Or as the ebon castanets
Clucked out dry time in unctuous jets,
Saw angry Jose thro' the grate
Glare on us a pale face of hate,
When some indecent colonel there
Presumed too lewdly for his ear.
Some still night in Seville; the street,
Candilejo; two shadows meet-
Flash sabres crossed within the moon-
Clash rapidly-a dead dragoon.
As slaughter red the long creek crawls
From solitary forest walls,
Out where the eve's wild glory falls.
One wiry leg drowned in his breast,
Neck-shrunk, flame-gilded with the west,
Severely he the evening wears.
The whimp'ring creek breaks on the stone;
The new moon came, but now is gone;
White, tingling stars wink out alone.
Lank spectre of wet, windy lands,
The melancholy heron stands ;
To clamoring dive into the stars.
HENRY TYRRELL.
[Of New York City. Born Ithaca, N. Y., 1860. the Century Magazine.]
THE DEBUTANTE.
THE music dwells upon its dying chord,
And thou dost linger trembling at thy start
Across the charmed borderland of Art.
The footlight's arc is like a flaming sword,
To frighten yet defend thee. Every word
Has meaning more than lies within thy part,
Thrilled with the pathos of a fainting heart
And asking sympathy that none afford.
But wait! and when the fostering years shall bring
Perfection to those fairest gifts of thine,
Its tributes at thy feet a world will fling,
And call thy calm precision fire divine.
All other hearts' emotions thou shalt waken,
Whilst thine amid the tempest rests unshaken.
CREUSA, in those idyll lands delaying,
For ever hung with mellow mists of gold,
We find but phantoms of delights long cold.
We listen to the pine and ilex swaying
Only in echo; to the players playing,
On faint, sweet flutes, lost melodies of old.
The beauteous heroes are but stories told;
Vain at the antique altars all our praying.
Oh, might we join, in vales unknown to story,
On shores unsung, by Western seas sublime,
The spirit of that loveliness and glory
Hellenic, with these hearts of fuller time,
Then to our days would sunnier joys belong
Than thrill us now in old idyllic song.
[Of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The poem quoted is from Lippincott's Magazine.]
THE SEEKER IN THE MARSHES.
THANKSGIVING to the gods!
Shaken and shivering in the autumn rains, With clay feet clinging to the weary sods;
I wait below the clouds, amid the plains, As though I stood in some remote, strange clime. Waiting to kneel upon the tomb of time.
The harvest swaths are gathered in the garth,
The aftermath is floating in the fields,—
The house-carl bides beside the roaring hearth,
And clustered cattle batten in the shields.
Thank ye the gods, O dwellers in the land,
For home and hearth and ever-giving hand.
Stretch hands to pray and feed and sleep and die,
And then be gathered to your kindred gods;
Low in dank barrows evermore to lie,
So long as autumn over wood-ways plods,
Forgetting the green earth as ye forgot
Its glory in the day when it was born
To you, on some fair tide in grove and grot,
As though new-made upon a glimmering morn:
And it shall so be meted unto you
As ye did mete when all things were to do.
The wild rains cling around me in the night
Closer than woman in the sunny days,
And through these shaken veins a weird delight
Of loneliness and storm and sodden ways
And desolation, made most populous,
Builds up the roof-trees of the gloomy house
Of grief, to hide and help my lonely path,
A sateless seeker for the aftermath.
Thanksgiving to the gods!
No hidden grapes are leaning to the sods,
No purple apple glances through green leaves,
Nor any fruit or flower is in the rains,
Nor any corn to garner in long sheaves;
And hard the toil is on these scanty plains,
Howbeit I thank the ever-giving ones,
Who dwell in high Olympus near the stars,
They have not walked in ever-burning suns,
Nor has the hard earth hurt their feet with scars; Never the soft rains beat them, nor the snow, Nor the sharp winds that we marsh-stalkers know In the sad halls of heaven they sleep the sleep,
Yea, and no morn breaks through their slumber deep.
These things they cast me forth at eventide to bear
With curving sickle over sod and sand;
And no wild tempest drowns me to despair
Nor terror fears me in a barren land.
Perchance somewhere, across the hollow hill,
Or in the thickets in these dreary meads,
Great grapes, uncut, are on the limp vine still,
And waving corn still wears its summer weeds,
Unseen, ungathered in the earlier tide,
When larger summer o'er the earth did glide.
Who knows? Belike from this same sterile path
My harvest hand, heaped with an aftermath,
Shall cast the garner forth before their feet,
Shapely and shaven clean, and very sweet.
Thanksgiving to the gods!
Wet with the falling rain;
My face and sides are beaten as with rods,
And soft and sodden is the endless plain.
How long! how long! Do I endure in vain ?
[Of Washington, D. C. Born in Illinois 1864.]
BEETHOVENS THIRD SYMPHONY.
PASSION and pain, the outcry of despair,
The pang of the unattainable desire,
And youth's delight in pleasures that expire
And sweet high dreamings of the good and fair
Clashing in swift soul-storm, through which no prayer
Uplifted stays the destined death-stroke dire.
Then through a mighty sorrowing, as through fire,
The soul burnt pure yearns forth into the air
Of the dear earth and, with the scent of flowers
And song of birds assuaged, takes heart again,
Made cheerier with this drinking of God's wine,
And turns with healing to the world of men,
And high above a sweet strong angel towers,
And Love makes life triumphant and divine.
[Of Boston, Massachusetts.]
MY MASTERPIECE.
I WROTE the truest, tend'rest song
The world has ever heard;
And clear, melodious and strong
And sweet was every word.
The flowing numbers came to me
Unbidden from the heart;
pure the strain, that poesy
Seemed something more than art.
No doubtful cadence marred a line,
So tunefully it flowed,
And through the measure, all divine
The fire of genius glowed.
So deftly were the verses wrought,
So fair the legend told,
That every word revealed a thought,
And every thought was gold.
Mine was the charm, the power, the skill,
The wisdom of the years;
'Twas mine to move the world at will
To laughter or to tears.
For subtile pleasantry was there,
And brilliant flash of wit,
Now, pleading eyes were raised in prayer,
And now with smiles were lit.
I sang of hours when youth was king,
And of one happy spot
Where life and love were everything,
And time was half forgot.
Of gracious days in woodland ways,
When every flower and tree
Seemed echoing the sweetest phrase
From lips in Arcadie.
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