Violets and Other Tales

								

Lyonesse, her perfect head poised in loving caress over the magic
violin. Dark-eyed Corinne, head drooped gently as she improvised those
Rome-famed world symphonies passed, almost ere Edna and St. Elmo had
crossed the threshold of the church happy in the love now consecrated
through her to God. Oh, the pictures, the forms, the love-words which
crowded her mind! They thrilled her heart, crushed out all else save a
crushing, over-powering sense of perfect, complete joy. A joy that
sought to express itself in wondrous melodies and silences, filled with
thoughts too deep and sacred for words. Overpowered with the
magnificence of his reign, overwhelmed with the complete subjugation of
all things unto him, do you wonder that she awoke and placing both hands
into those of the lover at her side, whispered:--


Take all of me--I am thine own, heart, soul,

    Brain, body, all; all that I am or dream
Is thine forever; yea, though space should teem
With thy conditions, I'd fulfil the whole,
Were to fulfil them to be loved by thee.

IN MEMORIAM.

  The light streams through the windows arched high,

    And o'er the stern, stone carvings breaks

    In warm rich gold and crimson waves,
Then steals away in corners dark to die.


And all the grand cathedral silence falls

    Into the hearts of those that worship low,

    Like tender waves of hushed nothingness,
Confined nor kept by human earthly walls.


Deep music in its thundering organ sounds,

    Grows diffuse through the echoing space,

    Till hearts grow still in sadness' mighty joy,
Or leap aloft in swift ecstatic bounds.


Mayhap 'twas but a dream that came to me,

    Or but a vision of the soul's desire,

    To see the nation in one mighty whole,
Do homage on its bended, worshipping knee.


Through time's heroic actions, the soul of man,

    Alone proves what that soul without earth's dross

    Could be, and this, through time's far-searching fire,
Hath proved thine white beneath the deepest scan.


A woman's tribute, 'tis a tiny dot,

    A merest flower from a frail, small hand,

    To lay among the many petaled wreaths
About thy form,--a tribute soon forgot.


But if in all the incense to arise

    In fragrance to the blue empyrean

    The blended sweetness of the womens' love
Goes pouring too, in all their heartfelt sighs.


And if one woman's sorrow be among them too,

    One woman's joy for labor past

    Be reckoned in the mighty teeming whole,
It is enough, there is not more to do.


Within the hearts of heroes small and great

    There 'bides a tenderness for weakling things

    Within thy heart, the sorrowing country knows
These passions, bravest and the tenderest mate.


When man is dust, before the gazing eyes

    Of all the gaping throng, his life lies wide

    For all to see and whisper low about
Or let their thoughts in discord's clatter rise.


But thine was pure and undefiled,