



Produced by David Garcia, Diane Monico, and the Online
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by The Kentuckiana Digital Library)










[Illustration: Leigh Gordon Giltner]




The Path of Dreams

_POEMS_

_BY LEIGH GORDON GILTNER_

[Illustration]

Fleming H. Revell Company
Chicago : New York : Toronto




COPYRIGHT 1900

BY LEIGH GORDON GILTNER




_TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER_




Contents

In Woodland Ways                9

Ashes of Roses                 11

A Challenge                    13

And Yet...                    15

The Master-Player              16

Afterbloom                     17

To Bliss Carman                18

When Love Passed By            19

Hedonism... Euthumism      21-22

Under the Leaves               23

Carmen                         23

To R. D. MacLean               26

Love and Death                 26

A Winter Landscape             27

Roses and Rue                  28

Severance                      47

Spartacus                      48

The Dead Leader                50

Hagar                          51

Flower-Fancies              52-53

Circe                          54

To A. M. M.                    55

Loveless                       56

Clytie--The Sunflower          57

In Bondage                     61

To a Singer                    63

Blossom of Brine               64

A Memory                       65

To Margaret                    66

Regret                         67

"God Bless You, Dear"          69

Roses                          71

The Poet                       72

Shylock                        72

To Charles J. O'Malley         73

Antithesis                     74

In Fortune's Twilight          74

Fate                           75

The Path of Dreams             76

An Autumn Song                 78

Vain                           79

Sartor Resartus                80

Illumed                        82

In The Play                    83

To E. P. B.                    84

Through The Dark               85

Preluding                      86

The Heights of Silence         87

Andromeda                      88

Requital                       90

When Fades the Light           91

Butterflies                    92

In the Dark Forest             93

Insatiate                      95




To One Who Sleeps

(Obiit, June 8th, 1894.)


_Tho' storm and summer shine for long have shed
Or blight or bloom above thy quiet bed,
Tho' loneliness and longing cry thee dead--
Thou art not dead, beloved. Still with me
Are whilom hopings that encompass thee
And dreams of dear delights that may not be.
Asleep--adream perchance, dost thou forget
The sometime sorrow and the fevered fret,
Sting of salt tears and long unbreathed regret?
Liest thou here thro' long sunshiny hours,
Holding sweet converse with the springing flowers,
Harking the singing of the warm sweet showers
That fall like happy tears... dost hear
The birds that unafraid assail thine ear--
And yet art silent when I whisper? Dear,
      Dost thou not hear?_

_Lying so low beneath the bending grass
In long, still smiling tranced for aye--alas!
Thou dost not harken when my footsteps pass.
If haply I some tender thing should tell
Thee of the springtime flowers thou once loved well--
Anemone and shining asphodel;
Should steal from Nature some enchanted lay,
Some bird-song lilted where green branches sway--
Heart-music that could stir thy heart alway;
Should call thee by the old fond name again,
Should tell thee all a heart's enduring pain
And long rememb'ring, would'st thou mute remain?
Alas! nor sigh nor song can thrill the ear
Tuned to Israfel's music in the sphere
Where things to thee erst dear no more are dear.
      Thou dost not hear!_




THE PATH OF DREAMS




In Woodland Ways


Out of the poignant glare, the shadeless heat
Of summer noon, beseech thee follow me
Into the dim, dream-haunted secrecy
The cool, green glooms, the grottoed deep retreat,
Of yon old wood; down aisles of lichened trees--
Grey Merlins clasped by lissom Viviens
Of clinging vine--to cloistered sylvan glens,
Where Nature weaves her fairest mysteries.

Here let us rest a little--find surcease
For feet grown weary of the thridded street
That echoes ever to the ceaseless beat
Of human tread;--a brief while know the ease
Of dreamful rest, to slumb