The Melody of Earth Part 12

Out of the purple drifts, From the shadow sea of night, On tides of musk a moth uplifts Its weary wings of white.

Is it a dream or ghost Of a dream that comes to me, Here in the twilight on the coast, Blue cinctured by the sea?

Fashioned of foam and froth-- And the dream is ended soon, And, lo, whence came the moon-white moth Comes now the moth-white moon!

FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN

THE SPRING BEAUTIES

The Puritan Spring Beauties stood freshly clad for church; A Thrush, white-breasted, o'er them sat singing on his perch.

"Happy be! for fair are ye!" the gentle singer told them, But presently a buff-coat Bee came booming up to scold them.

"Vanity, oh, vanity!

Young maids, beware of vanity!"

Grumbled out the buff-coat Bee, Half parson-like, half soldierly.

The sweet-faced maidens trembled, with pretty, pinky blushes, Convinced that it was wicked to listen to the Thrushes; And when, that shady afternoon, I chanced that way to pa.s.s, They hung their little bonnets down and looked into the gra.s.s.

All because the buff-coat Bee Lectured them so solemnly:-- "Vanity, oh, vanity!

Young maids, beware of vanity!"

HELEN GRAY CONE

THE MOCKING-BIRD

He didn't know much music When first he come along; An' all the birds went wonderin'

Why he didn't sing a song.

They primped their feathers in the sun, An' sung their sweetest notes; An' music jest come on the run From all their purty throats!

But still that bird was silent In summer time an' fall; He jest set still and listened, An' he wouldn't sing at all!

But one night when them songsters Was tired out an' still, An' the wind sighed down the valley An' went creepin' up the hill;

When the stars was all a-tremble In the dreamin' fields o' blue, An' the daisy in the darkness-- Felt the fallin' o' the dew,--

There come a sound o' melody No mortal ever heard, An' all the birds seemed singin'

From the throat o' one sweet bird!

Then the other birds went Mayin'

In a land too fur to call; For there warn't no use in stayin'

When one bird could sing for all!

FRANK L. STANTON

THE MESSENGER

Bee! tell me whence do you come?

Ten fields away, twenty perhaps, Have heard your hum.

If you are from the north, you may Have pa.s.sed my mother's roof of straw Upon your way.

If you came from the south you should Have seen another cottage just Inside the wood.

And should you go back that way, please Carry a message to the house Among the trees.

Say--I will wait her at the rock Beside the stream, this very night At eight o'clock.

And ask your queen when you get home To send my queen the present of A honey-comb.

JAMES STEPHENS

FIREFLIES

Fireflies, Fireflies, little glinting creatures, Making night lovely with a rain of gold, Born of the moonbeams, children all unearthly, Ah how you vanish from a look too bold!

Fireflies, Fireflies, lovely as our dreams are, Sewn with such fancies from the years gone by, Wayward, elusive, as the playful zephyrs, Hiding mid gra.s.ses, gleaming in the sky.

Fireflies, Fireflies, like unto the silent Brown nuns who gather for the dead to pray, As theirs your mission; holy, too, your tapers, Souls of dead flowers lighting on their way.

ANTOINETTE DE COURSEY PATTERSON

JULY MIDNIGHT

Fireflies flicker in the tops of trees, Flicker in the lower branches, Skim along the ground.

Over the moon-white lilies Is a flashing and ceasing of small, lemon-green stars.

As you lean against me, Moon-white, The air all about you Is slit, and p.r.i.c.ked, and pointed with sparkles of lemon-green flame Starting out of a background of great vague trees.

AMY LOWELL

THE CRICKET IN THE PATH

She pa.s.sed through the shadowy garden, so tall and so white, Her eyes on the stars and her face like an angel's upturned, And it seemed to my thought that the dusk round her head with the light Of an aureole burned.

But where she had trodden unseeing, I found on the path A cricket, so frail that her light foot had maimed it, yet strong To valiantly pipe, tiny hero, a faint aftermath Of its yesterday song.

And I whispered, "Alas, Little Brother, why must it befall That the pa.s.sing of angels but cripples and leaves us to die?

Poor imp of the greensward, G.o.d trumpets me clear in thy call; Thou art braver than I.

"The Bright Ones of Heaven have trodden me down as they pa.s.sed; I crawl in their footsteps a trampled and impotent thing.

I know not the reason, nor question henceforth. To the last, While I live, I will sing."

AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR