THE SINGING MAN A Book of Songs and Shadows By JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY [Illustration] _BOSTON_ and _NEW YORK_ HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1911 COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY JOSEPHINE PEABODY MARKS _Published November 1911_ NOTE Thanks are especially due to the editors of The American Magazine, Scribner's, The Atlantic Monthly, and to Messrs. Harper and Brothers, for their courteous permission to reprint certain of the poems included in this volume. FOREWORD We make our songs as we must, from fragments of the joy and sorrow of living. What Life itself may be, we cannot know till all men share the chance to know. Until the day of some more equal portion, there is no human brightness unhaunted by this black shadow: the thought of those unnumbered who pay all the heavier cost of life, to live and die without knowledge that there is any Joy of Living. No song could face such blackness, but for the will to share, and for hope of the day of sharing. Upon that hope and that mindfulness, the poems in this book are linked together. J.P.M. 4 October, 1911. CONTENTS THE SINGING MAN 3 THE TREES 15 _O, do you remember? How it came to be?_ 21 RICH MAN, POOR MAN 23 _But we did walk in Eden_ 29 THE FOUNDLING 31 _Love sang to me. And I went down the stair_ 35 THE FEASTER 37 _Belovèd, if the moon could weep_ 43 THE GOLDEN SHOES 45 NOON AT PÆSTUM 47 VESTAL FLAME 48 _The dark had left no speech save hand-in-hand_ 51 THE PROPHET 53 THE LONG LANE 56 _Ah but, Belovèd, men may do_ 59 ALISON'S MOTHER TO THE BROOK 61 _You, Four Walls, wall not in my heart!_ 65 CANTICLE OF THE BABE 67 _And thou, Wayfaring Woman whom I meet_ 73 GLADNESS 75 THE NIGHTINGALE UNHEARD 81 _Envoi_ 87 THE SINGING MAN AN ODE OF THE PORTION OF LABOR '_The profit of the Earth is for all._' --ECCLESIASTES. THE SINGING MAN I He sang above the vineyards of the world. And after him the vines with woven hands Clambered and clung, and everywhere unfurled Triumphing green above the barren lands; Till high as gardens grow, he climbed, he stood, Sun-crowned with life and strength, and singing toil, And looked upon his work; and it was good: The corn, the wine, the oil.