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Asta La Vista Baby
Held above,
The water.
Balanced on,
Seams.
Rippling waves,
Beneath us.
Gentle seas,
And streams.
Fingers intertwined,
Floating on air.
Light reflecting off eyes,
Wind blowing through hair.
Droplets from lashes,
Created this river.
Every sea hides,
Mountains of silver.
When they see my songs
They will sigh and say,
"Poor soul, wistful soul,
Lonely night and day."
They will never know
All your love for me
Surer than the spring,
Stronger than the sea;
Hidden out of sight
Like a miser's gold
In forsaken fields
Where the wind is cold.
Into my heart's treasury
I slipped a coin
That time cannot take
Nor a thief purloin,--
Oh better than the minting
Of a gold-crowned king
Is the safe-kept memory
Of a lovely thing.
I VISITED the palaces of kings,
And marvelled at the storied treasure brought
With vast expenditure of time and thought
To play upon the heart's imaginings;
All cunningly devised and priceless things —
Fine sculptured forms, rare, costly gems that caught
The sun, great canvases, and fabrics wrought
With wondrous skill to give the fancy wings.
But, coming forth, there crowded round my way
Such opulence of nature's tapestries,
That I reflected how the humblest may
Inherit all those lavish treasuries
Beside which human art is children's play,
And kings' possessions merest travesties.
LURED by the golden glamor of the West,
He crossed the pathless plains and scaled the bold
Titanic forms that, rising fold on fold,
Touch heaven's blue; and, toiling, strove to wrest
From Nature's rugged and reluctant breast
The treasure she had hidden there of old —
The treasure of her hoarded yellow gold —
Seductive hope of many a hapless quest!
For this he left all other hopes behind,
And gave his manhood's prime and powers away,
Content to be forgotten of his kind —
Yet all the while within himself there lay
The unregarded treasure of the mind,
Deep-buried, priceless, wasting day by day.
When in the mines of dark and silent thought
Sometimes I delve and find strange fancies there,
With heavy labour to the surface brought
That lie and mock me in the brighter air,
Poor ores from starved lodes of poverty,
Unfit for working or to be refined,
That in the darkness cheat the miner's eye,
I turn away from that base cave, the mind.
Yet had I but the power to crush the stone
There are strange metals hid in flakes therein,
Each flake a spark sole-hidden and alone,
That only cunning toilsome chemists win.
All this I know and yet my chemistry
Fails and the pregnant treasures useless lie.
So rich a treasure in yourself you bring,
That some is spilt and wasted on the way,
As low clouds, halting, on wild seas astray,
Cheat the thick, thirsty blossoms of the spring.
And some I waste. But in our later years
We shall remember how, too prodigal,
We let the precious drops of honey fall,
And pay for them at last with useless tears.
Ah, waste, waste, waste ! However much there is,
There's not too much for bare and mortal days,
That now, receding in youth's golden haze,
Seem dim but ever full eternities.
But there's an end ! Take heed, lest you and I
Have wasted wealth to think on when we die.
So am I as the rich, whose blessed key,
Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
The which he will not every hour survey,
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
Since, seldom coming in that long year set,
Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,
Or captain jewels in the carcanet.
So is the time that keeps you as my chest,
Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,
To make some special instant special-blest,
By new unfolding his imprison'd pride.
Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope,
Being had, to triumph; being lacked, to hope.