DREAMS AND IMAGES

AN ANTHOLOGY OF CATHOLIC POETS

DREAMS AND IMAGES

AN ANTHOLOGY

of

CATHOLIC POETS

Edited by

JOYCE KILMER

TORONTO

THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY

LIMITED

Copyright, 1917,

Boni & Liveright, Inc.

Printed in the U. S. of America

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

For advice and assistance in collecting and arranging these poems, I am grateful to many friends, especially to Mr. T. R. Smith, Miss Caroline Giltinan and Mr. John Bunker. The publishers, editors and authors who have kindly consented to let me use copyright material are numerous and I assure them of my deep sense of obligation. In particular I desire to thank the following publishers for their generous permission to use all that I required from their lists: Charles Scribner’s Sons, John Lane Company, Small, Maynard & Company, P. J. Kennedy Sons, Frederick A. Stokes Company, The Catholic World, Houghton Mifflin Company, The Encyclopaedia Press, Henry Holt & Company, The Devin-Adair Company, Little, Brown & Company, The Macmillan Company, Elkin Mathews, The Ave Maria, Laurence Gomme, and Wilfrid Meynell.

J. K.

To

Rev. James J. Daly, S.J.

INTRODUCTION

This is not a collection of devotional poems. It is not an attempt to rival Orby Shipley’s admirable “Carmina Mariana” or any other similar anthology. What I have tried to do is to bring together the poems in English that I like best that were written by Catholics since the middle of the Nineteenth Century. There are in this book poems religious in theme; there are also love-songs and war songs. But I think that it may be called a book of Catholic poems. For a Catholic is not a Catholic only when he prays; he is a Catholic in all the thoughts and actions of his life. And when a Catholic attempts to reflect in words some of the Beauty of which as a poet he is conscious, he cannot be far from prayer and adoration.

The Church has never been without her great poets. And in the Nineteenth Century there was a splendid renascence of Catholic poetry written in English. It had already begun when Francis Thompson wrote his Essay on Shelley, in which he longed for the by-gone days when poetry was “the lesser sister and helpmate of the Church; the minister to the mind, as the Church to the soul.” The members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were not Catholics, but their movement was related to the renascence of Catholic poetry—it was an attempt to restore to art and letters some of the glory of the days before what is called the Reformation. Coventry Patmore carried the theories of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to their logical conclusion, as Newman did those of the Tractarians. Coventry Patmore became a Catholic, and found in his Faith his inspiration and his theme. And his disciple Francis Thompson, born to the Faith which Patmore reached by way of the divine adventure of conversion, with art even greater than that of his master, made of the language of Protestant England an instrument of Catholic adoration.

A few of the poets represented in this book were not yet Catholics when they wrote the poems I have quoted. But I do not think that anyone will find fault with me for including Newman and Hawker among the Catholic poets. I am very sorry that the limitations of space have made me exclude many poems dear to me, many poems that are part of the world’s literary heritage. There should be many Catholic anthologies.

The poet sees things hidden from other men, but he sees them only in dreams. A poet is (by the very origin of the word) a maker, but a maker of images, not a creator of life. This is a book of reflections of the Beauty which mortal eyes can see only in reflection, a book of dreams of that Truth which one day we shall waking understand. A book of images it is, too, containing representations carved by those who worked by the aid of memory, the strange memory of men living in Faith.

Joyce Kilmer.

August, 1917.

165th Regiment, Camp Mills, Mineola, New York.

CONTENTS

Dreams and Images

OUR LORD AND OUR LADY

By Hilaire Belloc

They warned Our Lady for the Child

That was Our Blessed Lord,

And She took Him into the desert wild,

Over the camel’s ford.

And a long song She sang to Him

And a short story told:

And She wrapped Him in a woolen cloak

To keep Him from the cold.

But when Our Lord was grown a man

The Rich they dragged Him down,

And they crucified Him in Golgotha,

Out and beyond the Town.

They crucified Him on Calvary,

Upon an April day;

And because He had been her little Son

She followed Him all the way.

Our Lady stood beside the Cross,

A little space apart,

And when She heard Our Lord cry out

A sword went through Her Heart.

They laid Our Lord in a marble tomb,

Dead, in a winding sheet.

But Our Lady stands above the world

With the white Moon at Her feet.

TO THE BALLIOL MEN STILL IN AFRICA

By Hilaire Belloc

Years ago when I was at Balliol,

Balliol men—and I was one—

Swam together in winter rivers,

Wrestled together under the sun.

And still in the heart of us, Balliol, Balliol,

Loved already, but hardly known,

Welded us each of us into the others:

Called a levy and chose her own.

Here is a House that armours a man

With the eyes of a boy and the heart of a ranger,

And a laughing way in the teeth of the world

And a holy hunger and thirst for danger:

Balliol made me, Balliol fed me,

Whatever I had she gave me again:

And the best of Balliol loved and led me,

God be with you, Balliol men.

I have said it before, and I say it again,

There was treason done, and a false word spoken,

And England under the dregs of men,

And bribes about, and a treaty broken:

But angry, lonely, hating it still,

I wished to be there in spite of the wrong.

My heart was heavy for Cumnor Hill

And the hammer of galloping all day long.

Galloping outward into the weather,

Hands a-ready and battle in all:

Words together and wine together

And song together in Balliol Hall.

Rare and single! Noble and few!...

Oh! they have wasted you over the sea!

The only brothers ever I knew,

The men that laughed and quarrelled with me.

Balliol made me, Balliol fed me,

Whatever I had she gave me again;

And the best of Balliol loved and led me,

God be with you, Balliol men.

THE SOUTH COUNTRY

By Hilaire Belloc

When I am living in the Midlands

That are sodden and unkind,

I light my lamp in the evening:

My work is left behind;

And the great hills of the South Country

Come back into my mind.

The great hills of the South Country

They stand along the sea;

And it’s there walking in the high woods

That I could wish to be,

And the men that were boys when I was a boy

Walking along with me.

The men that live in North England

I saw them for a day:

Their hearts are set upon the waste fells,

Their skies are fast and grey;

From their castle-walls a man may see;

The mountains far away.

The men that live in West England

They see the Severn strong,

A-rolling on rough water brown,

Light aspen leaves along.

They have the secret of the Rocks,

And the oldest kind of song.

But the men that live in the South Country

Are the kindest and most wise,

They get their laughter from the loud surf,

And the faith in their happy eyes

Comes surely from our Sister the Spring

When over the sea she flies;

The violets suddenly bloom at her feet,

She blesses us with surprise.

I never get between the pines

But I smell the Sussex air;

Nor I never come on a belt of sand

But my home is there.

And along the sky the line of Downs

So noble and so bare.

A lost thing could I never find,

Nor a broken thing mend:

And I fear I shall be all alone

When I get towards the end.

Who will there be to comfort me

Or who will be my friend?

I will gather and carefully make my friends

Of the men of the Sussex Weald,

They watch the stars from silent folds,

They stiffly plough the field.

By them and the God of the South Country

My poor soul shall be healed.

If I ever become a rich man,

Or if ever I grow to be old,

I will build a house with deep thatch

To shelter me from the cold,

And there shall the Sussex songs be sung

And the story of Sussex told.

I will hold my house in the high wood

Within a walk of the sea,

And the men that were boys when I was a boy

Shall sit and drink with me.

THE EARLY MORNING

By Hilaire Belloc

The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other:

The moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother,

The moon on my left and the dawn on my right.

My brother, good morning: my sister, good night.

THE PROPHET LOST IN THE HILLS AT EVENING

By Hilaire Belloc

Strong God which made the topmost stars

To circulate and keep their course,

Remember me; whom all the bars

Of sense and dreadful fate enforce.

Above me in your heights and tall,

Impassable the summits freeze,

Below the haunted waters call

Impassable beyond the trees.

I hunger and I have no bread.

My gourd is empty of the wine.

Surely the footsteps of the dead

Are shuffling softly close to mine!

It darkens. I have lost the ford.

There is a change on all things made.

The rocks have evil faces, Lord,

And I am awfully afraid.

Remember me! the Voids of Hell

Expand enormous all around.

Strong friend of souls, Emmanuel,

Redeem me from accursed ground.

The long descent of wasted days,

To these at last have led me down;

Remember that I filled with praise

The meaningless and doubtful ways

That lead to an eternal town.

I challenged and I kept the Faith,

The bleeding path alone I trod;

It darkens. Stand about my wraith,

And harbour me—almighty God!

THE BIRDS

By Hilaire Belloc

When Jesus Christ was four years old,

The angels brought Him toys of gold,

Which no man ever had bought or sold.

And yet with these He would not play.

He made Him small fowl out of clay,

And blessed them till they flew away:

Tu creasti Domine.

Jesus Christ, Thou child so wise,

Bless mine hands and fill mine eyes,

And bring my soul to Paradise.

COURTESY

By Hilaire Belloc

Of Courtesy, it is much less

Than Courage of Heart or Holiness,

Yet in my Walks it seems to me

That the Grace of God is in Courtesy.

On Monks I did in Storrington fall,

They took me straight into their Hall;

I saw Three Pictures on a wall,

And Courtesy was in them all.

The first Annunciation;

The second the Visitation;

The third the Consolation,

Of God that was Our Lady’s Son.

The first was of Saint Gabriel;

On Wings a-flame from Heaven he fell;

And as he went upon one knee

He shone with Heavenly Courtesy.

Our Lady out of Nazareth rode⸺

It was her month of heavy load;

Yet was Her face both great and kind,

For Courtesy was in Her Mind.

The third it was our Little Lord,

Whom all the Kings in arms adored;

He was so small you could not see

His large intent of Courtesy.

Our Lord, that was Our Lady’s Son,

Go bless you, People, one by one;

My Rhyme is written, my work is done.

NOEL

By Hilaire Belloc

I

On a winter’s night long time ago

(The bells ring loud and the bells ring low),

When high howled wind, and down fell snow

(Carillon, Carilla).

Saint Joseph he and Notre Dame,

Riding on an ass, full weary came

From Nazareth into Bethlehem,

And the small child Jesus smile on you.

II

And Bethlehem inn they stood before

(The bells ring less and the bells ring more),

The landlord bade them begone from his door

(Carillon, Carilla).

“Poor folk” (says he), “must lie where they may,

For the Duke of Jewry comes this way,

With all his train on a Christmas Day.”

And the small child Jesus smile on you.

III

Poor folk that may my carol hear

(The bells ring single and the bells ring clear),

See! God’s one child had hardest cheer!

(Carillon, Carilla).

Men grown hard on a Christmas morn;

The dumb beast by and a babe forlorn.

It was very, very cold when our Lord was born.

And the small child Jesus smile on you.

IV

Now these were Jews as Jews may be

(The bells ring merry and the bells ring free).

But Christian men in a band are we

(Carillon, Carilla).

Empty we go, and ill be-dight,

Singing Noel on a Winter’s night.

Give us to sup by the warm firelight,

And the small child Jesus smile on you.

AFTER A RETREAT

By Robert Hugh Benson

What hast thou learnt to-day?

Hast thou sounded awful mysteries,

Hast pierced the veiléd skies,

Climbed to the feet of God,

Trodden where saints have trod,

Fathomed the heights above?

Nay,

This only have I learnt, that God is love.

What hast thou heard to-day?

Hast heard the Angel-trumpets cry,

And rippling harps reply;

Heard from the Throne of flame

Whence God incarnate came

Some thund’rous message roll?

Nay,

This have I heard, His voice within my soul.

What hast thou felt to-day?

The pinions of the Angel-guide

That standeth at thy side

In rapturous ardours beat,

Glowing, from head to feet,

In ecstasy divine?

Nay,

This only have I felt, Christ’s hand in mine.

THE TERESIAN CONTEMPLATIVE

By Robert Hugh Benson

She moves in tumult; round her lies

The silence of the world of grace;

The twilight of our mysteries

Shines like high noonday on her face;

Our piteous guesses, dim with fears,

She touches, handles, sees, and hears.

In her all longings mix and meet;

Dumb souls through her are eloquent;

She feels the world beneath her feet

Thrill in a passionate intent;

Through her our tides of feeling roll

And find their God within her soul.

Her faith and awful Face of God

Brightens and blinds with utter light;

Her footsteps fall where late He trod;

She sinks in roaring voids of night;

Cries to her Lord in black despair,

And knows, yet knows not, He is there.

A willing sacrifice she takes

The burden of our fall within;

Holy she stands; while on her breaks

The lightning of the wrath of sin;

She drinks her Saviour’s cup of pain,

And, one with Jesus, thirsts again.

HOW SHALL I BUILD

By Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

How shall I build my temple to the Lord,

Unworthy I, who am thus foul of heart?

How shall I worship who no traitor word

Know but of love to play a suppliant’s part?

How shall I pray, whose soul is as a mart,

For thoughts unclean, whose tongue is as a sword

Even for those it loves, to wound and smart?

Behold how little I can help Thee, Lord.

The Temple I would build should be all white,

Each stone the record of a blameless day;

The souls that entered there should walk in light,

Clothed in high chastity and wisely gay.

Lord, here is darkness. Yet this heart unwise,

Bruised in Thy service, take in sacrifice.

SONG

By Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

O fly not, Pleasure, pleasant-hearted Pleasure;

Fold me thy wings, I prithee, yet and stay:

For my heart no measure

Knows, or other treasure

To buy a garland for my love to-day.

And thou, too, Sorrow, tender-hearted Sorrow,

Thou gray-eyed mourner, fly not yet away:

For I fain would borrow

Thy sad weeds to-morrow,

To make a mourning for love’s yesterday.

The voice of Pity, Time’s divine dear Pity,

Moved me to tears: I dared not say them nay,

But passed forth from the city,

Making thus my ditty

Of fair love lost forever and a day.

THE DESOLATE CITY

By Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

Dark to me is the earth. Dark to me are the heavens.

Where is she that I loved, the woman with eyes like stars?

Desolate are the streets. Desolate is the city.

A city taken by storm, where none are left but the slain.

Sadly I rose at dawn, undid the latch of my shutters,

Thinking to let in light, but I only let in love.

Birds in the boughs were awake; I listen’d to their chaunting;

Each one sang to his love; only I was alone.

This, I said in my heart, is the hour of life and pleasure.

Now each creature on earth has his joy, and lives in the sun,

Each in another’s eyes finds light, the light of compassion,

This is the moment of pity, this is the moment of love.

Speak, O desolate city! Speak, O silence in sadness!

Where is she that loved in my strength, that spoke to my soul?

Where are those passionate eyes that appealed to my eyes in passion?

Where is the mouth that kiss’d me, the breast that I laid to my own?

Speak, thou soul of my soul, for rage in my heart is kindled.

Tell me, where didst thou flee in the day of destruction and fear?

See, my arms enfold thee, enfolding thus all heaven,

See, my desire is fulfilled in thee, for it fills the earth.

Thus in my grief I lamented. Then turned I from the window,

Turn’d to the stair, and the open door, and the empty street,

Crying aloud in my grief, for there was none to chide me,

None to mock my weakness, none to behold my tears.

Groping I went, as blind. I sought her house, my beloved’s.

There I stopp’d at the silent door, and listen’d and tried the latch.

Love, I cried, dost thou slumber? This is no hour for slumber,

This is the hour of love, and love I bring in my hand.

I knew the house with its windows barr’d, and its leafless fig-tree,

Climbing round by the doorstep, the only one in the street;

I knew where my hope had climbed to its goal and there encircled,

All those desolate walls once held, my beloved’s heart.

There in my grief she consoled me. She loved when I loved not.

She put her hand in my hand, and set her lips to my lips.

She told me all her pain and show’d me all her trouble.

I, like a fool, scarce heard, hardly return’d her kiss.

Love, thy eyes were like torches. They changed as I beheld them.

Love, thy lips were like gems, the seal thou settest on my life.

Love, if I loved not then, behold this hour thy vengeance;

This is the fruit of thy love and thee, the unwise grown wise.

Weeping strangled my voice. I call’d out, but none answered;

Blindly the windows gazed back at me, dumbly the door;

She whom I love, who loved me, look’d not on my yearning,

Gave me no more her hands to kiss, show’d me no more her soul.

Therefore the earth is dark to me, the sunlight blackness,

Therefore I go in tears and alone, by night and day;

Therefore I find my love in heaven, no light, no beauty,

A heaven taken by storm, where none are left but the slain!

A CHRISTMAS SONG

By Teresa Brayton

O Lord, as You lay so soft and white,

A Babe in a manger stall,

With the big star flashing across the night,

Did you know and pity us all?

Did the wee hands, close as a rosebud curled,

With the call of their mission ache,

To be out and saving a weary world

For Your merciful Father’s sake?

Did You hear the cries of the groping blind,

The woe of the leper’s prayer,

The surging sorrow of all mankind,

As You lay by Your Mother there?

Beyond the shepherds, low bending down,

The long, long road did You see

That led from peaceful Bethlehem town

To the summit of Calvary?

The world grown weary of wasting strife,

Had called for the Christ to rise;

For sin had poisoned the springs of life

And only the dead were wise.

But, wrapped in a dream of scornful pride,

Too high were its eyes to see

A Child, foredoomed to be crucified,

On a peasant Mother’s knee.

But, while the heavens with glad acclaim

Sang out the tale of Your birth,

A mystic echo of comfort came

To the desolate souls of earth.

For the thrill of a slowly turning tide

Was felt in that grey daybreak,

As if God, the Father, had sanctified

All sorrow for One Man’s sake.

O Child of the Promise! Lord of Love!

O Master of all the earth!

While the angels are singing their songs above,

We bring our gifts to Your birth.

Just the blind man’s cry, and the lame man’s pace,

And the leper’s pitiful call;

On these, over infinite fields of space,

Look down, for You know them all.

LIKE ONE I KNOW

By Nancy Campbell

Little Christ was good, and lay

Sleeping, smiling in the hay;

Never made the cows round eyes

Open wider at His cries;

Never when the night was dim,

Startled guardian Seraphim,

Who above Him in the beams

Kept their watch round His white dreams;

Let the rustling brown mice creep

Undisturbed about His sleep.

Yet if it had not been so—

Had He been like one I know,

Fought with little fumbling hands,

Kicked inside His swaddling bands,

Puckered wilful crimsoning face—

Mary Mother, full of grace,

At that little naughty thing,

Still had been a-worshipping.

MEA CULPA

By Ethna Carbery

Be pitiful, my God!

No hard-won gifts I bring—

But empty, pleading hands

To Thee at evening.

Spring came, white-browed and young,

I, too, was young with Spring.

There was a blue, blue heaven

Above a skylark’s wing.

Youth is the time for joy,

I cried, it is not meet

To mount the heights of toil

With child-soft feet.

When Summer walked the land

In Passion’s red arrayed,

Under green sweeping boughs

My couch I made.

The noon-tide heat was sore,

I slept the Summer through;

An angel waked me—“Thou

Hast work to do.”

I rose and saw the sheaves

Upstanding in a row;

The reapers sang Thy praise

While passing to and fro.

My hands were soft with ease,

Long were the Autumn hours;

I left the ripened sheaves

For poppy-flowers.

But lo! now Winter glooms,

And gray is in my hair,

Whither has flown the world

I found so fair?

My patient God, forgive!

Praying Thy pardon sweet

I lay a lonely heart

Before Thy feet.

IN TIR-NA’N-OG

By Ethna Carbery

In Tir-na’n-Og,

In Tir-na’n-Og,

Summer and spring go hand in hand, and in the radiant weather

Brown autumn leaves and winter snow come floating down together.

In Tir-na’n-Og,

In Tir-na’n-Og,

The sagans sway this way and that, the twisted fern uncloses,

The quicken-berry hides its red above the tender roses.

In Tir-na’n-Og,

In Tir-na’n-Og,

The blackbird lilts, the robin chirps, the linnet wearies never,

They pipe to dancing feet of Sidhe and thus shall pipe forever.

In Tir-na’n-Og,

In Tir-na’n-Og,

All in a drift of apple blooms my true love there is roaming,

He will not come although I pray from dawning until gloaming.

In Tir-na’n-Og,

In Tir-na’n-Og,

The Sidhe desired my Heart’s Delight, they lured him from my keeping,

He stepped within a fairy ring while all the world was sleeping.

In Tir-na’n-Og,

In Tir-na’n-Og,

He hath forgotten hill and glen where misty shadows gather,

The bleating of the mountain sheep, the cabin of his father.

In Tir-na’n-Og,

In Tir-na’n-Og,

He wanders in a happy dream thro’ scented golden hours,

He flutes, to woo a fairy love, knee deep in fairy flowers.

In Tir-na’n-Og,

In Tir-na’n-Og,

No memory hath he of my face, no sorrow for my sorrow,

My flax is spun, my wheel is hushed, and so I wait the morrow.

LADY DAY IN IRELAND

By P. J. Carroll, C.S.C.

Through the long August day, mantled blue with a sky of Our Lady,

They are there at the well from the dawn till the sea birds go home;

And the trees bending down with broad leaves offer spots that are shady,

Where the heart is at rest, sighing prayers till the shadows are come.

The brown beads and the crucifix pass in procession through fingers

That are pale as the snow or are hardened from labor and pain.

In each Ave they whisper the deep Celtic tenderness lingers,

Like a sweet phrase in song that is echoed and echoed again.

Marching down the white road with the sun in the noon of his splendor

Are the children, with joy in the blue of their innocent eyes;

In their hearts is a song, breaking forth into words that are tender,

Unto her with the gold of the stars and the blue of the skies.

In the still summer air there’s a chorus of minstrelsy breaking,

There are flashes of gold with a flutter and waving of wings:

Mary’s birds are they, come with the dawn, all the green woods forsaking,

Every heart in them breaking for love with the message it brings.

Through the calm August day, with Our Lady’s blue sky far above them,

And beyond the grey mountains where slumbers the Irish green sea,

There they speak to her, weep while they pray to her, beg her to love them,

Till beyond the bright stars where their home and their treasure shall be.

ST. PATRICK’S TREASURE

By P. J. Carroll, C.S.C.

Called son by many lands,

Thou art a father unto one.

Of all these mothers claiming thee,

By honored titles naming thee,

We ask: Where is thy priceless birthright gone?

That blessed faith of thine,

They mothering thee have sold.

But she, thy daughter dutiful,

Has kept thy treasure beautiful

Through many sorrows in her heart of gold.

THE SPOUSE OF CHRIST

By D. A. Casey

He came to her from out eternal years,

A smile upon His lips, a tender smile

That, somehow, spoke of partings and of tears.

’Twas eventide, and silence brooded low

On earth and sky—the hour when haunting fears

Of mystery pursue us as we go.

Strange, mystic shadows filled the temple dim,

But on the Golden Door the ruby glow

Spoke orisons more sweet than vesper hymn.

No human accents voiced His gentle call,

No crashing thunderbolts did wait on Him,

As when of old He deigned to summon Saul.

But heart did speak to heart, an unseen chord

In Love’s own scale did sweetly rise and fall;

Nor questioned she, but meekly answered “Lord!”

To-night some household counts a vacant chair,

But far on high Christ portions the reward,

A hundred-fold for each poor human care.

CHRIST THE COMRADE

By Padraic Colum

Christ, by Thine own darkened hour

Live within my heart and brain!

Let my hands not slip the rein.

Ah, how long ago it is

Since a comrade rode with me!

Now a moment let me see

Thyself, lonely in the dark,

Perfect, without wound or mark.

AN OLD WOMAN OF THE ROADS

By Padraic Colum

Oh, to have a little house,

To own the hearth and stool and all—

The heaped-up sods upon the fire,

The pile of turf against the wall!

To have a clock with weights and chains,

And pendulum swinging up and down!

A dresser filled with shining delph,

Speckled and white and blue and brown!

I could be busy all the day

Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor,

And fixing on their shelf again

My white and blue speckled store.

I could be quiet there at night

Beside the fire and by myself,

Sure of a bed, and loth to leave

The ticking clock and shining delph.

Och! but I’m weary of mist and dark,

And roads where there’s never a house or bush,

And tired I am of bog and road,

And the crying wind and the lonesome hush.

And I am praying to God on high,

And I am praying Him night and day,

For a little house—a house of my own—

Out of the wind’s and the rain’s way.

THE HEAVIEST CROSS OF ALL

By Katherine Eleanor Conway

I’ve borne full many a sorrow, I’ve suffered many a loss—

But now, with a strange, new anguish, I carry this last dread cross;

For of this be sure, my dearest, whatever thy life befall,

The cross that our own hands fashion is the heaviest cross of all.

Heavy and hard I made it in the days of my fair strong youth,

Veiling mine eyes from the blessed light, and closing my heart to truth.

Pity me, Lord, whose mercy passeth my wildest thought,

For I never dreamed of the bitter end of the work my hands had wrought!

In the sweet morn’s flush and fragrance I wandered o’er dewy meadows,

And I hid from the fervid noontide glow in the cool green woodland shadows;

And I never recked, as I sang aloud in my wilful, selfish glee,

Of the mighty woe that was drawing nigh to darken the world for me.

But it came at last, my dearest—what need to tell thee how?

Mayst never know of the wild, wild woe that my heart is bearing now!

Over my summer’s glory crept a damp and chilling shade,

And I staggered under the heavy cross that my sinful hands had made.

I go where the shadows deepen, and the end seems far off yet—

God keep thee safe from the sharing of this woeful late regret!

For of this be sure, my dearest, whatever thy life befall,

The crosses we make for ourselves, alas! are the heaviest ones of all.

SATURNINUS

By Katherine Eleanor Conway

He might have won the highest guerdon that heaven to earth can give,

For whoso falleth for justice—dying, he yet shall live.

He might have left us his memory to flame as a beacon light,

When clouds of the false world’s raising shut the stars of heaven from sight.

He might have left us his name to ring in our triumph song

When we stand, as we’ll stand at to-morrow’s dawn, by the grave of a world-old wrong.

For he gave thee, O mother of valiant sons, thou fair, and sore oppressed,

The love of his youth and his manhood’s choice—first-fruits of his life, and best.

Thine were throb of his heart and thought of his brain and toil of his strong right hand;

For thee he braved scorn and reviling, and loss of gold and land,

Threat and lure and false-hearted friend, and blight of a broken word—

Terrors of night and delay of light—prison and rack and sword.

For thee he bade death defiance—till the heavens opened wide,

And his face grew bright with reflex of light from the face of the Crucified.

And his crown was in sight and his palm in reach and his glory all but won,

And then—he failed—God help us! with the worst of dying done.

Only to die on the treacherous down by the hands of the tempters spread—

Nay, nay—make way for the strangers! we have no right in the dead.

But oh, for the beacon quenched, that we dreamed would kindle and flame!

And oh, for the standard smirched and shamed, and the name we dare not name!

Over the lonesome grave the shadows gather fast;

Only the mother, like God, forgives, and comforts her heart with the past.

DREAMING OF CITIES DEAD

By Eleanor Rogers Cox

Dreaming of cities dead,

Of bright Queens vanished,

Of kings whose names were but as seed wind-blown

E’en when white Patrick’s voice shook Tara’s throne,

My way along the great world-street I tread,

And keep the rites of Beauty lost, alone.

Cairns level with the dust—

Names dim with Time’s dull rust—

Afar they sleep on many a wind-swept hill,

The beautiful, the strong of heart and will—

On whose pale dreams no sunrise joy shall burst,

No harper’s song shall pierce with battle-thrill.

Long from their purpled heights,

Their reign of high delights,

The Queens have wended down Death’s mildewed stair,

Leaving a scent of lilies on the air,

To gladden Earth through all her days and nights,

That once she cherished anything so fair.

DEATH OF CUCHULAIN

By Eleanor Rogers Cox

Silent are the singers in the purple halls of Emain,

Silent all the harp-strings untouched of any hand,

Wan as twilight roses the radiant, royal women,

Black unto the hearthstone the erstwhile flaming brand.

Inward far from ocean the storm’s white birds are flying,

Darting, like dim wraith flames across the falling night.

Winds like a caoine through the quicken groves are sighing,

On no lip is laughter, in no heart delight.

For thitherwards witch-wafted athwart the sundering spaces,

Lo, a word doom-freighted unto Conchubar has come,

Whispering of one who in far-off, hostile places

Strikes a last defending blow for king and home.

And the King pacing lone in his place of High Decision,

Gazing with rapt eyes on that far-flung battle-plain,

Through the red rains rising beholds with startled vision

Sight such as man’s eye shall not see again.

For one there is dying, of his foes at last outnumbered,

One whose soul a sword was, shaped by God’s own hand,

One who guarded Ulaidh when all her knighthood slumbered,

Prone beneath the curse laid of old upon the land.

And dying so, alone, of all mortal aid forsaken,

Dead his peerless war steeds, dead his charioteer,

Yet the high splendor of his spirit all unshaken,

Shines morning-bright through the Death-mists drawing near.

And radiant round his brow yet the hero-flame is gleaming,

And firm yet his footstep upon the reddened sod,

As with sword uplifted towards the day’s last beaming,

Forth goes the spirit of Cuchulain unto God.

Leaving to his land and the Celtic race forever

That which shall not fail them throughout the fading years,

Heritage of faith unchanged, of fear-undimmed endeavor,

And a quenchless laughter ringing down the edge of hostile spears.

GODS AND HEROES OF THE GAEL

By Eleanor Rogers Cox

Forth in shining phalanx marching from the shrouding mists of time,

Bright the sunlight on their foreheads, bright upon their golden mail,

Lords of beauty, lords of valor, lords of Earth’s unconquered prime,

Come the gods, the kings, the heroes of the Gael.

Lugh, the splendor of whose shining lit the forest and the fen,

He whose smile at first illuming all the shadow-haunted space

Of the vast, primeval ranges, death-engirdled, shunned of men,

Over virgin seas to Erin led our race.

Mananaan, great lord of Ocean—he whose fair domain outspread

Wheresoever tides foam-flowered to the moon’s high mandate move,

Aengus, clothed in youth immortal, on immortal ardors fed,

Who of old in golden Brugh reigned lord of Love.

And his name a knightly pennon on the ramparts of the world,

And his fame a fire unfailing on Time’s utmost purple height,

Erin’s peerless gage of courage to the vaunting ages hurled—

Sunward evermore Cuchulain holds his flight.

They are coming with the silver speech of Erin on their lips;

The speech that once of all the mighty Celtic race made kin,

They are coming with the laughter that has known no age-eclipse,

They are coming with the songs beloved of Finn.

Yea, with gifts regenerating to all men of women born—

Flame of courage that shall fade not, flame of truth that shall not fail,

To the music of a thousand harps they’re marching through the Morn,

Deathless gods and kings and heroes of the Gael!

AT BENEDICTION

By Eleanor Rogers Cox

Joy, beauty, awe, supremest worship blending

In one long breath of perfect ecstasy,

Song from our hearts to God’s own Heart ascending,

The mortal merged in immortality.

There, veiled beneath that sacramental whiteness,

The wonder that all wonders doth transcend,

The Word that kindled chaos into brightness,

Our Lord, our God, our origin, our end.

Light, light, a sea of light, unshored, supernal,

Is all about our finite being spread,

Deep, soundless waves of harmonies eternal

Their balm celestial on our spirits shed.

O Source of Life! O Fount of waters living!

O Love, to whom all powers of mind and soul,

We give, and find again within the giving,

Of Thee renewed, made consecrate and whole.

PRIMROSE HILL

By Olive Custance

Wild heart in me that frets and grieves,

Imprisoned here against your will ...

Sad heart that dreams of rainbow wings ...

See! I have found some golden things!

The poplar trees on Primrose Hill

With all their shining play of leaves ...

And London like a silver bride,

That will not put her veil aside!

Proud London like a painted Queen,

Whose crown is heavy on her head ...

City of sorrow and desire,

Under a sky of opal fire,

Amber and amethyst and red ...

And how divine the day has been!

For every dawn God builds again

This world of beauty and of pain....

Wild heart that hungers for delight,

Imprisoned here against your will;

Sad heart, so eager to be gay!

Loving earth’s lovely things ... the play

Of wind and leaves on Primrose Hill ...

Or London dreaming of the night ...

Adventurous heart, on beauty bent,

That only Heaven could quite content!

TWILIGHT

By Olive Custance

Spirit of Twilight, through your folded wings

I catch a glimpse of your averted face,

And rapturous on a sudden, my soul sings

“Is not this common earth a holy place?”

Spirit of Twilight, you are like a song

That sleeps, and waits a singer,—like a hymn

That God finds lovely and keeps near Him long,

Till it is choired by aureoled cherubim.

Spirit of Twilight, in the golden gloom

Of dreamland dim I sought you, and I found

A woman sitting in a silent room

Full of white flowers that moved and made no sound.

These white flowers were the thoughts you bring to all,

And the room’s name is Mystery where you sit,

Woman whom we call Twilight, when night’s pall

You lift across our Earth to cover it.

TO A THRUSH

By T. A. Daly

Sing clear, O! throstle,

Thou golden-tongued apostle

And little brown-frocked brother

Of the loved Assisian!

Sing courage to the mother,

Sing strength into the man,

For they, who in another May

Trod Hope’s scant wine from grapes of pain,

Have tasted in thy song to-day

The bitter-sweet red lees again.

To them in whose sad May-time thou

Sang’st comfort from thy maple bough,

To tinge the presaged dole with sweet,

O! prophet then, be prophet now

And paraclete!

That fateful May! The pregnant vernal night

Was throbbing with the first faint pangs of day,

The while with ordered urge toward life and light,

Earth-atoms countless groped their destined way;

And one full-winged to fret

Its tender oubliette,

The warding mother-heart above it woke,

Darkling she lay in doubt, then, sudden wise,

Whispered her husband’s drowsy ear and broke

The estranging seal of slumber from his eyes:

“My hour is nigh: arise!”

Already, when, with arms for comfort linked,

The lovers at an eastward window stood,

The rosy day, in cloudy swaddlings, blinked

Through misty green new-fledged in Wister Wood.

Breathless upon this birth

The still-entranced earth

Seemed brooding, motionless in windless space.

Then rose thy priestly chant, O! holy bird!

And heaven and earth were quickened with its grace;

To tears two wedded souls were moved who heard,

And one, unborn, was stirred!

O! Comforter, enough that from thy green

Hid tabernacle in the wood’s recess

To those care-haunted lovers thou, unseen,

Should’st send thy flame-tipped song to cheer and bless.

Enough for them to hear

And feel thy presence near;

And yet when he, regardful of her ease,

Had led her back by brightening hall and stair

To her own chamber’s quietude and peace,

One maple-bowered window shook with rare,

Sweet song—and thou wert there!

Hunter of souls! the loving chase so nigh

Those spirits twain had never come before.

They saw the sacred flame within thine eye;

To them the maple’s depths quick glory wore,

As though God’s hand had lit

His altar-fire in it,

And made a fane, of virgin verdure pleached,

Wherefrom thou might’st in numbers musical

Expound the age-sweet words thy Francis preached

To thee and thine, of God’s benignant thrall

That broodeth over all.

And they, athirst for comfort, sipped thy song,

But drank not yet thy deeper homily.

Not yet, but when parturient pangs grew strong,

And from its cell the young soul struggled free—

A new joy, trailing grief,

A little crumpled leaf,

Blighted before it burgeoned from the stem—

Thou, as the fabled robin to the rood,

Wert minister of charity to them;

And from the shadows of sad parenthood

They heard and understood.

Makes God one soul a lure for snaring three?

Ah! surely; so this nursling of the nest,

This teen-touched joy, ere birth anoint of thee,

Yet bears thy chrismal music in her breast.

Five Mays have come and sped

Above her sunny head,

And still the happy song abides in her.

For though on maimed limbs the body creeps,

It doth a spirit house whose pinions stir

Familiarly the far cerulean steeps

Where God His mansion keeps.

So come, O! throstle,

Thou golden-tongued apostle

And little brown-frocked brother

Of the loved Assisian!

Sing courage to the mother,

Sing strength into the man,

That she who in another May

Came out of heaven, trailing care,

May never know that sometimes gray

Earth’s roof is and its cupboards bare.

To them in whose sad May-time thou

Sang’st comfort and thy maple bough,

To tinge the presaged dole with sweet,

O! prophet then, be prophet now

And paraclete!

TO A PLAIN SWEETHEART

By T. A. Daly

I love thee, dear, for what thou art,

Nor would I wish thee otherwise,

For when thy lashes lift apart

I read, deep-mirrored in thine eyes,

The glory of a modest heart.

Wert thou as fair as thou art good,

It were not given to any man,

With daring eyes of flesh and blood,

To look thee in the face and scan

The splendor of thy womanhood.

TO A ROBIN

By T. A. Daly

I heard thee, joyous votary,

Pour forth thy heart in one

Sweet simple strain of melody

To greet the rising sun,

When he across the morning’s verge his first faint flare had flung

And found the crimson of thy breast the whisp’ring leaves among,

In thine own tree

Which sheltered thee,

Thy mate, thy nest, thy young.

I marked thee, sorrow’s votary,

When in the noon of day

Young vandals stormed thy sacred tree

And bore thine all away;

The notes of grief that rent thy breast touched kindred chords in mine,

For memories of other days, though slumbering still confine

In mine own heart

The bitter smart

Of sorrow such as thine.

I hear thee now, sweet votary,

Beside thy ruined nest,

Lift up thy flood of melody

Against the crimsoned west,

Forgetful of all else in this, thy one sweet joyous strain.

I thank thee for this ecstasy of my remembered pain;

Thou liftest up

My sorrow’s cup

To sweeten it again.

THE POET

By T. A. Daly

The truest poet is not one

Whose golden fancies fuse and run

To moulded phrases, crusted o’er

With flashing gems of metaphor;

Whose art, responsive to his will,

Makes voluble the thoughts that fill

The cultured windings of his brain,

Yet takes no soundings of the pain,

The joy, the yearnings of the heart

Untrammeled by the bonds of art,

O! poet truer far than he

Is such a one as you may be,

When in the quiet night you keep

Mute vigil on the marge of sleep.

If then, with beating heart, you mark

God’s nearer presence in the dark,

And musing on the wondrous ways

Of Him who numbers all your days,

Pay tribute to Him with your tears

For joys, for sorrows, hopes and fears

Which he has blessed and given to you,

You are the poet, great and true.

For there are songs within the heart

Whose perfect melody no art

Can teach the tongue of man to phrase.

These are the songs His poets raise,

When in the night they keep

Mute vigil on the marge of sleep.

OCTOBER

By T. A. Daly

Come, forsake your city street!

Come to God’s own fields and meet October.

Not the lean, unkempt and brown

Counterfeit that haunts the town,

Pointing, like a thing of gloom,

At dead summer in her tomb;

Reading in each fallen leaf

Nothing but regret and grief.

Come out, where, beneath the blue,