ABRAM MORRISON Remain the law of destiny, AN AUTOGRAPH I WRITE my name as one, On sands by waves o'errun Or winter's frosted pane, Traces a record vain. Oblivion's blankness claims Wiser and better names, And well my own may pass As from the strand or glass. Wash on, O waves of time! Melt, noons, the frosty rime! Welcome the shadow vast, The silence that shall last! When I and all who know And love me vanish so, What harm to them or me Will the lost memory be? If any words of mine, Whose hand the message writ? Why should the "crowner's quest' Yet, as when dies a sound A whisper giving breath And, while my words are read, He loved his fellow-creatures. "If, of the Law's stone table, "Through mortal lapse and dulness "Age brought him no despairing "To all who dumbly suffered, "Hater of din and riot "He meant no wrong to any ABRAM MORRISON 413 'MIDST the men and things which will Good old Abram Morrison. When the Grist and Rolling Mill Ground and rumbled by Po Hill, And the old red school-house stood Midway in the Powow's flood, Here dwelt Abram Morrison. From the Beach to far beyond Bear-Hill, Lion's Mouth and Pond, Marvellous to our tough old stock, Chips o' the Anglo-Saxon block, Seemed the Celtic Morrison. Mudknock, Balmawhistle, all RELIGIOUS POEMS THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM WHERE Time the measure of his hours By changeful bud and blossom keeps, And, like a young bride crowned with flowers, Fair Shiraz in her garden sleeps; Where, to her poet's turban stone, The Spring her gift of flowers imparts, Less sweet than those his thoughts have sown In the warm soil of Persian hearts : There sat the stranger, where the shade Of scattered date-trees thinly lay, While in the hot clear heaven delayed The long and still and weary day. Strange trees and fruits above him hung, Strange odors filled the sultry air, Strange birds upon the branches swung, Strange insect voices murmured there. And strange bright blossoms shone around, Turned sunward from the shadowy bowers, As if the Gheber's soul had found A fitting home in Iran's flowers. Whate'er he saw, whate'er he heard, But Moslem graves, with turban stones, And mosque-spires gleaming white, in view, And graybeard Mollahs in low tones Chanting their Koran service through. The flowers which smiled on either hand, As if the burning eye of Baal The servant of his Conqueror knew, From skies which knew no cloudy veil, The Sun's hot glances smote him through. "Ah me!" the lonely stranger said, "The hope which led my footsteps on, And light from heaven around them shed, O'er weary wave and waste, is gone! "Where are the harvest fields all white, For Truth to thrust her sickle in? Where flock the souls, like doves in flight, From the dark hiding-place of sin? |