How like a bird, we’d love to roam Beyond the gray Horizon’s rim That shuts us like a prison grim Within that narrow niche - our home While thoughts unfettered steal away To Istanbul and far Cathay. O road we tread in toil and strife That climbs to greet the bending air, The long, long trail to none knows where - The weary highway we call Life - What lies beyond? Ah, who can say But we shall see and know - some day! THE BEACH GRASS THRENODY Lo in the wind the beach grass sings A medley of fantastic things That stirs the silence of the ear With elfin notes we scarce may hear, From formless shapes grotesque and strange That lurk beyond the vision’s range. The fingers of what moon beam sprite, Or lonely demon of the night, Have strummed those sweetly plaintive strings To the weird melody that wrings A note of haunting mystery From the chill vastness of the sea. TO A ROSE JAR Fair chalice in your spicy store The roses seem to blow And childhood’s simple faith restore In legend’s long ago; Such as the Arab’s jewelled prose Where Genii from the bottle rose The magician’s command obeyed And at his feet whole kingdoms laid. From odorous depths I summon thee O spirit of the past! Weave all your spells of fantasy And may your visions last. Bring to my ear the murmuring breeze The drowsy, far off hum of bees, Unfolding to my raptured gaze Those scenes beloved, of olden days. Once more within this scented gloom Forgotten sunbeams rest On hedges drooped with odorous bloom By blushing lips caressed. Those roses faded with the dusk - Her lips grew cold, but fixed in musk The fragrance lingers - and her eyes Do they smile down from Paradise? Prophetic incense, subtly rare, O may I understand The poignant messages you bear From Memory’s holy land For petals torn from withered stems Have filled this treasure casque with gems And their sweet perfume brings to me A hint of immortality. BLUE BERRIES From elfland’s glades and coverts green Peering through bars of sun and shade Are friendly little eyes, I ween, That glow like sapphires set in jade, And shyly veil their azure spheres In summer’s filmiest atmospheres. There banqueting, we half recline And sip the perfume redolent With sweet fern, aromatic pine, And bayberries’ seductive scent, An incense rare as smoking spice That censers raise to Paradise. The stillness brooding like a pall O’er thickets and entangled trees Is stabbed by the shrill blackbird’s call, And rippled by the wandering breeze That trails a buzzing dragon fly Where bumble bees hum drowsily.