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  Love of Life

LOVE you not the tall trees spreading wide their branches,

Cooling with their green shade the sunny days of June?

Love you not the little bird lost among the leaflets,

Dreamily repeating a quaint, brief tune?



Is there not a joy in the waste windy places;

Is there not a song by the long dusty way?

Is there not a glory in the sudden hour of struggle?

Is there not a peace in the long quiet day?



Love you not the meadows with the deep lush grasses;

Love you not the cloud-flocks noiseless in their flight?

Love you not the cool wind that stirs to meet the sunrise;

Love you not the stillness of the warm summer night?



Have you never wept with a grief that slowly passes;

Have you never laughed when a joy goes running by?

Know you not the peace of rest that follows labor? --

You have not learnt to live then; how can you dare to die?

Tertius Van Dyke

  Oxford Revisited in War-Time

BENEATH fair Magdalen's storied towers

I wander in a dream,

And hear the mellow chimes float out

O'er Cherwell's ice-bound stream.



Throstle and blackbird stiff with cold

Hop on the frozen grass;

Among the aged, upright oaks

The dun deer slowly pass.



The chapel organ rolls and swells,

And voices still praise God;

But ah! the thought of youthful friends

Who lie beneath the sod.



Now wounded men with gallant eyes

Go hobbling down the street,

And nurses from the hospitals

Speed by with tireless feet.



The town is full of uniforms,

And through the stormy sky,

Frightening the rooks from the tallest trees,

The aeroplanes roar by.



The older faces still are here,

More grave and true and kind,

Ennobled by the steadfast toil

Of patient heart and mind.



And old-time friends are dearer grown

To fill a double place:

Unshaken faith makes glorious

Each forward-looking face.



Old Oxford walls are grey and worn:

She knows the truth of tears,

But to-day she stands in her ancient pride

Crowned with eternal years.



Gone are her sons: yet her heart is glad

In the glory of their youth,

For she brought them forth to live and die

By freedom, justice, truth.



Cold moonlight falls on silent tower;

The young ghosts walk with the old;

But Oxford dreams of the dawn of May

And her heart is free and bold.

Tertius Van Dyke, Magdalen College, January, 1917

  Indian Summer

A SILKEN curtain veils the skies,

And half conceals from pensive eyes

The bronzing tokens of the fall;

A calmness broods upon the hills,

And summer's parting dream distills

A charm of silence over all.

The stacks of corn, in brown array,

Stand waiting through the tranquil day,

Like tattered wigwams on the plain;

The tribes that find a shelter there

Are phantom peoples, forms of air,

And ghosts of vanished joy and pain.

At evening when the crimson crest

Of sunset passes down the West,

I hear the whspering host returning;

On far-off fields, by elm and oak,

I see the lights, I smell the smoke,--

The Camp-fires of the past are burning.

Tertius and Henry Van Dyke, November, 1903

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