SONG OF THE PALM

I

WILD is its nature, as it were a token, Born of the sunshine, and the stars, and sea;

Grand as a passion felt but never spoken,
Lonely and proud and free.

For when the Maker set its crown of beauty,
And for its home ordained the torrid
ring,
Assigning unto each its place and duty,
He made the Palm a King.

So when in reverie I look and listen,

Half dream-like floats, within my passive mind,

Why in the sun its branches gleam and glisten,

And harp-wise beat the wind;

Why, when the sea-waves, heralding their tidings,

Come roaring on the shore with crests of down,

In grave acceptance of their sad confidings, It bows its stately crown;

Why, in the death-like calms of night and morning,

Its quivering spears of green are never
still,

But ever tremble, as at solemn warning
A human heart may thrill;

And also why it stands in lonely places,

By the red desert or the sad sea shore, Or haunts the jungle, or the mountain graces

Where eagles proudly soar !

It is a sense of kingly isolation,

Of royal beauty and enchanting grace, Proclaiming from the earliest creation

The power and pride of race,

That has almost imbued it with a spirit,

And made it sentient, although still a tree,

With dim perception that it might inherit An immortality.

Long live the King and his fair Queen,
Still loyal thousands roar:-
None know what woman died when fell
Gil, the Toreador.

DUM VIVIMUS VIGILEMUS

TURN out more ale, turn up the light;
I will not go to bed to-night.

Of all the foes that man should dread
The first and worst one is a bed.
Friends I have had both old and young,
And ale we drank and songs we sung:
Enough you know when this is said,
That, one and all, they died in bed.
In bed they died and I'll not go
Where all my friends have perished so.
Go you who glad would buried be,
But not to-night a bed for me.

For me to-night no bed prepare,
But set me out my oaken chair.
And bid no other guests beside
The ghosts that shall around me glide;
In curling smoke-wreaths I shall see
A fair and gentle company.
Though silent all, rare revellers they,
Who leave you not till break of day.

Go you who would not daylight see,
But not to-night a bed for me:
For I've been born and I've been wed-
All of man's peril comes of bed.

An empty chair, the brown ale spilled; Well may you know, though naught be

said,

That I've been borne away to bed.

INDIRECTION

FAIR are the flowers and the children, but their subtle suggestion is fairer; Rare is the roseburst of dawn, but the secret that-clasps it is rarer;

Sweet the exultance of song, but the strain that precedes it is sweeter; And never was poem yet writ, but the meaning outmastered the metre.

Never a daisy that grows, but a mystery guideth the growing;

Never a river that flows, but a majesty sceptres the flowing;

Never a Shakespeare that soared, but a stronger than he did enfold him, Nor ever a prophet foretells, but a mightier seer hath foretold him.

Back of the canvas that throbs the painter is hinted and hidden;

Into the statue that breathes the soul of the sculptor is bidden;

Under the joy that is felt lie the infinite issues of feeling;

Crowning the glory revealed is the glory

that crowns the revealing.

Great are the symbols of being, but that which is symboled is greater;

Vast the create and beheld, but vaster the inward creator;

Back of the sound broods the silence, back of the gift stands the giving; Back of the hand that receives thrill the sensitive nerves of receiving.

Space is as nothing to spirit, the deed is outdone by the doing;

The heart of the wooer is warm, but warmer the heart of the wooing; And up from the pits where these shiver, and up from the heights where those shine,

Twin voices and shadows swim starward, and the essence of life is divine.

THE WORD

O EARTH! thou hast not any wind that blows

Which is not music; every weed of thine