One who after writing prose all his life suddenly essays to launch a volume of verse, must know something of the feeling with which an old-time sailor after coasting only his native shores found himself setting sail into an unknown sea.
The author of this little volume knows quite as well as the most experienced mariner the temerity of sailing an untried main in so frail a bark. But he is willing, if the Fates so decree, to go down with the unnumbered sail of that great fleet which have throughout the ages faced the wide ocean of oblivion, merely for the thrill of being for a brief space on its vast waters.
Since Horace, secure in the double endowment of genius and of an Emperor's favor, wrote scornfully how hated of gods and men was middling verse, no one has ever doubted the fact—perhaps, not even one of all the myriads who have dared to brave that bitter scorn. The explanation then for the production of so much of the despised matter must be that there is for the minor poet also a music that the outer world does not catch—an inner day which the outer world does not see. It is this music, this light which, for the most part, is for the lesser poet his only reward. That he has heard, however brokenly, and at however vast a distance, snatches of those strains which thrilled the souls of Marlowe and Milton and Keats and Shelley, even though he may never reproduce one of them, is moreover a sufficiently high reward.
T. N. P.
*** Most of the poems in the following pages, with the exception of those in dialect, are now published for the first time.
DEDICATION
THE COAST OF BOHEMIA
THE VOICE OF THE SEA
LONG ROLL AT NAPOLEON'S TOMB
THE PRINCESS' PROGRESS
YOUTH
AMERICA: GREETING
DAWN
THE POET ON AGRADINA
THE SHEPHERD OF THE SEAS
SLEEP
TO A LADY AT A SPRING
UNFORGOTTEN
THE OLD LION
THE DRAGON OF THE SEAS
THE BENT MONK
THE MESSAGE
THE NEEDLE'S EYE
THE CLOSED DOOR
CONVENTION
THE MAGDALEN
THE REQUIREMENT
THE LISTENER
CONTRADICTION
THE QUESTION
OUR DEAD
MY MOTHER
HER INFLUENCE
MATTHEW ARNOLD
THE STRANGER
LOVE
AN OLD REFRAIN
TO CLAUDIA
THE APPLE-TREES AT EVEN
MY TRUE-LOVE'S WEALTH
A VALENTINE
A PORTRAIT
FÉLICE
LOVE SONG
THE HARBOUR LIGHT
FADED SPRAY OF MIGNONETTE
LOST ROSES
DE NAME OF OLE VIRGINIA
THE DANCER
THE APRIL-FACE
COME BACK TO US, DAVIE
THE WITCH
HUMANITY
ASPIRATION
REALITY
LITTLE DOLLY DIMPLE
A VALENTINE
UNCLE GABE'S WHITE FOLKS
LITTLE JACK
ASHCAKE
ZEKYL'S INFIDELITY
MARSE PHIL
ONE MOURNER
. … "Few, few are they:
Perchance, among a thousand, one
Thou shouldest find, for whom the sun
Of Poesy makes an inner day."
—The Medea of Euripides—Way's Translation.
As one who wanders in a lonely land,
Through all the blackness of a stormy night,
Now stumbling here, now falling there outright,
And doubts if it be worse to stir or stand,
Not knowing what abysses yawn at hand,
What torrents roar beyond some beetling height;
Yet scales the top to find the dawn in sight,
And Earth kissed into radiance with its wand:
So, wandering hopeless in the darkness, I,
Scarce recking whither led my painful way,
Or whether I should faint or strive to prove
If 'yond the mountain-top some path might lie,
Climbed boldly up the steep, and lo! the Day
Broke into pearl and splendor in thy love.
There is a land not charted on all charts;
Though many mariners have touched its coast,
Who far adventuring in those distant parts,
Meet ship-wreck there and are forever lost;
Or if they e'er return, are soon once more
Borne far away by hunger for that magic shore.
Its mystic mountains on the horizon piled,
Some mariners have glimpsed when driven far
Out of life's measured course by tempests wild,
Or lured therefrom by the erratic star
They chose as pilot, till their errant guide
Drew them resistlessly within its witching tide.
For oft, they tell, who know its sapphire strand
The golden haze enfolding it hangs low,
And those who careless steer may miss the land,
Embosomed in the sunset's purple glow,
Its lights mistaken for the evening stars,
Its music for the surf-beat on its golden bars.
Young Jason found it when he dauntless sought
The golden fleece by Colchis' perilous stream,
And in his track full many an argonaut
Hath found the rare fleece of his golden dream,
And at the last, Ulysses-like, surcease
From Sorrow's dole and Labor's heavy prease.
One voyager charted it for every age,
From azure rim to starry mountain core.
A nameless player on the World's great stage,
He spread his sails, adventured to that shore
And reared a pharos with his art sublime,
Like Ilion's song-wrought towers, to beacon every clime.
The great adventurers reached it when they brake
Columbus-led into the unknown West,
And those who followed in their shining wake,
But left no trace of where their keels have pressed;
Yet have through stress of storm and tempests' rage
Won by his quenchless light a happy anchorage.
There rest the heroes of lost causes lorn,
On their calm brows more fadeless chaplets far
Than all their conquerors' could e'er adorn,
When shone effulgent Fame's ascendant star;
There fallen patriots reap the glorious prize
Of deathless memory of their precious sacrifice.
There many a dream-faced maid and matron dwells,
From Argive Helen on through gliding time;
There drink the poets draughts from crystal wells,
And choir high music to their harps sublime:
And there the great philosophers discourse
Divine Philosophy in due and tranquil course.
There not alone the great and lofty sing;
But silent poets too find there the song
They only sang in dreams when wandering
Amazed and lost amid the earthly throng;
Their hearts unfettered all from worldly fears.
Attuned to meet the spacious music of the spheres:
Gray, wrinkled men, the sea-salt in their hair,
Their eyes set deep with peering through the gloom,
Their voices low with speaking ever, where