An Hour in a Studio

EACH picture was a painted memory

Of the far plains he loved, and of their life

Weird, mystical, dark, inarticulate,-

And cities hidden high against the blue,

Whose sky-hung steps one Indian could guard.

The enchanted Mesa there its fated wall

Lifted, and all its story lived again,-

How, in the happy planting time, the strong

Went down to push the seeds into the sand,

Leaving the old and sick.Then reeled the world

And toppled to the plain the perilous path.

Death climbed another way to them who stayed.

He showed us pictured thirst, a dreadful sight;

And many tales he told that might have come,-

Brought by some planet-wanderer,-fresh from Mars,

Or from the silver deserts of the moon.

But I remember better than all else

One night he told of in that land of fright-

The love-songs swarthy men sang to their herds

On the high plains to keep the beasts in heart;

Piercing the silence one keen tenor voice

Singing "Ai nostri monti" clear and high:

Instead of stakes and fences round about

They circled them with music in the night.

Richard Watson Gilder

The Sonnet (In Answer to a Question)

WHAT is a sonnet? 'T is the pearly shell

That murmurs of the far-off murmuring sea;

A precious jewel carved most curiously;

It is a little picture painted well.

What is a sonnet? 'T is the tear that fell

From a great poet's hidden ecstacy;

A two-edged sword, a star, a song--ah me!

Sometimes a heavy-tolling funeral bell.

This was the flame that shook with Dante's breath;

The solemn organ whereon Milton played,

And the clear glass where Shakespeare's shadow falls:

A sea this is--beware who ventureth!

For like a fjord the narrow floor is laid

Deep as mid-ocean to the sheer mountain walls.

Richard Watson Gilder

On the Bay