madrigals of lesser minds!
My heart tones thunder from the throats
Of throbbing seas and raging winds;
And yet, the master-spirit finds
The tenderness of mother earth
Is there expressed, despite the dearth
Of tinkle tunes like dancing motes!

My hand strokes not a golden lyre
Threaded with silver--spider spun!
The strings I strike are strands of fire,
Strung from Earth's center to the Sun!
Thrilled with passion, ev'ry one!
With songs of forest, corn, and vine;
Of rushing water, blood, and wine;
Of man's conception and desire!

But listen, comrade! This I say:
In all of all I give my heart!
With lover's voice I bid you stay
To share with me the better part
Of all my days! nights! thoughts! and start
With far-spread arms to welcome you,
And we will shout a song so true
That it shall ring for aye and aye.
--_Ray Clarke Rose_

Your lonely muse, unraimented with rhyme,
Her hair unfilleted, her feet unshod,
Naked and not ashamed demands of God
No covering for her beauty's youth or prime.
Clad but with thought, as space is clad with time,
Or both with worlds where man and angels plod,
She runs in joy, magnificently odd,
Ruggedly wreathed with flowers of every clime.
And you to whom her breath is sweeter far
Than choicest attar of the martyred rose
More deeply feel mortality's unrest
Than poets born beneath a happier star,
Because the pathos of your grand repose
Shows that all earth has throbbed within your breast.
--_Albert Edmund Lancaster_

They say that thou art sick, art growing old,
Thou Poet of unconquerable health,
With youth far-stretching, through the golden wealth
Of autumn, to Death's frostful, friendly cold;
The never-blenching eyes, that did behold
Life's fair and foul, with measureless content,
And gaze ne'er sated, saddened as they bent
Over the dying soldier in the fold
Of thy large comrade love:--then broke the tear!
War-dream, field-vigil, the bequeathed kiss,
Have brought old age to thee; yet, Master, now,
Cease not thy song to us; lest we should miss
A death-chant of indomitable cheer,
Blown as a gale from God;--Oh, sing it thou!
--_Aaron Leigh_

O pure heart singer of the human frame