Part 12 (1/2)
Out of the purple drifts, From the shadow sea of night, On tides of musk a moth uplifts Its weary wings of white.
Is it a dream or ghost Of a dream that comes to me, Here in the twilight on the coast, Blue cinctured by the sea?
Fas.h.i.+oned of foam and froth-- And the dream is ended soon, And, lo, whence came the moon-white moth Comes now the moth-white moon!
FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN
THE SPRING BEAUTIES
The Puritan Spring Beauties stood freshly clad for church; A Thrush, white-breasted, o'er them sat singing on his perch.
”Happy be! for fair are ye!” the gentle singer told them, But presently a buff-coat Bee came booming up to scold them.
”Vanity, oh, vanity!
Young maids, beware of vanity!”
Grumbled out the buff-coat Bee, Half parson-like, half soldierly.
The sweet-faced maidens trembled, with pretty, pinky blushes, Convinced that it was wicked to listen to the Thrushes; And when, that shady afternoon, I chanced that way to pa.s.s, They hung their little bonnets down and looked into the gra.s.s.
All because the buff-coat Bee Lectured them so solemnly:-- ”Vanity, oh, vanity!
Young maids, beware of vanity!”
HELEN GRAY CONE
THE MOCKING-BIRD
He didn't know much music When first he come along; An' all the birds went wonderin'
Why he didn't sing a song.
They primped their feathers in the sun, An' sung their sweetest notes; An' music jest come on the run From all their purty throats!
But still that bird was silent In summer time an' fall; He jest set still and listened, An' he wouldn't sing at all!
But one night when them songsters Was tired out an' still, An' the wind sighed down the valley An' went creepin' up the hill;
When the stars was all a-tremble In the dreamin' fields o' blue, An' the daisy in the darkness-- Felt the fallin' o' the dew,--
There come a sound o' melody No mortal ever heard, An' all the birds seemed singin'
From the throat o' one sweet bird!
Then the other birds went Mayin'
In a land too fur to call; For there warn't no use in stayin'
When one bird could sing for all!
FRANK L. STANTON
THE MESSENGER