Lyrics of joy / by Frank Dempster Sherman [electronic text]

QUATRAINS

DAWN

OUT of the scabbard of the night, By God's hand drawn, Flashes his shining sword of light, And lo, — the dawn!

STORM

IN the black jungle of the sky now wakes The Lightning's writhing brood of fiery snakes, And lion Thunder from his lair of cloud Startles the dusky world with challenge loud.

DUSK

UP from the underworld the shadows crowd And ply with noiseless fingers at the loom Whereon they weave the star-embroidered cloud That screens the door of Day's new-builded tomb.

STARLIGHT

OVER the rim, a fiery ball, God's hand the golden sun lets fall; Then from the blue deeps of the skies The myriad white bubbles rise.

A SEA FANCY

THE bugling winds their solemn dirges blow Across a dreary waste of foam-white waves. Here is the ocean cemetery. Lo, The phantom head-stones of the myriad graves!

MASTERY

STROLLING along the granite coast I caught From lips invisible this message clear: — Without my strength the ocean's rage were naught, And I am but the whisper in thine ear!

DERELICT

FAR in the distance looms a ship's dark hull, Aimlessly tossing on an angry sea; And, circling round, one solitary gull, —White ponderer of this black mystery!

FOG

IN agony of death throughout the night The frenzied monarch tossed upon his bed Whence rose at dawn, mysterious and white, A ghost, — the spectre of the mighty dead.

THE PENALTY

IMPLACABLE and stern, the captive, Hate, In silence sits, too anger-blind to see Love's shining figure at his prison gate, Longing to hear him bid her turn the key.

LIFE

LAUNCHED in the darkness on an unknown sea, A plaything of the winds and waves, I drift, And ponder what the shores of Life may be — What harbor welcome when the shadows lift.

THE GOAL

CREEDS for the credulous; but as for me, I choose to keep a mind alert and free. Not Faith but Truth I set me for a goal: Toward that shining mark God speed thee, Soul!

KNOWLEDGE

FOR all Philosophy may teach, Only so far can Knowledge reach: All that we know from breath to breath Is Life and its great question —Death.

IN A GARDEN

THROUGHOUT the long, enchanted summer hours, In treasuries of honey-wealth untold, Here in their bright metropolis of flowers The banker bees are busy with their gold.

IVY

UPON the walls the graceful Ivy climbs And wraps with green the ancient ruin gray: Romance it is, and these her leafy rhymes Writ on the granite page of yesterday.

GRASS

HERE is the cloth whereon the dew and sun Fashion their bright embroideries of bloom; For dreams a pillow, and, when dreams are done, A fragrant cover for the dreamless tomb.

ROSE

SCREENING her face of loveliness behind The garden's leafy curtain, waits the Rose For the enamored Nightingale to find A lyric hidden in his book of prose.

DAY DREAM

INTO the slumber of the Day there came The vision of a spirit winged with flame, And down the fragrant air one butterfly — Her golden dream —sailed indolently by.

FIRE FANCIES

DEEP in the ashes one live ember Lingers two similes to show: June in the arms of old December, A red rose in a drift of snow.

CITY SPARROWS

WITHIN the stone Sahara of the Town A green oasis lies the open Square: Hark to the noisy caravans of brown, Intrepid Sparrows, — Arabs of the air!

WRIT IN WATER

RIVER or sea, the voice is still the same, Each curving water-lip the word repeats, Forever rumoring the poet's name, And murmuring melodiously —Keats.

CONTRAST

CAUGHT in a crevice of the marble tomb, A fragile plant uplifts its hand of bloom, And poised thereon a butterfly takes breath: Fantastic fellowship of Life and Death!

THE QUATRAIN

HARK at the lips of this pink whorl of shell And you shall hear the ocean's surge and roar: So in the quatrain's measure, written well, A thousand lines shall all be sung in four.

A WISH

THIS be my wish: let all my lines Across the pages run like vines; The words, their shining blossoms be; The book, a field of melody.