Short Poems

Barbaric in stains of yellow and red,
The leaves o'ersprinkle the frosty pave;
They rustle beneath and around my tread;
And lo! a world three centuries dead
Leaps into life, and overhead
Miantonomi's forests wave.

What good, you ask of noon and afternoon,
With all the winds of inspiration stilled?
Why, then 't is our high joy, by Heaven's boon,
The mighty plans of morning to upbuild.

How filmy, faint, elusive, glows
The Old Moon in the New! It shows
What light the Earth from sunshine lent
Rays back upon the firmament.
So 'tis the Old Moon's hidden worth
To hold a mirror up to earth,
Which reads: " In me beside the New
Thine earthlight matched with sunlight view! "

Yea , Lethe current durst I ford with thee;
For, though it washed all memory away
Of what we are and were, seeing each other,
We should but rush together open-armed,
Doubly imparadised in our love's renewal.
As health from sleep, so should our wedded love
From Lethe rise new-born to ardor new.

Racing to conquer minutes, we whirl by,
Herded like pent-up beasts of savage breed,
Relinquishing God's gift of sun and sky,
Forgoing beauty in pursuit of speed!

The door-bell rings. Your cunning eyelids quiver.
The patient pales ... " My friend, you are quite ill. "
And so you magnify a torpid liver
To build a marble mansion on a hill.

He hid himself completely in his art,
And so we strive in vain to read his heart;
The critic's candle burns itself away,
But Romeo was born again today!

When the poet touches earth-bound words,
They flame on skyward wings;
And like a tree of dawn-stirred birds,
The dictionary sings!

Quoth Tom at Leigh's play, " The poor bard must look wan,
I don't think the public will clap it all,
For in the fourth act all the interest's gone. "
Quoth Dick, " Then the fifth must be capital . "

We every day bards may " anonymous " sign;
That Refuge, Miss Edgeworth, can never be thine.
Thy writings, where satire and moral unite,
Must bring forth the name of their author to light;
Good and bad join in telling the source of their birth,
The bad own their edge , and the good own their worth .