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THE POEMS OF RICHARD WATSON GILDER

The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, 1908, image from DJVU pg 5.jpg


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The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, 1908, image from DJVU pg 8a.jpg

The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, 1908, image from DJVU pg 8b.jpg


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THE POEMS

OF

RICHARD WATSON GILDER


The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, 1908, image from DJVU pg 9.jpg


BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1908


​

COPYRIGHT 1875, 1878, 1880, 1885, 1887, 1891, 1893, 1894, 1895, 1896,
1897, 1898, 1900, 1901, 1905, 1907, 1908, BY RICHARD WATSON GILDER

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published October 1908


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CONTENTS


THE NEW DAY
PRELUDE 3
⁠
PART I
I— Sonnet 4
II— Sonnet 4
III— "A barren stretch that slants to the salt sea's gray" 5
IV— Hesitation. (A Portrait) 5
V— Love grown Bold 6
INTERLUDE 6
⁠
PART II
I— Words without Song 7
II— The Traveler 7
III— "Come to me ye who suffer" 8
IV— Written on a Fly-Leaf of "Shakespeare's Sonnets" 9
V— "And were that best!" 9
VI— "There is nothing new under the sun" 10
VII— Love's Cruelty 11
INTERLUDE 11
⁠
PART III
I— "The pallid watcher of the eastern skies" 12
II— "My love for thee doth march like armèd men" 12
III— "What would I save thee from?" 13
IV— "What would I win thee to?" 13
V— "I will be brave for thee" 14
VI— "Love me not, Love, for that I first loved thee" 14
VII— Body and Soul:—
I— "O thou my Love, love first my lonely soul!" 15
II— "But, Love, for me thy body was the first" 15
VIII— "Thy lover, Love, would have some nobler way" 16
IX— Love's Jealousy 16
X— Love's Monotone 17
XI— "Once Only" 17
XII— Denial 18
XIII— "Once when we walked within a summer field" 18
XIV— Song: "I love her gentle forehead" 19
XV— Listening to Music 19
XVI— "A song of the maiden morn" 20
XVII— Words in Absence 20
XVIII— Song: "The birds were singing" 21
XIX— Thistle-Down 21
XX— "O sweet wild roses that bud and blow!" 22
XXI— The River 22
XXII— The Lover's Lord and Master 23
XXIII— Song: "My love grew" 23
XXIV— "A night of stars and dreams" 24
XXV— A Birthday Song 24
XXVI— "What can love do for thee, Love?" 25
XXVII— "The smile of her I love" 25
XXVIII— Francesca and Paolo 26
XXIX— The Unknown Way 26
XXX— The Sower 27
XXXI— "When the last doubt is doubted" 28
INTERLUDE 29
⁠
PART IV
I— Song: "Love, Love, my love" 30
II— The Mirror 30
III— Likeness in Unlikeness 30
IV— Song: "Not from the whole wide world" 31
V— All in One 31 ​
VI— "I count my time by times that I meet thee" 32
VII— Song: "Years have flown" 32
VIII— The Seasons 32
IX— "Summer's rain and winter's snow" 33
X— The Violin 33
XI— "O mighty river, triumphing to the sea" 34
XII— "My songs are all of thee" 35
XIII— After Many Days 35
XIV— Weal and Woe 36
XV— "O, Love is not a summer mood" 36
XVI— "Love is not bond to any man" 37
XVII— "He knows not the path of duty" 37
AFTER-SONG 38
⁠
THE CELESTIAL PASSION
PRELUDE 41
⁠
PART I
Art and Life 41
The Poet and his Master 43
Mors Triumphalis 45
The Master-Poets 49
⁠
PART II
A Christmas Hymn 49
Easter 50
A Madonna of Fra Lippo Lippi 52
Cost 52
The Song of a Heathen (sojourning in Galilee, A. D. 32) 53
Holy Land 53
On a Portrait of Servetus 54
"Despise not thou" 54
"To rest from weary work" 55
⁠
PART III
Recognition 55
Hymn sung at the Presentation of the Obelisk to the City of New York, February 22, 1881 57 ​
A Thought 58
The Voice of the Pine 59
Morning, Noon, and Night 60
"Day unto day uttereth speech" 61
⁠
PART IV
The Soul 61
"When Love dawned" 62
Love and Death:—
I— "Now who can take from us what we have known" 62
II— "We know not where they tarry who have died" 63
Father and Child 63
"Beyond the branches of the pine" 64
An Autumn Meditation 64
"Call me not dead" 66
"Each moment holy is" 66
"When to sleep I must" 66
To a Departed Friend. (J. G. H.) 67
"The Evening Star" 67
Life:—
I— "Great Universe—what dost thou with thy dead!" 68
II— "Ah, thou wilt never answer to our call" 68
The Freed Spirit 69
Undying Light:—
I— "When in the golden western summer skies" 69
II— "O Thou the Lord and Maker of life and light!" 70
⁠
LYRICS
⁠
PART I
Ode 73
A Song of Early Summer 75
A Midsummer Song 76
"On the wild rose tree" 77
"Beyond all beauty is the unknown grace" 78
The Violet 78 ​
The Young Poet 80
A Song of Early Autumn 81
The Building of the Chimney 82
"A word said in the dark" 87
A Riddle of Lovers 87
The Dark Room. (A Parable) 88
Before Sunrise 89
"The woods that bring the sunset near" 89
Sunset from the Train 90
"After Sorrow's night" 91
A November Child 92
At Night 92
Cradle Song 93
"Nine years" 93
"Back from the darkness to the light again" 94
⁠
PART II
Fate 94
"We met upon the crowded way" 96
The White and the Red Rose 96
A Woman's Thought 98
The River Inn 99
The Homestead 100
At Four Score 101
John Carman 103
Drinking Song 106
The Voyager 106
A Lament for the Dead of the Jeannette brought Home on the Frisia 107
Ill Tidings. (The Studio Concert) 110
A New World 110
⁠
PART III
Congress: 1878 111
The City 112
Reform 112
At Garfield's Grave. (September, 1881) 113
Memorial Day 114
The North to the South 114 ​
The Burial of Grant. (New York, August 8, 1885) 115
The Dead Comrade. (At the burial of Grant, a bugler stood forth and sounded "taps") 116
On the Life-Mask of Abraham Lincoln 117
The President. (Written during the first administration of President Cleveland) 118
⁠
PART IV
Essipoff 118
Adele aus der Ohe 119
Modjeska 120
The Drama. (Supposed to be from the Polish) 120
For an Album. (To be read one hundred years after) 122
Porto Fino 123
Impromptus:—
I— To F. F. C. on the pansy, her class flower 124
II— Art 125
III— To a Southern Girl 125
IV— For a Fan 125
V— To T. B. A. (In acknowledgment of a book of prose) 125
VI— A Theme 126
VII— The Christmas Tree in the Nursery. (For F. and R.) 126
⁠
PART V
Music and Words 128
The Poet's Fame 129
The Poet's Protest 131
To a Young Poet 132
"When the true poet comes" 132
Youth and Age 133
The Sonnet 134
A Sonnet of Dante. "Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare" 134
The New Troubadours. (Avignon, 1879) 135
Keats 135
An Inscription in Rome. (Piazza di Spagna) 136
Desecration 136
"Jocoseria" 137 ​
To an English Friend, with Emerson's "Poems" 138
Our Elder Poets. (1878) 139
Longfellow's "Book of Sonnets" 140
"H. H." 140
The Modern Rhymer 141
⁠
TWO WORLDS AND OTHER POEMS
⁠
PART I
Two Worlds
I— The Venus of Milo 145
II— Michael Angelo's Slave 145
⁠
PART II
The Star in the City 145
Moonlight 146
"I care not if the skies are white" 147
Contrasts 148
Serenade. (For Music) 148
Largess 149
Indoors, at Night 149
The Absent Lover 150
"To-night the music doth a burden bear" 150
Sanctum Sanctorum 150
The Gift 151
"Ah, Time, go not so soon" 153
"The years are angels" 153
"In her young eyes" 153
"Yesterday, when we were friends" 153
A Night Song. (For the Guitar) 154
Leo 154
⁠
PART III
Brothers 155
Love, Art, and Time. (On a picture entitled "The Portrait," by Will H. Low) 156
The Dancers. (On a picture entitled "Summer," by T. W. Dewing) 156
The Twenty-third of April 157
Emma Lazarus 157
The Twelfth of December. (Robert Browning) 158 ​
⁠
PART IV
Sheridan 158
Sherman 160
Pro Patria. (In memory of a faithful chaplain: the Rev. William Henry Gilder) 161
To the Spirit of Abraham Lincoln. (Reunion at Gettysburg twenty-five years after the battle) 163
Failure and Success. (G. C., 1888) 163
J. R. L.: on his Birthday 164
Napoleon 164
The White Czar's People 164
Charleston: 1886 167
⁠
PART V
Hide not thy Heart 168
"The poet from his own sorrow" 169
"White, pillared neck" 170
"Great nature is an army gay" 170
"Life is the cost" 171
The Prisoner's Thought 172
The Condemned 173
"Sow thou sorrow" 174
Temptation 174
A Midsummer Meditation 174
"As doth the bird" 175
Visions:—
I— "Cast into the pit" 175
II— "Came to him once" 176
III— "With full-toned beat" 176
With a Cross of Immortelles 176
The Passing of Christ 177
Credo 180
Non Sine Dolore 181
⁠
PART VI
Ode. (Read before the Alpha Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, Harvard University, June 26, 1890) 185
AFTER-SONG: To Rosamond 189 ​
⁠
THE GREAT REMEMBRANCE
⁠
PART I
The Great Remembrance. (Read at the Annual Reunion of the Society of the Army of the Potomac, Faneuil Hall, Boston, June 27, 1893) 193
⁠
PART II
"The White City". (The Columbian Exposition) 201
The Vanishing City 202
The Tower of Flame. (The Columbian Exposition, July 10, 1893) 204
Lowell 205
The Silence of Tennyson 206
On the Death of a Great Man. (Phillips Brooks) 207
A Hero of Peace. (In memory of Robert Ross: shot March 6, 1894) 207
Washington at Trenton. (The Battle Monument, October 19, 1893) 208
Fame 209
A Monument by Saint-Gaudens 209
A Memory of Rubinstein 210
Paderewski 210
Handel's Largo 211
The Stairway 212
The Actor 212
The Stricken Player. (Edwin Booth) 212
An Autumn Dirge. (E. F. H.) 213
Eleonora Duse 215
Kelp Rock. (E. C. S.) 215
At Niagara 215
The Child-Garden 216
The Christ-Child. (A picture by Frank Vincent Du Mond) 217
A Child 218
Two Valleys 218
On the Bay 219
Washington Square 219
The City 220 ​
A Rhyme of Tyringham. (In the Berkshire Mountains) 221
Elsie 222
Indirection 223
"Ah, be not false" 223
The Answer 224
How Death may make a Man 224
"Came to a master of song" 225
Bards 226
Meridian 227
Evening in Tyringham Valley 228
⁠
PART III
A Week's Calendar:—
I— New Year 228
II— A New Soul 229
III— "Keep pure thy soul" 229
IV— "Thy mind is like a crystal brook" 229
V— "One deed may mar a life" 230
VI— The Unknown 230
VII— Irrevocable 230
⁠
PART IV
Songs:—
  "Because the rose must fade" 231
"Fades the rose" 232
The Wintry Heart 232
Hast thou heard the Nightingale? 233
"In that dread, dreamed-of hour" 233
"Rose-dark the solemn sunset" 234
"Winds to the silent morn" 234
The Unreturning 235
Two Years 235
⁠
IN PALESTINE AND OTHER POEMS
⁠
PART I
In Palestine 239
The Anger of Christ 242
The Birds of Bethlehem 243 ​
Noël 244
"The supper at Emmaus." (A picture by Rembrandt) 244
The Doubter 245
The Parthenon by Moonlight 245
The Ottoman Empire 246
Karnak 247
"Angelo, thou art the master" 249
A Winter Twilight in Provence 250
⁠
PART II
"The poet's day" 253
"How to the singer comes the song?" 253
"Like the bright picture" 254
Remembrance of Beauty 254
Music in Solitude 255
"A power there is" 256
The Song's Answer 257
The 'Cello 257
The Valley Road 258
Hawthorne in Berkshire 259
Late Summer 260
An Hour in a Studio. (F. L.) 260
Illusion 261
A Song of the Road 261
"Not here" 262
"'No, no,' she said" 262
A Soul Lost, and Found 263
"This hour my heart went forth, as in old days" 264
"Even when joy is near" 265
Resurrection 266
"As soars the eagle" 266
⁠
PART III
Robert Gould Shaw. (The monument by Augustus Saint-Gaudens) 267
""The North Star draws the hero." (To H. N. G.) 268
Glave 269
Of Henry George. (Who died fighting against political tyranny and corruption, New York, 1897) 269 ​
Scorn 269
The Heroic Age. (Athens, 1896) 270
The Sword of the Spirit. (In memory of Joe Evans) 271
"Through all the cunning ages" 272
One Country—One Sacrifice. (Ensign Worth Bagley, May 11, 1898) 273
"When with their country's anger" 273
A Vision 274
The Word of the White Czar 275
⁠
PART IV
A Song for Dorothea, across the Sea 277
A Blind Poet 278
On a Woman seen upon the Stage. ("Tess," as played by Mrs. Fiske) 278
Of One who neither Sees nor Hears. (Helen Keller) 278
For the Espousals of Jeanne Roumanille, of Avignon 279
To Marie Josephine Girard, Queen of the Félibres, on her Wedding-Day 280
Inscription for a Tower in Florence. (Written for the Chatelaine) 280
With a Volume of Dante 281
⁠
POEMS AND INSCRIPTIONS
Autumn at Four-Brooks Farm 285
Indoors in Early Spring 285
The Night Pasture 286
A Letter from the Farm 288
Summer Begins 291
"Strolling toward Shottery" 291
Stratford Bells 292
In Wordsworth's Orchard. (Dove Cottage) 293
Sir Walter Scott 293
A Day in Tuscany 295
A Sacred Comedy in Florence. (In which takes part a certain statue on the façade of the Duomo) 296
Michael Angelo's Aurora. (The Medici Chapel, Florence) 297
The Old Master 297 ​
At Luther's Grave. (Wittenberg) 298
Beethoven. (Vienna) 298
The Desert 299
Egypt 299
Syria 300
The Dead Poet. (A. H.) 300
War 301
The Blameless Knight 302
The Demagogue 303
The Tool 303
The New Politician 304
A Lady to a Knight 305
"Is Hope a phantom?" 305
Song: "If lest thy heart betray thee" 305
Memory 306
"O glorious Sabbath sun" 307
Motto for a Tree-Planting 307
Janet 307
On being asked for a Song concerning the Dedication of a Mountain in Samoa to the Memory of Stevenson. (A letter to I. O. S.) 308
To Austin Dobson 309
To L. R. S. 309
A Name 310
John George Nicolay. (Washington, D. C, September, 1901) 310
The Comfort of the Trees. (McKinley: September, 1901) 310
The City of Light. (The Pan-American Exposition) 311
Inscriptions for the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, 1901
  For the Propylæa 315
For the Stadium 315
For the Great Pylons of the Triumphal Causeway 316
Dedicatory Inscriptions 318
⁠
"IN THE HIGHTS"
"In the hights." (John R. Procter) 323
Home Acres 324 ​
A Call to the Mountains 325
Spring Surprise 327
Autumn Trees 327
"The light lies on the farther hills" 327
"Ah, near, dear friend" 328
Music in Darkness. (Adele aus der Ohe) 328
The Anger of Beethoven 330
Mother and Child 330
Alice Freeman Palmer 331
"Mother of heroes." (Sarah Blake Shaw) 331
The Great Citizen. (Abram Stevens Hewitt) 332
On Reading of a Poet's Death. (Carlyle McKinley) 332
John Henry Boner 333
"A wondrous song" 333
A New Poet 334
The Singer of Joy 335
Bread upon the Waters 335
Lost 336
"What man hath done" 336
"He pondered well" 337
"Thou thinkest thou hast lived" 338
The Good Man 338
"So fierce the buffets" 339
Two Heroes 339
The World's End 340
Shelley's "Ozymandias" 340
La Salle. (Explorer of the Mississippi) 341
Inauguration Day 341
The Washington Monument. (At Washington, D. C.) 342
Builders of the State 342
Impromptus:—
  To William Watson. (On his Coronation Ode) 344
"Life is the hammer." (Sidney Lanier) 344
"The critic scanned the poet's book" 344
"Her delicate form" 345
Francesca Mia 345
Age, and the Scorner 345
To Jacob A. Riis. (On his Silver Wedding) 346
Music and Friendship 346
Friendship. (To ——) 346
To E. C. S. (On his Seventieth Birthday) 347 ​
"Tell me good-by" 347
Farewell to Charleston 348
"The Pines" 348
"Not wreaths alone" 349
For the City Club 349
To Charles H. Russell. (Whose father was one of Lincoln's helpers) 349
"Give thy day to duty" 350
Two Optimists. (A letter to Joseph Jefferson, acknowledging a copy of Helen Keller's Essay on "Optimism") 350
The Passing of Joseph Jefferson 351
"Shall we not praise the living?" 353
Hymn. (Written for the service in memory of Dr. J. L. M. Curry, held by the Southern Education Conference, Richmond, Virginia, April 26, 1903) 356
John Wesley. (Written for the celebration of the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of John Wesley, at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, June, 1903) 357
A Temple of Art. (Written for the opening of the Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, May 31, 1905) 361
⁠
THE FIRE DIVINE
The Fire Divine 367
The Invisible. (At a lecture) 368
Destiny. (After reading a work on Astronomy) 369
The Old Faith 369
The Doubter's Soliloquy 370
Law 372
Identity 373
"Spare me my dreams" 374
Hymn. (Thanksgiving for Saints and Prophets) 374
The Valley of Life 375
To One Impatient of Form in Art 377
To the Poet 378
Compensation 379
The Poet's Secret 380
"The day began as other days begin" 380 ​
A Poet's Question 381
Prelude for "A Book of Music" 382
Music at Twilight 384
Music in Moonlight 386
The Unknown Singer 387
The Voice 387
Wagner 388
"The Pathetic Symphony." (Tschaikowsky) 388
MacDowell 388
A Fantasy of Chopin. (Gabrilowitsch) 389
"How strange the musician's memory" 390
"In a night of midsummer" 390
In the White Mountains 391
John Paul Jones 391
To Emma Lazarus. (1905) 392
Carl Schurz 392
George MacDonald 393
Josephine Shaw Lowell 394
"One rose of song." (Mary Putnam Jacobi) 396
John Malone. (1906) 397
"Lost Leaders." (City Club Memorial in honor of Wheeler H. Peckham, James C. Carter, William H. Baldwin, Jr., and Norton Goddard) 397
On a Certain Agnostic. (G. E.) 398
"A weary waste without her." (L. B. P.) 398
The Poet's Sleep. (T. B. A.) 399
Where Spring began 399
Avarice 400
Pity the Blind 400
Proof of Service. (To R. F. C.) 400
Conquered 401
Blame. (A memory of Eisleben, the place of Luther's birth and death) 401
The Whisperers. (New York, 1905) 402
Before the Grand Jury 403
"In the Cities" 404
A Tragedy of To-day. (New York, 1905) 406
The Old House 409
"There's no place like the old place." (Old Home Week, Tyringham, 1905) 412
Glen Gilder 417 ​
Song: "Maria Mia" 418
Obscuration 419
"I dreamed" 419
Impromptus:—
  "From love to love." (For a wedding) 420
"I asked you to read my poem" 420
Nazimova 420
A Warrior of Troy 420
The Obelisk (1881) 421
Crowned Absurdities 421
To "Little Lady Margaret"—with a Book of Poems 421
Sacrilege 421
To the Hero of a Scientific Romance 421
The Watchman on the Tower. (January, 1907) 422
Under the Stars: A Requiem for Augustus Saint-Gaudens 424
⁠
IN HELENA'S GARDEN
⁠
PART I
In Helena's Garden
  The Sunset Window 431
"The gray walls of the garden" 431
The Marble Pool 432
The Table Round 433
The Sun-Dial 434
"Something missing from the garden" 434
Three Flowers of the Garden 435
Early Autumn 436
The Last Flower of the Garden 436
⁠
PART II
The Lion of Tyringham 437
The Voice of the Hight 437
A Song of Friendship 439
A Rose of Dream 440
Song: "O whither has she fled from out the dawning and the day?" 440 ​
"When the girls come to the old house" 441
The Song of a Song 443
The Net 444
Song: "O purer far than ever I!" 445
Song: "I awoke in the morning not knowing" 445
"When the war fleet puts to sea" 446
Art. (Miss Geraldine Farrar in "Madama Butterfly") 447
In Praise of Portraiture 448
In Times of Peace 450
Impromptus:—
  Edward Everett Hale 451
Bards of Britain (1908) 451
Calvé 451
In a Concert Room 452
The Lonesome Wild 452
New Friends and Old 452
Shadow and Sun 452
A Naval Surgeon of the War for the Union 452
A Mother's Picture 453
On a Young Hero 453
A Hero's Bride 453
To One who praised "the Gay Life" 453
Lyric Lives 453
Song: "A little longer still in summer suns" 453
The Singing River 454
The Solace of the Skies 454
The Winding Path 455
"What makes the garden grow" 456
"If, one great day" 457
Music beneath the Stars 458
The Birds of Westland 458
The Veil of Stars 459
 
INDEX OF FIRST LINES 461
INDEX OF TITLES 473
 
Frontispiece: Photograph by Gessford.
Decorations by H. de K. G.

This work was published before January 1, 1927, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

 
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