Collected Poems

DEDICATION The bird gives its songs to the day, The blossom its bloom to the sky, The fountain out-tosses its spray As a call to the cIoud that goes by. The star on its glimmering path Pays ton to the sovereign night Of the uttermost good that it hath, In a tribute of tremulous light. What though the birds carol be faint, The blossom be naught but a wecd, And the garb of the fountain be quaint, And the heavens too distant to heed What though the wan gleam of the star Be lost in the fulness of day Evermore to the power afar Each offers the thing that it may. So I, like the star and the fount, The reiterant bird and the flower, Telling oer the inadequate count Of the fruits of my harvesting hour, Fain to glean what I may from its store Before the brief reaping-time ends, With a sigh that the gift be no more, Lay my sheaf at the feet of my friends. Of the poems included in this volume, all save a few of .the shortcr ones have already appeared in separate editions from time to time since the year 1895, when under the collective title of Mimosa Leaves the lyrics were first issued in book form. These various publications, with some triling omissions from their pages, are here offered to the public as a whole, after a revision which, however careful, remains confessedly inadequate to their needs, yet which it is hoped may plead as an excuse for their re-presentation...