Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 fHE ] IBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CAL IFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES

 
 UNDER THE WILLOWS 
 
 OTHER POEMS.
 
 UNDER THE WILLOWS 
 
 OTHER POEMS. 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1869.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 R. CLAV, SON?, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, 
 BREAD STREET HILL.
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. 
 
 AGRO DOLCE. 
 
 wind is roistering out of doors, 
 My windows shake and my chimney roars ; 
 My Elmwood chimneys seem crooning to me, 
 As of old, in their moody, minor key, 
 And out of the past the hoarse wind blows, 
 As I sit in my arm-chair, and toast my toes. 
 
 " Ho ! ho ! nine-and-forty," they seem to sing, 
 
 " We saw you a little toddling thing, 
 
 We knew you child and youth and man, 
 
 A wonderful fellow to dream and plan, 
 
 With a great thing always to come, who knows ? 
 
 Well, well ! 'tis some comfort to toast one's toes. 
 
 JLUOJLO
 
 vi TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. 
 
 " How many times have you sat at gaze 
 Till the mouldering fire forgot to blaze, 
 Shaping among the whimsical coals 
 Fancies and figures and shining goals ! 
 What matters the ashes that cover those? 
 While hickory lasts you can toast your toes. 
 
 " O dream-ship-builder ! where are they all, 
 Your grand three-deckers, deep-chested and tall, 
 That should crush the waves under canvas piles, 
 And anchor at last by the Fortunate Isles ? 
 There's gray in your beard, the years turn foes, 
 While you muse in your arm-chair and toast your 
 toes." 
 
 I sit and dream that I hear, as of yore, 
 My Elmwood chimneys' deep-throated roar; 
 If much be gone, there is much remains; 
 By the embers of loss I count my gains,
 
 TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. vii 
 
 You and yours with the best, till the old hope 
 
 glows 
 In the fanciful flame, as I toast my toes. 
 
 Instead of a fleet of broad-browed ships, 
 To send a child's armada of chips ! 
 Instead of the great guns, tier on tier, 
 A freight of pebbles and grass-blades sere ! 
 "Well, maybe more love with the less gift goes,'" 
 I growl, as, half moody, I toast my toes.
 
 [%* No collection of the author's poems has been made since 
 1848, and some of those in this volume date back even farther 
 than that. All but two of the shortest have been printed before, 
 either wholly or in part. As the greater number, however, were 
 published more than fifteen years ago, they will have, perhaps, 
 something of novelty to most readers. A few pieces, more 
 strictly comic, have been omitted, as out of keeping ; and "Fitz 
 Adam's Story," which some good friends will miss, is also left 
 to stand over, because it belongs to a connected series, which, it 
 is hoped, may be completed if the days should be propitious.]
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 UNDER THE WILLOWS I 
 
 DARA 
 
 THE FIRST SNOW-FALL 
 
 THE SINGING LEAVES 
 
 SEA-WEED 
 
 THE FINDING OF THE LYRE 
 
 NEW-YEAR'S EVE. 1850 41 
 
 FOR AN AUTOGRAPH 43 
 
 AL FRESCO 45 
 
 MASACCIO 51 
 
 WITHOUT AND WITHIN 54 
 
 GODMINSTER CHIMES 57 
 
 THE PARTING OF THE WAYS . 6 1 
 
 ALADDIN 68 
 
 AN INVITATION 69 
 
 THE NOMADES 77 
 
 SELF-STUDY 8l
 
 x CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE . . 83 
 
 THE WIND-HARP 105 
 
 AUF WIEDERSEHEN ! IDS 
 
 PALINODE 1 10 
 
 AFTER THE BURIAL 112 
 
 THE DEAD HOUSE Il6 
 
 A MOOD I2O 
 
 THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND k . . 123 
 
 MAHMOOD THE IMAGE-BREAKER 140 
 
 1NVITA MINERVA 143 
 
 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 146 
 
 YUSSOUF 159 
 
 THE DARKENED MIND l6l 
 
 WHAT RABBI JEHOSHA SAID 163 
 
 ALL-SAINTS 165 
 
 A WINTER-EVENING HYMN TO MY FIRE 167 
 
 FANCY'S CASUISTRY 178 
 
 TO MR. JOHN BARTLETT 182 
 
 ODE TO HAPPINESS 185 
 
 VILLA FRANCA 192 
 
 THE MINER 197 
 
 GOLD EGG : A DREAM-FANTASY 2OO 
 
 A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO A FRIEND 2IO 
 
 AN EMBER PICTURE 221 
 
 TO H. W. L 225 
 
 THE NIGHTINGALE IX THE STUDY 228
 
 CONTENTS. xj 
 
 PAGE 
 
 IN THE TWILIGHT 233 
 
 THE FOOT-PATH 237 
 
 POEMS OF THE WAR 
 
 THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD 24$ 
 
 TWO SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF BLONDEL . . . 252 
 
 MEMORISE POSITUM 259 
 
 ON BOARD THE '76 265 
 
 ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION . 270 
 
 L'ENVOI. TO THE MUSE 295
 
 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 
 
 PRANK-HEARTED hostess of the field and 
 
 wood, 
 
 Gypsy, whose roof is every spreading tree, 
 June is the pearl of our New England year. 
 Still a surprisal, though expected long, 
 Her coming startles. Long she lies in wait, 
 Makes many a feint, peeps forth, draws coyly back, 
 Then, from some southern ambush in the sky, 
 With one great gush of blossom storms the world. 
 A week ago the sparrow was divine; 
 The bluebird, shifting his light load of song 
 From post to post along the cheerless fence 
 Was as a rhymer ere the poet come ; 
 
 n 
 
 B
 
 2 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 
 
 But now, O rapture ! sunshine winged and voiced, 
 Pipe blown through by the warm wild breath of the 
 
 West 
 
 Shepherding his soft droves of fleecy cloud, 
 Gladness of woods, skies, waters, all in one, 
 The bobolink has come, and, like the soul 
 Of the sweet season vocal in a bird, 
 Gurgles in ecstasy we know not what 
 Save June ! Dear June I Now God be praised for 
 
 June ! 
 
 May is a pious fraud of the almanac, 
 
 A ghastly parody of real Spring 
 
 Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern 
 
 wind ; 
 
 Or if, o'er-confident, she trust the date, 
 And, with her handful of anemones, 
 Herself as shivery, steal into the sun, 
 The season need but turn his hourglass round, 
 And Winter suddenly, like crazy Lear,
 
 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 3 
 
 Reels back, and brings the dead May in his arms, 
 Her budding breasts and wan dislustered front 
 With frosty streaks and drifts of his white beard 
 All overblown. Then, warmly walled with books, 
 While my wood-fire supplies the sun's defect, 
 Whispering old forest-sagas in its dreams, 
 I take my May down from the happy shelf 
 Where perch the world's rare song-birds in a row, 
 Waiting my choice to open with full breast, 
 And beg an alms of spring-time, ne'er denied 
 Indoors by vernal Chaucer, whose fresh woods 
 Throb thick with merle and mavis all the year. 
 
 July breathes hot, sallows the crispy fields, 
 Curls up the wan leaves of the lilac-hedge, 
 And every eve cheats us with show of clouds 
 That braze the horizon's western rim, or hang 
 Motionless, with heaped canvas drooping idly, 
 Like a dim fleet by starving men besieged, 
 Conjectured half, and half descried afar, 
 B 2
 
 4 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 
 
 Helpless of wind, and seeming to slip back 
 Adown the smooth curve of the oily sea. 
 
 But June is full of invitations sweet, 
 
 Forth from the chimney's yawn and thrice-read 
 
 tomes 
 
 To leisurely delights and sauntering thoughts 
 That brook no ceiling narrower than the blue. 
 The cherry, drest for bridal, at my pane 
 Brushes, then listens, Will he come ? The bee, 
 All dusty as a miller, takes his toll 
 Of powdery gold, and grumbles. What a day 
 To sun me and do nothing ! Nay, I think 
 Merely to bask and ripen is sometimes 
 The student's wiser business ; the brain 
 That forages all climes to line its cells, 
 Ranging both worlds on lightest wings of wish, 
 Will not distil the juices it has sucked 
 To the sweet substance of pellucid thought, 
 Except for him who hath the secret learned
 
 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 
 
 To mix his blood with sunshine, and to take 
 The winds into his pulses. Hush ! 'Tis he ! 
 My oriole, my glance of summer fire, 
 Is come at last, and, ever on the watch, 
 Twitches the pack-thread I had lightly wound 
 About the bough to help his housekeeping, 
 Twitches and scouts by turns, blessing his luck,. 
 Yet fearing me who laid it in his way, 
 Nor, more than wiser we in our affairs, 
 Divines the providence that hides and helps. 
 Heave, ho ! Heave, ho 1 he whistles as the twine 
 Slackens its hold; once more, now } and a flash 
 Lightens across the sunlight to the elm 
 Where his mate dangles at her cup of felt. 
 Nor all his booty is the thread ; he trails 
 My loosened thought with it along the air, 
 And I must follow, would I ever find 
 The inward rhyme to all this wealth of life. 
 
 I care not how men trace their ancestry,
 
 6 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 
 
 To ape or Adam ; let them please their whim ; 
 But I in June am midway to believe 
 A tree among my far progenitors, 
 Such sympathy is mine with all the race, 
 Such mutual recognition vaguely sweet 
 There is between us. Surely there are times 
 When they consent to own me of their kin, 
 And condescend to me, and call me cousin, 
 Murmuring faint lullabies of eldest time, 
 Forgotten, and yet dumbly felt with thrills 
 Moving the lips, though fruitless of the words. 
 And I have many a life-long leafy friend, 
 Never estranged nor careful of my soul, 
 That knows I hate the axe, and welcomes me 
 Within his tent as if I were a bird, 
 Or other free companion of the earth, 
 Yet undegenerate to the shifts of men. 
 
 Among them one, an ancient willow, spreads 
 Eight balanced limbs, springing at once all round
 
 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 5 
 
 His deep-ridged trunk with upward slant diverse, 
 
 In outline like enormous beaker, fit 
 
 For hand of Jotun, where 'mid snow and mist 
 
 He holds unwieldy revel. This tree, spared, 
 
 I know not by what grace, for in the blood 
 
 Of our New World subduers lingers yet 
 
 Hereditary feud with trees, they being 
 
 (They and the red-man most) our fathers' foes, 
 
 Is one of six, a willow Pleiades, 
 
 The seventh fallen, that lean along the brink 
 
 Where the steep upland dips into the marsh, 
 
 Their roots, like molten metal cooled in flowing, 
 
 Stiffened in coils and runnels down the bank. 
 
 The friend of all the winds, wide-armed he towers 
 
 And glints his steely aglets in the sun, 
 
 Or whitens fitfully with sudden bloom 
 
 Of leaves breeze-lifted, much as when a shoal 
 
 Of devious minnows wheel from where a pike 
 
 Lurks balanced 'neath the lily pads, and whirl 
 
 A rood of silver bellies to the day.
 
 8 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 
 
 Alas ! no acorn from the British oak, 
 
 'Neath which slim fairies tripping wrought those 
 
 rings 
 
 Of greenest emerald, wherewith fireside life 
 Did with the invisible spirit of Nature wed, 
 Was ever planted here ! No darnel fancy 
 Might choke one useful blade in Puritan fields ; 
 With horn and hoof the good old Devil came, 
 The witch's broomstick was not contraband, 
 But all that superstition had of fair, 
 Or piety of native sweet, was doomed. 
 And if there be who nurse unholy faiths, 
 Fearing their god as if he were a wolf 
 That snuffed round every home and was not seen, 
 There should be some to watch and keep alive 
 All beautiful beliefs. And such was that, 
 By solitary shepherd first surmised 
 Under Thessalian oaks, loved by some maid 
 Of royal stirp, that silent came and vanished, 
 As near her nest the hermit thrush, nor dared
 
 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 9 
 
 Confess a mortal name, that faith which gave 
 
 A Hamadryad to each tree ; and I 
 
 Will hold it true that in this willow dwells 
 
 The open-handed spirit, frank and blithe, 
 
 Of ancient Hospitality, long since, 
 
 With ceremonious thrift, bowed out of doors. 
 
 In June 'tis good to lie beneath a tree 
 While the blithe season comforts every sense, 
 Steeps all the brain in rest, and heals the heart, 
 Brimming it o'er with sweetness unawares, 
 Fragrant and silent as that rosy snow 
 Wherewith the pitying apple-tree fills up 
 And tenderly lines some last-year robin's nest. 
 There muse I of old times, old hopes, old friends, 
 Old friends ! The writing of those words has borne 
 My fancy backward to the gracious past, 
 The generous past, when all was possible, 
 For all was then untried; the years between 
 Have taught some sweet, some bitter lessons, none
 
 io UNDER THE WILLOWS. 
 
 Wiser than this, to spend in all things else, 
 But of old friends to be most miserly. 
 Each year to ancient friendships adds a ring, 
 As to an oak, and precious more and more, 
 Without deservingness, or help of ours, 
 They grow, and, silent, wider spread, each year, 
 Their unbought ring of shelter or of shade. 
 Sacred to me the lichens on the bark, 
 Which Nature's milliners would scrape away; 
 Most dear and sacred every withered limb ! 
 'Tis good to set them early, for our faith 
 Pines as we age, and, after wrinkles come, 
 Few plant, but water dead ones with vain tears. 
 
 This willow is as old to me as life ; 
 
 And under it full often have I stretched, 
 
 Feeling the warm earth like a thing alive, 
 
 And gathering virtue in at every pore 
 
 Till it possessed me wholly, and thought ceased, 
 
 Or was transfused in something to which thought
 
 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 
 
 Is coarse and dull of sense. Myself was lost, 
 
 Gone from me like an ache, and what remained 
 
 Become a part of the universal joy. 
 
 My soul went forth, and, mingling with the tree, 
 
 Danced in the leaves; or, floating in the cloud, 
 
 Saw its white double in the stream below; 
 
 Or else, sublimed to purer ecstasy, 
 
 Dilated in the broad blue over all. 
 
 I was the wind that dapples the lush grass, 
 
 The tide that crept with coolness to its roots, 
 
 The thin-winged swallow skating on the air ; 
 
 The life that gladdened everything was mine. 
 
 Was I then truly all that I beheld? 
 
 Or is this stream of being but a glass 
 
 Where the mind sees its visionary self, 
 
 As, when the kingfisher flits o'er his bay, 
 
 Across the river's hollow heaven below 
 
 His picture flits, another, yet the same? 
 
 But suddenly the sound of human voice 
 
 Or footfall, like the drop a chemist pours,
 
 12 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 
 
 Doth in opacous cloud precipitate 
 
 The consciousness that seemed but now dissolved 
 
 Into an essence rarer than its own, 
 
 And I am narrowed to myself once more. 
 
 For here not long is solitude secure, 
 
 Nor Fantasy left vacant to her spell. 
 
 Here, sometimes, in this paradise of shade, 
 
 Rippled with western winds, the dusty Tramp, 
 
 Seeing the treeless causey burn beyond, 
 
 Halts to unroll his bundle of strange food 
 
 And munch an unearned meal. I cannot help 
 
 Liking this creature, lavish Summer's bedesman, 
 
 Who from the almshouse steals when nights grow 
 
 warm, 
 
 . Himself his large estate and only charge, 
 To be the guest of haystack or of hedge, 
 Nobly superior to the household gear 
 That forfeits us our privilege of nature. 
 I bait him with my matchbox and my pouch, 
 Nor grudge the uncostly sympathy of smoke,
 
 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 13 
 
 His equal now, divinely unemployed. 
 
 Some smack of Robin Hood is in the man, 
 
 Some secret league with wild wood-wandering things : 
 
 He is our ragged Duke, our barefoot Earl, 
 
 By right of birth exonerate from toil, 
 
 Who levies rent from us his tenants all, 
 
 And serves the state by merely being. Here 
 
 The Scissors-grinder, pausing, doffs his hat, 
 
 And lets the kind breeze, with its delicate fan, 
 
 Winnow the heat from out his dank, gray hair, 
 
 A grimy Ulysses, a much-wandered man, 
 
 Whose feet are known to all the populous ways, 
 
 And many men and manners he hath seen, 
 
 Not without fruit of solitary thought. 
 
 He, as the habit is of lonely men, 
 
 Unused to try the temper of their mind 
 
 In fence with others, positive and shy, 
 
 Yet knows to put an edge upon his speech, 
 
 Pithily Saxon in unwilling talk. 
 
 Him I entrap with my long-suffering knife,
 
 i 4 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 
 
 And, while its poor blade hums away in sparks, 
 Sharpen my wit upon his gritty mind, 
 In motion set obsequious to his wheel, 
 And in its quality not much unlike. 
 
 Nor wants my tree more punctual visitors. 
 The children, they who are the only rich, 
 Creating for the moment, and possessing 
 Whate'er they choose to feign, for still with them 
 Kind Fancy plays the fairy godmother, 
 Strewing their lives with cheap material 
 For winged horses and Aladdin's lamps, 
 Pure elfin-gold, by manhood's touch profane 
 To dead leaves disenchanted, long ago 
 Between the branches of the tree fixed seats, 
 Making an o'erturned box their table. Oft 
 The shrilling girls sit here between school hours 
 And play at What's my thought like ? while the boys, 
 With whom the age chivalric ever bides 
 Pricked on by knightly spur of female eyes,
 
 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 15 
 
 Climb high to swing and shout on perilous boughs, 
 
 Or, from the willow's armoury equipped 
 
 With musket dumb, green banner, edgeless sword, 
 
 Make good the rampart of their tree-redoubt 
 
 'Gainst eager British storming from below, 
 
 And keep alive the tale of Bunker's Hill. 
 
 Here, too, the men that mend our village ways, 
 
 Vexing Macadam's ghost with pounded slate, 
 
 Their nooning take : much noisy talk they spend 
 
 On horses and their ills ; and, as John Bull 
 
 Tells of Lord This or That, who was his friend, 
 
 So these make boast of intimacies long 
 
 With famous teams, and add large estimates, 
 
 By competition swelled from mouth to mouth, 
 
 Of how much they could draw, till one, ill pleased 
 
 To have his legend overbid, retorts : 
 
 " You take and stretch truck-horses in a string 
 
 From here to Long Wharf end, one thing I know, 
 
 Not heavy neither, they could never draw, 
 
 Ensign's long bow ! " Then laughter loud and long.
 
 1 6 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 
 
 So they in their leaf-shadowed microcosm 
 Image the larger world ; for wheresoe'er 
 Ten men are gathered, the observant eye 
 Will find mankind in little, as the stars 
 Glide up and set, and all the heavens revolve 
 In the small welkin of a drop of dew. 
 
 I love to enter pleasure by a postern, 
 Not the broad popular gate that gulps the mob ; 
 To find my theatres in roadside nooks, 
 Where men are actors, and suspect it not; 
 Where Nature all unconscious works her will, 
 And every passion moves with human gait, 
 Unhampered by the buskin or the train. 
 Hating the crowd, where we gregarious men 
 Lead lonely lives, I love society, 
 Nor seldom find the best with simple souls 
 Unswerved by culture from their native bent, 
 The ground we meet on being primal man 
 And nearer the deep bases of our lives
 
 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 
 
 But. O, half heavenly, earthly half, my soul, 
 Canst thou from those late ecstasies descend, 
 Thy lips still wet with the miraculous wine 
 That transubstantiates all thy baser stuff 
 To such divinity that soul and sense, 
 Once more commingled in their source, are lost,- 
 Canst thou descend to quench a vulgar thirst 
 With the mere dregs and rinsings of the world? 
 Well, if my nature find her pleasure so, 
 I am content, nor need to blush ; I take 
 My little gift of being clean from God, 
 Not haggling for a better, holding it 
 Good as was ever any in the world, 
 My days as good and full of miracle. 
 I pluck my nutriment from any bush, 
 Finding out poison as the first men did 
 By tasting and then suffering, if I must. 
 Sometimes my bush burns, and sometimes it is 
 A leafless wilding shivering by the wall; 
 But I have known when winter barberries 
 c
 
 1 8 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 
 
 Pricked the effeminate palate with surprise 
 
 Of savour whose mere harshness seemed divine. 
 
 O, benediction of the higher mood 
 And human kindness of the lower ! for both 
 I will be grateful while I live, nor question 
 The wisdom that hath made us what we are, 
 With such large range as from the alehouse bench 
 Can reach the stars and be with both at home. 
 They tell us we have fallen on prosy days, 
 Condemned to glean the leavings of earth's feast 
 Where gods and heroes took delight of old; 
 But though our lives, moving in one dull round 
 Of repetition infinite, become 
 Stale as a newspaper once read, and though 
 History herself, seen in her workshop, seem 
 To have lost the art that dyed those glorious panes, 
 Rich with memorial shapes of saint and sage, 
 That pave with splendour the Past's dusky aisles, 
 Panes that enchant the light of common day
 
 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 19 
 
 With colours costly as the blood of kings, 
 Until it edge our thought with hues ideal, 
 Yet while the world is left, while nature lasts, 
 And man the best of nature, there shall be 
 Somewhere contentment for these human hearts, 
 Some freshness, some unused material 
 For wonder and for song. I lose myself 
 In other ways where solemn guide-posts say, 
 This way to Knowledge, This way to Repose, 
 But here, here only, I am ne'er betrayed, 
 For every by-path leads me to my love. 
 
 God's passionless reformers, influences 
 That purify and heal and are not seen, 
 Shall man say whence your virtue is, or how 
 Ye make medicinal the wayside weed? 
 I know that sunshine, through whatever rift, 
 How shaped it matters not, upon my walls 
 Paints discs as perfect-rounded as its source, 
 And, like its antitype, the ray divine, 
 c 2
 
 20 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 
 
 However finding entrance, perfect still, 
 Repeats the image unimpaired of God. 
 
 We, who by shipwreck only find the shores 
 
 Of divine wisdom, can but kneel at first ; 
 
 Can but exult to feel beneath our feet, 
 
 That long stretched vainly down the yielding deeps, 
 
 The shock and sustenance of solid earth ; 
 
 Inland afar we see what temples gleam 
 
 Through immemorial stems of sacred groves, 
 
 And we conjecture shining shapes therein ; 
 
 Yet for a space we love to wonder here 
 
 Among the shells and sea-weed of the beach. 
 
 So mused I once within my willow-tent 
 One brave June morning, when the bluff north-west, 
 Thrusting aside a dank and snuffling day 
 That made us bitter at our neighbours' sins, 
 Brimmed the great cup of heaven with sparkling 
 cheer
 
 UNDER THE WILLOWS. 21 
 
 And roared a lusty stave; the sliding Charles, 
 Blue toward the west, and bluer and more blue, 
 Living and lustrous as a woman's eyes 
 Look once and look no more, with southward curve 
 Ran crinkling sunniness, like Helen's hair 
 Glimpsed in Elysium, insubstantial gold ; 
 From blossom-clouded orchards, far away 
 The bobolink tinkled : the deep meadows flowed 
 With multitudinous pulse of light and shade 
 Against the bases of the southern hills, 
 While here and there a drowsy island rick 
 Slept and its shadow slept; the wooden bridge 
 Thundered, and then was silent ; on the roofs 
 The sun-warped shingles rippled with the heat ; 
 Summer on field and hill, in heart and brain, 
 All life washed clean in this high tide of June.
 
 D AR A. 
 
 Persia's sceptre trembled in a hand 
 Wilted with harem-heats, and all the land 
 Was hovered over by those vulture ills 
 That snuff decaying empire from afar, 
 Then, with a nature balanced as a star, 
 Dara arose a shepherd of the hills. 
 
 He who had governed fleecy subjects well 
 
 Made his own village by the selfsame spell 
 
 Secure and quiet as a guarded fold ; 
 
 Then, gathering strength by slow and wise degrees, 
 
 Under his sway, to neighbour villages 
 
 Order returned, and faith, and justice old.
 
 DARA. 23 
 
 Now when it fortuned that a king more wise 
 Endued the realm with brain and hands and eyes, 
 He sought on every side men brave and just; 
 And having heard our mountain shepherd's praise. 
 How he refilled the mould of elder days, 
 To Dara gave a satrapy in trust. 
 
 So Dara shepherded a province wide, 
 
 Nor in his viceroy's sceptre took more pride 
 
 Than in his crook before ; but envy finds 
 
 
 
 More food in cities than on mountains bare ; 
 And the frank sun of natures clear and rare 
 Breeds poisonous fogs in low and marish minds. 
 
 Soon it was hissed into the royal ear, 
 That, though wise Dara's province, year by year, 
 Like a great sponge, sucked wealth and plenty up, 
 Yet, when he squeezed it at the king's behest, 
 Some yellow drops, more rich than all the rest, 
 Went to the filling of his private cup.
 
 24 DARA. 
 
 For proof, they said, that, wheresoe'er he went,* 
 A chest, beneath whose weight the camel bent, 
 Went with him ; and no mortal eye had seen 
 What was therein, save only Dara's own ; 
 But, when 'twas opened, all his tent was known 
 To glow and light with heaped jewels' sheen. 
 
 The King set forth for Dara's province straight ; 
 
 There, as was fit, outside the city's gate, 
 
 The viceroy met him with a stately train, 
 
 And there, with archers circled, close at hand, 
 
 A camel with the chest was seen to stand : 
 
 The King's brow reddened, for the guilt was plain. 
 
 " Open me here," he cried, " this treasure-chest ! " 
 'Twas done ; and only a worn shepherd's vest 
 Was found therein. Some blushed and hung the head; 
 Not Dara; open as the sky's blue roof 
 He stood, and "O my lord, behold the proof 
 That I was faithful to my trust," he said.
 
 .DARA. 25 
 
 " To govern men, lo all the spell I had ! 
 My soul in these rude vestments ever clad 
 Still to the unstained past kept true and leal, 
 Still on these plains could breathe her mountain air, 
 And fortune's heaviest gifts serenely bear, 
 Which bend men from their truth and make them 
 reel. 
 
 " For ruling wisely I should have small skill, 
 Were I not lord of simple Dara still ; 
 That sceptre kept, I could not lose my way." 
 Strange dew in royal eyes grew round and bright, 
 And strained the throbbing lids ; before 'twas night 
 Two added provinces blest Dara's sway.
 
 THE FIRST SNOW-FALL. 
 
 'T'HE snow had begun in the gloaming, 
 
 And busily all the night 
 Had been heaping field and highway 
 With a silence deep and white. 
 
 Every pine and fir and hemlock 
 Wore ermine too dear for an earl, 
 
 And the poorest twig on the elm-tree 
 Was ridged inch deep with pearl. 
 
 From sheds new-roofed with Carrara 
 Came Chanticleer's muffled crow, 
 
 The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down, 
 And still fluttered down the snow.
 
 THE FIRST SNOW-FALL. 27 
 
 I stood and watched by the window 
 
 The noiseless work of the sky, 
 And the sudden flurries of snow-birds, 
 
 Like brown leaves whirling by. 
 
 I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn 
 
 Where a little headstone stood ; 
 How the flakes were folding it gently, 
 
 As did robins the babes in the wood. 
 
 Up spoke our own little Mabel, 
 
 Saying, "Father, who makes it snow?" 
 
 And I told of the good All-father 
 Who cares for us here below. 
 
 Again I looked at the snow-fall, 
 
 And thought of the leaden sky 
 That arched o'er our first great sorrow, 
 
 When that mound was heaped so high.
 
 28 THE FIRST SNOW-FALL. 
 
 I remembered the gradual patience 
 That fell from that cloud like snow, 
 
 Flake by flake, healing and hiding 
 The scar of our deep-plunged woe. 
 
 And again to the child I whispered, 
 
 "The snow that husheth all, 
 Darling, the merciful Father 
 
 Alone can make it fall ! " 
 
 Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her; 
 
 And she, kissing back, could not know 
 That my kiss was given to her sister, 
 
 Folded close under deepening snow.
 
 THE SINGING LEAVES. 
 
 A BALLAD. 
 
 I. 
 
 " "\ 1 7"HAT fairings will ye that I bring?" 
 Said the King to his daughters three; 
 "For I to Vanity Fair am boun, 
 Now say, what shall they be?" 
 
 Then up and spake the eldest daughter, 
 
 That lady tall and grand : 
 "O, bring me pearls and diamonds great, 
 
 And gold rings for my hand."
 
 30 THE SINGING LEA VES. 
 
 Thereafter spake the second daughter, 
 That was both white and red : 
 
 " For me bring silks that will stand alone, 
 And a gold comb for my head." 
 
 Then came the turn of the least daughter, 
 That was whiter than thistle-down, 
 
 And among the gold of her blithesome hair 
 Dim shone the golden crown. 
 
 "There came a bird this morning 
 And sang 'neath my bower eaves, 
 
 Till I dreamed, as his music made me, 
 ' Ask thou for the Singing Leaves.'" 
 
 Then the brow of the King swelled crimson 
 
 With a flush of angry scorn : 
 " Well have ye spoken, my two eldest, 
 
 And chosen as ye were born ;
 
 THE SINGING LEA VES. 3 1 
 
 " But she like a thing of peasant race, 
 That is happy binding the sheaves ; " 
 
 Then he saw her dead mother in -her face, 
 And said, " Thou shalt have thy leaves." 
 
 II. 
 
 He mounted and rode three days and nights 
 
 Till he came to Vanity Fair, 
 And 'twas easy to buy the gems and the silk, 
 
 But no Singing Leaves were there. 
 
 Then deep in the greenwood rode he, 
 
 And asked of every tree, 
 " O, if you have ever a Singing Leaf, 
 
 I pray you to give it me ! "
 
 32 THE SINGING LEA VES. 
 
 But the trees all kept their counsel, 
 And never a word said they, 
 
 Only there sighed from the pine-tops 
 A music of sea far away. 
 
 Only the pattering aspen 
 
 Made a sound of growing rain, 
 
 That fell ever faster and faster, 
 Then faltered to silence again. 
 
 " O, where shall I find a little foot-page 
 That would win both hose and shoon, 
 
 And will bring to me the Singing Leaves 
 If they grow under the moon?" 
 
 Then lightly turned him Walter the page, 
 
 By the stirrup as he ran : 
 "Now pledge ye me the truesome word 
 
 Of a king and gentleman,
 
 THE SINGING LEA VES. 33 
 
 " That you will give me the first, first thing 
 
 You meet at your castle-gate, 
 And the Princess shall get the Singing Leaves, 
 
 Or mine be a traitor's fate." 
 
 The King's head dropt upon his breast 
 
 A moment, as it might be; 
 'Twill be my dog, he thought, and said, 
 
 " My faith I plight to thee." 
 
 Then Walter took from next his heart 
 
 A packet small and thin, 
 " Now give you this to the Princess Anne, 
 
 The Singing Leaves are therein."
 
 34 THE SING TNG LEA VES. 
 
 III. 
 
 As the King rode in at his castle gate, 
 
 A maiden to meet him ran, 
 And " Welcome, father ! " she laughed and cried 
 
 Together, the Princess Anne. 
 
 ' Lo, here the Singing Leaves," quoth he, 
 " And woe, but they cost me dear ! " 
 
 She took the packet, and the smile 
 Deepened down beneath the tear. 
 
 It deepened down till it reached her heart, 
 
 And then gushed up again, 
 And lighted her tears as the sudden sun 
 
 Transfigures the summer rain.
 
 THE SINGING LEA VES. 35 
 
 And the first Leaf, when it was opened, 
 
 Sang : "I am Walter the page, 
 And the songs I sing 'neath thy window 
 
 Are my only heritage." 
 
 And the second Leaf sang : " But in the land 
 
 That is neither on earth or sea, 
 My lute and I are lords of more 
 
 Than thrice this kingdom's fee." 
 
 And the third Leaf sang : " Be mine ! Be mine ! " 
 
 And ever it sang, " Be mine ! " 
 Then sweeter it sang and ever sweeter, 
 
 And said, " I am thine, thine, thine ! " 
 
 At the first Leaf she grew pale enough, 
 
 At the second she turned aside, 
 At the third, 't was as if a lily flushed 
 
 With a rose's red heart's tide. 
 
 D 2
 
 THE SINGING LEA VES. 
 
 " Good counsel gave the bird," said she, 
 
 " I have my hope thrice o'er, 
 For they sing to my very heart," she said, 
 
 "And it sings to them evermore." 
 
 She brought to him her beauty and truth, 
 
 But and broad earldoms three, 
 And he made her queen of the broader lands 
 
 He held of his lute in fee.
 
 SEA-WEED. 
 
 "XJOT always unimpeded can I pray, 
 
 Nor, pitying saint, thine intercession claim ; 
 Too closely clings the burden of the day, 
 And all the mint and anise that I pay 
 But swells my debt and deepens my self-blame. 
 
 Shall I less patience have than Thou, who know 
 That Thou revisit'st all who wait for Thee, 
 Nor only fill'st the unsounded deeps below, 
 But dost refresh with punctual overflow 
 The rifts where unregarded mosses be? 
 
 The drooping sea-weed hears, in night abyssed, 
 Far and more far the wave's receding shocks,
 
 38 SEA- WEED. 
 
 Nor doubts, for all the darkness and the mist, 
 That the pale shepherdess will keep her tryst, 
 And shoreward lead again her foam-fleeced flocks. 
 
 For the same wave that rims the Carib shore 
 With momentary brede of pearl and gold, 
 Goes hurrying thence to gladden with its roar 
 Lorn weeds bound fast on rocks of Labrador, 
 By love divine on one sweet errand rolled. 
 
 And, though Thy healing waters far withdraw, 
 I, too, can wait and feed on hope of Thee 
 And of the dear recurrence of Thy law, 
 Sure that the parting grace that morning saw 
 Abides its time to come in search of me.
 
 THE FINDING OF THE LYRE. 
 
 r "PHERE lay upon the ocean's shore 
 
 What once a tortoise served to cover. 
 A year and more, with rush and roar, 
 The surf had rolled it over, 
 Had played with it, and flung it by, 
 As wind and weather might decide it, 
 Then tossed it high where sand- drifts dry 
 Cheap burial might provide it. 
 
 It rested there to bleach or tan, 
 
 The rains had soaked, the suns had burned it ; 
 
 With many a ban, the fisherman 
 
 Had stumbled o'er and spurned it; 
 
 And there the fisher-girl would stay, 
 
 Conjecturing with her brother
 
 40 THE FINDING OF THE LYRE. 
 
 How in their play the poor estray 
 Might serve some use or other. 
 
 So there it lay, through wet and dry, 
 
 As empty as the last new sonnet, 
 
 Till by and by came Mercury, 
 
 And, having mused upon it, 
 
 "Why, here," cried he, "the thing of things 
 
 In shape, material, and dimension ! 
 
 Give it but strings, and, lo, it sings, 
 
 A wonderful invention ! " 
 
 So said, so done ; the chords he strained, 
 And, as his fingers o'er them hovered, 
 The shell disdained a soul had gained, 
 The lyre had been discovered. 
 O empty world that round us lies, 
 Dead shell, of soul and thought forsaken, 
 Brought we but eyes like Mercury's, 
 In thee what songs should waken !
 
 NEW-YEAR'S EVE. 1850. 
 
 '"PHIS is the midnight of the century, hark : 
 
 Through aisle and arch of Godminster have 
 
 gone 
 
 Twelve throbs that tolled the zenith of the dark, 
 And mornward now the starry hands move on ; 
 " Mornward ! " the angelic watchers say, 
 " Passed is the sorest trial ; 
 No plot of man can stay 
 The hand upon the dial ; 
 Night is the dark stem of the lily Day." 
 
 If we, who watched in valleys here below, 
 Toward streaks, misdeemed of morn, our faces 
 turned
 
 42 NEW YEAR'S EVE. 
 
 When volcan glares set all the east aglow, 
 
 We are not poorer that we wept and yearned ; 
 
 Though earth swing wide from God's intent, 
 
 And though no man nor nation 
 
 Will move with full consent 
 
 In heavenly gravitation, 
 
 Yet by one Sun is every orbit bent.
 
 FOR AN AUTOGRAPH. 
 
 T^ HOUGH old the thought and oft exprest, 
 
 'Tis his at last who says it best, 
 I'll try my fortune with the rest. 
 
 Life is a leaf of paper white 
 Whereon each one of us may write 
 His word or two, and then comes night. 
 
 "Lo, time and space enough," we cry, 
 " To write an epic ! " so we try 
 Our nibs upon the edge, and die. 
 
 Muse not which way the pen to hold, 
 Luck hates the slow and loves the bold, 
 Soon come the darkness and the cold.
 
 44 FOR AN AUTOGRAPH. 
 
 Greatly begin ! though thou have time 
 But for a line, be that sublime, 
 Not failure, but low aim, is crime. 
 
 Ah, with what lofty hope we came ! 
 But we forget it, dream of fame, 
 And scrawl, as I do here, a name.
 
 AL FRESCO. 
 
 HP HE dandelions and buttercups 
 
 Gild all the lawn ; the drowsy bee 
 Stumbles among the clover-tops, 
 And summer sweetens all but me : 
 Away, unfruitful lore of books, 
 For whose vain idiom we reject 
 The soul's more native dialect, 
 Aliens among the birds and brooks, 
 Dull to interpret or conceive 
 What gospels lost the woods retrieve ! 
 Away, ye critics, city-bred, 
 Who set men-traps of thus and so, 
 And in the first man's footsteps tread, 
 Like those who toil through drifted snow !
 
 46 AL FRESCO. 
 
 Away, my poets, whose sweet spell 
 
 Can make a garden of a cell ! 
 
 I need ye not, for I to-day 
 
 Will make one long sweet verse of play. 
 
 Snap, chord of manhood's tenser strain ! 
 
 To-day I will be a boy again ; 
 
 The mind's pursuing element, 
 
 Like a bow slackened and unbent, 
 
 In some dark comer shall be leant. 
 
 The robin sings, as of old, from the limb ! 
 
 The cat-bird croons in the lilac-bush ; 
 
 Through the dim arbour, himself more dim, 
 
 Silently hops the hermit-thrush, 
 
 The withered leaves keep dumb for him ; 
 
 The irreverent buccaneering bee 
 
 Hath stormed and rifled the nunnery 
 
 Of the lily, and scattered the sacred floor 
 
 With haste-dropt gold from shrine to door ; 
 
 There, as of yore,
 
 AL FRESCO. 47 
 
 The rich, milk-tingeing buttercup 
 Its tiny polished urn holds up, 
 Filled with ripe summer to the edge, 
 The sun in his own wine to pledge ; 
 And our tall elm, this hundredth year 
 Doge of our leafy Venice here, 
 Who, with an annual ring, doth wed 
 The blue Adriatic over-head, 
 Shadows with his palatial mass 
 The deep canals of flowing grass. 
 
 O unestranged birds and bees ! 
 O face of nature always true ! 
 O never-unsympathising trees ! 
 O never-rejecting roof of blue, 
 Whose rash disherison never falls 
 On us unthinking prodigals, 
 Yet who convictest all our ill, 
 So grand and unappeasable ! 
 Methinks my heart from each of these
 
 48 AL FRESCO. 
 
 Plucks part of childhood back again, 
 Long there imprisoned, as the breeze 
 Doth every hidden odour seize 
 Of wood and water, hill and plain. 
 Once more am I admitted peer 
 In the upper house of Nature here, 
 And feel through all my pulses run 
 The royal blood of breeze and sun. 
 
 Upon these elm-arched solitudes, 
 
 No hum of neighbour toil intrudes ; 
 
 The only hammer that I hear 
 
 Is wielded by the woodpecker, 
 
 The single noisy calling his 
 
 In all our leaf-hid Sybaris ; 
 
 The good old time, close-hidden here, 
 
 Persists, a loyal cavalier, 
 
 While Roundheads prim, with point of fox, 
 
 Probe wainscot-chink and empty box ; 
 
 Here no hoarse-voiced iconoclast
 
 AL FRESCO. 49 
 
 Insults thy statues, royal Past ; 
 Myself too prone the axe to wield, 
 I touch the silver side of the shield 
 With lance reversed, and challenge peace. 
 A willing convert of the trees. 
 
 How chanced it that so long I tost 
 A cable's length from this rich coast, 
 With foolish anchors hugging close 
 The beckoning weeds and lazy ooze, 
 Nor had the wit to wreck before 
 On this enchanted island's shore, 
 Whither the current of the sea, 
 With wiser drift, persuaded me ? 
 
 O, might we but of such rare days 
 Build up the spirit's dwelling-place ! 
 A temple of so Parian stone 
 Would brook a marble god alone, 
 The statue of a perfect life, 
 E
 
 50 AL FRESCO. 
 
 Far-shrined from earth's bestaining strife. 
 
 Alas ! though such felicity 
 
 In our vext world here may not be, 
 
 Yet, as sometimes the peasant's hut 
 
 Shows stones which old religion cut 
 
 With text inspired, or mystic sign 
 
 Of the Eternal and Divine, 
 
 Torn from the consecration deep 
 
 Of some fallen nunnery's mossy sleep, 
 
 So, from the ruins of this day 
 
 Crumbling in golden dust away, 
 
 The soul one gracious block may draw, 
 
 Carved with some fragment of the law, 
 
 Which, set in life's uneven wall, 
 
 Old benedictions may recall, 
 
 And lure some nunlike thoughts to take 
 
 Their dwelling here for memory's sake.
 
 MASACCIO. 
 
 (IN THE BRANCACCI CHAPEL.} 
 
 T T E came to Florence long ago, 
 
 And painted here these walls that shone 
 For Raphael and for Angelo, 
 With secrets 'deeper than his own, 
 Then shrank into the dark again, 
 And died, we know not how or when. 
 
 The shadows deepened, and I turned 
 Half sadly from the fresco grand ; 
 " And is this," mused I, " all ye earned, 
 High-vaulted brain and cunning hand, 
 That ye to greater men could teach 
 The skill yourselves could never reach ? " 
 E 2
 
 52 MASACCIO. 
 
 " And who were they, " I mused, " that wrought 
 Through pathless wilds, with labour long, 
 The highways of our daily thought ? 
 Who reared those towers of earliest song 
 That lift us from the throng to peace 
 Remote in sunny silences ? " 
 
 Out clanged the Ave Mary bells, 
 And to my heart this message came : 
 Each clamorous throat among them tells 
 What strong-souled martyrs died in flame 
 To make it possible that thou 
 Shouldst here with brother sinners bow. 
 
 Thoughts that great hearts once broke for, we 
 Breathe cheaply in the common air ; 
 The dust we trample heedlessly 
 Throbbed once in saints and heroes rare, 
 Who perished, opening for their race 
 New pathways to the commonplace.
 
 MASACCIO. 53 
 
 Henceforth, when rings the health to those 
 Who live in story and in song, 
 O nameless dead, who now repose 
 Safe in Oblivion's chambers strong, 
 One cup of recognition true 
 Shall silently be drained to you !
 
 WITHOUT AND WITHIN. 
 
 TV !\ Y coachman, in the moonlight there, 
 
 Looks through the side-light of the door ; 
 I hear him with his brethren swear, 
 As I could do, but only more. 
 
 Flattening his nose against the pane, 
 
 He envies me my brilliant lot, 
 Breathes on his aching fists in vain, 
 
 And dooms me to a place more hot. 
 
 He sees me in to supper go, 
 
 A silken wonder by my side, 
 Bare arms, bare shoulders, and a row 
 
 Of flounces, for the door too wide.
 
 WITHOUT AND WITHIN. 55 
 
 He thinks how happy is my arm 
 
 'Neath its white-gloved and jewelled load ; 
 And wishes me some dreadful harm, 
 
 Hearing the merry corks explode. 
 
 Meanwhile I inly curse the bore 
 Of hunting still the same old coon, 
 
 And envy him, outside the door, 
 In golden quiets of the moon. 
 
 The winter wind is not so cold 
 
 As the bright smile he sees me win, 
 
 Nor the host's oldest wine so old 
 As our poor gabble sour and thin. 
 
 I envy him the ungyved prance 
 
 By which his freezing feet he warms, 
 
 And drag my lady's-chains and dance 
 The galley-slave of dreary forms.
 
 56 WITHOUT AND WITHIN. 
 
 O, could he have my share of din, 
 And I his quiet ! past a doubt 
 
 'T would still be one man bored within, 
 And just another bored without.
 
 GOD MINSTER CHIMES. 
 
 WRITTEN IN AID OF A CHIME OF BELLS FOR CHRIST 
 CHURCH, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 /^ODMINSTER? Is it Fancy's play? 
 
 I know not, but the word 
 Sings in my heart, nor can I say 
 
 Whether 'twas dreamed or heard ; 
 Yet fragrant in my mind it clings 
 
 As blossoms after rain, 
 And builds of half-remembered things 
 
 This vision in my brain. 
 
 Through aisles of long-drawn centuries 
 
 My spirit walks in thought, 
 And to that symbol lifts its eyes 
 
 Which God's own pity wrought ;
 
 58 GODMINSTER CHIMES. 
 
 From Calvary shines the altar's gleam, 
 
 The Church's East is there, 
 The Ages one great minster seem, 
 
 That throbs with praise and prayer. 
 
 And all the way from Calvary down 
 
 The carven pavement shows 
 Their graves who won the martyr's crown 
 
 And safe in God repose ; 
 The saints of many a warring creed 
 
 Who now in heaven have learned 
 That all paths to the Father lead 
 
 Where Self the feet have spurned. 
 
 And, as the mystic aisles I pace, 
 
 By aureoled workmen built, 
 Lives ending at the Cross I trace 
 
 Alike through grace and guilt ; 
 One Mary bathes the blessed feet 
 
 With ointment from her eyes,
 
 GODMINSTER CHIMES. 59 
 
 With spikenard one, and both are sweet, 
 For both are sacrifice. 
 
 Moravian hymn and Roman chant 
 
 In one devotion blend, 
 To speak the soul's eternal want 
 
 Of Him, the inmost friend ; 
 One prayer soars cleansed with martyr fire, 
 
 One choked with sinner's tears, 
 In heaven both meet in one desire, 
 
 And God one music hears. 
 
 While thus I dream, the bells clash out 
 
 Upon the Sabbath air, 
 Each seems a hostile faith to shout, 
 
 A selfish form of prayer ; 
 My dream is shattered, yet who knows 
 
 But in that heaven so near 
 These discords find harmonious close 
 
 In God's atoning ear?
 
 60 GODMINSTER CHIMES. 
 
 O chime of sweet Saint Charity, 
 
 Peal soon that Easter morn 
 When Christ for all shall risen be, 
 
 And in all hearts new-born ! 
 That Pentecost when utterance clear 
 
 To all men shall be given, 
 When all shall say My Brother here, 
 
 And hear My Son in heaven !
 
 THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. 
 
 ^\~\ 7"HO hath not been a poet? Who hath not, 
 With life's new quiver full of winged years, 
 Shot at a venture, and then, following on, 
 
 Stood doubtful at the Parting of the Ways? 
 
 ' i 
 
 There once I stood in dream, and as I paused, 
 Looking this way and that, came forth to me 
 The figure of a woman veiled, that said, 
 " My name is Duty, turn and follow me ; " 
 Something there was that chilled me in her voice ; 
 I felt Youth's hand grow slack and cold in mine, 
 As if to be withdrawn, and I replied : 
 " O, leave the hot wild heart within my breast ! 
 Duty comes soon enough, too soon comes Death ;
 
 62 THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. 
 
 This slippery globe of life whirls of itself, 
 
 Hasting our youth away into the dark; 
 
 These senses, quivering with electric heats, 
 
 Too soon will show, like nests on wintry boughs, 
 
 Obtrusive emptiness, too palpable wreck, 
 
 Which whistling north winds line with downy snow 
 
 Sometimes, or fringe with foliaged rime, in vain, 
 
 Thither the singing birds no more return." 
 
 Then glowed to me a maiden from the left, 
 With bosom half disclosed, and naked arms 
 More white and undulant than necks of swans : 
 And all before her steps an influence ran 
 Warm as the whispering South that opens buds 
 And swells the laggard sails of Northern May. 
 " I am called Pleasure, come with me, " she said, 
 Then laughed, and shook out sunshine from he. 
 
 hair; 
 
 Not only that, but, so it seemed, shook out 
 All memory too, and all the moonlit past,
 
 THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. 63 
 
 Old loves, old aspirations, and old dreams, 
 More beautiful for being old and gone. 
 
 So we two went together ; downward sloped 
 The path through yellow meads, or so I dreamed, 
 Yellow with sunshine and young green, but I 
 Saw naught nor heard, shut up in one close joy ; 
 I only felt the hand within my own, 
 Transmuting all my blood to golden fire, 
 Dissolving all my brain in throbbing mist. 
 
 Suddenly shrank the hand ; suddenly burst 
 
 A cry that split the torpor of my brain, 
 
 And as the first sharp thrust of lightning loosens 
 
 From the heaped cloud its rain, loosened my sense : 
 
 "Save me ! " it thrilled ; " O hide me! there is Death ! 
 
 Death the divider, the unmerciful, 
 
 That digs his pitfalls under Love and Youth, 
 
 And covers Beauty up in the cold ground ; 
 
 Horrible Death ! bringer of endless dark ;
 
 64 THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. 
 
 Let him not see me ! hide me in thy breast ! " 
 Thereat I strove to clasp her, but my arms 
 Met only what slipped crumbling down, and fell, 
 A handful of grey ashes, at my feet. 
 
 I would have fled, I would have followed back 
 
 That pleasant path we came, but all was changed \ 
 
 Rocky the way, abrupt, and hard to find ; 
 
 Yet I toiled on, and, toiling on, I thought, 
 
 " That way lies Youth, and Wisdom, and all 
 
 Good; 
 
 For only by unlearning Wisdom comes 
 And climbing backward to diviner Youth ; 
 What the world teaches profits to the world, 
 What the soul teaches profits to the soul, 
 Which then first stands erect with Godward face, 
 When she lets fall her pack of withered facts, 
 The gleamings of the outward eye and ear, 
 And looks and listens with her finer sense; 
 Nor Truth nor Knowledge cometh from without"
 
 THE PARTING OF THE WA YS. 65 
 
 After long weary days I stood again 
 
 And waited at the Parting of the Ways ; 
 
 Again the figure of a woman veiled 
 
 Stood forth and beckoned, and I followed now : 
 
 Down to no bower of roses led the path, 
 
 But through the streets of towns where chattering Cold 
 
 Hewed wood for fires whose glow was owned and 
 
 fenced, 
 
 Where Nakedness wove garments of warm wool 
 Not for itself; or through the fields it led 
 Where Hunger reaped the unattainable grain, 
 Where Idleness enforced saw idle lands, 
 Leagues of unpeopled soil, the common earth, 
 Walled round with paper against God and Man. 
 " I cannot look," I groaned, " at only these ; 
 The heart grows hardened with perpetual wont, 
 And palters with a feigned necessity, 
 Bargaining with itself to be content ; 
 Let me behold thy face." 
 
 The Form replied :
 
 66 THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. 
 
 " Men follow duty, never overtake 
 
 Duty nor lifts her veil nor looks behind." 
 
 But, as she spake, a loosened lock of hair 
 
 Slipped from beneath her hood, and I, who looked 
 
 To see it grey and thin, saw amplest gold ; 
 
 Not that dull metal dug from sordid earth, 
 
 But such as the retiring sunset flood 
 
 Leaves heaped on bays and capes of island cloud. 
 
 " O Guide divine," I prayed, " although not yet 
 
 I may repair the virtue which I feel 
 
 Gone out at touch of untuned things and foul 
 
 With draughts of Beauty, yet declare how soon ! " 
 
 " Faithless and faint of heart," the voice returned, 
 " Thou see'st no beauty save thou make it first ; 
 Man, Woman, Nature, each is but a glass 
 Where the soul sees the image of herself, 
 Visible echoes, offsprings of herself. 
 But, since thou need'st assurance of how soon, 
 Wait till that angel comes who opens all,
 
 THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. 67 
 
 The reconciler, he who lifts the veil, 
 The reuniter, the rest-bringer, Death." 
 
 I waited, and methought he came ; but how, 
 Or in what shape, I doubted, for no sign, 
 By touch or mark, he gave me as he passed ; 
 Only I know a lily that I held 
 Snapt short below the head and shrivelled up ; 
 Then turned my Guide and looked at me unveiled. 
 And I beheld no face of matron stern, 
 But that enchantment I had followed erst, 
 Only more fair, more clear to eye and brain, 
 Heightened and chastened by a household charm ; 
 She smiled, and " Which is fairer," said her eyes, 
 " The hag's unreal Florimel or mine ? " 
 
 F 2
 
 ALADDIN. 
 
 ~\ X 7"HEN I was a beggarly boy, 
 And lived in a cellar damp, 
 I had not a friend nor a toy, 
 
 But I had Aladdin's lamp; 
 When I could not sleep for cold, 
 
 I had fire enough in my brain, 
 And builded, with roofs of gold, 
 
 My beautiful castles in Spain ! 
 
 Since then I have toiled day and night, 
 
 I have money and power good store, 
 But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright, 
 
 For the one that is mine no more ; 
 Take, Fortune, whatever you choose, 
 
 You gave, and may snatch again ; 
 I have nothing 'twould pain me to lose, 
 
 For I own no more castles in Spain !
 
 AN INVITATION. 
 
 "JVTINE years have slipt like hour-glass sand 
 
 From life's still-emptying globe away, 
 Since last, dear friend, I clasped your hand, 
 And stood upon the impoverished land, 
 Watching the steamer down the bay. 
 
 I held the token which you gave, 
 While slowly the smoke-pennon curled 
 O'er the vague rim 'tween sky and wave, 
 And shut the distance like a grave, 
 Leaving me in the colder world. 
 
 The old worn world of hurry and heat, 
 
 The young, fresh world of thought and scope,
 
 70 AN INVITATION. 
 
 While you, where beckoning billows fleet 
 Climb far sky-beaches still and sweet, 
 Sank wavering down the ocean-slope. 
 
 You sought the new world in the old, 
 I found the old world in the new, 
 All that our human hearts can hold, 
 The inward world of deathless mould. 
 The same that Father Adam knew. 
 
 He needs no ship to cross the tide, 
 Who, in the lives about him, sees 
 Fair window-prospects opening wide 
 O'er history's fields on every side, 
 To Ind and Egypt, Rome and Greece. 
 
 Whatever moulds of various brain 
 E'er shaped the world to weal or woe, 
 Whatever empires' wax and wane,
 
 To him that hath not eyes in vain, 
 Our village-microcosm can show. 
 
 Come back our ancient walks to tread, 
 Dear haunts of lost or scattered friends, 
 Old Harvard's scholar-factories red, 
 Where song and smoke and laughter sped 
 The nights to proctor-haunted ends. 
 
 Constant are all our former loves, 
 Unchanged the icehouse-girdled pond, 
 Its hemlock glooms, its shadowy coves, 
 Where floats the coot, and never moves 
 Its slopes of long-tamed green beyond. 
 
 Our old familiars are not laid, 
 
 Though snapt our wands, and sunk our books ; 
 
 They beckon, not to be gainsaid, 
 
 Where round broad meads that mowers wade, 
 
 The Charles his steel-blue sickle crooks.
 
 72 AN IN VITA TION. \ 
 
 Where, as the cloudbergs eastward blow, 
 From glow to gloom the hillsides shift 
 Their plumps of orchard-trees arow, 
 Their lakes of rye that wave and flow, 
 Their snowy whiteweed's summer drift. 
 
 There have we watched the West unfurl 
 A cloud Byzantium newly born, 
 With flickering spires and domes of pearl, 
 And vapoury surfs that crowd and curl 
 Into the sunset's Golden Horn. 
 
 There, as the flaming Occident 
 Burned slowly down to ashes grey, 
 Night pitched o'erhead her silent tent, 
 And glimmering gold from Hesper sprent 
 Upon the darkened river lay, 
 
 Where a twin sky but just before 
 Deepened, and double swallows skimmed.
 
 AN INVITATION. 73 
 
 And, from a visionary shore, 
 
 Hung visioned trees, that more and more 
 
 Grew dusk as those above were dimmed. 
 
 Then eastward saw we slowly grow 
 Clear-edged the lines of roof and spire, 
 While great elm-masses blacken slow, 
 And linden-ricks their round heads show 
 Against a flush of widening fire. 
 
 Doubtful at first and far away, 
 The moon-flood creeps more wide and wide; 
 Up a ridged beach of cloudy grey, 
 Curved round the east as round a bay, 
 It slips and spreads its gradual tide. 
 
 Then suddenly, in lurid mood, 
 
 The moon looms large o'er town and field 
 
 As upon Adam, red like blood,
 
 74 AN INVITATION. 
 
 'Tween him and Eden's happy wood, 
 Glared the commissioned angel's shield. 
 
 Or let us seek the seaside, there 
 To wander idly as we list, 
 Whether, on rocky headlands bare, 
 Sharp cedar-horns, like breakers, tear 
 The trailing fringes of grey mist, 
 
 Or whether, under skies full flown, 
 
 The brightening surfs with foamy din, 
 
 Their breeze-caught forelocks backward blown, 
 
 Against the beach's yellow zone, 
 
 Curl slow, and plunge for ever in. 
 
 And, as we watch those canvas towers 
 That lean along the horizon's rim, 
 " Sail on," I'll say : " may sunniest hours 
 Convoy you from this land of ours, 
 Since from my side you bear not him ! "
 
 AN IN VITA TION. 75 
 
 For years thrice three, wise Horace said, 
 A poem rare let silence bind ; 
 And love may ripen in the shade, 
 Like ours, for nine long seasons laid 
 In deepest arches of the mind. 
 
 Come back ! Not ours the Old World's good, 
 The Old World's ill, thank God, not ours 
 But here, far better understood, 
 The days enforce our native mood, 
 And challenge all our manlier powers. 
 
 Kindlier to me the place of birth 
 That first my tottering footsteps trod ; 
 There may be fairer spots of earth, 
 But all their glories are not worth 
 The virtue of the native sod. 
 
 Thence climbs an influence more benign 
 Through pulse and nerve, through heart and 
 brain ;
 
 76 AN IN VITA TION. 
 
 Sacred to me those fibres fine 
 
 That first clasped earth. O, ne'er be mine 
 
 The alien sun and alien rain ! 
 
 These nourish not like homelier glows 
 Or waterings of familiar skies, 
 
 And nature fairer blooms bestows 
 On the heaped hush of wintry snows, 
 In pastures dear to childhood's eyes, 
 
 Than where Italian earth receives 
 The partial sunshine's ampler boons, 
 Where vines carve friezes 'neath the eaves, 
 And, in dark firmaments of leaves, 
 The orange lifts its golden moons.
 
 THE NOMADES. 
 
 "\ \J HAT Nature makes in any mood 
 
 To me is warranted for good, 
 Though long before I learned to see 
 She did not set us moral theses, 
 And scorned to have her sweet caprices 
 Strait-waistcoated in you or me. 
 
 I, who take root and firmly cling, 
 
 Thought fixedness the only thing ; 
 
 Why Nature made the butterflies 
 
 (Those dreams of wings that float and hover 
 
 At noon the slumberous poppies over), 
 
 Was something hidden from mine eyes,
 
 78 THE NOMADES. 
 
 Till once, upon a rock's brown bosom, 
 Bright as a thorny cactus-blossom, 
 I saw a butterfly at rest ; 
 Then first of both I felt the beauty ; 
 The airy whim, the grim-set duty, 
 Each from the other took its best. 
 
 Clearer it grew than winter sky 
 That Nature still had reasons why ; 
 And, shifting sudden as a breeze, 
 My fancy found no satisfaction, 
 No antithetic sweet attraction, 
 So great as in the Nomades. 
 
 Scythians, with Nature not at strife, 
 Light Arabs of our complex life, 
 They build no houses, plant no mills 
 To utilize Time's sliding river, 
 Content that it flow waste for ever, 
 If they, like it, may have their wills.
 
 THE NOMADES. 79 
 
 An hour they pitch their shifting tents 
 
 In thoughts, in feelings, and events ; 
 
 Beneath the palm trees, on the grass, 
 
 They sing, they dance, make love, and chatter, 
 
 Vex the grim temples with their clatter, 
 
 And make Truth's fount their looking-glass. 
 
 A picnic life; from love to love, 
 From faith to faith they lightly move, 
 And yet, hard-eyed philosopher, 
 The flightiest maid that ever hovered 
 To me your thought-webs fine discovered, 
 No lens to see them through like her. 
 
 So witchingly her finger-tips 
 
 To Wisdom, as away she trips, 
 
 She kisses, waves such sweet farewells 
 
 To Duty, as she laughs " To-morrow ! " 
 
 That both from that mad contrast borrow 
 
 A perfectness found nowhere else.
 
 8o THE NOMADES. 
 
 The beach-bird on its pearly verge 
 Follows and flies the whispering surge, 
 While, in his tent, the rock-stayed shell 
 Awaits the floods star-timed vibrations, 
 And both, the flutter and the patience 
 The sauntering poet loves them well. 
 
 Fulfil so much of God's decree 
 As works its problem out in thee, 
 Nor dream that in thy breast alone 
 The conscience of the changeful seasons, 
 The will that in the planets reasons 
 With Space-wide logic, has its throne. 
 
 Thy virtue makes not vice of mine, 
 Unlike, but none the less divine ; 
 Thy toil adorns, not chides, my play; 
 Nature of sameness is so chary, 
 With- such wild whim the freakish fairy 
 Picks presents for the christening-day.
 
 SELF-STUDY. 
 
 A PRESENCE both by night and day, 
 That made my life seem just begun, 
 Yet scarce a presence, rather say 
 The warning aureole of one. 
 
 And yet I felt it everywhere ; 
 Walked I the woodland's aisles along, 
 It seemed to brush me with its hair; 
 Bathed I, I heard a mermaid's song. 
 
 How sweet it was ! A buttercup 
 Could hold for me a day's delight, 
 A bird could lift my fancy up 
 To ether free from cloud or blight. 
 G
 
 82 SELF-STUDY. 
 
 Who was the nymph? Nay, I will see, 
 Methought, and I will know her near ; 
 If such, divined, her charm can be, 
 Seen and possessed, how triply dear ! 
 
 So every magic art I tried, 
 And spells as numberless as sand, 
 Until, one evening, by my side 
 I saw her glowing fulness stand. 
 
 I turned to clasp her, but " Farewell," 
 Parting she sighed, " we meet no more ; 
 Not by my hand the curtain fell 
 That leaves you conscious, wise, and poor. 
 
 " Since you have found me out, I go ; 
 Another lover I must find, 
 Content his happiness to know, 
 Nor strive its secret to unwind."
 
 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 
 
 I. 
 
 A HEAP of bare and splintery crags 
 
 Tumbled about by lightning and frost, 
 With rifts and chasms and storm-bleached jags, 
 That wait and growl for a ship to be lost ; 
 No island, but rather the skeleton 
 Of a wrecked and vengeance-smitten one, 
 Where, aeons ago, with half-shut eye, 
 The sluggish saurian crawled to die, 
 Gasping under titanic ferns ; 
 Ribs of rock that seaward jut, 
 Granite shoulders and boulders and snags, 
 Round which, though the winds in heaven be shut, 
 The nightmared ocean murmurs and yearns, 
 Welters, and swashes, and tosses, and turns, 
 G 2
 
 84 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 
 
 And the dreary black sea-weed lolls and wags 
 
 Only rock from shore to shore, 
 
 Only a moan through the bleak clefts blown, 
 
 With sobs in the rifts where the coarse kelp shifts, 
 
 Falling and lifting, tossing and drifting, 
 
 And under all a deep, dull roar, 
 
 Dying and swelling for evermore, 
 
 Rock and moan and roar alone, 
 
 And the dread of some nameless thing unknown, 
 
 These make Appledore. 
 
 These make Appledore by night : 
 
 Then there are monsters left and right ; 
 
 Every rock is a different monster; 
 
 All you have read of, fancied, dreamed, 
 
 When you waked at night because you screamed, 
 
 There they lie for half a mile, 
 
 Jumbled together in a pile, 
 
 And (though you know they never once stir), 
 
 If you look long, they seem to be moving
 
 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 85 
 
 Just as plainly as plain can be, 
 
 Crushing and crowding, wading and shoving 
 
 Out into the awful sea, 
 
 Where you can hear them snort and spout 
 
 With pauses between, as if they were listening, 
 
 Then tumult anon when the surf breaks glistening 
 
 In the blackness where they wallow about. 
 
 II. 
 
 All this you would scarcely comprehend, 
 
 Should you see the isle on a sunny day; 
 
 Then it is simple enough in its way, 
 
 Two rocky bulges, one at each end, 
 
 With a smaller bulge and a hollow between ; 
 
 Patches of whortleberry and bay ; 
 
 Accidents of open green, 
 
 Sprinkled with loose slabs square and gray, 
 
 Like graveyards for ages deserted ; a few 
 
 Unsocial thistles ; an elder or two,
 
 86 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 
 
 Foamed over with blossoms white as spray ; 
 
 And on the whole island never a tree 
 
 Save a score of sumachs, high as your knee, 
 
 That crouch in hollows where they may, 
 
 (The cellars where once stood a village, men say,) 
 
 Huddling for warmth, and never grew 
 
 Tall enough for a peep at the sea ; 
 
 A general dazzle of open blue ; 
 
 A breeze always blowing and playing rat-tat 
 
 With the bow of the ribbon round your hat ; 
 
 A score of sheep that do nothing but stare 
 
 Up or down at you everywhere; 
 
 Three or four cattle that chew the cud 
 
 Lying about in a listless despair ; 
 
 A medrick that makes you look overhead 
 
 With short, sharp scream, as he sights his prey, 
 
 And, dropping straight and swift as lead, 
 
 Splits the water with sudden thud ; 
 
 This is Appledore by day.
 
 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 87 
 
 A common island, you will say ; 
 
 But stay a moment: only climb 
 
 Up to the highest rock of the isle, 
 
 Stand there alone for a little while, 
 
 And with gentle approaches it grows sublime, 
 
 Dilating slowly as you win 
 
 A sense from the silence to take it in. 
 
 So wide the loneness, so lucid the air, 
 
 The granite beneath you so savagely bare, 
 
 You well might think you were looking down 
 
 From some sky-silenced mountain's crown, 
 
 Whose far-down pines are wont to tear 
 
 Locks of wool from the topmost cloud. 
 
 Only be sure you go alone, 
 
 For Grandeur is inaccessibly proud, 
 
 And never yet has backward thrown 
 
 Her veil to feed the stare of a crowd ; 
 
 To more than one was never shown 
 
 That awful front, nor is it fit 
 
 That she, Cothurnus-shod, stand bowed
 
 88 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 
 
 Until the self-approving pit 
 
 Enjoy the gust of its own wit 
 
 In babbling plaudits cheaply loud; 
 
 She hides her mountains and her sea 
 
 From the harriers of scenery, 
 
 Who hunt down sunsets, and huddle and bay, 
 
 Mouthing and mumbling the dying day. 
 
 Trust me, 'tis something to be cast 
 
 Face to face with one's Self at last, 
 
 To be taken out of the fuss and strife, 
 
 The endless clatter of plate and knife, 
 
 The bore of books and the bores of the street, 
 
 From the singular mess we agree to call Life, 
 
 Where that is best which the most fools vote is, 
 
 And to be set down on one's own two feet 
 
 So nigh to the great warm heart of God, 
 
 You almost seem to feel it beat 
 
 Down from the sunshine and up from the sod ; 
 
 To be compelled, as it were, to notice
 
 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 8c 
 
 All the beautiful changes and chances 
 Through which the landscape flits and glances, 
 And to see how the face of common day 
 Is written all over with tender histories, 
 When you study it that intenser way 
 In which a lover looks at his mistress. 
 
 Till now you dreamed not what could be done 
 
 With a bit of rock and a ray of sun ; 
 
 But look, how fade the lights and shades 
 
 Of keen bare edge and crevice deep ! 
 
 How doubtfully it fades and fades,' 
 
 And glows again, yon craggy steep, 
 
 O'er which, through colour's dreamiest grades, 
 
 The yellow sunbeams pause and creep ! 
 
 Now pink it blooms, now glimmers gray, 
 
 Now shadows to a filmy blue, 
 
 Tries one, tries all, and will not stay, 
 
 But flits from opal hue to hue, 
 
 And runs through every tenderest range
 
 90 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 
 
 Of change that seems not to be change, 
 So rare the sweep, so nice the art, 
 That lays no stress on any part, 
 But shifts and lingers and persuades ; 
 So soft that sun-brush in the west, 
 That asks no costlier pigments' aids, 
 But mingling knobs, flaws, angles, dints, 
 Indifferent of worst or best, 
 Enchants the cliffs with wraiths and hints 
 And gracious preludings of tints, 
 Where all seems fixed, yet all evades, 
 And indefinably pervades 
 Perpetual movement with perpetual rest ! 
 
 III. 
 
 Away northeast is Boone Island light; 
 You might mistake it for a ship, 
 Only it stands too plumb upright, 
 And like the others does not slip
 
 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 91 
 
 Behind the sea's unsteady brink ; 
 
 Though, if a cloud-shade chance to dip 
 
 Upon it a moment, 'twill suddenly sink, 
 
 Levelled and lost in the darkened main, 
 
 Till the sun builds it suddenly up again, 
 
 As if with a rub of Aladdin's lamp, 
 
 On the main-land you see a misty camp 
 
 Of mountains pitched tumultuously : 
 
 That one looming so long and large 
 
 Is Saddleback, and that point you see 
 
 Over yon low and rounded marge, 
 
 Like the boss of a sleeping giant's targe 
 
 Laid over his breast, is Ossipee ; 
 
 That shadow there may be Kearsarge ; 
 
 That must be Great Haystack ; I love these names, 
 
 Wherewith the lonely farmer tames 
 
 Nature to mute companionship 
 
 With his own mind's domestic mood, 
 
 And strives the surly world to clip 
 
 In the arms of familiar habitude.
 
 92 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 
 
 'Tis well he could not contrive to make 
 
 A Saxon of Agamenticus : 
 
 He glowers there to the north of us, 
 
 Wrapt in his blanket of blue haze, 
 
 Unconvertibly savage, and scorns to take 
 
 The white man's baptism or his ways. 
 
 Him first on shore the coaster divines 
 
 Through the early gray, and sees him shake 
 
 The morning mist from his scalp-lock of pines : 
 
 Him first the skipper makes out in the west, 
 
 Ere the earliest sunstreak shoots tremulous, 
 
 Plashing with orange the palpitant lines 
 
 Of mutable billow, crest after crest, 
 
 And murmurs Agamenticus / 
 
 As if it were the name of a saint. 
 
 But is that a mountain playing cloud, 
 
 Or a cloud playing mountain, just there, so faint ? 
 
 Look along over the low right shoulder 
 
 Of Agamenticus into that crowd 
 
 Of brassy thunderheads behind it ;
 
 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 93 
 
 Now you have caught it, but, ere you are older 
 By half an hour, you will lose it and find it 
 A score of times; while you look 'tis gone, 
 And, just as you've given it up, anon 
 It is there again, till your weary eyes 
 Fancy they see it waver and rise, 
 With its brother clouds ; it is Agiochook, 
 There if you seek not, and gone if you look, 
 Ninety miles off as the eagle flies. 
 
 But mountains make not all the shore 
 
 The main-land shows to Appledore; 
 
 Eight miles the heaving water spreads 
 
 To a long low coast with beaches and heads 
 
 That run through unimagined mazes, 
 
 As the lights and shades and magical hazes 
 
 Put them away or bring them near, 
 
 Shimmering, sketched out for thirty miles 
 
 Between two capes that waver like threads, 
 
 And sink in the ocean, and reappear,
 
 94 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 
 
 Crumbled and melted to little isles, 
 
 With filmy trees, that seem the mere 
 
 Half-fancies of drowsy atmosphere ; 
 
 And see the beach there, where it is 
 
 Flat as a threshing-floor, beaten and packed 
 
 With the flashing flails of weariless seas, 
 
 How it lifts and looms to a precipice, 
 
 O'er whose square front, a dream, no more, 
 
 The steepened sand-stripes seem to pour, 
 
 A murmurless vision of cataract; 
 
 You almost fancy you hear a roar, 
 
 Fitful and faint from the distance wandering; 
 
 But 'tis only the blind old ocean maundering, 
 
 Raking the shingle to and fro, 
 
 Aimlessly clutching and letting go 
 
 The kelp-haired sedges of Appledore, 
 
 Slipping down with a sleepy forgetting, 
 
 And anon his ponderous shoulder setting, 
 
 With a de"ep, hoarse pant against Appledore.
 
 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 95 
 
 IV. 
 
 Eastward as far as the eye can see, 
 Still eastward, eastward, endlessly, 
 The sparkle and tremor of purple sea 
 That rises before you, a flickering hill, 
 On and on to the shut of the sky, 
 And beyond, you fancy it sloping until 
 The same multitudinous throb and thrill 
 That vibrate under your dizzy eye 
 In ripples of orange and pink are sent 
 Where the poppied sails doze on the yard, 
 And the clumsy junk and proa lie 
 Sunk deep with precious woods and nard, 
 'Mid the palmy isles of the Orient. 
 
 Those leaning towers of clouded white 
 On the farthest brink of doubtful ocean, 
 That shorten and shorten out of sight, 
 Yet seem on the self-same spot to stay, 
 Receding with a motionless motion,
 
 96 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 
 
 * 
 
 Fading to dubious films of gray, 
 
 Lost, dimly found, then vanished wholly, 
 
 Will rise again, the great world under, 
 
 First films, then towers, then high-heaped clouds, 
 
 Whose nearing outlines sharpen slowly 
 
 Into tall ships with cobweb shrouds, 
 
 That fill long Mongol eyes with wonder, 
 
 Crushing the violet wave to spray 
 
 Past some low headland of Cathay ; 
 
 What was that sigh which seemed so near, 
 
 Chilling your fancy to the core? 
 
 Tis only the sad old sea you hear, 
 
 That seems to seek for evermore 
 
 Something it cannot find, and so, 
 
 Sighing, seeks on, and tells its woe 
 
 To the pitiless breakers of Appledore. 
 
 V. 
 
 How looks Appledore in a storm ? 
 
 I have seen it when its crags seemed frantic,
 
 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 97 
 
 Butting against the mad Atlantic, 
 When surge on surge would heap enorme, 
 
 Cliffs of emerald topped with snow, 
 
 That lifted and lifted, and then let go 
 A great white avalanche of thunder, 
 
 A grinding, blinding, deafening ire 
 Monadnock might have trembled under ; 
 
 And the island, whose rock-roots pierce below 
 
 To where they are warmed with the central fire, 
 You could feel its granite fibres racked, 
 
 As it seemed to plunge with a shudder and thrill 
 Right at the breast of the swooping hill, 
 And to rise again, snorting a cataract 
 Of rage-froth from every cranny and ledge, 
 
 While the sea drew its breath in hoarse and deep, 
 And the next vast breaker curled its edge, 
 
 Gathering itself for a mightier leap. 
 
 North, east, and south there are reefs and breakers 
 
 You would never dream of in smooth weather, 
 
 H
 
 98 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 
 
 That toss and gore the sea for acres, 
 
 Bellowing and gnashing and snarling together ; 
 Look northward, where Duck Island lies, 
 And over its crown you will see arise, 
 Against a background of slaty skies, 
 
 A row of pillars still and white, 
 
 That glimmer, and then are out of sight, 
 As if the moon should suddenly kiss, 
 
 While you crossed the gusty desert by night, 
 The long colonnades of Persepolis ; 
 Look southward for White Island light, 
 
 The lantern stands ninety feet o'er the tide ; 
 There is first a half-mile of tumult and fight, 
 Of dash and roar and tumble and fright, 
 
 And surging bewilderment wild and wide, 
 Where the breakers struggle left and right, 
 
 Then a mile or more of rushing sea, 
 And then the light-house slim and lone ; 
 And whenever the weight of ocean is thrown 
 Full and fair on White Island head,
 
 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 99 
 
 A great mist-jotun you will see 
 
 Lifting himself up silently 
 High and huge o'er the light-house top, 
 With hands of wavering spray outspread, 
 
 Groping after the little tower, 
 
 That seems to shrink and shorten and cower, 
 Till the monster's arms of a sudden drop, 
 
 And silently and fruitlessly 
 
 He sinks again into the sea. 
 
 You, meanwhile, where drenched you stand, 
 Awaken once more to the rush and roar. 
 
 And on the rock-point tighten your hand, 
 
 As you turn and see a valley deep, 
 That was not there a moment before, 
 
 Suck rattling down between you and a heap 
 Of toppling billow, whose instant fall 
 Must sink the whole island once for all, 
 
 Or watch the silenter, stealthier seas 
 
 Feeling their way to you more and more 
 
 H 2
 
 ioo PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 
 
 If they once should clutch you high as the knees, 
 They would whirl you down like a sprig of kelp, 
 Beyond all reach of hope or help ; 
 And such in a storm is Appledore. 
 
 VI. 
 
 'Tis the sight of a lifetime to behold 
 
 The great shorn sun as you see it now, 
 
 Across eight miles of undulant gold 
 
 That widens landward, weltered and rolled, 
 
 With freaks of shadow and crimson stains ; 
 
 To see the solid mountain brow 
 
 As it notches the disk, and gains and gains 
 
 Until there comes, you scarce know when, 
 
 A tremble of fire o'er the parted lips 
 
 Of cloud and mountain, which vanishes, then 
 
 From the body of day the sun-soul slips 
 
 And the face of earth darkens ; but now the strips 
 
 Of western vapour, straight and thin,
 
 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 101 
 
 From which the horizon's swervings win 
 
 A grace of contrast, take fire and burn 
 
 Like splinters of touchwood, whose edges a mould 
 
 Of ashes o'erfeathers ; northward turn 
 
 For an instant, and let your eye grow cold 
 
 On Agamenticus, and when once more 
 
 You look, 'tis as if the land-breeze, growing, 
 
 From the smouldering brands the film were blowing, 
 
 And brightening them down to the very core ; 
 
 Yet they momently cool and dampen and deaden, 
 
 The crimson turns golden, the gold turns leaden, 
 
 Hardening into one black bar 
 
 O'er which, from the hollow heaven afar, 
 
 Shoots a splinter of light like diamond, 
 
 Half seen, half fancied ; by and by, 
 
 Beyond whatever is most beyond 
 
 In the uttermost waste of desert sky, 
 
 Grows a star ; 
 
 And over it, visible spirit of dew, 
 
 Ah, stir not, speak not, hold your breath,
 
 2 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 
 
 Or surely the miracle vanisheth, 
 
 The new moon, tranced in unspeakable blue ! 
 
 No frail illusion ; this were true, 
 
 Rather, to call it the canoe 
 
 Hollowed out of a single pearl, 
 
 That floats us from the Present's whirl 
 
 Back to those beings which were ours, 
 
 When wishes were winged things like powers ! 
 
 Call it not light, that mystery tender, 
 
 Which broods upon the brooding ocean, 
 
 That flush of ecstasied surrender 
 
 To indefinable emotion, 
 
 That glory, mellower than a mist 
 
 Of pearl dissolved with amethyst, 
 
 Which rims Square Rock, like what they paint 
 
 Of mitigated heavenly splendour 
 
 Round the stern forehead of a Saint ! 
 
 No more a vision, reddened, largened, 
 The moon dips toward her mountain nest,
 
 PICTURES FROM APPLEDORE. 103 
 
 And, fringing it with palest argent, 
 Slow sheathes herself behind the margent 
 Of that long cloud-bar in the West, 
 Whose nether edge, erelong, you see 
 The silvery chrism in turn anoint, 
 And then the tiniest rosy point 
 Touched doubtfully and timidly 
 Into the dark blue's chilly strip, 
 As some mute, wondering thing below, 
 Awakened by the thrilling glow, 
 Might, looking up, see Dian dip 
 One lucent foot's delaying tip 
 In Latmian fountains long ago. 
 
 Knew you what silence was before? 
 
 Here is no startle of dreaming bird 
 
 That sings in his sleep, or strives to sing; 
 
 Here is no sough of branches stirred, 
 
 Nor noise of any living thing, 
 
 Such as one hears by night on shore ;
 
 PICTURES FROM APPLE DO RE. 
 
 Only, now and then, a sigh, 
 With fickle intervals between, 
 Sometimes far, and sometimes nigh, 
 Such as Andromeda might have heard, 
 And fancied the huge sea-beast unseen 
 Turning in sleep ; it is the sea 
 That welters and wavers uneasily 
 Round the lonely reefs of Appledore.
 
 THE WIND-HARP. 
 
 T TREASURE in secret some long, fine hair 
 
 Of tenderest brown, but so inwardly golden 
 I half used to fancy the sunshine there, 
 So shy, so shifting, so waywardly rare, 
 
 Was only caught for the moment and holden 
 While I could say Dearest ! and kiss it, and then 
 In pity let go to the summer again. 
 
 I twisted this magic in gossamer strings 
 Over a wind-harp's Delphian hollow; 
 Then called to the idle breeze that swings 
 All day in the pine-tops, and clings, and sings 
 
 'Mid the musical leaves, and said, "O, follow 
 The will of those tears that deepen my words, 
 And fly to my window to waken these chords."
 
 ro6 THE WIND-HARP. 
 
 So they trembled to life, and, doubtfully 
 
 Feeling their way to my sense, sang, " Say whether 
 They sit all day by the greenwood tree, 
 The lover and loved, as it wont to be, 
 
 When we " but grief conquered, and all 
 
 together 
 
 They swelled such weird murmur as haunts a shore 
 Of some planet dispeopled, " Nevermore " ! 
 
 Then from deep in the past, as seemed to me, 
 
 The strings gathered sorrow and sang forsaken, 
 " One lover still waits 'neath the greenwood tree, 
 But 'tis dark," and they shuddered, "where lieth she 
 Dark and cold ! Forever must one be taken ? " 
 But I groaned, " O harp of all ruth bereft, 
 This Scripture is sadder, 'the other left'!" 
 
 There murmured, as if one strove to speak, 
 
 And tears came instead ; then the sad tones 
 wandered
 
 THE WIND-HARP. 107 
 
 And faltered among the uncertain chords 
 In a troubled doubt between sorrow and words; 
 At last with themselves they questioned and 
 
 pondered, 
 
 " Hereafter ? who knoweth ? " and so they sighed 
 Down the long steps that lead to silence and died.
 
 AUF WIEDERSEHEN ! 
 
 SUMMER. 
 
 'T'HE little gate was reached at last, 
 Half hid in lilacs down the lane ; 
 She pushed it wide, and, as she past, 
 A wistful look she backward cast, 
 And said, " Auf wiedersehen I " 
 
 With hand on latch, a vision white 
 
 Lingered reluctant, and again 
 Half doubting if she did aright, 
 Soft as the dews that fell that night, 
 She said, " Auf wiedersehen ! " 
 
 The lamp's clear gleam flits up the stair ; 
 I linger in delicious pain ;
 
 AUF WIEDERSEHEN. 109 
 
 Ah, in that chamber, whose rich air 
 To breathe in thought I scarcely dare, 
 Thinks she, " Auf wiedersehen ! " 
 
 'T is thirteen years ; once more I press 
 The turf that silences the lane ; 
 
 I hear the rustle of her dress, 
 
 I smell the lilacs, and ah, yes, 
 I hear " Auf wiedersehen /" 
 
 Sweet piece of bashful maiden art ; 
 
 The English words had seemed too fain, 
 But these they drew us heart to heart, 
 Yet held us tenderly apart ; 
 
 She said, "Auf wiedersehen / "
 
 PALINODE. 
 
 AUTUMN. 
 
 OTILL thirteen years : 'tis autumn now 
 
 On field and hill, in heart and brain ; 
 The naked trees at evening sough ; 
 The leaf to the forsaken bough 
 Sighs not, "We meet again!" 
 
 Two watched yon oriole's pendent dome, 
 That now is void, and dank with rain, 
 
 And one, O, hope more frail than foam ! 
 
 The bird to his deserted home 
 Sings not, "We meet again!" 
 
 The loath gate swings with rusty creak : 
 Once, parting there, we played at pain
 
 PALINODE. 
 
 There came a parting, when the weak 
 And fading lips essayed to speak 
 Vainly, " We meet again ! " 
 
 Somewhere is comfort, somewhere faith, 
 
 Though thou in outer dark remain ; 
 One sweet, sad voice ennobles death, 
 And still, for eighteen centuries saith 
 Softly," Ye meet again ! " 
 
 If earth another grave must bear, 
 
 Yet heaven hath won a sweeter strain, 
 And something whispers my despair, 
 That, from an orient chamber there 
 Floats down, " We meet again ! "
 
 AFTER THE BURIAL. 
 
 \7"ES, Faith is a goodly anchor; 
 
 When skies are sweet as a psalm 
 At the bows it lolls so stalwart, 
 In bluff, broad-shouldered calm. 
 
 And when over breakers to leeward 
 The tattered surges are hurled, 
 It may keep our head to the tempest, 
 With its grip on the base of the world. 
 
 But, after the shipwreck, tell me 
 What help in its iron thews, 
 Still true to the broken hawser, 
 Deep down among sea-weed and ooze ? \
 
 AFTER THE BURIAL. 113 
 
 In the breaking gulfs of sorrow, 
 When the helpless feet stretch out 
 And find in the deeps of darkness 
 No footing so solid as doubt, 
 
 Then better one spar of Memory, 
 One broken plank of the Past, 
 That our human heart may cling to, 
 Though hopeless of shore at last ! 
 
 To the spirit its splendid conjectures, 
 To the flesh its sweet despair, 
 Its tears o'er the thin-worn locket 
 With its anguish of deathless hair ! 
 
 Immortal? I feel it and know it, 
 Who doubts it of such as she? 
 But that is the pang's very secret, 
 Immortal away from me. 
 i
 
 114 AFTER THE BURIAL. 
 
 There 's a narrow ridge in the graveyard 
 Would scarce stay a child in his race, 
 But to me and my thought it is wider 
 Than the star-sown vague of Space. 
 
 Your logic, my friend, is perfect, 
 
 Your morals most drearily true ; 
 
 But, since the earth clashed on her coffin, 
 
 I keep hearing that, and not you. 
 
 Coiisole if you will, I can bear it ; 
 'T is a well-meant alms of breath ; 
 But not all the preaching since Adam 
 Has made Death other than Death. 
 
 It is pagan ; but wait till you feel it, 
 That jar of our earth, that dull shock 
 When the ploughshare of deeper passion 
 Tears down to our primitive rock.
 
 AP7ER 7 HE BURIAL. 115 
 
 Communion in spirit ! Forgive me, 
 
 But I, who am earthy and weak, 
 
 Would give all my incomes from dreamland 
 
 For a touch of her hand on my cheek. 
 
 That little shoe in the corner, 
 So worn and wrinkled and brown, 
 With its emptiness confutes you. 
 And argues your wisdom down. 
 
 I 2
 
 THE DEAD HOUSE. 
 
 T T ERE once my step was quickened, 
 Here beckoned the opening door, 
 And welcome thrilled from the threshold 
 To the foot it had known before. 
 
 A glow came forth to meet me 
 
 From the flame that laughed in the grate, 
 And shadows adance on the ceiling, 
 
 Danced blither with mine for a mate. 
 
 " I claim you, old friend," yawned the arm chair, 
 '* This corner, you know, is your seat ;" 
 
 '' Rest your slippers on me," beamed the fender 
 " I brighten at touch of your feet"
 
 THE DEAD HOUSE. 117 
 
 "We know the practised finger," 
 Said the books, " that seems like brain ; " 
 
 And the shy page rustled the secret 
 It had kept till I came again. 
 
 Sang the pillow, " My down once quivered 
 On nightingales' throats that flew 
 
 Through moonlit gardens of Hafiz 
 
 
 To gather quaint dreams for you." 
 
 Ah me, where the Past sowed heart's-ease, 
 The Present plucks rue for us men ! 
 
 I come back : that scar unhealing 
 Was not in the churchyard then. 
 
 But, I think, the house is unaltered, 
 
 I will go and beg to look 
 At the rooms that were once familiar 
 
 To my life as its bed to a brook.
 
 il8 THE DEAD HOUSE. 
 
 Unaltered ! Alas for the sameness 
 That makes the change but more ! 
 
 'Tis a dead man I see in the mirrors, 
 Tis his tread that chills the floor ! 
 
 To learn such a simple lesson, 
 Need I go to Paris and Rome, 
 
 That the many make the household, 
 "But only one the home? 
 
 'T was just a womanly presence, 
 
 An influence unexprest, 
 But a rose she had worn, on my grave-sod 
 
 Were more than long life with the rest ! 
 
 'Twas a smile, 'twas a garment's rustle, 
 'Twas nothing that I can phrase, 
 
 But the whole dumb dwelling grew conscious, 
 And put on her looks and ways.
 
 THE DEAD HOUSE. 119 
 
 Were it mine I would close the shutters, 
 
 Like lids when the life is fled, 
 And the funeral fire should wind it, 
 
 This corpse of a home that is dead. 
 
 For it died that autumn morning 
 
 When she, its soul, was borne 
 To lie all dark on the hillside 
 
 That looks over woodland and corn.
 
 A MOOD. 
 
 T)INE in the distance, 
 
 Patient through sun or rain, 
 Meeting with graceful persistence, 
 With yielding but rooted resistance, 
 The northwind's wrench and strain, 
 No memory of past existence 
 Brings thee pain ; 
 Right for the zenith heading, 
 Friendly with heat or cold, 
 Thine arms to the influence spreading 
 Of the heavens, just from of old, 
 Thou only aspirest the more, 
 Unregretful the old leaves shedding 
 That fringed thee with music before,
 
 A MOOD. i: 
 
 And deeper thy roots embedding 
 In the grace and the beauty of yore ; 
 Thou sigh'st not, "Alas, I am older, 
 The green of last summer is sear ! " 
 But loftier, hopefuller, bolder, 
 Wins broader horizons each year. 
 
 To me 't is not cheer thou art singing : 
 
 There's a sound of the sea, 
 
 O mournful tree, 
 
 In thy boughs forever clinging, 
 
 And the far-off roar 
 
 Of waves on the shore 
 
 A shattered vessel flinging. 
 
 As thou musest still of the ocean 
 
 On which thou must float at last, 
 
 And seem'st to foreknow 
 
 The shipwreck's woe 
 
 And the sailor wrenched from the broken mast,
 
 A MOOD. 
 
 Do I, in this vague emotion, 
 This sadness, that will not pass, 
 Though the air throbs with wings, 
 And the field laughs and sings, 
 Do I forebode, alas ! 
 The ship-building longer and wearier, 
 The voyage's struggle and strife, 
 And then the darker and drearier 
 Wreck of a broken life?
 
 THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND. 
 
 I. 
 
 BIORN'S BECKONERS. 
 
 ~j\TOW Biorn, the son of Heriulf, had ill days 
 
 Because the heart within him seethed with 
 
 blood 
 
 That would not be allayed with any toil, 
 Whether of war or hunting or the oar, 
 But was anhungered for some joy untried : 
 For the brain grew not weary with the limbs, 
 But, while they slept, still hammered like a Troll, 
 Building all night a bridge of solid dream 
 Between him and some purpose of his soul, 
 Or will to find a purpose. With the dawn
 
 124 THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND. 
 
 The sleep-laid timbers, crumbled to soft mist, 
 Denied all foothold. But the dream remained, 
 And every night with yellow-bearded kings 
 His sleep was haunted, mighty men of old, 
 Once young as he, now ancient like the gods, 
 And safe as stars in all men's memories. 
 Strange sagas read he in their sea-blue eyes 
 Cold as the sea, grandly compassionless ; 
 Like life, they made him eager and then mocked. 
 Nay, broad awake, they would not let him be ; 
 They shaped themselves gigantic in the mist, 
 They rose far-beckoning in the lamps of heaven, 
 They whispered invitation in the winds, 
 And breath came from them, mightier than the wind, 
 To strain the lagging sails of his resolve, 
 Till that grew passion which before was wish, 
 And youth seemed all too costly to be staked 
 On the soiled cards wherewith men played their 
 
 game, 
 Letting Time pocket up the larger life,
 
 THE VOYAGE TO V1NLAND. 125 
 
 Lost with base gain of raiment, food, and roof. 
 
 " What helpeth lightness of the feet ? " they said, 
 
 " Oblivion runs with swifter foot than they ; 
 
 Or strength of sinew? New men come as strong, 
 
 And those sleep nameless ; or renown in war ? 
 
 Swords grave no name on the long-memoried rock 
 
 But moss shall hide it ; they alone who wring 
 
 Some secret purpose from the unwilling gods 
 
 Survive in song for yet a little while 
 
 To vex, like us, the dreams of later men, 
 
 Ourselves a dream, and dreamlike all we did." 
 
 II. 
 
 THORWALD S LAY. 
 
 So Biorn went comfortless but for his thought, 
 And by his thought the more discomforted, 
 Till Eric Thurlson kept his Yule-tide feast : 
 And thither came he, called among the rest,
 
 126 THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND. 
 
 Silent, lone-minded, a church-door to mirth : 
 But, ere deep draughts forbade such serious song 
 As the grave Skald might chant, nor after blush, 
 Then Eric looked at Thorwald, where he sat, 
 Mute as a cloud amid the stormy hall, 
 And said: "O Skald, sing now an olden song, 
 Such as our fathers heard who led great lives; 
 And, as the bravest on a shield is borne 
 Along the waving host that shouts him king, 
 So rode their thrones upon the thronging seas ! " 
 Then the old man arose ; white-haired he stood, 
 White-bearded, and with eyes that looked afar 
 From their still region of perpetual snow, 
 Beyond the little smokes and stirs of men : 
 His head was bowed with gathered flakes of years, 
 As winter bends the sea-foreboding pine, 
 But something triumphed in his brow and eye, 
 Which whoso saw it could not see and crouch : 
 Loud rang the emptied beakers as he mused, 
 Brooding his eyried thoughts ; then, as an eagle
 
 THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND. 127 
 
 Circles smooth-winged above the wind-vexed woods, 
 
 So wheeled his soul into the air of song 
 
 High o'er the stormy hall ; and thus he sang : 
 
 " The fletcher for his arrow-shaft picks out 
 
 Wood closest-grained, long-seasoned* straight as light ; 
 
 And from a quiver full of such as these 
 
 The wary bowman, matched against his peers, 
 
 Long doubting, singles yet once more the best 
 
 Who is it needs such flawless shafts as Pate? 
 
 What archer of his arrows is so choice, 
 
 Or hits the white so surely? They are men, 
 
 The chosen of her quiver; nor for her 
 
 Will every reed suffice, or cross-grained stick 
 
 At random from life's vulgar fagot plucked : 
 
 Such answer household ends; but she will have 
 
 Souls straight and clear, of toughest fibre, sound 
 
 Down to the heart of heart ; from these she strips 
 
 All needless stuff, all sapwood, seasons them, 
 
 From circumstance untoward feathers plucks 
 
 Crumpled and cheap, and barbs with iron will :
 
 128 THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND. 
 
 The hour that passes is her quiver-boy ; 
 When she draws bow, 'tis not across the wind, 
 Nor 'gainst the sun her haste-snatched arrow sings, 
 For sun and wind have plighted faith to her : 
 Ere men have heard the sinew twang, behold 
 In the butt's heart her trembling messenger ! 
 
 " The song is old and simple that I sing ; 
 But old and simple are despised as cheap, 
 Though hardest to achieve of human things : 
 Good were the days of yore, when men were tried 
 By ring of shields, as now by ring of words ; 
 But while the gods are left, and hearts of men, 
 And unlocked ocean, still the days are good. 
 Still o'er the earth hastes Opportunity, 
 Seeking the hardy soul that seeks for her. 
 Be not abroad, nor deaf with household cares 
 That chatter loudest as they mean the least; 
 Swift-willed js thrice-willed ; late means nevermore ; 
 Impatient is her foot, nor turns again."
 
 THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND. 129 
 
 He ceased ; upon his bosom sank his beard 
 Sadly, as one who oft had seen her pass 
 Nor stayed her : and forthwith the frothy tide 
 Of interrupted wassail roared along ; 
 But Biorn, the son of Heriulf, sat apart 
 Musing, and, with his eyes upon the fire, 
 Saw shapes of arrows, lost as soon as seen. 
 " A ship," he muttered, " is a winged bridge 
 That leadeth every way to man's desire, 
 And ocean the wide gate to manful luck ; " 
 And then with that resolve his heart was bent, 
 Which, like a humming shaft, through many a stripe 
 Of day and night, across the unpathwayed seas 
 Shot the brave prow that cut on Vinland sands 
 The first rune in the Saga of the West. 
 
 III. 
 GUDRIDA'S PROPHECY. 
 
 Four weeks they sailed, a speck in sky-shut seas, 
 Life, where was never life that knew itself, 
 
 K
 
 130 THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND. 
 
 But tumbled lubber-like in blowing whales ; 
 Thought, where the like had never been before 
 Since Thought primeval brooded the abyss ; 
 Alone as men were never in the world. 
 They saw the icy foundlings of the sea, 
 White cliffs of silence, beautiful by day, 
 Or looming, sudden-perilous, at night 
 In monstrous hush ; or sometimes in the dark 
 The waves broke ominous with paly gleams 
 Crushed by the prow in sparkles of cold fire. 
 Then came green stripes of sea that promised land 
 But brought it not, and on the thirtieth day 
 Low in the West were wooded shores like cloud. 
 They shouted as men shout with sudden hope ; 
 But Biorn was silent, such strange loss there is 
 Between the dream's fulfilment and the dream, 
 Such sad abatement in the goal attained. 
 Then Gudrida, that was a prophetess, 
 Rapt with strange influence from Atlantis, sang : 
 Her words : the vision was the dreaming shores.
 
 THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND. 131 
 
 Looms there the New Land : 
 Locked in the shadow 
 Long the gods shut it, 
 Niggards of newness 
 They, the o'er-old. 
 
 Little it looks there, 
 Slim as a cloud-streak ; 
 It shall fold peoples 
 Even as a shepherd 
 Foldeth his flock. 
 
 Silent it sleeps now ; 
 Great ships shall seek it, 
 Swarming as salmon ; 
 Noise of its numbers 
 Two seas shall hear.
 
 132 THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND. 
 
 Haste empty-handed ; 
 No more than manhood 
 Bring they, and hands. 
 
 Dark hair and fair hair, 
 Red blood and blue blood, 
 There shall be mingled; 
 Force of the ferment 
 Makes the New Man. 
 
 Pick of all kindreds, 
 King's blood shall theirs be, 
 Shoots of the eldest 
 Stock upon Midgard, 
 Sons of the poor. 
 
 Them waits the New Land ; 
 They shall subdue it, 
 Leaving their sons' sons
 
 THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND. 133 
 
 Space for the body, 
 Space for the soul. 
 
 Leaving their sons' sons 
 All things save song-craft, 
 Plant long in growing, 
 Thrusting its tap-root 
 Deep in the Gone. 
 
 Here men shall grow up 
 Strong from self-helping ; 
 Eyes for the present 
 Bring they as eagles', 
 Blind to the Past. 
 
 They shall make over 
 Creed, law, and custom ; 
 Driving-men, doughty 
 Builders of empire, 
 Builders of men.
 
 134 THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND. 
 
 Here are no singers; 
 What should they sing of? 
 They, the unresting? 
 Labour is ugly, 
 Loathsome is change. 
 
 These the old gods hate, 
 Dwellers in dream-land, 
 Drinking delusion 
 Out of the empty 
 Skull of the Past. 
 
 These hate the old gods, 
 Warring against them ; 
 Fatal to Odin, 
 Here the wolf Fenrir 
 Lieth in wait 
 
 Here the gods' Twilight 
 Gathers, earth-gulfing ;
 
 THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND. 13$ 
 
 Blackness of battle, 
 Fierce till the Old World 
 Flares up in fire. 
 
 Doubt not, my Northmen j 
 Fate loves the fearless ; 
 Fools, when their roof-tree 
 Falls, think it doomsday ; 
 Firm stands the sky. 
 
 Over the ruin 
 
 See I the promise ; 
 
 Crisp waves the corn-field, 
 
 Peace-walled, the homestead 
 
 Waits open-doored. 
 
 There lies the New Land ; 
 Yours to behold it, 
 Not to possess it ;
 
 136 THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND. 
 
 Slowly Fate's perfect 
 Fulness shall come. 
 
 Then from your strong loins 
 Seed shall be scattered, 
 Men to the marrow, 
 Wilderness tamers, 
 Walkers of waves. 
 
 Jealous, the old gods 
 Shut it in shadow, 
 Wisely they ward it, 
 Egg of the serpent, 
 Bane to them all. 
 
 Stronger and sweeter 
 New gods shall seek it, 
 Fill it with man-folk 
 Wise for the future, 
 Wise from the past.
 
 THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND. 137 
 
 Here all is all men's, 
 Save only Wisdom ; 
 King he that wins her; 
 Him hail they helmsman, 
 Highest of heart. 
 
 Might makes no master 
 Here any longer ; 
 Sword is not swayer ; 
 Here e'en the gods are 
 Selfish no more. 
 
 Walking the New Earth, 
 Lo, a divine One 
 Greets all men godlike, 
 Calls them his kindred, 
 He, the Divine. 
 
 Is it Thor's hammer 
 Rays in his right hand?
 
 138 THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND. 
 
 Weaponless walks he ; 
 It is the White Christ, 
 Stronger than Thor. 
 
 Here shall a realm rise 
 Mighty in manhood ; 
 Justice and Mercy 
 Here set a stronghold 
 Safe without spear. 
 
 Weak was the Old World, 
 Wearily war-fenced ; 
 Out of its ashes, 
 Strong as the morning, 
 Springeth the New. 
 
 Beauty of promise, 
 Promise of beauty, 
 Safe in the silence
 
 THE VOYAGE TO V1NLAND. 139 
 
 Sleep thou, till cometh 
 Light to thy lids ! 
 
 Thee shall awaken 
 Flame from the furnace, 
 Bath of all brave ones, 
 Cleanser of conscience, 
 Kindler of will. 
 
 Lowly shall love thee. 
 Thee, open-handed ! 
 Stalwart shall shield thee, 
 Thee, worth their best blood, 
 Waif of the West ! 
 
 Then shall come singers, 
 Singing no swan-song, 
 Birth-carols, rather, 
 Meet for the man-child 
 Mighty of bone.
 
 MAHMOOD THE IMAGE-BREAKER. 
 
 /^\LD events have modern meanings ; only that 
 
 survives 
 Of past history which finds kindred in all hearts 
 
 and lives. 
 
 Mahmood once, the idol-breaker, spreader of the 
 
 Faith, 
 Was at Sumnat tempted sorely, as the legend 
 
 saith. 
 
 In the great pagoda's centre, monstrous and ab 
 horred, 
 
 Granite on a throne of granite, sat the temple's 
 lord.
 
 MAHMOOD THE IMAGE-BREAKER. 141 
 
 Mahmood paused a moment, silenced by the silent 
 
 face 
 That, with eyes of stone unwavering, awed the 
 
 ancient place. 
 
 Then the Brahmins knelt before him, by his doubt 
 
 made bold, 
 Pledging for their idol's ransom countless gems 
 
 and gold. 
 
 Gold was yellow dirt to Mahmood, but of precious 
 
 use, 
 Since from it the roots of power suck a potent 
 
 juice. 
 
 " Were yon stone alone in question, this would 
 
 please me well," 
 Mahmood said ; " but, with the block there, I my 
 
 truth must sell.
 
 142 MAHMOOD THE IMAGE-BREAKER. 
 
 "Wealth and rule slip down with Fortune, as her 
 wheel turns round ; 
 
 He who keeps his faith, he only cannot be dis 
 crowned. 
 
 ' Little were a change of station, loss of life or 
 
 crown, 
 But the wreck were past retrieving if the Man fell 
 
 down." 
 
 So his iron mace he lifted, smote with might and 
 
 main, 
 And the idol, on the pavement tumbling, burst in 
 
 twain. 
 
 Luck obeys the downright striker ; from the hollow 
 
 core, 
 Fifty times the Brahmins' offer deluged all the 
 
 floor.
 
 INVITA MINERVA. 
 
 '"PHE Bard ling came where by a river grew 
 
 The pennoned reeds, that, as the west wind 
 
 blew, 
 
 Gleamed and sighed plaintively, as if they knew 
 What music slept enchanted in each stem, 
 Till Pan should choose some happy one of them, 
 And with wise lips enlife it through and through. 
 
 The Bardling thought, " A pipe is all I need ; 
 Once I have sought me out a clear, smooth reed, 
 And shaped it to my fancy, I proceed 
 To breathe such strains as, yonder 'mid the rocks, 
 The strange youth blows, that tends Admetus' 
 
 flocks, 
 And all the maidens will to me pay heed."
 
 144 IN VITA MINERVA. 
 
 The summer day he spent in questful round, 
 And many a reed he marred, but never found 
 A conjuring-spell to free the imprisoned sound ; 
 At last his vainly wearied limbs he laid 
 Beneath a sacred laurel's flickering shade, 
 And sleep about his brain her cobweb wound. 
 
 Then strode the mighty Mother through his dreams, 
 Saying : " The reeds along a thousand streams 
 Are mine, and who is he that plots and schemes 
 To snare the melodies wherewith my breath 
 Sounds through the double pipes of Life and Death, 
 Atoning what to men mad discord seems? 
 
 " He seeks not me, but I seek oft in vain 
 For him who shall my voiceful reeds constrain, 
 And make them utter their melodious pain ; 
 He flies the immortal gift, for well he knows 
 His life of life must with its overflows 
 Flood the unthankful pipe, nor come again.
 
 IN VITA A1INERVA. 145 
 
 'Thou fool, who dost my harmless subjects wrong 
 Tis not the singer's wish that makes the song : 
 The rhythmic beauty wanders dumb, how long, 
 Nor stoops to any daintiest instrument, 
 Till, found its mated lips, their sweet consent 
 Makes mortal breath than Time and Fate more 
 strong."
 
 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. 
 
 I. 
 
 ""PIS a woodland enchanted! 
 
 By no sadder spirit 
 Than blackbirds and thrushes, 
 That whistle to cheer it 
 All day in the bushes, 
 This woodland is haunted : 
 And in a small clearing, 
 Beyond sight or hearing 
 Of human annoyance, 
 The little fount gushes, 
 First smoothly, then dashes 
 And gurgles and flashes, 
 To the maples and ashes
 
 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. 14" 
 
 Confiding its joyance ; 
 Unconscious confiding, 
 Then, silent and glossy, 
 Slips winding and hiding 
 Through alder-stems mossy, 
 Through gossamer roots 
 Fine as nerves, 
 That tremble, as shoots 
 Through their magnetized curves 
 The allurement delicious 
 Of the water's capricious 
 Thrills, gushes, and swerves. 
 
 II. 
 
 'Tis a woodland enchanted ! 
 I am writing no fiction ; 
 And this fount, its sole daughter, 
 To the woodland was granted 
 To pour holy water 
 And win benediction ; 
 
 L 2
 
 148 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. 
 
 In summer-noon flushes, 
 When all the wood hushes. 
 Blue dragon-flies knitting 
 To and fro in the sun, 
 With sidelong jerk flitting 
 Sink down on the rushes, 
 And, motionless sitting, 
 Hear it bubble and run, 
 Hear its low inward singing, 
 With level wings swinging 
 On green tasselled rushes, 
 To dream in the sun. 
 
 III. 
 
 'Tis a woodland enchanted ! 
 The great August noonlight, 
 Through myriad rifts slanted. 
 Leaf and bole thickly sprinkles 
 With flickering gold ; 
 There, in warm August gloaming,
 
 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. 149 
 
 With quick, silent brightenings, 
 
 From meadow-lands roaming, 
 
 The firefly twinkles 
 
 His fitful heat-lightnings ; 
 
 There the magical moonlight 
 
 With meek, saintly glory 
 
 Steeps summit and wold ; 
 
 There whippoonvills plain in the solitudes 
 
 hoary, 
 
 With lone cries that wander 
 Now hither, now yonder, 
 Like souls doomed of old 
 To a mild purgatory ; 
 But through noonlight and moonlight 
 The little fount tinkles 
 Its silver saints'-bells, 
 That no sprite ill-boding 
 May make his abode in 
 Those innocent dells.
 
 150 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. 
 
 IV. 
 
 'T is a woodland enchanted ! 
 When the phebe scarce whistles 
 Once an hour to his fellow, 
 And, where red lilies flaunted, 
 Balloons from the thistles 
 Tell summer's disasters, 
 The butterflies yellow, 
 As caught in an eddy 
 Of air's silent ocean, 
 Sink, waver, and steady 
 O'er goat's-beard and asters, 
 Like souls of dead flowers, 
 With aimless emotion 
 Still lingering unready 
 To leave their old bowers ; 
 And the fount is no dumber, 
 But still gleams and flashes, 
 And gurgles and plashes,
 
 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. 151 
 
 To the measure of summer ; 
 
 The butterflies hear it, 
 
 And spell-bound are holden, 
 
 Still balancing near it 
 
 O'er the goat's-beard so golden. 
 
 V. 
 
 'T is a woodland enchanted ! 
 A vast silver willow, 
 I know not how planted, 
 (This wood is enchanted, 
 And full of surprises,) 
 Stands stemming a billow, 
 A motionless billow 
 Of ankle-deep mosses ; 
 Two great roots it crosses 
 To make a round basin, 
 And there the Fount rises ; 
 Ah, too pure a mirror
 
 152 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. 
 
 For one sick of error 
 To see his sad face in! 
 No dew-drop is stiller 
 In its lupin-leaf setting 
 Than this water moss-bounded ; 
 But a tiny sand-pillar 
 From the bottom keeps jetting, 
 And mermaid ne'er sounded 
 Through the wreaths of a shell. 
 Down amid crimson dulses 
 In some dell of ocean, 
 A melody sweeter 
 Than the delicate pulses, 
 The soft, noiseless metre, 
 The pause and the swell, 
 Of that musical motion : 
 I recall it, not see it ; 
 Could vision be clearer? 
 Half I'm fain to draw nearer, 
 Half tempted to flee it ;
 
 'I HE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. 153 
 
 The sleeping Past wake not, 
 
 Beware ! 
 
 One forward step take not, 
 
 Ah ! break not 
 
 That quietude rare ! 
 
 By my step unaffrighted 
 
 A thrush hops before it, 
 
 And o'er it 
 
 A birch hangs delighted, 
 
 Dipping, dipping, dipping its tremulous 
 
 hair ; 
 
 Pure as the fountain, once 
 I came to the place, 
 (How dare I draw nearer?) 
 I bent o'er its mirror, 
 And saw a child's face 
 'Mid locks of bright gold in it ; 
 Yes, pure as this fountain once, 
 Since, how much error ! 
 Too holy a mirror
 
 154 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. 
 
 For the man to behold in it 
 His harsh, bearded countenance 
 
 VI. 
 
 'T is a woodland enchanted ! 
 
 Ah, fly unreturning ! 
 
 Yet stay ; 
 
 'Tis a woodland enchanted, 
 
 Where wonderful chances 
 
 Have sway; 
 
 Luck flees from the cold one 
 
 But leaps to the bold one 
 
 Half-way ; 
 
 Why should I be daunted ? 
 
 Still the smooth mirror glances, 
 
 Still the amber sand dances, 
 
 One look, then away ! 
 
 O magical glass ! 
 
 Canst keep in thy bosom 
 
 Shades of leaf and of blossom
 
 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. 155 
 
 When summer days pass, 
 So that when thy wave hardens 
 It shapes as it pleases, 
 Unharmed by the breezes, 
 Its fine hanging gardens? 
 Hast those in thy keeping, 
 And canst not uncover, 
 Enchantedly sleeping, 
 The old shade of thy lover ? 
 It is there ! I have found it ! 
 He wakes, the long sleeper ! 
 The pool is grown deeper, 
 The sand dance is ending, 
 The white floor sinks, blending 
 With skies that below me 
 Are deepening and bending, 
 And a child's face alone 
 That seems not to know me, 
 With hair that fades golden 
 In the heaven-glow round it,
 
 156 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. 
 
 Looks up at my own ; 
 
 Ah, glimpse through the portal 
 
 That leads to the throne, 
 
 That opes the child's olden 
 
 Regions Elysian ! 
 
 Ah, too holy vision 
 
 For thy skirts to be h olden 
 
 By soiled hand of mortal ! 
 
 It wavers, it scatters, 
 
 'Tis gone past recalling! 
 
 A tear's sudden falling 
 
 The magic cup shatters, 
 
 Breaks the spell of the waters, 
 
 And the sand cone once more, 
 
 With a ceaseless renewing, 
 
 Its dance is pursuing 
 
 On the silvery floor, 
 
 O'er and o'er, 
 
 With a noiseless and ceaseless renewing.
 
 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. 157 
 
 VII. 
 
 T is a woodland enchanted ! 
 
 If you ask me, Where is it ? 
 
 I only can answer, 
 
 Tis past my disclosing ; 
 
 Not to choice is it granted 
 
 By sure paths to visit 
 
 The still pool enclosing 
 
 Its blithe little dancer ; 
 
 But in some day, the rarest 
 
 Of many Septembers, 
 
 When the pulses of air rest, 
 
 And all things lie dreaming 
 
 In drowsy haze steaming 
 
 From the wood's glowing embers, 
 
 Then, sometimes, unheeding, 
 
 And asking not whither, 
 
 By a sweet inward leading 
 
 My feet are drawn thither,
 
 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. 
 
 And, looking with awe in the magical mirror, 
 
 I see through my tears, 
 
 Half doubtful of seeing, 
 
 The face unperverted, 
 
 The warm golden being 
 
 Of a child of five years ; 
 
 And spite of the mists and the error, 
 
 And the days overcast, 
 
 Can feel that I walk undeserted, 
 
 But forever attended 
 
 By the glad heavens that bended 
 
 O'er the innocent past; 
 
 Toward fancy or truth 
 
 Doth the sweet vision win me ? 
 
 Dare I think that I cast 
 
 In the fountain of youth 
 
 The fleeting reflection 
 
 Of some bygone perfection 
 
 That still lingers in me ?
 
 Y U S S O U F. 
 
 A STRANGER came one night to Yussoufs 
 
 tent, 
 
 Saying, " Behold one outcast and in dread, 
 Against whose life the bow of power is bent, 
 Who flies, and hath not where to lay his head ; 
 I come to thee for shelter and for food, 
 To Yussouf, called through all our tribes 'The 
 Good.'" 
 
 " This tent is mine," said Yussouf, " but no more 
 
 Than it is God's ; come in, and be at peace ; 
 
 Freely shalt thou partake of all my store 
 
 As I of His who buildeth over these 
 
 Our tents His glorious roof of night and. day, 
 
 And at whose door none ever yet heard Nay."
 
 160 YUSSOUF. 
 
 So Yussouf entertained his guest that night, 
 And, waking him ere day, said : " Here is gold, 
 My swiftest horse is saddled for thy flight, 
 Depart before the prying day grow bold." 
 As one lamp lights another, nor grows less, 
 So nobleness enkindleth nobleness. 
 
 That inward light the stranger's face made grand, 
 Which shines from all self-conquest ; kneeling low. 
 He bowed his forehead upon Yussouf's hand, 
 Sobbing : " O Sheik, I cannot leave thee so ; 
 I will repay thee ; all this thou hast done 
 Unto that Ibrahim who slew thy son ! " 
 
 " Take thrice the gold," said Yussouf, " for with thee 
 Into the desert, never to return, 
 My one black thought shall ride away from me: 
 First-born, for whom by day and night I yearn, 
 Balanced and just are all of God's decrees; 
 Thou art avenged, my first-born, sleep in peace!"
 
 THE DARKENED MIND. 
 
 r "PHE fire is burning clear and blithely, 
 Pleasantly whistles the winter wind ; 
 We are about thee, thy friends and kindred. 
 On us all flickers the firelight kind ; 
 There them sittest in thy wonted corner 
 Lone and awful in thy darkened mind. 
 
 There thou sittest ; now and then thou meanest : 
 
 Thou dost talk with what we cannot see, 
 
 Lookest at us with an eye so doubtful, 
 
 It doth put us very far from thee ; 
 
 There thou sittest ; we would fain be nigh thee, 
 
 But we know that it can never be. 
 
 M
 
 1 62 THE DARKENED MIND. 
 
 We can touch thee, still we are no nearer; 
 Gather round thee, still thou art alone ; 
 The wide chasm of reason is between us ; 
 Thou confutest kindness with a moan ; 
 We can speak to thee, and thou canst answer, 
 Like two prisoners through a wall of stone. 
 
 Hardest heart would call it very awful 
 When thou look'st at us and seest O what? 
 If we move away, thou sittest gazing 
 With those vague eyes at the selfsame spot, 
 And thou mutterest, thy hands thou wringest, 
 Seeing something; us thou seest not. 
 
 Strange it is that, in this open brightness, 
 Thou shouldst sit in such a narrow cell ; 
 Strange it is that thou shouldst be so lonesome 
 Where those are who love thee all so well ; 
 Not so much of thee is left among us 
 As the hum outliving the hushed bell.
 
 WHAT RABBI JEHOSHA SAID. 
 
 "D ABBI JEHOSHA used to say 
 
 That God made angels every day, 
 Perfect as Michael and the rest 
 First brooded in creation's nest, 
 Whose only office was to cry 
 Hosanna ! once, and then to die ; 
 Or rather, with Life's essence blent, 
 To be led home from banishment. 
 
 Rabbi Jehosha had the skill 
 To know that Heaven is in God's will ; 
 And doing that, though for a space 
 One heart-beat long, may win a grace 
 As full of grandeur and of glow 
 As Princes of the Chariot know. 
 M 2
 
 164 WHA T RABBI JEHOSHA SAID. 
 
 'Twere glorious, no doubt, to be 
 
 One of the strong-winged Hierarchy, 
 
 To burn with Seraphs, or to shine 
 
 With Cherubs, deathlessly divine ; 
 
 Yet I, perhaps, poor earthly clod, 
 
 Could I forget myself in God, 
 
 Could I but find my nature's clew 
 
 Simply as birds and blossoms do, 
 
 And but for one rapt moment know 
 
 'Tis Heaven must come, not we must go, 
 
 Should win my place as near the throne 
 
 As the pearl-angel of its zone, 
 
 And God would listen 'mid the throng 
 
 For my one breath of perfect song, 
 
 That, in its simple human way, 
 
 Said all the Host of Heaven could say.
 
 ALL-SAINTS. 
 
 /^~\NE feast, of holy days the crest, 
 
 I, though no Churchman, love to keep, 
 All-Saints, the unknown good that rest 
 
 In God's still memory folded deep ; 
 The bravely dumb that did their deed, 
 
 And scorned to blot it with a name, 
 Men of the plain heroic breed, 
 
 That loved Heaven's silence more than fame. 
 
 Such lived not in the past alone, 
 
 But thread to-day the unheeding street, 
 
 And stairs to Sin and Famine known 
 Sing with the welcome of their feet ; 
 
 The den they enter grows a shrine, 
 The grimy sash an oriel burns,
 
 166 ALL-SAINTS. 
 
 Their cup of water warms like wine, 
 
 Their speech is filled from heavenly urns. 
 
 About their brows to me appears 
 
 An aureole traced in tenderest light, 
 The rainbow-gleam of smiles through tears 
 
 In dying eyes, by them made bright, 
 Of souls that shivered on the edge 
 
 Of that chill ford repassed no more, 
 And in their mercy felt the pledge 
 
 And sweetness of the farther shore.
 
 A WINTER-EVENING HYMN TO MY FIRE. 
 
 I. 
 
 T3EAUTY on my hearth-stone blazing! 
 
 To-night the triple Zoroaster 
 Shall my prophet be and master : 
 To-night will I pure Magian be, 
 Hymns to thy sole honour raising, 
 While thou leapest fast and faster, 
 Wild with self-delighted glee, 
 Or sink'st low and glowest faintly 
 As an aureole still and saintly, 
 Keeping cadence to my praising 
 Thee ! still thee ! and only thee !
 
 1 68 A WINTER-EVENING HYMN 
 
 II. 
 
 Elfish daughter of Apollo ! 
 Thee, from thy father stolen and bound 
 To serve in Vulcan's clangorous smithy 
 Prometheus (primal Yankee) found, 
 And, when he had tampered with thee, 
 (Too confiding little maid ! ) 
 In a reed's precarious hollow- 
 To our frozen earth conveyed : 
 For he swore I know not what 
 Endless ease should be thy lot, 
 Pleasure that should never falter, 
 Life -long play, and not a duty 
 Save to hover o'er the altar, 
 Vision of celestial beauty, 
 Fed with precious woods and spices. 
 Then, perfidious ! having got 
 Thee in the net of his devices, 
 Sold thee into endless slavery,
 
 TO MY FIRE. 169 
 
 Made thee a drudge to boil the pot, 
 Thee, Helios' daughter, who dost bear 
 His likeness in thy golden hair; 
 Thee, by nature wild and wavery, 
 Palpitating, evanescent 
 As the shade of Dian's crescent, 
 Life, motion, gladness, everywhere ! 
 
 III. 
 
 Fathom deep men bury thee 
 In the furnace dark and still, 
 There, with dreariest mockery, 
 Making thee eat, against thy will, 
 Blackest Pennsylvanian stone ; 
 But thou dost avenge thy doom, 
 For, from out thy catacomb, 
 Day and night thy wrath is blown 
 In a withering simoom, 
 And, adown that cavern drear, 
 Thy black pitfall in the floor,
 
 170 A WINTER-EVENING HYMN 
 
 Staggers the lusty antique cheer, 
 Despairing, and is seen no more ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 Elfish I may rightly name thee ; 
 We enslave, but cannot tame thee ; 
 With fierce snatches, now and then, 
 Thou pluckest at thy right again, 
 And thy down-trod instincts savage 
 To stealthy insurrection creep, 
 While thy wittol masters sleep, 
 And burst in undiscerning ravage; 
 Then how thou shak'st thy bacchant locks 
 While brazen pulses, far and near, 
 Throb thick and thicker wild with fear 
 And dread conjecture, till the drear 
 Disordered clangour every steeple rocks ! 
 
 V. 
 
 But when we make a friend of thee, 
 And admit thee to the hall
 
 TO MY FIRE. 171 
 
 On our nights of festival, 
 Then, Cinderella, who could see 
 In thee the kitchen's stunted thrall? 
 Once more a Princess lithe and tall, 
 Thou dancest with a whispering tread, 
 While the bright marvel of thy head 
 In crinkling gold floats all abroad, 
 And gloriously dost vindicate 
 The legend of thy lineage great, 
 Earth-exiled daughter of the Pythian god ! 
 Now in the ample chimney-place, 
 To honour thy acknowledged race, 
 We crown thee high with laurel good, 
 Thy shining father's sacred wood, 
 Which, guessing thy ancestral right, 
 Sparkles and snaps his dumb delight, 
 And, at thy touch, poor outcast one, 
 Feels through his gladdened fibres go 
 The tingle and thrill and vassal glow 
 Of instincts loyal to the sun.
 
 172 A WINTER-EVENING HYMN 
 
 VI. 
 
 O thou of home the guardian Lar, 
 And, when our earth hath wandered far 
 Into the cold, and deep snow covers 
 The walks of our New England lovers, 
 Their sweet secluded evening-star ! 
 'Twas with thy rays the English Muse 
 Ripened her mild domestic hues ; 
 'Twas by thy flicker that she conned 
 The fireside wisdom that enrings 
 With light from heaven familiar things ; 
 By thee she found the homely faith 
 In whose mild eyes thy comfort stay'th. 
 When Death, extinguishing his torch, 
 Gropes for the latch-string in the porch ; 
 The love that wanders not beyond 
 His earliest nest, but sits and sings 
 While children smooth his patient wings; 
 Therefore with thee I love to read
 
 TO MY FIRE. 173 
 
 Our brave old poets : at thy touch how stirs 
 
 Life in the withered words ! how swift recede 
 
 Time's shadows ! and how glows again 
 
 Through its dead mass the incandescent verse, 
 
 As when upon the anvils of the brain 
 
 It glittering lay, cyclopically wrought 
 
 By the fast throbbing hammers of the poet's thought ! 
 
 Thou murmurest, too, divinely stirred, 
 
 The aspirations unattained, 
 
 The rhythms so rathe and delicate, 
 
 They bent and strained 
 
 And broke, beneath the sombre weight 
 
 Of any airiest mortal word. 
 
 VII. 
 
 What warm protection dost thou bend 
 Round curtained talk of friend with friend, 
 While the gray snow-storm, held aloof, 
 To softest outline rounds the roof, 
 Or the rude North with baffled strain
 
 174 A WINTER-EVENING HYMN 
 
 Shoulders the frost-starred window-pane ! 
 
 Now the kind nymph to Bacchus borne 
 
 By Morpheus' daughter, she that seems 
 
 Gifted upon her natal morn 
 
 By him with fire, by her with dreams, 
 
 Nicotia, dearer to the Muse 
 
 Than all the grapes' bewildering juice, 
 
 We worship, unforbid of thee ; 
 
 And, as her incense floats and curls 
 
 In airy spires and wayward whirls, 
 
 Or poises on its tremulous stalk 
 
 A flower of frailest revery, 
 
 So winds and loiters, idly free, 
 
 The current of unguided talk, 
 
 Now laughter-rippled, and now caught 
 
 In smooth, dark pools of deeper thought. 
 
 Meanwhile thou mellowest every word, 
 
 A sweetly unobtrusive third ; 
 
 For thou hast magic beyond wine, 
 
 To unlock natures each to each ;
 
 TO MY FIRE. 175 
 
 The unspoken thought thou canst divine ; 
 
 Thou fillest the pauses of the speech 
 
 With whispers that to dream-land reach, 
 
 And frozen fancy-springs unchain 
 
 In Arctic outskirts of the brain ; 
 
 Sun of all inmost confidences ! 
 
 To thy rays doth the heart unclose 
 
 Its formal calyx of pretences, 
 
 That close against rude day's offences, 
 
 And open its shy midnight rose. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Thou holdest not the master key 
 
 With which thy Sire sets free the mystic gates 
 
 Of Past and Future : not for common fates 
 
 Do they wide open fling, 
 
 And, with a far-heard ring, 
 
 Swing back their willing valves melodiously ; 
 
 Only to ceremonial days, 
 
 And great processions of imperial song
 
 176 A WINTER-EVENING HYMN 
 
 That set the world at gaze, 
 
 Doth such high privilege belong : 
 
 But thou a postern-door canst ope 
 
 To humbler chambers of the selfsame palace 
 
 Where Memory lodges, and her sister Hope, 
 
 Whose being is but as a crystal chalice 
 
 Which, with her various mood, the elder fills 
 
 Of joy or sorrow, 
 
 So coloring as she wills 
 
 With hues of yesterday the unconscious morrow. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Thou sinkest, and my fancy sinks with thee : 
 
 For thee I took the idle shell, 
 
 And struck the unused chords again, 
 
 But they are gone who listened well; 
 
 Some are in heaven, and all are far from me : 
 
 Even as I sing, it turns to pain, 
 
 And with vain tears my eyelids throb and swell 
 
 Enough ; I come not of the race
 
 TO MY FIRE. 177 
 
 That hawk their sorrows in the market-place. 
 Earth stops the ears I best had loved to please ; 
 Then break, ye untuned chords, or rust in peace; 
 As if a white-haired actor should come back 
 Some midnight to the theatre void and black, 
 And there rehearse his youth's great part 
 'Mid thin applauses of the ghosts, 
 So seems it now : ye crowd upon my heart, 
 And I bow down in silence, shadowy hosts ! 
 
 N
 
 FANCY'S CASUISTRY. 
 
 TTOW straggles with the tempest's swells 
 That warning of tumultuous bells! 
 
 The fire is loose ! and frantic knells 
 Throb fast and faster, 
 
 As tower to tower confusedly tells 
 News of disaster. 
 
 But on my far-off solitude 
 No harsh alarums can intrude ; 
 The terror comes to me subdued 
 
 And charmed by distance, 
 To deepen the habitual mood 
 
 Of my existence.
 
 FANCY'S CASUISTRY. 179 
 
 Are those, I muse, the Easter chimes? 
 And listen, weaving careless rhymes 
 While the loud city's griefs and crimes 
 
 Pay gentle allegiance 
 To the fine quiet that sublimes 
 
 These dreamy regions. 
 
 And when the storm o'erwhelms the shore, 
 I watch entranced as, o'er and o'er, 
 The light revolves amid the roar 
 
 So still and saintly, 
 Now large and near, now more and more 
 
 Withdrawing faintly. 
 
 This, too, despairing sailors see 
 
 Flash out the breakers 'neath their lee 
 
 In sudden snow, then lingeringly 
 
 Wane tow'rd eclipse, 
 While through the dark the shuddering sea 
 
 Gropes for the ships. 
 
 N 2
 
 i8o FANCY'S CASUISTRY. 
 
 And is it right, this mood of mind 
 That thus, in revery enshrined, 
 Can in the world mere topics find 
 
 For musing stricture, 
 Seeing the life of humankind 
 
 Only as picture? 
 
 The events in line of battle go ; 
 In vain for me their trumpets blow 
 As unto him that lieth low 
 
 In death's dark arches, 
 And through the sod hears throbbing slow 
 
 The muffled marches. 
 
 O Duty, am I dead to thee 
 In this my cloistered ecstasy, 
 In this lone shallop on the sea 
 
 That drifts tow'rd Silence? 
 And are those visioned shores I see 
 
 But sirens' islands?
 
 FANCY'S CASUISTRY. 181 
 
 My Dante frowns with lip-locked mien, 
 As who would say, "Tis those, I ween, 
 Whom lifelong armor-chafe makes lean 
 
 That win the laurel ; " 
 But where is Truth? What does it mean, 
 
 The world-old quarrel ? 
 
 Such questionings are idle air : 
 Leave what to do and what to spare 
 To the inspiring moment's care, 
 
 Nor ask for payment 
 Of fame or gold, but just to wear 
 
 Unspotted raiment.
 
 TO MR. JOHN BARTLETT, 
 
 WHO HAD SENT ME A SEVEN-POUND TROUT. 
 
 "pIT for an Abbot of Theleme, 
 
 For the whole Cardinals' College, or 
 
 The Pope himself to see in dream 
 
 Before his lenten vision gleam, 
 He lies there, the sogdologer ! 
 
 His precious flanks with stars besprent, 
 
 Worthy to swim in Castaly ! 
 The friend by whom such gifts are sent, 
 For him shall bumpers full be spent, 
 His health ! be Luck his fast ally ! 
 
 I see him trace the wayward brook 
 Amid the forest mysteries,
 
 TO MR. JOHN BARTLETT. 183 
 
 Where at their shades shy aspens look, 
 Or where, with many a gurgling crook, 
 It croons its woodland histories. 
 
 I see leaf-shade and sun-fleck lend 
 
 Their tremulous, sweet vicissitude 
 To smooth, dark pool, to crinkling bend, 
 
 (O, stew him, Ann, as 'twere your friend, 
 With amorous solicitude !) 
 
 I see him step with caution due, 
 
 Soft as if shod with moccasins, 
 Grave as in church, for who plies you, 
 Sweet craft, is safe as in a pew 
 
 From all our common stock o' sins. 
 
 The unerring fly I see him cast, 
 That as a rose-leaf falls as soft, 
 
 A flash ! a whirl ! he has him fast ! 
 
 We tyros, how that struggle last 
 Confuses and appalls us oft.
 
 1 84 TO MR. JOHN BARTLETT. 
 
 Unfluttered he : calm as the sky 
 Looks on our tragi-comedies, 
 
 This way and that he lets him fly, 
 
 A sunbeam-shuttle, then to die 
 
 Lands him, with cool aplomb, at ease. 
 
 The friend who gave our board such gust, 
 
 Life's care, may he o'erstep it half, 
 And, when Death hooks him, as he must, 
 He'll do it handsomely, I trust, 
 
 And John H write his epitaph! 
 
 O, born beneath the Fishes' sign, 
 
 Of constellations happiest, 
 May he somewhere with Walton dine. 
 May Horace send him Massic wine. 
 
 And Burns Scotch drink, the nappiest ! 
 
 And when they come his deeds to weigh, 
 And how he used the talents his, 
 
 One trout-scale in the scales he'll lay. 
 
 (If trout had scales), and 'twill outsway 
 The wrong side of the balances.
 
 ODE TO HAPPINESS. 
 
 CPIRIT, that rarely comest now 
 And only to contrast my gloom, 
 
 Like rainbow-feathered birds that bloom 
 A moment on some autumn bough 
 That, with the spurn of their farewell, 
 Sheds its last leaves, thou once didst dwell 
 
 With me year-long, and make intense 
 To boyhood's wisely vacant days 
 Their fleet but all-sufficing grace 
 
 Of trustful inexperience, 
 
 While soul could still transfigure sense, 
 And thrill, as with love's first caress, 
 At life's mere unexpectedness. 
 
 Days when my blood would leap and run 
 As full of sunshine as a breeze,
 
 1 86 ODE TO HAPPINESS. 
 
 Or spray tossed up by Summer seas 
 That doubts if it be sea or sun ! 
 
 Days that flew swiftly like the band 
 That played in Grecian games at strife, 
 
 And passed from eager hand to hand 
 The onward-dancing torch of life ! 
 
 Wing-footed ! thou abid'st with him 
 Who asks it not ; but he who hath 
 Watched o'er the waves thy waning path, 
 
 Shall nevermore behold returning 
 
 Thy high-heaped canvas shoreward yearning ! 
 
 Thou first reveal'st to us thy face 
 
 Turned o'er the shoulder's parting grace, 
 A moment glimpsed, then seen no more, 
 
 Thou whose swift footsteps we can trace 
 
 Away from every mortal door ! 
 
 Nymph of the unreturning feet, 
 
 How may I win thee back? but no,
 
 ODE TO HAPPINESS. 187 
 
 I do thee wrong to call thee so ; 
 Tis I am changed, not thou art fleet : 
 The man thy presence feels again, 
 Not in the blood, but in the brain, 
 Spirit, that lov'st the upper air 
 Serene and passionless and rare, 
 
 Such as on mountain heights we find 
 
 And wide-viewed uplands of the mind ; 
 Or such as scorns to coil and sing 
 Round any but the eagle's wing 
 
 Of souls that with long upward beai 
 
 Have won an undisturbed retreat 
 Where, poised like winged victories, 
 They mirror in relentless eyes 
 
 The life broad-basking 'neath their feet, 
 Man eyer with his Now at strife, 
 
 Pained with first gasps of earthly air, 
 
 Then praying Death the last to spare, 
 Still fearful of the ampler life.
 
 1 88 ODE TO HAPPINESS. 
 
 Not unto them dost thou consent 
 Who, passionless, can lead at ease 
 
 A life of unalloyed content, 
 
 A life like that of land-locked seas, 
 
 That feel no elemental gush 
 
 Of tidal forces, no fierce rush 
 
 Of storm deep-grasping scarcely spent 
 'Twixt continent and continent. 
 
 Such quiet souls have never known 
 Thy truer inspiration, thou 
 Who lov'st to feel upon thy brow 
 
 Spray from the plunging vessel thrown 
 Grazing the tusked lee shore, the cliff 
 
 That o'er the abrupt gorge holds its breath, 
 Where the frail hair-breath of an if 
 
 Is all that sunders life and death : 
 
 These, too, are cared-for, and round these 
 
 Bends her mild crook thy sister Peace ; 
 These in unvexed dependence lie, 
 Each 'neath his strip of household sky ;
 
 ODE TO HAPPINESS. 
 
 O'er these clouds wander, and the blue 
 Hangs motionless the whole day through; 
 
 Stars rise for them, and moons grow large 
 And lessen in such tranquil wise 
 As joys and sorrows do that rise 
 
 Within their nature's sheltered marge ; 
 Their hours into each other flit 
 
 Like the leaf-shadows of the vine 
 And fig-tree under which they sit, 
 
 And their still lives to heaven incline 
 With an unconscious habitude, 
 
 Unhistoried as smokes that rise 
 From happy hearths and sight elude 
 
 In kindred blue of morning skies. 
 
 Wayward ! when once we feel thy lack, 
 'Tis worse than vain to woo thee back ! 
 
 Yet there is one who seems to be 
 Thine elder sister, in whose eyes 
 A faint far northern light will rise
 
 190 ODE TO HAPPINESS. 
 
 Sometimes, and bring a dream of thee ; 
 She is not that for which youth hoped, 
 
 But she hath blessings all her own, 
 Thoughts pure as lilies newly oped, 
 
 And faith to sorrow given alone ; 
 Almost I deem that it is thou 
 Come back with graver matron brow, 
 
 With deepened eyes and bated breath, 
 
 Like one that somewhere hath met Death. 
 But " No," she answers, " I am she 
 Whom the gods love, Tranquillity ; 
 
 That other whom you seek forlorn 
 
 Half earthly was ; but I am born 
 Of the immortals, and our race 
 Wear still some sadness on our face : 
 
 He wins me late, but keeps me long, 
 Who, dowered with every gift of passion, 
 In that fierce flame can forge and fashion 
 
 Of sin and self the anchor strong ; 
 Can thence cdmpel the driving force
 
 ODE TO HAPPINESS. 191 
 
 Of daily life's mechanic course, 
 Nor less the nobler energies 
 Of needful toil and culture wise ; 
 Whose soul is worth the tempter's lure 
 Who can renounce, and yet endure, 
 To him I come, not lightly wooed, 
 But won by silent fortitude."
 
 VILLA FRANCA. 
 
 1859- 
 
 VITAIT a little : do we not wait ? 
 Louis Napoleon is not Fate, 
 
 Francis Joseph is not Time ; 
 
 There's One hath swifter feet than Crime ; 
 
 Cannon-parliaments settle naught ; 
 
 Venice is Austria's, whose is Thought? 
 
 Minie is good, but, spite of change, 
 
 Gutenberg's gun has the longest range. 
 Spin, spin, Clotho, spin ! 
 Lachesis, twist ! and Atropos, sever 
 In the shadow, year out, year in, 
 The silent headsman waits forever.
 
 VILLA FRANCA. 193 
 
 Wait, we say : our years are long ; 
 Men are weak, but Man is strong; 
 Since the stars first curved their rings, 
 To have looked on many things ; 
 Great wars come and great wars go, 
 Wolf-tracks light on polar snow ; 
 We shall see him come and gone, 
 This second-hand Napoleon. 
 
 Spin, spin, Clotho, spin ! 
 
 Lachesis, twist ! and Atropos, sever ! 
 
 In the shadow, year out, year in, 
 
 The silent headsman waits forever. 
 
 We saw the elder Corsican, 
 And Clotho muttered as she span, 
 While crowned lackeys bore the train, 
 Of the pinchbeck Charlemagne : 
 " Sister, stint not length of thread ! 
 Sister, stay the scissors dread ! 
 On Saint Helen's granite bleak, 
 o
 
 194 VILLA FRANCA. 
 
 Hark, the vulture whets his beak ! " 
 Spin, spin, Clotho, spin ! 
 Lachesis, twist ! and Atropos, sever ! 
 In the shadow, year out, year in, 
 The silent headsman waits forever. 
 
 The Bonapartes, we know their bees 
 
 That wade in honey red to the knees ; 
 
 Their patent reaper, its sheaves sleep sound 
 
 In dreamless garners underground ; 
 
 We know false glory's spendthrift race 
 
 Pawning nations for feathers and lace ; 
 
 It may be short, it may be long, 
 
 " 'Tis reckoning day ! " sneers unpaid Wrong. 
 
 Spin, spin, Clotho, spin ! 
 
 Lachesis, twist ! and Atropos, sever ! 
 
 In the shadow, year out, year in, 
 
 The silent headsman waits forever. 
 
 The Cock that wears the Eagle's skin 
 Can promise what he ne'er could win ;
 
 VILLA FRANCA. 195 
 
 Slavery reaped for fine words sown, 
 System for all, and rights for none, 
 Despots atop, a wild clan below, 
 Such is the Gaul from long ago ; 
 Wash the black from the Ethiop's face, 
 Wash the past out of man or race ! 
 
 Spin, spin, Clotho, spin ! 
 
 Lachesis, twist ! and Atropos, sever ! 
 
 In the shadow, year out, year in, 
 
 The silent headsman waits forever. 
 
 'Neath Gregory's throne a spider swings, 
 And snares the people for the kings ; 
 " Luther is dead ; old quarrels pass ; 
 The stake's black scars are healed with grass ; " 
 So dreamers prate ; did man e'er live 
 Saw priest or woman yet forgive? 
 But Luther's broom is left, and eyes 
 Peep o'er their creeds to where it lies,. 
 Spin, spin, Clotho, spin ! 
 o 2
 
 196 VILLA FRANCA. 
 
 Lachesis, twist ! and Atropos, sever ! 
 In the shadow, year out, year in, 
 The silent headsman waits forever. 
 
 Smooth sails the ship of either realm, 
 
 Kaiser and Jesuit at the helm ; 
 
 We look down the depths, and mark 
 
 Silent workers in the dark 
 
 Building slow the sharp-tusked reefs, 
 
 Old instincts hardening to new beliefs ; 
 
 Patience a little ; learn to wait ; 
 
 Hours are long on the clock of Fate. 
 
 Spin, spin, Clotho, spin ! 
 
 Lachesis, twist ! and Atropos, sever ! 
 
 Darkness is strong, and so is Sin, 
 
 But only God endures forever.
 
 THE MINER. 
 
 IPvOWN 'mid the tangled roots of things 
 
 That coil about the central fire, 
 I seek for that which giveth wings 
 To stoop, not soar, to my desire. 
 
 Sometimes I hear, as 'twere a sigh, 
 The sea's deep yearning far above, 
 
 "Thou hast the secret not," I cry, 
 " In deeper deeps is hid my Love." 
 
 They think I burrow from the sun, 
 In darkness, all alone, and weak; 
 
 Such loss were gain if He were won, 
 For 'tis the sun's own Sun I seek.
 
 198 THE MINER. 
 
 " The earth," they murmur, " is the tomb 
 That vainly sought his life to prison ; 
 
 Why grovel longer in the gloom? 
 He is not here ; he hath arisen." 
 
 More life for me where he hath lain 
 Hidden while ye believed him dead, 
 
 Than in cathedrals cold and vain, 
 Built on loose sands of // is said. 
 
 My search is for the living gold 
 Him I desire who dwells recluse, 
 
 And not his image worn and old, 
 Day-servant of our sordid use. 
 
 If him I find not, yet I find 
 
 The ancient joy of cell and church, 
 
 The glimpse, the surety undefined, 
 The unquenched ardour of the search.
 
 THE MINER. 199 
 
 Happier to chase a flying goal 
 Than to sit counting laurelled gains, 
 
 To guess the Soul within the soul 
 Than to be lord of what remains. 
 
 Hide still, best Good, in subtile wise, 
 Beyond my nature's utmost scope ; 
 
 Be ever absent from mine eyes 
 To be twice present in my hope !
 
 GOLD EGG: A DREAM-FANTASY. 
 
 HOW A STUDENT IN SEARCH OF THE BEAUTIFUL, 
 FELL ASLEEP IN DRESDEN OVER HERR PROFESSOR 
 DOCTOR VISCHER'S WISSENSCHAFT DES SCHONEN, 
 AND WHAT CAME THEREOF. 
 
 T SWAM with undulation soft, 
 
 Adrift on Vischer's ocean, 
 And, from my cockboat up aloft, 
 Sent down my mental plummet oft 
 In hope to reach a notion. 
 
 But from the metaphysic sea 
 
 No bottom was forthcoming, 
 And all the while (how drearily !) 
 In one eternal note of B 
 
 My German stove kept humming.
 
 GOLD EGG. 
 
 "What's Beauty?" mused I; "is it told 
 
 By synthesis? analysis? 
 Have you not made us lead of gold ? 
 To feed your crucible, not sold 
 Our temple's sacred chalices?" 
 
 Then o'er my senses came a change ; 
 
 My book seemed all traditions,] 
 Old legends of profoundest range, 
 Diablery, and stories strange 
 
 Of goblins, elves, magicians. 
 
 Old gods in modern saints I found, 
 
 Old creeds in strange disguises; 
 I thought them safely underground, 
 And here they were, all safe and sound, 
 Without a sign of phthisis. 
 
 Truth was, my outward eyes were closed, 
 Although I did not know it;
 
 GOLD EGG. 
 
 Deep into dream-land I had dozed, 
 And so was happily transposed 
 From proser into poet. 
 
 So what I read took flesh and blood, 
 
 And turned to living creatures ; 
 The words were but the dingy bud 
 That bloomed, like Adam, from the mud, 
 To human forms and features. 
 
 I saw how Zeus was lodged once more 
 
 By Baucis and Philemon ; 
 The text said, " Not alone of yore, 
 But every day, at every door, 
 
 Knocks still the masking Demon." 
 
 DAIMON 'twas printed in the book, 
 
 And, as I read it slowly, 
 The letters stirred and changed, and took 
 Jove's stature, the Olympian look 
 
 Of painless melancholy.
 
 GOLD EGG. 
 
 He paused upon the threshold worn : 
 " With coin I cannot pay you ; 
 
 Yet would I fain make some return ; 
 
 The gift for cheapness do not spurn, 
 Accept this hen, I pray you. 
 
 " Plain feathers wears my Hemera, 
 
 And has from ages olden ; 
 She makes her nest in common hay, 
 And yet, of all the birds that lay, 
 Her eggs alone are golden." 
 
 He turned, and could no more be seen ; 
 
 Old Baucis stared a moment, 
 Then tossed poor Partlet on the green, 
 And with a tone, half jest, half spleen, 
 
 Thus made her housewife's comment : 
 
 " The stranger had a queerish face, 
 His smile was hardly pleasant,
 
 204 GOLD EGG. 
 
 And, though he meant it for a grace, 
 Yet this old hen of barnyard race 
 Was but a stingy present. 
 
 " She's quite too old for laying eggs, 
 
 Nay, even to make a soup of ; 
 One only needs to see her legs, 
 You might as well boil down the pegs 
 I made the brood-hen's coop of! 
 
 " Some eighteen score of such do I 
 
 Raise every year, her sisters; 
 Go, in the woods your fortunes try, 
 All day for one poor earthworm pry, 
 
 And scratch your toes to blisters !" 
 
 Philemon found the rede was good, 
 
 And, turning on the poor hen, 
 He clapt his hands, and stamped, and shooed, 
 Hunting the exile tow'rd the wood, 
 
 To house with snipe and moor-hen.
 
 GOLD EGG. 205 
 
 A poet saw and cried : " Hold ! hold ! 
 
 What are you doing, madman? 
 Spurn you more wealth than can be told, 
 The fowl that lays the eggs of gold, 
 
 Because she's plainly clad, man?" 
 
 To him Philemon: "I'll not balk 
 
 Thy will with any shackle ; 
 Wilt add a burden to thy walk? 
 There ! take her without further talk ; 
 
 You 're both but fit to cackle ! " 
 
 But scarce the poet touched the bird, 
 
 It swelled to stature regal; 
 And when her cloud-wide wings she stirred, 
 A whisper as of doom was heard, 
 
 'Twas Jove's bolt-bearing eagle. 
 
 As when from far-off cloud-bergs springs 
 A crag, and, hurtling under,
 
 206 GOLD EGG. 
 
 From cliff to cliff the rumor flings, 
 
 So she from flight-foreboding wings 
 
 Shook out a murmurous thunder. 
 
 She gripped the poet to her breast, 
 
 And, ever upward soaring, 
 Earth seemed a new moon in the west, 
 And then one light among the rest 
 
 Where squadrons lie at mooring. 
 
 How tell to what heaven-hallowed seat 
 
 The eagle bent his courses? 
 The waves that on its bases beat, 
 The gales that round it weave and fleet, 
 Are life's creative forces. 
 
 Here was the bird's primeval nest, 
 
 High on a promontory 
 Star-pharosed, where she takes her rest 
 To brood new aeons 'neath her breast, 
 
 The future's unfledged glory.
 
 GOLD EGG. 207 
 
 I know not how, but I was there 
 
 All feeling, hearing, seeing ; 
 It was not wind that stirred my hair, 
 But living breath, the essence rare 
 
 Of unembodied being. 
 
 And in the nest an egg of gold 
 
 Lay soft in self-made lustre ; 
 Gazing whereon, what depths untold 
 Within, what marvels manifold, 
 
 Seemed silently to muster ! 
 
 Daily such splendours to confront 
 
 Is still to me and you sent? 
 It glowed as when Saint Peter's front, 
 Illumed, forgets its stony wont, 
 
 And seems to throb translucent. 
 
 One saw therein the life of man, 
 (Or so the poet found it,)
 
 2o8 GOLD EGG. 
 
 The yolk and white, conceive who can, 
 Were the glad earth, that, floating, span 
 In the glad heaven around it. 
 
 I knew this as one knows in dream, 
 
 Where no effects to causes 
 Are chained as in our work-day scheme, 
 And then was wakened by a scream 
 
 That seemed to come from Baucis. 
 
 "Bless Zeus!" she cried, "I'm safe below!" 
 
 First pale, then red as coral ; 
 And I, still drowsy, pondered slow, 
 And seemed to find, but hardly know, 
 
 Something like this for moral. 
 
 Each day the world is born anew 
 
 For him who takes it rightly ; 
 Not fresher that which Adam knewj 
 Not sweeter that whose moonlit dew 
 Entranced Arcadia nightly.
 
 GOLD EGG. 209 
 
 Rightly? That's simply: 'tis to see 
 
 Some substance casts these shadows 
 Which we call Life and History, 
 That aimless seem to chase and flee 
 Like wind-gleams over meadows. 
 
 Simply? That's nobly: 'tis to know 
 
 That God may still be met with, 
 Nor groweth old, nor doth bestow 
 These senses fine, this brain aglow, 
 To grovel and forget with. 
 
 Beauty, Herr Doctor, trust in me, 
 
 No chemistry will win you ; 
 Charis still rises from the sea; 
 If you can't find her, might it be 
 
 Because you seek within you ?
 
 A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO A FRIEND. 
 
 Or write a mere perfunctory letter; 
 For letters, so it seems to me, 
 Our careless quintessence should be, 
 Our real nature's truant play 
 When Consciousness looks t'other way, 
 Not drop by drop, with watchful skill, 
 Gathered in Art's deliberate still, 
 But life's insensible completeness 
 Got as the ripe grape gets its sweetness, 
 As if it had a way to fuse 
 The golden sunlight into juice. 
 Hopeless my mental pump I try ; 
 The boxes hiss, the tube is dry;
 
 A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO A FRIEND. 211 
 
 As those petroleum wells that spout 
 Awhile like M. C.'s, then give out, 
 My spring, once full as Arethusa, 
 Is a mere bore as dry's Creusa; 
 And yet you ask me why I'm glum, 
 And why my graver Muse is dumb. 
 Ah me ! I've reasons manifold 
 Condensed in one, I'm getting old! 
 
 When life, once past its fortieth year, 
 Wheels up its evening hemisphere, 
 The mind's own shadow, which the boy 
 Saw onward point to hope and joy, 
 Shifts round, irrevocably set 
 Tow'rd morning's loss and vain regret, 
 And, argue with it as we will, 
 The clock is unconverted still. 
 
 " But count the gains/' I hear you say, 
 "Which far the seeming loss outweigh; 
 p 2
 
 2 A FAMILIAR EPISTLE 
 
 Friendships built firm 'gainst flood and wind 
 
 On rock-foundations of the mind ; 
 
 Knowledge instead of scheming hope ; 
 
 For wild adventure, settled scope ; 
 
 Talents, from surface-ore profuse, 
 
 Tempered and edged to tools for use; 
 
 Judgment, for passion's headlong whirls; 
 
 Old sorrows crystalled into pearls ; 
 
 Losses by patience turned to gains, 
 
 Possessions now, that once were pains ; 
 
 Joy's blossom gone, as go it must, 
 
 To ripen seeds of faith and trust ; 
 
 Why heed a snow-flake on the roof 
 
 If fire within keep Age aloof, 
 
 Though blundering north-winds push and strain 
 
 With palms benumbed against the pane?" 
 
 My dear old Friend, you're very wise ; 
 
 We always are with others' eyes, 
 
 And see so clear ! (our neighbour's deck on)
 
 TO A FRIEND. 213 
 
 What reef the idiot's sure to wreck on ; 
 
 Folks when they learn how life has quizzed 'em 
 
 Are fain to make a shift with Wisdom, 
 
 And, finding she nor breaks nor bends, 
 
 Give her a letter to their friends. 
 
 Draw passion's torrent whoso will 
 
 Through sluices smooth to turn a mill, 
 
 And, taking solid toll of grist, 
 
 Forget the rainbow in the mist, 
 
 The exulting leap, the aimless haste 
 
 Scattered in iridescent waste; 
 
 Prefer who likes the sure esteem 
 
 To cheated youth's midsummer dream, 
 
 When every friend was more than Damon, 
 
 Each quicksand safe to build a fame on; 
 
 Believe that prudence snug excels 
 
 Youth's gross of verdant spectacles, 
 
 Through which earth's withered stubble seen 
 
 Looks autumn-proof as painted green, 
 
 I side with Moses 'gainst the masses,
 
 214 A FAMILIAR EPISTLE 
 
 Take you the drudge, give me the glasses ! 
 
 And, for your talents shaped with practice, 
 
 Convince me first that such the fact is ; 
 
 Let whoso likes be beat, poor fool, 
 
 On life's hard stithy to a tool, 
 
 Be whoso will a ploughshare made, 
 
 Let me remain a jolly blade! 
 
 What's Knowledge, with her stocks and lands 
 To gay Conjecture's yellow strands? 
 What's watching her slow flock's increase 
 To ventures for the golden fleece ? 
 What her deep ships, safe under lee, 
 To youth's light craft, that drinks the sea, 
 For Flying Islands making sail, 
 And failing where 'tis gain to fail? 
 Ah me ! Experience (so we're told), 
 Time's crucible, turns lead to gold ; 
 Yet what's experience won but dross, 
 Cloud-gold transmuted to our loss?
 
 TO A PR1END. 215 
 
 What but base coin the best event 
 To the untried experiment ? 
 
 'Tvvas an old couple, says the poet, 
 
 That lodged the gods and did not know it ; 
 
 Youth sees and knows them as they were 
 
 Before Olympus' top was bare ; 
 
 From swampscot's flats his eye divine 
 
 Sees Venus rocking on the brine, 
 
 With lucent limbs, that somehow scatter a 
 
 Charm that turns Doll to Cleopatra ; 
 
 Bacchus (that now is scarce induced 
 
 To give Eld's lagging blood a boost), 
 
 With cymbals' clang and pards to draw him, 
 
 Divine as Ariadne saw him, 
 
 Storms through Youth's pulse with all his train 
 
 And wins new Indies in his brain ; 
 
 Apollo (with the old a trope, 
 
 A sort of finer Mister Pope), 
 
 Apollo but the Muse forbids ;
 
 2io A FAMILIAR EPISTLE 
 
 At his approach cast down thy lids, 
 And think it joy enough to hear 
 Far off his arrows singing clear; 
 He knows enough who silent knows 
 The quiver chiming as he goes ; 
 He tells too much who e'er betrays 
 The shining Archer's secret ways. 
 
 Dear Friend, you're right and I am wrong ; 
 
 My quibbles are not worth a song, 
 
 And I sophistically tease 
 
 My fancy sad to tricks like these. 
 
 I could not cheat you if I would ; 
 
 You know me and my jesting mood, 
 
 Mere surface-foam, for pride concealing 
 
 The purpose of my deeper feeling. 
 
 I have not spilt one drop of joy 
 
 Poured in the senses of the boy, 
 
 Nor Nature fails my walks to bless 
 
 With all her golden inwardness ;
 
 TO A FRIEND. 217 
 
 And as blind nestlings, unafraid, 
 
 Stretch up wide-mouthed to every shade 
 
 By which their downy dream is stirred, 
 
 Taking it for the mother-bird, 
 
 So, when God's shadow, which is light, 
 
 Unheralded, by day or night, 
 
 My wakening instincts falls across, 
 
 Silent as sunbeams over moss, 
 
 In my heart's nest half-conscious things 
 
 Stir with a helpless sense of wings, 
 
 Lift themselves up, and tremble long 
 
 With premonitions sweet of song. 
 
 Be patient, and perhaps (who knows ?) 
 These may be winged one day like those ; 
 If thrushes, close-embowered to sing, 
 Pierced through with June's delicious sting ; 
 If swallows, their half-hour to run 
 Star-breasted in the setting sun. 
 At first they're but the unfledged proem,
 
 2i8 A FAMILIAR EPISTLE 
 
 Or songless schedule of a poem ; 
 When from the shell they're hardly dry 
 If some folks thrust them forth, must I ? 
 
 But let me end with a comparison 
 
 Never yet hit upon by e'er a son 
 
 Of our American Apollo, 
 
 (And there's where I shall beat them hollow, 
 
 If he is not a courtly St. John, 
 
 But, as West said, a Mohawk Injun.) 
 
 A poem 's like a cruise for whales : 
 
 Through untried seas the hunter sails, 
 
 His prow dividing waters known 
 
 To the blue iceberg's hulk alone ; 
 
 At last, on farthest edge of day, 
 
 He marks the smoky puff of spray ; 
 
 Then with bent oars the shallop flies 
 
 To where the basking quarry lies ; 
 
 Then the excitement of the strife, 
 
 The crimsoned waves, ah, this is life !
 
 TO A FRIEND. 219 
 
 But, the dead plunder once secured 
 And safe beside the vessel moored, 
 All that had stirred the blood before 
 Is so much blubber, nothing more, 
 (I mean no pun, nor image so 
 Mere sentimental verse, you know,) 
 And all is tedium, smoke, and soil, 
 In trying-out the noisome oil. 
 
 Yes, this is life ! And so the bard 
 Through briny deserts, never scarred 
 Since Noah's keel, a subject seeks, 
 And lies upon the watch for weeks ; 
 That once harpooned and helpless lying, 
 What follows is but weary trying. 
 
 Now I' ve a notion, if a poet 
 
 Beat up for themes, his verse will show it ; 
 
 I wait for subjects that hunt me, 
 
 By day or night won't let me be,
 
 220 A PAMILIAR EPISTLE TO A FRIEND. 
 
 And hang about me like a curse, 
 Till they have made me into verse, 
 From line to line my ringers tease 
 Beyond my knowledge, as the bees 
 Build no new cell till those before 
 With limpid summer-sweet run o'er 
 Then, if I neither sing nor shine, 
 Is it the subject's fault, or mine ?
 
 AN EMBER PICTURE. 
 
 T T OW strange are the freaks of memory ! 
 
 The lessons of life we forget, 
 While a trifle, a trick of colour, 
 In the wonderful web is set, 
 
 Set by some mordant of fancy, 
 And, spite of the wear and tear 
 
 Of time or distance or trouble, 
 Insists on its right to be there. 
 
 A chance had brought us together ; 
 
 Our talk was of matters-of-course ; 
 We were nothing, one to the other, 
 
 But a short half-hour's resource.
 
 AN EMBER PICTURE. 
 
 We spoke of French acting and actors, 
 
 And their easy, natural way ; 
 Of the weather, for it was raining 
 
 As we drove home from the play. 
 
 We debated the social nothings 
 We bore ourselves so to discuss ; 
 
 The thunderous rumours of battle 
 Were silent the while for us. 
 
 Arrived at her door, we left her 
 With a drippingly hurried adieu, 
 
 And our wheels went crunching the gravel 
 Of the oak-darkened avenue. 
 
 As we drove away through the shadow, 
 The candle she held in the door 
 
 From rain- varnished tree-trunk to tree-trunk 
 Flashed fainter, and flashed no more;
 
 AN EMBER PICTURE. 223 
 
 Flashed fainter, then wholly faded 
 
 Before we had passed the wood ; 
 But the light of the face behind it 
 
 Went with me and stayed for good. 
 
 The vision of scarce a moment, 
 
 And hardly marked at the time, 
 It comes unbidden to haunt me, 
 
 Like a scrap of ballad-rhyme. 
 
 Had she beauty? Well, not what they call so; 
 
 You may find a thousand as fair; 
 And yet there's her face in my memory 
 
 With no special claim to be there. 
 
 As I sit sometimes in the twilight, 
 And call back to life in the coals 
 
 Old faces and hopes and fancies 
 
 Long buried, (good rest to their souls !)
 
 224 AN EMBER PICTURE. 
 
 Her face shines out in the embers ; 
 
 I see her holding the light, 
 And hear the crunch of the gravel 
 
 And the sweep of the rain that night. 
 
 Tis a face that can never grow older, 
 That never can part with its gleam, 
 
 'Tis a gracious possession forever, 
 For is it not all a dream?
 
 TO H. W. L., 
 
 ON HIS BIRTHDAY, 27TH FEBRUARY, 1867. 
 
 T NEED not praise the sweetness of his song, 
 
 Where limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds 
 Smooth as our Charles, when, fearing lest he 
 
 wrong 
 
 The new moon's mirrored skiff, he slides along, 
 Full without noise, and whispers in his reeds. 
 
 With loving breath of all the winds his name 
 Is blown about the world, but to his friends 
 A sweeter secret hides behind his fame, 
 And Love steals shyly through the loud acclaim 
 To murmur a God bless you ! and there ends. 
 Q
 
 226 TO H. W. L. 
 
 As I muse backward up the checkered years 
 
 Wherein so much was given, so much was lost, 
 Blessings in both kinds, such as cheapen tears, 
 But hush ! this is not for profaner ears ; 
 
 Let them drink molten pearls nor dream the cost. 
 
 Some suck up poison from a sorrow's core, 
 
 As naught but nightshade grew upon earth's 
 
 ground ; 
 
 Love turned all his to heart's-ease, and the more 
 Fate tried his bastions, she but forced a door 
 Leading to sweeter manhood and more sound. 
 
 Even as a wind-waved fountain's swaying shade 
 Seems of mixed race, a gray wraith shot with 
 
 sun, 
 
 So through his trial faith translucent rayed 
 Till darkness, half disnatured so, betrayed 
 A heart of sunshine that would fain o'errun.
 
 TO H. W. L. 227 
 
 Surely if skill in song the shears may stay 
 And of its purpose cheat the charmed abyss, 
 
 If our poor life be lengthened by a lay, 
 -He shall not go, although his presence may, 
 And the next age in praise shall double this. 
 
 Long days be his, and each as lusty-sweet 
 As gracious natures find his song to be; 
 May Age steal on with softly-cadenced feet 
 Falling in music, as for him were meet 
 
 Whose choicest verse is harsher-toned than he ! 
 
 Q 2
 
 THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY. 
 
 " f~~*OME forth ! " my catbird calls to me, 
 
 ^^ 
 
 "And hear me sing a cavatina 
 
 That, in this old familiar tree, 
 Shall hang a garden of Alcina. 
 
 "These buttercups shall brim with wine 
 Beyond all Lesbian juice or Massic ; 
 May not New England be divine? 
 My ode to ripening summer classic? 
 
 " Or, if to me you will not hark, 
 
 By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing 
 Till all the alder-coverts dark 
 
 Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing.
 
 THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY. 229 
 
 " Come out beneath the unmastered sky, 
 
 With its emancipating spaces, 
 
 And learn to sing as well as I, 
 
 Without premeditated graces. 
 
 "What boot your many-volumed gains, 
 
 Those withered leaves forever turning, 
 To win, at best, for all your pains, 
 A nature mummy-wrapt in learning? 
 
 "The leaves wherein true wisdom lies 
 
 On living trees the sun are drinking ; 
 Those white clouds, drowsing through the skies, 
 Grew not so beautiful by thinking. 
 
 " Come out ! with me the oriole cries, 
 
 Escape the demon that pursues you ! 
 And, hark, the cuckoo weatherwise, 
 
 Still hiding, farther onward wooes you."
 
 230 THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY. 
 
 "Alas, dear friend, that, all my days, 
 
 Hast poured from that syringa thicket 
 The quaintly discontinuous lays 
 To which I hold a season-ticket, 
 
 "A season-ticket cheaply bought 
 
 With a dessert of pilfered berries, 
 And who so oft my soul hast caught 
 With morn and evening voluntaries, 
 
 " Deem me not faithless, if all day 
 
 Among my dusty books I linger, 
 No pipe, like thee, for June to play 
 With fancy-led, half-conscious finger. 
 
 "A bird is singing in my brain 
 
 And bubbling o'er with mingled fancies, 
 Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain 
 Fed with the sap of old romances.
 
 THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY. 231 
 
 " I ask no ampler skies than those 
 
 His magic music rears above me, ' 
 No falser friends, no truer foes, 
 And does not Dona Clara love me? 
 
 " Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars, 
 A rush of feet, and rapiers clashing, 
 Then silence deep with breathless stars, 
 And overhead a white hand flashing. 
 
 " O music of all moods and climes, 
 
 Vengeful, forgiving, sensuous, saintly, 
 
 Where still, between the Christian chimes, 
 
 The Moorish cymbal tinkles faintly ! 
 
 " O life borne lightly in the hand, 
 
 For friend or foe with grace Castilian ! 
 O valley safe in Fancy's land, 
 
 Not tramped to mud yet by the million !
 
 232 THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY. 
 
 " Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale 
 
 To his, my singer of all weathers, 
 My Calderon, my nightingale, 
 
 My Arab soul in Spanish feathers. 
 
 "Ah, friend, these singers dead so long, 
 And still, God knows, in purgatory, 
 Give its best sweetness to all song, 
 To Nature's self her better glory."
 
 IN THE TWILIGHT. 
 
 TV /T EN say the sullen instrument, 
 That, from the Master's bow, 
 With pangs of joy or woe, 
 Feels music's soul through every fibre sent, 
 
 Whispers the ravished strings 
 More than he knew or meant ; 
 Old summers in its memory glow ; 
 The secrets of the wind it sings ; 
 It hears the April-loosened springs ; 
 And mixes with its mood 
 All it dreamed when it stood 
 In the murmurous pine-wood 
 Long ago !
 
 234 IN THE TWILIGHT. 
 
 The magical moonlight then 
 
 Steeped every bough and cone ; 
 The roar of the brook in the glen 
 
 Came dim from the distance blown ; 
 The wind through its glooms sang low, 
 And it swayed to and fro 
 With delight as it stood, 
 In the wonderful wood, 
 Long ago ! 
 
 O my life, have we not had seasons 
 
 That only said, Live and rejoice? 
 That asked not for causes and reasons, 
 
 But made us all feeling and voice? 
 When we went with the winds in their 
 blowing, 
 
 When Nature and we were peers, 
 And we seemed to share in the flowing 
 
 Of the inexhaustible years? 
 
 Have we not from the earth drawn juices
 
 IN THE TWILIGHT. 235 
 
 Too fine for earth's sordid uses? 
 Have I heard, have I seen 
 
 All I feel and I know? 
 Doth my heart overween? 
 Or could it have been 
 Long ago? 
 
 Sometimes a breath floats by me, 
 An odour from Dreamland sent, 
 That makes the ghost seem nigh rne 
 
 Of a splendour that came and went, 
 Of a life lived somewhere, I know not 
 
 In what diviner sphere, 
 Of memories that stay not and go not, 
 Like music heard once by an ear 
 That cannot forget or reclaim it, 
 A something so shy, it would shame it 
 
 To make it a show, 
 
 A something too vague, could I name it, 
 For others to know,
 
 236 IN THE TWILIGHT. 
 
 As if I had lived it or dreamed it, 
 As if I had acted or schemed it, 
 Long ago ! 
 
 And yet, could I live it over, 
 
 This life that stirs in my brain, 
 Could I be both maiden and lover, 
 Moon and tide, bee and clover, 
 
 As I seem to have been, once again, 
 Could I but speak and show it, 
 
 This pleasure more sharp than pain, 
 
 That baffles and lures me so, 
 The world should not lack a poet, 
 Such as it had 
 In the ages glad, 
 Long ago !
 
 THE FOOT-PATH. 
 
 TT mounts athwart the windy hill 
 
 Through sallow slopes of upland bare, 
 And Fancy climbs with foot-fall still 
 Its naiTOwing curves that end in air. 
 
 By day, a warmer-hearted blue 
 
 Stoops softly to that topmost swell; 
 
 Thy thread-like windings seem a clew 
 To gracious climes where all is well. 
 
 By night, far yonder, I surmise 
 An ampler world than clips my ken, 
 
 Where the great stars of happier skies 
 Commingle nobler fates of men.
 
 238 THE FOO T-PA TH. 
 
 I look and long, then haste me home, 
 Still master of my secret rare ; 
 
 Once tried, the path would end in Rome, 
 But now it leads me everywhere. 
 
 Forever to the new it guides, 
 
 From former good, old overmuch ; 
 What Nature for her poets hides, 
 
 'Tis wiser to divine than clutch. 
 
 * 
 
 The bird I list hath never come 
 Within the scope of mortal ear; 
 
 My prying step would make him dumb, 
 And the fair tree, his shelter, sear. 
 
 Behind the hill, behind the sky, 
 
 Behind my inmost thought, he sings ; 
 
 No feet avail ; to hear it nigh, 
 
 The song itself must lend the wings.
 
 ' THE FOOT-PATH. 239 
 
 Sing on, sweet bird, close hid, and raise 
 Those angel stairways in my brain, 
 
 That climb from these low-vaulted days 
 To spacious sunshines far from pain. 
 
 Sing when thou wilt, enchantment fleet, 
 
 I leave thy covert haunt untrod, 
 And envy Science not her feat 
 
 To make a twice-told tale of God. 
 
 They said the fairies tript no more, 
 And long ago that Pan was dead ; 
 
 'Twas but that fools preferred to bore 
 Earth's rind inch-deep for truth instead. 
 
 Pan leaps and pipes all summer long, 
 The fairies dance each full-mooned night, 
 
 Would we but doff our lenses strong, 
 And trust our wiser eyes' delight.
 
 240 THE FOOT-PA TH. 
 
 City of Elf-land, just without 
 
 Our seeing, marvel ever new, 
 Glimpsed in fair weather, a sweet doubt 
 
 Sketched-in, mirage-like, on the blue. 
 
 I build thee in yon sunset cloud, 
 Whose edge allures to climb the height ; 
 
 I hear thy drowned bells, inly-loud, 
 
 From still pools dusk with dreams of night. 
 
 Thy gates are shut to hardiest will, 
 Thy countersign of long-lost speech, 
 
 Those fountained courts, those chambers still, 
 Fronting Time's far East, who shall reach? 
 
 I know not and will never pry, 
 But trust our human heart for all ; 
 
 Wonders that from the seeker fly, 
 Into an open sense may fall.
 
 THE FO T-PA TH. 241 
 
 Hide in thine own soul, and surprise 
 The password of the unwary elves ; 
 
 Seek it, thou canst not bribe their spies ; 
 Unsought, they whisper it themselves.
 
 POEMS OF THE WAR. 
 
 R 2
 
 THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD. 
 
 OCTOBER, 1 86 1. 
 
 A LONG a river-side, I know not where, 
 
 I walked one night in mystery of dream ; 
 A chill creeps curdling yet beneath my hair, 
 To think what chanced me by the pallid gleam 
 Of a moon-wraith that waned through haunted air. 
 
 Pale fireflies pulsed within the meadow-mist 
 Their halos, wavering thistledowns of light; 
 The loon, that seemed to mock some goblin tryst, 
 Laughed ; and the echoes, huddling in affright, 
 Like Odin's hounds, fled baying down the night. 
 
 Then all was silent, till there smote my ear 
 
 A movement in the stream that checked my breath
 
 246 THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD. 
 
 Was it the slow plash of a wading deer ? 
 But something said, " This water is of Death ! 
 The Sisters wash a shroud, ill thing to hear!" 
 
 I, looking then, beheld the ancient Three 
 Known to the Greek's and to the Northman's 
 
 creed, 
 
 That sit in shadow of the mystic Tree, 
 Still crooning, as they weave their endless brede, 
 One song : "Time was, Time is, and Time shall be." 
 
 No wrinkled crones were they, as I had deemed, 
 But fair as yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, 
 To mourner, lover, poet, ever seemed ; 
 Something too high for joy, too deep for sorrow, 
 Thrilled in their tones, and from their faces gleamed. 
 
 "Still men and nations reap as they have strawn," 
 So sang they, working at their task the while; 
 " The fatal raiment must be cleansed ere dawn :
 
 THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD. 247 
 
 For Austria? Italy? the Sea-Queen's isle? 
 O'er what quenched grandeur must our shroud be 
 drawn ? 
 
 " Or is it for a younger, fairer corse, 
 That gathered States for children round his knees, 
 That tamed the wave to be his posting-horse, 
 Feller of forests, linker of the seas, 
 Bridge-builder, hammerer, youngest son of Thor's? 
 
 'What make we, murmur'st thou? and what are we? 
 When empires must be wound, we bring the shroud, 
 The time-old web of the implacable Three : 
 Is it too coarse for him, the young and proud ? 
 Earth's mightiest deigned to wear it, why not he?" 
 
 ''Is there no hope?" I moaned, "so strong, so fair! 
 
 Our Fowler whose proud bird would brook erewhile 
 
 No rival's swoop in all our western air ! 
 
 Gather the ravens, then, in funeral file 
 
 For him, life's morn yet golden in his hair?
 
 248 THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD 
 
 " Leave me not hopeless, ye unpitying dames ! 
 I see, half seeing. Tell me, ye who scanned 
 The stars, Earth's elders, still must noblest aims 
 Be traced upon oblivious ocean-sands? 
 Must Hesper join the wailing ghosts of names ? " 
 
 "When grass-blades stiffen with red battle-dew, 
 Ye deem we choose the victor and the slain : 
 Say, choose we them that shall be leal and true 
 To the heart's longing, the high faith of brain ? 
 Yet there the victory lies, if ye but knew. 
 
 " Three roots bear up Dominion : Knowledge, Will, 
 These twain are strong, but stronger yet the third. 
 Obedience, 'tis the great tap-root that still, 
 Knit round the rock of Duty, is not stirred, 
 Though Heaven-loosed tempests spend their utmost 
 skill. 
 
 "Is the doom sealed for Hesper? Tis not we 
 Denounce it, but the Law before all time :
 
 THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD. 249 
 
 The brave makes danger opportunity ; 
 
 The waverer, paltering with the chance sublime, 
 
 Dwarfs it to peril : which shall Hesper be ? 
 
 " Hath he let vultures climb his eagle's seat 
 To make Jove's bolts purveyors of their maw ? 
 Hath he the Many's plaudits found more sweet 
 Than Wisdom ? held Opinion's wind for Law ? 
 Then let him hearken for the doomster's feet ! 
 
 " Rough are the steps, slow-hewn in flintiest rock, 
 States climb to power by; slippery those with gold 
 Down which they stumble to eternal mock : 
 No chafferer's hand shall long the sceptre hold, 
 Who, given a Fate to shape, would sell the block. 
 
 " We sing old Sagas, songs of weal and woe, 
 Mystic because too cheaply understood ; 
 Dark sayings are not ours ; men hear and know, 
 See Evil weak, see strength alone in Good, 
 Yet hope to stem God's fire with walls of tow.
 
 250 THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD. 
 
 11 Time Was unlocks the riddle of Time Is, 
 That offers choice of glory or of gloom ; 
 The solver makes Time Shall Be surely his. 
 But hasten, Sisters ! for even now the tomb 
 Grates its slow hinge and calls from the abyss." 
 
 "But not for him," I cried, "not yet for him, 
 Whose large horizon, westering, star by star 
 Wins from the void to where on Ocean's rim 
 The sunset shuts the world with golden bar, 
 Not yet his thews shall fail, his eye grow dim ! 
 
 "His shall be larger manhood, saved for those 
 That walk unblenching through the trial-fires ; 
 Not suffering, but faint heart, is worst of woes, 
 And he no base-born son of craven sires, 
 Whose eye need blench confronted with his foes. 
 
 "Tears may be ours, but proud, for those who win 
 Death's royal purple in the foeman's lines ; 
 Peace, too, brings tears ; and 'mid the battle-din,
 
 THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD. 251 
 
 The wiser ear some text of God divines, 
 
 For the sheathed blade may rust with darker sin. 
 
 " God, give us peace ! not such as lulls to sleep, 
 But sword on thigh, and brow with purpose knit ! 
 And let our Ship of State to harbour sweep, 
 Her ports all up, her battle-lanterns lit, 
 And her leashed thunders gathering for their leap!" 
 
 So cried I with clenched hands and passionate pain, 
 Thinking of dear ones by Potomac's side ; 
 Again the loon laughed mocking, and again 
 The echoes bayed far down the night and died, 
 While waking I recalled my wandering brain.
 
 TWO SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF 
 BLONDEL. 
 
 AUTUMN, 1863. 
 
 SCENE 1. Near a Castle in Germany. 
 
 "T^ WERE no hard task, perchance, to win 
 
 The popular laurel for my song ; 
 'Twere only to comply with sin, 
 
 And own the crown, though snatched by wrong 
 Rather Truth's chaplet let me wear, 
 
 Though sharp as death its thorns may sting ; 
 Loyal to Loyalty, I bear 
 
 No badge but of my rightful king. 
 
 Patient by town and tower I wait, 
 Or o'er the blustering moorland go ; 
 
 I buy no praise at cheaper rate, 
 Or what faint hearts may fancy so ;
 
 SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF BLONDEL. 253 
 
 For me, no joy in lady's bower, 
 
 Or hall, or tourney, will I sing, 
 Till the slow stars wheel round the hour 
 
 That crowns my hero and my king. 
 
 While all the land runs red with strife, 
 
 And wealth is won by pedler-crimes, 
 Let who will find content in life 
 
 And tinkle in unmanly rhymes ; 
 I wait and seek ; through dark and light, 
 
 Safe in my heart my hope I bring, 
 Till I once more my faith may plight 
 
 To him my whole soul owns her king. 
 
 When power is filched by drone and dolt, 
 And, with caught breath and flashing eye, 
 
 Her knuckles whitening round the bolt, 
 Vengeance leans eager from the sky, 
 
 While this and that the people guess, 
 And to the skirts of praters cling,
 
 254 TWO SCENES FROM 
 
 Who court the crowd they should compress, 
 I turn in scorn to seek my king. 
 
 Shut in what tower of darkling chance 
 
 Or dungeon of a narrow doom, 
 Dreanrst thou of battle-axe and lance 
 
 That for the Cross make crashing room ? 
 Come ! with hushed breath the battle waits 
 
 In the wild van thy mace's swing ; 
 While doubters parley with their fates, 
 
 Make thou thine own and ours, my king ! 
 
 O, strong to keep upright the old, 
 
 And wise to buttress with the new, 
 Prudent, as only are the bold, 
 
 Clear-eyed, as only are the true, 
 To foes benign, to friendship stern, 
 
 Intent to imp Law's broken wing, 
 Who would not die, if death might earn 
 
 The right to kiss thy hand, my king?
 
 THE LIFE OF BLOND EL. 255 
 
 SCENE II. An Inn near the Chateau of Chalus, 
 
 "\~X 7 ELL, the whole thing is over, and here I sit 
 With one arm in a sling and a milk-score of 
 
 gashes, 
 
 And this flagon of Cyprus must e'en warm my wit, 
 Since what's left of youth's flame is a head flecked 
 
 with ashes. 
 I remember I sat in this very same inn, 
 
 I was young then, and one young man thought 
 
 I was handsome, 
 
 I had found out what prison King Richard was in, 
 And was spurring for England to push on the 
 ransom. 
 
 How I scorned the dull souls that sat guzzling 
 
 around, 
 
 And knew not my secret nor recked my derision ! 
 Let the world sink or swim, John or Richard be 
 
 crowned,
 
 256 TWO SCENES FROM 
 
 All one, so the beer-tax got lenient revision. 
 How little I dreamed, as I tramped up and down, 
 That granting our wish one of Fate's saddest 
 
 jokes is ! 
 I had mine with a vengeance, my king got his 
 
 crown, 
 
 And made his whole business to break other 
 folks's. 
 
 I might as well join in the safe old turn, turn : 
 
 A hero's an excellent loadstar, but, bless ye, 
 What infinite odds 'twixt a hero to come 
 
 And your only too palpable hero in esse ! 
 Precisely the odds (such examples are rife) 
 
 'Twixt the poem conceived and the rhyme we 
 
 make show of, 
 'Twixt the boy's morning dream and the wake-up of 
 
 life, 
 
 'Twixt the Blondel God meant and a Blondel I 
 know of!
 
 THE LIFE OF BLOND EL. 257 
 
 But the world's better off, I'm convinced of it now, 
 
 Than if heroes, like buns, could be bought for a 
 
 penny 
 To regard all mankind as their haltered milch-cow, 
 
 And just care for themselves. Well, God cares 
 
 for the many; 
 For somehow the poor old Earth blunders along, 
 
 Each son of hers adding his mite of unfitness, 
 And, choosing the sure way of coming out wrong, 
 
 Gets to port, as the next generation will witness. 
 
 You think her old ribs have come all crashing 
 
 through, 
 If a whisk of Fate's broom snap your cobweb 
 
 asunder ; 
 
 But her rivets were clinched by a wiser than you, 
 And our sins cannot push the Lord's right hand 
 
 from under. 
 
 Better one honest man who can wait for God's 
 mind 
 
 s
 
 258 SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF BLONDEL. 
 
 In our poor shifting scene here, though heroes 
 
 were plenty ! 
 
 Better one bite, at forty, of Truth's bitter rind, 
 Than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage 
 
 of twenty ! 
 
 I see it all now : when I wanted a king, 
 
 'Twas the kingship that failed in myself I was 
 
 seeking, 
 'Tis so much less easy to do than to sing, 
 
 So much simpler to reign by a proxy than be king ! 
 Yes, I think I do see : after all's said and sung, 
 Take this one rule of life and you never will 
 
 rue it, 
 'Tis but do your own duty and hold your own 
 
 tongue, 
 And Blondel were royal himself, if he knew it !
 
 MEMORISE POSITUM, 
 R. G. S. 
 
 I. 
 
 "DENEATH the trees, 
 
 My life-long friends in this dear spot, 
 Sad now for eyes that see them not 
 
 I hear the autumnal breeze 
 Wake the sear leaves to sigh for gladness gone, 
 Whispering hoarse presage of oblivion, 
 
 Hear, restless as the seas, 
 
 Time's grim feet rustling through the withered grace 
 Of many a spreading realm and strong-stemmed race, 
 Even as my own through these, 
 s 2
 
 260 MEMORISE POSITUM. 
 
 Why make we moan 
 For loss that doth enrich us yet 
 With upward yearnings of regret 
 
 Bleaker than unmossed stone 
 Our lives were but for this immortal gain 
 Of unstilled longing and inspiring pain ! 
 
 As thrills of long-hushed tone 
 Live in the viol, so our souls grow fine 
 With keen vibrations from the touch divine 
 
 Of noble natures gone, 
 
 'Twere indiscreet 
 To vex the shy and sacred grief 
 With harsh obtrusions of relief; 
 
 Yet, Verse, with noiseless feet r 
 Go whisper : " This death hath far choicer ends 
 Than slowly to impearl in hearts of friends; 
 
 These obsequies 'tis meet 
 Not to seclude in closets of the heart, 
 But, church-like, with wide doorways, to impart 
 
 Even to the heedless street."
 
 MEMORISE POSITUM, 261 
 
 IL 
 
 Brave, good, and true, 
 I see him stand before me now, 
 And read again on that young brow, 
 
 Where every hope was new, 
 
 How sweet were life ! Yet, by the mouth firm-set, 
 And look made up for Duty's utmost debt, 
 
 I could divine he knew 
 
 That death within the sulphurous hostile lines, 
 In the mere wreck of nobly-pitched designs, 
 
 Plucks heart's-ease, and not rue. 
 
 Happy their end 
 
 Who vanish down life's evening stream 
 Placid as swans that drift in dream 
 
 Round the next river-bend ! 
 Happy long life, with honour at the close, 
 Friends' painless tears, the softened thought of foes ! 
 And yet, like him, to spend
 
 262 MEMORISE POSITUM. 
 
 All at a gush, keeping our first faith sure 
 From mid-life's doubt and eld's contentment poor,- 
 What more could Fortune send ? 
 
 Right in the van, 
 
 On the red rampart's slippery swell, 
 With heart that beat a charge, he fell 
 
 Foeward, as fits a man ; 
 
 But the high soul burns on to light men's feet 
 Where death for noble ends makes dying sweet ; 
 
 His life her crescent's span 
 Orbs full with share in their undarkening days 
 Who ever climbed the battailous steeps of praise 
 $ince valour's praise began. 
 
 III. 
 
 His life's expense 
 Hath won for him coeval youth 
 With the immaculate prime of Truth ; 
 
 While we, who make pretence
 
 MEMORISE POSITUM. 263 
 
 At living on, and wake and eat and sleep, 
 And life's stale trick by repetition keep, 
 
 Our fickle permanence 
 
 (A poor leaf-shadow on a brook, whose play 
 Of busy idlesse ceases with our day) 
 
 Is the mere cheat of sense. 
 
 We bide our chance, 
 Unhappy, and make terms with Fate 
 A little more to let us wait ; 
 
 He leads for aye the advance, 
 Hope's forlorn-hopes that plant the desperate good 
 For nobler Earths and days of manlier mood ; 
 
 Our wall of circumstance 
 Cleared at a bound, he flashes o'er the fight, 
 A saintly shape of fame, to cheer the right 
 
 And steel each wavering glance. 
 
 I write of one, 
 While with dim eyes I think of three;
 
 264 MEMORISE POSITUM. 
 
 Who weeps not others fair and brave as he ? 
 
 Ah, when the fight is won, 
 
 Dear Land, whom triflers now make bold to scorn 
 (Thee ! from whose forehead Earth awaits her 
 
 morn), 
 
 How nobler shall the sun 
 Flame in thy sky, how braver breathe thy air, 
 That thou bred'st children who for thee could dare 
 And die as thine have done ! 
 
 1863.
 
 ON BOARD THE '76. 
 
 WRITTEN FOR MR. BRYANT'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY. 
 
 NOVEMBER 3, 1864. 
 /~~\UR ship lay tumbling in an angry sea, 
 
 Her rudder gone, her main-mast o'er the side ; 
 
 Her scuppers, from the waves' clutch staggering free, 
 
 Trailed threads of priceless crimson through the 
 
 tide; 
 
 Sails, shrouds, and spars with pirate cannon torn, 
 We lay, awaiting morn. 
 
 Awaiting morn, such morn as mocks despair; 
 
 And she that bore the promise of the world 
 Within her sides, now hopeless, helmless, bare, 
 
 At random o'er the wildering waters hurled ; 
 The reek of battle drifting slow alee 
 Not sullener than we.
 
 266 ON BOARD THE '76. 
 
 Morn came at last to peer into our woe, 
 
 When lo, a sail ! Now surely help was nigh ; 
 The red cross flames aloft, Christ's pledge ; but no, 
 
 Her black guns grinning hate, she rushes by 
 And hails us: "Gains the leak? Ay, so we 
 
 thought ! 
 Sink, then, with curses fraught ! " 
 
 I leaned against my gun still angry-hot, 
 
 And my lids tingled with the tears held back ; 
 
 This scorn methought was crueller than shot ; 
 The manly death-grip in the battle-wrack, 
 
 Yard-arm to yard-arm, were more friendly far 
 Than such fear-smothered war. 
 
 There our foe wallowed, like a wounded brute, 
 The fiercer for his hurt. What now were best ? 
 
 Once more tug bravely at the peril's root, 
 
 Though death came with it? Or evade the test
 
 ON BOARD THE '76. 267 
 
 If right or wrong in this God's world of ours 
 Be leagued with higher powers? 
 
 Some, faintly loyal, felt their pulses lag 
 
 With the slow beat that doubts and then despairs ; 
 
 Some, caitiff, would have struck the starry flag 
 That knits us with our past, and makes us heirs 
 
 Of deeds high-hearted as were ever done 
 'Neath the all-seeing sun. 
 
 But there was one, the Singer of our crew, 
 
 Upon whose head Age waved his peaceful sign, 
 
 But whose red heart's-blood no surrender knew ; 
 And couchant under brows of massive line, 
 
 The eyes, like guns beneath a parapet, 
 Watched, charged with lightnings yet. 
 
 The voices of the hills did his obey ; 
 
 The torrents flashed and tumbled in his song;
 
 268 ON BOARD THE '76. 
 
 He brought our native fields from far away, 
 
 Or set us 'mid the innumerable throng 
 Of dateless woods, or where we heard the calm 
 Old homestead's evening psalm. 
 
 But now he sang of faith to things unseen, 
 Of freedom's birthright given to us in trust ; 
 
 And words of doughty cheer he spoke between, 
 That made all earthly fortune seem as dust, 
 
 Matched with that duty, old as Time and new, 
 Of being brave and true. 
 
 We, listening, learned what makes the might of 
 
 words, 
 
 Manhood to back them, constant as a star; 
 His voice rammed home our cannon, edged our 
 
 swords, 
 
 And sent our boarders shouting ; shroud and spar 
 Heard him and stiffened ; the sails heard, and wooed 
 The winds with loftier mood.
 
 ON BOARD THE '76. 269 
 
 In our dark hours he manned our guns again ; 
 Reraanned ourselves from his own manhood's 
 
 store ; 
 Pride, honour, country, throbbed through all his 
 
 strain ; 
 And shall we praise? God's praise was his 
 
 before ; 
 
 And on our futile laurels he looks down, 
 Himself our bravest crown.
 
 ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COM 
 MEMORATION. 
 
 JULY 21, 1865. 
 
 I. 
 
 117EAK-WINGED is song, 
 
 Nor aims at that clear-ethered height 
 Whither the brave deed climbs for light : 
 
 We seem to do them wrong, 
 Bringing our robin's leaf to deck their hearse 
 Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse, 
 Our trivial song to honour those who come 
 With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum, 
 And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire, 
 Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire: 
 
 Yet sometimes feathered words are strong, 
 A gracious memory to buoy up and save
 
 COMMEMORATION ODE. 271 
 
 From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common grave 
 Of the unventurous throng. 
 
 II. 
 
 To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes back 
 Her wisest Scholars, those who understood 
 The deeper teaching of her mystic tome, 
 
 And offered their fresh lives to make it good : 
 
 No lore of Greece or Rome, 
 No science peddling with the names of things, 
 Or reading stars to find inglorious fates, 
 
 Can lift our life with wings 
 Far from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits, 
 
 And lengthen out our dates 
 With that clear fame whose memory sings 
 In manly hearts to come, and nerves them and 
 
 dilates : 
 
 Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all ! 
 Not such the trumpet-call 
 Of thy diviner mood,
 
 272 COMMEMORATION ODE. 
 
 That could thy sons entice 
 From happy homes and toils, the fruitful nest 
 Of those half-virtues which the world calls best, 
 Into War's tumult rude ; 
 But rather far that stern device 
 The sponsors chose that round thy cradle stood 
 In the dim, unventured wood, 
 The VERITAS that lurks beneath 
 The letter's unprolific sheath, 
 Life of whate'er makes life worth living, 
 Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food, 
 
 One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving. 
 
 III. 
 
 Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil 
 Amid the dust of books to find her, 
 
 Content at last, for guerdon of their toil, 
 With the cast mantle she hath left behind her. 
 Many in sad faith sought for her,
 
 COMMEMORATION ODE. 273 
 
 Many with crossed hands sighed for her ; 
 But these, our brothers, fought for her, 
 At life's dear peril wrought for her, 
 So loved her that they died for her, 
 Tasting the raptured fleetness 
 Of her divine completeness : 
 Their higher instinct knew 
 
 Those love her best who to themselves are true, 
 And what they dare to dream of dare to do ; 
 They followed her and found her 
 Where all may hope to find, 
 Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind, 
 But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her ; 
 Where faith made whole with deed 
 Breathes its awakening breath 
 Into the lifeless creed, 
 They saw her plumed and mailed, 
 With sweet stern face unveiled, 
 And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.
 
 274 COMMEMORATION ODE. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides 
 Into the silent hollow of the past; 
 
 What is there that abides 
 To make the next age better for the last? 
 
 Is earth too poor to give us 
 Something to live for here that shall outlive us ? 
 
 Some more substantial boon 
 Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle 
 
 moon? 
 
 The little that we see 
 From doubt is never free; 
 The little that we do 
 Is but half-nobly true; 
 With our laborious hiving 
 
 What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, 
 Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, 
 Only secure in every one's conniving, 
 A long account of nothings paid with loss,
 
 COMMEMORATION ODE. 275 
 
 Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, 
 
 After our little hour of strut and rave, 
 With all our pasteboard passions and desires, 
 Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, 
 Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave. 
 But stay ! no age was e'er degenerate, 
 Unless men held it at too cheap a rate, 
 For in our likeness still we shape our fate; 
 
 Ah, there is something here 
 Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer, 
 Something that gives our feeble light 
 A high immunity from Night, 
 Something that leaps life's narrow bars 
 To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven ; 
 
 A seed of sunshine that doth leaven 
 Our earthly dulness with the beams of stars, 
 
 And glorify our clay 
 
 With light from fountains elder than the Day; 
 A conscience more divine than we, 
 A gladness fed with secret tears, 
 T 2
 
 2 y6 COMMEMORATION ODE. 
 
 A vexing, forward-reaching sense 
 Of some more noble permanence ; 
 
 A light across the sea, 
 
 Which haunts the soul and will not let it be, 
 Still glimmering from the heights of undegenerate 
 years. 
 
 V. 
 
 Whither leads the path 
 To ampler fates that leads ? 
 Not down through flowery meads., 
 To reap an aftermath 
 Of youth's vain-glorious weeds, 
 But up the steep, amid the wrath 
 And shock of deadly-hostile creeds, 
 Where the world's best hope and stay 
 By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way, 
 And every turf the fierce foot clings-to bleeds. 
 Peace hath her not ignoble wreath, 
 Ere yet the sharp, decisive word
 
 COMMEMORATION ODE. 277 
 
 Light the black lips of cannon, and the sword 
 
 Dreams in its easeful sheath ; 
 But some day the live coal behind the thought. 
 
 Whether from Baal's stone obscene, 
 
 Or from the shrine serene 
 
 Of God's pure altar brought, 
 Bursts up in flame ; the war of tongue and pen 
 Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught, 
 And, helpless in the fiery passion caught, 
 Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men : 
 Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed 
 Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, 
 And cries reproachful : "Was it, then, my praise, 
 And not myself was loved ? Prove now thy truth ; 
 I claim of thee the promise of thy youth ; 
 Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase, 
 The victim of thy genius, not its mate ! " 
 Life may be given in many ways, 
 And loyalty to Truth be sealed 
 As bravely in the closet as the field,
 
 278 COMMEMORA TION ODE. 
 
 So bountiful is Fate; 
 
 But then to stand beside her, 
 
 When craven churls deride her, 
 
 To front a lie in arms and not to yield, . 
 This shows, methinks, God's plan 
 And measure of a stalwart man, 
 Limbed like the old heroic breeds, 
 Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid 
 
 earth, 
 Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, 
 
 Fed from within with all the strength he needs. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 
 
 Whom late the Nation he had led, 
 With ashes on her head, 
 Wept with the passion of an angry grief: 
 Forgive me, if from present things I turn 
 To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, 
 And hang my wreath on his world-honoured urn.
 
 COMMEMORATION ODE. 279 
 
 Nature, they say, doth dote, 
 And cannot make a man 
 Save on some worn-out plan, 
 Repeating us by rote : 
 
 For him her Old World moulds aside she threw, 
 And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 
 
 Of the unexhausted West, 
 With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
 Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 
 
 How beautiful to see 
 
 Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, 
 Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead ; 
 One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, 
 Not lured by any cheat of birth, 
 But by his clear-grained human worth, 
 And brave old wisdom of sincerity ! 
 
 They knew that outward grace is dust ; 
 They could not choose but trust 
 In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, 
 And supple-tempered will
 
 28o COMMEMORATION ODE. 
 
 That bent like perfect steel to spring again and 
 
 thrust. 
 
 His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, 
 Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, 
 A sea-mark now, now lost in vapours blind ; 
 Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, 
 Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, 
 
 Yet also nigh to Heaven and loved of loftiest stars. 
 Nothing of Europe here, 
 
 Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, 
 
 Ere any names of Serf and Peer 
 Could Nature's equal scheme deface ; 
 Here -was a type of the true elder race, 
 
 And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to 
 
 face. 
 I praise him not ; it were too late ; 
 
 And some innative weakness there must be 
 
 In him who condescends to victory 
 
 Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, 
 Safe in himself as in a fate.
 
 COMMEMORATION ODE. 281 
 
 So always firmly he; 
 He knew to bide his time, 
 And can his fame abide, 
 Still patient in his simple faith sublime, 
 
 Till the wise years decide. 
 Great captains, with their guns and drums, 
 Disturb our judgment for the hour, 
 
 But at last silence comes; 
 These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, 
 Our children shall behold his fame, 
 
 The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 
 Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
 New birth of our new soil, the first American. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Long as man's hope insatiate can discern 
 Or only guess some more inspiring goal 
 Outside of Self, enduring as the pole, 
 
 Along whose course the flying axles burn
 
 282 COMMEMORATION ODE. 
 
 Of spirits bravely-pitched, earth's manlier brood ; 
 Long as below we cannot find 
 
 The meed that stills the inexorable mind ; 
 
 So long this faith to some ideal Good, 
 Under whatever mortal names it masks, 
 Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal mood 
 
 That thanks the Fates for their severer tasks, 
 Feeling, its challenged pulses leap, 
 While others skulk in subterfuges cheap, 
 
 And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks, 
 Shall win man's praise and woman's love, 
 Shall be a wisdom that we set above 
 
 All other skills and gifts to culture dear, 
 
 A virtue round whose forehead we in wreathe 
 Laurels that with a living passion breathe 
 
 When other crowns grow, while we twine them, sear. 
 What brings us thronging these high rites to pay, 
 
 And seal these hours the noblest of our year, 
 Save that our brothers found this better way?
 
 COMMEMORATION ODE. 283 
 
 VIII. 
 
 We sit here in the Promised Land 
 That flows with Freedom's honey and milk; 
 But 't was they won it, sword in hand, 
 Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk. 
 We welcome back our bravest and our best ; 
 Ah me ! not all ! some come not with the rest, 
 Who went forth brave and bright as any here ! 
 I strive to mix some gladness with my strain, 
 But the sad strings complain, 
 And will not please the ear ; 
 I sweep them for a paean, but they wane 
 
 Again and yet again 
 Into a dirge, and die away in pain. 
 In these brave ranks I only see the gaps, 
 Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps, 
 Dark to the triumph which they died to gain : 
 Fitlier may others greet the living, 
 For me the past is unforgiving;
 
 284 COMMEMORATION ODE. 
 
 I with uncovered head 
 
 Salute the sacred dead, 
 
 Who went, and who return not. Say not so ! 
 'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay, 
 But the high faith that failed not by the way ; 
 Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave ; 
 No ban of endless night exiles the brave ; 
 
 And to the saner mind 
 
 We rather seem the dead that stayed behind. 
 Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow ! 
 For never shall their aureoled presence lack : 
 I see them muster in a gleaming row, 
 With ever-youthful brows that nobler show ; 
 We find in our dull road their shining track ; 
 
 In every nobler mood, 
 We feel the orient of their spirit glow, 
 Part of our life's unalterable good, 
 Of all our saintlier aspiration ; 
 
 They come transfigured back, 
 Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,
 
 COMMEMORATION ODE. 285 
 
 Beautiful evermore, and with the rays 
 
 Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation ! 
 
 IX. 
 
 But is there hope to save 
 Even this ethereal essence from the grave ? 
 What ever 'scaped Oblivion's subtle wrong 
 Save a few clarion names, or golden threads of song ? 
 
 Before my musing eye 
 The mighty ones of old sweep by, 
 Disvoiced now and insubstantial things, 
 As noisy once as we; poor ghosts of kings, 
 Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust, 
 And many races, nameless long ago, 
 To darkness driven by that imperious gust 
 Of ever-rushing Time that here doth blow : 
 O visionary world, condition strange, 
 Where naught abiding is but only Change, 
 Where the deep-bolted stars themselves still shift 
 and range !
 
 286 COMMEMORATION ODE. 
 
 Shall we to more continuance make pretence? 
 
 Renown builds tombs; a life-estate is Wit; 
 And, bit by bit, 
 
 The cunning years steal all from us but woe ; 
 Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest sow. 
 
 But, when we vanish hence, 
 Shall they lie forceless in the dark below, 
 Save to make green their little length of sods, 
 Or deepen pansies for a year or two, 
 Who now to us are shining-sweet as gods? 
 Was dying all they had the skill to do ? 
 That were not fruitless : but the Soul resents 
 Such short-lived service, as if blind events 
 Ruled without her, or earth could so endure ; 
 She claims a more divine investiture 
 Of longer tenure than Fame's airy rents ; 
 Whate'er she touches doth her nature share; 
 Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air, 
 
 Gives eyes to mountains blind, 
 Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the wind,
 
 COMMEMORA TION ODE. 287 
 
 And her clear trump sings succour everywhere 
 By lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind ; 
 For soul inherits all that soul could dare : 
 
 Yea, Manhood hath a wider span 
 And larger privilege of life than man. 
 The single deed, the private sacrifice, 
 So radiant now through proudly-hidden tears, 
 Is covered up erelong from mortal eyes 
 With thoughtless drift of the deciduous . years ; 
 But that high privilege that makes all men peers, 
 That leap of heart whereby a people rise 
 
 Up to a noble anger's height, 
 And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, but 
 
 grow more bright, 
 That swift validity in noble veins, 
 Of choosing danger and disdaining shame, 
 
 Of being set on flame 
 
 By the pure fire that flies all contact base, 
 But wraps its chosen with angelic might, 
 These are imperishable gains,
 
 288 COMMEMORATION ODE. 
 
 Sure as the sun, medicinal as light, 
 These hold great futures in their lusty reins 
 And certify to earth a new imperial race. 
 
 X. 
 
 Who now shall sneer? 
 Who dare again to say we trace 
 Our lines to a plebeian race ? 
 
 Roundhead and Cavalier ! 
 
 Dumb are those names erewhile in battle loud ; 
 Dream-footed as the shadow of a cloud, 
 
 They flit across the ear : 
 That is best blood that hath most iron in't 
 To edge resolve with, pouring without stint 
 
 For what makes manhood dear. 
 Tell us not of Plantagenets, 
 Hapsburgs, and Guelphs, whose thin bloods crawl 
 Down from some victor in a border-brawl ! 
 How poor their outworn coronets,
 
 COMMEMORATION ODE. 289 
 
 Matched with one leaf of that plain civic wreath 
 Our brave for honour's blazon shall bequeath, 
 
 Through whose desert a rescued Nation sets 
 Her heel on treason, and the trumpet hears 
 Shout victory, tingling Europe's sullen ears 
 
 With vain resentments and more vain regrets ! 
 
 XL 
 
 Not in anger, not in pride, 
 
 Pure from passion's mixture rude 
 
 Ever to base earth allied, 
 
 But with far-heard gratitude, 
 
 Still with heart and voice renewed, 
 To heroes living and dear martyrs dead, 
 The strain should close that consecrates our brave. 
 Lift the heart and lift the head ! 
 
 Lofty be its mood and grave, 
 
 Not without a martial ring, 
 
 Not without a prouder tread 
 
 And a peal of exultation : 
 u
 
 2go COMMEMORA TION ODE. 
 
 Little right has he to sing 
 Through whose heart in such an hour 
 Beats no march of conscious power, 
 Sweeps no tumult of elation ! 
 "Pis no Man we celebrate, 
 By his country's victories great, 
 A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, 
 But the pith and marrow of a Nation 
 Drawing force from all her men, 
 Highest, humblest, weakest, all, 
 For her time of need, and then 
 Pulsing it again through them, 
 Till the basest can no longer cower, 
 Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, 
 Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem. 
 Come back, then, noble pride, for 't is her dower ! 
 How could poet ever tower, 
 If his passions, hopes, and fears, 
 If his triumphs and his tears, 
 Kept not measure with his people?
 
 COMMEMORATION' ODE. 291 
 
 Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves ! 
 Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple ! 
 Banners, adance with triumph, bend your staves ! 
 And from every mountain-peak 
 Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak, 
 Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he, 
 And so leap on in light from sea to sea, 
 Till the glad news be sent 
 Across a kindling continent, 
 
 Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver: 
 " Be proud ! for she is saved, and all have helped 
 
 to save her ! 
 
 She that lifts up the manhood of the poor, 
 She of the open soul and open door, 
 With room about her hearth for all mankind ! 
 The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more; 
 From her bold front the helm she doth unbind, 
 Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin, 
 And bids her navies, that so lately hurled 
 Their crashing battle, hold their thunders in, 
 u 2
 
 292 COMMEMORA TION ODE. 
 
 Swimming like birds of calm along the unharm- 
 
 ful shore. 
 
 No challenge sends she to the "elder world, 
 That looked askance and hated ; a light scorn 
 Plays o'er her mouth, as round her mighty knees 
 She calls her children back, and waits the morn 
 Of nobler day, enthroned between her subject 
 
 seas." 
 
 XII. 
 
 Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release! 
 Thy God, in these distempered days, 
 Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways, 
 
 And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace ! 
 Bow down in prayer and praise ! 
 
 No poorest in thy borders but may now. 
 
 Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow. 
 
 O Beautiful ! my Country ! ours once more ! 
 
 Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair 
 
 O'er such sweet brows as never other wore,
 
 COMMEMORATION ODE. 293 
 
 And letting thy set lips, 
 
 Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, 
 The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, 
 What words divine of lover or of poet 
 Could tell our love and make thee know it, 
 Among the Nations bright beyond compare ? 
 
 What were our lives without thee ? 
 
 What all our lives to save thee? 
 
 We reck not what we gave thee; 
 
 We will not dare to doubt thee, 
 But ask whatever else, and we will dare !
 
 L'EN VOL
 
 TO THE MUSE. 
 
 HITHER? Albeit I follow fast, 
 
 In all life's circuit I but find, 
 Not where thou art, but where thou wast, 
 
 Sweet beckoner, more fleet than wind ! 
 I haunt the pine-dark solitudes, 
 
 With soft brown silence carpeted, 
 And plot to snare thee in the woods : 
 
 Peace I o'ertake, but thou art fled ! 
 I find the rock where thou didst rest, 
 The moss thy skimming foot hath prest ; 
 
 All Nature with thy parting thrills, 
 Like branches after birds new-flown ; 
 
 Thy passage hill and hollow fills 
 With hints of virtue not their own ; 
 In dimples still the water slips 
 Where thou hast dipt thy finger-tips ;
 
 298 TO THE MUSE. 
 
 Just, just beyond, forever burn 
 
 Gleams of a grace without return ; 
 
 Upon thy shade I plant my foot, 
 And through my frame strange raptures shoot ; 
 All of thee but thyself I grasp ; 
 
 I seem to fold thy luring shape, 
 And vague air to my bosom clasp, 
 
 Thou lithe, perpetual Escape ! 
 
 One mask and then another drops, 
 
 And thou art secret as before : 
 Sometimes with flooded ear I list, 
 And hear thee, wondrous organist, 
 
 From mighty continental stops 
 
 A thunder of new music pour; 
 
 Through pipes of earth and air and stone 
 
 Thy inspiration deep is blown ; 
 
 Through mountains, forests, open downs, 
 
 Lakes, railroads, prairies, states, and towns, 
 
 Thy gathering fugue goes rolling on 
 
 From Maine to utmost Oregon ;
 
 TO THE MUSE. 299 
 
 The factory-wheels in cadence hum, 
 From brawling parties concords come; 
 All this I hear, or seem to hear, 
 But when, enchanted, I draw near 
 To mate with words the various theme, 
 Life seems a whiff of kitchen steam, 
 History an organ-grinder's thrum, 
 
 For thou hast slipt from it and me 
 And all thine organ-pipes left dumb, 
 
 Most mutable Perversity ! 
 
 Not weary yet, I still must seek, 
 
 And hope for luck next day, next week ; 
 
 I go to see the great man ride, 
 
 Shiplike, the swelling human tide 
 
 That floods to bear him into port, 
 
 Trophied from Senate-hall and Court ; 
 
 Thy magnetism, I feel it there, 
 
 Thy rhythmic presence fleet and rare, 
 
 Making the Mob a moment fine 
 
 With glimpses of their own Divine,
 
 300 TO THE MUSE. 
 
 As in their demigod they see 
 
 Their cramped ideal soaring free; 
 
 'Twas thou didst bear the fire about, 
 That, like the springing of a mine, 
 
 Sent up to heaven the street-long shout ; 
 
 Full well I know that thou wast here, 
 
 It was thy breath that brushed my ear; 
 
 But vainly in the stress and whirl 
 
 I dive for thee, the moment's pearl. 
 
 Through every shape thou well canst run, 
 
 Proteus, 'twixt rise and set of sun, 
 
 Well pleased with logger-camps in Maine 
 
 As where Milan's pale Duomo lies 
 A stranded glacier on the plain, 
 Its peaks and pinnacles of ice 
 Melted in many a quaint device, 
 And sees, above the city's din, 
 Afar its silent Alpine kin : 
 I track thee over carpets deep 
 To wealth's and beauty's inmost keep ;
 
 TO THE MUSE. 301 
 
 Across the sand of bar-room floors 
 'Mid the stale reek of boosing boors ; 
 Where drowse the hay-field's fragrant heats, 
 Or the flail-heart of Autumn beats ; 
 I dog thee through the market's throngs 
 To where the sea with myriad tongues 
 Laps the green edges of the pier, 
 And the tall ships that eastward steer 
 Curtsey their farewells to the town, 
 O'er the curved distance lessening down ; 
 I follow allwhere for thy sake, 
 Touch thy robe's hem, but ne'er o'ertake, 
 Find where, scarce yet unmoving, lies, 
 Warm from thy limbs, thy last disguise ; 
 But thou another shape ^hast donned, 
 And lurest still just, just beyond ! 
 
 But here a voice, I know not whence, 
 Thrills clearly through my inward sense, 
 Saying : " See where she sits at home 
 While thou in search of her dost roam !
 
 302 TO THE MUSE. 
 
 All summer long her ancient wheel 
 
 Whirls humming by the open door, 
 Or, when the hickory's social zeal 
 
 Sets the wide chimney in a roar, 
 Close-nestled by the tinkling hearth, 
 It modulates the household mirth 
 With that sweet serious undertone 
 Of duty, music all her own; 
 Still as of old she sits and spins 
 Our hopes, our sorrows, and our sins ; 
 With equal care she twines the fates 
 Of cottages and mighty states ; 
 She spins the earth, the air, the sea, 
 The maiden's unschooled fancy free, 
 The boy's first love, the man's first grief, 
 The budding and the fall o' the leaf; 
 The piping west-wind's snowy care 
 For her their cloudy fleeces spare, 
 Or from the thorns of evil times 
 She can glean wool to twist her rhymes : 
 Morning and noon and eve supply
 
 TO THE MUSE. 303 
 
 To her their fairest tints for dye, 
 But ever through her twirling thread 
 There spires one line of warmest red, 
 Tinged from the homestead's genial heart, 
 The stamp and warrant of her art; 
 With this Time's sickle she outwears, 
 And blunts the Sisters' baffled shears. 
 
 " Harass her not : thy heat and stir 
 But greater coyness breed in her ; 
 Yet thou mayst find, ere Age's frost, 
 Thy long apprenticeship not lost, 
 Learning at last that Stygian Fate 
 Unbends to him that knows to wait. 
 The Muse is womanish, nor deigns 
 Her love to him that pules and plains; 
 With proud, averted face she stands 
 To him that wooes with empty hands. 
 Make thyself free of Manhood's guild ; 
 Pull down thy barris and greater build ; 
 The wood, the mountain, and the plain
 
 304 TO THE MUSE. 
 
 Wave breast-deep with the poet's grain ; 
 Pluck thou the sunset's fruit of gold, 
 Glean from the heavens and ocean old ; 
 From fireside lone and trampling street 
 Let thy life garner daily wheat ; 
 The epic of a man rehearse, 
 Be something better than thy verse ; 
 Make thyself rich, and then the Muse 
 Shall court thy precious interviews, 
 Shall take thy head upon her knee, 
 And such enchantment lilt to thee, 
 That thou shalt hear the life-blood flow 
 From farthest stars to grass-blades low, 
 And find the Listener's science still 
 Transcends the Singer's deepest skill!" 
 
 THE END. 
 
 London : R. Clay. Sons, and Taylor, Printers.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
 COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below.
 
 '-OLLEGE LIB! 
 
 005 721 
 
 PS 
 231U 
 
 ^, 
 1869& 
 
 A 001 199 441 5