I HEAR THE STARS STILL SINGING

    I hear the stars still singing
    To the beautiful, silent night,
    As they speed with noiseless winging
    Their ever westward flight. 
    I hear the waves still falling
    On the stretch of lonely shore,
    But the sound of a sweet voice calling
    I shall hear, alas! no more.

GIRL OF FIFTEEN

    Girl of fifteen,
    I see you each morning from my window
    As you pass on your way to school. 
    I do more than see, I watch you. 
    I furtively draw the curtain aside. 
    And my heart leaps through my eyes
    And follows you down the street;
    Leaving me behind, half-hid
    And wholly ashamed.

    What holds me back,
    Half-hid behind the curtains and wholly ashamed,
    But my forty years beyond your fifteen?

    Girl of fifteen, as you pass
    There passes, too, a lightning flash of time
    In which you lift those forty summers off my head,
    And take those forty winters out of my heart.

THE SUICIDE

    For fifty years,
    Cruel, insatiable Old World,
    You have punched me over the heart
    Till you made me cough blood. 
    The few paltry things I gathered
    You snatched out of my hands. 
    You have knocked the cup from my thirsty lips. 
    You have laughed at my hunger of body and soul.

    You look at me now and think,
    “He is still strong,
    There ought to be twenty more years of good punching there. 
    At the end of that time he will be old and broken,
    Not able to strike back,
    But cringing and crying for leave
    To live a little longer.”

    Those twenty, pitiful, extra years
    Would please you more than the fifty past,
    Would they not, Old World? 
    Well, I hold them up before your greedy eyes,
    And snatch them away as I laugh in your face,
    Ha!  Ha! 
    Bang—!

DOWN BY THE CARIB SEA

I

Sunrise in the Tropics

    Sol, Sol, mighty lord of the tropic zone,
    Here I wait with the trembling stars
    To see thee once more take thy throne.

    There the patient palm tree watching
    Waits to say, “Good morn” to thee,
    And a throb of expectation
    Pulses through the earth and me.

    Now, o’er nature falls a hush,
    Look! the East is all a-blush;
    And a growing crimson crest
    Dims the late stars in the west;
    Now, a flood of golden light
    Sweeps across the silver night,
    Swift the pale moon fades away
    Before the light-girt King of Day,
    See! the miracle is done! 
    Once more behold!  The Sun!