American novelist & poet (1869-1954)
I have another friend and his name is Poverty. I know he is no friend of yours, for I have heard you say so, but him do I love well. He walks beside me on the long roads of the universe, and we two are free as birds before their nestbuilding. But Wealth is my enemy; he is the only one who can bar a door in my face. The poor will always let me in -- though they are too dull with hunger to enjoy the subtlety of my wit; The weary let me in — but they always mistake me for Sleep, who wears a cloak of the same color as mine; The sorrowful cry to me -- but they call me by a prouder name than I desire to bear, and being a modest one I cannot answer their prayers. But the wealthy rarely unbar the door, they take me for a thief. In that they are very cunning, for I would pilfer their pride and leave them only bliss; And that is no shield against beggars and borrowers.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
With equal wonder we survey
The planet and the midge.
ELSA BARKER
The Frozen Grail and Other Poems
The poorest lives some little blossoms bring
To deck Love's altar in the days of spring.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
There are wings on the shoulders of all men, But being invisible the wings are never spread.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
I have whispered to you in the perfume of a rose;
But the flower soon faded and was like me forgotten.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
The wine of immortality I carry with me, and so am never thirsty.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
The joy of the struggle! That is the keynote of immortality, the keynote of power. Let this be my final message to the world. Tell them to enjoy their struggles, to thrill at the endless possibilities of combination and creation, to live in the moment while preparing for long hence, and not to exaggerate the importance of momentary failures and disappointments.
ELSA BARKER
Letters from a Living Dead Man
All life is a dream, my children, but you are not the dreamer; the Dreamer rests on a bed of down plucked from the breast of the swan of eternity. He turns in His sleep sometimes, and a world comes to
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
Lest Love should grow too earthly to aspire,
The wise gods blinded him with vague desire;
They nourished him on dreams and ecstasies,
Tempered his arrows in the sacred fire.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
Freedom is a bird of many feathers;
It may let one flutter down sometimes in the kitchengardens of the world,
But the bird rests not upon any branch that grows near the ground.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
Only the poet looks Love in the eyes.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
An angel can long subsist on its own substance.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
To conquer the world must man renounce the world?
ELSA BARKER
The Frozen Grail
We draw to ourselves the experiences which we are ready for and which we demand, and most souls do not demand enough.
ELSA BARKER
Letters from a Living Dead Man
I, Woman, am that wonder-breathing rose
That blossoms in the garden of the King.
ELSA BARKER
The Mystic Rose
He who knows Love becomes Love, and he knows
All beings are himself, twin-born of Love.
ELSA BARKER
He Who Knows Love
What shall prevail against the spirit of man,
When cold, the lean and snarling wolf of hunger,
The threatening spear of ice-mailed Solitude,
Silence, and space, and ghostly-footed Fear
Prevail not?
ELSA BARKER
The Frozen Grail and Other Poems
Oh, for the pure oblivion of sleep!
In those vast waters I would sink me deep
Beyond where both desire and dream lie dead,
And passion and despair forget to weep.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
Where there is neither light nor darkness, there God can cast His reflections. That seems to you impossible, because you are neither light nor dark; If you were either you would know your opposite -- and the neuter state where the two join hands. But that is too deep for you and too deep for the world of twilight people.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
O little hour of Love, so wild and sweet!
I gave the world, thy honey-dew to eat;
And now the tear-sown pathway of the dead
Echoes the patter of thy flying feet.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love