Charles Hanson Towne Poems

I who love the Spring so well
Shall be sleeping, some glad day,
When her hosts come back to dwell
In their old, familiar way....
...

I
Far, far across the desert sands,
I hear the camel-bells;
Merchants have come from alien lands,
...

It rained all day the day she died,
And yet she thought it sweet and fair;
She said the sunlight kissed her hair,
...

I am the flower within her garden-close
She cast aside;
Ah! had she plucked me, verily, God knows I had not died.
...

Far in the gold-embroidered west
The round and red sun lay,
Like a great wound upon the breast
Of the slow-dying day.
...

The host of flakes that float thro' leafless trees
When pale December reigns in Autumn's stead,
Are but the pallid ghosts of myriad bees
...

As long as the stars of God
Hang steadfast in the sky,
And the blossoms 'neath the sod
Awake when Spring is nigh;
...

There came an army from the sky,
And surged across the parched plain;
I saw the hurrying hosts go by--
The blue batallions of the rain.
...

Down his great corridors of sumptuous sound
Today I wandered once again. Each word
Seemed like the lyric rapture of a bird
...

We came away from the tinsel and false,
From the rings where we saw the elephants waltz;
From the clowns with their grins and painted faces,
...