Bugle Call

O pilot now your ship of days or years

Unerringly to reach a promised goal.

The Master Helmsman will allay your fears

And still the tempests that would scar your soul.

You leave the haven of a citadel

Which greed would now destroy; so let a song

Rise from your heard that you may break the spell

Of avarice that moves a Judas-throng.

Wearing white armor, go and give release;

Brave terror's henchmen on the death-strewn plain;

Bid earth to sing a canticle of peace,

Become a sanctuary--love's domain.

Your shield is youth's clean strength which you have won--

God's arm is long to reach to you, my son.

The Improvement Era

Upon the Lap of Spring

Youth kneels to death
not daring to shake off the binding gyves
and stand free.
(Why search for an oasis in the desert
with only the spectral Joshua-arms outreaching?)

It is a tragic thing
to see youth, dreamless,
walk with the step of an old man
while April violins are calling
and stars are singing in their courses.

It is a tragedy
when autumn lies dead upon the lap of spring.

Dream Your Dreams, O Youth

There are crystal-flame worlds to conquer;
There are kingdoms no king has dreamed;
For stars are worlds without number--
Forested ... peopled ... streamed.

Men who resemble earthlings
Will someday meet you in space--
Not forms into humans evolving,
But men with the Gods' own grace.

The sky with its crowds of planets
Is yours, O youth! Let your veins
Be plunged with adventure's fire--
Dare! Grasp the cosmic reins

And from planet to planet space-travel!
Till then, though the distance be far,
You can saddle the tail of a comet
And lasso a shooting star.

I Am Youth

I reached back

To that floatsome time

Before life had wrung the joy from me

And mangled me, leaving me old.

Spring laughed in October--

Then I knew:

I am my own touchstone; I am youth.

I lifted my head

And hurled a challenge--

The moon and stars hearing

Danced down to the lake

And bathed in its beauty.

I, myself, looked in its mystic mirror:

I saw no lines of age--

Youth looked back at me from my eyes

And my lips were tremulous with June.