Christopher Pearse Cranch

Thought is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought:
Souls to souls never can teach
What unto themselves was taught.
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As once I sat upon the shore
There came to me a fairy boat,
A bark I never saw before,
Whose coming I had failed to note,
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Across the sea the swift sad message darts
And beats with sudden pang against our hearts.
Under the elm-trees in his homestead old
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YE interstellar spaces, serene and still and clear.
Above, below, around!
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ON a time — not of old —
When a poet had sent out his soul and no welcome had found
Where the heart of the nation in prose stood fettered and
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COLD philosophers, so apt
With your formulas exacting,
In your problems so enwrapt,
And your theories distracting;
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A GROAN from a dim-lit upper room —
A stealthy step on the stairs in the gloom —
A hurried glance to left, to right
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OR endless sleep 't will be, — and that is rest,
Freedom forever from life's weary cares —
Or else a life beyond the climbing stairs
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IN boyhood's days we read with keen delight
How young Aladdin rubbed his lamp and raised
The towering Djin whose form his soul amazed,
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I.
IN the beautiful Castleton Island a mansion of lordly style,
Embowered in gardens and lawns, looks over the
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THE mind's deep history here in tones is wrought,
The faith, the struggles of the aspiring soul,
The confidence of youth, the chill control
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WHAT lapse or accident of time
Can dull that soul's sonorous chime
Which owns the priceless heritage —
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OUT of the cloud that dimmed his sunset light,
Into the unknown firmament withdrawn
Beyond the mists and shadows of the night,
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To G. W. C.
LONG, long ago, in the sweet Roman spring
Through the bright morning air we slowly strolled,
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One day in the bluest of summer weather,
Sketching under a whispering oak,
I heard five bobolinks laughing together
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BLACK in the midnight lies the City vast.
Its dim horizon from my window high
I see shut in beneath a misty sky
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I MET one in the Land of Sleep
Who seemed a friend long known and true.
I woke. That friend I could not keep —
For him I never knew.
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1.
COME, we 'll light the parlor fire;
Winter sets in sharp and rough.
Wood is dear, but coal's provided,
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WHEN Nature had made all her birds,
With no more cares to think on,
She gave a rippling laugh, and out
There flew a Bobolinkon.
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IF death be final, what is life, with all
Its lavish promises, its thwarted aims,
Its lost ideals, its dishonored claims,
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