Happy the dumb beast, hungering for food, But calling not his suffering his own; Blessed the angel, gazing on all good, But knowing not he sits upon a throne; Wretched the mortal, pondering his mood, And doomed to know his aching heart alone. To William Sharp. [Clinton Scollard] (Fiona Macleod) The waves about Iona dirge, The wild winds trumpet over Skye; Shrill around Arran's cliff-bound verge The gray gulls cry. Spring wraps its transient scarf of green, Its heathery robe, round slope and scar; And night, the scudding wrack between, Lights its lone star. But you who loved these outland isles, Their gleams, their glooms, their mysteries, Their eldritch lures, their druid wiles, Their tragic seas, Will heed no more, in mortal guise, The potent witchery of their call, If dawn be regnant in the skies, Or evenfall. Yet, though where suns Sicilian beam The loving earth enfolds your form, I can but deem these coasts of dream And hovering storm Still thrall your spirit -- that it bides By far Iona's kelp-strewn shore, There lingering till time and tides Shall surge no more. The Quiet Singer. [Charles Hanson Towne] (Ave! Francis Thompson) He had been singing -- but I had not heard his voice; He had been weaving lovely dreams of song, O many a morning long. But I, remote and far, Under an alien star, Listened to other singers, other birds, And other silver words. But does the skylark, singing sweet and clear, Beg the cold world to hear? Rather he sings for very rapture of singing, At dawn, or in the blue, mild Summer noon, Knowing that, late or soon, His wealth of beauty, and his high notes, ringing Above the earth, will make some heart rejoice. He sings, albeit alone, Spendthrift of each pure tone, Hoarding no single song, No cadence wild and strong. But one day, from a friend far overseas, As if upon the breeze, There came the teeming wonder of his words -- A golden troop of birds, Caged in a little volume made to love; Singing, singing, Flinging, flinging Their breaking hearts on mine, and swiftly bringing Tears, and the peace thereof. How the world woke anew! How the days broke anew! Before my tear-blind eyes a tapestry I seemed to see, Woven of all the dreams dead or to be. Hills, hills of song, Springs of eternal bloom, Autumns of golden pomp and purple gloom Were hung upon his loom. Winters of pain, roses with awful thorns, Yet wondrous faith in God's dew-drenched morns -- These, all these I saw, With that ecstatic awe Wherewith one looks into Eternity.