Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3046

Poems by Heath selected by Spencer MacCallum for James R. Elkins, jelkins@labs.net, publisher of the works of lawyer poets.

December 18, 2014

 

Original is missing.

 

 

   A Selection of Poems by

Spencer Heath, LLM (1876-1963)

 

 

            DESIRE

Thine eyes to darken I’d not gaze upon,

  Thy hand to crush my fingers not entwine;

I would not press thy shrinking heart beyond

  The measure of its throb to answer mine;

But I would love thee as the dew descends

  Upon the rose whom its caress has won

And, rising hallowed at the morn, becomes

  A love-impassioned incense to the sun.

 

 

              USYNTROPE

Two Shadows touch their wings and Lo! through both

Surge waves that tremble from the deeps of life —

That waken melodies long sought but known

Only as Emptiness for Echo yearns

And shudders lest the answer be a moan.

 

Two lips are pressed and then like doves descend

Fulfillments. — In one moment there are born

Preludes to symphonies that waken powers

And hidden potencies — that vanquish fears

But wail throughout the intervening hours.

 

              CONSUMMATION

The rift of golden dawn, the blushing of the rose,

Warm sighing winds, the passion of world-bosomed tides,

The glory of the skies, the splendor of the sun —

These rive my heart no more with longing long repressed

Nor leave my soul for beauty questing without rest.

For I have seen a face aglow, all dream-fulfilled,

Its ruby chalice nectar-brimming to be drained,

Eyes deep in ecstasy enswooned, pale cheeks rose-dawned,

And I have been a god to sip divinest sweets —

Infinitude encompassed in an hour of bliss.

 

 

Bennet Cerf of the Saturday Review of Literature once asked readers for original charades. Heath’s response was not published, perhaps lest it seem to be an ad for Palmolive Soap. Heath wrote to his daughter Lucile, “Here’s a travesty on semantics with apologies to Prof. Rudolph Carnap and a tin cup held out to the Colgate Co.”

 

To an Editor Who Printed a Request for Some Original Charades

(With apologies to all sensitive semanticists)

Sir:

Since you so plain a bid have made

for puzzle stuff and deep charade,

you will not find it ill, I hope,

to take my tribute to a soap;

and if I scoff, as well I may,

at what semanticists pretend,

you will not hold it base, I pray,

to salve and soap them in the end.

For if a world-philosophy

bound in a single word can be,

what depths of sage and mystic lore

may they not find who con it o’er

in all the language writ or spoke

in wisdom’s name and jest or joke.

      

      SAPONISEMANTICS

Take my beginning as a CONSTANT FRIEND in HAND

  And while it lies there I ask no ALM

But that you let one other letter stand

  And we will be together PALM in palm.

Now take my latter letters and, ignoring NAUGHT,

Go forward and you ever LIVE, nor life depart,

Unless you backward turn; then are you brought

Through EVIL to the NOTHING whence you start.

This CENTRAL FIGURE of my mystic symbols nine —

  The CIRCLE of existence — love and strife —

Unites the EARTHLY TREE with life divine,

  Backward to nature’s LAP, forward to LIFE.

But, as I LIVE, I am your ultimate demand

  For beauty bathing and assurance calm. —

You find me to your joy and pleasure planned,

  A cleansing spirit and a healing balm.

              

PALMOLIVE

 

                      Semantically yours,

                         Spencer Heath

 

 

 

 

Attendees at a poetry club meeting in Elkridge MD, July 31, 1938, were challenged to use, in a sonnet, poet and lexicographer Wilfred J. Funk’s compilation (as published in Sunshine Magazine) of “the ten most beautiful words in the English language .. beautiful in meaning and in the musical arrangement of their letters:” DAWN, HUSH, LULLABY, MURMERING, TRANQUIL, MIST, LUMINOUS, CHIMES, GOLDEN, MELODY. Heath, inspired, produced the following in twenty minutes, missing only “HUSH.”

 

       

BEAUTIFUL WORDS

Sweet wisps of meaning, all emotion hued,

  Let me but stir thee in my fancy’s bowl

And pour thee forth in measured rhyme, subdued

  To faery patterns, meet for poet’s scroll.

As twinkling orbs, each lovely all alone,

  In rhythmic pageants grace their lordless sky,

So fill my dreaming fancy with the tone

  Of silver CHIMES or mellow LULLABY. —

Whisper a TRANQUIL song to GOLDEN DAWN,

  Ravish the LUMINOUS noonday of its rays,

Glisten with MISTY glamour joys long gone,

  MURMUR a MELODY meet for halcyon days.

The beauty ye have singly caught and coined

  Give back ten-fold in gracious garlands joined.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doggerel verse composed on request for the 1948 annual Apple Dinner of the Orlando, Florida, Poetry Society. When reciting this on other occasions, the final stanza would be optional depending on Heath’s audience.

 

 

APPLE SAUCY

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away,”

Cried the maiden with cheek apple-red.

 

“Not a doubt but that’s true but for me none will do

  But the Winesap,” her customer said.

   “Are they not in season or have you some reason

To proffer another instead?”

 

“0, yes my good fellow, but not enough mellow;

They’re a little too brittle, though red.”

 

“Then what other brand that you do have on hand

Would be equal or better for me?”

 

“The King David,” she said, “is as sweet and as red

As ever a winesap can be.”

 

“Of such,” he averred, “I never have heard;

Some new-fangled kind, is my guess —

  Some poor substitute, of no such repute

As its long honored elders possess.”

 

“You’re mistaken,” said she, “for it comes from a tree

 Whose fruit is long famed with the rest;

  Of all apples that grow ‘tis the oldest we know —

  As good if not better than best.”

 

“That all may be true, but I’ll remind you

Of an apple long proven and tried:

 The old Jonathan, mayhap older than

This David you proffer with pride.”

 

“That is true,” said the maid, her wit undismayed,

  “But the argument still favors me —

Your apple’s old age cannot mine over-gage,

For they were con-tem-po-ra-ree.”

 

“Never mind,” says the man, “count up all you can,

   There’s an apple more ancient than all —

   That in Adam stuck in just under his chin

   Right after his sin and his fall.”

 

“0, fie,” said the girl, her lip in a curl,

Both Adam and apple disdaining,

“The kind that Eve ate are the ones that I date,

None others hereunto pertaining.”

 

“0, well,” said the man, “if Adam’s we ban

So must we ban Eve’s that she ate of;

  Not the fruit of her shame, but the fruit she became

We now need the name and the date of.”

 

“You are slick,” said the maid, “but your hand’s overplayed;

Your wit is not subtle, you’re slippin’;

  You try to discredit the way we’ve all read it;

You’re just itchin’ to call her a Pippin.”

 

“You do me much credit, but, now that you’ve said it,

Quite a pippin she was, I agree;

  But something much nicer and very much spicier

For her Adam she soon came to be.”

 

“Now what are you telling you think so excelling

The telling that’s always been told?

  You make me suspicious of thoughts meretricious —

I hope you’re not going to be bold!”

 

“You know, my dear madam, the nature of Adam,

What a dullard he was — unambitious —

  Until he went to college at Eve’s Tree of Knowledge

And she became his Stark Delicious.

 

 When he gave this a squeeze she went weak in the knees,

 Nor cared she what woe might betide her;

 So then Adam each day he the devil did play

 Till his spearit — it weakened — in cider.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heath admired the short old Anglo-Saxon words. Here is his

paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer in words of one syllable.

 

     PLEA TO THE LORD

Our Sire who in the skies doth dwell,

Thy Name in Love and awe be held

May Thy rule come — Thy law be one.

Give us our need of bread each day

And as we take not all we may

From those who in our debt shall be

So be Thou mild when we owe Thee.

In ways that tempt let us not go,

But free us from all harm and woe.

For Thine it is to Rule and Reign

And have all might, all praise and fame

For now and for all time to be.

And so, LORD, do we pray to Thee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

        PALESTINE

Embosomed on the stream of time

The ancient hills of Palestine

Resplendent in the sinking sun

  Drowse golden when the day is done.

 

‘Twas here the old-time sages trod

  Communing intimate with God,

Prophetic of that Promised One

  Whom He would bless, Beloved Son.

 

Remembering stars now lambent gleam

  In Jordan’s dim baptismal stream,

And hills of Palestine still stand,

  Mementos in that Holy Land

 

And solemn, silent vigil hold

  O’er tragic turmoil as of old,

Yet on the brow of one of them

  Shines an Eternal Diadem.

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Miltonic (variation of Petrarchan, or Italian) sonnet to beauty, composed on August 10, 1938 at his country place, Roadsend Gardens, in Elkridge, Maryland expresses Heath’s personal philosophy and at his request is carved on his tombstone in Winchester, Virginia:

            

            

APOTHEOSIS

Deep from the rhythmic heart of Time, ‘mid all

   The Cosmic Process, and the rise or wane

   Of human hopes and dreams, comes the refrain

Betimes, of Beauty’s rapture-raising call.

She led that hand on carven cavern wall,

   Those eyes of shepherds skyward on the plain;

   Inspired by her and scorning mortal pain,

Artists and seekers glory in her thrall.

For she endows with vast creative urge

   The earth-born spirit risen from the sod.

Beyond all impulse to destroy or purge,

   Her inspiration lifts the self-bound clod

From creature, as Creator, to upsurge

   Enraptured in the song — the work — of God.