Poems by Charles Hamilton Musgrove

Behold! I cover up this trail of tears

I.

Lucifer craved one boon of God

You are blue, you are blue like the sky,

Here is the freedom men die for,--die for but never know;

Once in a dream of Babylon

The poet painted a woman's soul,

You were a red rose then, I know,

(Written on the exhumation and reburial in Spain of the bones of Christopher Columbus.)

As one, a poet of a fairy's train,

I came your way in the years gone by,

I thought today within the crowded mart

I am the outer gate of life where sit

I might have met his anger with a smile

They were three old men with hoary hair

I.

The sun must rise, the sun must set,

The Child.

Today we are the fruits of yesterday

O wanderer! whoever thou mayest be,

I.

Through shimmering skies the big clouds slowly sail;

The snowy clouds, soft sleeping lambkins, lie

The dial has pointed the hour and the hour has rounded the day,

"Give us this day our daily bread!" O prayer

She comes not with the conscious grace

O king! what is the quest that evermore

The Sky Line.

The city frets in the distance, lass,

I am the word that lovers leave unsaid,

Down at the end of the iron lane

(Written on the occasion of the bringing of the body of Admiral John Paul Jones to the United States for reburial.)

Life to her was a perfect flower,

North and south with the fickle tides,

He crouches, voiceless, in his tomb-like cell,

The eyrie clung to the shattered cliff

An Earthworm once loved a Star. In the hush of the summer night,

It wouldn't be fair to Belshazzar

(Battleships of the Coronation Naval Review, Spithead, England, June 24, 1911.)

I.

Here is a tale the North Wind sang to me:

Here is one picture of the human world:

(Written on the ter-centenary of John Milton, December 9, 1908.)

Beyond the wall the passion flower is blooming,

Beyond the tumult and the proud acclaim,

I.

I.

I.

I.

Down in the vale the lazy sheep

St. George, I learned to love thee in my youth

From age to age the haggard human train

Poor shape grotesque that careless hands have wrought!

I have been kissed by the Priestess of the Thin and Deadly Blood--

This is the story of Moses,

God let me fall from His hand

You have builded your ships in the sun-lands,

Unweariedly he watches for the sign,

What will I say when face to face with God

(Oscar Wilde.)

Earthquake.

(Written during the hostilities in the Far East in 1900.)

I.