The Little Book of Modern Verse Part 21

G.o.d loves all prettiness, and on this Surely his angels lay their kiss.

A Faun in Wall Street. [John Myers O'Hara]

What shape so furtive steals along the dim Bleak street, barren of throngs, this day of June; This day of rest, when all the roses swoon In Attic vales where dryads wait for him?

What sylvan this, and what the stranger whim That lured him here this golden afternoon; Ways where the dusk has fallen oversoon In the deep canyon, torrentless and grim?

Great Pan is far, O mad estray, and these Bare walls that leap to heaven and hide the skies Are fanes men rear to other deities; Far to the east the haunted woodland lies, And cloudless still, from cyclad-dotted seas, Hymettus and the hills of h.e.l.las rise.

The Mystic. [Witter Bynner]

By seven vineyards on one hill We walked. The native wine In cl.u.s.ters grew beside us two, For your lips and for mine,

When, "Hark!" you said, -- "Was that a bell Or a bubbling spring we heard?"

But I was wise and closed my eyes And listened to a bird;

For as summer leaves are bent and shake With singers pa.s.sing through, So moves in me continually The winged breath of you.

You tasted from a single vine And took from that your fill -- But I inclined to every kind, All seven on one hill.

The Cloud. [Josephine Preston Peabody]

The islands called me far away, The valleys called me home.

The rivers with a silver voice Drew on my heart to come.

The paths reached tendrils to my hair From every vine and tree.

There was no refuge anywhere Until I came to thee.

There is a northern cloud I know, Along a mountain crest; And as she folds her wings of mist, So I could make my rest.

There is no chain to bind her so Unto that purple height; And she will s.h.i.+ne and wander, slow, Slow, with a cloud's delight.

Would she begone? She melts away, A heavenly joyous thing.

Yet day will find the mountain white, White-folded with her wing.

As you may see, but half aware If it be late or soon, Soft breathing on the day-time air, The fair forgotten Moon.

And though love cannot bind me, Love, -- Ah no! -- yet I could stay Maybe, with wings forever spread, -- Forever, and a day.

The Thought of her. [Richard Hovey]

My love for thee doth take me unaware, When most with lesser things my brain is wrought, As in some nimble interchange of thought The silence enters, and the talkers stare.

Suddenly I am still and thou art there, A viewless visitant and unbesought, And all my thinking trembles into nought And all my being opens like a prayer.

Thou art the lifted Chalice in my soul, And I a dim church at the thought of thee; Brief be the moment, but the ma.s.s is said, The benediction like an aureole Is on my spirit, and shuddering through me A rapture like the rapture of the dead.

Song. "If love were but a little thing --". [Florence Earle Coates]

If love were but a little thing -- Strange love, which, more than all, is great -- One might not such devotion bring, Early to serve and late.

If love were but a pa.s.sing breath -- Wild love -- which, as G.o.d knows, is sweet -- One might not make of life and death A pillow for love's feet.

The Rosary. [Robert Cameron Rogers]

The hours I spent with thee, dear heart, Are as a string of pearls to me; I count them over, every one apart, My rosary.

Each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer, To still a heart in absence wrung; I tell each bead unto the end -- and there A cross is hung.

Oh, memories that bless -- and burn!

Oh, barren gain -- and bitter loss!

I kiss each bead, and strive at last to learn To kiss the cross, Sweetheart, To kiss the cross.

Once. [Trumbull Stickney]

That day her eyes were deep as night.

She had the motion of the rose, The bird that veers across the light, The waterfall that leaps and throws Its irised spindrift to the sun.