Christopher Pearse Cranch Poems

FRIEND, dear as Memory's joys! of life that 's past
A part, and part of better life to come,
If life to come there be, in some dear home
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I NEEDS must praise the natural gifts of one
Who praises not himself, nor seeks for praise;
Too unambitious for these emulous days,
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O SHIP that bears him to his native shore,
Beneath whose keel the seething ocean heaves,
Bring safe our poet with his garnered sheaves
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(A True Story)
SHE stood beside the iron road,
A little child of ten years old.
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(A Hope.)
BEFORE our eyes a pageant rolled
Whose banners every land unfurled;
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O BOON and curse in one — this ceaseless need
Of looking still behind us and before!
Gift to the soul of eyes that cannot read
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AN old umbrella in the hall,
Battered and baggy, quaint and queer;
By all the rains of many a year
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I STARTED on a lonely road.
A few companions with me went.
Some fell behind, some forward strode,
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GRAY-HEADED POETS, whom the full years bless
With life and health and chance still multiplied
To hold your forward course — fame and success
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No more the scarlet maples flash and burn
Their beacon-fires from hilltop and from plain;
The meadow-grasses and the woodland fern
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