r 
 
LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 BY 
 
 PAUL H. HAYNE. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 
 1872. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 
 
 j. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 TO MY WIFE. 
 
 AH ! once I held the Poet s flame 
 
 A steadfast, heavenly star, above 
 The loftiest lights of mortal fame, 
 And to have won the Poet s name 
 
 I dreamed was more than love ! 
 
 Now, were a Shakspeare s radiant crown 
 
 By all the Muses borne to me, 
 I would not grasp that fair renown, 
 If thus my soul must needs disown 
 
 Its love, dear Heart ! for thee. 
 
 Even Shakspeare s fame at last shall sink, 
 
 His titles fail, his splendors die ; 
 But love, s^^ch love as ours, I think, 
 Was born, o er Time and Death to drink 
 
 Of immortality ! 
 
 So, for love s sake, but scarce for aught 
 
 These wavering strains may sing thee, Sweet, 
 I bind these sheaves of rhythmic thought, 
 Spring-sown, but in late autumn brought, 
 And laid before thy feet ! 
 
 M768814 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Daphles (An Argive Story) 13 
 
 Renewed , 32 
 
 Krishna and his Three Handmaidens 35 
 
 Under-the Pine (To the Memory of Henry Timrod) 37 
 
 A Dream of the South Wind 40 
 
 Aethra 42 
 
 In the Mist 43 
 
 The Bonny Brown Hand 44 
 
 A Summer Mood 46 
 
 Midnight 48 - 
 
 Sonnet (Addressed to William Morris) 49 . 
 
 Sonnet (November) 50 
 
 Sonnet (Sylvan Musings In May) 50 
 
 Sonnet (The Cottage on the Hill) 51 
 
 Sonnet (Poets) 5^ 
 
 Sonnet (The Phantom Bells) 52- 
 
 Sonnet 53 
 
 Sonnet (The Life-Forest) 54. 
 
 Sonnet (Cloud-Fantasies) 54 . 
 
 Sonnet 55 - 
 
 ( vii ) 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Sonnet 56-- 
 
 Fire Pictures 56 
 
 From the Woods 65 
 
 An Anniversary 66 
 
 Dolce far Niente 69 
 
 Cambyses and the Macrobian Bow 70 
 
 By the Autumn Sea 74 
 
 The Wife of Brittany 75 
 
 The River 108 
 
 The Nest in 
 
 The Little Saint in 
 
 The Story of Glaucus the Thessalian 113 
 
 Sonnet 120 " 
 
 Marguerite 120 
 
 Not Dead 122 
 
 Apart 124 
 
 " In Utroque Fidelis" 125 
 
 The Lotos and the Lily 127- 
 
 Windless Rain 129-- 
 
 Chloris 130 .- 
 
 Nature, Betrothed and Wedded 131 - 
 
 Fortunio (A Parable for the Times) JSS" 
 
 Stonewall Jackson 136 - 
 
 The Little White Glove 141 * 
 
 A Feudal Picture 143 
 
 The Warning 146 
 
 Drifting 147 - 
 
 Sonnet ( Carolina) *49 
 
CONTENTS. ix 
 
 I AGH 
 
 Sonnet (Leigh Hunt) 150" 
 
 Sonnet 151* 
 
 Sonnet (Soul Advances) I5 1 " 
 
 Ode to Sleep 152- 
 
 Song 155 
 
 Hopes and Memories 156 
 
 Widderin s Race i5 6 ~ 
 
 October 165 
 
 Here and There 167. 
 
 Ode in Honor of the Bravery and Sacrifices of the Soldiers of the 
 
 South 168- 
 
 Sonnet (Illegitimate) 176- 
 
 Sonnet (Vernal Pictures Without and Within) 177- 
 
 Welcome to Winter 178 
 
 Will 179 
 
 Sonnet 181- 
 
 To My Mother 182 
 
Love and be loved ! yet know love s holiest deeps 
 
 Few sound while living f when the loved one sleeps 
 
 That last, strange sleep beneath the mournful sod, 
 
 Then Memory wakes, like some remorseful god, 
 
 And all the golden past, we scarce did prize, 
 
 Subtly revives, with light of tender eyes, 
 
 That smiled their soft forgiveness on our wrongs, 
 
 And old thoughts rise, with echoes of sweet songs, 
 
 Soul-nightingales, in pensive twilight born, 
 
 To press their throbbing breasts against the thorn 
 
 Of sharp regret! till love so blends with pain, 
 
 And self-reproach with passion, we would fain 
 
 Re-live our years, their dim track jo.urney ing o er, 
 
 That thus, our lost Beloved, lost no more 
 
 In the vague distances of dreadful death, 
 
 Might read our hearts, and feel what passionate breath 
 
 Half stifled once, is quick to thrill and burn 
 
 In the keen fervor of that love s return, 
 
 Whose kiss once dropped on heedless eyes and brow, 
 
 Is all of heaven we madly yearn for now ! 
 
LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 DAPHLES. 
 
 AN ARGIVE STORY. 
 
 ONCE on the throne of Argos sat a maid, 
 
 Daphles the fair ; serene and unafraid 
 
 She ruled her realm, for the rough folk were brought 
 
 To worship one they deemed divinely wrought 
 
 In beauty and mild graciousness of heart : 
 
 Nobles and courtiers, too, espoused her part, 
 
 So that the sweet young face all thronged to see, 
 
 Glanced from her throne-room s silken canopy 
 
 (Broidered with leaves, and many a snow-white dove), 
 
 Rosily conscious of her people s love. 
 
 Only the chief of a far frontier clan, 
 
 A haughty, bold, ambitious nobleman, 
 
 By law her vassal, but self-sworn to be 
 
 From subject-tithe, and tribute boldly free, 
 
 And scorning most this weak girl-sovereign s reign, 
 
 Now from the mountain fastness to the plain 
 
 Summoned his savage legions to the fight, 
 
 Wherein he hoped to wrench the imperial might 
 
 From Daphles, and confirm his claim thereto. 
 
 But Doracles, the insurgent chief, could know 
 
I4 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 \ Naught of the secret charm, the subtle stress 
 Of beauty wed to warm unselfishness, 
 Which, in her hour of trial, wrapped the Queen 
 Safely apart, in golden air serene 
 Of deep devotion, and fond faith of those 
 The steadfast hearts betwixt her and her foes. 
 The oldest courtier, schooled in state-craft guile, 
 Some loyal fire at her entrancing smile 
 Felt strangely kindled in his outworn soul ; 
 Far more the warrior youths her soft control 
 Moulded to noble deeds, till all the land, 
 Aroused at Love s and Honor s joint command, 
 Bristled with steel, and rang with sounds of war. 
 
 Still rashly trusting in his fortunate star, 
 
 This arrogant thrall who fain would grasp a crown, 
 
 Backed by half -barbarous hordes, marched swiftly 
 
 down 
 
 Twixt the hill ramparts and the Western Sea. 
 First, blazing homesteads greet him, whence did flee 
 The frightened hinds through fires themselves had lit 
 Mid the ripe grain, lest foes should reap of it ; 
 Or, here and there, some groups of aged folk, 
 Women and men, bent down beneath the yoke 
 Of cruel years, and babbling idiot speech. 
 "Methinks," cried Doracles, "our arms will reach 
 The realm s unshielded heart; forlo! the breath, 
 The mere hot fume of rapine and of death 
 Which flames before our legions, like a blight 
 Withers this people s valor and their might." 
 
 The fifes played shriller ; the wild trumpet s blast 
 Smote the great host, and thrilled them as it passed ; 
 
DAPHLES. 15 
 
 While clashing shields, and spears which caught the 
 
 morn, 
 
 And splendid banners in strong hands upborne, 
 And plumed helms, and steeds of matchless race, 
 And in the van that clear, keen, eagle face 
 Of Doracles, firm set on shoulders tall, 
 Squared like a rock, and towering o er them all, 
 With all the pomp and swell of martial strife, 
 Woke the burnt plains and bleak defiles to life. 
 So phalanx after phalanx glittering filed 
 Firm to the front : their haughty leader smiled 
 To see with what a bold and buoyant air 
 The lowliest footman marched before him there, 
 Till his proud head he lifted to the sun, 
 And his heart leaped as at a victory won 
 That self-same hour, o er which bright-hovering shone 
 The steadfast image of an ivory throne. 
 
 But the Queen s host, by skillful champions led, 
 Its powers meanwhile concentred to a head, 
 Lay, an embattled force, with wary eye, 
 Ready to ward or strike whene er the cry 
 Of coming foemen on their ears should fall, 
 Nigh the huge towers which guard the capital. 
 
 Not long their watch : one bluff October day, 
 There rose a blare of trumpets far away, 
 And sound of thronging hoofs which muffled came, 
 Borne on the wind, like the dull noise of flame 
 Half stifled in dense woodlands ; then the wings 
 Of the Queen s host, as each swift section flings 
 The imperial banner proudly fluttering out, 
 Spread from the royal centre. Hark ! a shout, 
 
1 6 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 As from those thousand hearts in one great soul 
 
 Sublimely fused, rose thunder-deep, to roll, 
 
 In wild acclaim, far down the quivering van ; 
 
 And wilder still the heroic tumult ran 
 
 From front to rear, when, through her palace gate, 
 
 Daphles, in unaccustomed martial state, 
 
 A keen spear shimmering in its silver hold, 
 
 And on her brow the Argive crown of gold, 
 
 Flashed like a sunbeam on her warriors sight. 
 
 Girt by her generals, on a neighboring height 
 
 She reined her Lybian courser, while the air 
 
 Played with the bright waves of her meteor hair, 
 
 And on her lovely April face the tide 
 
 Of varied feeling now a jubilant pride 
 
 In those strong arms and stronger hearts below, 
 
 And now a prescient fear did ebb and flow, 
 
 Its sensitive heaven transforming momently. 
 
 But soon the foeman s cohorts, like a sea, 
 
 With waves of steel, and foam of snow-white plumes, 
 
 Slowly emerged from out the forest glooms, 
 
 In splendid pomp and antique pageantry. 
 
 An ominous pause ! And then the trumpets high 
 
 Sounded the terrible onset, and the field 
 
 Rocked as with earthquake, and the thick air reeled 
 
 With clangors fierce from echoing hill to hill. 
 
 Bloody but brief the contest ! All the skill 
 
 Of Doracles against the steadfast will 
 
 Planted by love in faithful hearts that day 
 
 Frothed like an idle tide that slips away 
 
 From granite walls ! His knights their furious 
 
 blows 
 Discharged on what seemed statues whose repose 
 
DAPHLES. 17 
 
 Was iron, or their fated coursers hurled 
 
 On spears unbent as bases of a world ! 
 
 Meanwhile the whole dread scene did Daphles view 
 
 With anguished, tearless eyes. But when she knew 
 
 The victory hers, down the hill-slopes she urged 
 
 Her restless steed, where still but faintly surged 
 
 The last worn waves of tumult ; there her bands 
 
 Of conquering captains she with fervent hands 
 
 And o erfraught swelling breast did proudly greet. 
 
 Yet her pale face was touched with pity sweet 
 
 While the chained rebels passed her, worn and sore 
 
 With ghastly wounds, and shivering in their gore. 
 
 But when, untamed, uncowed, in midst of these, 
 
 The grand, defiant form of Doracles 
 
 Rose like a god discrowned, her wan cheeks flushed, 
 
 And through her heart a quick, hot torrent rushed 
 
 Of undefined, mysterious sympathy. 
 
 Viewing that haughty brow, that unbent knee, 
 
 "O kingly head !" she thought, "too well I know 
 
 How bitter-keen to him the signal blow 
 
 This day hath dealt ! O kingly resolute eyes, 
 
 Shrining the sovran soul ! twere surely wise 
 
 To change their glance of cold vindictive gloom 
 
 To grateful light, and make what seemed a doom 
 
 Heavy as death, the clouded path to fame, 
 
 Lordship, and honor !" Ah, but pity came 
 
 To crown admiring kindness with a flame 
 
 Of subtler life; for he, the vanquished one, 
 
 On whom that day his fate s malignant sun 
 
 Had set in storms, that night would slumber, kissed 
 
 By a fair phantom girt with golden mist, 
 
 A new-born delicate love, but dimly guessed 
 
 Even in the pure depths of the maiden breast, 
 
 2* 
 
!8 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Whence the sweet sylph had scaped her unaware. 
 
 But when the evening silence drew anear, 
 
 And round about the borders of the world 
 
 The second night since that great contest furled 
 
 Its brooding shades, the young Queen, all alone, 
 
 Paused by the dungeon floor whereon were thrown, 
 
 At listless length, the limbs of Doracles. 
 
 "How, how," she murmured, "may I best appease 
 
 His stricken pride, or touch to tender calm 
 
 His fevered honor ? with what healing balm 
 
 Allay the smart wherewith his spirit groans ? 
 
 Perplexed, and yearning, on the dismal stones 
 
 Without the prison door she walked apart, 
 
 Love, doubt, and shame, all struggling in her heart, 
 
 Till the large flood of mingled love and woe 
 
 Rose to her snowy eyelids, and did flow 
 
 In soft refreshing tears like spring-tide showers; 
 
 Then, bright and blushing as the moss-rose bovvers 
 
 Of dewy May, she pushed the huge grate back, 
 
 And through the dusky glooms, the shadows black 
 
 Dawned glowingly ! Next for a moment she 
 
 Stood in a timid, strange uncertainty, 
 
 Changing from rosy red to deathly white ; 
 
 When, as a Queen sustained by true love s right, 
 
 She spake in mild, pure, steadfastness of soul: 
 
 "I come, O Doracles, with no mean dole 
 
 Of transient pity, but to show thee how 
 
 Thy mistress would exalt the abased brow 
 
 Of one who knows her not !" Therewith she freed 
 
 His fettered limbs, or yet his brain could heed 
 
 Or comprehend her mercy s cordial scope : 
 
 His soul had shrunk too low for dreams of hope, 
 
 Such swift misfortunes smote him : still, when all 
 
 The Queen s fair meaning on his mind did fall. 
 
DAPHLES. 19 
 
 The locked and frozen sternness of his look 
 Broke up, as breaks the death-cold wintry brook 
 1 Its icy spell at noonday; yet his face 
 Was lighted not by thankful, reverent grace, 
 But flashed an evil triumph where he stood 
 Spurning his unloosed chains. In such base mood, 
 One eager foot pressed on the dungeon stair, 
 "What terms," he asked, "O Queen, demand st thou 
 
 here? 
 
 I pledge thee faith !" Silent were Daphles lips, 
 And all her gentle hopes by swift eclipse 
 Were darkened. With a deathly smile she signed 
 The chief farewell, as one who scorned to bind 
 Her mercy with set terms. He turned to go, 
 Self-centred, callous, dreaming not how low 
 Her heart had sunk at each cold, shallow word 
 With which his barren nature, faintly stirred 
 By ruth, or love, or pardon, dared repay 
 Her matchless mercy. On his unchecked way 
 He turned to go, when with one shuddering sob, 
 And deep-drawn, plaintive breath, which seemed to rob 
 Life of its last dear hope, the Queen sank down, 
 Wrapped in a death-like trance. With sullen frown, 
 And many a muttered oath, he raised her form, 
 Frail now as some pale lily by the storm 
 Wind-blown and beaten; for at woman s love 
 He could but vaguely guess, and no poor dove 
 Pierced by the woodman s shaft was less to him 
 Than this fair spirit struggling in the dim 
 And tortured twilight of unshared desire ; 
 Nor could he part the pure romantic fire 
 Of such high passion from the lukewarm flame 
 That feebly burns in sordid hearts and tame, 
 
20 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Not of love s heat, but vacant flattery s born, 
 
 To feed his pride, yet stir the latent scorn 
 
 Of that rough manhood such hard natures know. 
 
 Waked from her trance, with wandering eyes and slow 
 
 The Queen looked round, but dimly conscious yet, 
 
 Until at last her faltering glance was set 
 
 On Doracles, to whom that he might see 
 
 How a soft ruth to love s intensity 
 
 Had strangely grown she laid her deep heart bare : 
 
 Then, with a sweet but nobly queen-like air, 
 
 She said, "O Doracles, in just return 
 
 For all this love and pity, which did yearn 
 
 To lift thee fallen, and to find thee, lost, 
 
 And slowly sickening underneath the frost 
 
 Of bleak despair, I well might ask of thee 
 
 Thy heart, with all its rarest freight in fee, 
 
 Save that I feel my virgin fame and life 
 
 Must count as pure, when thou hast made me wife, 
 
 Though but a wife in state and name alone. 
 
 Behold, O chief! I proffer, too, my throne, 
 
 Not as thy freedom s sole condition given, 
 
 But that men s eyes and scornful thoughts be driven 
 
 Away from what in me may seem as ill, 
 
 If if perchance, thou shouldst reject me still." 
 
 At which hard word she droops her head, and sighs, 
 
 While patient tears bedew her downcast eyes. 
 
 Now, with sly semblance of a soul at ease, 
 
 Her liberal proffer crafty Doracles 
 
 Freely embraced ! They passed the prison-bound, 
 
 And that same day with silver-ringing sound 
 
 Of trump and cymbal, the state heralds cried 
 
 Abroad through all the city, far and wide, 
 
DAPHLES. 21 
 
 The Queen s vast pardon : whereupon her court, 
 
 Nobles and dames, each quaintly gorgeous sport, 
 
 Known in the old time, bold or debonair, 
 
 With feasts, and mimic strifes, and pageants rare, 
 
 Did hold in honor of their sovereign s choice; 
 
 A choice none there would question ! Not a voice, 
 
 Gentle or simple, but was raised to bless, 
 
 And pray the kindly gods for happiness 
 
 And peace on both ! Meanwhile the thrall made 
 
 king, 
 
 Albeit a secret anger still would wring 
 His thankless soul, in princely fashion took 
 The general homage, nor by word or look 
 Betrayed the festering consciousness within: 
 So gracious seemed he, Daphles hopes begin 
 To wake, and whisper fond, sweet, foolish words 
 Close to her heart, that flutters like a bird s 
 Wooed in the spring-dawn : yet, alas ! alas ! 
 For joy that dies, and dreamy hopes that pass 
 To nothingness ! In midst of this, her trust, 
 Came a swift blow which smote her to the dust ; 
 News that her ingrate love had basely fled, 
 Whither none knew. Scarce had this shaft been sped 
 From fate s unerring bow, than swift again 
 Hurtled a second steeped in poisoned pain ; 
 For now the whole dark truth came sternly out : 
 Leagued with her bitterest foes, a savage rout 
 Of mountain robbers o er the frontier-land, 
 He unto whom she proffered heart and hand, 
 Kingdom and crown, had bared his treacherous blade, 
 And of the great and just gods unafraid, 
 Upreared his standard neath the blood-red star, 
 And raised once more the incarnate curse of war ! 
 
22 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 So from that day all gladness left the heart 
 
 Of broken Daphles; she would muse apart 
 
 From court and friends, her once blithe footsteps slow, 
 
 Her once proud head bow d down, and such wild woe 
 
 Couched in the clouded depths of mournful eyes 
 
 That few could mark her misery but with sighs 
 
 Deep almost as her own. At last, she wrote 
 
 (For still her soul hailed, watery and remote. 
 
 One beam of hope) a missive tender-sweet, 
 
 Charmed with such pathos, to her delicate feet 
 
 It might have lured a spirit, nigh to death, 
 
 And straight imbued with warm compassionate breath 
 
 A heart as cold as spires of Arctic ice ! 
 
 Ah, futile hope ! Ah, fond and vain device ! 
 
 Not all the pleading eloquence of wrong, 
 
 Veiling its wounds, and golden-soft as song 
 
 Trilled by the brown Sicilian nightingales, 
 
 In dusky nooks of melancholy vales, 
 
 Could melt the granite will of Doracles. 
 
 Each tender line she sent him did but tease 
 
 And sting his obdurate temper into hate, 
 
 As if the deep harmonious terms that wait 
 
 On truest love, were wasp-like, poisoned things : 
 
 Her timorous hints, her sweet imaginings, 
 
 Far thoughts, and dreams evanishing, but high, 
 
 Filled with the maiden dews of sanctity, 
 
 He crushed, as one might crush in maddened hours 
 
 The fairest of the sisterhood of flowers; 
 
 No further answer made he than could be 
 
 Couched in brief terms of cold discourtesy, 
 
 Holding all love the noblest love on earth 
 
 Of lesser moment than an insect s birth, 
 
DAPHLES. 
 
 Buzzing its life out twixt the dawn and dark. 
 
 That letter stifled the last healthful spark 
 
 Of the Queen s flickering reason, turned her wit 
 
 To wild and errant courses, sadly lit 
 
 By wandering stars, and orbs of fantasy. 
 
 Deeming that she full soon must sink and die, 
 
 Daphles, still true to that one dominant thought 
 
 And firm affection which such ill had brought, 
 
 Summoned her learned scribes and bade them draw 
 
 After strict form and precedents of law, 
 
 Her solemn testament; whereby she gave 
 
 Her throne to Doracles, whene er the grave 
 
 Closed o er her broken heart and humbled head. 
 
 But now her chiefs and nobles, hard bestead 
 
 By circumstance, and dreading much lest he, 
 
 The renegade, and rebel, who did flee 
 
 From love to league with license, yet should sway 
 
 The honored Argive sceptre, on a day 
 
 Called forth to solemn council and debate 
 
 Lords, liegemen, ministers, to save the state 
 
 From threatened tyranny and upstart rule : 
 
 Thereto the wan Queen, powerless now to school 
 
 Features or mind to subjugation meet, 
 
 Came weakly tottering; in her lofty seat 
 
 She sank bewildered, listless; all could mark 
 
 Beneath her languid eyes the hollows dark, 
 
 And save that sometimes as she slowly turned 
 
 Her wasted form, the fires of fever burned, 
 
 Death s prescient blazon, on each sunken cheek 
 
 Her face was pallid as a cold white streak 
 
 Of wintry moonlight on Siberian snows; 
 
 Her quivering mouth and chill contracted brows 
 
 2 3 
 
2 4 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Bespoke an inward torture, while frouii all 
 The shrewd debate within that council hall 
 Her dim thoughts wandered vaguely, lost and dumb. 
 But when her pitying maidens round her come, 
 And gently strive on her drooped head to place 
 The self-same laurel garland which did grace 
 Her warm, white temples on that morn of strife 
 And woeful victory, her sick brain seemed rife 
 Once more with memories; in her hand she pressed 
 The half-dead wreath, and o er her flowing vest 
 Strewed the plucked leaves those aimless fingers tore 
 Unwittingly ; which on the marble floor, 
 Down fluttering, one by one, lay blurred and dead, 
 Like the sere hopes her withered heart had shed, 
 Smitten of love ; for now she touched the close 
 Of the soul s dreary autumn, and the snows 
 Of winter soon would clasp her eyelids cold. 
 Yea, soon, too soon ! for while her fingers fold 
 The garland loosely, and in fitful grief 
 She still would strip the circlet leaf by leaf, 
 Till now one-half the wreath is plucked and bare, 
 She lifts her dim eyes, hearkening, as though ware 
 Of mystic voices calling on her name ; 
 Therewith her cheek, whence the quick fevered flame 
 Had quite pulsed out, with one last quiver, she 
 Drops on the cushioned dais passively ; 
 For death, more kind than love, hath brought her 
 peace. 
 
 Long was it ere her stricken realm could cease 
 To mourn for Daphles ; yet her burial rites, 
 With all their mournful pomp, their sombre sights 
 
DAPHLES. 25 
 
 Funereal, scarce were passed, when her last Will, 
 Despite its humbling terms which rankled still 
 In all men s minds, her faithful courtiers sent, 
 With news of that most sudden, sad event 
 Which made him king, to restless Doracles. 
 What recked he then that to its bitterest lees 
 A pure young soul had quaffed of misery s cup, 
 And after, death s? " My star," he thought, "flames up, 
 Fronting the heights of empire! All is well !" 
 Thereon, impelled by keen desire to dwell 
 In his new realm, with reckless haste he rode 
 From town to town, till now the grand abode, 
 The palace of the royal Argive race, 
 Did rise before him in its lofty place, 
 O erlooking leagues of golden fields and streams, 
 Fair hills and shadowy vineyards, by great teams 
 Of laboring oxen rifled morn by morn, 
 Till the bared tremulous branches swung forlorn 
 Gainst the red flush of autumn s sunset sky. 
 Housed with rich state therein, full regally 
 The king his sovereign life and course began, 
 Striving at one swift bound to reach the van 
 Of princely fame; his rare magnificence 
 Of feasts, shows, pageants, and high splendors, whence 
 The wondering guests all dazzled went their way, 
 Grew to a world-wide proverb for display 
 And costly lavishness. Yet one there was 
 O er whose gray head these days of pomp did pass 
 Like purpling shadows o er the faded grass : 
 Wit touched him not to smiles, gay music s flow 
 Fell powerless on his closed heart s secret woe, 
 While at their feasts silent he sat, and grim. 
 Ofttimes the king a cold glance cast on him, 
 
 3 
 
26 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 As one who marred their mirthful revelry, 
 And in the boisterous spring-tide of their glee 
 Rose like a boding phantom ! More and more 
 He felt a vague, dim trouble at the core 
 Of his rude nature stirred, whene er he saw 
 Phorbas draw near; something akin to awe, 
 If not to dread, for this old man did stand 
 Chiefest of Daphles mourners in her land, 
 As chief of her life s friends,, ere that black doom 
 Stole from her heart its joy, her cheek its bloom. 
 
 Just where the mellowed rays of noonday light 
 
 Streamed through the curtained gloom, obscurely bright. 
 
 Which wrapped the great art-galleries richly round, 
 
 There hung, mid many a stately portrait, bound 
 
 In frames of costly ivory, carved and wrought, 
 
 A picture, which the king s eyes oft had sought 
 
 With anxious wonder; for day following day 
 
 Would Phorbas, mutely sorrowing, make delay 
 
 Going or coming from the council-hall 
 
 To view that muffled mystery on the wall. 
 
 Over it flowed a veil of silvery hue, 
 
 With here and there fine threds of gold shot through 
 
 The delicate woof; and whoso chanced to turn 
 
 A glance thereon, would feel his spirit burn 
 
 To pierce the jealous veil whose folds might hide 
 
 Some priceless marvel. Now, at high noontide 
 
 Of one calm autumn day, the king again 
 
 Met Phorbas his worn features drawn with .pain, 
 
 And in his eyes the sharp salt-rheum of age 
 
 Still poring on the picture ! " Thou a sage !" 
 
 Sneered Doracles, "yet idly bent, forsooth, 
 
 On vaporing fancies?" Then, more harsh, "The truth! 
 
DAPHLES. 27 
 
 The truth, old man ! What strong spell drags thee here ? 
 
 (Some charm, methinks, twixt passion and despair:) 
 
 Morn after morn, forcing thine eyes to stray 
 
 O er yon blank mystery? Pry thee, Phorbas, say 
 
 What image lurks beneath that glimmering shroud ? 
 
 Perchance the last king s? Well ! am I less proud 
 
 And princely wise than he ? Or art thou bold 
 
 To deem me all unworthy to behold 
 
 My brave forerunner?" Thereupon he knit 
 
 His rugged brows, the while his soul was lit 
 
 To keen, impatient wrath. With trembling hands 
 
 But not for fear Phorbas unloosed the bands, 
 
 Studded with diamond points, which clasped the veil 
 
 Close to its place. The startled prince grew pale, 
 
 As there, in all her fresh young grace, did shine 
 
 The face of Daphles, with a smile divine, 
 
 Into arch dimples rippling joyfully ! 
 
 Some faintly-pensive memory seemed to vie 
 
 With deeper feelings, in the low, quick tone 
 
 Wherewith the king spake, whispering to his own 
 
 Half- wakened heart, "Certes, it could not be, 
 
 That she, who owned the glorious face I see, 
 
 Bright with all brightness of a young delight, 
 
 Yet pined and withered neath the fatal night 
 
 Of starless grief!" To which, " Thy pardon, sire," 
 
 The old man said, "but ere my life s low fire 
 
 Hath quite gone out, I fain would free my soul 
 
 Of that which long hath borne me care and dole ; 
 
 So, sovereign lord, list to the tale I tell !" 
 
 And therewithal did Phorbas deem it well 
 
 To show how Daphles darkened life did wane ; 
 
 How love, first touched by doubt, soon changed to pain, 
 
2 g LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 And, last, blank desolation, whose wild stress 
 Wrecked and made bare her perfect loveliness, 
 O erwhelming wit with beauty. "Still," said he, 
 " O sire ! to her last hour most tenderly 
 She spake of thee, her twilight reason set 
 On the sole thought, My love may love me yet ; 
 For man s love comes with knowledge, so I deem, 
 Slow-hearted man s f Ah, heaven ! she could not dream, 
 But thy name filled her dreams. When madness stole 
 Like a dread mist about her, and ter soul, 
 
 Wound in its viewless cerement-folds accursed " 
 
 " Madness !" the king cried in a sharp outburst 
 
 Of wild amazement : "madness ! / have known 
 
 The mad impatience of a will o ergrown, 
 
 When sternly thwarted in its fiery zeal, 
 
 But dreamed not how these fairy creatures feel, 
 
 These soft, frail-natured women, if, perchance, 
 
 Love turn on them a cold or lukewarm glance 
 
 Of brief denial !" Then the impatient red, 
 
 In a swift flood, but not of anger, spread 
 
 O er the king s face; convulsed it seemed, and stern. 
 
 But when from garrulous Phorbas he did learn 
 
 How the Queen s laurel wreath half bare became, 
 
 The hot blood ebbed, and o er its waning flame 
 
 Coursed the first tear his warrior-soul had shed. 
 
 Nor could he rouse again the lustihead 
 
 Of ruder thoughts, but, thickly muttering, laid 
 
 On the fair portrait of the sovereign maid 
 
 A reverent hand ; from midst the painted dome 
 
 Of the great gallery forth he bore it home 
 
 Unto the secret chamber of his rest ; 
 
 There next his couch he placed the beauteous guest ; 
 
DAPHLES. 
 
 2Q 
 
 There feasted on its sweetness ; and since naught 
 
 Of public import now did claim his thought, 
 
 No fierce war threatened, no shrewd treaties pressed, 
 
 Strangely the picture mastered him ; it grew, 
 
 As days, then weeks, and seasons, o er him flew, 
 
 A part, an inmost essence of all life, 
 
 Which touched to joy or thrilled to shuddering strife 
 
 The soul s deep-seated issues: yet, at last, 
 
 Stronger the fierce strife waxed ; the bliss was passed ; 
 
 And, wheresoe er the king went, night or day, 
 
 One haunting phantom barred his doomed way ! 
 
 But ere he reached the worst wild stage of woe, 
 Through many a change of passion, swift or slow, 
 The king passed downward, nearing treacherous death ; 
 And thus it happed, our old-world legend saith : 
 
 The more he gazed on Daphles blooming face, 
 All flushed with happy youth and Hebe grace, 
 The more her marvelous image seemed alive ; 
 He saw, or dreamed he saw, the warm blood strive, 
 In ruddier tide, with conscious hues to dye 
 Her lovely brow and swanlike neck, or vie 
 With Syrian roses on her cheeks of flame ; 
 The more he gazed, the more her lips became 
 Instinct with timorous motion, till a sigh, 
 New-born of honeyed love unwittingly, 
 Seemed hovering like a murmurous fairy-bee 
 About their rich, half-parted comeliness : 
 What slight breath softly stirs the truant tress, 
 Which like a waif of sunset light did rest 
 In wandering golden lustre on her breast ? 
 
3 o LEGENDS AND L YRICS. 
 
 And what dear thought her bosom graciously 
 
 Heaves into gentle billows, like a sea 
 
 Moon-kissed, and whispering? Thus the king would 
 
 task 
 
 Long hours with doting questions, when the mask 
 Of dull state forms and ceremonial play 
 With wearied brain and hand was cast away, 
 And he a dead maid s crafty image turned 
 To breathing life, and blissful love that burned 
 From her wild pulses and fond heart to his, 
 And on her mouth he pressed a bridegroom kiss. 
 
 Then the sweet spell was broken ; conscience spoke, 
 
 And in her burning depths pale memory woke. 
 
 Even in that gentle shape his cold self-will 
 
 Had strangely turned, and wrought him direful ill ; 
 
 Distempered, moody, sometimes nigh distraught 
 
 With ceaseless pressure of one harrowing thought, 
 
 He grew, and hapless thrills of lonely pain ; 
 
 Her picture, imaged on his heart and brain, 
 
 Ruled all his tides of being, as the moon 
 
 Draws changeful seas ; now in a clear high noon 
 
 Of memories bitter-sweet his soul would swim, 
 
 Anon to sink in turbulent gulfs and dim 
 
 Of wild regret, or as the dead to lie 
 
 Locked in a mute, life-withering lethargy. 
 
 Creator sweet of all his fortunes high, 
 
 Oh, that in Hades she could hear his cry 
 
 Remorseful, and come back in pitying guise 
 
 To ease his grief and calm his tortured sighs ! 
 
 A thousand, thousand times this wild desire 
 
 Would wake, and surge through all his veins like fire; 
 
DAPHLES. 31 
 
 Followed, alas, too soon, by such deep sense 
 
 Of powerless will, and mortal impotence, 
 
 As in red hurry up from soul to cheeks 
 
 Runs rioting, and ever harshly seeks 
 
 To drag them into gaunt, gray lines of care ! 
 
 Months sped eventless, with his dark despair 
 
 Grown darker ; till, one sad November morn, 
 
 Set to the rhythmic wail of winds forlorn, 
 
 They found, just where the morning s shadowy gloom 
 
 Had gathered deepest in the prince s room, 
 
 His prostrate body, cold, and turned in part 
 
 Upwards, the blade s hilt glittering o er his heart, 
 
 Where his own mad right arm had sent it home. 
 
 Beneath him, in soft-tinted, fadeless bloom, 
 
 Beneath him smiled the portrait he had torn 
 
 Madly from off the wall, his wan face borne 
 
 Next the clear brightness of that lifelike one 
 
 For whose fair sake he lay, at last, undone ; 
 
 But whose glad smile, could she have lived that hour, 
 
 Had waned and withered inward, like a flower 
 
 The storm-wind blights, at stern revenge, like this, 
 
 Of love s cold scorn and passion s unpaid kiss. 
 
32 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 RENEWED. 
 
 WELCOME, rippling sunshine ! 
 
 Welcome, joyous air ! 
 Like a demon shadow 
 
 Flies the gaunt despair ! 
 Heaven, through heights of happy calm, 
 
 Its heart of hearts uncloses, 
 To win earth s answering love in balm, 
 Her blushing thanks in roses ! 
 
 Voices from the pine-grove, 
 
 Where the pheasant s drumming, 
 Voices from the ferny hills 
 
 Alive with insect humming ; 
 Voices low and sweet 
 
 From the far-off stream, 
 Where two rivulets meet 
 
 With the murmur of a dream ; 
 Voices loud and free 
 From every bush and tree, 
 
 Of sportive forest bards outpouring songs of gladness; 
 But over them still 
 With its passionate trill, 
 The mock-bird s jocund madness ! 
 
 Deep down the swampy brake 
 Even the poison-snake, 
 
RENEWED. 33 
 
 Uncoiled, and basking in the noontide splendor, 
 May feel, perchance, on this auspicious day 
 (All dark clouds rolled away), 
 Thorough his stagnant blood, 
 Warmed by the sunlight flood, 
 A faint, far sense, 
 Coming he knows not whence, 
 Of dim intelligence, 
 The thinnest conscious thrill that human is, and tender ! 
 
 Look ! where on luminous wing 
 
 The ether s stately king, 
 The lone sea-eagle, circling proud and slow, 
 Towers in the sapphire glow ; 
 
 From out whose dazzling beam, 
 
 His resonant scream, 
 
 Heard even here, a note of fierce desire, 
 Hushes to silent awe the sylvan choir, 
 Till bird and note in airy deeps updrawn 
 Are melting toward the dawn ! 
 
 And hear ! O ! hear ! 
 No longer wildly terrible and drear, 
 But as if merry pulses timed their beating, 
 
 The frolic sea-waves near, 
 Dancing along like happy maidens playing 
 When blithe love goes "a-Maying," 
 And wreaking on the shore their panting blisses 
 In coy, impulsive kisses ; 
 
 Whilst he poor Dullard cannot catch nor hold them, 
 Nor in his massive, earthen arms enfold them, 
 The laughing virgin waves, so archly, swiftly fleeting ! 
 
34 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 This subtle atmosphere, 
 
 So magically clear, 
 Melts, as it were, upon my eager lip ; 
 From some invisible goblet of delight 
 
 Idly I sip and sip 
 A wine so warm and golden 
 (From some enchanted bin the wine was stolen), 
 
 A wine so sweet and rare, 
 
 Methinks a nobler birth 
 
 Illuminates the earth, 
 And in my heart I hear a fairy singing ; 
 Yet well I know tis but my soul renew d, 
 
 Reborn and bright, 
 
 From grief and grief s malignant solitude ! 
 Yet well I know, Joy is the Ganymede, 
 Who in my yearning need, 
 Turns to a cordial rich the balmy air ; 
 And tis but Hope s, divinest Hope s return, 
 Which makes my inmost spirit throb and burn, 
 
 And Hope s triumphant song, 
 
 So sweet and strong, 
 That all creation seems with that weird music ringing ! 
 
KRISHNA AND HIS THREE HANDMAIDENS. 
 
 35 
 
 KRISHNA AND HIS THREE HANDMAIDENS. 
 
 AND where he sat beneath the mystic stars, 
 
 Nigh the twin founts of Immortality, 
 
 That feed fair channels of the Stream of Trance, 
 
 To Krishna once his three handmaidens came, 
 
 Asking a boon : " O king ! O lord !" they said, 
 
 " Test thou thy servants wisdom; long in dreams, 
 
 Born of the waters of thy Stream of Trance, 
 
 Have we, thy fond handmaidens, wandered free, 
 
 And lapped in airiest wreaths of fantasy ; 
 
 Now would we, viewless, bearing each some gift 
 
 From thee, our father, seek the world of man, 
 
 The world of man, and pain, which whoso leaves 
 
 Better or brighter, for thy gift bestowed 
 
 Most worthily, shall claim thy just reward, 
 
 The Crown of Wisdom !" Krishna heard, and gave 
 
 To each one tiny drop of diamond dew, 
 
 Drawn from the founts that feed the Stream of Trance, 
 
 Wherewith, on waftage of miraculous winds, 
 
 Breathing full south, they sought the world of man, 
 
 The world of man and pain that shrank in drought, 
 
 Palsied and withered, like an old man s face 
 
 Death-smitten. 
 
 And the first handmaiden saw 
 A monarch s fountain sparkling in the waste, 
 Glowing and fresh, though all the land was sick, 
 Gasping for rain, and famished thousands died: 
 
36 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 "O brave," she said, "O beautiful bright waves! 
 Like calls to like ;" and so her dewdrop glanced, 
 And glittered downward as a fairy star 
 Loosed from a tress of Cassiopeia s hair, 
 Down to the glorious fountain of the king. 
 
 Over the passionless bosom of the sea, 
 
 The Indian Sea, cerulean, crystal-clear, 
 
 And calm, the second handmaid, hovering, viewed 
 
 Far through the tangled sea-weed and cool tides 
 
 Pulsing twixt coral branches the wide lips 
 
 Of purpling shells that yearned to clasp a pearl : 
 
 So where the oyster, blindly reared, awaits 
 
 Its priceless soul she lets the dewdrop fall, 
 
 Thenceforth to grow a jewel fit for courts, 
 
 And shine on swanlike necks of haughty queens ! 
 
 But Krishna s third handmaiden scarce had felt 
 
 The fume from parched plains that made the air 
 
 As one vast caldron of invisible fire, 
 
 Than casting downward pitiful eyes, she saw, 
 
 Crouched in the brazen cere of that red heat, 
 
 A tiny bird a poor, weak, suffering thing 
 
 (Its bright eyes glazed, its limbs convulsed and 
 
 prone), 
 
 Dying of thirst in torture : "Ah, kind Lord 
 Krishna," his handmaid murmured, "speed thy gift, 
 Best yielded here, to soothe, perchance to save, 
 The lowliest mortal creature cursed with pain !" 
 Gently she shook the dewdrop from her palm 
 Into the silent throat that thirst had sealed, 
 Soon silent, sealed no more, for, lo ! the bird 
 Fluttered, arose, was strengthened, and through calms 
 
UNDER THE PINE. 37 
 
 Of happy ether, echoing fair and far, 
 Rang the charmed music of the nightingale. 
 
 And so, where crowned beneath the mystic stars, 
 Nigh the twin founts of Immortality, 
 Krishna, the father, saw what ruth was hers, 
 And, smiling, to his wise handmaiden s rule 
 Gave the great storm-clouds and the mists of heaven, 
 Till at her voice the mighty vapors rolled 
 Up from the mountain-gorges, and the seas, 
 And cloud-land darkened, and the grateful rain, 
 Burdened with benedictions, rushed and foamed 
 Down the hot channels, and the foliaged hills, 
 And the frayed lips, and languid limbs of flowers ; 
 And all the woodlands laughed, and earth was glad ! 
 
 UNDER THE PINE. 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF HENRY TIMROD. 
 
 THE same majestic Pine is lifted high 
 
 Against the twilight sky, 
 The same low, melancholy music grieves 
 
 Amid the topmost leaves, 
 As when I watched, and mused, and dreamt with him, 
 
 Beneath these shadows dim. 
 
 O Tree ! hast thou no memory at thy core 
 Of one who comes no more ? 
 4 
 
3 8 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 No yearning memory of those scenes that were 
 
 So richly calm and fair, 
 When the last rays of sunset, shimmering down, 
 
 Flashed like a royal crown ? 
 
 And he, with hand outstretched and eyes ablaze, 
 Looked forth with burning gaze, 
 
 And seemed to drink the sunset like strong wine, 
 Or, hushed in trance divine, 
 
 Hailed the first shy and tremulous gLnce from far 
 Of Evening s virgin star? 
 
 O Tree ! against thy mighty trunk he laid 
 
 His weary head ; thy shade 
 Stole o er him like the first cool spell of sleep : 
 
 It brought a peace so deep 
 The unquiet passion died from out his eyes, 
 
 As lightning from stilled skies. 
 
 And in that calm he loved to rest, and hear 
 
 The soft wind-angels, clear 
 And sweet, among the uppermost branches sighing 
 
 Voices he heard replying 
 (Or so he dreamed) far up the mystic height, 
 
 And pinions rustling light. 
 
 O Tree ! have not his poet- touch, his dreams 
 
 So full of heavenly gleams, 
 Wrought through the folded dullness of thy bark, 
 
 And all thy nature dark 
 Stirred to slow throbbings, and the fluttering fire 
 
 Of faint, unknown desire ? 
 
UNDER THE PINE. 39 
 
 At least to me there sweeps no rugged ring 
 
 That girds the forest-king, 
 No immemorial stain, or awful rent 
 
 (The mark of tempests spent), 
 No delicate leaf, no lithe bough, vine-o ergrown, 
 
 No distant, flickering cone, 
 
 But speaks of him, and seems to bring once more 
 
 The joy, the love of yore ; 
 But most when breathed from out the sunset-land 
 
 The sunset airs are bland, 
 That blow between the twilight and the night, 
 
 Ere yet the stars are bright ; 
 
 For then that quiet eve comes back to me, 
 
 When, deeply, thrillingly, 
 He spake of lofty hopes which vanquish Death ; 
 
 And on his mortal breath 
 A language of immortal meanings hung, 
 
 That fired his heart and tongue. 
 
 For then unearthly breezes stir and sigh, 
 
 Murmuring, "Look up ! tis I : 
 Thy friend is near thee ! Ah, thou canst not see !" 
 
 And through the sacred Tree 
 Passes what seems a wild and sentient thrill 
 
 Passes, and all is still ! 
 
 Still as the grave which holds his tranquil form, 
 
 Hushed after many a storm, 
 Still as the calm that crowns his marble brow, 
 
 No pain can wrinkle now, 
 Still as the peace pathetic peace of God 
 
 That wraps the holy sod, 
 
> LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Where every flower from our dead minstrel s dust 
 Should bloom, a type of trust, 
 
 That faith which waxed to wings of heavenward might 
 To bear his soul from night, 
 
 That faith, dear Christ ! whereby we pray to meet 
 His spirit at God s feet ! 
 
 A DREAM OF THE SOUTH WIND. 
 
 O FRESH, how fresh and fair 
 Through the crystal gulfs of air, 
 The fairy South Wind floateth on her subtle wings of 
 
 balm! 
 
 And the green earth lapped in bliss, 
 To the magic of her kiss 
 
 Seems yearning upward fondly through the golden- 
 crested calm ! 
 
 From the distant Tropic strand, 
 Where the billows, bright and bland, 
 Go creeping, curling round the palms with sweet, faint 
 
 undertune, 
 
 From its fields of purpling flowers, 
 Still wet with fragrant showers, 
 
 The happy South Wind lingering sweeps the royal 
 blooms of June. 
 
 All heavenly fancies rise 
 On the perfume of her sighs, 
 
A DREAM OF THE SOUTH WIND. 41 
 
 Which steep the inmost spirit in a languor rare and 
 
 fine, 
 
 And a Peace more pure than Sleep s 
 Unto dim, half- conscious deeps, 
 
 Transports me, lulled and dreaming, on its twilight 
 tides divine. 
 
 Those dreams ! ah me ! the splendor, 
 So mystical and tender, 
 Wherewith like soft heat-lightnings they gird their 
 
 meaning round, 
 
 And those waters, calling, calling, 
 With a nameless charm enthralling, 
 Like the ghost of music melting on a rainbow spray 
 of sound ! 
 
 Touch, touch me not, nor wake me, 
 Lest grosser thoughts o ertake me, 
 From earth receding faintly with her dreary din and 
 
 jars, 
 
 What viewless arms caress me ? 
 What whispered voices bless me, 
 
 With welcomes dropping dewlike from the weird and 
 wondrous stars ? 
 
 Alas ! dim, dim, and dimmer 
 Grows the preternatural glimmer 
 Of that trance the South Wind brought me on her 
 
 subtle wings of balm, 
 For behold ! its spirit flieth, 
 And its fairy murmur dieth, 
 
 And the silence closing round me is a dull and soulless 
 calm ! 
 
 4* 
 
4 2 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 jr. 
 
 AETHRA. 
 
 IT is a sweet tradition, with a soul 
 Of tenderest pathos ! Hearken, love ! for all 
 The sacred undercurrents of the heart 
 Thrill to its cordial music : 
 
 Once, a chief, 
 
 Philantus, king of Sparta, left the stern 
 And bleak defiles of his unfruitful land 
 Girt by a band of eager colonists 
 To seek new homes on fair Italian plains. 
 Apollo s oracle had darkly spoken : 
 " Where } er from cloudless skies a plenteous shower 
 Outpours, the Fates decree that ye should pause 
 And rear your household Deities / Racked by doubt 
 Philantus traversed with his faithful band 
 Full many a bounteous realm ; but still defeat 
 Darkened his banners, and the strong-walled towns 
 His desperate sieges grimly laughed to scorn ! 
 Weighed down by anxious thoughts, one sultry eve 
 The warrior his rude helmet cast aside 
 Rested his weary head upon the lap 
 Of his fair wife, who loved him tenderly ; 
 And there he drank a generous draught of sleep. 
 She, gazing on his brow all worn with toil 
 And his dark locks, which pain had silvered ovei 
 With glistening touches of a frosty rime, 
 Wept on the sudden bitterly ; her tears 
 Fell on his face, and, wondering, he awoke. 
 
IN THE All ST. 43 
 
 "O blest art thou, my Aethra, my dear sky" 
 
 He cried exultant, "from whose pitying blue 
 
 A heart-rain falls to fertilize my fate : 
 
 Lo ! the deep riddle s solved the gods spake truth !" 
 
 So the next night he stormed Tarentum, took 
 The enemy s host at vantage, and o erthrew 
 His mightiest captains. Thence with kindly sway 
 He ruled those pleasant regions he had won, 
 But dearer ever than his rich demesnes 
 The love of her whose gentle tears unlocked 
 The close-shut mystery of the Oracle ! 
 
 IN THE MIST. 
 
 MORE fearful grows the hillside way, 
 
 The gloom no softening breeze hath kissed ! 
 I glance far upward to the Day, 
 But scarce can catch one faltering ray 
 From out the mist ! 
 
 Ah, heaven ! to think youth s morning prime, 
 
 All flushed with rose and amethyst, 
 Its tender loves, its hopes sublime, 
 Should shrink to this dull twilight-time 
 Of cold and mist ! 
 
 No tranquil evening Hour descends, 
 
 When Peace with Memory holds her tryst, 
 
44 
 
 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 But Doubt with prescient Terror blends, 
 And Grief her mournful curfew sends 
 Along the mist ! 
 
 Weird shapes and wild stalk strangely by, 
 
 And say, what bodeful voices hissed 
 Where yonder blasted pine-trunks lie ? 
 What mystic phantoms shuddering fly 
 Far down the mist ? 
 
 Dark omens all ! they bid me stay, 
 
 Unsheathe resolve, pause, strive, resist 
 That poisonous Charm which haunts my way; 
 Alas ! the Fiend, more bold than they, 
 Still rules the mist ! 
 
 And now from gulfs of turbulent gloom 
 
 A torrent s threatening thunder; list ! 
 That ravening roar ! that hungry boom ! 
 Down, down I pass to meet my doom 
 Within the mist ! 
 
 THE BONNY BROWN HAND. 
 
 OH, drearily, how drearily, the sombre eve comes 
 
 down ! 
 
 And wearily, how wearily, the seaward breezes blow ! 
 But place your little hand in mine so dainty, yet so 
 
 brown ! 
 
 For household toil hath worn away its rosy-tinted 
 snow ; 
 
THE BONNY BROWN JIAND. 45 
 
 But I fold it, wife, the nearer, 
 And I feel, my love, tis dearer 
 Than all dear things of earth, 
 As I watch the pensive gloaming, 
 And my wild thoughts cease from roaming, 
 And birdlike furl their pinions close beside our peaceful 
 
 hearth : 
 Then rest your little hand in mine, while twilight 
 
 shimmers down, 
 That little hand, that fervent hand, that hand of bonny 
 
 brown, 
 
 The hand that holds an honest heart, and rules a happy 
 hearth. 
 
 Oh, merrily, how merrily, our children s voices rise ! 
 
 And cheerily, how cheerily, their tiny footsteps fall ! 
 But, hand, you must not stir awhile, for there our nest 
 ling lies, 
 
 Snug in the cradle at your side, the loveliest far of all ; 
 And she looks so arch and airy, 
 So softly pure a fairy, 
 She scarce seems bound to earth ; 
 And her dimpled mouth keeps smiling, 
 As at some child-fay s beguiling, 
 Who flies from Ariel realms to light her slumbers on the 
 
 hearth. 
 Ha, little hand, you yearn to move, and smooth the 
 
 bright locks down ! 
 But, little hand, but, trembling hand, but, hand of 
 
 bonny brown, 
 
 Stay, stay with me ! she will not flee, our birdling on 
 the hearth. 
 
4 6 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Oh, fittingly, how fittingly, the parlor-shadows thrill, 
 As wittingly, half wittingly, they seem to pulse and 
 
 pass ! 
 And solemn sounds are on the wind that sweeps the 
 
 haunted hill, 
 
 And murmurs of a ghostly breath from out the grave 
 yard grass. 
 
 Let me feel your glowing fingers 
 In a clasp that warms and lingers 
 With the full, fond love of earth, 
 Till the joy of love s completeness 
 In this flush of fireside sweetness, 
 Shall brim our hearts with spirit-wine, outpoured beside 
 
 the hearth. 
 So steal your little hand in mine, while twilight falters 
 
 down, 
 That little hand, that fervent hand, that hand of bonny 
 
 brown, 
 
 The hand which points the path to heaven, yet makes 
 a heaven of earth. 
 
 A SUMMER MOOD. 
 
 "Now, by my faith, a gruesome MOOD, for summer !" THOMAS 
 HEYWARU (1597)- 
 
 AH ! me, for evermore, for evermore 
 
 These human hearts of ours must yearn and sigh, 
 While down the dells and up the murmurous shore 
 
 Nature renews her immortality. 
 
A SUMMER MOOD. 47 
 
 The heavens of June stretch calm and bland above, 
 June roses blush with tints of Orient skies, 
 
 But we, by graves of joy, desire, and love, 
 
 Mourn in a world which breathes of Paradise ! 
 
 The sunshine mocks the tears it may not dry, 
 The breezes tricksy couriers of the air, 
 
 Child-roisterers winged, and lightly fluttering by 
 Blow their gay trumpets in the face of care ; 
 
 And bolder winds, the deep sky s passionate speech, 
 Woven into rhythmic raptures of desire, 
 
 Or fugues of mystic victory, sadly reach 
 
 Our humbled souls, to rack, not raise them higher ! 
 
 The field-birds seem to twit us as they pass 
 
 With their small blisses, piped so clear and loud ; 
 
 The cricket triumphs o er us in the grass, 
 
 And the lark, glancing beamlike up the cloud, 
 
 Sings us to scorn with his keen rhapsodies : 
 
 Small things and great unconscious tauntings bring 
 
 To edge our cares, whilst we, the proud and wise, 
 Envy the insect s joy, the birdling s wing ! 
 
 And thus for evermore, till time shall cease, 
 
 Man s soul and Nature s each a separate sphere 
 
 Revolves, the one in discord, one in peace, 
 And who shall make the solemn mystery clear? 
 
48 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 MIDNIGHT. 
 
 THE Moon, a ghost of her sweet self, 
 And wading through a watery cloud 
 (Which wraps her lustre like a shroud), 
 
 Creeps up the gray, funereal sky, 
 
 Wearily ! how wearily ! 
 
 The Wind, with low, bewildered wail 
 (A homeless spirit, sadly lost), 
 Sweeps shuddering o er the pallid frost, 
 
 And faints afar, with heart-sick sigh, 
 Drearily ! how drearily ! 
 
 And now a deathly stillness falls 
 
 On Earth and Heaven, save when the shrill, 
 Malignant owl o er heath and hill 
 
 Smites the wan silence with a cry, 
 Eerily! how eerily! 
 
SONNETS. 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO WILLIAM MORRIS, AFTER READING HIS 
 "L ENVOY," IN THE THIRD VOLUME OF HIS "EARTHLY 
 PARADISE." 
 
 IN some fair realm unbound of time or space, 
 Where souls of all dead May-times, with their play 
 Of blissful winds, soft showers, and bird-notes gay, 
 Make mystic music in the flower- bright place, 
 Yea, there, O poets !* radiant face to face, 
 Keen heart to heart, beneath the enchanted day, 
 Ye met, each hearkening to the other s lay, 
 With rapt, sweet eyes, and thoughts of Old-World grace: 
 "Son," saith the elder bard, "when thou wert born, 
 So yearned toward thine my spirit s fervency, 
 Flamelike its warmth on thy deep soul was shed ; 
 Hence the ripe blood of England s lustier morn 
 Of song burns through thee ; hence alone on thee 
 Fall the rich bays which bloomed round Chaucer s 
 head!" 
 
 * Chaucer and the author of " The Earthly Paradise. 
 5 
 
LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 NOVEMBER. 
 
 WITHIN the deep-blue eyes of Heaven a haze 
 Of saddened passion dims their tender light, 
 For that her fair queen-child, the Summer bright, 
 Lies a wan corse amidst her mouldering bays : 
 The sullen Autumn lifts no voice of praise 
 To herald Winter s cold and cruel might, 
 But winds foreboding fill the desolate night, 
 And dje at dawning down wild woodland ways : 
 The sovereign sun at noonday smileth cold, 
 As through a shroud he hath no power to part, 
 While huddled flocks crouch listless round their fold; 
 The mock-bird s dumb, no more with cheerful dart 
 Upsoars the lark through morning s quivering gold, 
 And dumb or dead, methinks, great Nature s heart ! 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 SYLVAN MUSINGS. 
 IN MAY. 
 
 COUCHED in cool shadow, girt by billowy swells 
 Of foliage, rippling into buds and flowers, 
 Here I repose o erfanned by breezy bowers, 
 Lulled by a delicate stream whose music wells 
 
SONNETS. 51 
 
 Tender and low through those luxuriant dells, 
 Wherefrom a single broad-leaved chestnut towers ; 
 Still musing in the long, lush, languid hours, 
 As in a dream I heard the tinkling bells 
 Of far-off kine, glimpsed through the verdurous sheen, 
 Blent with faint bleatings from the distant croft, 
 The bee.-throngs murmurous in the golden fern, 
 The wood-doves veiled by depths of flickering green, 
 And near me, where the wild " queen fairies"* burn, 
 The thrush s bridal passion, warm and soft ! 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 THE COTTAGE ON THE HILL. 
 
 ON a steep hillside, to all airs that blow, 
 
 Open, and open to the varying sky, 
 
 Our cottage homestead, smiling tranquilly, 
 
 Catches morn s earliest and eve s latest glow ; 
 
 Here, far from worldly strife, and pompous show, 
 
 The peaceful seasons glide serenely by, 
 
 Fulfill their missions, and as calmly die, 
 
 As waves on quiet shores when winds are low. 
 
 Fields, lonely paths, the one small glimmering rill 
 
 That twinkles like a wood-fay s mirthful eye, 
 
 Under moist bay-leaves, clouds fantastical 
 
 That float and change at the light breeze s will, 
 
 To me, thus lapped in sylvan luxury, 
 
 Are more than death of kings, or empires fall. 
 
 # " Queen fairies," the name given popularly to an exquisite South 
 ern wild-flower. 
 
I LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 POETS. 
 
 SOME thunder on the heights of song, their race 
 Godlike in power, while others at their feet 
 Are breathing measures scarce less strong and sweet 
 Than those which peal from out that loftiest place ; 
 Meantime, just midway on the mount, his face 
 Fairer than April heavens, when storms retreat, 
 And on their edges rain and sunshine meet, 
 Pipes the soft lyrist lays of tender grace ; 
 But where the slopes of bright Parnassus sweep 
 Near to the common ground, a various throng 
 Chant lowlier measures, yet each tuneful strain 
 (The silvery minor of earth s perfect song) 
 Blends with that music of the topmost steep, 
 O er whose vast realm the master minstrels reign ! 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 THE PHANTOM BELLS. 
 
 UPVEILED in yonder dim ethereal sea, 
 Its airy towers the work of phantom spells, 
 A viewless belfry tolls its wizard bells, 
 Pealed o er this populous earth perpetually. 
 
SONNETS. 53 
 
 Some hear, some hear them not ; but aye they be 
 
 Laden with one strange note that sinks or swells, 
 
 Now dread as doom, now gentle as farewells, 
 
 Time s dirge borne ever toward eternity. 
 
 Each hour its measured breath sobs out and dies, 
 
 While the bells toll its requiem, Passing, past, " 
 
 The sole sad burden of their long refrain. 
 
 Still, with those hours each pang, each pleasure flies, 
 
 Brief sweet, brief bitter, all our days are vain, 
 
 Knolled into drear forgetfulness at last. 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 BEHOLD ! how weirdly, wonderfully grand 
 The shapes and colors of yon sunset sky ! 
 Rare isles of light in crimson oceans lie, 
 Whose airy waves seem rippling, bright and bland, 
 Up the soft slopes of many a mystic strand, 
 While luminous capes, and mountains towering high 
 In golden pomp and proud regality, 
 O erlook the frontiers of that fairy-land, 
 But now, in transformations swift and strange 
 The vision changes ! Castles, glittering fair, 
 And sapphire battlements of loftiest range 
 Commingle with vast spire and gorgeous dome, 
 Round which the sunset rolls its purpling foam, 
 Girding this transient VENICE of the air. 
 
54 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 THE LIFE-FOREST. 
 
 IN Springtime of our youth life s purpling shade, 
 
 Foliage and fruit, do hang so thickly round ; 
 
 We seem glad tenants of enchanted ground, 
 
 O er which for aye dream-whispering winds have played. 
 
 Then Summer comes, her full-blown charm is laid 
 
 On all the forest aisles ; from bound to bound 
 
 Floats woodland music, and the silvery sound 
 
 Of fountains babbling to the golden glade. 
 
 Next, a chill breath, the breath of Autumn s doom 
 
 Strips the fair sylvan branches, one by one, 
 
 Till the bared landscape broadens to our view ; 
 
 Behind, black tree-boles blot the twilight blue, 
 
 Before, unfoliaged, bald 67 light and bloom, 
 
 Our pathway darkens towards the darkening sun ! 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 CLOUD -FANTASI ES . 
 
 WILD, rapid, dark, like dreams of threatening doom, 
 Low cloud-racks scud before the level wind ; 
 Beneath them, the bared moorlands, blank and blind, 
 Stretch, mournful, through pale lengths of glimmering 
 
 gloom ; 
 
 Afar, grand mimic of the sea-waves boom, 
 Hollow, yet sweet, as if a Titan pined 
 
SONNETS. 
 
 55 
 
 O er deathless woes, yon mighty wood consigned 
 To Autumn s blight, bemoans its perished bloom ; 
 The dim air creeps with a vague, shuddering thrill 
 Down from those monstrous mists, the sea-gale brings, 
 Half formless, inland, poisoning earth and sky ; 
 Most from yon black cloud, shaped like vampire wings 
 O er a lost angel s visage, deathly-still, 
 Uplifted toward some dread eternity. 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 OF all the woodland flowers of earlier spring, 
 
 These golden jasmines, each an air-hung bower, 
 
 Meet for the Queen of Fairies tiring hour, 
 
 Seem loveliest and most fair in blossoming ; 
 
 How yonder mock-bird thrills his fervid wing 
 
 And long, lithe throat, where twinkling flower on 
 
 flower 
 
 Rains the globed dewdrops down, a diamond shower, 
 O er his brown head, poised as in act to sing ; 
 Lo ! the swift sunshine floods the flowery urns, 
 Girding their delicate gold with matchless light, 
 Till the blent life of bough, leaf, blossom, burns; 
 Then, then outburstslhe mock-bird clear and loud, 
 Half-drunk with perfume, veiled by radiance bright, 
 A star of music in a fiery cloud ! 
 
LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 I FEAR thee not, O Death ! nay, oft I pine 
 
 To clasp thy passionless bosom to mine own, 
 
 And on thy heart sob out my latest moan, 
 
 Ere lapped and lost in thy strange sleep divine ; 
 
 But much I fear lest that chill breath of thine 
 
 Should freeze all tender memories into stone, 
 
 Lest ruthless and malign Oblivion 
 
 Quench the last spark that lingers on love s shrine :- 
 
 O God ! to moulder through dark, dateless years, 
 
 The while all loving ministries shall cease, 
 
 And Time assuage the fondest mourner s tears ! 
 
 Here lies the sting ! this, this it is to die ! 
 
 And yet great Nature rounds all strife with peace, 
 
 And life or death, each rests in mystery ! 
 
 FIRE. PICTURES. 
 
 O ! THE rolling, rushing Fire ! 
 
 O ! the Fire ! 
 
 How it rages, wilder, higher, 
 Like a hot heart s fierce desire, 
 Thrilled with passion that appalls us, 
 Half appalls, and yet enthralls us, 
 O ! the madly mounting Fire ! 
 
FIRE PICTURES. 
 
 Up it sweepeth, wave and quiver, 
 Roaring like an angry river, 
 
 O ! the Fire ! 
 
 Which an earthquake backward turneth, 
 Backward o er its riven courses, 
 Backward to its mountain sources, 
 While the blood-red sunset burneth, 
 Like a God s face grand with ire, 
 O ! the bursting, billowy Fire ! 
 
 Now the sombre smoke-clouds thicken 
 To a dim Plutonian night ; 
 
 O ! the Fire ! 
 
 How its flickering glories sicken, 
 Sicken at the blight ! 
 Pales the flame, and spreads the vapor, 
 Till scarce larger than a taper, 
 Flares the waning, struggling light : 
 O ! thou wan, faint-hearted Fire, 
 
 Sadly darkling, 
 
 Weakly sparkling, 
 Rise ! assert thy might ! 
 
 Aspire ! aspire ! 
 
 At the word, a vivid lightning, 
 Threat ning, swaying, darting, bright ning, 
 Where the loftiest yule-log towers, 
 
 Bursts once more, 
 Sudden bursts the awakened Fire ; 
 
 Hear it roar ! 
 Roar, and mount high, high, and higher, 
 
 Till beneath, 
 Only here and there a wreath 
 
 57 
 
LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Of the passing smoke-cloud lowers, 
 Ha ! the glad, victorious Fire ! 
 
 O ! the Fire ! 
 
 How it changes, 
 
 Changes, ranges 
 
 Through all phases fancy-wrought, 
 Changes like a wizard thought ; 
 See Vesuvian lavas rushing 
 Twixt the rocks! the ground asunder 
 Shivers at the earthquake s thunder, 
 And the glare of Hell is flushing 
 Startled hill-top, quaking town; 
 Temples, statues, towers go down, 
 While beyond that lava-flood, 
 Dark-red like blood, 
 I behold the children fleeting 
 Clasped by many a frenzied hand ; 
 What a flight, and what a meeting, 
 On the ruined strand ! 
 
 O ! the Fire ! 
 
 Eddying higher, higher, higher 
 From the vast volcanic cones ; 
 O ! the agony, the groans 
 Of those thousands stifling there ! 
 "Fancy," say you? but how near 
 Seem the anguish and the fear ! 
 
 Swelling, turbulent, pitiless Fire : 
 Tis a mad northeastern breeze 
 Raving o er the prairie seas; 
 How, like living things, the grasses 
 Tremble as the storm-breath passes, 
 
FIRE PICTURES, 59 
 
 Ere the flames devouring magic 
 Coils about their golden splendor, 
 
 And the tender 
 Glory of the mellowing fields 
 To the wild Destroyer yields ; 
 Dreadful waste for flowering blooms, 
 Desolate darkness, like the tomb s, 
 Over which there broods the while, 
 Instead of daylight s happy smile, 
 A pall malign and tragic ! 
 
 Marvelous Fire ! 
 
 Changing, ranging 
 Through all phases fancy-wrought, 
 Changing like a charmed thought ; 
 A stir, a murmur deep, 
 Like airs that rustle over jungle-reeds, 
 Where the gaunt Tiger breathes but half asleep ; 
 
 A bodeful stir, 
 And then the victim of his own pure deeds, 
 
 I mark the mighty Fire 
 Clasp in its cruel palms a martyr-saint, 
 
 Christ s faithful worshiper ; 
 One mortal cry affronts the pitying Day, 
 One ghastly arm uplifts itself to heaven 
 When the swart smoke is riven, 
 Ere the last sob of anguish dies away, 
 The worn limbs droop and faint, 
 And o er those reverend hairs, silvered and hoary, 
 Settles the semblance of a crown of glory. 
 
 Tireless Fire ! 
 Changing, ranging 
 
60 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Through all phases fancy-wrought, 
 Changing like a Protean thought ; 
 Here s a glowing, warm interior, 
 A Dutch tavern, rich and rosy 
 With deep color, sill and floor 
 Dazzling as the white seashore, 
 Where within his arm-chair cosy 
 Sits a Toper, stout and yellow, 
 Blinking o er his steamy bowl; 
 
 Hugely drinking, 
 
 Slyly winking, 
 
 As the pot-house Hebe passes, 
 With a clink and clang of glasses ; 
 Ha ! tis plain, the stout old fellow 
 As his wont is waxes mellow, 
 Nodding twixt each dreamy leer, 
 Swaying in his elbow chair, 
 Next to one, a portly Peasant, 
 Pipe in hand, whose swelling cheek, 
 Jolly, rubicund, and sleek, 
 Puffs above the blazing coal ; 
 While his heavy, half-shut eyes 
 Watch the smoke wreaths evanescent, 
 Eddying lightly as they rise, 
 Eddying lightly and aloof 
 Toward the great, black, oaken roof! 
 
 Dreaming still, from out the Fire 
 Faces grinning and grotesque, 
 Flash an eery glance upon me ; 
 Or, once more, methinks, I sun me 
 On the breadths of happy plain 
 Sloping towards the Southern main, 
 
FIRE PICTURES. 6 1 
 
 Where the inmost soul of shadow 
 
 Wins a golden heat, 
 And the hill-side and the meadow 
 (Where the vines and clover meet, 
 Twining round the virgins feet, 
 While the natural arabesque 
 Of the foliage grouped above them 
 Droops, as if the leaves did love them, 
 Over brow, and lips, and eyes) 
 Gleam with hints of Paradise ! 
 
 Ah! the Fire! 
 
 Gently glowing, 
 
 Fairly flowing, 
 Like a rivulet rippling deep 
 Through the meadow-lands of sleep, 
 Bordered where its music swells, 
 By the languid lotos-bells, 
 And the twilight asphodels ; 
 Mingled with a richer boon 
 Of queen-lilies, each a moon, 
 Orbed into white completeness ; 
 O ! the perfume ! the rare sweetness 
 Of those grouped and fairy flowers, 
 Over which the love-lorn hours 
 Linger, not alone for them, 
 Though the lotos swings its stem 
 With a lulling stir of leaves, 
 Though the lady-lily laves 
 Coy feet in the crystal waves, 
 And a silvery undertune 
 From some mystic wind-song grieves 
 6 
 
62 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Dainty-sweet, amid the bells 
 
 Of the twilight asphodels ; 
 
 But because a charm more rare 
 
 Glorifies the mellow air, 
 
 In the gleam of lifted eyes, 
 
 In the tranquil ecstasies 
 
 Of two lovers, leaf-embowered, 
 
 Lingering there, 
 
 Each of whose fair lives hath flowered, 
 Like the lily-petals finely, 
 Like the asphodel divinely. 
 
 Titan arches ! 
 
 Titan spires ! 
 
 Pillars whose vast capitals 
 Tower towards Cyclopean halls, 
 And whose unknown bases pierce 
 Down the nether Universe ; 
 Countless coruscations glimmer, 
 Glow and darken, wane and shimmer, 
 Twixt majestic standards, swooping, 
 Like the wings of some strange bird 
 By mysterious currents stirred 
 Of great winds, or darkly drooping, 
 In a hush sublime as death, 
 When the conflict s quivering breath 
 Sobs its gory life away, 
 At the close of fateful marches, 
 On an empire s natal day : 
 Countless coruscations glimmer, 
 Glow and darken, wane and shimmer, 
 Round the shafts, and round the walls, 
 Whence an ebon splendor falls 
 
FIRE PICTURES. 63 
 
 On the scar-seamed, angel bands, 
 
 (Desolate bands!) 
 Grasping in their ghostly hands 
 Weapons of an antique rage, 
 From some lost, celestial age, 
 When the serried throngs were hurled 
 Blasted to the under world : 
 Shattered spear-heads, broken brands, 
 And the mammoth, moonlike shields, 
 Blazoned on their lurid fields, 
 With uncouth, malignant forms, 
 
 Glowering, wild, 
 Like the huge cloud-masses piled 
 Up a Heaven of storms ! 
 
 Ah, the faint and flickering Fire ! 
 
 Ah, the Fire ! 
 
 Like a young man s transient ire, 
 Like an old man s last desire, 
 Lo ! it falters, dies ! 
 Still, through weary, half-closed lashes, 
 
 Still I see, 
 But brokenly, but mistily, 
 
 Fall and rise, 
 
 Rise and fall, 
 
 Ghosts of shifting phantasy ; 
 Now the embers, smouldered all, 
 Sink to ruin ; sadder dreams 
 Follow on their vanished gleams : 
 Wailingly the spirits call, 
 Spirits on the night-winds solemn, 
 Wraiths of happy Hopes that left me ; 
 
64 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 (Cruel ! why did ye depart ?) 
 
 Hopes that sleep, their youthful riot 
 
 Merged in an awful quiet, 
 
 With the heavy grief-moulds pressed 
 
 On each pallid, pulseless breast, 
 
 In that graveyard called THE HEART, 
 
 Stern and lone, 
 Needing no memorial stone, 
 And no blazoned column : 
 
 Let them rest ! 
 
 Let them rest ! 
 
 ; Yes, tis useless to remember 
 May-morn in the mirk December ; 
 Still, O Hopes ! because ye were 
 Beautiful^ and strong, and fair, 
 Nobly brave, and sweetly bright, 
 
 Who shall dare 
 
 Scorn me, if through moistened lashes, 
 Musing by my hearthstone blighted, 
 Weary, desolate, benighted, 
 I, because those sweet Hopes left me, 
 I, because my Fate bereft me, 
 
 Mourn my dead, 
 
 Mourn, and shed 
 Hot tears in the ashes? 
 
FROM THE WOODS. 65 
 
 FROM THE WOODS. 
 
 WHY should I, with a mournful, morbid spleen, 
 Lament that here, in this half-desert scene, 
 
 My lot is placed? 
 
 At least the poet-winds are bold and loud, 
 At least the sunset glorifies the cloud, 
 And forests old and proud 
 Rustle their verdurous banners o er the waste. 
 
 Perchance tis best that I, whose Fate s eclipse 
 Seems final, I, whose sluggish life-wave slips 
 
 Languid away, 
 
 Should here, within these lowly walks, apart 
 From the fierce throbbings of the populous mart, 
 
 Commune with mine own heart, 
 While Wisdom blooms from buried Hope s decay. 
 
 Nature, though wild her forms, sustains me still ; 
 The founts are musical, the barren hill 
 
 Glows with strange lights ; 
 
 Through solemn pine-groves the small rivulets fleet 
 Sparkling, as if a Naiad s silvery feet, 
 In quick and coy retreat, 
 Glanced through the star-gleams on calm summer nights ; 
 
 And the great sky, the royal heaven above, 
 Darkens with storms or melts in hues of love ; 
 While far remote, 
 6* 
 
66 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Just where the sunlight smites the woods with fire, 
 Wakens the multitudinous sylvan choir ; 
 There innocent love s desire 
 Poured in a rill of song from each harmonious throat. 
 
 My walls are crumbling, but immortal looks 
 Smile on me here from faces of rare books : 
 
 Shakspeare consoles 
 
 My heart with true philosophies ; a balm 
 Of spiritual dews from humbler song or psalm 
 
 Fills me with tender calm, 
 
 Or through hushed heavens of soul Milton s deep thun 
 der rolls ! 
 
 And more than all, o er shattered wrecks of Fate, 
 The relics of a happier time and state, 
 
 My nobler Life 
 
 Shines on unquenched ! O deathless love that lies 
 In the clear midnight of those passionate eyes ! 
 
 Joy waneth ! Fortune flies ! 
 
 What then ? Thou still art here, soul of my soul, my 
 Wife! 
 
 J - r- <fr 
 
 AN ANNIVERSARY. 
 
 O LOVE, it is our wedding-day ! 
 
 This morn, how swift the seasons flee ! 
 A virgin morn of cloudless May, 
 
 You gave your loyal hand to me, 
 Your dainty hand, claspt sweet and sure 
 As Love s sweet self, for evermore ! 
 
AN ANNIVERSARY. 67 
 
 Love, it is our wedding-day, 
 
 And memory flies from now to then ; 
 
 1 mark the soft heat-lightning play 
 
 Of blushes o er your cheek again, 
 And shy but fond foreshadowings rise 
 Of tranquil joy in tender eyes. 
 
 O Love, it is our wedding-day ; 
 
 The very rustling of your dress, 
 The trembling of your arm that lay 
 
 On mine, with timorous happiness, 
 Your fluttered breath and faint footfall, 
 Ah, sweet, I hear, I see them all ! 
 
 O Love, it is our wedding-day, 
 
 And backward Time s strange current rolls, 
 Till life s and love s auspicious May 
 
 Once more is blooming in our souls, 
 And, larklike, swell the songs of hope, 
 Your blissful bridal horoscope. 
 
 O Love, it is our wedding-day, 
 Yet say, did those fair hopes but sing, 
 
 Lapped in the tuneful morn of May, 
 To die or droop on faltering wing, 
 
 When noontide heats and evening chills 
 
 Made pale the flowers and veiled the hills ? 
 
 O Love, it is our wedding-day, 
 
 And none of those glad hopes of youth, 
 
 Thrilled to its height, outpoured a lay 
 To match our future s simple truth : 
 
 Though deep the joy of vow and shrine, / 
 
 Our wedded calm is more divine ! 
 
68 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 O Love, it is our wedding-day ! 
 
 Life s summer, with slow-waning beam, 
 Tints the near autumn s cloud-land gray 
 
 To softness of a fairy dream, 
 Whence Peace by musing Pathos kissed, 
 Smiles through a veil of golden rnist. 
 
 O Love, it is our wedding-day ; 
 
 The conscious winds are whispering low 
 Those passionate secrets of the May 
 
 Fraught with your kisses long ago ; 
 Warm memories of our years remote 
 Are trembling in the mock-bird s throat. 
 
 O Love, it is our wedding-day, 
 
 And not a thrush in woodland bowers, 
 
 And not a rivulet s silvery lay, 
 
 Nor tiny bee-song mid the flowers, 
 
 Nor any voice of land or sea, 
 
 But deepens love to ecstasy ! 
 
 Our wedding-day ! The soul s noontide ! 
 
 In these rare words at watchful rest 
 What sweet, melodious meanings hide 
 
 Like birds within one balmy nest, 
 Each quivering with an impulse strong 
 To flood all heaven and earth with song ! 
 
DOLCE FAR NIENTE. 
 
 DOLCE FAR NIENTE. 
 
 LET the world roll blindly on ! 
 Give me shadow, give me sun, 
 And a perfumed eve as this is : 
 
 Let me lie, 
 
 Dreamfully, 
 
 When the last quick sunbeams shiver 
 Spears of light athwart the river, 
 And a breeze, which seems the sigh 
 Of a fairy floating by, 
 
 Coyly kisses 
 
 Tender leaf and feathered grasses; 
 Yet so soft its breathing passes, 
 These tall ferns, just glimmering o er me, 
 Blending goldenly before me, 
 
 Hardly quiver ! 
 
 I have done with worldly scheming, 
 Mocking show, and hollow seeming ! 
 
 Let me lie 
 
 Idly here, 
 
 Lapped in lulling waves of air, 
 Facing full the shadowy sky. 
 Fame ! the very sound is dreary, 
 Shut, O soul ! thine eyelids weary, 
 For all nature s voices say, 
 " Tis the close the close of day, 
 Thought and grief have had their sway:" 
 
yo LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Now Sleep bares her balmy breast, 
 
 Whispering low 
 
 (Low as moon-set tides that flow 
 Up still beaches far away ; 
 While, from out the lucid West, 
 Flutelike winds of murmurous breath 
 Sink to tender-panting death), 
 " On my bosom take thy rest ; 
 (Care and grief have had their day!) 
 Tis the hour for dreaming, 
 Fragrant rest, elysian dreaming !" 
 
 CAMBYSES AND THE MACROBIAN BOW. 
 
 ONE morn, hard by a slumberous streamlet s wave, 
 The plane-trees stirless in the unbreathing calm, 
 And all the lush-red roses drooped in dream, 
 Lay King Cambyses, idle as a cloud 
 That waits the wind, aimless of thought and will, 
 But with vague evil, like the lightning s bolt 
 Ere yet the electric death be forged to smite, 
 Seething at heart. His courtiers ringed him round, 
 Whereof was one who to his comrades ears, 
 With bated breath and wonder-arched brows, 
 Extolled a certain Bactrian s matchless skill 
 Displayed in bowcraft : at whose marvelous feats, 
 Eagerly vaunted, the King s soul grew hot 
 With envy, for himself erewhile had been 
 Rated the mightiest archer in his realm. 
 
CAMBYSES AND THE MACROS I AN BOW. 71 
 
 Slowly he rose, and pointing southward, said, 
 " Seest thou, Prexaspes, yonder slender palm, 
 A mere wan shadow quivering in the light, 
 Topped by a ghostly leaf-crown ? Prithee, now, 
 Can this, thy famous Bactrian, standing here, 
 Cleave with his shaft a hand s breadth marked there 
 on?" 
 
 To which Prexaspes answered, "Nay, my lord; 
 I spake of feats compassed by mortal skill, 
 Not of Gods prowess." Unto whom, the King: 
 "And if myself, Prexaspes, made essay, 
 Think st thou, wise counselor, I too should fail?" 
 " Needs must I, sire," albeit the courtier s voice 
 Trembled, and some dark prescience bade him 
 
 pause, 
 
 " Needs must I hold such cunning more than man s; 
 And for the rest, I pray thy pardon, King, 
 But yester-eve, amid the feast and dance, 
 Thou tarried st with the beakers overlong." 
 
 The thick, wild, treacherous eyebrows of the King, 
 That looked a sheltering ambush for ill thoughts 
 Waxing to manhood of malignant acts, 
 These treacherous eyebrows, pent -house fashion, 
 
 closed 
 
 O er the black orbits of his fiery eyes, 
 Which, clouded thus, but flashed a deadlier gleam 
 On all before him : suddenly as fire, 
 Half choked and smouldering in its own dense smoke, 
 Bursts into roaring radiance and swift flame, 
 Touched by keen breaths of liberating wind, 
 So now Cambyses eyes a stormy joy 
 Stormily filled; for on Prexaspes son, 
 
72 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 His first-born son, they lingered, a fair boy 
 ( Mid most his fellow-pages flushed with sport), 
 Who, in his office of King s cup-bearer, 
 So gracious and so sweet were all his ways, 
 Had even the captious sovereign seemed to please ; 
 While for the court, the reckless, reveling court, 
 They loved him one and all : 
 "Go," said Cambyses now, his voice a hiss, 
 Poisonous, and low, "go, bind my dainty page 
 To yonder palm-tree ; bind him fast and sure, 
 So that no finger stirreth ; which being done, 
 Fetch me, Prexaspes, the Macrobian bow." 
 
 Thus ordered, thus accomplished, fast they bound 
 The innocent child, the while that mammoth bow, 
 Brought by the spies from Ethiopian camps, 
 Lay in the King s hand ; slowly, sternly up, 
 He reared it to the level of his sight, 
 Reared, and bent back its oaken rnassiveness 
 Till the vast muscles, tough as grapevines, bulged 
 From naked arm and shoulder, and the horns 
 Of the fierce weapon groaning, almost met, 
 When, with one lowering glance askance at him, 
 His doubting Satrap, the King coolly said, 
 " Prexaspes , look, my aim is at the heart!" 
 
 Then came the sharp twang, and the deadly whirr 
 Of the loosed arrow, followed by the dull, 
 Drear echo of a bolt that smites its mark ; 
 And those of keenest vision shook to see 
 The fair child fallen forward across his bonds, 
 With all his limbs a-quivering. Quoth the King, 
 Clapping Prexaspes shoulder, as in glee, 
 
CAMBYSES AND THE MACROBIAN BOW. 
 
 73 
 
 "Go thou, and tell me how that shaft hath sped!" 
 
 Forward the wretched father, step by step, 
 
 Crept, as one creeps whom black Hadean dreams, 
 
 Visions of fate and fear unutterable, 
 
 Draw, tranced and rigid, towards some definite goal 
 
 Of horror ; thus he went, and thus he saw 
 
 What never in the noontide or the night, 
 
 Awake or sleeping, idle or in toil, 
 
 Neath the wild forest or the perfumed lamps 
 
 Of palaces, shall leave his stricken sight 
 
 Unblasted. or his spirit purged of woe. 
 
 Prexaspes saw, yet lived ; saw, and returned 
 
 Where still environed by his dissolute court, 
 
 Cambyses leaned, half scornful, on his bow : 
 
 The old man s face was riven and white as death; 
 
 But making meek obeisance to his King, 
 
 He smiled (ah, such a smile !) and feebly said, 
 
 "What am I, mighty master, what am /, 
 
 That I durst question my lord s strength and skill? 
 
 His arrows are like arrows of the god, 
 
 Egyptian Horus, and for proof, but now, 
 
 I felt a child s heart (once the child was mine, 
 
 Tis my Lord s now and Death s), all mute and still, 
 
 Pierced by his shaft, and cloven, ye gods! in twain !" 
 
 Then laughed the great King loudly, till his beard 
 Quivered, and all his stalwart body shook 
 With merriment ; but when his mirth was calmed, 
 "Thou art forgiven," said he, "forgiven, old man; 
 Only when next these Persian dogs shall call 
 Cambyses drunkard, rise, Prexaspes, rise! 
 And tell them how, and to what purpose, once, 
 7 
 
74 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Once, on a morn which followed hot and wan 
 A night of monstrous revel and debauch, 
 Cambyses bent this huge Macrobian bow." 
 
 BY THE AUTUMN SEA. 
 
 FAIR as the dawn of the fairest day, 
 
 Sad as the evening s tender gray, 
 
 By the latest lustre of sunset kissed, 
 
 That wavers and wanes through an amber mist, 
 
 There cometh a dream of the past to me, 
 
 On the desert sands, by the autumn sea. 
 
 All heaven is wrapped in a mystic veil, 
 And the face of the ocean is dim and pale, 
 And there rises a wind from the chill northwest, 
 That seemeth the wail of a soul s unrest, 
 As the twilight falls, and the vapors flee 
 Far over the wastes of the autumn sea. 
 
 A single ship through the gloaming glides 
 Upborne on the swell of the seaward tides ; 
 And above the gleam of her topmost spar 
 Are the virgin eyes of the vesper-star 
 That shine with an angel s ruth on me, 
 A hopeless waif, by the autumn sea. 
 
 / 
 
 The wings of the ghostly beach-birds gleam 
 Through the shimmering surf, and the curlew s 
 scream 
 
THE WIFE OF BRITTANY. 
 
 75 
 
 Falls faintly shrill from the darkening height ; 
 
 The first weird sigh on the lips of Night 
 
 Breathes low through the sedge and the blasted 
 
 tree, 
 With a murmur of doom, by the autumn sea. 
 
 Oh, sky-enshadowed and yearning main, 
 Your gloom but deepens this human pain ; 
 Those waves seem big with a nameless care, 
 That sky is a type of the heart s despair, 
 As I linger and muse by the sombre lea, 
 And the night-shades close on the autumn sea. 
 
 THE WIFE OF BRITTANY. 
 
 (SUGGESTED BY THE FRANKELEINES TALE OF CHAUCER.) 
 PROEM. 
 
 TRUTH wed to beauty in an antique tale, 
 Sweet-voiced like some immortal nightingale, 
 Trills the clear burden of her passionate lay, 
 As fresh, as fair, as wonderful to-day, 
 As when the music of her balmy tongue 
 Ravished the first warm hearts for whom she sung. 
 
 Thus, when the early spring-dawn buds are green, 
 Glistening beneath the sudden silvery sheen 
 
7 6 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Of glancing showers; while heaven with bridegroom- 
 kiss 
 
 Wakens the virgin earth to bloom and bliss, 
 Enamored breathing, and soft raptures born 
 About the roseate footsteps of the morn, 
 An old-world song, whose breezy music pours 
 Through limpid channels twixt enchanted shores, 
 Steals on me wooingly from that far time 
 When tuneful Chaucer wrought his lusty rhyme 
 Into rare shapes of fancy and delight, 
 For May winds blithely blew, and hawthorn flowers 
 were bright. 
 
 O brave old poet ! genius frank and bold ! 
 Sustain me, cherish, and around me fold 
 Thine own hale, sun-warm atmosphere of song, 
 Lest I, who touch thy numbers, do thee wrong; 
 Speed the deep measure, make the meaning shine 
 Ruddy and high with healthful spirit-wine, 
 Till to attempered sense and quickening ears 
 My strain some faint harmonious echo bears 
 From that rich realm wherein thy cordial art 
 Throbbed with its pulse of fire gainst youthful Eng 
 land s heart. 
 
 THE STORY. 
 
 Where the hoarse billows of the Northland Sea 
 Sweep the rude coast of rock-bound Brittany, 
 Dwelt, ages since, a knight, whose warrior-fame 
 Might well have struck all carpet-knights with shame; 
 Vowed to great deeds and princely manhood, he 
 Burgeoned the topmost flower of chivalry ; 
 
THE WIFE OF BRITTANY. 77 
 
 Yet gentle-hearted, nursed one delicate thought 
 Fixed firm in love : with anxious pain he sought 
 To serve his lady in the noblest wise, 
 And many a labor, many a grand emprise 
 He wrought ere that sweet lady could be won. 
 She was a maiden bright-aired as the sun, 
 And graceful as the tall lake-lilies are 
 Flushed twixt the twilight and the vesper -star; 
 But born to such rare state and sovereignty, 
 He hardly durst before her bend the knee 
 In passion s ardor and keen heart distress ; 
 Still, at the last, his loyal worthiness 
 And mild obeisance, his observance high 
 Of manly faith, firm will, and constancy, 
 Aroused an answering pity to his sighs, 
 Till pity, grown to love, beamed forth from genial 
 eyes. 
 
 Thus with pure trust, and cheerful calm accord, 
 She made this gentle suitor her soul s lord ; 
 And he, that thence their happy fates should stray 
 Through pastures beauteous as the fields of May, 
 Swore of his own free mind to use the right 
 Her mercy gave him, with no churlish might, 
 Nor e er in wanton freaks of mastery, 
 Ire-bred perverseness, or sharp jealousy, 
 Vex the clear-flowing current of her days. 
 She thanked him in a hundred winning ways : 
 "And I," she said, "will be thy loyal wife; 
 Take here my vows, my solemn troth for life." 
 
 On a June morning, when the verdurous woods 
 Flushed to the core of dew-lit solitudes, 
 
78 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Murmured almost as with a human feeling, 
 Tenderly low, to frolic breezes stealing 
 Through dappled shades and depths of dainty fern, 
 Crossed here and there by some low-whimpering burn, 
 These twain were wedded at a forest shrine. 
 O saffron-vested Hymen the divine ! 
 Did aught of gloom or boding shadow weigh 
 Upon thy blushing consciousness that day? 
 No ! thy frank face breathed only hope and love ; 
 Earth laughed in wave and leaf, all heaven was fair 
 above. 
 
 Home to the land wherein the knight was born 
 Blithely they rode upon the morrow-morn, 
 Not far from Penmark ; there they lived in ease 
 And solace of matured felicities, 
 Until Arviragus whose soul of fire 
 Not even fruition of his love s desire 
 Could fill with languorous idlesse, cut the tie 
 Which bound to silken dalliance suddenly, 
 Sailing the straits for England s war-torn strand, 
 There ampler bays to pluck from victory s "red right 
 hand." 
 
 But lolene, fond lolene, whose heart 
 Can beat no longer, lonely and apart 
 From him she loves, save with a sickening stress 
 Of fear o erwrought and brooding tenderness, 
 Mourns for his absence with soul-wearying plaint, 
 Slow, pitiful tears and midnight murmurings faint, 
 And thus the whole world sadly sets at naught. 
 Meanwhile her friends, who guess what canker-thought 
 Preys on her quiet, with a mild essay 
 
THE WIFE OF BRITTANY. 
 
 79 
 
 Strive to subdue her passion s torturing sway : 
 
 Beware ! beware, sweet lady, thou wilt slay 
 
 Thy reason ! nay, thy very life s at stake ! 
 
 By love, and love s dear pleadings, for his sake 
 
 Who yearns to clasp thee scathless to his breast, 
 
 We pray thee, soothe these maddening cares to rest !" 
 
 Even as the patient graver on a stone, 
 
 Laboring with tireless fingers, sees anon 
 
 The shape embodying his rare fancies grow 
 
 And lighten, thus upon her stubborn woe 
 
 Their tireless comforts wrought, until a Trust, 
 
 Clear-eyed and constant, raised her from the dust 
 
 And ashy shroud of sorrow; her despair 
 
 Gave place to twilight gladness and soft cheer, 
 
 Confirmed ere long by letters from her love : 
 
 "Dear lolene!" he wrote, "thou tender dove 
 
 That tremblest in thy chilly nest at home, 
 
 Prithee embrace meek patience till I come. 
 
 Lo, the swift winds blow freshening o er the sea, 
 
 From out the sunset isles I speed to rest with thee !" 
 
 The knight s ancestral home stood grim and tall 
 
 Beyond its shadowy moat and frowning wall ; 
 
 It topped a gradual summit crowned with fir, 
 
 Green murmurous myrtle, and wild juniper, 
 
 Fronting a long, rude, solitary strand, 
 
 Whereon the earliest sunbeam, like a hand 
 
 Of tremulous benediction, rested bland, 
 
 And warmly quivering; o er the wave-worn lea 
 
 Gleamed the broad spaces of the open sea. 
 
 Now often, with her pitying friends beside, 
 
 She walked the desolate beach and watched the tide, 
 
80 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Forth looking through unconscious tears to view- 
 Sail after sail pass shimmering o er the blue ; 
 And to herself, ofttimes, "Alas!" said she, 
 "Is there no ship, of all these ships I see, 
 Will bring me home my lord? Woe, woe is me! 
 Though winds blow fresh, and sea-birds skim the main, 
 Thou still delay st, my liege ! Ah, wilt thou come 
 again?" 
 
 Sometimes would she, half-dreaming, sit and think, 
 Casting her dark eyes downward from the brink; 
 And when she saw those grisly rocks beneath, 
 Round which the pallid foam, in many a wreath 
 White as the lips of passion, faintly curled, 
 Her thoughts would pierce to the drear under-world, 
 Mid shipwrecks wandering, and bleached bones of 
 
 those 
 
 O er whom the unresting ocean ebbs and flows ; 
 And though the shining waters hushed and deep, 
 Might slumber like an innocent child asleep, 
 From out the North her prescient fancy raised 
 Huge ghostlike clouds, and spectral lightnings blazed 
 I th van of phantom thunder, and the roar 
 Of multitudinous waters on the shore, 
 Heard as in dreadful trance its billowy swells 
 Blent with the mournful tone of far funereal bells ! 
 
 Her friends perceiving that this seaside walk, 
 Though gay and jovial their unstudied talk, 
 But dashed her dubious spirits, kindly took 
 And led her where the blossom-bordered brook 
 Babbled through woodlands, and the limpid pool 
 Lay couched like some shy Naiad in the cool 
 
THE WIFE OF BRITTANY. 8 1 
 
 Of mossy glades; or when a tedious hour 
 Pressed on her with its dim, lethargic power, 
 They wooed her with glad games or jocund song, 
 Till the dull demon ceased to do her wrong. 
 
 So, on a pleasant May morn, while the dew 
 Sparkled on tiny hedgerow-flowers of blue, 
 Passing through many a sun-brown orchard-field, 
 They reach a fairy plesaunce, which revealed 
 Such prospects into breezy inland vales, 
 The natural haunt of plaining nightingales, 
 Such verdant, grassy plots, through which there rolled 
 A gleeful rivulet glimpsing sands of gold, 
 And winding slow by clumps of plumed pines, 
 Rich realms of bay, and gorgeous jasmine-vines, 
 That none who strayed to that fair flowery place 
 Had paused in wonder if its sylvan Grace, 
 Embodied, beauteous, with an arch embrace 
 Had stopped, and smiling, kissed them face to face. 
 
 A buoyant, blithesome company were they, 
 Grouped round the plesaunce on that morn of May ; 
 Wit, song, and rippling laughter, and arch looks 
 That might have lured the wood-gods from their nooks, 
 Echoed and flashed like dazzling arrows tipped 
 With amorous heat; and now and then there slipped 
 From out the whirling ring of jocund girls, 
 Wreathing white arms and tossing wanton curls, 
 Some maiden who with momentary mien 
 Of coy demureness bent o er lolene, 
 And whispered sunniest nothings in her ear. 
 
 First mid the brave gallants assembling there 
 
82 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Aurelian came, a squire of fair degree, 
 
 Tall, vigorous, handsome, his whole air so free, 
 
 Yet courteous, and such princely sweetness blent 
 
 With every well-timed, graceful compliment, 
 
 That sooth to speak, where er Aurelian went, 
 
 To turbulent tilt-yard and baronial hall, 
 
 Sporting a-field or at high festival, 
 
 Favor, like sunshine, filled his heart and eyes. 
 
 Thus nobly gifted, high-born, opulent, wise, 
 
 One hidden curse was his: for troublous years,* 
 
 Secretly, swayed in turn by hopes and fears, 
 
 And all unknown to her, his heart s desire, 
 
 This youth had loved with wild, delirious fire, 
 
 The lonely, sad, unconscious lolene. 
 
 He durst not show how love had brought him teen, 
 
 Nor prove how deep his passion s inward might; 
 
 Thinking, half maddened, on her absent knight; 
 
 Save that the burden of a love-lorn lay 
 
 Would somewhat of his stifled flame betray, 
 
 But in those vague complainings poets use, 
 
 When charging Love with outrage and abuse 
 
 Of his all-potent witchery. "Ah," said he, 
 
 "I love, but ever love despondently; 
 
 For though one vision haunts me, and I burn 
 
 To hold that dream incarnated, I yearn 
 
 In vain, in vain; love breathes no bland return!" 
 
 Thus only did Aurelian strive to show 
 What pangs of hidden passion worked below 
 
 * We are to suppose that Aurelian had seen lolene previous to her 
 marriage, and that circumstances had prevented his becoming intimate 
 with her, or in any way prosecuting his suit honestly and frankly. 
 
THE WIFE OF BRITTANY. 83 
 
 The surface calmness of his front serene; 
 Unless perhaps he met his beauteous Queen, 
 Scarce brightening at the banquet or the dance ; 
 When, with a piercing yet half-piteous glance, 
 His eyes would search, then strangely shun her face, 
 As one condemned, who fears to sue for grace. 
 
 But on this self-same day, when, homeward bound, 
 Her footsteps sought the loneliest path that wound 
 Through tangled copses to the upland ground 
 And orchard close, her fair companions kissed 
 With tearful thanks, and all kind friends dismissed, 
 Aurelian, who the secret pathway knew, 
 Through the dense growth and shrouded foliage 
 
 drew 
 
 Near the pale Queen, the lady of his dreams: 
 The evening s soft pathetic splendor streams 
 O er her clear forehead and her chestnut hair, 
 All glorified as in celestial air; 
 But the dark eyes a wistful light confessed, 
 And some soft murmuring fancies heaved her breast 
 Benignly, like enamored tides that rise 
 And sink melodious to the West wind s sighs. 
 He gazed, and the long passion he had nursed, 
 Impetuous, sudden, unrestrained, o erburst 
 All bounds of custom and enforced restraint: 
 "O lady, hear me: I am deadly faint, 
 Yet wild with love ! such love as forces man 
 To beard conventions, trample on the ban 
 Of partial laws, spurn with contemptuous hate 
 Whate er would bar or blight his blissful fate, 
 And in the feverous frenzy of his zeal, 
 Even from the shrinking flower he dotes on, steal 
 
84 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Blush, fragrance, and heart-dew ! Forgive ! forgive ! 
 What ! have I dared to tell thee this, to live 
 For aye hereafter in thy cold regard? 
 Yet veil thy scorn ; nor make more cold and hard 
 The anguished life now cowering at thy feet." 
 
 As o er a billowy field of ripened wheat 
 One sees perchance the spectral shadows meet, 
 Cast by a darkened heaven, whose lowering hush 
 Broods, thunder-charged, above its golden flush, 
 So, a dark wonder, a sublime suspense, 
 Of gathering wrath at this wild insolence, 
 Dimmed the mild glory of her brow and lips; 
 Her beauty, more majestic in eclipse, 
 Shone with that awful iustre which of old, 
 In the god s temples and the fanes of gold. 
 Blazed in the Pythia s face, and shook her form 
 With throes of baleful prophecy; a storm 
 She stood incarnate, in whose ominous gloom 
 Throbbed the red lightning on the verge of doom. 
 
 But as a current of soft air, unfelt 
 
 On the lower earth, is seen ere long to melt 
 
 The up-piled surge of tempests slowly driven 
 
 In scattered vapors through the deeps of heaven, 
 
 Thus a serener thought tenderly played 
 
 Across her spirit; its portentous shade, 
 
 Big with unuttered wrath and meanings dire, 
 
 Began with slow, wan pulsings to expire ; 
 
 A far ethereal voice she seemed to hear 
 
 Luting its merciful accents in her ear, 
 
 Subtly harmonious: "Yea," she thought, "in truth, 
 
 A rage, a madness holds him, the poor youth 
 
THE WIFE OF BRITTANY. 85 
 
 Is drunk with passion ! Shall I, deeply blessed 
 By all love s sweets, its balm and trustful rest, 
 Crush the less fortunate spirit? utterly 
 Blight and destroy him, all for love of me? 
 His hopes, if hopes he hath, must surely die ; 
 Still would I nip their blossoms tenderly, 
 With a slight, airy frost-bite of contempt. 
 God s mercy, good Sir Squire! art thou exempt 
 Of courtesy as of reason? What weird spell 
 Doth work this madness in thee, and compel 
 Thy nobler nature to such base despites ? 
 Forsooth, thou It blush some day the flower of knights, 
 Should this thy budding virtue wax and grow 
 To natural consummation ! Come ! thy flow 
 Of weak self-ruth might shame the veriest child, 
 A six years peevish unchin, whimpering wild, 
 And scattering his torn locks, because afar 
 He sees and yearns to clasp, but cannot clasp, a 
 star!" 
 
 She ceased, with shame and pity weighing down 
 Her dovelike lids demurely, and a frown 
 Just struggling faintly with as faint a smile 
 (For the mute, trembling squire still knelt the while) 
 Round the arch dimples of her rosy mouth ; 
 Whereon, in fitful fashion, like the South 
 Which sweeps with petulant wing a field of blooms, 
 Then dies a heedless death mong golden brooms 
 And lavish shrubbery, briefly she resumes, 
 With quick-drawn breath, the courses of her speech: 
 " Aurelian, rise ! Behold st thou yonder beach, 
 And the blue waves beyond? those bristling rocks, 
 O er which the chafed sea, in quick thunder-shocks, 
 8 
 
86 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Leaps passionate, panting through the showery spray, 
 Roaring defiance to the calm-eyed day ? 
 Ah, well, fantastic boy ! I blithely swear 
 When yon rude coast beneath us rises clear 
 (Down to the farthest bounds of wild Bretaigne), 
 Of that black rampart darkening sky and main, 
 I ll pay thy vows with answering vows again, 
 And be God save the mark! thy paramour." 
 
 Her words struck keen and deep, even to the core 
 Of the rash listener s soul; they seemed to be 
 More fatal in their careless irony 
 Than if the levin bolt, hurled from above, 
 Had slain at once his manhood and his love. 
 What more he felt in sooth twere vain to tell ; 
 He only heard her whispering, " Fare-thee-well, 
 And Heaven assoil thee of all sinful sorrow!" 
 Then, with a grace and majesty which borrow 
 Fresh lustrous sweetness from an inward stress 
 And hidden motion of chaste gentleness, 
 She glideth like some beauteous cloud apart : 
 Aurelian saw her pass with yearning pangs at heart. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 Soul-epochs are there, when Grief s pitiless storm 
 O erwhelms the amazed spirit; when the warm 
 Exultant heart, whose hopes were brave and high, 
 Shrinks in the darkness, withering all its sky: 
 Then, like a wounded bird by the rude wind 
 Clutched and borne onward, tortured, reckless, blind, 
 Too frail to struggle with that passionate blast, 
 We take wild, wavering courses, and at last 
 
THE WIFE OF BRITTANY. 37 
 
 Are dashed, it may be, on the rocky verge, 
 Or hurled o er the unknown and perilous surge 
 Of some dark doom, when, bruised and tempest-tost, 
 We sink in turbulent eddies, and are lost. 
 
 Urged by a mood thus desperate, careless what 
 
 Thenceforth befell him, from that hateful spot, 
 
 The scene of such stern anguish and despair, 
 
 Aurelian rushed, he knew not, recked not, where. 
 
 All night he wandered in the forest drear, 
 
 Till on the pale phantasmal front of morn 
 
 The first thin flickering day-gleam glanced forlorn, 
 
 Wan as the wraith of perished hopes, the ghost 
 
 Of wishes long sustained and fostered most, 
 
 Now gone for evermore. "O Christ ! that I," 
 
 He muttered hoarsely, "might unsought for lie 
 
 Here, in the dismal shadows and dank grass, 
 
 And close my heavy eyelids, and so pass 
 
 With one brief struggle from the world of men, 
 
 Never to grieve or languish, never again ! 
 
 Never to sow live seeds of expectation 
 
 And joyous promise, to reap desolation; 
 
 But as the seasons fly, snow-wreathed, or crowned 
 
 With odorous garlands, rest in the mute ground, 
 
 Peaceful, oblivious, a Lethean cloud 
 
 Wrapped round my faded senses like a shroud, 
 
 And all earth s turmoil and its juggling show 
 
 Dead as a dream dissolved ten thousand years ago!" 
 
 Long, long revolving his sad thoughts he stood, 
 When gleefully from out the lightening wood 
 Came the sharp ring of horn and echoing steed ; 
 A score of huntsmen, scouring at full speed, 
 
88 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Flashed like a brilliant meteor o er the scene, 
 In royal pomp of glimmering gold and green; 
 Whereat, with wrathful gestures, neath the dome 
 Of the old wood he hastened towards his home, 
 Where day by day he grew more woeful-pale, 
 Calling on Heaven unheard to ease his bale. 
 
 Among his kinfolk, many in hot haste, 
 
 To salve an unknown wound with balms misplaced, 
 
 Came the Squire s brother, Curio, a wise scribe, 
 
 Modest withal, and nobler than his tribe; 
 
 With heart as loving as his brain was wise : 
 
 He could not see with cold, indifferent eyes 
 
 Aurelian pass to madness or the grave, 
 
 While care and wit of man perchance might save; 
 
 So, pondering o er what seemed a desperate case, 
 
 At length there leapt into his kindling face 
 
 The flush of a bright thought. "By Heaven!" cried 
 
 he, 
 
 "O brother, there may still be hope for thee; 
 Therefore, take heart of grace, for what I tell 
 Doubtless preludes a health-inspiring spell ; 
 And thou, released from this long, sorrowful blight, 
 Shalt feel the stir of joy, and bless the morning light. 
 
 "Ten years ten centuries sometimes they would 
 
 seem 
 
 Passed idly o er me like a mystic s dream; 
 Ten years agone, when these dull locks of mine 
 Flowed round broad shoulders with a perfumed shine, 
 And life s clear glass o erbrimmed with purpling wine, 
 I met in Orleans a shrewd clerk-at-law, 
 One all his comrades loved, yet viewed with awe, 
 
THE WIFE OF BRITTANY. 89 
 
 To whom the deepest lore of antique ages, 
 The stored secrets of old seers and sages 
 In Greece, or Ind, or Araby, lay bare : 
 From out the vacant kingdoms of the air, 
 He could at will call forth an hundred forms, 
 Hideous or lovely: the wild wrath of storms; 
 The zephyr s sweetness; bird, beast, wave, obeyed 
 The luminous signs his slender wand conveyed, 
 At whose weird touch men sick in flesh or brain 
 Became their old, bright, hopeful selves again. 
 Aurelian, rise! shake off this vile disease, 
 And ride with me to Orleans; an it please 
 God and our Lady, we may chance to meet 
 Mine ancient comrade, who with deftest feat 
 Of magic skill may cut the Gordian knot 
 That long hath bound, and darkly binds thy lot." 
 
 "But," said Aurelian, with a listless turn 
 
 Of his drooped head, and wandering eyes that 
 
 burn 
 
 With a quick feverish brilliance, "dost thou speak 
 Of thine own knowledge, when thou bid st me seek 
 This rare magician? Hast thou looked on aught 
 Of all the mighty marvels he hath wrought?" 
 
 "Yea! I bethink me how, one summer s day, 
 He led me through the city gates, away 
 To the dark hollows neath a lonely hill: 
 So hushed the noontide, and so breathless-still 
 The drowsy air, the voice of one far stream 
 Came like thin whispers murmuring in a dream ; 
 The blithesome grasshopper, his sense half closed 
 To all his verdurous luxury, reposed 
 8* 
 
9 o 
 
 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Pendent upon the quivering, spearlike grain; 
 Steeped in the mellow sunshine s noiseless rain, 
 All Nature slept; alone the matron wren, 
 From the thick coverts of her thorny den, 
 Teased the hot silence with her twittering low : 
 My inmost soul accordant, seemed to grow 
 Languid and dumb within that mystic place. 
 At length the Wizard s hand across my face 
 Was waved with gentle motion ; a vague mist 
 Flickered before me, on a sudden kissed 
 To warmth and glory by an influence bright; 
 The strangest glamour hovered o er my sight, 
 Wherethrough I saw, methought, a palace proud, 
 Crowned by a lightning-veined thunder-cloud, 
 Whose wreaths of vapory darkness gleamed with eyes 
 Of multitudinous shifting phantasies ; 
 Its pinnacles like diamond spars outshone 
 The starry splendors of an Orient zone ; 
 And, leading towards its lordly entrance, rose 
 Through slow gradations to its marbled close, 
 White terraces where golden sunflowers bloomed ; 
 Above, a ponderous portal archway loomed, 
 High-columned, quaint, majestical : we passed 
 Within that palace, gorgeous, wild, and vast. 
 Ah, blessed saints ! what wonders weirdly blent 
 Did smite me with a hushed astonishment ! 
 A troop of monsters couchant lined our path, 
 Their tawny manes and eyes of fiery wrath 
 Erect and blazing ; an unearthly roar 
 Of fury, shaking vaulted roof and floor, 
 Burst from each savage, inarticulate throat, 
 In sullen echoings lost through halls and courts 
 remote. 
 
THE WIFE OF BRITTANY. 91 
 
 "At the far end of glimmering colonnades 
 
 That gleamed gigantic through the dusky shades, 
 
 Two mighty doors swept backward noiselessly ; 
 
 There heaved beyond us a vast laboring sea; 
 
 Not vacant, for a stately vessel bore 
 
 Swift down the threatening tides that flashed before, 
 
 Thronged with black-bearded Titans, such as moved 
 
 In far-off times heroic, well-beloved 
 
 Of the old gods; there at his stalwart ease, 
 
 Shouldering his knotted club, great Hercules 
 
 Towered, his fierce eyes touched to dewy light, 
 
 And rapt on Hylas, who, serenely bright, 
 
 With intense gaze uplifted, tranced and mute, 
 
 Heard, in ecstatic reverie, the lute 
 
 Of Orpheus plaining to the waves that bow 
 
 And dance subsiding round the blazoned prow ; 
 
 Till the rude winds blew meekly, and caressed 
 
 The mimic golden fleeces o er the crest 
 
 Of bard and warrior, on their secret quest 
 
 Bound to the groves of Colchis; and the bark, 
 
 Round which had frowned a threatening shade and 
 
 dark, 
 Now seemed to thrill, like some proud sentient 
 
 thing 
 
 That glories in the prowess of its wing. 
 The gusty billows of that turbulent sea 
 Their wild crests smoothed, and slowly, pantingly, 
 Sunk to the quiet of a charmed calm ; 
 What odors Hesperean, what rich balm 
 Freight the fair zephyrs, as they shyly run 
 O er the lulled waters dimpling in the sun ! 
 And murmurings, hark ! soft as the long-drawn kiss 
 Pressed by a young god-lover in his bliss 
 
9 2 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 On lips immortal, when the world was new; 
 And, lo ! across the pure, pellucid blue, 
 A barge, with silken sails, whose beauteous crew, 
 Winged Fays and Cupids, curl their sportive arms 
 O er one, more lovely in her noontide charms 
 Than youngest nymphs of Paphos ; fragrant showers 
 Of freshening roses, all luxuriant flowers 
 That feed on Eastern dews, their fairy bands 
 Scatter about her from white liberal hands ; 
 While o er the surface of the dazzling water, 
 Dark-eyed, mysterious, many an ocean daughter 
 Flashes a vanishing brightness on her way, 
 Half seen through tiny twinklings of the spray; 
 And music its full heart in airy falls 
 Outpours, like silvery cascades down the walls 
 Of haunted rocks, and golden cymbals ring, 
 And lutelike measures on voluptuous wing 
 Rise gently to the tranced heavens, replying 
 From azure-tinted deeps in a low passionate sighing. 
 
 "Then were all climes, all ages, wildly blended 
 
 On blood-red fields, wherefrom shrill shouts ascended, 
 
 Of naked warriors, huge and swart of limb, 
 
 Mixed with the mailed Grecians ominous hymn, 
 
 Where mighty banners starlike waved and shone 
 
 Mid cloven bucklers grandly; and anon 
 
 Marched the stern Roman phalanx, with a ring 
 
 And clash of spears, and lusty trumpeting, 
 
 And steeds that neighed defiance unto death, 
 
 And all war s dreadful pomp and hot devouring 
 
 breath. 
 
 Last, on a sudden, the whole tumult died, 
 The vision disappeared ; pale, leaden-eyed, 
 
THE WIFE OF BRITTANY. 93 
 
 Bewildered, on the enchanted floor I sank ; 
 
 When next my wakening spirit faintly drank 
 
 Life s consciousness, within my lonely room 
 
 I sat, and round me drooped the dreary twilight gloom." 
 
 "Enough, good brother! By the Holy Rood 
 Thy tale is medicinal ! the black mood, 
 Which like a spiritual vulture seized and tore 
 My heart-strings, and imbued its beak in gore 
 Hot from the soul, beneath the golden spell 
 Of sovereign hope hath sought its native hell. 
 Then, ho! for Orleans !" At the word he sprung 
 Light to his feet; it seemed there scarcely hung 
 One trace of his long madness round him now, 
 So blithe his smile, so bright his kindling brow. 
 All day they rode till waning afternoon, 
 Through breezy copses, and the shadowy boon 
 Of mightier woods, when, as the latest glance 
 Of sunset, like a level burnished lance, 
 Smote their steel morions, sauntering near the town, 
 With thoughtful mien, robed in his scholar s gown, 
 They met a keen-eyed man, ruddy and tall; 
 O er his grave vest a beard of wavy fall 
 Flowed like a rushing streamlet, rippling down : 
 "Welcome!" he cried in mellow accents deep; 
 "The stars have warned me, and my visioned sleep 
 Foretold your mission, gentles. Curio, what ! 
 Thine ancient, loving comrade quite forgot ? 
 Spur thy dull memory, gossip !" 
 
 "By St. Paul! 
 
 The learned clerk, the gracious Artevall, 
 Or glamour s in it," shouted Curio; "yet 
 Thou look st as hale, as young, as firmly set 
 
94 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 In face and form, as if for thee old Time 
 Had stopped his flight." A lofty glance, sublime 
 And swift as lightning, from the Magian s eye 
 Darted some latent meaning grave and high. 
 He spake not, but the twain he gently led 
 Where grassy pathways and fair meads were spread, 
 Skirting the city walls, till near them stood, 
 Fronting the gloomy boskage of a wood, 
 The Wizard s lonely home. I need not pause 
 To tell how magic and the occult laws 
 Of sciences long dead that sage s lore 
 Did in the spectral, midnight hours explore. 
 Enough, that his strange spells a marvel wrought 
 Beyond the utmost reach of credulous thought. 
 At last he said, " Sir Squire, my task is o er ; 
 Go when thou wilt, and view the Breton shore, 
 And thou shalt see a wide unwrinkled strand, 
 Smooth as thy lovely lady s delicate hand, 
 Washed by a sea o er which the halcyon West 
 Broods like a happy heart whose dreams are dreams of 
 rest." 
 
 PART III. 
 
 Meanwhile, Arviragus, a year before 
 Returned in honor from the English shore, 
 Led with his faithful lolene that life 
 Harmonious, justly balanced, free from strife, 
 Which crowns our hopes with a true-hearted wife. 
 
 Ne er dreamed he, as she laid her happy head 
 Close to his heart, what cloud of shame and dread 
 
THE WIFE OF BRITTANY. 95 
 
 Gloomed o er his placid roof-tree; but content 
 To think how nobly his late toils had spent 
 Their force beneath Death s gory-dripping brow 
 Through shocks of battle, a fresh laurel bough 
 Plucking therefrom, to flourish green and high 
 About his war-worn temples majesty, 
 Gladly from bloodshed, conflicts, and alarms 
 He rested in those white, encircling arms, 
 And oft his strong heart thrilled, his eyes grew dim, 
 To know, kind Heaven ! how deep her love for him. 
 
 Thus month on month the cheerful days went by, 
 
 Like caroling birds across an April sky, 
 
 A fairy sky, undimmed by clouds or showers. 
 
 But on a morning, while her favorite flowers 
 
 lolene tended, in the garden-walks 
 
 Pausing to clip dead leaves, and prop the stalks 
 
 Of drooping plants, herself more sweet and fair 
 
 Than any flower, the brightest that blushed there, 
 
 Her lord stole gently on her unaware; 
 
 His haughty grace all softened, he bowed down 
 
 To kiss the stray curls of her locks of brown, 
 
 Thick-sown with threads of tangled, glimmering 
 
 gold: 
 
 "At need," he said, "thou canst be calm and bold; 
 Therefore, thou wilt not yield to foolish woe 
 If duty parts us briefly. Wife, I go 
 To scourge some banded ruffians who of late 
 Assailed our peaceful serfs, and our estate 
 Thou knowest it well northwest of Penmark town, 
 Ravished with sword and fire. Thy lord s renown, 
 Yea, and thy lord, were soon the scoff of all, 
 If in his own fair fief such crimes befall 
 
96 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Unscourged of justice; so, dear love, adieu! 
 Nor fear the end of that I have to do." 
 
 Thus spake the knight, who forthwith raised a shout, 
 And bade them bring his stalwart war-horse out ; 
 When, on the sudden, a steed, tall, jet-black, 
 Led by a groom, came whinnying down the track, 
 Twixt the green myrtle hedges; at a bound 
 He vaulted in the selle ; smilingly round 
 He turned to wave "farewell" with mailed hand, 
 And then rode blithely down the sunlit land. 
 
 That evening, at the close of vesper-prayer, 
 Wandering along through the still twilight air, 
 lolene, somewhat sad and sick in mind, 
 Met in her homeward pathway, low-reclined 
 Beneath the blasted branches of an oak, 
 Aurelian, her wild lover of old days: 
 She started backward in a wan amaze. 
 But he, uprising calmly, bowed and spoke : 
 "Ha! thou recall st me, lady? I had deemed 
 These bitter years which have so scarred and seamed 
 Whate er of grace I owned in youthful prime, 
 Had razed me from thy memory. See ! a rime 
 Like that of age hath touched my locks to white; 
 Yet never once, so help me Heaven ! by night 
 Or day, in storm or brightness, hath my soul 
 Veered but a point from thee, its starry goal. 
 A mighty purpose doth itself fulfill, 
 Wise men have said. Lady! I love thee still, 
 And Love works marvels. Prithee come with me, 
 Ay, quickly come, and thou thyself shalt see 
 
THE WIFE OF BRITTANY. 97 
 
 I am no falsehood-monger. Yea, come, come !" 
 His words, his sudden passion, smote her dumb, 
 And from her cheeks, those delicate gardens, wane 
 The rare twin roses, as when autumn rain, 
 Fatally sharp, sweeps o er some doomed domain 
 Of matron blooms, and their rich colors fade 
 Like rainbows slowly dying, shade by shade, 
 Unto wan spectres of the flowers that were. 
 With languid head and thoughts of prescient fear, 
 Passively following where Aurelian guides, 
 She hears anon the surge and rush of tides 
 On the seashore, and feels the freshening spray 
 Bedew her brow. "Lady, look forth, and say 
 If to a love unquenched, unquenchable, 
 Eternal Nature yields not; its strong spell 
 Hath toiled for me, till the rocks rooted under 
 Those heaving waters have been rent asunder, 
 And the wide spaces of the ocean plain, 
 Down to the farthest bounds of wild Bretaigne, 
 Rise calmly glorious in the day-god s beam. 
 Look, look thy fill! it is no vanishing dream : 
 Lo ! now I claim thy promise / 
 
 A keen gleam 
 
 Shot its victorious radiance o er his brow. 
 But she, bewildered, tremulous, shrinking low, 
 Her clinched hands pale even to the finger-tips, 
 Pressed on her blinded eyes and faltering lips, 
 Sued in a voice like wailing wind that breaks 
 From aspen coverts over lonely lakes, 
 In the shut heart of immemorial dells, 
 A fitful, sobbing voice, whose anguish swells, 
 Burdened with deep upyearning supplication, 
 Coldly across his evil exultation. 
 9 
 
98 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 She pleads for brief delay, with frenzied pain 
 Grasping at some dim phantom of the brain, 
 Shadowing a vague deliverance. "As thou wilt," 
 He answered, slowly. "Well I know the guilt 
 Of broken vows can never rest on thee! 
 Pass by unhurt!" Mutely she turned to flee, 
 Nor paused until her chambered privacy 
 She reached with panting sides, pallid as death, 
 And gasping with short, anguished sobs for breath. 
 "Caught am I, trapped like a poor fluttering bird, 
 Or dappled youngling from the innocent herd 
 Lured to a pitfall ! Yet such oath as this 
 Were surely void? If not, he still shall miss 
 Whate er betide his long-expected bliss! 
 Better pure-folded arms, and stainless sleep 
 Where the gray-drooping willow-branches weep, 
 Than meet a fate so hideous ! Let me think ! 
 Others, pure wives, brave virgins, on the brink 
 Of shame and ruin, have struck home and fled, 
 To find unending quiet with the dead." 
 
 Borne down as by a demon s hand which pressed 
 
 Invisible, but stifling, on her breast, 
 
 With brain benumbed, yet burning, and a sense 
 
 Of utter, wearied, desperate impotence, 
 
 Her forlorn glance around the darkening room 
 
 Roving in helpless search, from out the gloom 
 
 Caught the blue glitter of a half-sheathed blade, 
 
 A small but trenchant steel, whose lustre played 
 
 Balefully bright, and like a serpent s eye 
 
 Fixed on her with malign expectancy, 
 
 Drew her perforce towards Death, that death which 
 
 seemed 
 The sole, stern means through which her fame, redeemed, 
 
THE WIFE OF BRITTANY. 
 
 99 
 
 Should soar in spiritual beauty o er the tomb 
 Wherein might rest her body s mouldering bloom. 
 
 Ah, me ! the looks distraught, the passionate care, 
 
 The whole wild scene, its misery and despair, 
 
 Come back like scenes of yesterday. Half bowed 
 
 Her queenly form, and the pent grief allowed 
 
 A moment s freedom, shakes her to the core, 
 
 The inmost seat of reason. "All is o er," 
 
 She murmurs, as her slender fingers feel 
 
 The deadly edge of the cold shimmering steel. 
 
 At once her swift arm flashes to its height, 
 
 While the poised death hangs quivering, and her sight 
 
 Grows dazed and giddy : when from far, so far 
 
 It sounded like the weird voice of a star, 
 
 Muffled by distance, yet distinct and deep, 
 
 About her in the terrible silence creep 
 
 Accents that seize as with a bodily force 
 
 On her white arm suspended, and its course 
 
 To fatal issues, with arresting will 
 
 Hold rigid, till supine it drops and still, 
 
 Back to its drooping level, and a clang 
 
 Of the freed steel through all the chamber rang 
 
 Sharply, and something shuddered down the air 
 
 Like wings of baffled fiends passing in fierce despair. 
 
 A warning blent of prescient wrath and prayer 
 Those accents seemed, wherethrough a palpable dread 
 Ran coldly shivering. " Pause, pause, pause ! they said ; 
 "Bar not thy hopes gainst chance of happier fate! 
 The circuit vast which rounds life s dial-plate 
 Hath many lights and shades; its hand which lowers 
 So threatening now, may move to golden hours, 
 
loo LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 And thou on this sad time may st look like one 
 Smiling on mortal woes from some unsetting sun." 
 
 Motionless, overcome by hushing awe, 
 
 She heard the mystic voice, and dreamed she saw, 
 
 Just o er the dubious borders of the light, 
 
 A wavering apparition, scarce more bright 
 
 Than one faint moon-ray, through the misty tears 
 
 Of clouded evenings seen on breezeless mountain meres. 
 
 Mistlike it waned; but in her heart of hearts 
 
 The solemn counsel sank: with guilty starts, 
 
 She thought how near, through Grief s bewildering 
 
 blight, 
 
 How near to death, to death and shame, this night 
 Her reckless soul had strayed. Yet short-lived hope 
 Moved hour by hour through paths of narrowing scope, 
 As, day by day, her term of grace passed by, 
 Like phantom birds across a phantom sky: 
 Her lord still absent, and Aurelian bound 
 (For thus he wrote her) to one weary round, 
 Morn after morn, of pacings to and fro, 
 Within the wooded garden-walks below 
 The city s southward portals. "There," said he, 
 "Each day, and all day long, impatiently 
 I wait thy will." 
 
 As when in dewy spring, 
 Mid the moist herbage closely nestling, 
 Ofttimes we see the hunted partridge cling, 
 Panting and scared, to the thick-covering grass, 
 The while above her couch doth darkly pass 
 What seemeth the shadow of a giant wing, 
 
THE WIFE OF BRITTANY. IQ 
 
 And she, more lowly, with a cowering stoop, 
 
 Shivers, expecting the fell, fiery swoop 
 
 Of the gaunt hawk, that corsair of the breeze, 
 
 And feels beforehand his sharp talons seize 
 
 And rend her tender vitals; so at home, 
 
 lolene, trembling at the stroke to come, 
 
 Touched by the lurid shadow of her doom, 
 
 Lingered ; until, upon a sunny dawn, 
 
 Her lord returning, gayly up the lawn 
 
 Urged his blithe courser, and, dismounting, came 
 
 Upon her, warmly glowing, all aflame 
 
 With hope and love. But as her dreary eyes 
 
 Were turned on his, a quick, disturbed surprise, 
 
 And then a terror, smote him, and the voice 
 
 All jubilant, full-breathed to say, "Rejoice, 
 
 Our foes are slain !" clave stammering in his throat. 
 
 But she, her loose, disheveled locks afloat 
 
 Round the fair-sloping shoulders, her hands clasped 
 
 About his mailed knees, brokenly gasped 
 
 Her anguish forth, and told her sorrowful tale. 
 
 Dizzy and mute, and as the marble pale 
 
 Whereon he leaned, unto the desperate close 
 
 The knight heard all, locked in a cold repose 
 
 More dread than stormiest passion; life and strength 
 
 Seemed slowly ebbing from him, till at length 
 
 His soul, like one that walks the fatal sand 
 
 (Whose treacherous smoothness looks a solid strand, 
 
 But tempts to ruin), felt all earth grow dim, 
 
 And round him saw, as in a chaos, swim 
 
 Joy s fair horizon melting in the cloud. 
 
 But soon his stalwart will, rugged and proud, 
 
 Woke lionlike to action; a swift flush 
 
 Rushed like a sunset river s reddening glow 
 
 n* 
 
102 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 O er the tempestuous blackness of his brow, 
 Pregnant with thunder; through the dismal hush, 
 His pitiless voice, sharp-echoing round about 
 The clanging court, leaped like a falchion out. 
 
 "Thou hast played with honor as a juggler s ball ; 
 God strikes thee from thy balance, and the thrall 
 Art thou, henceforth, of one vainglorious deed. 
 What ! shall we plant with rash caprice the seed 
 Of bitterness, nor look for some harsh fruit 
 To spring untimely from its poisonous root? 
 What ! a lewd spark, a perfumed popinjay, 
 Dares in the broad-browed honest gaze of day, 
 To dash a foul thought, like the hideous spray 
 Of Hell, right in thy forehead, and thy hand, 
 Which should have towered as if the levin-brand 
 Of scorn and judgment armed it, but a bland 
 Dismissal signs him ! not one hint which tells 
 Thy lord, meantime, what loathsome secret dwells 
 Here, by his hearthstone, muffled up, concealed, 
 And like a corse corrupting, till, revealed 
 By vengeful doom, its pestilent odor steals 
 Outward, while all the wholesome blood congeals 
 To a chill horror, and the air grows vile, 
 And even the blessed sun a death s-head smile 
 Assumes in our distempered fantasy? 
 By Heaven ! this withering curse which hangs o er 
 
 thee, 
 
 O lolene!" but here his angry voice 
 Broke short, "There is no choice," he moaned, "no 
 
 choice. 
 
 Yea, wife ! may Christ adjudge me if I lie, 
 To endless, as now keen calamity, 
 
THE WIFE OF BRITTANY. IO3 
 
 But through this troublous gloom my mind discerns 
 One lonely light to guide us; lo, it burns 
 Lurid, yet clear, by whose fierce flame I see 
 Ah, grief malign ! ah, bitter destiny ! 
 As if God s own right hand the blazing pain 
 And fiery bale did stamp on soul and brain, 
 These terms of doom : 
 
 Shame and despair for both, 
 
 Sorrow and heartbreak ! Through all, keep thine oath, 
 Thou woman, self -involved, s elf- lost ; and so 
 Face the black front of thi s tremendous woe / 
 
 She bowed as if a blast of sudden wind, 
 Breathing full winter, smote her cold and blind; 
 Then as one wandering in a soul-eclipse, 
 Feebly she rose, and with her quivering lips 
 Kissed her pale lord, stifling one desolate cry. 
 Anon she moved around him noiselessly, 
 Bent on the small, sweet offices of love; 
 And sometimes pausing, she would glance above 
 With tearless eyes, for solemn griefs like this, 
 Blighting at once both root and flowers of bliss, 
 Are arid as the desert, and in vain 
 Thirst for the cooling freshness of the rain. 
 Fitfully led from treasured nook to nook 
 Of her dear home, she walked with far-off look, 
 And absent fingers, plying household tasks; 
 Bravely her sunless wretchedness she masks 
 Through moments deemed unending while they passed - 
 When passed, a flickering point ! Hark ! The doomed 
 hour at last ! 
 
104 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 An afternoon it was, stirless and calm; 
 
 From field and garden-close rare breaths of balm 
 
 Made the air moist and odorous. Nature lay 
 
 Divinely peaceful ; only far away 
 
 In the broad zenith, a strange cloud unfurled 
 
 Its boding banner weirdly o er the world; 
 
 Whilst lolene, her veiled head sadly bowed, 
 
 Passed through the gay thorpe and its motley crowd, 
 
 To where a great wall towered this side a wood. 
 
 All things her mazed, chaotic fancy viewed 
 
 Looked dreamlike; even Aurelian lingering there, 
 
 To meet her in the shadiest forest-lair, 
 
 Gleamed ghostly dim, a dreadful ghost in sooth, 
 
 For still a hideous trance appeared to press 
 
 Upon her, and a nightmare helplessness, 
 
 To whom she knelt in sad mechanic guise, 
 
 Pleading for mercy with such piteous eyes, 
 
 And such soft flow of self-bewailing ruth, 
 
 Aurelian felt his passion s quivering chords 
 
 Stilled at the touch of those pathetic words, 
 
 That glance of wild, appealing agonies. 
 
 Stirred by his nobler nature s grave command 
 
 (That fair, indwelling angel sweet and grand, 
 
 Born to transmute the worn and blasted soil 
 
 Of sinful hearts by his celestial toil 
 
 To Eden places and the haunts of God), 
 
 He stooped, and, courteous, raised her from the sod, 
 
 And whispered closely in her eager ear 
 
 Words which his guardian genius smiled to hear; 
 
 Words of release, and balmy-breathing cheer. 
 
 And while his softening gaze a grateful mist 
 
 Feelingly dimmed, with knightly grace he kissed 
 
THE WIFE OF BRITTANY. 105 
 
 Her drooping forehead, and loose tressses thrown 
 In rippling waves adown the heaving zone; 
 Once, twice, he kissed her thus, with reverence meek; 
 But when her brimming eyes uplifted, seek 
 Aurelian now, with eloquent looks to tell 
 What tenderest words could not convey so well, 
 She only sees the tree- stems tall and brown, 
 The golden leaves come faintly fluttering down, 
 And o nly hears the wind of sunset moan : 
 Midmost the twilight wood the lady stands alone. 
 
 Stung by his misery into frenzied motion, 
 Her lord meantime beside the restless ocean 
 fRoamed, hearkening to the mournful undertone 
 |Of the sea s mighty heart, which touched his own, 
 O God, how sadly ! when abruptly lifting 
 His furrowed b.row long fixed upon the shifting 
 And mimic whirlwinds of loose sand that flew 
 Hither and thither, as the brief winds blew 
 At fitful whiles from o er the watery waste, 
 He saw, as if she spurned the earth in haste, 
 His gentle wife returning, with a face 
 Whereon there dwelt no shadow of disgrace; 
 A face that seemed transfigured in the light 
 Of Paradise, it shone so softly bright. 
 Beautiful ever, round her now there hovered 
 A subtle, new-born glory, which discovered 
 A shape so dazzling, you had thought the plume 
 Of some archangel s pinion cast its bloom 
 About her, and the veil of heaven withdrawn, 
 She viewed the mystic streams, the sapphire dawn, 
 And heard the choirs celestial, tier on tier 
 Uptowering to the uttermost golden sphere, 
 
106 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Sing of a vanquished dread, a blest release, 
 The effluence and the solemn charm of peace. 
 
 Evening closed round them; o er the placid reach 
 Stretching far northward of the sea-girt beach, 
 They passed, while night s first planet in the sky 
 Faltered from out the stillness timidly, 
 And perfumed breezes rustled murmuring by, 
 Twixt the grim headlands up the glens to die, 
 And white-winged sea-birds, with a long-drawn cry 
 Which spake of homeward flight and billowy nest, 
 Glanced through the sunset down the wavering West. 
 
 Evening closed o er them, mellowing into dark; 
 Along the horizon s edge, a tiny spark, 
 Dull-red at first, but broadening to a white 
 And tranquil orb of silvery-streaming light, 
 Slowly the Night Queen fair her heaven ascends: 
 The outlines of those loving forms she blends 
 Into one luminous shade, which seems to float, 
 Mingle and melt in shining mists remote ; 
 Type of two perfect lives whose single soul 
 Outbreathes a cordial music, sweet and whole, 
 One will, one mind, one joy-encircled fate, 
 And one winged faith that soars beyond the heavenly 
 gate. 
 
 My song which now hath long flowed unperplexed 
 Through scenes so various, calm as heaven, or vexed 
 By gusty passion, reaches the lone shore. 
 Ghostlike and strange, of silence and old dreams; 
 Far-off its weird and wandering whisper seems 
 Like airs that faint o er untracked oceans hoar 
 
THE WIFE OF BRITTANY. 107 
 
 On haunted midnights, when the moon is low. 
 And now tis ended: long, yea, long ago, 
 Lost on the wings of all the winds that blow, 
 The dust of these dead loves hath passed away ; 
 Still, still, methinks, a soft ethereal ray 
 Illumes the tender record, and makes bright 
 Its heart-deep pathos with a marvelous light, 
 So that whate er of frenzied grief and pain 
 Marred the pure currents of the crystal strain, 
 Transfigured shines through fancy s mellowing trance, 
 Touching with golden haze the quaint old-world 
 romance. 
 
 NOTE. Of "The Frankleines Tale," the plot of which has been 
 followed in " The Wife of Brittany," Richard Henry Home, the author 
 of " Orion," says : " It is a noble story, perfect in its moral purpose, 
 and chivalrous self-devotion to a feeling of truth and honor; but it 
 would have been more satisfactory in an intellectual sense had a dis 
 tinction been made between a sincere pledge of faith and a merry 
 bond !" 
 
 This may at first seem incontrovertible, but we should remember 
 that Chaucer, who, without pretension, and through the medium of his 
 humor, satire, and pathos, was the great moralist and preacher of his 
 time, desired in "The Frankleines Tale" to show the danger of too 
 lightly treating, from whatever motive, such solemn obligations as 
 those connected with a wife s chastity and honor. 
 
 Moreover, in the mediaeval age, a superstitious sanctity was often 
 made to attach to one s word, no matter how unthinkingly it may have 
 been given ; nay, it was maintained by certain strict formalists, that 
 even an extorted oath was, under some conditions, binding! It will, 
 therefore, be perceived, that in allowing so much importance to a 
 "merry bond," and associating with it such grave trials, the poet was 
 true both to the time depicted and to human nature, as influenced by 
 morbid and conventional ideas of duty. 
 
io8 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 THE RIVER. 
 
 [" Man s life is like a River, which likewise hath its Seasons or 
 phases of progress : first, its Spring rise, gentle and beautiful ; next, its 
 Summer, of eventful maturity, mixed calm, and storm, followed by 
 Autumnal decadence, and mists of Winter, after which cometh the 
 all-embracing Sea, type of that mystery we call Eternity !"] 
 
 UP among the dew-lit fallows 
 
 Slight but fair it took its rise, 
 And through rounds of golden shallows 
 
 Brightened under broadening skies; 
 While the delicate wind of morning 
 
 Touched the waves to happier grace, 
 Like a breath of love s forewarning, 
 
 Dimpling o er a virgin face, 
 Till the tides of that rare river 
 
 Merged and mellowed into one, 
 Flashed the shafts from sundawn s quiver, 
 
 Backward to the sun. 
 
 Royal breadths of sky-born blushes 
 
 Burned athwart its billowy breast, 
 But beyond those roseate flushes 
 
 Shone the snow-white swans at rest; 
 Round in graceful flights the swallows 
 
 Dipped and soared, and soaring sang, 
 And in bays and reed-bound hollows, 
 
 How earth s wild, sweet voices rang! 
 Till the strong, swift, glorious river 
 
 Seemed with mightier pulse to run, 
 Thus to roll and rush forever, 
 
 Laughing in the sun. 
 
THE RIVER. 109 
 
 Nay ; a something born of shadow 
 
 Slowly crept the landscape o er, 
 Something weird o er wave and meadow, 
 
 Something cold o er stream and shore; 
 While on birds that gleamed or chanted, 
 
 Stole gray gloom and silence grim, 
 And the troubled wave-heart panted, 
 
 And the smiling heavens waxed dim, 
 And from far strange spaces seaward, 
 
 Out of dreamy cloud-lands dun, 
 Came a low gust moaning leaward, 
 
 Chilling leaf and sun. 
 
 Then, from gloom to gloom intenser, 
 
 On the laboring streamlet rolled, 
 Where from cloud-racks gathered denser, 
 
 Hark ! the ominous thunder knolled ! 
 While like ghosts that flit and shiver, 
 
 Down the mists, from out the blast, 
 Spectral pinions crossed the river, 
 
 Spectral voices wailing passed ! 
 Till the fierce tides, rising starkly, 
 
 Blended, towering into one 
 Mighty wall of blackness, darkly 
 
 Quenching sky and sun ! 
 
 Thence, to softer scenes it wandered, 
 
 Scents of flowers and airs of balm, 
 And methought the streamlet pondered, 
 
 Conscious of the blissful calm; 
 Slow it wound now, slow and slower 
 
 By still beach and ripply bight, 
 And the voice of waves sank lower, 
 
 Laden, languid with delight; 
 
 10 
 
no LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 In and out the cordial river 
 
 Strayed in peaceful curves that won 
 
 Glory from the great Life- Giver, 
 Beauty from the sun ! 
 
 Thence again with quaintest ranges, 
 
 On the fateful streamlet rolled 
 Through unnumbered, nameless changes, 
 
 Shade and sunshine, gloom and gold, 
 Till the tides, grown sad and weary, 
 
 Longed to meet the mightier main, 
 And their low-toned miserere 
 
 Mingled with his grand refrain ; 
 Oh, the languid, lapsing river, 
 
 Weak of pulse and soft of tune, 
 Lo ! the sun hath set forever, 
 
 Lo ! the ghostly moon ! 
 
 But thenceforth through moon and starlight 
 
 Sudden-swift the streamlet s sweep; 
 Yearning for the mystic far-light, 
 
 Pining for the solemn deep; 
 While the old strength gathers o er it, 
 
 While the old voice rings sublime, 
 And in pallid mist before it, 
 
 Fade the phantom shows of time, 
 Till with one last eddying quiver, 
 
 All its checkered journey done, 
 Seaward breaks the ransomed river, 
 
 Goal and grave are won ! 
 
THE LITTLE SAINT. TII 
 
 THE NEST. 
 
 AT the poet s life-core lying 
 Is a sheltered and sacred nest, 
 
 Where, as yet, unfledged for flying, 
 His callow fancies rest : 
 
 Fancies, and Thoughts, and Feelings, 
 Which the mother Psyche breeds, 
 
 And Passions whose dim revealings 
 But torture their hungry needs. 
 
 Yet, there cometh a summer splendor 
 When the golden brood wax strong, 
 
 And, with voices grand or tender, 
 They rise to the heaven of song. 
 
 THE LITTLE SAINT. 
 
 AT the calm matin hour 
 
 I see her bend in prayer, 
 As bends a virgin flower 
 
 Kissed by the summer air: 
 O ! meek her downcast eyes ! 
 
 But the sweet lips wear a smile; 
 How hard the little angel tries 
 
 To be serious all the while ! 
 
II2 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 I tell her tis not right 
 
 To be half grave, half gay, 
 Imploring in Heaven s sight 
 
 A blessing on the day : 
 She hears, and looks devout 
 
 (Although it gives her pain) ; 
 Still, when the ritual s almost out, 
 
 She s sure to smile again! 
 
 She shocks her maiden aunt, 
 
 Who thinks it a disgrace 
 That do her best she can t 
 
 Give her a solemn face : 
 She ll scold, and rate, and fume, 
 
 And lecture hour by hour, 
 Until she makes the very room 
 
 Look passionate and sour ! 
 
 Alack! tis all in vain! 
 
 Soon as the sermon s done, 
 My fairy blooms again, 
 
 Like a rosebud in the sun; 
 I cannot damp her mirth, 
 
 I will not check her play, 
 Is innocent joy so rife on earth 
 
 Hers should not have full sway? 
 
 I asked her yester-night, 
 
 Why, when prayer was made, 
 Her brow of cordial light 
 
 Scarce caught one serious shade. 
 "Father," she said, "you love 
 
 Better to meet me glad, 
 And so, I thought, the Christ above 
 
 Might grieve to see me sad !" 
 
STORY OF GLAUCUS THE THESSALIAN. 
 
 THE STORY OF GLAUCUS THE THESS ALLAN.* 
 
 LIST to this legend, which an antique poet 
 
 Hath left among the musty tomes of eld, 
 
 Like a flushed rosebud pressed between the leaves 
 
 Of some worn, dark-hued volume. What a light 
 
 Of healthful bloom about it ! What an air 
 
 Seems breathing round its delicate petals still! 
 
 Wilt thou not take it, lady, thou, whose face 
 
 Is lovely as a lost Arcadian dream, 
 
 And place it next thy heart, and keep it fresh 
 
 With balmy dews thy gentle spirit sends 
 
 Up to the deep founts of the tenderest eyes 
 
 That e er have shone, I think, since in some dell 
 
 Of Argos and enchanted Thessaly, 
 
 The poet, from whose heart-lit brain it came, 
 
 Murmured this record unto her he loved? 
 
 THE STORY. 
 
 Glaucus, a young Thessalian, while the dawn 
 Of a fresh spring-tide brightened copse and lawn, 
 Sauntered, with lingering steps and dreamy mood, 
 Adown the fragrant pathway of a wood 
 
 Which skirted his small homestead pleasantly, 
 
 And there he saw a tall, majestic tree, 
 
 - The elements of this story are to be found in Apollonius Rhodius, 
 and Leigh Hunt has embodied them in a graceful prose legend, 
 lo* 
 
H 4 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 An oak of untold summers, whose broad crown, 
 
 Quivering as if in some slow agony, 
 
 And trembling inch by inch forlornly down, 
 
 Threatened, for want of a kind propping care, 
 
 To leave its breezy realm of golden air, 
 
 And from its leafy heights, with shriek and groan, 
 
 Like some proud forest empire overthrown, 
 
 Measure its vast bulk on the greensward lone. 
 
 Glaucus beheld and pitied it. He saw 
 
 The approaching ruin with a touch of awe, 
 
 No less than genial sympathy, for men, 
 
 Jn those old times, pierced with a wiser ken 
 
 To the deep soul of Nature, and from thence 
 
 Drew a serene and mystic influence, 
 
 Which thrilled all life to music. Therefore he 
 
 Called on his slaves, and bade them prop the tree. 
 
 Musing he passed to a still lonelier place 
 
 In the dim forest, by this act of grace 
 
 Lightened and cheered, when, from the copse-wood 
 
 nigh, 
 
 There dawned upon his vision suddenly 
 A shape more fair and lustrous than the star 
 Which rides o er Cloudland on her sapphire car 
 When vesper winds are fluting solemnly. 
 "Glaucus," she said, in tones whose liquid flow, 
 Mellow, harmonious, passionately low, 
 Stole o er his spirit with a strange, wild thrill, 
 "I am the Nymph of that fair tree thy will 
 Hath saved from ruin ; but for thee my breath 
 Had vanished mistlike, my glad eyes in death 
 Been sealed for evermore. Yes ! but for thee 
 I must have lost that half-divinity 
 
STORY OF GLAUCUS THE THESSALIAN. 11 
 
 Whose secret essence, spiritually fine, 
 Hath warmed my veins like Hebe s heavenly -wine. 
 No more, no more amid my rippling hair 
 Could I have felt soft fingers of the Air 
 Dallying at dawn or twilight, on my cheek 
 Have felt the sun rest with a rosy-streak, 
 Pulsing in languor; nor with pleasant pain 
 Drooped in the cool arms of the loving Rain, 
 That wepf its soul out on my bosom fair. 
 But now, in long, calm, blissful days to be, 
 This life of mine shall lapse deliciously 
 Through all the seasons of the bounteous year ; 
 Beneath my shade mortals shall sit, and hear 
 Benignant whispers in the shimmering leaves; 
 And sometimes, upon warm and odorous eves, 
 Lovers shall bring me offerings of sweet things, 
 Honey and fruit, and dream they mark the wings 
 Of Cupids fluttering through the oak-boughs hoar. 
 All this I owe thee, Glaucus, all, and more ! 
 Ask what thou wilt ! thou shalt not ask in vain !" 
 
 Then Glaucus, gazing in her glorious eyes, 
 And rallying from his first unmanned surprise, 
 Emboldened, too, by her soft looks, which drew 
 A spell about his heart like fire and dew 
 Mingled and melting in a love-charm bland, 
 And by the twinkling of her moon-white hand, 
 That seemed to beckon coyly to her side, 
 And by her maiden sweetness deified, 
 And something that he deemed a dear unrest 
 Heaving the unveiled billows of her breast 
 (As if her preternatural part, as free 
 And wild as any nursling of the lea, 
 
1 1 6 LE GENDS AND L YRICS, 
 
 Yearned wholly downward to humanity) 
 Emboldened thus, I say, Glaucus replied : 
 "O fairest vision! be my love, my bride!" 
 
 Over her face there passed an airy flush, 
 The roseate shade, the twilight of a blush, 
 Ere the low-whispering answer pensively 
 Stirred the dim silence in its tranced hush. 
 "Thy suit is granted, Glaucus! though perchance 
 A peril broods o er this, thy bright romance, 
 Like a lone cloudlet o er a lake that s fair. 
 When the high noon, flaunting so hotly now 
 Fades into evening, thou may st meet me here, 
 Just in the cool of this rill-shadowing bough; 
 My favorite Bee, my fairy of the flowers, 
 Shall bid thee come to that pure tryst of ours." 
 
 Who now so proud as Glaucus? "I have won," 
 Lightly he said, "the marvelous benison 
 Of love from her in whose soft-folding arms 
 Gods might forget Elysium ! O ! her charms 
 Are perfect, perfect heaven and perfect earth, 
 Blest and commingled in one exquisite birth 
 Of beauty, and for me ! I know not why, 
 But rosy Eros ever seems to fly 
 Gayly before me, armed for victory, 
 In every pleasant love-strife!" On this theme 
 Deeply he dwelt, till a vain self-esteem 
 Obscured his worthier spirit. Thus he went 
 Out from the haunted wood, his nature toned 
 Down to the common daylight, disenzoned 
 Of all its rare, ethereal ravishment. 
 
STORY OF GLAUCUS THE THESSALIAN. n 
 
 Still in this mood, he sought the neighboring town, 
 
 Met with some gay young comrades, and sat down 
 
 To dice and wassail. All that morn he played, 
 
 And quaffed, and sang, and feasted, till the shade 
 
 Of evening o er earth s forehead cast a gloom; 
 
 And still he played, when on his ear the boom 
 
 Of a swift, shining, yellow-breasted Bee 
 
 Rung out its small alarum. Teasingly 
 
 The insect hummed about him, went and came, 
 
 And like a tiny hell of circling flame 
 
 And discord seemed to Glaucus, who at last 
 
 Struck at the winged torment testily. 
 
 The Bee poor go-between ! in either thigh 
 
 Cruelly maimed, with feeble flutterings, passed 
 
 Back to its home amid the foliaged bloom. 
 
 At length, in two most fortunate throws, the game 
 
 Was won by Glaucus ! With triumphant smile 
 
 He seized and pocketed a glittering pile 
 
 Of new sestertii. "Ay! tis e er the same," 
 
 He muttered; "dice or women, I must win ! 
 
 But hold ! by Venus ! twere a burning sin, 
 
 And false to my fond wild flower of the wood 
 
 Longer to dally here. O Fortune ! good, 
 
 Kind mistress, speed me still ! Would that each heel 
 
 Were plumed like happy Hermes !" His late zeal 
 
 Spurred the youth onward to the place of tryst, 
 
 One final burst of sunset amethyst, 
 
 Ruby, and topaz blazed among the boughs, 
 
 Whence a sad voice, "Breaker of solemn vows, 
 
 What dost thou here ? Thine hour has past for aye f 
 
 Glaucus, with startled eyes, peered through the sway 
 
 Of moistened fern and thicket, but his view 
 
Il8 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Rested alone on vacancy, or caught, 
 Swift as the shifting glamour of a thought, 
 Only the golden and evanishing ray, 
 Which, softened by cool sparktes of the dew, 
 Flashed through the half-closed lids of weary Day. 
 
 "Here am I," said the voice, so sadly sweet, 
 
 The listener thrilled even to his pausing feet, 
 
 "Here, right before thee, Glaucus!" Yet again 
 
 The youth, with straining eyeballs and hot brain, 
 
 Searched the dense thickets, it was all in vain. 
 
 "Alas! alas!" (and now a tremulous moan 
 
 Sobbed through the voice, like a faint minor tone 
 
 In mournful human music) "thou canst see 
 
 My face no more, for sternly, drearily, 
 
 A wildering cloud of sense, that shall not rise, 
 
 Hath come between me and thy darkening eyes. 
 
 O shallow-hearted ! nevermore on thee 
 
 Shall visions of that finer world above 
 
 Dawn from the chaste auroras of their love; 
 
 But common things, seen in a funeral haze 
 
 Of earthiness, and sorrow, and mistrust, 
 
 Weigh the soul down, and soil its hopes with dust ; 
 
 A hand like Fate s with cruel force shall press 
 
 Thy spirit backward into heaviness, 
 
 And the base realm of that forlorn abyss 
 
 Wherein the serpent Passions writhe and hiss 
 
 In savage desolation! Blind, blind, blind 
 
 Art thou henceforth in heart, and hope, and mind ! 
 
 For he to whom my messenger of joy 
 
 And soothing promise only brought annoy 
 
 And sharp disquiet in his low-born lust, 
 
 What, what to him Ideal Beauty s kiss, 
 
STORY OF GLAUCUS THE THESSALIAN. 
 
 ng 
 
 The charm of lofty converse in the dells, 
 
 Of divine meetings, musical farewells, 
 
 And glimpses through the flickering leaves at night 
 
 Of such fair mysteries in awe-hushing light 
 
 That even I } who in these forests dwell 
 
 Purely with innocent creatures, unto whom 
 
 All Nature opes her innermost heart of bloom 
 
 And blessedn ess, by some majestic spell 
 
 Uplifted unto realms ineffable, 
 
 Faint almost in the splendor large and clear? 
 
 The winds have ceased their murmurings, on my ear 
 
 The rill-songs melt to threads of delicate tune, 
 
 And every small mote dancing in the moon 
 
 Expands, and brightens to a spiritual eye, 
 
 Luring me up to Immortality. 
 
 O ! then my earthly nature, loosening, slips 
 
 Down like a garment, and invisible lips 
 
 Whisper the secrets of their happier sphere ! 
 
 This bliss, O youth ! my soul had shared with one 
 
 Worthy the gift ! Alas ! thou art not he ! " 
 
 The voice died off toward the waning sun ! 
 Glaucus looked up, the gaunt, gray forest trees 
 Seemed to close o er him like a vault of stone. 
 11 Just Gods t" he sighed, "fam indeed alone /" 
 
I2 o LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 HAST thou beheld a landscape dull and bare, 
 On which, at times, a flying gleam was shed 
 From some shy sunbeam shifting overhead, 
 
 That made the scene for one brief moment fair? 
 
 Such is the light, so transient, flickering, rare, 
 
 Which, from Fate s sullen heavens above me spread, 
 Hath flushed the path my weary footsteps tread, 
 
 And lent to Darkness glimpses of sweet cheer. 
 
 Alas ! alas ! that I, whose soul doth burn 
 With such deep passion for a steadfast bliss, 
 
 Must bend forever o er Hope s burial urn, 
 
 And greet even Love with a half-mournful kiss ! 
 In sooth, what stern, malignant doom is this? 
 
 Joy ! delicate Ariel ! ah ! return ! return ! 
 
 MARGUERITE. 
 
 SHE was a child of gentlest air, 
 Of deep-dark eyes, but golden hair, 
 And, ah ! I loved her unaware, 
 
 Marguerite ! 
 
 She spelled me with those midnight eyes, 
 The sweetness of her na ive replies, 
 And all her innocent sorceries, 
 Marguerite ! 
 
MAR G UERITE. 121 
 
 The fever of my soul grew calm 
 Beneath her smile that healed like balm, 
 Her words were holier than a psalm, 
 Marguerite ! 
 
 But twixt us yawned a gulf of fate, 
 Whose blackness I beheld, too late. 
 O Christ! that LOVE should smite like HATE, 
 Marguerite ! 
 
 She did not wither to the tomb, 
 But round her crept a tender gloom 
 More touching than her earliest bloom, 
 Marguerite ! 
 
 The sun of one fair hope had set, 
 A hope she dared not all forget, 
 Its twilight glory kissed her yet, 
 Marguerite ! 
 
 And ever in that twilight fair 
 Moves with deep eyes and golden hair 
 The child who loved ME unaware ! 
 Marguerite ! 
 
 ii 
 
122 LEGENDS AND LYXICS. 
 
 NOT DEAD. 
 
 TO J. A. D. 
 
 HERE, at the sweetest hour of this sweet day, 
 Here, in the calmest woodland haunt I know, 
 
 Benignant thoughts around thy memory play, 
 And in my heart do pleasant fancies blow, 
 Like flowers turned to thee, radiant and aglow, 
 
 Flushed by the light of times forever fled, 
 
 Whose tender glory pales, but is not dead. 
 
 The warm South-wind is like thy generous breath, 
 Laden with kindly words of gentle cheer, 
 
 And every whispering leaf above me saith, 
 
 She whom thou dream st so distant hovers near; 
 Her love it is that thrills the sunset air 
 
 With mystic motions from a time that s fled, 
 
 Long past and gone, in sooth, but, oh ! not dead ! 
 
 The drowsy murmur of cool brooks below; 
 
 The soft, slow clouds that seem to muse on high; 
 Love-nojtes of hidden birds, that come and go, 
 
 Making a sentient Rapture of the sky; 
 
 All the rare season s peaceful sorcery, 
 These hint of cordial joys, forever fled, 
 Joys past, indeed, and yet they are not dead : 
 
 Far from the motley throng of sordid men, 
 
 From fashion far, mean strife, and frenzied gain, 
 
NOT DEAD. 
 
 123 
 
 In those dear days through many a mountain glen, 
 By mountain streams, and fields of rippling grain, 
 We roamed, untouched by Passion s feverish pain, 
 But quaffing Friendship s tranquil draughts instead, 
 Its waters clear whose sweetness is not dead ! 
 
 Above that nook of fair remembrance stands 
 A dove-eyed Faith, that falters not, nor sleeps ; 
 
 No flowers of Lethe droop in her white hands, 
 And if the watch that steadfast angel keeps 
 Be pensive, and some transient tears she weeps, 
 
 They are but tears a fond regret may shed 
 
 O er twilight joys which fade, but are not dead ! 
 
 Not dead ! not dead ! but glorified and fair, 
 Like yonder marvelous cloudland floating far 
 
 Between the mellowing sunset s amber air 
 And the mild lustre of eve s earliest star, 
 Oh, such, so pure, so bright, these memories are ! 
 
 Earth s warmth and Heaven s serene around them 
 spread, 
 
 They pass, they wane, but, Sweet ! they are not dead ! 
 
124 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 APART. 
 
 COME not with empty words that say, 
 "Your strength of manhood wastes away 
 In long, ignoble, fruitless years!" 
 I live apart from pain and tears, 
 Wherewith the ways of men are sown, 
 Nor dwell I loveless, and alone; 
 One tender spirit shares my days, 
 One voice is swift to yield me praise, 
 One true heart beats against my own ! 
 What more, what more could man desire 
 Than love that burns a steadfast fire, 
 And faith that ever leads him higher 
 Along the paths which point to peace? 
 
 Oh, far and faint I hear the din 
 Of battle-blows, and mortal sin 
 From out the stir and press of life; 
 Those hollow, mufHed sounds of strife 
 Seem rolled from thunder-clouds upcurled 
 About a dim and distant world, 
 Below me, in the sunless gloom ; 
 But round my brow the amaranths bloom 
 Of sober joy with heart s-ease furled; 
 For more, what more can man desire 
 Than love that burns a steadfast fire, 
 And faith that ever leads him higher, 
 Where all the jars of earth shall cease? 
 
/A T UTROQUE FIDELIS." 125 
 
 A present glory haunts my way, 
 
 A promise of diviner day 
 
 Illumes the flushed horizon s verge; 
 
 And fainter, farther still, the surge 
 
 Of buffeting waves that beat and roar 
 
 Up the dim world s tempestuous shore 
 
 Beneath me in the moonless airs; 
 
 Alas, its passions, sorrows, cares ! 
 
 Alas, its fathomless despairs ! 
 
 Yet dreams, vague dreams, they seem to me, 
 
 On these clear heights of liberty, 
 
 These summits of serene desire, 
 
 Whence love ascends, a quenchless fire, 
 
 And sweet faith ever leads me higher 
 
 To pearly paths of perfect peace ! 
 
 "IN UTROQUE FIDELIS." 
 
 ALONG the woods the whispering night-airs swoon, 
 A single bird-note dies adown the trees, 
 
 Clear, pallid, mournful, droops the summer moon, 
 Dipped in the foam of cloudland s phantom seas; 
 Soundless they heave above 
 
 The dim, ancestral home that holds my love. 
 
 How breathless-still ! A mystic glamour keeps 
 
 Calm watch and ward o er this weird, drowsy hour: 
 
 Yon heaven s at peace, the earth benignly sleeps; 
 And thou, thou slumberest too, my woodland flower, 
 Fair lily steeped in light 
 
 And happy visions of the marvelous night ! 
 
126 LEGENDS AND CYRICS. 
 
 I waft a sigh from this fond soul to thine, 
 
 A little sigh, yet honey-laden, dear, 
 With fairy freightage of such hopes divine 
 
 As fain would flutter gently at thine ear, 
 
 And, entering, find their way 
 Down to the heart so veiled from me by day. 
 
 In dreams, in dreams, perchance, thou art not coy; 
 
 And one keen hope more bold than all the rest 
 May touch thy spirit with a tremulous joy, 
 
 And stir an answering softness in thy breast : 
 
 O sleep ! O blest eclipse ! 
 What murmured word is faltering at her lips? 
 
 Awake for one brief moment, genial South: 
 
 Breathe o er her slumbers, waft that word to me, 
 
 Warm with the fragrance of her rosebud mouth, 
 Enwreathed in smiles of dreamful fantasy: 
 Come, whisper, low and light, 
 
 The name which haunts her maiden trance to-night. 
 
 Still, breathless-still ! No voice in earth or air: 
 
 I only know my delicate darling lies, 
 A twilight lustre glimmering in her hair, 
 
 And dews of peace within her languid eyes: 
 
 Yea, only know that I 
 Am called from love and dreams, perhaps to die, 
 
 Die when the heavens are thick with scarlet rain, 
 And every time-throb s fated: even there 
 
 Her face would shine through mists of mortal pain, 
 And sweeten death, like some incarnate prayer: 
 Hark ! tis the trumpet s swell ! 
 
 O love ! O dreams ! farewell, farewell, farewell ! 
 
THE LOTOS AND THE LILY. 127 
 
 THE LOTOS AND THE LILY. 
 
 The little poems which follow were suggested by an Oriental idea 
 developed in Alger s "Specimens of Eastern Poetry." The MOON is 
 strangely spoken of as masculine. 
 
 THE LOTOS. 
 
 DROOPING in the sunlit streams, 
 We are wrapped all day in dreams; 
 
 Morn and noon and evening light 
 Robed for us in garbs of night. 
 
 Only when the moon appears 
 Through a silvery mist of tears, 
 
 From the waters dark and still, 
 We arise to drink our fill 
 
 Of the tender love he sheds 
 On our fair enamored heads. 
 
 Ah ! no longer wrapped in dreams, 
 How we pant beneath his beams ! 
 
 How, with breath of softest sighs, 
 We unclose our yearning eyes, 
 
 And our snowy necks in pride 
 Curve about the glittering tide ! 
 
128 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Warmth for warmth and kiss for kiss, 
 All our pulses burn with bliss, 
 
 Till revealed our inmost charms 
 Glowing in the Night-God s arms. 
 
 THE LILY. 
 
 View us, white-robed Lilies, 
 We whose beauty s rareness 
 
 Sleeps until the Bridegroom Sun 
 Woos our virgin fairness. 
 
 Then, our bosoms baring, 
 Neath his ardent kisses, 
 
 Stem, and leaf, and delicate heart 
 Trembling into blisses, 
 
 The full, fervid Godhead 
 Thrills our being tender, 
 
 And our happy souls expand 
 In ecstatic splendor. 
 
 Thus all, all we yield him 
 Of our shrined sweetness, 
 
 All that maiden warmth may grant 
 To true love s completeness. 
 
WINDLESS RAIN. 
 
 WINDLESS RAIN. 
 
 THE rain, the desolate rain ! 
 
 Ceaseless, and solemn, and chill ! 
 How it drips on the misty pane, 
 
 How it drenches the darkened sill ! 
 O scene of sorrow and dearth ! 
 
 I would that the wind awaking 
 To a fierce and gusty birth 
 
 Might vary this dull refrain 
 Of the rain, the desolate rain: 
 
 For the heart of heaven seems breaking 
 In tears o er the fallen earth, 
 
 And again, again, again 
 
 We list to the sombre strain, 
 The faint, cold, monotone 
 Whose soul is a mystic moan 
 Of the rain, the mournful rain, 
 The soft, despairing rain ! 
 
 The rain, the murmurous rain ! 
 
 Weary, passionless, slow, 
 Tis the rhythm of settled sorrow, 
 
 Tis the sobbing of cureless woe ! 
 And all the tragic of life, 
 
 The pathos of Long- Ago, 
 
 Comes back on the sad refrain 
 Of the rain, the dreary rain, 
 Till the graves in my heart unclose, 
 
 And the dead who are buried there 
 
130 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 From a solemn and weird repose 
 
 Awake, but with eyeballs drear, 
 And voices that melt in pain 
 On the tide of the plaintive rain, 
 The yearning, hopeless rain, 
 The long, low, whispering rain ! 
 
 CHLORIS. 
 
 WHAT time the rosy-flushing West 
 Sleeps soft on copse and dingle, 
 
 Wherein the sunset shadows rest, 
 Or richly float and mingle; 
 
 When down the vale the wood-dove s note 
 
 Thrills in a cadence tender, 
 And every rare, ethereal mote 
 
 Turns to a winged splendor ; 
 
 Just as the mystic cloudlands ope, 
 
 Far up their sapphire portal, 
 Fair as the fairest dream of Hope, 
 
 Half goddess and half mortal,- 
 
 I see that lovely Genius rise, 
 
 That child of Orient trances, 
 On whose sweet face the glory lies 
 
 Of weird Hellenic fancies, 
 
NATURE, BETROTHED AND WEDDED. 
 
 CHLORIS ! beneath whose procreant tread 
 All earth yields up her sweetness, 
 
 The violet s scent, the rose s red, 
 The dahlia s orbed completeness, 
 
 And verdures on the myriad hills, 
 
 The breath of her pure duty 
 Hath nursed to life by sparkling riils 
 
 And foliaged nooks of beauty ; 
 
 Till bloom and odor, blush and song, 
 So fill earth s radiant spaces, 
 
 The fading touch of sin, or wrong, 
 Leaves glad the we^kst faces ; 
 
 And so, through happy spring-tide dells, 
 O er mount, and field, and river, 
 
 Her Zephyr s fairy clarion swells, 
 Her footsteps glance forever ! 
 
 NATURE, BETROTHED AND WEDDED, 
 
 HAVE you not noted how in early Spring, 
 
 From out the forests, past the murmuring brooks, 
 
 O er the hillsides, Nature, with airy grace, 
 
 Like some fair virgin, touched by lights and shades. 
 
 Glides timidly, a veil of golden mist 
 
 About her brows, and budding bosom draped 
 
 In maiden coyness? She s a Bride betrothed 
 
I 3 2 
 
 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Unto that mystic god, who comes from far, 
 Rich Orient lands upon the winds of June, 
 That bear him like swift Ardours, winged with fire ; 
 And when, on some calm, lustrous morn, her Lord 
 Uplifts the golden veil, and weds to hers 
 The quickening warmth of ripe, immortal lips, 
 How the broad Earth leaps into raptured life, 
 And thrills with music ! 
 
 Then, a queenly spouse, 
 
 Raised unto fruitful empire, through all hours 
 Of bounteous Summer, she walks proudly on, 
 Shining with blissful eyes of matronhood, 
 Till, at the last, Autwn, with reverent hand, 
 Doth crown her with such full, completed joy, 
 Such wealth of sovereign beauty, she once more 
 About her brows and sumptuous bosom folds 
 That golden veil, not in the tremulous fear 
 Of maiden coyness now, but lest rash men, 
 Drawn by her awful loveliness, should dare 
 To gaze too closely on it, and thus fall, 
 Smitten and blind, at her imperial feet ! 
 
FORTUNIO. 133 
 
 FORTUNIO. 
 
 A PARABLE FOR THE TIMES. 
 
 WHO at the court of Astolf, the great King, 
 King of a realm of firs, and icy floes, 
 Cold bright fiords, and mountains capped with clouds, - 
 Who there so loved and honored as the knight, 
 The youthful knight, Fortunio? Whence he came, 
 None knew, nor whom his kindred : at a bound 
 He passed all rivals moving towards the throne, 
 And stood firm-poised above them ; yet with mien 
 So sweet, it honeyed envy, and surprised 
 The bitterest railers into complaisance ! 
 Low-voiced and delicate-featured, with a cheek 
 As soft as peach down, or the golden dust 
 Shrined in a maiden lily s heart of hearts, 
 Yet a stern will bent bowlike, with the shaft 
 Of some keen purpose swiftly drawn to head, 
 Or launched unerring at its lofty mark, 
 Rose thrilled with action, or high-strung at aim, 
 Beneath his jeweled doublet ! While the hand 
 So warm, so white, and wont to press the palm 
 In palpitating clasp of fair sixteen, 
 Could wield the ponderous battle-axe, or flash 
 The lightning rapier in a foeman s eyes. 
 Prince of the tourney and the dance alike, 
 War s fiercer lists had seen his furrowless brow 
 Flushed red with heat of battle, heard his voice 
 Shrilled clear beyond the clarions, mount and break 
 
 12 
 
1 34 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 In larklike song far o er the mists of blood, 
 
 Through Victory s calmer heaven. Mixed love and fear, 
 
 With love ofttimes preponderant, girded him 
 
 Closely, as with an atmosphere disturbed 
 
 Only by hints of thunder, ghosts of cloud. 
 
 But love, all love, love in her passionate eyes, 
 
 Love twixt the pure twin rosebuds of her mouth, 
 
 Love in the arch of brooding, beauteous brows, 
 
 And every wavering dimple wherein smiles 
 
 At hide-and-seek with sly, mock frownings played, 
 
 All love was Freyla, though a princess she, 
 
 For this unknown Fortunio ! Wildly beat 
 
 And burned her heart at each soft glance he gave, 
 
 Or softer word, albeit as yet unthrilled 
 
 By answering passion ! Swiftly flew her dreams 
 
 Birdlike on balmy winds of fancy borne, 
 
 To bridal realms empurpled and divine, 
 
 Alas ! but Scorn, that long had lurked and spied 
 
 In ambush, shot its sudden bolts, and brought 
 
 Those winged Dreams transfixed to earth and dead ! 
 
 While Rage, Scorn s ally, in her father s breast, 
 
 Clutched the sweet dreamer rudely, dragged her soul 
 
 Into the garish glare of Commonplace 
 
 (Soon to be lit by Horror s lurid star!) 
 
 And so convulsed her tenderness with threats, 
 
 That all her being seemed collapsed to fall 
 
 Crushed, as in moral earthquake: Doting fool," 
 
 Outshrieked the King, "dost dream great Odin s blood 
 
 Could mix with veins plebeian ? Purge thy thoughts, 
 
 Unvirgined, vile, of sacrilegious sin! 
 
 But for this boy, our twelvemonth s grace hath raised 
 
 So high, a moment s justice shall cast down 
 
 To fathomless depths of ruin!" 
 
FOKTUNIO. ; 
 
 Wherewithal 
 
 (Harping on justice still, though justice slept) 
 The King decreed, "This youth Fortunio dies!" 
 So, on a bright spring morn, the knight stood up, 
 Fronting the royal doomsmen,. with a face 
 Sublimely calm ; they tore his bravery off, 
 His jeweled vest and knighthood s golden spurs, 
 And bared his heart to catch the arrowy hail, 
 When lo ! beneath those rough, disrobing hands, 
 The dangerous, lewd seducer, coyly boived, 
 Outbeamed a virgin beauty chaste and fair ! 
 
 The King, beholding, started, and then smiled : 
 "Thou wanton madcap," said he, "go in peace!" 
 
 O cordial eyes, the brown eyes and the blue, 
 
 Or ye dark eyes, with deeps like midnight heavens, 
 
 Where unimagined worlds of thought and love 
 
 Shine starlike, would ye quench your glorious rays 
 
 In the low levels of the lives of men? 
 
 O gracious souls of women tender-sweet, 
 
 And luminous with goodness, would ye soil 
 
 Your nascent angel-plumage in the sty 
 
 Of sordid worldliness? Be warned, be warned! 
 
 Set not the frail spears of your rash caprice 
 
 In rest against great Nature s pierceless shield; 
 
 Strive not to grasp monopolies impure, 
 
 Man s fated heritage. Be warned, be warned ! 
 
 For surely as yon bright sun dawns and dies, 
 
 And sure as Nature, all immutable, 
 
 Year after year completes her mystic round 
 
 Through law s vast orbit, so ye desperate Fair, 
 
 Arrayed against the eternal force of God, 
 
i 3 6 
 
 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Must fall discomfited, and like that knight, 
 The false Fortunio, rest your claims at last, 
 Not on deft spells of simulated power, 
 But on the soft white bosom which enspheres 
 The sacred charms of perfect womanhood ! 
 
 STONEWALL JACKSON. 
 
 THE fashions and the forms of men decay, 
 
 The seasons perish, the calm sunsets die, 
 
 Ne er with the same bright pomp of cloud or ray 
 
 To flush the golden pathways of the Sky ; 
 
 All things are lost in dread Eternity, 
 
 States, Empires, Creeds, the Lay 
 
 Of master Poets, even the shapes of Love, 
 
 Bear ever with them an invisible Shade, 
 
 Whose name is death; we cannot breathe nor move, 
 
 But that we touch the Darkness, till dismayed, 
 
 We feel the imperious Shadow freeze our hearts, 
 
 And mortal Hope grows pale and fluttering Life departs. 
 
 n. 
 
 All things are lost in dread Eternity, 
 
 Save that majestic VIRTUE which is given 
 
 Once, twice, perchance beneath our earthly Heaven, 
 
 To some great Soul in ages : O ! the Lie, 
 
 The base, incarnate Lie we call the World, 
 
 Shakes at his coming, as the forest shakes, 
 
 When mountain storms with bannered clouds unfurled, 
 
STONEWALL JACKSON. 137 
 
 Rush down and rend it; sleek Convention drops 
 Its glittering mass, and hoary, cobwebbed rules 
 Of petty Charlatans or insolent fools 
 Shrink to annihilation, Truth awakes, 
 A morning splendor in her fearless eyes 
 
 Touching the delicate stops 
 Of some rare Lute which breathes of promise fair, 
 
 Or pouring on the covenanted air 
 A trumpet blast which startles, but makes strong, 
 
 While ancient Wrong, 
 Driven like a beast from his deep-caverned lair, 
 
 Grows gaunt, and inly quakes, 
 Knowing that Retribution draws so near ! 
 
 in. 
 
 Whether with Blade, or Pen, 
 
 Toil these immortal men, 
 Theirs is the Light supreme, which Genius wed 
 
 To a clear spiritual Dower, 
 Hath ever o er the aroused Nations shed 
 
 Joy, faith, and power; 
 
 Whether from wrestling with the Godlike Thought, 
 They launch a noiseless blessing on mankind, 
 Or through wild streams of terrible carnage brought, 
 
 No longer crushed and blind, 
 
 Trampled, disheveled, gored, 
 They proudly lift, where kindling soul and eye 
 May feast upon her beauty as She stands 
 (Girt by the strength of her invincible Bands), 
 And freed through keen redemption of the sword, 
 Thy worn, but radiant form, victorious Liberty! 
 12* 
 
138 
 
 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 We bow before this grandeur of the spirit; 
 
 We worship, and adore 
 God s image burning through it evermore; 
 And thus, in awed humility to-night,* 
 As those who at some vast Cathedral door 
 Pause with hushed faces, purified desires, 
 
 We contemplate His merit, 
 Who lifted Failure to the heights of Fame, 
 And by the side of fainting, dying Right, 
 Stood, as Sir Galahad pure, Sir Launcelot brave, 
 
 The quick, indignant fires 
 
 Flushing his pale brow from the passionate mind 
 No strength could quell, no sophistry could bind, 
 Until that moment, big with mystic doom 
 
 (Whose issue sent 
 
 O er the long wastes of half a continent 
 Electric shudders through the deepening gloom), 
 When in his knightly glory "Stonewall" fell, 
 And all our hearts sank with him; for we knew 
 Our staff, our bulwark broken, the fine clew 
 To Freedom snapped, his hands had held alone, 
 Through all the storms of battle overblown, 
 Lost, buried, mouldering in our Hero s grave. 
 
 v. 
 
 O Soul ! so simple, yet sublime ! 
 
 With faith as large, and mild 
 As that of some benignant, trustful child, 
 Who mounts to Heaven on bright, ethereal stairs 
 
 Of tender-worded prayers, 
 
 * This Ode was originally written to be delivered before a Southern 
 patriotic association. 
 
STONEWALL JACKSON, 139 
 
 Yet strong as if a Titan s force were there 
 To rise, to act, to suffer, and to dare, 
 
 O Soul ! that on our Time 
 Wrought, in the calm magnificence of power 
 To ends so noble, that an antique light 
 Of grace and virtue streamed along thy way, 
 
 Until the direst hour 
 Of carnage caught from that immaculate ray 
 
 A Consecration, and a Sanctity ! 
 Thou art not dead, thou nevermore canst die, 
 
 But wide and far, 
 
 Where er on Christian realms the Morning Star 
 Flames round the spires that tower towards the sky, 
 
 Thy name, a household word, 
 In cottage homes, by palace walls, is heard, 
 Breathed with low murmurs, reverentially ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 Even as I raise this faltering song to One, 
 Who now beyond the empires of the Sun, 
 Looks down perchance upon our mournful sphere, 
 With the deep pity of seraphic eyes, 
 Fancy unveils the Future, and I see 
 Millions on millions, as year follows year 
 Gather around our warrior s place of rest 
 In the green shadows of Virginian hills; 
 Not with the glow of martial blazonry, 
 With trump and muffled drum, 
 Those pilgrim millions come, 
 
 But with bowed heads, and measured footsteps slow, 
 As those who near the presence of a shrine, 
 And feel an air divine, 
 
140 
 
 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 All round about them blandly, sweetly blow, 
 While like dream-music the faint fall of rills, 
 
 Lapsing from steep to steep, 
 The wood-dove plaining in her covert deep, 
 And the long whisperings of the ghostly Pine 
 (Like ocean-breathings borne from tides of sleep), 
 With every varied melody expressed 
 In Nature s score of solemn harmonies, 
 Blends with a feeling in the reverent breast, 
 Which cannot find a voice in mortal speech, 
 So deep, so deep it lies beyond the reach 
 Of stammering words, the Pilgrims only know 
 That slumbering, O ! so calmly there, below 
 The dewy grass, the melancholy trees, 
 
 Moulders the dust of HIM, 
 
 By whose crystalline fame, earth s scarlet pomps grow 
 dim, 
 
 The crowned Heir 
 
 Of two majestic immortalities, 
 That which is earthly, and yet scarce of earth, 
 
 Whose fruitful seeds 
 Were his own grand, self-sacrificing deeds, 
 
 And that whose awful birth 
 Flowered into instant perfectness sublime, 
 
 When done with toil and time, 
 He shook from off the raiments of his soul, 
 The weary conflict s desecrating dust, 
 For stern reveilles, heard the angels sing, 
 For battle turmoils found eternal Calm, 
 Laid down his sinless sword to clasp the Palm, 
 And where vast heavenly organ-notes outroll 
 Melodious thunders, mid the rush of wing, 
 
THE LITTLE WHITE GLOVE. 
 
 And flash of plume celestial, paused in peace, 
 
 A rapture of ineffable release 
 
 To know the long fruition of the Just ! 
 
 141 
 
 THE LITTLE WHITE GLOVE. 
 
 (FOUNDED ON AN INCIDENT OF THE LATE WAR.) 
 
 THE early springtime faintly flushed the earth, 
 And in the woods, and by their favorite stream, 
 The fair wild roses blossomed modestly 
 Above the wave that wooed them, there, at eve, 
 Philip had brought the woman that he loved, 
 And told his love, and bared his burning heart; 
 She, Constance, the shy sunbeams trembling oft 
 Through dewy leaves upon her golden hair, 
 Made him no answer, tapped her pretty foot, 
 And seemed to muse. "To-morrow I depart," 
 Said Philip, sadly, "for wild fields of war, 
 Shall I go girt by love s invincible mail, 
 Stronger than mortal armor, or all stripped 
 Of love and hope, march reckless unto death?" 
 
 A soft mist filled her eyes, and overflowed 
 In sudden rain of passion, as she stretched 
 Her delicate hand to his, and plighted troth 
 With lips more rosy than the sun-bathed flowers. 
 And Philip pressed the dear hand fervently, 
 Where from in happy mood he quickly drew 
 A small white glove, and ere she guessed his will, 
 
142 
 
 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Clipped lightly from her head one golden curl, 
 
 And bound the glove, and placed it next his heart. 
 
 "Now am I safe," cried Philip, "this pure charm 
 
 Is proof against all hazard or mischance. 
 
 Here, yea, unto this self-same spot I vow 
 
 To bring it stainless back; and you shall wear 
 
 This little glove upon our marriage eve." 
 
 And Constance heafd him, smiling through her tears. 
 
 Another springtime faintly flushed the earth, 
 
 And in the woods, and by their favorite stream, 
 
 The fair wild roses blossomed modestly 
 
 Above the waves that wooed them; there, at eve, 
 
 Came a pale woman with wide-wandering eyes, 
 
 And tangled golden ringlets, and weak steps, 
 
 Reeling towards the streamlet s glittering marge, 
 
 She seemed phantasmal, shadowy, like the forms 
 
 By moonlight conjured from a place of graves; 
 
 There, crouching o er the stream, she laved and laved 
 
 Some object in it with a strained regard, 
 
 And muttered fragments of distempered words, 
 
 Whereof were these: "He vowed to bring it back, 
 
 The love-charm that I gave him my white glove 
 
 Stainless and whole. He has not kept his oath ! 
 
 O Philip ! Philip ! have you cast me off, 
 
 Off, like this worthless thing you send me home, 
 
 Tattered, and mildewed ? Look you, what a rent, 
 
 Right through the palm! it cannot be my glove, 
 
 And look again! what horrid stain is here? 
 
 MY glove ! You placed it next your heart and swore 
 
 To keep it safe, and on this self-same spot 
 
A FEUDAL PICTURE. 143 
 
 Return it to me on our marriage eve; 
 
 And now and now I know tis not my glove, 
 
 Yet Philip, sweet, it was a cruel jest, 
 
 You surely did not mean to fright me thus? 
 
 For hark you, as I laved the loathsome thing, 
 
 To see what stain defiled it (do not smile, 
 
 I feel that I am foolish, foolish, Philip), 
 
 But, God of heaven ! I dreamed that stain was blood ! 
 
 A FEUDAL PICTURE. 
 
 (SCENE The Corridor of a Palace. PERSONS A 
 young Knight and his Mentor. TIME The Fourteenth 
 Century.) 
 
 MENTOR. 
 
 " WITH what a grace she passed us by just now ! 
 Her delicate chin half raised, her cordial brow 
 A cloudless heaven of bland benignities ! 
 What tempered lustre too in her dove s eyes, 
 Just touched to archness by the eyebrow s curve, 
 And those quick dimples which the mouth s reserve 
 Stir and break up, as sunlit ripples break 
 The cool, clear calmness of a mountain lake ! 
 A woman in whom majesty and sweetness 
 Blend to such issues of serene completeness, 
 That to gaze on her were a prince s boon ! 
 The calm of evening, the large pomp of noon, 
 Are hers; soft May morns melting into June, 
 Hold not such tender languishments as those 
 
I 4 4 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Which steep her in that dew-light of repose, 
 
 That floats a dreamy balm around the full-blown rose: 
 
 And yet, tis not her beauty though so bright 
 
 (Clear moon-fire mixed with sun-flame), nor the light, 
 
 Transparent charm we feel so exquisite, 
 
 Whereby she s compassed as a wizard star 
 
 By its own life-air! tis not one, nor all 
 
 Of these, whereby we re mastered, Sir, and fall 
 
 Slavelike before her : doubtless such things are 
 
 Potent as spells, still there s a something fine, 
 
 Subtler than hoar-rime in the faint moonshine, 
 
 More potent yet ! an undefined art, 
 
 Twere vain to question : your whole being, heart, 
 
 Brain, blood, seem lapsing from you, fired and fused 
 
 In hers, a terrible power, and if abused 
 
 But by St. Peter! tis not safe to talk 
 Of yon weird woman ! turn now ! watch her walk 
 Twixt the tall tiger-lilies, there s a free, 
 Brave grace in every step, but still to me, 
 It hath I know not what of covertness, 
 Cunning, and cruel purpose ! can you guess 
 The picture it brings up? a lonely rock 
 From which a young Bedouin guards his flock, 
 In the swart desert: there s a tawny band, 
 A curved and tangled pathway of loose sand, 
 Winding above him; the tranced airs make dim 
 His slumberous senses! his great brown eyes swim 
 In th mist of dreams, when gliding with mute tread 
 Forth from the thorn-trees, o er his nodding head, 
 Moves a lithe-bodied panther; (S0d-! how fair 
 The beast is, with her moony-spotted hair, 
 And her deft desert paces!) one breath more! 
 And you ll behold the spouting of fresh gore, 
 
A FEUDAL PICTURE. 
 
 145 
 
 Heart-blood that s human ! can aught save him now? 
 
 Hist ! the sharp crackle of a blasted bough, 
 
 Whence flies a huge hill-eagle, rustling 
 
 O er the boy s forehead his vast breadths of wing, 
 
 And sweeping as a half-seen shade, twould seem, 
 
 Betwixt his startled spirit, and its dream; 
 
 He s roused ! espies his danger! at a bound 
 
 Leaps into safety where the low-set ground 
 
 Is buttressed neath two giant crags thereby: 
 
 (Now hark ye! tis no pictured phantasy, 
 
 This scene, my Anslem! but all s true and clear 
 
 Before me, though full many a weary year 
 
 Has waxed and waned since then: 
 
 My meaning prithee? foolish youth, beware! 
 
 There s treachery lurking in the gay parterre, 
 
 As in the hoary desert s silentness, 
 
 And dreams with danger, death perchance behind, 
 
 May lull young sleepers in the perfumed wind, 
 
 Which hardly lifts the tiniest truant tress 
 
 It toys with coyly, of a woman s hair: 
 
 Our sternest fates have risen in forms as fair, 
 
 As, let us say for lack of similes, 
 
 As, hers, who bends now with such gracious ease, 
 
 O er her rich tulip-beds! 
 
 Were I the bird, 
 
 Wert THOU the shepherd ANSLEM, of my tale, 
 (And that thou hast not hearkened, boy, unstirred 
 Is clear, albeit thou need st not wax so pale), 
 What would true wisdom whisper, now tis done, 
 My warning, and thy day-dream in the sun? 
 What! why, her mandate s plain: I hear her say, 
 Young Knight! to horse! leave the Queen s Court 
 to-day! 
 
 13 
 
I4 6 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 THE WARNING. 
 
 PATIENCE ! I yet may pierce the rind 
 Wherewith are shrewdly girded round 
 The subtle secrets of his mind ; 
 A dark, unwholesome core is bound 
 Perchance within it ! Sir, you see, 
 Men are not what they seem to be ! 
 
 A candid mien, and plausible tongue ! 
 A bearing calmly frank and fair, 
 The tear ( twould seem) by pity wrung, 
 All these are his, but still, beware! 
 A something strange, false, unbegot 
 Of virtue, whispers, trust him not: 
 
 But yesterday, his mask (I know 
 He wears one), for a moment s space, 
 By chance dropped off, and swift below 
 The smile just waning on his face, 
 I caught a look, flashed sudden, keen 
 As lightning, which he deemed unseen : 
 
 I will not pause to tell thee what 
 That look betrayed ! enough I think, 
 To smite the spirit cold and hot, 
 By turns, and make one inly shrink 
 From contact with a soul that keeps 
 Such wild-fire smouldering in its deeps: 
 
DRIFTING. 147 
 
 So friend, be warned ! he is not one 
 Thy youth should trust, for all his smiles, 
 Frank foreheads, genial as the Sun, 
 May hide a thousand treacherous wiles, 
 And tones, like music s honeyed flow, 
 May work (God knows!) the bitterest woe! 
 
 DRIFTING. 
 
 I HAVE settled at last in a sombre nook, 
 In the far-off heart of the Norland hills, 
 There s a dark pine forest before my gates, 
 And behind is the voice of rills 
 That murmur all day, and murmur all night, 
 Through the tangled copses green and lone, 
 Where, couched in the depths of the shadowy leaves, 
 The wood-dove makes her moan. 
 
 My home is a castle ancient and worn, 
 With hoary walls, and with crumbling floors, 
 And the Burglar-Winds their entrance force 
 Through the cobwebbed panes and doors. 
 I can hardly say that a roof is mine, 
 For whene er the mountain tempests rise, 
 A deluge is poured through its countless rents, 
 Wide open to air and skies ! 
 
 Ah ! Nature alone keeps a wholesome mien, 
 In the midst of a squalor wildly bare, 
 
148 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 And I draw sometimes from her bounteous breast 
 
 Brief balms for the heart s despair ; 
 
 All human friends that were loyal have died, 
 
 And the false and treacherous only stay, 
 
 To poison the soul with their serpent tongues 
 
 In my fortune s dull decay ! 
 
 Distant and dim in the perishing past 
 Grow the joys that made its springtime sweet, 
 And the last of the saving angels Hope 
 Hath spurned my lot with her shining feet ; 
 Ambition is dead, and if Love survives, 
 Her lip, it is pale, and her eyes forlorn 
 As beams of the waning stars that melt 
 In a clouded winter s morn. 
 
 I have met my fate as a man should meet 
 What cannot be vanquished, nor put aside, 
 I have striven with spirit and force to stem 
 Its rushing and mighty tide ; 
 But the Godlike nerve, and the iron will, 
 They were not granted to me, I say, 
 And therefore a waif on an angry sea, 
 I am drifting, drifting away ! 
 
 Ay! drifting, and drifting, and drifting away, 
 
 Not a hand upraised, nor a cry for aid ; 
 
 And hoarser the voice of the storm- wind swells, 
 
 And darker the wild night-shade ; 
 
 There are breakers ahead that will crush me soon, 
 
 How much, O God ! do thy creatures bear ! 
 
 I marvel if somewhere, in Heaven or Hell, 
 
 This riddle of life grows clear ! 
 
SONNET CAROLINA. 149 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 CAROLINA. 
 
 THAT fair young land which gave me birth is dead ! 
 Lost as a fallen star that quivering dies 
 Down the pale pathway of Autumnal skies, 
 A vague faint radiance flickering where it fled ; 
 All she hath wrought, all she hath planned or said, 
 Her golden eloquence, her high emprise, 
 Wrecked, on the languid shore of Lethe lies, 
 While cold Oblivion veils her piteous head:* 
 O mother ! loved and loveliest ! debonair 
 As some brave Queen of antique chivalries, 
 
 * This may be esteemed an exaggeration ; but really it is the sober 
 and melancholy truth. The fame of the great Statesmen and Orators, 
 for example, who once flourished in South Carolina, and made her 
 name illustrious from one end of the Union to the other, is fast becom 
 ing a mere shadowy tradition. With a single exception, their works 
 have never been collected for publication, nor have their lives been 
 written, unless in the most fragmentary and imperfect fashion. The 
 period during which these things might have been rightly done has 
 forever passed. 
 
 Thus, over their genius and performances, as over their native State, 
 the Carolina of old, oblivion, day by day, is more darkly gathering. 
 If elements of a new political birth exist in that unfortunate section, 
 they are now hopelessly confused and chaotic ! 
 
 While the Past recedes, becoming momently more ghostly and 
 phantasmal, the Future is wrapped in thick clouds and darkness! 
 Where, indeed, is the prophet or son of a prophet who can predict the 
 nature of that new Polity destined to rise from the old institutions and 
 the defunct civilization? 
 
 13* 
 
150 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Thy beauty s blasted like thy desolate coasts ; 
 
 Where now thy lustrous form, thy shining hair? 
 Where thy bright presence, thine imperial eyes? 
 Lost in dim shadows of the realm of Ghosts ! 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 LEIGH HUNT. 
 
 " Leigh Hunt loves everything: he catches the sunny side of every 
 thing, and except a few polemical antipathies finds everything 
 beautiful." HENRY CRABB ROBINSON. 
 
 DESPITE misfortune, poverty, the dearth 
 
 Of simplest justice to his heart and brain, 
 
 This gracious Optimist lived not in vain; 
 
 Rather, he made a partial Heaven of Earth ; 
 
 For whatsoe er of pure and cordial birth 
 
 In body or soul, dawned on him, he was fain 
 
 To bless and love, as an immortal gain, 
 
 A thing divine, of fair immaculate worth: 
 
 The clearest, cleanest nature given to man 
 
 In these, our latter days, methinks was his, 
 
 With instincts which alone did bring him bliss; 
 
 All life he viewed as one long, luminous plan 
 
 Wherein God s love and wisdom meet and kiss, 
 
 His sole brave creed, the creed Samaritan ! 
 
SONNET SOUL ADVANCES. 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 IN yonder grim, funereal forest lies 
 
 A foul lagoon, o erfilmed by dust and slime, 
 
 Hidden and ghastly, like a thought of crime 
 
 In some stern soul, kept secret from men s eyes; 
 
 But if, perchance, a healthful breeze should rise, 
 
 And part those stifling boughs, sweet morning s prime, 
 
 And the fair flush of evening s cordial clime, 
 
 Reflect therein the calmly glorious skies : 
 
 Is t so with man? holds not the darkened breast, 
 
 Turbid, corrupt, o ergrown by worldliness, 
 
 One little spot whereon love s smile may rest? 
 
 Lo ! a pure impulse breathes, the sin-clouds part, 
 
 The grief-defilements melt in hopes that bless, 
 
 And pour God s quickening sunshine on the heart ! 
 
 SONNET. ; _ 
 
 SOUL ADVANCES. 
 
 HE, who with fervent toil and will austere, 
 
 His innate forces, and high faculties, 
 
 Develops ever, with firm aim, and wise, 
 
 He only keeps his spiritual vision clear; 
 
 To him earth s treacherous shadows shift and veer 
 
 Like idle mists o ercrowding windless skies, 
 
I5 2 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Where through ofttimes to purged and prayerful eyes, 
 The steadfast heavens seem beckoning calm and 
 
 near: 
 
 Still, o er life s rugged heights, with many a slip, 
 And painful pause he journeys, and sad fall, 
 Toward death s dark strand, washed by a mystic sea; 
 There her worn cable straining to be free, 
 He sees, and enters Faith s majestic ship, 
 To sail where 1 er the voice of God may call! 
 
 ODE TO SLEEP. 
 
 BEYOND the sunset, and the amber sea 
 To the lone depths of Ether, cold and bare, 
 Thy influence, Soul of all tranquillity, 
 Hallows the Earth, and awes the reverent air; 
 Yon laughing rivulet quells its silvery tune, 
 The Pines, like priestly watchers tall and grim, 
 Stand mute, against the pensive twilight dim, 
 Breathless to hail the advent of the Moon; 
 From the white beach the Ocean falls away 
 Coyly, and with a thrill ; the sea-birds dart 
 Ghostlike from out the distance, and depart 
 With a gray fleetness, moaning the dead Day; 
 The wings of Silence overfolding space, 
 Droop with dusk grandeur from the heavenly steep, 
 And through the stillness gleams thy starry face, 
 Serenest Angel Sleep ! 
 
ODE TO SLEEP. 
 
 Come ! woo me here, amid these flowery charms, 
 Breathe on my eyelids; press thy odorous lips 
 Close to mine own, enwreathe me in thine arms, 
 
 And cloud my spirit with thy sweet eclipse; 
 
 No dreams ! no dreams ! keep back the motley throng, 
 For such are girded round with ghastly might, 
 And sing low burdens of despondent song, 
 
 Decked in the mockery of a lost delight ; 
 
 I ask Oblivion s balsam ! the mute peace 
 
 Toned to still breathings, and the gentlest sighs, 
 
 Not music woven of rarest harmonies 
 Could yield me such elysium of release: 
 The tones of Earth are weariness, not only 
 Mid the loud mart, and in the walks of trade, 
 But where the mountain Genius broodeth lonely, 
 In the cool pulsing of the sylvan shade: 
 Then, bear me far into thy noiseless land, 
 Surround me with thy silence, deep on deep, 
 
 Until serene I stand 
 
 Close by a duskier country, and more grand, 
 Mysterious Solitude, than thine, O Sleep ! 
 
 As he whose veins a feverous frenzy burns, 
 Whose life-blood withers in the fiery drouth, 
 Feebly, and with a languid longing, turns 
 
 To the spring breezes gathering from the South, 
 
 So, feebly, and with languid longing, I 
 
 Turn to thy wished Nepenthe, and implore 
 
 The golden dimness, the purpureal gloom 
 
 Which haunt thy poppied realm, and make the shore 
 
 Of thy dominion balmy with all bloom: 
 
 In the clear gulfs of thy serene Profound, 
 
4 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Worn Passions sink to quiet, Sorrows pause, 
 Suddenly fainting to still-breathed rest; 
 Thou own st a magical atmosphere, which awes 
 The memories seething in the turbulent breast ; 
 Which muffling up the sharpness of all sound 
 Of mortal lamentation, solely bears 
 The silvery minor toning of our woe, 
 All mellowed to harmonious underflow, 
 Soft as the sad farewells of dying years, 
 Lulling as sunset showers that veil the West, 
 
 And sweet as Love s last tears 
 When overvvelling hearts do mutely weep: 
 O Griefs ! O wailings ! your tempestuous madness, 
 Merged in a regal quietude of sadness, 
 Wins a strange glory by the streams of Sleep ! 
 
 Then woo me here amid these flowery charms, 
 Breathe on my eyelids, press thy odorous lips 
 Close to mine own y enfold me in thine arms, 
 And cloud my spirit with thy sweet eclipse; 
 And while from waning depth to depth I fall, 
 Down lapsing to the utmost depths of all, 
 Till wan forgetfulness obscurely stealing, 
 Creeps like an incantation on the soul, 
 And o er the slow ebb of my conscious life 
 Dies the thin flush of the last conscious feeling, 
 And like abortive thunder, the dull roll 
 Of sullen passions ebbs far, far away, 
 O Angel ! loose the chords which cling to strife, 
 Sever the gossamer bondage of my breath, 
 And let me pass gently as winds in May, 
 From the dim realm which owns thy shadowy sway, 
 To THY diviner Sleep, O sacred Death! 
 
SONG. 155 
 
 SONG. 
 
 O ! to be 
 
 By the sea, the sea ! 
 While a brave Nor wester s blowing, 
 With a swirl on the lea, 
 Of cloud-foam free, 
 And a spring-tide deeply flowing ! 
 
 With the low moon red and large, 
 O er the flushed horizon s marge, 
 And a little pink hand in mine, 
 On the sands in the long moonshine ! 
 
 O ! to be 
 
 By the sea, the sea ! 
 With the wind full west and dying, 
 With a single star 
 O er the misty bar, 
 And the dim waves dreamily sighing ! 
 O ! to be there, but there ! 
 With my sweet Love nestling near ! 
 Near, near, till her heart-throbs blend with mine, 
 Through the balmy hush of the night s decline, 
 On the glimmering beach, in the soft star-shine ! 
 
156 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 HOPES AND MEMORIES. 
 
 OUR hopes in youth are like those roseate shadows 
 Cast by the sunlight on the dewy grass 
 When first the fair Morn opes her sapphire eyes; 
 They seem gigantic and yet graceful shades, 
 Touched with bright color. As our sun of life 
 Rises towards meridian, less and less 
 Grow the bright tremulous shadows, till at last, 
 tn the hot dust and noontide of our day, 
 They glimmer to blank nothingness. Again, 
 That grand climacteric passed, the shadows gleam 
 Bright still, perchance (if our past deeds be pure), 
 Bright still, but all reversed! Eastward they point, 
 Lengthening and lengthening ever toward the dawn ; 
 For hopes have then grown memories, whose strange life 
 Deepens and deepens as the sunset dies. 
 
 WIDDERIN S RACE. 
 
 (AUSTRALIAN.) 
 
 (The incidents of the following sketch will be found in "The Re 
 collections of Geoffrey Hamlin," by Henry Kingsley.) 
 
 "A HORSE amongst ten thousand ! on the verge, 
 The extremest verge of equine life he stands ; 
 Yet mark his action, as those wild young colts 
 Freed from the stock- yard gallop whinnying up; 
 
WIDDERIN S RACE. j^ 
 
 See how he trots towards them, nose in air, 
 Tail arched, and his still sinewy legs out-thrown 
 In gallant grace before him ! A brave beast 
 As ever spurned the moorland, ay, and more, 
 He bore me once, such words but smite the truth 
 I the outer ring, while vivid memory wakes, 
 Recalling now, the passion and the pain, 
 He bore me once from earthly Hell to Heaven ! 
 
 "The sight of fine old Widderin (that s his name, 
 Caught from a peak, the topmost rugged peak 
 Of tall Mount Widderin, towering to the North 
 Most like a steed s head, with full nostrils blown. 
 And ears pricked up), the sight of Widderin brings 
 That day of days before me, whose strange hours 
 Of fear and anguish, ere the sunset, changed 
 To hours of such content, and full-veined joy, 
 As Heaven can give our mortal lives but once. 
 
 "Well, here s the story : While yon bush-fires sweep 
 
 The distant ranges, and the river s voice 
 
 Pipes a thin treble through the heart of Drouth, 
 
 While the red Heaven like some huge caldron s top 
 
 Seems with the heat a-simmering, better far 
 
 In place of riding tilt gainst such a sun, 
 
 Here in the safe veranda s flowery gloom, 
 
 To play the dwarfish Homer to a song, 
 
 Whereof myself am hero: 
 
 "Two decades 
 
 Have passed since that wild autumn-time when last 
 The convict hordes from near Van Diemen freed 
 By force or fraud, swept, like a blood-red fire, 
 "4 
 
158 
 
 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Inland from beach to mountain, bent on raid 
 And rapine; fiends o th f lowest pit, they spared 
 Nor sex, nor age, nor infancy; the vulture 
 Followed their track, and a black smoke like hell s 
 Hung its foul reek above each home accursed, 
 Sacked by their greed, or ravished by their lust. 
 Their crimes were monstrous, weird, unutterable, 
 Not to be hinted, save in awe-struck whispers 
 Dropped by dark hearthstones, far from maidens ears, 
 In the blank, silent midnight ! all the land 
 Uprose to seek, confront, and decimate 
 These devils spawned of Tophet; but their bands 
 At the first bruit of battle, the first clang 
 Of sabres girding honest loins, and champ 
 Of horse-bits held by manly hands that burned 
 To smite them, hip and thigh, fled, disappeared, 
 And crouched in hiding, wheresoe er the Earth, 
 By wave and hillside, forest, and bleak tarn, 
 Vouchsafed to shield them ; as the time rolled on, 
 Our fears grew lighter, and all dread was quelled, 
 When on a morning, mid the outmost reefs 
 Of rough Cape Boiling, our chief herdsman found 
 The carcass of a huge boat overturned, 
 All stoven, and firmly wedged between the jaws 
 Of monster rocks, whereby three bodies lay, 
 Splashing and gurgling in the refluent tides, 
 Well known as corses of three desperate men, 
 The outlaws leaders; thereupon twas deemed, 
 And all must own with fairest likelihood, 
 That glutted by their vengeance, or spurred on 
 By hopes of rapine, beckoning otherwhere, 
 The whole foul crew embarking, had been seized 
 By wind and wave, God s Executioners, 
 
WIDDERIN S RACE. *59 
 
 The pitiless Doomsmen of the wrath of Heaven, 
 And so, crushed out of being, and made less 
 Than the vile seaweed dabbling in the surf. 
 
 "Thenceforth, our caution cooled; save here and there, 
 
 At critical mountain-passes, or lone caves, 
 
 And sheltered inlets of the wild Southwest, 
 
 No sentinels watched ; and wherefore should they watch? 
 
 The storm had threatened, broken, and was passed! 
 
 So, in late Autumn, twas a marvelous morn, 
 
 With breezes from the calm snow-river borne 
 
 That touched the air, and stirred it into thrills, 
 
 Mysterious and mesmeric, a bright mist 
 
 Lapping the landscape like a golden trance, 
 
 Swathing the hilltops with fantastic veils, 
 
 And o er the moorland-ocean quivering light 
 
 As gossamer threads drawn down the forest aisles 
 
 At dewy dawning, on this marvelous morn, 
 
 I, with four comrades, in this self-same spot, 
 
 Watched the fair scene, and drank the spicy airs, 
 
 That held a subtler spirit than our wine, 
 
 And talked and laughed, and mused in idleness, 
 
 Weaving vague fancies, as our pipe-wreaths curled 
 
 Fantastic in the sunlight ! I, with head 
 
 Thrown back, and cushioned snugly, and with eyes 
 
 Intent on one grotesque and curious cloud, 
 
 Puffed upward, that now seemed to take the shape 
 
 Of a Dutch tulip, now a Turk s face topped 
 
 By folds on folds of turban limitless, 
 
 Heard suddenly, just as the clock chimed one, 
 
 To melt in musical echoes up the hills, 
 
 Quick footsteps on the graveled path without, 
 
!6o LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Steps of the couriers of calamity, 
 
 So my heart told me, ere with blanched regards, 
 
 Two stalwart herdsmen on our threshold paused, 
 
 Panting, with lips that writhed, and awful eyes; 
 
 A breath s space in each other s eyes we glared, 
 
 Then, swift as interchange of lightning thrusts 
 
 In deadly combat, question and reply 
 
 Clashed sharply, What ! the Rangers ? Ay, by 
 
 Heaven ! 
 And loosed in force, the hell-hounds! Whither 
 
 bound? 
 
 I stammered, hoarsely. Bound, the elder said, 
 Southward ! four stations had they sacked and burnt, 
 
 And now, drunk, furious but I stopped to hear 
 
 No more; with booming thunder in mine ears, 
 And blood-flushed eyes, I rushed to Widderin s side, 
 Drew tight the girths, upgathered curb and rein, 
 And sprang to horse ere yet our laggard friends, 
 Now trooping from the green veranda s shade, 
 Could dream of action ! 
 
 "Love had winged my will, 
 For to the southward, fair Garoopna held 
 My all of hope, life, passion; she whose hair 
 (Its tiniest strand of waving, witch-like gold) 
 Had caught my heart, entwined, and bound it fast, 
 As twere some sweet enchantment s heavenly net! 
 
 "I only gave a hand-wave in farewell, 
 Shot by, and o er the endless moorland swept 
 (Endless it seemed, as those weird, measureless plains, 
 Which, in some nightmare vision, stretch and stretch 
 Towards infinity!) like some lone ship 
 
WIDDERIN S RACE. 161 
 
 O er wastes of sailless waters: now, a Pine, 
 
 The beacon Pine gigantic, whose grim crown 
 
 Signals the far land-mariner from out 
 
 Gaunt boulders of the gray-backed Organ hill, 
 
 Rose on my sight, a mistlike, wavering orb, 
 
 The while, still onward, onward, onward still, 
 
 With motion winged, elastic, equable, 
 
 Brave Widderin cleaved the air-tides, tossed aside 
 
 The winds as waves, their swift, invisible breasts, 
 
 Hissing with foamlike noise when pressed and pierced 
 
 By that keen head and fiery-crested form ! 
 
 "The lonely shepherd guardian on the plains, 
 Watching his sheep through languid, half-shut eyes, 
 Looked up, and marveled, as we passed him by, 
 Thinking, perchance, it was a glorious thing, 
 So dressed, so booted, so caparisoned, 
 To ride such bright blood-coursers unto death ! 
 Two sun-blacked Natives, slumbering in the grass, 
 Just rose betimes to scape the trampling hoofs, 
 And hurled hot curses at me as I sped; 
 While here and there, the timid kangaroo 
 Blundered athwart the mole-hills, and in puffs 
 Of steamy dust-cloud vanished like a mote ! 
 
 "Onward, still onward, onward, onward still! 
 And lo! thank Heaven, the mighty Organ hill, 
 That seemed a dim blue cloudlet at the start, 
 Hangs in aerial, fluted cliffs aloft, 
 And still as through the long, low glacis borne, 
 Beneath the gorge borne ever at wild speed, 
 I saw the mateless mountain eagle wheel 
 Beyond the stark height s topmost pinnacle; 
 14* 
 
1 62 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 I heard his shriek of rage and rivin die 
 Deep down the desolate dells, as far behind 
 I left the gorge, and far before me swept 
 Another plain, tree-bordered now, and bound 
 By the clear river gurgling o er its bed. 
 
 "By this, my panting, but unconquered steed 
 Had thrown his small head backward, and his breath 
 .Through the red nostrils burst in labored sighs ; 
 I bent above his outstretched neck, I threw 
 My quivering arms about him, murmuring low, 
 Good horse ! brave heart ! a little longer bear 
 The strain, the travail; and thenceforth for thee 
 Free pastures all thy days, till death shall come ! 
 Ah, many and many a time, my noble Bay, 
 Her lily hand hath wandered through thy mane, 
 Patted thy rainbow neck, and brought thee ears 
 Of daintiest corn from out the farm-house loft, 
 Help, help to save her now! 
 
 "I ll vow the brute 
 
 Heard me, and comprehended what he heard ! 
 He shook his proud crest madly, and his eye 
 Turned for a moment sideways, flashed in mine 
 A lightning gleam, whose fiery language said, 
 I know my lineage, will not shame my sire, 
 My sire, who rushed triumphant twixt the flags, 
 And frenzied thousands, when on Epsom downs 
 Arcturus won the Derby ! no, nor shame 
 My granddam, whose clean body, half enwrought 
 Of air, half fire, through swirls of desert sand 
 Bore Shiek Abdallah headlong on his prey! 
 
WIDDERIN S RACE. 163 
 
 "At last came forest shadows, and the road 
 Winding through bush and bracken, and at last 
 The hoarse stream rumbling o er its quartz-sown crags. 
 
 "No, no! stanch Widderin ! pause not now to drink; 
 
 An hour hence, and thy dainty nose shall dip 
 
 In richest wine, poured jubilantly forth 
 
 To quench thy thirst, my Beauty! but press on, 
 
 Nor heed these sparkling waters. God ! my brain s 
 
 On fire once more ! an instant tells me all ; 
 
 All! life or death, salvation or despair! 
 
 For yonder, o er the wild grass-matted slope 
 
 The house stands, or it stood but yesterday. 
 
 "A Titan cry of inarticulate joy 
 
 I raised, as calm and peaceful in the sun, 
 
 Shone the fair cottage, and the garden-close, 
 
 Wherein, white-robed, unconscious, sat my Love % 
 
 Lilting a low song to the birds and flowers. 
 
 She heard the hoof-strokes, saw me, started up, 
 
 And with her blue eyes wider than their wont, 
 
 And rosy lips half tremulous, rushed to meet 
 
 And greet me swiftly. Up, dear Love! I cried, 
 
 The Convicts, the Bush-Rangers ! let us fly! 
 
 Ah, then and there you should have seen her, friend, 
 
 My noble, beauteous Helen ! not a tear, 
 
 Nor sob, and scarce a transient pulse- quiver, 
 
 As, clasping hand in hand, her fairy foot 
 
 Lit like a small bird on my horseman s boot, 
 
 And up into the saddle, lithe and light, 
 
 Vaulting she perched, her bright curls round my face ! 
 
 "We crossed the river, and, dismounting, led 
 
1 64 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 O er the steep slope of blended rock and turf, 
 
 The wearied horse, and there behind a Tor 
 
 Of castellated bluestone, paused to sweep 
 
 With young keen eyes the broad plain stretched afar, 
 
 Serene and Autumn-tinted at our feet : 
 
 Either, said I, these devils have gone East, 
 
 To meet with bloodhound Desborough in his rage 
 
 Between the granite passes of Luxorme, 
 
 Or else, dear Christ! my Helen, low! stoop low! 
 
 (These words were hissed in horror, for just then, 
 
 Twixt the deep hollows of the river- vale, 
 
 The miscreants, with mixed shouts and curses, poured 
 
 Down through the flinty gorge tumultuously, 
 
 Seeming, we thought, in one fierce throng to charge 
 
 Our hiding-place.) I seized my Widderin s head, 
 
 Blindfolding him, for with a single neigh 
 
 Our fate were sealed o th instant ! As they rode, 
 
 Those wild, foul-languaged demons by our lair, 
 
 Scarce twelve yards off, my troubled steed shook wide 
 
 His streaming mane, stamped on the earth, and pawed 
 
 So loudly, that the sweat of agony rolled 
 
 Down my cold forehead ; at which point, I felt 
 
 My arm clutched, and a voice I did not know, 
 
 Dropped the low murmur from pale, shuddering lips, 
 
 O God ! if in those brutal hands I fall, 
 
 Living, look not into your mother s face 
 
 Or any woman s more! 
 
 "What time had passed 
 
 Above our bowed heads, we pent, pinioned there 
 By awe and nameless horror, who shall tell? 
 Minutes, perchance, by mortal measurement, 
 Eternity by heart-throbs! when at length 
 
OCTOBER. 165 
 
 We turned, and eyes of mutual wonder raised, 
 
 We gazed on alien faces, haggard, worn, 
 
 And strange of feature as the faces born 
 
 In fever and delirium ! Were we saved? 
 
 We scarce could comprehend it, till, from out 
 
 The neighboring oak-wood, rode our friends at speed, 
 
 W T ith clang of steel and eyebrows bent in wrath. 
 
 But warned betimes, the wily ruffians fled 
 
 Far up the forest-coverts, and beyond 
 
 The dazzling snow-line of the distant hills, 
 
 Their yells of fiendish laughter pealing faint, 
 
 And fainter from the cloudland, and the mist 
 
 That closed about them like an ash-gray shroud : 
 
 Yet were these wretches marked for imminent death : 
 
 The next keen sunrise pierced the savage gorge, 
 
 To which we tracked them, where, mere beasts at bay, 
 
 Grimly they fought, and brute by brute they fell." 
 
 OCTOBER. 
 
 AFAR from the city, its cark and care, 
 Thank God ! I am cosily seated here, 
 
 On this night of hale October, 
 While the flames leap high on the roaring hearth, 
 And voices, the dearest to me on earth, 
 Ring out in the music of household mirth, 
 
 For the time is blithe October ! 
 
 There s something, but whatl can scarce divine,- 
 Perchance tis the breath like a potent wine, 
 Of the cordial, clear October, 
 
1 66 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Which makes, when the jovial month comes round, 
 The life-blood bloom, and the pulses bound, 
 And the soul spring forth like a monarch crown d, 
 God s grace on the brave October! 
 
 Come, Sweetheart ! open your choicest bin, 
 For who, I would marvel, could deem it sin, 
 
 On this night of keen October, 
 To quaff one health to his ruddy cheer, 
 On the golden edge of the waning year, 
 To his eyes so bright, and his cheeks so clear, 
 
 Our bluff King Hal," October? 
 
 Away with Rhenish and light Champagne ! 
 Tis not in these we must pledge the reign 
 
 Of the stout old Lord, October; 
 But in mighty stoups of the "mountain dew," 
 With "beads" like tears in an eye of blue, 
 But tears of a laughter, sound and true, 
 
 As thine honest heart, October ! 
 
 He brought me love and he brought me health, 
 He brought me all but the curse of wealth, 
 
 This kindly and free October; 
 And forever and aye I will bless his name, 
 While his winds blow fresh, and his sunsets flame, 
 And the whole earth burns with his crimson fame, 
 
 This Prince of the months, October ! 
 
HERE AND THERE. 167 
 
 HERE AND THERE.* 
 
 HERE the warm sunshine fills 
 
 Like wine of gods the deepening, cup-shaped dells, 
 Embossed with marvelous flowers; the happy rills 
 Roam through the autumnal fields whose rich increase 
 Of gathered grain smiles under heavens of peace; 
 
 While many a bird-song swells 
 From glades of neighboring woodlands, cool and fair, 
 
 Content and Peace are here. 
 
 THERE the wild Battle s wrath 
 Thunders from castled height to storied plain, 
 Plows with red lightning-bolts its terrible path, 
 And sows the abhorrent seeds of blood and death, 
 Blown far on Desolation s tameless breath, 
 
 While for autumnal grain 
 Time reaps the harvest of a bleak despair, 
 
 God s curse consumes them there. 
 
 HERE jovial children play 
 Beneath the latest vine-leaves; innocent kings, 
 And blissful queens, on them the matron Day, 
 Like a sweet mother, drops her kisses light ; 
 The very clouds some secret joy makes bright, 
 
 And round us clings and clings 
 With Ariel arms, the season s influence rare, 
 
 Heaven s heart beats near us here. 
 
 * Written during the war between France and Germany. 
 
1 68 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 THERE Love bemoans its lost, 
 Countless as seaside sands; all joys of life 
 Rest locked and stirless in the blood-red frost; 
 Ye drums roll out, shrill clarions peal your parts ! 
 Ye cannot drown the wail of broken hearts, 
 
 Nor still that spiritual strife 
 
 Which thrills through Victory s voice its death-notes 
 drear, 
 
 Dear Christ, soothe, save them there! 
 
 ODE (,> 
 
 IN HONOR OF THE BRAVERY AND SACRIFICES OF THE 
 SOLDIERS OF THE SOUTH. 
 
 WITH bavonets slanted in the glittering light, 
 
 With solemn roll of drums, 
 With star-lit banners rustling wings of might, 
 
 The knightly concourse comes ! 
 The flower and fruit of all the tropic lands, 
 The unsheathed brightness of their stainless brands 
 
 Blazing in courtly hands, 
 One glorious soul within those thousand eyes, 
 One aim, one hope, one impulse from the skies, 
 
 While silent, awed and dumb, 
 A nation waits the end in dread surmise, 
 
 They come ! they come ! 
 
 The summer flaunts her vivid leaves above 
 The unwonted scene, 
 
THE SOLDIERS OF THE SOUTH. 169 
 
 The summer heavens embrace with smiles of love 
 
 The hill-slopes green ; 
 Far in the uppermost realms of silent air 
 Peace sits enthroned and happy, but on earth 
 The cymbals clash, and the shrill trumpets blare, 
 And Death, like some grim Mower on the plain, 
 
 Topped by the ripened grain, 
 Whets his keen scythe, and shakes it fearfully ! 
 
 Our serried lines march sternly to the front, 
 Where decked as if they rose to celebrate 
 
 A joyous festal morn, 
 In glistening pomp and splendid blazonry, 
 
 Slow moving as in scorn 
 
 Of those weak bands that guard the pass below, 
 Come gorgeous, flushed and proud, the cohorts of the 
 foe! 
 
 They wheel ! deploy, are stationed, down the cleft 
 
 Of the long gorge their signal thunders run ! 
 A sullen answer echoes from our left 
 
 And the great fight s begun ! 
 O! who shall picture the immortal fray? 
 Our Southern host that day 
 Breasted the onset of the invading sea 
 With wills of adamant; but stern-weighted strength, 
 Like waves by some infernal alchemy 
 Hardened, transformed to solid metal, burning 
 At white heat as they struck, and aye returning 
 Hotter and more resistless than hefore 
 (All flecked atop with foam of human gore), 
 Pierced here and there our crumbling ranks at length, 
 Which as a mountain shore, 
 15 
 
I7 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Rock-ribbed and iron founded, still had stood, 
 
 And outward hurled 
 
 In bloody sprayings, that tremendous flood 
 Which, with wild charge and furious brunt on brunt, 
 Had dashed against us like a fiery world ! 
 
 Unceasing still poured on the fateful tide, 
 And plumed victory ever seemed to ride 
 On the red billows of the northland war ! 
 
 Our glory and pride 
 
 Had fallen, fallen in the terrible van, 
 Like wine the life-streams ran ; 
 "Back! back!" cried one (it was the voice of Bee, 
 Lifted in wrath and bitter agony), 
 "We re driven backward!" unto whom there came 
 An answer, like the rush of steady flame, 
 Twixt ribs of iron, "We will give them yet 
 
 The bayonet ! 
 
 The sharp edge of the Southern bayonet!" 
 At which the other s face flushed up, and caught 
 Light like a warrior-angel s, and he sprang 
 To the front rank, while swift as passionate thought 
 Leaped forth his sword, and this high summons rang : 
 
 "See! see! where fixed and grand, 
 Like a stone wall the braves of Jackson stand ! 
 "Forward!" and on he rushed with quivering breath, 
 
 On to his Spartan death ! 
 
 Unceasing still poured down the fateful tide, 
 And plumed victory ever seemed to ride 
 O er the red billows of the northland war! 
 When faint and far, 
 
THE SOLDIERS OF THE SOUTH. 
 
 171 
 
 Far on our left there rose a sound that thrilled 
 All souls, and even the battle s thunderous pulse 
 (Or so we deemed), for briefest space was stilled; 
 A sound, low hissing as a meteor- tar, 
 But gathering depth of volume, till it burst 
 
 In one great flamelike cheer, 
 That seemed to rend and lift the cloud accurst, 
 
 The poisonous-clinging cloud 
 
 That wrapped us in its shroud, 
 
 While wounded men leaped on their feet to hear, 
 And dying men upraised their eyes to see 
 How on the conflict s lowering canopy, 
 Dawned the first rainbow hues of victory ! 
 
 Have you watched the Condor leap 
 From his proud Andean rock, 
 And with hurtling pinions sweep 
 On the valley-pasturing flock ? 
 Have you watched an Eygre vast 
 On the rude September blast 
 Roll adown with curved crest 
 O er the low sands of the West? 
 O ! thus and thus they came 
 (Four thousand men and more), 
 Hearts, faces, all aflame, 
 And the grandeur of their wrath 
 Whirled the Tyrant from their path 
 As the frightened rack is driven 
 By the unleashed winds in heaven ; 
 Then, maddened, tossed aboul 
 In a reckless, hopeless rout, 
 The Northern army fled 
 O er their dying and their dead, 
 
172 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 And the Southern steel flashed out, 
 And their vengeful points were red 
 With the hot heart s tide that flowed 
 Where they sabred as they rode ! 
 And the news sped on apace 
 (Where the Rulers, in their place, 
 Sat jubilant, one and all), 
 Till a shadow seemed to fall 
 Round their joyance like a pall, 
 And the inmost Senate-hall 
 Pealed an echo of disgrace ! 
 At the set of July s sun 
 They stood quivering and undone, 
 For the eagle standards waned and the Southern "stars" 
 had won ! ). 
 
 Thus loomed serene and large 
 
 Upon that desperate contest s lurid marge 
 Our orb of destiny; millions of hearts 
 
 Throb with bold exultation, 
 
 Till there starts 
 
 From mountain fastness, and from waving plain, 
 From wooded swamp and mist-encircled main, 
 
 From hamlet, city, field, 
 
 And the rich midland weald, 
 The spirit of the antique Hero Time ! 
 O ! twas a sight sublime 
 To watch the upheaval of the popular soul, 
 The stormy gathering, the majestic roll 
 Upward of its wild forces, by the awe 
 Of Right and Justice steadied into law ! 
 Faith lent our cause its heavenly consecration ! 
 
 Hope its omnipotent might ! 
 And Fame stood ready, with her flowers of light. 
 
THE SOLDIERS OF THE SOUTH. I73 
 
 To crown alike the living and the dead, 
 While in the broadening firmament o erhead 
 We seemed to read the fiat of our fate, 
 
 "Ye are baptized, a Nation! 
 Amongst the freest, free, amongst the mightiest, 
 
 great ! 
 An ominous hush ! and then the scattered clouds 
 
 In the dark northern heaven 
 (Clouds of a deadlier strife), 
 
 Urged by the poison wind 
 
 Of rage and rapine, sullenly combined, 
 Charged with the bolts of ruin ! what were shrouds, 
 Crimsoned with gore? the widowed spirit riven? 
 The desecration of God s gift of life, 
 To that one thought (three fiery strands uniting, 
 
 Hot from a Had can loom), 
 
 "Conquest!" "Revenge!" "Supremacy?" The blight 
 ing 
 
 Of untold promises, the grief, the gloom, 
 The desolate madness and the anguish blind, 
 
 All spreading on and on 
 From murdered sire to subjugated son, 
 Were less than nothing to the arrogant pride 
 Which treaties, compacts, honor, laws defied, 
 And aimed above the wrecks of temple and tower 
 To rear the symbols of its merciless power ! 
 
 Four deadly years we fought, 
 Ringed by a girdle of unfaltering fire, 
 That coiled and hissed in lessening circles nigher. 
 
 Blood dyed the Southern wave; 
 From ocean border to calm inland river, 
 There was no pause, no peace, no respite ever. 
 
174 
 
 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Blood of our bravest brave 
 Drenched in a scarlet rain the western lea, 
 Swelled the hoarse waters of the Tennessee, 
 Incarnadined the gulfs, the lakes, the rills, 
 And from a hundred hills 
 Steamed in a mit.. of slaughter to the skies, 
 Shutting all hope of heaven from mortal eyes. 
 The Beaufort blooms were withered on the stem; 
 
 The fair gulf city in a single night 
 
 Lost her imperial diadem ; 
 And wheresoe er men s troubled vision sought, 
 They viewed MIGHT towering o er the humbled crest 
 of RIGHT! 
 
 But for a time, but for a time, O God ! 
 The innate forces of our knightly blood 
 Rallied, and by the mount, the fen, the flood, 
 
 Upraised the tottering standards of our race. 
 O grand Virginia though thy glittering glaive 
 Lies sullied, shattered in a ruthless grave, 
 How it flashed once ! They dug their trenches deep 
 (The implacable foe), they ranged their lines of wrath; 
 But watchful ever on the imminent path, 
 
 Thy steel-clad genius stood ; 
 North, South, East, West, they strove to pierce thy 
 
 shield ; 
 
 Thou would st net yield ! 
 
 / Until, unconquered, yea, unconquered still, ^~ 
 I NATURE S weakened forces answered not thy WILL, / 
 i And gored with wound on wound, 
 , Thy fainting limbs and forehead sought the ground; 
 
 And with thee the young nation fell, a pall 
 * Solemn and rayless, covering one and all ! 
 
THE SOLDIERS OF THE SOUTH. 175 
 
 God s ways are marvelous; here we stand to-day 
 Discrowned, and shorn, in wildest disarray, 
 The mock of earth ! yet never shone the sun 
 On sterner deeds, or nobler victories won. 
 Not in the field alone; ah, come with me 
 To the dim bivouac by the winter s sea; 
 Mark the fair sons of courtly mothers crouch 
 O er flickering fires; but gallant still, and gay 
 As on some bright parade; or mark the couch 
 
 In reeking hospitals, whereon is laid 
 The latest scion of a line perchance, 
 Whose veins were royal ; close your blurred romance, 
 Blurred by the dropping of a maudlin tear, 
 And watch the manhood here ; 
 
 That firm but delicate countenance, 
 Distorted sometimes by an awful pang, 
 Borne in meek patience; when the trumpets rang 
 "To horse!" but yester-morn, that ardent boy 
 Sprung to his charger, thrilled with hope and joy 
 To the very finger-tips, and now he lies, 
 The shadows deepening in those falcon eyes, 
 
 But calm and undismayed, 
 
 As if the Death that chills him, brow and breast, 
 Were some fond bride who whispered, "Let us rest!" 
 
 Enough! tis over! the last gleam of hope 
 Hath melted from our mournful horoscope, 
 
 Of all, of all bereft, 
 \ Only to us are left 
 
 Our buried heroes and their matchless deeds; 
 These cannot pass; they hold the vital seeds 
 W T hich in some far, untracked, unvisioned hour 
 May burst to vivid bud and glorious flower.v 
 
176 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 Meanwhile, upon the nation s broken heart 
 Her martyrs sleep. O ! dearer far to her, 
 Than if each son, a wreathed conqueror, 
 
 Rode in triumphant state 
 
 The loftiest crest of fate; 
 O ! dearer far, because outcast and low, 
 She yearns above them in her awful woe. 
 One spring its tender blooms 
 Hath lavished richly by those hallowed tombs; 
 One summer its imperial largess spread 
 Along our heroes bed ; 
 One autumn wailing with funereal blast, 
 The withered leaves and pallid dust amassed 
 All round about them, till bleak winter now 
 Hangs hoar-frost on the grasses, and the bough 
 
 In dreary woodlands seems to thrill and start, 
 Thrill to the anguish of the wind that raves 
 Across those lonely, desolated graves ! 
 1866. 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 ILLEGITIMATE. 
 
 THE maiden SPRING came laughing down the dales, 
 Her fair brows arched, and on her rosebud mouth, 
 The balm and beauty of the lustrous South; 
 Through soft green fields, from hills to happy vales, 
 She tripped, her small feet twinkling in the sun ; 
 Her delicate finger raised with girlish mirth, 
 Pointed at graybeard Winter, who, in dearth, 
 
SONNET. 
 
 177 
 
 Toiled toward his couch, his long day labor done; 
 Ah no, not done ! for hark ! a sudden wind, 
 Death-laden, sweeps from realms of arctic sky, 
 And blurred with storm, the morn grows crazed and blind; 
 Then, WINTER mocking, backward turns apace, 
 Where pallid Spring, all vainly strives to fly, 
 And with brute buffet scars her shrinking face ! 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 VERNAL PICTURES (WITHOUT AND WITHIN). 
 
 AMID fresh roses wandering, and the soft 
 And delicate wealth of apple-blossoms spread 
 In tender spirals of blent white and red, 
 Round the fair spaces of our blooming croft, 
 This morn I caught the gurgling note, so oft 
 Heard in the golden spring-tides that are dead, 
 The Swallow s note, murmuring of winter fled, 
 Dropped silverly from passionless calms aloft : 
 "O heart!" I said, "thy vernal depths unclose, 
 That mirror Nature s; warm airs, come and go 
 Of whispering Ardors o er Thought s budded rose, 
 And half-hid flowers of sweet philosophy; 
 While now upglancing, now borne swift and low, 
 SONG like the swallow darts through Fancy s sky." 
 
1 78 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 WELCOME TO WINTER. 
 
 Now, with wild and windy roar, 
 Stalwart Winter comes once more, 
 O er our roof-tree thunders loud, 
 And from edges of black cloud 
 Shakes his beard of hoary gold, 
 Like a tangled torrent rolled 
 Down the sky-rifts, clear and cold ! 
 
 Hark ! his trumpet summons rings, 
 
 Potent as a warrior-king s; 
 
 Till the forces of our blood 
 
 Rise to lusty hardihood, 
 
 And our summer s languid dreams 
 
 Melt, like form-wreaths, down the streams, 
 
 When the fierce northeasters roll, 
 
 Raving from the frozen pole. 
 
 Nobler hopes, and keener life, 
 Quicken in his breath of strife; 
 Through the snow-storms and the sleet 
 On he stalks with armed feet, 
 While the sounding clash of hail 
 Clanging on his icy mail, 
 Stirs whate er of generous might 
 Time hath left us in his flight, 
 And our yearning pulses thrill 
 For some grand achievement still ! 
 
 Lord of ice-bound sea and land, 
 Let me grasp thy kingly hand, 
 
WILL. 179 
 
 And from thy great heart and bold, 
 Hecla-warm, though all is cold 
 Round about thee, catch the fire 
 Of my lost youth s brave desire ; 
 Let me, in the war with wrong, 
 Like thy storms, be swift and strong, 
 Gloomy griefs, and coward cares, 
 Broods of wildering, dark despairs, 
 Making all life s glory dim, 
 Let me rend them, limb from limb, 
 As the forest-boughs are rent 
 When thou wak st the firmament, 
 And with savage shriek and groan 
 All the wild wood s overthrown ! 
 
 WILL. 
 
 6 - (>- 
 
 YOUR face, my boy, when six months old, 
 We propped you laughing in a chair, 
 And the sun-artist caught the gold 
 
 Which rippled o er your waving hair ! 
 And deftly shadowed forth the while 
 That blooming cheek, that roguish smile, 
 
 Those dimples seldom still : 
 The tiny, wondering, wide-eyed elf! 
 Now, can you recognize yourself 
 
 In that small portrait, Will ? 
 
 I glance at it, then turn to you, 
 
 Where in your healthful ease you stand, 
 1 No Beauty, but a youth as true, 
 And pure as any in the land ! 
 
i8o LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 I For Nature, through fair sylvan ways, 
 i Hath led and gladdened all your days, 
 
 Kept free from sordid ill ; 
 Hath filled your veins with blissful fire, 
 / And winged your instincts to aspire 
 Sunward, and Godward, Will ! 
 
 Long-limbed and lusty, with a stride 
 
 That leaves me many a pace behind, 
 You roam the woodlands, far and wide, 
 
 You quaff great draughts of country wind ; 
 While tree and wildflower, lake and stream, 
 Deep shadowy nook, and sunshot gleam, 
 
 Cool vale and far-off hill, 
 Each plays its mute mysterious part, 
 In that strange growth of mind and heart, 
 I joy to witness, Will ! 
 
 "Can this tall youth," I sometimes say, 
 "Be mine? my son?" it surely seems 
 Scarce further backward than a day, 
 
 Since watching o er your feverish dreams 
 In that child-illness of the brain, 
 I thought (O Christ, with what keen pain !) 
 
 Your pulse would soon.be still, 
 That all your boyish sports were o er, 
 And I, heart-broken, nevermore 
 
 Should call, or clasp you, Will ! 
 
 But Heaven was kind, Death passed you by; 
 
 And now upon youf arm I lean, 
 My second self, of clearer eye, 
 
 Of firmer nerve, and sturdier mien; 
 Through you, methinks, my long-lost youth 
 Revives, from wjiose sweet founts of truth, 
 
SONNET. i 
 
 And joy, I drink my fill : 
 - I feel your every heart-throb, know 
 ^,What inmost hopes within you glow, 
 ~/ One soul s between us, Will! 
 
 Pray Heaven that this be always so ! 
 
 That ever on your soul and mine 
 Though my thin locks grow white as snow, 
 
 The self-same radiant trust may shine; 
 Pray that while this, my life, endures, 
 It aye may sympathize with yours 
 
 In thought, aim, action still; 
 That you, O son (till comes the end), 
 In me may find your comrade, friend, 
 And more than father, Will ! 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 I CAST this sorrow from me like a crown 
 Of bitter nettles, and unwholesome weeds, 
 Nursed by cold night-dews, from malignant seeds, 
 111 Fortune sowed, when all the Heaven did frown ; 
 Its loathsome round I trample deeply down 
 In mire and dust, to burn my brain no more; 
 From off my brow I wipe the trickling gore, 
 While all about me, like keen clarions blown, 
 From breezy dells, and golden heights afar, 
 Their stern reveille the wild March winds sound; 
 They wake an answering passion in my soul, 
 Whence, marshaled as brave warriors, taking ground 
 For noblest conflict, freed from doubt or dole, 
 Great Thoughts uprising, front Hope s morning star! 
 16 
 
,82 LEGENDS AND LYRICS. 
 
 TO MY MOTHER. 
 
 LIKE streamlets to a silent sea, 
 
 These songs with varied motion 
 Flow from bright Fancy s uplands free, 
 
 To Lethe s clouded ocean; 
 They lapse in deepening music down 
 
 The slopes of flower-lit meadows, 
 Nor dream, poor songs ! how near them frown 
 
 Oblivion s rayless shadows! 
 
 Yet though of brief and dubious life, 
 - All wed to incompleteness, 
 The voices of these lays are rife 
 
 With frail and fleeting sweetness ; 
 One chord to make more full the strain, 
 
 One note I may not smother, 
 Is echoed in the heart s refrain 
 
 Which holds thy name, my mother ! 
 
 To thee my earliest verse I brought, 
 
 All wreathed in loves and roses, 
 Some glowing boyish fancy, fraught 
 
 With tender May-wind closes; 
 Thou did st not taunt my fledgling song, 
 
 Nor view its flight with scorning; 
 The bird," thou said st, "grown fleet and strong, 
 
 Might yet outsoar the morning!" 
 
TO MY MOTHER. 183 
 
 Ah me ! between that hour and this, 
 
 Eternities seem flowing ; 
 O er hapless graves of youth and bliss 
 
 Dark cypress boughs are growing; 
 Our Fate hath dimmed with base alloy 
 
 The rich, pure gold of pleasure, 
 And changed the choral chant of joy 
 
 To Care s heart-broken measure ! 
 
 But through it all, the blight, the pall, 
 The stress of thunderous weather, 
 
 That God who keeps wild chance in thrall 
 Hath linked our lots together ; 
 
 So, hand in hand, we sail the gloom, 
 
 i Faith s mystic plummet casting 
 
 To sound the ways which end in bloom 
 Of Edens everlasting ! 
 
 I bless thee, Dear, with reverent thought ! 
 
 Pale face, and tresses hoary, 
 Whose every silvery thread hath caught 
 
 Some hint of heavenly glory; 
 To Thee, with trust assured, sublime, 
 
 Death s angel-call that waitest, 
 To thee, as once my earliest rhyme, 
 
 Lo ! now, I bring my latest ! 
 
 THE END.