Helen M. Merrill
The Blue Flower
STILL, though the sun is setting,
She lingers unheeding the hour,
Her face held to its splendor,
Her heart in thrall of its power.
Her hair is golden burnished;
In her eye the heaven’s hue;
Her charm of immortal beauty
Holds me from dawn till dew.
She has a soul of fire,
Pure as a star’s white flame;
I gaze in silence, and wonder
The glory whence it came.
She is the spirit elusive
Sorrowing poets seek;
I stand rapt in her presence,
And listen to hear her speak.
All time in the forest olden,
She tells her wondrous chain;
My hope of suns eternal,
Priest of a mighty fane.
Through the pale light glowing golden,
She watches the day decline;
She sings from her ancient volume,
I interpret line on line.
Flower or star bright shining,
A bird, or a silver sheaf;
In her great book I discover
An enigma on every leaf.
Her song is of paradises
Where wheeling fires shine,
To mystic dreams beguiling
Like whispering wind in a pine.
She would that the spirits of mortals
Wander in amaranth meads;
Never a shadow trembles
On the soul-path where she leads,
Under the flashing stars
And the splendor of suns in prime,
In a land of new horizons,
In the unknown aftertime.
At Edgewater
ONE by one they pass away,
Days, like white ships which sail peacefully
From the shore, yet come not back again.
And their freight is Life, and Love, and lesser things,
Yet as beautiful and good. And ever they set sail
Under golden suns for sea,
Till the summer is gone and shadows fall so gloomily,
At Edgewater!
When the winds of autumn blow
Through the brown vines swinging mournfully,
Calling for the sun disconsolate,
And the rain falls, and the spirit of the deep,
Grieving for the summer, chants its death-song of the sun,
It is lonely by the sea,
And the heart is haunted by unhappy memory,
At Edgewater.
Yet again a golden day
Gilds the blue wave flowing tranquilly,
And a sudden splendor lights the shore,
And the heart of autumn, trembling, turneth warm,
As though summer loitered in it dreaming of the sun.
By-gone dreams, and dreams to be,
Their white shadows on the soul reflect ceaselessly,
At Edgewater.
The Promise of Spring
BLUE-BLACK like the breast of the gusty sea,
Cumulus clouds where the sun goes down,
Stormful shadows against the gold,
Under the arches of even blown.
Nowhere a white bird beating the storm,
Nowhere a sunray gilding the sea;
Bud nor leaf on the orchard bough,
Butterfly, nor blossom, nor bee.
Yet to-night, where the blue waves beat,
Under the shadows, the storm-winds bring
Omen mysterious out of the dusk,
Out of the darkness the promise of Spring.
Sun-Gold
ALL day the sun drops gold, the grassy mead
Like miser olden hoarding underground,
Till soft-shod June will track it, like a hound
Scents the lone covert where the wild deer feed.
Then from an ample mint, with lavish hand,
In every field, by every fountain-side,
She’ll scatter gold-bits round her far and wide,
In flower cups o’er all the fragrant land.
Wherever butter-flowers and wild daisies blow,
You’ll mark her presence in the green lush grasses;
You’ll hear her blithely singing as she passes
On sunny uplands where gold violets grow.