George Parsons Lathrop

Dost thou remember, Love, those hours
Shot o'er with random rainy showers,
When the bold sun would woo coy May?
She smiled, then wept - and looked another way.

We, learning from the sun and season,
Together plotted joyous treason
'Gainst maiden majesty, to give
Each other troth, and henceforth wedded live.

But love, ah, love we know is blind!
Not always what they seek they find
When, groping through dim-lighted natures,
Fond lovers look for old, ideal statures.

What then? Is all our purpose lost?
The balance broken, since Fate tossed
Uneven weights? Oh well beware
That thought, my sweet: 't were neither fit nor fair!

Seek not for any grafted fruits
From souls so wedded at the roots;
But whatsoe'er our fibres hold,
Let tha...

[Read before the Sons of the Revolution, New-York, February 22, 1887]


Sons of the youth and the truth of the nation,
Ye that are met to remember the man
Whose valor gave birth to a people's salvation,
Honor him now; set his name in the van.
A nobleness to try for,
A name to live and die for -
    The name of Washington.

Calmly his face shall look down through the ages -
Sweet yet severe with a spirit of warning;
Charged with the wisdom of saints and of sages;
Quick with the light of a life-giving morning.
A majesty to try for,
A name to live and die for -
    The name of Washington!

Though faction may rack us, or party divide us,
And bitterness break the gold links of our story,
Our father and leader is ever beside us.
Live, a...

(A REPLY)


Yes, I was wrong about the phoebe-bird.
Two songs it has, and both of them I've heard:
I did not know those strains of joy and sorrow
Came from one throat, or that each note could borrow
Strength from the other, making one more brave
And one as sad as rain-drops on a grave.

But thus it is. Two songs have men and maidens:
One is for hey-day, one is sorrow's cadence.
Our voices vary with the changing seasons
Of life's long year, for deep and natural reasons.
Therefore despair not. Think not you have altered,
If, at some time, the gayer note has faltered.
We are as God has made us. Gladness, pain,
Delight and death, and moods of bliss or bane,
With love and hate, or good and evil - all,
At separate times, in separate accents call;

Ethereal, faint that music rang,
As, with the bosom of the breeze,
It rose and fell and murmuring sang
    Aeolian harmonies!

I turned; again the mournful chords,
In random rhythm lightly flung
From off the wire, came shaped in words;
    And thus meseemed, they sung:

"I, messenger of many fates,
Strung to the tones of woe or weal,
Fine nerve that thrills and palpitates
    With all men know or feel, -

"Is it so strange that I should wail?
Leave me my tearless, sad refrain,
When in the pine-top wakes the gale
    That breathes of coming rain.

"There is a spirit in the post;
It, too, was once a murmuring tree;
Its withered, sad, imprisoned ghost
    Echoes my melody.

"Come close, and lay your listening ear
...

Hark to that faint, ethereal twang
    That from the bosom of the breeze
Has caught its rise and fall: there rang
    Æolian harmonies!

I looked; again the mournful, chords,
    In random rhythm lightly flung
From off the wire, came shaped in words;
    And thus, meseemed, they sung.

"I, messenger of many fates,
    Strung to the tones of woe or weal,
Fine nerve that thrills and palpitates
    With all men know or feel, -

"Oh, is it strange that I should wail?
    Leave me my tearless, sad refrain,
When in the pine-top wakes the gale
That breathes of coming rain.

"There is a spirit in the post;
    It, too, was once a murmuring tree;
Its sapless, sad, and withered ghost
    Echoes my melody.

"Come close, and la...

Glimmers gray the leafless thicket
Close beside my garden gate,
Where, so light, from post to picket
Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate;
Who, with meekly folded wing,
Comes to sun himself and sing.

It was there, perhaps, last year,
That his little house he built;
For he seems to perk and peer,
And to twitter, too, and tilt
The bare branches in between,
With a fond, familiar mien.

Once, I know, there was a nest,
Held there by the sideward thrust
Of those twigs that touch his breast;
Though 'tis gone now. Some rude gust
Caught it, over-full of snow, -
Bent the bush, - and stole it so.

Thus our highest holds are lost,
In the ruthless winter's wind,
When, with swift-dismantling frost,
The green woods we dwelt in, thinn'd

Glimmers gray the leafless thicket
    Close beside my garden gate,
Where, so light, from post to picket
    Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate;
    Who, with meekly folded wing,
    Comes to sun himself and sing.

It was there, perhaps, last year,
    That his little house he built;
For he seems to perk and peer,
    And to twitter, too, and tilt
    The bare branches in between,
    With a fond, familiar mien.

Once, I know, there was a nest,
    Held there by the sideward thrust
Of those twigs that touch his breast;
    Though 'tis gone now. Some rude gust
    Caught it, over-full of snow, -
    Bent the bush, - and robbed it so

Thus our highest holds are lost,
    By the ruthless winter's wind,
When, with swift-dismantling...

"Go," said the star to its light:
"Follow your fathomless flight!
Into the dreams of space
Carry the joy of my face.
Go," said the star to its light:
"Tell me the tale of your flight."

As the mandate rang
The heavens through,
Quick the ray sprang:
Unheard it flew,
Sped by the touch of an unseen spur.
It crumbled the dusk of the deep
That folds the worlds in sleep,
And shot through night with noiseless stir.

Then came the day;
And all that swift array
Of diamond-sparkles died.
And lo! the far star cried:
"My light has lost its way!"
Ages on ages passed:
The light returned, at last.

"What have you seen,
What have you heard -
O ray serene,
O flame-winged bird
I loosed on endless air?
Why do you l...

The sunshine of thine eyes,
(O still, celestial beam!)
Whatever it touches it fills
With the life of its lambent gleam.

The sunshine of thine eyes,
O let it fall on me!
Though I be but a mote of the air,
I could turn to gold for thee!

The sunshine of thine eyes,
    (Oh still, celestial beam!)
Whatever it touches it fills
    With the life of its lambent gleam.

The sunshine of thine eyes,
    Oh let it fall on me!
Though I be but a mote of the air,
    I could turn to gold for thee!

A penciled shade the sky doth sweep,
And transient glooms creep in to sleep
    Amid the orchard;
Fantastic breezes pull the trees
Hither and yon, to vagaries
    Of aspect tortured.

Then, like the downcast dreamy fringe
Of eyelids, when dim gates unhinge
    That locked their tears,
Falls on the hills a mist of rain, -
So faint, it seems to fade again;
    Yet swiftly nears.

Now sparkles the air, all steely-bright,
With drops swept down in arrow-flight,
    Keen, quivering lines.
Ceased in a breath the showery sound;
And teasingly, now, as I look around,
    Sweet sunlight shines!

"How shall we honor the man who creates?"
Asked the Bedouin chief, the poet Antar; -
"Who unto the truth flings open our gates,
Or fashions new thoughts from the light of a star;
Or forges with craft of his finger and brain
Some marvelous weapon we copy in vain;
Or chants to the winds a wild song that shall wander forever undying?

"See! His reward is in envies and hates;
In lips that deny, or in stabs that may kill."
"Nay," said the smith; "for there's one here who waits
Humbly to serve you with unmeasured skill,
Sure that no utmost devotion can fail,
Offered to you, nor unfriended assail
The heart of the hero and poet Antar, whose fame is undying!"

"Speak," said the chief. Then the smith: "O Antar,
It is I who would serve you! I know, by the sou...

I warn, like the one drop of rain
On your face, ere the storm;
Or tremble in whispered refrain
With your blood, beating warm.
I am the presence that ever
Baffles your touch's endeavor, -
Gone like the glimmer of dust
Dispersed by a gust.
I am the absence that taunts you,
The fancy that haunts you;
The ever unsatisfied guess
That, questioning emptiness,
Wins a sigh for reply.
Nay; nothing am I,
But the flight of a breath -
For I am Death!

Seaward, at morn, my doves flew free;
At eve they circled back to me.
The first was Faith; the second, Hope;
The third - the whitest - Charity.

Above the plunging surge's play
Dream-like they hovered, day by day.
At last they turned, and bore to me
Green signs of peace thro' nightfall gray.

No shore forlorn, no loveliest land
Their gentle eyes had left unscanned,
'Mid hues of twilight-heliotrope
Or daybreak fires by heaven-breath fanned.

Quick visions of celestial grace, -
Hither they waft, from earth's broad space,
Kind thoughts for all humanity.
They shine with radiance from God's face.

Ah, since my heart they choose for home,
Why loose them, - forth again to roam?
Yet look: they rise! with loftier scope
They wheel in f...

At night, with shaded eyes, the summer moon
    In tender meditation downward glances
    At the dark earth, far-set in dim expanses,
And, welcomer than blazoned gold of noon,
Down through the air her steady lights are strewn.
    The breezy forests sigh in moonlit trances,
    And the full-hearted poet, waking, fancies
The smiling hills will break in laughter soon.

Oh thus, thou gentle Nature, dost thou shine
    On me to-night. My very limbs would melt,
Like rugged earth beneath yon ray divine,
    Into faint semblance of what they have felt:
Thine eye doth color me, O wife, O mine,
With peace that in thy spirit long hath dwelt!

When, looking deeply in thy face,
I catch the undergleam of grace
That grows beneath the outward glance,
Long looking, lost as in a trance
Of long desires that fleet and meet
Around me like the fresh and sweet
White showers of rain which, vanishing,
'Neath heaven's blue arches whirl, in spring;
Suddenly then I seem to know
Of some new fountain's overflow
In grassy basins, with a sound
That leads my fancy, past all bound,
Into a region of retreat
From this my life's bewildered heat.
Oh if my soul might always draw
From those deep fountains full of awe,
The current of my days should rise
Unto the level of thine eyes!

I.

    Lips that are met in love's
        Devotion sweet,
While parting lovers passionately greet,
And earth through heaven's arc more swiftly moves -
    Oh, will they be less dear
    Within a year?


II.

    Eyes in whose shadow-spell
        Far off I read
That which to lovers taking loving heed
Dear women's eyes full soon and plainly tell -
    Oh, will you give such cheer
    This time a year?


III.

    Behold! the dark year goes,
        Nor will reveal
Aught of its purpose, if for woe or weal,
Swift as a stream that o'er the mill-weir flows:
    Mayhap the end draws near
    Within the year!


IV.

    Yet, darling, once more touch
        Those lips to mine.

(TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES)


Strange spell of youth for age, and age for youth,
Affinity between two forms of truth! -
As if the dawn and sunset watched each other,
Like and unlike as children of one mother
And wondering at the likeness. Ardent eyes
Of young men see the prophecy arise
Of what their lives shall be when all is told;
And, in the far-off glow of years called old,
Those other eyes look back to catch a trace
Of what was once their own unshadowed grace.
But here in our dear poet both are blended -
Ripe age begun, yet golden youth not ended; -
Even as his song the willowy scent of spring
Doth blend with autumn's tender mellowing,
And mixes praise with satire, tears with fun,
In strains that ever delicately run;
So musical and wise, page...