Swallows
O LITTLE hearts, beat home, beat home,
Here is no place to rest.
Night darkens on the falling foam
And on the fading west.
O little wings, beat home, beat home.
Love may no longer roam.
O, Love has touched the fields of wheat
And Love has crowned the corn,
And we must follow Love's white feet
Through all the ways of morn.
Through all the silver roads of air
We pass and have no care.
The silver roads of Love are wide,
O winds that turn, O stars that guide.
Sweet are the ways that Love has trod
Through the clear skies that reach to God.
But in the cliff-grass Love builds deep
A place where wandering wings may sleep.
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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O Silver Rose
THE dark hour turns so slowly and so sweet,
The last still hour soft-fallen from the stars.
To-morrow I may kneel and touch thy feet,
O Rose of all Shiraz.
Lay wide thine amorous lattice to the south,
O Silver Rose, when roses breathe thy name,
And thou at dawn shalt feel upon thy mouth
The kiss I dared not claim.
Discrowned, dishonoured, reft of pride and power,
From the red battle where they hailed me lord,
O Silver Rose, O sweet Pomegranate Flower,
I turn me to their sword.
Life hath so held me to an empty part,
Life hath so snared me, bound and made me blind.
To-morrow I may rest upon thy heart,
For death shall prove more kind.
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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To Alcithoë
IN your dim Greece of old, Alcithoë,
Death like a lover sought and crowned you young,
Between the olive orchards and the sea.
When they had twined your myrtle-buds, and hung
The stately cypress at your door, they said,
'Alcithoë is dead,
Before whose feet the flaming crocus sprung,
For whom the red rose opened ere the prime;
Those the gods love are taken before their time.'–
Ah! why did no one, watching you alone,
Snare your dead beauty in undying stone ?
The gold hair bound beneath its golden band,
The milk-white poppies closed within your hand;
That the harsh world a little space might keep
The last, still, exquisite vision of your sleep.
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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The Immortal
BEAUTY is still immortal in our eyes;
When sways no more the spirit-haunted reed,
When the wild grape shall build
No more her canopies,
When blows no more the moon-gray thistle seed,
When the last bell has lulled the white flocks home,
When the last eve has stilled
The wandering wing and touched the dying foam,
When the last moon burns low, and, spark by spark,
The little worlds die out along the dark,–
Beauty that rosed the moth-wing, touched the land
With clover-horns and delicate faint flowers,
Beauty that bade the showers
Beat on the violet's face,
Shall hold the eternal heavens within their place
And hear new stars come singing from God's hand.
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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The Sea Witch
ENDLESSLY fell her chestnut flowers,
Faint snow throughout the honeyed dark;
The myrtle spread his boughs to drink
Deep draughts of salt from the sea's brink,
And like a moon-dial swung her tower's
Straight shadow o'er her warded park.
From her calm coasts the galleons fled,
The fisher steered him further west,
No port was hailed, no keel came home
Across that pale, enchanted foam,
But by her roof the thrushes fed
And wandering swallows found their rest.
The shadows touched her tenderly,
The red beam lingered on her dress;
The white gull and the osprey knew
Her tower across the leagues of blue.
The wild swan when he sought the sea
Was laggard through her loveliness.
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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Youth’s End
I HAVE held my life too high,
Spring and harvest, love and laughter, smile and sigh.
I should have held it lightly, like a young leaf rent in haste
From the willow in the waste.
A moment in my fingers; then it fluttered, then it fled,
A little flame of red,
To the God-beholding desert where the soundless years go by,–
I have held my life too high.
I have held my death too dear,
Shame or honour, peace or peril, pride or fear.
I should have held it softly, as the little cloud that flies
When the heron takes the skies.
I should have held it kindly as a passing whisper,–'Friend,
Here's the end,
Here the silver cord is loosened and the bowl is broken here,'–
But I held my death too dear.
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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Sleep
HERE is a house, so great, so wide
It will take in the whole world's pride.
Yet, when I looked, it seemed I saw
Only a vast room strewn with straw
That was threshed of moony gleams
And dew of branches and star beams.
Here cheek by cheek the drowsed souls lay
Still as leverets in the hay.
Merry it was to see in Sleep
How each soul had found his brother;
Here a king and there a sweep
Lay hand-fast and kissed each other,
There a queen that had been sad
Mothered in Sleep a shepherd lad,
And lovers saw the loved one's face
Star-like in a lonely place.
But the Lamp that gave them light
Was lovelier than the dreams of night.
Angels watched lest any steal it,–
Christ's own heart, laid here to heal it.
poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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A Child’s Song Of Christmas
MY counterpane is soft as silk,
My blankets white as creamy milk.
The hay was soft to Him, I know,
Our little Lord of long ago.
Above the roof the pigeons fly
In silver wheels across the sky.
The stable-doves they cooed to them,
Mary and Christ in Bethlehem.
Bright shines the sun across the drifts,
And bright upon my Christmas gifts.
They brought Him incense, myrrh, and gold,
Our little Lord who lived of old.
O, soft and clear our mother sings
Of Christmas joys and Christmas things.
God's holy angels sang to them,
Mary and Christ in Bethlehem.
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poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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My Father He Was A Fisherman
MY father he was a fisherman,
That wrought at the break o' day,
And hither and thither the long tides ran
I' the long blue bay.
'The tides go up and the tides go down,
But what do you know of the sea ?'
Her voice, i' the long gray streets o' the town,
Is singing to me.
'What do you know of the sails at dawn,
What of the shell-white foam ?'
Cheerly and sweet, from a world withdrawn,
They are calling me home.
'What is the grief you fain would tell
When your eyes are turned on me ?'
O, well it was taught and I learned it well,–
The grief o' the sea.
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poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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Dedication
LORD, on this paper white,
My soul would write
Tales that were heard of old
Of perilous things and bold;
Kings as young lions for pride;
Lost cities where they died
Last in the gate; the cry
That told some Eastern throng
A prophet was gone by;
The song of swords; the song
Of beautiful, fierce lords
Gone down among the swords;
The traffick and the breath
Of nations spilled in death;
The glory and the gleam
Of a whole age
Snared in a golden page,–
Such is my dream.
Yet thanks, if yet You give
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poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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