And once, among the roses and the sheaves,
The Gardener and I were there alone.
He led me to the plot where I had thrown
The fennel of my days on wasted ground,
And in that riot of sad weeds I found
The fruitage of a life that was my own.
My life! Ah, yes, there was my life, indeed!
And there were all the lives of humankind;
And they were like a book that I could read,
Whose every leaf, miraculously signed,
Outrolled itself from Thought’s eternal seed.
Love-rooted in God’s garden of the mind.
Whereat he turned and stood with folded armsAnd weary-waiting eyes, cold and half-closed—Hard eyes, where doubts at war with memoriesFanned a sad wrath. “Why frown upon a friend?Few live that have too many,” Gawaine said,And wished unsaid, so thinly came the lightBetween the narrowing lids at which he gazed.“And who of us are they that…
I would not have you think that Reuben BrightWas any more a brute than you or I;For when they told him that his wife must die,He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright,And cried like a great baby half that night,And made the women cry to see him cry.And after she was dead,…
That such a doom was ever wroughtAs his, to toil while others fought;To toil, to dream — and still to dream,With one day barren as another;To consummate, as it would seemThe dry despair of his old mother.Far off one afternoon beganThe sound of man destroying man;And Levi. sick with nameless rage,Condemned again his heritage,And sighed…
All outward recognition of revealedAnd righteous omnipresence are the daysOf most of us affrighted and diseased,But rather by the common snarls of lifeThat come to test us and to strengthen usIn this the prentice-age of discontent,Rebelliousness, faint-heartedness, and shame.IIWhen through hot fog the fulgid sun looks downUpon a stagnant earth where listless menLaboriously dawdle, curse,…
But his hard, human pulse is throbbing stillWith the sure strength that fearless truth endows.In spite of all fine science disavows,Of his plain excellence and stubborn skillThere yet remains what fashion cannot kill,Though years have thinned the laurel from his brows.Whether or not we read him, we can feelFrom time to time the vigor of…
Who told of an old vessel, harbor-drowned,And out of mind a century before,Where divers, on descending to exploreA legend that had lived its way aroundThe world of ships, in the dark hulk had foundAnchors, which had been seized and seen no more.Improving a dry leiure to investTheir misadventure with a manifestAnalogy that he may read…
