Chapter I: Foreword

We make our songs as we must, from fragments of the joy and sorrow of living. What Life itself may be, we cannot know till all men share the chance to know.

Until the day of some more equal portion, there is no human brightness unhaunted by this black shadow: the thought of those unnumbered who pay all the heavier cost of life, to live and die without knowledge that there is any Joy of Living.

No song could face such blackness, but for the will to share, and for hope of the day of sharing.

Upon that hope and that mindfulness, the poems in this book are linked together.

J.P.M.

4 October, 1911.

CONTENTS

THE SINGING MAN 3

THE TREES 15

_O, do you remember? How it came to be?_ 21

RICH MAN, POOR MAN 23

_But we did walk in Eden_ 29

THE FOUNDLING 31

_Love sang to me. And I went down the stair_ 35

THE FEASTER 37

_Belovèd, if the moon could weep_ 43

THE GOLDEN SHOES 45

NOON AT PÆSTUM 47

VESTAL FLAME 48

_The dark had left no speech save hand-in-hand_ 51

THE PROPHET 53

THE LONG LANE 56

_Ah but, Belovèd, men may do_ 59

ALISON'S MOTHER TO THE BROOK 61

_You, Four Walls, wall not in my heart!_ 65

CANTICLE OF THE BABE 67

_And thou, Wayfaring Woman whom I meet_ 73

GLADNESS 75

THE NIGHTINGALE UNHEARD 81

_Envoi_ 87

THE SINGING MAN

AN ODE OF THE PORTION OF LABOR

'_The profit of the Earth is for all._' --ECCLESIASTES.

THE SINGING MAN