American novelist & poet (1869-1954)
Even a cricket knows the difference between a man and an angel; For a man looks not at the ground whereon he walks, he crushes many a life; While the passing of an angel leaves all the world a-thrill.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
If you have something to give -- throw it out of the window;
The one who needs it will come along with eyes bent on the ground.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
Always it seems
That only a thin veil--
Sheer as the music of the nightingale--
Trembles and streams
Between me and the mystery of dreams.
ELSA BARKER
The Frozen Grail and Other Poems
It is undoubtedly true that there is no spirit without substance, no substance without spirit, latent or expressed; but a painting of a man may seem at a distance to be a man.
ELSA BARKER
Letters from a Living Dead Man
It is a long road that leads to eternity, and the inns for travelers are few.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
There are horrors out here—far worse than the horrors on earth.
ELSA BARKER
Letters from a Living Dead Man
She is the idol of the wise,
The mistress of the rhyming race;
But pain lurks in her luring eyes,
And bitter-sweet is her embrace.
ELSA BARKER
The Frozen Grail and Other Poems
My friend, there is nothing to fear in death. It is no harder than a trip to a foreign country—the first trip—to one who has grown oldish and settled in the habits of his own more or less narrow corner of the world.
ELSA BARKER
Letters from a Living Dead Man
And after all our toils and dreams and prayers,
'Tis only Love for which the future cares;
Labour and fame are steps along Love's way,
And art is but the garment that he wears.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
I am often merry at the jests of the constellations.
Did you fancy that the stars were always serious?
Only the dull never laugh, and the stars are very bright.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
Wisdom is a tree of slow growth; the rings around its trunk are earthly lives, and the grooves between are the periods between lives. Who grieves that an acorn is slow in becoming an oak?
ELSA BARKER
Letters from a Living Dead Man
We have a bitter power who laugh at pain,
Who laugh and laugh -- for tears are shed in vain.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
Concentration is the secret of power.
ELSA BARKER
Letters from a Living Dead Man
If we could only remember in life that the form which we call ourselves is not our real immortal self at all, we would not give it such an exaggerated importance, though we would nevertheless take needful care of it.
ELSA BARKER
Letters from a Living Dead Man
Those people who think of their departed friends as being all-wise, how disappointed they would be if they could know that the life on this side is only an extension of the life on earth! If the thoughts and desires there have been only for material pleasures, the thoughts and desires here are likely to be the same.
ELSA BARKER
Letters from a Living Dead Man
Our sorrows are the golden grain
Of the great reaper--Art.
ELSA BARKER
The Frozen Grail and Other Poems
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
He who remembers, sees; and he who sees, can fly.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
Then I sped across the prairies of ether and stood upon the moon. It was no longer luminous, its hardness hurt my feet; And I found that it had nothing either to sell or give me; Its empty frankness was brutal as a blow.
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