Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/48

IN WAR TIME And perchance he thought—"My life, it seems,

Like her, unfreighted with aught but dreams;

Yet I feel within me a strength to dare

Some outward voyage, I know not where!"

But the forceful impulse wore away

In the common life of every day,

And for Hendrick Van Ghelt no timely hour

Ruffled the calm of that hidden power;

Yet in the prelude of my song

His storied presence may well belong,

As a Lombardy poplar, lithe and hoar,

Stands at a Monmouth farmer's door,

Set like a spire against the sky,

Marking the hours, while lover and maid

Linger long in its stately shade,

And round its summit the swallows fly.

II

1

a devious by-way finds: solve me her secret whim,

That the seed of a gnarled oak should sprout to a sapling straight and prim;

That a russet should grow on the pippin stock, on the garden-rose a brier;

That a stalwart race, in old Hendrick's son, should smother its wonted fire.

Hermann, fond of his book, and shirking the brawny outdoor sports;

Sent to college, and choosing for life the law with her mouldy courts;

Proud, and of tender honor, as well became his father's blood,

But with cold and courtly self-restraint weighing the ill and good; 18