A Williams Anthology Part 8

HYLAS

SANBORN GOVE TENNEY '86

Many years have left their shadows on the pathless flow of time; Many bards have with soft music sung their lays of ancient rhyme, Since the day when rosy Hylas plunged into Scamander's wave, Since the am'rous Naiads bore him where no human arm could save.

On the waves swift Argo rested; scarce a ripple stirred the sea, While across the Dardan meadows sighed the breezes soft and free; Then the sun, in golden splendor, sank into a sea of flame, Darkness o'er the blue hills rested; yet no fair young Hylas came.

For the water nymphs had loved him, when they saw his beauty rare, And with yielding lips caressing, they entwined him with their hair, Till they bound him, still entreating, with this soft and silken chain, Till they drew him 'neath the waters, whence he ne'er should come again.

Then the moon, a crescent jewel, edged the clouds with silver light, While they sped like shallops sailing, swift-winged messengers of Night.

And the stream, dark-hued and somber, sighed in surges on the sh.o.r.e, Gently sighed among its rushes, "Hylas! Hylas!" o'er and o'er.

Yet no voice replied in answer, tho' the sighing louder grew, Tho' with sorrow bowed the flowers and their tears were drops of dew; No sweet echo breaks the silence, tho' the heart may hope and yearn, O'er the stream a realm of quiet, on the sh.o.r.e the empty urn.

_Fortnight_, 1886.

THE 'CELLO

SAMUEL ABBOTT '87

The mellow light steals o'er its silent strings, That catch the sound of some far sylvan strain; Such fantasie as thrills the poet's brain, Or Morpheus, floating 'neath the pale stars, brings.

And list! Divinely, on its own sad wings, It sings a wondrous pitiful refrain, Methinks some soul with aching grief is lain-- That moans and dies with broken murmurings.

The voice is hushed, the lights are low and spent; The dancers bid farewell, with tired feet.

Too few, I ween, this thing of wood has meant A tenth part what its harmony, so sweet, Has told to me. 'Mid joy, the sorrows greet The wanderer, their hearts by weeping rent.

_Fortnight_, 1887.

MILLET'S "ANGELUS"

ELBRIDGE LAPHAM ADAMS '87

Dim, distant, tinkling chimes, That summoned men in olden times To pray the Virgin grace impart; Ye solemn voices of a day gone by, Whose mystic strains of melody Alike touched peer and peasant's heart: Your music falters in the fleeting years, Yet still comes faintly to our ears, Saved by a master's cunning art.

_Literary Monthly_, 1885.

A SUMMER AFTERNOON

HENRY D. WILD '88

In the country, with a soft, calm, hazy afternoon to keep you company!

To feel that Nature and yourself have moods in common, for you are lazy and Nature is lazy, too, and blinks sleepily at you from filmy, dreamy eyes that open and shut with your own in a sort of drowsy rhythm. What more delightful than to yield yourself entirely to the present mood and wander off somewhere, aimless except to see and feel?

The trim soberness of the dusty road with its gray windings and vistas of sand-ruts becomes less matter-of-fact at length, and so you leave it to itself, and seek a path that leads to the heart of Nature and far from ways of men. Down gra.s.sy slopes and over little hillocks that pique your curiosity by shutting out the view of what is coming next; now skirting the edge of a furrowed potato-patch, and now sauntering down cool lanes of corn, listening to the breezy lisping of the long, green leaves that flap you softly in the face; now across a moist spot where a spring bubbles forth, apparently only to nourish a family of cowslips, and so on and on until you break the stillness of a shady wood as your feet keep alternate time among the heaps of leaves whose rustling is varied by the occasional noise of crackling twigs. The damp air, freshened by contact with trickling drops and oozy bogs, and perfumed with spicy cedar, soothes and cools. Yonder lies prostrate some mighty giant of the forest, victim of a ruthless storm, grim with decay and raising a vertical base of black sod and tangled roots torn from the earth where a gaping wound shows its former place. Here a rock, moist with swamp-sweat, lichen-covered and set in moss. There a clump of thick-grown cedars, deep shelter for the timid rabbit. All is noiseless, breathless. Not even the squirrel chatters, for it is not long past noon. But farther on comes a dull, low murmuring, scarcely to be heard at first, so nicely does it fit this gentle monotone of silence, yet soon filling the trembling air with overtones that rise and fall and swell again in varying chords. It is the river. A few steps more and you are there, and beside the stream in a fragrant bed of ferns, with one hand caressing the delicate tresses of the maidenhair, and the other dipped among the ripples, you give yourself up, half dozing, to thoughts of the long ago and the far away that seem to float up from the past along the dim windings of the stream.

The sun makes dancing spots of dark and light between the fluttering leaves, and throws a changing shadow upon yon deep pool, where a grand old beech, festooned with clematis, leans its gray trunk far over as if to bless the stream whose waters, bubbling swiftly over the pebbles a little higher up, calm themselves here to rest in peace. The wood-thrush sends its plaintive, solitary note of silver-globuled melody from the inmost forest. No other sound, save when a wagon now and then rolls its quick rumble across a bridge, and then is gone like some self-conscious intruder. But luxury like this is the very thief of time. Before you are aware the waves of heat have ceased to form a throbbing air-hive for humming insects, and the cool of early twilight has come on, attended by lengthening shadows. And so home again along the dewy fields, while an orchestra of crickets chirps a happy end beneath the summer stars to the day that is done. It is in ways like this that poets renew their souls, the old their youth, and weary hearts, in sweet release from care, gain strength for life.

_Literary Monthly_, 1887.

QUESTIONINGS

GEORGE L. RICHARDSON '88

There are strange complications in it all, This life of ours--had I fourfold the wit That as his share to any man doth fall, I fear me that I could not fathom it.

This sorrow bringing laughter, and joy tears, Conflicting things we cannot understand; This constant longing for great length of years, That brings but weary limb and feeble hand;

Eyes that are dim, and saddened, lowly life; These hot-waged wars, squalid with cries of pain, This joy in contest and this thirst for strife, In which both suffer, and there is no gain;

Strong love that ere long turns to stronger hate, Sin leading into good, good into sin-- In very truth do lambs with tigers mate.

The world is wide, and strange things are therein.

_Fortnight_, 1887.

ON BRYANT'S "THANATOPSIS"

GEORGE LYNDE RICHARDSON '88

A great thought came to a great singer's heart, Out of the grandeur of the changeless hills-- A thought whose greatness e'en in our day fills Men's minds with n.o.bler feeling. All his art He lavished on the poem that he wrought, That it might be, through all the years of time, An inspiration, to all men, sublime, And nor for fault of his hand come to naught.

So it hath been. The singer lieth dead; His words live on. And still the mountains stand, And all men say who know them, in that land-- And through all ages, it will still be said-- Not gold that perisheth, from deep-hid veins, They give us, but the thought that aye remains.

_Literary Monthly_, 1887.