Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/428

VARIOUS POEMS That, which to the base of birth

Were a guise of little worth,

Shall, through thy regard intense,

Gain from all men reverence;

Honor it and thou shalt see

It will honor bring to thee.

IV

, though on wings of morn

Thou at will art swiftly borne,

Use them not for every quest;

Ruffle not their folded rest

That thy daily sport and toil

May be lifted from the soil.

Even the winged angels walk

Side by side in pleasant talk,

And with loitering footsteps move

Through the valleys fair with love;

But anon, commissioned far

Light to strew from star to star,

Spread their plumes and soar on high,

Bearing glory through the sky!

HELIOTROPE

in the morning twilight,

Along a garden slope,

To the shield of moss encircling

My beautiful Heliotrope.

O sweetest of all the flowerets

That bloom where angels tread!

But never such marvellous odor

From heliotrope was shed,

As the passionate exhalation,

The dew of celestial wine, 398