Theodore Harding Rand
The Dragonfly
I
WINGED wonder of motion
In splendor of sheen,
Cruising the shining blue
Waters all day,
Smit with hunger of heart
And seized of a quest
Which nor beauty of flower
Nor promise of rest
Has charm to appease
Or slacken or stay,—
What is it you seek,
Unopen, unseen?
II
Are you blind to the sight
Of the heavens of blue,
Or the wind-fretted clouds
On their white, airy wings,
Or the emerald grass
That velvets the lawn,
Or glory of meadows
Aflame like the dawn?
Are you deaf to the note
In the woodland that rings
With the song of the whitethroat,
As crystal as dew?
III
Winged wonder of motion
In splendor of sheen,
Stay, stay a brief moment
Thy hither and thither
Quick-beating wings,
Thy flashes of flight;
And tell me thy heart,
Is it sad, is it light,
Is it pulsing with fears
Which scorch it and wither,
Or joys that up-well
In a girdle of green?
IV
“O breather of words
And poet of life,
I tremble with joy,
I flutter with fear!
Ages it seemeth,
Yet only to-day
Into this world of
Gold sunbeams at play,
I came from the deeps.
O crystalline sphere!
O beauteous light!
O glory of life!
V
“On the watery floor
Of this sibilant lake,
I lived in the twilight dim.
‘There’s a world of Day,’
Some pled, ‘a world
Of ether and wings athrob
Close over our head.’
‘It’s a dream, it’s a whim,
A whisper of reeds,’ they said,—
And anon the waters would sob.
And ever the going
Went on to the dead
Without the glint of a ray,
And the watchers watched
In their vanishing wake.
VI
“The passing
Passed for aye,
And the waiting
Waited in vain!
Some power seemed to enfold
The tremulous waters around,
Yet never in heat
Nor in shrivelling cold,
Nor darkness deep or gray,—
Came token of sound or touch,—
A clear unquestioned ‘Yea!’
And the scoffers scoffed,
In swelling refrain,
‘Let us eat and drink,
For to-morrow we die.’
VII
“But, O, in a trance of bliss,
With gauzy wings I awoke!
An ecstasy bore me away
O’er field and meadow and plain.
I thought not of recent pain,
But revelled, as splendors broke
From sun and cloud and air,
In the eye of golden Day.
VIII
“I’m yearning to break
To my fellows below
The secret of ages hoar;
In the quick-flashing light
I dart up and down,
Forth and back, everywhere,
But the waters are sealed
Like a pavement of glass,—
Sealed that I may not pass.
O for waters of air!
Or the wing of an eagle’s might
To cleave a pathway below!”
IX
And the Dragonfly in splendor
Cruises ever o’er the lake,
Holding in his heart a secret
Which in vain he seeks to break.
Beauty
I
“HAD I two loaves of bread—ay, ay!
One would I sell and hyacinths buy
To feed my soul.”—“Or let me die!”
Beauty, dew-sweet, of heavenly birth,
Thy flower is writ of grief, not mirth,
Thy rainbow’s footed on the earth.
Rainbows and Hyacinths! O seers,
Your voices call across the years:
“The bread of Beauty’s wet with tears!”
II
The living words from Beauty’s mien,
Than blade by swordsman swung more keen,
Spirit and soul divide between:
“Pure as the sapphire-blue from blame,
Humble as glad, of holiest aim—
Love’s sevenfold beam a flashing flame!”
III
It yearns me sore, so near, so far!
My heart moans like the harbor-bar,
For coming of the morning star.
Buy Hyacinths—a goodly share!
Ascend, O soul, Love’s iris-stair,
The bridegroom waiteth for thee there!
Love
THE blooming flowers, the galaxies of space,
Lie pictured in a sheeny drop of even;
And globed in one round word, on lips of grace,
Shine out the best of earth and all of heaven.
The Hepatica
HAIL, first of the spring,
Pearly sky-tinted thing
Touched with pencil of Him
Who rollest the year!
Lo, thy aureole rim
No painter may limn—
Vision thou hast, and no fear!
Fair child of the light,
What fixes thy sight?
Wide-open thy roll
From the seal of the clod,
And thy heaven-writ scroll
Glows, beautiful soul,
With the shining of God!
Thou look’st into heaven
As surely as Stephen,
So steadfast thy will is!
And from earth’s inglenook
Seest Christ of the lilies
And daffadowndillies,
And catchest His look.
And a portion is mine,
Rapt gazer divine,
From thy countenance given—
Angel bliss in thy face!
I’ve looked into heaven
As surely as Stephen,
From out of my place!
“I Am”
I AM, and therefore these,
Existence is by me,—
Flux of pendulous seas,
The stable, free.
I am in blush of the rose,
The shimmer of dawn;
Am girdle Orion knows,
The fount undrawn.
I am earth’s potency,
The chemic ray’s, the rain’s,
The reciprocity
That loads the wains.
I am, or the heavens fall!
I dwell in my woven tent,
Am immanent in all,—
Suprámanent!
I am the Life in life,
Impact and verve of thought,
The reason’s lens and knife,
The ethic “ought.”
I am of being the stress,
I am the brooding Dove,
I am the blessing in “bless,”
The Love in love.
I am the living thrill
And fire of poet and seer,
The breath of man’s goodwill,
The Father near;
Am end of the way men grope,
Core of the ceaseless strife,
I am man’s bread of hope,
Water of life.
I am the root of faith,
Substance of vision, too,
The spirit shadowed in wraith,
Urim in dew.
I am the soul’s white Sun,
Love’s slain, enthronëd Lamb,
I am the Holy One,
I am I AM.
The Veiled Presence
AN ashen gray touched faint my night-dark room,
I flung my window wide to the whispering lawn—
Great God! I saw the mighty globe from gloom
Roll with its sleeping millions to the dawn.
No tremor spoke its motion swift and vast,
In hush it swept the awful curve adown,
The shadow that its rushing speed did cast
Concealed the Father’s hand, the Kingly crown.
Into the deeps an age has passed since then,
Yet evermore for me, more humble grown,
The vision of His awesome presence veiled
Burns in the flying spheres, still all unknown,
In nature’s mist-immantled seas unsailed,
And in the deeper shadowed hearts of men.
The Ghost Flower
LIKE Israel’s seer I come from out the earth
Confronting with the question air and sky,
Why dost thou bring me up? White ghost am I
Of that which was God’s beauty at its birth.
In eld the sun kist me to ruby red,
I held my chalice up to heaven’s full view,
The wistful stars dropt down their golden dew,
And skyey balms exhaled about my bed.
Alas, I loved the darkness, not the light!
The deadly shadows, not the bending blue,
Spoke to my trancëd heart, made false seem true,
And drowned my spirit in the deeps of night.
O Painter of the flowers, O God most sweet,
Dost say my spirit for the light is meet?
Glory-Roses
“ONLY a penny, Sir!”—
A child held to my view
A bunch of “glory-roses,” red
As blood, and wet with dew.
(O earnest little face,
With living light in eye,
Your roses are too fair for earth,
And you seem of the sky!)
“My beauties, Sir!” he said,
“Only a penny, too!”—
His face shone in their ruddy glow
A Rafael cherub true.
“Yestreen their hoods were close
About their faces tight,
But ere the sun was up, I saw
That God had come last night.
O, Sir, to see them then!
The bush was all aflame!—
O yes, they’re glory-roses, Sir,
That is their holy name.
Only a penny, sir!”—
Heaven seemed across the way!
I took the red, red beauties home—
Roses to me for aye!
For aye, that radiant voice
As if from heaven it came—
“O yes, they’re glory-roses, Sir,
That is their holy name!”
The Carven Shores
HOW bold the Imagination and how strong
That makes so rich with carven-work these shores!
More gorgeous they than Oriental throng—
What altar-pomps, and rough with beaten ores!
These great events, once fluid as a song,
Now gates uplift, e’en His authentic doors!
(His stay no tent is for-a-night along
The murmuring floods and boisterous battle-roars.)
The wedge of frost, and beetle wave, sand blast,
With stroke of pencil-sun, and wash of rain,
Outline unsearchable and shadow vast!
And evermore, as moons grow or decline,
The whirl and speed of tidal lathe and plane
Shaping chaotic mass to forms divine!