2.

Sometimes it seemed as if New England air For his large lungs too parsimonious were, As if those empty rooms of dogma drear 370 Where the ghost shivers of a faith austere Counting the horns o'er of the Beast, Still scaring those whose faith to it is least, As if those snaps o' th' moral atmosphere That sharpen all the needles of the East, Had been to him like death, Accustomed to draw Europe's freer breath In a more stable element; Nay, even our landscape, half the year morose, Our practical horizon, grimly pent, 380 Our air, sincere of ceremonious haze, Forcing hard outlines mercilessly close, Our social monotone of level days, Might make our best seem banishment; But it was nothing so; Haply this instinct might divine, Beneath our drift of puritanic snow, The marvel sensitive and fine Of sanguinaria over-rash to blow And trust its shyness to an air malign; 390 Well might he prize truth's warranty and pledge In the grim outcrop of our granite edge, Or Hebrew fervor flashing forth at need In the gaunt sons of Calvin's iron breed, As prompt to give as skilled to win and keep; But, though such intuitions might not cheer, Yet life was good to him, and, there or here, With that sufficing joy, the day was never cheap; Thereto his mind was its own ample sphere, And, like those buildings great that through the year 400 Carry one temperature, his nature large Made its own climate, nor could any marge Traced by convention stay him from his bent: He had a habitude of mountain air; He brought wide outlook where he went, And could on sunny uplands dwell Of prospect sweeter than the pastures fair High-hung of viny Neufchatel; Nor, surely, did he miss Some pale, imaginary bliss Of earlier sights whose inner landscape still was Swiss. 411

V

1.

I cannot think he wished so soon to die With all his senses full of eager heat, And rosy years that stood expectant by To buckle the winged sandals on their feet, He that was friends with Earth, and all her sweet Took with both hands unsparingly: Truly this life is precious to the root, And good the feel of grass beneath the foot; To lie in buttercups and clover-bloom, 420 Tenants in common with the bees, And watch the white clouds drift through gulfs of trees, Is better than long waiting in the tomb; Only once more to feel the coming spring As the birds feel it, when it bids them sing, Only once more to see the moon Through leaf-fringed abbey-arches of the elms Curve her mild sickle in the West Sweet with the breath of haycocks, were a boon Worth any promise of soothsayer realms 430 Or casual hope of being elsewhere blest; To take December by the beard And crush the creaking snow with springy foot, While overhead the North's dumb streamers shoot, Till Winter fawn upon the cheek endeared, Then the long evening-ends Lingered by cosy chimney-nooks, With high companionship of books Or slippered talk of friends And sweet habitual looks, Is better than to stop the ears with dust: 441 Too soon the spectre comes to say, 'Thou must!'

2.

When toil-crooked hands are crost upon the breast, They comfort us with sense of rest; They must be glad to lie forever still; Their work is ended with their day; Another fills their room; 't is the World's ancient way, Whether for good or ill; But the deft spinners of the brain, Who love each added day and find it gain, 450 Them overtakes the doom To snap the half-grown flower upon the loom (Trophy that was to be of life long pain), The thread no other skill can ever knit again. 'Twas so with him, for he was glad to live, 'Twas doubly so, for he left work begun; Could not this eagerness of Fate forgive Till all the allotted flax were spun? It matters not; for, go at night or noon, A friend, whene'er he dies, has died too soon, 460 And, once we hear the hopeless He is dead, So far as flesh hath knowledge, all is said.

VI

1.

I seem to see the black procession go: That crawling prose of death too well I know, The vulgar paraphrase of glorious woe; I see it wind through that unsightly grove, Once beautiful, but long defaced With granite permanence of cockney taste And all those grim disfigurements we love: There, then, we leave him: Him? such costly waste 470 Nature rebels at: and it is not true Of those most precious parts of him we knew: Could we be conscious but as dreamers be, 'Twere sweet to leave this shifting life of tents Sunk in the changeless calm of Deity; Nay, to be mingled with the elements, The fellow-servants of creative powers, Partaker in the solemn year's events, To share the work of busy-fingered hours, To be night's silent almoner of dew, 480 To rise again in plants and breathe and grow, To stream as tides the ocean caverns through, Or with the rapture of great winds to blow About earth's shaken coignes, were not a fate To leave us all-disconsolate; Even endless slumber in the sweetening sod Of charitable earth That takes out all our mortal stains, And makes us cleanlier neighbors of the clod, Methinks were better worth Than the poor fruit of most men's wakeful pains, 491 The heart's insatiable ache: But such was not his faith, Nor mine: it may be he had trod Outside the plain old path of God thus spake, But God to him was very God And not a visionary wraith Skulking in murky corners of the mind, And he was sure to be Somehow, somewhere, imperishable as He, 500 Not with His essence mystically combined, As some high spirits long, but whole and free, A perfected and conscious Agassiz. And such I figure him: the wise of old Welcome and own him of their peaceful fold, Not truly with the guild enrolled Of him who seeking inward guessed Diviner riddles than the rest, And groping in the darks of thought Touched the Great Hand and knew it not; 510 Rather he shares the daily light, From reason's charier fountains won, Of his great chief, the slow-paced Stagyrite, And Cuvier clasps once more his long-lost son.

2.

The shape erect is prone: forever stilled The winning tongue; the forehead's high-piled heap, A cairn which every science helped to build, Unvalued will its golden secrets keep: He knows at last if Life or Death be best: Wherever he be flown, whatever vest 520 The being hath put on which lately here So many-friended was, so full of cheer To make men feel the Seeker's noble zest, We have not lost him all; he is not gone To the dumb herd of them that wholly die; The beauty of his better self lives on In minds he touched with fire, in many an eye He trained to Truth's exact severity; He was a Teacher: why be grieved for him Whose living word still stimulates the air? 530 In endless file shall loving scholars come The glow of his transmitted touch to share, And trace his features with an eye less dim Than ours whose sense familiar wont makes dumb.



TO HOLMES

ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY

Dear Wendell, why need count the years Since first your genius made me thrill, If what moved then to smiles or tears, Or both contending, move me still?

What has the Calendar to do With poets? What Time's fruitless tooth With gay immortals such as you Whose years but emphasize your youth?

One air gave both their lease of breath; The same paths lured our boyish feet; One earth will hold us safe in death With dust of saints and scholars sweet.

Our legends from one source were drawn, I scarce distinguish yours from mine, And don't we make the Gentiles yawn With 'You remembers?' o'er our wine!

If I, with too senescent air, Invade your elder memory's pale, You snub me with a pitying 'Where Were you in the September Gale?'

Both stared entranced at Lafayette, Saw Jackson dubbed with LL.D. What Cambridge saw not strikes us yet As scarcely worth one's while to see.

Ten years my senior, when my name In Harvard's entrance-book was writ, Her halls still echoed with the fame Of you, her poet and her wit.

'Tis fifty years from then to now; But your Last Leaf renews its green, Though, for the laurels on your brow (So thick they crowd), 'tis hardly seen.

The oriole's fledglings fifty times Have flown from our familiar elms; As many poets with their rhymes Oblivion's darkling dust o'erwhelms.

The birds are hushed, the poets gone Where no harsh critic's lash can reach, And still your winged brood sing on To all who love our English speech.

Nay, let the foolish records he That make believe you're seventy-five: You're the old Wendell still to me,— And that's the youngest man alive.

The gray-blue eyes, I see them still, The gallant front with brown o'erhung, The shape alert, the wit at will, The phrase that stuck, but never stung.

You keep your youth as yon Scotch firs, Whose gaunt line my horizon hems, Though twilight all the lowland blurs, Hold sunset in their ruddy stems.

You with the elders? Yes, 'tis true, But in no sadly literal sense, With elders and coevals too, Whose verb admits no preterite tense.

Master alike in speech and song Of fame's great antiseptic—Style, You with the classic few belong Who tempered wisdom with a smile.

Outlive us all! Who else like you Could sift the seedcorn from our chaff, And make us with the pen we knew Deathless at least in epitaph?



IN A COPY OF OMAR KHAYYAM

These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred, Each softly lucent as a rounded moon; The diver Omar plucked them from their bed, Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.

Fit rosary for a queen, in shape and hue, When Contemplation tells her pensive beads Of mortal thoughts, forever old and new. Fit for a queen? Why, surely then for you!

The moral? Where Doubt's eddies toss and twirl Faith's slender shallop till her footing reel, Plunge: if you find not peace beneath the whirl, Groping, you may like Omar grasp a pearl.



ON RECEIVING A COPY OF MR. AUSTIN DOBSON'S 'OLD WORLD IDYLLS'

I

At length arrived, your book I take To read in for the author's sake; Too gray for new sensations grown, Can charm to Art or Nature known This torpor from my senses shake?

Hush! my parched ears what runnels slake? Is a thrush gurgling from the brake? Has Spring, on all the breezes blown, At length arrived?

Long may you live such songs to make, And I to listen while you wake, With skill of late disused, each tone Of the Lesboum, barbiton, At mastery, through long finger-ache, At length arrived.

II

As I read on, what changes steal O'er me and through, from head to heel? A rapier thrusts coat-skirt aside, My rough Tweeds bloom to silken pride,— Who was it laughed? Your hand, Dick Steele!

Down vistas long of clipt charmille Watteau as Pierrot leads the reel; Tabor and pipe the dancers guide As I read on.

While in and out the verses wheel The wind-caught robes trim feet reveal, Lithe ankles that to music glide, But chastely and by chance descried; Art? Nature? Which do I most feel As I read on?



TO C.F. BRADFORD

ON THE GIFT OF A MEERSCHAUM PIPE

The pipe came safe, and welcome too, As anything must be from you; A meerschaum pure, 'twould float as light As she the girls call Amphitrite. Mixture divine of foam and clay, From both it stole the best away: Its foam is such as crowns the glow Of beakers brimmed by Veuve Clicquot; Its clay is but congested lymph Jove chose to make some choicer nymph; And here combined,—why, this must be The birth of some enchanted sea, Shaped to immortal form, the type And very Venus of a pipe.

When high I heap it with the weed From Lethe wharf, whose potent seed Nicotia, big from Bacchus, bore And cast upon Virginia's shore, I'll think,—So fill the fairer bowl And wise alembic of thy soul, With herbs far-sought that shall distil, Not fumes to slacken thought and will, But bracing essences that nerve To wait, to dare, to strive, to serve.

When curls the smoke in eddies soft, And hangs a shifting dream aloft, That gives and takes, though chance-designed, The impress of the dreamer's mind, I'll think,—So let the vapors bred By Passion, in the heart or head, Pass off and upward into space, Waving farewells of tenderest grace, Remembered in some happier time, To blend their beauty with my rhyme.

While slowly o'er its candid bowl The color deepens (as the soul That burns in mortals leaves its trace Of bale or beauty on the face), I'll think,—So let the essence rare Of years consuming make me fair; So, 'gainst the ills of life profuse, Steep me in some narcotic juice; And if my soul must part with all That whiteness which we greenness call, Smooth back, O Fortune, half thy frown, And make me beautifully brown!

Dream-forger, I refill thy cup With reverie's wasteful pittance up, And while the fire burns slow away, Hiding itself in ashes gray, I'll think,—As inward Youth retreats, Compelled to spare his wasting heats, When Life's Ash-Wednesday comes about, And my head's gray with fires burnt out, While stays one spark to light the eye, With the last flash of memory, 'Twill leap to welcome C.F.B., Who sent my favorite pipe to me.



BANKSIDE

(HOME OF EDMUND QUINCY)

DEDHAM, MAY 21, 1877

I

I christened you in happier days, before These gray forebodings on my brow were seen; You are still lovely in your new-leaved green; The brimming river soothes his grassy shore; The bridge is there; the rock with lichens hoar; And the same shadows on the water lean, Outlasting us. How many graves between That day and this! How many shadows more Darken my heart, their substance from these eyes Hidden forever! So our world is made Of life and death commingled; and the sighs Outweigh the smiles, in equal balance laid: What compensation? None, save that the Allwise So schools us to love things that cannot fade.

II

Thank God, he saw you last in pomp of May, Ere any leaf had felt the year's regret; Your latest image in his memory set Was fair as when your landscape's peaceful sway Charmed dearer eyes with his to make delay On Hope's long prospect,—as if They forget The happy, They, the unspeakable Three, whose debt, Like the hawk's shadow, blots our brightest day: Better it is that ye should look so fair. Slopes that he loved, and ever-murmuring pines That make a music out of silent air, And bloom-heaped orchard-trees in prosperous lines; In you the heart some sweeter hints divines, And wiser, than in winter's dull despair.

III

Old Friend, farewell! Your kindly door again I enter, but the master's hand in mine No more clasps welcome, and the temperate wine, That cheered our long nights, other lips must stain: All is unchanged, but I expect in vain The face alert, the manners free and fine, The seventy years borne lightly as the pine Wears its first down of snow in green disdain: Much did he, and much well; yet most of all I prized his skill in leisure and the ease Of a life flowing full without a plan; For most are idly busy; him I call Thrice fortunate who knew himself to please, Learned in those arts that make a gentleman.

IV

Nor deem he lived unto himself alone; His was the public spirit of his sire, And in those eyes, soft with domestic fire, A quenchless light of fiercer temper shone What time about, the world our shame was blown On every wind; his soul would not conspire With selfish men to soothe the mob's desire, Veiling with garlands Moloch's bloody stone; The high-bred instincts of a better day Ruled in his blood, when to be citizen Rang Roman yet, and a Free People's sway Was not the exchequer of impoverished men, Nor statesmanship with loaded votes to play, Nor public office a tramps' boosing-ken.



JOSEPH WINLOCK

DIED JUNE 11, 1875

Shy soul and stalwart, man of patient will Through years one hair's-breadth on our Dark to gain, Who, from the stars he studied not in vain, Had learned their secret to be strong and still, Careless of fames that earth's tin trumpets fill; Born under Leo, broad of build and brain, While others slept, he watched in that hushed fane Of Science, only witness of his skill: Sudden as falls a shooting-star he fell, But inextinguishable his luminous trace In mind and heart of all that knew him well. Happy man's doom! To him the Fates were known Of orbs dim hovering on the skirts of space, Unprescient, through God's mercy, of his own!



SONNET

TO FANNY ALEXANDER

Unconscious as the sunshine, simply sweet And generous as that, thou dost not close Thyself in art, as life were but a rose To rumple bee-like with luxurious feet; Thy higher mind therein finds sure retreat, But not from care of common hopes and woes; Thee the dark chamber, thee the unfriended, knows, Although no babbling crowds thy praise repeat: Consummate artist, who life's landscape bleak Hast brimmed with sun to many a clouded eye, Touched to a brighter hue the beggar's cheek, Hung over orphaned lives a gracious sky, And traced for eyes, that else would vainly seek, Fair pictures of an angel drawing nigh!



JEFFRIES WYMAN

DIED SEPTEMBER 4, 1874

The wisest man could ask no more of Fate Than to be simple, modest, manly, true, Safe from the Many, honored by the Few; To count as naught in World, or Church, or State, But, inwardly in secret to be great; To feel mysterious Nature ever new; To touch, if not to grasp, her endless clue, And learn by each discovery how to wait. He widened knowledge and escaped the praise; He wisely taught, because more wise to learn; He toiled for Science, not to draw men's gaze, But for her lore of self-denial stern. That such a man could spring from our decays Fans the soul's nobler faith until it burn.



TO A FRIEND

WHO GAVE ME A GROUP OF WEEDS AND GRASSES, AFTER A DRAWING OF DUeRER

True as the sun's own work, but more refined, It tells of love behind the artist's eye, Of sweet companionships with earth and sky, And summers stored, the sunshine of the mind. What peace! Sure, ere you breathe, the fickle wind Will break its truce and bend that grass-plume high, Scarcely yet quiet from the gilded fly That flits a more luxurious perch to find. Thanks for a pleasure that can never pall, A serene moment, deftly caught and kept To make immortal summer on my wall. Had he who drew such gladness ever wept? Ask rather could he else have seen at all, Or grown in Nature's mysteries an adept?



WITH AN ARMCHAIR

1.

About the oak that framed this chair, of old The seasons danced their round; delighted wings Brought music to its boughs; shy woodland things Shared its broad roof, 'neath whose green glooms grown bold, Lovers, more shy than they, their secret told; The resurrection of a thousand springs Swelled in its veins, and dim imaginings Teased them, perchance, of life more manifold. Such shall it know when its proud arms enclose My Lady Goshawk, musing here at rest, Careless of him who into exile goes, Yet, while his gift by those fair limbs is prest, Through some fine sympathy of nature knows That, seas between us, she is still his guest.

2.

Yet sometimes, let me dream, the conscious wood A momentary vision may renew Of him who counts it treasure that he knew, Though but in passing, such a priceless good, And, like an elder brother, felt his mood Uplifted by the spell that kept her true, Amid her lightsome compeers, to the few That wear the crown of serious womanhood: Were he so happy, think of him as one Who in the Louvre or Pitti feels his soul Rapt by some dead face which, till then unseen, Moves like a memory, and, till life outrun, Is vexed with vague misgiving past control, Of nameless loss and thwarted might-have-been.



E.G. DE R.

Why should I seek her spell to decompose Or to its source each rill of influence trace That feeds the brimming river of her grace? The petals numbered but degrade to prose Summer's triumphant poem of the rose: Enough for me to watch the wavering chase, Like wind o'er grass, of moods across her face, Fairest in motion, fairer in repose. Steeped in her sunshine, let me, while I may, Partake the bounty; ample 'tis for me That her mirth cheats my temples of their gray, Her charm makes years long spent seem yet to be. Wit, goodness, grace, swift flash from grave to gay,— All these are good, but better far is she.



BON VOYAGE

Ship, blest to bear such freight across the blue, May stormless stars control thy horoscope; In keel and hull, in every spar and rope, Be night and day to thy dear office true! Ocean, men's path and their divider too, No fairer shrine of memory and hope To the underworld adown thy westering slope E'er vanished, or whom such regrets pursue: Smooth all thy surges as when Jove to Crete Swam with less costly burthen, and prepare A pathway meet for her home-coming soon With golden undulations such as greet The printless summer-sandals of the moon And tempt the Nautilus his cruise to dare!



TO WHITTIER

ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY

New England's poet, rich in love as years, Her hills and valleys praise thee, her swift brooks Dance in thy verse; to her grave sylvan nooks Thy steps allure us, which the wood-thrush hears As maids their lovers', and no treason fears; Through thee her Merrimacs and Agiochooks And many a name uncouth win gracious looks, Sweetly familiar to both Englands' ears: Peaceful by birthright, as a virgin lake, The lily's anchorage, which no eyes behold Save those of stars, yet for thy brother's sake That lay in bonds, thou blewst a blast as bold As that wherewith the heart of Roland brake, Far heard across the New World and the Old.



ON AN AUTUMN SKETCH OF H.G. WILD

Thanks to the artist, ever on my wall The sunset stays: that hill in glory rolled, Those trees and clouds in crimson and in gold, Burn on, nor cool when evening's shadows fall. Not round these splendors Midnight wraps her pall; These leaves the flush of Autumn's vintage hold In Winter's spite, nor can the Northwind bold Deface my chapel's western window small: On one, ah me! October struck his frost, But not repaid him with those Tyrian hues; His naked boughs but tell him what is lost, And parting comforts of the sun refuse: His heaven is bare,—ah, were its hollow crost Even with a cloud whose light were yet to lose!



TO MISS D.T.

ON HER GIVING ME A DRAWING OF LITTLE STREET ARABS

As, cleansed of Tiber's and Oblivion's slime, Glow Farnesina's vaults with shapes again That dreamed some exiled artist from his pain Back to his Athens and the Muse's clime, So these world-orphaned waifs of Want and Crime, Purged by Art's absolution from the stain Of the polluting city-flood, regain Ideal grace secure from taint of time. An Attic frieze you give, a pictured song; For as with words the poet paints, for you The happy pencil at its labor sings, Stealing his privilege, nor does him wrong, Beneath the false discovering the true, And Beauty's best in unregarded things.



WITH A COPY OF AUCASSIN AND NICOLETE

Leaves fit to have been poor Juliet's cradle-rhyme, With gladness of a heart long quenched in mould They vibrate still, a nest not yet grown cold From its fledged burthen. The numb hand of Time Vainly his glass turns; here is endless prime; Here lips their roses keep and locks their gold; Here Love in pristine innocency bold Speaks what our grosser conscience makes a crime. Because it tells the dream that all have known Once in their lives, and to life's end the few; Because its seeds o'er Memory's desert blown Spring up in heartsease such as Eden knew; Because it hath a beauty all its own, Dear Friend, I plucked this herb of grace for you.



ON PLANTING A TREE AT INVERARAY

Who does his duty is a question Too complex to be solved by me, But he, I venture the suggestion, Does part of his that plants a tree.

For after he is dead and buried, And epitaphed, and well forgot, Nay, even his shade by Charon ferried To—let us not inquire to what,

His deed, its author long outliving, By Nature's mother-care increased, Shall stand, his verdant almoner, giving A kindly dole to man and beast.

The wayfarer, at noon reposing, Shall bless its shadow on the grass, Or sheep beneath it huddle, dozing Until the thundergust o'erpass.

The owl, belated in his plundering, Shall here await the friendly night, Blinking whene'er he wakes, and wondering What fool it was invented light.

Hither the busy birds shall flutter, With the light timber for their nests, And, pausing from their labor, utter The morning sunshine in their breasts.

What though his memory shall have vanished, Since the good deed he did survives? It is not wholly to be banished Thus to be part of many lives.

Grow, then, my foster-child, and strengthen, Bough over bough, a murmurous pile, And, as your stately stem shall lengthen, So may the statelier of Argyll!



AN EPISTLE TO GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

'De prodome, Des qu'il s'atorne a grant bonte Ja n'iert tot dit ne tot conte, Que leingue ne puet pas retraire Tant d'enor com prodom set faire.'

CRESTIEN DE TROIES, Li Romans dou Chevalier au Lyon, 784-788.

1874

Curtis, whose Wit, with Fancy arm in arm, Masks half its muscle in its skill to charm, And who so gently can the Wrong expose As sometimes to make converts, never foes, Or only such as good men must expect, Knaves sore with conscience of their own defect, I come with mild remonstrance. Ere I start, A kindlier errand interrupts my heart, And I must utter, though it vex your ears, The love, the honor, felt so many years. 10 Curtis, skilled equally with voice and pen To stir the hearts or mould the minds of men,— That voice whose music, for I've heard you sing Sweet as Casella, can with passion ring, That pen whose rapid ease ne'er trips with haste, Nor scrapes nor sputters, pointed with good taste, First Steele's, then Goldsmith's, next it came to you, Whom Thackeray rated best of all our crew,— Had letters kept you, every wreath were yours; Had the World tempted, all its chariest doors 20 Had swung on flattered hinges to admit Such high-bred manners, such good-natured wit; At courts, in senates, who so fit to serve? And both invited, but you would not swerve, All meaner prizes waiving that you might In civic duty spend your heat and light, Unpaid, untrammelled, with a sweet disdain Refusing posts men grovel to attain. Good Man all own you; what is left me, then, To heighten praise with but Good Citizen? 30

But why this praise to make you blush and stare, And give a backache to your Easy-Chair? Old Crestien rightly says no language can Express the worth of a true Gentleman, And I agree; but other thoughts deride My first intent, and lure my pen aside. Thinking of you, I see my firelight glow On other faces, loved from long ago, Dear to us both, and all these loves combine With this I send and crowd in every line; 40 Fortune with me was in such generous mood That all my friends were yours, and all were good; Three generations come when one I call, And the fair grandame, youngest of them all, In her own Florida who found and sips The fount that fled from Ponce's longing lips. How bright they rise and wreathe my hearthstone round, Divine my thoughts, reply without a sound, And with them many a shape that memory sees, As dear as they, but crowned with aureoles these! 50 What wonder if, with protest in my thought, Arrived, I find 'twas only love I brought? I came with protest; Memory barred the road Till I repaid you half the debt I owed.

No, 'twas not to bring laurels that I came, Nor would you wish it, daily seeing fame, (Or our cheap substitute, unknown of yore,) Dumped like a load of coal at every door, Mime and hetaera getting equal weight With him whose toils heroic saved the State. 60 But praise can harm not who so calmly met Slander's worst word, nor treasured up the debt, Knowing, what all experience serves to show, No mud can soil us but the mud we throw. You have heard harsher voices and more loud, As all must, not sworn liegemen of the crowd, And far aloof your silent mind could keep As when, in heavens with winter-midnight deep, The perfect moon hangs thoughtful, nor can know What hounds her lucent calm drives mad below. 70 But to my business, while you rub your eyes And wonder how you ever thought me wise. Dear friend and old, they say you shake your head And wish some bitter words of mine unsaid: I wish they might be,—there we are agreed; I hate to speak, still more what makes the need; But I must utter what the voice within Dictates, for acquiescence dumb were sin; I blurt ungrateful truths, if so they be, That none may need to say them after me. 80 'Twere my felicity could I attain The temperate zeal that balances your brain; But nature still o'erleaps reflection's plan, And one must do his service as he can. Think you it were not pleasanter to speak Smooth words that leave unflushed the brow and cheek? To sit, well-dined, with cynic smile, unseen In private box, spectator of the scene Where men the comedy of life rehearse, Idly to judge which better and which worse 90 Each hireling actor spoiled his worthless part? Were it not sweeter with a careless heart, In happy commune with the untainted brooks, To dream all day, or, walled with silent books, To hear nor heed the World's unmeaning noise, Safe in my fortress stored with lifelong joys? I love too well the pleasures of retreat Safe from the crowd and cloistered from the street; The fire that whispers its domestic joy, Flickering on walls that knew me still a boy, 100 And knew my saintly father; the full days, Not careworn from the world's soul-squandering ways, Calm days that loiter with snow-silent tread, Nor break my commune with the undying dead; Truants of Time, to-morrow like to-day, That come unhid, and claimless glide away By shelves that sun them in the indulgent Past, Where Spanish castles, even, were built to last, Where saint and sage their silent vigil keep, And wrong hath ceased or sung itself to sleep. 110 Dear were my walks, too, gathering fragrant store Of Mother Nature's simple-minded lore: I learned all weather-signs of day or night; No bird but I could name him by his flight, No distant tree but by his shape was known, Or, near at hand, by leaf or bark alone. This learning won by loving looks I hived As sweeter lore than all from books derived. I know the charm of hillside, field, and wood, Of lake and stream, and the sky's downy brood, 120 Of roads sequestered rimmed with sallow sod, But friends with hardhack, aster, goldenrod, Or succory keeping summer long its trust Of heaven-blue fleckless from the eddying dust: These were my earliest friends, and latest too, Still unestranged, whatever fate may do. For years I had these treasures, knew their worth, Estate most real man can have on earth. I sank too deep in this soft-stuffed repose That hears but rumors of earth's wrongs and woes; 130 Too well these Capuas could my muscles waste, Not void of toils, but toils of choice and taste; These still had kept me could I but have quelled The Puritan drop that in my veins rebelled. But there were times when silent were my books As jailers are, and gave me sullen looks, When verses palled, and even the woodland path, By innocent contrast, fed my heart with wrath, And I must twist my little gift of words Into a scourge of rough and knotted cords 140 Unmusical, that whistle as they swing To leave on shameless backs their purple sting.

How slow Time comes! Gone who so swift as he? Add but a year, 'tis half a century Since the slave's stifled moaning broke my sleep, Heard 'gainst my will in that seclusion deep, Haply heard louder for the silence there, And so my fancied safeguard made my snare. After that moan had sharpened to a cry, And a cloud, hand-broad then, heaped all our sky 150 With its stored vengeance, and such thunders stirred As heaven's and earth's remotest chambers heard, I looked to see an ampler atmosphere By that electric passion-gust blown clear. I looked for this; consider what I see— But I forbear, 'twould please nor you nor me To check the items in the bitter list Of all I counted on and all I mist. Only three instances I choose from all, And each enough to stir a pigeon's gall: 160 Office a fund for ballot-brokers made To pay the drudges of their gainful trade; Our cities taught what conquered cities feel By aediles chosen that they might safely steal; And gold, however got, a title fair To such respect as only gold can bear. I seem to see this; how shall I gainsay What all our journals tell me every day? Poured our young martyrs their high-hearted blood That we might trample to congenial mud 170 The soil with such a legacy sublimed? Methinks an angry scorn is here well-timed: Where find retreat? How keep reproach at bay? Where'er I turn some scandal fouls the way.

Dear friend, if any man I wished to please, 'Twere surely you whose humor's honied ease Flows flecked with gold of thought, whose generous mind Sees Paradise regained by all mankind, Whose brave example still to vanward shines, Cheeks the retreat, and spurs our lagging lines. 180 Was I too bitter? Who his phrase can choose That sees the life-blood of his dearest ooze? I loved my Country so as only they Who love a mother fit to die for may; I loved her old renown, her stainless fame,— What better proof than that I loathed her shame? That many blamed me could not irk me long, But, if you doubted, must I not be wrong? 'Tis not for me to answer; this I know. That man or race so prosperously low 190 Sunk in success that wrath they cannot feel, Shall taste the spurn of parting Fortune's heel; For never land long lease of empire won Whose sons sate silent when base deeds were done.



POSTSCRIPT, 1887

Curtis, so wrote I thirteen years ago, Tost it unfinished by, and left it so; Found lately, I have pieced it out, or tried, Since time for callid juncture was denied. Some of the verses pleased me, it is true, And still were pertinent,—those honoring you. 200 These now I offer: take them, if you will, Like the old hand-grasp, when at Shady Hill We met, or Staten Island, in the days When life was its own spur, nor needed praise. If once you thought me rash, no longer fear; Past my next milestone waits my seventieth year. I mount no longer when the trumpets call; My battle-harness idles on the wall, The spider's castle, camping-ground of dust, Not without dints, and all in front, I trust. 210 Shivering sometimes it calls me as it hears Afar the charge's tramp and clash of spears; But 'tis such murmur only as might be The sea-shell's lost tradition of the sea, That makes me muse and wonder Where? and When? While from my cliff I watch the waves of men That climb to break midway their seeming gain, And think it triumph if they shake their chain. Little I ask of Fate; will she refuse Some days of reconcilement with the Muse? 220 I take my reed again and blow it free Of dusty silence, murmuring, 'Sing to me!' And, as its stops my curious touch retries, The stir of earlier instincts I surprise,— Instincts, if less imperious, yet more strong, And happy in the toil that ends with song.

Home am I come: not, as I hoped might be, To the old haunts, too full of ghosts for me, But to the olden dreams that time endears, And the loved books that younger grow with years; 230 To country rambles, timing with my tread Some happier verse that carols in my head, Yet all with sense of something vainly mist, Of something lost, but when I never wist. How empty seems to me the populous street, One figure gone I daily loved to meet,— The clear, sweet singer with the crown of snow Not whiter than the thoughts that housed below! And, ah, what absence feel I at my side, Like Dante when he missed his laurelled guide, 240 What sense of diminution in the air Once so inspiring, Emerson not there! But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet Lessen like sound of friends' departing feet, And Death is beautiful as feet of friend Coming with welcome at our journey's end; For me Fate gave, whate'er she else denied, A nature sloping to the southern side; I thank her for it, though when clouds arise Such natures double-darken gloomy skies. 250 I muse upon the margin of the sea, Our common pathway to the new To Be, Watching the sails, that lessen more and more, Of good and beautiful embarked before; With bits of wreck I patch the boat shall bear Me to that unexhausted Otherwhere, Whose friendly-peopled shore I sometimes see, By soft mirage uplifted, beckon me, Nor sadly hear, as lower sinks the sun, My moorings to the past snap one by one. 260



II. SENTIMENT

ENDYMION

A MYSTICAL COMMENT ON TITIAN'S 'SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE'

I

My day began not till the twilight fell, And, lo, in ether from heaven's sweetest well, The New Moon swam divinely isolate In maiden silence, she that makes my fate Haply not knowing it, or only so As I the secrets of my sheep may know; Nor ask I more, entirely blest if she, In letting me adore, ennoble me To height of what the Gods meant making man, As only she and her best beauty can. 10 Mine be the love that in itself can find Seed of white thoughts, the lilies of the mind, Seed of that glad surrender of the will That finds in service self's true purpose still: Love that in outward fairness sees the tent Pitched for an inmate far more excellent; Love with a light irradiate to the core, Lit at her lamp, but fed from inborn store; Love thrice-requited with the single joy Of an immaculate vision naught could cloy, 20 Dearer because, so high beyond my scope, My life grew rich with her, unbribed by hope Of other guerdon save to think she knew One grateful votary paid her all her due; Happy if she, high-radiant there, resigned To his sure trust her image in his mind. O fairer even than Peace is when she comes Hushing War's tumult, and retreating drums Fade to a murmur like the sough of bees Hidden among the noon-stilled linden-trees, 30 Bringer of quiet, thou that canst allay The dust and din and travail of the day, Strewer of Silence, Giver of the dew That doth our pastures and our souls renew, Still dwell remote, still on thy shoreless sea Float unattained in silent empery, Still light my thoughts, nor listen to a prayer Would make thee less imperishably fair!

II

Can, then, my twofold nature find content In vain conceits of airy blandishment? 40 Ask I no more? Since yesterday I task My storm-strewn thoughts to tell me what I ask: Faint premenitions of mutation strange Steal o'er my perfect orb, and, with the change, Myself am changed; the shadow of my earth Darkens the disk of that celestial worth Which only yesterday could still suffice Upwards to waft my thoughts in sacrifice; My heightened fancy with its touches warm Moulds to a woman's that ideal form; 50 Nor yet a woman's wholly, but divine With awe her purer essence bred in mine. Was it long brooding on their own surmise, Which, of the eyes engendered, fools the eyes, Or have I seen through that translucent air A Presence shaped in its seclusions bare, My Goddess looking on me from above As look our russet maidens when they love, But high-uplifted, o'er our human heat And passion-paths too rough for her pearl feet? 60

Slowly the Shape took outline as I gazed At her full-orbed or crescent, till, bedazed With wonder-working light that subtly wrought My brain to its own substance, steeping thought In trances such as poppies give, I saw Things shut from vision by sight's sober law, Amorphous, changeful, but defined at last Into the peerless Shape mine eyes hold fast. This, too, at first I worshipt: soon, like wine, Her eyes, in mine poured, frenzy-philtred mine; 70 Passion put Worship's priestly raiment on And to the woman knelt, the Goddess gone. Was I, then, more than mortal made? or she Less than divine that she might mate with me? If mortal merely, could my nature cope With such o'ermastery of maddening hope? If Goddess, could she feel the blissful woe That women in their self-surrender know?

III

Long she abode aloof there in her heaven, Far as the grape-bunch of the Pleiad seven 80 Beyond my madness' utmost leap; but here Mine eyes have feigned of late her rapture near, Moulded of mind-mist that broad day dispels, Here in these shadowy woods and brook-lulled dells.

Have no heaven-habitants e'er felt a void In hearts sublimed with ichor unalloyed? E'er longed to mingle with a mortal fate Intense with pathos of its briefer date? Could she partake, and live, our human stains? Even with the thought there tingles through my veins 90 Sense of unwarned renewal; I, the dead, Receive and house again the ardor fled, As once Alcestis; to the ruddy brim Feel masculine virtue flooding every limb, And life, like Spring returning, brings the key That sets my senses from their winter free, Dancing like naked fauns too glad for shame. Her passion, purified to palest flame, Can it thus kindle? Is her purpose this? I will not argue, lest I lose a bliss 100 That makes me dream Tithonus' fortune mine, (Or what of it was palpably divine Ere came the fruitlessly immortal gift;) I cannot curb my hope's imperious drift That wings with fire my dull mortality; Though fancy-forged, 'tis all I feel or see.

IV

My Goddess sinks; round Latmos' darkening brow Trembles the parting of her presence now, Faint as the perfume left upon the grass By her limbs' pressure or her feet that pass 110 By me conjectured, but conjectured so As things I touch far fainter substance show. Was it mine eyes' imposture I have seen Flit with the moonbeams on from shade to sheen Through the wood-openings? Nay, I see her now Out of her heaven new-lighted, from her brow The hair breeze-scattered, like loose mists that blow Across her crescent, goldening as they go High-kirtled for the chase, and what was shown, Of maiden rondure, like the rose half-blown. 120 If dream, turn real! If a vision, stay! Take mortal shape, my philtre's spell obey! If hags compel thee from thy secret sky With gruesome incantations, why not I, Whose only magic is that I distil A potion, blent of passion, thought, and will, Deeper in reach, in force of fate more rich, Than e'er was juice wrung by Thessalian witch From moon-enchanted herbs,—a potion brewed Of my best life in each diviner mood? 130 Myself the elixir am, myself the bowl Seething and mantling with my soul of soul. Taste and be humanized: what though the cup, With thy lips frenzied, shatter? Drink it up! If but these arms may clasp, o'erquited so, My world, thy heaven, all life means I shall know.

V

Sure she hath heard my prayer and granted half, As Gods do who at mortal madness laugh. Yet if life's solid things illusion seem, Why may not substance wear the mask of dream? 140 In sleep she comes; she visits me in dreams, And, as her image in a thousand streams, So in my veins, that her obey, she sees, Floating and flaming there, her images Bear to my little world's remotest zone Glad messages of her, and her alone. With silence-sandalled Sleep she comes to me, (But softer-footed, sweeter-browed, than she,) In motion gracious as a seagull's wing, And all her bright limbs, moving, seem to sing. 150 Let me believe so, then, if so I may With the night's bounty feed my beggared day. In dreams I see her lay the goddess down With bow and quiver, and her crescent-crown Flicker and fade away to dull eclipse As down to mine she deigns her longed-for lips; And as her neck my happy arms enfold, Flooded and lustred with her loosened gold, She whispers words each sweeter than a kiss: Then, wakened with the shock of sudden bliss, 160 My arms are empty, my awakener fled, And, silent in the silent sky o'erhead, But coldly as on ice-plated snow, she gleams, Herself the mother and the child of dreams.

VI

Gone is the time when phantasms could appease My quest phantasmal and bring cheated ease; When, if she glorified my dreams, I felt Through all my limbs a change immortal melt At touch of hers illuminate with soul. Not long could I be stilled with Fancy's dole; 170 Too soon the mortal mixture in me caught Red fire from her celestial flame, and fought For tyrannous control in all my veins: My fool's prayer was accepted; what remains? Or was it some eidolon merely, sent By her who rules the shades in banishment, To mock me with her semblance? Were it thus, How 'scape I shame, whose will was traitorous? What shall compensate an ideal dimmed? How blanch again my statue virgin-limbed, 180 Soiled with the incense-smoke her chosen priest Poured more profusely as within decreased The fire unearthly, fed with coals from far Within the soul's shrine? Could my fallen star Be set in heaven again by prayers and tears And quenchless sacrifice of all my years, How would the victim to the flamen leap, And life for life's redemption paid hold cheap!

But what resource when she herself descends From her blue throne, and o'er her vassal bends 190 That shape thrice-deified by love, those eyes Wherein the Lethe of all others lies? When my white queen of heaven's remoteness tires, Herself against her other self conspires, Takes woman's nature, walks in mortal ways, And finds in my remorse her beauty's praise? Yet all would I renounce to dream again The dream in dreams fulfilled that made my pain, My noble pain that heightened all my years With crowns to win and prowess-breeding tears; 200 Nay, would that dream renounce once more to see Her from her sky there looking down at me!

VII

Goddess, reclimb thy heaven, and be once more An inaccessible splendor to adore, A faith, a hope of such transcendent worth As bred ennobling discontent with earth; Give back the longing, back the elated mood That, fed with thee, spurned every meaner good; Give even the spur of impotent despair That, without hope, still bade aspire and dare; 210 Give back the need to worship, that still pours Down to the soul the virtue it adores!

Nay, brightest and most beautiful, deem naught These frantic words, the reckless wind of thought; Still stoop, still grant,—I live but in thy will; Be what thou wilt, but be a woman still! Vainly I cried, nor could myself believe That what I prayed for I would fain receive; My moon is set; my vision set with her; No more can worship vain my pulses stir. 220 Goddess Triform, I own thy triple spell, My heaven's queen,—queen, too, of my earth and hell!



THE BLACK PREACHER

A BRETON LEGEND

At Carnac in Brittany, close on the bay, They show you a church, or rather the gray Ribs of a dead one, left there to bleach With the wreck lying near on the crest of the beach, Roofless and splintered with thunder-stone, 'Mid lichen-blurred gravestones all alone; 'Tis the kind of ruin strange sights to see That may have their teaching for you and me.

Something like this, then, my guide had to tell, Perched on a saint cracked across when he fell; 10 But since I might chance give his meaning a wrench, He talking his patois and I English-French, I'll put what he told me, preserving the tone, In a rhymed prose that makes it half his, half my own.

An abbey-church stood here, once on a time, Built as a death-bed atonement for crime: 'Twas for somebody's sins, I know not whose; But sinners are plenty, and you can choose. Though a cloister now of the dusk-winged bat, 'Twas rich enough once, and the brothers grew fat, 20 Looser in girdle and purpler in jowl, Singing good rest to the founder's lost soul.

But one day came Northmen, and lithe tongues of fire Lapped up the chapter-house, licked off the spire, And left all a rubbish-heap, black and dreary, Where only the wind sings miserere.

No priest has kneeled since at the altar's foot, Whose crannies are searched by the nightshade's root, Nor sound of service is ever heard, Except from throat of the unclean bird, 30 Hooting to unassoiled shapes as they pass In midnights unholy his witches' mass, Or shouting 'Ho! ho!' from the belfry high As the Devil's sabbath-train whirls by.

But once a year, on the eve of All-Souls, Through these arches dishallowed the organ rolls, Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work, The chimes peal muffled with sea-mists mirk, The skeleton windows are traced anew On the baleful nicker of corpse-lights blue, 40 And the ghosts must come, so the legend saith, To a preaching of Reverend Doctor Death.

Abbots, monks, barons, and ladies fair Hear the dull summons and gather there: No rustle of silk now, no clink of mail, Nor ever a one greets his church-mate pale; No knight whispers love in the chatelaine's ear, His next-door neighbor this five-hundred year; No monk has a sleek benedicite For the great lord shadowy now as he; 50 Nor needeth any to hold his breath, Lest he lose the least word of Doctor Death.

He chooses his text in the Book Divine, Tenth verse of the Preacher in chapter nine: '"Whatsoever thy hand shall find thee to do, That do with thy whole might, or thou shalt rue; For no man is wealthy, or wise, or brave, In that quencher of might-be's and would-be's, the grave." Bid by the Bridegroom, "To-morrow," ye said, And To-morrow was digging a trench for your bed; 60 Ye said, "God can wait; let us finish our wine;" Ye had wearied Him, fools, and that last knock was mine!'

But I can't pretend to give you the sermon, Or say if the tongue were French, Latin, or German; Whatever he preached in, I give you my word The meaning was easy to all that heard; Famous preachers there have been and be, But never was one so convincing as he; So blunt was never a begging friar, No Jesuit's tongue so barbed with fire, 70 Cameronian never, nor Methodist, Wrung gall out of Scripture with such a twist.

And would you know who his hearers must be? I tell you just what my guide told me: Excellent teaching men have, day and night, From two earnest friars, a black and a white, The Dominican Death and the Carmelite Life; And between these two there is never strife, For each has his separate office and station, And each his own work in the congregation; 80 Whoso to the white brother deafens his ears, And cannot be wrought on by blessings or tears, Awake In his coffin must wait and wait, In that blackness of darkness that means too late, And come once a year, when the ghost-bell tolls, As till Doomsday it shall on the eve of All-Souls, To hear Doctor Death, whose words smart with the brine Of the Preacher, the tenth verse of chapter nine.



ARCADIA REDIVIVA

I, walking the familiar street, While a crammed horse-car jingled through it, Was lifted from my prosy feet And in Arcadia ere I knew it.

Fresh sward for gravel soothed my tread, And shepherd's pipes my ear delighted; The riddle may be lightly read: I met two lovers newly plighted.

They murmured by in happy care, New plans for paradise devising, 10 Just as the moon, with pensive stare, O'er Mistress Craigie's pines was rising.

Astarte, known nigh threescore years, Me to no speechless rapture urges; Them in Elysium she enspheres, Queen, from of old, of thaumaturges.

The railings put forth bud and bloom, The house-fronts all with myrtles twine them, And light-winged Loves in every room Make nests, and then with kisses line them. 20

O sweetness of untasted life! O dream, its own supreme fulfillment! O hours with all illusion rife, As ere the heart divined what ill meant!

'Et ego', sighed I to myself, And strove some vain regrets to bridle, 'Though now laid dusty on the shelf, Was hero once of such an idyl!

'An idyl ever newly sweet, Although since Adam's day recited, 30 Whose measures time them to Love's feet, Whose sense is every ill requited.'

Maiden, if I may counsel, drain Each drop of this enchanted season, For even our honeymoons must wane, Convicted of green cheese by Reason.

And none will seem so safe from change, Nor in such skies benignant hover, As this, beneath whose witchery strange You tread on rose-leaves with your lover. 40

The glass unfilled all tastes can fit, As round its brim Conjecture dances; For not Mephisto's self hath wit To draw such vintages as Fancy's.

When our pulse beats its minor key, When play-time halves and school-time doubles, Age fills the cup with serious tea, Which once Dame Clicquot starred with bubbles.

'Fie, Mr. Graybeard! Is this wise? Is this the moral of a poet, 50 Who, when the plant of Eden dies, Is privileged once more to sow it!

'That herb of clay-disdaining root, From stars secreting what it feeds on, Is burnt-out passion's slag and soot Fit soil to strew its dainty seeds on?

'Pray, why, if in Arcadia once, Need one so soon forget the way there? Or why, once there, be such a dunce As not contentedly to stay there?' 60

Dear child, 'twas but a sorry jest, And from my heart I hate the cynic Who makes the Book of Life a nest For comments staler than rabbinic.

If Love his simple spell but keep, Life with ideal eyes to flatter, The Grail itself were crockery cheap To Every-day's communion-platter.

One Darby is to me well known, Who, as the hearth between them blazes, 70 Sees the old moonlight shine on Joan, And float her youthward in its hazes.

He rubs his spectacles, he stares,— 'Tis the same face that witched him early! He gropes for his remaining hairs,— Is this a fleece that feels so curly?

'Good heavens! but now 'twas winter gray, And I of years had more than plenty; The almanac's a fool! 'Tis May! Hang family Bibles! I am twenty! 80

'Come, Joan, your arm; we'll walk the room— The lane, I mean—do you remember? How confident the roses bloom, As if it ne'er could be December!

'Nor more it shall, while in your eyes My heart its summer heat recovers, And you, howe'er your mirror lies, Find your old beauty in your lover's.'



THE NEST

MAY

When oaken woods with buds are pink, And new-come birds each morning sing, When fickle May on Summer's brink Pauses, and knows not which to fling, Whether fresh bud and bloom again, Or hoar-frost silvering hill and plain,

Then from the honeysuckle gray The oriole with experienced quest Twitches the fibrous bark away, The cordage of his hammock-nest. Cheering his labor with a note Rich as the orange of his throat.

High o'er the loud and dusty road The soft gray cup in safety swings, To brim ere August with its load Of downy breasts and throbbing wings, O'er which the friendly elm-tree heaves An emerald roof with sculptured eaves.

Below, the noisy World drags by In the old way, because it must, The bride with heartbreak in her eye, The mourner following hated dust: Thy duty, winged flame of Spring, Is but to love, and fly, and sing.

Oh, happy life, to soar and sway Above the life by mortals led, Singing the merry months away, Master, not slave of daily bread, And, when the Autumn comes, to flee Wherever sunshine beckons thee!



PALINODE—DECEMBER

Like some lorn abbey now, the wood Stands roofless in the bitter air; In ruins on its floor is strewed The carven foliage quaint and rare, And homeless winds complain along The columned choir once thrilled with song.

And thou, dear nest, whence joy and praise The thankful oriole used to pour, Swing'st empty while the north winds chase Their snowy swarms from Labrador: But, loyal to the happy past, I love thee still for what thou wast.

Ah, when the Summer graces flee From other nests more dear than thou, And, where June crowded once, I see Only bare trunk and disleaved bough; When springs of life that gleamed and gushed Run chilled, and slower, and are hushed;

When our own branches, naked long, The vacant nests of Spring betray, Nurseries of passion, love, and song That vanished as our year grew gray; When Life drones o'er a tale twice told O'er embers pleading with the cold,—

I'll trust, that, like the birds of Spring, Our good goes not without repair, But only flies to soar and sing Far off in some diviner air, Where we shall find it in the calms Of that fair garden 'neath the palms.



A YOUTHFUL EXPERIMENT IN ENGLISH HEXAMETERS

IMPRESSIONS OF HOMER

Sometimes come pauses of calm, when the rapt bard, holding his heart back, Over his deep mind muses, as when o'er awe-stricken ocean Poises a heapt cloud luridly, ripening the gale and the thunder; Slow rolls onward the verse with a long swell heaving and swinging, Seeming to wait till, gradually wid'ning from far-off horizons, Piling the deeps up, heaping the glad-hearted surges before it, Gathers the thought as a strong wind darkening and cresting the tumult. Then every pause, every heave, each trough in the waves, has its meaning; Full-sailed, forth like a tall ship steadies the theme, and around it, Leaping beside it in glad strength, running in wild glee beyond it, Harmonies billow exulting and floating the soul where it lists them, Swaying the listener's fantasy hither and thither like drift-weed.



BIRTHDAY VERSES

WRITTEN IN A CHILD'S ALBUM

'Twas sung of old in hut and hall How once a king in evil hour Hung musing o'er his castle wall, And, lost in idle dreams, let fall Into the sea his ring of power.

Then, let him sorrow as he might, And pledge his daughter and his throne To who restored the jewel bright, The broken spell would ne'er unite; The grim old ocean held its own.

Those awful powers on man that wait, On man, the beggar or the king, To hovel bare or hall of state A magic ring that masters fate With each succeeding birthday bring.

Therein are set four jewels rare: Pearl winter, summer's ruby blaze, Spring's emerald, and, than all more fair, Fall's pensive opal, doomed to bear A heart of fire bedreamed with haze.

To him the simple spell who knows The spirits of the ring to sway, Fresh power with every sunrise flows, And royal pursuivants are those That fly his mandates to obey.

But he that with a slackened will Dreams of things past or things to be, From him the charm is slipping still, And drops, ere he suspect the ill, Into the inexorable sea.



ESTRANGEMENT

The path from me to you that led, Untrodden long, with grass is grown, Mute carpet that his lieges spread Before the Prince Oblivion When he goes visiting the dead.

And who are they but who forget? You, who my coming could surmise Ere any hint of me as yet Warned other ears and other eyes, See the path blurred without regret.

But when I trace its windings sweet With saddened steps, at every spot That feels the memory in my feet, Each grass-blade turns forget-me-not, Where murmuring bees your name repeat.



PHOEBE

Ere pales in Heaven the morning star, A bird, the loneliest of its kind, Hears Dawn's faint footfall from afar While all its mates are dumb and blind.

It is a wee sad-colored thing, As shy and secret as a maid, That, ere in choir the robins sing, Pipes its own name like one afraid.

It seems pain-prompted to repeat The story of some ancient ill, But Phoebe! Phoebe! sadly sweet Is all it says, and then is still.

It calls and listens. Earth and sky, Hushed by the pathos of its fate, Listen: no whisper of reply Comes from its doom-dissevered mate.

Phoebe! it calls and calls again, And Ovid, could he but have heard, Had hung a legendary pain About the memory of the bird;

A pain articulate so long, In penance of some mouldered crime Whose ghost still flies the Furies' thong Down the waste solitudes of time.

Waif of the young World's wonder-hour, When gods found mortal maidens fair, And will malign was joined with power Love's kindly laws to overbear,

Like Progne, did it feel the stress And coil of the prevailing words Close round its being, and compress Man's ampler nature to a bird's?

One only memory left of all The motley crowd of vanished scenes, Hers, and vain impulse to recall By repetition what it means.

Phoebe! is all it has to say In plaintive cadence o'er and o'er, Like children that have lost their way, And know their names, but nothing more.

Is it a type, since Nature's Lyre Vibrates to every note in man, Of that insatiable desire, Meant to be so since life began?

I, in strange lands at gray of dawn, Wakeful, have heard that fruitless plaint Through Memory's chambers deep withdrawn Renew its iterations faint.

So nigh! yet from remotest years It summons back its magic, rife With longings unappeased, and tears Drawn from the very source of life.



DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE

How was I worthy so divine a loss, Deepening my midnights, kindling all my morns? Why waste such precious wood to make my cross, Such far-sought roses for my crown of thorns?

And when she came, how earned I such a gift? Why spend on me, a poor earth-delving mole, The fireside sweetnesses, the heavenward lift, The hourly mercy, of a woman's soul?

Ah, did we know to give her all her right, What wonders even in our poor clay were done! It is not Woman leaves us to our night, But our brute earth that grovels from her sun.

Our nobler cultured fields and gracious domes We whirl too oft from her who still shines on To light in vain our caves and clefts, the homes Of night-bird instincts pained till she be gone.

Still must this body starve our souls with shade; But when Death makes us what we were before, Then shall her sunshine all our depths invade, And not a shadow stain heaven's crystal floor.



THE RECALL

Come back before the birds are flown, Before the leaves desert the tree, And, through the lonely alleys blown, Whisper their vain regrets to me Who drive before a blast more rude, The plaything of my gusty mood, In vain pursuing and pursued!

Nay, come although the boughs be bare, Though snowflakes fledge the summer's nest, And in some far Ausonian air The thrush, your minstrel, warm his breast. Come, sunshine's treasurer, and bring To doubting flowers their faith in spring, To birds and me the need to sing!



ABSENCE

Sleep is Death's image,—poets tell us so; But Absence is the bitter self of Death, And, you away, Life's lips their red forego, Parched in an air unfreshened by your breath.

Light of those eyes that made the light of mine, Where shine you? On what happier fields and flowers? Heaven's lamps renew their lustre less divine, But only serve to count my darkened hours.

If with your presence went your image too, That brain-born ghost my path would never cross Which meets me now where'er I once met you, Then vanishes, to multiply my loss.



MONNA LISA

She gave me all that woman can, Nor her soul's nunnery forego, A confidence that man to man Without remorse can never show.

Rare art, that can the sense refine Till not a pulse rebellious stirs, And, since she never can be mine, Makes it seem sweeter to be hers!



THE OPTIMIST

Turbid from London's noise and smoke, Here I find air and quiet too; Air filtered through the beech and oak, Quiet by nothing harsher broke Than wood-dove's meditative coo.

The Truce of God is here; the breeze Sighs as men sigh relieved from care, Or tilts as lightly in the trees As might a robin: all is ease, With pledge of ampler ease to spare.

Time, leaning on his scythe, forgets To turn the hour-glass in his hand, And all life's petty cares and frets, Its teasing hopes and weak regrets, Are still as that oblivious sand.

Repose fills all the generous space Of undulant plain; the rook and crow Hush; 'tis as if a silent grace, By Nature murmured, calmed the face Of Heaven above and Earth below.

From past and future toils I rest, One Sabbath pacifies my year; I am the halcyon, this my nest; And all is safely for the best While the World's there and I am here.

So I turn tory for the nonce, And think the radical a bore, Who cannot see, thick-witted dunce, That what was good for people once Must be as good forevermore.

Sun, sink no deeper down the sky; Earth, never change this summer mood; Breeze, loiter thus forever by, Stir the dead leaf or let it lie; Since I am happy, all is good.



ON BURNING SOME OLD LETTERS

With what odorous woods and spices Spared for royal sacrifices, With what costly gums seld-seen, Hoarded to embalm a queen, With what frankincense and myrrh, Burn these precious parts of her, Full of life and light and sweetness As a summer day's completeness, Joy of sun and song of bird Running wild in every word, Full of all the superhuman Grace and winsomeness of woman?

O'er these leaves her wrist has slid, Thrilled with veins where fire is hid 'Neath the skin's pellucid veil, Like the opal's passion pale; This her breath has sweetened; this Still seems trembling with the kiss She half-ventured on my name, Brow and cheek and throat aflame; Over all caressing lies Sunshine left there by her eyes; From them all an effluence rare With her nearness fills the air, Till the murmur I half-hear Of her light feet drawing near.

Rarest woods were coarse and rough, Sweetest spice not sweet enough, Too impure all earthly fire For this sacred funeral-pyre; These rich relics must suffice For their own dear sacrifice.

Seek we first an altar fit For such victims laid on it: It shall be this slab brought home In old happy days from Rome,— Lazuli, once blest to line Dian's inmost cell and shrine. Gently now I lay them there. Pure as Dian's forehead bare, Yet suffused with warmer hue, Such as only Latmos knew.

Fire I gather from the sun In a virgin lens; 'tis done! Mount the flames, red, yellow, blue, As her moods were shining through, Of the moment's impulse born,— Moods of sweetness, playful scorn, Half defiance, half surrender, More than cruel, more than tender, Flouts, caresses, sunshine, shade, Gracious doublings of a maid Infinite in guileless art, Playing hide-seek with her heart.

On the altar now, alas, There they lie a crinkling mass, Writhing still, as if with grief Went the life from every leaf; Then (heart-breaking palimpsest!) Vanishing ere wholly guessed, Suddenly some lines flash back, Traced in lightning on the black, And confess, till now denied, All the fire they strove to hide. What they told me, sacred trust, Stays to glorify my dust, There to burn through dust and damp Like a mage's deathless lamp, While an atom of this frame Lasts to feed the dainty flame.

All is ashes now, but they In my soul are laid away, And their radiance round me hovers Soft as moonlight over lovers, Shutting her and me alone In dream-Edens of our own; First of lovers to invent Love, and teach men what it meant.



THE PROTEST

I could not bear to see those eyes On all with wasteful largess shine, And that delight of welcome rise Like sunshine strained through amber wine, But that a glow from deeper skies, From conscious fountains more divine, Is (is it?) mine.

Be beautiful to all mankind, As Nature fashioned thee to be; 'Twould anger me did all not find The sweet perfection that's in thee: Yet keep one charm of charms behind,— Nay, thou'rt so rich, keep two or three For (is it?) me!



THE PETITION

Oh, tell me less or tell me more, Soft eyes with mystery at the core, That always seem to melt my own Frankly as pansies fully grown, Yet waver still 'tween no and yes!

So swift to cavil and deny, Then parley with concessions shy, Dear eyes, that make their youth be mine And through my inmost shadows shine, Oh, tell me more or tell me less!



FACT OR FANCY?

In town I hear, scarce wakened yet, My neighbor's clock behind the wall Record the day's increasing debt, And Cuckoo! Cuckoo! faintly call.

Our senses run in deepening grooves, Thrown out of which they lose their tact, And consciousness with effort moves From habit past to present fact.

So, in the country waked to-day, I hear, unwitting of the change, A cuckoo's throb from far away Begin to strike, nor think it strange.

The sound creates its wonted frame: My bed at home, the songster hid Behind the wainscoting,—all came As long association bid.

Then, half aroused, ere yet Sleep's mist From the mind's uplands furl away, To the familiar sound I list, Disputed for by Night and Day.

I count to learn how late it is, Until, arrived at thirty-four, I question, 'What strange world is this Whose lavish hours would make me poor?'

Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Still on it went, With hints of mockery in its tone; How could such hoards of time be spent By one poor mortal's wit alone?

I have it! Grant, ye kindly Powers, I from this spot may never stir, If only these uncounted hours May pass, and seem too short, with Her!

But who She is, her form and face, These to the world of dream belong; She moves through fancy's visioned space, Unbodied, like the cuckoo's song.



AGRO-DOLCE

One kiss from all others prevents me, And sets all my pulses astir, And burns on my lips and torments me: 'Tis the kiss that I fain would give her.

One kiss for all others requites me, Although it is never to be, And sweetens my dreams and invites me: 'Tis the kiss that she dare not give me.

Ah, could it he mine, it were sweeter Than honey bees garner in dream, Though its bliss on my lips were fleeter Than a swallow's dip to the stream.

And yet, thus denied, it can never In the prose of life vanish away; O'er my lips it must hover forever, The sunshine and shade of my day.



THE BROKEN TRYST

Walking alone where we walked together, When June was breezy and blue, I watch in the gray autumnal weather The leaves fall inconstant as you.

If a dead leaf startle behind me, I think 'tis your garment's hem, And, oh, where no memory could find me, Might I whirl away with them!



CASA SIN ALMA

RECUERDO DE MADRID

Silencioso por la puerta Voy de su casa desierta Do siempre feliz entre, Y la encuentro en vano abierta Cual la boca de una muerta Despues que el alma se fue.



A CHRISTMAS CAROL

FOR THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH OF THE DISCIPLES

'What means this glory round our feet,' The Magi mused, 'more bright than morn?' And voices chanted clear and sweet, 'To-day the Prince of Peace is born!'

'What means that star,' the Shepherds said, 'That brightens through the rocky glen?' And angels, answering overhead, Sang, 'Peace on earth, good-will to men!'

'Tis eighteen hundred years and more Since those sweet oracles were dumb; We wait for Him, like them of yore; Alas, He seems so slow to come!

But it was said, in words of gold No time or sorrow e'er shall dim, That little children might be bold In perfect trust to come to Him.

All round about our feet shall shine A light like that the wise men saw, If we our loving wills incline To that sweet Life which is the Law.

So shall we learn to understand The simple faith of shepherds then, And, clasping kindly hand in hand, Sing, 'Peace on earth, good-will to men!'

And they who do their souls no wrong, But keep at eve the faith of morn, Shall daily hear the angel-song, 'To-day the Prince of Peace is born!'



MY PORTRAIT GALLERY

Oft round my hall of portraiture I gaze, By Memory reared, the artist wise and holy, From stainless quarries of deep-buried days. There, as I muse in soothing melancholy, Your faces glow in more than mortal youth, Companions of my prime, now vanished wholly, The loud, impetuous boy, the low-voiced maiden, Now for the first time seen in flawless truth. Ah, never master that drew mortal breath Can match thy portraits, just and generous Death, Whose brush with sweet regretful tints is laden! Thou paintest that which struggled here below Half understood, or understood for woe, And with a sweet forewarning Mak'st round the sacred front an aureole glow Woven of that light that rose on Easter morning.



PAOLO TO FRANCESCA

I was with thee in Heaven: I cannot tell If years or moments, so the sudden bliss, When first we found, then lost, us in a kiss. Abolished Time, abolished Earth and Hell, Left only Heaven. Then from our blue there fell The dagger's flash, and did not fall amiss, For nothing now can rob my life of this,— That once with thee in Heaven, all else is well. Us, undivided when man's vengeance came, God's half-forgives that doth not here divide; And, were this bitter whirl-blast fanged with flame, To me 'twere summer, we being side by side: This granted, I God's mercy will not blame, For, given thy nearness, nothing is denied.



SONNET

SCOTTISH BORDER

As sinks the sun behind yon alien hills Whose heather-purple slopes, in glory rolled, Flush all my thought with momentary gold, What pang of vague regret my fancy thrills? Here 'tis enchanted ground the peasant tills, Where the shy ballad dared its blooms unfold, And memory's glamour makes new sights seem old, As when our life some vanished dream fulfils. Yet not to thee belong these painless tears, Land loved ere seen: before my darkened eyes, From far beyond the waters and the years, Horizons mute that wait their poet rise; The stream before me fades and disappears, And in the Charles the western splendor dies.



SONNET

ON BEING ASKED FOR AN AUTOGRAPH IN VENICE

Amid these fragments of heroic days When thought met deed with mutual passion's leap, There sits a Fame whose silent trump makes cheap What short-lived rumor of ourselves we raise. They had far other estimate of praise Who stamped the signet of their souls so deep In art and action, and whose memories keep Their height like stars above our misty ways: In this grave presence to record my name Something within me hangs the head and shrinks. Dull were the soul without some joy in fame; Yet here to claim remembrance were, methinks, Like him who, in the desert's awful frame, Notches his cockney initials on the Sphinx.



THE DANCING BEAR

Far over Elf-land poets stretch their sway, And win their dearest crowns beyond the goal Of their own conscious purpose; they control With gossamer threads wide-flown our fancy's play, And so our action. On my walk to-day, A wallowing bear begged clumsily his toll, When straight a vision rose of Atta Troll, And scenes ideal witched mine eyes away. 'Merci, Mossieu!' the astonished bear-ward cried, Grateful for thrice his hope to me, the slave Of partial memory, seeing at his side A bear immortal. The glad dole I gave Was none of mine; poor Heine o'er the wide Atlantic welter stretched it from his grave.



THE MAPLE

The Maple puts her corals on in May, While loitering frosts about the lowlands cling, To be in tune with what the robins sing, Plastering new log-huts 'mid her branches gray; But when the Autumn southward turns away, Then in her veins burns most the blood of Spring. And every leaf, intensely blossoming, Makes the year's sunset pale the set of day. O Youth unprescient, were it only so With trees you plant, and in whose shade reclined, Thinking their drifting blooms Fate's coldest snow, You carve dear names upon the faithful rind, Nor in that vernal stem the cross foreknow That Age shall bear, silent, yet unresigned!



NIGHTWATCHES

While the slow clock, as they were miser's gold, Counts and recounts the mornward steps of Time, The darkness thrills with conscience of each crime By Death committed, daily grown more bold. Once more the list of all my wrongs is told, And ghostly hands stretch to me from my prime Helpless farewells, as from an alien clime; For each new loss redoubles all the old. This morn 'twas May; the blossoms were astir With southern wind; but now the boughs are bent With snow instead of birds, and all things freeze. How much of all my past is dumb with her, And of my future, too, for with her went Half of that world I ever cared to please!



DEATH OF QUEEN MERCEDES

Hers all that Earth could promise or bestow,— Youth, Beauty, Love, a crown, the beckoning years, Lids never wet, unless with joyous tears, A life remote from every sordid woe, And by a nation's swelled to lordlier flow. What lurking-place, thought we, for doubts or fears, When, the day's swan, she swam along the cheers Of the Alcala, five happy months ago? The guns were shouting Io Hymen then That, on her birthday, now denounce her doom; The same white steeds that tossed their scorn of men To-day as proudly drag her to the tomb. Grim jest of fate! Yet who dare call it blind, Knowing what life is, what our human-kind?



PRISON OF CERVANTES

Seat of all woes? Though Nature's firm decree The narrowing soul with narrowing dungeon bind, Yet was his free of motion as the wind, And held both worlds, of spirit and sense, in fee. In charmed communion with his dual mind He wandered Spain, himself both knight and hind, Redressing wrongs he knew must ever be. His humor wise could see life's long deceit, Man's baffled aims, nor therefore both despise; His knightly nature could ill fortune greet Like an old friend. Whose ever such kind eyes That pierced so deep, such scope, save his whose feet By Avon ceased 'neath the same April's skies?



TO A LADY PLAYING ON THE CITHERN

So dreamy-soft the notes, so far away They seem to fall, the horns of Oberon Blow their faint Hunt's-up from the good-time gone; Or, on a morning of long-withered May, Larks tinkle unseen o'er Claudian arches gray, That Romeward crawl from Dreamland; and anon My fancy flings her cloak of Darkness on, To vanish from the dungeon of To-day. In happier times and scenes I seem to be, And, as her fingers flutter o'er the strings, The days return when I was young as she, And my fledged thoughts began to feel their wings With all Heaven's blue before them: Memory Or Music is it such enchantment sings?



THE EYE'S TREASURY

Gold of the reddening sunset, backward thrown In largess on my tall paternal trees, Thou with false hope or fear didst never tease His heart that hoards thee; nor is childhood flown From him whose life no fairer boon hath known Than that what pleased him earliest still should please: And who hath incomes safe from chance as these, Gone in a moment, yet for life his own? All other gold is slave of earthward laws; This to the deeps of ether takes its flight, And on the topmost leaves makes glorious pause Of parting pathos ere it yield to night: So linger, as from me earth's light withdraws, Dear touch of Nature, tremulously bright!



PESSIMOPTIMISM

Ye little think what toil it was to build A world of men imperfect even as this, Where we conceive of Good by what we miss, Of ill by that wherewith best days are filled; A world whose every atom is self-willed, Whose corner-stone is propt on artifice, Whose joy is shorter-lived than woman's kiss, Whose wisdom hoarded is but to be spilled. Yet this is better than a life of caves, Whose highest art was scratching on a bone, Or chipping toilsome arrowheads of flint; Better, though doomed to hear while Cleon raves, To see wit's want eterned in paint or stone, And wade the drain-drenched shoals of daily print.



THE BRAKES

What countless years and wealth of brain were spent To bring us hither from our caves and huts, And trace through pathless wilds the deep-worn ruts Of faith and habit, by whose deep indent Prudence may guide if genius be not lent, Genius, not always happy when it shuts Its ears against the plodder's ifs and buts, Hoping in one rash leap to snatch the event. The coursers of the sun, whose hoofs of flame Consume morn's misty threshold, are exact As bankers' clerks, and all this star-poised frame, One swerve allowed, were with convulsion rackt; This world were doomed, should Dulness fail, to tame Wit's feathered heels in the stern stocks of fact.



A FOREBODING

What were the whole void world, if thou wert dead, Whose briefest absence can eclipse my day, And make the hours that danced with Time away Drag their funereal steps with muffled head? Through thee, meseems, the very rose is red, From thee the violet steals its breath in May, From thee draw life all things that grow not gray, And by thy force the happy stars are sped. Thou near, the hope of thee to overflow Fills all my earth and heaven, as when in Spring, Ere April come, the birds and blossoms know, And grasses brighten round her feet to cling; Nay, and this hope delights all nature so That the dumb turf I tread on seems to sing.



III. FANCY



UNDER THE OCTOBER MAPLES

What mean these banners spread, These paths with royal red So gaily carpeted? Comes there a prince to-day? Such footing were too fine For feet less argentine Than Dian's own or thine, Queen whom my tides obey.

Surely for thee are meant These hues so orient That with a sultan's tent Each tree invites the sun; Our Earth such homage pays, So decks her dusty ways, And keeps such holidays, For one and only one.

My brain shapes form and face, Throbs with the rhythmic grace And cadence of her pace To all fine instincts true; Her footsteps, as they pass, Than moonbeams over grass Fall lighter,—but, alas, More insubstantial too!



LOVE'S CLOCK

A PASTORAL

DAPHNIS waiting

'O Dryad feet, Be doubly fleet, Timed to my heart's expectant beat While I await her! "At four," vowed she; 'Tis scarcely three, Yet by my time it seems to be A good hour later!'

CHLOE

'Bid me not stay! Hear reason, pray! 'Tis striking six! Sure never day Was short as this is!'

DAPHNIS

'Reason nor rhyme Is in the chime! It can't be five; I've scarce had time To beg two kisses!'

BOTH

'Early or late, When lovers wait, And Love's watch gains, if Time a gait So snail-like chooses, Why should his feet Become more fleet Than cowards' are, when lovers meet And Love's watch loses?'



ELEANOR MAKES MACAROONS

Light of triumph in her eyes, Eleanor her apron ties; As she pushes back her sleeves, High resolve her bosom heaves. Hasten, cook! impel the fire To the pace of her desire; As you hope to save your soul, Bring a virgin casserole, Brightest bring of silver spoons,— Eleanor makes macaroons!

Almond-blossoms, now adance In the smile of Southern France, Leave your sport with sun and breeze, Think of duty, not of ease; Fashion, 'neath their jerkins brown, Kernels white as thistle-down, Tiny cheeses made with cream From the Galaxy's mid-stream, Blanched in light of honeymoons,— Eleanor makes macaroons!

Now for sugar,—nay, our plan Tolerates no work of man. Hurry, then, ye golden bees; Fetch your clearest honey, please, Garnered on a Yorkshire moor, While the last larks sing and soar, From the heather-blossoms sweet Where sea-breeze and sunshine meet, And the Augusts mask as Junes,— Eleanor makes macaroons!

Next the pestle and mortar find. Pure rock-crystal,—these to grind Into paste more smooth than silk, Whiter than the milkweed's milk: Spread it on a rose-leaf, thus, Cate to please Theocritus; Then the fire with spices swell, While, for her completer spell, Mystic canticles she croons,— Eleanor makes macaroons!

Perfect! and all this to waste On a graybeard's palsied taste! Poets so their verses write, Heap them full of life and light, And then fling them to the rude Mumbling of the multitude. Not so dire her fate as theirs, Since her friend this gift declares Choicest of his birthday boons,— Eleanor's dear macaroons!

February 22, 1884.



TELEPATHY

'And how could you dream of meeting?' Nay, how can you ask me, sweet? All day my pulse had been beating The tune of your coming feet.

And as nearer and ever nearer I felt the throb of your tread, To be in the world grew clearer, And my blood ran rosier red.

Love called, and I could not linger, But sought the forbidden tryst, As music follows the finger Of the dreaming lutanist

And though you had said it and said it, 'We must not be happy to-day,' Was I not wiser to credit The fire in my feet than your Nay?



SCHERZO

When the down is on the chin And the gold-gleam in the hair, When the birds their sweethearts win And champagne is in the air, Love is here, and Love is there, Love is welcome everywhere.

Summer's cheek too soon turns thin, Days grow briefer, sunshine rare; Autumn from his cannekin Blows the froth to chase Despair: Love is met with frosty stare, Cannot house 'neath branches bare.

When new life is in the leaf And new red is in the rose, Though Love's Maytlme be as brief As a dragon-fly's repose, Never moments come like those, Be they Heaven or Hell: who knows?

All too soon comes Winter's grief, Spendthrift Love's false friends turn foes; Softly comes Old Age, the thief, Steals the rapture, leaves the throes: Love his mantle round him throws,— 'Time to say Good-by; it snows.'



'FRANCISCUS DE VERULAMIO SIC COGITAVIT'

That's a rather bold speech, my Lord Bacon, For, indeed, is't so easy to know Just how much we from others have taken, And how much our own natural flow?

Since your mind bubbled up at its fountain, How many streams made it elate, While it calmed to the plain from the mountain, As every mind must that grows great?

While you thought 'twas You thinking as newly As Adam still wet with God's dew, You forgot in your self-pride that truly The whole Past was thinking through you.

Greece, Rome, nay, your namesake, old Roger, With Truth's nameless delvers who wrought In the dark mines of Truth, helped to prod your Fine brain with the goad of their thought.

As mummy was prized for a rich hue The painter no elsewhere could find, So 'twas buried men's thinking with which you Gave the ripe mellow tone to your mind.

I heard the proud strawberry saying, 'Only look what a ruby I've made!' It forgot how the bees in their maying Had brought it the stuff for its trade.

And yet there's the half of a truth in it, And my Lord might his copyright sue; For a thought's his who kindles new youth in it, Or so puts it as makes it more true.

The birds but repeat without ending The same old traditional notes, Which some, by more happily blending, Seem to make over new in their throats;

And we men through our old bit of song run, Until one just improves on the rest, And we call a thing his, in the long run, Who utters it clearest and best.



AUSPEX

My heart, I cannot still it, Nest that had song-birds in it; And when the last shall go, The dreary days, to fill it, Instead of lark or linnet, Shall whirl dead leaves and snow.

Had they been swallows only, Without the passion stronger That skyward longs and sings,— Woe's me, I shall be lonely When I can feel no longer The impatience of their wings!

A moment, sweet delusion, Like birds the brown leaves hover; But it will not be long Before their wild confusion Fall wavering down to cover The poet and his song.



THE PREGNANT COMMENT

Opening one day a book of mine, I absent, Hester found a line Praised with a pencil-mark, and this She left transfigured with a kiss.

When next upon the page I chance, Like Poussin's nymphs my pulses dance, And whirl my fancy where it sees Pan piping 'neath Arcadian trees, Whose leaves no winter-scenes rehearse, Still young and glad as Homer's verse. 'What mean,' I ask, 'these sudden joys? This feeling fresher than a boy's? What makes this line, familiar long, New as the first bird's April song? I could, with sense illumined thus, Clear doubtful texts in AEeschylus!'

Laughing, one day she gave the key, My riddle's open-sesame; Then added, with a smile demure, Whose downcast lids veiled triumph sure, 'If what I left there give you pain, You—you—can take it off again; 'Twas for my poet, not for him, Your Doctor Donne there!'

Earth grew dim And wavered in a golden mist, As rose, not paper, leaves I kissed. Donne, you forgive? I let you keep Her precious comment, poet deep.



THE LESSON

I sat and watched the walls of night With cracks of sudden lightning glow, And listened while with clumsy might The thunder wallowed to and fro.

The rain fell softly now; the squall, That to a torrent drove the trees, Had whirled beyond us to let fall Its tumult on the whitening seas.

But still the lightning crinkled keen, Or fluttered fitful from behind The leaden drifts, then only seen, That rumbled eastward on the wind.

Still as gloom followed after glare, While bated breath the pine-trees drew, Tiny Salmoneus of the air, His mimic bolts the firefly threw.

He thought, no doubt, 'Those flashes grand, That light for leagues the shuddering sky, Are made, a fool could understand, By some superior kind of fly.

'He's of our race's elder branch, His family-arms the same as ours. Both born the twy-forked flame to launch, Of kindred, if unequal, powers.'

And is man wiser? Man who takes His consciousness the law to be Of all beyond his ken, and makes God but a bigger kind of Me?



SCIENCE AND POETRY

He who first stretched his nerves of subtile wire Over the land and through the sea-depths still, Thought only of the flame-winged messenger As a dull drudge that should encircle earth With sordid messages of Trade, and tame Blithe Ariel to a bagman. But the Muse Not long will be defrauded. From her foe Her misused wand she snatches; at a touch, The Age of Wonder is renewed again, And to our disenchanted day restores The Shoes of Swiftness that give odds to Thought, The Cloak that makes invisible; and with these I glide, an airy fire, from shore to shore, Or from my Cambridge whisper to Cathay.



A NEW YEAR'S GREETING

The century numbers fourscore years; You, fortressed in your teens, To Time's alarums close your ears, And, while he devastates your peers, Conceive not what he means.

If e'er life's winter fleck with snow Your hair's deep shadowed bowers, That winsome head an art would know To make it charm, and wear it so As 'twere a wreath of flowers.

If to such fairies years must come, May yours fall soft and slow As, shaken by a bee's low hum, The rose-leaves waver, sweetly dumb, Down to their mates below!



THE DISCOVERY

I watched a moorland torrent run Down through the rift itself had made, Golden as honey in the sun, Of darkest amber in the shade.

In this wild glen at last, methought, The magic's secret I surprise; Here Celia's guardian fairy caught The changeful splendors of her eyes.

All else grows tame, the sky's one blue, The one long languish of the rose, But these, beyond prevision new, Shall charm and startle to the close.



WITH A SEASHELL

Shell, whose lips, than mine more cold, Might with Dian's ear make bold, Seek my Lady's; if thou win To that portal, shut from sin, Where commissioned angels' swords Startle back unholy words, Thou a miracle shalt see Wrought by it and wrought in thee; Thou, the dumb one, shalt recover Speech of poet, speech of lover. If she deign to lift you there, Murmur what I may not dare; In that archway, pearly-pink As the Dawn's untrodden brink, Murmur, 'Excellent and good, Beauty's best in every mood, Never common, never tame, Changeful fair as windwaved flame'— Nay, I maunder; this she hears Every day with mocking ears, With a brow not sudden-stained With the flush of bliss restrained, With no tremor of the pulse More than feels the dreaming dulse In the midmost ocean's caves, When a tempest heaps the waves. Thou must woo her in a phrase Mystic as the opal's blaze, Which pure maids alone can see When their lovers constant be. I with thee a secret share, Half a hope, and half a prayer, Though no reach of mortal skill Ever told it all, or will; Say, 'He bids me—nothing more— Tell you what you guessed before!'



THE SECRET

I have a fancy: how shall I bring it Home to all mortals wherever they be? Say it or sing it? Shoe it or wing it, So it may outrun or outfly ME, Merest cocoon-web whence it broke free?

Only one secret can save from disaster, Only one magic is that of the Master: Set it to music; give it a tune,— Tune the brook sings you, tune the breeze brings you, Tune the wild columbines nod to in June!

This is the secret: so simple, you see! Easy as loving, easy as kissing, Easy as—well, let me ponder—as missing, Known, since the world was, by scarce two or three.