HE NOPTH 
 SllRE WCH 
 
 7\ND 
 

 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY Of 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO 
 
16118 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. In American Men 
 of Letters Series. With Portrait. i6mo, 
 $1-25- 
 
 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH, AND 
 OTHER POEMS. i6mo, $1.25. 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK. 
 
/6//S 
 
 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 (iCbe 3&toer0i&e prejjs, Cambridge 
 
 1890 
 
Copyright, 1890, 
 BY GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The River tide Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE NOBTH SHORE WATCH .... 5 
 
 AGATHON 31 
 
 MY COUNTRY 75 
 
 SONNETS 
 
 To THOSE WHO REPROVED THE AUTHOR FOR 
 TOO SANGUINE PATRIOTISM . . . .95 
 
 OUR FIRST CENTURY 96 
 
 To LEO XIII 97 
 
 ON THE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 
 
 FRENCH REVOLUTION 98 
 
 AT GIBRALTAR. 1 99 
 
 AT GIBRALTAR. II. 100 
 
 ITALIAN VOLUNTARIES 
 
 LINES 103 
 
 ANECDOTES OF SIENA 104 
 
 VICTOR S BIRD 108 
 
 IN THE SQUARE OF ST. PETER S . . . 116 
 
 NEAR BALE 116 
 
 LOVE DELAYED 117 
 
 TAORMINA 118 
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF ^ETNA .... 120 
 BE GOD S THE HOPE 123 
 
THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 
 
CLARENCE LAIGHTON DENNETT 
 
 SEPTEMBER 6, 1854 JUNE 5, 1878 
 
THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 
 
 i. 
 
 FIRST dead of all my dead that are to be, 
 Who at life s flush with me wast wont to 
 
 roam 
 
 The pine-fringed borders of this surging sea, 
 From far and lonely lands Love brings me 
 
 home 
 
 To this wide water s foam ; 
 Here thou art fallen in thy joyful days, 
 
 Life quenched within thy breast, light in thy 
 
 eyes; 
 And darkly from thy ruined beauty rise 
 
 These flowerless myrtle-sprays ; 
 The hills we trod enfold thee evermore, 
 The gray and sleepless sea breaks round the or 
 phaned shore. 
 
8 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 
 
 II. 
 
 All things are lovely as they were, and still 
 They draw with gladness toward me as a 
 
 friend ; 
 
 The evening star doth touch me with the thrill 
 Of welcome, and the waves their voices 
 
 blend 
 
 To hail my exile s end. 
 Oft while I wandered in those weary lands, 
 This dear-remembered shore would comfort 
 
 me, 
 Seeing in thought the everlasting sea 
 
 Washing his yellow sands ; 
 But now the scene I longed for gives me pain 
 Since he is dead, and ne er shall feel its joy 
 again. 
 
 ni. 
 
 Still planet, making beautiful the west, 
 
 Bright bringer of the stars and sheltered 
 
 sleep, 
 
 Easing our hearts, as some beloved guest, 
 Whom for a little while our eyes may keep, 
 
 And through long years shall weep ; 
 O eloquent with flashes to the soul, 
 
 Even as his eyes beneath thy pure empire 
 Beamed the mute music of the heart s desire, 
 
 Thee, too, doth fate control ; 
 And brief as his thy hour of light must be 
 To earth her starry hush, my solitude to me ! 
 
THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 9 
 
 IV. 
 
 Yet here our day spring long ago was born, 
 While heaven still hovered near earth s 
 
 dusky frame ; 
 
 Light touched the isles, and joyously the morn 
 O erflowed the orient with prophetic flame, 
 
 And on the waters came, 
 
 Crimson and pearl, and woke the singing shore ; 
 On over murmuring waves the glad light 
 
 swept ; 
 On through the west the loosened glory leapt 
 
 The far blue uplands o er ; 
 And slowly rose the sun, and made the sea 
 White with his splendor, and filled heaven with 
 purity. 
 
 v. 
 
 Upon this beach we welcomed in the world, 
 
 And loved the lore of its wise solitude, 
 Where on the foaming sands the surges swirled, 
 Or broad, blue-belted calm, in blessed brood, 
 
 Lay many a shining rood ; 
 Here in that prime we kept our boyish tryst, 
 
 When woke our April and the need to rove ; 
 We trod the mantle that the white moon wove, 
 
 We pierced the star-looped mist ; 
 And ever where our eager feet might roam, 
 The air was morning, and the loneliest spot was 
 home. 
 
10 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 
 
 VI. 
 
 The eloquent voices of the yearning sea 
 
 Called to us, strong as syllables of fate, 
 And, wafting in, like some lost memory, 
 Subdued us to the haunting hopes that wait 
 
 Round boyhood s rapt estate ; 
 The deep spell moved, a passion in our blood, 
 And made the throbbing of our hearts keep 
 
 time 
 Unto the laughter of the waves, and chime 
 
 With thunders of the flood ; 
 And subtly as a dream takes hue and form, 
 Our spirits clothed their youth in ocean s sun 
 and storm. 
 
 vn. 
 Still would we watch, wave-borne from dawn 
 
 to dark, 
 
 The pools of opal gem the windless bay ; 
 Or touch at eve the purple isles, and mark 
 Where, by the moon, far on the edge of day, 
 
 The shore s pale crescent lay ; 
 Or up broad river-reaches are we gone, 
 
 Through sunset mirrored in the hollow tide 
 In beauty sphered, as some lone bird enskied, 
 
 The halcyon boat drifts on, 
 To twilight, and the stars, and deepest night, 
 With phosphorescent gleams, and dark oars drop 
 ping light. 
 
THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 11 
 
 VIII. 
 Ah, then a presence moved within this deep, 
 
 That more than beauty made its regions dear ; 
 O er the long levels of its golden sleep 
 
 The light that beams from the eternal year 
 
 Flashed on the spirit clear ; 
 And wheresoe er we saw the ocean roll, 
 With sounds of harmony his waves among, 
 The song that breathed before the lyre was 
 
 strung 
 
 Gave echo to the soul ; 
 And tremulous the immortal instincts woke 
 That prophesy of Him in whom the sweet dawn 
 broke. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Alas, the faery light that truth once wore ! 
 
 Alas, the easy questing of the heart ! 
 When, by the hushed and visionary shore, 
 The dreaming hope, wherein all things have 
 
 part, 
 
 Made our young pulses start ! 
 Once, once I knew thy sweetness, O salt sea ! 
 I reaped along thy furrows bearded grain ; 
 Thy groves, that never drink the sun nor rain, 
 
 Gave nectarous fruit to me ; 
 And all thy herbless pastures yielded wine, 
 Deep-hearted, fragrant, bright ah, then his 
 hand clasped mine ! 
 
12 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 
 
 X. 
 Ay, heart with heart companioned we went on, 
 
 And ever lovelier was the wooded shore ; 
 More joyous bloomed the May, and warmer 
 
 shone 
 The slant light down the forest s muffled floor, 
 
 With music vaulted o er ; 
 Ah, when the bluebird through the meadows 
 
 darts, 
 
 Still yellow dogtooths gleam amid the brakes , 
 And fearlessly on all the green-leaved lakes 
 
 Lilies unfold their hearts ; 
 Earth s children slumber when the wild winds 
 
 rise 
 
 The tempest passes o er, and heaven looks through 
 their eyes. 
 
 XI. 
 
 But the dark pines, whose heart is like the sea s, 
 Mourn for one darling flower they nurtured 
 
 here, 
 
 With morning fed, and deep, deep harmonies 
 The sweetest blossom that the windy year 
 
 E er rifled and left sere ; 
 Wake, O ye violets preluding the May, 
 And many a barren slope for beauty win ! 
 Burst, O white laurels, flush your cups within, 
 
 And whisper, spray to spray ! 
 But till the cypress buds, and blooms the yew, 
 The sylvan year brings not the love that once ye 
 knew. 
 
THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 13 
 
 XII. 
 
 Too swiftly fled the green and fragrant time ! 
 Bleak on the vacant earth the North Wind 
 
 fell, 
 
 Bitter and fierce, to beat the frozen clime, 
 In shriveled fields and ruined woods to dwell, 
 
 And on the flood s black swell ; 
 But us the rude transformer could not change ; 
 We saw his pale dominions gleam afar, 
 His keen skies flash with many a friendlier 
 
 star, 
 
 And, lo, the vision strange 
 Dear to our faith far in the alien north, 
 With faltering hues and faint, a dream of morn 
 stole forth. 
 
 xm. 
 
 Such presages before us ever went, 
 
 And flushed the skies with joyful heraldings ; 
 We trusted beauty t is the element 
 
 Wherein the soul unfolds her poising wings, 
 
 And heavenward soars, and sings ; 
 But in the dawn and by the star-swept tides, 
 In dim melodious aisles of lonely pines, 
 We felt the heart of sorrow none divines, s 
 
 That in all things abides ; 
 And borne on sighing winds came sounds of 
 
 woe, 
 
 Whose burden well we knew, but he feared not to 
 know. 
 
14 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 
 
 XIV. 
 I saw the beauty of the early world 
 
 More lovely imaged in his lucid mind ; 
 Pure at his heart of innocence impearled 
 Shone the white truth no search can ever find, 
 
 In love, as light, enshrined ; 
 Him nature folded childlike to her breast, 
 Gave him her peace, her strength, her ease, 
 
 her joy ; 
 Fate could not move him, doubt could not 
 
 annoy, 
 
 Nor sorrow, all men s guest ; 
 And woven of her music fell his voice 
 On the wide-glimmering eve, and bade my soul 
 rejoice. 
 
 xv. 
 
 " Ere yet we knew Love s name," he said to me, 
 " He gave the new earth to our boyish hands ; 
 For us morn blossoms, and the azure sea 
 Ruffles and smooths his long and gleaming 
 
 sands 
 
 Upon a hundred strands ; 
 In green and gold the radiant mist exhales, 
 When through the willow buds the blue 
 
 March blows, 
 And sowing Persia through the world the rose 
 
 Reddens our western vales : 
 Clasped with the light, bathed with the glowing 
 
 air, 
 
 Rest we in his embrace who made our paths so 
 fair! 
 
THE NORTH 8HORE WATCH 15 
 
 XVI. 
 " Why fear we ? wherefore doubt ? is Love not 
 
 strong, 
 Whose starry shield o er-roofs our mortal 
 
 way, 
 
 Who makes his home within our hearts lifelong, 
 An instinct to divine, a law to sway, 
 
 A hero s faith to stay ? 
 See, all life beats responsive to his might ; 
 Its yearning in his tameless hope began ; 
 Its dawning triumph in the heart of man 
 
 Is his far-beaconing light ; 
 He builds the empire of the golden years ; 
 The red strife, too, is his, the field of blood and 
 tears. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 " Through Him we look toward life with con 
 quering eyes, 
 Nor swerve, nor falter, though his fire must 
 
 blend 
 
 With our young hearts as flame with sacrifice, 
 Consuming all we are for that great end 
 
 He bids our souls befriend ; 
 The laws invincible of his firm state 
 
 Work with us till the vision grows the fact, 
 And thought, slow-suppling into perfect act, 
 
 Makes our desire our fate ; 
 Nor elsewise unto truth may man attain, 
 Though built in Shelley s heart, though orbed in 
 Shakespeare s brain. 
 
16 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 
 
 xvin. 
 " His are we, as we were before we saw 
 
 The murder-strife that ravin cannot sate, 
 The fierce, incessant moan, the strokes of 
 
 law, 
 The deep betrayal of our birth and state 
 
 That baffles us with fate ; 
 Be life s inevitable sadness ours, 
 
 The evil that we cannot help but will, 
 The good with viewless consequence in ill, 
 
 Our maimed and thwarted powers ! 
 Nor yet " I hear him say " repining 
 
 know, 
 
 The shadow-clouded earth through the blue deep 
 must go. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 " It moves, and plunges to the central sun, 
 
 Its paltry ruin flashes, and is gone ; 
 The stars, indifferent, their calm courses run, 
 The constellations shine as erst they shone, 
 
 The clustered heavens go on ; 
 Who shall foresee of all the one bliud doom 
 When darkness shall inhabit torpid space, 
 Still, starless, orphaned of dawn s lovely 
 
 face, 
 
 Unfathomable tomb ! 
 Yet may the soul pitch her adventure high, 
 With beauty and with love impassioned, though 
 we die. 
 
THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 17 
 XX. 
 
 " Beauty that sings of unisons unseen, 
 
 Bright emanation of consenting laws, 
 In flower, wave, shell, blue skies, and pastures 
 
 green, 
 The passing of the power that hath no 
 
 pause, 
 
 That knows nor fate nor cause ; 
 The thrill of life aye pulsing through the void, 
 With rhythmic motions felt in sun and star, 
 And galaxies of splendor streaming far, 
 
 Nor in their woe destroyed ; 
 The presence wonderful, beneath, above 
 In the lone heart of man it wakes, incarnate 
 Love. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " It hallows all, the aureole He wears 
 
 Whom frail mortality hath never bound ; 
 Who in his hands the burning sphere upbears, 
 Though stars grow gray, their dateless ruin 
 
 found, 
 
 And perish in their round ; 
 He is and, lo, t is loveliness we see, 
 
 The heavens majestic, and the joyous earth ; 
 Is not and all the glory and the mirth 
 
 Are things of memory ; 
 Long, long o er us be his divine control 
 The beauty of the world, the rapture of the 
 soul ! " 
 
18 THE KORTH SHORE WATCH 
 
 xxn. 
 
 Such musings ours upon the moonlit shore, 
 WLae dark with motion sways the luminous 
 
 tide; 
 On come the long, black waves, and, whitening 
 
 o er, 
 Fall, far-resounding, eddy, and divide, 
 
 And up the smooth sands glide : 
 So, life-engirdling, shone eternal truth, 
 So darkly luminous, so swift, so strong, 
 Flooding our mortal brink, it broke along 
 
 The winding shores of youth ; 
 There silent, glad, in Love s repose we lay 
 Calm was among the stars, peace on the heaving 
 bay. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Oh, wherefore could we not forever dwell 
 In that seclusion of the world new-born, 
 Where on our passive youth the promise fell 
 That dawns beneath the sweet brows of the 
 
 morn, 
 
 The light none lives to scorn ! 
 Too soon we left the haunts of boyish thought ; 
 Moored swung the boat beside the shining 
 
 sea; 
 The arethusas flowered in secrecy, 
 
 And fell, unloved, unsought ; 
 Lone the rare cardinal, autumn s herald, stood ; 
 The bittersweet gleamed red in the deserted wood. 
 
THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 19 
 
 XXIV. 
 One watch was ours ; far o er the elMng sea, 
 
 Heavy and dark, the rainy shadows lay ; 
 From his familiar door he walked with me 
 . To that broad hill, grown dear in boyhood s 
 
 day, 
 
 The old field-trodden way ; 
 Chill rose the mists, and faint the distant roar 
 Of ocean sounded ; our old seat we took 
 Silent and sad ; cold autumn s dying look 
 
 The summer landscape wore ; 
 We minded not in our hearts shadows were 
 The wide earth harbors not, housing their misery 
 there. 
 
 xxv. 
 
 The Hour sprang forth from universal time, 
 Of his joy-hearted race the last sad Hour ; 
 Crowned heir of all his brothers of the prime, 
 Bodied more nobly, girt with secret power, 
 
 Starred with Love s passion flower ;. 
 Through night he sprang, and black the flakes 
 
 of gloom 
 
 Fled, afar off, the lustre of his feet ; 
 Our hill he sought, and made the darkness 
 
 sweet, 
 
 Staying the wand of doom ; 
 And dear as from the Grail s all-precious sight, 
 Grace from his presence flowed, and fell on us 
 as light. 
 
20 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 
 
 XXVI. 
 We seemed to live within the soul alone 
 
 Of sorrow s silent love the loftier mood ; 
 The spirit, vibrant to love s perfect tone, 
 Sang love that was, more subtly understood, 
 
 In love to be, renewed ; 
 And was death hovering there, with shades of 
 
 woe, 
 
 Round that dear head the sullen frosts con 
 fine? 
 Dear hands, dear lips, dear eyes, I knew 
 
 thee mine, 
 
 Mine, mine, where er I go ! 
 The Hour was dead ; we rose, we took our 
 
 ways, 
 Forever lost to sight through all the exiled days. 
 
 xxvn. 
 O Song, move softly through the laureled lyre, 
 
 melancholy music breathing woe ; 
 With strains that trembling loose love s wild 
 
 desire, 
 And waft it to its peace, through sorrow go, 
 
 With ocean pauses, slow ! 
 Strike nobler notes, O laden as thou art, 
 That die not on the ear with dying tones ; 
 Oh, touch the finer chords man s nature owns 
 
 To ease the breaking heart ; 
 And harmonies that of the soul partake, 
 Heard in the days of joy, in evil days awake ! 
 
THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 21 
 
 XXVIII. 
 Heavy is exile wheresoe er it be ! 
 
 Or where his armored ship s strong bows 
 
 divide 
 Green, empty hollows of the Afric sea, 
 
 Or where my broad-browed prairies, wester 
 ing wide, 
 
 A race of men abide ; 
 And life in exile is a thing of fears, 
 A song bereaved of music, a delight 
 That sorrow s tooth doth feast on, day and 
 
 night, 
 
 A hope dissolved in tears, 
 A poem in the dying spirit aught 
 Lost to its use and beauty, desolate, idle, naught ! 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Heavy is exile wheresoe er it be ! 
 
 To miss the sense of love from out the days ; 
 To wake, and work, and tire, nor ever see 
 Love s glowing eyes suffused with tender 
 
 rays 
 
 Darling of human praise ! 
 To lose Love s ministry from out our life, 
 Nor gentle labor know for dear ones 
 
 wrought, 
 When once Love lorded the thronged ways of 
 
 thought, 
 
 And quelled the harsh world strife ; 
 To feel the hungering spirit slowly stilled, 
 While hours and months and years the barren 
 seasons build. 
 
22 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 
 XXX. 
 
 Ever to watch, like an unfriended guest, 
 The sun rise up and lead the days through 
 
 heaven, 
 
 The silent days, on to the flaming west, 
 The unrecorded days, to darkness given, 
 
 Unloved, unwept, unshriven : 
 With our great mother, Earth, to live alone ; 
 To clasp in silence Wisdom s moveless knees ; 
 To fix dumb eyes, that know fate s whelm 
 ing seas, 
 
 On her eternal throne ; 
 
 While better seems it, were the soul sunk deep 
 In life s death-mantled pool, sealed in oblivious 
 sleep ! 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 " Alas," I cried, beneath the sun-bright sky, 
 " What profits it to search what Athens 
 
 says 
 To heap a little learning ere we die, 
 
 Blind pilgrims, walk the world s deserted 
 
 ways, 
 
 And lose the living days ; 
 To cheat sad memory s self with storied woes ; 
 To summon up sweet visions out of books 
 Wherein old poets have enshrined love s 
 
 looks ; 
 
 To seek in pain repose ; 
 Oh, cup of bitterness he too must taste, 
 Shut in his homeless ship upon the salt sea- 
 waste ! " 
 
THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 23 
 
 XXXII. 
 What though o er him the tropic sunset bloom, 
 
 With hyacinthine hues and sanguine dyes, 
 And down the central deep s prof oundest gloom 
 Soft blossoms, fallen from the wreathed skies, 
 
 The seas imparadise ? 
 
 With light immingling, colors, dipped in May, 
 Through multitudinous changes still en 
 dure 
 Orange and unimagined emeralds pure 
 
 Drift through the softened day ; 
 " Alas," he whispers, " and art thou not nigh ? 
 Earth reaches now her height of beauty ere I 
 die." 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 And I give answer, " Would that he were 
 
 here ! 
 
 Three halos, crescent-horned, of purest grain, 
 In shadowless keen ether burning clear, 
 
 In morn s blue eastern depths, a glory, reign 
 
 Burn brighter, burn, and wane ; 
 Never to us," I whisper, " by that strand 
 Stepped morn, so diademed upon the sea ; 
 Sweet wanderer, joyous shall thy roaming be 
 
 Across this wind-swept land ! 
 Urge on thy western flight and die in bliss ! 
 On those unsheltered waves his temples didst 
 thou kiss." 
 
24 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Brief now his voyaging is o er those far seas, 
 By shoal and reef that the lost mariner 
 
 mock, 
 By lands of palm that nurse the poisoned 
 
 breeze, 
 And pillared isles whose foam-girt bases rock 
 
 With the tornado s shock ; 
 The branding suns smite down on glassy waves ; 
 They sink ; on high strange stars malignant 
 
 roll, 
 The regents of the pale, untraveled pole, 
 
 Whose coasts no mortal braves : 
 Why will he on ? Come back, O bleeding 
 
 heart ! 
 
 O stricken soul, return ! Death hunteth where 
 them art. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Eager as sea-birds from their bonds set free, 
 
 He sought the ancient harbors of his home ; 
 The Southern Cross fell in the frozen sea, 
 And stars of gladness, washed in northern 
 
 foam, 
 
 His boyhood heavens upclomb ; 
 Once more beneath the tender spring he drinks 
 The fountains of his youth for which he 
 
 yearned ; 
 The beauty of the shore, like love returned, 
 
 Deep in his spirit sinks ; 
 The violets linger, wide the laurels bloom 
 Alas, the flowering earth is his eternal tomb ! 
 
THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 25 
 
 XXXVI. 
 Moan, melancholy Ocean, he is dead 
 
 In whom thou hadst thy life, thy throbbing 
 
 jy ! 
 
 Our woe, melancholy Ocean, shed 
 
 In music round thy ever-strangered boy, 
 
 Whom the blind deeps destroy ! 
 Waken, dark pines ! that ruinous eclipse 
 
 Hath broke the tender league of musing 
 
 youth, 
 And shut love s insights and the hopes of 
 
 truth 
 
 Within his parted lips : 
 
 I take, ay me, no welcome from his hands 
 He comes not through the wood, nor down the 
 shadowy sands. 
 
 xxx vn. 
 From him the lone sun doth withhold his light ; 
 
 To him lorn eve her western star denies ; 
 But oh, a lovelier world hath sunk in night, 
 Its music-breathing fields, its dreaming 
 
 skies, 
 
 Dark in his darkened eyes ; 
 The rapturous element is still, in him, 
 And all of nature that can perish, dead ; 
 Oblivion gathers o er his obscure head ; 
 
 Death binds him, face and limb ; 
 Earth-sundered soul, no beauty now he knows, 
 Nor sense nor act of love sweetens his long 
 repose. 
 
26 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 On crag and beach I hear his threnody ; 
 
 I touch the myrtles clinging round his 
 
 grave ; 
 
 But weak is all that severs him from me, 
 Faint and far off, although my heart will 
 
 crave 
 
 The old response he gave ; 
 No, not the moaning waves nor sighing pines 
 Persuade my soul of loss, nor blinding 
 
 tears 
 I love him, I shall love through lonely years, 
 
 Where er my life declines ; 
 I lean my head down to the flowerless sod 
 I feel his shepherding as when on earth he trod. 
 
 XXXLX. 
 
 Mortality sways not, while heaven shall last, 
 The starry years that were when he was 
 
 mine ; 
 Death blots not out a fair-recorded past, 
 
 Whose meanings deeper are than men divine, 
 
 Who write it, line by line ; 
 The years of noble life are pledges deep, 
 That bind futurity our souls to friend ; 
 Woe cannot cancel them, nor far time end 
 
 The privilege they keep ; 
 They live their light still blessed where it 
 
 leads, 
 
 Their hoarded music loosed, pure song, in perfect 
 deeds. 
 
THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 27 
 
 XL. 
 
 Yea, he to whom Love was as God is dead ; 
 Cold, mute, and dark, he unresponsive 
 
 lies ; 
 
 A joyless form, the kindling presence fled, 
 The spirit faded from his wistful eyes ; 
 
 No more will he arise ! 
 Yet not in vain was our adoring trust, 
 Our deep-vowed fealty, our service done ; 
 To finer issues love that was lives on, 
 
 Nor moulders into dust : 
 Of Love, the Giver, still my song must be, 
 The Victor, Love, repeat, whose grace descends 
 on me. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Love blends with mine the spirit I deplore, 
 Like music in sweet verse that lasts for 
 
 aye; 
 
 While yet we wandered by our native shore, 
 He sent the blessings for which all men pray, 
 
 That cannot pass away ; 
 
 He wrought with ministries of star and flower 
 And the gray sea, to build our lives secure ; 
 He made the sources of the spirit pure, 
 
 And with truth lent us power ; 
 And him to me He gave and lo, his gift 
 Is changeless, and doth now my soul from death 
 uplift. 
 
28 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 
 
 XLII. 
 
 On deepest night arisen, the morning star 
 Trembles across the wide, unquiet sea, 
 And heavenward springs, with influence felt 
 
 afar 
 The world s new hope he leads, the day to be, 
 
 The life that waits for me ; 
 Speed on, glad star, and golden be thy flight, 
 Inviolable, serene, the waters o er ! 
 Fear not the eclipsing west, born to soar, 
 
 And, dying, die in light ! 
 Bring, bring the morning with her tides of 
 
 song, 
 
 Her floods of amber air, breaking earth s heights 
 along. 
 
 XLHI. 
 
 Beauty abides, nor suffers mortal change, 
 Eternal refuge of the orphaned mind ; 
 Where er a lonely wanderer, I range, 
 
 The tender flowers shall my woes unbind, 
 
 The grass to me be kind ; 
 And lovely shapes innumerable shall throng 
 On sea and prairie, soft as children s eyes ; 
 Morn shall awake me with her glad sur 
 prise ; 
 
 The stars shall hear my song ; 
 And heaven shall I see, whate er my road, 
 Steadfast, eternal, light s impregnable abode. 
 
THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 29 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Love, too, abides, and smiles at savage death, 
 And swifter speeds his might and shall en 
 dure ; 
 
 The secret flame, the unimagined breath, 
 That lives in all things beautiful and pure, 
 
 Invincibly secure ; 
 
 In Him creation hath its glorious birth, 
 Subsists, rejoices, moves prophetic on, 
 Till that dim goal of all things shall be won 
 
 Men yearn for through the earth ; 
 Voices that pass we are of Him, the Song, 
 Whose harmonies the winds, the stars, the seas, 
 prolong. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Break, surging sea, about the lovely shore ! 
 O dimly heaving plains, through darkness 
 
 sweep ! 
 Thy restless waves, with morning stars roofed 
 
 o er, 
 Their incommunicable secret keep, 
 
 Impenetrable deep ! 
 
 The eldest years on time s oblivious verge 
 Saw thee through tempest-weltering night 
 
 uplift 
 Great, mountainous continents amid thy 
 
 drift, 
 
 And their tall peaks submerge ; 
 The vast, abysmal, wandering fields moved on, 
 Whelming the wasteful wreck of the old world 
 undone. 
 
30 THE NORTH SHORE WATCH 
 
 XLVT. 
 
 And still round mortal shores thy billows roll, 
 And shall through long, long ages yet un 
 
 born; 
 
 Lone splendor of the sense-illumined soul, 
 Eternal moaning of the spirit lorn, 
 
 By strokes of loss outworn ; 
 Thy terrors image our blind mortal state, 
 Dark with impending doom and whirling 
 
 woe, 
 And monsters in thy bosom come and go, 
 
 And death is thy fell mate ; 
 Ah yet, through sun and storm, gray ocean, roll, 
 Love clasps thy mighty tides in his profound 
 control. 
 
 Surge on, thy melancholy is not doom ! 
 
 Surge, O wan sea, into the golden day ! 
 The mom is breathing off thy purple gloom, 
 The isles lift up their promise, dim and gray, 
 
 Love holds his dauntless sway ! 
 Thy ripples kiss the shore with lips of foam, 
 Thy waves are dawning soft the winds 
 
 blow free ! 
 Keep thou the eternal watch, O dear, dear 
 
 sea, 
 
 Those far lands I must roam ! 
 Lo, t is the sunrise and the sphered stars 
 
 move, 
 
 Singing unseen, like silent thoughts through si 
 lent love. 
 
AGATHON 
 
THE CHARACTERS. 
 
 EROS, the god of Desire. 
 
 DIOTIMA, the prophetess of Mantineia. 
 
 AOATHON, the poet, 
 
 PHANTASM. 
 
 URANIA, unseen. 
 
AGATHON 
 
 SCENE I. 
 Before DIOTIMA S cave. EROS enters. 
 
 EROS. 
 
 Between the gods who live and mortal men 
 I am the Intercessor, Eros called, 
 Fathered in heaven, but earth did mother me ; 
 Whence is my nature mixed of opposites, 
 Unquenchable desire, want absolute, 
 And is near neighbor unto human fate. 
 The edict of Necessity besides 
 Bids own that kinship ; for I come not home 
 Except my errand done, which ever is 
 To break the mystery of love to men, 
 Freeing themselves and me : not without me 
 Find they the Immortals; without them my 
 
 wings 
 
 Blade not, nor from the gleaming shoulder break, 
 But by the warmth of love those plumes un 
 sheathe ; 
 
 Wherefore I ever speed to win men s hearts. 
 I bear the gifts of all the gods to men ; 
 The bright Promethean fire burns from my hand, 
 
84 AGATHON 
 
 And from it falls Demeter s holy corn ; 
 
 Poseidon s horse, Athene s olive-tree, 
 
 The plough, the ship, the sceptre, and the lyre 
 
 I give, and only from my favor live 
 
 All art and use and ornament of life ; 
 
 And whom I meet, with whatsoever gift 
 
 He wills in his desire I charge his heart. 
 
 The most, low-eyed and basely covetous, 
 
 Scramble in shameful packs for Plutus hoard, 
 
 To gild their bosoms with a little gold, 
 
 But leave unfurnished all that lies within ; 
 
 And those who flaunt them in a purple cloak, 
 
 And on bright honor fasten greedy eyes, 
 
 Are like unmindful what they most should mind. 
 
 The king who wolfs it in the precious flock 
 
 Forgets the heavenly leasing of his throne ; 
 
 The warrior flaming in his woundless arms 
 
 Forgets their forging in the fiery mount ; 
 
 The victor whose green leaves o erprize his brows 
 
 Forgets the sacred tree they budded on ; 
 
 Oblivious, the crammed steward, of his lord ; 
 
 The artist, of the beam whence Iris glows ; 
 
 The sculptor, of the form within the stone ; 
 
 The poet, of the very breath he draws ; 
 
 Users of heavenly trust, unmindful all. 
 
 They waste my gifts ; I gave them not from 
 
 earth 
 
 To nourish life alone, but from the gods 
 Who fashioned them to foster the young soul 
 In reverence, gratitude, and humbleness. 
 
AGATHON 35 
 
 Yet some, whose eyes were more divinely touched 
 In that long-memoried world whence souls set 
 
 forth, 
 
 Discern the holy meaning of the gift, 
 Which who receives aright receives the god. 
 The rest esteem it as a thing their own 
 And common, and neglect to know the gods ; 
 And me, their messenger, they thrust without ; 
 And here I wander in the ways of men, 
 Hungry and poor, and begging for my bread ; 
 And oft my feet print blood what time I leave 
 Inhospitable, hard, and kindless doors. 
 But where some noble soul makes his abode, 
 And bids me enter in and lodge with him, 
 Beautiful am I as the gods in heaven ; 
 His thatch, though lowly, unto them is known, 
 The rushes of his floor are loved of men, 
 And who live there behold me as I am. 
 One such I seek for now, the flower of Greece, 
 Young Agathon ; to men hereafter known 
 (If I but thrive as I have hope to do) 
 More than her athlete s olive-cinctured brows, 
 Wrestler, or runner, or swift charioteer, 
 His cherished name endears her memory. 
 A spirit of joy he is, to beauty vowed, 
 Made to be loved, and every sluggish sense 
 In him is amorous and passionate. 
 Whence danger is ; therefore I seek him out, 
 So with pure thought and awe of things divine 
 To touch his soul that he partake the gods. 
 
36 AOATHON 
 
 Now here he comes with that wise prophetess 
 Who reared his youthful wisdom ; I, awhile, 
 Will stand and mark them ; sweet is their dis 
 course. 
 
 [EROS retires. 
 
 DIOTIHA and AGATHON enter, and seat themselves near the 
 
 DIOTIMA. 
 
 What robs thee, Agathon, of thy delight, 
 That thou art fallen in grave and silent ways, 
 Nor longer wilt divide thy breast with me ? 
 
 AOATHON. 
 I would obey the gods, but see not how. 
 
 DIOTIMA, 
 
 Hast thou forgotten ? But youth ever fears, 
 And, like the fledgeling on the low nest s edge, 
 Thinks not how instant heaven receives its wings 
 And bears them up unseen. The reed once knew 
 Thy boyish warble ; long the lyre expects 
 When thou shall touch Apollo s waiting strings, 
 Thy name be golden on the lips of men. 
 Not idly do the gods bestow their gifts. 
 
 AGATHON. 
 
 Long silent hangs the lyre, silent my heart. 
 I cannot sing ; I am too much betrayed 
 By this too fickle world that robbeth me. 
 Beauty herself hath fed me on despair ; 
 
AGATHON 37 
 
 And the deep change which doth infect all things 
 Lessons the soul in death, by her eyes taught 
 More than by gross decay. Change, change is 
 
 here ! 
 
 Still seems the region as the land I loved 
 Seems, but is not; something hath fallen be 
 tween, 
 
 Strangeness and severance that the exile feels 
 Returning to his haunts from roving years ; 
 No stay for him is there ; he turns and goes ; 
 For he has robbed his father s quiet fields 
 Of nature s sweet horizons ; nevermore 
 The sky shall rest upon the hills for him ; 
 His bounds are of the soul ; his rims of heaven 
 The visions which his wayward eyes have caught ; 
 And what that gleam hath whispered to his 
 
 heart, 
 
 He cannot all forget. This have I learned 
 From the revolving hours, and fear it much, 
 And hide it in my breast, as wise men do, 
 Lest truth should prove contagion to the world. 
 Woe be to us, to us alone the woe ! 
 The solitude in loveliest places felt, 
 The heart estranged from earth, but undivine, 
 The soul aware of that which heaven withholds 
 Poets whose eyes the goddess lights and blinds 
 To be than mortals more, but less than gods ! 
 
 DlOTIMA. 
 
 Hath beauty so bereaved thee, nor love crowned ? 
 
88 AGATBON 
 
 AQATHON. 
 
 Thou knowest it, because them smilest so ; 
 Yet pity in that smile confession makes 
 Of thoughts not unacquainted with my own. 
 I do remember t was on such a night 
 As spreads this silver silence on the earth 
 On the sea-cape I watched the brooding wave ; 
 Only the moon my meditation shared, 
 Nor any sound save of the voiceful deep 
 Among the white crags of my solitude ; 
 I saw its loveliness, and sighed to see ; 
 And stretching out my palms to the bright air, 
 " Wherefore art thou so beautiful, my life ? " 
 I cried ; and knew in heaven a subtle change, 
 Celestial fading, and the pale approach 
 Of morning in the east ; and all my thoughts 
 Fled thence, as from the gray dawn fled the 
 
 stars. 
 
 The time was disenchanted, not my soul ; 
 And oft on some clear height, some curving 
 
 shore, 
 
 From beauty s momentary trance I woke 
 As from another world ; flown was the light 
 That wooed me to such sweet oblivion, 
 But not from memory flown ; still must I mourn 
 That every lovely thing escapes the heart 
 Even in the moment of its cherishing. 
 O young regret that still will turn desire ! 
 For Nature wounds and orphans while she 
 
 charms 
 
AGATHON 39 
 
 Her dearest lover ; no perfection hers, 
 
 And no continuance ; change, forever change ! 
 
 Stars shine where morning was, morn dims the 
 
 stars ; 
 
 Spring follows spring, and all our autumns roll 
 Morrow on morrow mourning yesterday ; 
 So mutable is this dissolving sphere ; 
 Aloft and under change, forever change ! 
 And we like sailors on the inconstant deep 
 The moon-driven rack, the rout of wind-swept 
 
 waves, 
 Are earth and heaven ; the whole world slips 
 
 below. 
 
 DIOTIMA. 
 
 Truth is not given as pearls, my Agathon. 
 There is a light within, and that must shine 
 Before the soul can see ; o er Nature s world, 
 The flux and all the ruin of her sway, 
 Is the eternal ; there the gods abide. 
 
 AGATHON. 
 
 The gods are hard to seek, but sure they are. 
 I have not yet my boyhood so unlearned 
 But with my soul I keep some privacy ; 
 Such as each spirit owns what time it wakes 
 And broods and ponders on what things must be 
 To match its nature; then what thoughts were 
 
 mine ! 
 
 Desire and dream were undissevered then ! 
 I rode the dark-ribbed waves, Poseidon s son ; 
 
40 AGATHON 
 
 The ample ether kissed me, sprung from Zeus ; 
 Apollo wrapt me in his golden beams 
 Like some proud elder brother ; as a star 
 Upon the unregarded edge of heaven 
 Knows not his brethren of the crowded host, 
 Before their beauty timorous, yet feels 
 His isolate nature one with theirs divine, 
 So my young spirit felt beyond the sense 
 Something at one with it that made the world 
 Its shining element oh, wherefore bright 
 Unless the gods, making such glad proclaim, 
 Would break their secrecy with Nature s tongues, 
 And unprofaned do borrow of the soul 
 Some sweet forewarnings ? upon this I mused, 
 "When morning flashed on great Athene s spear, 
 Pacing within her temple. On one hand 
 The violet landscape through the columns 
 
 glowed 
 
 JEgina. and the olive-coasted gulf 
 Empurpling to the far Corinthian gleam ; 
 Ilissus reed-beloved ; Hymettus flowering ; 
 On white Pentelicus the cloud-hung pines ! 
 At every step more fair with lovelier change 
 The scene passed by, in those white columns 
 
 framed, 
 
 Porches of heaven ; upon the other side 
 Was I o ershadowed by the eternal frieze, 
 That only seemed to move, but ever stayed, 
 Horsemen and maidens in the marble march, 
 Athene s people, bearing evermore 
 
AGATHON 41 
 
 Praise to Athene ; beautiful they stood 
 Before her coming, mixed with forms divine 
 Men worthy to be gods, gods to be men ; 
 And waking from my trance, I saw them shine, 
 Nor knew the change from the eternal world. 
 
 DIOTIMA. 
 
 T is the god s doing : oh, follow, follow there ! 
 Create what thou desirest, Agathon. 
 Cling not to Nature ; of eternity 
 Some glimpses live that counsel the divine 
 In the brief shadows of this mortal being. 
 The light that fills the temple thence proceeds ; 
 And all the Phidian art and mastery 
 Is but the spirit bringing like the gods 
 The light it shines by ; only it creates 
 And truly fashions ; Nature s works decay ; 
 It hath a higher and immortal craft ; 
 It is the parent of eternal form. 
 Not in the sphere the song that moves it sings, 
 But in the soul ; tis Nature s element, 
 Her shaping principle, her other frame, 
 Locking old Chaos in the rhyme of law ; 
 Its influence exceeds this sensual reach ; 
 It doth invest the very gods with charm ; 
 Such deity resides within the soul. 
 Oh, wert thou Orpheus, or the shepherd boy 
 Apollo loved amid his Thracian flocks, 
 Thy lyre must from thyself bring harmony, 
 Whose unlocked music builds the world divine. 
 
42 AGATE ON 
 
 AOATHON. 
 
 One must be born again to breathe that world. 
 
 DIOTIMA. 
 
 Not once, but many times the soul is born 
 Before the mortal body wastes away 
 That it inhabits ; it is born in sense, 
 And like a thing of Nature in what is 
 Lives momentary ; born in memory next, 
 In time s dark shadow and eclipse it builds 
 The insubstantial world where Nature hath 
 Her only immortality ; nor long 
 Consents to tarry with that second death, 
 And to eternize loss ; but, risen aloft, 
 Is in imagination born, whose throe 
 Is Nature s dissolution. Nature dies 
 In uttering the ideal ; earth below 
 Is stubble, stars the refuse of the thought, 
 That works in time and death, denying both 
 And all the world of change, and winnows 
 
 thence 
 
 The inviolable and perfect element, 
 And sees the gods afar. But more remains, 
 This but the darkness dreaming in the mind 
 And increate creation ; for the soul 
 Works not its dream ; yet through belief it may 
 If it believe ; such premonition hath 
 The quick eternal nature in it lodged 
 Immortal travail, thoughts that at their birth 
 Have touches of necessity, and shape 
 
AGATE ON 43 
 
 Themselves the life to come ; in faith t is born ; 
 In what shall be it breathes, till that last change 
 When it shall lay its mortal nature off, 
 In what eternal is, eternal live. 
 
 AQATHON. 
 
 Oh, eloquent and noble as desire 
 Thy doctrine is, charming as melody ; 
 Beyond the reach of thought we follow it 
 Whither, oh, whither? 
 
 DlOTUIA. 
 
 Here repose thyself 
 
 Upon the flinty rock, the dreamer s couch ; 
 For oft in dreams the gods do visit us 
 Or what seem dreams and then we wake and 
 
 find 
 Only the ideal has reality. 
 
 [DIOTIMA enters the cave, AQATHON sleeps. 
 
 EROS comes forward singing. AGATHON wakes. 
 
 When love in the faint heart trembles, 
 
 And the eyes with tears are wet, 
 Oh, tell me what resembles 
 
 Thee, young Regret ? 
 Violets with dewdrops drooping, 
 
 Lilies o erfull of gold, 
 Roses in June rains stooping, 
 
 That weep for the cold, 
 Are like thee, young Regret. 
 
44 AGATE ON 
 
 Bloom, violets, lilies and roses ! 
 
 But what, young Desire, 
 Like thee, when love discloses 
 
 Thy heart of fire ? 
 The wild swan unreturning, 
 
 The eagle alone with the sun, 
 The long-winged storm-gulls burning 
 
 Seaward when day is done, 
 Are like thee, young Desire. 
 
 AOATHON. 
 
 Who art thou that dost echo on thy lips 
 The unspoken heart that pains with silent 
 
 throb 
 And thoughts ineffable the aching side ? 
 
 EROS. 
 
 A wanderer who sings from land to land ; 
 A single night he lodges where he sings, 
 And goes ere morning. Subtle is the song 
 And sweet ; which, if thy heart shall entertain, 
 T is destiny, eternal joy or woe. 
 
 AGATHON. 
 
 There is a princely pleading in thy looks, 
 Yet doth this fair-demeanored courtesy 
 Show with a borrowed favor, as if a god, 
 With lowly bending of his attributes 
 And gentle usage of humility, 
 Should be a suppliant. So Apollo once 
 Among the herdsmen came, but godlike sang. 
 
AGATEON 45 
 
 EROS. 
 A god I am, though mortal now I seem. 
 
 AGATHON. 
 I have heard tales of gods who mixed with 
 
 men 
 
 When men were heroes and divinely sprung ; 
 But whether by compulsion of strict fate 
 Or by corruption of our long descent, 
 The way is lost, and scarce may Hermes self 
 Retrace his golden sandals gleaming track 
 To guide us hence, whence all the gods are gone. 
 
 EROS. 
 
 Not gone from thee or any mortal man 
 Who trusts them, though of pride-emboldened 
 
 eyes 
 
 They suffer not the near and curious gaze ; 
 But whom they love they leave not uninspired. 
 I am their messenger, and joy I bring. 
 Long have I sought, and loved thee ere I saw ; 
 Now take my heart of longing to thy breast ; 
 Suffer my leading : I alone lead true, 
 And strip the ambush on the paths of peril, 
 And hedge the flowery way with innocence. 
 Eros I am, the wooer of men s hearts. 
 Unclasp thy lips, yield me thy close embrace ; 
 So shall thy thoughts once more to heaven 
 
 climb, 
 Their music linger here, the joy of men. 
 
46 AGATE ON 
 
 AOATHON. 
 
 Take my poor friending, such as man may give 
 Whose only having is a human heart ; 
 This be thy pillow and thy breast my guard, 
 Both loyal lovers till the world shall end ! 
 For thou dost seem all mortal, and dost crave 
 An equal bond ; and far that journey lies 
 (So strong is prescience here), and long, alas, 
 Hath that young trust that was about my heart 
 Flown forth, the bird of roaming, through the 
 
 world 
 
 Oft lost in heaven, oft fluttering back to earth, 
 Builds in the morn and nests in darkening waves, 
 The tired wing not vain, nor vain the song. 
 And now my soul must follow after it, 
 Going with thee ; with thee needs must I go ; 
 For had one planet launched our lives at birth, 
 And had one sun harnessed our golden days, 
 And one dear memory shrined our jewels up, 
 Thou couldst not more prevail. Oh, thou hast 
 
 ta en 
 
 My heart into thy breast ; my faith lies there, 
 And I must follow ! 
 
 Thy kisses make me faint, 
 And, tremulously sweet, ambrosial flame 
 Steals in my blood, with heavenly vigor bright. 
 Upon what stream shall this high passion slake ? 
 Not sun-kissed wine that bursts the blooded grape, 
 Cold Castaly, nor any nectared draught 
 That whispers Hebe s secret, shall dull this pain, 
 
AGATHON 47 
 
 Nor any dark-leaved herb of melancholy 
 Lull it to sleep. 
 
 EROS. 
 
 There is a fount more clear 
 Than gave Narcissus to himself, more pure 
 Than on Tiresias flashed Athene s form, 
 And softer to the touch than Venus bath. 
 If thou canst win unto that crystal brook, 
 And if but once thy lips kiss that bright flow, 
 Was never Beauty s paragon more blessed, 
 Nor Wisdom s lover so by her desired, 
 Nor darling Adon to the goddess dear. 
 While this sweet passion sorrows in thy breast 
 Unto that heavenly fount thou rt each day nigh ; 
 There shalt thou learn the mystery of thyself, 
 How thou ari mortal to become a god. 
 But now the night wears on, and long the way. 
 
 AGATHON. 
 How short a time thou givest to my love ! 
 
 EROS. 
 
 Nor long, nor short ; but when I go from thee 
 The interval is all ; against that hour 
 Whisper thy heart into my breast to-night, 
 And I in turn will treasure mine in thee. 
 
 [They enter the cave together. 
 
48 AGATBON 
 
 SCENE II. 
 DIOTIMA S cave within. AGATHON and EROS enter. 
 
 AGATHOH. 
 How thou hast stolen within my heart ! even 
 
 there, 
 
 Sweet fabler, fable on, with myth and tale 
 That thronged before the eyes of poets gone ! 
 Oh, only once to breathe young Attic air, 
 Cithseron rove, or Ida s slumber know, 
 A guiltless Paris by ^Enone s side ! 
 Dream thou, my heart ! for Love so made our 
 
 frame 
 
 And shut his empire in a maid s white arms, 
 And in a woman s kiss his sovereignty. 
 For this Poseidon hath his trident bowed ; 
 For this great Zeus let the leashed thunder sleep 
 And the bird drowse beside the empty throne ; 
 For this did Enna blossom, and with strewn 
 
 spring 
 
 Love s footprints bud in hell ; even but for this 
 Did Dian s self lay her white bow aside 
 And still a thousand hymns of sanctity ! 
 Love comes in youth, and in the wakeful heart 
 Delight begins, soft as Aui ora s breath 
 Fretting the silver waves, and dimly sweet 
 As stir of birds in branches of the dawn. 
 So soft, so sweet, thy touches round my heart. 
 Oh, fable, fable on ! 
 
AGATHON 49 
 
 EROS. 
 
 I fable not, 
 
 But as the sense is fashioned sees the mind, 
 And as the tongue is languaged hears the ear, 
 And as the heart is chambered lives the soul ; 
 Illusion binds us ! [The scene darkens. 
 
 Alas, he hears me not, 
 And by the darkening of the way I know 
 Anteros, him, my brother, born with me, 
 Who will contest for this most noble prize. 
 His bright enchantment oft my image steals 
 And silences my voice ; and power is his ; 
 Whatever loveliness doth dwell in sense 
 Ministers to him, many gentle thoughts, 
 Fair shapes, forever beautiful to man, 
 And dear with tenderness that touches most 
 Pure hearts and young. Look down, sweet 
 
 heaven, now, 
 And nearer bend thy light, and shine within ! 
 
 [The scene brightens, disclosing, as the two advance, what 
 seems a lake under the cave s high-vaulted rock. 
 
 AGATHON. 
 
 Darkness itself doth change ; and in my breast 
 Expectancy doth like a spirit sit 
 And helms me on ; and deep within my heart 
 Is such unrest, that sweetens as it grows, 
 Excess makes nature faint. Now might I hear 
 The music of the bright Sicilian reef, 
 Caught over heaving seas by mariners lost, 
 
50 AGATflON 
 
 The sea-child s harp of joy ; or whatso else 
 
 Is storied in the tales of mortal love, 
 
 Of dragon-damsels in the woodland met, 
 
 Or river-maidens in their golden hair. 
 
 The dark way flames ; the gross and threatening 
 
 rock 
 
 As the fair element doth softly burn 
 With violet rays, whose stealing -lambency 
 Subdues these awful ledges up aloft, 
 Melting with darkness there ; and, isled below, 
 This chasm of radiance, this bloom of light, 
 This purple fragment of crag-shadowed seas 
 Where Naiads slumber ! Grottoes neath the 
 
 wave, 
 
 Where the unbodied spirit of the air 
 Laves his blue lustre in the sunless stream, 
 Dissolve such hues ; such still ethereal tints 
 Within their sapphire caves the glaciers hush, 
 Light s mountain hermitage ; and, soft-embarked, 
 What vision pulses on the brightening air ? 
 
 [The PHANTASM appears floating upon the lake. 
 How fair she lies within the purple shell, 
 Couched in the halo of a golden mist 
 That drops its pale light o er her flowing limbs ! 
 
 The PHANTASM. 
 T is sweet to roam ; oh, sweet in breaking 
 
 dawns 
 
 To speak with Light, the pilgrim beautiful ; 
 To hear and follow the earth s roaming soul ! 
 
AGATHOy 51 
 
 The winged winds forsake their craggy nests ; 
 The singing birds take flight and glow in air ; 
 The pale mists slip their golden anchorage ; 
 The white clouds lead them on ; for all the gates 
 Of heaven stand open. Who would linger then ? 
 The sweetest roamer is a boy s young heart ; 
 Sweet is his roaming, for his heart is young. 
 youngest Roamer, Hesper shuts the day, 
 White Hesper folded in the rose of eve ; 
 The still cloud floats, and kissed by twilight 
 
 sleeps ; 
 The mists drop down, and near the mountain 
 
 moor ; 
 And mute the bird s throat swells with slumber 
 
 now ; 
 
 And now the wild winds to their eyries cling. 
 The youth divine, where now lays he his head ? 
 The sea roves on, and rove the awful stars, 
 Unalterable as when the young gods woke 
 And alien gazed upon the mystery 
 That hopes not nor remembers, with strange 
 
 eyes; 
 
 And he, too, gazes, and his heart still roves. 
 Ah, dark he roams whom sea and stars waft on 
 To voyage and venture, and to peril all, 
 Still wandering with the silver-footed waves, 
 Still coursing with the globes of fiery flight, 
 A mortal he, but they eternal are. 
 Now where for him shall end the darkening 
 
 search, 
 
52 AGATHON 
 
 Whose feet are bound with sandals of the dust ? 
 The waste desire be his, and sightless fate : 
 Him light shall not revisit ; late he knows 
 The love that mates with heaven weds in the 
 
 grave. 
 
 O youngest Roamer, wonderful is joy, 
 The rose in bloom that out of darkness springs, 
 The lily folded to the wave of life, 
 The lotus on the stream s dark passion borne ; 
 T is hidden far from dawn, and shut from eve ; 
 The shore wave never kissed ; the starless bower ; 
 Ah, fortunate he roams who roameth there, 
 Who finds the happy covert and lies down, 
 And hears the laughter gurgling in the fount, 
 And feels the dreamy light imbathe his limbs. 
 No more he roams ; he roams no more, no more. 
 
 AGATHON. 
 
 How sweet a freight of beauty lieth here ! 
 And like a god I hover over it. 
 So Bacchus hung where Ariadne lay ; 
 So Ariadne unto Bacchus arms 
 Gave her white breasts with upward streaming 
 
 eyes. 
 
 And me, though mortal, the swift flame devours, 
 And winds with sparkles of immortal heat 
 In my quick veins, and finds sweet pasture there. 
 Alas, her parted lips, how still they smile ! 
 Her soft, immobile face, her calling gaze ! 
 Now from me fall the whole world s memory, 
 
AGATHON 53 
 
 And hang henceforth, my thoughts, your starlight 
 
 here ! 
 What art thou, speak ! like Aphrodite 
 
 In mystery clad and raiment of desire ? 
 Yet speak not ; so thy silence is more sweet 
 Even than thy song, I would not have thee speak. 
 Still as the light that streams from thee, gaze on, 
 Sunning thy treasures in thy tresses gold ! 
 Oh, thou art lovely, maiden, thou art fair, 
 But to be loved is more than to be fair. 
 Lift up thy eyes to mine, look with the soul, 
 And in light reach me ! 
 
 [The PHANTASM reveals itself. Agathon starts back, 
 and the PHANTASM changes, sinking, as the cave 
 darkens. 
 
 T is not thee, not thee ! 
 It is not thee I serve ! O thou one face 
 That art the sweetness of my thousand dreams, 
 Beam on me, and uncharm these hoodless orbs ! 
 Ah, base, base, base ! I saw the nether fire 
 Dilated glow, with expectation ripe, 
 The brutish spark ! Eros, art thou gone ? 
 Didst thou not mark it, like a meteor globed, 
 Glance down the blue rift and low-eddying gleam 
 Deep-whirled ? And in its fiery womb I saw 
 The twisted serpent ringing woe obscene, 
 And far it lit the pitchy ways of hell ! 
 Alas, that horror ! Eros, Eros, Eros 
 I cannot find thee. [AGATHON falls. 
 
54 AGATE OH 
 
 EROS sings. 
 
 In waste places of the night 
 Joy once wandered out of light, 
 And when he parted thence on high 
 The Desolation heard her first-horn s cry ; 
 Yet another birth was nigh, 
 Hell-engendered, lean and scant, 
 In the starved womb of Want. 
 Eros, born the elder, I ; 
 Anteros, he ; at one same birth 
 Nourished at the breasts of Dearth. 
 Oft our pathways cross on earth, 
 Though we seek a different goal, 
 For the way lies through the soul. 
 Oft he wrestles, might and main, 
 To break the palm-branch in my hand ; 
 In the torch-race oft doth strain 
 To quench in dust my burning brand ; 
 But my strength from heaven derives, 
 Victor stays, howe er he strives. 
 
 Another fortune with the sons of men 
 His hazardous encounter hath ; 
 Safer the Lernaean den, 
 Or old Scylla s toothed wrath, 
 To wayfarer or helmsman of the wave ; 
 So many thousands find in him the grave. 
 By avenues of soft approach, 
 And fair delights to high-placed fortune due, 
 Upon prosperity doth he encroach ; 
 Seeming all sympathy and sorrow true, 
 
AGATHON 55 
 
 With wretchedness its fallen pride doth rue, 
 
 And some poor betterment as falsely show ; 
 
 But all in general wreck doth ever overthrow. 
 
 So fond is man, though seeming wise, 
 
 From his own heart to spin fair lies, 
 
 And, by himself deluded, worst slavery to endure ; 
 
 Nor any truth were now kept bright and pure, 
 
 Nor for a single hour 
 
 Were man secure 
 
 Against that secret, sullen, undermining tide, 
 
 But, to my strength allied, 
 
 Love stoops from heaven, clad in dismaying 
 
 power. 
 
 Foolish they are who think him soft. 
 The Avenger he ! 
 His cloudless throne 
 Oft sends the thunder down 
 On mortals ; as when Zeus aloft 
 Is angered in his heart to see 
 Some insolent lord to fullness blown 
 Instant of the Thunderer aware, 
 Under his golden seat 
 The winged terror at his feet, 
 Eagle of god, sun-nurtured, fierce for prey, 
 Flashes on the storming cloud 
 With beak thrust out and riding pinions loud ; 
 Sees, and plunges from the air, 
 And, darkening the blaze of day, 
 Swoops the offended law ; 
 And on the race of men beholding falleth awe. 
 
56 AGATE ON 
 
 Or like to him heroic song once saw 
 
 Leave his bright station on Olympus crown, 
 
 To Ida coming ; terrible the clang 
 
 Of the full quiver on his armed shoulders rang ; 
 
 Terrible the bow-string sang ; 
 
 Like night the mighty arrow sprang ; 
 
 First on beasts, and then on men ; 
 
 Pestilence did the armies pen ; 
 
 With funeral pyres 
 
 The wide camp smokes and death-choked fires. 
 
 Such things the poets feign 
 Of god-inflicted pain ; 
 But to the inner eye 
 Secret that force and nigh ; 
 In the blood implicate, 
 In nerve and bone 
 
 The burning serpent, in the heart a stone, 
 Invisible fate 
 
 Astonishes, struck with internal rout, 
 The body s faculties, and puts them out; 
 Dries up the vital lamp ; 
 Dissolves the mind s own harmony ; 
 Lets madness in, and uncontrolled be ; 
 Dismantles virtue s hold ; 
 Uncasts, imperial wreck, reason s large mould ; 
 And in the soul 
 
 Unmints the image of its heavenly stamp ; 
 Erases and abolishes the whole. 
 O ruin absolute, and not to be withstood 
 By the frail mortal brood ! 
 
AGATHON 57 
 
 Avenging Love ! Oh, terrible 
 The brightness of thy burning stroke 
 Illumes the darkness when the victim falls ! 
 One moment on his eyeballs broke 
 The whole eternal fabric, heaven and hell, 
 Thy glory, unsearchable, 
 And oft then first descried 
 When to the light he died ! 
 Yet not to darkness left, 
 And utterly bereft, 
 If any soul be capable of light ; 
 For He, who framed man at His will, 
 Did in the inward parts distill 
 Such sensible, ethereal force, 
 That there immortal sorrows course, 
 Not fatal, but with issues bright ; 
 Woes of the heart unburdening 
 That fondly to this mould will cling ; 
 Pangs of the spirit when it dies, 
 Yet strives on thoughts of heaven to rise. 
 O one true sacrifice ! 
 Where never incense upward clomb 
 Of holocaust or hecatomb, 
 The lone heart shall His secrecy surprise 
 Far in the unapparent skies. 
 
 For who hath once known light within, 
 And entered on heaven s pilgrimage, 
 The under-world, whence souls begin, 
 Shall nevermore his steps engage ; 
 Though oft he suffer pain, 
 
58 AGATHON 
 
 In peril seeming lost, 
 On darkness tost, 
 He shall be found again, 
 Light shall to him return. 
 So into safety brought, 
 And hardly taught 
 
 That souls most beautiful are framed most stern, 
 Seeing the black and Stygian flood 
 Redden, beneath Love s scourge, in seas of blood, 
 And, livid with lightnings of his flame, 
 Sink whence it came, 
 
 Leaving its wrecks along the mortal shore, 
 With wiser praise 
 He shall the paean raise, 
 
 And Love, the Avenger, sing, who saves him, ever 
 more. [AGATHON wakes. 
 AGATHON. 
 
 And art thou here ? and dost thou love me still, 
 As when thou didst confide thyself to me ? 
 Then leapt my heart up at thy darling name, 
 That slipped on that dark air, as slips a star ; 
 But whether more of mystery or of light 
 It yields, beauty or sorrow has, who knows ? 
 Oh, yet one moment in the darkness here 
 Bend thy full soul on mine ! So lovers eyes 
 Gaze on each other lost, and suffer all ! 
 
 EROS. 
 
 The cords of birth do not so strictly bind, 
 The bonds of Nature are less absolute 
 
AGATHON 59 
 
 Than our communion : be not thou afraid ; 
 I cannot leave thy side until the soul 
 That passions in thee gives me to my peace ; 
 Only through thee I come unto the gods. 
 
 AGATHON. 
 
 I know how strong are forged love s bright links 
 Where virtue is, and truth, and innocence ; 
 My heart has no such metal ; and thou, alas, 
 How near thy eyes see my mortality ! 
 
 EROS. 
 
 Be not distrustful, nor with shame o ercome 
 Whom sin o ercame not ; in thy secrecy, 
 All bare and open to the god s pure sight, 
 And naked as the desert to the sun 
 He every part surveys, there truest known 
 Where light is most ; for oft dishonored here, 
 Defeated and given o er (since wisest men 
 Discern but little in another s life, 
 And scarce themselves dare judge), the soul 
 
 stands there 
 
 In garlanded and sweet-hymned victory, 
 Lovely, and oft majestic after pain. 
 It is the fool that judges ; so judge not thou, 
 But rather from the judgments of high heaven 
 Bethink thee how to pluck eternal law. 
 Let not dejection on thy heart take hold 
 That Nature hath in thee her sure effects, 
 And beauty wakes desire. Should Daphne s eyes, 
 
60 AGATHON 
 
 Leucothea s arms and clinging white caress, 
 
 The arch of Thetis brows, be made in vain ? 
 
 Beauty is universal nature s lure ; 
 
 The gods themselves from beauty seek increase ; 
 
 The fiery soul is natured like the gods, 
 
 And hath like motions, and therein is fixed 
 
 Immortal generation : whence in it 
 
 Creative passion and divine desire 
 
 That suffer not to mate with mortal things, 
 
 But beauty equal to eternal date 
 
 It seeks, and finds it in the virgin soul. 
 
 Love giveth not his flame to rosy cheeks, 
 
 Nor to the oratory of bright eyes 
 
 Yields his commission up, nor to the lips 
 
 That breathe his vows renders his constancy ; 
 
 But where the spirit within doth live insphered 
 
 In noble thoughts, fair actions, and kind words, 
 
 He is enthroned, with mutual hearts conjoined 
 
 In virtue, courtesy, and married lives 
 
 That so uniting more with heaven unite. 
 
 He is not fit to love that knows not this. 
 
 AGATHON. 
 
 This was the beam that chastened my young eyes 
 In early visitation found and loved, 
 And beauty s first surprisal ; loving it, 
 That love in me conquered the lower love. 
 Yet something will intrude ; though found at last, 
 That dear response and union of the soul, 
 Though held secure against time s disarray, 
 
AGATHON 61 
 
 (So clearer shines the eternal ornament,) 
 Death snatches all, and bears it underground, 
 Where weeps Persephone, and at the gates 
 The golden lute of Orpheus shattered lies. 
 
 EROS. 
 
 The wisest doctrine darkens near the grave ; 
 On Nature and thy frame of mystery 
 Where truth works nearest, ground thy faith the 
 
 same. 
 
 Nature seeks life no more ; where vigor is 
 Beauty implants and joy, that measure life 
 Flowing and ebbing ; thence her art secretes 
 The loaded seeds and vessels of her force 
 Ere falls the prime in ugliness and pain, 
 Death incomplete, and ashy death at last ; 
 She with new bursts mocks mutability, 
 And stays her shifting empire. In fair things 
 There is another vigor, flowing forth 
 From heavenly fountains, the glad energy 
 That broke on chaos, and the outward rush 
 Of the eternal mind ; and as they share 
 In this they to the soul are beautiful. 
 It bendeth not, nor lower will converse 
 Than with that perfect and eternal being 
 Which beauty portions; hence the poet s eye 
 That mortal sees creates immortally 
 The hero more than men, not more than man, 
 The type prophetic ; hence in marble shines 
 The god, but never down Olympus slopes 
 
62 AGATHON 
 
 Nor in Idalian meadows stepped so proud 
 
 In grace, joy, love, beauty, and majesty. 
 
 Thus beauty, as the Graces throwing gifts 
 
 On Aphrodite make her visible, 
 
 Endues immortal substance and unveils 
 
 The bright original, in all things bright, 
 
 But only in the reason seen divine, 
 
 And there adored in present deity. 
 
 And dream not this the dreaming of the mind. 
 
 The soul hath its own order, and its laws, 
 
 Strict in its element as Nature s bond, 
 
 Are heavenly regents of its destined course ; 
 
 They bend the future to the thing to be, 
 
 And in the accomplished hour disburden fate. 
 
 Wisdom is but their foretaste ; obeying them, 
 
 (And what is virtue but obeying them ?) 
 
 Thou leaguest with heaven s will, its nursling 
 
 thou, 
 
 And of its purposes the choicest part ; 
 So shall thy soul be grappled round with fate, 
 And on the centre stayed thy fabric stand. 
 To trust thyself is half thy victory : 
 The soul that doubteth, it doth daily die, 
 Thou knowest ; and clearer proof to thee I bring, 
 The light and language in thyself o erheard, 
 Showing the way and passport to the god. 
 Thou knowest it the circle of thy wits 
 From beauty all things have their origin ; 
 In virtue permanence ; consummation seek 
 Only in love ; thy soul the witness is. 
 
AGATHON 63 
 
 AGATHON. 
 
 Glimpses at times the heavenly spark in me 
 Hath shed, nor now first heard I know the soul. 
 But oh, too feeble faith is, self-derived, 
 Self-seeking, on the little round of self 
 Narrowly based ! but rather unto Truth, 
 As to Parnassus bare and calling height, 
 Should leap the bright ascent ; or as the sun, 
 His burning rays advancing gloriously, 
 Moves with immeasurable azure sphered 
 And golden empire of his unbraved beam, 
 The soul should make the heaven through which 
 
 it moves 
 
 And in its own light chariot its course. 
 Is there no other Way ? 
 
 EROS. 
 
 Another Way there is, 
 So have I heard ; not yet the gates unlock. 
 And oh, not thine the praise, dear Mount of Joy, 
 That heard st the world s first music ; not by 
 
 thee, 
 
 Nor o er thy married peaks, the Way to heaven ! 
 Deep sinks the gulf ; the rushing breath thereof, 
 O Delphian, had rent thy oracle ! 
 Oh, then, what mortal lips shall frame the word ? 
 Who dare the cleft ? What god shall he invoke 
 Save the eternal will that lies on him ? 
 He bears the burden of man s broken hopes ; 
 Sorrowing he goes and treads the paths of loss ; 
 
64 AGATHON 
 
 As far as falls the gulf with whirling fate 
 His soul must follow. Not with him go I, 
 The heaven-climber ; but one companions him, 
 Oh, how unlike to me, Divine Desire, 
 Whose pathway leaves eternal light behind ; 
 To me, oh, how unlike, Child of the god ! 
 T is Love himself so is it noised above 
 Shall wear mortality beneath these stars, 
 And, journeying, that Way of Sorrow show ; 
 He smooths the dark descent, and goes before. 
 Not yet He comes. 
 
 AGATHON. 
 
 A mystery thou speakest 
 That yet familiar to the heart of man 
 Seems truth most native to his breast who loves 
 And knows what Love is. I did praise him once ; 
 Called him the youngest of the gods ; most blest ; 
 The tenderest ; the nestler in soft hearts ; 
 Most just, who neither does nor suffers wrong ; 
 The bravest, Ares tamer ; in temperance first, 
 Who ruleth all desires, all passions quells ; 
 The best beloved, darling of gods and men. 
 Before he came in heaven were chains and 
 
 wounds, 
 
 Revolts, dethronements, mutilations, wrecks, 
 Old realms defrauded and the new defiled, 
 Necessity s hard reign ; but he brought in 
 Sweetness and peace, and in smooth order set 
 The empire of the gods, and gave them gifts : 
 
AGATHON 66 
 
 The throne to Zeus and to the Muses song ; 
 Apollo s healing and divining art, 
 Hephaestus forge, Athene s loom, thank him ; 
 Out of his loins is every good thing sprung ; 
 Inventor and inspirer, wise in works ; 
 Suggester of fair shapes ; persuasion s lips ; 
 The poet whose touch makes all men poets he, 
 And hearts that had no music breathe it forth ; 
 And fame he gives, making all art beloved. 
 He fills men with affection, voids their hate ; 
 He maketh them to meet at friendly feasts, 
 At sacrifice and dance, the priest, the lord ; 
 Kindness supplies, unkindness banishes ; 
 Friendship he gives, and forgives enmity ; 
 Joy of the good and wonder of the wise, 
 The gods amazement ; most desired by those 
 Who have him not, and precious unto whom 
 He is their better part ; softness and grace, 
 Delicacy, luxury, fondness and desire, 
 His children are ; he s careful of the good, 
 But of the evil mindeth not at all ; 
 In every word and deed, in hope and fear, 
 The pilot, comrade, helper, saviour, he ; 
 The glory of the gods, the praise of men, 
 The leader best and brightest ! in choral march 
 Let each man in his footsteps following tread, 
 And honoring him sing sweetly the sweet strain 
 With which Love charms the souls of gods and 
 men ! 
 
66 AGATEON 
 
 EROS. 
 
 Fragrant thy praise is and immortal-hymned ; 
 This breath of thine, this little golden breath, 
 When Athens lies behind like Babylon, 
 Shall be love s censer ! Delphi shall be mute, 
 Athene s wisdom oracled in stone 
 Be shattered ; in another country then 
 (Though desert now and roaring seas between) 
 Thou shalt be loved ; such charm the Muses give. 
 But look lest thou their bright occasions lose. 
 The poet s heart is a wise counselor ; 
 Oh for thou canst invoke Urania now, 
 That she through song may yield thee thy de 
 sire. 
 
 AGATHON sings. 
 
 Muse of the eternal tune, 
 
 O erheard in Nature s starry rune ; 
 
 Whom mortals in themselves discern 
 
 By thoughts that from thy fingers burn ; 
 And the heart divinely falls 
 To native hymns and madrigals ! 
 
 Thou, the Wisdom of the sphere, 
 
 Whom most by inward sight we fear, 
 
 Since souls o erwrought through thee may pierce 
 
 The violet-girdled universe ; 
 
 And the truth to us is given 
 
 With the shining t hath in heaven ! 
 
AGATHON 67 
 
 Sacred passion seizes me 
 
 Through love of the divinity ; 
 
 Oft upon my eyelids stream 
 
 Bright visions of thy borrowed beam ; 
 
 Hear, and have me in thy grace ; 
 
 Thee I implore to see Love s face ! 
 
 URANIA, unseen. 
 To man s spirit-visioned eye, 
 As the robeless world doth lie 
 To the sun when clouds disperse, 
 Unsheltered lies the universe. 
 Hoar Nature s solitary heir, 
 He looks on earth and sea and air ; 
 Thought s empire-making word he wills, 
 The great domain responsive thrills ; 
 Break from the bases of the earth 
 The fire-scrawled legends of their birth ; 
 Flash sun and planet, wheel in wheel, 
 Nor dare the central poise conceal ; 
 And dateless stars of Chaldee stay 
 His subtler influence to obey. 
 The viewless pulses of keen force 
 Traverse their ethereal course ; 
 Beneath his eye their films withdraw ; 
 He sees the essences of law. 
 What he knows a fragment is 
 Of what destiny maketh his ; 
 Even beyond hope s climbing border 
 Unknown worlds shall Science order ; 
 
68 AGATHON 
 
 Her dominions distance far 
 The lone ray of the outer star. 
 
 Yet to her is set a bound, 
 Nor words divine by her are found. 
 Nature will not cast for thee " --. 
 
 x^ 
 The starry robe of deity. 
 
 Mortal, rack her nerves no more, 
 Nor in her frame the god explore ! 
 Her tongues of fire forget the word 
 In star-song nor in sea-chime heard, 
 Nor on Dodona s sacred breeze. 
 Go, sift with light the Pleiades ; 
 And clothe anew the fossil bone ; 
 Of force, resolve the monotone ; 
 Weigh, number, chart, infer and sum 
 Not from without the god will come. 
 Never through the senses portal 
 Gleamed that Power, of all the source, 
 The large-libertied Immortal 
 Who inhabits Fate and Force. 
 Nature has no path to him, 
 But rather shows man, dumb and dim, 
 Back to himself her mazes wind 
 And laws of things are laws of mind. 
 He the conscious Being only 
 Of the world whereon he gazes ; 
 He the sceptred sovereign lonely 
 In whose state its glory blazes ! 
 
 Yet, look home : there shalt thou find, 
 Orb in orb, eternal mind. 
 
AGATHON 69 
 
 Naught is knowledge but the light 
 
 Unsealing thy immortal sight. 
 
 Naught is beauty but the eye 
 
 Led captive by divinity. 
 
 For truth divine is life, not lore, 
 
 Creative truth, and evermore 
 
 Fashions the object of desire 
 
 Through love that breathes the spirit s fire. 
 
 It loves, and loving grows more bright, 
 
 And, changing to its own delight, 
 
 Doth ever in itself express 
 
 And image the god s loveliness. 
 
 Love beauty, and thy soul grows fair ; 
 
 Love wisdom, virtue harbors there ; 
 
 Love love, the god thou canst not miss 
 
 Within thy heart his secret is. 
 
 The spark within, the self-fed flame, 
 
 From those twin hands of blessing came, 
 
 That cast the massy earth s blue round 
 
 And in man s bosom virtue found. 
 
 Thy acre of eternal fate 
 
 Is broad enough to bear thy weight ; 
 
 Take thou the scope the god doth give, 
 
 And fear not from the heart to live ! 
 
 Behold the sacred words I sing 
 Are but thy spirit laboring : 
 So near the nameless mystery lies, 
 Revealed, though hidden, to thy eyes ; 
 The vision seen, its form and light 
 Are only with thy shining bright ; 
 
70 AGATHON 
 
 Unveiling him, I unveil thee, 
 And bare thy inmost privacy. 
 
 [AGATHON, entranced, sinks as in sleep. 
 
 EROS sings. 
 
 Tranced now his eyelids be 
 Seals of light and secrecy ; 
 Slumber, poet, and still keep 
 Golden vigils in thy sleep, 
 And, waking, bring the world divine 
 Through thy opening eyes to shine ! 
 
 Now I leave mortality ; 
 This dear heart has set me free, 
 Through the sacred passion burning 
 That denotes his home-returning, 
 Where the gods in joy recline, 
 And the sphere is all divine. 
 Here I scatter ere I go 
 Thoughts that in white lilies blow, 
 Hopes that in sweet violets breathe, 
 Memory, the starred moss beneath ; 
 These for Agathon shall be 
 The woven crown of victory. 
 But to heaven I ascend, 
 And better there the soul befriend, 
 With the glad gods interceding, 
 Till again my pinions greet 
 The young hearts that love my leading, 
 Dear as Hermes ivory feet 
 Down the purple ether steering, 
 
AGATHON 71 
 
 To the souls in prison nearing, 
 With the holy meadow s bloom ; 
 I shall touch them in the gloom, 
 And, starlike, from my hending eyes, 
 The sweet beam of divine surprise 
 Shall in a moment teach them more 
 Than all the worlds of light before. 
 
72 AGATHON 
 
 SCENE in. 
 
 DIOTIMA S cave ; dawn without. 
 AGATHON wakes. DIOTIMA beside him. 
 
 DlOTIMA. 
 
 Canst thou interpret this ? 
 
 AGATHON. 
 
 prophetess, 
 
 Thou knowest ; this rock was riven in twain, 
 And over me the glistening purple deep, 
 Sparkling with starry hosts, began to pale 
 With morning, and the sleeping vales beneath 
 Broke into thousand shadows, violet-winged, 
 That in their motions died, and gleaming hills 
 Unbosomed their fair slopes unto the east 
 That molten burned : then from that cloudless 
 
 throne 
 
 Light issued like a pillar of burning gold 
 Sea-based ; and Phosphor in the rosy flush 
 Folded the stars upon the hills of dawn. 
 New earth, new heavens ! Never land I saw 
 That promised roving in such pastures sweet 
 Since through the woods that front the sacred 
 
 dawn 
 
 I came, and music in my heart was born, 
 And at my feet broke the deep sea of song. 
 And One whose presence left the orient bare, 
 Came ; of the image that my soul had stamped 
 
AGATE ON. 73 
 
 This was the living and god-motioned form. 
 
 mortal speech, how truth disdaineth thee, 
 The dark confuser ! Beautiful he stood 
 The feet that never wandered from the god, 
 The eyes that yet remembered heavenly light ; 
 His form advanced still sang his joyful speed ; 
 And in his hand I marked a laurel branch. 
 
 1 was o erawed, and darkly in that morn 
 I felt the nearer hovering of his plumes ; 
 He struck me with the laurel, face and lips, 
 And low upon my spirit borne I heard 
 Not silence, nor in words of mortal speech 
 " I am the angel of the god thou wouldest ; 
 Love am I called, one name in heaven and earth ; 
 And thee through me He chooses : lift up thy 
 
 heart 
 
 High as His will whose hope abides in thee ; 
 Know thou His mercy justifies His choice." 
 And sleep a thousandfold had sealed my eyes. 
 Yet feel I on my cheeks the laurel burn. 
 
 DIOTIMA. 
 The gods have been with thee : obey the gods ! 
 
MY COUNTRY 
 
MY COUNTRY 
 
 WHO saith that song doth fail ? 
 
 Or thinks to bound 
 
 Within a little plot of Grecian ground 
 The sole of mortal things that can avail ? 
 
 Olympus was but heaven s gate ; 
 Not there the strong Light-bringer deigned to 
 
 wait ; 
 
 But westward o er the rosy height, 
 His cloud-sprung coursers trample light ; 
 And ever westward leans the god above the joy 
 ful steeds ; 
 The light in his eyes is prophecy ; on his lips the 
 
 words are deeds ; 
 On whirls the burning Singer ; earth wakens 
 
 where he speeds. 
 
 The singing keels that moored great Rome 
 Silence o ertakes ; but his Immortal Song, 
 To which the world-wide fates belong, 
 Still seeks the fleeing shore and for the gods a 
 
 home, 
 A new Ausonia sings, swells o er a mightier 
 
 foam. 
 
 The citadels of Italy 
 (Oh dear to him is Liberty !) 
 Chained not to her marble mountains, 
 
78 MY COUNTRY 
 
 Sealed not in her broken fountains, 
 
 His bright fire ; 
 
 Up the dark North it leapt, the masterless de 
 sire : 
 
 Nor even the Imperial Isle, the Ocean-State, 
 Who Time s great order leads, and fastens 
 
 fate, 
 
 Shall keep his speed across the shouting sea ; 
 Destiny exceeds her scope ; 
 The hope of man exceeds her hope ; 
 The regions of the west unfold ; 
 New ages on the god are rolled ; 
 The throning years to be, 
 Of earth s new men the praise, 
 Rise on him where he stands and bends his 
 
 dreaming gaze, 
 And smiles to see the shore night vainly 
 
 shrouds 
 
 Through tracts of ruddy air and darkly-gleaming 
 clouds. 
 
 Awake, O Land, and lesser fortunes scorn ! 
 Amid the darkness, by the eastern strand, 
 Bend down thy ear, and hearken with thy hand ; 
 He comes who brings to thee eternal morn ! 
 More radiant and fair 
 Than ever thy mornings were, 
 Or any rnorn that ever broke from night 
 Since the dear star of dawn began his earthly 
 flight ! 
 
MY COUNTRY 79 
 
 Oh, whisper to thy clustered isles, 
 If any rosy promise round them smiles ; 
 Oh, call to every seaward promontory, 
 If one of them, perchance, is made the cape of 
 
 glory ; 
 
 Oh, bid the mountains answer thy inquire, 
 If any peak be tipped with lonely fire, 
 
 A shining name 
 And station of the winged flame 
 
 Above the time s desire ! 
 Doubt not, O waiting Land ; for who hath 
 
 power 
 
 To bar the golden journey of the sun, 
 Or on time s dial set back the destined hour ? 
 Doubt not, but oh, thy heart within prepare, 
 And ripen praise upon thy lips with prayer, 
 When the bright summons through thy frame 
 shall run 
 
 Of that great day begun ! 
 Then heaven shall search thee with its shafts 
 
 of light, 
 
 And lay thy coverts and thy fastness bare, 
 And drag the Serpent from its human lair, 
 And on its scales the swords of God shall smite, 
 Wielded aloft by spirits that know to fight, 
 To find the heart with wounds and not to spare. 
 O wilderness untried, 
 
 If thou dost cherish, 
 Brought from the old earth s side, 
 The beasts that perish, 
 
80 MY COUNTRY 
 
 The things that eat the dust and darkly crawl, 
 And in the heart of nations poison all - 
 Oh, terrible that brightness will appall, 
 World-justice hanging o er thee, and shall fall ! 
 Seize thy spear and grasp thy sword ; 
 
 Speak the righteous word ; 
 
 And his battle rolling o er thee, 
 
 And his victory flashing round, 
 
 Shall drive the cumbering brood before thee, 
 
 Free forevermore thy ground ; 
 
 Thy great ally, 
 Leaning from the sky, 
 
 Shall twine thy hair with morning and the olive s 
 warless crown ! 
 
 O Soil befriending men, 
 Pluck from the Future s hand her iron pen ; 
 While yet his coming lingers, oh, stoop down, 
 And write upon the threshold of thy earth 
 The word that levels all men in their birth, 
 And in thy love, and in their spirits worth ! 
 Be that sign, engraved on thee, 
 Thy omen and thy destiny ! 
 
 Look forth, O Land, thy mountain-tops 
 Glitter ; look, the shadow drops ; 
 On the warder summits hoaiy 
 Bursts the splendor-voiced story ; 
 Round the crags of watching rolled 
 The purple vales of heaven unfold, 
 
 And far-shining ridges hang in air 
 
MY COUNTRY 81 
 
 Northward beam, and to the south the promise 
 
 bear. 
 
 Unto isle and headland sing it, 
 O er the misty Midland fling it, 
 From a hundred glorious peaks, the Appalachian 
 
 gold! 
 O er the valley of the thousand rivers, 
 
 O er the sea-horizoned lakes, 
 Through heaven s wide gulf the marvelous fire 
 
 quivers, 
 Myriad-winged, and every dwindling star 
 
 o ertakes ; 
 
 On where earth s last ranges listen, 
 Thunder-peaks that cloud the west 
 With the flashing signal waken ; 
 All the tameless Rockies own it 
 One great edge of sunrise glisten ; 
 All the skied Sierras throne it ; 
 And lone Shasta, high uplifted 
 O er the snowy centuries drifted, 
 Hears, and through his lands is splendor shaken 
 From the morning s jewel in his crest ! 
 O chosen Land, 
 
 God s hand 
 Doth touch thy spires, 
 And lights on all thy hills his rousing fires ! 
 O beacon of the nations, lift thy head ; 
 
 Firm be thy bases under ; 
 Now thy earth-might with heaven wed 
 Beyond hell s hate to sunder ! 
 
82 MY COUNTRY 
 
 O Land of Promise, whom all eyes 
 
 Have strained through time to see, 
 Since poets, cradled in the skies, 
 
 Flashed prophecy on thee ! 
 O great Atlantis, other world, 
 
 That never voyager won, 
 Though many a shining sail was furled, 
 
 Lost in the setting sun ! 
 Joy, joy, joy ! thy destiny hath found thee ! 
 Now the oceans brighten round thee, 
 To thy heaven-born fate ascending ; 
 Thou, earth s darling ! thou, the yearning 
 
 Of the last hope in her burning, 
 Who shalt seal her womb forevermore ! 
 Child, whose rosy breath is blending 
 With the morning s o er thee bending, 
 While the chorus, never-ending, 
 
 Swells from shore to shore 
 Triumph of the peoples, anthem never heard 
 
 before ! 
 Thou, the crowner of the ages, 
 
 Now the eagle seeks thy hand ; 
 Poets, statesmen, heroes, sages, 
 
 In the long-drawn portals stand ! 
 Well may mount to mount declare thee ; 
 
 Ocean unto ocean sound thee ; 
 To the skies loud hymns upbear thee ; 
 Earth embrace, and heaven bound thee ; 
 
 God hath found thee ! 
 Through the world the tidings pour, 
 
MY COUNTRY 83 
 
 And fill it o er and o er, 
 As the wave of morning fills the long Atlantic 
 
 shore ; 
 
 Fills, and brims oh, speed the story ! 
 The emerald cup of thy great river-gods ; 
 Brims, and through the west down golden 
 
 sods 
 
 To the Pacific rolls ; flood unto flood speaks 
 glory ! 
 
 O Fair Land, do thy eyes 
 
 Dream paradise ? 
 
 Or mortals fields are these, or fallen skies ? 
 Dost thou not hear Him singing in the 
 
 gold 
 
 The lofty paean thy long years unfold, 
 And joy divine that shines in man s just 
 praise, 
 
 Though yet a while delays 
 The hour full-orbed, and his unclouded 
 
 blaze ? 
 
 Of holy hymns and famous deeds 
 He casts before the deathless seeds ; 
 He wooes thy dust with rosy rain ; 
 Of thy sweet months is he so fain ; 
 Oh, lovelier than the poets told, 
 Unwreathes his brow to light thy dying 
 
 mould ! 
 
 And from their morning bower, and from their 
 sunny lair, 
 
84 MY COUNTRY 
 
 Scatters the bloom that springs 
 On heavenly pastures fair, 
 
 And o er thy bosom flings 
 The fragrance of his own immortal air ! 
 Nor flowers alone are his, but every fruit 
 That takes the breath of heaven fed from a dark 
 ened root ; 
 
 Joy to thy virgin soil that spring shall thrill and 
 shoot ! 
 
 Like Love, its coming sweet, 
 With motions of auroral winds that fleet, 
 Shadow and music, o er the new green wheat ; 
 Thy summer lights the land, thy autumn loads the 
 
 sea; 
 
 And still a lovelier year returns to thee ; 
 Or where the glowing South is white like 
 
 wool ; 
 
 Or where the sun-spanned ocean of the maize 
 Broods in the brilliant calm, and lightly 
 
 sways ; 
 
 Or where by inland seas, forever full, 
 The golden reservoirs of summer days, 
 Towers of abundance stand in all thy ways ; 
 Or further on, where bud and fruit together, 
 Immortal orchards, star the fadeless weather. 
 O generous fertility, 
 Like Love, to all men free ! 
 And ever rolls an ampler year, and heaven grows 
 ripe in thee ! 
 For nobler yields than these, 
 
M7 COUNTRY 85 
 
 favored Land, 
 Are whispering with thy breeze 
 
 The tillage of God s hand ; 
 ,And though it seem thy own, this fair estate, 
 
 (Or fief or freehold, ask of Day and Night) 
 The Eternal only sows the field of fate, 
 
 And o er thy will doth exercise His right. 
 Thou canst not groove the soil nor turn the sod 
 But thou shalt drop therein the seeds of 
 
 time ; 
 Thy labor brings to light the will of God ; 
 
 Fair must the harvest be, and stand sublime ; 
 And when the mellowing year is made complete, 
 And for the world thou reapest time s in 
 crease, 
 
 He thrusts His sickle in the falling wheat, 
 And in thy bursting granaries garners Peace. 
 
 Oh, humbly bow thee down, 
 Blessed o er all thou art ; 
 Eai th s plenty in thy crown, 
 
 God s Peace within thy heart ! 
 Again, O mighty hymn, begin ! 
 
 O mount, Virgilian song ! 
 Let be the suffering and the sin ; 
 
 Thy years to Love belong ! 
 No Janus-stables on thy soil, nor hoof of Mars s 
 
 steeds ; 
 
 No ruin smokes ; no war-bolt strikes ; no scar of 
 battle bleeds ; 
 
86 MY COUNTRY 
 
 But fair as once Athene s height thy marble hill 
 
 shall rise, 
 
 Where Justice reconciles thy earth, Virtue dis 
 arms thy skies ! 
 
 As splendors of the dawn 
 Make earthly tapers wan, 
 Less than a candle s beam 
 The world s first hope shall gleam 
 When o er thy vales and soothed seas the truce 
 of time shall stream ! 
 
 Come ! Come ! O light divine ! 
 
 O come, Saturniau morn ! 
 O Land of Peace on whom recline 
 
 Ten thousand hopes unborn 
 O Beautiful, stand forth, nor sword, nor lance, 
 
 Silent wielder of the fates ! 
 War-tamer, striking with thy glance 
 The thunder from imperial states ! 
 So hard, surpassing war, doth Peace assail ; 
 So far, exceeding hate, doth Love avail ; 
 
 Now, married to thy sphere, 
 Blessed between the nodding poles shall wheel 
 the earth s Great Year. 
 
 O destined Land, unto thy citadel, 
 
 What founding fates even now doth peace 
 
 compel, 
 That through the world thy name is sweet 
 
 to tell! 
 O throned Freedom, unto thee is brought 
 
MY COUNTRY 87 
 
 Empire ; nor falsehood nor blood-payment 
 
 asked ; 
 
 "Who never through deceit thy ends hast sought, 
 Nor toiling millions for ambition tasked ; 
 Unlike the fools who build the throne 
 
 On fraud, and wrong, and woe ; 
 For man at last will take his own, 
 
 Nor count the overthrow ; 
 But far from these is set thy continent, 
 
 Nor fears the Revolution in man s rise ; 
 On laws that with the weal of all consent, 
 
 And saving truths that make the people wise : 
 For thou art founded in the eternal fact 
 That every man doth greaten with the act 
 Of freedom ; and doth strengthen with the weight 
 Of duty ; and diviner moulds his fate, 
 By sharp experience taught the thing he lacked, 
 God s pupil; thy large maxim framed, though 
 
 late, 
 
 "Who masters best himself best serves the State. 
 This wisdom is thy Corner : next the stone 
 Of Bounty ; thou hast given all ; thy store, 
 Free as the air, and broadcast as the light, 
 Thou fiingest ; and the fair and gracious sight, 
 More rich, doth teach thy sons this happy lore : 
 That no man lives who takes not priceless gifts 
 Both of thy substance and thy laws, whereto 
 He may not plead desert, but holds of thee 
 A childhood title, shared with all who grew, 
 His brethren of the hearth ; whence no man lifts 
 
88 MY COUNTRY 
 
 Above the common right his claim ; nor dares 
 To fence his pastures of the common good ; 
 For common are thy fields ; common the toil ; 
 Common the charter of prosperity, 
 That gives to each that all may blessed be. 
 This is the very counsel of thy soil. 
 Therefore if any thrive, mean-souled he spares 
 The alms he took ; let him not think subdued 
 The State s first law, that civic rights are strong 
 But while the fruits of all to all belong ; 
 Although he heir the fortune of the earth, 
 Let him not hoard, nor spend it for his mirth, 
 But match his private means with public worth. 
 That man in whom the people s riches lie 
 Is the great citizen, in his country s eye. 
 Justice, the third great base, that shall secure 
 To each his earnings, howsoever poor, 
 From each his duties, howsoever great. 
 She bids the future for the past atone. 
 Behold her symbols on the hoary stone 
 The awful scales and that war-hammered beam 
 Which whoso thinks to break doth fondly dream. 
 Or Czars who tyrannize or mobs that rage ; 
 These are her charge, and heaven s eternal law. 
 She from old fountains doth new judgment draw, 
 Till, word by word, the ancient order swerves 
 To the true course more nigh ; in every age 
 A little she creates, but more preserves. 
 Hope stands the last, a mighty prop of fate. 
 These thy foundations are, O firm-set State ! 
 
MY COUNTRY 89 
 
 And strength is unto thee 
 More than this masonry 
 
 Of common thought ; 
 
 Beyond the stars, from the Far City brought. 
 Pillar and tower 
 
 Declare the shaping power, 
 
 Massive, severe, sublime, 
 
 Of the stern, righteous time, 
 From sire to son bequeathed, thy eldest dower. 
 
 Large-limbed they were, the pioneers, 
 Cast in the iron mould that fate reveres ; 
 They could not help but frame the fabric well, 
 Who squared the stones for heaven s eye to tell ; 
 Who knew from eld and taught posterity, 
 That the true workman s only he 
 Who builds of God s necessity. 
 Nor yet hath failed the seed of righteousness ; 
 Still doth the work the awe divine confess, 
 Conscience within, duty without, express. 
 Well may thy sons rejoice thee, O proud Land ; 
 No weakling race of mighty loins is thine, 
 No spendthrifts of the fathers ; lo, the Arch, 
 The loyal keystone glorying o er the march 
 Of millioned peoples freed ! on every hand 
 Grows the vast work, and boundless the design. 
 So in thy children shall thy empire stand, 
 As in her Caesars fell Rome s majesty 
 O Desolation, be it far from thee ! 
 Forgetting sires and sons to whom were given 
 The seals of glory and the keys of fate 
 
90 MY COUNTRY 
 
 From Him, whom well they knew the Rock of 
 
 State, 
 Thy centre, and on thy doorposts blazed His 
 
 name 
 
 Whose plaudit is the substance of all fame, 
 The sweetness of all hope forbid it, Heaven ! 
 
 Shrink not, O Land, beneath that holy fear ! 
 
 Thou art not mocked of God ; 
 His kingdom is thy conquering sphere, 
 
 His will thy ruling rod ! 
 O Harbor of the sea-tossed fates, 
 The last great mortal Bound ; 
 Cybele, with a hundred States, 
 A hundred turrets, crowned ; 
 Mother, whose heart divinely holds 
 
 Earth s poor within her breast ; 
 World-Shelterer, in whose open folds 
 
 The wandering races rest ; 
 Advance, the hour supreme arrives ; 
 O er Ocean s edge the chariot drives ; 
 The past is done ; 
 Thy orb begun ; 
 
 Upon the forehead of the world to blaze, 
 Lighting all times to be with thy own golden 
 days. 
 
 O Land beloved ! 
 My Country, dear, my own ! 
 May the young heart that moved 
 
MY COUNTRY 91 
 
 For the weak words atone ; 
 The mighty lyre not mine, nor the full breath of 
 
 song ! 
 
 To happier sons shall these belong. 
 
 Yet doth the first and lonely voice 
 
 Of the dark dawn the heart rejoice, 
 
 While still the loud choir sleeps upon the bough ; 
 
 And never greater love salutes thy brow 
 
 Than his, who seeks thee now. 
 Alien the sea and salt the foam 
 Where er it bears him from his home ; 
 And when he leaps to land, 
 A lover treads the strand ; 
 Precious is every stone ; 
 No little inch of all the broad domain 
 But he would stoop to kiss, and end his pain, 
 Feeling thy lips make merry with his own ; 
 But oh, his trembling reed too frail 
 
 To bear thee Time s All-Hail ! 
 Faint is my heart, and ebbing with the passion of 
 
 thy praise ! 
 
 The poets come who cannot fail ; 
 Happy are they who sing thy perfect days ! 
 Happy am I who see the long night ended, 
 In the shadows of the age that bore me, 
 All the hopes of mankind blending, 
 Earth awaking, heaven descending, 
 , While the new day steadfastly 
 Domes the blue deeps over thee ! 
 Happy am I who see the Vision splendid 
 
92 MY COUNTRY 
 
 In the glowing of the dawn before me, 
 All the grace of heaven blending, 
 Man arising, Christ descending, 
 While God s hand in secrecy 
 Builds thy bright eternity. 
 
SONNETS 
 
SONNETS 
 
 TO THOSE WHO REPROVED THE AU 
 THOR FOR TOO SANGUINE 
 PATRIOTISM 
 
 THE riches of a nation are her dead 
 
 Whom she hath borne to be her memory 
 Against her passing, when that time shall be, 
 
 And in the Csesars tomb she makes her bed ; 
 
 And oft of such decay in books I ve read 
 Carthage or Venice, who had wealth as we ; 
 Yet, all too wise for patriots, blame hot me ! 
 
 I know a nation s gold is not man s bread. 
 
 But rather from itself the heart infers 
 
 That ached when Lincoln died ! those boyish 
 tears 
 
 Still keep my breast untraitored by its fears ; 
 Farragut, Phillips, Grant I saw them shine, 
 
 Names worthy to have filled a Roman line ; 
 
 If I prove false, it is the future errs. 
 
96 SONNETS 
 
 OUR FIRST CENTURY 
 
 IT cannot be that men who are the seed 
 
 Of Washington should miss fame s true ap 
 plause ; 
 Franklin did plan us ; Marshall gave us laws ; 
 
 And slow the broad scroll grew a people s creed 
 
 One land and free ! then at our dangerous need, 
 Time s challenge coming, Lincoln gave it pause, 
 Upheld the double pillars of the cause, 
 
 And dying left them whole our crowning deed. 
 
 Such was the fathering race that made all fast, 
 Who founded us, and spread from sea to sea 
 A thousand leagues the zone of liberty, 
 
 And built for man this refuge from his past, 
 Unkinged, unchurched, unsoldiered; shamed 
 
 were we, 
 Failing the stature that such sires forecast ! 
 
SONNETS 97 
 
 TO LEO XIII 
 
 THE German tyrant plays thee for his game ; 
 
 Italy curbs thee ; France gives little rest ; 
 And o er the broad sea dost thou think to tame 
 
 God s young plantation in the virgin West ? 
 Three kingdoms did He sift to find the seed, 
 
 And sowed ; then open threw the sea s wide 
 
 door; 
 And millions came, used but to starve and bleed, 
 
 And built the great republic of the poor. 
 
 Remember Dover Strait that shore from thee 
 Whole empires, hidden in the banked-up clouds 
 
 Of England s greatness ! Of all lands are we, 
 But chiefly Northmen ; still their might un- 
 shrouds 
 
 The fates ; dream not their children of this sod 
 
 Cease to be freemen when they bow to God ! 
 
98 SONNETS 
 
 ON THE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF 
 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 SHE matched the world in arms against man s 
 
 right, 
 And when the Fates would stay victorious 
 
 France, 
 With her own conquests must they dull her 
 
 lance, 
 
 And legions worn with fadeless battles smite. 
 O laugher at the shocks of time, her might 
 
 Rejoiced in more than arms ! the great ad 
 vance 
 
 Through Europe of her triple ordinance 
 Man owes to her. O Century, born to-night, 
 
 Fulfil her glory ! Europe still hath slaves, 
 Scourged by the Turk, mown by the Scythian 
 
 car; 
 Siberia, more rich in heroes graves 
 
 Than the most famous field of glorious war, 
 Yet waits ; and by the bloody Cretan waves 
 Man suffers hope, and pleads his woe afar. 
 
SONNETS 99 
 
 AT GIBRALTAR 
 
 ENGLAND, I stand on thy imperial ground, 
 Not all a stranger ; as thy bugles hlow, 
 I feel within my blood old battles flow 
 
 The blood whose ancient founts in thee are found. 
 
 Still surging dark against the Christian bound 
 Wide Islam presses ; well its peoples know 
 Thy heights that watch them wandering below ; 
 
 I think how Lucknow heard their gathering sound. 
 
 I turn, and meet the cruel, turbaned face. 
 
 England, t is sweet to be so much thy son ! 
 I feel the conqueror in my blood and race ; 
 
 Last night Trafalgar awed me, and to-day 
 Gibraltar wakened ; hark, thy evening gun 
 
 Startles the desert over Africa ! 
 
100 SONNETS 
 
 AT GIBRALTAR 
 II. 
 
 THOU art the rock of empire, set mid-seas 
 
 Between the East and West, that God has 
 
 built ; 
 
 Advance thy Roman borders where thou wilt, 
 "While run thy armies true with his decrees ; 
 Law, justice, liberty great gifts are these ; 
 Watch that they spread where English blood is 
 
 spilt, 
 
 Lest, mixed and sullied with his country s guilt, 
 The soldier s life-stream flow, and Heaven dis 
 please ! 
 
 Two swords there are : one naked, apt to smite, 
 Thy blade of war ; and, battle-storied, one 
 
 Rejoices in the sheath, and hides from light. 
 American I am ; would wars were done ! 
 
 Now westward, look, my country bids good 
 night 
 Peace to the world from ports without a gun ! 
 
ITALIAN VOLUNTARIES 
 
ITALIAN VOLUNTARIES 
 
 LINES 
 
 Now snowy Apennines shining 
 
 Should breathe my spirit hare ; 
 My heart should cease repining 
 
 In the rainbow-haunted air ; 
 But cureless sorrow carries 
 
 My heart beyond the sea, 
 Nor comfort in it tarries 
 
 Save thoughts of thee. 
 
 The branch of olive shaken 
 
 Silvers the azure sea ; 
 Winds in the ilex waken ; 
 
 Oh, wert thou here with me, 
 Gray olive, dark ilex, bright ocean, 
 
 The radiant mountains round, 
 Never for love s devotion 
 
 Were sweeter lodging found ! 
 
ANECDOTES OF SIENA 
 
 IN THE PABK. 
 
 ONCE I came to Siena, 
 
 Traveling waywardly ; 
 I sought not church nor palace ; 
 
 I did not care to see. 
 In the little park at Siena, 
 
 Her famous ways untrod, 
 I laid me down in the springtime 
 
 Upon the daisied sod. 
 New, but not unfamiliar, 
 
 Of my boyhood seemed the scene 
 The hillsides of Judaea, 
 
 And Turner s pines between ; 
 And tenderly the rugged, 
 
 Volcanic rock-lands bare, 
 Warm in the April weather, 
 
 Slept in the melting air. 
 T was April in the valleys ; 
 
 T was April in the sky ; 
 And from the tufted locusts 
 
 The sweet scent wandered by ; 
 But strange to me the sunshine, 
 
ANECDOTES OF SIENA 105 
 
 And strange the growing grass ; 
 To the branch that cannot blossom 
 
 How cold doth April pass ! 
 As lovers, when love is over, 
 
 Remembering seem men dead, 
 Down on the warm bright daisies, 
 
 Earth s lover, I laid my head ; 
 And whence or why I know not, 
 
 At the touch my eyes were dim, 
 And I knew that these were the daisies 
 
 That Keats felt grow o er him. 
 
 IL 
 
 SODOMA S CHRIST SCOURGED. 
 
 I SAW in Siena pictures, 
 
 Wandering wearily ; 
 I sought not the names of the masters 
 
 Nor the works men care to see ; 
 But once in a low-ceiled passage 
 
 I came on a place of gloom, 
 Lit here and there with halos 
 
 Like saints within the room. 
 The pure, serene, mild colors 
 
 The early artists used 
 Had made my heart grow softer, 
 
 And still on peace I mused. 
 Sudden I saw the Sufferer, 
 
 And my frame was clenched with pain ; 
 
106 ANECDOTES OF SIENA 
 
 Perchance no throe so noble 
 
 Visits my soul again. 
 Mine were the stripes of the scourging ; 
 
 On my thorn-pierced brow blood ran ; 
 In my breast the deep compassion 
 
 Breaking the heart for man. 
 I drooped with heavy eyelids, 
 
 Till evil should have its will ; 
 On my lips was silence gathered ; 
 
 My waiting soul stood stilL 
 I gazed, nor knew I was gazing ; 
 
 I trembled, and woke to know 
 Him whom they worship in heaven 
 
 Still walking on earth below. 
 Once have I borne his sorrows 
 
 Beneath the flail of fate ! 
 Once, in the woe of his passion, 
 
 I felt the soul grow great ! 
 I turned from my dead Leader ; 
 
 I passed the silent door ; 
 The gray-walled street received me ; 
 
 On peace I mused no more. 
 
 m. 
 
 "AFTER DATS OP WAITING." 
 
 AFTER days of waiting, 
 Rambling still elsewhere, 
 
 I took the narrow causeway, 
 Climbed the broad stone stair ; 
 
ANECDOTES OF SIENA 107 
 
 Round the angle turning 
 
 With unlifted gaze 
 In the high piazza 
 
 Oh, the wasted days ! 
 There the great cathedral 
 
 Came upon my eyes ; 
 Nevermore may marvel 
 
 Bring to me surprise ! 
 In the light of heaven 
 
 Builded, heaven s delight, 
 Never sculptured beauty 
 
 Hallowed so my sight ! 
 On the silent curbstone 
 
 Long I sat, and gazed, 
 With the sainted vision 
 
 Ever more amazed ; 
 Rose, and past the curtain 
 
 Trod the pictured floor, 
 Read Siena s story, 
 
 Saw her glory s store. 
 In the high piazza 
 
 Once again I turned ; 
 Clear in heaven s sunlight 
 
 Prophet and angel burned. 
 Still, whene er that vision 
 
 Comes upon my eyes, 
 I seem to see triumphant 
 
 The Resurrection rise. 
 
VICTOR S BIRD 
 
 " SIENA still she sits upon her crags, 
 
 And on the slope the dark-stemmed Mangia 
 
 springs, 
 
 And o er the crest the Campanile towers ; 
 My mother, and the mother of my soul ! 
 For from her face I did not need to roam 
 To find my heaven ; there every rock aspires. 
 There once I slept, and woke beneath the stars, 
 And found within my bosom a snow-white bird, 
 A waif unknown, and stroked and loved its plumes ; 
 And ever after was I lightly named 
 The boy who bore the bird within his breast. 
 Blind eyes that babbled of the thing of sense, 
 Of boy and bird, and missed the rhyme of life, 
 The voice of promise, echo of desire ! 
 For heavenly grace that hath made all things 
 
 twain, 
 
 Doth but divide them as the hand and lyre 
 To free the music of their harmony. 
 There s naught so lonely in the world of change 
 But t is the prison of these concords sweet 
 When hearts shall find them ; therefore to the 
 
 boy 
 Trifles are often rich in miracle ; 
 
VICTOR S BIRD 109 
 
 Doubt not his treasure ; rather doubt thy own. 
 The finding of the bird was more to me 
 Than the rich coffer of the earth all gems, 
 Than Rome s tiara to the shaking brow, 
 Than continents of gold to voyaging kings ; 
 My whisper of the yonder world, my thought 
 Of the far country and the over-seas 
 O whence, O whence, I asked, and beautiful 
 It cleft the frowning walls, and entered light, 
 And came again, the warm sun on its wings, 
 And clasped with rosy feet my tender hands, 
 And shared my poverty and brought its heaven. 
 
 " The months rolled on and swelled the young 
 
 tree s girth ; 
 The autumn blew and stripped the last year s 
 
 vines ; 
 The stars of winter dropped their shining 
 
 strength ; 
 
 The wild spring came ; and as the mists of morn 
 Upon the azure marches far away 
 Build towers of vantage over distant lands, 
 So by the spirit s breath my thoughts were driven, 
 And on the soul s horizons, round and round, 
 Won on the shining borders of the world 
 Regions of vision ; evermore the bird 
 Hung in the morning sky above my heart, 
 As if I too should follow and fly with it 
 To morrows without end ; the still noon dreamt, 
 And unseen armor on the ether clanged 
 
110 VICTOR S BIRD 
 
 Virgilian music ; and the paths of sleep 
 
 Shone with white garments, gleamed with myrtle 
 
 crowns 
 
 Of youth in triumph bearing boughs of spring ; 
 Then darkened was the hollow cloud of dream, 
 And, angel-watched, a glory-lighted face 
 Shining on heaven through flowers of martyrdom 
 Filled my faint eyes with peace more sweet than 
 
 jy; 
 
 And still the bird in every vision flew 
 
 As he would woo me to some world removed, 
 
 Forever breaking, lingering, biding nigh, 
 
 Till came the Word. T was by the marble brook 
 
 That jets neglected in the gray-walled cirque 
 
 Where slept the Wolf in stone and slept the law ; 
 
 Silent, I gazed upon the mightier age 
 
 Tombed in those walls austere ; the bird in air 
 
 Shadowed the fountain, and a monk passed by 
 
 Erasing those spread wings ; and all at once 
 
 The poppy-branch struck on my dream-drenched 
 
 eyes, 
 
 And blackness rolled upon the solid world, 
 And drowned it ; and there broke a yellow shaft 
 Like some great rift of sunset smiting through, 
 And on the mighty beam the bird, full flight, 
 Came singing out of heaven, songless till then, 
 A little cluster of rich-warbled notes, 
 Ever the same, one thrill, and o er and o er, 
 That fell upon my heart like dropping flames, 
 So strange, it seemed I knew not song before. 
 
VICTORS BIRD HI 
 
 I woke ; the music slept within my breast 
 And over me the ancient walls leaned down 
 As with some statue s marble utterance ; 
 How fair he comes who brings his country 
 
 peace ! 
 
 I heard, as plain as winds on olive groves. 
 What peace ? I cried, and climbed the strait 
 ened ways 
 
 To where upon the City s sacred brow, 
 As to the breath of the Eternal Morn, 
 The mystic Rose of Christ unfolds its leaves, 
 The bower of his earthly memory ; 
 And there I marked the priests go ever in, 
 Like flies and gnats ; and on me came the Voice : 
 4 Wouldst thou bring peace ? Then haste thee ; 
 
 now, even now, 
 
 The eagles of the Christ fly forth to war ! 
 The bird was gone a white and quivering 
 
 point, 
 
 Breasting the blue, far, far beyond recall 
 He soared, and bathed in light his new-found 
 
 song. 
 
 And I arose, and as the torrents pour 
 In April, and the water-courses rush 
 To brim the river that roars out to sea, 
 Desire from all the spirit s heights leaped down. 
 In wild tumultuous thought and speed to find 
 The ways of action and the throng of deeds ; 
 And as, when tempests blow, the winds will 
 break 
 
112 VICTOR 8 BIRD 
 
 On flood and forest, and the gathering blast 
 
 Louder and longer swells one mighty note, 
 
 So, in that hour, one nature-cadenced word 
 
 Struck on my soul, and smote its music forth, 
 
 Wild as a poet s in his stormy youth ; 
 
 And with the night calm fell ; and with the calm 
 
 The bird came silent home. For what was I ? 
 
 A youth distrusted, unallied, obscure, 
 
 In all things poor save that one heavenly gift, 
 
 The winged heart within my bosom hid ; 
 
 And must I loose it to the flashing swords, 
 
 And rifle the sweet lodging of my breast, 
 
 And bid the bird go sing through Italy 
 
 That song of his ? No other deed there was, 
 
 No other way but this to give my life ! 
 
 bella Libertd, I caroled out ; 
 
 The bird took flight, the thronged street stood 
 
 still ; 
 
 O breath that wakes the hundred lyres of song, 
 O trump that fills the thousand fields of fame, 
 O hand of Hope, seed of Memory, 
 Planting the future with the past sublime ! 
 O voice that doth proclaim the glorious peace, 
 O hymn that lifts the jubilee of slaves 
 The birth-cry of the nations, earth s new name, 
 The victory s blazon, Christ s eternal rouse ! 
 Thy faintest whisper quakes beneath the throne, 
 And echoes in the people s mighty heart. 
 And gathers to the shout that gives God hail ! 
 O rushing from the sun-struck mountain-tops, 
 
VICTOR S BIRD 113 
 
 O thunder-zoned, thou banisher of kings, 
 
 sweet thy smile that brings the exile home ! 
 
 " The paean swelled bella Liberia J 
 
 1 sent from hill to hill the singing word ; 
 I cherished with my life the song I sang ; 
 
 I poured it forth, free as the patriot s blood, 
 The all I was ; and, lo, my chambered soul 
 Lived in a thousand nobler lives than mine ; 
 For he who standeth in the whole world s hope 
 Is as a magnet ; he shall draw all hearts 
 To be his shield, all arms to strike his blow. 
 So round my voice the globe of battle grew, 
 The war-clash gan to murmur, and my lips 
 Sang to the onset, and death flashing fell. 
 But evil, that doth cling to all things here, 
 O ercame that triumph. Yet, come all again, 
 I 11 say it o er ; the dearest word of men, 
 The first to seal the poet s virgin vow, 
 The last to wing the patriot s breath to heaven, 
 Is Liberty ; it hath the heart s touch in it, 
 The pang of sacred deaths, the onward reach 
 Of old heroic lives ; oh, richly charged 
 With virtue s spoils and dear-prized honor 
 
 heaped, 
 
 And ventures of such make their precious worth 
 Should purchase heaven, if any ransom s weight 
 Leveled the beam of that great counterpoise 
 With even scales aloft ; but t is not so. 
 In time s dark field must mortal valor fight 
 
114 VICTOR S BIRD 
 
 And with the viewless future cope on earth. 
 Yet the good cause plants virtue in the act ; 
 T is blessed ; and so, and most through liberty, 
 The peopled earth is made the place of souls ; 
 And sooner shall the little life of man 
 Cease to be heaven s prologue than his lips 
 Shall be untreasured of the word of grace 
 That chased them half-divine. Such thoughts 
 
 be mine 
 
 Though captived chained unto the Roman wall, 
 Where none but priests are free ! Oh, them I 
 
 curse, 
 
 From blue-veined Venice to white Naples flush, 
 Where er across the square of sun they creep 
 Through filth of beggars to Christ s open door ! 
 The hearts unransomed by the love of man, 
 The lips that lie for power and pray for gam, 
 The practised brains that plot the baser age, 
 Hunters of liberty the thousand years ! 
 They scourge the nations with the holy Cross, 
 And poison in the wine the Sacred Wounds, 
 And of our great Redemption bondage forge ! 
 Where lingers vengeance ? On, ye sleepless 
 
 hours! 
 
 And Thou, whose long age over them yet rolls 
 Harvest this curse among the quiet spheres ! 
 
 " I know not where they died who loved my song ; 
 
 I cannot suffer ; joy is in my heart, 
 
 Joy of the far-flown bird, the empty breast. 
 
VICTOR S BIRD. 115 
 
 I die, but him they could not cage for death, 
 The bird whom I had sent to fly and sing 
 From snowy Alp to ^Etna s rosy cloud ; 
 He nests within the heart of Italy." 
 
IN THE SQUARE OF ST. PETER S 
 
 How brave with heaven St. Peter s fountain copes, 
 And sheds the rainbow round, and silvers all ! 
 
 Man s heart is such a fountain ; so his hopes 
 The rainbow shed, and through the rainbow 
 fall. 
 
 NEAR 
 
 OH, tender are the gods, and deep their scorn, 
 Who write their wisdom on the child s new 
 heart ! 
 
 The temple that saluted them at morn, 
 Ruined and bare, silent they let depart. 
 
LOVE DELAYED 
 
 THE Star that most is mine once did I see ; 
 No cloud there was ; only the reddened air 
 Bloomed round it where it smiled, all bright 
 and fair ; 
 
 Then most of all love seemed divine to me. 
 
 So pure it shone I could but think of thee ; 
 So rosily enclasped, yet more must dare ; 
 
 " So dost thou shine, my love," nor could for 
 bear, 
 
 " So soft my passion folds thy purity ! " 
 
 But now I see the western star all gold 
 
 Hang o er the high and gloomy Apennine ; 
 And there I read my lot more truly told 
 
 The night, the penance, the far journey mine ! 
 Still be thou bright ! My heart, all dark and 
 
 cold, 
 
 Suffers no light save what from thee doth shine. 
 133 
 
TAORMINA 
 
 GARDENS of olive, gardens of almond, gardens of 
 
 lemon, down to the shore, 
 Terrace on terrace, lost in the hollow ravines 
 
 where the stony torrents pour ; 
 Spurs of the mountain-side thrusting above them 
 
 rocky capes in the quiet air, 
 Silvery-green with thorned vegetation, sprawling 
 
 lobes of the prickly pear ; 
 
 High up, the eagle-nest, small Mola s ruin, cling 
 ing and hanging over the fall ; 
 Nobly the lofty, castle-cragged hill-top, famed 
 
 Taormina, looketh o er all. 
 Southward the purple Mediterranean rounds the 
 
 far shimmering, long-fingered capes : 
 Twenty sea-leagues has the light traveled ere 
 
 out of azure yon headland it shapes ; 
 Purple the distance, deep indigo under, save by 
 
 the beach the emerald floor, 
 Save just below where, ever emerging, lakes of 
 
 mother-of-pearl drift o er ; 
 Deep purple northward, over the Straits, as far 
 
 as the long Calabrian blue ; 
 Front more majestic of sea-mountains nowhere is 
 
 there uplifted the whole earth through. 
 
TAORMINA 119 
 
 Seaward so vast the prospect envelops one half 
 
 the broad world, wave and sky ; 
 Landward the ribbon of hill-slanted orchards 
 
 blossoming down from the mountains 
 
 high; 
 Beautiful, mighty; yet ever I leave it, lose 
 
 and forget it in yon awful clime, 
 ./Etna, out of the sea-floor raising slowly its long- 
 skied ridge sublime ; 
 Heavily snow-capped, girdled with forests, ^Etna, 
 
 the bosom of frost and fire, 
 Roughened by lava-floods, bossed and sculptured, 
 
 massive, immense, alone, entire ; 
 Clear are the hundred white-coped craters sunk 
 
 in the wrinkled winter there ; 
 Smoke from the summit cloud-like trailing lessens 
 
 and swells and drags on the air ; 
 ./Etna, the snow, the fire, the forest, lightning 
 
 and flood and ashy gale ; 
 Terrible out of thy caverns flowing, the burning 
 
 heaven, the dark hot hail ! 
 JEina,, the garden-sweet mother of vineyard, 
 
 corn-tilth, and fruits that hang from the 
 
 sky; 
 Bee-pastured ^iEtna ; it charms me, it holds me, 
 
 it fills me, than life is it more nigh ; 
 Till into darkness withdrawn, dense darkness ; 
 
 and far below from the deep-set shore 
 Glimmers the long white surf, and uprises the 
 
 ancient far-resounding roar. 
 
IN the shadow of JEtna, sitting why comes it 
 back to me 
 
 The cry of dying boyhood beside the northern 
 sea, 
 
 On the hill where the great horizons of life be 
 gan for me ? 
 
 I. 
 
 God dreamt a dream ere the morning woke 
 
 Or ever the stars sang out ; 
 The glory, although it never broke, 
 Filled heaven with a golden shout. 
 
 And when in the North there s a quiver 
 
 and beam 
 
 Of mystical lights that heavenward stream, 
 The heart of a boy will dream God s dream. 
 
 II. 
 
 O Noras, who sit by the pale sea s capes, 
 
 Loosen the wonderful shine ! 
 The glamour of God hath a thousand shapes, 
 
 And every one divine. 
 
IN THE SHADOW OF JSTNA 121 
 
 Dartle and listen o er the blue height ; 
 Drift and shimmer, flight on flight ; 
 The heart of a boy is God s delight. 
 
 in. 
 Oh, clamber and weave with the Milky Way 
 
 The Rose in the East that sprang, 
 From star to star, with blossom and spray, 
 On heaven s gates to hang ! 
 
 O Vine of the Morning, cling and climb, 
 Till the stars like birds in your branches 
 
 chime ! 
 The heart of a boy is God s springtime. 
 
 IV. 
 
 T is Dawn that shadows the glowing roof ! 
 
 T is Light with the Dragon strives ! 
 Ah, Night s black warp with the rainbow-woof 
 The shuttle of Destiny drives. 
 
 They swerve and falter, gather and fly, 
 Wane, and shiver, and slip from the sky 
 O Noras, is the heart of a boy God s lie ? 
 
 v. 
 Childless Ones, would your blind charms 
 
 Might seal our darling s eyes ! 
 Dead, with the dead Dawn in his arms, 
 
 In the pale north Light lies. 
 
122 IN THE SHADOW OF 
 
 Glimmer and glint, fallen fire ! 
 
 The lights of heaven like ghosts expire ; 
 
 The heart of a boy is God s desire. 
 
 VI. 
 
 O dream God dreamt ere the morning woke 
 
 Or ever the stars sang out ; 
 O glory diviner than ever broke, 
 Of the false, false dawn the shout ! 
 
 False dawn, false dawn, false dawn 
 
 Alas, when God shall wake ! 
 False dawn, false dawn, false dawn 
 
 Alas, our young mistake ! 
 False dawn, false dawn, false dawn 
 O heart betrayed, break, break ! 
 
BE God s the Hope ! He built the azure frame ; 
 He sphered its borders with the walls of flame ; 
 T is His, whose hands have made it, glory or 
 shame. 
 
 Be God s the Hope ! 
 
 n. 
 
 The Serpent girds the round of earth and sea ; 
 The Serpent pastures on the precious tree ; 
 The Serpent, Lord of Paradise is he. 
 
 Be God s the Hope ! 
 
 in. 
 
 I thought to slay him. I am vanquished. 
 Heaven needed not my stroke, and I am sped. 
 Yea, God, thou livest, though thy poor friend be 
 dead. 
 
 Be God s the Hope ! 
 
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