And his eye sat back in the socket, and shrunken the eyeballs shone, As withdrawn from a vision of deeds it were shame to see. "Now, now, grim henchman, what is't with thee?" Brake Maclean, and his wrath rose red as a beacon the wind hath upblown.

"Three does and a ten-tined buck made out," spoke Hamish, full mild, "And I ran for to turn, but my breath it was blown, and they passed; I was weak, for ye called ere I broke me my fast." Cried Maclean: "Now a ten-tined buck in the sight of the wife and the child

I had killed if the gluttonous kern had not wrought me a snail's own wrong!" Then he sounded, and down came kinsmen and clansmen all: "Ten blows, for ten tine, on his back let fall, And reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of thong!"

So Hamish made bare, and took him his strokes; at the last he smiled. "Now I'll to the burn," quoth Maclean, "for it still may be, If a slimmer-paunched henchman will hurry with me, I shall kill me the ten-tined buck for a gift to the wife and the child!"

Then the clansmen departed, by this path and that; and over the hill Sped Maclean with an outward wrath for an inward shame; And that place of the lashing full quiet became; And the wife and the child stood sad; and bloody-backed Hamish sat still.

But look! red Hamish has risen; quick about and about turns he. "There is none betwixt me and the crag-top!" he screams under breath. Then, livid as Lazarus lately from death, He snatches the child from the mother, and clambers the crag toward the sea.

Now the mother drops breath; she is dumb, and her heart goes dead for a space, Till the motherhood, mistress of death, shrieks, shrieks through the glen, And that place of the lashing is live with men, And Maclean, and the gillie that told him, dash up in a desperate race.

Not a breath's time for asking; an eye-glance reveals all the tale untold. They follow mad Hamish afar up the crag toward the sea, And the lady cries: "Clansmen, run for a fee! — Yon castle and lands to the two first hands that shall hook him and hold

Fast Hamish back from the brink!" — and ever she flies up the steep, And the clansmen pant, and they sweat, and they jostle and strain. But, mother, 'tis vain; but, father, 'tis vain; Stern Hamish stands bold on the brink, and dangles the child o'er the deep.

Now a faintness falls on the men that run, and they all stand still. And the wife prays Hamish as if he were God, on her knees, Crying: "Hamish! O Hamish! but please, but please For to spare him!" and Hamish still dangles the child, with a wavering will.

On a sudden he turns; with a sea-hawk scream, and a gibe, and a song, Cries: "So; I will spare ye the child if, in sight of ye all, Ten blows on Maclean's bare back shall fall, And ye reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of the thong!"

Then Maclean he set hardly his tooth to his lip that his tooth was red, Breathed short for a space, said: "Nay, but it never shall be! Let me hurl off the damnable hound in the sea!" But the wife: "Can Hamish go fish us the child from the sea, if dead?

Say yea! — Let them lash ME, Hamish?" — "Nay!" — "Husband, the lashing will heal; But, oh, who will heal me the bonny sweet bairn in his grave? Could ye cure me my heart with the death of a knave? Quick! Love! I will bare thee — so — kneel!" Then Maclean 'gan slowly to kneel

With never a word, till presently downward he jerked to the earth. Then the henchman — he that smote Hamish — would tremble and lag; "Strike, hard!" quoth Hamish, full stern, from the crag; Then he struck him, and "One!" sang Hamish, and danced with the child in his mirth.

And no man spake beside Hamish; he counted each stroke with a song. When the last stroke fell, then he moved him a pace down the height, And he held forth the child in the heartaching sight Of the mother, and looked all pitiful grave, as repenting a wrong.

And there as the motherly arms stretched out with the thanksgiving prayer — And there as the mother crept up with a fearful swift pace, Till her finger nigh felt of the bairnie's face — In a flash fierce Hamish turned round and lifted the child in the air,

And sprang with the child in his arms from the horrible height in the sea, Shrill screeching, "Revenge!" in the wind-rush; and pallid Maclean, Age-feeble with anger and impotent pain, Crawled up on the crag, and lay flat, and locked hold of dead roots of a tree —

And gazed hungrily o'er, and the blood from his back drip-dripped in the brine, And a sea-hawk flung down a skeleton fish as he flew, And the mother stared white on the waste of blue, And the wind drove a cloud to seaward, and the sun began to shine.

_ Baltimore, 1878.



To Bayard Taylor.



To range, deep-wrapt, along a heavenly height, O'erseeing all that man but undersees; To loiter down lone alleys of delight, And hear the beating of the hearts of trees, And think the thoughts that lilies speak in white By greenwood pools and pleasant passages;

With healthy dreams a-dream in flesh and soul, To pace, in mighty meditations drawn, From out the forest to the open knoll Where much thyme is, whence blissful leagues of lawn Betwixt the fringing woods to southward roll By tender inclinations; mad with dawn,

Ablaze with fires that flame in silver dew When each small globe doth glass the morning-star, Long ere the sun, sweet-smitten through and through With dappled revelations read afar, Suffused with saintly ecstasies of blue As all the holy eastern heavens are, —

To fare thus fervid to what daily toil Employs thy spirit in that larger Land Where thou art gone; to strive, but not to moil In nothings that do mar the artist's hand, Not drudge unriched, as grain rots back to soil, — No profit out of death, — going, yet still at stand, —

Giving what life is here in hand to-day For that that's in to-morrow's bush, perchance, — Of this year's harvest none in the barn to lay, All sowed for next year's crop, — a dull advance In curves that come but by another way Back to the start, — a thriftless thrift of ants

Whose winter wastes their summer; O my Friend, Freely to range, to muse, to toil, is thine: Thine, now, to watch with Homer sails that bend Unstained by Helen's beauty o'er the brine Tow'rds some clean Troy no Hector need defend Nor flame devour; or, in some mild moon's shine,

Where amiabler winds the whistle heed, To sail with Shelley o'er a bluer sea, And mark Prometheus, from his fetters freed, Pass with Deucalion over Italy, While bursts the flame from out his eager reed Wild-stretching towards the West of destiny;

Or, prone with Plato, Shakespeare and a throng Of bards beneath some plane-tree's cool eclipse To gaze on glowing meads where, lingering long, Psyche's large Butterfly her honey sips; Or, mingling free in choirs of German song, To learn of Goethe's life from Goethe's lips;

These, these are thine, and we, who still are dead, Do yearn — nay, not to kill thee back again Into this charnel life, this lowlihead, Not to the dark of sense, the blinking brain, The hugged delusion drear, the hunger fed On husks of guess, the monarchy of pain,

The cross of love, the wrench of faith, the shame Of science that cannot prove proof is, the twist Of blame for praise and bitter praise for blame, The silly stake and tether round the wrist By fashion fixed, the virtue that doth claim The gains of vice, the lofty mark that's missed

By all the mortal space 'twixt heaven and hell, The soul's sad growth o'er stationary friends Who hear us from our height not well, not well, The slant of accident, the sudden bends Of purpose tempered strong, the gambler's spell, The son's disgrace, the plan that e'er depends

On others' plots, the tricks that passion plays (I loving you, you him, he none at all), The artist's pain — to walk his blood-stained ways, A special soul, yet judged as general — The endless grief of art, the sneer that slays, The war, the wound, the groan, the funeral pall —

Not into these, bright spirit, do we yearn To bring thee back, but oh, to be, to be Unbound of all these gyves, to stretch, to spurn The dark from off our dolorous lids, to see Our spark, Conjecture, blaze and sunwise burn, And suddenly to stand again by thee!

Ah, not for us, not yet, by thee to stand: For us, the fret, the dark, the thorn, the chill; For us, to call across unto thy Land, "Friend, get thee to the minstrels' holy hill, And kiss those brethren for us, mouth and hand, And make our duty to our master Will."

_ Baltimore, 1879.



A Dedication. To Charlotte Cushman.



As Love will carve dear names upon a tree, Symbol of gravure on his heart to be,

So thought I thine with loving text to set In the growth and substance of my canzonet;

But, writing it, my tears begin to fall — This wild-rose stem for thy large name's too small!

Nay, still my trembling hands are fain, are fain Cut the good letters though they lap again;

Perchance such folk as mark the blur and stain Will say, 'It was the beating of the rain;'

Or, haply these o'er-woundings of the stem May loose some little balm, to plead for them.

_ 1876.



To Charlotte Cushman.



Look where a three-point star shall weave his beam Into the slumb'rous tissue of some stream, Till his bright self o'er his bright copy seem Fulfillment dropping on a come-true dream; So in this night of art thy soul doth show Her excellent double in the steadfast flow Of wishing love that through men's hearts doth go: At once thou shin'st above and shin'st below. E'en when thou strivest there within Art's sky (Each star must o'er a strenuous orbit fly), Full calm thine image in our love doth lie, A Motion glassed in a Tranquillity. So triple-rayed, thou mov'st, yet stay'st, serene — Art's artist, Love's dear woman, Fame's good queen!

_ Baltimore, 1875.



The Stirrup-Cup.



Death, thou'rt a cordial old and rare: Look how compounded, with what care! Time got his wrinkles reaping thee Sweet herbs from all antiquity.

David to thy distillage went, Keats, and Gotama excellent, Omar Khayyam, and Chaucer bright, And Shakespeare for a king-delight.

Then, Time, let not a drop be spilt: Hand me the cup whene'er thou wilt; 'Tis thy rich stirrup-cup to me; I'll drink it down right smilingly.

_ Tampa, Florida, 1877.



A Song of Eternity in Time.



Once, at night, in the manor wood My Love and I long silent stood, Amazed that any heavens could Decree to part us, bitterly repining. My Love, in aimless love and grief, Reached forth and drew aside a leaf That just above us played the thief And stole our starlight that for us was shining.

A star that had remarked her pain Shone straightway down that leafy lane, And wrought his image, mirror-plain, Within a tear that on her lash hung gleaming. "Thus Time," I cried, "is but a tear Some one hath wept 'twixt hope and fear, Yet in his little lucent sphere Our star of stars, Eternity, is beaming."

_ Macon, Georgia, 1867. Revised in 1879.



Owl against Robin.



Frowning, the owl in the oak complained him Sore, that the song of the robin restrained him Wrongly of slumber, rudely of rest. "From the north, from the east, from the south and the west, Woodland, wheat-field, corn-field, clover, Over and over and over and over, Five o'clock, ten o'clock, twelve, or seven, Nothing but robin-songs heard under heaven: How can we sleep?

'Peep!' you whistle, and 'cheep! cheep! cheep!' Oh, peep, if you will, and buy, if 'tis cheap, And have done; for an owl must sleep. Are ye singing for fame, and who shall be first? Each day's the same, yet the last is worst, And the summer is cursed with the silly outburst Of idiot red-breasts peeping and cheeping By day, when all honest birds ought to be sleeping. Lord, what a din! And so out of all reason. Have ye not heard that each thing hath its season? Night is to work in, night is for play-time; Good heavens, not day-time!

A vulgar flaunt is the flaring day, The impudent, hot, unsparing day, That leaves not a stain nor a secret untold, — Day the reporter, — the gossip of old, — Deformity's tease, — man's common scold — Poh! Shut the eyes, let the sense go numb When day down the eastern way has come. 'Tis clear as the moon (by the argument drawn From Design) that the world should retire at dawn. Day kills. The leaf and the laborer breathe Death in the sun, the cities seethe, The mortal black marshes bubble with heat And puff up pestilence; nothing is sweet Has to do with the sun: even virtue will taint (Philosophers say) and manhood grow faint In the lands where the villainous sun has sway Through the livelong drag of the dreadful day. What Eden but noon-light stares it tame, Shadowless, brazen, forsaken of shame? For the sun tells lies on the landscape, — now Reports me the 'what', unrelieved with the 'how', — As messengers lie, with the facts alone, Delivering the word and withholding the tone.

But oh, the sweetness, and oh, the light Of the high-fastidious night! Oh, to awake with the wise old stars — The cultured, the careful, the Chesterfield stars, That wink at the work-a-day fact of crime And shine so rich through the ruins of time That Baalbec is finer than London; oh, To sit on the bough that zigzags low By the woodland pool, And loudly laugh at man, the fool That vows to the vulgar sun; oh, rare, To wheel from the wood to the window where A day-worn sleeper is dreaming of care, And perch on the sill and straightly stare Through his visions; rare, to sail Aslant with the hill and a-curve with the vale, — To flit down the shadow-shot-with-gleam, Betwixt hanging leaves and starlit stream, Hither, thither, to and fro, Silent, aimless, dayless, slow ('Aimless? Field-mice?' True, they're slain, But the night-philosophy hoots at pain, Grips, eats quick, and drops the bones In the water beneath the bough, nor moans At the death life feeds on). Robin, pray Come away, come away To the cultus of night. Abandon the day. Have more to think and have less to say. And CANNOT you walk now? Bah! don't hop! Stop! Look at the owl, scarce seen, scarce heard, O irritant, iterant, maddening bird!"

_ Baltimore, 1880.



A Song of the Future.



Sail fast, sail fast, Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams; Sweep lordly o'er the drowned Past, Fly glittering through the sun's strange beams; Sail fast, sail fast. Breaths of new buds from off some drying lea With news about the Future scent the sea: My brain is beating like the heart of Haste: I'll loose me a bird upon this Present waste; Go, trembling song, And stay not long; oh, stay not long: Thou'rt only a gray and sober dove, But thine eye is faith and thy wing is love.

_ Baltimore, 1878.



Opposition.



Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill, Complain no more; for these, O heart, Direct the random of the will As rhymes direct the rage of art.

The lute's fixt fret, that runs athwart The strain and purpose of the string, For governance and nice consort Doth bar his wilful wavering.

The dark hath many dear avails; The dark distils divinest dews; The dark is rich with nightingales, With dreams, and with the heavenly Muse.

Bleeding with thorns of petty strife, I'll ease (as lovers do) my smart With sonnets to my lady Life Writ red in issues from the heart.

What grace may lie within the chill Of favor frozen fast in scorn! When Good's a-freeze, we call it Ill! This rosy Time is glacier-born.

Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill, Complain thou not, O heart; for these Bank-in the current of the will To uses, arts, and charities.

_ Baltimore, 1879-80.



Rose-Morals.



I. — Red.

Would that my songs might be What roses make by day and night — Distillments of my clod of misery Into delight.

Soul, could'st thou bare thy breast As yon red rose, and dare the day, All clean, and large, and calm with velvet rest? Say yea — say yea!

Ah, dear my Rose, good-bye; The wind is up; so; drift away. That songs from me as leaves from thee may fly, I strive, I pray.

II. — White.

Soul, get thee to the heart Of yonder tuberose: hide thee there — There breathe the meditations of thine art Suffused with prayer.

Of spirit grave yet light, How fervent fragrances uprise Pure-born from these most rich and yet most white Virginities!

Mulched with unsavory death, Grow, Soul! unto such white estate, That virginal-prayerful art shall be thy breath, Thy work, thy fate.

_ Baltimore, 1875.



Corn.



To-day the woods are trembling through and through With shimmering forms, that flash before my view, Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue. The leaves that wave against my cheek caress Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express A subtlety of mighty tenderness; The copse-depths into little noises start, That sound anon like beatings of a heart, Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart. The beech dreams balm, as a dreamer hums a song; Through that vague wafture, expirations strong Throb from young hickories breathing deep and long With stress and urgence bold of prisoned spring And ecstasy of burgeoning. Now, since the dew-plashed road of morn is dry, Forth venture odors of more quality And heavenlier giving. Like Jove's locks awry, Long muscadines Rich-wreathe the spacious foreheads of great pines, And breathe ambrosial passion from their vines. I pray with mosses, ferns and flowers shy That hide like gentle nuns from human eye To lift adoring perfumes to the sky. I hear faint bridal-sighs of brown and green Dying to silent hints of kisses keen As far lights fringe into a pleasant sheen. I start at fragmentary whispers, blown From undertalks of leafy souls unknown, Vague purports sweet, of inarticulate tone. Dreaming of gods, men, nuns and brides, between Old companies of oaks that inward lean To join their radiant amplitudes of green I slowly move, with ranging looks that pass Up from the matted miracles of grass Into yon veined complex of space Where sky and leafage interlace So close, the heaven of blue is seen Inwoven with a heaven of green.

I wander to the zigzag-cornered fence Where sassafras, intrenched in brambles dense, Contests with stolid vehemence The march of culture, setting limb and thorn As pikes against the army of the corn.

There, while I pause, my fieldward-faring eyes Take harvests, where the stately corn-ranks rise, Of inward dignities And large benignities and insights wise, Graces and modest majesties. Thus, without theft, I reap another's field; Thus, without tilth, I house a wondrous yield, And heap my heart with quintuple crops concealed.

Look, out of line one tall corn-captain stands Advanced beyond the foremost of his bands, And waves his blades upon the very edge And hottest thicket of the battling hedge. Thou lustrous stalk, that ne'er mayst walk nor talk, Still shalt thou type the poet-soul sublime That leads the vanward of his timid time And sings up cowards with commanding rhyme — Soul calm, like thee, yet fain, like thee, to grow By double increment, above, below; Soul homely, as thou art, yet rich in grace like thee, Teaching the yeomen selfless chivalry That moves in gentle curves of courtesy; Soul filled like thy long veins with sweetness tense, By every godlike sense Transmuted from the four wild elements. Drawn to high plans, Thou lift'st more stature than a mortal man's, Yet ever piercest downward in the mould And keepest hold Upon the reverend and steadfast earth That gave thee birth; Yea, standest smiling in thy future grave, Serene and brave, With unremitting breath Inhaling life from death, Thine epitaph writ fair in fruitage eloquent, Thyself thy monument.

As poets should, Thou hast built up thy hardihood With universal food, Drawn in select proportion fair From honest mould and vagabond air; From darkness of the dreadful night, And joyful light; From antique ashes, whose departed flame In thee has finer life and longer fame; From wounds and balms, From storms and calms, From potsherds and dry bones And ruin-stones. Into thy vigorous substance thou hast wrought Whate'er the hand of Circumstance hath brought; Yea, into cool solacing green hast spun White radiance hot from out the sun. So thou dost mutually leaven Strength of earth with grace of heaven; So thou dost marry new and old Into a one of higher mould; So thou dost reconcile the hot and cold, The dark and bright, And many a heart-perplexing opposite, And so, Akin by blood to high and low, Fitly thou playest out thy poet's part, Richly expending thy much-bruised heart In equal care to nourish lord in hall Or beast in stall: Thou took'st from all that thou mightst give to all.

O steadfast dweller on the selfsame spot Where thou wast born, that still repinest not — Type of the home-fond heart, the happy lot! — Deeply thy mild content rebukes the land Whose flimsy homes, built on the shifting sand Of trade, for ever rise and fall With alternation whimsical, Enduring scarce a day, Then swept away By swift engulfments of incalculable tides Whereon capricious Commerce rides. Look, thou substantial spirit of content! Across this little vale, thy continent, To where, beyond the mouldering mill, Yon old deserted Georgian hill Bares to the sun his piteous aged crest And seamy breast, By restless-hearted children left to lie Untended there beneath the heedless sky, As barbarous folk expose their old to die. Upon that generous-rounding side, With gullies scarified Where keen Neglect his lash hath plied, Dwelt one I knew of old, who played at toil, And gave to coquette Cotton soul and soil. Scorning the slow reward of patient grain, He sowed his heart with hopes of swifter gain, Then sat him down and waited for the rain. He sailed in borrowed ships of usury — A foolish Jason on a treacherous sea, Seeking the Fleece and finding misery. Lulled by smooth-rippling loans, in idle trance He lay, content that unthrift Circumstance Should plough for him the stony field of Chance. Yea, gathering crops whose worth no man might tell, He staked his life on games of Buy-and-Sell, And turned each field into a gambler's hell. Aye, as each year began, My farmer to the neighboring city ran; Passed with a mournful anxious face Into the banker's inner place; Parleyed, excused, pleaded for longer grace; Railed at the drought, the worm, the rust, the grass; Protested ne'er again 'twould come to pass; With many an 'oh' and 'if' and 'but alas' Parried or swallowed searching questions rude, And kissed the dust to soften Dives's mood. At last, small loans by pledges great renewed, He issues smiling from the fatal door, And buys with lavish hand his yearly store Till his small borrowings will yield no more. Aye, as each year declined, With bitter heart and ever-brooding mind He mourned his fate unkind. In dust, in rain, with might and main, He nursed his cotton, cursed his grain, Fretted for news that made him fret again, Snatched at each telegram of Future Sale, And thrilled with Bulls' or Bears' alternate wail — In hope or fear alike for ever pale. And thus from year to year, through hope and fear, With many a curse and many a secret tear, Striving in vain his cloud of debt to clear, At last He woke to find his foolish dreaming past, And all his best-of-life the easy prey Of squandering scamps and quacks that lined his way With vile array, From rascal statesman down to petty knave; Himself, at best, for all his bragging brave, A gamester's catspaw and a banker's slave. Then, worn and gray, and sick with deep unrest, He fled away into the oblivious West, Unmourned, unblest.

Old hill! old hill! thou gashed and hairy Lear Whom the divine Cordelia of the year, E'en pitying Spring, will vainly strive to cheer — King, that no subject man nor beast may own, Discrowned, undaughtered and alone — Yet shall the great God turn thy fate, And bring thee back into thy monarch state And majesty immaculate. Lo, through hot waverings of the August morn, Thou givest from thy vasty sides forlorn Visions of golden treasuries of corn — Ripe largesse lingering for some bolder heart That manfully shall take thy part, And tend thee, And defend thee, With antique sinew and with modern art.

_ Sunnyside, Georgia, August, 1874.



The Symphony.



"O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead! The Time needs heart — 'tis tired of head: We're all for love," the violins said. "Of what avail the rigorous tale Of bill for coin and box for bale? Grant thee, O Trade! thine uttermost hope: Level red gold with blue sky-slope, And base it deep as devils grope: When all's done, what hast thou won Of the only sweet that's under the sun? Ay, canst thou buy a single sigh Of true love's least, least ecstasy?" Then, with a bridegroom's heart-beats trembling, All the mightier strings assembling Ranged them on the violins' side As when the bridegroom leads the bride, And, heart in voice, together cried: "Yea, what avail the endless tale Of gain by cunning and plus by sale? Look up the land, look down the land The poor, the poor, the poor, they stand Wedged by the pressing of Trade's hand Against an inward-opening door That pressure tightens evermore: They sigh a monstrous foul-air sigh For the outside leagues of liberty, Where Art, sweet lark, translates the sky Into a heavenly melody. 'Each day, all day' (these poor folks say), 'In the same old year-long, drear-long way, We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns, We sieve mine-meshes under the hills, And thieve much gold from the Devil's bank tills, To relieve, O God, what manner of ills? — The beasts, they hunger, and eat, and die; And so do we, and the world's a sty; Hush, fellow-swine: why nuzzle and cry? "Swinehood hath no remedy" Say many men, and hasten by, Clamping the nose and blinking the eye. But who said once, in the lordly tone, "Man shall not live by bread alone But all that cometh from the Throne?" Hath God said so? But Trade saith "No:" And the kilns and the curt-tongued mills say "Go! There's plenty that can, if you can't: we know. Move out, if you think you're underpaid. The poor are prolific; we're not afraid; Trade is trade."'" Thereat this passionate protesting Meekly changed, and softened till It sank to sad requesting And suggesting sadder still: "And oh, if men might some time see How piteous-false the poor decree That trade no more than trade must be! Does business mean, 'Die, you — live, I?' Then 'Trade is trade' but sings a lie: 'Tis only war grown miserly. If business is battle, name it so: War-crimes less will shame it so, And widows less will blame it so. Alas, for the poor to have some part In yon sweet living lands of Art, Makes problem not for head, but heart. Vainly might Plato's brain revolve it: Plainly the heart of a child could solve it."

And then, as when from words that seem but rude We pass to silent pain that sits abrood Back in our heart's great dark and solitude, So sank the strings to gentle throbbing Of long chords change-marked with sobbing — Motherly sobbing, not distinctlier heard Than half wing-openings of the sleeping bird, Some dream of danger to her young hath stirred. Then stirring and demurring ceased, and lo! Every least ripple of the strings' song-flow Died to a level with each level bow And made a great chord tranquil-surfaced so, As a brook beneath his curving bank doth go To linger in the sacred dark and green Where many boughs the still pool overlean And many leaves make shadow with their sheen. But presently A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly Upon the bosom of that harmony, And sailed and sailed incessantly, As if a petal from a wild-rose blown Had fluttered down upon that pool of tone And boatwise dropped o' the convex side And floated down the glassy tide And clarified and glorified The solemn spaces where the shadows bide. From the warm concave of that fluted note Somewhat, half song, half odor, forth did float, As if a rose might somehow be a throat: "When Nature from her far-off glen Flutes her soft messages to men, The flute can say them o'er again; Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone, Breathes through life's strident polyphone The flute-voice in the world of tone. Sweet friends, Man's love ascends To finer and diviner ends Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends For I, e'en I, As here I lie, A petal on a harmony, Demand of Science whence and why Man's tender pain, man's inward cry, When he doth gaze on earth and sky? I am not overbold: I hold Full powers from Nature manifold. I speak for each no-tongued tree That, spring by spring, doth nobler be, And dumbly and most wistfully His mighty prayerful arms outspreads Above men's oft-unheeding heads, And his big blessing downward sheds. I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves, Lichens on stones and moss on eaves, Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves; Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes, And briery mazes bounding lanes, And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains, And milky stems and sugary veins; For every long-armed woman-vine That round a piteous tree doth twine; For passionate odors, and divine Pistils, and petals crystalline; All purities of shady springs, All shynesses of film-winged things That fly from tree-trunks and bark-rings; All modesties of mountain-fawns That leap to covert from wild lawns, And tremble if the day but dawns; All sparklings of small beady eyes Of birds, and sidelong glances wise Wherewith the jay hints tragedies; All piquancies of prickly burs, And smoothnesses of downs and furs Of eiders and of minevers; All limpid honeys that do lie At stamen-bases, nor deny The humming-birds' fine roguery, Bee-thighs, nor any butterfly; All gracious curves of slender wings, Bark-mottlings, fibre-spiralings, Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings; Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell Wherewith in every lonesome dell Time to himself his hours doth tell; All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones, Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans, And night's unearthly under-tones; All placid lakes and waveless deeps, All cool reposing mountain-steeps, Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps; — Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights, And warmths, and mysteries, and mights, Of Nature's utmost depths and heights, — These doth my timid tongue present, Their mouthpiece and leal instrument And servant, all love-eloquent. I heard, when '"All for love"' the violins cried: So, Nature calls through all her system wide, 'Give me thy love, O man, so long denied.' Much time is run, and man hath changed his ways, Since Nature, in the antique fable-days, Was hid from man's true love by proxy fays, False fauns and rascal gods that stole her praise. The nymphs, cold creatures of man's colder brain, Chilled Nature's streams till man's warm heart was fain Never to lave its love in them again. Later, a sweet Voice 'Love thy neighbor' said; Then first the bounds of neighborhood outspread Beyond all confines of old ethnic dread. Vainly the Jew might wag his covenant head: '"All men are neighbors,"' so the sweet Voice said. So, when man's arms had circled all man's race, The liberal compass of his warm embrace Stretched bigger yet in the dark bounds of space; With hands a-grope he felt smooth Nature's grace, Drew her to breast and kissed her sweetheart face: Yea man found neighbors in great hills and trees And streams and clouds and suns and birds and bees, And throbbed with neighbor-loves in loving these. But oh, the poor! the poor! the poor! That stand by the inward-opening door Trade's hand doth tighten ever more, And sigh their monstrous foul-air sigh For the outside hills of liberty, Where Nature spreads her wild blue sky For Art to make into melody! Thou Trade! thou king of the modern days! Change thy ways, Change thy ways; Let the sweaty laborers file A little while, A little while, Where Art and Nature sing and smile. Trade! is thy heart all dead, all dead? And hast thou nothing but a head? I'm all for heart," the flute-voice said, And into sudden silence fled, Like as a blush that while 'tis red Dies to a still, still white instead.

Thereto a thrilling calm succeeds, Till presently the silence breeds A little breeze among the reeds That seems to blow by sea-marsh weeds: Then from the gentle stir and fret Sings out the melting clarionet, Like as a lady sings while yet Her eyes with salty tears are wet. "O Trade! O Trade!" the Lady said, "I too will wish thee utterly dead If all thy heart is in thy head. For O my God! and O my God! What shameful ways have women trod At beckoning of Trade's golden rod! Alas when sighs are traders' lies, And heart's-ease eyes and violet eyes Are merchandise! O purchased lips that kiss with pain! O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain! O trafficked hearts that break in twain! — And yet what wonder at my sisters' crime? So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime, Men love not women as in olden time. Ah, not in these cold merchantable days Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays The one red Sweet of gracious ladies'-praise. Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying eye — Says, 'Here, you Lady, if you'll sell, I'll buy: Come, heart for heart — a trade? What! weeping? why?' Shame on such wooers' dapper mercery! I would my lover kneeling at my feet In humble manliness should cry, 'O sweet! I know not if thy heart my heart will greet: I ask not if thy love my love can meet: Whate'er thy worshipful soft tongue shall say, I'll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay: I do but know I love thee, and I pray To be thy knight until my dying day.' Woe him that cunning trades in hearts contrives! Base love good women to base loving drives. If men loved larger, larger were our lives; And wooed they nobler, won they nobler wives."

There thrust the bold straightforward horn To battle for that lady lorn, With heartsome voice of mellow scorn, Like any knight in knighthood's morn. "Now comfort thee," said he, "Fair Lady. For God shall right thy grievous wrong, And man shall sing thee a true-love song, Voiced in act his whole life long, Yea, all thy sweet life long, Fair Lady. Where's he that craftily hath said, The day of chivalry is dead? I'll prove that lie upon his head, Or I will die instead, Fair Lady. Is Honor gone into his grave? Hath Faith become a caitiff knave, And Selfhood turned into a slave To work in Mammon's cave, Fair Lady? Will Truth's long blade ne'er gleam again? Hath Giant Trade in dungeons slain All great contempts of mean-got gain And hates of inward stain, Fair Lady? For aye shall name and fame be sold, And place be hugged for the sake of gold, And smirch-robed Justice feebly scold At Crime all money-bold, Fair Lady? Shall self-wrapt husbands aye forget Kiss-pardons for the daily fret Wherewith sweet wifely eyes are wet — Blind to lips kiss-wise set — Fair Lady? Shall lovers higgle, heart for heart, Till wooing grows a trading mart Where much for little, and all for part, Make love a cheapening art, Fair Lady? Shall woman scorch for a single sin That her betrayer may revel in, And she be burnt, and he but grin When that the flames begin, Fair Lady? Shall ne'er prevail the woman's plea, 'We maids would far, far whiter be If that our eyes might sometimes see Men maids in purity,' Fair Lady? Shall Trade aye salve his conscience-aches With jibes at Chivalry's old mistakes — The wars that o'erhot knighthood makes For Christ's and ladies' sakes, Fair Lady? Now by each knight that e'er hath prayed To fight like a man and love like a maid, Since Pembroke's life, as Pembroke's blade, I' the scabbard, death, was laid, Fair Lady, I dare avouch my faith is bright That God doth right and God hath might. Nor time hath changed His hair to white, Nor His dear love to spite, Fair Lady. I doubt no doubts: I strive, and shrive my clay, And fight my fight in the patient modern way For true love and for thee — ah me! and pray To be thy knight until my dying day, Fair Lady." Made end that knightly horn, and spurred away Into the thick of the melodious fray.

And then the hautboy played and smiled, And sang like any large-eyed child, Cool-hearted and all undefiled. "Huge Trade!" he said, "Would thou wouldst lift me on thy head And run where'er my finger led! Once said a Man — and wise was He — 'Never shalt thou the heavens see, Save as a little child thou be.'" Then o'er sea-lashings of commingling tunes The ancient wise bassoons, Like weird Gray-beard Old harpers sitting on the high sea-dunes, Chanted runes: "Bright-waved gain, gray-waved loss, The sea of all doth lash and toss, One wave forward and one across: But now 'twas trough, now 'tis crest, And worst doth foam and flash to best, And curst to blest.

Life! Life! thou sea-fugue, writ from east to west, Love, Love alone can pore On thy dissolving score Of harsh half-phrasings, Blotted ere writ, And double erasings Of chords most fit. Yea, Love, sole music-master blest, May read thy weltering palimpsest. To follow Time's dying melodies through, And never to lose the old in the new, And ever to solve the discords true — Love alone can do. And ever Love hears the poor-folks' crying, And ever Love hears the women's sighing, And ever sweet knighthood's death-defying, And ever wise childhood's deep implying, But never a trader's glozing and lying.

And yet shall Love himself be heard, Though long deferred, though long deferred: O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred: Music is Love in search of a word."

_ Baltimore, 1875.



My Springs.



In the heart of the Hills of Life, I know Two springs that with unbroken flow Forever pour their lucent streams Into my soul's far Lake of Dreams.

Not larger than two eyes, they lie Beneath the many-changing sky And mirror all of life and time, — Serene and dainty pantomime.

Shot through with lights of stars and dawns, And shadowed sweet by ferns and fawns, — Thus heaven and earth together vie Their shining depths to sanctify.

Always when the large Form of Love Is hid by storms that rage above, I gaze in my two springs and see Love in his very verity.

Always when Faith with stifling stress Of grief hath died in bitterness, I gaze in my two springs and see A Faith that smiles immortally.

Always when Charity and Hope, In darkness bounden, feebly grope, I gaze in my two springs and see A Light that sets my captives free.

Always, when Art on perverse wing Flies where I cannot hear him sing, I gaze in my two springs and see A charm that brings him back to me.

When Labor faints, and Glory fails, And coy Reward in sighs exhales, I gaze in my two springs and see Attainment full and heavenly.

O Love, O Wife, thine eyes are they, — My springs from out whose shining gray Issue the sweet celestial streams That feed my life's bright Lake of Dreams.

Oval and large and passion-pure And gray and wise and honor-sure; Soft as a dying violet-breath Yet calmly unafraid of death;

Thronged, like two dove-cotes of gray doves, With wife's and mother's and poor-folk's loves, And home-loves and high glory-loves And science-loves and story-loves,

And loves for all that God and man In art and nature make or plan, And lady-loves for spidery lace And broideries and supple grace

And diamonds and the whole sweet round Of littles that large life compound, And loves for God and God's bare truth, And loves for Magdalen and Ruth,

Dear eyes, dear eyes and rare complete — Being heavenly-sweet and earthly-sweet, — I marvel that God made you mine, For when He frowns, 'tis then ye shine!

_ Baltimore, 1874.



In Absence.



I.

The storm that snapped our fate's one ship in twain Hath blown my half o' the wreck from thine apart. O Love! O Love! across the gray-waved main To thee-ward strain my eyes, my arms, my heart. I ask my God if e'en in His sweet place, Where, by one waving of a wistful wing, My soul could straightway tremble face to face With thee, with thee, across the stellar ring — Yea, where thine absence I could ne'er bewail Longer than lasts that little blank of bliss When lips draw back, with recent pressure pale, To round and redden for another kiss — Would not my lonesome heart still sigh for thee What time the drear kiss-intervals must be?

II.

So do the mottled formulas of Sense Glide snakewise through our dreams of Aftertime; So errors breed in reeds and grasses dense That bank our singing rivulets of rhyme. By Sense rule Space and Time; but in God's Land Their intervals are not, save such as lie Betwixt successive tones in concords bland Whose loving distance makes the harmony. Ah, there shall never come 'twixt me and thee Gross dissonances of the mile, the year; But in the multichords of ecstasy Our souls shall mingle, yet be featured clear, And absence, wrought to intervals divine, Shall part, yet link, thy nature's tone and mine.

III.

Look down the shining peaks of all my days Base-hidden in the valleys of deep night, So shalt thou see the heights and depths of praise My love would render unto love's delight; For I would make each day an Alp sublime Of passionate snow, white-hot yet icy-clear, — One crystal of the true-loves of all time Spiring the world's prismatic atmosphere; And I would make each night an awful vale Deep as thy soul, obscure as modesty, With every star in heaven trembling pale O'er sweet profounds where only Love can see. Oh, runs not thus the lesson thou hast taught? — When life's all love, 'tis life: aught else, 'tis naught.

IV.

Let no man say, 'He at his lady's feet Lays worship that to Heaven alone belongs; Yea, swings the incense that for God is meet In flippant censers of light lover's songs.' Who says it, knows not God, nor love, nor thee; For love is large as is yon heavenly dome: In love's great blue, each passion is full free To fly his favorite flight and build his home. Did e'er a lark with skyward-pointing beak Stab by mischance a level-flying dove? Wife-love flies level, his dear mate to seek: God-love darts straight into the skies above. Crossing, the windage of each other's wings But speeds them both upon their journeyings.

_ Baltimore, 1874.



Acknowledgment.



I.

O Age that half believ'st thou half believ'st, Half doubt'st the substance of thine own half doubt, And, half perceiving that thou half perceiv'st, Stand'st at thy temple door, heart in, head out! Lo! while thy heart's within, helping the choir, Without, thine eyes range up and down the time, Blinking at o'er-bright science, smit with desire To see and not to see. Hence, crime on crime. Yea, if the Christ (called thine) now paced yon street, Thy halfness hot with His rebuke would swell; Legions of scribes would rise and run and beat His fair intolerable Wholeness twice to hell. 'Nay' (so, dear Heart, thou whisperest in my soul), ''Tis a half time, yet Time will make it whole.'

II.

Now at thy soft recalling voice I rise Where thought is lord o'er Time's complete estate, Like as a dove from out the gray sedge flies To tree-tops green where cooes his heavenly mate. From these clear coverts high and cool I see How every time with every time is knit, And each to all is mortised cunningly, And none is sole or whole, yet all are fit. Thus, if this Age but as a comma show 'Twixt weightier clauses of large-worded years, My calmer soul scorns not the mark: I know This crooked point Time's complex sentence clears. Yet more I learn while, Friend! I sit by thee: Who sees all time, sees all eternity.

III.

If I do ask, How God can dumbness keep While Sin creeps grinning through His house of Time, Stabbing His saintliest children in their sleep, And staining holy walls with clots of crime? — Or, How may He whose wish but names a fact Refuse what miser's-scanting of supply Would richly glut each void where man hath lacked Of grace or bread? — or, How may Power deny Wholeness to th' almost-folk that hurt our hope — These heart-break Hamlets who so barely fail In life or art that but a hair's more scope Had set them fair on heights they ne'er may scale? — Somehow by thee, dear Love, I win content: Thy Perfect stops th' Imperfect's argument.

IV.

By the more height of thy sweet stature grown, Twice-eyed with thy gray vision set in mine, I ken far lands to wifeless men unknown, I compass stars for one-sexed eyes too fine. No text on sea-horizons cloudily writ, No maxim vaguely starred in fields or skies, But this wise thou-in-me deciphers it: Oh, thou'rt the Height of heights, the Eye of eyes. Not hardest Fortune's most unbounded stress Can blind my soul nor hurl it from on high, Possessing thee, the self of loftiness, And very light that Light discovers by. Howe'er thou turn'st, wrong Earth! still Love's in sight: For we are taller than the breadth of night.

_ Baltimore, 1874-5.



Laus Mariae.



Across the brook of Time man leaping goes On stepping-stones of epochs, that uprise Fixed, memorable, midst broad shallow flows Of neutrals, kill-times, sleeps, indifferencies. So twixt each morn and night rise salient heaps: Some cross with but a zigzag, jaded pace From meal to meal: some with convulsive leaps Shake the green tussocks of malign disgrace: And some advance by system and deep art O'er vantages of wealth, place, learning, tact. But thou within thyself, dear manifold heart, Dost bind all epochs in one dainty Fact. Oh, sweet, my pretty sum of history, I leapt the breadth of Time in loving thee!

_ Baltimore, 1874-5.



Special Pleading.



Time, hurry my Love to me: Haste, haste! Lov'st not good company? Here's but a heart-break sandy waste 'Twixt Now and Then. Why, killing haste Were best, dear Time, for thee, for thee!

Oh, would that I might divine Thy name beyond the zodiac sign Wherefrom our times-to-come descend. He called thee 'Sometime'. Change it, friend: 'Now-time' sounds so much more fine!

Sweet Sometime, fly fast to me: Poor Now-time sits in the Lonesome-tree And broods as gray as any dove, And calls, 'When wilt thou come, O Love?' And pleads across the waste to thee.

Good Moment, that giv'st him me, Wast ever in love? Maybe, maybe Thou'lt be this heavenly velvet time When Day and Night as rhyme and rhyme Set lip to lip dusk-modestly;

Or haply some noon afar, — O life's top bud, mixt rose and star, How ever can thine utmost sweet Be star-consummate, rose-complete, Till thy rich reds full opened are?

Well, be it dusk-time or noon-time, I ask but one small boon, Time: Come thou in night, come thou in day, I care not, I care not: have thine own way, But only, but only, come soon, Time.

_ Baltimore, 1875.



The Bee.



What time I paced, at pleasant morn, A deep and dewy wood, I heard a mellow hunting-horn Make dim report of Dian's lustihood Far down a heavenly hollow. Mine ear, though fain, had pain to follow: 'Tara!' it twanged, 'tara-tara!' it blew, Yet wavered oft, and flew Most ficklewise about, or here, or there, A music now from earth and now from air. But on a sudden, lo! I marked a blossom shiver to and fro With dainty inward storm; and there within A down-drawn trump of yellow jessamine A bee Thrust up its sad-gold body lustily, All in a honey madness hotly bound On blissful burglary. A cunning sound In that wing-music held me: down I lay In amber shades of many a golden spray, Where looping low with languid arms the Vine In wreaths of ravishment did overtwine Her kneeling Live-Oak, thousand-fold to plight Herself unto her own true stalwart knight.

As some dim blur of distant music nears The long-desiring sense, and slowly clears To forms of time and apprehensive tune, So, as I lay, full soon Interpretation throve: the bee's fanfare, Through sequent films of discourse vague as air, Passed to plain words, while, fanning faint perfume, The bee o'erhung a rich, unrifled bloom: "O Earth, fair lordly Blossom, soft a-shine Upon the star-pranked universal vine, Hast nought for me? To thee Come I, a poet, hereward haply blown, From out another worldflower lately flown. Wilt ask, 'What profit e'er a poet brings?' He beareth starry stuff about his wings To pollen thee and sting thee fertile: nay, If still thou narrow thy contracted way, — Worldflower, if thou refuse me — — Worldflower, if thou abuse me, And hoist thy stamen's spear-point high To wound my wing and mar mine eye — Nathless I'll drive me to thy deepest sweet, Yea, richlier shall that pain the pollen beat From me to thee, for oft these pollens be Fine dust from wars that poets wage for thee. But, O beloved Earthbloom soft a-shine Upon the universal Jessamine, Prithee, abuse me not, Prithee, refuse me not, Yield, yield the heartsome honey love to me Hid in thy nectary!" And as I sank into a dimmer dream The pleading bee's song-burthen sole did seem: "Hast ne'er a honey-drop of love for me In thy huge nectary?"

_ Tampa, Florida, 1877.



The Harlequin of Dreams.



Swift, through some trap mine eyes have never found, Dim-panelled in the painted scene of Sleep, Thou, giant Harlequin of Dreams, dost leap Upon my spirit's stage. Then Sight and Sound, Then Space and Time, then Language, Mete and Bound, And all familiar Forms that firmly keep Man's reason in the road, change faces, peep Betwixt the legs and mock the daily round. Yet thou canst more than mock: sometimes my tears At midnight break through bounden lids — a sign Thou hast a heart: and oft thy little leaven Of dream-taught wisdom works me bettered years. In one night witch, saint, trickster, fool divine, I think thou'rt Jester at the Court of Heaven!

_ Baltimore, 1878.



Street Cries.

Oft seems the Time a market-town Where many merchant-spirits meet Who up and down and up and down Cry out along the street

Their needs, as wares; one THUS, one SO: Till all the ways are full of sound: — But still come rain, and sun, and snow, And still the world goes round.



I. Remonstrance.

"Opinion, let me alone: I am not thine. Prim Creed, with categoric point, forbear To feature me my Lord by rule and line. Thou canst not measure Mistress Nature's hair, Not one sweet inch: nay, if thy sight is sharp, Would'st count the strings upon an angel's harp? Forbear, forbear.

"Oh let me love my Lord more fathom deep Than there is line to sound with: let me love My fellow not as men that mandates keep: Yea, all that's lovable, below, above, That let me love by heart, by heart, because (Free from the penal pressure of the laws) I find it fair.

"The tears I weep by day and bitter night, Opinion! for thy sole salt vintage fall. — As morn by morn I rise with fresh delight, Time through my casement cheerily doth call 'Nature is new, 'tis birthday every day, Come feast with me, let no man say me nay, Whate'er befall.'

"So fare I forth to feast: I sit beside Some brother bright: but, ere good-morrow's passed, Burly Opinion wedging in hath cried 'Thou shalt not sit by us, to break thy fast, Save to our Rubric thou subscribe and swear — 'Religion hath blue eyes and yellow hair:' She's Saxon, all.'

"Then, hard a-hungered for my brother's grace Till well-nigh fain to swear his folly's true, In sad dissent I turn my longing face To him that sits on the left: 'Brother, — with you?' — 'Nay, not with me, save thou subscribe and swear 'Religion hath black eyes and raven hair:' Nought else is true.'

"Debarred of banquets that my heart could make With every man on every day of life, I homeward turn, my fires of pain to slake In deep endearments of a worshipped wife. 'I love thee well, dear Love,' quoth she, 'and yet Would that thy creed with mine completely met, As one, not two.'

"Assassin! Thief! Opinion, 'tis thy work. By Church, by throne, by hearth, by every good That's in the Town of Time, I see thee lurk, And e'er some shadow stays where thou hast stood. Thou hand'st sweet Socrates his hemlock sour; Thou sav'st Barabbas in that hideous hour, And stabb'st the good

"Deliverer Christ; thou rack'st the souls of men; Thou tossest girls to lions and boys to flames; Thou hew'st Crusader down by Saracen; Thou buildest closets full of secret shames; Indifferent cruel, thou dost blow the blaze Round Ridley or Servetus; all thy days Smell scorched; I would

"— Thou base-born Accident of time and place — Bigot Pretender unto Judgment's throne — Bastard, that claimest with a cunning face Those rights the true, true Son of Man doth own By Love's authority — thou Rebel cold At head of civil wars and quarrels old — Thou Knife on a throne —

"I would thou left'st me free, to live with love, And faith, that through the love of love doth find My Lord's dear presence in the stars above, The clods below, the flesh without, the mind Within, the bread, the tear, the smile. Opinion, damned Intriguer, gray with guile, Let me alone."

_ Baltimore, 1878-9.



II. The Ship of Earth.

"Thou Ship of Earth, with Death, and Birth, and Life, and Sex aboard, And fires of Desires burning hotly in the hold, I fear thee, O! I fear thee, for I hear the tongue and sword At battle on the deck, and the wild mutineers are bold!

"The dewdrop morn may fall from off the petal of the sky, But all the deck is wet with blood and stains the crystal red. A pilot, GOD, a pilot! for the helm is left awry, And the best sailors in the ship lie there among the dead!"

_ Prattville, Alabama, 1868.



III. How Love Looked for Hell.

"To heal his heart of long-time pain One day Prince Love for to travel was fain With Ministers Mind and Sense. 'Now what to thee most strange may be?' Quoth Mind and Sense. 'All things above, One curious thing I first would see — Hell,' quoth Love.

"Then Mind rode in and Sense rode out: They searched the ways of man about. First frightfully groaneth Sense. ''Tis here, 'tis here,' and spurreth in fear To the top of the hill that hangeth above And plucketh the Prince: 'Come, come, 'tis here —' 'Where?' quoth Love —

"'Not far, not far,' said shivering Sense As they rode on. 'A short way hence, — But seventy paces hence: Look, King, dost see where suddenly This road doth dip from the height above? Cold blew a mouldy wind by me' ('Cold?' quoth Love)

"'As I rode down, and the River was black, And yon-side, lo! an endless wrack And rabble of souls,' sighed Sense, 'Their eyes upturned and begged and burned In brimstone lakes, and a Hand above Beat back the hands that upward yearned —' 'Nay!' quoth Love —

"'Yea, yea, sweet Prince; thyself shalt see, Wilt thou but down this slope with me; 'Tis palpable,' whispered Sense. — At the foot of the hill a living rill Shone, and the lilies shone white above; 'But now 'twas black, 'twas a river, this rill,' ('Black?' quoth Love)

"'Ay, black, but lo! the lilies grow, And yon-side where was woe, was woe, — Where the rabble of souls,' cried Sense, 'Did shrivel and turn and beg and burn, Thrust back in the brimstone from above — Is banked of violet, rose, and fern:' 'How?' quoth Love:

"'For lakes of pain, yon pleasant plain Of woods and grass and yellow grain Doth ravish the soul and sense: And never a sigh beneath the sky, And folk that smile and gaze above —' 'But saw'st thou here, with thine own eye, Hell?' quoth Love.

"'I saw true hell with mine own eye, True hell, or light hath told a lie, True, verily,' quoth stout Sense. Then Love rode round and searched the ground, The caves below, the hills above; 'But I cannot find where thou hast found Hell,' quoth Love.

"There, while they stood in a green wood And marvelled still on Ill and Good, Came suddenly Minister Mind. 'In the heart of sin doth hell begin: 'Tis not below, 'tis not above, It lieth within, it lieth within:' ('Where?' quoth Love)

"'I saw a man sit by a corse; 'Hell's in the murderer's breast: remorse!' Thus clamored his mind to his mind: Not fleshly dole is the sinner's goal, Hell's not below, nor yet above, 'Tis fixed in the ever-damned soul —' 'Fixed?' quoth Love —

"'Fixed: follow me, would'st thou but see: He weepeth under yon willow tree, Fast chained to his corse,' quoth Mind. Full soon they passed, for they rode fast, Where the piteous willow bent above. 'Now shall I see at last, at last, Hell,' quoth Love.

"There when they came Mind suffered shame: 'These be the same and not the same,' A-wondering whispered Mind. Lo, face by face two spirits pace Where the blissful willow waves above: One saith: 'Do me a friendly grace —' ('Grace!' quoth Love)

"'Read me two Dreams that linger long, Dim as returns of old-time song That flicker about the mind. I dreamed (how deep in mortal sleep!) I struck thee dead, then stood above, With tears that none but dreamers weep;' 'Dreams,' quoth Love;

"'In dreams, again, I plucked a flower That clung with pain and stung with power, Yea, nettled me, body and mind.' ''Twas the nettle of sin, 'twas medicine; No need nor seed of it here Above; In dreams of hate true loves begin.' 'True,' quoth Love.

"'Now strange,' quoth Sense, and 'Strange,' quoth Mind, 'We saw it, and yet 'tis hard to find, — But we saw it,' quoth Sense and Mind. Stretched on the ground, beautiful-crowned Of the piteous willow that wreathed above, 'But I cannot find where ye have found Hell,' quoth Love."

_ Baltimore, 1878-9.



IV. Tyranny.

"Spring-germs, spring-germs, I charge you by your life, go back to death. This glebe is sick, this wind is foul of breath. Stay: feed the worms.

"Oh! every clod Is faint, and falters from the war of growth And crumbles in a dreary dust of sloth, Unploughed, untrod.

"What need, what need, To hide with flowers the curse upon the hills, Or sanctify the banks of sluggish rills Where vapors breed?

"And — if needs must — Advance, O Summer-heats! upon the land, And bake the bloody mould to shards and sand And dust.

"Before your birth, Burn up, O Roses! with your dainty flame. Good Violets, sweet Violets, hide shame Below the earth.

"Ye silent Mills, Reject the bitter kindness of the moss. O Farms! protest if any tree emboss The barren hills.

"Young Trade is dead, And swart Work sullen sits in the hillside fern And folds his arms that find no bread to earn, And bows his head.

"Spring-germs, spring-germs, Albeit the towns have left you place to play, I charge you, sport not. Winter owns to-day, Stay: feed the worms."

_ Prattville, Alabama, 1868.



V. Life and Song.

"If life were caught by a clarionet, And a wild heart, throbbing in the reed, Should thrill its joy and trill its fret, And utter its heart in every deed,

"Then would this breathing clarionet Type what the poet fain would be; For none o' the singers ever yet Has wholly lived his minstrelsy,

"Or clearly sung his true, true thought, Or utterly bodied forth his life, Or out of life and song has wrought The perfect one of man and wife;

"Or lived and sung, that Life and Song Might each express the other's all, Careless if life or art were long Since both were one, to stand or fall:

"So that the wonder struck the crowd, Who shouted it about the land: 'His song was only living aloud, His work, a singing with his hand!'"

_ 1868.



VI. To Richard Wagner.

"I saw a sky of stars that rolled in grime. All glory twinkled through some sweat of fight, From each tall chimney of the roaring time That shot his fire far up the sooty night Mixt fuels — Labor's Right and Labor's Crime — Sent upward throb on throb of scarlet light Till huge hot blushes in the heavens blent With golden hues of Trade's high firmament.

"Fierce burned the furnaces; yet all seemed well, Hope dreamed rich music in the rattling mills. 'Ye foundries, ye shall cast my church a bell,' Loud cried the Future from the farthest hills: 'Ye groaning forces, crack me every shell Of customs, old constraints, and narrow ills; Thou, lithe Invention, wake and pry and guess, Till thy deft mind invents me Happiness.'

"And I beheld high scaffoldings of creeds Crumbling from round Religion's perfect Fane: And a vast noise of rights, wrongs, powers, needs, — Cries of new Faiths that called 'This Way is plain,' — Grindings of upper against lower greeds — — Fond sighs for old things, shouts for new, — did reign Below that stream of golden fire that broke, Mottled with red, above the seas of smoke.

"Hark! Gay fanfares from halls of old Romance Strike through the clouds of clamor: who be these That, paired in rich processional, advance From darkness o'er the murk mad factories Into yon flaming road, and sink, strange Ministrants! Sheer down to earth, with many minstrelsies And motions fine, and mix about the scene And fill the Time with forms of ancient mien?

"Bright ladies and brave knights of Fatherland; Sad mariners, no harbor e'er may hold, A swan soft floating tow'rds a magic strand; Dim ghosts, of earth, air, water, fire, steel, gold, Wind, grief, and love; a lewd and lurking band Of Powers — dark Conspiracy, Cunning cold, Gray Sorcery; magic cloaks and rings and rods; Valkyries, heroes, Rhinemaids, giants, gods!

* * * * *

"O Wagner, westward bring thy heavenly art, No trifler thou: Siegfried and Wotan be Names for big ballads of the modern heart. Thine ears hear deeper than thine eyes can see. Voice of the monstrous mill, the shouting mart, Not less of airy cloud and wave and tree, Thou, thou, if even to thyself unknown, Hast power to say the Time in terms of tone."

_ 1877.



VII. A Song of Love.

"Hey, rose, just born Twin to a thorn; Was't so with you, O Love and Scorn?

"Sweet eyes that smiled, Now wet and wild; O Eye and Tear — mother and child.

"Well: Love and Pain Be kinsfolk twain: Yet would, Oh would I could love again."



To Beethoven.



In o'er-strict calyx lingering, Lay music's bud too long unblown, Till thou, Beethoven, breathed the spring: Then bloomed the perfect rose of tone.

O Psalmist of the weak, the strong, O Troubadour of love and strife, Co-Litanist of right and wrong, Sole Hymner of the whole of life,

I know not how, I care not why, — Thy music sets my world at ease, And melts my passion's mortal cry In satisfying symphonies.

It soothes my accusations sour 'Gainst thoughts that fray the restless soul: The stain of death; the pain of power; The lack of love 'twixt part and whole;

The yea-nay of Freewill and Fate, Whereof both cannot be, yet are; The praise a poet wins too late Who starves from earth into a star;

The lies that serve great parties well, While truths but give their Christ a cross; The loves that send warm souls to hell, While cold-blood neuters take no loss;

Th' indifferent smile that nature's grace On Jesus, Judas, pours alike; Th' indifferent frown on nature's face When luminous lightnings strangely strike

The sailor praying on his knees And spare his mate that's cursing God; How babes and widows starve and freeze, Yet Nature will not stir a clod;

Why Nature blinds us in each act Yet makes no law in mercy bend, No pitfall from our feet retract, No storm cry out 'Take shelter, friend;'

Why snakes that crawl the earth should ply Rattles, that whoso hears may shun, While serpent lightnings in the sky, But rattle when the deed is done;

How truth can e'er be good for them That have not eyes to bear its strength, And yet how stern our lights condemn Delays that lend the darkness length;

To know all things, save knowingness; To grasp, yet loosen, feeling's rein; To waste no manhood on success; To look with pleasure upon pain;

Though teased by small mixt social claims, To lose no large simplicity, And midst of clear-seen crimes and shames To move with manly purity;

To hold, with keen, yet loving eyes, Art's realm from Cleverness apart, To know the Clever good and wise, Yet haunt the lonesome heights of Art;

O Psalmist of the weak, the strong, O Troubadour of love and strife, Co-Litanist of right and wrong, Sole Hymner of the whole of life,

I know not how, I care not why, Thy music brings this broil at ease, And melts my passion's mortal cry In satisfying symphonies.

Yea, it forgives me all my sins, Fits life to love like rhyme to rhyme, And tunes the task each day begins By the last trumpet-note of Time.

_ 1876-7.



An Frau Nannette Falk-Auerbach.



Als du im Saal mit deiner himmlischen Kunst Beethoven zeigst, und seinem Willen nach Mit den zehn Fingern fuehrst der Leute Gunst, Zehn Zungen sagen was der Meister sprach. Schauend dich an, ich seh', dass nicht allein Du sitzest: jetzt herab die Toene ziehn Beethovens Geist: er steht bei dir, ganz rein: Fuer dich mit Vaters Stolz sein' Augen gluehn: Er sagt, "Ich hoerte dich aus Himmelsluft, Die kommt ja naeher, wo ein Kuenstler spielt: Mein Kind (ich sagte) mich zur Erde ruft: Ja, weil mein Arm kein Kind im Leben hielt, Gott hat mir dich nach meinem Tod gegeben, Nannette, Tochter! dich, mein zweites Leben!"

_ Baltimore, 1878.



To Nannette Falk-Auerbach.



Oft as I hear thee, wrapt in heavenly art, The massive message of Beethoven tell With thy ten fingers to the people's heart As if ten tongues told news of heaven and hell, — Gazing on thee, I mark that not alone, Ah, not alone, thou sittest: there, by thee, Beethoven's self, dear living lord of tone, Doth stand and smile upon thy mastery. Full fain and fatherly his great eyes glow: He says, "From Heaven, my child, I heard thee call (For, where an artist plays, the sky is low): Yea, since my lonesome life did lack love's all, In death, God gives me thee: thus, quit of pain, Daughter, Nannette! in thee I live again."

_ Baltimore, 1878.



To Our Mocking-Bird.

Died of a cat, May, 1878.



I.

Trillets of humor, — shrewdest whistle-wit, — Contralto cadences of grave desire Such as from off the passionate Indian pyre Drift down through sandal-odored flames that split About the slim young widow who doth sit And sing above, — midnights of tone entire, — Tissues of moonlight shot with songs of fire; — Bright drops of tune, from oceans infinite Of melody, sipped off the thin-edged wave And trickling down the beak, — discourses brave Of serious matter that no man may guess, — Good-fellow greetings, cries of light distress — All these but now within the house we heard: O Death, wast thou too deaf to hear the bird?

II.

Ah me, though never an ear for song, thou hast A tireless tooth for songsters: thus of late Thou camest, Death, thou Cat! and leap'st my gate, And, long ere Love could follow, thou hadst passed Within and snatched away, how fast, how fast, My bird — wit, songs, and all — thy richest freight Since that fell time when in some wink of fate Thy yellow claws unsheathed and stretched, and cast Sharp hold on Keats, and dragged him slow away, And harried him with hope and horrid play — Ay, him, the world's best wood-bird, wise with song — Till thou hadst wrought thine own last mortal wrong. 'Twas wrong! 'twas wrong! I care not, WRONG's the word — To munch our Keats and crunch our mocking-bird.

III.

Nay, Bird; my grief gainsays the Lord's best right. The Lord was fain, at some late festal time, That Keats should set all Heaven's woods in rhyme, And thou in bird-notes. Lo, this tearful night, Methinks I see thee, fresh from death's despite, Perched in a palm-grove, wild with pantomime, O'er blissful companies couched in shady thyme, — Methinks I hear thy silver whistlings bright Mix with the mighty discourse of the wise, Till broad Beethoven, deaf no more, and Keats, 'Midst of much talk, uplift their smiling eyes, And mark the music of thy wood-conceits, And halfway pause on some large, courteous word, And call thee "Brother", O thou heavenly Bird!

_ Baltimore, 1878.



The Dove.



If haply thou, O Desdemona Morn, Shouldst call along the curving sphere, "Remain, Dear Night, sweet Moor; nay, leave me not in scorn!" With soft halloos of heavenly love and pain; —

Shouldst thou, O Spring! a-cower in coverts dark, 'Gainst proud supplanting Summer sing thy plea, And move the mighty woods through mailed bark Till mortal heart-break throbbed in every tree; —

Or (grievous 'if' that may be 'yea' o'er-soon!), If thou, my Heart, long holden from thy Sweet, Shouldst knock Death's door with mellow shocks of tune, Sad inquiry to make — 'When may we meet?'

Nay, if ye three, O Morn! O Spring! O Heart! Should chant grave unisons of grief and love; Ye could not mourn with more melodious art Than daily doth yon dim sequestered dove.

_ Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania, 1877.



To ——, with a Rose.



I asked my heart to say Some word whose worth my love's devoir might pay Upon my Lady's natal day.

Then said my heart to me: 'Learn from the rhyme that now shall come to thee What fits thy Love most lovingly.'

This gift that learning shows; For, as a rhyme unto its rhyme-twin goes, I send a rose unto a Rose.

_ Philadelphia, 1876.



On Huntingdon's "Miranda".



The storm hath blown thee a lover, sweet, And laid him kneeling at thy feet. But, — guerdon rich for favor rare! The wind hath all thy holy hair To kiss and to sing through and to flare Like torch-flames in the passionate air, About thee, O Miranda.

Eyes in a blaze, eyes in a daze, Bold with love, cold with amaze, Chaste-thrilling eyes, fast-filling eyes With daintiest tears of love's surprise, Ye draw my soul unto your blue As warm skies draw the exhaling dew, Divine eyes of Miranda.

And if I were yon stolid stone, Thy tender arm doth lean upon, Thy touch would turn me to a heart, And I would palpitate and start, — Content, when thou wert gone, to be A dumb rock by the lonesome sea Forever, O Miranda.

_ Baltimore, 1874.



Ode to the Johns Hopkins University.

Read on the Fourth Commemoration Day, February, 1880.



How tall among her sisters, and how fair, — How grave beyond her youth, yet debonair As dawn, 'mid wrinkled Matres of old lands Our youngest Alma Mater modest stands! In four brief cycles round the punctual sun Has she, old Learning's latest daughter, won This grace, this stature, and this fruitful fame. Howbeit she was born Unnoised as any stealing summer morn. From far the sages saw, from far they came And ministered to her, Led by the soaring-genius'd Sylvester That, earlier, loosed the knot great Newton tied, And flung the door of Fame's locked temple wide. As favorable fairies thronged of old and blessed The cradled princess with their several best, So, gifts and dowers meet To lay at Wisdom's feet, These liberal masters largely brought — Dear diamonds of their long-compressed thought, Rich stones from out the labyrinthine cave Of research, pearls from Time's profoundest wave And many a jewel brave, of brilliant ray, Dug in the far obscure Cathay Of meditation deep — With flowers, of such as keep Their fragrant tissues and their heavenly hues Fresh-bathed forever in eternal dews — The violet with her low-drooped eye, For learned modesty, — The student snow-drop, that doth hang and pore Upon the earth, like Science, evermore, And underneath the clod doth grope and grope, — The astronomer heliotrope, That watches heaven with a constant eye, — The daring crocus, unafraid to try (When Nature calls) the February snows, — And patience' perfect rose. Thus sped with helps of love and toil and thought, Thus forwarded of faith, with hope thus fraught, In four brief cycles round the stringent sun This youngest sister hath her stature won.

Nay, why regard The passing of the years? Nor made, nor marr'd, By help or hindrance of slow Time was she: O'er this fair growth Time had no mastery: So quick she bloomed, she seemed to bloom at birth, As Eve from Adam, or as he from earth. Superb o'er slow increase of day on day, Complete as Pallas she began her way; Yet not from Jove's unwrinkled forehead sprung, But long-time dreamed, and out of trouble wrung, Fore-seen, wise-plann'd, pure child of thought and pain, Leapt our Minerva from a mortal brain.

And here, O finer Pallas, long remain, — Sit on these Maryland hills, and fix thy reign, And frame a fairer Athens than of yore In these blest bounds of Baltimore, — Here, where the climates meet That each may make the other's lack complete, — Where Florida's soft Favonian airs beguile The nipping North, — where nature's powers smile, — Where Chesapeake holds frankly forth her hands Spread wide with invitation to all lands, — Where now the eager people yearn to find The organizing hand that fast may bind Loose straws of aimless aspiration fain In sheaves of serviceable grain, — Here, old and new in one, Through nobler cycles round a richer sun O'er-rule our modern ways, O blest Minerva of these larger days! Call here thy congress of the great, the wise, The hearing ears, the seeing eyes, — Enrich us out of every farthest clime, — Yea, make all ages native to our time, Till thou the freedom of the city grant To each most antique habitant Of Fame, — Bring Shakespeare back, a man and not a name, — Let every player that shall mimic us In audience see old godlike Aeschylus, — Bring Homer, Dante, Plato, Socrates, — Bring Virgil from the visionary seas Of old romance, — bring Milton, no more blind, — Bring large Lucretius, with unmaniac mind, — Bring all gold hearts and high resolved wills To be with us about these happy hills, — Bring old Renown To walk familiar citizen of the town, — Bring Tolerance, that can kiss and disagree, — Bring Virtue, Honor, Truth, and Loyalty, — Bring Faith that sees with undissembling eyes, — Bring all large Loves and heavenly Charities, — Till man seem less a riddle unto man And fair Utopia less Utopian, And many peoples call from shore to shore, 'The world has bloomed again, at Baltimore!'

_ Baltimore, 1880.



To Dr. Thomas Shearer.

Presenting a portrait-bust of the author.



Since you, rare friend! have tied my living tongue With thanks more large than man e'er said or sung, So let the dumbness of this image be My eloquence, and still interpret me.

_ Baltimore, 1880.



Martha Washington.

Written for the "Martha Washington Court Journal".



Down cold snow-stretches of our bitter time, When windy shams and the rain-mocking sleet Of Trade have cased us in such icy rime That hearts are scarcely hot enough to beat, Thy fame, O Lady of the lofty eyes, Doth fall along the age, like as a lane Of Spring, in whose most generous boundaries Full many a frozen virtue warms again. To-day I saw the pale much-burdened form Of Charity come limping o'er the line, And straighten from the bending of the storm And flush with stirrings of new strength divine, Such influence and sweet gracious impulse came Out of the beams of thine immortal name!

_ Baltimore, February 22d, 1875.



Psalm of the West.



Land of the willful gospel, thou worst and thou best; Tall Adam of lands, new-made of the dust of the West; Thou wroughtest alone in the Garden of God, unblest Till He fashioned lithe Freedom to lie for thine Eve on thy breast — Till out of thy heart's dear neighborhood, out of thy side, He fashioned an intimate Sweet one and brought thee a Bride. Cry hail! nor bewail that the wound of her coming was wide. Lo, Freedom reached forth where the world as an apple hung red; 'Let us taste the whole radiant round of it,' gayly she said: 'If we die, at the worst we shall lie as the first of the dead.' Knowledge of Good and of Ill, O Land! she hath given thee; Perilous godhoods of choosing have rent thee and riven thee; Will's high adoring to Ill's low exploring hath driven thee — Freedom, thy Wife, hath uplifted thy life and clean shriven thee! Her shalt thou clasp for a balm to the scars of thy breast, Her shalt thou kiss for a calm to thy wars of unrest, Her shalt extol in the psalm of the soul of the West. For Weakness, in freedom, grows stronger than Strength with a chain; And Error, in freedom, will come to lamenting his stain, Till freely repenting he whiten his spirit again; And Friendship, in freedom, will blot out the bounding of race; And straight Law, in freedom, will curve to the rounding of grace; And Fashion, in freedom, will die of the lie in her face; And Desire flame white on the sense as a fire on a height, And Sex flame white in the soul as a star in the night, And Marriage plight sense unto soul as the two-colored light Of the fire and the star shines one with a duplicate might; And Science be known as the sense making love to the All, And Art be known as the soul making love to the All, And Love be known as the marriage of man with the All — Till Science to knowing the Highest shall lovingly turn, Till Art to loving the Highest shall consciously burn, Till Science to Art as a man to a woman shall yearn, — Then morn! When Faith from the wedding of Knowing and Loving shall purely be born, And the Child shall smile in the West, and the West to the East give morn, And the Time in that ultimate Prime shall forget old regretting and scorn, Yea, the stream of the light shall give off in a shimmer the dream of the night forlorn.

Once on a time a soul Too full of his dole In a querulous dream went crying from pole to pole — Went sobbing and crying For ever a sorrowful song of living and dying, How 'life was the dropping and death the drying Of a Tear that fell in a day when God was sighing.' And ever Time tossed him bitterly to and fro As a shuttle inlaying a perilous warp of woe In the woof of things from terminal snow to snow, Till, lo! Rest. And he sank on the grass of the earth as a lark on its nest, And he lay in the midst of the way from the east to the west. Then the East came out from the east and the West from the west, And, behold! in the gravid deeps of the lower dark, While, above, the wind was fanning the dawn as a spark, The East and the West took form as the wings of a lark. One wing was feathered with facts of the uttermost Past, And one with the dreams of a prophet; and both sailed fast And met where the sorrowful Soul on the earth was cast. Then a Voice said: 'Thine, if thou lovest enough to use;' But another: 'To fly and to sing is pain: refuse!' Then the Soul said: 'Come, O my wings! I cannot but choose.' And the Soul was a-tremble like as a new-born thing, Till the spark of the dawn wrought a conscience in heart as in wing, Saying, 'Thou art the lark of the dawn; it is time to sing.'

Then that artist began in a lark's low circling to pass; And first he sang at the height of the top of the grass A song of the herds that are born and die in the mass. And next he sang a celestial-passionate round At the height of the lips of a woman above the ground, How 'Love was a fair true Lady, and Death a wild hound, And she called, and he licked her hand and with girdle was bound.' And then with a universe-love he was hot in the wings, And the sun stretched beams to the worlds as the shining strings Of the large hid harp that sounds when an all-lover sings; And the sky's blue traction prevailed o'er the earth's in might, And the passion of flight grew mad with the glory of height And the uttering of song was like to the giving of light; And he learned that hearing and seeing wrought nothing alone, And that music on earth much light upon Heaven had thrown, And he melted-in silvery sunshine with silvery tone; And the spirals of music e'er higher and higher he wound Till the luminous cinctures of melody up from the ground Arose as the shaft of a tapering tower of sound — Arose for an unstricken full-finished Babel of sound. But God was not angry, nor ever confused his tongue, For not out of selfish nor impudent travail was wrung The song of all men and all things that the all-lover sung. Then he paused at the top of his tower of song on high, And the voice of the God of the artist from far in the sky Said, 'Son, look down: I will cause that a Time gone by Shall pass, and reveal his heart to thy loving eye.'

Far spread, below, The sea that fast hath locked in his loose flow All secrets of Atlantis' drowned woe Lay bound about with night on every hand, Save down the eastern brink a shining band Of day made out a little way from land. Then from that shore the wind upbore a cry: 'Thou Sea, thou Sea of Darkness! why, oh why Dost waste thy West in unthrift mystery?' But ever the idiot sea-mouths foam and fill, And never a wave doth good for man or ill, And Blank is king, and Nothing hath his will; And like as grim-beaked pelicans level file Across the sunset toward their nightly isle On solemn wings that wave but seldomwhile, So leanly sails the day behind the day To where the Past's lone Rock o'erglooms the spray, And down its mortal fissures sinks away.

Master, Master, break this ban: The wave lacks Thee. Oh, is it not to widen man Stretches the sea? Oh, must the sea-bird's idle van Alone be free?

Into the Sea of the Dark doth creep Bjoerne's pallid sail, As the face of a walker in his sleep, Set rigid and most pale, About the night doth peer and peep In a dream of an ancient tale.

Lo, here is made a hasty cry: 'Land, land, upon the west! — God save such land! Go by, go by: Here may no mortal rest, Where this waste hell of slate doth lie And grind the glacier's breast.'

The sail goeth limp: hey, flap and strain! Round eastward slanteth the mast; As the sleep-walker waked with pain, White-clothed in the midnight blast, Doth stare and quake, and stride again To houseward all aghast.

Yet as, 'A ghost!' his household cry: 'He hath followed a ghost in flight. Let us see the ghost' — his household fly With lamps to search the night — So Norsemen's sails run out and try The Sea of the Dark with light.

Stout Are Marson, southward whirled From out the tempest's hand, Doth skip the sloping of the world To Huitramannaland, Where Georgia's oaks with moss-beards curled Wave by the shining strand,

And sway in sighs from Florida's Spring Or Carolina's Palm — What time the mocking-bird doth bring The woods his artist's-balm, Singing the Song of Everything Consummate-sweet and calm —

Land of large merciful-hearted skies, Big bounties, rich increase, Green rests for Trade's blood-shotten eyes, For o'er-beat brains surcease, For Love the dear woods' sympathies, For Grief the wise woods' peace,

For Need rich givings of hid powers In hills and vales quick-won, For Greed large exemplary flowers That ne'er have toiled nor spun, For Heat fair-tempered winds and showers, For Cold the neighbor sun.

Land where the Spirits of June-Heat From out their forest-maze Stray forth at eve with loitering feet, And fervent hymns upraise In bland accord and passion sweet Along the Southern ways: —

"O Darkness, tawny Twin whose Twin hath ceased, Thou Odor from the day-flower's crushing born, Thou visible Sigh out of the mournful East, That cannot see her lord again till morn: O Leaves, with hollow palms uplifted high To catch the stars' most sacred rain of light: O pallid Lily-petals fain to die Soul-stung by subtle passion of the night: O short-breath'd Winds beneath the gracious moon Running mild errands for mild violets, Or carrying sighs from the red lips of June What wavering way the odor-current sets: O Stars wreathed vinewise round yon heavenly dells, Or thrust from out the sky in curving sprays, Or whorled, or looped with pendent flower-bells, Or bramble-tangled in a brilliant maze, Or lying like young lilies in a lake About the great white Lily of the moon, Or drifting white from where in heaven shake Star-portraitures of apple trees in June, Or lapp'd as leaves of a great rose of stars, Or shyly clambering up cloud-lattices, Or trampled pale in the red path of Mars, Or trim-set quaint in gardeners'-fantasies: O long June Night-sounds crooned among the leaves; O whispered confidence of Dark and Green; O murmurs in old moss about old eaves; O tinklings floating over water-sheen."

Then Leif, bold son of Eric the Red, To the South of the West doth flee — Past slaty Helluland is sped, Past Markland's woody lea, Till round about fair Vinland's head, Where Taunton helps the sea,

The Norseman calls, the anchor falls, The mariners hurry a-strand: They wassail with fore-drunken skals Where prophet wild grapes stand; They lift the Leifsbooth's hasty walls They stride about the land —

New England, thee! whose ne'er-spent wine As blood doth stretch each vein, And urge thee, sinewed like thy vine, Through peril and all pain To grasp Endeavor's towering Pine, And, once ahold, remain —