LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 Chap. Copyright No. 
 
 Shelt_-K&jM (o 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
KOOPMAN 
 POETICAL WORKS 
 
 III 
 MORROW-SONGS 
 
CHARGE 
 
 Go, Morrow-Songs,/^ so 1 bid you greet 
 With blithe good-morrow all ye hap to meet; 
 And, Morrow, while to glad my steps ye ran 
 On childhood's dewy sward, ere they began 
 To slip and stumble up life's craggy slope ; 
 Morrow, because your greeting rings with hope, 
 Stronger for disillusion ; and, again, 
 As Morrow-Songs I send you forth to men, 
 Because of earth's great morrow-tide ye sing, 
 And all the wonder that its dawn shall bring ; 
 And, Morrow, lastly, since to far-off days, 
 If, haply, any, must ye look for praise. 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 1880-1898 
 
 BY / 
 
 HARRY LYMAN KOOPMAN 
 
 BOSTON, MASS. 
 H. D. EVERETT, PUBLISHER 
 
 1898 
 
 
 TWO COPIES RECEIVED- 
 

 Copyright i8p8 
 By H. L. Koopman 
 
 6163 
 
DEDICATION 
 
 Inly beloved, ere my songs take flight, 
 Grant them, I pray, acceptance in thy sight, 
 Who art my morrow-tide with hope elate, 
 And courage to confront the coming fate ; 
 Tet art my midday strength and equal mind, 
 Who daily faith renewest in humankind ; 
 And art no less the solace and repose 
 That come with darkness at my labor's close. 
 Morning and noon and even, O my wife, 
 Unite in thee my perfect day of life. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Charge 
 
 ii 
 
 Dedication 
 
 V 
 
 Freedom 
 
 3 
 
 The Gothic Minster 
 
 5 
 
 The Conqueror 
 
 19 
 
 John Brown 
 
 21 
 
 The Sowers 
 
 21 
 
 Progress 
 
 23 
 
 Reform 
 
 23 
 
 The Thinker 
 
 24 
 
 Heaven 
 
 25 
 
 Life 
 
 26 
 
 Recognition 
 
 26 
 
 Indignation 
 
 27 
 
 Temptation 
 
 27 
 
 Home 
 
 27 
 
 The Outlook 
 
 34 
 
 Appreciation 
 
 37 
 
 The Pioneer 
 
 38 
 
 The Higher Harmony 
 
 38 
 
 Numbers 
 
 39 
 
 The Heavenly Vision 
 
 39 
 
 My Washerwoman 
 
 40 
 
 The Church Progressive 
 
 4 1 
 
 Failure 
 
 4 1 
 
 After-Life 
 
 41 
 
 Priestcraft 
 
 42 
 
 Inheritance 
 
 42 
 
 Vll 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 What Shall It Profit? 
 
 42 
 
 Riches 
 
 43 
 
 Prudence 
 
 44 
 
 Extremes 
 
 44 
 
 The Wail of the Wounded 
 
 45 
 
 Opportunity 
 
 46 
 
 Truth 
 
 46 
 
 M'Cready 
 
 46 
 
 Stumbling-Blocks 
 
 47 
 
 Two Characterizations 
 
 48 
 
 Individualism 
 
 49 
 
 New Birth 
 
 49 
 
 Masks 
 
 49 
 
 Wit and Madness 
 
 50 
 
 Oppression 
 
 5o 
 
 The Beginning of Civilization 
 
 50 
 
 The Jew 
 
 5i 
 
 The King of Darkness 
 
 5i 
 
 Music-Life 
 
 5* 
 
 Recreant 
 
 52 
 
 The Rule of Mammon 
 
 53 
 
 Birth 
 
 54 
 
 Hate 
 
 54 
 
 Truth, Peace, Love 
 
 55 
 
 John Henry Mackay 
 
 57 
 
 Aloneness 
 
 57 
 
 Comrade 
 
 58 
 
 The Satirist 
 
 58 
 
 Midway 
 
 59 
 
 Originality 
 
 63 
 
 Revealed 
 
 63 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Kearsarge 
 Babyhood 
 Medio Tutissimus Ibis 
 
 6 4 
 65 
 
 66 
 
 The Triumph of Toil 
 
 67 
 
 The Player 
 
 Song-Lull 
 
 The Time-Server 
 
 67 
 67 
 68 
 
 Genius 
 
 68 
 
 Fertility 
 
 Guided 
 
 The Way Station 
 
 Culture 
 
 69 
 69 
 7o 
 7* 
 
 Before Dawn 
 
 7i 
 
 Dust 
 
 72 
 
 Two Poets 
 
 73 
 
FREEDOM 
 
 VANISHED the tender gleams 
 That my past illumed ; 
 In a blaze of noon-bright beams 
 Is their dawn consumed. 
 
 A vision blasting with light 
 
 Thy features give. — 
 Have I looked with naked sight 
 
 On Thee, and live ? 
 
 Or who will credit my tale, 
 
 If I speak Thee true ? 
 But, chosen of Thee, can I fail ? 
 
 I will dare and do. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 In the following poem the description of the cathedral adopts, 
 for the outside y somenvhat the lines of the minster at Ulm ivith 
 its single spire, among the spires of earth peerless in height and 
 beauty ; nvhile the colors of the interior ha<ve been drawn from 
 the more gorgeous cathedrals of the Ile-de-France, the cradle 
 and the throne of Gothic architecture . 
 
THE GOTHIC MINSTER 
 
 A SYMPHONY in stone ; wherein all notes 
 Wrung or upleaping from man's ruddy heart, 
 The low, the loud, the dull, the penetrating, 
 As up to heaven thronging they ascend, 
 In labyrinthean intertanglement, 
 O'ertaken in mid-harmony by form, 
 Stand bodied forth, eternized, visible. 
 No thin Memnonian murmur, faintly heard 
 At dawn or dusk with glad or plaintive strain, 
 Here swells a chorus never still, a vast 
 Millennial antiphon absolved from sound, 
 Which thrills and thunders on the eye alone ; 
 The music of the world-wide life of man, 
 Its hopes and fears and sins and sacrifices, 
 Rapt adoration, faith by deeds confirmed, 
 Jaw-dropt credulity, keen questioning, 
 Death-scorning courage daunted by the dark, 
 Love barred with hate, with grossness purity, 
 Red-slipping war, the hammering hum of peace, 
 Hand-clasping brotherhood and manliness, 
 The joy of handiwork, whose rest is toil, 
 The joy of breathing, moving, loving life, 
 Immortalized and eloquent in stone. 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 Stand here at night in storm, when, through the 
 
 gloom, 
 The great bulk seems a wall across the world, 
 Uprising jagged to the very sky, 
 And you could deem a horned Alp, rebellious 
 Against the encircling conclave of his peers, 
 Had by their doom been banished here to dwell, 
 With all his fretting pines and pinnacles. 
 But let the moon break forth, and through swift scud 
 Flicker and float upon these carven walls, 
 The mountain vanishes, and in its place 
 A structure gleams without a stain of earth, 
 A temple heaven-descended, or, as if 
 A convoy of blest angels chorusing, 
 As back to heaven they bore a saint's white soul, 
 Had ravished so the moonlight with their song, 
 That, where their notes fell, there the beams, trans- 
 formed, 
 Had stood upstriving, and, as rose the hymn, 
 So rose the silver fane, until the sound 
 Was muffled by the stars ; while far below, 
 Though far aloft to men, the snowy cross 
 Hung yearning for that vanished melody. 
 But stand before the minster when high noon 
 Throws its revealing light on tower and wall, 
 The airy structure hardens into stone ; 
 Not all forgetful of the mountain form 
 It wore in darkness, nor the winged grace 
 
 
THE GOTHIC MINSTER 
 
 And lightness of that moony masonry ; 
 
 Yet plainly work of man, man at his best, 
 
 Highest aspiring and most self-forgetful, 
 
 Therefore most self-revealing. Then, what self? 
 
 The genius of what master intellect 
 
 Shines here by baser hands wrought visibly ? 
 
 No mighty genius, and no baser hands, 
 
 But common lives by faith and art exalted ; — 
 
 Such workmen reared these walls, and carved these 
 
 spires, 
 And shot yon shaft of beauty into air 
 Till the eye aches that follows, and the heart 
 Feels itself snatched from earth and swept on high, 
 As by the current of a soaring flame. 
 
 If then the greatness was not theirs that wrought, 
 What mastering motive so informed their lives 
 As through such lowly means to win expression ? 
 Religion 't was, and art its ministrant, 
 The records answer; but the question comes, 
 If unto them the word " religion " spake 
 As in our ears to-day. In every age 
 Bears not the word its new significance, 
 Or meanings manifold, though under all 
 Abide the root and spring of all religion, 
 The loneliness and longing of the soul 
 Orphaned of its ideal ? The eye within 
 Beholds an image of perfection, 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 But in the outer and embodied world 
 Sees only crudeness, failure, death, decay ; 
 No circle round, no angle true, no life 
 But inly bears the seeds of its own death ; 
 The redeless riddle of the universe : 
 The rain descending on the evil man 
 As on the good, and on the good as oft 
 The hail and lightning j nothing justified 
 Within the span of life ; the heart awarding 
 Men's lot by merit, and aggrieved to find 
 That force on earth usurps the place of right ; 
 Nor satisfied that with the ages' lapse 
 Wrong slowly is made right, if this man's hurt 
 Is never healed, nor that man's pride put down. 
 The heart has vision in its inmost shrine 
 Of love illimitable, its native air, 
 Its birthplace and its bourne ; but sees on earth 
 Man's hand against his brother, hate and greed 
 Making the world a shambles, or a den 
 Of famine and of torture ; yea ! the lesson, 
 Learned after centuries, that 't is thriftier 
 To coin a brother's heart's-blood, drop by drop, 
 Than spill it wastefully by the swift sword. 
 
 But heart and mind refuse to answer no 
 To the enigma of the universe. 
 Though earth and air and sea and human life, 
 With all their voices, howl a negative, 
 8 
 
THE GOTHIC MINSTER 
 
 Deep in the soul resounds eternal yea. 
 Therefore the soul back on itself returns, 
 And through itself, as though a glass, beholds 
 The infinite brought down to human ken, 
 The dateless, boundless, beauty, goodness, truth. 
 But not in all its hours can the soul scale 
 Those dizzy heights of contemplation, 
 Descend those depths and breathe with mortal 
 
 breath ; 
 Nor have all souls that strength to climb and dive. 
 So, that the blind might share the seer's sight, 
 And that the seer in his hours of gloom 
 Might not forget the vision wonderful, 
 Men wrought them symbols that should reproduce 
 The shadowed glory, as the picture's lines 
 Recall the absent loved one. Yea, they strove 
 By strong suggestions so to realize 
 The world unseen, that o'er the symbol seen 
 The unseen through the parted heaven should burst. 
 Many the symbols that in many lands 
 Throughout the ages have moved human hearts 
 With heavenly persuasion ; but with some 
 An age, a race, drank all the meaning dry, 
 And left a rocky channel to our thirst. 
 Yet other symbols spake to all men's hearts 
 And speak to after ages. Such are those 
 Vast emblems of the life of man in God 
 And of God's life with men, that, long perfecting, 
 
 9 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 After the opening of the new millennium 
 For half a thousand years ceased not to break 
 Flower-like on Europe's air, as if the rocks 
 Had risen in worship, and the forest aisles 
 Had joined them in uplifted adoration. 
 
 For him who from our naked shore brings eyes 
 Of unblest innocence, which never saw 
 Beauty in stone nor vaulted awfulness, 
 Yet brings a heart that thrills to grace and gloom 
 What ravishment awaits ! On him unwarned, 
 In all their beauty and their fragrance, burst 
 These fadeless blossoms of the centuries. 
 Upon his ears not dulled by frequency 
 The mighty chords of these vast instruments 
 Shatter full diapason. O'er his soul 
 The symbol once again breaks up the depths 
 Of the unfathomed blue to melt beneath 
 The glory of the infinite descending. 
 Man's life in God, so mounts the soaring pile ; 
 Foundations vast and broad laid far below 
 In sunless depths of unseen sacrifice; 
 The walls arising, buttressed all about 
 With rallying support ; oft scarcely more 
 Than buttresses, so precious is the room 
 For inward light ; then shrinking in the roof, 
 Then, as if taking heart, once more the walls 
 Rise heavenward, many-windowed, through a maze 
 10 
 
THE GOTHIC MINSTER 
 
 Of buttresses that spring to meet the lower, 
 
 Then leap in upward flame for very joy 
 
 Of help received and given ; while, through all 
 
 The length and breadth of the vast edifice, 
 
 No line but upward strives, no stone but lifts, 
 
 No smallest spire or finial but stands 
 
 On tiptoe to ascend. But not so broad 
 
 Can mount the highest life. The roof shuts in ; 
 
 And all the upward impulse of the pile 
 
 Narrows into the tower, which climbs and climbs, 
 
 But though so far from earth not yet finds heaven ; 
 
 Too earthly still, it throws more weight away ; 
 
 A flying cloud is scarce so airy now ; 
 
 But still the vision waits, and still the spire, 
 
 Now narrowed to a staff, holds on its aim, 
 
 Will not give o'er until the blessing fall ; 
 
 And see, the stone begins to bud with hope; 
 
 Swifter the spire shoots up, then suddenly 
 
 Stops, and in the rose-cross blossoms forth 
 
 For rapture of the beatific vision. 
 
 So finds the life of man its rest in God, 
 After long toil, repose ; long warfare, peace. 
 Where finds it ? Yonder, never here on earth, 
 The upward-pointing answers. Finds what life ? 
 The heart still urges, and for answer given 
 Receives the beckoning of the sculptured portal. 
 With heart upturned and chastened soul go in ; 
 
 II 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 The world shuts down behind, and thou art left 
 
 Alone in presence of the ineffable. 
 
 The very light is not the light of day ; 
 
 For here the sun shines not, but living light 
 
 With its effulgence glorifies the air, 
 
 As if the rainbow's promise filled the world. 
 
 All vistas end in light ; past range on range 
 
 Of columns down the illimitable aisle 
 
 A glory shuts the vision j while, above, 
 
 From gloom to splendor soar the vaulted heights. 
 
 To right, to left, the air is dyed with hues, 
 
 Rich, darkling, solemnly magnificent, 
 
 Like the deep organ tones that from aloft 
 
 Roll under the huge vaults, and die away 
 
 Along the lessening arches dim and far. 
 
 Hours here are ages ; time has oped his hand 
 
 And let the soul fly free ; the bounds of space 
 
 Hem its light wings no longer. Where and when 
 
 Have lost their meaning to the mind entranced. 
 
 Yea, self itself is lost ; the weary soul, 
 
 After long flight, within the bosom rests 
 
 Of the eternal, as the spray-flung drop 
 
 Sinks back in ocean's immensity. 
 
 What shall bring back the soul to earthly life, 
 After such heavenly ravishment, lest it faint, 
 Being clothed upon with flesh, in that fine air ? 
 Beauty : which links the human and divine, 
 12 
 
 
THE GOTHIC MINSTER 
 
 And lures the soul on heavenly meads astray 
 
 Down its bright pathways to humanity. 
 
 At last the eye begins with separate sight 
 
 To mark what wholly had but dazzled it. 
 
 The mind, by suddenness of the splendor stunned, 
 
 Now step by step and slowly traverses 
 
 The strange new world revealed ; and finds it all 
 
 Not wholly new or strange. The forms are here 
 
 That build the forest's awe, the cavern's dread, 
 
 And, more familiar still, the lowlier shapes 
 
 Of leaf and bud and flower, with vines that cling 
 
 And coii and twine and creep and nestle or climb ; 
 
 All wrought with faithfulness that comes alone 
 
 To love, a love that cherishes the life, 
 
 Not merely the dead forms. Then the mind's eye 
 
 Pictures the workman of that elder time 
 
 On Sunday with his children wandering 
 
 In wood and field, and noting curve and poise 
 
 Of flower and leaf and stem, while constantly 
 
 His children bring him brighter, sweeter blooms 
 
 For his approval. Wearying at last, 
 
 They lighten with their songs the homeward way. 
 
 No man might hope to see the pile complete, 
 
 But yet his daily, weekly, yearly task 
 
 He wrought and finished, and in doing it 
 
 Found happiness. Toil might his body tire, 
 
 But in his heart was never any wish 
 
 Save to renew his task with the new day ; 
 
 *3 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 So much he loved the work. His toil to him 
 Was recreation, for it ministered 
 To mind and heart ; in it his thought and will 
 Wrought their creative impulse, and he knew 
 The artist's joy, finding in art his life. 
 
 Men build no more cathedrals ; — walls may rise, 
 
 With tower and window, and be consecrate 
 
 To the old purpose, but the soul is fled. 
 
 Small need the cause to question. Who toils now 
 
 For love of art, with high creative joy ? 
 
 No laborer. Then in vain the master plans, 
 
 Or, rather, vain his plan, and void of soul. 
 
 Art knows no sundering of the hand and brain ; 
 
 The two as one must labor, for in art 
 
 The greater sinks or rises with the less. 
 
 But, given the art, should we be able still 
 
 To lift such clouds of incense to the sky, 
 
 By marble less than faith made permanent ? 
 
 The question holds its answer ; for the faith 
 
 That bade these mountains be removed and wrought 
 
 Into new shapes of heavenlier loveliness 
 
 Is dead on earth, never to live again. 
 
 That faith is dead ; light slew it ; when men came 
 
 To know the world they live in, and themselves, 
 
 The faith that pointed them away from earth, 
 
 And bade them scorn and flee it, could not live. 
 
 With all the beauty and the nameless charm 
 
THE GOTHIC MINSTER 
 
 And soothing of the soul and inspiration 
 And lessons, which their monuments retain, 
 The old beliefs of twilight, when day dawned, 
 Must needs grow thin and vanish like the night. 
 That faith is dead which made the earth a waste, 
 And man's life but a desert pilgrimage 
 O'er burning sands and flinty shards to find 
 Beyond its bounds a Paradise and rest. 
 That faith is dead which in the body saw 
 Only the spirit's prison, a house of sin, 
 To be escaped from, not indwelt with joy. 
 That faith is dead, with its black pessimism, 
 Which deemed this world the devil's world, and then, 
 That men might not die wholly in despair, 
 Fashioned a heaven for earth's apology. 
 That faith is dead, but its dark influence 
 Yet shadows us. Now men discern at last 
 That whatsoever other lives and worlds 
 Within the unrevealed may wait for man, 
 Yet is this earth his home, the theatre, 
 Where, and not elsewhere, he must play his part ; — 
 So much is sure ; the rest is dread or hope ; — 
 How do men greet this knowledge ? How for this 
 Has the old faith prepared them ? Alas ! the heart, 
 In the long years wherein the mind has grown 
 To stature and strength of manhood, has been fed 
 On childish food, and in its weakliness 
 Staggers beneath the burden. Some men therefore 
 
 15 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 Rush out of life, preferring any change, 
 Or nothingness itself, to life on earth. 
 Others, like wolves, against their fellows turn 
 And rend the weak and wounded, feasting on them. 
 Others, retreating to the charnel house 
 Of the dead faith, pretend that life is there. 
 But most men to themselves seem aimlessly 
 Hurrying to and fro and finding naught. 
 
 Yet, unto one who from the minster tower 
 Looks down along the centuries to the ground, 
 They seem to move in common ; and the sight 
 Awakes within his heart a faith, to which 
 That elder faith was childish fantasy. 
 What the new life shall be toward which men move 
 No tongue can tell, for it no eye hath seen ; 
 But whence they move is clear; therefore in part 
 The whither we may guess. Away from hate, 
 Away from violence, men slowly draw, 
 And leave behind the huddling fear of force, 
 Which sinks in mass the individual, 
 And leave the vapors of world-ignorance, 
 Whereon man saw his morning shadow thrown, 
 And fell before its vastness, worshiping ; 
 And leave with every lie some love of lies. 
 Hence deem we kindliness and brotherhood, 
 Respect for others born of self-respect, 
 And bold research in room of cringing awe, 
 16 
 
 
THE GOTHIC MINSTER 
 
 Shall have their home in that new world men seek ; 
 And though on earth they seek it, is it less 
 Than that celestial city which John saw 
 Descending out of heaven unto men, 
 Wherein was no defilement, no more curse, 
 Abomination, lie in love or deed, 
 Sorrow nor crying more, nor any night, 
 But blessedness and healing of the nations ? 
 No temple stood therein ; for in that world 
 Symbol in sight is lost. There the eternal 
 Is manifest in full-flowered human life, 
 Which finds itself in the eternal found. 
 More we cannot discern, and if we saw 
 We could but misinterpret ; but no doubt 
 That newer life will bring its new ideals, 
 New character, new conduct, new religion ; 
 Which if revealed to us were meaningless 
 Or profanation. Let us be content 
 With what the far height of the tower unfolds 
 Of man's divine progression. 
 
 If, in times 
 When all things change, our hearts distrust and 
 
 doubt, 
 Turn we to where the Gothic minster lifts 
 Its cross above the ages, and there learn 
 How through the old life's death the new is born : 
 A thousand years one order ruled the world, 
 
 17 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 One form for every temple, wrought upon 
 The hard lines of the Roman's hall of state. 
 It added first the symbol of the cross, 
 Then arched the mighty dome of heaven's peace ; 
 The walls reached out their level length, and stood 
 In strength a bulwark against all the world ; 
 While, like a lower firmament, the roof, 
 Expansive, low, benignly sheltering, 
 Shut out the world above from that beneath ; 
 On every window pressed the rounded arch, 
 And all was strong and stable and secure. 
 At last, with change of times, the order changed : 
 The windows robbed the wall's supremacy, 
 Grown wider, yet aspiring far aloft 
 In slender shafts that broke the restful lines 
 Of level, broken further by supports 
 To prop the weakened sides. The roof, upheaved 
 As by a strong convulsion, cleft the air 
 A wedge, no more a shelter. Losing power 
 To lift great domes in air, men reared instead 
 Dizzy and toppling spires. Even the round 
 Of the strong arch was broken, and the whole, 
 To hide its death, was draped with carven flowers. 
 So, when at Amiens change had wrought its worst, 
 In the completed pile no trace was left 
 Of the old meaning ; and, to eyes that saw 
 After the ancient order, seemed alone 
 Ruin, where we behold the full-blown rose 
 18 
 
THE GOTHIC MINSTER 
 
 Of Gothic beauty, and discern therein 
 Meanings that more transcend what they displaced 
 Than those the coldness of the Roman hall. 
 The elder order built with lifeless weight 
 Of stone on stone against the outer light ; 
 With all its strength it perished ; but the new 
 Abides, which builds with life and light and love. 
 
 THE CONQUEROR* 
 
 A KNIGHT withouten golden spurs, 
 Or shield or plumy crest, 
 Or axe or brand to take in hand, 
 Or lance to lay in rest ; 
 
 A knight for whom no champing steed 
 Impatient paws the ground ; 
 
 By squire unfollowed, and by rede 
 Of minstrel unrenowned ; 
 
 No lordly mould of brow or limb, 
 
 Nor eye's imperial ken, 
 Nor grace of speech distinguish him 
 
 Above his fellow-men ; 
 
 * From this point onward the poems are arranged in order of time. 
 
 19 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 And they that see him day by day, 
 With eyes of outward sight, 
 
 Have never guessed he rideth quest 
 Or hath been dubbed a knight. 
 
 But weary eye and weary arm 
 And heart world-overworn 
 
 Bespeak how near hope lies to fear, 
 While blows yet must be borne. 
 
 Oh ! couldst thou deem that at the last 
 Thy God would leave thee so ? 
 
 Hark to the heavenly trumpet blast, 
 The death-knell of thy foe ! 
 
 Mankind at length are open-eyed, 
 
 And, all along the sky, 
 Behold their beacon-fires that wide 
 
 Proclaim thy victory. 
 
 For only Truth can triumph long, 
 And they that work its will 
 
 Then conquer most when foemen boast 
 Their bodies slain and still. 
 
 20 
 
JOHN BROWN 
 
 JOHN BROWN 
 
 THE sea-bound landsman, looking back to shore, 
 Now learns what land is highest ; — not the ring 
 
 Of hills that erewhile shut out everything 
 Beyond them from him ; these are seen no more ; 
 Nor yet the loftier heights that, from the lower, 
 
 He saw far inland, blue, and, worshiping, 
 
 Believed they touched the sky; the gull's white 
 wing 
 Long since flashed o'er them sunk in the sea-floor. 
 These were but uplands hiding the true height, 
 
 Which looms above them as they sink, and rears 
 Its greatness ever greater on the sight. 
 
 So thou, across the widening sea of years, 
 Aye risest great, as on through gloom and bright 
 
 Our tossing bark of Progress sunward steers. 
 
 THE SOWERS 
 
 THERE went three sowers forth to sow, 
 In the shining days when the earth was young ; 
 One scarfed with the dawning-light did go, 
 For out of the east his steps had sprung ; 
 And seeds of knowledge he bore in his hand 
 To scatter broadcast over the land. 
 
 21 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 Another came from the midday heat, 
 And seeds of beauty he sowed afar ; 
 
 Resplendent vapors rolled at his feet, 
 
 And his brows were bright as the sun-lands are ; 
 
 To the lands of midnight away he strode, 
 
 And the dawnand the gloaming beneath him glowed. 
 
 The third came out of the star-lit north, 
 
 With the rush of winds and of waters he came ; 
 
 And seeds of duty he scattered forth, 
 
 Far-flung like the northern dayspring's flame ; 
 
 Till dale and hillside, from sea to sea, 
 
 Were bright with the bloom of his husbandry. 
 
 But that was ages and ages gone, 
 
 The sowers are now at rest from their toil ; 
 The threefold harvest is drawing on, 
 
 For the dry stalks clash o'er a withered soil. 
 Already the reapers throng amain 
 With shining sickles among the grain. 
 
 For out of the west the reapers pour 
 
 To reap the harvest the three have sown, 
 
 To bind the sheaves for the threshing-floor, 
 Where history's fruit shall at last be shown ; 
 
 And beauty, knowledge, and duty then 
 
 Shall yield their bread for the life of men. 
 
 22 
 
E 
 
 PROGRESS 
 
 PROGRESS 
 
 NLARGED horizons, ampler life, are gains 
 Less than their proof mankind still onward 
 strains. 
 
 REFORM 
 
 HALT ! hear ye not the cry, 
 That voice not loud nor high, 
 But a mighty undertone, 
 From the four winds of heaven blown ? 
 Hark ! ye can hear it now, 
 The sound men heard of yore, 
 Making the tyrant bow, 
 And crumbling sceptre and throne. 
 Hark to the gathering roar, 
 And flee from the coming storm. 
 Reform, reform, reform ! 
 
 What ! an ye will not hear, 
 Look the horizon round, 
 See how the wroth clouds rear 
 Their blackness from the ground. 
 The blue sky shrivels in dread, 
 It is furled as a sail is furled ; 
 There are fiery bolts to be sped, 
 
 2 3 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 For the vengeance waxeth warm, 
 For justice wakes on the world, 
 And woe to the guilty head. 
 Reform, reform, reform ! 
 
 Nay, it is now too late ! 
 Ye heed, but we cannot wait ; 
 The tempest has drawn too nigh ; 
 Its threaded lightnings ply, 
 And a fiery shroud they weave. 
 Fools, ye would not believe, 
 Ye doubted, and ye must die. 
 Ye vanish, and where ye stood 
 The hosts of the upright swarm, 
 Their battle-cry made good : 
 Reform, reform, reform ! 
 
 THE THINKER 
 
 A PURBLIND mole bored underneath a stone, 
 A castle's corner-stone. Then came a storm 
 And swept the stronghold to the ground, and men 
 Wondered a wind should have such power to smite. 
 
 24 
 
HEAVEN 
 
 HEAVEN 
 
 OUT of the world of illusion into the world of 
 truth, 
 
 From the world of change and dying to the world 
 of fadeless youth ; 
 
 Where the eye of man unclouded shall look on 
 things that are, 
 
 And the heart of man unwithered be free from sor- 
 row and care, 
 
 And the life of man, unfettered by bonds of time 
 and space, 
 
 Shall bloom as a god's, unsleeping, yea, lit by 
 God's own face. 
 
 O Father, 't is that fair kingdom Thy hands have 
 wrought for men ; 
 
 From Thee was their beginning, to Thee they re- 
 turn again. 
 
 But forget not, O heart anhungered, that now, 
 and here on the earth, 
 
 Mayst thou dwell in that heavenly city, mayst 
 thou see with the soul's new birth ; 
 
 For whoso liveth and striveth in service of truth 
 and of love, 
 
 To him yieldeth earth already the blessings prom- 
 ised above. 
 
 25 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 LIFE 
 
 LIFE is a passage o'er a stream 
 That bridge nor ferry owns j 
 Which we must cross, in gloom or gleam, 
 On slippery stepping-stones. 
 
 RECOGNITION 
 
 AT twenty, " Dreamer," pitying neighbors said ; 
 At thirty, " Fool," the harsher title came ; 
 At forty, " Crank," men sneered with scorn and 
 blame ; 
 But still the genius toiled with unbowed head, 
 Wide sowing seed that none saw harvested, 
 Till, by and by, at fifty, some cried " Shame ! 
 Respect at least is due a noble aim." 
 So called him " Mister " guardedly instead. 
 At sixty, one must harvest, wheat or chaff* ; 
 
 And now 't was " the Distinguished " that he 
 heard. 
 At seventy, fields are reaped, the winners laugh ; 
 And he had won ; " the Great " was now men's 
 word. 
 At eighty, they inscribed 4 His fame folds in 
 This orb o' the earth.' Yea, who but dreamers win ? 
 26 
 
INDIGNATION 
 
 INDIGNATION 
 
 SHOCK old proprieties, cross local forms, — 
 How Indignation in a moment storms ! 
 Lie, cheat, bribe, steal, thrust orphans out of doors,- 
 And Indignation in its arm-chair snores. 
 
 H 
 
 TEMPTATION 
 
 ER his divine scorn back to virtue won ; 
 He by his second temptress was undone. 
 
 HOME* 
 
 HAIL, Mother of us all ! from sea and shore 
 Thy children gather round thy knees once 
 more; 
 The faithful ones that never left thy side, 
 And they whose feet have wandered far and wide. 
 How dear these love thee, in thy sheltering nest, 
 Thy happier children, all their lives attest ; 
 But they no less that under alien skies 
 In tearful memory mark thy homes arise. 
 
 * Read at the centennial celebration of the town of Freeport, Maine, 
 July fourth, 1889. 
 
 27 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 The fevered sailor on the Spanish Main 
 
 Sees in thy springs his boyhood's face again. 
 
 The homeless toiler 'mid the city's roar 
 
 In midnight watches visits thee once more, 
 
 Retraces every step his childhood trod, 
 
 And in his garret plucks thy goldenrod, 
 
 Or breathes the fragrance of the mayflower meek 
 
 One moment that blots out the city's reek ; 
 
 And even those whose sun sets in the sea 
 
 Prairie and mountain cannot part from thee. 
 
 Serener, softer skies may arch above, 
 
 Thy children yield them a divided love. 
 
 Let now the homage all have paid so long 
 
 In grateful silence, voice itself in song, 
 
 While flock thy nurselings from the ends of earth 
 
 To greet thee on thy second century's birth. 
 
 O Mother Town, thy children love thee well, — 
 For what they love thee let our praises tell. 
 Thy skies we love, whether they laugh with blue, 
 Or frown with clouds the tempest hurtles through ; 
 For sheltering still their vastness o'er thee bends, 
 A shield whose dome from hill to sea extends. 
 Thy hills we love, whose granite ridges show 
 Westward the summits of late-lingering snow; 
 Themselves to eastward many a watery mile 
 The sailor's promise of his children's smile. 
 How oft, far inland, gray-beard sons of thine, 
 28 
 
HOME 
 
 Catching the scent of rope or tarry twine, 
 Have felt the odor in a flash restore 
 Thy river-port, the shipyards on the shore ! 
 Again the mallets ply their clattering din, 
 The tackles chirp, the screeching planes join in, 
 While from the sooty cauldron spreads afar 
 The wholesome fragrance of the boiling tar. 
 They see the boys with mimic boats at play, 
 The white sails flashing in the outer bay, 
 With wooded islands peeping still beyond, 
 Enchanted isles, the gates of "faery lond." 
 Yea, dear is Haraseket's blue expanse ; 
 Dear also every brooklet's foamy dance, 
 Dusking and dimpling down the wooded hills, 
 Where streaming moss its frolic tinkle stills. 
 We love thy spruces, hemlocks, and thy firs, 
 Cross-bearing, but unwearied worshipers ; 
 Thy maples, Autumn's chariot of fire, 
 Thy royal elms that robed in gold expire; , 
 And even the wild roses by the way 
 Our memories cherish many a thorny day. 
 
 The ships that make thy name no longer strange 
 Wherever commerce and its ventures range, 
 These love we ; but our warmer love arouse 
 The manly hearts that urge their frothing prows ; 
 Nor these alone, but all the sons of toil 
 That reap God's harvests in the wave or soil. 
 
 29 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 Such are earth's noblemen. In after-time, 
 When Right shall reckon idleness a crime, 
 Who earns not shall not eat, nor any knave 
 Shall make by law his fellow-man his slave; 
 For God's great granary of earth shall be 
 No longer fenced, but, as the winds are, free. 
 What sturdy sons thy lap hath given to fame 
 Where learning builds, let Rochester proclaim. 
 What inspiration from thy fields hath sprung 
 To lend art hues and piety a tongue, — 
 Hark to the champion of the Rising Faith, 
 Hear what CEnone's pictured beauty saith ! 
 
 Our pulses leap, we glow with filial pride, 
 Yet is unspoken more than all beside. 
 O brave young souls who at your country's call 
 Gave life itself, and deemed the offering small, 
 If you we name not this memorial day 
 May tyrants filch our liberties away. 
 Ah no ! your fame is blazoned on the sky ; 
 Your lives ye lost to find eternally. 
 And oh ! the sainted, nameless, unforgot 
 Sweet souls that live, though now we see them not, 
 Whose lives were love to daily duty set, 
 Whose prayers, we know, are not all answered yet, 
 Whose memories blossom o'er their dust entombed, 
 As Aaron's rod, long dead, to fragrance bloomed. 
 *T is these that teach us what of thine we prize, — 
 30 
 
HOME 
 
 Not chiefly nature's boon of fields and skies, 
 Which other climes in richer store extend, 
 Unclouded heavens, and harvests without end, 
 Where, free from blight of frost and suns that sear, 
 Perpetual spring leads round the laughing year. 
 Such blessings here we need not, satisfied 
 With one chief good that beggars all beside. 
 For here, our lives, though wide they learn to roam, 
 Find last, as first, and only here, the Home. 
 
 Resting on earth, but leading up to heaven, 
 Like Bethel's ladder, home to man was given. 
 First ray of love in selPs benighted life, 
 The care for other self in maid and wife ; 
 Then pity quickened for the crying child, 
 Last, duty ; and the man that roamed the wild, 
 Chief brute in cunning, but with death his goal, 
 Breathed on by God became a living soul. 
 O childhood's home, what memories haunt thy 
 
 name ! 
 Of prayers the mother taught when twilight came, 
 Her kiss that cheered the urchin's steps to school, 
 The father's praise where silence was the rule, 
 The mysteries of morning, noon, and night, 
 Transfigured all by love's celestial light, 
 When all the world was new, and all was good, 
 And midmost of the world the household stood. 
 Wide now the world has grown, but not so wide 
 
 3 1 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 As oft the gulf that parts men side by side. 
 Though petty seem the joys which then we knew, 
 They filled our hearts, as now what triumphs do ? 
 Yea, toil itself was pleasure, for the work 
 Was done in love, and not as hirelings shirk. 
 Here beauty wrought, revealing heaven's design 
 That only service can make life divine ; 
 And well had wrought if never stranger's gaze 
 Had waked the great world's chorus of its praise. 
 Here sturdy yeomen, toiling without shame, 
 Amassed the riches of an honest name, 
 And taught their sons to walk where they had trod, 
 Speak truth, and love their country and their God. 
 
 Beloved town, with gladness we discern 
 How fortune smiles on thee at every turn, 
 And trust that all its present favor brings 
 Is but the earnest of still goodlier things ; 
 Yet on this day, the fulness of thy years, 
 One word the poet brings not free from fears. 
 Dear Home Town, let men ever call thee so ; 
 Guard well the fount from which thy virtues flow. 
 Only thy homes can rear thee manly sons 
 And daughters gentle, as thine earlier ones. 
 Only thy homes, when dawns this day again, 
 Can bring thee love like ours from future men. 
 O Land of Homes, amid the storms to fall, 
 No fear be thine if thou hast homes for all. 
 32 
 
HOME 
 
 Assured of this, let drowning rains descend, 
 And all the winds their wrath against thee bend ; 
 The fleeting sands may shift with every shock, 
 Not thou, for thou art founded on a rock. 
 O Mother Earth, then blooms thy perfect flower 
 Only when perfect homes prepare the hour ; 
 The perfect flower of Earth, the perfect pair, 
 Whose Eden yet awaits them everywhere ! 
 
 As Europe's vast cathedrals, piled in stone, 
 Displaced the trees that on their sites had grown, 
 Yet in their aisles and arches but renewed 
 The living outlines of the primal wood, 
 Even so our dreams of human life at best, — 
 Mankind restored, its demons dispossessed, 
 Where labor waits on health and joy and truth, 
 And beauty finds in love eternal youth, — 
 Our visions, as they shape themselves in air, 
 And clearer grow, familiar faces wear, 
 Till, when at last their structure rounds to view, 
 'Tis only the old home-life builded new. 
 
 33 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 THE OUTLOOK 
 
 BY A CONSERVATIVE 
 
 WHEN I was young I sighed for fame, 
 And burned the midnight oil ; 
 But, now I 'm old, my blood is tame, 
 I sit and nurse the sea-coal's flame, 
 And read how others toil. 
 
 Here Henry George, for all he 's worth, 
 
 Proclaims his one taxation, 
 Crusading to set free the earth, 
 And make the loafer, rich from birth, 
 
 Dismount his poor relation. 
 
 There Bellamy, another crank, 
 
 Fiction with fact would mingle ; 
 He sees that men in file and rank, 
 Like oars arranged in tier and bank, 
 Beat twice their number single. 
 
 And so the great industrial mob 
 
 He 'd mold into an army, 
 And send it forth to kill and rob 
 Famine and Surfeit, which hobnob, 
 
 While discontent grows barmy. 
 
 34 
 
THE OUTLOOK 
 
 u Amen ! " cries Boston's Dawn of Bliss, 
 
 " But don't be too paternal. 
 Fraternal the true watchword is. 
 Man in management to miss 
 
 Were tyranny infernal." 
 
 Yonder Macready calls, whose cue 
 Seems caught from sport, not killing, 
 
 " See how the players dare and do ; 
 
 What order, yet what ardor too ! 
 Because each part is willing." 
 
 He 'd have no man controlled by man, — 
 
 Police or politician ; 
 For each will do the best he can, 
 Simply through fear of public ban, 
 
 Or hope of recognition. 
 
 So he holds ; and this loose-hung state 
 
 He calls ideal freedom ; 
 Where men may join or separate, 
 Live gods or beasts, in love or hate, 
 
 As happiness shall lead 'em. 
 
 The poet Morris, oversea, 
 
 Sick of civilization, 
 Dreams how England's wealth may be 
 Common wealth, and Britons free 
 
 Even from education. 
 
 35 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 In Germany upstarts Mackay, 
 
 The monarch self proclaiming, 
 Across the Storm a steadying cry, 
 A torch to lighten earth and sky, 
 For equal freedom flaming. 
 
 " Bravo ! " shouts Tucker, looking up 
 
 Above the Transatlantic. 
 " That 's Liberty ; that 's Proudhon's cup, 
 Whereof when nations learn to sup, 
 
 Their greatness grows gigantic." 
 
 Last, Sullivan exclaims serene : 
 
 " God bless you all, my hearties ! " 
 Deuce take them, I say, for I 've seen 
 Too much reform to care a bean 
 For any of their parties. 
 
 I '11 wager if I had 'em here, 
 
 Well fed, with none that know by, 
 
 Two fingers round a glass of beer, 
 
 Some good havanas lying near, 
 They 'd give the crowd the go-by. 
 
 I 'd wager, yet I won't be sure ; 
 
 I own I can't quite place them. 
 You 'd really think they love the poor, 
 Gold seems powerless to allure, 
 
 Or honors to debase them. 
 
 36 
 
THE OUTLOOK 
 
 'T was like this in the tiresome days 
 
 We now call ante-bellum ; 
 Garrison setting all ablaze, 
 And Beecher drowning Parker's brays, 
 
 With Phillips to outyell 'em ; 
 
 Whittier hounding us in rhyme, 
 
 And Mrs. Stowe in fiction, 
 And Lowell with them keeping time, 
 But trying to disguise his crime 
 Beneath the rabble's diction. 
 
 I promise these the self-same fate. 
 
 Who now spouts abolition ? 
 Just so you '11 see, if you but wait, 
 A time when fools no longer prate 
 
 About the poor's condition. 
 
 w 
 
 APPRECIATION 
 
 E crowned with thorns the living hero's brow; 
 But see, we deck his grave with roses now. 
 
 Now! while the very stones from which he bled 
 Climb to a monument above his head. 
 
 37 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 THE PIONEER 
 
 HERE shall be smiling fields, where now the fell 
 And ravening wolf howls to his echoed howl ; 
 Babies shall prattle where couched panthers 
 growl, 
 And lovers clip and coo in many a dell 
 Which now the savage wakes with midnight yell 
 To blood and flame and frenzied orgies foul. 
 Already light breaks in on bat and owl 
 O'er crashing trees. The settler's axe aims well. 
 
 How desperate are beginnings ! But, at last, 
 Where one and then a hundred sadly wrought, 
 
 Throng, on a sudden, millions, and the past 
 Becomes heroic, with men's praises fraught. 
 
 Take my praise now, while still thy toils loom vast, 
 Lone outpost on the far frontier of thought. 
 
 T 
 
 38 
 
 THE HIGHER HARMONY 
 
 HE soul attuned to music of the spheres 
 Strikes often discords unto earthly ears. 
 
NUMBERS 
 
 NUMBERS 
 
 THE crowd is always on the side of truth ; 
 But commonly not long before the truth 
 Has in that special form become a lie. 
 
 THE HEAVENLY VISION 
 
 WHEN I am dead, 
 May this with truth be said, 
 On the rude stone that marks my lowly head, 
 That, spite of doubt and indecision, 
 In spite of weakness, lameness, blindness, 
 Heart's treachery and fate's unkindness, 
 Neglect of friends and scorn of foes, 
 Stark poverty and all its woes, 
 The body's ills that clog the mind 
 And the bold spirit bind, 
 Still through my earthly course I went, 
 "Not disobedient 
 Unto the heavenly vision." 
 
 39 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 MY WASHERWOMAN 
 
 I LIVE at the upper end of the street, 
 Where the ground is clean and the air is sweet, 
 But all I can see is a patch of sky, 
 And lawns and painted walls hard by. 
 My washerwoman lives at the end 
 Where street and people downward tend ; 
 Where the air is full of sickly smells 
 And unkempt, squabbling children's yells ; 
 But, all day long, from her dingy room, 
 She can look where earth's first mountains loom, 
 Beyond the broad and living lake, 
 Whose deeps the sunset splendors take. 
 
 She looks, but, ah ! she cannot see, 
 So blinding is her poverty. 
 On pain and hunger, heat and frost, 
 The pomp of earth and sky is lost. 
 
 And I that haste the foul street through, 
 Envying her its wealth of view, 
 I know that if some ill desert 
 Should doom me to its noise and dirt, 
 The change would bring me loss, not gain, 
 Though hourly through my narrow pane 
 
 40 
 
MY WASHERWOMAN 
 
 I saw those primal mountains rise, 
 As proudly peerless to the skies 
 As when adown their slopes of old 
 The parted waters wallowing rolled. 
 
 THE CHURCH PROGRESSIVE 
 
 THE Church advances ; to each new position 
 Man's marching spirit takes she hobbles fast, 
 Asserting shrill the hour she finds admission, 
 That here she had her home through all the past. 
 
 FAILURE 
 
 YES, I succeeded, and have men's praise, 
 And cannot escape it all my days. 
 My rival failed ; — but every age 
 Shall thrill at the task he dared engage. 
 
 AFTER-LIFE 
 
 OF any other life than this we lead 
 Now on the earth, nothing we know indeed ; 
 But having this life, with its depth and range, 
 We know not whence, why seems another strange ? 
 
 41 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 PRIESTCRAFT 
 
 AT Bruno's, Lessing's, Rousseau's monument 
 Priests glower aloof, their sullen spite to vent 
 Against those Sons of Dawn ; for well they wot 
 When priestcraft dies its memory shall rot. 
 
 INHERITANCE 
 
 OUR godly fathers from the body stole 
 Comfort and beauty, to enrich the soul. 
 We, starved and stunted beneath rigor's frown, 
 Our souls in riot of the senses drown. 
 
 WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT?* 
 i. 
 
 AN EARLY PHYSICIAN 
 
 IF I lay waste and wither up with doubt 
 The confidence men have that fleshly ills 
 Are the invasion of a demon rout 
 
 Whose fury charm or incantation stills, 
 
 * Suggested by Mr. Howells's poem in Harper'' s Magazine for Feb- - 
 ruary, 1891. 
 
 42 
 
WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT? 
 
 What shall it profit ? for the sick are healed 
 Oft with these if not by them, and shall I 
 
 Disturb men's faith, who have no help to yield, 
 And leave the sick in their despair to cry ? 
 
 II. 
 
 DOUBT 
 
 This profit is in doubt : until men fear 
 
 They trust a lie, who will strive truth to find ? 
 And what is faith but holding truth so dear 
 
 We welcome doubt lest some lie lurk behind ? 
 The truth abides ; to halt with doubt perplexed 
 
 Is the first step toward the truth's finding out. 
 Though one road fail, the next, or next, or next 
 
 Shall lead to truth ; for men are saved by doubt. 
 
 RICHES 
 
 FREEDOM the wood-nymph in a marish found 
 A gilded asp, with glittering jeweled crest 
 And eyes of light. So gracefully it coiled, 
 With rainbow shimmer playing o'er its gold, 
 That Freedom, charmed, took up the lissome toy, 
 And let it coil about her sloping wrist, 
 And span her neck, and make its pliant nest 
 
 43 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 Among the soft curves of her youthful bosom. 
 For what should white-armed Freedom dream of ill! 
 Now lies she low, a purple-spotted corpse, 
 Poisoning the air, dead without sign of wound. 
 But those that nearer drew tell how they saw 
 A mark as of a tooth above the spot 
 Where once beat Freedom's heart. 
 
 PRUDENCE 
 
 INTO Truth's abandoned camp 
 Prudence mounts with martial tramp, 
 Celebrates a victory vast ; 
 While the Truth, unseen, has passed 
 Onward in its desperate fight 
 With the cohorts of the Night. 
 
 EXTREMES 
 
 TRUTH is found in extremes ; 't is only expe- 
 dience, prudence, 
 Hug the mean, and call it truth, and their palter- 
 ing, wisdom. 
 Both extremes may be true, but the mean, from its 
 
 very nature, 
 Always has been, is, and must forever be untrue. 
 44 
 
THE WAIL OF THE WOUNDED 
 
 THE WAIL OF THE WOUNDED 
 
 AFTER the Gettysburg fight, 
 When war had ceased with the night, 
 Uncared-for the wounded lay, 
 Where they fell in the bloody fray, 
 Ten thousand on every side, 
 With the myriad more that died. 
 But oh ! the chorus of pain 
 That rose from hillside and plain, 
 A vast, intermingled groan, 
 Shriek and howling and moan, 
 A volume that crowded the air, 
 Agony, anguish, despair, 
 In billows that rose and sank, 
 Till my soul became a blank, 
 By sympathy wrung too deep, 
 Escaping madness in sleep. 
 
 But often now I awake 
 
 With every limb a-quake, 
 
 And hair upstarting, wet, 
 
 While on my hearing yet 
 
 In torture shriek again 
 
 That landscape of wounded men. 
 
 45 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 OPPORTUNITY 
 
 THOR with his thunderous hammer smote the 
 rock 
 Full nine and ninety times with bounding shock, 
 And still a mocking laugh the granite gave ; 
 Then Thor the thunderer slept within his grave. 
 I came, a stripling, dealt my puny stroke, 
 And into dust the stubborn boulder broke. 
 
 TRUTH 
 
 LIKE the dropping rain is truth, 
 Which barren soil to foulness turns, 
 But life in fruitful soil reneweth, 
 Till all the land with beauty burns. 
 
 M'CREADY* 
 
 HOW soon forgotten when we are gone ! 
 But here and there our lives bloom on 
 Perennial in faithful hearts, 
 Whose love recalls our played-out parts, 
 
 * Died June 16, 1890. 
 
 46 
 
M'CREADY 
 
 And heaves a sigh o'er the broken thread, 
 
 And the roofless tower, and the path that led 
 
 To where the prairie's light and bloom 
 
 Began to break on the jungle's gloom. 
 
 For the spinning ceased, and the trowel fell, 
 
 And the pioneer, who had led so well 
 
 From the forest-depths to the clearing's verge, 
 
 Sank earthward, powerless to emerge. 
 
 But he left behind him a shining trail, 
 
 For others' guidance who shall not fail j 
 
 Who, pressing onward, shall easily win 
 
 To the gardens of beauty and enter in ; 
 
 By thousands enter, till where he trod 
 
 They build an avenue, firm and broad ; 
 
 At the side of which, near the forest's bound, 
 
 He lies in unremembering ground. 
 
 But the throngs that follow where first he went 
 
 Shall be his living monument. 
 
 STUMBLING-BLOCKS 
 
 LIFE'S greatest art, learned through its hardest 
 knocks, 
 Is to make stepping-stones of stumbling-blocks. 
 
 47 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 TWO CHARACTERIZATIONS 
 
 H. L. K. — Shelley's Adonais, 33a 
 
 AT last, long after these, a form appeared, 
 Some deemed it marsh-lamp, some a meteor 
 stray ; 
 So low it moved that envy never bleared, 
 Nor hate nor malice stifled its thin ray ; 
 Yet with love's rosy flame it burned alway, 
 Save wrath at wrong flushed it with vengeful red, 
 Or honor's hue, caught from the fount of day, 
 Or hope with gold of dawn was through it shed ; — 
 Now pale with ruth and rue, it sought that stricken 
 head. 
 
 K. H. K. — Born January 1, 18Q2 
 
 To dare the right, though heaven denounce it sin, 
 To clasp the truth, though all men brand it lie, 
 
 To stand alone, until thy firmness win 
 
 The world to look and what thou seest descry, 
 To know thyself, and trust thine own clear eye 
 
 Against a multitude, greatly to love, 
 Greatly to be loved, void of jealousy, 
 
 And not even hate to hate ; so live, and prove 
 
 The New Year's gift to earth its need has vision of. 
 
 48 
 
INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 INDIVIDUALISM 
 
 WHEN will all the world go right ? 
 Never ! — Right is infinite. 
 When will all the world go well ? 
 That is different ; I will tell : 
 When each man shall do no less 
 Nor more than mind his business, 
 And others would risk life and limb 
 Who dared to interfere with him ; — 
 This whenever you shall see, 
 The world will then wag merrily. 
 
 NEW BIRTH 
 
 ,/ TMS not reform the world wants, 
 A. A smoothing of this or that feature ; 
 
 'T is not reform, but conversion, 
 A new, regenerate creature. 
 
 MASKS 
 
 THOUGHT is but the mask whereby 
 Life is hid, as word hides thought. 
 Ends the dance ; and eye to eye 
 Soul and Life at last are brought. 
 
 49 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 WIT AND MADNESS 
 
 HIS sister, crazing, dreamed herself a queen, 
 And, after long years, in that fancy died ; 
 Meanwhile, a poet, he, with brow serene, 
 
 Faced Life, its king ; — as mad as she, men cried. 
 
 OPPRESSION 
 
 BROTHERS, ye still must suffering endure ; — 
 'T is life's hard way its ills through pain to cure. 
 And cured shall yours be when your agony 
 Wrings you at last to ope your eyes and see. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF CIVILIZATION 
 
 MAN outgrows like a garment and throws off 
 Law, which is custom armed ; then custom 
 next, 
 That levelling instinct of the commonplace; 
 Last righteousness, which is the cramped cocoon 
 Wherein man's soul bred wings for flying free. 
 Then love shoots forth, fragrant and white, from lust, 
 As from its root in mud the water-lily. 
 Man's long, long term of barbarism ends, 
 Civilization and true life begin. 
 50 
 
THE JEW 
 
 THE JEW 
 
 THE Jew at his best and worst, Jesus and Shy- 
 lock stand ; — 
 Galilee bred the one, the other a Christian land. 
 
 THE KING OF DARKNESS 
 
 IF I were the King of Darkness, 
 But one thing I should fear. — 
 I would toil as a liberal monarch 
 
 To make my people freer ; 
 I would take the tax off music, 
 
 Words should be free as air ; 
 All men should taste of the choicest, 
 
 And revel in perfumes rare. 
 The softest of silk should clothe them, 
 
 Their limbs should repose on down ; 
 Naught should lack my approval, 
 
 On no excess would I frown. 
 One only thing would I banish, 
 
 And combat with all my might, — 
 The poisonous, blasphemous, impious, 
 
 Nihilistic Light. 
 
 *The first line embodies a saying of my friend Robert Nicol. 
 
 51 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 MUSIC-LIFE 
 
 OVER the poet's eyes 
 The clods are shoveled and trod. 
 Stifled in silence lies 
 
 The seer who sang of God. 
 
 Wide o'er that voiceless mound 
 The anthem's might outswells ; 
 
 And I know — in the world of sound, 
 Escaped, the spirit dwells. 
 
 RECREANT 
 
 HAD he died while his words of flame 
 Were kindling every soul, 
 The world had written his name 
 On its brightest hero-scroll. 
 
 But fate condemned him to live, 
 And life his words to unsay ; 
 
 Our idol we cannot forgive 
 
 For crumbling to common clay. 
 
 But, trust me, 't is better so ; 
 
 No man should our homage own ; 
 Our hearts should their faith bestow 
 52 On Truth, and on Truth alone. 
 
THE RULE OF MAMMON 
 
 THE RULE OF MAMMON 
 
 LOADED with curses of men, and long for- 
 gotten of God ; 
 This is the upas tree on its venom-blasted sod ; 
 Loveless, lightless, foul, in its poison's reeking pall, 
 Befriended, known, but of Hate, where God smiles 
 
 over all. 
 The seasons cheer and strengthen, the morns their 
 
 life renew, 
 But here is naught that lives but the drip of mur- 
 der-dew, 
 And the ring of leperous greensward, whose oozy 
 
 death o'erpours, 
 Widening, widening, widening over earth's happy 
 
 shores ; 
 And ever its charnel breath blackens the festered 
 
 sky, 
 And ever the ground that was made for men, who 
 
 have risen so high, 
 To grow from men into man, and, still ascending, 
 
 who knows ? 
 To mount from man into godhead, ever the good 
 
 ground grows 
 But a breeding-place for devils, where they that 
 
 still have room 
 Choke their brothers backward into the stench and 
 
 gloom ; 
 
 53 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 And both outdo the beasts in their clamorous claw- 
 ing strife; 
 
 And still that circle of death spews over the green 
 earth's life. 
 
 But, see, in the black above, the lightnings that 
 probe to the clod ! 
 
 An earthquake fumbles beneath. 
 
 No, not forgotten of God ! 
 
 BIRTH 
 
 TO E. G. R. 
 
 FOR thee the mother's sacred joy 
 That unto earth a man is born ; 
 For him the love without alloy, — 
 
 God's pledge, — unfailing even and morn. 
 
 HATE 
 
 THE hottest hate by vengeance fanned 
 Burns not with instant wrath ; 
 White molten iron will kiss thy hand, — 
 But make it not thy bath ! 
 
 54 
 
TRUTH, PEACE, LOVE 
 TRUTH, PEACE, LOVE * 
 
 TRUTH 
 
 " TXT'E buy the truth," cried BunyarTs pilgrim 
 
 W pair, 
 
 In that vile mart where truth ne'er entered in. 
 
 Here, amid industry's encroaching din, 
 Where traffic's tumult storms the trembling air, 
 What task is this ye deem than all more fair, 
 
 What profit manifold look ye to win, 
 
 What ore to smelt, what golden threads to spin, 
 What shop is this, what handiwork, what ware ? 
 
 We build a mart to knowledge consecrate, 
 
 Above whose door is writ " Let there be light." 
 
 On him that lacks our treasures freely wait, 
 For eyes that see make not the sun less bright. 
 
 Free are our goods, yet is our profit great, 
 For only truth preserves a nation's might. 
 
 PEACE 
 
 Of knowledge what shall be the earliest fruit ? 
 Oh ! can ye doubt that first-fruit shall be peace ? 
 To earth's long agony bringing release, 
 
 * Read at the dedication of the Riverside Public Library. 
 
 55 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 Ending the trail of blood that from the brute 
 Hath ever followed man's advancing foot ; 
 
 To war and rumored war a last surcease. 
 
 Desire of all the ages, blest increase 
 Of earth's blood-watered prayers, Peace we salute. 
 
 But canst thou dream these inoffensive ranks 
 Have power to scatter war's embattled hosts ? 
 
 That at their silent shock the navy's banks 
 
 Of waiting death shall fade from earth's fair 
 coasts ? 
 
 Nay, 't is no dream. On Slaughter's bristling flanks 
 Truth charges, and they melt like morning ghosts. 
 
 LOVE 
 
 For lo ! a mighty spirit upon earth 
 
 Descends, whereof Peace but forerunner fares ; 
 
 For Peace is naught, saving as it prepares 
 The whole round world a pathway for the mirth 
 And majesty that hasten to Love's birth ; 
 
 For Love shall reign wide as earth's wooing airs, 
 
 Deep as man's heart, high as heaven's altar stairs, 
 Whose rule shall know no end, nor fulness dearth. 
 
 Love the fulfilment is of all the law, 
 And all the aeons of the travailing past ; 
 
 56 
 
TRUTH, PEACE, LOVE 
 
 Is in our hearts fulfilled, who here withdraw 
 From ease and gain and strife, which heaven 
 o'ercast, 
 
 That we may build this temple without flaw 
 To Truth, to Peace, to Love, supreme and last. 
 
 JOHN HENRY MACKAY 
 
 WIDE through the world thou art driven 
 By the spirit that lashes thy breast ; 
 All life can give it hath given 
 Thee freely, save only rest ; 
 
 Rest, and the vision raising 
 
 The vail over uttermost skies, — 
 
 The look that comes to me gazing 
 Into my children's eyes. 
 
 ALONENESS 
 
 SIRIUS girt by worlds of light 
 With lesser wonderment I mark 
 Than a glowworm in the forest's night, 
 Where else is only dark. 
 
 57 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 COMRADE 
 
 " T ET the dead bury their dead " quoth he ; 
 
 -I— 'And on he marched without more ado ; 
 Not a turn of the head, not a bend of the knee, 
 
 For the comrade so tender and brave and true. 
 
 I care not ; the Cause may linger now, 
 
 While the stricken heart in its anguish cowers ; 
 
 I must kneel, and twine for that fair Greek brow 
 A garland of dusty wayside flowers. 
 
 THE SATIRIST 
 
 NOT mine to draw the cloth-yard shaft 
 From straining palm to thrilling ear ; 
 Then launch it through the monster's hulk, 
 One thrust, from front to rear. 
 
 Mine is the Bushman's tiny bow, 
 
 Whose wounds the foeman hardly feels ; 
 
 He laughs and lifts his hand to smite, 
 Then, suddenly, he reels. 
 
 58 
 
MIDWAY 
 MIDWAY * 
 
 " Nel mezzo del camtnln di nostra vita." 
 
 YOUTH for dreams, manhood for toil, age for 
 the dreams' fulfilling, 
 
 So runs the course of highest life, when all the gods 
 are willing. 
 
 So Dante dreamed and agonized, from sweet New 
 Life's romances, 
 
 Through strife and exile, to the sight that crowns 
 all human trances. 
 
 His face, that from the artist's brush had graced 
 the courts of Heaven, 
 
 Grew seared as if enswathed within his Malebolge's 
 levin ; 
 
 And yet his heart passed on unbroke through Hell's 
 forlorn abysm, 
 
 Nor failed until it sank beneath the triune splen- 
 dor's chrysm. 
 
 So sweet Cervantes, sunrise-souled, with wounds 
 and fetters burdened, 
 
 Nursed in his heart the high resolve that fate, re- 
 pentant, guerdoned. 
 
 Before his smile the masquerade of folly, robed and 
 hollow, 
 
 * Written for the fifteenth anniversary of the class of 1880 in 
 Colby University. 
 
 59 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 Sank like the braying herds that felt the bright 
 
 shafts of Apollo ; 
 And, " one foot in the stirrup," still he wrought 
 
 that all men wondered, 
 And Death, who bore his soul away, of half his 
 
 booty plundered. 
 So Chaucer, touched by love's sweet pain to most 
 
 melodious plaining, 
 Was doomed to con life's day-book lines of sordid 
 
 loss and gaining ; 
 But when at last for his account the great Task- 
 master beckoned, 
 He smiled and held the world aloft with all its 
 
 values reckoned. 
 
 Of all the darlings of the muse, foremost among 
 her favored, 
 
 Blest with her full, peculiar love, that life-long 
 never wavered, 
 
 Stand two supremely eminent : the one whom Flor- 
 ence nourished, 
 
 The other round whose youthful steps the drama's 
 fulness flourished. 
 
 But twice, O calm Urania, high-throned above our 
 passions, 
 
 Twice only hast thou felt the pang that Death for 
 mortals fashions : 
 
 60 
 
MIDWAY 
 
 ! 
 
 Once when beneath Ravenna's pines thy Dante's 
 
 eyes were darkened, 
 i And once when Milton, blind, alone, Death's icy 
 
 footsteps hearkened. 
 | A Samson straining at the posts his tugging could 
 
 not level, 
 A captive 'neath the roof where Crime held high 
 
 exultant revel ; 
 | Powerless to raze that Shrine of Sin, which mocked 
 
 his might, victorious, 
 He turned, and high above it reared another shrine 
 
 so glorious 
 That all the world with pilgrim feet now bends its 
 
 worship thither, 
 Unmindful of the crumbling Shame, whose weeds 
 
 untrodden wither; 
 So, to the dream of Milton's youth, his manhood's 
 
 high ambition, 
 The gods accorded to his age to work a full frui- 
 tion. 
 Men live who Hawthorne's morning saw by gloom 
 
 of toil beclouded, 
 Yet witness how he bore his heart with no repining 
 
 shrouded ; 
 And when at length the darkness broke, lo ! fame's 
 
 serenest summit. 
 The height his youthful vision saw, his manhood's 
 
 feet had clomb it. 
 
 61 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 O kindly friends within whose eyes the light of 
 
 love arises, 
 Which once illumed our youthful blanks with glow 
 
 of future prizes, 
 No trophies from the world we bring, save un- 
 
 dimmed high endeavor, 
 Yet dare believe your toil, your faith, shall not be 
 
 mocked forever. 
 Our dreams are dreamed ; with eyesight purged of 
 
 golden youth's illusion, 
 We see the world the maze it is of struggle and 
 
 confusion. 
 No place for dreams ! and yet we leave our castles 
 
 high upbuilded, 
 Flushed with the rose of hope untried, with dawn's 
 
 expectance gilded. 
 We turn, and deep in earth we delve, or swink in 
 
 kiln and quarry, 
 Whereto ? but that the world some day may see, 
 
 and not be sorry, 
 Those airy outlines taking form in solid, shining 
 
 marble, 
 A house of joy, where men may feast, while birds 
 
 around it warble. 
 For History this proclaims, its flight world-wide 
 
 through aeons taking, 
 That naught abides save only dreams transmuted 
 
 into waking. 
 62 
 
ORIGINALITY 
 
 ORIGINALITY 
 
 THE man who not yet seeth clear, 
 Confused by cries u Lo there ! " " Lo 
 here ! " 
 Can but proclaim another's sight. 
 But when he once hath seen aright, 
 Pierced to the splendor through the dim, 
 His vision so attendeth him, 
 Whate'er he views by others shown, 
 His revelation bides his own. 
 
 REVEALED 
 
 NOW, on a sudden, I know it, the secret, the 
 secret of life. 
 
 Why, the very green of the grass in the fields with 
 betrayal is rife ! 
 
 The whirr of the grasshopper by the wayside pro- 
 claims it to all ; 
 
 'T is unrolled as a scroll to all eyes in the curve of 
 the waterfall. 
 
 But, for me, I can only wonder at mortals, — the 
 secret out ; 
 
 For they see, hear, taste, smell, feel not what Heaven 
 reveals all about. 
 
 63 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 KEARSARGE 
 
 THIS morning on my eastward road 
 Kearsarge's top a diamond glowed. 
 At noon on its ice-planed ridge I lie, 
 Facing the neighbor clouds on high ; 
 My back is warmed by the sun-bathed stone, — 
 A child of earth myself I own, 
 And yet within for flight endowed, 
 To float, a brother to the cloud. 
 An eagle swims the gulf abreast, 
 Eyeing askance his unknown guest. 
 O Eagle, I wonder if thou art 
 Nearer than I to the mountain's heart ; 
 Canst better the hidden meaning guess 
 Of its vast and cavernous silences ; 
 The burden of its midnight moan, 
 The plaint of the rain on its breast of stone, 
 Or the Cause whereto its trumpet-call 
 Summons the world to fight or fall. 
 
 But hither though we twain may come, 
 Neither here can build his home. 
 Thine is the tree-top half-way down, 
 And mine in the lowland, the far-off" town. 
 Thy tongue I know not, thou knowst not mine ; 
 We dimly interpret by sound and sign ; 
 
 6 4 
 
KEARSARGE 
 
 Then how shall either the secret reach 
 Of the mountain's formless and primal speech ? 
 Yet all-prevailing is love that abides ; 
 Not wholly its meaning the mountain hides 
 From thee in thy patient, circling flight, 
 Nor me outstretched on its sailing height. 
 For what we lack it behooves us wait ; 
 And what we have learned, with hearts elate, 
 Yet awed by the mountain's mighty sway, 
 To ponder, understand, and obey. 
 
 BABYHOOD 
 
 THE baby learns by bumps and bruises, 
 Else could he never learn at all. 
 Now, who can tell but this the use is 
 Of earthly life to great and small ? 
 
 Our world was haply made to fail in, 
 The place to learn how not to do ; 
 
 To blunder, stumble, ache, and wail in, 
 Till out of false we learn the true. 
 
 65 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 MEDIO TUTISSIMUS IBIS 
 
 THEY bade me take the middle course 
 And shun a palsied eld's remorse ; 
 Betimes to rise and eke to bed, 
 Look not on wine or lips when red, 
 In food and drink, in speech and dress, 
 Avoiding spareness and excess ; 
 Ever as Wisdom's final touch 
 To take the rule of " Not too much." 
 
 By this rule have I lived my life, 
 
 Free from ambition, joy, or strife ; 
 
 And now, when fourscore years are done, 
 
 I strike the balance, and have won 
 
 From all, head, heart, and hand have brought 
 
 In fourscore years of living — naught. 
 
 Better one pang of love's defeat, 
 
 One mad thought hammered at white heat, 
 
 One dash to gain a hopeless goal, 
 
 Than Life triumphant over Soul. 
 
 66 
 
THE TRIUMPH OF TOIL 
 
 THE TRIUMPH OF TOIL 
 
 O GOLDEN Dreams that I loved and toiled 
 but to feed, 
 This is the triumph of toil, that no longer I heed 
 You, whom I toiled for by day to possess at night, 
 But find night and day in toil my only delight. 
 
 THE PLAYER 
 
 YON man with hollow cheeks and eyes of fire, 
 And hair upstarting, as he smites the lyre ; 
 The message it so wrings him to convey, 
 That music, dar'st thou hear and call it play ? 
 
 SONG-LULL 
 
 WHY are our poets silent ? Is it in 
 The utter wanhope of this devil's-din, 
 Which stuns men into deafness ? Do not fear ! 
 That low-born jangle never meets their ear. 
 It is because too near sweeps roaring by 
 The flaming robe of giant Destiny. 
 
 67 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 THE TIME-SERVER 
 
 HE serves the Time with knuckle and nod, 
 And Time, who is a generous god, 
 Gives him all that heart can desire, 
 Except, it may be, prophetic fire. 
 
 GENIUS 
 
 AT last the doom of genius is made plain ; — 
 Not heavenly-fed the beacon we behold, 
 Which turns the dusk of earthly life to gold, 
 But stealing sustenance from heart and brain. 
 No marvel if the streaming Pharos drain 
 
 The strength that lifts it, and with manifold 
 Disaster crashing fall, its years half told, 
 A fume bat-winged with every shape of pain. 
 
 Twin-born its wreck and splendor. — Oh ! rejoice 
 
 That we have learned its secret, and no more 
 
 May cheapen with blind insult or defence 
 
 Its godlike doom, wherein was writ no choice 
 
 And no escape. The dead vain tears deplore ; 
 
 The living claim love's tardy penitence. 
 
 68 
 
FERTILITY 
 
 FERTILITY 
 
 A MONTH devoid of song, but strown 
 With toil and pain and anxious care, — 
 The cumbering draff through which alone 
 Song's fragrant blossoms leap to air. 
 
 GUIDED 
 
 MUSE, we have rowed on glassy streams, 
 Poised 'twixt the skies of truth and dreams ; 
 You, at the tiller, lolled to trail 
 A water-lily o'er the rail ; 
 I, drunken with your beauty's wine, 
 Recked only of its breath divine, 
 Nor dreamed what high up-clashing seas 
 Should follow swift that love-lapped ease. 
 
 On those white surges tost and whirled, 
 
 An atom in a strangling world, 
 
 Without a star, without a ray, 
 
 We drove through wrecks of night and day, 
 
 You guiding still our dizzy flight, 
 
 I at your feet benumbed with fright, 
 
 Till suddenly you seized my hand, 
 
 And lo ! we were in peace at land. 
 
 69 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 On this Enchanted Isle our stay 
 Or long or short is yours to say. 
 Here all about us rolls the sea, 
 Its terror now a part of me, 
 To heighten joys like these I know, 
 Reclining on your breast of snow, 
 Yet to assure by sea or land 
 My welfare at your guiding hand. 
 
 THE WAY STATION 
 
 TWELVE times a day the train whirls by, 
 Four times my humble name it heeds ; 
 I live not in the traveler's eye 
 
 More than the rail o'er which he speeds. 
 
 From the great city forward borne 
 
 To the great city of his quest, 
 Awake or slumbering, night or morn, 
 
 He recks not of my toil or rest. 
 
 Yet, but for me, the giant mart 
 
 Would melt like drifted smoke of trains ; 
 Its very stones are all my part, 
 
 And mine its conquering hands and brains. 
 
 70 
 
CULTURE 
 
 CULTURE 
 
 BEAUTY, — ah! yes, but first let Justice be 
 done in the earth, 
 Justice, which brings Heaven down from the 
 barren stars to the ground, 
 Here to be dwelt-in of men — Heaven's only mean- 
 ing and worth ; 
 And in Heaven or this our Hell, think you, shall 
 Beauty be found ? 
 
 Nay, dream not of Heaven below ; the utmost that 
 earth can give, 
 The highest of human life, the perfectest Golden 
 Age, 
 Will not be Heaven brought down, where men 
 shall as angels live, 
 But Purgatory, where still we shall climb from 
 stage to stage. 
 
 B 
 
 BEFORE DAWN 
 
 ECAUSE I spurned the manikin men name 
 The Ineffable Name, they shrieked and stopped 
 their ears. 
 But taunts of" Atheist " lend my death no fears ; 
 
 7i 
 
MORROW-SONGS 
 
 My dread is all lest I, as meet for blame, 
 Reared too my idol when I durst proclaim : 
 
 Exalt we Plato's thought, the Christ's warm 
 
 tears, 
 And Caesar's throne above heaven's topmost 
 spheres, 
 The Infinite outsoars them still the same. 
 
 Silence had holier been ; I see it now, 
 
 Lying 'twixt night and what shall follow night. 
 
 Better to stand with bare and open brow 
 Confessing never can our human sight 
 
 Attain thy garment's hem ; yea, to avow 
 Earth's dark not even the nadir of thy light. 
 
 DUST 
 
 SATANIC Science, to reveal 
 A speck of dust the snowflake's core ! 
 Well, bravo, dust ! If you could steal 
 Angelic plumes, we '11 mope no more. 
 
 72 
 
TWO POETS 
 
 TWO POETS 
 
 HE had a straight Greek brow, which sculptors 
 loved, 
 And clear and pure his classic measures rang. 
 Men hailed him bard by all the gods approved, 
 And snowy maids his star-cold numbers sang. 
 
 Look now on this face. Mark the bulging brow, 
 The shapeless mouth, the torn and twisted ear, 
 
 The seams of riot. Nay, who marks them now ? 
 He fired men's hearts to win our Golden Year. 
 
 73 
 
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