The Home Book of Verse Volume Ii Part 7

Love comes laughing up the valleys, Hand in hand with hoyden Spring; All the Flower-People nodding, All the Feathered-Folk a-wing.

"Higher! Higher!" call the thrushes; "Wilder! Freer!" breathe the trees; And the purple mountains beckon Upward to their mysteries.

Always farther leagues to wander, Peak to peak and slope to slope; Lips to sing and feet to follow, Eyes to dream and heart to hope!

Tarry? Nay, but who can tarry?

All the world is on the wing; Love comes laughing up the valleys, Hand in hand with hoyden Spring.

Reginald Wright Kauffman [1877-

THE HIGHWAY

All day long on the highway The King's fleet couriers ride; You may hear the tread of their horses sped Over the country side.

They ride for life and they ride for death And they override who tarrieth.

With show of color and flush of pride They stir the dust on the highway.

Let them ride on the highway wide.

Love walks in little paths aside.

All day long on the highway Is a tramp of an army's feet; You may see them go in a marshaled row With the tale of their arms complete: They march for war and they march for peace, For the l.u.s.t of gold and fame's increase, For victories sadder than defeat They raise the dust on the highway.

All the armies of earth defied, Love dwells in little paths aside.

All day long on the highway Rushes an eager band, With straining eyes for a worthless prize That slips from the grasp like sand.

And men leave blood where their feet have stood And bow them down unto bra.s.s and wood-- Idols fas.h.i.+oned by their own hand-- Blind in the dust of the highway.

Power and gold and fame denied, Love laughs glad in the paths aside.

Louise Driscoll [1875-

SONG

Take it, love!

'Twill soon be over, With the thickening of the clover, With the calling of the plover, Take it, take it, lover.

Take it, boy!

The blossom's falling, And the farewell cuckoo's calling, While the sun and showers are one, Take your love out in the sun.

Take it, girl!

And fear no after, Take your fill of all this laughter, Laugh or not, the tears will fall, Take the laughter first of all.

Richard Le Gallienne [1866-

"NEVER GIVE ALL THE HEART"

Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To pa.s.sionate women, if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that's lovely is But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.

O never give the heart outright For they, for all smooth lips can say, Have given their hearts up to the play, And who can play it well enough If deaf and dumb and blind with love?

He that made this knows all the cost, For he gave all his heart and lost.

William Butler Yeats [1865-

SONG

I came to the door of the House of Love And knocked as the starry night went by; And my true love cried "Who knocks?" and I said "It is I."

And Love looked down from a lattice above Where the roses were dry as the lips of the dead: "There is not room in the House of Love For you both," he said.

I plucked a leaf from the porch and crept Away through a desert of scoffs and scorns To a lonely place where I prayed and wept And wove me a crown of thorns.

I came once more to the House of Love And knocked, ah, softly and wistfully, And my true love cried "Who knocks?" and I said "None now but thee."

And the great doors opened wide apart And a voice rang out from a glory of light, "Make room, make room for a faithful heart In the House of Love, to-night."

Alfred Noyes [1880-

"CHILD, CHILD"

Child, child, love while you can The voice and the eyes and the soul of a man, Never fear though it break your heart-- Out of the wound new joy will start; Only love proudly and gladly and well Though love be heaven or love be h.e.l.l.

Child, child, love while you may, For life is short as a happy day; Never fear the thing you feel-- Only by love is life made real; Love, for the deadly sins are seven, Only through love will you enter heaven.

Sara Teasdale [1884-1933]

WISDOM

The young girl questions: "Whether were it better To lie for ever, a warm slug-a-bed, Or to rise up and bide by Fate and Chance, The rawness of the morning, The gibing and the scorning Of the stern Teacher of my ignorance?"

"I know not," Wisdom said.

The young girl questions: "Friend, shall I die calmer, If I've lain for ever, sheets above the head, Warm in a dream, or rise to take the worst Of peril in the highways Of straying in the by-ways, Of hunger for the truth, of drought and thirst?"

"We do not know," he said, "Nor may till we be dead."