Autumn Eve

The yellow poplar leaves have strown
Thy quiet mound, thou slumberest
Where winter's winds will be unknown;
So deep thy rest,
So deep thy rest.

Sleep on, my love, thy dreams are sweet,
If thou hast dreams: the flowers I brought
I lay aside for passing feet,
Thou needest nought,
Thou needest, needest nought.

The grapes are gather'd from the hills,
The wood is piled, the song bird gone,
The breath of early evening chills;
My love, my love, sleep on;
My love, my love, sleep on

poem by Arthur Maquarie
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Rhapsody

LOVERS, are you faring forth?
Will you seek the icy north?
Are you steering by the sun?
Where you journey there is none
But a frozen viking’s targe
Resting idly on the marge.

Lovers, do you make your way
To a land of larger day?
Do you track the homing flight
Of the birds that seek the light?
They will lead you to your death
In the desert’s scorching breath.

North or east or south or west,
Lovers, you will lose your quest,
For the prize of your demand
Yields not to the hunter’s hand;
He who searches love or truth
Leaves them hid behind his youth.

poem by Arthur Maquarie
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Of Taking things Easy

TELL me what boots to battle, when the end
Is foreseen failure? What, by heaven, I ask—
By bearded martyrs, and the holy cask
Of papal comfort, what can struggle lend
Of true nobility to those who bend
Constrainèd after all? ’Twere better bask
With resignation and a quiet flask
Than rush to strokes that heaven will surely send.

Methinks the base desire to change our stars
Is but the taint of old mortality,
And as the wavelet curls in every sea
The schoolboy bares his wounds and thinks him Mars.
Give me Petrarca and a pot of tea,
And carry thou thy honourable scars.

poem by Arthur Maquarie
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Of Glory

WHO will persuade me that one perfect song
Is not more glorious than a victor’s bays?
I know not who. I ask because the phrase
Runs lightly and the final words are strong.
But did you press me for a right or wrong,
Then would I bid you hunt for perfect lays,
And rouse the dust of dead heroic days,
And pass your judgement if you live so long.

To me it seems more worth, when all is said,
To smoke a friend’s cigar and see the moon
Lie rippling on the Arno mid the strewn
White ranks of rippling stars, to give my head
Its own good leading, to expect no boon,
To sing, and damn the world, and join the dead.

poem by Arthur Maquarie
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Brittania's Throne

MIRROR of the trackless sky,
Priestess of its changing mood,
Ere thy shores were piled on high
Thou didst feel God’s Spirit brood;
Thou didst hear His word alone;—
Be thou still Britannia’s throne.

From thy deeps the creeping things
Spread through cove and brook and fen,
Changing scales for soaring wings
And the mould of mortal men;
From thy womb the world hath grown!
Be thou still Britannia’s throne.

Then among the happier ones
Filing in millennial train,
Thou didst make us favoured sons,
Teaching us to rule and reign:
Thou didst call us for thine own—
Be thou still Britannia’s throne.

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poem by Arthur Maquarie
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Love's Palace

IF the woodland and the heath,
And the hedgerows thick with may,
And the weed-flowers underneath,
And the clambering honey-sheath,
And the mosses green and grey,

And the flecks of sun and shade
Lying light upon the grass,
And the ripple in the glade,
And the songs that float and fade,
And the joys that come and pass,

If the dog-rose choir of bees
Whirling golden in the sun,
And the sweetness of the breeze,
And the joists of mighty trees,
And the hoods of purple nun,

If this fabric of delight
Spread around to make the spring

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poem by Arthur Maquarie
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