The Little Knight in Green
WHAT fragrant-footed comer
Is stepping o’er my head?
Behold, my queen! the Summer!
Who deems her warriors dead.
Now rise, ye knights of many fights,
From out your sleep profound!
Make sharp your spears, my gallant peers,
And prick the frozen ground.
Before the White Host harm her,
We ’ll hurry to her aid;
We ’ll don our elfin armor,
And every tiny blade
Shall bear atop a dewy drop,
The life-blood of the frost,
Till from their king the order ring:
“Fall back! the day is lost.”
Now shame to knighthood, brothers!
Must Summer plead in vain?
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poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Beyond
COLOSSAL orb of space,
Sparkling with diamond
Of countless star on star,
All whirling with wild grace
In their enwoven dance
Illimitably far,
What lies beyond
Your vasty hollow girdled by that bright
River of stellar spray
We call the Milky Way?
Immeasurable ball,
Cornpassed and clasped in light,
Can you be all,
A flock of fireflies circling in the night,
A maze of jewels that the toss of Chance
Let fall,
Sun, planet, asteroid,
One globe of glories in the utter void?
What lies beyond?
Does the sheer Dark immerse
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poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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The Thracian Stone
'The faieries gave him the propertie of the Thracian stone; for who toucheth it is exempted from griefe.'
The fairies to his cradle came to play their fairy part,
Their footsteps like the laughter of a leaf;
They touched him with the Thracian stone that setteth free the heart
—O dream-enchanted, singing heart!—forever free from grief.
The wind it could not blow a way that failed to please him well;
Beyond the rain he saw the March skies blue
With hope of April violets; he cast his fairy spell
Over our flawed and tarnished world, creating all things new.
He bore the burden of his day, the burden and the heat,
As blithely as a seagull breasts the gale,
Glorying that God should trust his strength. The color of ripe wheat
Was on his life when it was flung beneath pain's threshing-flail.
He fronted that grim challenge like some resplendent knight
Who rides against foul foes of fen and wood;
With ringing song of onset, his spirit, hero bright,
Went tilting with a sunbeam against the dragon brood.
Then dusky shapes stole on him, Queen of the Quaking Isle,
Queens of the Land of Longing and the Waste;
He bowed him to their bidding with a secret in his smile;
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poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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To Heavy Hearts
HEAVY hearts, your jubilee
Droops about the Christmas Tree.
Sudden sighs cut off the laughter,
For a haunting pain comes after
All your gallant glee,
— Pain for your soldiers far away to-night,
(O cloud that darkens on the Christmas star!)
Sons, husbands, those who wreathed your world with light,
Far, far, so far.
Be comforted! They never were so near.
In life's deep center of self-sacrifice
You meet with vision clear.
There in love's purest paradise
The touch of soul on soul is close and dear.
Not to-night shall soft cheeks glow
Where the Druid mistletoe
Weaves its charm, while hollies twinkle;
For the lads in some grim wrinkle
Of the earth crouch low.
Hard is their Christmas in the aching trench,
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poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Around The Sun
THE weazen planet Mercury,
Whose song is done,
— Rash heart that drew too near
His dazzling lord the Sun!—
Forgets that life was dear,
So shriveled now and sere
The goblin planet Mercury.
But Venus, thou mysterious, Enveilèd one,
Fairest of lights that fleet
Around the radiant Sun,
Do not thy pulses beat
To music blithe and sweet,
O Venus, veiled, mysterious?
And Earth, our shadow-haunted Earth,
Hast thou, too, won
The graces of a star
From the glory of the Sun?
Do poets dream afar
That here all lusters are,
Upon our blind, bewildered Earth?
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poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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My Lady Of Whims
(A medieval Spanish legend slanderously setting forth the utter unreason of woman.)
ROMAQUIA sat and wept her
Lace mantilla full of tears.
King Abit laid by his scepter,
Left the Council of the Peers.
'Now what sorrow makes thee cry, mate?
Queen of Seville, sobbing so?'
''Tis your Andalusian climate.
Oh, I want to see the snow.'
'Speak thy wish and it is granted;
Thine to bid and mine to please.'
All the hills and plains he planted
With a myriad almond trees.
When the suns of February
Made them white with blossoming,
Romaquia was so merry
That she kissed the happy king.
'Every ill has its panacea,'
Wrote the learned King Abit,
Smiling on his Romaquia,
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poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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The Falmouth Bell
Never was there lovelier town
Than our Falmouth by the sea.
Tender curves of sky look down
On her grace of knoll and lea.
Sweet her nestled Mayflower blows
Ere from prouder haunts the spring
Yet has brushed the lingering snows
With a violet-colored wing.
Bright the autumn gleams pervade
Cranberry marsh and bushy wold,
Till the children's mirth has made
Millionaires in leaves of gold;
And upon her pleasant ways,
Set with many a gardened home,
Flash through fret of drooping sprar
Visions far of ocean foam.
Happy bell of Paul Revere,
Sounding o'er such blest demesne
While a hundred times a year
Weaves the round from green to green.
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poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Lydd
For the Reunion of the Bates Family at Quincy, August 3, 1916
FAR away on the sunny levels
Where Kent lies drowsing beside the sea,
Where over the foxglove as over the foam
The gray gull sails, is our ancient home.
Wide though we wander, something follows,
The cradle-call from a village hid
Under the cloud of rooks and swallows
That love its thatches and orchards, Lydd.
Here they sported in rustic revels,
Our sturdy forbears, while ale flowed free,
Richard and Susan and Sybil and John,
All their jollity hushed and gone;
Our grandsires proud of their scraps of Latin,
Our grandams, 'notable huswifs' all;
We may touch the very settles they sat in,
But they, like their shadows upon the wall,
Have slipped from their sweet, accustomed places,
Stephen, Samuel, Ellen, Anne.
The pewter flagons they valued so
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poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Yellow Clover
Must I, who walk alone,
Come on it still,
This Puck of plants
The wise would do away with,
The sunshine slants
To play with,
Our wee, gold-dusty flower, the yellow clover,
Which once in Parting for a time
That then seemed long,
Ere time for you was over,
We sealed our own?
Do you remember yet,
O Soul beyond the stars,
Beyond the uttermost dim bars
Of space,
Dear Soul, who found earth sweet,
Remember by love's grace,
In dreamy hushes of the heavenly song,
How suddenly we halted in our climb,
Lingering, reluctant, up that farthest hill,
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poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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How Long?
How long, O Prince of Peace, how long? We sicken of the shame
Of this wild war that wraps the world, a roaring dragon-flame
Fed on earth's glorious youth, high hearts all passionate to cope
—O Chivalry of Hope!—
With the cloudy host of the infidel and the Holy Earth reclaim.
For each dear land is Holy Land to her own fervent sons
Who fling in loyal sacrifice their lives before the guns,
But when they meet their foes above the battlesmoke, they laugh,
And all together quaff
The cup of welcome Honor pouts for her slain champions.
Oh, if a thousandth part of all this treasure, purpose, skill,
Were poured into the crucible transforming wrong and ill,
By the white magic of a wise and generous brotherhood,
To righteousness and good,
The world would be divine again, with eery war-cry still.
Poor world so worn with wickedness, bedimmed with rage and fear,
Sad world that sprang forth singing from God's hand, a golden sphere,
O yet may Love's creative breath renew thee, fashioned twice
A shining Paradise,
Unsullied in the astral choir, with Joy for charioteer.
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poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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