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 ! 000 681 347 1