Poems, 1914-1919

JULIET’S OWL

Juliet has lost her little downy owl,The bird she loved more than all other birdsHe was a darling bird, so white, so wise,Like a monk hooded in a snowy cowl,With sun-shy scholar’s eyes,He hooted softly in diminished thirds;And when he asked for mice,He took refusal with a silent pride —And never pleaded twice.He was a wondrous bird, as dignifiedAs any DiplomatThat ever satBy the round table of a Conference.He was delicious, lovable and soft.He understood the meaning of the night,And read the riddle of the smiling stars.When he took flight,And roosted high aloft,Beyond the shrubbery and the garden fence,He would return and seek his safer bars,All of his own accord; and he would pleadForgiveness for the trouble and the search,And for the anxious heart he caused to bleed,And settle once again upon his perch,And utter a propitiating note,And take the heartOf Juliet by his pretty winning ways.His was the artOf pleasing without effort easily.His fluffy throat,His sage round eye,Sad with old knowledge, bright with young amaze,Where are they now? ah! where?Perchance in the pale halls of Hecate,Or in the poplars of Elysium,He wanders careless and completely free.But in the regions dumb,And in the pallid air,He will not find a sweet, caressing handLike Juliet’s; not in all that glimmering landShall he behold a silver planet riseAs splendid as the light of Juliet’s eyes.Therefore in weeping with you, Juliet,Oh! let us not forget,To drop with sprigs of rosemary and rue,A not untimely tearUpon the bier,Of him who lost so much in losing you.

LE PRINCE ERRANT

I am the Prince of unremembered towersDestroyed before the birth of Babylon;And I was there when all the forest shoneWhile pale Medea culled her deadly flowers.I heard the iron weeping of the King,When Orpheus sang to life his buried joy;And I beheld upon the walls of TroyThe woman who made of death a little thing.I heard the horn that shook the mountain tall,When Roland lay a-dying, and the callThat fevered Tristram whispered o’er the sea,And brought Iseult of Cornwall to his side.I saw the Queen of Egypt like a brideGo glorious to her dead Mark Antony.