For days that laugh or nights that weep
You two strike oars across the deep
With life's tide at the brim;
And all time's beauty, all love's grace
Beam, little bride, upon your face
Here, looking up at him.

AWAY DOWN HOME

"T will not be long before they hear
The bullbat on the hill,

And in the valley through the dusk
The pastoral whippoorwill.

A few more friendly suns will call
The bluets through the loam
And star the lanes with buttercups
Away down home.

"Knee-deep!" from reedy places
Will sing the river frogs.
The terrapins will sun themselves
On all the jutting logs.

The angler's cautious oar will leave
A trail of drifting foam
Along the shady currents
Away down home.

The mocking-bird will feel again
The glory of his wings,

And wanton through the balmy air
And sunshine while he sings,

With a new cadence in his call,

The glint-wing'd crow will roam From field to newly-furrowed field Away down home.

When dogwood blossoms mingle
With the maple's modest red,
And sweet arbutus wakes at last
From out her winter's bed,

'T would not seem strange at all to meet

A dryad or a gnome,

Or Pan or Psyche in the woods

Away down home.

Then come with me, thou weary heart!

Forget thy brooding ills,

Since God has come to walk among

His valleys and his hills!

The mart will never miss thee,

Nor the scholar's dusty tome, And the Mother waits to bless thee, Away down home.

OH, ASK ME NOT

Love, should I set my heart upon a crown,
Squander my years, and gain it,

What recompense of pleasure could I own?
For youth's red drops would stain it.

Much have I thought on what our lives may mean,

And what their best endeavor,

Seeing we may not come again to glean,

But, losing, lose forever.

Seeing how zealots, making choice of pain,

From home and country parted,

Have thought it life to leave their fellows slain, Their women broken-hearted;

How teasing truth a thousand faces claims,

As in a broken mirror,

And what a father died for in the flames

His own son scorns as error;

How even they whose hearts were sweet with song

Must quaff oblivion's potion,

And, soon or late, their sails be lost along

The all-surrounding ocean;

Oh, ask me not the haven of our ships,
Nor what flag floats above you!

I hold you close, I kiss your sweet, sweet lips,
And love you, love you, love you!

FOR JANE'S BIRTHDAY

If fate had held a careless knife
And clipped one line that drew,
Of all the myriad lines of life,
From Eden up to you;

If, in the wars and wastes of time,
One sire had met the sword,
One mother died before her prime
Or wed some other lord;

Or had some other age been blest,
Long past or yet to be,

And you had been the world's sweet guest
Before or after me:

I wonder how this rose would seem,

Or yonder hillside cot;

For, dear, I cannot even dream

A world where you are not!

Thus heaven forfends that I shall drink
The gall that might have been,
If aught had broken a single link
Along the lists of men;

And heaven forgives me, whom it loves,

For feigning such distress:

My heart is happiest when it proves

Its depth of happiness.

Enough to see you where you are,

Radiant with maiden mirth!

To bless whatever blessed star

Presided o'er your birth,

That, on this immemorial morn,

When heaven was bending low,

The gods were kind and you were born
Twenty sweet years ago!

HOME SONGS

The little loves and sorrows are my song:
The leafy lanes and birthsteads of my sires,
Where memory broods by winter's evening fires
O'er oft-told joys, and ghosts of ancient wrong;
The little cares and carols that belong

To home-hearts, and old rustic lutes and lyres,
And spreading acres, where calm-eyed desires
Wake with the dawn, unfevered, fair and strong.

If words of mine might lull the bairn to sleep,
Or tell the meaning in a mother's eyes;
Might counsel love, and teach their eyes to weep
Who, o'er their dead, question unanswering skies,
More worth than legions in the dust of strife,
Time, looking back at last, should count my life.

PROTEST

Oh, I am weary, weary, weary

Of Pan and oaten quills

And little songs that, from the dictionary,

Learn lore of streams and hills,

Of studied laughter, mocking what is merry,
And calculated thrills!

Are we grown old and past the time of singing?
Is ardor quenched in art

Till art is but a formal figure, bringing
A money-measured heart,

Procrustean cut, and, with old echoes, ringing

Its bells about the mart?

The race moves on, and leaves no wildnernesses Where rugged voices cry;

It reads its prayer, and with set phrase it blesses
The souls of men who die,

And step by even step its rank progresses,
An army marshalled by.

If it be better so, that Babel noises,
Losing all course and ken,

And grief that wails and gladness that rejoices
Should ever wake again

To shock a world of modulated voices

And mediocre men.

Then he is blest who wears the painted feather And may not turn about

To dusks when muses romped the dewy heather In unrestricted rout

And dawns when, if the stars had sung together, The sons of God would shout!

A CHRISTMAS HYMN

Near where the shepherds watched by night
And heard the angels' o'er them,
The wise men saw the starry light
Stand still at last before them.
No armored castle there to ward

His precious life from danger,
But, wrapped in common cloth, our Lord
Lay in a lowly manger.

No booming bells proclaimed his birth,
No armies marshalled by,

No iron thunders shook the earth,
No rockets clomb the sky;

The temples builded in his name
Were shapeless granite then,
And all the choirs that sang his fame
Were later breeds of men.