Thought's Garden.

I have within Thought's garden sat
And played with this sweet flower and that,
And touched my lute till each soft string
Was tuned to Love's remembering.
Then in the grass I've laid me down
And woven my heart a faery crown,
As one who in a dream might be
Intoxicate with poesy.
Until I felt my being grow
Pure as a flower, as white as snow,
Though through it did a rosy streak
The passion of my love bespeak.
And I would feed on fancies then
Till I came back to time again,
Like one who on a fragrant way
Had parted with the golden Day;
And in the twilight wandering home
Did then as to Love's cabin come,
And found within a mate who made
A glory of the coming shade!

poem by Robert Crawford
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Earth Rune.

I heard the Earth within me sing
As if it were a trancéd thing,
Or as if under thought's control
All things were chaunting in my soul.
I was the centre of the sphere,
And made the imaginary year,
Whose seasons four were each a mood
Like God's within His solitude.
The unborn may dream of our life
As we still dream of death, until
Its shadow falls upon our strife,
As the birth-light on the unborn will
When they emerge as from a tomb
Within the antenatal gloom.
Ah! they may guess at what we know,
May picture what their lives will be
When they into time's essence flow
And take on thought's reality,
As we may deem of death, who pass
Like shadows o'er the shining grass.

poem by Robert Crawford
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To A Baby.

I.
Two hands that hold the world in fee,
So tender, yet so bold:
Whatever life has now for me,
Two hands that hold.
What magic lies in them enroll'd —
What wondrous alchemy
Transmuting thus life's lead to gold!
Until that thought shall cease to be,
Until my heart is cold,
I'd only clasp (how tenderly!)
Two hands that hold.
II.
Two soft blue eyes whose light has lit
Two hearts, as stars that rise —
Love's lights within the infinite,
Two soft blue eyes.
No fancy may their charm surmise,
But those who have felt it
Breathe as it were in Paradise.

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Crawford
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Dies Irae.

The last great Day it may be near,
Or Man may pass ere it comes here.
There may be nothing but weeds and flowers
Over the Earth in her dying hours;
Men, beasts and birds may all be gone
Ere the world's disaster shall come on;
Or there may be neither grass nor trees,
But stony wastes round the ashen seas —
No life to take when the days are dead,
And God is doing the thing He said;
Nothing but Desolation's wing
Like a sunless mist o'er everything!
And all the millions long, long gone,
To ashes turned in Oblivion;
And the last great Day shall but consume
The bones of a world in its fiery tomb,
As God puts by for ever and aye
The thought of the sorrow that's passed away!

poem by Robert Crawford
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Love's Bower.

On the white bosom, 'tween the breasts
Of Helen Love has made his bower,
As in a sweet and secret tower
Where mid the world's decay he rests —
A bridegroom in his dream's desire
With the imperial bride whose brow
Is great with beauty now,
Whose eyes have the old fire
That in their passion's joy
Burnt to a cinder on the towers of Troy!
All youths and virgins may go there,
And thence their hearts as torches light,
Fragrant and fresh as new-born air
In the old world's serenest might —
May learn from Love and his warm mate
The secret of the tender tune
Of that long honeymoon,
That like the fire of Fate
Still in their passion's joy
Burns to a cinder on the towers of Troy!

poem by Robert Crawford
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The Wind O' Death.

Oh! we hae a' to die, dear,
We're a' to gang awa';
We, when Death's wind blows by, dear,
Like apples hae to fa';
Howe'er we may be clinging,
Be green or rosy hinging,
When we hear the wind singing
A glamour's over a'.
We drap unto the ground, dear,
Each frae the boughs we fa',
When we hear the wind sound, dear,
The voice in the wind ca'!
It comes through leagues o' heaven,
A dream-joy to it given,
It comes at morn or even
Wi' the glamour over a'.
We'll wait for it to blow, dear —
How sweet the birdies ca'!
The flowers come and go, dear,
There's peace atween us twa:

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poem by Robert Crawford
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Night.

The wings of Evening, spread like phantom sails
Athwart the waning west,
Now as the last thin streak of crimson fails,
Seem as with sleep possessed.
Now hope is changed to memory, and time
Becomes eternity,
As thought were chaunting to a runic rhyme
In some old mystery.
The shadows deepen, and the Night's weird stir
Seems like a spirit still
To tremble in the silence, as with her
Death walked invisible.
The heart can ken, e'en like an echo dead,
The eerie things they say
Who have come from a coast where none may tread
Within the dream of Day.
Night and her paramour — the last of things
That touch the soul with fear,
As that which deems that it is deathless clings
To its own shadow here.

poem by Robert Crawford
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Experience.

Experience is a stern pace-maker, and
'Tis on the road to wisdom, that rough way,
So many fall.
Wrongs unrepented and unpunished breed
More deadly growths of that pernicious seed.
Were all men equal, were all dull or keen,
Ulysses or Ajax had never been.
Even as men shut their doors to unkind airs.
Misery in poverty unpitied fares.
I hate effeminate men, she frowning cried;
And I a mannish woman, he replied.
The one white violet's the innocence
A maid knows not she had — until it's gone.
An unclean thought still like an ulcer eats
The life immortal.
Life at the best is what it makes of hope;
Its use or its abuse is all.
Our sweet sins have their own sour medicine,
And that must cure us.

poem by Robert Crawford
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Before Execution.

The sun is set, and all the stars are come,
Stars I shall no more see; the air is still,
And my life waits the ruin so near now.
A little space, and I shall have done here.
Ah, God! twelve hours, twelve little hours, and, lo!
The air and these lips part, day becomes night,
Earth nothing, time a skeleton, and I
An angry ghost, or a tired phantom laid
With many others in oblivion.
Twelve hours, twelve little hours, and I shall have
A wondrous change — feel one fierce pang, and then
Fade off I know not where, or like a star
Shot fearfully from the zenith singe my way
Through chaos haply for some aeons till
I reach another air, a lower sky,
And maybe with a baleful influence
Burn in Pluto's reign.

poem by Robert Crawford
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Mind.

Without us and within us mind is all;
The truth of life and knowledge still are one,
And though all be a dream, yet in the dream
All is true to the after and before,
And ourselves but the shade or mirror of
The what has been or is to be, who still
Remembering and forgetting co-exist
With the mysterious One, and through ourselves
Attain prevision of the soul's escape
In some strange eyrie 'bove the flux of all,
E'en as the termites ere the great rains rear
Their termitoriums in the tallest trees
To 'scape the deluge. 'Tis the eye within
That has the potency of light: We see
But by foreseeing, even as it were
The soul's prismatic radiancy imbued
Life's rose with an interior loveliness
For beauty's summer in another sphere.

poem by Robert Crawford
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