And I blushed for the world we’d made, Putting God’s hand aside, Till for the want of sun and shade His little children died; And blushed that I who every year With Spring went up and down, Must greet a soul that ached for her With “penny for a bun!”
Struck as a thief in holy place Whose sin upon him cries, I watched the flowers leave her face, The song go from her eyes.
Then she, sweet heart, she saw my rout, And of her charity A hand of grace put softly out And took the coin from me.
A red-cap sang in Bishop’s wood, A lark o’er Golder’s lane; But I, alone, still glooming stood, And April plucked in vain;
Till living words rang in my ears And sudden music played: _Out of such sacred thirst as hers The world shall be remade._
Afar she turned her head and smiled As might have smiled the Spring, And humble as a wondering child I watched her vanishing.
_Atlantic Monthly_ _Olive Tilford Dargan_
Nevermore Shall the shepherds of Arcady follow Pan’s moods as he lolls by the shore Of the mere, or lies hid in the hollow; Nevermore Shall they start at the sound of his reed fashioned flute;
Fallen mute Are the strings of Apollo, His lyre and his lute; And the lips of the Memnons are mute Evermore;
And the gods of the North,--are they dead or forgetful, Our Odin and Baldur and Thor? Are they drunk, or grown weary of worship and fretful, Our Odin and Baldur and Thor?
And into what night have the Orient deities strayed? You swart gods of the Nile, in dusk splendors arrayed, Brooding Isis and sombre Osiris, You were gone ere the fragile papyrus That bragged you eternal decayed.
The avatars But illumine their limited evens And vanish like plunging stars; They are fixed in the whirling heavens No firmer than falling stars; Brief lords of the changing soul, they pass Like a breath from the face of a glass, Or a blossom of summer blown shalloplike over The clover And tossed tides of grass.
Sink to silence the psalms and the pæans, The shibboleths shift, and the faiths, And the temples that challenged the æons Are tenanted only by wraiths; Swoon to silence the cymbals and psalters, The worship grow senseless and strange, And the mockers ask, “Where be thy altars?” Crying, “Nothing is changeless--but Change!” Yea, nothing seems changeless, but Change. And yet, through the creed wrecking years, One story forever appears: