The Melody of Earth Part 4

We come and go, as the breezes blow, But whence or where Hath ne'er been told in the legends old By the dreaming seer.

The welcome rain to the parching plain And the languid leaves, The rattling hail on the burnished mail Of the serried sheaves, The silent snow on the wintry brow Of the aged year, Wends each his way in the track of day From a clouded sphere: But still as the fog in the dismal bog Where the shifting sheen Of the spectral lamp lights the marshes damp, With a flash unseen We drip through the night from the starlids bright, On the sleeping flowers, And deep in their breast is our perfumed rest Through the darkened hours: But again with the day we are up and away With our stolen dyes, To paint all the shrouds of the drifting clouds In the eastern skies.

JOHN B. TABB

SONNET

It may be so; but let the unknown be.

We, on this earth, are servants of the sun.

Out of the sun comes all the quick in me, His golden touch is life to everyone.

His power it is that makes us spin through s.p.a.ce, His youth is April and his manhood bread, Beauty is but a looking on his face, He clears the mind, he makes the roses red.

What he may be, who knows? But we are his, We roll through nothing round him, year by year, The withering leaves upon a tree which is Each with his greed, his little power, his fear.

What we may be, who knows? But everyone Is dust on dust a servant of the sun.

JOHN MASEFIELD

CHARM: TO BE SAID IN THE SUN

I reach my arms up, to the sky, And golden vine on vine Of sunlight showered wild and high, Around my brows I twine.

I wreathe, I wind it everywhere, The burning radiancy Of brightness that no eye may dare, To be the strength of me.

Come, redness of the crystalline, Come green, come hither blue And violet--all alive within, For I have need of you.

Come honey-hue and flush of gold, And through the pallor run, With pulse on pulse of manifold New largess of the Sun!

O steep the silence till it sing!

O glories from the height, Come down, where I am garlanding With light, a child of light!

JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY

THE DIALS

With fingers softer than the touch of death The sundial writes the pa.s.sing of the day, The hours unfolding slow to twilight gray, The gleaming moments vanish in a breath.

But sunny hours alone the sundial names; All unrecorded are the midnight spans And vain within the dusk the watcher scans The marble face; thereon no record flames.

So on eternal dials that G.o.d may hold, And those more humble in the human heart, No bitter deeds their pa.s.sing hours impart; Kind deeds alone are marked in fadeless gold!

ARTHUR WALLACE PEACH

TO A NEW SUNDIAL

Oh, Sundial, you should not be young, Or fresh and fair, or spick and span!

None should remember when began Your tenure here, nor whence you sprung!

Like ancient cromlech notch'd and scarr'd, I would have had you sadly tow'r Above this world of leaf and flower All ivy-tress'd and lichen-starr'd;

Amba.s.sador of Time and Fate, In contrast stern to bud and bloom, Seeming half temple and half tomb, And wholly solemn and sedate;

Till, one with G.o.d's own works on earth, The lake, the vale, the mountain-brow, We might have come to count you now Whose home was here before our birth.

But lo! a priggish, upstart thing-- Set here to tell so old a truth-- How fleeting are our days of youth-- _You_, that were only made last spring!

Go to!... What sermon can you preach, Oh, mushroom--mentor pert and new?

We are too old to learn of you What you are all too young to teach!

Yet, Sundial, you and I may swear Eternal friendship, none the less, For I'll respect your youthfulness If you'll forgive my silver hair!

VIOLET FANE

THE FOUNTAIN

I thought my garden finished. I beheld Each bush bee-visited; a green charm quelled The louder winds to music; soft boughs made Patches of silver dusk and purple shade-- And yet I felt a lack of something still.

There was a little, sleepy-footed rill That lapsed among sun-burnished stones, where slept Fish, rainbow-scaled, while dragon-flies, adept, Balanced on bending gra.s.s.

All perfect? No.

My garden lacked a fountain's upward flow.

I coaxed the brook's young Naiad to resign Her meadow wildness, building her a shrine Of worship, where each ravished waif of air Might wanton in the brightness of her hair.

So here my fountain flows, loved of the wind, To every vagrant, aimless gust inclined, Yet constant ever to its source. It greets The face of morning, wavering windy sheets Of woven silver; sheer it climbs the noon, A shaft of bronze; and underneath the moon It sleeps in pearl and opal. In the storm It streams far out, a wild, gray, blowing form; While on calm days it heaps above the lake,-- Pelting the dreaming lilies half awake, And pattering jewels on each wide, green frond,-- Recurrent pyramids of diamond!

HARRY KEMP

THE PAGEANTRY OF GARDENS

THE BIRTH OF THE FLOWERS

_G.o.d spoke! and from the arid scene Sprang rich and verdant bowers, Till all the earth was soft with green,-- He smiled; and there were flowers._

MARY MCNEIL FENOLLOSA

THE WELCOME

G.o.d spreads a carpet soft and green O'er which we pa.s.s; A thick-piled mat of jeweled sheen-- And that is Gra.s.s.