The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 34. Five Poems for Winter

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Five Poems for Winter

“Whom the Gods Love”

“Whom the gods love die young” – if gods ye be,

Then generously might ye have spared to us

One from your vast unnumbered overplus,

One youth we loved as tenderly as ye.

A Winter Elegy

for J. F. H.

Now he is gone, I would not find

These waters summer-fair,

Girt round with meadows bland and kind;

The rigors of the winter wind

Better befit our care.

Yet sometimes on the snow-wrapped hill

A light at evening lies,

Tender beyond the summer’s skill —

What light, I wonder, fairer still,

Gladdens his absent eyes?

And sometimes, touched by winter’s breath,

I thrill with wakened powers.

“Youth still is his,” a whisper saith;

“That searching spirit found not death,

But life — more life than ours.”

Bitter-Sweet

They gave the garden Friendship’s name,

And planted many a seed,

Unthinking, till a wizard came

And did a wondrous deed.

Where one seed lay he touched his wand,

And high all else above,

Sprang full-blown, fair all flowers beyond,

The blood-red flower of Love.

Then one said, “Come, be friends again,”

But ah! what magic cry

Can bid the bloom grow back? ‘Tis vain!

The bittered flower must die.

Giving and Keeping

Better than thy gift, dear friend,

Rare and precious though it be,

Is the thing thou couldst not send

From thy inmost heart to me.

Who am I to say thee so?

Who but one taught long and well

That from out the hand can go

Naught that in the heart doth dwell?

When to thee with gem or flower,

I would offer most besides,

Then, beyond a giver’s power,

Most within me still abides.

A Sermon

Ten crimson drops of nature’s blood,

Ten berries of the alder tree,

Saturday’s gleaning from the wood,

Went to the church with you and me.

And while the learned doctor there

His theologic missiles threw,

These children of the sun and air

Sat calm and heedless — so did you.

But once I saw a small caress

Steal from your finger to their cheek

With messages of tenderness

And sympathy no word could speak.

‘Twas then I felt you kin to them,

Pagan and nature-bred and free;

And you and that bright woodland stem

Preached gospels of your own to me.

—Mark Anthony DeWolfe Howe,[i]

1909