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

LOVE

TO JULIET

(Cum regnat rosa)

HEEDLESS how it may fare with Time, I send you here a rose of rhyme: Its fragrance, love; its color, one Caught from Hope's ever-constant sun; Upon each leaf a lyric writ — Your eyes alone may witness it; And in its heart for you to see Another heart — the heart of me.

All roses are as fitly worn By you as by your sister Morn, Since you, like Morn, fail not to give New beauty to them while they live. If this against your bosom rest One brief, sweet hour its life were blest; Then, should you chance to cast it by, It would not find it hard to die.

So take this bloom of love and song, And, be its life or brief or long, Know that for you the petals part, Disclosing all its lyric heart; For you its fragrant breaths are drawn; For you its color — love's glad dawn; And for you, too, the heart that goes Song-prisoned in this rhyme of rose!

ROSE LORE

Now since it knows My heart so well, Would that this rose Might speak and tell!

You could not scorn Its winsome grace, The blush of morn Upon its face.

Unto your own You needs must press The sweet mouth prone To tenderness;

Then, lip to lip, With rapture stirred, You might let slip The secret word,

With fragrant kiss Interpreting The dream of bliss The rose would bring.

Then to your breast Take it to be Your own heart's best Love-augury, — A welcome guest, — To gladden me.

ON SOME BUTTERCUPS

A LITTLE way below her chin, Caught in her bosom's snowy hem, Some buttercups are fastened in, — Ah, how I envy them!

They do not miss their meadow place, Nor are they conscious that their skies Are not the heavens but her face, Her hair and tender eyes.

There, in the downy meshes pinned, Such sweet illusions haunt their rest, They think her breath the gentle wind And tremble on her breast;

As if, close to her heart, they heard A captive secret slip its cell, And with desire were sudden stirred To find a voice and tell.

THE BOWER OF CUPID

WHOSO enters at this portal Shall find Love the one immortal. Green the grove that hides the grotto Over which is hung this motto; Broidered paths of bloom and berry Lead unto the monarch merry; Birds above on leafy branches Loosen lyric avalanches; Bees go singing in the sunny, Blossom-builded haunts of honey; Flutes of brooks and lutes of grasses Waken with each wind that passes; All is fragrance, song and joy, Made for one immortal boy!

Many seek this grotto hidden; Welcome all, and none forbidden. Soft the air and clear as amber; Round the gate red roses clamber; Day long, mirth and music fill it; Night sends moon and star to thrill it. Voices, visions, dreams of rapture, There await, the heart to capture;

Full it is of faultless faces — All the Muses and the Graces; Poem, picture, flower and fancy, Every form of necromancy; Naught to worry or annoy, Save the one immortal boy!

In this grotto lies the golden Guest-book, full of legends olden, Writ by lovers on its pages Since the daybreak of the ages; Paris, Helen, Petrarch, Laura, Meleager, Heliodora, All the glorious Amante Sung of old by Tuscan Dante, Names that shine in song and story Crowd this volume with their glory, —Tokens left by all the lovers In the world, between the covers; Yet the record cannot cloy Love, the one immortal boy.

Eve in Eden, fresh and pearly, Found on Earth this grotto early; So, it came forever after To be haunted by her laughter.

What a countless throng have tasted Love therein ere life was wasted! Blind they call the boy, in kindness, Yet is theirs the only blindness. He is sure of ear and vision, Hearts he matches with precision; That is Cupid's only duty In this bower of bliss and beauty — That the end of all employ Is for one immortal boy!

MOONLIGHT AND MUSIC

DEAR Heart, do you remember That summer by the sea, One blue night in September When you were here with me, How like a pearl uplifted The full moon rose and drifted, And how the shadows shifted Until the stars were free?

Along the beach the breakers Brought in their lavish store, Gathered from ocean acres, And strewed the curving shore; Grasses that gleamed and glistened, Flowers that the sea had christened, Shells at whose lips you listened To learn their wonder-lore.

Softly the breeze blew over From groves and gardens fair, Spilling a scent of clover Into the balmy air;

The breath of pines around us, Fragrant it came and found us Just as the moonlight crowned us And Love at last came there.

What music hailed our rapture!What singers on the sand Were they whose hearts could capture Our joy and understand? O Wind and Wave, they guessed it, They sang it and confessed it, — Their love and ours, — and blessed it There on the moonlit strand!

Dear Heart, still sweet the story, For all the years gone by: Still floods the moon with glory The land, the sea, the sky: And still the night-moth hovers Around us and discovers The same devoted lovers, — Wind, Wave, and You and I.

IN ABSENCE

IT matters not how far I fare, Or in what land I bide, Your voice sings ever on the air, Your face shines at my side.

For me each crimson flower that slips Its velvet sheath of green Yields the remembrance of your lips With all their sweets between.

Your hair is in the dusk that lies Around me when I rest; My only stars are your dear eyes, Love's own and loveliest.

Happy am I, though far apart From all that makes life dear: Love dwells contented in my heart, Exiled yet always near.

Then take my message, Sweet, and know How far your love has flown To cheer and bless your lover, so Lonely, but not alone:

I send it from the drowsy South, A dream of my delight, A message to your rosebud mouth —A kiss, and a good-night!