BY
MEREDITH NICHOLSON
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOWEN-MERRILL CO.
1891
Copyright 1890
BY
MEREDITH NICHOLSON
TO MY UNCLE
WILLIAM MORTON MEREDITH
INVOCATION—To the Seasons | xi |
Sat Est Vixisse | 1 |
Song | 3 |
’Tis Never Night in Love’s Domain | 5 |
Estranged | 7 |
When Friends are Parted | 8 |
Whereaway | 9 |
A Secret | 11 |
Disappointment | 13 |
Striving | 14 |
An Idolater | 16 |
Love’s Midas Touch | 17 |
In Ether Spaces | 18 |
My Paddle Gleamed | 20 |
Faithless | 21 |
Grape Bloom | 22 |
Ill-Starred | 23 |
The Soldier Heart | 25 |
An Unwritten Letter | 27 |
My Lady of the Golden Heart | 28 |
Dreams | 30 |
Cardinal Newman | 31 |
On the Mediterranean | 32 |
Watching the World Go By | 34[vi] |
Righteous Wrath | 36 |
Sunset | 37 |
Rondeau of Eventide | 38 |
A Prince’s Treasure | 39 |
Dieu Vous Garde | 41 |
Sweetheart Time | 42 |
The Road to Happiness | 44 |
Guarding Shadows | 46 |
Art’s Lesson | 47 |
In the Shadow | 48 |
“Lead, Kindly Light” | 50 |
Songs and Words | 51 |
For a New Year’s Morn | 53 |
Three Friends | 54 |
A Rhyme of Little Girls | 57 |
The Battles Grandsire Missed | 59 |
Barred | 61 |
A Slumber Song | 62 |
Before the Fire | 64 |
October | 66 |
In Winter I was Born | 68 |
Good Night and Pleasant Dreams | 69 |
Where Love Was Not | 71 |
Down the Aisles | 73 |
Ruin | 74 |
Half Flights | 76 |
A Kind of Man | 77 |
Transfigured | 78 |
Love’s Power | 79[vii] |
Fire-Hunting | 80 |
Heartache | 81 |
Friendship’s Sacrament | 83 |
Omar Khayyam | 84 |
A Discovery | 86 |
SONNETS | |
A Modern Puritan | 89 |
The Law of Life | 90 |
To Eugene Field in England | 91 |
Dependence | 92 |
By Sheridan’s Grave | 93 |
Viking | 94 |
Violin | 95 |
What the Babies Say | 96 |
Secrets | 97 |
Blind | 98 |
A Fancy | 99 |
Thoreau | 100 |
SEASONS that pass me by in varied mood,
GLAD and sad make rhyme, my dear,
’TWAS morning when one found his way
IT was but yesterday that thou
TIME keeps no measure when true friends are parted,—
WHERE are you going my bright blue eyes,
HE said, “No one shall ever learn
THE broad-armed wave that reaches for the land
IT is not much that I can do.
I READ of pagan priests in idols hiding,
YOUR love has made life dear to me;
SOMEWHERE in space there is a realm where lingers
MY paddle gleamed, the light canoe
AH, yes! Thy love was like the stars, but not
I WALK ’mid vines which rest upon
OH, prayers and sympathetic tears
ONE day in careless wise I said:
SHE wrote a letter with her eyes,
MY lady of the golden heart, she comes each day
LIKE shadow-freighted ships which softly creep
“To the last I never recognized the hold I had over young men.”—Apologia pro Vita Sua.
NO more the sun may know the strength it hath
TO-DAY my lover lends his flocks;
SWIFT as a meteor and as quickly gone
HOW splendid is the righteous wrath
TWO giants meet upon the hills
AT eventide when we are prest
[To His Royal Highness, Russell Fortune.]
OUR little prince can’t understand
MAY Allah in thy heart unfold
IT is a time before the rose
HERE’S the path our feet shall press
GRIM watchmen are the jealous trees
O glorious marble statue,
I WOULD not have thee otherwise,
“LEAD, kindly light,” I heard the glad bells ring,
THE songs you sing, the songs you sing,
LIKE some tired reader who has put aside
[Paul Hamilton Hayne, Sidney Lanier and Robert Burns Wilson]
THREE noble friends the South has given me,
PRITHE tell me, don’t you think
COME, boy, and sit upon my knee,
ONE cheerless night when winter winds were sowing
BABY, you stand by a gate that leads
THE winds go riding down the wold,
THE year is getting older, day by day;
ONCE in a dream I saw a blackened world
LONE here in vague cathedral gloom I sit,
THE slowly crumbling wall, the broken gate,
I think it were better that lips should forever be mute
I like a man who all mean things despises,
“A cold, hard man I said,” as day by day
WITHIN the palace of a brain
WITH dip and glide a light canoe
[Lines naming a landscape painted by Mr. Theodore C. Steele, owned by Mr. Louis C. Gibson.]
ALTHOUGH the fields of summer time are dear
WHEN I’ve partaken of your bread and wine,
KING of the wise who, long ago,
[According to a child.]
I have just discovered what makes bread white,
AS though Priscilla had smoothed out the frown
[To Mr. Charles H. Ham, author of “Manual Training”.]
“LABOR the law of life,” that is your creed;
GOOD poet of the city by the lake,
WHEN a kind parent first his children guides
I STOOD upon the heights at Arlington,
[Written In Du Chaillu’s Viking Age.]
WHAT has been stolen from time’s jealous hand,—
GENTLY, beneath her perfect rounded chin,
WHAT things the babies say are listened to
HOW well her many secrets nature keeps
AS one who in a cavern underground
’NEATH sullen skies the marshalled clouds parade;
A prince he was, yet scorning princely ways,
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.