And I all shy and silent grow
Beneath his glance of gladness, though
Wild yearnings through my bosom spring,
When we shall meet.
Till joyful tears of passion show,
And to his kind embrace I throw
My heart unworthy, and I cling
With deathless fondness to the king
I worshipped in the Long Ago,
When we shall meet!
SWEET EYES OF BLUE.
Sweet eyes of blue! The stars by night,
That swoon the world with laughing light,
And touch the hills with tender glow
While all the vales are kissed below,
Beside you would no more be bright.
My worlds ye are, and while I throw
My heart to catch the beams that flow
From your fair shrine, my woes take flight,
Sweet eyes of blue!
Glad orbs of beauty! In your sight
My soul mounts up with secret might,
Till Eden's lovely bowers I know;
And as through Heaven's gates I go,
The pleasures all my sorrow smite,
Sweet eyes of blue!
HAD WE NOT MET.
Had we not met, the brooding woe
And all the griefs that greater grow,
Might not have been, and happy-wise
Our lives have laughed with lullabies
And quaffed such joys as few may know.
Our days beneath embittered skies
Where anguish moans and sorrow cries,
Might not have wept and wandered so,
Had we not met!
But ah, my darling! All we prize,--
Love and sweet trust that never dies,
Wild yearnings that with constant flow
From kindred heart to bosom go,--
Would never in our souls had rise,
Had we not met!
A SONNET.
We gentler grow by sorrow; not the breast
That never crouches in the nights of tears,
That never bends beneath the loads of years,
Has sympathies that are the kindliest.
There is a strength in agony that best
Can link the careless heart with human fears,
And teach it that fond kindness which endears
The millions that with sadness are oppressed.
Grief softens while it saddens; pleasure smites
The timid soul with harshness, till it knows
Small earnest of the great world's grievous woes
And little of its struggles; sorrow plights
Her troth with sorrow, and in tears unites
Man unto man and hatred overthrows.
OKLAHOMA,--A SONNET.
Here, through the ages old, the desert slept
In solitudes unbroken, save when passed
The bison herds, and savage hunters swept
In thund'ring chaos down the valleys vast;
But, lo! Across the barren margins stepped
Advancement with her legions, and one blast
From her imperial trumpet filled the last
Lone covert where affrighted wildness crept.
Full armed, full armored, at her wondrous birth,
Her shining temples wreathed with gorgeous dower,
She sits among the empires of the earth;
Her proud achievements o'er the nations tower,
Won by her people with their royal worth,
With lofty culture, wisdom, wealth and power.
ESTRANGED.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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