The Word and the Deed
THE Word was first, says the revelation:
Justice is older than error or strife;
The Word preceded the Incarnation
As symbol and type of law and life.
And always so are the mighty changes:
The word must be sown in the heart like seed;
Men's hands must tend it, their lives defend it,
Till it burst into flower as a deathless Deed.
The primal truth neither dies nor slumbers,
But lives as the test of the common right,
That the laws proclaimed by the sworded numbers
May stand arraigned in the people's sight.
The Word is great, and no Deed is greater,
When both are of God, to follow or lead;
But, alas, for the truth when the Word comes later,
With questioned steps, to sustain the Deed.
Not the noblest acts can be true solutions;
The soul must be sated before the eye,
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poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Peace and Pain
THE day and night are symbols of creation,
And each has part in all that God has made;
There is no ill without its compensation,
And life and death are only light and shade.
There never beat a heart so base and sordid
But felt at times a sympathetic glow;
There never lived a virtue unrewarded,
Nor died a vice without its meed of woe.
In this brief life despair should never reach us;
The sea looks wide because the shores are dim;
The star that led the Magi still can teach us
The way to go if we but look to Him.
And as we wade, the darkness closing o'er us,
The hungry waters surging to the chin,
Our deeds will rise like stepping-stones before us—
The good and bad—for we may use the sin.
A sin of youth, atoned for and forgiven,
Takes on a virtue, if we choose to find:
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poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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The Cry of the Dreamer
I am tired of planning and toiling
In the crowded hives of men;
Heart-weary of building and spoiling,
And spoiling and building again.
And I long for the dear old river,
Where I dreamed my youth away;
For a dreamer lives forever,
And a toiler dies in a day.
I am sick of the showy seeming
Of a life that is half a lie;
Of the faces lined with scheming
In the throng that hurries by.
From the sleepless thoughts' endeavour,
I would go where the children play;
For a dreamer lives forever,
And a thinker dies in a day.
I can feel no pride, but pity
For the burdens the rich endure;
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poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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The Poison-Flower
IIN the evergreen shade of an Austral wood,
Where the long branches laced above,
Through which all day it seemed
The sweet sunbeams down-gleamed
Like the rays of a young mother's love,
When she hides her glad face with her hands and peeps
At the youngling that crows on her knee:
'Neath such ray-shivered shade,
In a banksia glade,
Was this flower first shown to me.
A rich pansy it was, with a small white lip
And a wonderful purple hood;
And your eye caught the sheen
Of its leaves, parrot-green,
Down the dim gothic aisles of the wood.
And its foliage rich on the moistureless sand
Made you long for its odorous breath;
But ah! 'twas to take
To your bosom a snake,
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poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Mary
DEAR honored name, beloved for human ties,
But loved and honored first that One was given
In living proof to erring mortal eyes
That our poor earth is near akin to heaven.
Sweet word of dual meaning: one of grace,
And born of our kind advocate above;
And one by memory linked to that dear face
That blessed my childhood with its mother-love,
And taught me first the simple prayer, 'To thee,
Poor banished sons of Eve, we send our cries.'
Through mist of years, those words recall to me
A childish face upturned to loving eyes.
And yet to some the name of Mary bears
No special meaning and no gracious power;
In that dear word they seek for hidden snares,
As wasps find poison in the sweetest flower.
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Vignettes
“AND Smith has made money?'
'O, no; that's a myth:
Smith never made money
But money made Smith!'
_______________
A sculptor is Deming—a great man, too;
But the chisel of fancy the hand outstrips;
While he talks of the wonder he's going to do
All the work of his fingers leaks out at his lips!
______________
'A scholar, sir! To Brown six tongues are known!'
(The Blockhead! never spoke one thought his own!)
_______________
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There is Blood on the Earth
THERE is blood on the face of the earth-
It reeks through the years, and is red:
Where Truth was slaughtered at birth,
And the veins of Liberty bled.
Lo! vain is the hand that tries
To cover the crimson stain:
It spreads like a plague, and cries
Like a soul in writhing pain.
It wasteth the planet's flesh;
It calleth on breasts of stone:
God holdeth His wrath in a leash
Till the hearts of men atone.
Blind, like the creatures of time;
Cursed, like all the race,
They answer: '' The blood and crime
Belong to a sect and place! '
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Golu
ONCE I had a little sweetheart
In the land of the Malay,—
Such a little yellow sweetheart!
Warm and peerless as the day
Of her own dear sunny island,
Keimah, in the far, far East,
Where the mango and banana
Made us many a merry feast.
Such a little copper sweetheart
Was my Goln, plump and round,
With her hair all blue-black streaming
O'er her to the very ground.
Soft and clear as dew-dropp clinging
To a grass blade was her eye;
For the heart below was purer
Than the hill-stream whispering by.
Costly robes were not for Golu:
No more raiment did she need
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An Old Picture
THERE are times when a dream delicious
Steals into a musing hour,
Like a face with love capricious
That peeps from a woodland bower;
And one dear scene comes changeless;
A wooded hill and a river;
A deep, cool bend, where the lilies end,
And the elm-tree shadows quiver.
And I lie on the brink there, dreaming
That the life I live is a dream;
That the real is but the seeming,
And the true is the sun-flecked stream.
Beneath me, the perch and the bream sail past
In the dim cool depths of the river;
The struggling fly breaks the mirrored sky
And the elm-tree shadows quiver.
There are voices of children away on the hill;
There are bees thro' the flag-flowers humming;
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Silence, Not Death
I START! I have slept for a moment;
I have dreamt, sitting here by her chair—
Oh, how lonely! What was it that touched me?
What presence, what heaven-sent air?
It was nothing, you say. But I tremble!
I heard her, I knew she was near—
Felt her breath, felt her cheek on my forehead—
Awake or asleep, she was here!
It was nothing—a dream? Strike that harp-string;
Again—still again—till it cries
In its uttermost treble—still strike it—
Ha? vibrant but silent! It dies—
It dies, just as she died. Go, listen—
That highest vibration is dumb.
Your sense, friend, too soon finds a limit
And answer, when mysteries come.
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poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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