Part 4 (1/2)

BEFORE A PAINTING

I knew not who had wrought with skill so fine What I beheld; nor by what laws of art He had created life and love and heart On canvas, from mere color, curve and line.

Silent I stood and made no move or sign; Not with the crowd, but reverently apart; Nor felt the power my rooted limbs to start, But mutely gazed upon that face divine.

And over me the sense of beauty fell, As music over a raptured listener to The deep-voiced organ breathing out a hymn; Or as on one who kneels, his beads to tell, There falls the aureate glory filtered through The windows in some old cathedral dim.

I HEAR THE STARS STILL SINGING

I hear the stars still singing To the beautiful, silent night, As they speed with noiseless winging Their ever westward flight.

I hear the waves still falling On the stretch of lonely sh.o.r.e, But the sound of a sweet voice calling I shall hear, alas! no more.

GIRL OF FIFTEEN

Girl of fifteen, I see you each morning from my window As you pa.s.s on your way to school.

I do more than see, I watch you.

I furtively draw the curtain aside.

And my heart leaps through my eyes And follows you down the street; Leaving me behind, half-hid And wholly ashamed.

What holds me back, Half-hid behind the curtains and wholly ashamed, But my forty years beyond your fifteen?

Girl of fifteen, as you pa.s.s There pa.s.ses, too, a lightning flash of time In which you lift those forty summers off my head, And take those forty winters out of my heart.

THE SUICIDE

For fifty years, Cruel, insatiable Old World, You have punched me over the heart Till you made me cough blood.

The few paltry things I gathered You s.n.a.t.c.hed out of my hands.

You have knocked the cup from my thirsty lips.

You have laughed at my hunger of body and soul.

You look at me now and think, ”He is still strong, There ought to be twenty more years of good punching there.

At the end of that time he will be old and broken, Not able to strike back, But cringing and crying for leave To live a little longer.”

Those twenty, pitiful, extra years Would please you more than the fifty past, Would they not, Old World?

Well, I hold them up before your greedy eyes, And s.n.a.t.c.h them away as I laugh in your face, Ha! Ha!

Bang--!