Down the Bayou

THE cypress swamp around me wraps its spell,

With hushing sounds in moss-hung branches there,

Like congregations rustling down to prayer,

While Solitude, like some unsounded bell,

Hangs full of secrets that it cannot tell,

And leafy litanies on the humid air

Intone themselves, and on the tree-trunks bare

The scarlet lichen writes her rubrics well.

The cypress-knees take on them marvellous shapes

Of pygmy nuns, gnomes, goblins, witches, fays,

The vigorous vine the withered gum-tree drapes,

Across the oozy ground the rabbit plays,

The moccasin to jungle depths escapes,

And through the gloom the wild deer shyly gaze.

Mary Ashley Townsend

Virtuosa

AS by the instrument she took her place,

The expectant people, breathing sigh nor word,

Sat hushed, while o'er the waiting ivory stirred

Her supple hands with their suggestive grace.

With sweet notes they began to interlace,

And then with lofty strains their skill to gird,

Then loftier still, till all the echoes heard

Entrancing harmonies float into space.

She paused, and gaily trifled with the keys

Until they laughed in wild delirium,

Then, with rebuking fingers, from their glees

She led them one by one till all grew dumb,

And music seemed to sink upon its knees,

A slave her touch could quicken or benumb.

Mary Ashford Townsend

Reserve

THE sea tells something, but it tells not all

That rests within its bosom broad and deep;

The psalming winds that o'er the ocean sweep

From compass point to compass point may call,

Nor half their music unto earth let fall;

In far, ethereal spheres night knows to keep

Fair stars whose rays to mortals never creep,

And day uncounted secrets holds in thrall.

He that is strong is stronger if he wear

Something of self beyond all human clasp,--

An inner self, behind unlifted folds

Of life, which men can touch not nor lay bare:

Thus great in what he gives the world to grasp,

Is greater still in that which he withholds.

Mary Ashford Townsend

Her Horoscope

'TIS true, one half of woman's life is hope

And one half resignation. Between there lies

Anguish of broken dreams,--doubt, dire surprise,

And then is born the strength with all to cope.

Unconsciously sublime, life's shadowed slope

She braves; the knowledge in her patient eyes

Of all that love bestows and love denies,

As writ in every woman's horoscope!

She lives, her heart-beats given to others' needs,

Her hands, to lift for others on the way

The burdens which their weariness forsook.

She dies, an uncrowned doer of great deeds.

Remembered? Yes, as is for one brief day

The rose one leaves in some forgotten book.

Mary Ashley Townsend

Embryo

I FEEL a poem in my heart to-night,

     A still thing growing,--

As if the darkness to the outer light

     A song were owing:

A something strangely vague, and sweet, and sad,

     Fair, fragile, slender;

Not tearful, yet not daring to be glad,

     And oh, so tender!

It may not reach the outer world at all,

     Despite its growing;

Upon a poem-bud such cold winds fall

     To blight its blowing.

But, oh, whatever may the thing betide,

     Free life or fetter,

My heart, just to have held it till it died,

     Will be the better!

Mary Ashley Townsend