A WONDROUS SONG

Yet still with us his golden spirit stayed:
On the same page

That told his end, his living verse I read-
His lyric rage.

Behold! I thought, they call him cold in death,
But hither turn-

See where his soul, a glorious, flaming breath,
Doth pulse and burn!

This is the poet's triumph, his high doom!
After life's stress,

For him the silent, dark, o'er-shadowing tomb
Is shadowless.

And this the miracle, the mystery:
In that he gives

His soul away, magnificently free-
By this he lives.

JOHN HENRY BONER

IN life's hard fight this poet did his part;
He was a hero of the mind and heart.

Now rests his body 'neath his own loved skies,
And from his tomb Courage! his spirit cries.

"A WONDROUS SONG"

A WONDROUS song,

Rank with sea smells and the keen lust of life;
Echoing with battle trumpets, and the moan
Of dying men in reeking hospitals;

Thrilling all through with human pity and love
And crying courage in the face of doom;
With all its love of life still praising death

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Enchantingly, as death was never praised;
And with high anger and a god-like scorn
Passionately proclaiming life in death

And the unquenched, immortal soul of man
A wondrous song,

Trembling with unshed tears and life's full joy,
Burst the tense meshes of the critic's web
And sang itself into eternal day.

FRIENDS, beware!

A NEW POET

I

Stop babbling! Hark, a sound is in the air!

Above the pretty songs of schools

(Not of music made, but rules),

Above the panic rush for gold

And emptinesses manifold,

And selling of the soul for phantom fame,

And reek of praises where there should be blame;

A sound of singing in the air!

The love-song of a man who loves his fellow-men; Mother-love and country-love, and the love of sea and fen; Lovely thoughts and mighty thoughts and thoughts that linger long;

There has come to the old world's singing the thrill of a brave new song.

A voice of the true joy-bringers!
Now will ye heed and rejoice,
Or pass on the other side,

And wait till the singer has died,

Then weep o'er his voiceless clay?
Friends, beware!

A keen, new sound is in the air;

Know ye a poet's coming is the old world's judgment day!

THE SINGER OF JOY

He sang the rose, he praised its fragrant breath;
(Alas, he saw the gnawing worm beneath.)
He sang of summer and the flowing grass;
(He knew that all the beauty quick would pass.)
He said the world was good and skies were fair;
(He saw far, gathering clouds, and days of care.)
Immortally he sang pure friendship's flame;
(Yet had he seen it shrivel to a name.)

And, ah, he praised true love, with golden speech;
(What tho' it was a star he could not reach.)
His songs in cowering souls the hero woke ;
(He in the shadows waited the last stroke.)
He was the singer of the joyous art;
(Down to the grave he bore a broken heart.)

BREAD UPON THE WATERS

A MELANCHOLY, life o'er-wearied man

Sat in his lonely room, and, with slow breath,
Counted his losses: thrice-wreckt plan on plan,

Failure of friend, and hope, and heart, and faith -
This last the deadliest, and holding all.

Help was there none through weeping, for the years
Had stolen all his treasury of tears.

Then on a page where his eyes chanced to fall
There sprang such words of courage that they seemed
Cries on a battlefield, or as one dreamed

Of trumpets sounding charges. On he read
With fixed gaze, and sad, down-drooping head,
And curious, half-remembering, musing mind.
The ringing of that voice had something stirred
In his deep heart, like music long since heard.
"Brave words," he sighed; and looked where they were
signed;

There, reading his own name, tears made him blind.

LOST

AN old, blind poet, sitting sad and lone,
Thinking his scribe was near, chimed slowly forth
Into the empty and unheeding air

A song, of all his songs the loveliest.

That night he died, and the sweet song was lost.

A million roses and uncounted worlds
Unknown, save to their Maker, strew the flood
Of heedless and immeasurable time.

"WHAT MAN HATH DONE"

THUS did he speak, thus was he comforted:
"I yet shall learn to live ere I am dead;
I shall be firm of will, know false from true:
Each error will but show me how to do,

HE PONDERED WELL

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When next the occasion calls. I shall pursue
The path that grim experience has taught."
This was his solace, this his saving thought.
Then came a sudden knocking at the door.
He rose
- and did what he had done before:
He looked into the dark, he flinched, he quailed;
The occasion came, and once again he failed.

Thus wrote a man who had seen much of men: “What man hath done, that will he do again.”

Yet are there souls who, having clinched with fate,
Have learned to live, ere it was all too late.
Be it thy hope, tho' seven times a fool,
To get some lessons in life's fearful school.

"HE PONDERED WELL”

He pondered well, looked in his heart,
And bravely did his part.

Then spake the Ironic Powers

That rule the prostrate hours:

"Look now on this your deed; Despite your heroic creed,

Your pondering and your prayers,

Behold how ill the pretty project fares!

Not hotly were you driven;

For thought and thought the days were seven;

All was wisdom, all was cool

And now one name you to yourself have given: 'Tis fool, fool, fool, and only fool!"

Hast thou kept honor, and sweet courtesy kept,
Then is no loss that may be wailed or wept.