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Johnston Annie Fellows
Songs Ysame

Eclipse

 
GOD keep us from the sordid mood
That shrinks to self-infinitude,
That sees no thing as good or grand,
That answers not the hour's demand,
And throws o'er Heaven's splendors furled
The shadow of our little world.
 

In the Dark

 
HERE in the dark I lie, and watch the stars
That through the soft gloom shine like tear-bright eyes
Behind a mourner's veil. The darkness seems
Almost a vapor, palpable and dense,
In which my room's familiar outlines melt,
And all seems one black pall that folds me round.
Only a mirror glimmers through the dusk,
And on the wall a dim, uncertain square
Shows where a portrait hangs. Ah, even so
Beloved faces fade into the past
And naught remains except a space of light
To show us where they were.
How still it seems!
The busy clock, whose tell-tale talk was drowned
By Day's uproarious voices, calls aloud,
Undaunted by the dark, the flight of time,
And through the halls its tones ring drearily.
The breeze on tiptoe seems to tread, as though
It were afraid to rouse the drowsy leaves.
The long, dim street is quiet. Nothing breaks
The dream of Night, asleep on Nature's breast.
Hark! Some one passes. On the pavement stones
Each stealthy step gives back a muffled sound,
Till the last foot-fall seems in distance drowned.
So Death might pass, bent on his mission dread,
Adown the silent street, and none might know
What hour he passed or what he bore away.
Ah, sadder thought! So Life goes, unawares,
Noiseless and swift and resolutely on,
While the dumb world lies folded in the gloom,
Unconscious and uncaring in its sleep.
And towards the west, the stars, all silently
Like golden sands in God's great hour-glass, glide
And fall into the nether crystal globe.
 

Felipa, Wife of Columbus

 
MORE than the compass to the mariner,
Wast thou, Felipa, to his dauntless soul.
Through adverse winds that threatened wreck, and nights
Of rayless gloom, thou pointed ever to
The North Star of his great ambition. He
Who once has lost an Eden, or has gained
A paradise by Eve's sweet influence,
Alone can know how strong a spell lies in
The witchery of a woman's beckoning hand.
And thou didst draw him, tide-like, higher still,
Felipa, whispering the lessons learned
From thy courageous father, till the flood
Of his ambition burst all barriers
And swept him onward to his longed-for goal.
 
 
Before the jewels of a Spanish queen
Built fleets to waft him on his untried way,
Thou gavest thy wealth of wifely sympathy
To build the lofty purpose of his soul.
And now the centuries have cycled by,
Till thou art all-forgotten by the throng
That lauds the great Pathfinder of the deep.
It matters not in that infinitude
Of space, where thou dost guide thy spirit-bark
To undiscovered lands, supremely fair.
If to this little planet thou couldst turn
And voyage, wraithlike, to its cloud-hung rim,
Thou wouldst not care for praise. And if, perchance,
Some hand held out to thee a laurel bough,
Thou wouldst not claim one leaf, but fondly turn
To lay thy tribute, also, at his feet.
 

'Twixt Creek and Bay

 
'TWIXT creek and bay
We whisper to our white sails "stay!
Oh, Life, a little while delay!
'Twixt creek and bay."
 
 
So loath to go
From these calm shallows that we know,
We fain would stay the year's swift flow,
Nor onward go
 
 
To banks more wide,
Where seaward drawings of the tide
Impel to deeper depths untried,
Where Life grows wide.
 
 
'Twixt creek and bay —
The morning deepens into day,
And richer freight we bear, alway,
When in the bay.
 

When Youth is Gone

 
HOW can we know when youth is gone, —
When age has surely come at last?
There is no marked meridian
Through which we sail, and feel when past.
 
 
A keener air our faces strike,
A chiller current swifter run;
They meet and glide like tide with tide,
Our youth and age, when youth is done.
 

The Fickle Heart

 
CANST tell me, thou inconstant heart,
What like unto thou art?
A gypsy wandering up and down
Through April's green and Autumn's brown,
Until the year is spent;
And then, when hills are white with snow,
And brooks, ice-bound, have ceased to flow,
No place to pitch his tent.
 

Banditti

 
UPON Life's lonely highway, robber bands
Of grim-faced years seize with relentless hands
Each traveler, and wrest from out his grasp
The treasures that he fain would closer clasp.
None can escape. Each year demands its toll,
Till robbed of youth, we grope toward the goal,
Halting and blind, of all but life bereft,
And death claims that – the only boon that's left.
 

The Silent Brotherhood

 
ON through the cloisters of eternity
The years, like monks, in slow procession pass,
Telling their rosary beads, the golden days,
With penance prayers of dark and dismal nights.
Hooded and cowled, with silence on they pass,
Nor will they pause until their vesper rings
A solemn curfew at the sunset hour,
When all the fires of life are buried low,
And all the worlds drop down upon their knees,
To say a last mass ere the death of Time.
 

Spendthrift

 
HE was a king one time,
And they wrapped the ermine around him,
And the bells rang out when they crowned him,
Rang with a joyful chime.
 
 
And he sat on a throne!
The wealth that a world could offer
Was heaped in the New Year's coffer,
For the world was his own.
 
 
He was a spendthrift though,
And the coins of his lavish giving
Were the golden moments of living, —
Coins that he squandered so.
 
 
He is a beggar now.
In the night and the storm he lingers,
No gold in his prodigal fingers, —
King with the uncrowned brow.
 
 
Nothing to call his own!
His fortune scattered behind him;
Death empty-handed shall find him, —
A New Year takes his throne.
 

Lost

 
CHILDHOOD flits by with flowers in both its hands, —
We know not why it leaves, nor when it goes;
But suddenly we miss some subtle grace,
As perfume passes from a fading rose;
We scarce divine, yet somehow faintly feel
In the soft air a far-blown breath of snows.
 
 
Straying afar, unheeded and alone
Upon life's highway 'mid the busy throng,
Swept in its eager, restless race along
To the great future, unexplored, unknown,
The little child is lost. And when with haste
The wanderer's footsteps through the streets are traced,
They find a man with features pale and stern,
But the lost child will nevermore return.
 

The Robber

 
DO you know why Time flies by so slow
When we are sad and old?
Why he turns and waits as if loath to go
On his journey cold?
Because from our coffers of hope and youth,
Where we kept life's gold,
He has stolen our treasures all, in sooth,
From their sacred hold.
He who came with a gift in hand
Was a robber bold.
He whose greeting was smooth and bland
Was a wolf in the fold.
And this is the reason that he goes by,
When we're worn and old,
So slowly, because he can scarcely fly
With his weight of gold.
 

My Carol

 
'TIS the time when holly berries
Grow red as the Yule-log's glow,
And hearth and hall are decked by all
With the green of the mistletoe.
Time when the joy of giving
Is felt at each fireside,
And wings seek rest in the old home nest,
For the time is Christmas-tide.
 
 
Though only a carol singer
With nothing of gold in store,
And little to bring as an offering,
I stand outside your door.
Open! This blessed morning
Peace be to thee and thine!
Here to you all I gaily call
A greeting from me and mine.
 
 
Haply it may awaken
Some joy that so long ago,
On the frosty dawn of a Christmas gone,
You found in your stocking toe.
Though but an old, old carol,
It bears love's myrrh and gold,
And the frankincense of a joy intense
That the angel hosts foretold.