At the Crossroads

YOU to the left and I to the right,

For the ways of men must sever--

And it well may be for a day and a night,

And it well may be forever.

But whether we meet or whether we part

(For our ways are past our knowing),

A pledge from the heart to its fellow heart

On the ways we all are going!

Here's luck!

For we know not where we are going.

Whether we win or whether we lose

With the hands that life is dealing,

It is not we nor the ways we choose

But the fall of the cards that's sealing.

There's a fate in love and a fate in flight,

And the best of us all go under--

And whether we're wrong or whether we're right,

We win, sometimes, to our wonder.

Here's luck!

That we may not yet go under!

With a steady swing and an open brow

We have tramped the ways together,

But we're clasping hands at the crossroads now

In the Fiend's own night for weather;

And whether we bleed or whether we smile

In the leagues that lie before us

The ways of life are many a mile

And the dark of Fate is o'er us.

Here's luck!

And a cheer for the dark before us!

You to the left and I to the right,

For the ways of men must sever,

And it well may be for a day and a night,

And it well may be forever!

But whether we live or whether we die

(For the end is past our knowing),

Here's two frank hearts and the open sky,

Be a fair or an ill wind blowing!

Here's luck!

In the teeth of all winds blowing.

Richard Hovey

The Sea Gypsy

I AM fevered with the sunset,

I am fretful with the bay,

For the wander-thirst is on me

And my soul is in Cathay.

There's a schooner in the offing,

With her topsails shot with fire,

And my heart has gone aboard her

For the Islands of Desire.

I must forth again to-morrow!

With the sunset I must be

Hull down on the trail of rapture

In the wonder of the sea.

Richard Hovey

Accident in Art

WHAT painter has not with a careless smutch

Accomplished his despair?--one touch revealing

All he had put of life, thought, vigor, feeling,

Into the canvas that without that touch

Showed of his love and labor just so much

Raw pigment, scarce a scrap of soul concealing!

What poet has not found his spirit kneeling

A-sudden at the sound of such or such

Strange verses staring from his manuscript,

Written he knows not how, but which will sound

Like trumpets down the years? So Accident

Itself unmasks the likeness of Intent,

And ever in blind Chance's darkest crypt

The shrine-lamp of God's purposing is found.

Richard Hovey

Earth's Lyric

APRIL. You hearken, my fellow,

Old slumberer down in my heart?

There's a whooping of ice in the rivers:

The sap feels a start.

The snow-melted torrents are brawling;

The hills, orange-misted and blue,

Are touched with the voice of the rainbird

Unsullied and new.

The houses of frost are deserted,

Their slumber is broken and done,

And empty and pale are the portals

Awaiting the sun.

The bands of Arcturus are slackened;

Orion goes forth from his place

On the slopes of the night, leading homeward

His hound from the chase.

The Pleiades weary and follow

The dance of the ghostly dawn;

The revel of silence is over;

Earth's lyric comes on.

A golden flute in the cedars,

A silver pipe in the swales,

And the slow large life of the forest

Wells back and prevails.

A breath of the woodland spirit

Has blown out the bubble of spring

To this tenuous hyaline glory

One touch sets a-wing.

Richard Hovey