American novelist & poet (1869-1954)
It is a long road that leads to eternity, and the inns for travelers are few.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
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
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
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
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
There is a crevice in Love's garden wall
Where mandrakes thrive, with lilies rank and tall;
Where stealthy Death peers through a purple veil
In madmen's eyes, and strange worms crawl and crawl.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
If you knew the meaning of light you would yourself be a light in a dark place.
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
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
There are horrors out here—far worse than the horrors on earth.
ELSA BARKER
Letters from a Living Dead Man
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
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
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
He who remembers, sees; and he who sees, can fly.
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
Concentration is the secret of power.
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
Sometimes I love thee so I wish thee dead.
I would devour thy being as my bread;
Would drain thy hidden veins dry, as of wine,
Red drop by drop, for all my heart has bled!
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
In these unquenchable desires we feel
The thirsty future's dominant appeal;
And through the fire of our impassioned dust
A thousand ancestors their loves reveal.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
So still is Love he hears the farthest sound:
The footfall of the seasons in their round,
The soft etheric swish of the rushing spheres,
The murmur of the mute things underground.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love