Arlo Bates

The earliest flowers of spring
To thee, beloved, I bring:
Anemone and graceful adder's-tongue,
With golden cowslips, yellow as the sun
And fresh as brooks by which they sprung;
...

Like to a coin, passing from hand to hand,
Are common memories, and day by day
The sharpness of their impress wears away.
But love's remembrances unspoiled with-stand
The touch of time, as in an antique land
...

For , O America, our country!—land
Hid in the west through centuries, till men
Through countless tyrannies could understand
The priceless worth of freedom,—once again
...

'Mid the seal-silt and the sea-sand,
Sinuous and sinister, fold on fold,
Sliding and winding tortuously,
Slips the sea-snake, weird and old;
Longing, with gleams of slumberous fire
...

Let gleeful muses sing their roundelays!
So might my muse have sung;
But in the jocund days
When she was young,
She chanced upon a grave
New-made, and since, there strays
A mournful cadence through her lightest stave.
...

Under my keel another boat
Sails as I sail, floats as I float;
Silent and dim and mystic still,
It steals through that weird nether-world,
Mocking my power, though at my will
The foam before its prow is curled,
Or calm it lies, with canvas furled.
...

Over the plains where Persian hosts
Laid down their lives for glory
Flutter the cyclamens, like ghosts
That witness to their story.
Oh, fair! Oh, white! Oh, pure as snow!
On countless graves how sweet they grow!
...

Pale beryl sky, with clouds
Hued like dove's wing,
O'ershadowing
The dying day,
And whose edge half enshrouds
...

We must be nobler for our dead, be sure,
Than for the quick. We might their living eyes
Deceive with gloss of seeming; but all lies
Were vain to cheat a prescience spirit-pure.
...

Three horsemen galloped the dusty way
While sun and moon were both in the sky;
An old crone crouched in the cactus' shade,
And craved an alms as they rode by.
...

"O Pitying angel, pause, and say
To me, new come to Paradise,
How I may drive one pain away
By penitence or sacrifice.
...

Thy laugh's a song an oriole trilled,
Romping in glee the sky,
Sunshine in lucent drops distilled,
And showered from on high.
...

Was I not thine when Allah spoke the word
Which formed from smoke the sky?
Were not our two hearts one
When heaven heard the stars,
The first faint stars reply?
...

In the hush of the morn before the sun
I waken to think of thee
And all the sweet day thus begun
As hallowed sees to be.
...

His swart cheek tingled with the rain,
So swift he rode that night;
But all his speed no boon might gain
Save to kiss, in a rapture of love and pain,
Dead lips at morning light.
...