test

Oh, I am weary, weary, weary
Of Pan and oaten quills
And little songs that, from the dictionary,
Learn lore of streams and hills,
Of studied laughter, mocking what is merry,
And calculated thrills!

Are we grown old and past the time of singing?
Is ardor quenched in art
Till art is but a formal figure, bringing
A money-measured heart,
Procrustean cut, and, with old echoes, ringing
Its bells about the mart?

The race moves on, and leaves no wildernesses
Where rugged voices cry;
It reads its prayer, and with set phrase it blesses
The souls of men who die,
And step by even step its rank progresses,
An army marshalled by.

If it be better so, that Babel noises,
Losing all course and ken,
And grief that wails and gladness that rejoices
Should never wake again
To shock a world of modulated voices
And mediocre men,

Then he is blest who wears the painted feather
And may not turn about
To dusks when muses romped the dewy heather
In unrestricted rout
And dawns when, if the stars had sung together,
The sons of God would shout!

Oblivion

Green moss will creep
Along the shady graves where we shall sleep.

Each year will bring
Another brood of birds to nest and sing.

At dawn will go
New ploughmen to the fields we used to know.

Night will call home
The hunter from the hills we loved to roam.

She will not ask,
The milkmaid, singing softly at her task,

Nor will she care
To know if I were brave or you were fair.

No one will think
What chalice life had offered us to drink,

When from our clay
The sun comes back to kiss the snow away.

Now!

Her brown hair knew no royal crest,
No gems nor jeweled charms,
No roses her bright cheek caressed,
No lilies kissed her arms.
In simple, modest womanhood
Clad, as was meet, in white,
The fairest flower of all, she stood
Amid the softest light.

It had been worth a perilous quest
To see the court she drew,--
My rose, my gem, my royal crest,
My lily moist with dew;
Worth heaven, when, with farewells from each
The gay throng let us be,
To see her turn at last and reach
Her white hands out to me.