American novelist & poet (1869-1954)
I lie alone under the mocking sky.
The midnight hours indifferently walk by.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
The Rose of Life to us reveals
Her hidden petals without shame,
For in our questing faith she feels
The love that melts the seven seals
Of the Eternal Name.
ELSA BARKER
The Frozen Grail and Other Poems
Our sorrows are the golden grain
Of the great reaper--Art.
ELSA BARKER
The Frozen Grail and Other Poems
I met one man who refused to speak of the earth, and was always talking about "going on." I reminded him that if he went on far enough he would come back to the place from which he started.
ELSA BARKER
Letters from a Living Dead Man
There are horrors out here—far worse than the horrors on earth.
ELSA BARKER
Letters from a Living Dead Man
Life can be so free here! There is none of that machinery of living which makes people on earth such slaves. In our world a man is held only by his thoughts. If they are free, he is free.
ELSA BARKER
Letters from a Living Dead Man
Immortal love is fearless, and leaves the key of its door on the outside.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
Deep Love is slow of speech and void of art;
Silence and timid tears reveal his heart.
But shallow Love is ever eloquent
To mouth his meagre passion -- and depart.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
Is there no anodyne despair may buy,
No draught of dreamless sleep for such as I?
Discordant singer in the choir of Love,
Who neither cares to live nor dares to die.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
For a body of dust is a limit to the loving of a soul.
It sees a face and finds it fair, forgetting the myriad who are unseen.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
Only the Lord of Change has endless sway.
The vanished Love of our dead yesterday.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
Give me to drink the poison of thy breast--
Dark cruel wine from grapes of passion pressed--
Till I am drunk beyond delirium's dream
In that dim utter deep where men may rest.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
For me the cosmic aeons lie complete,
O Love, between thy forehead and thy feet!
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
To get, one must give. That is the Law.
ELSA BARKER
Letters from a Living Dead Man
I want to say a word to those who are about to die. I want to beg them to forget their bodies as soon as possible after the change which they call death. Oh, the terrible curiosity to go back and look upon that thing which we once believed to be ourselves! The thought comes to us now and then so powerfully that it acts in a way against our will and draws us back to it. With some it is a morbid obsession, and many cannot get free from it while there remains a shred of flesh on the bones which they once leaned upon. Tell them to forget it altogether, to force the thought away, to go out into the other life free. Looking back upon the past is sometimes good, but not upon this relic of the past.
ELSA BARKER
Letters from a Living Dead Man
I know a logic beyond time and space; that is why I am so illogical, why space cannot hold me nor time make me old.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
The discords of dragon-laughter are often heard in the orchestra of God.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
an end; He smiles in His sleep sometimes, and men know the Golden Age; sometimes He is restless, too, and the revolutions come. Will the Dreamer never awake? Who knows! I would hold Him sleeping; For if He should rise from His nest on the down of eternity, He might rub His drowsy eyes -- and I should forget to be.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
When I entreated Life to make me wise,
It drew aside Love's broidered veil of lies;
And perilous Beauty, undivined before,
Beckoned me from the mazes of his eyes.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
You can do so much for me by lending me your hand occasionally, that I wonder why you shrink from it.
ELSA BARKER
Letters from a Living Dead Man