Tabb Centenary Year XXXV

Five lyrics by Rev. John B. Tabb.

The Mist

Eurydice eludes the dark
   To follow Orpheus, the lark
That leads her to the dawn
   With rhapsodies of star-delight,
   Till, looking backward in his flight,
He finds that she is gone.

December 1900 (p. 62, Nature: Clouds and Sky)

The Shower

   Against the royal blue,
   A mist rebellious flew—
A night-born, wind-uplifted shade
That for an angry moment stayed,
   Then wept itself away.

   The earth with moistened eyes
   Beholds the sunlit skies
Again, but never to forget
The cloud whose life-drops mingle yet
   With her maternal clay.

August 1895 (p. 57, Nature: Clouds and Sky)

Tides

Like inland streams, O sea,
   Through joy and pain
All nature dreams of thee;
   Nor more appears
Thy life in mist or rain
   Than in our tears.

July 1909 (p. 69, Nature: The Sea)

Desert-Orbs

The world, they tell us, dwindles,
   When matched with other spheres;
And yet in all their amplitudes
   No place for human tears.

How sterile is the sunshine,
   How masculine the blue,
That breeds no shadow, nor betrays
   A memory of dew!

July 1909 (p. 151, Life, Death, and Similar Themes: Sympathy)

A Legacy

Do you remember, little cloud,
   This morning when you lay—
A mist along the river—what
   The waters had to say?

And how the many-coloured flowers
   That on the margin grew
All promised when the day was done
   To leave their tints to you?

1899 (p. 59, Nature: Clouds and Sky)

[“The Mist”: Eurydice and her husband Orpheus are figures in Greek mythology; dismayed by the death of Eurydice, Orpheus travels to the underworld to win her return; in the poem, the mist is Eurydice and the lark is Orpheus.]

The references (page number and section) are to The Poetry of Father Tabb, ed. Francis A. Litz, Ph.D. (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1928). All of Tabb's poems published here in the Father Tabb Centenary Year were originally published before 1923.

Biblical references link to the New Advent Bible comprising Bishop Challoner's edition of the Douay-Rheims Bible (English) and the Sixto-Clementine edition of the Vulgate (Latin), since they are the versions which Father Tabb would have used as a Catholic.

The year 2009 is the centenary of the death of Rev. John Banister Tabb, November 19, 1909.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 06/07/09 06:24:25 PM
Categorized as Father Tabb Centenary Year & Literary.