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While birds and rills but name thee
In all their flight and flow.
Speed on thy joyous mission
With wonder-blossoms clad,
Of life the sweet magician
To make our sad hearts glad.
James T. Pyke.
The Poet
The poet is Protean, and is pleas'd
To venture forth as other than himself;
For in the character of fay, or elf,
Or what not, pray, his heart is greatly eas'd.
Therefore look not for self-disclosures true
In all he says and does in variant mood.
Is he Jack Robinson or Robin Hood
Because he wakes the glen with loud halloo?
So would you sense a black streak in his heart
Because he knows all motives to all sin?
Judgment in inferences is akin
To purposes of low Satanic art:
The poet quickly feels the heat of strife,
Yet knows that life is love and love is life.
James T. Pyke.
Departed.
By Maude Kingsbury Barton
I wander out into the fields, I linger under trees
I hear the songs of lovely birds, and drowsing of the bees.
I glance up to the cloudless sky, such glory there I see!
But still I find no happiness is left on earth for me.
The streamlets are as sparkling, and the sky is just as blue
As the day that you departed. I wonder if you know,
As your spirit soar'd on upward, and left me here below,
That my heart was breaking, breaking, that you wore call'd to go?
The autumn leaves are falling, there's a ling'ring bud or two
In my garden of the roses, I see you flitting through.
I ever hear your laughing voice, I see your golden hair,
The sunlight shining on it, and your eyes beyond compare.
