Improvisations 
 
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Improvisations 
 
 Stanley Kimmcl 
 
 Author 
 "SOUVENIRS." tffc. 
 
Copynght 1919 
 
 "The Publiihera of Little Boob" 
 San Francisco. 
 
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"Ingenuas didicisse fideliter arles 
 Emollit mores, nee sinit esse feros." 
 Ovid. 
 
 4131* 
 
VESPERA 
 
 Evening comes and softly floats 
 The music of a summer's breeze, 
 And mingles with Apollo's lyre 
 The sighing of the laurel trees. 
 On yonder lake the gleaming stars 
 Have kissed the tiring waves to sleep, 
 And o'er the far off stretching plain 
 Golden moon-beams, silent, creep. 
 
 Olympus harps again are stilled, 
 The song is dead, the feast is o'er, 
 Fair Hebe holds an empty cup, 
 And nectar spots the golden floor. 
 
NOCTIS SILENTIUM 
 
 The day lies buried 'neath a wintry sky, 
 In cloaks of silence, once vermilion, 
 Through misty shreds of fading verdant 
 
 light, 
 
 Selene bathes white-limbed Endymion. 
 Beside a flaming shield of golden mould, 
 The ancient Clio grasps a withered quill, 
 Impatiently, with quivering hand, she 
 
 scrawls, 
 
 Atropos softly breathes, "Be still, be still." 
 O where is she of Ilion's fallen towers, 
 Or Caesar with his treasured wealth and 
 
 fame, 
 
 And he who roamed a fabled, mystic sea, 
 That liberty might know a sweeter name 
 Are they but as the dust of Fortune's day, 
 When she strode boldly through archaic 
 
 lands 
 
 And wedded deathless Immortality, 
 Then left him with her Jewels in his 
 
 hands? 
 
LIMON! 
 
 Limon! Limon! What thrill thou gavest 
 
 me 
 When first I looked upon thy silent 
 
 throng, 
 
 When all of life lay dreaming in the calm, 
 And night winds mingled with a 
 
 boatman's song. 
 Where once the greedy hand of pirate 
 
 Spain 
 Snatched from thy birth-right a 
 
 dominion's gold, 
 
 Then placed upon the soil a tyrant claw. 
 And for some tinseled god, thy franchise 
 
 sold. 
 
 What land can breath the air republican 
 Whose State kneels low before a papist, 
 
 crowned? 
 
 Is freedom but a gift of regal power. 
 Must Liberty in scarlet robes be bound? 
 Where are the warriors of thy classic 
 
 days 
 Who freed thee when thou wert a noble 
 
 slave? 
 
 Arise! Behold! The lord of yesteryears 
 Who came as knight remains as royal 
 
 knave! 
 
MELPOMENE 
 
 (To Sarah Truax) 
 
 Amid the sparkling flood of silver sand, 
 Where sleeps the desert wrapped In 
 
 vestal beams, 
 
 Thou art the goddess of the opal streams 
 That fall from heaven to this torrid 
 
 land. 
 
 Like some strange cadence of a saraband 
 The droning winds chant their nomadic 
 
 themes 
 O'er crouching tents where each bronze 
 
 Arab dreams 
 Of Cassim's gold and nights in 
 
 Samarkand. 
 
 Who knows, save he whose prison soul 
 
 has bled. 
 The lonely anguish of these Trappist 
 
 walls, 
 
 Or had companionship with living dead 
 Who jeer the day and chide the night 
 
 yet dread 
 The coming hour when o'er their serfdom 
 
 falls 
 The requiem they hear in cloistral halls. 
 
 (Garden of Allah) 
 
OLD MEN 
 
 Old men always sit alone, 
 In groups of twos or threes or more, 
 Like rusted bolts held feebly fast 
 Upon some queer, old fashioned door, 
 Whose withered eyes have often mocked 
 The passing paupers and the kings, 
 And others strolling by that way, 
 Ladies of the street and things. 
 They have seen all, the good and bad, 
 Known Love and pale, green lipped 
 
 Despair; 
 
 Yet still they sit with wrinkled eyes, 
 And like the dead they stare and stare. 
 
LAW 
 
 A child of Custom whom all tyrants 
 
 fear, 
 
 A gift divine if reason guides thy way, 
 But tread not purple roads of power by day, 
 Nor steal with soulless step into the night 
 Where Pity gropes unpitied in the sight 
 Of those gold-kings who would by 
 
 pillage live, 
 
 Lest thou become a red-eyed fugitive 
 When thou the voice of Anarchy doth 
 
 hear. 
 
 Where Lust and Greed have built a 
 
 vulture throne 
 The Christ of Justice kneels with 
 
 bleeding head, 
 
 And Kindness is a stranger in that land 
 Where Poverty with Crime walks hand 
 
 in hand; 
 For such my native soil doth hold her 
 
 dead- 
 Is this mine heritage of Washington? 
 
JXCelancholia 
 
 Movements from a Symphony 
 
ADAGIO 
 
 In the park so melancholy 
 The sad pines their torches bear, 
 Towering in the silence, holy, 
 Cleave the grey, nocturnal air. 
 
 Would it were some vale fantastic 
 Where my soul could meet thine own, 
 And with purple song chromatic 
 Dance the hours as roses blown. 
 
 Perfumes linger after greeting, 
 (Once I saw thee weep, and know) 
 Saw the moon-light quickly fleeting 
 In the dawn's first lustrous glow. 
 
 L'ENVOI 
 
 As tones prolonged are softly swept 
 By jewelled hands on ivory keys, 
 You passed and only angels wept, 
 And cold winds stirred the leafless 
 trees. 
 
ANDANTE 
 
 (Qua! des Augustines) 
 The night is green, monotonous, 
 And rain engulfs the vendor's mart, 
 It bathes my soul in deepest gloom, 
 Will not from out my soul depart. 
 
 The street lamps glitter dolefully, 
 Throughout the space of empty halls 
 Grim phantoms dance half-wittingly, 
 A eunuchs dance at secret balls. 
 
 Now sleeps the river with its fears 
 Mist hidden by the night's strange 
 
 pall. 
 
 Nor hears the weird, impassioned plaint 
 Of rain and tears upon the wall; 
 
 Hears not the sobbing of the rain 
 Or tears upon the cold, grey wall. 
 
 Like dusky porcelains, spectral forms 
 Strut up and down the haunted mall; 
 They mock the little things they pass, 
 The rain and tears which sob and fall. 
 
'Pieces from a Boudoir 
 Suite 
 
Limbs so pure and white, 
 
 What wonderful delight 
 
 The pallor of the sheet discloses; 
 
 Wrapped in fragile hair 
 
 They have that virgin air 
 
 Of snow and roses. 
 
 Have the muses seen 
 
 Pygmalion and his queen 
 
 Known the marble passion of her eyes? 
 
 Swiftly the false moon. 
 
 Dances about the room. 
 
 Naked, over-wise. 
 
IV 
 
 Evening fades and the moon's light 
 Falls like some soft, blue brocade; 
 O'er a balcony of Jade 
 Steal the shadows in their flight. 
 
 Soul of fastly fleeting dreams, 
 Like the night whose silver song 
 Wanes as perfumed silks among 
 Slender, luring, sapphire beams. 
 
 All the grace of woman-kind, 
 Innocence, quite like a child, 
 Mirrored in a voice as mild, 
 Gay as laughing summer wind. 
 
Queries 
 
 TWO SONGS 
 
MORNING SADNESS 
 
 Why am I thus with sorrow wed, 
 Who scarce did know sweet childhood's 
 
 guest, 
 
 Where are the singing meadow larks 
 With carols of their morning quest; 
 
 Why do the flowers droop their heads 
 Upon the shadowed garden wall, 
 Why is the music soft and sad 
 From out the sparkling water- fall? 
 
WHENCE COMES THIS SONG 
 
 Whence comes this song BO golden 
 In the dark and silent night, 
 Born from my soul's great sadness 
 Carried on by fancy's flight; 
 
 Where go these words of sorrow 
 Through the ages yet unbound, 
 Will they, like wintry flowers. 
 Fall on barren, frozen ground? 
 
PENOMBRA 
 
 Before the day her sleepy eyes have 
 
 closed 
 And Somnus sweeps her into shadowed 
 
 dreams, 
 
 Let music float upon the silenced air 
 In one great symphony of dulcet themes; 
 Let all the Earth resound in eulogy, 
 As Sappho sings of some famed hero's 
 
 might, 
 
 Till Phoebus drops his gems of aureate 
 And lifeless falls into the arms of Night. 
 
 Pale Sleep, with robes of scented 
 
 asphodels, 
 Glides swiftly on past mystic twilight 
 
 folds; 
 
 And steals into the forest's dim recess 
 Where he can woo the gaudy marigolds; 
 The stars peer out with cold and jealous 
 
 eyes 
 
 Upon a timid faun who doth forsake 
 Her lily-bed that she may muse beside 
 The moon's proud image mirrored in 
 
 the lake. 
 

UNIVERSITY