NRLF tesof Sonff! * AT THE GATES OF SONG SONNETS BY LLOYD MIFFLIN The buildings of my fancy SHAKESPEARE HENRY FROWDE London, Edinburgh, Glasgow & Belfast I90J All rights reserved TO THE MEMORY OF KEATS " O thou, the Nightingale of English song!^ 273376 Contents Page A Passing Ship . 47 A Picture of my Mother 32 A Poef s Grave . . 67 A Tuscan Lachrymatory .7 An August Shower . . . . . . . H4 An Elegy . . . . . . . . .135 An Idyl .... . . 102 An Invitation JJ3 An Old Anchor on the Coast 85 " About the Hour" . . *05 Above the Abysm .... \\ Across the Years * *. ,, . . * v .132 Adonis to Apollo ........ \26 Africa . ... , 63 After Reading Shakespeare s Sonnets . . 28 "Ah, Tell Me Not" , *3 Antony to Cleopatra . . . . . -. . 57 At the Point of Death * 46 Awaiting Summons * 106 Beloved Dales .....%... 148 Build Thou Thy Temples * \1 Burke . . . . . 60 By the River at Sunset . . . . ; *. . t44 By Willowy Shores .... . . . . J08 Contents Page Dear Are These Fields . . J3J December . . J4J Delay O Light . . 99 Disillusioned ... JO Eros 18 Evening 125 Eventide . 20 Eurydice . ... J4 Edwin Booth . 68 Fame .127 Far from the Crowd .... 27 Feeding the Pigeons . . .124 Fiat Lux . 35 Forgetfulness .... 33 From the Peak . . ... 77 Golden Days I 103 Golden Days E . . .104 He Made the Stars Also 86 If Thou Wouldst Come \2 In After Days . 42 In a Vineyard of Asti \2\ Indian - Summer . . H9 In Memoriam .74 In Italy . 138 In Quiet Fields . .... . JO* Insufficiency \\\ "I Stand upon the Bastions n 87 Ladro . 43 La Primavera 134 Contents Page La Sorella Mia .... *43 Lethe .... .90 Like Bells UntoUed . . . . 24 Lost Isles 30 Marsyas . . .... 84 Milton ....... 38 Mors Victrix 79 My Castle ........ 6 My Native Stream . .... *33 Night . . . . . . . . . 75 Nilus . . .... 19 November ... . . J23 Now Like a Red Leaf . 37 On London Bridge .... 3J On Writing Some Sonnets . 69 Prodigals . . . . . 39 Prometheus Chained ; 48 Psapho 73 Rembrandt Van Rhyn ...... 70 Scorn for Myself I Feel ...... 4! Sesostris . . 23 Socrates Death - 76 Some Peak of High Achieve J20 Storm -Swept 45 St. Paul s Shipwreck . .... 89 Still Thou the Tempest . . 29 Submission . . ^46 Sunrise on the Marsh . UO Contents Page The Apostate Saint ... 55 The Bouquet 66 The Builder . .98 The Close of Day . . 142 The Country Burial 129 The Daybreak . 9* The Doors . 3 The Dusk . . 147 The Empty House ... 62 The End of Erebus . ... 59 The Evening Breeze . 140 The Evening; Comes . ... 137 The Evening Hosts . ... 95 The Evening Voice 54 The Fading Light . . 107 The First Hoar -Frost 116 The Flight . 49 The Frontier . . 109 The Gloaming . ... 150 The Grasshopper to Aurora . 26 The Heights . 93 The Journey 83 The Last Song of Orpheus . . . . 16 The Noontide Gone . 80 The Nymph ... 115 The Obelisk in New York * 9 The Ocean Isle ... 56 The Pale Rider ... ..... 72 The Poet . 130 The Psalm . . 8 The Question .... .... 21 The Sea 22 The Sea-Gull 97 The Ship . * . 71 Contents Page The Silence after Orpheus Death . * .. * J5 The Silent Guest . . * The Sonnet . H8 The Sovereigns . 2 The Stormy Petrel . ... 5 The Susquehanna from the Cliff . . \M The Syrinx *45 The Threshing Floor 34 The Thrush . . \\2 The Vision ... . 53 The Voiceless . ... 64 The Wedding Morn . . . . J28 There Was a Time ... . 94 Theseus and Ariadne .50 These Things I Saw 5J These Waste the Spirit 58 They Come at Evening 4 Tithonus to Aurora ... . 25 Transmutation 36 To a Maple Seed ..... 40 To an Old Venetian Wine Glass ... 52 To Brizo . 78 To Byron 82 To the Milkweed \ To the Poppy ....... 65 To the Sculptor of Ladro ..... 44 Unsolaced . J49 Upon the Hearth . J36 Up with the Drawbridge 6\ Why Do We Sing . 139 Will These Fade Too . ... 8? Contents Winter Woods .122 Withdraw, O World . JOO With Folded Wings . . 8 j Within the Gates AT THE GATES OF SONG TO THE MILKWEED ONE call thee flower L . . I will not so ma%a The satin softness of thy plumed seed, Nor so profane thee as to call thee weed, Thou tuft of ermine down, fit to entwine About a queen; or, fitter still, to line The nest of birds of strange exotic breed* The orient cunning, and the somnolent speed Of looms of Ind weave not a silk so fine* Ah, could but he who in these pages sings, On such adventurous and aerial wings Far over lands and undiscovered seas Waft the dark seeds of his imaginings, That, flowering, men might say, Lo! look on these Wild Weeds of Song not all ungracious things! THE SOVEREIGNS HEY who create rob death of half its stings; Their life is given for the Muse s sake, Of Thought they build their palaces, and make Enduring entities and beauteous things; They are the Poets they give airy wings To shapes marmorean; or they overtake The Ideal with the brush, or, soaring, wake Far in the rolling clouds their glorious strings. The Poet is the only potentate; His sceptre reaches o er remotest zones; His thought remembered and his golden tones Shall, in the ears of nations uncreate, Roll on for ages and reverberate When Kings are dust beside forgotten thrones. THE DOORS S through the Void we went, I heard his plumes Strike on the darkness* It was passing sweet To hold his hand and hear that thin air beat Against our pinions, as we winged those glooms Of Ebon, through which Atropos still dooms Each soul to pass* Then presently our feet Found footing on a ledge of dark retreat, And opposite appeared two doors of tombs Seen by the star upon the angel s head That made dim twilight; there I caught my breath: "Why pause we here?" The angel answering said, "The journey ends* These are the Doors of Death; Lo, now they open, inward, for the dead*" And then a Voice, "Who next that entereth?" THEY COME AT EVENING TO S. F. H. HINK not because upon these slopes of green Thou hear st no footsteps follow, that alone I tread this vale, and on these crags of stone At set of sun, or in the twilight sheen, Walk by myself* Round me at times convene Illustrious Shades, that, from their airy zone, Stand with me here upon this mountain throne, And solace with low voices not terrene* They come at evening as an avatar: Great ones wfth laureled brows, and glorious eyes Bright with fulfilment of their prophecies; With voices like the voices of a star: Some hover near, and others faint, afar Pace the horizon in the twilight skies* THE STORMY PETREL TO G. B. M. NWARD forever by thy spirit borne Bird of the dim illimitable seas. Winging wild gulfs of water at thine ease When all the surging waves with winds are torn! Thou for the shore hast unabating scorn, And with thy brave heart to the howling breeze Trustest thy life and all thy destinies! O wanderer of lone waters half forlorn, By that dark demon, too, thou art possessed, That drives thee through the storm at any cost! Bird of the wave! my soul, as thine, is crossed By the same spirit of undying quest Far on the shoreless ocean of unrest Driven forever, and forever tossed! MY CASTLE jOW pale, how faint, how phantom-like it seems, That vague and vaporous Castle, dimly bright! From cloudy battlements burst on the sight Unfading valleys and innumerous streams* Inside, a golden-vaulted gallery gleams With troops of luminous spirits, which alight When day drops down the drawbridge for the Night* It is the airy castle of my dreams* From shadowy turrets dim my soul commands The spirit of the cloud; nightly I mark The path of stars* Ah! no assaulting bands No hounds of Care swarm at the gate and bark; And when Sleep comes, the winged Warden s hands Let fall the still portcullis of the dark* A TUSCAN LACHRYMATORY HY sweet brow low above thy lover bend* For he is dead thou fairest of all maids That lived and loved in glad Etrurian glades Where Vallombrosa now her vale extends! To thee no comfort from the sky descends; Thy fingers, ringed with jasper and with jades, Clasp this small vase of sorrow. In the shades Cold lies thy love, and so for thee all ends. Thou weep st, and dost endure such grief as sears The soul. No solace for thy heart in years To come. . . . Dead Tuscan by the Umbrian sea! Thou who art dust this many a century, What lover shall I leave to weep for me What amphora wan, filled with what woman s tears? THE PSALM IER upon tier of seraphim, bedight With most excessive glory; not alone In golden voids of Heaven, but near the throne, Triumphant, with flamboyant wings upright; Peal upon peal of song, that took its flight O er walls of sardonyx and jasper stone, Of such enrapturing sweetness as was known Never to me who came from earth s dark night: So did they sing; so ever did they choir; Yet I who listened still am found unmeet One strain of that wild rapture to repeat, Though all of Heaven seemed turned into one lyre Prostrate I fell before their burning feet Prostrate before their flaming wings of fire. THE OBELISK IN NEW YORK HOU look st in vain for Egypt s mystic strand; The holy ibis never comes anear, Nor bannered Bedouins in their spangled gear; No long-drawn caravan across the sand, With camels carrying silks of Samarkand; No dancing girls with anklets tinkling clear, Nor troop, nor scymetar, nor plumed spear There is no revelry within the land: Beside our meagre gayety and gold, Thou must, remembering, feel a pang, and sigh For that imperial splendor near thee rolled That purple pomp Egyptian, long gone by Thou scornful Alien, sphinx-like in our sky, Based on thy mystic symbols, as of old! DISILLUSIONED HERE have the power and the splendor flown? Where have the promises of morning sped? Ambition where? her gonfalon outspread Flaunting the spacious sky of youth alone; Making the neck of circumstance a stone Whereon to mount, with high and haughty tread, Up the sheer steep to her imperial throne. Those starry aspirations are they dead? Were they but as a phantom, then, that loomed Across the desert of our days, unknown, Uncomprehended ? and have they consumed The pith of youth for naught? Will these atone These hopes deferred for visions long entombed? And is this all that life can give a moan? 10 ABOVE THE ABYSM N either side huge beetling peaks rose sheer, And blackness filled the gorge for evermore; Up from the yawning chasm the cataract s roar Thundered aloud from cliff to cliff austere* Across the abysm, as thin as gossamer, Was stretched a cord from perilous shore to shore; To this a man clung where no bird could soar, While low the thin thread sagged, his weight to bear* In that unf ooted region who could aid ? * * * Across the darkness there I heard no cry, But still his vague form, dimly could espy, Where, with tense hands, he held, and swayed * * and * * swayed; I sickened at the sight, and for him prayed; Nor knew, until he fell, this man was I* 11 IF THOU WOULDST COME HAT day He stilled the tempest, and on land Drave out the spirits* He was filled with power And pity* Jairus said, "O Lord, my flower My rose my daughter dies; do Thou demand She live, and it shall be," One there at hand Spake out, " She is already dead." * * * That hour From Galilee, by many a palm and tower, He came, and she arose at His command. Were I to be within earth s darksome deeps A thousand years, commingled with the clay, I should not feel to-night as one who weeps, If I could know, dear Lord, in that far day Thou dst come, and to the slumbering ashes say, "Awake! arise! He is not dead, but sleeps," 12 AH, TELL ME NOT H, tell me not that passionate words of mine Shall vanish from the world and pass away; That these strong dreams which haunt me night and day, Wrought into song, shall with my sun decline* Will not some poet, pacing by the brine, Repeat these words to keep them from decay? Or but the tone of one elusive lay That I have sung, deep in his heart enshrine? Or some fond lover, who is yet unborn, Wandering about the reaches of the sea, Sick of the world, and filled with softened scorn, Will he not read one line, and think of me And softly sigh, "What hidden grief had he This Poet dead whose soul was so forlorn?" EURYDICE HE eve was quiet, with no airs to fan The silent rushes round the milk-white knees Of the lone Naiad; nor the faintest breeze To stir still pools. There, on the marge, began The print of sandals, faint, that onward ran Those love-lorn foot-marks were Eurydice s* She listened, as within the Cyclades One listens to the sea cerulean* Pale clouds lay on the stream and changed to red; A fear came to her, and her quick pulse beat; The heart of silence ached so that it bled; When through the laurel hot, pursuing, fleet Rushed Aristaeus, and she turned and fled, Nor heard the hissing adder at her feet* 14 THE SILENCE AFTER ORPHEUS DEATH T was the sweetest silence ever fell Upon the ear of earth* Not the profound Dark deeps of air which tremble and resound When seraphim have ceased; nor far-off swell Of seas that break on shores of asphodel, And leave a stillness panting all around With the remembered music of the sound; Not when some faint and spiritual bell Tolled in the memory, ceases; not the star That throbs itself to darkness in the sky, Leaving a void softer than voices are, Not these were sweet as silence with her sigh Around the head of Orpheus, floating far, When Bacchic revellers stopped his melody* 15 THE LAST SONG OF ORPHEUS HAT silence ceased; and on the golden shore, The Thracian women, sanguine-handed, heard Song from the River sweeter than the bird That takes the night with rapture, or of yore, Orpheus himself had sung* And more and more It grew, and gathered to one lucent word, So piteous-sweet, no pen could e er record Such honeyed sound as then began to soar* The satyr pricked his goat-ears, wonderingly, And dropped, atween his hoofs, his pipe of oat* Bird, fish, and grove, moved to the melody For the last time* On Hebrus, far afloat, The soul of Orpheus, in one dulcet note Passed, as his dead lips sang, Eu-ryd-i-ce! Till listening mermaids in th ,/Egean sea Drew down the head, and sang with silver throat, On rocks, and in sea-caves, the self-same note, Eu-ryd-i-ce ! Eu-ryd-i-ce ! 16 BUILD THOU THY TEMPLES EWARD lies in the work, not in the eye Nor voice of critic* Whether on the mart, Or on the Heliconian hills apart, Toil at thy temples builded in the sky* Dreams are in sooth the only verity* The world with scorn may lacerate thy heart Insult with praise too kte* Delve at thine Art: Beauty shall never unremembered die* The sculptor, unillustrious and alone, Pent in the still reclusion of his room, Carves, through the vexed vicissitude of years, Some marvel in Carrara; but the stone Men heed not till it stand above his tomb The cold commemoration of his tears* 17 EROS EATH yonder moon-lit archways, like the Moors , Luscious of limb, and knguorously dull, BalefuIIy sweet and darkly beautiful, The Nautch girls, o er the tesselated floors, Come tinkling down the distant corridors With somnolent sounds that soon all cares annul, Leaving the listener, dreamy, in the glooms, Lapped in the sensuousness of Circe s shores: Mid scents of sandal-wood and strange perfumes, One hardly hears the nightingale, that pours Her soul out by the fountain where she soars; The air is love-oppressed; Love s very plumes Pulse with the passion that his life consumes Where clambering roses close the curtained doors* 18 NILUS ?EN say her source is in wild mountain glooms. But where even the dark Sphinx never knows! Kingdoms in ashes, past them all she flows, And dust of monarchs and swart queens she dooms To lie along her sands* She laves the tombs Of tyrants long forgotten, even those Who built their dais on her nation s woes, And in her people s heart-blood dipped their plumes* And still she strews her banks with human bones; Her wave is crimsoned with the cruel things Done by her despots; on her shores the groans Of dusky millions* * * * Hearken ! as she sings The decimation of the tyrant thrones, The fate of Empire, and the dirge of Kings! 19 EVENTIDE TILL does Apollo down the scarlet ways Of sunset glory charioteer his team, Where the long lessening lanes of crimson gleam Athwart the solemn rifts of gathering grays* Within a molten waste of chrysoprase Dim temporal domes arise as in a dream; While toward the zenith, over all, supreme, Torn shreds of splendor float within the blaze* Dark grow the islands, as the sinking beam Deserts each crag and sombre-wooded scar; From o er the empurpled gravel of the bar, Faint to us comes the lonely bittern s scream; While on the darkening mirror of the stream Falls the effulgence of the evening star. THE QUESTION ITH folded wings we paced the gorge alone, The shining nimbus round the angel there Lighted my feet* Black in the zenith air Rose the immeasurable mountain throne, Peak above peak of everlasting stone: "What is Eternity? O Guide, declare!" "Conceive," said he, "an angel flying where Rises aloft yon peak s Cimmerian cone, And that his pinion s soft extremity Should brush those walls of adamant, and wear One grain away; then, every thousandth year Again his wing should touch it, flying by, Till all the cliff, at kst, should disappear Then only would begin Eternity!" 21 THE SEA HE plunging, dark-maned Sea bellows and gores Like some infuriated buffalo band That sweeps headlong, and devastates the land! A hungry creature round the world she roars; Her maw is ravenous as the Minotaur s, In the deep cemetery of her sand Rolls the smooth skull, and rests the mariner s hand* The Kraken sleeps, portentous, on her floors* She lifts vast voices. In her awful glooms Peal the deep thunders of eternity, Her soul is as a vortex, and she fumes Restless as mortal man. Doth she foresee The Seal of Doom is on her as she booms Within her monstrous caverns, ceaselessly? SESOSTRIS HOLE Lord of Lords and very King of Kings, He sits within the desert, carved in stone; Inscrutable, colossal, and alone, And ancienter than memory of things* Graved on his front the sacred beetle clings; Disdain sits on his lips; and in a frown Scorn lives upon his forehead for a crown* The affrighted ostrich dares not dust her wings Anear this Presence* The long caravan s Dazed camels stop, and mute the Bedouins stare* This symbol of past power more than man s Presages doom* Kings look and Kings despair: The sceptres tremble in their jewelled hands And dark thrones totter in the baleful air! 23 LIKE BELLS UNTOLLED WEET are the songs the soul still leaves unsung! Why should the spirit strive to set in speech The poignant love that lies beyond the reach And utmost eloquence of human tongue Upon the shores of Silence, heaped among Those splendid jewels of the soul, that each Snatches and hides forever on the beach Of Life from Love s great tidal-wave upflung? O lips that smile, and eyes that shed no tears, What pangs ye suffer in your bosom s hell! O hearts that keep a silence all your years Though breaking with a love ye will not tell, Your sob dies with you like an untolled bell, Or if at last ye speak, t is Death who hears ! 24 TITHONUS TO AURORA O long ago that I forget the day, I begged this boon of immortality Which, granted, brought me endless agony? Dazed by her beauty, I, in my dismay, Forgot to ask for Youth; and here I stray Dim-sighted, loveless, chill, and doomed to be Aged forever* Through eternity Worlds may be born at will, but I must stay Cold in these clouds, who beauteous was, and drew Eos to love me every rosy morn. Her sandals touch the hill-tops wet with dew Divine she comes ! , * , * O Sweet, I am forlorn Forlorn and old too old for love, and you! Grant me at last to die, ere Day be born! 25 THE GRASSHOPPER TO AURORA (TITHONUS SPEAKS) DAWN! was this my punishment condign? How long it is since thou upon me beamed! That thou wouldst change me thus I never dreamed, Who am become a voice, and here repine Unknown to all, except to thee, divine* Rechange !- -restore me to thyself, though seamed With eld, to see thy chariot, radiant-teamed, Come up the slopes of morning from the brine ! Let me return to thee though I be old! Without thee, O Beloved! here I pine Ages within the grass* T is I, behold ! Who had a body beauteous e en as thine; Lift me above; and thou once more be mine Far in the bosom of thy clouds of gold! 26 FAR FROM THE CROWD HE upland winds are blowing loud and shrill; Above this hollow lone, I hear them rave Mong autumn grasses o er the summer s grave; The silent cypresses that fringe the hill Bend neath the fury of their angry will Down here, this limpid pool beside the cave Lies all unruffled by the wind or wave, And holds the blue of heaven calm and still* Then let her trump blare round them on their peak, They who by bktant Fame enthroned are; But I will make my soul a pool, and seek The sheltering hollows of the hills afar; Then through the days it may of heaven speak, And through the nights, perchance, reflect a star. 27 AFTER READING SHAKESPEARE S SONNETS SAID that I would make my soul a pool And set it in the hollows of the hills Far from the turbulence of the love that kills, Far from blind passion that makes man a fool, For he lacks wisdom, who, with mad misrule, Vexes his kke of life with Love s wild ills; Still let him hide his heart where dew distils Sweet influence round him, ever calm and cooL To-night I read of Shakespeare s agony The hell he walked through in the pangs of love; And I remembered others that Love drove Through fiery furnaces of ecstasy; But Poets should sit raised such bksts above, Throned in the fine air of Tranquillity. 28 STILL THOTJ THE TEMPEST HE sun upon the Galilean lake Was setting red as though in sullen mood; And Christ, aweary with the multitude, Doing good works all day for pity s sake, Entered the ship and slept. A storm made quake The sea, and howling, thundered with its flood; But He, rebuking, stilled it where He stood And winds were hushed where erst the tempest brake. O gentle Pilot! when those waves of ill Come roaring round me; and when tempest-tossed; When doubt s black winds rise near me and are shrill ; When I am sinking and am almost lost, Awake from out Thy sleep, my hope fulfill, And to the surging storm say, Peace, be still! LOST ISLES WAS long ago we roamed a summer sea, With pictured sails that fanned the fragrant air, Far o er the waters, yet we knew not where; Sudden an isle, dim as a memory, Called like a siren to us, until we Lay in her bosom an hour, at anchor there . , We sailed afar; then searched in sheer despair, But never more we found where it could be! O lips of those who loved us, lightly pressed, Where are ye now, since life is growing gray? Hands laid in ours ; dear faces once caressed And left forever; and some tender breast Where we were anchored, by sweet Love, a day,- Lost Isles are these from which we sailed away. ON LONDON BRIDGE SUNSET LEGION girt with angry thunder, fills The crimsoned West, and wings of spirits in pain Wave where the sun, as in some lost domain, Incarnadines the clouds like one who kills, And on his track the victim s life-blood spills* The city s crime flaunts on the air its stain, As demons blurred the sky the while Lot s train Left Sodom and Gomorrah for the hills* Angels of Peace! not here may ye abide* Amid this undistinguishable din And roar of peoples, still from side to side Moves a new wave of faces, flushed and thin, That carries on its Babylonian tide, The red irrevocable stain of sin* A PICTURE OF MY MOTHER this old daguerreotype appears Thy face, my Mother, crowned with wondrous hair* What reconciliation in thine air; And what a saintly smile, as if thy fears The Lord had taken from thee, and thy tears! Tis my delight still to believe thee fair; And thou wast loved we know, for often here We saw my Father s eyes, at eighty years, Overflow with love whene er we spoke of thee We spoke of thee, I said, not he not he! He could not speak ! . * , Oh, peace be with thee, then, Madonna-like, thy babe upon thy knee! My gentle Mother, lost on earth to me, Shall I not know thee somewhere once again? FORGETFULNESS H|HE eagles of incessant thought still prey Upon me here; so, as Prometheus stooa Chained in the Caucasus, there in his blood The eternal vulture gnawed* Great thoughts were they t Taloned and winged, that tore him night and day * * * Those who, high on the peak and solitude Of being, live in the mind, they are the fcod For death, the harpy* Thought is malady; And death itself may not that evil cure* Tis weariness to think of thinking on Through aeons of that dim dominion Of after-life . * * * Me thou dost still allure To seek thy shores O thou divine, obscure, (Jnthoughted Lethe of Oblivion! THE THRESHING FLOOR FT may you see within some barn s wide door, In winter, underneath the snowy eaves, A glowing depth of summer s opened sheaves, And moving horses, tethered four and four, Tramping in endless circles, o er and o er, A seeming bootless task, as one believes; Yet at the end, when day her work achieves, Behold the yellow wheat upon the floor ! My soul, be thou contented, and full fain, Though yearning for the boundless prairies sweet, Still round life s circle trudge, with willing feet; And from the sheaves of trial and of pain, By patience strong and by endurance meet, Tramp out, ere evening comes, the golden grain! 34 FIAT LUX TO B. N that dread angel near the awful throne, Leaving the seraphs ranged in flaming tiers, Winged his dark way through those unpinioned spheres, And on the void s black beetling edge, alone, Stood with raised wings, and listened for the tone Of God s command to reach his eager ears; While Chaos wavered, for she felt her years Unsceptred now in that convulsive zone* Night trembled* And as one hath oft beheld * A lamp lit in a vase light up its gloom, So God s voice lighted him, from heel to plume: "Let there be light!" It said, and Darkness, quelled, Shrunk noiseless backward in her monstrous womb Through vasts unwinnowed by the wings of eld! 35 TRANSMUTATION from India s spired citadel, Where all the Orient wafts her odorous breeze Along the reaches of Ceylonian seas Above her reefs of coral, there doth dwell A jewel-making mollusk* In its shell When atoms enter t then, the pain to ease, Slowly it coats with nacre each of these, Producing pearls that scarce have parallel* Ah, me! all sufferings and all ecstasies Of grief which to the Singer still belong Heart-lacerations and the vortex-swirls Of passion are by him, through agonies Of spirit, turned at length to lyric pearls Transmuted by the alchemy of song* NOW LIKE A RED LEAF N youth how slowly passed the golden day! As if upon the stillness of some brook You threw a rose-leaf, and the rose-leaf took Its own sweet time to loiter to the bay; The lark sang always; life was endless pky; We lived on nectar from a poet s book, Drifting along by many a sunny nook; Little we cared it would be ever May! Now, like a red leaf on the autumnal stream That cannot steer nor stop that cannot sink Swiftly I glide. As in some fateful dream There is no time to pause no time to think; The cataract roars I see the white foam gleam Within the gorge it draws me to the brink I MILTON feet were shod with music, and had wings Like Hermes; far upon the peaks of song His sandals sounded silverly along; The dull world blossomed into beauteous things Where er he trod; and Heliconian springs Gushed from the rocks he touched; round him a throng Of fair invisibles, seraphic, strong, Struck Orphean murmurs out of golden strings; But he, spreading keen pinions for a white Immensity of radiance and of peace, Uplooming to the empyreal infinite, Far through ethereal fields and zenith seas, High, with strong wing-beats and with eagle ease, Soared in a solitude of glorious light! 38 PRODIGALS some crazed king upon a wild sea-shore Takes from his chests his hoard of hidden gold. His crown, his sceptre, and his gems untold, With all the royal orders which he wore, And hurls them, one by one, into the roar And hunger of the sea; and then, when old, Comes to his senses, shivers in the cold, And mourns his kingdom s treasures evermore: So we, unwitting of the wealth of years, Here by life s ocean fling away our gems Sceptres of youth, and manhood s diadems; Like fools we waste them with no future fears; Reason returns, and us too kte condemns The beggared monarchs of a realm of tears! TO A MAPLE SEED TO E. IT. M. T thou some winged Sprite, that, fluttering round, Exhausted on the grass at last doth lie, Or wayward Fay? Ah, weakling! by and by, Thyself shalt grow a giant, strong and sound, When, like Antasus, thou dost touch the ground* O happy Seed! it is not thine to die; Thy wings bestow thy immortality, And thou canst bridge the deep and dark profound. I hear the ecstatic song the wild bird flings In future summers from thy leafy head! What hopes! what fears! what rapturous sufferings! What burning words of love will there be said! What sobs what tears ! what passionate whisperings Under thy boughs, when I, alas! am dead. 40 SCORN FOR MYSELF I FEEL NE ER I think what some rare souls have done, Who drank the dregs of dire adversity; Who, on the Ixion wht^l of penury, Sang while they starved, as starry Chatterton; Whose pens were dipped in heart s blood every one; Who died in dungeons singing liberty: Scorn for myself I feel, who, being free, Held but my "farthing candle to the sun*" With organ-pealings deep and reaching far, Like Bards long dead I should have spoken loud; They, from the top of their Olympian cloud, Flung jewelled harmonies oracular, That on the forehead of the centuries proud Live on forever deathless as a star! 4] IN AFTER DAYS H, yes! in those inevitable days Not so far distant but I see the rim Of their horizon looming then of him It shall be said, who writes these roundelays, "Lo, he is gone gone down Death s darksome ways." But when they ope his heart, love s paradigm Shall meet their look, and hardened eyes shall swim A name graved there shall dash them with amaze. So it befalls some traveler, in that zone That followed on the age Silurian, Who, with a mere incurious interest stirred, Breaks carelessly a road-side rock in twain, And, startled, finds the footmarks of a bird Imperishably printed in the stone. 42 LADRO STATUE IN METROPOLITAN MUSEUM AM that sacrilegious one, the same Whose lie beheaded Nona; erewhile seen By him, that tattling scribbler Florentine, Ages ago in Hell; and lest foul fame Of me should fade, Albano lately came, And carved in stone like life itself, I ween Me the base church thief, tied with snakes unclean,- A marble perpetuity of shame! Art s immortality of infamy Now coats me ever as this viper slime* Accursed be the sculptor! and may I Burn this Carrara, kiln-like, into lime Fanged as I am to death, unendingly, By knots of venomed serpents, for my crime! 43 TO THE SCULPTOR OF LADRO ,BANO, one is glad who once more sees A work of genius in this age, in stone; Virile, consummate, masterful, alone Amid a world of white inanities, For this is worthy golden days of Greece* No mediocrity in art has won This eminence such quivering flesh and bone Ay, this Praxiteles himself would please. And yet we cavil cavil at the theme ! The Medieval surely is effete* Peer deep into the soul the soul we deem Poetic still, if Dante s obsolete; Idealize To-day, then carve your Dream, Your ear held closer to Life s red heart-beat! 44 STORM-SWEPT faces calm as from all sorrow free; The pkcid brows Madonna might have worn; Clear foreheads where no cares were ever born, These are the gauds of Youth s vacuity* Not so the fronts of those who life foresee; Scarred with the thunder-track of Thought, and torn With eagle beaks of Art, they bear the thorn Of passion in their souls, eternally* Behold the infinite pathos of their eyes! Each face is as the sorrow which it knows Gashed as the shield of Hector, but with blows, Immortal of the mind, that agonize. And if e er peace to such her seal bestows, Twill be in Lethe where no thoughts arise. 45 AT THE POINT OF DEATH 1OME nearer, my Beloved, it is night; Bend down above my bed thy features mild; No wife have I to love, nor tender child* Thou wert mine angel. Wilt thou take thy flight Thou! with thine eyes of pity infinite And leave me dying and unreconciled? It was the sweetness of thy lips beguiled Life of its pang and made the darkness bright, Oh, lean down nearer nearer! Do not fly! Have we not loved each other well and long? Leave me not now, my heart ! my soul ! my song ! Beloved Poesy! to thee I cry, Wrap thy dear arms around me hold me strong! Oh, wake me with thy kisses when I die! 46 A PASSING SHIP |f|OW beauteous with her full sails to the breeze, As slow she bends and rocks above the bay ! She will not come anear us; she will stray Onward within the West. Mark, how she flees Along the sunset splendor of the seas ! Comes she from silken Fez or dusk Cathay, With scents of sandal-wood that round her play In all her canvas ? Brings she fragrant teas ? Or pungent rolls of Ceylon s cinnamon? She sails . * * and sails ! But whither will she steer ? It seems to one who waits, that far from here, Between the crimson gateways she will run, Deep down those glowing portals, golden-clear, And cast her anchors in the flaming sun. 47 PROMETHEUS CHAINED , no! not tears held back, nor wail, nor shriek, Tempestuous anger, nor delirious groan; Nor longings, unimagined and unknown; Nor the red javelin of the vulture s beak, Not these shall make the indomitable meek! I stand against the gods for man alone* This bed of anguish shall become a throne; These chains, O Jove ! shall consecrate this peak* Nay, shouldst thou slide the multitudinous sands Of Libya through an hour-glass in thy hands To time the future of my doom forlorn, Yield would I not! Thy tortures have I borne, Thy vultures, thunders, lightnings, and commands, Yet thee I still defy defy and scorn ! 48 THE FLIGHT PON a cloud among the stars we stood* The angel raised his hand* and looked* and said* "Which world of all yon starry myriad Shall we make wing to?" The still solitude Became a harp whereon his voice and mood Made spheral music round his haloed head* I spake for then I had not long been dead "Let me look round upon the vasts* and brood A moment on these orbs ere I decide* . * * What is yon lower star that beauteous shines* And with soft splendor now incarnadines Our wings ? There would I go* and there abide." Then he* as one who some child s thought divines "That is the world where yesternight you died." 49 THESEUS AND ARIADNE AT NAXOS TOfr-ifiY* I have loved thee! Thes. mm. Art. Thou hast loved, didst say? Thes. I loved thee well at Crete* Art. Lov st me no more? Thes. Ah! who can hold the wave upon the shore? Art. Thou* if thou wouldst ; and oh, is that the way Thou speak st to me, who gave thee, on that day, My flower of life? Thes. My ship is ready sail and oar! Art. Did I not save thee from the Minotaur, And wilt thou leave me? Thes. Who can make love stay? Wax is my heart, and takes full easily The last print on t* Past love is past recall* Adieu ! * * . Love has the helm he guides not we* Beloved Traitor! may thy black sail pall, Deep in the brine, thee, and thy maidens all ! * * Ye gods ! he leaves me and my babe to be ! 50 THESE THINGS I SAW- WANDERED on through dark mysterious deeps; I stood on beetling cliffs that loomed sublime Above vast valleys, where for countless time Gathers fertility which useless sleeps Where never, through the soil, one flower peeps; Deep caves with floating pendants of green slime, Through which strange Things did ever crawl and climb. Near the great Monster that in coils still keeps Listening forever for the trump s commands; Lovers were there, clasped with convulsive hands; Jewels, and crowns, and sceptres; precious stones Rolled in the eyes of skulls; and whitened bones Forever shifting over shifting sands : These things I saw within the sea s dim zones. TO AN OLD VENETIAN WINEGLASS ROSE-COLORED AT THE BRIM UGHTER of Venice, fairer than the moon ! From thy dark casement leaning, half divine, And to the lutes of love that low repine Across the midnight of the hushed lagoon, Listening with languor in a dreamful swoon On such a night as this thou didst entwine Thy lily fingers round this glass of wine, Didst cksp thy climbing lover none too soon I Thy lover left, but ere he left thy room From this he drank, his warm lips at the brim; Thou kissed it as he vanished in the gloom, That kiss, because of thy true love for him Long, long ago when thou wast in thy bloom Hath left it ever rosy round the rim! 52 THE VISION NE side the beetling ridge of heated stone The fiery chasm lay, with flaming seas And tongues of fire, and awful agonies; Sobs, shrieks, and wails, and many a hopeless groan Rose wild around me as I stood alone* I looked above, and under summer trees Saw troops of spirits strolling at their ease, Who, harping always, never knew a moan, But filled the rosy air with ecstasies Of song* "And who are those that never cease To sing? who they that by the flames are blown ?" Those are the spirits who have championed Peace; The souls that gloried in red War are these* Lo, God is just they reap as they have sown ! " 53 THE EVENING VOICE have I seen o er some gray orchard wall The solemn cattle in the evening sun, Awake, and slowly rising, one by one, Hearing from home the master s welcome call, Follow the winding pathway, great and small, Nor wander from it till the barn was won; Then quench each parched throat within the run, And through the night sleep safe within the stall: E en so would I, now in this lessening light, Hearing a voice that calls me o er the hills, Rise and walk onward with no fear of ills, Threading the dim path homeward as I might, Then, drinking deeply from immortal rills, Rest in the folds of Peace throughout the night 54 THE APOSTATE SAINT ID WAY upon a precipice I prayed. And gave my soul to God ages ago* To me, up from a seething chasm below, A seeming Angel came, and on me kid His hand* " Mount higher up with me," he said, A day and night we clomb those heights of woe, And stood anear the stars* How could I know His purpose? Round him then he cast a shade; I quailed; and then he spake, "I am the Prince Of Darkness. Worship me; be thou my thrall/ The Coward in me conquered made me wince And yield* "Traitor!" he hissed; and o er that wall Me in the abysm hurled* I fell through all That Void, and falling * . . . fall, forever, since* 55 THE OCEAN ISLE S cliffs are peaks, ten thousand feet on high, Sheer from the sea, they tower above the mist; Each sunrise smites them gold and amethyst; And there the noon clouds pause as they go by, It looms a vision of the wave and sky* From upland valleys which the dawn has kissed, Vague waterfalls come streaming where they list, And lose themselves in falling, dreamily. Unutterably blue and dim, it seems Some region rising from the sea serene* Across the years the phantom waves of green Boom at its base above the petrels screams; But by none else hath it been ever seen Only by me and only in my dreams ! 56 ANTHONY TO CLEOPATRA AFTER THE BATTLE AT SEA TH this mine arm lost valor, and mine eye Its penetrant power? And will no smile Leap to thy lips, my Lotus of the Nile, To greet my coming, now that victory Sits on the helmets of our enemy? Who nobly die must nobly live the while; Ah ! there I lapsed through love, but not through guile- And now portentous phantoms fill the sky. The day is past defeat, and all its ills* * * * Oh, let me lean this head upon thy breast, As on the gentle shoulder of the hills The gray and fading clouds of evening rest- Vanquished, my Queen! not by War s plumed crest, But by thy conquering kisses fatal thrills ! 57 THESE WASTE THE SPIRIT to a pebble lying on the shore. So is our life that for a space abides; The dominant sea overrules us and overrides, Wearing each day a little from our store. We rest supine; we listen to the roar, And bear the slow abrasion of the tides; And still with its irrevocable strides Tramples the sea upon us evermore* The unending friction of the night and day; And e en the slow corrosion of our glee; The thunderous breakers capped with agony ,- These waste the spirit, as they sap the clay, Until at last we re slowly worn away, Gulfed in the surges of the ceaseless sea* 58 THE END OF EREBUS |S on the cliffs Cimmerian ridge I bent, Precipitously steep, below the scaur, Down down the abysm s perpendicular, I listened for the rock my feet had sent Thundering, to strike some bottom; but it went Noiseless into the Nadir, as a star Darkened by God in anger, from afar Drops black into the gulphs ignipotent. A voice swept past. The Pit below me brake Into one crimsoned cauldron, and the glooms, And all the heated peaks, began to take The dye of dread vermilion; for the wombs Of hell belched upward, and I saw the quake And frantic winnowings of a billion plumes. 59 BURKE (1730-1797) was that golden opulence of phrase- That sumptuous and impassioned diction splendid. Upon whose fiery pauses hung suspended Assembled multitudes in mute amaze* That great heart still for Freedom was ablaze* The battery of his eloquence defended Man and his rights : too soon that power ended, He died while in the lustre of his days* So some great battle-ship magnificent, Whose cannon, thundering o er the listening world, Their still triumphant detonations hurled In pealing tones of conquest eloquent, Sinks, suddenly her royal flags unfurled Invincible, with all her armament* UP WITH THE DRAWBRIDGE (UNRESTRICTED IMMIGRATION) HIS glorious Castle, whose broad base was laid With our forefathers blood, whose turrets glow Yet from our war, is threatened with worse woe, While home-foes mine the walls in ambuscade. The idle worthless pauper renegade, Swarm on the moat* Shall Europe Python foe Slough her skin here ? Or Asia ? Tell her, No ! This Tower, by sires, for us alone was made! See! from the steerage, how they scale the wall! Shall our fair Castle sink into such hands? Awake, ye Sentries! His a Nation s call, We welcome all the good of all the lands, But bring not here the evil, outcast bands, Quick to the gate! Let the portcullis fall! 01 \ THE EMPTY HOUSE AND here, I pray you, at this iron gate Beyond the house this gateway grim of stone Dear as you are, let me go in alone Among the ghostly chambers, where await The sacred Presences, long called by fate Beyond my touch, but not beyond the zone Of dear companionship* There is a tone Of exquisite sadness in these halls sedate, Unheard but by the heart* In upper rooms I hear faint footfalls, silent for long years; Lost lips bend down anear me. Through the glooms Loved faces throng the stairway, sweet with tears; And from the walls, where nothing now appears, Each dim ancestral portrait looks and looms. AFRICA some nocturnal lily that shall bloom In centuries hence, we watch thee; in our dream See in thy swamps the Prospero of our steam ; Thy doors unlocked, where knowledge in her tomb Hath kin innumerable years in gloom* Then shalt thou, waking with that morning s gleam, Shine as thy sister lands with equal beam; But Indian-like, thy race hath met its doom: As tidal waves that strike some midnight shore Rush, and with white irrevocable hands Sweep clean the coast of all the horde of sands, So the great waves of Franks that onward pour, Shall sweep thy swart race sheer from off thy knds To death, and life shall know them there no more* 63 THE VOICELESS clomb where dreamers ever strive to climb; Not at life s low unsatisfying lake He sought insatiable thirst to slake, But with unalterable faith sublime He scaled the cliffs of midnight and the prime, Gnawed by the vultures of his thought, nor spake One word, mute-waiting for some Power to break The torturing taciturnity of Time* Stern with the soul s unconquerable will, He stood, and trembled with ecstatic thrill, While through the darkness gleamed his pallid face, Uplooking to the stars, he listened still For some apocalyptic Voice to fill The Vasts of unimaginable space. 64 TO THE POPPY USIVE Spirit of the vague inane Whose keys unlock the cavernous doors of sleep, Profound and dim, unfathomably deep, Thou, with the soft links of thy noiseless chain, Dost bind the frenzied body and the brain! Soother of anguish for all men that weep! Angel of mercy! thou dost from them keep The pangs of torture the wild throes of pain* Strange lights thou bringest far beyond the gleams Of beacons on the peaks of thought, while all About thy feet move those unending streams And labyrinthine by-ways past recall; And twixt two worlds, t is thou that canst let fall The cloudy drawbridge of daedalian dreams* 65 THE BOUQUET S one in late November mid low meads Tramps to far fields among the uplands set, And on some fence as on a parapet Leans, and looks in on briery wastes, where feeds The snow-bird, lonely, on the gray grass-seeds While round, the wraiths of April s violet And ghosts of pale rath roses bring regret Then rambles in among those sombre weeds By bloomless stalks of many a late wood-rose, And gleans from them one handful of wild things That, when at home, some recollection brings Of sweet dead days: so may he find who goes Through uplands of my Song where no flower blows- Some faint suggestion of far fairer Springs ! A POET S GRAVE shall I make my grave my soul to please? In sultry wastes where silent Arabs tread? Upon the brow of some stark mountain s head? Or in the lone, illimitable seas? Beneath the umbrage of ancestral trees, Where I have laughed with loved ones who are dead ? Or on the blue hills where my youth was sped? Oh, yield me yet some wilder spot than these! Place me at last, when my brief day is o er, And life s scant lamp burns out within my room, Place me on high above the Cataract s shore Amid the mist, the sunshine, and the gloom, That I may hear, in that unending roar, The thunder of God s presence round my tomb! 67 EDWIN BOOTH AS HAMLET PRINCELY Shade, crowned with immortal bays ill In amaranthine fields beyond our ken, Look down with patience on the lesser men That thou hast left to follow in thy ways! The fine rendition of Shakespearian plays Passed out with thee, nor has it come again* Thy Muse, alas! is not the denizen Of Thespian boards in these material days. The stage thou trodd st is made spectacular. Where is the fire the pathos loved in thee? The grace inimitable that was thine? Thy wondrous eye was as a glorious star; And when thy voice rolled out the sounding line, We seemed to hear the surges of the sea ! ON WRITING SOME SONNETS M. J. M. H! who would list forever to one choir? The lark s clear note, the dove s melodious moan, The sweetest music unto mortal known, With frequent iteration soon must tire* Whoso shall lay his hand upon the lyre For twice a hundred times, as I have done, Needs must reverberate some earlier tone, And often strike, alas, the self-same wire! So if with jarring note his harp resounds, Blame not the struggling Lyrist nor the Muse: How can the rugged Saxon which we use, Whose roughness cleaves these lines with ragged wounds, Charm as an organ-roll of Umbrian sounds That float from Vallombrosa or Vaucluse? 69 REMBRANDT VAN RHYN OW, avaricious, mean, thou wert, they tell, Rembrandt! thy inner life they vilify. Do thorns grow figs? Can truth spring from a lie? The tenderness of Dante rather fell Upon thy sorrowing soul, I know full well, Else the sad angel looking through the eye Of those old portraits thou couldst not descry, Diviner of the supernatural! Master of light, and color s crowned king, O Painter of the glory and the gloom, Wizard of luminous dark of glow of bloom, Poet profound, who wore the unseen wing, Thrower of splendors round the meanest thing, With thee, thy mantle fell within the tomb ! 70 THE SHIP LAY at Delos of the Cyclades, At evening, on a cape of golden land; The blind Bard s book was open in my hand, There where the Cyclops makes the Odyssey s Calm pages tremble as Odysseus flees* Then, stately, like a vision o er the sand, A phantom ship across the sunset strand Rose out of dreams and clave the purple seas; Straight on that city s bastions did she run Whose toppling turrets on their donjons hold Bells that to mortal ears have never tolled Then drifted down the gateways of the sun With fading pennon and with gonfalon, And dropped her anchors in the pools of gold* THE PALE RIDER kst I felt the ominous black air quake With far-off beatings of their horned wings Before they came enormous, baleful Things Harpy, chimera, scaly winged snake With dugs of witches, roaring in the wake Of him who furious rode, and held the stings Of adders in his hand* A million kings Skin in his path could not his ravin slake* Onward he plunged, and, as he came, I saw High on his eyeless skull a crown was wreathed; Sceptre he held, and sword he never sheathed; Headlong he rushed* Gaunt was his empty maw Though he devoured the world and all that breathed: I looked, and fell before him, dead, from awe* PSAPHO pM ancient times, tis said, this Libyan J Tamed hosts of birds, and, with a deep design, Taught them to say, " Psapho s a god divine ! " Then turned them loose* And many a caravan, Halting at wells twixt Cairo and Kairwan, Hearing the birds, believed in Psapho s line; While others doubted, and by palm and pine Smiled on their camels tinkling to Assuan. There s many a clique within our daily ken Which drills the voices of its pert Reviews To utter and re-utter, like cuckoos, That they divine are mong the ranks of men; But as we read, we think of Psapho s ruse The Libyan with his birds is back again ! IN MEMORIAM H. H. H, JR. OBIT. ROME MDCCCLXXIX HEN died for us more life than often dies, The child, the lad, the youth, the unconscious Prince, All untamed boyhood s thousand royalties These passed with him, nor have they risen since* His face drew downward from benignant skies The chiseled beauty of the sculptor s stone; And all the luminous dark of Tuscan eyes Was mirrored there, still lovelier, in his own* And now, beyond the range of sorrow s dart, He lives in fields of calm eternity, A flower whose leaves shall never fall apart Though gusts of half forgetfulness drift by: His memory blooms a rose within the heart And sweetest odors are the last to die. 74 NIGHT , of old, was God s dominion; T was His beloved child, His own first-born ; And He was aged ere the thought of morn Shook the sheer steeps of black Oblivion* Then all the works of darkness being done Through countless aeons hopelessly forlorn, Out to the very utmost verge and bourne, God at the last, reluctant, made the sun* He loved His darkness still, for it was old; He grieved to see His eldest child take flight; And when His Fiat Lux the death-knell tolled, As the doomed Darkness backward by Him rolled, He snatched a remnant flying into light And strewed it with the stars, and called it Night* To SOCRATE S DEATH FROM PLATO S PH^EDO HEN from the prison walls they saw the sun Folding great wings within the western skies A few friends round him there who slowly dies. The grinding of the poison being done, He spake, reproved their tears, and to each one Gave cheer and comfort, and made kind replies: Then drank the hemlock with his great grave eyes Steadfast and mild. The sands were nearly run Down through his glass of life; he from that bed Smiling upon them faintly, turned and said, 4 The chill is at my heart* * * * Do not forget To pay to ^Escukpius our just debt !"..** Then Crito closed his eyes, for he was dead, And looked up weeping and the sun had set ! 76 FROM THE PEAK GH on the mountain, brother to the cloud, I stand upon this elemental stone As free as kings upon their native throne* The winds which whirl the leaves on in a crowd Whistle around the bleak crags wild and loud; I hear the muttering and the thunder tone Of dark and ominous storms, that not alone Earth, but the cowering heavens, now enshroud* Land of my birth! so looking over thee The Poet sees from his prophetic peak Havoc and whirlwind brewing* We are free, But powers are at work that crawl and sneak, Yet hold, no less, the fatal lightning streak* Be warned ! This storm is aimed at Liberty* 77 TO BRIZO OWSY thou test on thy poppied bed, Inamorata of the realms of air! Goddess or queen or spirit, passing fair, Rise from thy slumberous pillow where is spread In lustrous darkness round thy starry head The wondrous wealth of thine ethereal hair; Still whisper to me from thy dusky lair Or Atropos shall cut the silver thread ! Clear source and fountain of my fleeting lays, Angel of peace, and saint that comforteth, Thy lips were on my mouth I drew thy breath- Thine arms enwrapt me through thy shadowy ways- O thou divine consoler of my days, Be near me in the darkness after death! MORS VICTRIX T last had come the time long prophesied The world was frozen; ice now ruled again* Dead lay the earth s last man. Feeling Death s reign Was o er, Life, though dismayed and terrified Thus spake to Death, " Since the last soul hath died, Numbed with thy rancorous venom here and skin Since man no more exists to suffer pain, Lie down thyself, and die/ But, furious-eyed, Ravenous and grim, Death raised his haughty head And pointed to the stars, "Yon worlds," he said, "With all their multitudes, were made for me, For me created and inhabited; And souls unborn on myriad orbs to be Are mine, foredoomed through all Eternity!" 79 THE NOONTIDE GONE N murmuring silence of these cottage rooms, The noontide gone, I rest beside the sea; And through the latticed windows, thoughtfully, Peer down upon the crowd that, flower-like, blooms Along the beach and where the breaker booms. The surge of Life s and Youth s intensity Is there. Unmoved, I gaze beyond their glee Far o er the unfathomable ocean s glooms. From the dim chambers of maturer years, One looks with lessened ardor than before; And through the lattice dark of hopes and fears With small concern hails joy, and calmly hears Love s surges beat against Life s lessening shore As on a land that he shall touch no more. 80 WITH FOLDED WINGS HY should I, like the restless, ever roam, And clip the world from shining shore to shore? To-day beneath their native sycamore, Beneath the palm to-morrow, far from home; They pass the sea and all its snowy foam, Its vast and restless rolling and its roar; Mountains and vales, dread deserts they explore, And glorious cities dim with many a dome; Lone lakes they skim among the Pyrenees; And in mute marble see the immortals bloom Down the long aisles of gilded galleries; And censers swinging, and cathedral gloom: Why should I travel, when I see all these Within the silence of my lamp-lit room? TO BYRON with a strenuous voice of vibrant tone t Eolian in its sweep and majesty, Untrammeled as the heavens, and as free, In passionate throbbings from his bosom s throne Flung Song from the -/Egean s farthest zone Sublime in its impetuosity, Like to the voice of the eternal sea Filled with a wild unfathomable moan, O Dust! far from the Minster by the Thames, Reft of the oriel and the organ roll, Unniched among thy land s illustrious names, Where is he, living, who can touch thy goal? Whose words, as thine, within the file of Fame s Resplendent troop, so melt, so move the soul! THE JOURNEY ;Y path lay through a valley white as lime In sunlight* The long grasses looked as though Covered with frost or thinnest coats of snow* The trees were alabaster yet the time Was Summer up their trunks did crawl and climb Ivy, like marble, and bleached mistletoe; And while I paced, the semblance of a crow Flew near, and whispered something to a Mime Who beckoned me to follow up the glen: I followed through interminable glooms Of white, up to an eminence of tombs As thick as snow-flakes on the hills, and then A wind arose, and dust of buried men Blew round such blackness as no light illumes* 83 MARSYAS PHRYGIAN Youth! a piper of thy kind Am I, though piping very near the ground* Alas! I cannot make as thou, that sound Of silvery flutings floating down the wind* Though searching on the hill-tops of the mind, That flute Minerva dropped, I have not found, That waked the woods at Nysa, where he bound And flayed, and threw thee from him as a rind* We men are weak, the gods are ever strong; Apollo still is cruel as the sea, Me has he tied upon that fatal tree; Ah! by thy hand, I too shall die ere long Thou sweet inexorable Poesy Willing, but still a martyr to my song! AN OLD ANCHOR ON THE COAST OKEN, I rust beside this Northern roar Mid rocks of desoktion and of doom I who once dropped through waters filled with bloom Of lotus-lilies where flamingoes soar In coves of El Dorado* I no more Shall dip in green sea-beds of glimmering gloom, Nor hear the warm white-crested breakers boom Far on the stretches of the palmy shore! Ah! ne er again shall these corroded hands Grapple the branched coral neath the waves To hold the good ship safe against the breeze, Nor wake the Mermaid, dreaming in her caves On ocean ledges floored with fabulous sands Deep in the dim unfathomable seas! 85 HE MADE THE STARS ALSO hollow voids, beyond the utmost reach Of suns, their legions withering at His nod, Died into day hearing the voice of God; And seas new-made, immense and furious, each Plunged and rolled forward feeling for a beach; He walked the waters with effulgence shod* This being made, He yearned for worlds to make From other chaos out beyond our night, For to create is still God s prime delight* The large moon, all alone, sailed her dark lake, And the first tides were moving to her might; Then Darkness trembled, and began to quake Big with the birth of stars, and when He spake A million worlds leapt radiant into fight! I STAND UPON THE BASTIONS STAND upon the bastions of the day; The troublous Dawn is laboring in the skies; Vast shapes and vague, portentous effigies, Stalk in the clouds and threaten, yet men say That we are safe * , . * Yes ! Safe as once were they Feasting in Babylon when Cyrus wiles Drew off Euphrates, and let in his files His myrmidons to skughter and dismay ! Safe say ye? Listen! Hear ye not the sound Of stealthy sappers tunnelling neath the walls? That ominous rumble heard below the ground When muffled millions dig no shouts no calls, But dark and secret workings all around- Safe? * . . Safe! Why wait ye till the Castle falls! 87 WILL THESE FADE TOO SORROW, sorrow, leave me now alone! I hear the noiseless foot-falls of the dead In all the paths; and in the blue overhead I feel the yearning faces of my own. There is each day a melancholy tone Tolled from the cloudy towers of sunset red* I know the wings of morning vanished, And in the child s laugh hear my manhood s moan* Oh, daily losses gathering to a pain, Something is gone that will not come again ! Where is the glory fled? where are the gleams The recreant Dawn s incomparable beams ? , . * * Faded and flown ! . , , Will these fade too, and wane These last delusions and desired dreams? 88 ST. PAUL S SHIPWRECK HERE under Crete soft were the skies and blue; Sudden the troubled heavens turned to dun, The simoon, from swart deserts Nubian, Raged with its furies; famished were the crew; Two sennights, dreadful, wandering, drave we through Terrific roarings of Euroclydon; The sky a wall of brass, no stars, no sun, Where shrieked above us still the lost sea-mew; Sharp spears of jagged rock rose mid that roar Black in the foam of breakers; it was land Death-dealing, dread; on it we hurled, and tore The ship atwain; then, dashed upon the sand, By God s grace saved, lay on Mileta s shore There where that beast, unvenomed, fanged my hand. LETHE HE angel takes my hand and downward leads Through those dim regions where Oblivion lies* Upon the lava-rock that vitrifies Around us there, no flowers grow, nor weeds* Sole on her throne sits Darkness grim, and breeds. Each cliff with cliff in solemn blackness vies ; No voices from that midnight gloom arise; Slowly the inky river flows and feeds. The angel with me stops, and from the brink Amid that troop of gray shades on the shore Who pace for ages bids me stoop and drink, I do his hest, and mark him upward soar; Then memory, with that draught, begins to shrink, And I remember ah! * * * no more * * + no . , more* 90 THE DAYBREAK HE Dawn has come! with soft harmonious sound Turn on your hinge each adamantine gate! Crumble ye barriers! be exterminate All ye impenetrable doors profound That bar the way to knowledge! let redound The paean, and to Man capitulate! To him ope your Cimmerian portals straight, Ye Powers of Darkness that our souls confound! Young is the World, and man has just begun To touch those havens of the unfathomed sea That lie enshrouded dark in mystery In that unfooted dim dominion Beyond auroral reaches of the sun: This is the daybreak of the Day to be! 91 THE SILENT GUEST O-NIGHT, O Death, I feel thee near again; Cease peering in, but enter at the door If thou must enter as thou didst of yore* I did not call thee in this night of rain, Yet thou art here Oh, may it be in vain! And yet, alas! full many times before Thou hast been near so near! that now no more Thou seem st a foe, but one to end all pain* I know thy face so well that I could weep; For thou art with me more than any friend* I am too young to sink to thy black Deep; Yet, if I must, Oh, gently o er me bend, Delude me into dreams that have no end, Until I feel it is not Death, but Sleep! 92 THE HEIGHTS ijTELL is Prometheus with his anguish fraught, And each aspiring soul Thought s vulture-beak Yet feels, defiant, and will not be meek For peace with genius never need be sought. T is in achieving only, life is wrought* Fame s clarion peals above the highest peak, And the icarian mind will ever seek The starry uplands of creative thought. O empyrean Youth! who soared away Up to the sun with thy fresh pinions free, Then lost thy wings, and for a night and day Fell headlong, sheer, into the abysmal sea, Far greater thou, than Daedalus wise and gray, Who, soaring lower, lived ingloriously ! THERE WAS A TIME HERE was a time when o er my gentle books, Upon the vellumed treasures and their lore, From morn to tranced midnight would I pore. But now, for years, with far and dreamful looks I ve passed them by. Enough for me the brook s Sweet counsel, and the torrent s roar. For Nature still allures me more and more, And draws me daily to her sylvan nooks. There, like a hermit, I may muse alone : For vocal is the ground; the stars still shine That on the shepherds over Bethlehem shone; The fields are volumes, and each page, divine. Few books he needs who listens at the shrine Of Nature, and translates aright her tone. 94 THE EVENING HOSTS BOVE the battlement and parapet The warrior squadrons of the setting Sun Hurl in the Twilight s face their gonfalon; From scarlet tower and from minaret, With purple pomp and plumed violet, In splendid phalanxes they charge upon The approaching legions of the Evening dun Those grim battalions never vanquished yet. They storm the bastions of the wavering Day Whose crimsoned javelins fall within that host Unconquered; they in that unequal fray Make of those glorious troops a holocaust: Then from the turrets on the ramparts lost The Twilight cohorts flaunt their flag of gray. 95 WITHIN THE GATES GREATER fulgence, then, mine eyes assaulted, And in a radiance which all suns transcended, Low down my brow before the Throne I bended. Unworthy e en to look upon the vaulted Heavenly dome t much less on Him, exalted O er Time and Death* Slowly my vision wended Upward; with trust and trepidation blended, Reverent I moved, and near the Glory halted That Glory which was God, supreme, celestial: No sceptre held He, but a child most holy A little child that beamed a look terrestrial; And while great wings of Spirits flamed supernal, The Seraphs sang: Ye must be pure and lowly E en as this babe to gain the Life Eternal* THE SEA-GULL H, had I but thy wings when storms arise. Gray spirit of the sea and of the shore! When the wild waters round thee rave and roar, Calm art thou neath the tumult of the skies* Thy plume hath spanned the deep s immensities; Above her vast and ever-shifting floor Thou, on thy gray wing roaming, still dost soar, Forever drawn to where the distance lies* From the dim sea s unknowable extreme Thou comest, wandering through lone water-ways To cliffs empurpled and cerulean bays; Then, rocking near some cavern s emerald gleam, Thou seem st the soul of halcyonian days The restful Spirit of the sea supreme* 07 THE BUILDER a worn mason by a viflage street Works at a chapel day by day, alone, And slowly hewing, pkces every stone, Then some sad twilight, through the dusty heat Treads homeward o er the hills with weary feet, Finds the sole light within his hamlet gone, The dark door enters, and there dies, unknown, Leaving his building ever incomplete, So I, at evening, o er the hills shall roam, Worn with my masonry and Art s sharp thong, Missing the star that led my steps so long, And lie, at last, within my darksome home, Leaving the rude Cathedral of my Song Unfinished still devoid of spire or dome. DELAY, O LIGHT Y awhile, delay, O sinking light I A little longer linger in the sky; Spread not those golden pinions as to fly, But stay for me, who watch thee from the height: Remain ! for soon too soon will come the night, When from the crags around me here on high Shall fade the sunset colors; all shall die, And shadow spread her universal blight. Eternal Darkness, fold thy fateful wings ! And let the twilight we call Life that spark A little longer last; that he who sings May strive, with bleeding plumes, to touch his mark Delay! for he has high imaginings Imperative to utter ere the dark* 99 WITHDRAW, O WORLD ECEDE! recede! all literal things that arel Welcome the voice that is not, but that seems! Ye rapt illusions and resplendent gleams, Drift out of darkness to me from afar! Aerial ministers! your gates unbar, And give me glimpses of eternal streams; Take all that is, but leave me all my dreams, That solace like the presence of a star* Recede, O World! and let the mysteries Sweep in upon me of the Spirit s birth; Oh, come, ethereal unrealities, Flood me and fill me beyond reach of dearth With those immortal murmurs not of earth, Memnonian music sweeter than the sea s! 100 When shepherds pipe on oaten straws. LOVE S LABOR LOST. IN QUIET FIELDS: SONNETS CHIEFLY PASTORAL IN QUIET FIELDS NE lies and dreams; there is no dissonance In all the slumbering air; and e en the heat The summer-colt that shimmers o er the wheat Is still; the dells are dim with vague romance; Sweet Echo is disconsolate no chance Has she to-day the traveler to cheat, For down is on the sandals of all feet, And soft the summer wind puts by her lance* Far in her golden fields of calm repose, Deep bathed within the amber afternoon, Hangs the pale remnant of the mid-day moon; And Day s sweet flower that at the evening s close Folds like a bud to open as a rose Fades with the fading of this day of June* 101 AN IDYL OT in these valleys where we now recline, But far beyond the purple peaks aglow. Lies the fair land I love* There winds are low And soft* He of the thyrsus and the vine Comes with his leopards and his skins of wine. Glimpses there are of Naiads to and fro Flitting through groves ; and faint is heard and slow The pipe of some brown Faun beneath the pine. There upland streams, dissolving, reach the vales; And there are groves of ilex and of yew, Unending valleys and Illyrian dales, And gods reclining where the soft winds woo; And azure seas there are, and sunset sails, And shepherds piping on the capes of blue* 102 GOLDEN DAYS i O S this a-coming through the meflow haze Nude as young Bacchus, russet-skinned, embrowned; His head with clustered grapes and grape-leaves bound And trailing vines of scarlet all ablaze? From golden wigwams of the Indian maize He husks the red-grained ears; o er stubbled ground Bowls, in his mirth, the yellow melons round; Dozes anear the cider-press for days, Sipping the oozed juice of pomace lees; And, leaning on the cope of orchard walls, Watches the golden apple till it falls ; Searches the velvet burrs neath chestnut-trees, And brings the partridge to him by his calls, Who s he that so delights in things like these ? * * * 103 GOLDEN DAYS ii O S he that so delights in such soft ease? Who, dreamless, lofls throughout the dreamy days ? Who spreads the dim and amethystine haze In all the dells, and for the full-fed bees Bursts the late pear, and makes its mell increase? Who marks the glint of wings in woodland ways The gold of flickers, and the blue of jays? Who wafts the thistle-down to far-off seas, And spins the spider threads across the fields Of evening, golden in the setting sun? Who, plucking clusters that the ripe vine yields, Stains his lips purple ? * * Ah ! there is but one Autumn, that drowsy Faun, who glides away Down through the fading woods and all is gray! 104 ABOUT THE HOUR BOUT the hour the vivid sunset makes The beauteous rivers long unrippled blue Turn to more sumptuous and refulgent hue. Reflecting all its clouds and scarlet flakes; And when no wind the reedy patches shakes, When all is quiet as the falling dew, The fisher, drifting in his still canoe, Floats noiselessly upon these little lakes* In twittering flocks, where rushes rise and shoot Their spears above the shallows, golden-clear, The marsh-birds settle down and have no fear* * So silent is the air, so hushed, so mute, That e en the sentinel heron does not hear, But stands erect, nor drops his lifted foot* 105 AWAITING SUMMONS XED with foreboding awe, beneath the trees He waits the Voice* The seven seals of dread Are set* No word of comfort may be said. Above him e en the harmless summer breeze Brings apprehension, nor can hope appease. As ever hangs above his conscious head Held by a more attenuated thread The horror of the sword of Damocles. So one within a donjon hourly waits, Doomed to the block, yet knowing not the day Hears unreturning prisoners leave their room, And ominous uproar round the inner gates; Yet still unsummoned, slowly wastes away In dire anticipation of his doom* 106 THE FADING LIGHT HE dim aureola of the western glow Lingers above the river hill-top s rim, And the sweet huntress, now a virgin slim, Draws, in immortal fields, her silver bow, Fair as in far Illyria long ago In immemorial days divinely dim. In lessening light the glimmering islands swim, As twilight folds her pinions, soft and slow. The gateways of the night begin to ope, And through them throng as in a dazzling dream The stars, that up the gentle evening s slope Through amaranthine meads of heliotrope Tread on imperial, haughty and supreme, Shod with those sandals of eternal beam* 107 BY WILLOWY SHORES OOK out upon the river and give thanks For glimpses of far islands these dim views Between the willow branches, of faint blues That lie upon the waters azure blanks Of beauty, studded, here and there, with ranks Of arrow-headed weeds, where his strange hues The dragon-fly displays, . * * The pensive Muse, Secluded from the world, by willowy banks From immemorial times has loved to stray Along the murmuring margin of fair streams, Where she may pace, anear the close of day, Serene, with troops of her own airy Dreams; And take the wide world over, so meseems, Her sandals could not touch diviner clay! 108 THE FRONTIER SOLDIER! treading through the long day s heat, With tattered banner and with drooping crest, Now as the sun sinks down thy purpled West; Thou who hast come so far with aching feet, Thou who must march and never canst retreat, Art thou not weary of the bootless quest? Look st thou not forward to a time of rest? Sweet will it be beyond all telling sweet After long marches with red danger fraught; The wakeful bivouac; the assault and flight; After thy scars of glory, sore distraught, To camp afar, beyond defeat and fight, Wrapped in the blanket of a dreamless night, Out past the pickets and the tents of thought! 109 SUNRISE ON THE MARSH down the sky, as yet Day sleeps serene; She does not stir, she lies as in a swoon* Silent the marshes, save, at times, the croon Of some lone heron in the swamp s dark green, Where lyric fingers of the wind, unseen, Pky on the lute-strings of the reeds a tune To be remembered! All the glassed lagoon Is hushed as is the desert s void demesne; When, under the horizon far, I hear Aurora s phantom heralds wind the horn, And low above the dying twilight s bier A few faint-flushed and feathery clouds appear; Then o er the far savanna s utmost bourn- Flare the wide wings of the flamingo morn! no INSUFFICIENCY TO W. H. G. HE spirit cannot spread at will her wings; The dust clings to us, holding us to earth; Some vague degeneracy of spiritual birth Grapples us to the ground, and often clings Like lead about us; Heliconian springs Then gush in vain; while ever joy and mirth Seem palsied by an universal dearth: Yet sometimes, in such vein, the Poet sings* And if he cannot always touch the mark The soul has set, it is to be forgiven; Nor does that skyey minstrel, the rapt lark, Chant ever at the very gate of heaven, But oft, by changing moods of spirit driven, Pipes plaintive notes, low by his nest, at dark. 111 THE THRUSH have I seen at even-tide the thrush Embowered in the topmost branches fair, Warbling his love-lay in the golden air, As on his beating breast the sunset flush Lay like a glory, and the twilight hush Deepened between the sobs of song that there Filled the dark groves with eloquent despair; While all the listening laurel underbrush Trembled and thrilled its myriad leaves among, Till the white wood-nymph, as she silent stood, Leaned forward her sweet neck a-listening long,- Held captive in the darkening solitude, Chained by this necromancer of the wood, Enraptured by the ecstasies of song! 112 AN INVITATION Y box-wood, arbor-Wiae, and the pine We planted in our youth, are standing green About the porch, though Boreal bksts blow keen: Friend of past days, come worship at the shrine We love; sit at that table where no wine They need who quaff immortal Hippocrene, And from the hand of Poesy, serene, Sup on Olympian viands all divine! Oh, leave that buzzing hive, the city mart! Come, while my gnarl d oaks hold their wealth of snows, Come to a country home, let mind and heart Mellowed by midnight, while the back-log glows Touch on the themes most dear the Muse and Art Till in the east unfolds the auroran rose* 113 AN AUGUST SHOWER HE gilded Indian of the village vane Swirls to the east; and slow the tall tree-tops Wave with the fitful wind that stirs, and stops, And stirs anew; while gently falls again The gracious benefaction of the rain* The pendent garlands of the garden hops Sway with the breeze; and the blown peach-tree drops Her globes of crimson in the grassy lane* The thunder, from its cavernous retreat, Rolls hither o er the fields and darkening fells; The brooklet in the meadow slowly swells; The shower has come, and gone* Past is the heat* Happy the cattle in the clover dells Happy the flocks that range the stubbled wheat* 114 THE NYMPH N quiet stillness of a wild wood dell Knee-deep with fern, beneath the hemlock s screen, A brook, sliding the mossy rocks atween, Plunged into foam and music, as it fell Sheer to a pool, dark as a cloistered cell: Twas in the afternoon, in this demesne, I saw the goddess coming through the green; The dazzle of her beauty s miracle Smote me as with a gleaming scymetar; She alighted * * * panting, while her sister wings Pulsed * * * slowly as a butterfly s that are A-poise upon a flower the summer brings; I knew her by immortal murmurings: Twas Psyche, white-limbed, glowing like a star! 115 THE FIRST HOAR-FROST HE meads to-day are white with rime, no mirth Comes from the leafless thicket on the hill Where birds once choired; and along the rill, Ice-bound, no rippling music, but a dearth Of cheer on this the day of Winter s birth; Yet while the frosts the dormant wheat-fields fill, We know that warmly beats, beneath this chill, The unextinguishable pulse of Earth* And though my life s December spreads its gray, Lightly, in this first frost, within my hair, My spirit soars a falcon, now, in sooth, More eager for the zenith and her prey* Why count the years while in our breast we bear The bard s unalterable heart of Youth! 116 THE SUSQUEHANNA, FROM THE CLIFF TO H. H. H. PON Salunga s kureled brow at rest With evening and with thee as in a dream Life flows unrippled even as thy stream* Below, the islands jewel all thy breast; The dying glories of the crimson west Are mirrored on thy surface, till they seem Another sunset, and we fondly deem The splendors endless, e en as those possessed In youth, which sink, alas ! to duller hue As years around us darken, and but few Faint stars appear, as now appear in thee* How softly round thy clustered rocks of blue Thou murmurest onward! Oh! may we pursue Our way as calmly to the eternal seal 117 THE SONNET TILL let a due reserve the Muse attend Who threads the Sonnet s labyrinth* As some bell That tolls for vespers in a twilight dell, So in the octave, let her voice suspend Her pomp of phrase* The sestet may ascend Slowly triumphant, like an organ-swell In opulent grandeur rising pause, and dwell With gathering glories to its dolphin end : So, oft at eve around the sunset doors, From uppiled splendors of some crimsoned cloud Storm-based with dark unrolling like a scroll Forth the accumukted thunder pours Across the listening valleys, long and loud, With low reverberations, roll on roll! 118 INDIAN SUMMER OW still the groves ! And has some silver flute Ceased suddenly? The Summer days are sped; The earth is quiet; and far overhead All the blue altitudes of air are mute; While those JEolian harps are destitute Of music, for sweet Melody is dead, And Song to Silence in the woods is wed. No longer now we hear the thrush salute The laurels with soft-throated ecstasies* Where Summer hummed with buzzing sound, we see The straw-built hives, mute with immurmurous bees, No sound is heard; but soft and tenderly, Down the dim aisles of fading memory, Drifts the deep plaint of countless threnodies. 119 SOME PEAK OF HIGH ACHIEVE IS hard to be forgot, to have our name Fade from a world we even half despise; And men have done gold deeds of vast emprise To be remembered only, so that Fame Might fix them in her amber* Can we blame Such spirits, yearning for the stars and skies, If, courting death, she them emparadise? Mere love mere life, for these, were all too tame! So, as man s night comes on, fain would he weave His name around some deathless star, or die To give it to a flower* Ah! but to leave, O er foot-worn wastes of mediocrity, Some peak unscalable of high achieve To daze the dim blue of Futurity! 120 IN A VINEYARD OF ASTI ITALY NYMPH of cheer that lurks within the vine, You shall not so elude me as you think! Eyes shall be bright for you, and cheeks be pink, Though cool in clusters lurking, you recline. On cheese of Parma some day we shall dine, Faunian enough to make the Cyclops blink. O sprite of Asti! there shall be the clink Of fluted gksses foamed with golden wine: Some eve upon the Corso, down at Rome, Giulio and I shall find you, bottled trim, And, sipping softly, hear the hissing foam Of rising bubbles bursting round the rim, Then walk up to the Pincio for a whim, And watch the sunset glorify the Dome. 121 WINTER WOODS IS sweet to wander through new-fallen snow Far in the wooded upland miles from town. With head bent forward and eyes looking down All unenticed by the surrounding show The stir of small birds in the laurel low, Or partridge whirring by on wings of brown, Still wearing on the forehead as a crown The recollections of the long ago; And while the feet are moving mid the cold, To pace beneath the olive and the vine; At every step to tread through temples old; To lie on Capri, basking by the pine, And see far Naples where the sunset brine Makes her a pearl within a shell of gold! 122 NOVEMBER STATELY figure walking through the wood; Her features faded; in her eye a tear; Her face the grave of beauty, sad, severe; A queen dethroned and in her solitude* Her crimson robes that long the winds withstood, Now trailing dark in mourning for the year* In her pale hands the pendent ivy, sere; Stript of her coronal; in widowhood; Yet still remembering her magnificence, She walks superbly through the leafless glades; She feels the splendor of her opulence Has faded from her as the leafs, that fades; A queen indeed! in royal impotence She sweeps how proudly! down into the shades. 123 FEEDING THE PIGEONS VENICE is a chrysolite! her manners, too, Are pure Venetian, haughty, yet endearing* Didst ever see, my Claudio, such a bearing? Just watch her as the pigeons round her woo For more caresses, voice like some dove s coo, And with that face so saint-like yet so daring By Bacchus! as you say here in your swearing, She is as perfect as a drop of dew! Yet she is of the South the counterpart Of vengeance with its hidden venomed dart , , Hush I for the gargoyles hear ! * * , Though white as curds That sweet soft hand the hand that feeds the birds If you should hint about it certain words, Would plunge its poisoned poniard through your heart* 124 EVENING TO S. IS sweet at evening when the light of Mars Glows softly earthward over vale and dune, To saunter, solaced by the quiet tune The evening sings with no discordant jars; The cattle, dreaming, stand about the bars, Where ripe wheat yellows all the hills of June, What time the silver sickle of the moon Reaps down, in golden swaths, the western stars* The twilight to her purple caves has flown, While dying thunders roll o er dale and scar; In the still pool the bittern sees the star, And voices of the night begin to moan; A single bell has ceased to toll afar, And silence listens, stiller than a stone* 125 ADONIS TO APOLLO do I seal these lips and never sing Of love, I who so many a time have sung? Ah! passionate lips from my own lips have wrung Love ere it reached to song! How could I fling Love into verse whose poignant aspic s sting Silenced afl voice? Love to these lips has clung So fiery close, speech could not find among Her burning words one word whose eagle wing Could reach the cloud we soared in she and I! She would not hear my song; and on my mouth Laid her hot hand, and like the parched south Hungered for rain* O Love! though I should die, What could I do but water such a drouth? I was made mute by Love s own ecstasy* 126 FAME HAT does it profit, all the praise of men, When these our ears are filled with silent dust? What solace in the monumental bust Which never more can reach our distant ken ? Better to let the fluent brush and pen Drop from the hand into corrosive rust Than feel this feverish and ignoble lust For mere men s praises, never heard again* And I, in sooth, oft being much to blame, Listening the trump the inglorious goddess blows- Beguiled in youth by that injurious dame- Spake rashly then, but now as one who knows, That he who lets Love pass to clutch at Fame, Gathers but ashes for life s sweetest rose* 127 THE WEDDING MORN TO M. S. M. ET the sweet Dawn kiss darkness from the ground, And the great sun rise like a globe of fire Above the sea, and in his strong desire Rosy the gables of her home, and round Her lattice linger; breezes from the Sound Turn all the waste of reeds into one lyre For her; and let the swarm of marsh-birds choir, Till from the rushes comes the wild redound; And let old Ocean cease his rude uproar, And waft in pearls and all his roseate shells; While on the top of his foam-crested swells Let the poised curl hang whiter than before, For here to-day, upon this Island shore, Comes the sweet melody of marriage bells! 128 THE COUNTRY BURIAL NOVEMBER HE day is dull, and the last leaf is sped From tree and vine* The flowers are gone, and weeds Border the fence-row, as the year recedes* In drizzling mist slowly the mourners tread, Following the hearse at the procession s head Up to the church-yard, far above the meads, There where the parson by the new grave reads Dust unto dust! and all the world seems dead: But here come troops of children, young and sweet, Down the steep lane; they are the Future s flowers Which soon shall bloom for other eyes than ours In years to be; while all about the feet Are silent monitors of Nature s powers And in the ground sprouts the next summer s wheat* 129 THE POET HROUGH beds of asphodel he walks along To amaranthine meadows of the prime; He is in love with hope, and longs, in time, To add one bead more of denouncement strong Unto the rosary gainst all human wrong; He hopes besides so high his wishes climb To leave, in the wild garden of his rhyme, Some marvelous lily of immortal song* And still he gives full freely of his store, Walking this world as one entrancedly; And in life s turbid wave, for evermore, Drops the crown jewel of his Melody, As one who from some cliff upon the shore Lets fall, unseen, a ruby to the sea. 130 DEAR ARE THESE FIELDS by the fence-row blooms the golden-rod, When days are dreamy, tempting one to ease, I leave my house a wren s nest in the trees And pace the dear fields I so oft have trod* Here my impassioned father walked the sod And flung Shakespearian numbers down the breeze While slow we strolled, as brothers* Joys like these Are mine no more, since him the cold dull clod Long claims, alas! Yet still I softly tread, Musing, within these glades, and find repose. And oft, at eve, when pales the western rose, I then recall the sounding phrases read, As he, enraptured, dwelt on some fine close Timonian, Ah, I hear each word he said! 131 ACROSS THE YEARS HE old rememberable bam how gray It loomed above the orchard and the spring! The orchard where the robin used to sing, Building his nest beneath the blossomed spray* Where are the rose-bud maidens of that day? Some, like the birds, afar have taken wing; Some sleep below, but memories oft they bring Sweet as remembered odors of the hay* Ah, yet once more across the shadowy years She meets me in the gloaming. Down the lane We hear the dropping of the pasture bars; It is the trysting hour, and kindly stars Bloom in the twilight trees * * * O Love! O Tears! O Youth that was that will not come again! 132 MY NATIVE STREAM O Vallombrosan valleys let them go; To steep Sorrento, or where ilex-trees Cast their gray shadows o er Sicilian seas; Dream at La Conca D Oro; catch the glow Of sunset on the Ischian cliffs, and know The blue Ionian inlets, where the breeze, Leaving some snow-white temple s Phidian frieze, Wafts their light shallop languorously slow* Let me lie here, far off from Zante s shore, Where Susquehanna spreads her liquid miles, To watch the circles from the dripping oar; To see the halcyon dip, the eagle soar; To drift at eve around these Indian isles, Or dream at noon beneath the sycamore* 133 LA PRIMAVERA morning when the year is young and pale, While yet the azure of the trembling skies Is soft as is the blue within the eyes Of some sweet child; when in the quiet vale About the feet, and in the far-off dale, Close to the pool the earliest swallow flies; When down within the dell the dim haze lies And dreams; when from the thicket near, the quail Pipes to his mate; and the brown sparrow sings As if his soul were in his rapturous trills; Then the fair goddess with her gauzy wings Paces the meads serenely, toward the hills* It is the Spring come back again, who brings Hope to the heart amid her daffodils* 134 AN ELEGY MMORTAL laurel of no growth terrene, Gather, ye Muses, in Olympian air; T is for a shepherd loved of Pan to wear. Behold him, lying on the headland green That juts above the sea in this demesne, As still as sculptured marble, and as fair. Ye will not wake him if ye crown him there; Wreathe him the while he seems to sleep serene. The syrinx now lies useless by his head . . . Was that a sigh within the cypress near? Oh, soft, ye Muses! softly round him tread, Bring all your late reluctant garlands here; Relax your haughty mien; ye need not fear To crown this Dorian now for he is dead! 135 UPON THE HEARTH TREE will prove a blessing all fife long; From birth to death it brings us naught but good; Its shade will make a pleasant solitude For one who lies and dreams the grass among: What golden globes upon the limbs are hung In summer! and when dead, the burning wood Will foster sweetness in the poet s mood, Hum on his hearth and help his sylvan song. Its death is like the day s, for still it throws A lingering light roseate around our rooms, As slow the fire its last of life consumes; Then sinks to embers like the sunset snows, And dying, even in its ashes, glows With bright remembrance of the spring-time blooms* 136 THE EVENING COMES HE evening comes : the boatman lifts his net, Poles his canoe and leaves it on the shore; So low the stream he does not use the oar; The umber rocks rise like a parapet Up through the purple and the violet, And the faint-heard and never-ending roar Of moving waters lessens more and more, While each vague object looms a silhouette. The light is going; but low overhead Poises the glory of the evening star; The fisher, silent on the rocky bar, Drops his still line in pools of fading red; And in the sky, where all the day lies dead, Slowly the golden crescent sinks afar. 137 IN ITALY OT Nemi charms me with her olive-trees, Nor fair Frascati at the close of day Gemming the Alban Mount a pearl astray; The rampant Centaurs of the ruined frieze; The immemorial Caryatides; The marvels of the famed Flaminian Way; The wide Campagna s reaches, lone and gray;- All unallured I still can look on these* Unalienated yet by spire or dome, By cliff-built citadel, or stately pine, Or all the Naiads of Italian rills, My heart leaps westward o er the rolling brine To bask once more upon the purple hills The Appalachian ridges round my home! 138 WHY DO WE SING do we sing? the world has sung its lay Better than we can hope to sing; Of all things sweet is there left one sweet thing But one for us to say? What can we utter new at this old day? As some late-coming birds the songs we bring Are dulled by earlier songs of spring* Why do we sing? the world is deaf and gray; We know full well our words twill never read, But leave them in the dust; We know ah, well we know! it takes no heed Of song the sweetest sung; that not a crust It gives in fife; in death no praise no meed* Why do we sing ? Alas ! because we must* 139 THE EVENING BREEZE HE light is waning, and the gentle air Touches the shallow pools along the shore Not roughly, but as if it still forbore To spoil that mirrored surface sleeping fair* The water-lilies seem to have no care, But dream on in the silence; and the oar Sleeps in the shadows by the sycamore* I feel the zephyr s breath that here and there Bends the poised arrow-heads, and interlocks. Gently, their barbs; and on the maple shows The under silver of its leaves, and goes Landward so faintly that the twittering flocks Of small birds settling down upon the rocks Cease, in the dusk, their soft adagios* 140 DECEMBER TO MY BROTHER H. HE snow lies white upon the frozen plain, And loudly blows the hyperborean blast; His cohorts armed with knees of the rain Tilt fierce against me and go charging past* The darling summer that we loved in vain, Oh, where is she and all her gold of yore ? Far, far the naiad of the brook has flown, Her reeds all tuneless on the icy shore; Gleams from the wood, white as Carrara s stone, The Dorian column of the sycamore; O er barren hill-tops girt with windy trees The songless thickets make their chilly moan ; And on the high crags where the wan snows freeze. The gaunt gray Winter mounts his stormy throne. 141 THE CLOSE OF DAY HE sun is sinking softly down the sky, And all the air is growing hushed and still, A tinge of rose has touched the purple hill Where slow the silver river murmurs by. The busy day has run the head-race dry; The wheel rests, unrevolving, by the mill, Where, like an amber thread, the dwindled rill Slips past the ripening slopes of yellow rye. As yet the fish is sun-tipped on the vane, Though cottage lamps are lit beneath the boughs; At rest, within the furrow, stand the plows, And homeward o er the hill-top goes the wain; While in a dusty glory all the cows Come winding, slowly, up the golden lane. 142 LA SORELLA MIA T day when thou wast in the church-yard laid Can I forget? Thou wert so passing fair, Thy sweet neck like the lily, and thy hair Gold-chestnut on thy brow. . * O gentle Maid, Who would have thought thy loss could so invade The sunshine of my years, and everywhere Make my remembrance of thee my despair Thou who art but a visionary shade! Had I but loved thee more ere thou hadst fled Far from these fields, that tender heart of thine Had oftener, in those twilights, kin in mine To comfort and console. Would I had fed Thy heart with more affection now thou rt dead, Alone I drink this wormwood for my wine* 143 BY THE RIVER AT SUNSET HE sting of this tarantula of toil, The glitter of some vague Golconda s gold, These goad us through our lives* We men have sold Our birthright for this pottage drudge and moil Not only cities now our souls embroil In haste, but in each hamlet too, behold The roaring wheels of hurry on are rolled, This writhing serpent never stops to coil* Thou silent sun ! now sinking down the dale ; Thou river fair! unrippled by an oar; Restful yet mighty emblems ye, all hail! Teach your repose to man for evermore, That he upon life s lake that knows no shore May move as peaceful as a folded sail* 144 THE SYRINX ME evening by the velvet vale that leads The unrippled course of that Arcadian rill, Where all the golden air is hushed and still Above the rushes and dark water-weeds That sentinel the margin of dim meads, Sudden there was a stir; there was a thrill That trembled to its heart each daffodil, Pan, like a satyr, lurked within the reeds. He watched the white nymph Syrinx where she stood, And chased her through the lush-green water-ways, To clasp, but reeds! not her whom he pursued; Then made of these a pipe, so sweet, though rude, That pastoral Poets, listening, on rare days, Envy the god his reedy roundelays. 145 SUBMISSION IS well, stretched out beneath the yellow trees, Deep in the hollow near the silent run, To watch for hours the leaves, as one by one, Like wounded birds they flutter on the breeze* Silence is brooding o er the golden dale, But from the hill-tops, ever and anon, Muffled and faint, is heard the cruel gun That wakes the echoes in the distant vale* Tis well to leave the world or dearest friend, And in these Autumn ferns alone to lie; To feel that life is drawing to an end E en as the leaves that drift adown the sky; To endure that Fate we cannot comprehend, And, like the Year, submit, and learn to die. 146 THE DUSK GENTLE air is in the twilight sky; The clouds are spirits, waving shadowy wings Above the empurpled cliffs* The hour brings, From o er the wood, the whippoorwill s lone cry Faint voices, low from out the gloaming, sigh; Afar, some spirit of the belfry rings Softly the evening bells; and silence clings Like some loved arm around us, long kid by. No other sound the sombre stillness mars All hushed as are the poplars minarets; The dusky cattle dozing by the bars Seem gainst the sky but shadowy silhouettes; And now, above the hills, the first few stars Pace their steep paths and wear their coronets. 147 BELOVED DALES HOSE words believe not, for they were not true. That lauding other lands disparaged mine. If I have sung the olive and the pine; If still from half-closed eyelids looking through I dreamed of Capri, dimly vague and blue; If I have praised the castles of the Rhine, Or Dorian inlets of the -ffigean brine; I have not therefore lost my love for you, O river islands that in clusters lie As beautiful as clouds ! ye are my own ! Beloved dales, and crags that touch the sky, The tendrils of my heart for years have grown Around you all, ye cannot be overthrown, Ye hold my heart, and shall until I die! 148 UNSOLACED AN AUGUST THBENE HE plowman slowly down the furrow goes; The harvest fields are empty bare and shorn; The standing squadrons of the tasseled corn Turn goldener each day in golden rows* The yellow peach within the orchard grows Encrimsoned toward the sun; and faintly borne O er dale and dell, fond fancy hears the horn September from her phantom hill-side blows* Yet in the heart the fragrance of the rose The summer s rose lingers with eloquence; Nor can the autumn s rare magnificence, Nor her soft voices and adagios For rapture gone bring balm or recompense, Or soothe the sadness that the soul overflows. 149 THE GLOAMING HE tree-tops tremble with the gentle air; Cool as a sister s fingers on my brow I feel the fondling of the zephyr now, As if some delicate spirit touched my hair* The wings of twilight, opening darkly fair, Shed round their velvet glamour, and the glow, Pale on the western pyre, is burning low; Hush! for the Day is kneeling down in prayer* Her life is o er, and she is moving on Into the shadowy caverns of the Vast; Into the hollows void of moon or sun, Down to the dim irrevocable Past; Yet shall she thread those doors, nor look aghast- She walked in light until her race was run. 150 Colonial \3rtss Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. Boston, Mass., U.S A. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY