East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1911-11-27

Have you no empty chair at your
table? Yes, says some sobbing SOUL
that is very real to me- 1t Is large
part of my life.i Is 1t? The David
spirit in Longfellow says that 1t Is
also poetry. Have you never listen-
ed for the inaudible symphonies or
the voiceless dead and heard only.
Break. break, break, and Oh for the
toucr. of vanished hand, and the
sound of voice that is still?" Have
you never cried like IAN infant cry
ing in the night, and with no langu-
age but cry?" Then were you never
comforted with the admonition:
ALAS for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress
trees
Who hopeless lays his dead away
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play;
Who hath not learned in hours of
faith
The truth, to flesh and sense un-
known,
That life is ever loru OF death
And love can never lose its own"
Have you never observed the green
| foliage of autumn days turn into the
scar and yellow leaf? Did you never
sit by the bedside of the sick and the
dying? Did you never stand on the
bridge at midnight when the clock
was striking the hour?" Did you.
never fall in love These and all
things else of beauty and worth are
poetry Life Is poetry, and II we are
grateful for life, let us thank God
for poetry-not for verses, but for
poetry. Verses are not poetry. but
only one of her many gowns worn on.
special occasions and to suit the taste
of special people. Poetry itself Is
quality of soul. 1t is that spirit of in
depreciation which turns the Song
OF the Shirt into Song OF Love.
makes the "Ode to Duty" an ode to
Joy, and plays with her deft fingers
upon the lutte of life until this once
bare and baneful existence becomes
the blessed reality of blissful dream.
In our Thanksgiving, therefore let
us exhaust our expressions of graft
tude upon the falsely-so- called ma
terial things, for big crops and fat
bank accounts. Rather let us praise
God for the real things of life, those
permanent possessions of soul which
, abide after we shuttle off this NOR
tail coil" We can't take our gold
with us to that Far Country" for
gold there Is not legal tender. A grim
humorist with sagasity even superior
to his wit once advised his friend:
DO not take your gold with you when
you die, because If you do, 1t will
, melt" Let us turn, then from the
things that perish and praise God for
the things that shall abide.-the SOUL
stuff of which poetry is made.
: "Bless the Lord, o my SOUL" for
, sunsets and morning dawns! Behold
the pearlaceous East boiling up like
8 molten silverl The weight of the dark
5 Is no longer able to hold down the
irky lid of mist. Cleaning swords OF
5 illumination pnncture with great riffs
, the blanket Of night, so that oncoming
! billows of dawn rush through every
I aperature, and climb up along the
rafters of the sky, until they splash
. their foam in triumph against the
| dome of heaven and spill the bowl of
the world full of day. The defeated
clouds now break their ranks and en-
erge from the seething fusion, their
torn and ragged garments dripping
with liquid fire and glorified as II they
had caught, from some upper celec-
tial banquet chamber. the shed blood
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