TonganoxieMirror.com

Harry Davis is this week's featured poet. These poems are from a book of poetry he published in the early 1980s, "Songs Along the Missouri." Davis turns 92 today.

The Blue Mist

(Written when Harry was 20ears old and living inefiance, Mo.)



The blue mist is filling the valley tonight,

The hills are all silent in haze,

And my heart looking up to the faltering light

Is deep with the fullness of praise.



I rejoice in the ways of both good men and saints,

The pathway where innocence flowers,

Where the joy of our God is the balm of complaints

And answered petitions are ours.

And I pray that the angels may stand soft above

The beds where some precious ones sleep,

That their breathing may kiss the sweet features I love,

Their wings guard the peace of the deep.

Let the mist cover up all I see in the vale,

No mist may envelope my hopes,

For a sacredness haunts me and love in the dale

Rolls deep on its forested slopes.



Lost Loves

O where do lost loves go?

To where do they retire?

What winds snuff out their glow?

What waters quench their fire?



They must not wholly die

For memory retains

The vestige of a sigh

Above their sad remains.



The one who once has cared

Cannot undo the groove

Which once he neatly pared

Upon the desk of love.



O where do lost loves go?

To where do they retire?

What winds snuff out their glow?

What waters quench their fire?



Love Is A Glow

Love is a glow of never failing light

Surrounding every head.

Loves is a father standing in the night

Beside his children's bed.

Love is communion keeping wedded life

As sweet as it began.

Love is the tender pity which a wife

Has for a struggling man.

Love was the cry which from our spirits rose

When those we loved were gone.

Love is the yearning which we have for those

Who beautified the dawn.

Love is the prize which is the goal of strife

When struggles all have ceased.

Love is the beautiful repast of life,

Its everlasting feast.