Jump to content

Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/288

From Wikisource
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
260
IN PALESTINE

This Brook of Shadows, whose dark waters purled
Solace to his deep mind, it felt his smile—
Haunted, and melancholy, and remote.


LATE SUMMER

Tho' summer days are all too fleet,
Not yet the year is touched with cold;
Through the long billows of the wheat
The green is lingering in the gold.


The birds that thrilled the April copse,
Ah! some have flown on silent wings;
Yet one sweet music never stops:
The constant vireo sings and sings.


AN HOUR IN A STUDIO

Each picture was a painted memory
Of the far plains he loved, and of their life,—
Weird, mystical, dark, inarticulate,—
And cities hidden high against the blue,
Whose sky-hung steps one Indian could guard.
The enchanted Mesa there its fated wall
Lifted, and all its story lived again—
How, in the happy planting time, the strong
Went down to push the seeds into the sand,
Leaving the old and sick. Then reeled the world
And toppled to the plain the perilous path.
Death climbed another way to them who stayed.
He showed us pictured thirst, a dreadful sight;
And many tales he told that might have come,
Brought by some planet-wanderer—fresh from Mars,
Or from the silver deserts of the moon.