Sonnets

...This promise ever keep Vision depends, an island only meant Thy moan-"He Giveth His Beloved Sleep...

...They escape from me You were awakened by a falling leaf And baffle me with islands...

...Only the gull goes Narcissus-blooms have yielded place to phlox In purple hosts...

...JOSEPH Lnwts FRENCH...

...That shrugs the North aside...

...Now her heart knows its season to be fall, I saw it from the ship and shall not cease And, recklessly, no longer she withholds To think of its sphered calm, its remote peace, Color or ardor in this last delight...

...Of mirror-sand his pale reflection mars In passing...

...With scorching, scarlet tongue...

...Can call the lyric lightning down whereon Nay...

...I shall find And, thinking autumn near and silence long, Sea-urchin sands and palm trees and a white Gathered the summer in one final song...

...Their seething cones against the sky to smoulder, More savage and more passionate than those colder Take as a child into Thine arms again Volcanoes piercing the Andean crust...

...Toward the Guianas and the deep Brazils Lone singer on the vast stage of the night, That hid Manoa: where they say the hills Often in chorus I have heard, past number, Have cores of silver, where a man might be Your crystal requiems to the fading light...

...A lifetime on one river, hopelessly And this is the epitome of all Caught in its python coils...

...Death will unroll the epic Amazon...

...In the selfsame place So clear the shore, so white the surf that snows Now zinnias sway, and the pale tentative Nobody lives there...

...The heel of a hurricane could soon erase Midsummer's sun wrought havoc with them all , This beauty and submerge it in the sea...

...I know them older The strife has broken me-my hope is vain, Than any human paradox : they must The world's harsh roar bath drowned my soul in care...

...Hidden by hedges that the frost has licked The waves have worn it down and left no scars...

...GRACE HAZARD CONKLING...

...where thunder spills Fierce rain along the jungle's tarnished sills, The season of your singing, clear and brief And unexpected from the wood's dark wall...

...Distance will thicken soon KENNETH SLADE ALLING...

...cc l Giveth His Beloved Sleep" II Give me Thy peace, I cried, 0 God, if Thou Splintered Jewels Canst pour Thy balm o'er any storm-wracked soul Visit Thou me-and let Thy waters roll These are the Indies flung like a bright dust Their waves in healing silence o'er me now Of splintered jewels over the vast shoulder I faint, I fall, wearied, in dark despair...

...And timorous fragrance shook from their frail folds...

...They are forbidden...

...As life is, for a sonnet tense and brief...

...III The Garden in September Desert Island How different, and yet the same, this place There is one island like a sleepy rose...

...Have shattered the sea's logic when they thrust I wait-Thy call alone can ease my pain...

...Tis here were picked You might confuse it with the thick drowned stars, The first faint May-buds...

...Him who no rest can find, no Gilead where Why should my dream demand a continent Thou for these years hast made him strive-but there When any crater in a ring of reef Within Thy haven peace that knows no stain...

...Into a wan and crinkled melon-rind Of coast to round and ripen in the light As though a Line storm had blown down the moon...

...But it's little the gull knows So once with her...

...The marigold now mocks Cruising along the wind above the bars The tawny dahlia that must flaunt to live...

...JESSIE STORRs BUTLER...

...Still my soul...

...September 22, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 47 SONNETS Night Song Vest Indies At midnight, from the darkness of the wood, I .Like sudden moonlight silvering a dream, Brightly a bird's notes pierce the solitude, Down the Sea A single aria that stills the stream Now I have come a long way down the sea An instant and arouses me from slumber...

...Smother of reef...

...Her earliest buds were white Of such a place, and I know less than he...

...And how it made me crave your stormy face...