For the gladness here where the sun is shining at evening on the weeds at the river,
Our prayer of thanks.
For the laughter of children who tumble barefooted and bareheaded in the summer grass,
Our prayer of thanks.
For the sunset and the stars, the women and the white arms that hold us,
Our prayer of thanks.
God,
If you are deaf and blind, if this is all lost to you,
Where a river roars in rapids
And doves in maples fret,
Where peace has decked the pastures
Our guardian angels met.
Long they had sought each other
In God's mysterious name,
Had climbed the solemn chaos tides
Alone, with hope aflame:
Amid the demon deeps had wound
By many a fearful way.
As they beheld each other
Their shout made glad the day.
No need of purse delayed them,
No hand of friend or kin —
Nor menace of the bell and book,
Nor fear of mortal sin.
You are ice and fire,
The touch of you burns my hands like snow.
You are cold and flame.
You are the crimson of amaryllis,
The silver of moon-touched magnolias.
When I am with you,
My heart is a frozen pond
Gleaming with agitated torches.
Submitted by Venus
A goddess, with a siren's grace,--
A sun-haired girl on a craggy place
Above a bay where fish-boats lay
Drifting about like birds of prey.
Wrought was she of a painter's dream,--
Wise only as are artists wise,
My artist-friend, Rolf Herschkelhiem,
With deep sad eyes of oversize,
And face of melancholy guise.
I pressed him that he tell to me
This masterpiece's history.
He turned--REturned--and thus beguiled
Me with the tale of Orlie Wilde:--
"We artists live ideally:
IN Ortygia the Dawn land the old gods dwell,
And the silver’s yet a-quiver on the old wizard well
By the milk-white walls of the Temple of the Moon,
Where the Dawn Maids hallow the red gods’ tune,
And old grey Time is a nine-year child,
Back between the rivers ere man was ever ’guiled,
Or the knelling ‘Never, never!’ by the cherubim was rung.
It was there, there, there, in Ortygia the young,—
It was there, there, there, in the meadows of the sky
A moonbeam floateth from the skies,
Whispering, "Heigho, my dearie!
I would spin a web before your eyes,--
A beautiful web of silver light,
Wherein is many a wondrous sight
Of a radiant garden leagues away,
Where the softly tinkling lilies sway,
And the snow-white lambkins are at play,--
Heigho, my dearie!"
A brownie stealeth from the vine
Singing, "Heigho, my dearie!
And will you hear this song of mine,--
A song of the land of murk and mist
Where bideth the bud the dew hath kist?
THE STRONG sob of the chafing stream
That seaward fights its way
Down crags of glitter, dells of gleam,
Is in the hills to-day.
But far and faint, a grey-winged form
Hangs where the wild lights wane—
The phantom of a bygone storm,
A ghost of wind and rain.
The soft white feet of afternoon
Are on the shining meads,
The breeze is as a pleasant tune
Amongst the happy reeds.
The fierce, disastrous, flying fire,
Open, Time, and let him pass
Shortly where his feet would be!
Like a leaf at Michaelmas
Swooning from the tree,
Ere its hour the manly mind
Trembles in a sure decrease,
Nor the body now can find
Any hold on peace.
Take him, weak and overworn;
Fold about his dying dream
Boyhood, and the April morn,
And the rolling stream:
Weather on a sunny ridge,
Showery weather, far from here;
Under some deep-ivied bridge,
Water rushing clear:
On this day of sky-blue bears
Running across quiet eyelashes,
I divine beyond the blue waters
In the cup of my eyes an order to wake.
The silver spoon of my extended eyes
Offers me a sea buoying a storm petrel;
And I see how the Russian bird flies
Through unknown lashes to the roaring sea.
A sea of heavenlove has capsized
Someone's sail in the round-blue water,
But the first storm is hopeless and gone
And from now on the journey is spring.
Half-lost in film of faintest lawn,
A single star in armour white
Upon the dreamy heights of dawn
Guards dim frontier of the night,
Till plumed ray
And golden spray
Have washed its trembling light away.
The sun has peeped above the blue;
His level lances as they pass
Have shot the dew-drops thro' and thro',
And dashed with rubies all the grass,
And silver sound
Of horse-bells round
Floats softly o'er the jewelled ground.
The sunbeam and the wanton wind,
