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THE MAROON TIGER
c With the *3?oets
TO SYLVIA
♦
♦
A SONG
I
Why do I love you? There ought to be some reason
Why I plucked you from the milling throng
Do vile injustice to a lovely song
That should be sung by robins in their season.
Perhaps I love you for your trick of talking
Of nothing in particular—but so well;
Perhaps I move and dream beneath your spell
Because you sway like Venus when you’re walking:
Perhaps because I schemed and schemed again
Saying, “By fair or foul means I’ll get her.”
Or maybe it’s because when wrath I feign,
Your gentle heart bleeds for my eyes a letter.
But this is why, perhaps: in youth’s mad vein
I rushed in like a fool who knows no better.
II
This world is too much with our love, my dear;
Too soon it will envelop all that’s we
And fling us out to that vast, boundless sea,
To be one with the rose of Omar’s year.
Tomorrow when we flounder in the deep,
Or play the hosts for worm and mold and rain,
We shall not quiver with love’s joy or pain;
We shall be too content to lie and sleep.
So while we breath this luscious, stinging air
Let’s revel wisely while we can and may;
Give seer and sage the labors of the day;
Come, laugh and revel while the earth is fair.
Death is a goodly lad—but his caress
Is far too rigid for our tropic breasts.
III
And who are those that point and, mocking, cry:
“Love is a thing that will be gone with rain
That lately splashed against the window pane;
Love is a thing that always goes awry.
Nothing endures; so cast away your lyre;
Put out the flame that kindles in your eyes;
And take your greedy fingers from the skies:
Stars are not plucked by mortals from the fire.”
Poor blinded fools, they know not that they say
The things we said before we found the gleam;
They do not know that we have passed that way
Long years ago and crossed that shallow stream.
So let them point, and rant, and bellow, “Shame!”
They do not know that we are one with flame.
—An Observer.
LOVELY BROWN GIRL
Lovely brown girl
With your dark eyes glowing
And your sable hair freely flowing,
I see in the soft beauty
Of your slender figure
All the mystic charm and subtle grace
Of those wondrous women
Of Egypt’s ancient race.
—Hugh Gloster, ’31.
A song to sing:
I am blind
Ere I see
Beauty in dark clouds
That bring the rain—
Life filled droplets,
Nature’s dowery,
Spring’s guess:
Beauty in clearing skies
That fill the air with light fantasies—
White billows
Racing to and fro,
Blue skies
Receding from their hiding;
Beauty in the sun—
Life’s great candle,
Spring’s incubator—
Rays—
Life’s sparks
Igniting the heart of every seed.
Dark clouds
Refreshing showers,
Clearing skies,
Sun’s rays,
Spring!
If I cannot see and know thy beauty,
My soul has ceased to be!
A song I sing.
—Charles Alfred Beckett, ’33.
SPRING
Songs within me that I thought were dead
Have come to life again.
Flowers, nipped to the ground by the cruel
Blast of Winter, have freshed their roots
And reared new little heads.
WTiat once was barren now glows in beauty'.
VTiat once was silent now sings in glee.
God and I are surely' kin.
He renovates His earth.
I renovate my heart.
—Wallace Gooden, ’33.
COURAGE
I hear you singing, black boy.
You fired an engine from Memphis
to Chicago, and sang all the way.
Laid you off at the yard last week,
Didn’t they black boy?
Skirts all turn you down
since you are broke,
Haven’t they, black boy?
Sing!
Your world around your shoulders
They call it indifference;
I call it courage.
—Wallace Gooden, '33.