Charles Hamilton Musgrove

Behold! I cover up this trail of tears A moment's weakness left upon my cheek, And hush my heart a little ere I speak

I. I dreamed a mighty dream. It seemed mine eyes Sealed for the moment were to things terrene,

Lucifer craved one boon of God After his fall, as his own to hold; So He gave him a mite in heaven's sight,

You are blue, you are blue like the sky, Cruel and cold and blue, And I turn from you, voiceless sea,

Here is the freedom men die for,--die for but never know; Here is the peace they pray for shrined in eternal snow; Down on the plain the city moans with a human cry,

Once in a dream of Babylon I sat with Lilith and Cain At the world-old drama, "From God to God,"

The poet painted a woman's soul, Human, trusting and kind, And then he drew the soul of a man,

You were a red rose then, I know, Red as her wine--yea, redder still,-- Say rather her blood; and ages ago

(Written on the exhumation and reburial in Spain of the bones of Christopher Columbus.) Once more upon the ocean's heaving breast He lays his head, not like the lover bold

As one, a poet of a fairy's train, Might sit beside a violet's stem and view Its opening petals, watch the wondrous blue

I came your way in the years gone by, In the summers that now are old, And then there was light in your beaming eye,

I thought today within the crowded mart I saw thee for a moment, friend of mine, And all at once my blood leapt fast and fine

I am the outer gate of life where sit Faith and Unfaith, those two interpreters That spell in diverse ways what God has writ

I might have met his anger with a smile For so it was that I had set my heart To mask deception with a wanton's guile,

They were three old men with hoary hair And beards of wintry gray, And they digged a grave in the yellow soil,

I. Mouths have they, but they speak not: Yet something in the certainty of faith

The sun must rise, the sun must set, Nor ever change in plan may be, Though dawn to stricken wretch may bring

The Child. I hear you weeping, mother, dear,-- I hear you wake and weep;

Today we are the fruits of yesterday And what tomorrow shall of us demand,-- The helpless tools within the Master's hand

O wanderer! whoever thou mayest be, I beg of thee to pass in silence here And leave me with my empty sepulchre

I. Eagle-heart, child-heart, bonnie lad o' dreams, Far away thy soul hears passion-throated Art

Through shimmering skies the big clouds slowly sail; A faint breeze lingers in the rustling beech; Atop the withered oak with vagrant speech

The snowy clouds, soft sleeping lambkins, lie Along the dark blue meadows of the sky, And the bright stars, like golden daffodils,

The dial has pointed the hour and the hour has rounded the day, The day has finished the year that dies with a century's birth; Eastward the morning stars sing as they go their way:

"Give us this day our daily bread!" O prayer By Jesus taught, thou hast become a cry For starveling mouths in Famine's ghastly lair--

She comes not with the conscious grace Of gentle, winsome womanhood, Nor yet, withal, the flaunting face

O king! what is the quest that evermore Foredooms thy feet to roam, yet blinds thine eyes? Why seek ye still for life's imperfect prize,

The Sky Line. Like black fangs in a cruel ogre's jaw The grim piles lift against the sunset sky;

The city frets in the distance, lass, The city so grim and gray, A glare in the sky by night, my lass,

I am the word that lovers leave unsaid, The eloquence of ardent lips grown mute, The mourning mother's heart-cry for her dead,

Down at the end of the iron lane I see the sunset's glare, And the red bars lie across the sky

(Written on the occasion of the bringing of the body of Admiral John Paul Jones to the United States for reburial.) Brave ships are these that bear thee home again From under far-off skies--brave flags that fly

Life to her was a perfect flower, And every petal a jeweled hour, Till all at once--we know not why--

North and south with the fickle tides, With the wind from east to west, The death-ship follows her track of doom,

He crouches, voiceless, in his tomb-like cell, Forgot of all things save his jailer's hate That turns the daylight from his iron grate

The eyrie clung to the shattered cliff That the glacier's torrent thundered under; And the unfledged eaglet's lifted eye

An Earthworm once loved a Star. In the hush of the summer night, He lay quite close to the ground and gazed on its golden light; He looked from his house of clay, and dreamed of wonderful things,

It wouldn't be fair to Belshazzar When speaking of madness and mirth, To draw from his revel a moral

(Battleships of the Coronation Naval Review, Spithead, England, June 24, 1911.) Hail, sceptered Mars, great god of wars! Hail, Carnage, queen of blood!

I. "He has eyes like the Christ," The mother said, and smiled;

Here is a tale the North Wind sang to me: Hell hath set Mammon o'er a frozen land, Crowned him with gold, put gold into his hand,

Here is one picture of the human world: An unreaped field and Death, the harvester, Taking his rest beside a gathered sheaf

(Written on the ter-centenary of John Milton, December 9, 1908.) Immortal singer, in whose glorious brain Unearthly melodies were born to make

Beyond the wall the passion flower is blooming, Strange hints of life along the winds are blown; Within, the cowled and silent men are kneeling

Beyond the tumult and the proud acclaim, Beyond the circle where the glory beats With withering light upon the mighty seats,

I. With the light just quenched in their eyes They lie in their graves 'neath the skies,

I. Wind of the North, I know your song Out on the frozen plain,

I. Silent as ever, stoic as of old, The scattered nomads of that dusky race

I. Where falls the shadow of the Kofel cross Athwart the Alpine snows, the rose of faith

Down in the vale the lazy sheep Are roaming at their will, But I would be away to weep

St. George, I learned to love thee in my youth When of thy deeds I read in deathless song; And now, when I behold the dragon Wrong

From age to age the haggard human train Creeps wearily across Time's burning sands To look into her face, and lift weak hands

One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

I have been kissed by the Priestess of the Thin and Deadly Blood-- With the kiss that men call Lightning, and yet I did not die, For the kiss was a message from God; I felt it and understood,

This is the story of Moses, The earliest scribe that we keep: Void was the earth and formless,

God let me fall from His hand One day at His forge when the elemental world Was shaping. I am but a breath from His great bellows,

You have builded your ships in the sun-lands, And launched them with song and wine; They are boweled with your stanchest engines,

Unweariedly he watches for the sign, The sign I promised from the farthest goal, My lover of a world no longer mine,

What will I say when face to face with God My naked soul shall come, seared with the stain That men call sin? Why, God will understand;

(Oscar Wilde.) I gazed upon thee desolate and heard Thine anguished cry when fell the iron gin

Earthquake. I am a memory of cosmogony, That first great hour of travail when the voice

(Written during the hostilities in the Far East in 1900.) Hard by the gates of Eden, Where God first walked with man,

I. The light of a new day was on his brow, The faith of a great dawn was on his tongue;