Part 2

Yet how we long for her! How ardently we yearn For her return!

SYLVESTER BAXTER

TWO MOODS FROM THE HILL

YOUTH

I love to watch the world from here, for all The numberless living portraits that are drawn Upon the mind. Far over is the sea, Fronting the sand, a few great yellow dunes, A salt marsh stumbling after, rank and green, With brackish gullies wandering in between, All this from the hill. And more: a clump of dwarfed and twisted cedars, Sentinels over the marsh, and bright with the sun A field of daises wandering in the wind As though a hidden serpent glided through, A broken wall, a new-plowed field, and then The dusty road and the abodes of men Surrounding the hill. How small the enclosure is wherein there lives Each phase and passion of life, the distant sail Dips in the limpid bosom of the sea, From that far place to where in state the turf Raises a throne for me upon the hill, Each little love and lust of a living thing Can thus be compassed in a rainbow ring And seen from the hill.

II.

AGE

Why did I build my cottage on a hill Facing the sea? Why did I plan each terraced lawn to slope Down to the deep blue billowy breast of hope, Surging and sweeping, laughing and leaping, Tumbling its garments of foam upon the shore, Rustling the sands that know my step no more, I should have found a valley, deep and still, To shelter me.

There flows the river, and it seems asleep So far away, Yet I remember whip of wave and roar Of wind that rose and smote against the oar, Smote and retreated, Proud but defeated, While I rejoiced and rowed into the brine, Drawing on wet and heavy-straining line The great cod quivering from the deep As counterplay.

What is the solace of these hills and vales That rise and fall? What is there glorious in the greenwood glen, Or twittering thrush or wing of darting wren? Give me the gusty, Raucous and rusty Call of the sea gull in the echoing sky, The wild shriek of the winds that cannot die, Give me the life that follows the bending sails, Or none at all!

ERNEST BENSHIMOL

A BANQUET ONE MEMORY FROM SOCRATES

After the song the love, and after the love the play, Flute girl and pretty boy blowing Bubbles of sparkling Wine into darkling Beards of a former austerity, stern even now, but fast growing Foolish, with less of a stately Reserve that held them sedately. Oh Zeus, what a sight! With the wine dripping off it, The grin of an ass on a bald-pated prophet.

After the feast the night, and after the night the day, Fool and philosopher stirring With the day dawning, Stretching and yawning, While in each wine-throbbing, desolate brain is the wheeling and whirring Of thousands of bats, that the slaking Of throats will not hinder from aching, No wine for the brow that is beating to bursting, But water at morning is quench for the thirsting!

ERNEST BENSHIMOL

SONG

Out of one heart the birds and I together, Earth hushed in twilight, Low through the live-oaks hung heavy with silver, Gemmed with the sky-light, Under the great wet star Shaking with light, we jar Lute-voiced the silence with intervaled music.

While under the margined world the slow sun lingers, Flaming earth’s portal, Over the lilac dusk spreads his great fingers— Earth is immortal! While the frail beauty dies. Dream in the dreamer’s eyes, All the good gladness turns praise for the singers.

Hark, ’tis the breath of life! Hush! and I need it; Northern, gigantic,— Questing the silences, herding the sudden foam Down the Atlantic; Leaves from the autumn’s store Shrill at my desert door, They and I out of one heart that is grieving.

GEORGE CABOT LODGE

THE WORLDS

I saw an idler on a summer day Piping with Iris by a dancing brook; And all his world was rife with Pleasures gay, And languid Follies smiled from every nook.

I saw an artist in a world of dreams, His rainbow rising from his radiant task, To throw its magic prism beams O’er Fancy’s changeful masque and counter-masque.

I saw Toil—stooping underneath a world Whereon his foster-brothers lighter tread, His skyward pinions ever closer furled Before the grim necessity of bread!

I saw a sinner working hard to be Worthy his death-wage from the mint of time; I saw a sailor, unto whom the sea Was hearth and hope and love and wedding-chime.

I saw a mother living in her child— I saw a saint among his fellow men— Brave soldiery before my eyes defiled And solemn-hearted scholars—Sudden then

I cried: “The stars are no less neighborly In their ethereal remoteness swung, Than these near human orbits wherein we Live out our lives and speak our chosen tongue!

“Love seek through all—less there be one Least soul unlit within the night— And over all, the selfsame sun Give each creation light!”