Amaranth
ONCE a poet—long ago—
Wrote a song as void of art
As the songs that children know,
And as pure as a child’s heart.
With a sigh he threw it down,
Saying, “This will never shed
Any glory or renown
On my name when I am dead.
“I will sing a lordly song
Men shall hear, when I am gone,
Through the years sound clear and strong
As a golden clarion.”
So this lordly song he sang
That would gain him deathless fame—
When the death-knell o’er him rang
No man even knew its name.
Ay, and when his way he found
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poem by Victor James Daley
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Poncé De Léon
By a black wharf I stood lately,
When the night was at its noon;
Keen, malicious stars were shining,
And a wicked, white-faced moon.
And I saw a stately vessel,
Built in fashion quaint and old;
From her masthead, in the moonlight,
Hung a flag of faded gold.
Black with age her masts and spars were,
Black with age her ropes and rails;
Like a ghost through cere-cloths gazing
Shone the white moon through her sails.
Not a movement stirred the stillness,
Not a sound the silence broke,
Save alone the livid water
Lapping round her sides of oak.
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poem by Victor James Daley
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Players
And after all -- and after all,
Our passionate prayers, and sighs, and tears,
Is life a reckless carnival?
And are they lost, our golden years?
Ah, no; ah, no; for, long ago,
Ere time could sear, or care could fret,
There was a youth called Romeo,
There was a maid named Juliet.
The players of the past are gone;
The races rise; the races pass;
And softly over all is drawn
The quiet Curtain of the Grass.
But when the world went wild with Spring,
What days we had! Do you forget?
When I of all the world was King,
And you were my Queen Juliet?
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poem by Victor James Daley
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The Nightingale
WHEN the moon a golden-pale
Lustre on my casement flings,
An enchanted nightingale
In the haunted silence sings.
Strange the song—its wondrous words
Taken from the primal tongue,
Known to men, and beasts, and birds,
When the care-worn world was young
Listening low, I hear the stars
Through her strains move solemnly,
And on lonesome banks and bars
Hear the sobbing of the sea.
And my memory dimly gropes
Hints to gather from her song
Of forgotten fears and hopes,
Joys and griefs forgotten long.
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poem by Victor James Daley
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The Little People
WHO are these strange small folk,
These that come to our homes as kings,
Asking nor leave nor grace,
Bending our necks to their yoke,
Taking the highest place,
And mastery of all things?
Whence they come none may know,
But a wondrous land it must be;
Angels in exile they!
Here in this dull world below
Creatures of sinful clay
We feel near their purity.
Clearer their young eyes are
Than the dew in the cups of flowers
Gleaming, when shines at dawn,
Faintly, the morning’s one star—
Eyes whose still gaze, indrawn,
Sees things unseen by ours.
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poem by Victor James Daley
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Tamerlane
LO, upon the carpet, where
Throned upon a heap of slain
Blue-eyed dolls of beauty rare
(Ah, they pleaded all in vain!)
Sits the Infant Tamerlane!
Broken toys upon the floor
Scattered lie—a ruined rout.
Thus from all things evermore
Are—the fact is past a doubt—
Hidden virtues hammered out.
Poet’s page, or statesman’s bust,
Nothing comes to him amiss;
Everything he clutches must—
’Tis his simple dream of bliss!—
Suffer his analysis.
O my little Tamerlane,
Infantile Iconoclast,
Is your small barbaric brain
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poem by Victor James Daley
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The Voice of the Soul
In Youth, when through our veins runs fast
The bright red stream of life,
The Soul’s Voice is a trumpet-blast
That calls us to the strife.
The Spirit spurns its prison-bars,
And feels with force endued
To scale the ramparts of the stars
And storm Infinitude.
Youth passes; like a dungeon grows
The Spirit’s house of clay:
The voice that once in music rose
In murmurs dies away.
But in the day when sickness sore
Smites on the body’s walls,
The Soul’s Voice through the breach once more
Like to a trumpet calls.
Well shall it be with him who heeds
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poem by Victor James Daley
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The Three Roads
There is a town in Ireland,
A little town I know;
Its girls have tender Irish eyes
Beneath their brows of snow;
And in the field around it
The Fairy Hawthorns grow.
O, the Hawthorn is a Queen
And the daughter of a King,
And amidst her branches green
The sweet brown thrushes sing.
And from that little city
Three roads forever run
And on those roads the people,
The father and the son,
The mother and the daughter,
Walk till the day is done.
O, the Hawthorn is a Queen
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poem by Victor James Daley
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Omarism
With pen in hand and pipe in mouth,
And claret iced to quench my drouth,
I sit upon my balcony
That overlooks the sparkling sea,
Serenly gay, and cool, and bland -
With pipe in mouth and pen in hand.
This life I think is beautiful,
When at the jug I take a pull.
The harbor shines like azure silk;
The claret tastes like mother's milk;
Then to the pipe I turn again -
And then I trifle with the pen.
The red-faced neighbors townward go;
The air is in a furnace glow.
I watch them scorching as they pass,
Like flies beneath a burning glass -
Each clutching at the red-hot hour
For coin; their folly turns me sour.
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poem by Victor James Daley
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A Vision of Youth
A horseman on a hilltop green
Drew rein, and wound his horn;
So bright he looked he might have been
The Herald of the Morn.
His steed was of the sovran strain
In Fancy’s meadows bred—
And pride was in his tossing mane,
And triumph in his tread.
The rider’s eyes like jewels glowed—
The World was in his hand—
As down the woodland way he rode
When Spring was in the land.
From golden hour to golden hour
For him the woodland sang.
And from the heart of every flower
A singing fairy sprang.
He rode along with rein so free,
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poem by Victor James Daley
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