Poems - John L. Stoddard

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mote, our tiny earth

       No furrow leaves in shoreless space!

       What is one brief existence worth,

       Which disappears, and leaves no trace?

       That silent, star-strewn vault survives

       The dawns and dusks of countless lives.

      Why grieve, dear heart? Oblivion deep

       Will soon enshroud both friend and foe,

       And those who laugh and those who weep

       Must join the hosts of long ago,

       Whose transient hours of smiles and tears

       Make up earth's wilderness of years.

      The sunset's glowing embers die,

       The snow-peaks lose their crimson hue,

       Through deepening shades the ruddy sky

       Burns slowly down to darkest blue,

       Wherein a million worlds of light

       Announce the coming of the night.

      I gaze, and slowly my despair

       At human wretchedness and crime

       Gives place to hopes and visions fair—

       So much may be evolved by time!

       So much may yet men's souls surprise

       Beneath the splendor of God's skies!

      Some day, somewhere, in realms afar

       His light may make all problems plain,

       And justice on some happier star

       May recompense this planet's pain,

       And earth's bleak Golgothas of woe

       Grow lovely in life's afterglow.

       Table of Contents

      In Bordighera's groves of palm

       I linger at the close of day,

       And watch, beyond the ocean's calm,

       A range of mountains far away.

      Their snowy summits, white and cold,

       Flush crimson like a tinted shell,

       As sinks the sun in clouds of gold

       Behind the peaks of Esterel.

      No unsubstantial shapes are they—

       The offspring of the mist and sea;

       No splendid vision of Cathay,

       Recalled in dreamful revery;

      Their solid bastions—towering high

       Though rooted in earth's primal plan—

       Proclaim to every passer by

       The cradle of the Corsican.

      What martial soul there found rebirth,

       When on those cliffs, then scarcely known,

       There once more visited the earth

       The spirit called Napoleon?

      Three islands, like the sister Fates,

       His life-thread wove upon their loom

       From fair Ajaccio's silvered gates

       To Saint Helena's mournful tomb;—

      The first, his birthplace; whence appeared

       His baleful star with lurid glow;

       Next, Elba, where the world still feared

       The fugitive from Fontainebleau;

      Last, England's lonely prison-block,

       Grim fragment 'neath a tropic sky,

       Where, like Prometheus on his rock,

       The captive Caesar came to die,

      O Corsica, sublimely wild

       And riven by the winds and waves,

       Thy fame is deathless from thy child,

       Whose glory filled a million graves.

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      O goddess of that Grecian isle

       Whose shores the blue Aegean laves,

       Whose cliffs repeat with answering smile

       Their features in its sun-kissed waves!

      An exile from thy native place,

       We view thee in a northern clime;

       Yet mark on thy majestic face

       A glory still undimmed by Time.

      Through those calm lips, proud goddess, speak!

       Portray to us thy gorgeous fane,

       Where Melian lovers thronged to seek

       Thine aid, Love's paradise to gain;

      And where, as in the saffron east,

       Day's jewelled gates were open flung,

       With stately pomp the attendant priest

       Drew back the veil before thee hung;

      And when the daring kiss of morn,

       Empurpling, made thy charms more fair,

       Sweet strains from unseen minstrels borne

       Awoke from dreams the perfumed air.

      Vouchsafe at last our minds to free

       From doubts pertaining to thy charms—

       The meaning of thy bended knee,

       The secret of thy vanished arms.

      Wast thou in truth conjoined with Mars?

       Did thy fair hands his shield embrace,

       The surface of whose golden bars

       Grew lovely from thy mirrored face?

      Or was it some bright scroll of fame

       Thus poised on thine extended knee,

       Upon which thou didst trace the name

       Of that fierce god so dear to thee?

      Whate'er thou hadst, no mere delight

       Was thine the glittering prize to hold;

       Not thine the form that met thy sight,

       Replying from the burnished gold;

      Unmindful what thy hands retained,

       Thy gaze is fixed beyond, above;

       Some dearer object held enchained

       The goddess of immortal love.

      We mark the motion of thine eyes,

       And smile; for, heldst thou shield or scroll,

       A tender love-glance we surprise,

       That tells the secret of thy soul.

       Table of Contents

      When o'er the agèd lion steals

       The instinct of approaching death,

       Whose numbing grasp he vaguely feels

       In trembling limbs and labored breath,

      

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