English

Having crossed the threshold,
you leave your house to itself.

You pass the end of the fence
and make all distance near,
and nearness distant.
The slope and all you loved
are like a face in the past.
You yield to memory.
You scale mysterious mountains.
You climb the castle of the dead
and forget your losses.
You come to a valley,
and you feel that terror within you
when everything is memory
and you can't save yourself
and there are no thresholds

Have you not heard the poets tell
How came the dainty Baby Bell
Into this world of ours?
The gates of heaven were left ajar;
With folded hands and dreamy eyes,
Wandering out of Paradise,
She saw this planet, like a star,
Hung in the glistening depths of even, —
Its bridges, running to and fro,
O'er which the white-winged angels go,
Bearing the holy dead to heaven.
She touched a bridge of flowers, — those feet,
So light they did not bend the bells

Have you met Miss Mabel Green
Who makes all kind of gel-a-tine?
'Cause she sells it very high
To get any better you need not try
I've known her for a great long time
All kind of jelly is in her line
If it look like jelly, shake like jelly
it must be gel-a-tine

If you chance to pass her way
You will hear her singing most every day
If it look like jelly, shake like jelly
it must be gel-a-tine

You won't try it, you gonna buy it

HAVE YOU HEARD the tale of the aloe plant,
Away in the sunny clime?
By humble growth of a hundred years
It reaches its blooming time;
And then a wondrous bud at its crown
Breaks into a thousand flowers;
This floral queen in its blooming seen
Is the pride of the tropical bowers;
But the plant to the flower is a sacrifice,
For it blooms but once, and in blooming dies.

Have you heard the tale of the pelican,
The Arab's Gomel el Bahr,
That dwells in the African solitudes
Where the birds that live lonely are?

Have you heard the Master's call?
Will you go forsaking all?
Millions still in sin and shame
Ne'er have heard the Saviour's name.

Some may give and some may pray,
But for you He calls today—
Will you answer: “Here am I,”
Or must Jesus pass you by?

Have you heard their bitter cry?
Can you bear to see them die,
Thousands who in darkest night,
Never yet have seen the light?

Soon 'twill be too late to go
And your love for Jesus show.
Oh, then quickly haste away—
Tarry not another day!

Have you ever tried to get along
With someone whom you felt was wrong
In attitude and thought and speech;
Whose fellowship you could not reach?

Have you ever been misunderstood
Believing that your aims were good
By one who simply would not see
Your views, or with your words agree?

And has it also seemed that you,
If in his place, would try to do
In word and thought and deed the thing
That to yourself would comfort bring?

Then, having changed the parts around
And looking further, have you found

HAVE YOU COME to the Red Sea place in your life,
Where, in spite of all you can do,
There is no way out, there is no way back,
There is no other way but through?
Then wait on the Lord, with a trust serene,
Till the night of your fear is gone;
He will send the winds, He will heap the floods,
When He says to your soul, “Go on!”

And His hand shall lead you through, clear through,
Ere the watery walls roll down;
No wave can touch you, no foe can smite,
No mightiest sea can drown.

“H AVE you been with the King to Rome,
Brother, big brother?”
“I've been there and I've come home.
Back to your play, little brother.”

“Oh, how high is Cæsar's house,
Brother, big brother?”
“Goats about the doorways browse:
Night hawks nest in the burnt roof-tree,
Home of the wild bird and home of the bee.
A thousand chambers of marble lie
Wide to the sun and the wind and the sky.
Poppies we find amongst our wheat
Grow on Cæsar's banquet seat.
Cattle crop and neatherds drowse

Have pity, God, on one you cast down here
You granted some delight, more often care.
He weeps — for he is ever on the move —
Sometimes to greet, sometimes to part from love.
Always his enemy, the treacherous night
Has hoodwinked him, depriving him of light
And given him a bitter draught to drain
A draught of black despair time and again
For forty years he's suffered this distress
Still hurled from wilderness to wilderness.

Have I spoken too much or not enough of love?
Who can tell?

But we who do not drug ourselves with lies
Know, with how deep a pathos, that we have
Only the warmth and beauty of this life
Before the blankness of the unending gloom.
Here for a little while we see the sun
And smell the grape-vines on the terraced hills,
And sing and weep, fight, starve and feast, and love
Lips and soft breasts too sweet for innocence.
And in this little glow of mortal life—
Faint as one candle in a large cold room—