Lyrics / by John B. Tabb [electronic text]

QUATRAINS.

WOMAN.

SHALL she come down, and on our level stand? Nay; God forbid it! May a mother's eyes — Lovers earliest home, the heaven of Babyland — Forever bend above us as we rise.

OPPORTUNITY.

ONCE only did the Angel stir The pool, whereat She paused in pain; Another step outspeeded her; The waters ne'er have moved again.

LIFE.

THE Power that lifts the leaf above And sends the root below, Sustains the heart in brother-love And makes it heavenward grow.

DEATH.

SO sweet to tired mortality the night Of Life's laborious day, That God himself, o'erwearied of the light, Within its shadow lay.

RELEASE.

SO long am I a prisoner As Time and Thought surround me here: When Time is dead, and Memory Deserts the ramparts, I am free.

LIGHT.

WE know thee not, save that when thou art gone, Thy sister, Beauty, follows in thy train, Leaving the soul in exile till the dawn Come with the gift of franchisement again.

IN DARKNESS.

DUMB Silence and her sightless sister Sleep Glide, mistlike, through the deepening Vale of Night; Waking, where'er their shadowy garments sweep, Dream-voices and an echoing dream of light.

SILENCE.

A SEA wherein the rivers of all sound Their streams incessant pour, But whence no tide returning e'er hath found An echo on the shore.

FANCY.

A BOAT unmoored, wherein a dreamer lies, The slumberous waves low-lisping of a land Where Love, forever with unclouded eyes, Goes, wed with wandering Music, hand in hand.

FAME.

THEIR noonday never knows What names immortal are: 'T is night alone that shows How star surpasseth star.

TIME'S LEGACY.

THE night so long to Grief, The day to Joy so brief, What shall Eternity To each, unaltered, be!

A CRISIS.

O LEAF, against the twilight seen, Move not; for at thy side Gleams, trembling lest thou intervene, My hope, my star, my guide.

THE CYNOSURE.

SO let me in thy heaven of thought appear, As doth a twilight star — The harbinger of tenderest hopes anear, And memories afar.

RESISTANCE.

RESISTANCE to its pinions light Uplifts the bird in airy flight; Resistance to the wingèd soul Uplifts it to the lofty goal.

THE BILLOWS.

OF tribes that in the desert fell The wandering souls are we —Wind-scattered seed of Ishmael Upon the sterile sea.

THE VOYAGER.

COLUMBUS-LIKE, I sailed into the night, The sunset gold to find: Alas! 't was but the phantom of the light! Life's Indies lay behind!

ADRIFT.

THE calm horizon circles only me, The centre of its measureless embrace, —A bubble on the bosom of the sea, Itself a bubble in the bound of space.

DEEP UNTO DEEP.

WHERE limpid waters lie between, There only heaven to heaven is seen: Where flows the tide of mutual tears There only heart to heart appears.

VESTIGES.

UPON the Isle of Time we trace The signs of many a vanished race: But on the sea that laps it round, No memory of man is found.

THE MID-DAY MOON.

BEHOLD, whatever wind prevail, Slow westering, a phantom sail — The lonely soul of Yesterday — Unpiloted, pursues her way.

TO AN EVENING SHADE.

O PILGRIM, ever yearning for the East, What fate before thee lies? "The spouse of Night, and, from the wedding feast, The Morning's sacrifice."

HEROES.

AGAINST the night, a champion bright, The glow-worm, lifts a spear of light; And, undismayed, the slenderest shade Against the noonday bares a blade.

LANIER'S FLUTE.

WHEN palsied at the pool of Thought The Poet's words were found, Thy voice the healing Angel brought To touch them into sound.

POE-CHOPIN.

O'ER each the soul of Beauty flung A shadow mingled with the breath Of music that the Sirens sung, Whose utterance is death.

TO AN EXILE.

AS still upon the prophet shone A light, when God himself was gone, So lives, unbanished from thine eyes, The splendor of thy native skies.

TO A DYING BABE.

O BUBBLE, break! All heaven thou hast Unsullied in thy heart! Ere Time its shadow on thee cast Love calls thee to depart.

MY SECRET.

'T IS not what I am fain to hide, That doth in deepest darkness dwell, But what my tongue hath often tried, Alas, in vain, to tell.

IN ABSENCE.

ALL that thou art not, makes not up the sum Of what thou art, beloved, unto me: All other voices, wanting thine, are dumb; All vision, in thine absence, vacancy.

A REMONSTRANCE.

SING me no more, sweet warbler, for the dart Of joy is keener than the flash of pain: Sing me no more, for the re-echoed strain Together with the silence breaks my heart.

NEW AND OLD.

NEW blossoms from the selfsame earth, Beneath the selfsame skies; New hope with dawn's perennial birth, The selfsame heaven supplies.

THE FIG-TREE.

FIRST go-between in fallen man's defence, To shield, or share his blame. Christ-like, to lend the robe of innocence Wherewith to hide his shame.

THE BEE AND THE BLOSSOMS.

WHY stand ye idle, blossoms bright, The livelong summer day? "Alas! we labor all the night For what thou takest away!"

BONE-CASTANETS.

A PART, of death and silence we, The fittest emblems found, Together, mad with minstrelsy, Leap into life and sound.