LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OP 
 
LYRICAL RECREATIONS 
 
LYRICAL 
 RECREATIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL WARD 
 
 Je vous dontte avecque niafoy 
 Ce qu H y a de mieulx en ft toy. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 1883 
 
COPYRIGHT 
 
 1883 
 BY SAMUEL WARD. 
 
 GIFT 
 
 Printed by R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh. 
 
us ^ 
 
 
 1883 
 
 TO THE EARL OF ROSEBERY, 
 Decori Scotice et Hwnanitatis. 
 
 THE muse I wooed at fifty-two 
 
 Bore me these urchin lays, 
 Which raise their lowly heads anew 
 
 Since quickened by thy praise. 
 
 Will they live on, to vindicate 
 
 The memory of their sire, 
 Whom Fate compelled to leave to fate 
 
 These foundlings of his lyre ? 
 
 What care we ? Ere the pyramids 
 
 The priests of Isis sang, 
 While on the kingly coffin-lids 
 
 The graver s chisel rang, 
 
 754 
 
vi TO THE EARL OF ROSEBERY. 
 
 Carving great deeds on stone to cheat 
 
 Oblivion of its prey, 
 Until the last reveille should beat 
 
 The dawn of Judgment Day. 
 
 The priests are dust, the crumbling fane 
 
 In piteous ruin lies ; 
 In loving hearts the holy strain 
 
 Of David never dies. 
 
TJ7HEN in -my walks I meet some ruddy lad 
 Or swarthy man, with tray-beladen head, 
 Whose smile entreats me, or his -visage sad, 
 To buy the images he moulds for bread ; 
 
 I think that, though his poor Greek Slave in chains, 
 His Venus and her Boy with Blaster dart, 
 
 Be, like the organ-grinder s quavering strains. 
 But farthings in the currency of art ; 
 
 Such coins a kingly effigy still wear, 
 
 Let metals base or precious in them -mix ; 
 
 The painted vellum hallows not the Prayer 
 Nor ivory nor gold the Crucifix. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 To THE EARL OF ROSEBERY . . . . v 
 
 THE POET S ACRE i 
 
 IGNES FATUI 3 
 
 MONKHOOD 5 
 
 TIME THE AUCTIONEER n 
 
 THE GLASS-BLOWER I4 
 
 THE MONITOR 17 
 
 PANACEA X g 
 
 MONTAUK LIGHT 2I 
 
 HYMN TO MARS 25 
 
 THE MAIDEN S CHILDREN 2 $ 
 
 ZISKA . . 32 
 
 METEMPSYCHOSIS 37 
 
 THE WISE MAIDEN 40 
 
 THE HEBREW ALPHABET 42 
 
 PORRIGO DEXTRAM 44 
 
 THE BLIND FIDDLER 47 
 
x CONTENTS, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 NEW Music 51 
 
 STRADIVARIUS 54 
 
 NOCTURNE 56 
 
 TRIBUTE TO THE LOST SCORE .... 59 
 
 THE PERFECT WAY 61 
 
 THE EXILE 63 
 
 SENESCENTIA 65 
 
 ANTEPENULTIMATE 67 
 
 THE MORROW OF THE FUNERAL 69 
 
 THE OLD ROPE 73 
 
 FALCONRY 77 
 
 THE CHARGE 85 
 
 LOST AND FOUND 86 
 
 A ROYAL ABODE 92 
 
 VATHEK 95 
 
 SUB TEGMINE FAGI 98 
 
 CHANT DU DEPART 101 
 
 POIGNARD OR PlLLS ? 103 
 
 To ALFRED TENNYSON 105 
 
 To THE POET OF FARRINGFORD .... 107 
 
 To LADY S. G in 
 
 To SIBELL 113 
 
 IMPROMPTU TO MRS. HOWE . . . .114 
 
 LINES WRITTEN IN A COPY OF OMAR KHAYYAM . Il6 
 
 To MY NIECE DAISY INTERPRETING LISZT . -117 
 
 To EDGAR ALLAN POE 120 
 
CONTENTS. xi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 To WALT WHITMAN 122 
 
 IMPROMPTU IN AN ALBUM 125 
 
 SIRO DELMONICO 126 
 
 FRUITION 131 
 
 LEAVES AND STARS 133 
 
 OCTOBER LAY 135 
 
 SONG OF THE WREN 139 
 
 ORCHARD FANTASIA 143 
 
 A WAKING DREAM 147 
 
 THE INCOMPLETE PICTURE 149 
 
 THE TRYST 151 
 
 To CONSUELO 156 
 
 NOT WINE ALONE 158 
 
 THE RUBY GOBLET ...... 161 
 
 BOHEMIAN SONG 166 
 
 WALTZ 169 
 
 MAZURKA 172 
 
 DAWN AT MIDNIGHT 174 
 
 THE MOON AND THE BEACON .... 176 
 
 LA CHOCOLATIERE 178 
 
 DOLORES 180 
 
 TITIAN TO STELLA 182 
 
 " No CARDS " 184 
 
 A DEPARTING BRIDE 186 
 
 LlEBESRUHE . . 1 88 
 
xii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE MARINER S BETROTHED . . . .190 
 
 CATECHISM Ig2 
 
 METATHALAMIUM 195 
 
 ZAMPITA i 97 
 
 TODESFRAGE 2OI 
 
 GIVE ME Jov 203 
 
 IN FIFTH AVENUE 206 
 
 To A WELL-KNOWN CAMELLIA .... 210 
 
 UNDERGRADUATE 2I2 
 
 IMPROMPTU 214 
 
 To GRACE 216 
 
 THE VALLEY-LILY 217 
 
 SONG . 218 
 
 LE MANOIR DE LOCKSLEY 221 
 
 AT LAST 226 
 
 ENFIN 227 
 
 LA SYLPHIDE 230 
 
 THE SYLPHIDE 231 
 
 A LA COMTESSE IDA 236 
 
 MA SAINTE AUX ROSES 238 
 
 STANCES A SIBELLE 240 
 
 A MA GRACE DARLING 242 
 
 A LA PRINCESSE MARGOT 244 
 
 A LAURE 246 
 
I. 
 
THE POET S ACRE. 
 
 DOWN the mountain as I wandered, 
 And upon the landscape pondered, 
 
 Where, as in a net, 
 Lordly hedge and stately railing 
 With the farmer s wooden paling 
 
 Intersecting met, 
 
 Compassing the field of azure 
 Of the lake no rigid measure 
 
 Mapped unequally, 
 I bethought me, " Such division 
 Of the plain is a derision," 
 
 When my roving eye 
 
 Rested on the sexton s barrow 
 Shrinking near the portal narrow 
 Of the churchyard green, 
 B 
 
THE POET S ACRE. 
 
 Where fill prince and peasant places 
 Equal as the chessboard s spaces, 
 Hold they pawn or queen. 
 
 Still the zig-zag path descending, 
 Came I to a painter blending, 
 
 On a tinier scale, 
 Under April s sunshine merry, 
 Meadow, lake, and cemetery 
 
 Sparkling in the vale. 
 
 And with passionate expansion, 
 Free from envy, I the mansion 
 
 And the cot surveyed, 
 Coveting nor manor pleasant, 
 Nor the patches which the peasant 
 
 Vexed with hoe and spade. 
 
 Happy, though without an acre, 
 While supplies the paper-maker 
 
 Sod like this fair page, 
 Into which, at Fancy s hours, 
 I transplant the wayside flowers 
 
 Of my pilgrimage. 
 
IGNES FATUI. 
 
 A DREAM the limner s waking eyes 
 
 Shall strive to seize, 
 As vainly as the bark that flies 
 
 Before the breeze ; 
 
 A strain that flutters in the ear 
 
 Yet shuns the throat, 
 As ceases, when you draw too near, 
 
 The linnet s note ; 
 
 An echo which, within a vale, 
 
 Responds no more 
 Than a belov d one, by the gale 
 
 Cast dead ashore ; 
 
 The stations of the stars at noon, 
 
 The silvery wake 
 Poured by the horn of last night s moon 
 
 Upon the lake ; 
 
I ONES FATUL 
 
 The memory of April s grace 
 
 When trees are bare, 
 Or of December s frosty face 
 
 When June is fair ; 
 
 To strike from air those sparks of bliss, 
 
 In solitude, 
 Which seemed eternal when your kiss 
 
 Its fellow wooed ; 
 
 To ask a friend the boon yourself 
 
 Had freely given, 
 And find him dearer prizing pelt 
 
 Than love or heaven ; 
 
 To toil from dawn till day is old, 
 
 With bleeding hands, 
 Yet fail to find one grain of gold 
 
 In mocking sands ; 
 
 So seem and such the shapes that throng 
 
 Him who pursues 
 Endeavouring to entrap in song 
 
 The wayward Muse. 
 
MONKHOOD. 
 
 SEMI-RIGID, half-elastic, 
 Was the pious, old monastic 
 
 Scheme of life ; 
 
 When the lenten bread of heaven 
 With a dash of human leaven 
 
 Aye was rife. 
 
 Through dark ages, they kept burning 
 The forbidden lamps of learning 
 
 In their cells ; 
 
 As, in Afric s sands, the rover, 
 With protecting stones, doth cover 
 
 The glad wells. 
 
MONKHOOD. 
 
 And, with ecstasy, the stainless 
 Mother loved they, who, in painless 
 
 Travail, bore 
 
 HIM whose birth and crucifixion 
 Loosed the bonds of our affliction 
 
 Evermore. 
 
 Lordly herds, on meadows, thriving 
 Under vineyards, they, by shriving 
 
 Sinners, got. 
 
 Pious hinds their wealth augmented, 
 And their broad lands tilled, contented 
 
 With their lot. 
 
 That the Friars worldly pleasure, 
 In their lay-days, without measure 
 
 Had enjoyed, 
 
 And discovered that the madness 
 Of the revel s sinful gladness 
 
 Left a void ; 
 
 Taught them that the peasant s toil, 
 On the mute but grateful soil 
 Is a fate 
 
MONKHOOD. 
 
 Happier than his wild ambition, 
 Who aspires to patrician 
 Pomp and state. 
 
 And the monk, so old and shabby, 
 Seemed the image of his Abbey, 
 
 Gray and hoary : 
 Winter s rudest blasts defying, 
 With its inward and undying 
 
 Warmth of glory. 
 
 Chimed the convent-bell a marriage ? 
 He uncoifed his austere carriage, 
 
 And was mortal, 
 As with benediction saintly, 
 Ushered he the fond ones quaintly 
 
 Through hope s portal. 
 
 But a sad yet tender riot 
 Sometimes thrilled his pulse s quiet 
 
 With strange charms, 
 When the holy-water glistened 
 On the new-born infant, christened 
 
 In his arms. 
 
MONKHOOD. 
 
 And you saw each waxen finger 
 With unconscious twitchings linger 
 
 Round the boy ; 
 
 As though yearnings, pent and hidden, 
 Cried within, for the forbidden 
 
 Human joy. 
 
 And his eyes, through fond mists glowing, 
 Saw the babe in stature growing, 
 
 Till the day 
 
 When himself its soul might foster, 
 And, with creed and Pater-noster, 
 
 Point the way. 
 
 Like the glass a sigh hath clouded, 
 Brighter shone his gaze when, crowded 
 
 Near the font, 
 
 He beheld God s children pressing, 
 And bestowed a warmer blessing 
 
 Than his wont. 
 
 Called the death-bell s lingering knelling 
 Prince or peasant from life s dwelling 
 To depart ? 
 
MONKHOOD. 
 
 By those Heaven-sent stewards shriven, 
 Who the imps of sin had driven 
 From his heart, 
 
 Each a message, as he kissed him, 
 Whispered softly and dismissed him 
 
 On glad wing ; 
 
 Like the bark that carries tidings 
 From a Viceroy s distant hidings 
 
 To his King. 
 
 Fiercely they rebuked the scorner, 
 Tenderly consoled the mourner 
 
 In his sorrow j 
 
 Eyes, all moist to-day with sadness, 
 Shone serene midst festive gladness 
 
 On the morrow. 
 
 Thus abroad, with zeal unending, 
 Rich and poor alike befriending, 
 
 Lived the Friars ; 
 Vigil, fast, and flagellations 
 Mortified the world s temptations 
 
 And desires. 
 
io MONKHOOD. 
 
 And when waxed the poor monk paler, 
 Until granted him Life s gaoler 
 
 His release, 
 
 Earth s sad stewardship resigning, 
 Homeward flew his spirit, pining, 
 
 Into peace. 
 
TIME THE AUCTIONEER. 
 
 STANDS the clock within the hall, 
 Like a monk against the wall, 
 Like a hooded monk with eyes 
 Owl-like, spectral, solemn, wise, 
 In whose sockets, moon and sun, 
 Mimic phase and season run ; 
 While, beneath the face austere, 
 
 " Going ! Gone ! Going ! Gone !" 
 Time, the ruthless Auctioneer, 
 
 Sells the moments one by one ; 
 Moments all too cheaply sold, 
 Save to Love, for lavished gold, 
 Save to crime, with dagger bold ! 
 Four and twenty times a day 
 Step the Morrice-dancers gay, 
 
TIME THE AUCTIONEER. 
 
 From their tire-room in the clock, 
 At the hour s impatient knock ; 
 Wind in courteous rigadoon, 
 Wind in cadence with the tune, 
 Vanish with its blithsome strain, 
 
 " Going! Gone! Going! Gone!" 
 Time his hammer raps again. 
 
 Hark ! A groan ! Hark ! A groan ! 
 Groan for that bright hour just past, 
 Breathed by one would hold it fast, 
 For the next shall be his last ! 
 
 Through the western oriel fall 
 Sunset glories in the hall. 
 Thus at eve they ever pour 
 Rainbowed rapture on the floor. 
 Now the Virgin s lips are pressed 
 On yon cherub s sculptured rest, 
 Now ascends a crimson stain 
 From the storied window-pane, 
 Till the light of evening skies 
 Glimmers in those sleepless eyes. 
 
TIME THE AUCTIONEER. 13 
 
 Drink, poor monk, the lingering rays, 
 "Going ! Gone ! Going ! Gone !" 
 
 Brief their lustre ! Brief thy gaze 
 On the sun ! Day is done ! 
 
 Pensive, in the twilight hour, 
 Sits the maiden in her bower ; 
 Broods the felon in his tower. 
 One the noon a bride shall see ! 
 One at noon shall cease to be ! 
 
THE GLASS-BLOWER. 
 
 FROM chaos, with creative hand 
 And fiery breath and magic wand, 
 I saw an artizan expand 
 
 And mould a crystal earth, 
 Where Plain and Hill and Sea and Isle 
 Were blended in the sunny smile 
 
 That saw our Planet s birth. 
 
 Where trees sprang up, whose foliage, dyed 
 
 Unfadingly in Summer s pride, 
 
 Rude Autumn s withering breath defied, 
 
 And Winter s icy blasts ; 
 And ships, becalmed on wrinkled seas, 
 Though full their sails, felt not the breeze 
 
 That bent their tapering masts. 
 
THE GLASS-BLOWER. 15 
 
 A city rose upon the shore 
 And, on its quay, the stevedore 
 Awaited to unload and store 
 
 That spell-bound navy s freight ; 
 While on the scaffold felons stood, 
 Unhanged above the multitude, 
 
 Before the prison gate. 
 
 In gardens of ungathered fruit, 
 
 Young lovers sat whose tongues were mute, 
 
 Nor thrilled its spell the anxious lute 
 
 Within the maiden s hands ; 
 They smiled, in bliss without regret, 
 As only they who feel not yet 
 
 The altar s silken strands. 
 
 And when the adept s task was done, 
 I saw the boy for whom was spun 
 That globe, its beauties, one by one, 
 
 With childish ardour greet ; 
 Then clutch it with such eager grip 
 That mountain, city, tree, and ship 
 
 Fell shivered at his feet ; 
 
1 6 THE GLASS-BLOWER. 
 
 And thought when down shall shade his chin, 
 
 And Fancy mould a world akin 
 
 To that bright Earth, unstain d by sin, 
 
 The adept s fingers wrought 
 He ll clutch and lose it, as a boy, 
 The bubbles which he saw with joy 
 
 In rainbow meshes caught. 
 
 Yet, when his disenchanted eyes 
 Shall cease to see the mirage rise, 
 Between him and the desert s skies, 
 
 Above the phantom wave, 
 He ll halt and kneel and cross his hands, 
 Nor long the Simoon s shifting sands 
 
 Will mark the new-made grave. 
 
THE MONITOR. 
 
 A MISER joined a funeral train, 
 
 With flinty eye, 
 
 And thought, "Yon wretch, whose every vein 
 I drained till naught was left to gain, 
 
 Did well to die." 
 
 He passed the cypress-sentried gate 
 
 With footstep firm ; 
 Nay, lighter trod, because elate 
 " That his was not the lonely fate 
 
 Of that poor worm." 
 
 He stood the yawning grave beside, 
 
 All undismayed, 
 
 While Delver and Sacristan vied 
 Which first the coffin s lid should hide 
 
 With eager spade. 
 c 
 
1 8 THE MONITOR. 
 
 Then, homeward sauntering, he passed 
 
 His father s tomb, 
 And felt his pulses throbbing fast, 
 In memory of his joy when last 
 
 He, through its gloom, 
 
 Saw glittering the radiant hoard, 
 
 His lifelong lust, 
 
 Forgetful that, though now its lord, 
 He soon must by his sire be stored, 
 
 And waste to dust. 
 
 But when, at home, to meet him, stole 
 
 The meek-faced lad 
 Into whose lap must one day roll 
 The wealth for which he d pawned his soul, 
 
 His brow grew sad. 
 
PANACEA. 
 
 WHEN skies are gray, and droops my mateless 
 heart 
 
 Within this attic drear, 
 I wander forth into the restless mart, 
 
 Through labour s busy sphere, 
 Or thread the moist and dismal lanes, 
 Where poverty reveals its pains. 
 
 My wind-swept garret then a palace seems, 
 
 A tropic sun my fire, 
 My books a mine of bliss, while cheerly steams 
 
 The kettle s soothing choir. 
 My toast is made, my tea is brewed 
 Once more with smiling gratitude. 
 
20 PANACEA. 
 
 So I, comparing mine with sadder stars, 
 
 Thus magnify its light, 
 Which seems to those encaged by misery s bars 
 
 With happiest lustre bright ; 
 The lot of captive, drudge, or slave 
 Is brighter far, beside the grave, 
 
 Than mine, compared with that by them 
 
 deplored, 
 
 Or than the grander fate 
 Of Croesus, revelling amidst his hoard, 
 
 A king without a state, 
 Though for his standard taketh he 
 The measure of my poverty. 
 
MONTAUK LIGHT. 
 
 Latitude 41 4 1 2" N. Longitude 7 1 5 1 54" W. 
 
 BEFORE the stars appear on high, 
 I open wide my Cyclops eye, 
 
 Like them unseen by day ; 
 Though, while they roll in distant realms, 
 My vacant face still guides the helms 
 
 That o er the waters stray. 
 
 The only living things I view, 
 
 At times, are cormorant and mew ; 
 
 Yet, from my stage-box grand, 
 I watch the drama of the skies, 
 And hear, through awful symphonies, 
 
 The Storm-King lead his band. 
 
22 MONT AUK LIGHT. 
 
 When clouds obscure the starry host, 
 My smile beams brighter on the tossed 
 
 And storm-imperilled ships ; 
 While rock-cleft surges shoreward hie, 
 Like troubled souls whose bodies lie 
 
 Where yon horizon dips. 
 
 Then booms the signal-gun its prayer, 
 And counts with pulse of wild despair 
 
 The moments that remain 
 To those upon some bark forlore, 
 Ere from its wreck their souls shall soar 
 
 Beyond the hurricane. 
 
 The dawning day uncurtains night 
 As on a plain where fierce in fight 
 
 At eve men charged and fell ; 
 The slain, amid bale, plank, and spar, 
 Though undefaced by bruise or scar, 
 
 The Tempest s victory tell, 
 
 On serpent waves, that languidly 
 Unroll their coils along the sea, 
 With victims satiate, 
 
MO NT AUK LIGHT. 23 
 
 Until to sharp resentment urged, 
 By jutting points of rocks submerged, 
 Their dripping jaws dilate. 
 
 Yet as to Shakespeare, so to me, 
 Thaleia and Melpomene 
 
 Alternate come and go ; 
 Once more flits by the merry fleet 
 Of barks, as in a royal street 
 
 The chariots to and fro. 
 
 The full-plumed ship, the wingless car 
 That, shuttle-like, to strands afar, 
 
 Bears that bright thread of gold 
 Which weaves, with human sympathy, 
 Between the warps of sky and sea, 
 
 The New World to the Old. 
 
 And I survive the barks that ply 
 Above the wrecks and crews that lie 
 
 Beneath the glutton wave, 
 As stately cenotaphs outlive 
 The mourners who have met to grieve 
 
 Around a new-made grave. 
 
24 MO NT A UK LIGHT. 
 
 The. cross, upon the only fane 
 
 That decks some lone and dreary plain, 
 
 Sees not the temples fair 
 Which, stretching in a zone sublime, 
 Take up in turn its belfry s chime 
 
 And girt the earth with prayer : 
 
 Nor I, adown the seaboard line, 
 My giant kin with eyes benign, 
 
 On keys and headlands ramp ; 
 Like pickets posted on the shore, 
 Where quicksands lurk and breakers roar, 
 
 Before the Atlantic camp. 
 
 As when a father shares his gold, 
 The sun, ere day s last knell is tolled, 
 
 Confides to each a ray, 
 And like a captain when the word 
 And pass at change of guard are heard, 
 
 He bids us watch till day. 
 
HYMN TO MARS. 
 
 SINCE ages dim in deathless sleep, 
 As knights in bronze sepulchral keep 
 
 O er tombs their silent guard, 
 Thy lone watch thou, with stately pace, 
 Hast measured in creation s race, 
 
 Mars with the golden beard ! 
 
 But brighter glows thy ruddy eye, 
 
 When Heav n s grand minuet brings thee nigh l 
 
 To Earth whilom endeared ; 
 And, o er thy fiery cheek, a smile 
 Of happy dreams doth play the while, 
 
 Mars with the golden beard ! 
 
 1 Written in June, 1860, when Mars, in his perigee, 
 had shortened his greatest distance from the earth by 
 something more than one hundred and fifty millions of 
 miles. 
 
26 HYMN TO MARS. 
 
 Dreams of thy brief terrestrial home 
 On Tiber s banks, in infant Rome 
 
 Where thou art still revered ; 
 When Rhea left the vestal shrine 
 To bear thee Romulus Quirinine, 
 
 Mars with the golden beard ! 
 
 Creation s mighty problem solved, 
 And out of chaos dark evolved 
 
 The star for man prepared, 
 With thee there came a spirit band, 
 From higher spheres, to grace the land,- 
 
 Mars with the golden beard ! 
 
 Like birds in spring on Arctic rocks, 
 Or mariners, who from ocean s shocks, 
 
 To some lone isle have veered, 
 Cleaving ethereal realms of light, 
 Ye landed on Olympus height, 
 
 Mars with the golden beard ! 
 
 They on glad plains, in moulds of grace, 
 Fashioned and beautified our race ; 
 In Etna s caverns seared, 
 
HYMN TO MARS. 27 
 
 The sword to Vulcan gavest thou, 
 From which he forged the primal plough, 
 Mars with the golden beard ! 
 
 To nature wild abandoned long, 
 In sportive dance and festive song, 
 
 Earth s children first were reared ; 
 Thy brother Gods loved, drank, and ate, 
 E en Zeus himself threw off all state, 
 
 Mars with the golden beard ! 
 
 But thou didst teach the sons of toil 
 To delve the brown glebe s fecund soil 
 
 Neath flowery meads unspared ; 
 In vernal months to plant and sow, 
 To harvest when days shorter grow, 
 
 Mars with the golden beard ! 
 
 And when, years o er, their task was done, 
 From earth rebounding to the sun, 
 
 By man more loved than feared, 
 Each sought his planet-home afar, 
 And with them, thou, red God of War, 
 
 Mars with the golden beard ! 
 
THE MAIDEN S CHILDREN. 
 
 Suggested by Miss Stebbins s statue of the Lotus- 
 Eater. 
 
 A MAIDEN in her summer bloom, 
 
 Whose heart had neither felt love s thorn 
 Nor yet rejected love with scorn, 
 
 Lamented thus her sex s doom : 
 
 " Ah me ! whose gaze dare not engage 
 In mystic tilt with belted knight, 
 Nor venture e en in sport to plight 
 A glance to squire or beardless page ; 
 
 Exposed to cold and sordid eyes, 
 
 Like Georgian nymph in Eastern mart, 
 Who only may her hand impart 
 To him whose gold her beauty buys ; 
 
THE MAIDEN S CHILDREN. 29 
 
 Whilst like the incandescent blush, 
 
 That with feigned warmth doth tantalise 
 Earth s breast congealed neath Arctic 
 
 skies 
 Electric thrills my being flush ; 
 
 " As though within me gleamed a fire 
 Unfed a glowing, not a burning 
 A coming thirst, a nascent yearning, 
 A subtle, nameless, vague desire. 
 
 " Ah ! would my soul from Earth were free ; 
 For, like the puzzled bird that flies 
 Twixt fowler s net and serpent s eyes, 
 I dread my sex s destiny !" 
 
 An angel heard the maiden s sigh, 
 And gently led her spirit where 
 In dreams she saw a temple, fair 
 
 With chiselled forms not doomed to die : 
 
 The brow of Jove, serene, august ; 
 The breathing, almost blushing, frame 
 Of Psyche, whose ethereal name 
 
 The soul takes when it leaves the dust ; 
 
30 THE MAIDEN S CHILDREN. 
 
 Apollo listening to his lyre ; 
 
 Minerva softened by its strains ; 
 
 And she within whose sea-born veins 
 For ever burns Love s unquenched fire ; 
 
 The Graces three, the sacred Nine 
 Whose snowy brows and vestal hearts 
 Defied the Boy-God s flame-tipped darts ; 
 
 And mortals more than half divine. 
 
 But when the maiden s slumber broke, 
 Those god-like shapes, through memory 
 
 stealing 
 And Art s ideal world revealing, 
 
 To new resolves her soul awoke. 
 
 A roofless shrine deep in the glade, 
 Where leant, neglected, moss-bestained, 
 The marble god who there had reigned, 
 
 Hallowed her vow, with fervour made 
 
 On bended knee : "The unwed Bride 
 Of Art divine henceforth I ll be ; 
 And rear a spotless family, 
 
 With all a mother s love and pride. 
 
THE MAIDEN S CHILDREN. 31 
 
 " My travail thus shall realise, 
 
 Without a pang, her chastest joys ; 
 In snowy marble shall my boys 
 Beneath my fostering hands arise. 
 
 " Since to their frames I may not give 
 The quickening pulses of my heart, 
 My soul its graces shall impart, 
 And in their stainless bodies live. 
 
 " Their snowy shapes, without defect, 
 
 Angelic beauty shall display ; 
 
 No inborn sin of mortal clay 
 
 Shall envious eye in them detect." 
 
 And as a form embalmed in song 
 Awakens to the music sweet 
 Which lulled it in its winding-sheet, 
 
 So did the maiden s touch, ere long, 
 
 Awake to life, with pious art, 
 
 The graceful phantom here congealed ; 
 
 A Phoenix, though in snow revealed, 
 Out of the ashes of her heart. 
 
ZISKA. 
 
 WHEN first my infant eyes took in the glory 
 
 Of this fair earth, 
 Ere on them fell the shadow of the story 
 
 Of mortal birth, 
 
 The blessed light above seemed but one 
 fusion 
 
 Of many a sun, 
 And closing, they imprisoned the illusion 
 
 That Heaven was won. 
 
 When I looked forth again, God s bright 
 creation 
 
 Revealed its forms 
 
 Beneath the orb which every constellation 
 Illumes and warms. 
 
ZISKA. 33 
 
 I then discovered mid the heavenly spaces 
 
 Vast depths of blue, 
 And on the earth the landscape s myriad graces, 
 
 Of varied hue ; 
 
 Unconscious that, as cleared the golden vision, 
 
 It darker grew, 
 I revelled in green fields and groves Elysian 
 
 With joys all new ; 
 The sun seemed sent to me alone for reading 
 
 Nature s great book, 
 O er which I pored wherever fancy, leading, 
 
 My footsteps took. 
 
 Oh, then, Aladdin-like, I gathered treasures 
 
 On golden stems ; 
 
 First fruits and flowers, then clutched at empty 
 pleasures, 
 
 As precious gems. 
 
 But soon these luresome objects lost their 
 shimmer, 
 
 As in a ball, 
 When wax-lights wane, the waltzer s eyes flit 
 
 dimmer 
 
 Around the hall. 
 
 D 
 
34 ZISKA. 
 
 To childhood s lively joys succeeded sorrows 
 
 Poignant and stern, 
 As he who from a miser silver borrows, 
 
 Gold must return ; 
 For manhood hath no sportive recreations 
 
 Like schoolboy plays, 
 No anguish keener than when in vacations 
 
 Come rainy days. 
 
 And soon my soul began its second training 
 
 With new-born zest ; 
 I thought to spend one half of life explaining 
 
 What meant the rest ; 
 
 And found the problem solved and the equa 
 tion 
 
 Like some tall peak 
 
 Attained, which reaches but the adumbration 
 Of what you seek. 
 
 And when with every sense alive to Nature, 
 
 By day and night, 
 Familiarly I knew her every feature 
 
 Shaded and bright ; 
 
ZISKA. 35 
 
 With adolescence came an empty craving 
 
 For the unknown ; 
 As thinks the spendthrift butterfly of saving 
 
 When summer s gone. 
 
 And then, the sad reflection realising, 
 
 How brief is life, 
 Behold the soul against the senses rising 
 
 In bitter strife. 
 Existence, like the fleeting year, had seasons, 
 
 And in the end 
 
 I could not through its gloom divine the 
 reasons 
 
 Must graveward tend. 
 
 Through misty tears, a God-like face and lowly 
 
 In rainbows beamed, 
 Around whose bleeding brow a radiance holy, 
 
 Upshooting, gleamed. 
 
 But though toward earth big drops of blood 
 still rolling, 
 
 Did lingering fall, 
 
 He said with tender voice, His pain controlling, 
 "I died for all." 
 
36 ZISKA. 
 
 Since from His bow-shaped lips, like golden 
 
 arrows 
 
 Those words did speed, 
 
 No more my heart an endless craving harrows 
 With hunger s need ; 
 
 Already, when I lift my eyes to heaven, 
 I see but light, 
 
 And scenes once fair below, from morn to even 
 Are dark as night. 
 
METEMPSYCHOSIS. 
 
 THE God, the Hero, and the Sage, 
 Nor sceptre, sword, nor myrtle crown, 
 Nor e en a drop have handed down 
 
 Of bubbling blood to this our age. 
 
 Caught in the marble or the brass, 
 They smile or frown their joy or grief 
 From statue, coin, or bas-relief, 
 
 Which, though in fashion they surpass 
 
 The chiselled thoughts of modern days, 
 Bring to our eyes but traits of men, 
 Who, like ourselves, on earth have been 
 
 The shrines of Life s ephemeral blaze. 
 
38 METEMPSYCHOSIS. 
 
 But deeds and words embalmed in song, 
 In after ages like the seed 
 From royal mummies drawn to feed 
 
 The tribes which Egypt s river throng 
 
 Dilate fresh hearts and sublimate 
 The lowliest blood with flames heroic, 
 And fortify with valour stoic 
 
 The weak against the storms of fate. 
 
 Yes, as the shivered chord s complaint 
 Floats onward through the murmuring air, 
 Until some unison as fair 
 
 Responds into its whisper faint, 
 
 So, when it severs earth s last thread, 
 The soul pursues its journeying, 
 And swells, on fleet and tireless wing, 
 
 The shadowy army of the dead ; 
 
 Until it chance a kindred chord 
 Within some brother s sleeping heart 
 To wake, and its own life impart 
 
 To sage s lips or warrior s sword. 
 
METEMPSYCHOSIS. 39 
 
 Napoleon fought with Caesar s blade, 
 Dante was god-like Homer s son, 
 Timoleon prompted Washington, 
 
 And Paul stout Luther s fierce crusade. 
 
 Nor in such mighty souls alone 
 Do kindred spirits breathe their fire ; 
 The humblest heart s untutored lyre 
 
 From shadowy voices takes its tone. 
 
 Until they sound, bend every string 
 Thy hand can grasp, with zealous care, 
 Though from thy lyre but hoarse despair 
 
 Fate s ruthless sweep at first should wring. 
 
 Strain on ! until thy spirit s Sire 
 Awake that chord of happier fate, 
 Whose jubilance shall modulate 
 
 Thy woe to joy s celestial choir. 
 
TO MY DAUGHTER, 
 MRS. MARGARET ASTOR CHANLER. 
 
 THE WISE MAIDEN. 
 
 MASTER. 
 
 PRITHEE, why for ever sweeping, 
 
 Maiden, this poor room ? 
 Ever stirring, never sleeping, 
 
 Seems thy restless broom. 
 
 Prithee, why for ever praying, 
 
 Those pure lips within ? 
 Art, I fear, too dearly paying 
 
 For but fancied sin. 
 
THE WISE MAIDEN. 41 
 
 MAID. 
 Though I m ever sweeping, master, 
 
 Did my zeal grow slack, 
 Than it disappeareth faster 
 Would the dust come back ; 
 
 And my praying is but sweeping 
 
 This poor sinful breast, 
 Into which fresh dust is creeping, 
 
 When from prayer I rest. 
 
 MASTER. 
 Never does my eye remember, 
 
 Maiden, to have seen, 
 When thy care hath swept my chamber, 
 
 Speck of dust within. 
 
 MAID. 
 May the angel to my sweeping 
 
 Praise like this impart, 
 Who, his master s mansions keeping, 
 
 Comes to search my heart. 
 
THE HEBREW ALPHABET. 
 
 COME, my little Hebrew lad, 
 On thy task look not so sad. 
 Only learn it, and thou lt feel 
 Writing is in prayer to kneel ; 
 Writing, in His sacred tongue, 
 Words His holy prophets sung ; 
 Writing out the law bequeathed 
 Unto Moses, when He breathed, 
 Near the burning bush, the Word 
 Then as now, " I am the Lord." 
 First we ll learn to spell the name 
 Sinai heard in clouds and flame. 
 Write the Aleph every sign 
 Let thy pen with love design. 
 
THE HEBREW ALPHABET. 43 
 
 Akph is bright Eden s token, 
 Ere our race by sin was broken. 
 Daleth follows in the spell 
 Loved in Heaven, feared in Hell. 
 Aleph, Daleth, lowly now 
 On our bended knees we bow, 
 Ere unto the Holy Rune 
 We append the closing Nitn. 
 Adon Adon, clap your hands, 
 Hills ! while joy elates the lands ; 
 Once more write, and with a Yod, 
 Tremble at the name of God ! 
 God with whom none others vie, 
 God of Israel ! 
 
PORRIGO DEXTRAM. 
 
 WHILE sorrows ebb and flow 
 On Life s gray strand, 
 
 To all oppressed by woe 
 I reach a hand. 
 
 The body s but a cell, 
 
 Its jailer he 
 Whose key from earth s dark spell 
 
 Shall set us free. 
 
 Stars, though unseen by day, 
 
 Still glow in wells, 
 Where truth s unwelcome ray 
 
 In exile dwells. 
 
PORRIGO D EXT RAM. 45 
 
 Like barks, wave-tossed till sore, 
 
 Upon the deep, 
 Within our souls a store 
 
 Of wealth we keep. 
 
 Then, brother, here s my hand, 
 
 Though void its palm, 
 Beside thee will I stand 
 
 Till God send balm ; 
 
 Beside thee float, while hold 
 
 Two planks together, 
 Till melts His sun this cold 
 
 And wintry weather. 
 
 When that ray shines, we part, 
 
 But thou shalt stay ; 
 Another sinking heart 
 
 Calls me away. 
 
 And should hope s dawning beams 
 
 To gems congeal, 
 Bright as the diamond stream 
 
 Of Maund reveal, 
 
46 PORRIGO D EXT RAM. 
 
 Swear that a brother s cry, 
 
 By sea or land, 
 Shall ever draw thee nigh 
 
 With helping hand. 
 
THE BLIND FIDDLER. 
 
 WHO knocks ? Come in ! Thy message say. 
 
 A beggar ? Sixpence go thy way ! 
 
 A fiddler too ? A shilling take 
 
 And go ; nor dare my nerves to shake. 
 
 Thy little handmaid says thou rt blind, 
 
 Each eye, a sixpence more. That s kind. 
 
 Two shillings not enough ? Ingrate ! 
 
 Well, let the little maiden prate. 
 
 " Please, sir, his poor old viol s strung ; 
 
 For thanks he has no other tongue." 
 
 A tear ? "Its strings he fain would sweep, 
 
 Few thank when they a harvest reap." 
 
 Well, play, old man. That timid air 
 
 Steals through me like an infant-prayer. 
 
 Now swells the bow to fuller strains 
 
 Exhaling riper joys and pains 
 
48 THE BLIND FIDDLER, 
 
 Of youth and manhood, old man, stay 
 Thy fingers ! picture not decay, 
 But Love, the Dance, the Festal Song, 
 The Squadron s Charge, the Altar s Throng. 
 Here, take my purse my blessing too, 
 Thou st shown me something yet to do. 
 
 And when thou rt gone, I ll hie me forth, 
 
 Convinced there still are joys on earth, 
 
 Though not the passions, pride and power, 
 
 Which wither in life s sunset-hour ; 
 
 But Nature s every charm and grace 
 
 For ages wrinkle not her face 
 
 A steadfast Love, to Friendship kin, 
 
 The victory of soul o er sin ; 
 
 And charities, like cargoes sent 
 
 To distant climes, which tenfold rent 
 
 Bring back to hearts whose happy glow 
 
 Is fed by what themselves bestow. 
 
 And all these fragrant flowers hath twined 
 
 About my heart a fiddler blind ! 
 
 The poet hath no keener sight 
 Than this old man with vision blight, 
 
THE BLIND FIDDLER. 49 
 
 Who, piercing with the spirit s eye 
 
 The veil of his infirmity, 
 
 Hath with his viol s quickening spell 
 
 My pinions warmed to break their shell ; 
 
 If I accomplish half the task 
 
 He wrought on me t is all I ask. 
 
 DIALOGUE. 
 
 POET. 
 
 Round my heart thy viol flings 
 Rapture, with four magic strings. 
 If thy bow, with but the spell 
 Of twelve semitones, can tell, 
 Like the rod that gold divines, 
 All the ear s unfathomed mines, 
 Spells how many wields the pen, 
 To delight the hearts of men ? 
 
 FIDDLER. 
 
 Countless as the shore s gray sands 
 Are the spells the pen commands ; 
 E 
 
50 THE BLIND FIDDLER. 
 
 Earth, and they who on it dwell, 
 Space and Ocean, Heaven and Hell. 
 Be thy soul with these chords strung 
 Fervently, and pen and tongue, 
 Thrilling deeper, hearts shall raise 
 Higher than my lowly lays. 
 
 POET. 
 
 By the measure thou hast taught 
 I will sell what life hath bought, 
 I will give thy song a shape, 
 Ere its fleeting tones escape. 
 
 FIDDLER. 
 
 Mock thou not my humble art ! 
 With my bow, God touched thy heart, 
 And to Him ascend its strains, 
 While thy song on earth remains. 
 
NEW MUSIC. 
 
 WHEN sounds an air that thrills your ears 
 With memories of bygone years, 
 Forgetting age and care and pain, 
 The soul puts on its youth again ; 
 And she who shone in beauty s pride, 
 Long faded, sparkles at your side ; 
 And as in spring old wines ferment 
 When buds and leaves on vines are blent, 
 So through your quickened pulses pour 
 The effervescent joys of yore. 
 Again her name drops from your lip 
 Into the brimming cup you sip ; 
 Nay, in the amber wine you trace 
 The image of her cherished face. 
 O days of youth and wild delight ! 
 O gladdening waters, sweet as bright, 
 
52 NEW MUSIC. 
 
 Which memory s melodious spells 
 Uncover like the desert s wells ! 
 
 Another sits in gloom and pain 
 Whilst you drink in the rapturous strain. 
 As East winds open ancient wounds, 
 His bleed afresh at those sweet sounds ; 
 It is the air, that lured him on 
 To wretchedness in days bygone, 
 Which now relumes the witching gaze 
 Of those dark eyes whose treacherous rays 
 To ashes burnt his youth so fair, 
 And left his life one long despair, 
 Renewed, as with those notes arise 
 His heart s burnt-offerings to the skies, 
 And leave it, when the strains expire, 
 An altar blackened by the fire. 
 The sun grows pale, the air is chill, 
 Grim skeletons his vision fill ; 
 In death no greater terrors lie, 
 For thus to suffer is to die. 
 
 Now, like fond brothers, hand in hand, 
 Both tread some fair and unknown strand, 
 
NEW MUSIC. 53 
 
 In measure ; when the magic wand 
 Of SCHUMANN sways the tuneful band, 
 Or WAGNER S glorious voices smite 
 The ear, and unsipped joys unlock, 
 As when the patriarch Israelite 
 With faith-borne rod struck Horeb s rock. 
 
 One, wafted to the fairy isle 
 On ocean s softest summer smile ; 
 One, scaped with life and nothing more 
 From ocean s fiercest wintry roar : 
 Both drink its odours, breeze-beguiled 
 From thicket and savanna wild ; 
 Both taste its tropic fruitage filled 
 With sweetness from the sun distilled : 
 Both bask in blooms that never change 
 From sea-side up to mountain range ; 
 Till to their ravished senses seem 
 Life s bliss and bale an equal dream, 
 And each, in ecstasy, forgets 
 The past its joys and its regrets. 
 
STRADIYARIUS. 
 
 WHEN the viol hath been strung, 
 And the master s hand hath wrung 
 Speech from every hermit tongue 
 
 That unseen dwells 
 
 Within its cells ; 
 Hoarse its voices until taught 
 With its rapture to consort, 
 Or, in sweet concent, to show 
 Sympathy with human woe. 
 
 Then, in their retiredness, 
 Craving constantly to bless 
 Air and ear with tuneful stress, 
 
 Each mellower grows 
 
 In its repose, 
 
STRADIVARIUS. 55 
 
 Till a fuller choral swell, 
 And a softer waning spell, 
 Are the echoes that respond 
 To the master s magic wand. 
 
 When the viol s tones aspire 
 Upward, like the breath of fire, 
 Does the master s soul inspire 
 
 Alone its sighs 
 
 And symphonies? 
 Or do angels with the strain 
 Seek their long-lost home again, 
 Soaring in melodious throng 
 On the pinions of his song ? 
 
 When a friend hath ceased to groan, 
 While we o er his coffin moan, 
 And deplore his spirit flown, 
 
 Dare we maintain 
 
 That ne er again 
 
 Shall that unstrung harp be wound 
 And the Master s glory sound ? 
 May not, then, the lute enshrine 
 Unseen spirits half divine ? 
 
NOCTURNE. 
 
 MAIDEN, while thy fairy fingers 
 Free those prisoned harmonies, 
 While thy left hand softly lingers, 
 And thy right skims o er the keys, 
 Darting as hussars manoeuvre, 
 Skirmishing in mazy drill, 
 Swift to scatter, and recover 
 Order at their leader s will ; 
 
 Dreamily I hear two voices, 
 One in fervent tones of prayer, 
 One that sparkles and rejoices 
 As a skylark in the air, 
 With so wild a jubilation 
 That its carol seems a taunt, 
 Till a sterner modulation 
 Drops it to the dominant. 
 
NOCTURNE. 57 
 
 Then a dialogue more tender 
 Twixt the wooer and the wooed, 
 Where the latter vows to mend her 
 Wayward petulance of mood ; 
 And the manly voice responding 
 Breathes a rapture of content, 
 As through chords with joy resounding 
 Both in unison are blent. 
 
 Through the moonlit fir-trees playing, 
 Murmuringly the roving breeze 
 Kisses the white fingers swaying 
 Pensively the ivory keys, 
 Cools my brow and soothes the beating 
 Of this scarred and crippled heart, 
 Still, despite experience, cheating 
 Me with fond delusive art. 
 
 Cheating me with phantoms thronging 
 Dimly up from days of yore, 
 Shapes of loveliness and longing 
 Dead and gone for evermore. 
 
58 NOCTURNE. 
 
 And as wizards from the ashes 
 Of the rose evoke its grace, 
 I recall the spectral flashes 
 Of a once all-radiant face. 
 
TRIBUTE TO THE LOST SCORE. 
 
 To a young friend lamenting the loss 
 of her teens. 
 
 YEARS are but the tools of youth, 
 Spades that turn the sod of Truth, 
 Symbols on a black-board traced, 
 Traced in chalk to be effaced, 
 Scaffoldings to rear and prop 
 Work the seasons cannot stop. 
 For, though marmots hybernate, 
 Man s live pulses never bate, 
 Nor lie fallow like the field 
 Resting from its autumn yield. 
 So until we reach the brink, 
 We must either grow or shrink. 
 
60 TRIBUTE TO THE LOST SCORE. 
 
 Years are tomes the student lone, 
 
 Poring over, makes his own ; 
 
 Or the fruits, Earth, Sun, and Air 
 
 Quicken for his destined fare, 
 
 Like the ship that bears us o er 
 
 Safely to a distant shore, 
 
 Or the ducats that we spend 
 
 To attain a journey s end. 
 
 So the years that make us men, 
 
 Aye, or women, are a gain ; 
 
 Strength to fight or grace to win, 
 
 Prove what friends those years have been. 
 
 Maiden, though Time s ruthless shears 
 From thy life lop twenty years, 
 For the lost score only grieve 
 Thou hast twenty less to live. 
 Those have left a crystalline 
 Charm upon thy face benign ; 
 Spirit-beauty, virtue, grace, 
 Time may envy, not deface ; 
 Scythe and glass, his emblems gaunt, 
 Fail to scratch the adamant. 
 
THE PERFECT WAY. 
 
 Lines sent with a book bearing the above title, 
 
 THE Perfect Way ah, who shall say 
 
 He holds the mystic clue, 
 Up that steep rath the hidden path 
 
 To find and to pursue ? 
 
 No stars above with eyes of love 
 
 Direct us when astray ; 
 With faith and hope we feel and grope 
 
 Through thick ning gloom our way. 
 
 Anon around sweet voices sound, 
 And breaths of frankincense, 
 
 As breezes thrill a glassy rill, 
 Awake each latent sense. 
 
62 THE PERFECT WAY. 
 
 To climb and pant, the Hierophant 
 The Acolyte hath doomed, 
 
 Until within the dross of sin 
 By penance be consumed. 
 
 Then sorely tried and mortified, 
 The flesh to spirit yields, 
 
 With truer might than in the fight 
 The hero s sabre wields. 
 
THE EXILE. 
 
 THEY who in the churchyard sleep, 
 Or the bosom of the deep, 
 Or beneath the sabre s sweep, 
 
 Are not all that die ; 
 Other loved ones pass away, 
 Whom we mourn as dead, while they 
 
 With the living hie. 
 
 Homeward turns the funeral train ; 
 " Brother ! freed from mortal pain, 
 Thou in warmth wilt rise again 
 
 From thy cold repose ; 
 When the sea its dead shall yield, 
 And the gorged battle-field 
 
 Shall its lips unclose." 
 
64 THE EXILE. 
 
 Time dries tears ; and jest and laugh 
 Crown the brimming cup we quaff, 
 Long before his epitaph 
 
 Moss and age efface ; 
 Nay, the shipwreck s fearful story, 
 Or the combat s victims gory, 
 
 Years from memory chase. 
 
 But when boyhood s melodies 
 Shed their dew in festive eyes, 
 Through soft mists we see arise 
 
 Phantom-like, the friend, 
 Dead, yet living, who from home, 
 Is in exile doomed to roam 
 
 To life s dreary end. 
 
SENESCENTIA. 
 
 IN my youthful hey-day, pleasure 
 
 Lured me to its glad unrest, 
 And the goblet s mantling measure 
 
 Fed the joy-flames in my breast ; 
 Life was rapturous commotion 
 
 Then of body, heart, and mind, 
 I, a bark upon the ocean, 
 
 Pressed by wave and kissed by wind. 
 
 But the sailor quits the fountains 
 
 Of the ever-throbbing main, 
 Gladly for the steadfast mountains 
 
 And the stillness of the plain, 
 Wave and wind at length together 
 
 Strain the seams and cords of life, 
 While on land in mildest weather 
 
 Rooted we abide the strife. 
 F 
 
66 SENESCENTIA. 
 
 So I fled the blood s temptation 
 
 As the mariner the seas, 
 Fanned thenceforth to contemplation 
 
 Only by the living breeze ; 
 Onward since serenely treading, 
 
 Yielding now to reason s sway, 
 Now the paths of fancy threading 
 
 I am master of my way. 
 
 All my being now is yearning 
 
 For the rapture of repose, 
 Youthful flame and manhood s burning 
 
 Quenched like torches dipped in snows 
 Every siren s charms transcending 
 
 Blessed be the angel, who 
 Thus prepares my soul for wending 
 
 The Nirvana s portals through. 
 
ANTEPENULTIMATE. 
 
 SHALL I sit and wait for Death, 
 With a sigh at every breath 
 For the hours of gladness flown, 
 From the present drear and lone ? 
 Sit, abandoning all hope 
 Of a brighter horoscope ? 
 Sit, as in a skiff that glides 
 Down some rapid s angry tides ? 
 Sit, nor dash a valiant oar 
 To regain the rugged shore ? 
 Yes ! I m weary of the fight ; 
 Ajax-like, my smitten sight 
 Findeth neither in the day 
 Nor the night, a cheering ray ; 
 Though the shore by which I glide 
 Is my native river-side, 
 
68 ANTEPENULTIMATE. 
 
 And the hamlets that arise 
 Wear the old familiar guise ; 
 Though yon steeple points the road 
 Pious forefathers have trod. 
 
 In the church, another voice 
 Bids the kneeling fold rejoice ; 
 In the hall another squire 
 Sits before the yule-log fire ; 
 All are strangers, why should I 
 Midst them tarry, but to die ? 
 
THE MORROW OF THE 
 FUNERAL. 
 
 MY room is dark but darker yet 
 
 The cell where he lies low 
 For whom our eyelids still are wet, 
 
 Our hearts still throb with woe. 
 
 My room is cold the Western breeze, . 
 
 That wakes me with its breath, 
 Above him stirs the aspen trees, 
 
 But not his sleep of death. 
 
 Just now I dreamed that sweet and fair 
 
 I saw his kindly face ; 
 He dreams no more : he waits us where 
 
 Nor death nor dream hath place. 
 
70 MORROW OF THE FUNERAL. 
 
 Yes ! ours the darkness, his the light ; 
 
 I clasp his outstretched hand 
 Whose feet have found, through doubt and 
 night, 
 
 The sure and shining land. 
 
II. 
 
THE OLD ROPE. 
 
 " FATHER ! what is this old rope ? " 
 Boy ! twas once our vessel s hope 
 
 When the billows rose in rage her decks 
 
 to whelm ; 
 
 In that wild September gale, 
 Which had rent our every sail, 
 
 With that bit of rope I lashed her helm. 
 
 Had its strands then given way, 
 We had been the fishes prey, 
 
 At their banquet in the sea s deep caves ; 
 But I never lost my grip 
 Of that rope which held the ship 
 
 Till the winds had made peace with the 
 waves. 
 
74 THE OLD ROPE. 
 
 How the mariner exults, 
 
 When he feels the throbbing pulse 
 
 Of the ocean lashed to fever by the gale, 
 And his hand directs the course 
 Of his vessel, like a horse 
 
 Madly tearing over hill and over dale ! 
 
 Ah ! the boldest charioteer 
 Were beside himself with fear, 
 
 If a steed in his teeth the bit should take, 
 Not on solid hill or plain, 
 But across the slippery main, 
 
 Where the path writhes beneath him like 
 a snake. 
 
 There be those that gather nests 
 Down the Orkneys sea-girt crests, 
 
 Who are lowered by a rope like this, 
 And who, when their scrips are full, 
 Give the signal-cords a pull, 
 
 To be hoisted up out of the abyss. 
 
 Yet the boldest ne er dissemble 
 
 How much now and then they tremble, 
 
THE OLD ROPE. 75 
 
 When they feel their lives hang on such 
 
 a bight, 
 
 Though those fowlers, when they climb, 
 Risk but one life at a time, 
 
 While this rope held a score of us that 
 night. 
 
 But no feeble hand of man 
 Thus from parting kept its span, 
 
 And our vessel from the trough of the sea ; 
 It was God who held it there, 
 For I breathed a breath of prayer, 
 
 Like the fishers on the lake of Galilee. 
 
 When I m summoned by the Lord, 
 Round my coffin let this cord 
 
 Drop me like a fowler seeking for a nest ; 
 And another boon I crave 
 Is that by me, in the grave, 
 
 This old and trusty friend of mine shall rest. 
 
 Dare an unbeliever say 
 That on Resurrection Day, 
 
76 THE OLD ROPE. 
 
 It may not serve to raise me from the 
 
 grave ? 
 
 Like the fowler with his scrip, 
 Or our storm-imperilled ship, 
 
 Which its strands from destruction helped 
 to save ? 
 
TO JULIA ROM AN A HOWE, 
 
 FALCONRY. 
 
 SORCERER. 
 
 IF to avert, O king, 
 
 The doom of death at morn, 
 My voice had summoned thee, 
 
 I should deserve thy scorn. 
 
 To save my worthless life 
 
 These lips shall frame no prayer 
 Nor ask a boon of thee ; 
 
 But if thy daughter fair, 
 
 What time the noose shall bind 
 My throat at break of day 
 
 Will smile upon me from 
 Yon lattice o er the way ; 
 
73 FALCONRY. 
 
 " And round her snowy neck 
 The lilac sash will wear 
 Which girt her waist that eve 
 My hand was torn from there ; 
 
 " And let its waving bands, 
 
 Which fell below her knee, 
 Appear to hold her looped 
 As will the halter me ; 
 
 " And last, if when I drop 
 
 Her head shall sink beneath 
 The casement-sill, as though 
 Resolved to share my death ; 
 
 " Pledge this, and ask what boon 
 
 A wizard may impart, 
 A spark to fire thy veins, 
 
 A hoard to freeze thy heart. " 
 
 KING. 
 
 All this and more I grant, 
 Thy life and her white hand, 
 
FALCONRY. 79 
 
 The sceptre and the crown 
 By which I rule the land, 
 
 Whereof thou shalt be king, 
 
 And I will go my ways, 
 If thou lt impart the spell 
 
 Of never-ending days." 
 
 SORCERER. 
 The kneeling boor, whose shoulder 
 
 Is smitten by thy sword, 
 Arises, by the spell 
 
 Of kingly words a lord. 
 
 ; But whom my wand shall touch, 
 
 Be high or low his birth, 
 My whispered charm can make 
 The richest of the earth. 
 
 The Shibboleth of life 
 
 Would lose my soul, if told ; 
 For what I ask, be thine 
 The charm of endless gold." 
 
8o FALCONRY. 
 
 KING. 
 
 " So thou wilt prove that spell 
 Upon the chains that hold 
 Thy body, and transmute 
 Their iron into gold ; 
 
 " My daughter from yon lattice 
 
 Shall smile on thee, nor falter 
 When in the morn the hangman 
 Shall loop thee with the halter ; 
 
 " The lilac sash she wore, 
 
 The night I found thy grasp 
 Around her in the garden, 
 Her snowy neck shall clasp : 
 
 " And on the lattice bow 
 
 Its waving ends I ll tie, 
 
 That she may seem to thee 
 
 Like thee about to die ; 
 
 " And when beneath thy feet 
 The fatal bolt is sped, 
 
FALCONRY. 81 
 
 I swear that she shall bend, 
 Saluting thee, her head." 
 
 SORCERER. 
 
 " Now cross yon hazel wand 
 
 Upon thy royal sword, 
 And swear by Him who died 
 That thou wilt keep thy word. 
 
 " Tis well dismiss these slaves, 
 
 Now take the hazel wand : 
 The serpent -head in thine, 
 The tail in my right hand. 
 
 " Thine ear bring close and listen, 
 
 And after me recite 
 The measured incantation, 
 And grasp the hazel tight. 
 
 " Nay, open not thine eyes 
 
 So wide, as in dismay ; 
 No coward will the Gnome 
 
 Who guards the mine obey. 
 G 
 
82 FALCONRY. 
 
 " The Sprite must know a master 
 
 Or else the master he : 
 The second rune is faster ; 
 Repeat it after me. 
 
 Thy face is pale, O monarch, 
 
 And all alive thy hair ; 
 Pause not ! or of the malice 
 Of Gnome and Sprite beware. 
 
 ; Tis said now touch my chains, 
 Ha ! they grow yellow straight, 
 
 And from my wrists I feel 
 
 Them hang with heavier weight 
 
 Now get the charm by rote ; 
 
 A word misplaced rebounds 
 As from a rock the ball 
 
 Which him who shot it wounds. 
 
 Ah, so ! these chains thou fain 
 Wouldst in the furnace try ? 
 
FALCONRY. 83 
 
 Exchange them and thou lt find 
 Their gold no jugglery." 
 
 At dawn beneath the gibbet 
 
 Serene the wizard stood, 
 And saw within the lattice 
 
 The princess he had wooed. 
 
 Around her neck the sash 
 
 As round his throat the cord ; 
 
 Then knew he that the king 
 Had kept his royal word. 
 
 For, by its fastened ends, 
 
 The lilac noose was hung, 
 As from the gallows-tree 
 
 The rope that held him swung. 
 
 And when their glances met, 
 
 Upon her lip and eye 
 He saw a radiant smile, 
 
 And said "Now let me die." 
 
 And when the trap was sprung, 
 The princess dipped her head ; 
 
84 FALCONRY. 
 
 But when they came to raise her, 
 They found her spirit fled ; 
 
 And twixt those corpses twain, 
 They saw a falcon bear 
 
 Aloft, with clenched talons, 
 A white dove through the air. 
 
THE CHARGE. 
 
 CANTER on, canter on, gaily we go ! 
 Let no betrayal our trumpeters blow, 
 Till we behold on yon summit the foe 
 
 Loose not the bugle s wild breath ; 
 Then to its sound we will bound o er the 
 ground, 
 
 Jubilant unto the death. 
 
 Tighten your girths as we rise yonder slant. 
 Slacken your pace, let your weary steeds pant, 
 Hark ! tis the enemy s rude battle-chant, 
 
 Grow to your saddles, my men ! 
 We re on the hill blow your will, bugles 
 shrill ! 
 
 Now for a crash in the glen ! 
 
LOST AND FOUND. 
 
 I. 
 
 LOST. 
 
 To Major C * * *, U. S. Infantry, reported 
 (( dead on the field of honour" at Gainers Mill, 
 fune 21th, 1862. 
 
 A LEGEND of the guillotine, 
 
 Or of the gibbet s vengeful cord, 
 
 Or of two foes at sunrise seen 
 
 To grasp the pistol or the sword, 
 
 May for a beat our pulses stop, 
 While fancy sees the axe descend, 
 
LOST AND FOUND. 87 
 
 The pinioned felon hopeless drop, 
 The slayer o er his victim bend. 
 
 When one, of old a comrade, dies, 
 
 His life-march flits before our ken, 
 Dim passing shadows that arise 
 
 Upon a wall, to fall again ; 
 But being told some dearer brow 
 
 Lies cold neath Azrael s marble seal, 
 As to a cannon-shot we bow, 
 
 And nearer to the graveyard feel. 
 
 But fancy s self-adjusted glass 
 
 May not include the vaster woe 
 Of crews that storm-fiends, as they pass, 
 
 In ocean s barren furrows sow : 
 Or of gay legions, which with pride 
 
 Of crested ranks clothed hill and dale, 
 Swept down by battle s furious tide, 
 
 Like stately grain by summer s hail. 
 
 Twas thus on me this strife had gleamed 
 But as an airy pageant s show 
 
88 LOST AND FOUND. 
 
 Of war s bold game, which well beseemed 
 Its varying chances ebb and flow ; 
 
 Until it like a mirage waned 
 
 And bared thy mortal wound O friend, 
 
 With whom the parting toast I drained 
 Was, " May the conflict quickly end ! " 
 
 The Old Year sank within our bowl, 
 
 And when the New in splendour rose, 
 I should have wept heroic soul ! 
 
 To think thou wouldst not see its close ; 
 To dream that Atropos then held, 
 
 E en then, the scissors near thy thread, 
 And that our goblet-chimes but knelled 
 
 Thy fate, to DEATH AND GLORY wed. 
 
 When I recall thy pensive face, 
 
 The smile that smoothed its furrows deep, 
 The sternness veiled by tender grace, 
 
 As lilies screen a lion s sleep ; 
 I feel that we who weep thee are 
 
 Poor trimmers, who as sailors guide 
 
LOST AND FOUND. 89 
 
 Their vessels waste our souls in care 
 To follow, not to breast the tide. 
 
 A teacher of the art heroic, 
 
 Who precept with example twines, 
 Nor counterfeits a virtue stoic 
 
 Against whose rule his soul repines, 
 Is he who drills a nation s youth 
 
 The call of duty to obey, 
 To fight the fight of right and truth, 
 
 To point and more, to lead the way. 
 
 Such wert thou, Friend, whose loss I mourn 
 
 As martial seed ! Thy fertile yield 
 Might, like the future s garnered corn, 
 
 Have bearded many a battle-field. 
 Thy country was thy only wife, 
 
 Thy troop thy only family ; 
 For her thou hast laid down thy life, 
 
 Whose sons had gladly died for thee ! 
 
90 LOST AND FOUND. 
 
 II. 
 
 FOUND. 
 
 To Major C * * *, 7. S. Infantry, danger 
 ously wounded and made a prisoner- at Caines s 
 Mill, June 2*jth, 1862. 
 
 MY tears fell on an empty grave, 
 Yet let them not be shed in vain, 
 
 But dedicated to the brave 
 
 Whom thousands mourn amongst the slain. 
 
 My dirge, in feeble numbers wrought 
 With pious heart, shall consecrate 
 
 Their memory whose death has brought 
 Such grief as thy imagined fate. 
 
 Could tears wake them to life again, 
 
 Their forms heroic would arise, 
 Like trampled grass from quickening rain, 
 
 Beneath a nation s weeping eyes. 
 
LOST AND FOUND. 91 
 
 Could plaint or song their ears but thrill 
 As thine awoke to hear my strain, 
 
 No pen were dry, no voice were still, 
 From where they lie to distant Maine. 
 
 Yet deem not that my heart retracts 
 The praise ne er meant to dim the eye 
 
 Of one whose future words and acts 
 Shall verify that eulogy. 
 
 I greet thee as some vessel fair 
 Her owner hath deplored as lost, 
 
 When on his gaze, through summer-air, 
 Her white sails glisten off the coast ; 
 
 And up the cliffs glad neighbours rush, 
 With kindred joy, and grasp his hand 
 
 Whose moistened cheek the breezes flush 
 That waft his lost bark to the land. 
 
A ROYAL ABODE. 
 
 IF to dwell within a palace, 
 Out of reach of want or malice, 
 
 Is a king to be ; 
 If the loftier one s storey, 
 Higher soars one s earthly glory, 
 
 Few are kings like me. 
 
 Though a monarch I ve no nation 
 To preserve from grim starvation,- 
 
 I no uproar fear ; 
 But throughout my city stately 
 Suffered am to walk sedately, 
 
 Free from scowl or sneer. 
 
 Me surround no courtiers pettish, 
 With their capers etiquettish, 
 Ceremonious, cold ; 
 
A ROYAL ABODE. 
 
 Jealous heart-burns ill concealing, 
 None, because the other, kneeling, 
 Doth my slippers hold. 
 
 Mine s a life of royal pleasure ; 
 All my days are clays of leisure, 
 
 All the nights the same ; 
 When I take an extra bottle, 
 Cares my throat-latch never throttle, 
 
 No one cries out " Shame !" 
 
 And the visions of my slumber 
 Haggard faces ne er encumber ; 
 
 At my will I rise, 
 And whene er it suits my fancy, 
 Rolls and coffee brings up Nancy 
 
 With the dark-blue eyes. 
 
 From my larder s tempting plenty, 
 Dine alone or dine with twenty 
 
 Or a hundred guests ; 
 Sit till our convivial laughter 
 Shakes the glasses, thrills the rafter, 
 
 Mingling songs and jests. 
 
94 A ROYAL ABODE. 
 
 Servants many round the table ; 
 Many grooms within the stable ; 
 
 Nay, a commodore, 
 With his word and gesture serious, 
 On the quarter-deck imperious, 
 
 Is not worshipped more. 
 
 Of all this the glad fruition 
 Hold I upon one condition, 
 
 Sometimes hard to fill 
 Hard as chancellor must drudge it 
 When compelled to shape his budget,- 
 
 I MUST PAY MY BILL. 
 
VATHEK. 
 
 MY eyes are dim, my thin locks gray, 
 The avalanche of years hath bent 
 
 My frame will it suspend decay 
 If at your bidding I repent ? 
 
 Repent ! Do monarchs abdicate 
 
 When senses wane and pleasures cloy ? 
 
 Doth avarice expropriate 
 
 The wealth which buys no other joy? 
 
 The hoary king retains his throne, 
 The miser s palsied grasp his hoard ; 
 
 Shall I the crumbling fane disown 
 Of which my will is still the lord ? 
 
96 VATHEK. 
 
 Repent ! While Love s bright galaxies 
 Still glisten in the blue of sleep, 
 
 And shapes once worshipped greet my eyes 
 When up the slope I turn to peep ? 
 
 Read in yon bark that quits the shore, 
 The tale, by years and tempests told, 
 
 Of planks, without their sap of yore, 
 Wave-twisted from the builder s mould. 
 
 Yet, while she floats, intrepid tars 
 Confide their all to her, nor pause 
 
 To think how frail the screen that bars 
 Them from the ocean s myriad jaws. 
 
 She hath her legends of rare freights, 
 Of food to starving peoples borne, 
 
 Of silks and teas from China s gates, 
 And spices from the Isles of Morn. 
 
 When weary of such yarns her crew 
 Cast webs, like spiders, to the shore ; 
 
 Their watch, in tempests, they fight through. 
 Then sleep as though the fight were o er. 
 
VATHEK. 97 
 
 If they beyond such hourly care 
 
 Look not, whose cares may cease to-morrow, 
 Shall I that drift I know not where 
 
 Weigh down my sinking years with sorrow ? 
 
 The wind is rising ; let me glean, 
 
 From Time s heaped sands, such golden 
 
 grains 
 As miners gather up between 
 
 The walls of long-exhausted veins. 
 
TO SAMUEL L. M. BARLOW. 
 
 SUB TEG MINE FAGI. 
 
 You marvel I should bid farewell 
 
 To cities and to men 
 At fifty and contented dwell 
 
 Within this lonely glen. 
 
 Long be it ere afflictions give 
 Your undimmed faith the lie, 
 
 And teach you it is hard to live 
 Where those you cherish die ! 
 
 While here I draw, with every breath 
 
 Of life a balmy share, 
 Your city seems the haunt of death 
 
 When to it I repair. 
 
SUB TEGMINE FAGI. 99 
 
 So many of its palaces 
 
 Are sepulchres for me, 
 Of those who shared a happiness 
 
 That never more shall be ; 
 
 That when my footsteps pause beside 
 Some old friend s dwelling-place, 
 
 A gravestone seems the door, once wide 
 With welcoming embrace. 
 
 And e en the living few, of al 
 
 My comrades I yet meet, 
 Seem tottering to a funeral, 
 
 Along the callous street. 
 
 Afar from walls in mourning hung, 
 
 And mutes so nigh the tomb, 
 These forests seem forever young, 
 
 These fields dispel my gloom. 
 
 I cannot tell the birds apart 
 
 Which in my beeches sing, 
 From those which last year taught my heart 
 
 To beat in tune with Spring. 
 
ioo SUB TEG MINE FAG I. 
 
 The self-same squirrel seems to trip 
 From branch to branch in glee, 
 
 That I beheld last summer skip 
 About the self-same tree. 
 
 The night-hawks, at the close of day, 
 
 The owl to supper call ; 
 The cricket chirps his roundelay 
 
 Beneath my chimney-wall ; 
 
 And this is why I bade farewell 
 
 To cities and to men 
 At fifty and contented dwell 
 
 Within this lonely glen. 
 
CHANT DU DEPART. 
 
 IN buoyant youth we sing and dance, 
 
 Later we only sing, 
 Then fade the rainbows of romance, 
 
 Our cymbals cease to ring ; 
 And we, like the enchanted Prince 
 
 All petrified below, 
 Lament the bright years vanished since 
 
 We tripped with nimble toe. 
 
 With kindred fancies, lovely friend, 
 
 So soon to brave the sea, 
 This minuet of the brain I send, 
 
 Too grave, I fear, for thee. 
 Alas ! too old for dance or song 
 
 My feet and head repose, 
 But, sweet, my heart still beating strong 
 
 For thee with rapture glows. 
 
102 CHANT DU DEPART. 
 
 And if there be a blissful land 
 Where friends hereafter meet, 
 
 I ll hail thee there, with beckoning hand, 
 On gaily bounding feet. 
 
 And in thine ear breathe couplets fail- 
 To Gabriel s tuneful sway, 
 
 And both rejoice that we have there 
 No washing-bills to pay ! 
 
 STEAMSHIP " BRAUNSCHWEIG," 
 BALTIMORE, July 1875. 
 
POIGNARD OR PILLS? 
 
 MARGARET of Burgundy, 
 
 Frailest of the frail, 
 Tempted many a gallant 
 
 To the Tour de Nesle. 
 
 With caresses burning, 
 Made his soul her own ; 
 
 Then she softly stabbed him 
 Dead without a groan. 
 
 Stabbed him, while her kisses 
 Drained his parting breath ; 
 
 What a modulation 
 
 That from Love to Death. 
 
I0 4 POIGNARD OR PILLS? 
 
 Mozart the magician, 
 
 Thus from jubilee 
 Deftly shifts the tonic 
 
 To a minor key. 
 
 As at Juan s banquet, 
 
 Wassail, mirth, and glory, 
 
 Freeze to awe when raps 
 // Commendatore, 
 
 At each rap a blast 
 
 From the horns of hell, 
 
 No such warning had they 
 At the Tour de Nesle. 
 
 Were not death more welcome 
 Last of mortal ills 
 
 In a shower of kisses 
 Than a box of pills ? 
 
TO ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 A CURATE in a lonely hamlet preaching, 
 
 Nor heard beyond, 
 Until with rumours of his saintly teaching 
 
 Echoes respond, 
 And then into a broader field translated 
 
 With ampler fold, 
 As soldiers are to higher grades elated 
 
 For actions bold 
 
 Cries, when he hears assembled hundreds 
 voicing 
 
 Responsive prayer, 
 Hosanna ! in yet bolder strains rejoicing 
 
 The distant air. 
 So thou, in humbler days, didst hymn a wailing 
 
 For Claribel, 
 Which on the outer world like unavailing 
 
 Entreaty fell ; 
 
io6 TO ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 But friends around thee shared thy tuneful 
 weeping, 
 
 And treasured long 
 The memory of that hapless maiden sleeping 
 
 Within thy song. 
 I see thee now in Art s great temple throning, 
 
 A Hierophant, 
 And hear glad voices from far peaks intoning 
 
 Thy larger chant. 
 
TO THE POET OF FARRINGFORD. 
 
 A FRIEND, 1 who in the South now waits 
 
 Until the Sesame 
 Of peace shall cleave his prison-gates, 
 
 Thus spake to me of thee : 
 
 " He dwells in Britain s fairest isle, 
 Within an ivy-kirtled pile, 
 
 Gray as its Saxon age ; 
 Mid flower-brocaded turfs that lie 
 On chalk-cliffs, like the minstrelsy 
 
 That broidereth his page. 
 
 " He dwells afar from Caerleon 
 
 Where Arthur s dawning glories shone, 
 
 1 My friend William Henry Hurlbert, at that time 
 imprisoned at Richmond, expiating his defence of 
 human liberty by the loss of his own. 
 
io8 THE POET OF FARRINGFORD. 
 
 Nor near to Camelot ; 
 Though in his walks, the spectral throng 
 Of Paladins applaud his song, 
 
 While weeps Sir Launcelot. 
 
 " Twas there I heard his silver voice, 
 In spells his pen had cast, rejoice, 
 
 And saw its tones evoke 
 The calm procession of his Dream 
 Of Women Fair, until the stream 
 Of song by night was broke. 
 
 " Next day at even s favouring tide 
 I left the Isle ; and by his side, 
 
 To speed the parting guest, 
 Stood she, who held in either hand 
 A flaxen child with golden band 
 
 Clasped round a crimson vest. 
 
 " As on them burned day s orange glow, 
 My fancy pictured Ivanhoe, 
 
 When love had crowned his joys ; 
 Rowena in the bloom of life, 
 The mother, still with beauty rife, 
 Of his two Saxon boys." 
 
THE POET OF FARRINGFORD. 109 
 
 Moss-rose Pendennis, when he cast 
 His petals on our Northern blast, 
 
 To scent its wintiy breath, 
 Swore thou alone of living men, 
 Within his widely-reaching ken, 
 
 Would st long survive thy death. 
 
 Another came, whose sparkling glov, 
 Might vie with the inspiring flow 
 
 Of Rhone or fairy Rhine, 
 And vowed thou wert no anchorite. 
 For once he saw thee half the night 
 
 The cup with garlands twine. 
 
 Two portraits of thee near me lie : 
 In rapture on the Eastern sky 
 
 The younger seems to gaze ; 
 The other of the Western sun 
 In autumn, ere the day is done, 
 
 Reflects the saddening rays. 
 
 But not thy living fame nor face, 
 Though tongue or bust their image trace, 
 
no THE POET OF FARRINGFORD. 
 
 Before my soul arise ; 
 I see thee as in after days 
 Posterity shall with his lays 
 
 The minstrel canonize. 
 
TO LADY S. G. 
 With a White Carnation. 
 
 THE pale carnation represents 
 
 A spirit pure, 
 A soul from eveiy blush of sense 
 
 Henceforth secure. 
 
 I see thee in such raiment gleaming 
 
 When, at its edge, 
 The altar heard thy voice redeeming 
 
 Thy sponsor s pledge. 
 
 And next I hear the organ pealing 
 
 Its shout of pride, 
 When thou, before that altar kneeling, 
 
 Becam st a bride. 
 
112 TO LADY S. G. 
 
 How of such memories the flood 
 
 Can I impart, 
 While that carnation s primal blood 
 
 Invades my heart ? 
 
TO SIBELL. 
 
 THE martial pageant that absorbed our gaze 
 And fired my pulses, when the gladdened air 
 Quickened with joy the sun s majestic rays, 
 All disappeared ! All save thy face so fair, 
 Which seemed to say, "A desert at the best 
 Is life, o er which the floating mirage-gleams 
 Incite our paces, until we find rest 
 Beside some angel of our better dreams." 
 
 DOVER HOUSE, May 28, 1883. 
 
IMPROMPTU. 
 
 To my Sister, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, on her 
 54th Birthday. 
 
 Six times nine make fifty-four ! 
 
 May you live years many more, 
 
 Dearest, bravest sister mine 
 
 I have loved years six times nine ! 
 
 At my life-stone ten times six, 
 
 Just one lustrum nearer Styx, 
 
 Wise ones say, I ve lived in vain 
 Through life s calm and hurricane, 
 All my voyage wayward sport, 
 With no cargo brought to port, 
 Save upon the barren deck 
 Some one rescued from a wreck. 
 They forget that those who hold 
 Cargoes, houses, bonds and gold, 
 
IMPR OMPTU. 1 1 5 
 
 Prize pursuit and gain above 
 All that kindlier natures love, 
 And must in proportion grieve 
 Treasures of such cost to leave ; 
 Churls expire without a sigh, 
 While t is hard for kings to die. 
 But to those who " think my way," 
 Death but ends a toilsome day. 
 Yet who may the story tell 
 Must avow my craft sailed well, 
 Though a battered hulk of wood, 
 Now but to dismantle good. 
 
 But a teak-built clipper thou ! 
 
 Waves, for years, shall kiss thy prow, 
 
 And the winds their fury ply 
 
 Vainly on thy banner high. 
 
 Like Van Tromp s wild broom made fast, 
 
 It shall float while points the mast ; 
 
 Woman s Rights and Woman s Wrongs 
 
 Still shall thrill thy fiery songs, 
 
 As of yore, in struggles grim 
 
 Brave hearts throbbed thy "Battle Hymn." 
 
LINES WRITTEN IN A COPY OF 
 OMAR KHAYYAM. . 
 
 AT night among the churchyard thistles 
 The boy with feigned bravado whistles ; 
 And minor chords when Omar sings 
 Betray his path s environings, 
 And show, however brave their tread 
 Our footsteps lead but to the dead. 
 
 As flow ry meads delight the eye 
 Though, neath their grasses, serpents lie, 
 His jubilees, with rapture fair, 
 Conceal a dreg-note of despair. 
 The cold stars glisten in his rhymes, 
 To mock their muffled funeral chimes. 
 
TO MY NIECE DAISY INTER 
 PRETING LISZT. 
 
 HER tapering fingers from the keys 
 Purloined such dulcet harmonies, 
 That scarce the drowsy chords awoke, 
 But seemed to murmur in their sleep, 
 Until like troops when day hath broke, 
 To arms at the reveille who leap, 
 Her touch aroused an unseen host, 
 The voices of a Pentecost, 
 A host that in consent obeyed 
 The incantation of the maid. 
 
 But how portray the spirit s mood 
 Controlling that melodious brood ? 
 Hath Fancy moulded yet a shape 
 Worthy her tenderness to drape, 
 
u8 TO MY NIECE DAISY. 
 
 As in those years of dolls and toys 
 The mimicry of later joys ? 
 Or is she the unconscious bird 
 Which sings, and cares not to be heard ? 
 
 Ah, no, the eager chords relate 
 The feelings glad or desolate 
 Of one whose wayward life hath been 
 A mystery to his fellow-men ; 
 A monarch in the realms of tone, 
 Now cinctured by a priestly zone, 
 Who every gamut, every scale, 
 To Alpine height from Alpine dale, 
 In human life hath sobbed or sung. 
 
 As brooks in pensive beauty glide 
 To mingle in the breakers roar, 
 But homeward with the turning tide 
 Some truant drops regain the shore, 
 So he, his native hills among, 
 Now tunes the lyre his life hath strung. 
 And that wild life to her unknown 
 Her fingers trace ; as on the stone 
 
TO MY NIE CE DAISY. 119 
 
 That marks a grave its legend sad 
 
 We read, nor know the good or bad 
 
 That throbbed and wrought ere tearless Death 
 
 Laid low the crumbling frame beneath. 
 
TO EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 O WAYWARD, weird, and mystic soul, 
 
 Whose meteoric pace 
 Outstripped the pigmy orbs that roll 
 
 In grooves of commonplace ; 
 Like aerolites from heaven that fall 
 
 Thy works were tossed and piled, 
 Thy Raven brooding over all, 
 
 Fit crest for sorrow s child. 
 
 Hadst thou been born when heroes reigned, 
 
 And hailed the bard a seer, 
 A poet s largesse thou hadst gained, 
 
 And stepped a prince s peer ; 
 Or e en to-day when keener thirst 
 
 For deeper fountains longs, 
 Beneath thy magic touch had burst 
 
 A Horeb of high songs. 
 
TO EDGAR ALLAN FOE. 121 
 
 But on thee lay the curse of toil, 
 
 The child-devouring sire, 
 For life s imperious needs to moil, 
 
 And drop the golden lyre. 
 Yet its rare raptures round us float, 
 
 As of a cindered star, 
 Dead aeons since, the rays remote 
 
 Still reach us from afar. 
 
TO WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 HE who scorns the tuneful measure 
 
 Is a lout, 
 Trampling down melodious pleasure 
 
 With a shout, 
 Like the Moenads Corybantic, 
 
 Who would tear 
 Beauty s eyelids in their frantic, 
 
 Wild despair. 
 Let the Muses nine deny him, 
 
 As a churl 
 Only hut-ward fit to hie him, 
 
 From the whirl 
 Of the striving cadence leading 
 
 Up the dance, 
 Lads and lasses gaily speeding 
 
 In its trance. 
 
TO WALT WHITMAN. 123 
 
 Cornu Miruris brassy snorting 
 
 Calls the kine, 
 But Apollo s lyre exhorting 
 
 The divine 
 Wavy swaying to its playing 
 
 Is a bliss, 
 Kindling summer-lightnings straying 
 
 Till they kiss. 
 Walt in Belvedere Apollo 
 
 Sees a boy 
 Only fit the chase to follow 
 
 With youth s joy. 
 Fool ! yon tankard s crystal shimmer 
 
 Hides a wine 
 Fit for Juno, or the dimmer 
 
 Proserpine. 
 And the Bow-god, lithe and slender, 
 
 Hath a soul, 
 Mortal feelings fierce or tender 
 
 To control. 
 Sparks your darling Vulcan dashes 
 
 At each blow, 
 Only gleam to sink in ashes 
 
 Down below, 
 
124 TO WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 While the Day-god s silver lyre 
 
 Trills its psean 
 To the ultramundane choir 
 
 Empyrean, 
 Voicing homage to the warder, 
 
 Who on high 
 Out of chaos marshals order 
 
 In the sky. 
 
IMPROMPTU IN AN ALBUM. 
 
 O PEN ! wert thou a magic brush, 
 
 And mine a limner s hand, 
 Upon this page what scenes should gush,- 
 
 What skies from fairy-land ! 
 
 But such bright visions fade away 
 
 As clouds in ocean sink, 
 When I to thee can only pay 
 
 My compliments in ink. 
 
III. 
 
FRUITION. 
 
 [JUNE.] 
 
 LIE thou there, black pack of care, 
 I have carried full months nine ! 
 
 Let me seek the greenwood fair 
 While the summer s glory s mine. 
 
 Far from me the miser s lot 
 Beadle of a golden shrine 
 
 Whilst, by nature s toil begot, 
 All the summer s wealth is mine. 
 
 In the masquerade of flowers 
 
 Let the Cedar, Larch, and Pine, 
 
 Mourn stern winter s vanished towers, 
 So the summer s joy be mine. 
 
132 FRUITION. 
 
 Ninety times the sun shall Vise 
 Earlier from his couch of brine, 
 
 And shall linger in the skies 
 
 While the summer s bliss is mine. 
 
 By the stream, as when a child, 
 
 Shrinking from the snake-like vine, 
 
 I will wander, thrush-beguiled, 
 While the summer s glory s mine. 
 
 Sunbeams jewelling the showers 
 Which the knotted clouds untwine 
 
 Over thirsty fields and bowers, 
 Are the summer s gems and mine. 
 
 Strolling through its paths of bliss 
 Skirted by the jessamine, 
 
 I will sing and dance and kiss 
 
 While the summer s glory s mine ; 
 
 Till the grapes the robins spare 
 Shall redeem their pledge in wine, 
 
 Let me glean the treasures rare 
 Of the summer s sparkling mine. 
 
LEAVES AND STARS. 
 [SEPTEMBER.] 
 
 YESTERDAY, when Autumn s fire 
 Flushed the maple and the briar, 
 Till they crimsoned as a maid 
 Who her love hath just betrayed, 
 Disappeared my summer dream, 
 Like the picture in a stream 
 Which the wanton breezes chase 
 From the liquid mirror s face. 
 
 Was each reddening leaf the ghost 
 Of a precious moment lost ? 
 Else why should the woodland s glow 
 Thrill me with such sense of woe, 
 
136 OCTOBER LAY. 
 
 As escape the winged legions 
 Of the air, from Arctic regions, 
 
 Pale with sunless cold ; 
 Gales in search of tropic fires 
 Rushing, wake the thousand lyres 
 
 Of the Druid wold. 
 
 Green, midst Autumn s fading splendour, 
 Swing the lonely willow s tender 
 
 Fringes, o er the brook ; 
 As though, fresh from Ocean s portal, 
 Some fair Nereid immortal 
 
 There her ringlets shook. 
 
 Circling zephyrs, with caresses, 
 Gently sway those drooping tresses 
 
 Sheltered by the grove ; 
 Whilst its giant tree-tops, braving 
 Ruder blasts, are madly waving 
 
 In the air above. 
 
OCTOBER LAY. 137 
 
 II. MAN. 
 
 STORMY day of mid October ! 
 I, poor drunkard, waxing sober, 
 
 Feel thy pelting rain 
 Fierce as shot my cheeks assailing, 
 Driven by the blast whose wailing 
 
 Heralds Winter s reign. 
 
 As I plod with weary measure, 
 Conscience tolls the knell of pleasure 
 
 Oh, the Summer hours ! 
 Gone are now their joys enchanting, 
 Leaving only phantoms, haunting 
 
 Memory s leafless bowers. 
 
 On the leaves the wayside strewing, 
 I, in each a moment rueing, 
 
 Look with tearful eyes ; 
 Look, as were they corpses serried 
 On a battle-field, ere buried 
 
 Never more to rise. 
 
138 OCTOBER LAY. 
 
 Blows the north-wind sharp and biting, 
 Scatters dreams of bliss inviting, 
 
 Rain-drops burn like fire, 
 And the fire my breast tormenting, 
 Unextinguished, unrelenting, 
 
 Withers all desire. 
 
 Though like spray from storm-lashed surges 
 Whip the forest s leaves thy scourges, 
 
 Fearful Hurricane ! 
 
 Leaflets, erst Spring s welcome bringing, 
 To the willow fondly clinging, 
 
 Bright as hope remain. 
 
SONG OF THE WREN. 
 
 THE summer s joyous warblers away 
 
 Have flown from November s frown, 
 And midst the palsied woodland s decay, 
 I reign on my perch of hemlock spray, 
 A monarch without a crown. 
 
 In early spring came the Oriole 
 To foster her orange brood, 
 Ere crept the rattlesnake from his hole 
 Or the dormant Owl his stern patrol 
 Resumed, in the tropic wood. 
 
 The Throstle brown and the Catbird gray, 
 
 With the timid Redbreast came, 
 And the Blackbird and the Bobolink gay, 
 With answering notes took up the lay 
 Of the Grosbeak s throat of flame. 
 
HO SOA T G OF THE WREN. 
 
 Out of last year s leaves and grasses sere 
 
 And the gray rock s mossy beard, 
 In tufts, or copses shrouding the mere, 
 Or neath the Catalpa s flapping ear, 
 Their nests they merrily reared. 
 
 While lasted the spring-tide s quickening hours 
 
 Their carols the forest thrilled, 
 They summoned the bee to opening flowers 
 When honey, from April s balmy showers, 
 The sun in their cups distilled. 
 
 To quiet their nestlings plaintive cry 
 Like flashes they clave the air, 
 
 Now chasing the golden dragon-fly, 
 
 Now preying upon the insect fiy, 
 Or the spider in his lair. 
 
 Like guests who flit from a summer fete, 
 
 Aweary of dance and play, 
 Ere the motley fireworks scintillate, 
 In starry pennons, before the gate 
 
 Of night, and awake the day ; 
 
SONG OF THE WREN. 141 
 
 They fled when the hoarfrost first congealed 
 
 On the clover s flower-reft blade, 
 And Autumn her tawny dyes revealed 
 In the scattered spoils by road and field 
 Of the Summer s masquerade. 
 
 They fled as worldly parasites fly 
 From the prodigal s dying bed, 
 
 And the only mourner left am I 
 
 To witness the funeral pageantry 
 Of Nature burying her dead. 
 
 The squirrel sleeps in the hollow tree 
 
 Or munches his winter store, 
 The partridge crops fat berries in glee, 
 The quail roams gleaning the stubble free, 
 
 And the meadow-lark the moor. 
 
 When spread the Oak his pall o er the flowers, 
 
 The silver Maple grew pale, 
 And a crimson flushed the ivied bowers 
 Where neath the Dogwood, in fervid hours 
 
 Had blossomed the Orchis frail. 
 
142 SONG OF THE WREN. 
 
 The Hickory s green to gold then turned, 
 
 Yet clave to the fruitful bough, 
 While the Catbriar, as a miser spurned 
 In death, was stripped of its leaves, which 
 
 burned 
 Like coals in the muddy slough. 
 
 The Gum s leaves will with the rainbow vie, 
 
 Till from the Heavens, o ercast 
 With frowns no longer checked by the eye 
 Of the sun, rebellious snows shall fly 
 On the ruthless Arctic blast. 
 
 But his realms their absent Lord again, 
 In Spring, shall awake from sleep, 
 And my sisters will cheer their little Wren 
 With newest songs from the grove and glen, 
 Where the mocking-birds vigil keep. 
 
ORCHARD FANTASIA. 
 
 BEHOLD yon hale old apple-tree, 
 
 In its wrinkled skin with mosses bound, 
 Yield to the south wind s sportive glee 
 The blossoms it scatters recklessly, 
 Like snowflakes over the ground. 
 
 Like snow in a night they will disappear, 
 Absorbed by the yearning earth ; 
 
 But the fruits it hath borne for many a year, 
 
 The joy of urchins far and near, 
 That tree shall again bring forth. 
 
 And as those blossoms sown by the wind 
 
 Leave germing fruits on the bounteous tree, 
 So gentle words and charities kind, 
 Though man prove thankless, leave behind 
 Sweet germs for the hoards of memory. 
 
144 ORCHARD FANTASIA. 
 
 And when deathward sighs the bosom heaves, 
 Though the kindly deeds we have done on 
 
 earth 
 
 Should seem to us but as withered leaves, 
 While our sins, like serpents, in living sheaves, 
 Daunt the soul on the verge of its second 
 birth ; 
 
 The blossoms shall flower in Heaven again, 
 Where no wild breeze shall waft them away ; 
 
 And the clang of the blow that breaks our 
 chain 
 
 Shall drive the emblems of sin and pain, 
 The serpents, back to their dens of clay. 
 
IV. 
 
A WAKING DREAM. 
 
 WESTWARD gazing through my window, Venus 
 
 shone ; 
 Lit the room where I had all night dreamed 
 
 alone j 
 Woke her lustrous eye the slumbering depths 
 
 of mine, 
 
 Kindling sparks among the ashes of lang-syne. 
 Vainly strove the dawn s first glories through 
 
 the gloom ; 
 Like my heart, the lonely chamber looked a 
 
 tomb 
 Where sweet ghosts, in sad procession, seemed 
 
 to flow 
 Past my bed, become a bier, and there bestow 
 
148 A WAKING DR&AM. 
 
 Griefs last kiss upon my brow. Each tender 
 
 glance 
 Thrilled my soul with joy and pain ; as in a 
 
 trance 
 
 Shrank within my palsied lips all utterance. 
 Fading in the dawn the Morn- Star disappears, 
 And dispels the tender throng, but not my tears ; 
 For I wake with sorrowing heart and aching 
 
 head, 
 Wake to find sweet Venus vanished and Love 
 
 dead. 
 
THE INCOMPLETE PICTURE. 
 
 LAST summer, in the Catskill range, 
 I took a sketch, and thought it good, 
 
 Of yonder dale, and now t is strange, 
 The picture chimes not with my mood. 
 
 And yet the brush s motley trace 
 Repeats the landscape to my eye ; 
 
 The hills, with grave or smiling grace 
 Of chiselled profile, fret the sky. 
 
 The knoll still shrinks beyond the lawn 
 To nothingness twixt loftier steeps, 
 
 Gay creepers on the cottage fawn, 
 
 And o er the brook the willow weeps. 
 
150 THE INCOMPLETE PICTURE. 
 
 The unchained skiff upon the bank 
 Its shoulder rests, as in a doze ; 
 
 The oars press down the rushes dank, 
 The lake with yellow sunset glows. 
 
 Yon urchin toward the water sways 
 His oxen, lightened of their yoke ; 
 
 The air they breathe is autumn s haze, 
 Or Indian summer s chilly smoke. 
 
 Yet, like some tune that wakes no more, 
 Though sweetly sung in after years, 
 
 Emotions which it roused of yore, 
 
 The dance s throb, the burial s tears, 
 
 My canvas mirror, tame and cold, 
 Lacks sleeping Nature s living glow ; 
 
 Like shrouds its shadows wrap the wold, 
 Nor with the sunset seem to grow. 
 
 Ah ! now I see its chief defect ; 
 
 My hand refused, beneath the porch, 
 To seat the lass with garlands decked 
 
 Whose eyes took up day s fading torch. 
 
THE TRYST. 
 
 AN hour too early in the grove ! 
 
 An hour for blissful dreams, 
 Which countless starry eyes above 
 
 Will gladden with their beams. 
 
 Through leaves and twigs they peep at me, 
 
 Like frolic elves at play, 
 Who slip behind rock, bush, or tree, 
 
 Whene er one looks their way. 
 
 The varying screen through which I gaze, 
 
 Fantastic shapes assumes, 
 As with its breath the south wind sways 
 
 The tree-tops yielding plumes : 
 
152 THE TRYST. 
 
 Till rests my wandering glance upon 
 The steadfast star of Jove, 
 
 As lovers eyes all others shun 
 Save those that drink their love. 
 
 I hearken to the village chime ; 
 
 The first half-hour is past ! 
 With what a funeral march old Time 
 
 Sets forth upon the last ! 
 
 A dark cloud sailing by puts out 
 My lone star s radiant light ; 
 
 Its shadow dims with sombre doubt 
 Fond hopes just now so bright. 
 
 Anon, upon the thirsty leaves 
 The pattering rain-drops fall, 
 
 The sky its swelling bosom heaves 
 And clouds each other call. 
 
 In place of heaven s fair face, alive 
 With kindly twinkling eyes, 
 
 Remote volcanoes seem to rive 
 The cloud-peaks of the skies, 
 
THE TRYST. 153 
 
 Up-flaring, like the beacon s flame, 
 Which darts from crag to brow 
 
 On Alpine summits, and the gleam 
 Of arms reveals below. 
 
 The zephyr that with fond caress, 
 The prostrate leaves just stirred, 
 
 Until methought her rustling dress 
 And fairy foot I heard, 
 
 Like a startled hind, now holds its breath, 
 As the north wind s eager pant 
 
 With a hiss, as of serpents bristling its path, 
 Comes driving the rain aslant ; 
 
 Swaying the saplings of the wood 
 And its giants of stalwart form, 
 
 Who toss their arms, like a multitude 
 Applauding the voice of the storm. 
 
 Soon from the battlements of night, 
 Fierce lightning shafts are hurled, 
 
 Like meteors pre-Adamite 
 In the old chaotic world. 
 
154 THE TRYST. 
 
 A roar, as of a smitten shield, 
 
 Responds to those red brands, 
 As when Salmoneus scorned to yield 
 
 To Jove s divine commands. 
 
 A roar as of caissons over a vault 
 
 Each armed with a loaded gun 
 
 Which on its summit a moment halt, 
 Then topple down one by one. 
 
 They are fired, first singly, and then pell-mell, 
 
 And the startled air is riven 
 By thunder crashes like echoes from Hell 
 
 Of its fiends besieging Heaven ! 
 
 Appalled, I clasp in pallid dismay 
 
 The tryst-tree in the glade, 
 While gods and Titans in frantic affray 
 
 Ply round me their cannonade. 
 
 When lo ! in the midst of that riot fell, 
 
 Through its bolts of deadly fire, 
 The silvery voice of the midnight bell 
 
 Speaks from the village spire. 
 
THE TRYST. 155 
 
 As waived by a spell, the battle turns ; 
 
 Its wild alarums cease ; 
 The full moon now in the zenith burns ; 
 
 All nature is at peace. 
 
 At chime the twelfth, my whispered name, 
 
 And then an angel s kiss ! 
 Who would not brave that fearful dream 
 
 For the wealth of this waking bliss ? 
 
TO CONSUELO. 
 
 A SUBTILE charm bewildered me, 
 
 As in a depth of wood 
 No scent of moss, or flower, or tree, 
 But the soft air that blends the three 
 
 Inspires a dreamy mood. 
 
 Eyes pensive neath their fringe s shade, 
 
 Sedate lips which disclosed 
 The pearly keys on which were played 
 Clear words that in me music made 
 And gentlest thoughts disposed. 
 
 A vestal shape framed to entrance 
 Sculptors from Phidias down, 
 Allure an Exarch to the dance, 
 Or fire the bravest knightly lance 
 That e er won tourney s crown. 
 
TO CONSUELO, 157 
 
 But how shall tongue or pencil tell, 
 
 Or eye the secret learn, 
 Of that unseen electric spell 
 Which made the heart renascent swell, 
 
 The soul with transport burn ? 
 
 Yet were I mad to analyse 
 
 The mainsprings of a joy ; 
 Yon magic gewgaw children prize 
 Draws tears if we anatomise 
 
 And disenchant the toy. 
 
 Sweet mystery ! this photograph, 
 In twilight caught, is thine ; 
 Beneath I write its epigraph, 
 "The precious cup I may not quaff, 
 But I can bless the wine ! " 
 
TO CONSUELO. 
 
 A SUBTILE charm bewildered me, 
 
 As in a depth of wood 
 No scent of moss, or flower, or tree, 
 But the soft air that blends the three 
 
 Inspires a dreamy mood. 
 
 Eyes pensive neath their fringe s shade, 
 
 Sedate lips which disclosed 
 The pearly keys on which were played 
 Clear words that in me music made 
 And gentlest thoughts disposed. 
 
 A vestal shape framed to entrance 
 Sculptors from Phidias down, 
 Allure an Exarch to the dance, 
 Or fire the bravest knightly lance 
 That e er won tourney s crown. 
 
TO CONSUELO, 157 
 
 But how shall tongue or pencil tell, 
 
 Or eye the secret learn, 
 Of that unseen electric spell 
 Which made the heart renascent swell, 
 
 The soul with transport burn ? 
 
 Yet were I mad to analyse 
 
 The mainsprings of a joy j 
 Yon magic gewgaw children prize 
 Draws tears if we anatomise 
 
 And disenchant the toy. 
 
 Sweet mystery ! this photograph, 
 In twilight caught, is thine ; 
 Beneath I write its epigraph, 
 "The precious cup I may not quaff, 
 But I can bless the wine ! " 
 
NOT WINE ALONE. 
 
 Tis not within the vine -wreathed bowl 
 
 Alone, that madness lies. 
 Whatever quickens pulse and soul, 
 Beyond sage reason s mild control, 
 
 With wine s sweet frenzy vies. 
 
 The Boy, when first his arrow shakes 
 
 Within the circle s eye ; 
 The Youth, whose javelin o ertakes 
 The roebuck bounding to the brakes, 
 
 Is drunk with ecstasy. 
 
 The Rider, when his steed hath past 
 
 Some rival cavalcade ; 
 And he whose bark and wind-bent mast 
 On adverse sails their shadows cast, 
 
 In sport or cannonade ; 
 
NOT WINE ALONE. 159 
 
 The brain that yields to starry eyes, 
 
 Or fires with clash of steel ; 
 Or swims when victory s shouts arise 
 From blood-stained fields to evening skies, 
 
 All these with madness reel. 
 
 The Bard, whose fervid strains arouse 
 
 Ten thousand echoes, when 
 A nation s gratitude endows 
 With laurel or with oak the brows 
 
 Of King or Citizen ; 
 
 The Conqueror, with sheathed sword, 
 
 Midst lo Paeans borne ; 
 The Tribune, whose electric word, 
 Upon the forum s billows poured, 
 
 Awakens wrath or scorn ; 
 
 These all are drunk with conscious power, 
 
 And they, the fierce or cold, 
 Who revel in revenge s hour, 
 Or who exult when gloating o er 
 
 Red piles of hidden gold. 
 
160 NOT WINE ALONE. 
 
 Yet, when I glow with gladdening wine, 
 All, all these various joys are mine 
 
 At Fancy s will. 
 
 Love, beauty, fame, rank, wealth, and power, 
 Alternate, in the jocund hour 
 
 My bosom fill. 
 
 Again, a boy, I clutch the prize, 
 A youth, I bask in sunny eyes, 
 
 The race I win ; 
 
 My bark all other barks outstrips, 
 My name is, by a nation s lips, 
 
 Made Glory s twin. 
 
 Tis o er ! I find twas but a dream. 
 
 But through the fore-dawn s dark extreme, 
 
 Day s earliest dart 
 Reminds me that, in Love or War, 
 Such triumphs leave no other scar 
 
 Than in my heart. 
 
THE RUBY GOBLET. 
 
 COMRADES ! we have sung and laughed 
 
 Merrily to-night ; 
 Each of us a cup hath quaffed 
 
 To his mistress bright. 
 Do not let a sadder strain 
 
 Take you by surprise ; 
 Ere the toast we fill again 
 
 I would moralise. 
 
 Blazoned in our firmament 
 
 Float the poised hours, 
 From their task, like us, unbent, 
 
 Garlanded with flowers. 
 In this polished table s face 
 
 See the wax- lights gleam, 
 As the early sunbeams chase 
 
 Darkness from a stream. 
 
 M 
 
162 THE RUBY GOBLET. 
 
 Say, is not this empty glass 
 
 Some poor spirit s jail ? 
 Else, when I my finger pass 
 
 Round it, why this wail ? 
 Now a maiden s plaintive sigh, 
 
 Now a captive s groan, 
 Now a stricken warrior s cry 
 
 Seems its swelling tone. 
 
 These dim arabesques you see 
 
 Gild its ruddy bowl, 
 Are the faded tracery 
 
 Of a magic scroll. 
 Mine the wizard s mystic lore 
 
 To divine the spell, 
 And evoke those shapes of yore 
 
 From the crystal cell. 
 
 Hist ! an echo now replies 
 
 Faintly to my hymn ; 
 Lo ! a ghost with pale blue eyes 
 
 Rises to the brim. 
 
THE RUBY GOBLET. 163 
 
 Wistful is his visage cold, 
 
 Trimmed his beard with grace, 
 
 As we see in many an old 
 Pictured knightly face. 
 
 To my ear those lips so pale, 
 
 In his native tongue 
 Whisper now a sadder tale 
 
 Than our lips have sung. 
 Tis a century at least 
 
 Since Venetian mould 
 Fashioned for his bridal feast 
 
 This red cup I hold. 
 
 Day had only broken thrice 
 
 Ere the Adriatic, 
 Of his young heart s Paradise 
 
 Quenched the bliss ecstatic. 
 Ransomed came from Tunis strand 
 
 One long mourned as dead, 
 By whose madly jealous hand 
 
 His fair life was sped. 
 
THE RUBY GOBLET. 
 
 Though she wept and tore her hair 
 
 On her darling s bier, 
 Fugitive was her despair 
 
 As the fleeting year. 
 Hardly was the crimson dried 
 
 On the fatal knife, 
 Ere became the victim s bride 
 
 The destroyer s wife. 
 
 From this chalice, which her lips 
 
 Drained their bridal night, 
 He, in spirit hovering, sips 
 
 Still a sad delight. 
 Hark ! the spectre chants a lay 
 
 Of the olden time 
 Listen, while my lips essay 
 
 To repeat the rhyme. 
 
 All the friends who round my bridal board 
 
 Joyous shone, 
 
 Are, like me, beneath the ttifted sward, 
 Dead and gone. 
 
THE RUBY GOBLET. 165 
 
 Oft has this beloved goblet rung 
 
 Life s first dawn ; 
 Often wailed the child whose birth it sung, 
 
 Dead and gone. 
 
 Warriors I have seen, and statesmen hoary, 
 
 Round it drawn ; 
 Seen eclipsed their wisdom and their glory, 
 
 Dead and gone. 
 
 Jovial guests ! how near your notes of glee, 
 
 Those lips yawn, 
 To swallow you as they have swallowed me, 
 
 Dead and gone. 
 
 Comrades ! sadly sings the ghost 
 
 Of this ruby glass ; 
 Fill to him a silent toast 
 
 Quick the flagon pass. 
 If so near the red lips yawn 
 
 Of the glutton grave, 
 Let us antedate the dawn 
 
 In this rosy wave ! 
 
BOHEMIAN SONG. 
 
 COME, trip it with me gaily here, 
 The forest glade our ball-room is, 
 
 The ills of life shall disappear, 
 Or from the turf rebound in bliss. 
 
 Blow, comrade, blow thy wheaten pipe, 
 Twang, brother, twang the trembling string, 
 
 Care gripes us with an iron gripe ; 
 To care the joyous heel we fling. 
 
 Their walls of stone but dungeons are, 
 To those who in great cities dwell, 
 
 Neath roofs through which no sunbeam fair 
 Can reach the flowers we love so well. 
 
BOHEMIAN SONG. 1 
 
 For us our last night s grassy bed 
 Kind nature makes up fresh again, 
 
 Ere drops the sun his weary head 
 Upon the bosom of the main. 
 
 In sleep we hear the mystic powers 
 Of earth their subtile callings ply ; 
 
 Awake, in brighter worlds than ours, 
 We read the marvels of the sky. 
 
 Once more, sweet partner, pipe again ; 
 
 Twang fiercer, mates, the cittern s call ; 
 For unseen spirits swell the strain 
 
 To which our feet keep festival. 
 
 An atom less, and we should be 
 Floating on rosy clouds of love ; 
 
 A feather more, with pinions free, 
 Cleaving the paths of worlds above. 
 
 Thy drooping head my shoulder seeks, 
 Sweet partner of the wandering doom 
 
 Which poised twixt earth and heaven keeps 
 Us like Mohammed s pensile tomb. 
 
1 68 B HE MI AN SONG. 
 
 The evening star sinks fast, and see ! 
 
 Around us in the twilight shades, 
 The mystic throngs of old Chaldee, 
 
 Her patriarchs, matrons, braves and maids. 
 
 Blow softly while the ghostly crew 
 
 The cadence mark with statelier pace ; 
 
 Are they so many we so few ? 
 
 O brothers, quick, one warm embrace ! 
 
 They re gone ! tis night ; at dusk they come, 
 Those shades of our long-buried sires, 
 
 To follow us where er we roam j 
 
 Now, comrades ! to your evening fires. 
 
WALTZ. 
 
 COME to me, maiden fair, 
 Maiden with golden hair, 
 Now that the vesper air 
 Trembles no more with prayer ! 
 
 Come where the Zingaree, 
 Under the linden tree, 
 Spurring his comrades three, 
 Pipes a wild jubilee ! 
 
 Come, while their tabor s beat 
 Urges the dancers fleet ; 
 Come, let thy tiny feet 
 Mine on the meadow meet ! 
 
1 70 WALTZ. 
 
 Bounding we gaily start ; 
 Flashes thy blue eyes dart : 
 Spare thou my captive heart ; 
 Or let us never part ! 
 
 Strains gently sighing in the air, love, 
 Wake echoes in our hearts so near, love ! 
 
 I pant with thy sighs, 
 
 And see with thine eyes. 
 Swayed by the magic waltz, love, 
 Ne er to its measure false, love, 
 
 One hand in thine, 
 
 One holds thee mine, 
 Mine, while fills the glade the whirling dance : 
 
 With visions bright 
 
 That dazzle sight j 
 Mine, while clasped we float, as in a trance, 
 
 On pinions bright 
 
 This sparkling night. 
 
 Rarest diamonds of the mine, love, 
 Pale beside those eyes of thine, love ; 
 But ere I thy hand resign, 
 Take, oh, take this heart of mine. 
 
WALTZ. 171 
 
 Dying, sleeps in death the strain ; 
 Sinks my soul in gloom and pain. 
 Till that waltz shall wake again, 
 Thou and I, sweet girl, are twain. 
 
MAZURKA. 
 
 STAND aside while Schamiloff, 
 In the hall of Peterhof, 
 Drags the Queen of Beauty off, 
 Duchess Olga Romanoff, 
 Stemming the dance s tide 
 With the Mazurka stride 
 Which she, so lately 
 Grand Duchess stately, 
 Follows sedately. 
 Now, with a victor s pride, 
 
 Clasps he her slender waist, 
 Twin-like they onward glide, 
 
 As though by foemen chased ; 
 Now casts her loose, but holds, 
 
 Vice-like, her captive hand ; 
 While like a tempest rolls 
 
 Louder the frantic band. 
 
MAZURKA. 173 
 
 He tramps with fiercer swing, 
 She his pace following 
 Lightly as bird on wing, 
 Follows without demur 
 His clashing heel and spur ; 
 He proud as Lucifer, 
 She as an angel calm 
 Trusting his iron arm 
 Through the wild dances swarm, 
 Till the orchestral storm 
 Melts into melodies 
 Soft as a summer breeze. 
 Now other steps they choose, 
 He in his turn pursues 
 And her forgiveness woos, 
 With a beseeching joy, 
 Woos her retreating coy, 
 When, like a thunder-clap, 
 Halt ! bids the leader s rap, 
 And Duchess Olga sees 
 Schamiloff on his knees. 
 
DAWN AT MIDNIGHT. 
 
 ALONE upon the Spouting Rock 
 
 I hear its voices roar, 
 And watch the baffled surges shock 
 
 Against the iron shore. 
 
 The wind grows bolder not a cloud 
 Restrains the sweeping breath 
 
 I ve seen rend ships, till mast and shroud 
 Whirled in a dance of death. 
 
 Against the sky, with swollen sail, 
 A bark now ploughs the deep ; 
 
 Her freight, perchance, but seed this gale 
 Shall sow, and Ocean reap. 
 
DA WN A T MIDNIGHT. 175 
 
 God speed those whom the winds pursue 
 
 This wild yet starry night ; 
 And keep my heart until I view 
 
 Her casement s promised light. 
 
 Sail on, O bark, through every change 
 
 Of season and of sky ; 
 Within the haven of yon grange 
 
 My hopes at anchor lie ! 
 
THE MOON AND THE BEACON 
 
 HONEY moon ! Honey moon ! 
 
 Though this April night 
 Ocean, bay, and dark lagoon 
 
 Revel in thy light, 
 Will to-morrow see thy rays 
 
 Where to-night they gleam, 
 And my young bride s tender gaze 
 
 Still with gladness beam ? 
 
 Beacon light ! Beacon light ! 
 
 On yon lonely shore, 
 Shining faith-like every night, 
 
 Where the breakers roar, 
 Like a beating heart thy flash, 
 
 Fed by human care, 
 Cheers the mariner when crash 
 
 Tempests through the air. 
 
THE MOON AND THE BEACON. 177 
 
 Maiden fair ! Maiden fair ! 
 
 While the orange wreath 
 Sheds its fragrance o er thy hair, 
 
 Let thy balmier breath 
 Vow that, like the Beacon s light, 
 
 Thou wilt ever shine 
 For the lover who to-night 
 
 Links his fate with thine. 
 
LA CHOCOLATI&RE. 
 
 BRIGHT are thine eyes, my pretty little maid, 
 
 As diamonds sunk in jet ; 
 Brown is thy cheek, as shadows in the glade 
 
 By eve for lovers set. 
 
 Lissom and smooth thy fairy-moulded shape 
 Which gossamer muslins press, 
 
 As clouds around the Jungfrau s summit drape 
 Her snows with mute caress. 
 
 Sometimes a thrill shoots through the sweet 
 repose 
 
 In which thou art enchained, 
 And like the flush of summer-lightning glows 
 
 Thy cheek with azure veined. 
 
LA CHOCOLATlkRE. 179 
 
 Say ! dost thou then a song of spirits hear, 
 
 Inaudible to me ? 
 
 Or, on his throne in dreamland s moonlit 
 sphere, 
 
 Thy young heart s monarch see ? 
 
 Say ! if the black braids of the silken hair 
 In which thy face is noosed, 
 
 Are but a witchingly-devised snare 
 To pinion souls seduced ? 
 
 For that thy fawn eyes bait no ambuscade 
 
 Could I but fondly trust 
 I d kneel so low to thee, O pretty maid, 
 
 My brow should kiss the dust ! 
 
TO MY NIECE LOUISE. 
 
 DOLORES. 
 
 HER ear to all the litanies 
 
 Of brooks and whispering leaves alive, 
 Pure as the violet-laden breeze, 
 
 Dolores hath no sin to shrive. 
 
 By fawns she s welcomed in the fields ; 
 
 In groves by birds with vying throats, 
 To swains or lords no heed she yields, 
 
 But in sweet peace serenely floats ; 
 
 Till in the twilight hour she hears 
 
 A voice that wakes her sleeping heart, 
 
 Now breathing tones that melt to tears, 
 Now blasts at which her pulses start. 
 
DOLORES. 181 
 
 Sphinx-like her face, while tender fires 
 Soften the glaciers of her breast, 
 
 And pleasing fears and new desires 
 Like fairy voices thrill her rest. 
 
 Her ear thenceforth his trumpet is ; 
 
 Her soul a lyre within his hands ; 
 Her eye sees only light in his 
 
 Who twines her fate with silken strands. 
 
TITIAN TO STELLA. 
 
 I LOVE thee that thou dost inspire 
 
 My ice-bound heart with quickening fire, 
 
 And makest me forget, 
 One silver moment, that I m old, 
 When warms thy breath my lips, from cold 
 
 Indifference to regret. 
 
 As in gray autumn s dreary days 
 Their pallid cheeks the asters raise, 
 
 To catch the sun s stray kiss, 
 So, ere the Arctic night sets in, 
 Thy radiance shall my last thread spin 
 
 With rapture s golden bliss. 
 
 O thrilling touch, O glowing eyes, 
 Whose beams, like stars in wintry skies, 
 
TITIAN TO STELLA. 183 
 
 Shine harmless on the snow ! 
 Harmless as when, in tempest dark, 
 The palmer from the steel s cold spark 
 
 A kindling flame would blow. 
 
 Yet phantom dear of buried days 
 That veilest, with a sunset haze, 
 
 The future s gloom and sorrow 
 Stay ! that the thought of thee may bless, 
 With one bright ray of happiness, 
 
 The dark clouds of to-morrow ! 
 
"NO CARDS." 
 
 LET me wed thee where my wooing 
 Sanctified this mossy glade, 
 
 Where above us ring-doves cooing 
 Long their leafy nest delayed. 
 
 Do not think my soul would falter 
 To proclaim thy heart my prize, 
 
 But a crowd before an altar 
 Minds me of a sacrifice, 
 
 Where no Dian moved to pity 
 Swift bears off the doomed maid, 
 
 As when in the Aulic city 
 
 Calchas dropped his baffled blade. 
 
" NO CARDS." 185 
 
 Let the hermit, e en now telling 
 
 Soft his beads in yonder hut, 
 Breathe the prayer thy fears dispelling, 
 
 Tie the knot man shall not cut. 
 
 Let no vain misgivings daunt thee, 
 Freely, bravely, plight thy troth ; 
 
 Wilt not have, should worldlings taunt thee, 
 My sword, and yon friar s oath ? 
 
A DEPARTING BRIDE. 
 
 STEAMSHIP "RUSSIA,"/*/? 6, 1873. 
 
 HER winsome face and artless grace 
 Like sunbeams warmed my heart, 
 
 As angels bright diffuse a light 
 That stays when they depart. 
 
 A touch may heal ; a spark from steel 
 
 Of bright eyes kindle fire ; 
 One touch of hers my finger stirs 
 
 To wake with joy the lyre. 
 
 And through the day her spirit gay 
 Spread like a summer breeze, 
 
 When left alone, I saw her on 
 The alienating seas. 
 
A DEPARTING BRIDE. 187 
 
 To her my thanks. Back to the ranks, 
 
 I turn, of work and strife, 
 Breathing a prayer that saints as fair 
 
 As she, may guard her life. 
 
LIEBESRUHE. 
 
 SLAKED is the burning desert-thirst, 
 
 And thou art wholly mine ; 
 Stilled is the heart I thought must burst 
 
 When throbbing close to thine. 
 
 Calmed the strange sense of vague unrest 
 That shipwrecked mariners feel, 
 
 Ere, through the tropic breaker s crest, 
 They launch their untried keel, 
 
 Framed of the lordly tree which gave 
 
 Them shelter from the blast, 
 When, beachward high, the strong-armed wave 
 
 Their senseless bodies cast. 
 
LIEBESRUHE. 189 
 
 Like them, my heart, life s bleakest heath 
 
 In darkness doomed to rove, 
 Found rest and woke to bliss beneath 
 
 The mantle of thy love. 
 
 With fire they carved the giant bole 
 
 Unconscious of its fate ; 
 With flame I shaped thy stately soul 
 
 To carry mine as freight. 
 
 In it, through passion s surges driven, 
 
 I float beyond their roar ; 
 And we, O Love ! are nearer Heaven 
 
 Than when we left the shore. 
 
THE MARINER S BETROTHED. 
 
 MORNING-STAR of drear November, 
 Peering o er yon wild lagoon, 
 
 Last thy radiance I remember, 
 Sparkling on that eve in June, 
 
 As we two came forth together, 
 From the porch with roses pied, 
 
 Blushed I, when he asked me whether 
 I would be a sailor s bride. 
 
 Then, invoking thy soft splendour 
 Lingering in the pale blue West, 
 
 Words he whispered, true and tender, 
 Till I sank upon his breast. 
 
THE MARINER S BETROTHED. 191 
 
 With the twilight, ah, he vanished, 
 Vanished to return in May. 
 
 Oh, tis sad to love one banished 
 To the ocean s desert way ! 
 
 But though day thy lustre hideth, 
 Star of love ! from morn to night 
 
 In the deep lagoon abideth 
 
 Still thine image, truthful, bright. 
 
 And though far his bark be riding 
 Friendly sea or stormy wave, 
 
 In my heart s deep springs abiding 
 Shines his image fair and brave. 
 
CATECHISM. 
 
 LOVER. 
 
 MAIDEN, whom I fain would woo, 
 Tell me truly what canst do ? 
 Nay a moment let the lute 
 That just won my ear be mute, 
 Nor inflame my soul again 
 With thy voice s siren strain. 
 Speak me calmly speak me true ; 
 Candour thou shalt never rue. 
 
 MAIDEN. 
 
 I can reckon and can read, 
 Deftly say my prayers and creed, 
 In the church know when to kneel, 
 And will neither lie nor steal ; 
 
CATECHISM. 193 
 
 Thus far have been reared in ease, 
 Learning chiefly how to please, 
 And with song and merry smile, 
 Hours of sadness to beguile. 
 
 LOVER. 
 
 This is well, but not enough. 
 Life is made of sterner stuff ; 
 From the altar dateth bliss, 
 From it too oft wretchedness. 
 Ask thy heart if it feel sure 
 Thou canst care and want endure 
 Sorrow also nor repine 
 At the lot that made them thine. 
 
 MAIDEN. 
 
 If my will and power I knew, 
 Me thou wouldst not seek to woo ; 
 Were my virgin soul not wax, 
 Which life s stern impression lacks, 
 Waiting till Love s mystic seal 
 Stamp its fate for woe or weal, 
 Thou wouldst find the vow a curse, 
 " Take for better or for worse." 
 o 
 
194 CATECHISM. 
 
 LOVER. 
 
 Sweeter honey yield thy lips 
 Than the bee from clover sips, 
 Sweeter tones than thrill thy lute 
 Breathes thine answer to my suit ; 
 Canst thou not divine my fate, 
 Whether bright or desolate ? 
 Speak ! for if deceived in thee, 
 Life and Love must bankrupt be. 
 
 MAIDEN. 
 
 Ere a charger thou dost buy, 
 Thou canst all his paces try ; 
 Buy him and if good he ll grow 
 With the grace thy hands bestow. 
 Yet the jockey s cunning task 
 May his imperfections mask ; 
 If his value thou wouldst know,. 
 Must upon a journey go. 
 
METATHALAMIUM. 
 
 WHEN like a perfume from thy lips 
 
 The May-Queen s Song first through me stole, 
 Like dawn above the mountain tips, 
 
 Thy voice made morning in my soul, 
 Until expired the tender strain 
 
 And silence quenched the rosy light, 
 When though I woke to day again, 
 
 Within my spirit all was night. 
 
 When horn and viol banished thought, 
 
 Yet summoned every sense that slept, 
 My hand thy grasp with ardour sought, 
 
 And through the dance s maze we swept ; 
 But while thy feet, with tireless tread, 
 
 Fulfilled its orb like Dian chaste, 
 My reeling brain with frenzy sped, 
 
 Until my clasp released thy waist. 
 
196 METATHALAMIUM. 
 
 We married nor would I have changed 
 
 My lot that morn for crown of gold. 
 A month has flown are you estranged ? 
 
 I find you silent, thoughtful, cold. 
 I am but mortal whilst you sang 
 
 In blissful dreams I sat entranced, 
 And when the waltz its summons rang, 
 
 Whilst I had breath and sight I danced. 
 
 But when or song or dance expires, 
 
 A gold cord snaps a spell is broke. 
 Tis sad but true that mortal fires, 
 
 Like those of brushwood, end in smoke. 
 You promised me to make life bright 
 
 With smiles then why that pouting glance ? 
 You cannot sing from morn till night, 
 
 Nor I from night till morning dance. 
 
ZAMPITA. 
 
 OH, she was wondrous fair, 
 And when I said 
 "Thee would I wed," 
 
 She listened to my prayer ; 
 
 But not as woman hears, 
 When thrills the oath 
 Of plighted troth 
 
 In her expectant ears ; 
 
 Rather as Maiy Saint 
 In altared shrine, 
 With look benign, 
 
 Receives a sinner s plaint 
 
198 ZAMPITA. 
 
 Who asks a happier lot ; 
 Though to his suit 
 The Virgin, mute 
 
 But gracious, answers not, 
 
 Until his soul shall rise, 
 Through saving grace, 
 Her living face 
 
 To meet in Paradise. 
 
 I said, "When we are wed, 
 
 My paradise 
 
 Shall be thine eyes." 
 Then she " My heart is dead." 
 
 I answered "Only seared, 
 
 And by the blight 
 
 Of broken plight 
 To me far more endeared. 
 
 Black is the carboneer, 
 
 Who burns the oak 
 
 To blacker coke, 
 And makes the woodlands drear. 
 
ZAMPITA. 199 
 
 But blacker yet his soul, 
 
 Who kindled thine 
 
 With base design, 
 And left its blossoms coal. 
 
 My love with tender art 
 
 And patient aim 
 
 Shall blow its flame 
 Upon thy cindered heart." 
 
 At this she dimly smiled, 
 
 As in a grief 
 
 One finds relief 
 By curious tales beguiled. 
 
 And when my suit I pressed, 
 She, still in sorrow, 
 Sighed, "Well, to-morrow; 
 
 Now, prithee, let me rest." 
 
 The morrow came and sealed 
 
 Our fates in one ; 
 
 Fair smiled the sun ; 
 Gaily the church-bells pealed. 
 
200 ZAMPITA. 
 
 As when you chance to feel 
 A limb of wood, 
 It chills your blood, 
 
 As might the surgeon s steel ; 
 
 I found the wounded pride 
 Of Love s keen smart, 
 Had left her heart 
 
 Not charred, but petrified. 
 
 For years I ve vainly striven 
 With ardour true 
 To fire anew 
 
 That heart by sorrow riven. 
 
 For years my lips have tasted 
 The mocking bliss 
 Of marble kiss, 
 
 Until my frame is wasted. 
 
 And when I pray for death, 
 Her lips, still fair, 
 Add to my prayer, 
 
 Amen ! with icy breath. 
 
TODESFRAGE. 
 
 DID she ever, ever love me ? 
 
 Never, never shall I know, 
 Till I join her soul above me 
 
 And her body down below. 
 
 When I sought to draw the fire 
 Of affection from her eye, 
 
 Mine alone was the desire, 
 
 Mine the smile or mine the sigh. 
 
 See her like a statue sleeping ! 
 
 Yet no colder is she now 
 Than when living and my weeping 
 
 Failed to melt her icy brow. 
 
202 TODESFRAGE. 
 
 Yet that brow at times with flashes 
 Of a cindered past relumed ; 
 
 Like the runes that flare in ashes 
 Of old letters just consumed. 
 
 Did its snow conceal a mystery, 
 Shame or crime beneath its crust ? 
 
 Or but cover up the history 
 Of all human pride and dust ? 
 
 For the last time let me kiss her, 
 Shut the lid I ll weep no more, 
 
 Since my heart will only miss her 
 As a prisoner the door 
 
 Of his cell shut to at dawning 
 To exclude all day the light, 
 
 And at eventide set yawning 
 To admit a starless night. 
 
GIVE ME JOY. 
 
 WHEN age its wrinkles and its snows 
 Had laid on Talma s cheek and brow, 
 Tis said lie made the mournful vow, 
 
 JVb friend shall see my eyes unclose ; 
 For eveiy form he looked upon 
 Revealed a ghastly skeleton. 
 
 This earth was bright when first, a toy, 
 Life in my youthful hands was placed, 
 But now its waters have no taste 
 
 Bring me the wine-cup ! Give me joy ! 
 
 Like Talma, in the present dim 
 And future dark, I see abound, 
 In silvery age and youth just crowned 
 
 With beauty s wreath, but spectres grim. 
 E en Fortune s ingots lost and won 
 Are watched by Care, the skeleton ; 
 
 Nay, power, wealth, and pleasure cloy, 
 Tis all the same sad change of tone 
 
204 GIVE ME JOY. 
 
 From smile to tear, from laugh to groan 
 Bring me the wine-cup ! Give me joy ! 
 
 Though youth has fled, affections still 
 With steady glow my heart may cheer : 
 Come hither, wife and children dear, 
 
 Come, ere the cup again I fill, 
 
 Come, ere each loved shape looked upon 
 Shall seem to hide a skeleton. 
 
 What ! was thy smile but a decoy ? 
 And ye to whom I ve given breath, 
 Do ye already wait my death ? 
 
 Quick ! quick ! The wine-cup ! Give me joy ! 
 
 Begone, ye vipers whom I ve nursed, 
 
 And cherished with my heart s best blood ; 
 
 Beldame, avaunt ! with all thy brood 
 And be ye all like me accurst ! 
 
 Thank Heaven, thy witching beauty s gone 
 
 And leaves thee but a skeleton. 
 Come, friend beloved ! Thou since a boy 
 
 My more than brother, thou lt not fail ! 
 
 Away, thou death s-head grim and pale ! 
 Fill, fill the wine-cup ! Give me joy ! 
 
GIVE ME JOY. 205 
 
 Thou st changed the wine, my throat it burns, 
 
 Tis bitter as ingratitude ! 
 
 What ! say st thou from the grape twas 
 
 brewed ? 
 Within my lips to gall it turns ! 
 
 Bring me the glass ! O death, thou st won ! 
 
 I see myself a skeleton ! 
 And that weird shape was once a boy, 
 
 To whom each scene below shone fair ? 
 
 God ! How its eyeless sockets stare ! 
 Is there no cup will give me joy ? 
 
 No, not the bowl ! The chalice bring, 
 
 Exhaustless with the Paschal blood 
 
 That purified sin s sable flood, 
 And still flows from Thee, thorn-crowned King ! 
 
 In whom mine eyes behold alone 
 
 A Saviour, not a skeleton ! 
 Oh, touch the hearts of wife and boy, 
 
 And friend, with quivering grace divine. 
 
 Thou wilt ! Then let me life resign, 
 Draining Thy last cup s heavenly joy ! 
 
IN FIFTH AVENUE. 
 
 MY husband is neither young nor old, 
 Though his hair is turning gray ; 
 
 My temper is neither hot nor cold, 
 Yet I mope the livelong day. 
 
 My house is neither spacious nor small ; 
 
 Tis built in the usual way, 
 And nicely furnished from garret to hall, 
 
 Yet I mope the livelong day. 
 
 We have children twain, a boy and a girl, 
 
 My every wish they obey, 
 Tom s a rough diamond, Maud is a pearl, 
 
 Yet I mope the livelong day. 
 
 Abroad I may either walk or drive, 
 As it suits my humour s play ; 
 
 We breakfast at nine and dine at fire, 
 And I mope the livelong day. 
 
IN FIFTH A VENUE. 207 
 
 The bees that feed all winter on honey 
 
 To flowers return in May ; 
 All seasons are like, with plenty of money, 
 
 Yet I mope the livelong day. 
 
 My husband s the bee that gathers the sweets, 
 
 In sunshine he makes the hay, 
 And drudges in rain through muddy streets 
 
 While I mope the livelong day. 
 
 When dinner is over, he like a drone 
 
 On the sofa snoozes away, 
 And over the paper I mope alone 
 
 At night as I moped all day. 
 
 They called me lovely when I was young, 
 And fond of praise and display ; 
 
 Tis a tale that s told and a song that s sung, 
 For I mope the livelong day. 
 
 An old admirer unto me came, 
 Resolved fresh homage to pay, 
 
 And tenderly sighing he whispered his flame 
 As I moped at home one day. 
 
208 IN~ FIFTH A VENUE. 
 
 He came just after the postman s bell 
 
 My husband was far away 
 And when he swore that he loved me well, 
 
 I moped no more that day. 
 
 An Indian god in a jewelled shrine 
 
 Condemned for ever to stay, 
 Like me if alive would mope and pine 
 
 When alone the livelong day. 
 
 From worship to earthly love is a stride 
 
 A stage without a relay 
 The abrupt transition touched my pride, 
 And I moped no more that day. 
 
 He seized my hand and I felt a spark, 
 
 His eye shot a wicked ray 
 Which I sometimes see again in the dark, 
 
 When I ve moped the livelong day. 
 
 Though I forgave him he wanted still more 
 I scorned my vows to betray, 
 
 But ordered him to be shown the door, 
 And moped no more that day. 
 
IN FIFTH A VENUE. 209 
 
 And I sometimes wish that this stupid life 
 
 Might finish without delay ; 
 I m a virtuous, uncomplaining wife, 
 
 But I mope the livelong day. 
 
 And when to our marble church we go, 
 
 I wonder why people pray, 
 For I have every thing here below, 
 
 Yet I mope the livelong day. 
 
TO A WELL-KNOWN CAMELLIA. 
 
 PRAY, who was Lady Hume? and why her 
 blush? 
 
 Was it a sad or sweet emotion 
 Which wakened on her cheek this earliest flush 
 
 Of dawn awakening the ocean ? 
 
 Was it the voice of homage women prize, 
 Or undreamt love s abrupt confession ? 
 
 Or did the mute reproach of sorrowing eyes 
 Beyond all speech make intercession ? 
 
 Was it the flash of anger half controlled, 
 Or shame s ill-masked hue of panic ? 
 
 Or the resentment of a virtue bold 
 
 Withstanding passion s burst volcanic ? 
 
TO A WELL-KNOWN CAMELLIA. 211 
 
 We ll hope that she, whose name upon thy 
 
 bloom 
 
 All princes shall outlast and powers, 
 Lacked not a soul her beauty to perfume 
 Like thee, O Queen ! but of the scentless 
 flowers ; 
 
 That like the matron fair I may not name, 
 Her blush betrayed a soul transcending 
 
 Her charms, and through them glowing to 
 
 proclaim 
 Its grace with their effulgence blending. 
 
UNDERGRADUATE. 
 
 GENTLE maiden ! whom sixteen 
 
 Summers drape with statelier grace 
 Than thy mirror s placid sheen 
 
 Held when first I saw thy face ; 
 Thou art now as one awaiting 
 
 To be ferried o er the stream, 
 Ever narrowing and abating, 
 
 That divides thee from thy dream ; 
 
 Waiting till some glorious morn 
 
 That young ferryman appears, 
 At the notes of whose sweet horn 
 
 Hopes and blushes come with fears ; 
 Then his shallop he unmooring, 
 
 Arrow-like shall speed to thee, 
 And thy foot scarce touch the flooring 
 
 Ere he whispers, " Come with me ! " 
 
UNDERGRADUATE. 213 
 
 Not across the shrinking river, 
 
 But adown its channel mid 
 To the island where forever, 
 
 Nestling as the doves lie hid, 
 I may tell thee how I love thee, 
 
 While thou answerest, Love me more, 
 Till my tenderness shall prove thee 
 
 Wisely to have left the shore." 
 
IMPROMPTU. 
 
 TO MISS S. W. ON THE RIG I. 
 
 EDELWEISS, Edelweiss, 
 Edelweiss was she, 
 Budding on that mountain top 
 Far above the sea ! 
 Edelweiss, Edelweiss, 
 Edelweiss again, 
 Scarce a new moon later 
 Blooming in the plain. 
 Edelweiss upon the Rigi 
 Lilienweiss upon the lea, 
 Fifty years have dug the chasm 
 That divideth her from me ! 
 
 In the valley as I stood 
 
 Gray and owl-like by the wood, 
 
IMPROMPTU. 215 
 
 She a lily gainst the green 
 On her stately stem was seen ; 
 A child s the heart within her bodice 
 Yet in face and form a goddess, 
 I could pray, yes, pray and kneel, 
 Die, if need were, for her weal. 
 Gamblers rather lose their all 
 Than forsake the mocking ball, 
 And to love is greater gain 
 Than not being loved is pain. 
 
 Edelweiss, Edelweiss, 
 
 On the Jungfrau steep ! 
 
 Snows as pure as where I pluck thee 
 
 Shall thy starry petals keep ; 
 
 And a happier lot betide thee 
 
 Where thy sister fair shall hide thee 
 
 Than amidst the snows eternal 
 
 Of thy glacier home supernal ! 
 
 For this bettering of thy fortune 
 
 Let thy gratitude importune 
 
 Her to breathe a gentle Ave, 
 
 For the soul of him that gave thee. 
 
TO GRACE. 
 
 SABLE her garb as starless skies, 
 
 A harvest moon her face, 
 Twin glories sparkled in her eyes, 
 
 Her lips blushed bounteous grace. 
 And when they moved, her voice so soft 
 
 And musical in tone, 
 Seemed Dian s floating from aloft 
 
 To wake Endymion. 
 
 Ah ! would I were that sleeping boy, 
 
 Unconscious of the bliss 
 Awaiting him when love its joy 
 
 Shall pour through Dian s kiss I 
 Nor did it chill my longing mood 
 
 To realise that I, 
 Were such a kiss by Grace bestowed, 
 
 Should not awake but die ! 
 
 CATSKILL, August 22, 1874. 
 
THE VALLEY-LILY. 
 
 TAKE, O Gardener, to the maiden 
 
 In whose praise the harp I string, 
 Take at dawn a basket laden 
 
 With the loveliest blooms of spring. 
 Let no orange -flowers suggesting 
 
 Altar, priest, or ring be there, 
 But sweet valley-lilies, cresting 
 
 Roses than her cheek less fair ; 
 
 Seeing which, her bird with mellow 
 
 Throat shall pipe a roundelay, 
 And her eyelids from her pillow 
 
 Open on a happy day, 
 Happier should its waning prove her 
 
 Mindful of the tender stress 
 That impels my soul to love her, 
 
 Though that love she never bless. 
 
SONG. 
 
 MY Sibyl hath a dainty look 
 
 Of spiritual grace, 
 Serene as yonder limpid brook 
 
 That ripples through the chase ; 
 
 Where, when at night the merry stars 
 
 Upon its waters play, 
 Their peering eyes find naught that mars 
 
 Its clearness through the day. 
 
 But they at dawn their glories hide, 
 
 Whilst Sibyl s look benign 
 Beams fair, as neath that mimic tide 
 
 Its sun-kissed pebbles shine. 
 
V. 
 
LE MANOIR DE LOCKS LEY. 
 
 An experiment. 
 
 AMIS ! Je veux attendre ici que palisse 
 
 1 aurore ; 
 Laissez-moi ! Quand vous me voudrez, donnez 
 
 du cor sonore. 
 
 C est bien toi ! Manoir de Locksley. Autour, 
 
 comme jadis, 
 Au long des dunes Ton entend se heler les 
 
 courlis. 
 
 Locksley ! tes tours comment les coteaux jus- 
 
 qu au rivage, 
 Et le flot- billon deferle en dentelles sur la 
 
 plage. 
 
222 LE MANOIR DE LOCKSLEY. 
 
 Que de nuits m ont vu, la, sous cette ogive 
 
 contempler, 
 Au couchant, l e grand Orion lentement 
 
 s incliner ; 
 
 Ou le lever, dans la brume qui coiffe les 
 
 collines, 
 Des essaims de mouches a f eu , par files 
 
 argentines. 
 
 Dans ces landes ma jeunesse feerique s abreuvait 
 Des merveilles de science que le Temps nous 
 transmet : 
 
 Quand les siecles passe s reposaient comme un 
 
 champ fecond, 
 Faisant croire aux promesses que le present 
 
 cache au fond : 
 
 Je scrutai 1 avenir, autant que 1 ceil humain 
 
 penetre, 
 Depuis le fait actuel jusqu a la merveille a 
 
 naitre. 
 
LE MANOIR DE LOCKS LEY. 223 
 
 Le printemps cramoisit a neuf la gorge du 
 
 robin ; 
 Le printemps donne une autre huppe au van- 
 
 neau libertin. 
 
 Au printemps plus vif en ses couleurs le ramier 
 
 s agite ; 
 Au printemps le jouven^eau d un amour soudain 
 
 palpite. 
 
 De son beau visage amaigri se fanaient les appas, 
 Et son regard muet ne faisait qu epier mes 
 pas. 
 
 Ce que voyant je dis : " Ne me caches rien, 
 
 chere Aime e, 
 Tout mon cceur tend vers toi comme au rivage 
 
 la maree." 
 
 De son ceil alangui jaillit un eclair ephemere, 
 Vermeil comme quand POurse deploie au Nord 
 sa banniere. 
 
224 LE MANOIR DE LOCKSLEY. 
 
 Puis j observai le trouble de son sein a mes 
 
 aveux, 
 Et son ame dans les sombres profondeurs de ses 
 
 yeux. 
 
 " J ai voile, Cousin, mes sentiments de peur de 
 me nuire ; 
 
 " M aimes-tu?" fit-elle en pleurs. "Long- 
 temps je 1 ai voulu dire." 
 
 L amour prit le sablier du temps dans ses 
 
 doigts ardents, 
 Et, le tournant, en sable d or fit couler les 
 
 moments ; 
 
 L amour fit tant d arpeges sur la harpe de la 
 
 Vie, 
 Que le ton du Soi, tremblant, s absorba dans 
 
 1 harmonie. 
 
 Souvent, la cognee au bois, le matin nous 
 
 surprenait, 
 Des fievreux transports du printemps sa voix 
 
 me remplissait ; 
 
LE MANOIR DE LOCKS LEY. 225 
 
 Sou vent, lorsque a se croiser les voiles nous 
 
 contemplames, 
 Au doux contact des levres se confondirent nos 
 
 ames. 
 
 O cousine ! Ainiee ! O creur leger ! mon 
 
 eternel deuil ! 
 Lande morne ! Triste rive ou la vague bat 
 
 1 ecueil ! 
 
 Fonds ou ne saurait atteindre la sonde du 
 
 poete ! 
 D un regard dur, d un mot vif, docile marion- 
 
 nette ! 
 
 Dois-je croire que, m ayant connu, tu trouves 
 
 le bonheur 
 En t abaissant au rang plus bas d emotions, 
 
 de coeur ? 
 
AT LAST. 
 
 WHAT care I whence the cold wind blows, 
 
 Or if yon skies be drear, 
 Now that my longing arms enclose 
 
 Her whom I hold most dear ! 
 
 What care I for the wealth and power 
 That light an emperor s throne, 
 
 Since that kiss made tis scarce an hour 
 Those tender lips my own ! 
 
 Let warriors chase the phantom-light 
 
 Of glory o er the field, 
 And tyrants with oppression s might 
 
 Make sullen nations yield. 
 
ENF1N. 
 
 QU IMPORTE d ou vient la bise 
 Qui teint en gris les cieux, 
 
 Puisqu enfin, dans mes bras, Elise 
 Repond a tous mes voeux ! 
 
 Qu importent la puissance et Tor 
 Qui luisent pres d un roi, 
 
 Puisque, cedes leurs doux tresors, 
 Ses levres sont a moi ! 
 
 De la gloire que le soldat 
 
 Cherche le feu follet, 
 Et de son sceptre les appas 
 
 Le tyran deteste. 
 
228 AT LAST. 
 
 Let orators with stormy breath 
 Upheave the human seas, 
 
 And heirs rejoice when pallid death 
 Gives them the golden keys. 
 
 I ll henceforth live alone for her 
 
 Who lives alone for me ; 
 The vine that clasps the hoary fir 
 
 Makes glad the lonely tree. 
 
 What though death lurk in its embrace, 
 Both men and trees must die ; 
 
 What matters then my resting-place, 
 Or when in it I lie ? 
 
 Her tears shall bless with flowers my grave, 
 Until her soul take wing ; 
 
 As o er the fallen fir shall wave 
 
 The vine-bells many a spring. 
 
ENFIN. 229 
 
 Que 1 orateur, comnie Forage, 
 
 Souleve 1 assemblee, 
 Et 1 aine, de son heritage, 
 
 Touche la clef doree. 
 
 Desormais pour elle je vis 
 
 Qui pour moi seul existe ; 
 La vigne verte autour de lui 
 
 Rejouit le sapin triste. 
 
 Que ses baisers cachent la mort, 
 
 Tout sapin doit mourir ; 
 Qu importe quand le meme sort 
 
 Me condamne a perir ? 
 
 Ses pleurs eclateront en roses 
 
 Dessus mon toit dernier ; 
 Comme, du pin couchant ecloses, 
 
 Les fleurs de vigne en Mai. 
 
LA SYLPH IDE. 
 
 Beranger. 
 
 LA Raison a son ignorance ; 
 
 Son flambeau n est pas toujours clair 
 
 Elle niait votre existence, 
 
 Sylphes charmants, peuples de 1 air ; 
 
 Mais, ecartant sa lourde egide 
 
 Qui genait mon ceil curieux, 
 
 J ai vu naguere une sylphide, 
 
 Sylphes legers, soyez mes dieux. 
 
 Oui, vous naissez au sein des roses, 
 Fils de 1 Aurore et des Zephyrs ; 
 Vos brillantes metamorphoses 
 Sont le secret de nos plaisirs. 
 
THE SYLPHIDE. 
 From the French of Ber anger. 
 
 IGNORANT, at times, is Reason, 
 
 And her torch not always clear ; 
 She denies, fair Sylphs, what treason !- 
 
 That your people fill the air ; 
 Her huge ^Egis pushed aside, 
 
 One bright glimpse beyond to steal, 
 Once a Sylphide I descried, 
 
 Now to none but Sylphs I kneel. 
 
 Born and nurtured amid roses, 
 Children of the morning breeze, 
 
 Your untold metempsychoses 
 
 Charm us in all things that please ; 
 
LA SYLPH IDE. 
 
 D un souffle vous sechez nos larmes ; 
 Vous epurez 1 azur des cieux : 
 J en crois ma sylphide et ses charmcs. 
 Sylphes legers, soyez mes dieux. 
 
 J ai devine son origine 
 Lorsq au bal, ou dans un banquet, 
 J ai vu sa parure enfantine 
 Plaire par ce qui lui manquait. 
 Ruban perdu, boucle defaite, 
 Elle etait bien, la voila mieux. 
 C est de vos soeurs la plus parfaite. 
 Sylphes legers, soyez mes dieux. 
 
 Que de grace en elle font naitre 
 Vos caprices toujours si doux ! 
 C est un enfant gate peut-etre, 
 Mais un enfant gate par vous. 
 J ai vu sous un air de paresse, 
 L amour reveur peint dans ses yeux. 
 Vous qui protegez la tendresse, 
 Sylphes legers, soyez mes dieux. 
 
THE SYLPHIDE. 233 
 
 With a breath our tears you dry, 
 You the rainbow s hues reveal, 
 
 Yours the azure of the sky ; 
 
 Ah ! to none but Sylphs I kneel ! 
 
 I my Sylphide s race divined 
 
 When upon the ball-room s floor, 
 She, untrammelled as the wind, 
 
 Won more hearts the less she wore ; 
 Loosened bow-knot, tangled hair 
 
 Did but beauties fresh reveal ; 
 Fairest she among the fair 
 
 Of the Sylphs to whom I kneel. 
 
 Ah ! in her what grace engender 
 
 All your fancies sweet and new, 
 Spoilt she is I can t defend her, 
 
 But the darling s spoilt by you. 
 In her languid moments even 
 
 Neath her lids see Cupid steal, 
 Open them and earth is heaven ! 
 
 Now to none but Sylphs I kneel. 
 
234 LA SYLPH IDE. 
 
 Mais son aimable enfantillage 
 Cache un esprit aussi brillant 
 Que tous les songes qu au bel age 
 Vous nous apportez en riant. 
 Du sein de vives etincelles 
 Son vol m elevait jusqu au cieux ; 
 Vous dont elle empruntait les ailes, 
 Sylphes legers, soyez mes dieux. 
 
 Helas ! rapide meteore, 
 
 Trop vite elle a fui loin de nous. 
 
 Doit-elle m apparaitre encore ? 
 
 Quelque sylphe est-il son epoux ? 
 
 Non, comme 1 abeille elle est reine 
 
 D un empire mysterieux ; 
 
 Vers son trone un de vous m entraine. 
 
 Sylphes legers, soyez mes dieux. 
 
THE SYLPHIDE. 235 
 
 Yet her sportive, childish laughter 
 
 Hides as bright a mother-wit, 
 As the dreams we follow after, 
 
 And the marks we never hit. 
 Now a careless spark she flings, 
 
 Now her tones the heart unseal ; 
 You that lend her all your wings, 
 
 Sylphs ! to you alone I kneel. 
 
 Brilliant meteor, alas ! 
 
 She has vanished undescried. 
 Shall I once more see her pass ? 
 
 Or does some Sylph call her bride ? 
 No ! she rules, as rules the bee, 
 
 Some mysterious commonweal ; 
 To her hidden palace me 
 
 Guide, O Sylphs, to whom I kneel ! 
 
A LA COMTESSE IDA. 
 
 Explication. 
 
 Si d un enfant nous partageons la joie 
 Lorsque du jeu 1 ardeur vibre en son corps, 
 S il nous fait rajeunir lorsqu il tournoie 
 Et saute, heureux comme un poulain sans mors 
 
 Ah ! combien plus je me sentais revivre 
 A vous voir belle, ardente de transport 
 Que soixante ans sont defendus de suivre, 
 A moins de vouloir recruter les morts ? 
 
 Alors que vous supposiez qu insensible 
 Je dedaignais la chasse ce matin, 
 J etais ravi, j en fais 1 aveu terrible, 
 Comme Acteon regardant Diane au bain. 
 
A LA COMTESSE IDA. 237 
 
 Ainsi qu on sent a voir tourner la danse 
 Battre le coeur et tressaillir le pied, 
 Je me trouvais dans un etat de transe, 
 Devant le bonheur qui vous enivrait. 
 
 Vous auriez dit un courant mesmerique 
 Qui m enlevait quarante ans bien sonnes, 
 Un adorable reve magnetique 
 Dont le reveil s exprime en bouts-rimes ? 
 
 MENTMORE, February 1882. 
 
MA SAINTE A UX ROSES. 
 
 VIEIL ermite que je suis 
 Attendant la mort sans crainte, 
 Que tout serait plein d ennuis, 
 Si je n avais une Sainte ! 
 J ai tache de m incliner 
 Devant les Saintes qu on prie ; 
 Je n ai pu me prosterner 
 Qu aux pieds d une Sainte en vie. 
 
 Car celles dont les portraits, 
 Oraent tant de sanctuaires, 
 Ne sont que de vains reflets 
 Sauf aux yeux fervents des Peres. 
 Que me font ces tableaux de foi, 
 CEuvres d artiste, de pretre, 
 Quand elle, ma Sainte a moi, 
 Est 1 oeuvre du plus Grand Maitre ? 
 
MA SAINTE AUX ROSES. 239 
 
 Pauvre Abbe ! vos sombres toits 
 Rendant de 1 Ave la phrase, 
 Ecrasent de tout leur poids 
 La sainte ardeur de 1 extase ; 
 Tandis qu aux pres, au bosquet, 
 Butinant les fleurs ecloses, 
 J en fais un charmant bouquet 
 Pour leur soeur, ma Sainte aux Roses. 
 
 L Abbe voit a son reveil 
 Sa Madonne a peau de cire ; 
 Moi je reve au teint vermeil 
 De ma Sainte, et son sourire ; 
 En songe, du Paradis 
 II voit la cime lointaine, 
 Tandis que la, vis-a-vis, 
 Ma Sainte est ma Chatelaine. 
 
STANCES A SIBELLE. 
 
 CELLE que j aime est si belle 
 Qu un voile d or d Immortelle 
 Semble flotter autour d elle. 
 
 Mais je suis mortel ! 
 Et mon pauvre cceur se voile, 
 Elle est loin comme une etoile, 
 
 Tronant dans le ciel ; 
 
 Mieux gardee droite et gauche 
 Que Danae, dont 1 approche 
 Defendait la vide poche 
 
 D un pauvre gardien, 
 Ebloui par la poussiere 
 D or du maitre du tonnerre, 
 
 Et s en trouvant bien. 
 
STANCES A SIBELLE. 241 
 
 Mon ideal, ma charmante, 
 Dont la beaute me tourmente 
 De bonheur et d epouvante, 
 
 Mon doute, ma foi ! 
 Meme si j avais les ailes 
 Des legeres hirondelles, 
 
 Atteindrais-je a toi ? 
 
2 MA GRACE DARLING. 
 
 Je cherchais dans le monde 
 Ses bruits et ses oublis ; 
 
 Je voulais sous 1 onde 
 Noyer tous mes soucis. 
 
 La Folie enivrante 
 
 Y guettait le plaisir ; 
 En vain la Corybante 
 
 Amor9ait mon desir. 
 
 Que le Seigneur exauce 
 
 Mon besoin d ideal, 
 Mais ou 1 on " fait la noce " 
 
 N est pas le Sangreal. 
 
A MA GRACE DARLING. 243 
 
 O vous tous, pauvres hommes, 
 
 Pour qui jouir est tout, 
 Vous mordez a des pommes 
 
 Qui laissent le degout ! 
 
 Comme, las de la fete, 
 
 Je m enfuyais bien loin, 
 Une angelique tete 
 
 M apparut dans un coin. 
 
 Je commencais a peine 
 
 D etudier ses traits, 
 Lorsqu elle dit en reine 
 
 " Suis moi ! je t attendais." 
 
 Hors de la salle alerte, 
 
 Mon coeur realisait 
 Que, jouant a la perte, 
 
 Le gros lot j ai tire. 
 
 Ballottee, en detresse 
 
 Deja sombrait ma barque, 
 
 Quand Laure, O sainte ivresse ! 
 Delivrait 
 
 SON PETRARQUE. 
 
LA PRINCES SE M ARGOT. 
 
 Comment chanter ma Princesse, 
 
 Dont 1 aimable soeur 
 D une semblable tendresse 
 
 Fait bondir mon cceur ? 
 
 Mais au nom de Saint Hercule 
 
 Pourquoi prononcer, 
 Tant qu elles comme pendule 
 
 Me font balancer ? 
 
 Je ne suis point girouette, 
 
 Foi de papillon, 
 Quoique d une escarpolette 
 
 J imite le bond. 
 
A LA PRINCESSE MARGOT. 245 
 
 Entre vous, charmantes filles, 
 
 Douteux mais dispos, 
 A ma goutte, a. mes bequilles, 
 
 J ai donne campos. 
 
 Butinant comme 1 abeille 
 
 Jamais colibri 
 N aura fortune pareille 
 
 De voir, ebloui, 
 
 Un beau lis pur, une rose, 
 
 Vrai parfum du ciel, 
 Chacune attendant qu il ose 
 
 Savourer son miel. 
 
 Vole done, O balangoire 
 
 Ou le bonheur luit, 
 Avant que tombe la noire 
 
 Mante de la nuit ! 
 
 August 13, 
 
Printed by K. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh. 
 
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 General Library 
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