Short Poems

THE F AITHLESS

A CHURCH-BELL in the dawn
But, like the dead,
I too — alas! — sleep on.

AUTUMN S ADNESS

From grief no hope could numb —
All the world's grief —
Does Autumn sadness come.

The Y OUNG M OON

The young moon is so shy
She slips away
Ere stars half fill the sky.

My geta clacked. A paper lantern moved, led by a hand, before me. The wind moaned. A wet pine struck my face. It seemed as if I heard the river rushing o'er me.
I followed. In the tea-house Geisha danced The Death of Spring . Their shadows fell like petals on the shoji ... I felt a creeping mist about me cling.
The bridge was darkly arched. Midway the lantern waited. Pale as the hidden moon the hand was! ... his! ... She came! ... Will the gods ever know how much I hated?

The deed is speech. Great Love remembereth.
Only the voice that in the life is found.
The spoken word is but a broken breath
That moans in breaking into speech and sound;
The thought and feeling, — these are life and death,
And with the deed, complete life's fullest round.

The flowers are dead that starred the summer sod;
The hillsides sleep beneath the breath of God;
The moon that sailed so queenly down the night
Peers through a silver veil of misty light;
The morning rises o'er the land and lo,
A sacred, mute astonishment of snow!

Down from her sun-dominion, to vision she flew,
Limpid and clear
As a child's eyes wide with their wonder.
Soft was the drum of her pinion afar in the blue,
As the hum of a bird
At the crimson lips of a flower, yet deeper toned
Than the thunder.

Hast thou the wisdom one least step to take?
Take thou that step even though the heavens fall,
Thankful that thou hast faith and power to make
One onward move — to take a step at all.

A FLAWLESS cup: how delicate and fine
The flowing curve of every jewelled line!
Look, turn it up or down, 'tis perfect still, —
But holds no drop of life's heart-warming wine.

FOR BAYARD AND HELEN STOCKTON

Two hundred years of blessing I record
For Morven's house, protected by the Lord:
And still I stand among old-fashioned flowers
To mark for Morven many sunlit hours.