PS 3535 
 .U67 S8 
 1901 
 Copy 1 
 
 
 
 
 vv 
 
 :.j ,i ^%.} .kj. 
 
Class _P535M. 
 Book._ 
 
 
 Goipglit}!^. 
 
 COPyRIGIIT DEPOSIT. 
 
TO THE MEMORY OF ABBT OSBORNE 
 RUSSELL, THESE THE SONGS OF HER 
 INSPIRATION 
 
SUCH STUFF 
 AS DREAMS 
 
n !! a 
 
 qfJ 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF 
 OONGBESS, 
 
 Two CuHE8 HeMIVEO 
 
 JAN. 2 1190? 
 
 CO^WGHT ENTRy 
 
 CLASS Ar XXo. NU, 
 COPY 6. 
 
 copyr ight 190 i 
 The Bowen-Mer ri ll Company 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 BRAUNWORTH & CO. 
 
 BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS 
 
 BROOKLYN ,N. Y. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Interlaken 
 
 I 
 
 Le Triomphe de la Republique 
 
 4 
 
 Success 
 
 8 
 
 In the Church of St. Mary RedclifFe, Bristol 
 
 9 
 
 Off the Lightship 
 
 17 
 
 The Sixty-Second Birthday of Swinburne 
 
 18 
 
 City Roses 
 
 .22 
 
 The Cloud-Capped Towers 
 
 25 
 
 Songs for Barbara 
 
 31 
 
 France ! 
 
 38 
 
 Failure 
 
 41 
 
Contents, 
 
 Picardy, 1899 4 2 
 
 Forgiveness 5 3 
 
 The Rhone Valley at Leuk S^ 
 
 Impressions 7^ 
 
 Achievement 7" 
 
 The Old House at Waramaug 71 
 
 Las Guasimas °° 
 
 The Fleet at Santiago ^^ 
 
 The Last of the Armada 84 
 
 The Fifteenth of February 88 
 
 Boer and Briton 9^ 
 
 Nikolson's Nek 9^ 
 
 Before a Greuze 97 
 
 Seven Sonnets to Julia Marlov^e loi 
 
 To Philip Massinger, "A Stranger" 108 
 
 Switzerland ^°9 
 
 Beethoven, Op. 13 ^ ^° 
 
 Beneficence ^ ^ ^ 
 
 "The Sleepless Soul" " 112 
 
Contents, 
 
 The Empress Theodora 113 
 
 Fruition 114 
 
 Change (Rondel) 115 
 
 March (Ballade) 116 
 
 Helvetia (Villanelle) 118 
 
 The Music of Meiringen (Ballade) 119 
 
 At Thun (Roundel) 1 21 
 
 On Barbara's Birthday 122 
 
 Dead Music (Triolet) 124 
 
 The Chimera (Rondel) 125 
 
 Memories of the RifFelberg (Rondeau) 126 
 
 Der Silberhorn (Chant Royal) 127 
 
 Chatterton at Bristol (Roundel) 130 
 
 At Wilderswyl (Rondelet) 131 
 
 The Tunes of March (Villanelle) 132 
 
 Ringgenberg (Triolet) 133 
 
 Retrospect (Roundel) 134 
 
 The Dreamer I. (Ballade) 135 
 
 The Dreamer II. (Ballade) 137 
 
Contents, 
 
 Marguerite (Rondelet) 
 
 Lake Michigan in June (Triolet) 
 
 To Barbara (Rondeau) 
 
 Benjamin Harrison 
 
 In the Autumn Woods (Sestina) 
 
 The Long Fight 
 
 139 
 
 140 
 
 141 
 142 
 144 
 146 
 
INTERLAKEN. 
 
 For alien eyes she has no visions fair : 
 
 Her sons alone, the sons of dreams may know 
 
 What glittering gems are bound across her hair, 
 What roses underneath may fade or glow ; 
 
 Or, sometimes in a silent night of June, 
 The half-sad smile upon her slender lips, 
 
 When one white arm around her sister moon 
 The wooing fleece-cloud slips. 
 
 Silence is hers — not colorless of sound, 
 A bloomless waste unto the listening ear. 
 
 But deep-drawn singing of the gulfs profound 
 Made vibrant with the strains of star and sphere, 
 
 With mellow breathing of the faint-heard horns 
 And far-off roll of dim delightful drums. 
 
 The symphony of still sun-litten morns 
 
 That from her god-head comes. 
 
Inter laken» 
 
 Between her hills green-skirted, bathed in light. 
 Ethereal, ageless, not of earth, she stands, 
 
 The virgin goddess clad in virgin white. 
 
 Beyond the reach of Time's revoking hands. 
 
 Her stern sweet beauty, scatheless of all change, 
 Alone is like to him, the sun, her lover. 
 
 Who clothes upon her dazzling robes and strange 
 From beyond her and above her. 
 
 For him alone her face uplifted glows. 
 For him is made the music of her voice ; 
 
 His kiss alone her fair white forehead knows. 
 Alone his footsteps wake her to rejoice. 
 
 His breath, the wind, about her mourns and raves. 
 He woos her with his sprites of mist and cloud; 
 
 She answers from the hollows of her caves 
 With echoes low or loud. 
 
 And unregarded as the seas that beat 
 
 With waves of green and bluish-tinted haze 
 
 By harbor hills and reefs about her feet 
 Are other loves than his and other ways; 
 
 Or as the tombs, forgotten, crumbled, old. 
 
 That lie forlorn beneath those troubled deeps 
 
 To house old lovers of the goddess cold, 
 Diana of the Steeps. 
 
Inter laken. 
 
 She of the steeps is as of subject skies. 
 
 The moon her chill and silver sister, queen. 
 
 And queen and mistress to the straining eyes 
 
 That in dead dreams her haunting face have seen ;- 
 
 Have seen and known, as once the shepherd boy 
 In shades Arcadian knew the soft sweet kiss. 
 
 And light touch on his curls, with perilous joy 
 To own the goddess his. 
 
 Nay, in no deep embossed arboreal vale. 
 Haunted of elves and resonant of leaves. 
 
 Or shadowed hollow of the moonlight pale. 
 Sweet-scented with the piled Arcadian sheaves, 
 
 Her trysting; but vast halls, star-lighted, dim. 
 Beyond the gleam and glory of her crest. 
 
 Where echoed quirings of an unheard hymn 
 Breathe only silent rest. 
 
 No fever and no fainting and no pain. 
 
 No tale of mute unprofitable days. 
 No passionate mad longing and no stain 
 
 Of earth's delight, no blaming and no praise ; 
 Eternal calm, immovable, as down 
 
 The growing twilight when the day-winds cease. 
 To these green valleys from the fire-tipped crown 
 The whisper falls of peace. 
 
LE TRIOMPHE DE LA REPUBLIQUE. 
 
 Place de la Nation^ November /p, i8gg. 
 
 The long straight files with measured thoughtful tread. 
 
 Brown-handed and bare-armed, sweep through the street 
 To where the goddess stands with fair-poised head 
 
 Sun-gloried, and cleft chains beneath her feet. 
 These are the sons whose unforgotten sires 
 
 Broke at her word such chains of darkness ; she 
 Is the goddess that in earth's enduring fires 
 
 Forged from the links the sword that made them free. 
 
 Here in the city once of all men's haunts 
 
 The darkest, whence was cast her son first born 
 
 With ban for blessing, and for crown the thorny taunts 
 Offeree that seemed eternal, on this morn 
 
Le Triomphe de la Republique, 
 
 Made festal, lo, these only knights appear : 
 Enfranchised serfs of hoary Time that wield 
 
 With unswayed hand the hammer for the spear. 
 The trowel for the sword and saw for shield. 
 
 Shall she not triumph ? Lo ! 
 Before the dawning was, while yet the day 
 Only the dreamers saw and might not know 
 If light from sun or marish mist should grow. 
 This was a spirit, tireless on her way 
 Returning, strong 
 And still unsummoned righter of old wrong, 
 With torch to kindle, at her side 
 The blade at whose wide flash the darkness died. 
 
 This face was pallid then. 
 Wasted with watching, with faded hopes grown gray. 
 Channeled with tears shed for the sake of men, 
 Sad with more grief than three score years and ten. 
 Childless she was, and hopeless of her way, 
 A weary spirit driven 
 As homeless winds about the halls of heaven ; 
 Her footsteps no man marked, nor where 
 Her shadowy form slipped through the starless air. 
 
Le Triomphe de la Republique, 
 
 Thrice on this chosen place 
 Of hers she has stretched hands of heaUng, twice 
 Gone hence betrayed ; still on her shield is trace 
 Of many a spear-point, still across her face 
 The faint flush lingers, fading. Sacrifice 
 A shadow leaves 
 And tears yet gleaming ; still her bosom heaves 
 From panting now forgotten — for 
 She knows she shall go henceward nevermore. 
 
 These were the lips that now 
 So soft and smiling, on that morn were set 
 Against the trumpet ; with this smoothest brow 
 She bore the battle ; from this hand the vow 
 Of freemen came ; these eyes that glisten yet 
 Were then a light 
 Far shining in the clanging van of fight. 
 And when that sweetest voice out rang 
 The wide world listened to the song she sang. 
 
 Shall she not triumph ? Where 
 The sun goes of her light some echoes break. 
 And all earth's toilers for her visage fair 
 Have touch of sunnier sky and sweeter air ; 
 And clearer in remotest regions wake 
 The songs of earth 
 
Le Triomphe de la Republique, 
 
 Because she came with newer notes of mirth. 
 Hope has bent down to man and shone 
 In the waste places for her sake alone. 
 
 The clouds may form or fade, 
 As gloom hangs heavy now on that far race 
 Of hers to Southward ; strength and greed arrayed 
 Sore smite her scattered children ; undismayed. 
 Untouched of shadow on her lovely face, 
 Patient she waits 
 The tides unseen that sap old forms, old hates. 
 Old wrongs, before her feet to fling 
 These wrecks where lie the wrecks of throne and king. 
 
 What shall her triumph be, 
 When clouds and doubting, dark and strife are done. 
 And from her gates above the slumbrous sea. 
 Wherethrough shines morning now but glimmeringly, 
 Noonward through golden vaults ascends her sun ; 
 When Force is dead 
 At last, and man, rose-crowned about his head 
 Like hers, free, equal, brothered, goes 
 Unfeared and fearless while her noontide glows ! 
 
 7 
 
SUCCESS. 
 
 There came a flower in a city lot. 
 
 By careless breeze or bird a chance-sown seed. 
 And glowed a day, a tiny scarlet spot 
 
 Half hid by sombre waste of dust and weed. 
 
 And one wan face behind a tarnished pane, 
 Turning to look its last on squalid square, 
 
 Caught glimpse of that bare bud and smiled again. 
 And smiling still lay dead and sweet and fair. 
 
 Then blew the south wind's furnace breath that way, 
 The lonely flower faltered, shrank and died ; 
 
 A stronger gust before the close of day 
 
 Flung its brown leaves across the pavement's tide. 
 
 8 
 
IN THE CHURCH OF ST. MARY REDCLIFFE, 
 
 BRISTOL. 
 
 I. 
 
 Dawn, that from the eastern hills, low-lying, 
 
 Smites with fire. 
 Like shafts her fairy fingers have set flying. 
 
 The topmost spire. 
 And turns to burning gold against bright blue 
 
 The filmy lace 
 That lines of pinnacles and towers anew 
 
 In outline trace; 
 Noon, that pours on silent chancel floor 
 The red and purple glory of the saints, 
 
In the Church of St. Mary Redcliffe^ Bristol. 
 
 While through the twilight of the great north door 
 
 A voiceless whisper sighs and sinks and faints ; 
 Night, when down the shadowy aisles the gloom 
 
 Lies breathless and the ghostly footfalls fade. 
 And faint, like bale-lights in a haunted room, 
 
 The altar bears the bars of moon and shade — 
 All these and all their hours of bright or dim 
 And all their ways 
 These long years gone were known of him 
 
 Whose boyish heart 
 Throbbed out its little tale of days 
 In weariness apart. 
 
 II. 
 
 He saw all visions : here with solemn state 
 
 And low-voiced chant the russet monks went by; 
 There through the gold at heaven's eastern gate 
 
 The hour-led sun looked forth across the sky, 
 And here with blaze of helm, white foam of plume. 
 
 Banded with light from many a silver shield. 
 Long lines of knights rode through the cloistered gloom, 
 
 Down clattering gaily to the listed field. 
 No day might be so drear 
 But through its darkness clear 
 
 lO 
 
In the Church of St, Mary Redciiffey Bristol, 
 
 For him the sunlight lay asleep 
 On unknown meadows flooded deep 
 In stainless gold of daisies, starred about 
 With fox-glove bells but yet half budded out ; 
 
 And in the shade 
 A drowsy woodland sprite his bed of cowslip made. 
 
 III. 
 
 He heard all music : then these shadows, dumb 
 
 To us, sonorous sang with throbbing strings 
 Of minstrels and the muffled drone of drum. 
 
 With choirs unseen and unheard beat of wings. 
 Wild sounds of trumpets singing to the charge. 
 
 Wild whirr of arrows and hot hiss of spears. 
 The chime of corselet and the tang of targe, 
 And clink of bridle reins rang in his ears. 
 Or through the midnight's calm 
 He heard the May-tide's psalm. 
 And all his spirit sang aloud 
 The change of changing sun and cloud. 
 The tunes of winds across the hawthorn brake 
 And every carol wherewith skylarks wake 
 
 Melodious morn 
 Came with the ghostly strains of organ anthems borne. 
 
 1 1 
 
In the Church of St. Mary Redcliffe^ Bristol, 
 
 IV. 
 
 For him all beauty breathed in Music; light 
 
 Of sun-birth or of star-dawn rose and fell 
 Surge-like with sound, and when the morn was bright 
 
 Through all this carven wonder came the swell 
 Of symphonies by angels played. He knew 
 
 All moanings that the wind through bare boughs weaves 
 In March-tide, when the vast and vivid blue 
 
 Is chord-like; and all whispers round the eaves. 
 In every garden close 
 Sang low for him the rose, 
 The vine climbed high its matin hymn 
 To murmur in the morning dim ; 
 The sun along the cloud's white edges smote. 
 As from a harp, a clear and lingering note, 
 
 And now the sea 
 Thundered the diapason of her mystery. 
 
 V. 
 
 Sorrow, too, he knew, the best of all. 
 
 Best of all he knew that visage dreary. 
 
 Darker shadows than from night's hand fall 
 Hovered close upon his footsteps weary. 
 
 12 
 
In the Church of St, Mary Redcliffe^ Bristol, 
 
 Heavy hung the hours about his bed 
 
 While the shades and shapes all wan and haggard. 
 Going to and fro with restless tread, 
 
 Drove from languid eyes sweet Sleep, the laggard. 
 Care was comrade to him. Grief was kin ; 
 
 Boding thoughts with him had made their dwelling. 
 Sad as souls weighed down with sense of sin 
 
 Throbbed the sense of tears in notes upswelling 
 Under all his songs of brave and gay ; 
 
 Tears that in his eyes still lurked or lingered. 
 Let the meads be merriest with the May, 
 
 Or dun Autumn come, the flying fingered, 
 Weaving webs of red and gold and grey. 
 
 Still warm tears — for all things lovely perished ; 
 Sunsets stayed not though the rocks remained, 
 
 Cold and dark as flowers the dew had cherished 
 Left forlorn when Summer's suns had waned. 
 
 Came no leaf along the wet walk flying. 
 Torn untimely from the wind-wrought quire, 
 
 Glowed no rose reft from its stalk and dying. 
 Wasted all its wealth of form and fire. 
 
 But his soul to their dumb stifled crying. 
 Little griefs and piteous moan. 
 
 Note for note raised song divine replying. 
 Singing here alone. 
 
 13 
 
In the Church of St, Mary Redcliffe^ Bristol, 
 
 VI. 
 
 Only the voice of a boy 
 
 Singing and sobbing alone ; 
 Only the voice of a boy 
 In songs that were barren of joy, 
 Songs that made end in a moan. 
 Only the voice of a boy that has fluttered and 
 upward flown, 
 Light as a beam or a bird, and clear as the dawn 
 on the sea ; 
 Yet from the light it has left, from the chance of 
 the seed it has sown. 
 Glows the whole world with new glory like 
 Spring risen fresh on the lea. 
 Only the voice of a boy, but now from its echoes arise 
 Songs that make sweet all the air with buds and 
 blossoms of rose. 
 Songs that gleam like Shelley's, a wonder of stars 
 in the skies. 
 Songs that glow in the heart as a hope or a 
 beacon glows. 
 Birds have no notes that are sweeter, nor June from 
 its green woodland lyre. 
 Mountains have voices no surer, and not from 
 the sunset has flown 
 
 14 
 
In the Church of St, Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, 
 
 Thoughts that are greater of grace than the songs 
 of love and of fire 
 Sprung from the voice of a boy here singing and 
 sobbing alone. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Not yet departed, not yet hushed or still. 
 
 A presence hovers round these portals where 
 
 His passing face made bright the heavy air. 
 
 And whence he heard that strange sweet singing 
 
 thrill 
 All shadowland with strains so faint and fair. 
 Not gone ; his voice in all these echoes clings 
 With softer sounds than the moan outside of dove. 
 And when the organ peals this soars above ; 
 Sweeter than field-heard matin bell it rings. 
 And to the choirs of sleep and dreams it sings. 
 Not yet departed: to the listening ear 
 This pile transformed, made glorious in his song 
 As in a sun that sets not, firm and clear. 
 Where of his short sad flight the memories throng. 
 Shall but the echoes of himself prolong. 
 Men to the dust of other mighty dead 
 With solemn song and speech the great shaft rear. 
 
 15 
 
/;/ the Church of St, Mary Rede /iff e^ Bristol, 
 
 We know not in what lost and lonely bed, 
 Unwept, alone, with shards and sorrows spread, 
 Worn from lost fight this boy has laid his head : 
 But the monument of all he was is here. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 What thoughts, what dreams, what passions, what 
 
 desires, 
 Here burned and struggled in his boyish breast ! 
 Now from this window through the sunrise fires 
 He saw upclimb strange dome and mountain crest. 
 Now watched the sun beyond the pillared west 
 Fling its red torch on citadels and spires. 
 Oft on these steps his little foot was prest. 
 Wearing with haste the cold responseless stone ; 
 Here went his hand, and here with hair back-blown 
 And head on arm the slender form found rest. 
 Not yet departed whence his love had grown 
 Like lingering ivy round each storied stone : 
 Not yet departed — even now alone, 
 While in the slowly growing gloom I stand, 
 A breath of song sweeps by, a light is shown. 
 And from the dark I dream a small white hand, 
 A boy's small hand, is laid within mine own. 
 
 i6 
 
OFF THE LIGHTSHIP. 
 
 Into white clouds, as white as snow. 
 The smother springs as on we plunge and quiver. 
 
 And through the shrouds are blown the clouds. 
 Or drift across the decks that lean and shiver. 
 
 Somewhere within the mists, I know. 
 Belike just where the silver sail is lifting. 
 
 Sweet Iris floats on pearly motes 
 To draw her magic bow athwart the drifting. 
 
 And " Iris ! Iris! " cries the sea. 
 Leaping aboard to pluck her thin gown under. 
 
 And " Iris ! " sings through harp-like strings 
 The wind above the green sea's mellow thunder. 
 
 She will not hear, she will not see. 
 Intent upon her colors, else unheeding ; 
 
 Like mortal maid, she is not swayed 
 By prayers and tears and lover's tender pleading. 
 
 17 
 
THE SIXTY-SECOND BIRTHDAY OF 
 SWINBURNE. 
 
 (Born April 5, 18 jy.) 
 
 Prophet, whose straining eyes 
 Watch ever eastward while the slow stars fade, 
 Hast thou beheld the hope-tinged morning rise 
 Far off on alien seas, in other skies? 
 Or hast thou from thy sky-bound station made 
 On lonely peak-tops far away, aloft. 
 
 The footsteps heard that oft 
 Have sounded in thy visions soft 
 
 And distant, but as clear 
 As woodman's stroke across the dying year? 
 
 18 
 
The Sixty-Second Birthday of Swinburne, 
 
 For thou through all thy days 
 Hast been as one for man's sake set apart, 
 Beyond the clash of meaner things and ways. 
 Since first the touch of strong sun-splendid rays 
 Was laid on singing lips and tender heart. 
 First of the sons of song, with upturned brow, 
 
 Orphean prophet thou. 
 Tell us what light breaks on thee now ; 
 
 For in the vale we grope, 
 Hearing thy words but cheerless of thy hope. 
 
 Singer, whose song's high flight 
 Wings steadfast on, serene, from star to star. 
 Melodious, molten, fledged with golden light 
 As from a mountain summit glitters bright 
 When noontide's stern unclouded glories are, 
 Has thy great soul a new more resonant sound. 
 
 Fit for this season, found. 
 That gave us thee while April bound 
 
 With passion flowers thy head 
 And music's purest effluence round thee shed ? 
 
 For thou in all thy singing 
 Hast been as one in scorn of Time and Change ; 
 Years that make thin the weaker voices, clinging 
 Like echoes where they once rose clear and ringing, 
 
 19 
 
The Sixty-Second Birthday of Swinburne, 
 
 Thy voice make only still more sweet and strange. 
 Therefore we pray thee of thy great song's fire ! 
 
 Strike from thy golden lyre, 
 O minstrel of the world's desire. 
 
 Those notes that wake again 
 Our hearts with preludes of thy mightiest strain. 
 
 Captain, in whose firm hand, 
 Far forward where the battle trumpets blow. 
 Has shone for us thy word, a burnished brand. 
 Drawn without doubt wherever Right makes stand. 
 Drawn without fear where fires the fiercest glow. 
 What old oppression whereto cowards kneel. 
 
 What tyrant, now shall feel 
 The swift stroke of thy keen-edged steel ? 
 
 Before what buttressed shame 
 Thunder the wrath of thy consuming flame ? 
 
 For thou in all these years 
 That crown thee now as with a crown of flowers. 
 Hast been too great of heart for any fears. 
 Dauntless, immovable for aught save tears. 
 Supernal sign of strength for us and ours. 
 Therefore, we pray thee, on before and lead ! 
 For never had more need 
 Of such as thou in word and deed 
 
 20 
 
The Sixty-Second Birthday of Swinburne. 
 
 The world that dark with wrong 
 Waits for such light as lightens from thy song. 
 
 Master, while at thy feet 
 Like rose leaves red and yellow and pale 
 The song leaves flutter, still more fresh and sweet. 
 Of singers of thy great fame not unmeet 
 With sound of many voices crying ** Hail ! " 
 A quavering voice upon that great throng's brim. 
 
 Unheard and harsh and dim, 
 Sings to itself a tuneless hymn 
 
 In praise of thee — O more 
 Than cloud and fire across this desert's floor. 
 
 For thou art life to those 
 That hear thy spirit, master of tone and tune. 
 Whose echoes breathe in every wind that blows. 
 In dawn and sunset, quiet star that glows 
 At midnight and the stainless depths of noon, 
 With all sounds glorious, from great ocean's swell 
 
 To drone of murmuring shell 
 And far-heard chime of evening bell ; 
 
 As if, O music's king, 
 Thy hand then strayed upon the heavenly string. 
 
 21 
 
CITY ROSES. 
 
 I cannot smell the balmy pine in the city's dust 
 and heat, 
 
 1 cannot see the woodland vine as I walk the 
 crowded street ; 
 
 I know that while a furnace breath on baking pave- 
 ment blows 
 
 The shadows of great clouds are sailing where the 
 laurel grows. 
 
 Stifling ! To think, with a choking pain, of the 
 shadowy thickets there. 
 
 Where cool waves lave the shores of lakes and ferns 
 with maidenhair. 
 
 22 
 
City Roses. 
 
 Yet beauty holds her sway serene here, in the 
 
 crush of crowds, 
 As where she blossoms in the rose or floats in the 
 
 folds of clouds ; 
 The lesson that the mayflower tells in nooks of 
 
 forest wild 
 Is told again in the town's hot mews in the smiles 
 
 of a happy child, 
 And daily in the little square the merry children 
 
 playing 
 Are not less fair than Phyllis where in the meads 
 
 she goes a-Maying. 
 
 The city has its roses, too ; for, looking up, 
 I see 
 Upon the tenement's high wall a bit of greenery — 
 A little box, with trailing strings of purple morning- 
 glory; 
 A mimic world, where nature still repeats her 
 
 season's story. 
 Say I am weary as I plod in labor's sullen ways. 
 Two merry eyes look down on me with soft and 
 
 lambent gaze; 
 A little maid— my little maid — my white rose of 
 the town — 
 
 23 
 
City Roses, 
 
 'Tis like a whiff from out the wood, a gHmpse of 
 
 odorous down; 
 For day by day she smiles at me, and from her 
 
 dainty lips 
 A kiss she throws, my city rose, from slender 
 
 finger tips. 
 
 I cannot smell the balmy pine in the city's dust 
 
 and heat, 
 I cannot see the woodland vine as I walk the 
 crowded street — 
 
 But the city has its garden spots. 
 Its heartsease and forget-me-nots. 
 
 24 
 
THE CLOUD CAPPED TOWERS. 
 
 Gold squares across the tessellated floor, 
 
 Gold lances shivered on the fountain's brim, 
 
 Gold threaded curtains at the great court door, 
 Half hiding where the court lies cool and dim- 
 This is no vision that has come to him ; 
 
 By many a toiling path, oft weary and alone. 
 
 He has reached at last this fortune all his own. 
 
 This is his spacious dwelling, past all doubt. 
 Although he tries his senses if he wake. 
 
 And clasps the polished columns round about 
 And dips his hand within the mimic lake 
 To note the tiny gold fish flash and quake; 
 
 In his own marble citadel he stands 
 
 And knows himself the lord of many lands. 
 
 25 
 
The Cloud Capped Towers, 
 
 And all is his — out there the nodding flowers 
 And long dark vistas of the garden close. 
 
 And here the sunny heights of gleaming towers, 
 Whose carven turrets at his bidding rose. 
 The very labyrinth oi the walks he knows. 
 
 And pictured hangings of each lofty room 
 
 Scant shaken with the garden's blown perfume. 
 
 How came it his ? Something he left unclear 
 Slinks at him ghostlike from the shadows yet. 
 
 No matter that ; this drop is not a tear 
 
 That flecks his finger from the fountain jet. 
 There is no weeping where the lotus net 
 
 Is woven and the trembling spray beads lie 
 
 Crisp in the curling lily leaves near by. 
 
 Silence and rest — now senses dull and weary 
 
 Have what they sought through the long dolorous 
 day, 
 
 How far off seems that time, uncouth and dreary. 
 When he, not clothed as now in rich array. 
 Wandered a waif upon a bitter way. 
 
 His wandering must have been the dreamed of thing. 
 
 And all his life long he has been a king. 
 
 26 
 
The Cloud Capped Towers, 
 
 He minds a dim old time when they had played 
 At king and queen beneath the apple bough. 
 
 He and his black-haired, blue-eyed country maid. 
 Plaiting the apple leaves about her brow 
 With blossoms golden-hearted; even as now 
 
 The little smile will break on him to wear 
 
 This gold half-showing in her wind-blown hair. 
 
 Where is she, then? What woodside way along 
 Goes straying now the patter of her feet 
 
 That to him, waiting, in the wood-bird's song 
 Came sounding like its light recurrent beat 
 To make the Autumn stillness still more sweet? 
 
 What lying tongue had told him she was dead ? 
 
 To-morrow he would crown her stately head. 
 
 Above the fountain's little chime 
 
 And through the sob of music dying. 
 Beyond the chorals of the lime 
 
 And Summer through the lattice sighing, 
 I hear the coming of her feet, 
 
 The little rustle of her dress ; 
 I hear my quickened pulses beat, 
 
 And know her by her loveliness. 
 
 27 
 
The Cloud Capped Towers. 
 
 I shall hold her on my heart again 
 After long years of numbing sorrow. 
 
 Forgotten all the ancient pain. 
 To-morrow and to-morrow. 
 
 After the sunrise we shall go 
 
 By mazes of sun-heavy wheat. 
 And fragrant hedges set a-row 
 
 Across the thick-starred daisies sweet ; 
 And so unto our state again, 
 
 After long years of bitter sorrow, 
 Forgetting all the smart of pain. 
 
 To-morrow and to-morrow. 
 
 Beneath this rose and silver gleaming 
 
 The little tender curving face ; 
 From up-cast eyes upon me beaming 
 
 To know who holds her heart's first place; 
 From eyes with blue no longer wet 
 
 With vain tears of the dim world's sorrow. 
 Loving and learning to forget, 
 
 To-morrow and to-morrow. 
 
 To-morrow he will take her hand in his 
 
 And wander through their endless fair domain, 
 
 28 
 
Tf)e Cloud Capped Towers, 
 
 And think out ways of unimagined bliss 
 
 That somehow fail him in his throbbing brain. 
 For now, confused and faltering, he would fain. 
 
 Like tired child, to drowsy pillow creep 
 
 And take his fill of luxury and sleep. 
 
 So breaks the morrow. Or is that the light 
 
 Of beam-swung lantern there that flickering glares 
 
 Into his eyes, still dull with drug and night? 
 Long lying on his wretched rags, he stares 
 Where the pale beam the filmy darkness tears. 
 
 Then at one stroke of reasserting pain 
 
 Comes to himself and misery again. 
 
 Into the city's reawakened day. 
 
 Into the staring sunlight of the street. 
 
 He struggles forth upon his aimless way 
 
 Benumbed and dazzled and with stumbling feet. 
 For all part in that tide of life unmeet. 
 
 To stand where dreamless death goes whirling by. 
 
 And look and long and lack the will to die. 
 
 The drifting derelict of man we mark, 
 
 A thing debased below man's outward seeming. 
 The godlike mind now windowless and dark 
 
 29 
 
The Cloud Capped Towers, 
 
 Whose rift of light is only purchased dreaming. 
 
 Pity herself, upon all others beaming. 
 Hardens her lovely face as hard as fate. 
 And wise men hold him in contempt and hate. 
 
 Come, then, O wise man ! tell us — what is all 
 
 More worth than dreaming? Lo, the world's 
 long story ! 
 
 Where marble palace and the stately hall. 
 All that man labors for, his hard-won glory, 
 All records of his triumphs grim or gory. 
 
 Are but the visions of a brain gone mad. 
 
 As unsubstantial, fleeting, and as sad. 
 
 30 
 
SONGS FOR BARBARA. 
 
 I. One Tear Old. 
 
 Ah, little feet ! If from your rosy palms 
 
 A prayer of ours might keep all harder ways, 
 
 And through the shaded calms 
 
 And over fragrant balms 
 Your pathway lead you all your changing days. 
 
 Should any prayers we know 
 
 Fail from our lips to flow 
 And bless you, spring-bird whiter than the snow ? 
 
 31 
 
Songs for Barbara, 
 
 Ah, little hands ! If any thought of ours 
 
 Might gather from the sunbeams that bright gold 
 
 That falls in yellow showers. 
 
 Or store the scented flowers 
 That now your tiny fingers strive to hold. 
 
 Our thoughts should at the gate 
 
 Of each benignant fate 
 Beseech for you that came the spring flowers' mate. 
 
 Ah, soft brown gentle eyes ! Through all your years 
 If any hopes or deeds of ours might keep 
 
 From any touch of tears 
 
 Or any furtive fears 
 Your dainty sheen that was not made to weep. 
 
 Should hopes or deeds forget 
 
 To strive and struggle yet 
 To make your joys forever, brown-eyed pet ? 
 
 Ah, sunny head and sweet ! If such a light. 
 Golden and tempered as of April's youth. 
 
 For all our wishes might 
 
 Shine here forever bright 
 To change all dark to day, all night to truth. 
 
 Should not our wishes rise 
 
 For you beyond the skies 
 That light should make your world a paradise ? 
 
 32 
 
Songs for Barbara, 
 
 Ah, little smile ! that on your baby lips 
 
 Even in your sleep like sunshine comes and goes 
 
 As when the sunset slips 
 
 From cloud-ports of no ships, 
 If pains of ours might keep that tender rose 
 
 Should not our sorrows be 
 
 A perfect joy to see 
 Its fruitage be for you the least felicity ? 
 
 Ah, lovely life! that is the only link 
 
 To bind our days beyond their mortal span. 
 
 Life standing on life's brink. 
 
 May all dark shadows shrink 
 Before you as the March-blown fleece clouds ran 
 
 Before your day of birth, 
 
 And left the joyous earth 
 As bright with sun as we are with your mirth ! 
 
 II. Two Tears Old. 
 
 Will you remember in the times hereafter. 
 
 When kindly years this floss have longer spun. 
 
 Which way turned your earliest dawn of laughter. 
 Where your faltering footsteps used to run ? 
 
 Or when you ruled, our loveliest queen and holiest, 
 Crowned with the sunbeams in your gracious way, 
 
 33 
 
Songs for Barbara, 
 
 Of all your slaves who was the least and lowliest 
 That owned your sway ? 
 
 Will you remember names your lips first learning 
 Lisped with a sweeter sound than wind through 
 leaves. 
 Yea, when the sumach into red gold turning 
 
 Sings in an autumn morn of gathered sheaves? 
 Or when, like buds before the quickening paces 
 Of May-time rains and suns by summer sent. 
 Your dreaming eyes unclosed upon what faces 
 Above you bent? 
 
 We shall remember through all dim to-morrows. 
 Though time come plucking all our blooms but 
 this, 
 From all the years' grey wastes and shadowy sorrows. 
 
 The scented blossom of your birthday kiss ; 
 And, sweetheart, hear your little treble ringing 
 As in deep woods sometimes at stillest noon 
 A tree-top thrush alone starts softly singing 
 Its trilling tune. 
 
 We shall remember little ways and wanderings, 
 The serious little mouth and thoughtful eyes, 
 
 34 
 
Songs for Barbara, 
 
 Brown-studies and mute looks and gravest ponderings, 
 And curious quests unspoken at the skies ; 
 
 The tireless feet and busy little fingers. 
 
 And wise young way vain grievings to beguile. 
 
 But most of all, O soul of spring-tide, lingers 
 Your earliest smile. 
 
 We shall remember all these things, recalling 
 
 The tenderest face and purest, while we think 
 Of you as of a rose that never falling 
 
 Lives white and sweet and grows but does not 
 shrink ; — 
 Or on dark days your very name comes bringing 
 These memories back, as some swift sunbeam 
 might 
 Make sudden way through cloudy curtains, flinging 
 A shaft of light. 
 
 III. A Song in the Springtime, 
 
 What shall I say is like to thee, Barbara mine ? 
 Something a rose is like to thee, framed in vine; 
 White and touched with a warmer hue 
 Near its heart. 
 
 35 
 
Songs for Barbara, 
 
 Where the diamonds of the dew 
 
 Tremble and start; 
 Just the grace of a rose soft white. 
 Just as pure from the dull earth's blight, 
 Fresh from the dews of the kindly night. 
 
 Child thou art. 
 
 Moon on the water is like to thee, Barbara dear. 
 Slenderly shining eastward, faint and clear; 
 Ripple to ripple, the soft sheen slides 
 
 Through the night, 
 Drawing over the amethyst tides 
 
 This silvery light; 
 So at times thy little face seems 
 Fairy fresh as the young moon's beams. 
 Just as the film on the ripple gleams 
 Dainty bright. 
 
 Something the wind is like to thee, round the eaves; 
 Wind that breathes of the blooming of fresh young 
 leaves. 
 Wind that white from the apple tree 
 
 Lightly flings. 
 Wind that just kisses the sleeping sea 
 And softly sings; 
 
 36 
 
Songs for Barbara, 
 
 Just as light the May-wind goes, 
 Just as sweet as its sweet breath blows. 
 Fair as the freshest flower that grows 
 Beneath its wings. 
 
 Something a star is like to thee, Barbara love, 
 Sweetest star in the serenest skies, far above. 
 
 So conies in her tenuous robes, even now. 
 
 The shadowy West, 
 One such light on her stainless brow 
 
 Borne for crest; 
 Child-like star and star-like child, 
 Living light of a way undefiled, 
 Pathways are brighter since thou hast smiled, 
 
 Brighter and blest. 
 
 All these things are like to thee, Barbara, yet 
 What shall tell the whole tale of thee, Barbara pet ? 
 Birds that come through the morning blush 
 
 Clearly shown ? 
 Songs of spring in the morning hush 
 
 Faintly blown ? 
 Yea, but where in the world shall be 
 Image of aught that may mean for me 
 Truly symbol or sign of thee 
 
 But thou alone ? 
 
 11 
 
FRANCE! 
 
 I. 
 
 Beloved of nations ! Thou in whose free hand 
 Was borne the torch that dawning on dark days 
 Burns now a Ught for all earth's gloomiest ways. 
 
 Here on this margin of a century's strand 
 
 Wherein thy name has been a flashing brand, 
 
 What were the word compact of love and praise. 
 Where were the wreath of laurels or of bays, 
 
 Fit for thy fame as sun for morning land? 
 We from across these leagues of shining sea 
 That in old days shut not our loves from thee. 
 
 When down its hollows glimmered less the sail 
 That bore thy hero from a nation's heart. 
 Remembering, sister, all thou wast and art. 
 
 Cry to the fair and firm Republic, Hail ! 
 
 -.8 
 
France ! 
 II. 
 
 Thy foes sit by thee prophesying ill. 
 
 No change of dawn or dark or sun or cloud 
 
 But in the shadow they shall see thy shroud, 
 And in the sun some portent to their will. 
 Smoulders about thee that old hatred still 
 
 Since first before thy face the kings were bowed, 
 
 Since first before thy sword Old Force was cowed, 
 Thus have they lied that had not power to kill. 
 Thou shalt decline, O Queen, my France, they say 
 
 Whose fingers fain would close about thy throat. 
 Decline ! In widening waves day after day 
 
 Slowly thy faith becomes the whole world's note. 
 " Let liberty and light," it runs, "have sway," 
 
 And still resounds the string thy hands first smote. 
 
 III. 
 
 Not in thy mellow land alone, or where 
 
 Thy flag makes morn and sunshine, thou art France ; 
 Wherever men in all the world's expanse 
 A handful gather, smit with fire, and dare 
 To strike for men and freedom while they bare 
 Defiant breasts against a desperate chance 
 For her dear sake whose earliest sword and lance 
 
 
France! 
 
 Wast thou, and faithful — fairest France is there '1 
 Lo, on the lonely veldt while heroes died 
 
 Thy name was music and thy faith was light, 
 As comes like bugle blast on hard fought day 
 Some deed of thine across the battle's tide. 
 Or warrior stricken by outnumbering might 
 Thinks " France ! " and flings himself into the 
 fray ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 Now when the tide runs backward through the world. 
 With faith unshaken and with brow still turned 
 Upward and eastward where the morning burned, 
 
 Men see thee still, as when the war clouds whirled 
 
 Thickest around thy flag then first unfurled, 
 Standing alone, for thou hast not unlearned 
 That creed of man whose light, by rulers spurned. 
 
 Flashed forth a sunbeam through the darkness hurled. 
 
 Not yet to thee that faith is made a jest. 
 The name heroic and the daring deed. 
 
 Where struggling man struck at a tyrant's brow. 
 
 Are deathless with thee, worn upon thy breast; 
 Brutus of old, and Tell, and Winkelried, 
 
 And Washington, and Hale, and Kruger now. 
 
 40 
 
FAILURE. 
 
 What if thy glory, Uke a great green tree 
 
 With slow grown weft of waving branches, spread 
 
 Till farers by the weary land or sea 
 
 Afar gaze wondering on the sky-borne head, — 
 
 And violets grow not in its sunless shade, 
 The clover sicken and the daisy die. 
 And in the barren circle scarce a blade 
 Wave a wee signal to the yellow fly, — 
 
 What if, enriched by every wind that blows. 
 Thy tree win praise from shifting tribes of men. 
 And by its sullen plot dead leaves of rose 
 Go drifting and unheeded — aye, what then ? 
 
 41 
 
PICARDY. 
 
 1899. 
 
 The watchful castle scowling on the hill 
 
 Shed forth a brooding sadness — 
 A far-flung shadow, listless, gloomy, chill. 
 
 That hushed all sounds of gladness 
 And deep across the silent hamlet lay, 
 
 A moveless sign of sorrow. 
 From sunburst to the drooping death of day, 
 
 Dewfall to joyless morrow. 
 
 Elsewhere the heralds of the new day's birth. 
 
 With flags of fire outflinging, 
 Roused all the melodists of heaven and earth 
 
 In field or forest singing; 
 New-made from careless sleep the giant Toil 
 
 With dauntless eyes upstarted 
 And trudged across the rifts of furrowed soil 
 
 And hailed the dawn, light-hearted. 
 
 42 
 
Picardy, 
 
 Elsewhere when deepening purples slowly drew 
 
 Below the shadowed ledges 
 Unburdened villagers that freedom knew 
 
 Might meet beside the hedges; 
 Children might laugh aloud, and smiles might be 
 
 In tired eyes no stranger, 
 And no man shrink nor glance behind to see 
 
 A lurking shape of danger. 
 
 Elsewhere the leaf-tuned whispers of the night 
 
 Might not be all-foreboding. 
 Nor each limb drag a chain of feudal might, 
 
 Each heart a wrong corroding; 
 Hope might arise still shining, fears might cease 
 
 Sometimes their busy pursuing. 
 And night wing by, her poppied sheaf of peace 
 
 The land with slumber strewing. 
 
 But for these slaves — what hope or help had they? 
 
 Death was their hope : none other. 
 Day was to heavy night and night to day 
 
 One sorrow to its brother ; 
 Peace in the sunset smiles might go unseen. 
 
 Red cloud to white cloud flying — 
 Peace was alone the rounded bed and green 
 
 In the strait churchyard lying. 
 
 43 
 
Picardy, 
 
 Brave days ! Fair lay the castle's broad domain 
 
 For tithes and taxes teeming. 
 Long leagues of guarded forest and champaign. 
 
 Hillside and river gleaming; 
 My noble lord's, the all ; and his were these. 
 
 The things that God had given 
 But soul enough to serve him on their knees 
 
 And herd where they were driven. 
 
 Brave days ! When yoked and harnessed to the plough. 
 
 The goad his shoulders tickling, 
 Fine sport it was to see the bondman bow 
 
 His head to hide tears trickling ; 
 Or watch the grandsire's quivering face above 
 
 The slave-born grandson yearning. 
 And eyes old tears had worn on hopeless love 
 
 Their lightless glances turning. 
 
 Brave days ! Sometimes my lord and train rode forth 
 
 With spurs and bridle ringing. 
 When faint across the Autumn-breathing North 
 
 The hunting horns came singing; 
 And these should start the prey as other hounds 
 
 Through swamp and thicket panting. 
 And beat the bush, and follow hard the sounds 
 
 Of dog and horn loud chanting. 
 
 44 
 
Picardy, 
 
 Brave days ! While now no stricken mother wept. 
 
 More often and more slowly 
 Churchward the little dull procession crept 
 
 When tolled the church bell lowly. 
 And oft returning from the hunt or ride 
 
 A castle-man, half-sneering, 
 Saw from the hedge one haggard face, mad-eyed 
 
 And hatred-darkened, peering. 
 
 Sunk cheeks, bent forms, the saddened face or grim. 
 
 On lips the thin claws trembling, 
 Hawk-like or feverish, haunted eyes or dim, 
 
 A latent thirst dissembling — 
 What mattered to my lord that clearly saw 
 
 Himself by God's direction 
 Ordained to be a pillar of rank and law 
 
 And hold these in subjection? 
 
 Brave days forever I No less brightly glowed 
 
 In hall the lanterns flashing, 
 Nor less for groans the warming grape blood flowed, 
 
 With merry music clashing; , 
 
 For rooted in the bases of the world 
 
 Stood noble pomp and power. 
 And these were as the wind that idly curled 
 
 Around the turret tower. 
 
 45 
 
Picardy, 
 
 " It is your lot to toil," the fat priest said. 
 
 And mumbled his ave the faster, 
 " Contrition is as a gracious banquet spread. 
 
 Servant obey thy master." 
 "Let them eat hay," said my lord, ** my other 
 beasts do ; " — 
 
 A smile his stern face crackled ; 
 The good jest round the reverent table flew. 
 
 The fat Driest shook and cackled. 
 
 Till one, the youth whose dark presageful gaze. 
 
 Deep-eyed and dully burning. 
 The castle-man at dusk by homeward ways 
 
 Had noted on him turning. 
 With lank stretched finger strode the guests among 
 
 And stayed the shouts of laughter. 
 Till with the fluttering crows he lifeless swung 
 
 Upon a turret rafter. 
 
 Vive la Republique ! The night was very dark, 
 A starless pall of bitterness and pain. 
 
 When first her glittering sword struck out a spark. 
 Hard smitten on a chain : 
 
 46 
 
Picardy, 
 
 And in the brooding skies 
 Watched the malignant eyes 
 Of fiends that sought with force to slay or stifle her 
 with lies. 
 
 They rose that night, they left their huts, with 
 
 white hard haggard faces. 
 They gathered in the starlit lane and silent took 
 
 their places; 
 Strange arms they bore for such a use long hoarded 
 
 in safe keeping, 
 Secreted scythes and rusty hooks and long knives 
 
 made for reaping ; 
 The mow gave up a sharpened stake, the swamp 
 
 fens yielded sledges. 
 And broken pikes and picks came forth from 
 
 corners of the hedges. 
 No word, no shout, no cry of wrath, swiftly and 
 
 with no turning 
 They swarmed along the stony heights where 
 
 beacon lights were burning; 
 They burst upon the castle gate, with hammers 
 
 beating thunder, 
 And smote with fierce resistless tide until it fell 
 
 asunder. 
 
 47 
 
Picardy, 
 
 While frantic clanged the deep-mouthed bell and 
 
 sang the bullets flying, 
 With tramp of men, and flash of shots, and wailing 
 
 of the dying. 
 They faltered not, nor ever stayed, but as one fell 
 
 another 
 Snatched from his hand the sunken pike and battled 
 
 for his brother. 
 Slow yielding backward step by step the hench- 
 men, fiercely fighting, 
 Circled their lord with flashing fire of long swords 
 
 swiftly smiting. 
 Till one by one, each in his place, they fell where 
 
 they had striven. 
 And trembling stood my lord ringed round with 
 
 the herd that he had driven. 
 So equalled, front to front at last, came serf and 
 
 lord unspeaking. 
 While over all his wild eyes roved, one sign of pity 
 
 seeking. 
 Vain search from bitter face to face, tense, fateful 
 
 and unchanging, 
 From glittering eyes to twitching hands his fearful 
 
 gaze went ranging; 
 Till from his knees, late bowed in vain, they caught 
 
 him pale and pleading. 
 
 48 
 
Picardy. 
 
 Without a word they haled him forth, a halter for 
 
 his leading. 
 And stuffed his mouth with hay and grass, and tied 
 
 his hands behind him. 
 And flung him in the castle moat and let the fishes 
 
 find him. 
 Then up the creaking stairs they thronged, for that 
 
 last service eager. 
 And pried and tore with pike and pick, or bare 
 
 hands wan and meagre. 
 And wrenched each hated stone from stone, each 
 
 counterscarp and casement. 
 Ana blotted it from off the earth, from turret tower 
 
 to basement. 
 Then turned they home and had no fear and waited, 
 
 calmly scorning, 
 What flood of vengeful wrath might come upon 
 
 them with the morning. 
 It came not. With that night fled forth old sorrow 
 
 swiftly winging ; 
 Witn sunlight burst on sons of men a new age 
 
 sweetly singing. 
 
 Vive la Republique ! There comes one star ana breaks 
 A lance lane through the clouded dull expanse; 
 
 49 
 
Picardy, 
 
 Vive la Republique ! There sounds one note and wakes 
 The sleeping soul within the soul of France ! 
 And now the fervent glow 
 Falls on the earth below, 
 And light and music fill the air from heaven's 
 bright overflow. 
 
 In varying shades of brown and gold and green. 
 Square after square along the valley sides. 
 
 The liberal earth from heaping horn unseen 
 
 Pours spendthrift down her wealth in jewelled tides. 
 
 Below the slope the sturdy village spreads 
 Its round of dull red walls. 
 
 With quiet corners where the rosebush sheds 
 Its leafdrift and the ripened apple falls. 
 
 From where the church its crumbling crosses rears 
 The little street a long bow bends to show 
 
 The old moss-tinted tiles aslant in tiers 
 
 And southward standing cherry trees a-row. 
 
 The old inn opens wide its studded door. 
 And in its Summer shade 
 
 The white-capped girls, above its sanded floor, 
 
 Cut snowy loaves and the snow-white cloth is laid. 
 
 50 
 
Picardy, 
 
 There is no castle glooming on the hill, 
 There is no shadow on the hamlet cast ; 
 
 The stalking fear that once with finger chill 
 
 Laid hush on hearts and lips and hopes has past 
 
 With things forgotten. But to scattered stone 
 The dark old memory clings. 
 
 And on one cottage wall there hangs alone 
 A battered sword between two rusty rings. 
 
 And on a fallen fragment at full noon 
 
 The farmer sits and eats his cheese and bread. 
 
 And hearkens while the wind a rustling tune 
 Plays in the grass that grows above the dead ; 
 
 And looks across his little sunny square 
 Of grapes all purple turning 
 
 Down to that dim red patch of tiling where 
 
 He knows for him his hearthstone iire is burning. 
 
 The air breathes blossoming song. While from their 
 feet 
 The beaten dust in dwindling spirals springs. 
 Slow step the stallions to a rhythmic beat. 
 
 The wagons rumble, and the driver sings. 
 The very wind has merrier tunes than when 
 It blew about the moat; 
 
 51 
 
Picardy. 
 
 The blackbird pipes a cheerier lay, the wren 
 
 Goes twittering on the sheaves with clearer note. 
 
 There is no castle watchful on the hill ; 
 
 But where its moveless shadow lay of old 
 Enfranchised sons of the Republic till 
 
 Their straight trim tracks and mounds of fertile 
 mold; 
 And rising with the sun go forth and reap 
 
 The fruitage fully grown 
 Of night's dark seed-time, when on threatening steep 
 With long-pent wrath let loose this seed was sown. 
 
 Blue, white and red ! Long live the flag of France ! 
 
 Its signal shall be bright for evermore ; 
 Blue, white and red ! It led the world's advance. 
 The hope it lightened glows from shore to shore. 
 And now no land but knows 
 What fair new faith arose 
 When recreated France sprang forth and grappled 
 with her foes ! 
 
 52 
 
FORGIVENESS. 
 
 Of all sweet things is none so sweet as this; 
 Not honey that the lily's lover sips, 
 Nor wild wood rose that opes her folded lips 
 
 At faintest sound of wings to get his kiss. 
 Nor waterfall that down the cool rock slips. 
 
 There is no peace like this ; not that deep calm 
 At midnight when the great still moonlight pours 
 Its tide of gold on level ocean floors 
 
 And no last breathing of the night wind's psalm 
 Stirs sleeping ripples by the soundless shores. 
 
 53 
 
Forgiveness, 
 
 There is no joy like this — not wind and sun 
 Are blither spirits on the first spring day; 
 Not more serenely on their shaded way 
 
 The singing river currents seaward run ; 
 
 Yea, this is far more swift and sweet than they. 
 
 There is no ease like this that comes and steals 
 Heartache away and sighs and old dull pain, 
 And on each weary wound and throbbing vein 
 
 Lays anodyne that soothes, and touch that heals 
 Worn eyes with dear forgetfulness again. 
 
 Yea. And what is this to him who goes 
 
 Stumbling and blinded from sharp stone to stone. 
 Crushed by no unhelped burden but his own, 
 
 Dumb to the morning song, poor clod to rose. 
 Who can forgive all save himself alone ? 
 
 54 
 
THE RHONE VALLEY AT LEUK. 
 
 L 
 
 Across the meadow by the whirling river 
 
 The laggard sun, restrained of fairy hands, 
 A late-come archer, from his shining quiver 
 
 Smites one by one the warders of the lands; 
 From castle-head to head that long undaunted. 
 
 Hard beaten by the suns and storms and fates. 
 Of half-forgotten legend only haunted. 
 
 Keeps guard above the torrents at its gates. 
 
 Earth hath not heard such song of salutation. 
 
 Triumphal chant and sweet sonorous lay. 
 Rung forth from holy station unto station 
 
 Before the marching of the lord of day ; 
 Rung forth from herds upon the shaded highways 
 
 A far-off clash and clang of mellow sound. 
 Attuned of herd-horns in unnoted byways 
 
 Soft blown by herd-boys stretched upon the ground. 
 
 55 
 
The Rhone Valley at Leuk, 
 
 Awakened winds arise and breathing lowly 
 
 Around the casements of the tower four square 
 Go tip-toed through the dusty chambers slowly 
 
 To flute and pipe an old sad homesick air. 
 Sung once, belike, to windows where fair faces 
 
 Looked out and longed across the grim gray bars, 
 Or joyed as we on these soft-shadowed spaces. 
 
 On snow-piled peaks and fields and skies and stars. 
 
 And now no face is at the window peering. 
 
 No eyes look down aflame with love or light; 
 No singing of old songs for lovers' hearing. 
 
 No footsteps on the stairs by day or night ; 
 All dust the hearts joy thrilled or by grief broken. 
 
 Nay, dust the very eyes, the waving hair ; 
 Beyond remembrance, without sign or token. 
 
 Untouched of grief or joy or tear or care. 
 
 Unto this end was all the pain and striving. 
 
 The toil to build, the blood to have and hold ; 
 Fury of combat, clouds of arrows driving, 
 
 Leaguer and camp and gallant deed and bold ; 
 Beneath the stars long dreary vigil keeping. 
 
 By day the clash of swords and clang of shields : 
 Hearts — to be dust in star or sun-light sleeping ; 
 
 Towers — to be fragments in the sweet green fields. 
 
 56 
 
The Rhone Valley at Leuk, 
 
 These things the sun has seen, the sun that pouring 
 
 Through vale and cleft the glory of his gaze 
 Flames on the stainless summits, rest imploring, 
 
 Now answering fire with fire, now dim with haze. 
 Fire answers fire, or on the snow-lipped edges 
 
 Rings darker hollows out with glowing light. 
 Till over summits, fields and whitened ledges 
 
 Slowly descends the all-effacing night. 
 
 These only, suns and nights and heights uplifted, 
 
 Steadfast stand, while the restless tides below 
 Year after year along the pass have drifted 
 
 As drifts the shade of cloud across the snow ; 
 While back, as to their mother's arms returning. 
 
 The works of man, the towers that told of pride 
 With those that held the symbol of his yearning. 
 
 Turret and cross sink earthward side by side. 
 
 II. 
 
 The shadows were as blue. 
 As soft the sunsets, and the heights as still. 
 And such sweet Summer breaths went pouring through 
 The hollow of the hill. 
 
 57 
 
The Rhone Valley at Leuk. 
 
 When up the winding way. 
 While hope in all men's eyes turned towards the 
 dawns, 
 Eastward they rode all the long lingering day 
 Beside the river lawns. 
 
 Red morning on the shields 
 With strange rose-hearted fire undying glowed. 
 And redder on the flags with snow white fields 
 The holy emblem showed ; 
 
 With red iov hope's bright hue 
 And red for fire that fiaught in hot young veins, 
 And reddest ^ov the fall of fiery dew 
 
 On sun-baked Syrian plains. 
 
 Above the river's rhyme 
 And tunes that bird and wind-swept forest sang 
 With steel to steel a sharp insistent chime 
 Their casques and corslets rang 
 
 Through curves of green-walled glen, 
 Fronting the castle there aflame with flags. 
 To bear the tramp and tramp of marching men 
 Among defiant crags; 
 
 58 
 
The Rhone Valley at Leuk. 
 
 Where men might never be, 
 Where dwelt alone the oread of the snows. 
 Whose steps beneath the sun, unchallenged, free. 
 The west wind only knows ; 
 
 Startling the echoes there 
 Across the snow-flood's tide and track and blight, 
 And vast unfathomed gulfs whose stirless air 
 Still holds in chains the night ; 
 
 Keen echoes ringing clear. 
 From bare bleak cliff or drifted summit leaping. 
 In silences where none there was to hear 
 
 And sound itself seemed sleeping; 
 
 No warning voice to chide, 
 No stern-browed prophet with uplifted hand. 
 Nor presage of the brooding wings spread wide 
 And the woe upon the land. 
 
 Though to her surer sight 
 Revealed were those slow circling birds of prey 
 That winged unseen with fouler birds of night 
 Their even-paced dark way ; 
 
 59 
 
The Rhone Valley at Leuk, 
 
 Into what depths of gloom. 
 What misery and pain beyond all cure, 
 They walked death's road in the shadow of a gloom 
 Predestinate and sure. 
 
 She might make moan in vain, 
 And wailing protest none would hear or heed. 
 Came not for all her tears of mist or rain 
 A help upon their need. 
 
 No, not from that sweet sky 
 Whereto on bended knees with halting breath 
 They raised for blessing a beseeching cry 
 
 On a cause of blood and death ; 
 
 Not from the cross, blood red. 
 Debased by conquerors to a thing of war. 
 The aspiring Greek saw from his thorny bed 
 Afront him and afar ; 
 
 Beheld the burning bars. 
 Adrift upon a surgeless sea of light. 
 Slowly efface the pallid chill of stars 
 
 Across the breathless night ; 
 
 60 
 
The Rhone Valley at Leuk 
 
 While as a robe let slip 
 A hallowed hush fell through the shuddering air, 
 And faltered on the awe-touched monarch's lip 
 The breath of formal prayer. 
 
 Beheld he ? Or but dreamed — 
 Who knows ? For now, transformed to sign of hate 
 From sign of love, steadfast before them gleamed 
 To mock them to their fate 
 
 The empty cross and vain 
 Of might unmighty, that for victory gave 
 Defeat, for conquest death, and loss for gain. 
 For fame the nameless grave. 
 
 Since of its promised gifts 
 Fulfilled the glory was a vagrant dust. 
 An empty tale of white bones piled in drifts. 
 Dead hate and bitter lust. 
 
 And down the winding way. 
 Despised, abased, rejected and cast out. 
 Slow stumbling westward all the Winter day 
 Came back the remnant rout; 
 
 6i 
 
The Rhone Valley at LeuL 
 
 Too war-worn it may be. 
 Too sick at heart of wanderings and despair, 
 The solendors of the sunset once to see, 
 What changes in the air ; 
 
 Or mark more than before 
 How vainly broke the steady streams of light 
 On slumberous summits, as on a changeless shore 
 Shatters the foam wave's might. 
 
 They rise and break and fail. 
 And stifle not, nor ever hush nor stay 
 The hvmns reverberate raised by choirists Dale 
 Before the coming day. 
 
 For these sound ever, though 
 Years change, hopes fail, tribes perish — these endure 
 While fair false lights, their careless heads below. 
 Deride men or allure. 
 
 III. 
 
 And surely as to us the echoes mourn 
 
 Of these that strove and perished long ago. 
 
 And wild winds through the crannied turrets blow 
 
 A ghostlv strain of trumpeting forlorn. 
 
 62 
 
The Rhone Valley at Leuk, 
 
 Not otherwise they also dreamed their dreams 
 Of pilum, sword and javelin, and of him 
 Whose face, a bitter bale-fire growing dim. 
 
 Still through the murk of fallen empire gleams. 
 
 For he came hither with the lesser tide ; 
 
 Yea, standing here perchance his boding gaze. 
 To see the slanting sun-shafts and the haze, 
 
 Blue shot with gold, from hill to valley glide. 
 
 Lightened a little, or apart a pace. 
 
 While now unheard with ringing tramp and tread 
 The legions passed before his unbowed head. 
 
 He watched the shadows on the mountain's face. 
 
 What fleeting glimpse or brief bright dream he had 
 Of guiltless days and slow-pulsed life aloof. 
 Of curling vines across the cottage roof 
 
 And Summer making all the grape rows glad, — 
 
 Who knows ? Who knows what sudden sombre 
 thought 
 Late knocking at his weary heart there came 
 To show one sum of bitterness and shame. 
 
 The gainless fabric that his toil had wrought ? 
 
 Bright winged above the pass the eagles swept ; 
 Beneath, the shadow of their sailing cast 
 
 63 
 
The Rhone Valley at Leuk, 
 
 One gloom from Alps to Tiber, and the last 
 Of Romans for the lost republic wept, 
 And one star more that shed before men's eyes 
 Somewhat of hope, somewhat of light and cheer. 
 Touched to dumb darkness by the gathering fear 
 Swung cold and rayless in the stormy skies. 
 
 Vain tears were his who thought these things were 
 worth 
 His weeping — these or other; for their will 
 Of men have Change and Time for good or ill ; 
 
 Primeval godhead, to whose monstrous mirth 
 
 Man and his little strange laborious cares 
 Are consecrate; who make a jest and toy 
 Man's momentary glimpse of grief and joy, 
 
 A huge Titanic pastime of his prayers. 
 
 For Change that knows not rest by night or day, 
 Slow shaping dooms in Cimbrian depths unseen. 
 The fateful bow made sure, the shaft made keen. 
 
 And marked for death the bright imperial prey ; 
 
 And that last Roman soul through last of tears, 
 Forthlooking on his last of life and light. 
 Might have foreseen the eagle from his flight 
 
 Heart-cleft beyond the veil of heavy years. 
 
 64 
 
The Rhone Valley at LeuL 
 
 For eagles nor for legions stays the wheel, 
 
 For emperors nor kings, for force nor might. 
 Here where these abbeys to their carven height 
 
 Rang with the passing of the iron heel 
 
 And flashed with lightnings of the imperial wings 
 The dust of these and all their tribe whirls by. 
 The flame of empire fades upon the sky, 
 
 But man goes on unthralled of thrones or kings. 
 
 The drifting dust goes whirling, and as ghosts 
 Strange forms within and airy shadows pass 
 Up angles of the hillsides dark with grass. 
 
 Shapes surely like the fierce-eyed, skin-clad hosts. 
 
 The surging sea that hereby gathered wrath. 
 Oft beaten back and oft returning strong 
 To break across the fallen hold of wrong 
 
 Wide swept at last a new day's gleaming path. 
 
 Steadily to southward, forceful, fateful, slow. 
 They, too, went by, heavy of face and strange. 
 Through shadowy thicket, past the clouded range. 
 
 Threading the thin strait cleft, trampling the snow; 
 
 Countless, resistless, restless — feet that trod 
 
 The wine press out and mighty hands that bore 
 From Northland forests to the Southland shore 
 
 The bitter draught and plied the scourge of God. 
 
 65 
 
The Rhone Valley at Leuk. 
 
 These went their destined way as others went — 
 Toiled for no fruit, hoped highly, dared or quailed ; 
 Beat idly on the unopening gates and failed 
 
 As we, with bleeding fingers torn and rent ; 
 
 Plucked at such adamantine chains and won 
 What win the tireless wayless winds that hurl 
 Dead leaves along the dusty way or furl 
 
 The forest flags before the Autumn sun. 
 
 Some imprint of their passing done in stone. 
 Some tingling in the blood of wilder life, 
 A stirring of the pulse at sound of strife, 
 
 The piteous broken statues that atone. 
 
 Someway atone, the horror of the time — 
 These only bear the record of a race 
 Before the surges of the years efface 
 
 Forever name and fame with curse and crime. 
 
 Unseen — unheard — indomitable as they, 
 As restless, surer of her might and aim, 
 An unguessed cloud, an unbeholden flame, 
 
 A spirit moved above their wandering way. 
 
 Year after year and age by age to bear 
 
 The quenchless torch whose light divine shall grow 
 From hope to having, from a flame to glow 
 
 That sun-like shall make gold the common air. 
 
 66 
 
The Rhone Valley at Leuk. 
 
 But she sweeps on and on forever, she 
 As little noting of appealing cries 
 As feeble hands upreared against her, flies 
 
 Straight starward like a star, as fair and free. 
 
 Not shades that pass nor phantoms like the night. 
 Nor man that breaks his hopeless heart or waits 
 Sustained and sure the slow paced certain fates. 
 
 Make swift or slow the winging of her flight. 
 
 IV. 
 
 But the tides flow ever and cease not their rising 
 and falling. 
 Ere the towers were built or their tale begun 
 Rang all these rocks with clangor of trumpets loud 
 calling. 
 With hosts in mad conflict, with victory won. 
 In these ways, where the bland benediction of sun- 
 light is sleeping. 
 The races unknown, beyond legend or name. 
 Slew and were slain, knew triumph and glory and 
 weeping. 
 Made moaning or joy in their own day of fame. 
 
 67 
 
The Rhone Valley at Leuk, 
 
 Where sunken and sunless and soundless the dim 
 secrets slumber 
 In backward abysms unpierced of our sight 
 The long generations and tribe after tribe without 
 number 
 Crept onward as we from night unto night. 
 Strange races of men through cycles of Time old 
 and hoary, 
 Not a trace to us leaving save trace of the beast. 
 Here played their poor little part, told out their 
 swift story. 
 Strutted and fretted, chased shadows and ceased. 
 
 Not a tear, not a sigh, not a heart that ever has 
 broken 
 In the tales that we know of this highway of men. 
 Not a song that whispered of grieving, a sorrow 
 unspoken, 
 Has a note of despair unknowable then ; 
 Whatever of love or of hope may cheer men or 
 lighten. 
 Whatever of toil, or of aim high or low. 
 What distant fantastical dreams may darken or 
 brighten 
 Were known of these also ages ago. 
 
 68 
 
The Rhone Valley at Leuk, 
 
 Did they think, being mutable men, to them it 
 was given 
 The secrets of whither and whence to lay bare ? 
 Did the priests the dim veil unto them show rent 
 and riven ; 
 Did king-craft and priest-craft make murky their 
 air? 
 But they lived, and they loved, knew child-love and 
 all the swift anguish 
 When heart-stricken love of love is bereft, 
 Saw the heads that they loved wax weary, fade 
 slowly and languish. 
 And the darkening way over those that were left. 
 
 There were Caesars likewise of these ; there was 
 striving and straining. 
 There were hearts that were stirred to set all on 
 a cast ; 
 The same luring lights that the promise upheld of 
 attaining 
 To the same barren reefs led ever at last ; 
 Achievement that mocks and strife that is all un- 
 availing. 
 Empty pursuing, hands grasping at naught, 
 The strength of the strong on his weaker brother 
 prevailing 
 And sloth ever winning what labor had wrought. 
 
 69 
 
The Rhone Valley at Leuk. 
 
 And the same lies blasted, in like dense darkness 
 groping, 
 Deluded, deserted, whirled down the dark way. 
 These, too, struggled on, beset with vain fearing 
 and hoping. 
 Built their own crumbling towers, thought their 
 own fleeting day 
 To be great in the tale of the years that careless 
 and scornful 
 Swept utterly them and their works from the earth. 
 Not a memory leaving or echo of bright days or 
 mournful. 
 Thoughts, aspirations, sorrows or mirth. 
 
 And of us, as of them, the destinate years, that care 
 not 
 For men more than seas in their ebb or their flow. 
 Such dim speculations shall leave as these that 
 bear not 
 A trace of a name or a deed here below ; 
 An airy tradition, a dream to the times that come 
 after. 
 The works and the woes, the striving and pain, 
 A gathering of store for naught but the future's grim 
 laughter. 
 For the winds and the suns to scatter again. 
 
 JO 
 
The Rhone Valley at Leuk, 
 
 While the same stars beckon, the same mellifluous 
 voices, 
 From the glittering heights sing low, sing soft. 
 As the river's song in her ancient course rejoices, 
 
 As the soul of the mountain is singing aloft. 
 When her beautiful face in the light of the sunset 
 seems living. 
 Uplifted and radiant, turned to the west, 
 Listening she seems to the sound of her own song 
 giving 
 Forever to earth the promise of rest. 
 
 71 
 
IMPRESSIONS. 
 
 /. Shrewsbury River. 
 
 Ashen green and listless sea smoke gray, 
 
 Dun yellow here and there on spits of sand, 
 And lone gulls wheeling on their viewless way ; 
 
 Slow reaching mists upon the unshadowed land. 
 And foamy ridges caught in shoreward reeds 
 Where these mad currents run like startled steeds — 
 
 Outside the beach with narrow verge 
 
 Booms leaden ocean's sullen surge. 
 
 2. From Brooklyn Bridge. 
 
 Swung in the air upon the midmost span. 
 
 Just at the gray and purple death of day. 
 While underneath the whirling currents ran 
 And tenuous mists between the far shores lay, 
 I saw above me and below 
 The shadowy ships unnoted go, 
 
 72 
 
Imp 
 
 r ess tons. 
 
 And hidden somewhere in the filmy screen 
 The giant-hearted city throbbed unseen 
 With busy murmur far away and low. 
 And faint lamps like an archipelago. 
 
 At once then from the dark pier's utmost head 
 There came a sparkle and then a gleam of light 
 
 That grew into a steady coal of red — 
 A glowing ruby on the breast of night ; 
 And now I traced with this for guide 
 The whole course of the river's tide : 
 By what dim shores, along the island's lea, 
 By golden sands into the heaving sea ; 
 I saw the great piles towering to the clouds. 
 The belfry, and the streets with restless crowds. 
 
 J. Daubensee in the Gemmi Pass. 
 
 Lifeless — for what life should flutter here ? 
 
 Through this silence if a wing might glisten. 
 Leaves might rustle or the wind walk clear. 
 
 Would the startled sense not stop to listen; 
 Would not sight be sound to famished ear ? 
 
 Hardly even airiest echo finds 
 
 Covert in these caverns, hardly winds 
 Faintest horn across their shadows drear. 
 
 73 
 
Impressions, 
 
 Bleak and gray and bare the billows lie. 
 Wave on wave of stony sea unbreaking ; 
 
 Here a dreaming desert, there a sky 
 
 Darkling on those depths where sleeps unwaking 
 
 Water wan as stirless wastes near by. 
 
 Where the wind will never bend to trace 
 Lightest smile upon the brooding face — 
 
 Never ripple curl and break and die. 
 
 Not for suns was made this soundless deep. 
 
 Not for suns and stars to lie reflected. 
 Here shall never foam-bow bend or leap, 
 
 Moonlight silver, cloud-shade pass dejected; 
 From its banks no marish-reeds shall peep, 
 
 Shallows shiver or the wind-flower bloom; 
 
 Laughter lightens not the dusky gloom 
 Nor any noon shall stir its sombre sleep. 
 
 From this height what fiend of wrath or fear. 
 Gazing on some space of turbid ocean. 
 
 Stretched his hand and saw the surges rear, 
 Stricken at his word from aimless motion, 
 
 Rocks whose bastions, sullen now and sere. 
 Chill the heart with such a force of woe 
 As the master's deathless pages show 
 
 Speechless in the heavy heart of Lear ? 
 
 74 
 
Impressions, 
 
 ^. The English Channel. 
 
 Wan cliffs that watch with wrinkled changeless faces 
 The wide-winged ships forever pass and pass. 
 
 Cliffs on whose tops the wind with restless paces 
 Treads the thin cincture of the tawny grass ; 
 
 Beneath, a sombre reach of leaden deep 
 
 Writ strangely o'er with stranger tides that sweep 
 Round those lean scythes of rock await for ships 
 About the pulsing waters' haggard lips. 
 
 The sea-mews circle and the slim mists hover. 
 The low dull clouds roll on their sullen way, 
 
 Winds moan, waves rise and long gray shadows cover 
 Faint foreland, drooping down, and smileless bay; 
 
 And grim lone warder isles by whose piled foam 
 
 The sweet-souled Raleigh sought his thankless home. 
 The pirate Drake fared on his sordid quest, 
 The Pilgrim steered stout-hearted for the west. 
 
 1^ 
 
ACHIEVEMENT. 
 
 In the vast mid-sea, with tireless toil and care, 
 The wind has built of clearest chrysoprase. 
 
 Of greenest emerald and of topaz rare, 
 
 A girdled tower to guard untrodden ways. 
 
 And on the summit that the sun hath crowned 
 Gleam brighter buds than ever garden grew. 
 
 Lovelier lilies than have blessed the ground. 
 Whiter roses than have thanked the dew. 
 
 And at a breath the buds burst forth in bloom. 
 And at a breath the stately tower falls. 
 
 No leaf is left nor any chance perfume. 
 
 Nor trace of wonder of the gleaming walls. 
 
 76 
 
THE OLD HOUSE AT WARAMAUG. 
 
 Of what use are the odors of the birch and piney 
 thicket 
 That blow all day through the deserted rooms ? 
 Of what use is the rose that climbs atop the 
 mouldering wicket. 
 Loading the idle air with its perfumes ? 
 For no one hears the piping of the bluebird soft 
 and mellow 
 Nor nightly whistle of the whippoorwill : 
 And there is none to mark what pools of daisies, 
 white and yellow. 
 Break on the barren bases of the hill. 
 
 n 
 
The Old House at Waramaug, 
 
 A brooding silence as of men long perished and 
 forgotten 
 Dwells in the empty chambers' musty breath ; 
 The tapping of the woodpecker upon the timbers 
 rotten 
 Sounds through the echoing house the doom of 
 death. 
 And where are now the faces that belike with eager 
 fancies 
 Have gazed from out these windows on this scene ? 
 Where are the children that in sport and merry 
 dances 
 Have worn with tireless feet the dooryard green? 
 I seem to see on door and lintel still the little fingers 
 That tore black cherries from the drooping bough ; 
 A faery echo of their thrilling mirth and laughter 
 lingers — 
 Voices that in the grave are silent now. 
 
 The sound of war has echoed up and down these 
 quiet valleys, 
 And when soul-trying days were big with fate 
 From out this door the farmer has gone forth to 
 patriot rallies, 
 Leaving a woman's heart to weep and wait. 
 
 78 
 
The Old House at Waramaug, 
 
 And all life's round, from dawn to dark, has filled 
 its tangled history 
 Within the circuit of these narrow walls : 
 The living face upon the dead one laid — the pain 
 and mystery. 
 And sobbing voices through the darkened halls. 
 
 Those tears are dried now; eyes they dimmed, 
 beyond the misty curtain 
 Ceased long ago to heed of grief or mirth ; 
 One tale of men and dwellings! Lo! this home 
 with doom as certain 
 Sinks back again within the arms of Earth. 
 Has everything beneath the sun its purpose and its 
 mission. 
 In an unending chain predestined place ? 
 Or happens it by chance that unto this or that 
 condition 
 It serves the uses of a feeble race ? 
 
LAS GUASIMAS. 
 
 June 26 J 1 8^8. 
 
 We saw them in the streets go to and fro 
 
 As other men, 
 The godHke strength beneath the careless show 
 
 Unnoted then; 
 Unseen the faith, the fervor undefined, 
 Unspoken love that faith and flag enshrined 
 
 And self resigned. 
 
 One was a man unknown, of sturdy frame, 
 
 Who toiled for bread ; 
 One was a fair-faced youth who bore the name 
 
 Of patriot dead ; 
 But, brothers all, fought onward side by side 
 For one great cause in the rush of that fierce tide. 
 
 And brothers — died. 
 
 And not as men commanded or for hire 
 
 They did and dared ; 
 Serene they went, as martyrs to the fire 
 
 Their bosoms bared; 
 To lift a fallen race they fought the fight. 
 They kept the faith, they brought fair freedom's light,. 
 
 And scattered night. 
 
 80 
 
Las Guasimas, 
 
 Daybreak in Cuba ! and a light that ran 
 
 The world around. 
 And trumpets sounding, "Where man died for man 
 
 Is holy ground ! " 
 The light of the republic ! Where it flies 
 Old bat-like wrongs take flight, oppression dies. 
 
 And men arise. 
 
 We in that new day's dawn-glow, here above 
 
 Their sacred dust. 
 Wreathe now with hope that conquers tears, with love 
 
 And new-sprung trust ; 
 The victor's laurel for a duty done, 
 A people freed, a reign of love begun, 
 
 A land made one. 
 
 These to their rest the while the vibrant voice 
 
 Of ages calls : 
 " Oh, mother of heroic men, rejoice 
 
 Within thy walls ! 
 A legion of such sons from sea to sea 
 Stand forth, stern-browed, strong armed, to keep thee 
 free. 
 
 Or die with thee ! " 
 
 8i 
 
THE FLEET AT SANTIAGO. 
 
 July J, i8g8. 
 
 The heart leaps with the pride of their story. 
 
 Predestinate lords of the sea ! 
 They are heirs of the flag and its glory, 
 
 They are sons of the soil it keeps free ; 
 For their deeds the serene exaltation 
 
 Of a cause that was stained with no shame, 
 For their dead the proud tears of a nation, 
 
 Their fame shall endure with its fame. 
 
 The fervor that grim, unrelenting, 
 
 The founders in homespun had fired. 
 With blood the free compact cementing. 
 
 Was the flame that their souls had inspired. 
 They were sons of the dark tribulations. 
 
 Of the perilous days of the birth 
 Of a nation sprung free among nations, 
 
 A new hope to the children of earth ! 
 
 82 
 
The Fleet at Santiago, 
 
 They were nerved by the old deeds of daring, 
 
 Every tale of Decatur they knew, 
 Every ship that, the bright banner bearing. 
 
 Shot to keep it afloat in the blue ; 
 They were spurred by the splendor undying 
 
 Of Somers' fierce fling in the bay. 
 And the watchword that Lawrence died crying. 
 
 And of Cushing's calm courage were they. 
 
 By the echo of guns at whose thunder 
 
 Old monarchies crumbled and fell. 
 When the war ships were shattered asunder 
 
 And their pennants went down in the swell ; 
 By the strength of the race that, unfearing, 
 
 Faces death till the death of the last. 
 Or has sunk with the fierce Saxon cheering. 
 
 Its colors still nailed to the mast — 
 
 So they fought — and the stern race immortal 
 
 Of Cromwell and Hampton and Penn 
 Has thrown open another closed portal. 
 
 Stricken chains from a new race of men. 
 So they fought, so they won, so above them 
 
 Blazed the light of a consecrate aim ; 
 Empty words ! Who may tell how we love them. 
 
 How we thrill with the joy of their fame ! 
 
 83 
 
THE LAST OF THE ARMADA. 
 
 1^88— i8g8. 
 
 The slow revolving wheel 
 Brings round her doom that was the nation's pest. 
 Thunder that shook the sturdy English keel, 
 Thunder that threatened from the toppling crest 
 When torn clouds whirled across the watery West 
 And swept her great fleet in a tangled reel, 
 Rising and gathering these three hundred years, 
 Falls and scatters to the dust 
 The structure built of blood and lust, 
 Cemented with men's tears. 
 
 Behold that work is done ! 
 No brighter for the wide world was the flash 
 
 84 
 
The Last of the Armada, 
 
 On England's seas of England's earliest gun, 
 Nor sweeter sang the tempest's hollow clash 
 Nor dearer was the swinging of its lash, 
 Since there, as here, the centuries' cause was one. 
 As one still smoulders in the Viking's race 
 The fervor of the sea that wakes 
 When from the sloping billow breaks 
 The sea salt in the face. 
 
 The score is even now ; 
 Nor ours, but that great grudge of all mankind 
 For her that ever bore against the brow 
 Of man enslaved the brand, and for his mind 
 The shackles ; she that made his young eyes blind. 
 And fed his soul with falsehood of her vow ; 
 Whose pall of plagues and curses weft made way 
 
 When through the May-tide morning's smoke 
 
 Guns of the later Howard woke 
 The thunders of the bay. 
 
 They might not co-exist. 
 These twain — man's sign of hope and this the worst 
 Of the signs of darkness, hope's antagonist. 
 The sword was in their hands whose sires had first 
 Panted for freedom with a quenchless thirst ; 
 The sun was on their brows her lips had kissed 
 
 85 
 
The Last of the Armada, 
 
 Before all others ; peace might easier be 
 In sea-tides when a great wind blows 
 Than peace between fair freedom's foes 
 And sons she had set free. 
 
 Time takes his bright bead-roll 
 Of men heroic — all that ever smote 
 The tyrant, from that lonely silent soul 
 That beat her down by many a lowland moat, 
 And Bolivar with sword across her throat, 
 Great name by name along the splendid scroll 
 To him that died ere Cuba's morning came ; 
 Then writes across the golden lines: 
 "A Wrong Set Right at Last," and signs 
 Our brave old Admiral's name ! 
 
 For as one figure rose 
 With masterful stern brow and clearest eyes 
 To lead and light the earlier band whose blows 
 First made her tremble, in these brighter skies, 
 Fulfilled of promise, men have seen arise 
 One destined for the weary struggle's close 
 To whom the years looked forward, who should bring 
 
 To lands within her shadow day ; 
 
 As after darkest Winter May 
 
 Comes with the blossomed Spring. 
 
 86 
 
The Last oj the Armada. 
 
 Not that these dead are dead — 
 Nay, never that — the rising of the heart 
 And throbbing; nor only for the sounding tread 
 Of arms triumphant ; but the mighty part 
 Fate has ordained us that the bitter smart 
 Of far mankind, throne-bound and bHndly led. 
 Should be our healing; ours to spread afar 
 The rule of man for rule of kings. 
 And further on her viewless wings 
 The future's unswayed star. 
 
 Not for ourselves alone. 
 Not for ourselves, with narrow brow of care, 
 The sacred fire that freed, the light that shone. 
 The heritage of hope and faith we share ; 
 Not ours to hoard and hide, but ours to bear 
 Wherever dawn is late or man makes moan : 
 Lo! with this day a broader vision, gift 
 
 Beyond all gifts of battle, spread 
 
 Through doubts that died and fears that fled, 
 An ever-widening rift ! 
 
 87 
 
THE FIFTEENTH OF FEBRUARY. 
 
 i8()8—i8gg. 
 
 Is it not well, my brethren ? They whose sleep 
 
 Beneath the nodding palm, 
 Where the strong currents of the trade wind sweep. 
 
 Is measureless and calm. 
 If from those loyal lips, now one year dumb. 
 One word across the heaving seas might come. 
 
 What other word 
 Than this should hail the morning ? Might they know 
 That where the tides past grim Cabanas flow 
 The mirrored glories of their banner glow, 
 
 What other cheer be heard ? 
 
 88 
 
The Fifteenth of February, 
 
 Is it not well — the surer, stronger sight 
 
 And for that pain and shame 
 The sense of all things slowly set aright 
 
 Unto a destined aim ? 
 That gazing where beyond our utmost dreams 
 The way new broken through the darkness gleams. 
 
 Fresh wreaths we bring, 
 And heeding all that these with life have bought. 
 What wondrous things the circling months have 
 
 wrought, 
 For these held dear in all a nation's thought 
 
 "Pro patria mori" sing. 
 
 Is it not well ? Pro patria mori ! Yea, 
 
 For her dear sake no less 
 Than those that on some hard-fought glorious day 
 
 Fall in the strife and stress. 
 Though not as Anglo-Saxons love to go, 
 Stern-set, hard-gripped, with answering blow for 
 blow — 
 
 Not thus they died — 
 Yet not without such sacrifice might be 
 Full wrought the perfect work of Liberty, 
 Nor we the children of her first-born see 
 
 Her sun-lit wings spread wide. 
 
 89 
 
The Fifteenth of February, 
 
 Is it not well ? Lo, where the shade was cast 
 
 Of out-worn kingly sway 
 To gloom the Future with a blighted Past, 
 
 That curse is swept away ; 
 And now above the fading dark arise 
 New constellations in the glittering skies ; 
 
 And in our ears, 
 That heard but now the universal groan. 
 The prison shot and tortured prisoner's moan. 
 The chorus of a people freed is blown 
 
 From the verge of coming years. 
 
 Is it not well that far beyond, below. 
 
 The market's empty strife 
 We have made sure what tides of feeling flow 
 
 To make the people's life ? 
 How deeply shrined the sacred flag has place 
 In all the toiling million-hearted race. 
 
 And at her need 
 The youthful giant of the nation wakes. 
 Within his hand a disused weapon takes, 
 Lays down for her his ready life, or shakes 
 
 The world with deathless deed. 
 
 Is it not well — the hope, as if new born. 
 The first of glimmering light. 
 
 90 
 
The Fifteenth of February, 
 
 The slender herald of the promised morn 
 
 Athwart the ancient night ? 
 That comes with healing for her wounded breast 
 Of that old East that is the radiant West 
 
 Of times to be ; 
 While in her prostrate place as loaded long 
 With chains of might and blinded hate and wrong. 
 She trembles at the first heard morning song 
 
 From across the morning sea ? 
 
 Is it not well, my brethren ? There is made 
 
 One song through all the land ; 
 Before one light old doubts and shadows fade. 
 
 With old lines drawn in sand. 
 The past lies dead. New sight, a broader view. 
 For the Republic sees a purpose new 
 
 Of boundless scope. 
 While like a sun that burns with clearer flame 
 Sweeps rising through the sky her spotless fame. 
 And lights a land that knows one love, one aim. 
 
 One flag, one faith, one hope. 
 
 91 
 
BOER AND BRITON. 
 
 Lo, in these forlornest limits, back to rock, 
 A hunted thing and followed far for prey. 
 
 Saddest offspring of the Silent One's great stock. 
 He, shorn of hope, turns sullenly at bay. 
 
 All the suns and seas have changed not, all the years 
 Have not made tame 
 
 Iron of that ancient blood that found no fears 
 In Alva's name. 
 
 Here as by the Northland meadows stands the race 
 
 Sternly grappled with the stronger foeman, face to face. 
 
 92 
 
Boer and Briton, 
 
 Here is never dike to open and no wave 
 
 To beat oppression down with friendly flood ; 
 Hither comes no Sidney, gallant heart and brave. 
 With purest sword that shed a tyrant's blood ; 
 Sons of her that in the world's great midnight shed 
 
 The earliest light, 
 Now by all that world forgotten and deserted 
 
 She once made bright, 
 Sons of those that fell by Leyden, sword in hand — 
 These shall well remember how to die for native 
 land. 
 
 She that heard not, cared not, when arose the cry 
 
 From lips made bloody by the Turkish heel ; 
 She that with turned head and drawn-back skirts 
 went by 
 When Crete from out her wound would pluck 
 the steel ; 
 She that smugly psalmed the sweets of peace to 
 others 
 
 And force abhorred — 
 This is she that now upon her weakest brothers 
 
 Sends fire and sword. 
 Ere her siren song had ceased or her words grown 
 
 cold. 
 Warring for some acres and a little paltry gold. 
 
 93 
 
Boer and Briton, 
 
 She that might have crowned the century's closing 
 hour 
 Aglow like morning with the signs of peace ; 
 She that might have cleansed her sumless sins of 
 power 
 And blown the trump that bids all wars to cease — 
 She the flag has stained a deeper crimson, red 
 
 With blood before ; 
 She has called a newer curse upon her head, 
 
 Curse-bowed of yore ; 
 She, still true to shame's traditions, here has made 
 Once again the roar of cannon " for the sake of 
 trade!" 
 
 "Progress," she will call it when the bullet sings 
 
 Across the barren furrow's trampled track ; 
 "Progress" march of torch and axe and flame that 
 flings 
 For light abroad the Old World's shadow back ; 
 "Progress" when the farmer Wrath goes forth and 
 sows 
 
 His direst seed. 
 When about her throat the weaker nation knows 
 
 The hands of greed; 
 Shall we call it "progress" when this bitter root 
 Bears of fierce undying hatred all its fatal fruit ? 
 
 94 
 
Boer and Briton, 
 
 Blazon victories on these pigmies, you have need, 
 
 Sing songs of triumph, make the utmost air 
 Echo vi^ith the praise of this your gallant deed 
 
 Where thousands bearded tw^enty in their lair. 
 Shouting streets are not the future, loud acclaim 
 
 Will not avail 
 When its sure relentless finger points to shame 
 
 This wretched tale ; 
 All your songs will turn not back the hands that 
 
 write 
 This the crime that makes fair Poland's murder all 
 but white. 
 
 95 
 
NIKOLSON'S NEK. 
 
 Nataly Oct. jo, i8gg. 
 
 Ho, ancient bully, beaten to your knees. 
 
 Do you know her eyes that flame, her hands that 
 smite ? 
 
 Whose wrathful face and wide smooth brows 
 and white 
 And dented shield from countless fields like these 
 Gleamed fierce and fair among the rocks and trees 
 
 On Concord road ? Who through the weary night 
 
 Burned, though beclouded, till from Yorktown's 
 height 
 She crowned a people with their liberties ? 
 Yea, fear her ! This is she in whose sure scrolls 
 
 Is writ, blood-red, the record of your crime — 
 By what wrecked nations and what wretched souls. 
 
 What tears, what hate, what groveling and grime 
 Your rising — and the very tide that rolls 
 
 To hurl you headlong on the sands of Time ! 
 
 96 
 
BEFORE A GREUZE. 
 
 Museum of the Louvre. 
 
 Which shall I say is fairer — this face of thine, 
 With all its limpid lights and wondrous ways. 
 
 Its sudden flash of soul turned full on mine, 
 Its hints of roses and its dreams of days 
 Faint flushed like morning in a summer haze. 
 
 Its luminous depths of shadowy eyes that shine 
 
 With fleeting fires and fervors all divine ? 
 
 Or that calm changeless face his hand long dead 
 Wrought to the flying music of his dream. 
 
 When all the fairy flutes and trumpets bred. 
 With roseate glory and with purple beam, 
 A vision of the springtime all agleam 
 
 Where she went lowly, by her fancies led. 
 
 And one pure sunbeam crowned upon her head ? 
 
 97 
 
Before a Greuze, 
 
 From these mute moveless lips, I know, I know. 
 Shall never speech nor song nor sigh arise ; 
 
 Whatever whispers at these gates may grow 
 I shall not have one answer at these eyes; 
 There is no colder star in any skies. 
 
 Nor less responsive when the wind breathes low 
 
 That other Jungfrau's forehead wreathed in snow. 
 
 And thou, the rosy sweet antithesis. 
 
 Stand thou thus silent while my soul takes 
 note: 
 
 The ripe red lips that seem carved thus to kiss. 
 The warm dark hair about thy head afloat. 
 The slender curve of dainty chin and throat. 
 
 The memories of thy blameless mirth and bliss — 
 
 What now to these is beauty chill like this ? 
 
 Alas this parchment ! was it made to write 
 The lines thereon no wit may turn away ? 
 
 I search and find no scripture there tonight ; 
 Perchance the penman lingers till the day — 
 That grim old penman, busy, bent and gray, 
 
 Who finds soft cheeks like these, aflush and bright. 
 
 And leaves them scored and scribbled with his 
 might. 
 
 98 
 
Before a Greuze, 
 
 Grief is his word, and parting, and salt tears, 
 The path thick set with flowers where it begins 
 
 And paved with broken hopes by weary years. 
 With broken wings of phantom faiths and sins 
 And tiresome thoughts of the vanished goal none 
 wins, 
 
 The circling chase that never center nears, 
 
 And over all the tale of nameless fears. 
 
 But here his hand turns back ; he hath no power 
 To mar or maim upon this other face. 
 
 Or stain this snow with evil; hour by hour 
 
 And year by year Time keeps his wonted pace, 
 Yet if with aged eyes grown dim this place 
 
 I seek, with all joys else grown sere and sour, 
 
 I shall not find one blight on this fair flower. 
 
 Ah child, would that some power there were to 
 keeo 
 Thy bud half-opened perfect in its glow; 
 
 That some strange dew might drop on thee and steep 
 Thy beauty with its essence till the slow 
 Remorseless hand should fail or traceless go. 
 
 That change might dwell as light on thee as sleep 
 
 And these dark eyes might never droop to weep ! 
 
 LofC. 
 
 99 
 
Before a Greuze, 
 
 Lo now, the lily that seems like to thee, 
 
 Lo now, the snowdrift stainless as thou art — 
 
 Lo now, the bloom grown gray on the apple tree. 
 The curled sad lily leaves torn far apart. 
 The dull world's dust blown on the snowdrift's 
 heart ; 
 
 Shall all this woeful change and canker be 
 
 And this wan penman leave thy beauty free ? 
 
 So now I turn me to this canvas, where 
 
 With smile that fleets not, rose that shall not fade, 
 
 Looks out through tearless eyes my lady fair. 
 Ah saint, before thy feet my shrine is made. 
 Within thy little hands my heart is laid. 
 
 And like the matchless minstrel in his prayer 
 
 Behold my soul lies tangled in thy hair. 
 
 lOO 
 
SEVEN SONNETS TO JULIA MARLOWE. 
 
 The Art. 
 
 It is not only sheer similitude, 
 
 Nor recitation of the undying line ; 
 
 Not formal show nor accurate design. 
 With question of the poet's occult mood. 
 The hand upon the enchanted harp is rude. 
 
 Unskilful lingers seeking to define 
 
 Ethereal music in the thought divine. 
 When art and mechanism are at feud. 
 
 For true art takes small heed of surface things ; 
 
 Far from the plains where streams untroubled roll 
 It circles on the summits where the springs 
 
 Burst storm-lashed with the passion of the soul. 
 Sustained and poised upon two outstretched wings — 
 
 The Truth, and Intellectual Control. 
 
 lOI 
 
Seven Sonnets to Julia Marlowe, 
 
 'The Artist. 
 
 Yet more ; this colder reason bravely flies, 
 
 And fails and falters ; still the soul saith naught 
 Of subtler feelings ; shall we then take thought 
 
 Of all that sways us ? Come where Juliet lies 
 
 Calm after tempest, or cold Scottish skies 
 
 Fade over Mary, where the snare has caught 
 A boy's soul singing, or with laughter fraught 
 
 Through Arden trips the trim maid in disguise — 
 
 Ah, not with calmly reasoned why or how 
 
 We shall make count of ways elusive, whence 
 The mind, it may be in its own despite. 
 Finds dreamed-of cloudland all made living! Now 
 Remains clear vision seen with surer sense. 
 Whereof a part is loveliness, part light. 
 
 I02 
 
Seven Sonnets to yulia Marlowe, 
 
 Juliet. 
 
 It was not summer's ripening breath that blew 
 With perfumed eddies round and round the close. 
 To charm from out the bud the perfect rose 
 
 Of love that midst the dead leaves sweetly grew. 
 
 But as its half-oped folds were touched with dew 
 The blinded gardener Fate, that never knows 
 If weed or lily in his garden grows, 
 
 Across the silken sheath his sickle drew. 
 
 It died and dies not ; ere the years had shed 
 Their sad forgetful dust above its head 
 
 The soul of deathless life was breathed from him 
 Whose word lives ever ; as for us again 
 In you this flower blossoms love and pain 
 
 Beheld through eyes that tears have made all dim. 
 
 103 
 
Seven Sonnets to yulia Mar/owe. 
 
 Beatrice. 
 
 She will not love, not she — nay. Love, depart — 
 She is love-proof and panoplied in mirth 
 By that same star that danced above her birth ; 
 
 So says she. At the word Love's puny dart 
 
 A way finds through wit's armor to her heart. 
 She bravely jests of poor men made of earth 
 The while the love she says is nothing worth 
 
 Becomes her master. So transcends your art. 
 
 "We'll not be moved," we say. "Why should we 
 care 
 For these old tales of triumph or distress. 
 
 And woes of folk that long have passed away?'* 
 And then — a word — the smile — the rippling hair. 
 Or but the far-off rustle of your dress, 
 And the old thraldom reasserts its sway. 
 
 104 
 
Seven Sonnets to yulia Marlowe. 
 
 Viola. 
 
 " Poor lady, she were better love a dream ! " 
 Olivia's fate we fathom by our own ; 
 Yet waver whether dreams that thus are shown 
 
 Or cold sun-light be clearer ; elusive seem 
 
 The gliding figure and the face, the gleam 
 Of tears or laughter in her eyes, the tone 
 So soft she speaks in sometimes, when unknown 
 
 She loves by stealth or has her joy supreme. 
 
 Yea, like a dream may all be when we muse 
 Hereafter — all but of the tender maid 
 
 This portrait. Like the faces of our youth. 
 That with shut eyes we see and cannot lose, 
 It lingers — Time nor Change may never fade 
 Its perfect beauty, which is perfect truth. 
 
 105 
 
Seven Sonnets to yulia Marlowe, 
 
 Rosalind. 
 
 From out the pages of the Master's book — 
 Doublet and hose new russet Hke the morn, 
 A spear within her slim white fingers borne — 
 
 Comes now the very Rosalind that took 
 
 Captive his fancy ; so in forest nook 
 
 He dreamed her, going past the flowered thorn. 
 All woman heart, all love in spite of scorn 
 
 For love, soothly pretended; as we look 
 
 A world of toil and tangled trouble fades; 
 As if to some Elizabethan seer 
 
 Dim Elfland comes again : and, straying, we, 
 Forgetful in its fairy lights and shades, 
 A sound as of a harp long silent hear ; 
 A face as of a long-sought singer see. 
 
 1 06 
 
Seven Sonnets to yuiia Marlowe, 
 
 Chatterton, 
 
 He went his way to rest with weary feet. 
 
 Home-turning as one would that long had strayed 
 In stoniest pathways, for his love repaid 
 
 With mocking laughter, for his singing sweet 
 
 With fast-shut door and wind-swept echoing street. 
 Tired eyes and hopeless heart to the great shade 
 Crept beaten back at last but unafraid. 
 
 And stilled were wings for a sodden world too fleet. 
 
 He went his way; and we, in whose charmed ears 
 Live still the sound and throbbing of his song, 
 
 But for this picture of his darkening years 
 
 Might nothing know how bruised and baffled long 
 
 His soul soared singing to the brightest spheres 
 From that salt gulf of bitterness and wrong. 
 
 107 
 
TO PHILIP MASSINGER, "A STRANGER/* 
 
 {In the Chancel of Old St. Saviour s, Southwark.) 
 
 Alone thy spirit went, thy thoughts alone, 
 
 Scorner of courts and pomps and tinsel kings. 
 Watchman of morning and the light that brings 
 
 Freedom to men, crushing of tyrant's throne. 
 
 And retribution for the people's moan ! 
 
 Beneath the shadow of the brooding wings 
 In gloom and sorrow were thy wanderings. 
 
 And men to him that loved them gave — this stone; 
 
 But now to us no more ** a stranger " thou; 
 
 From lands beyond thy dreaming come acclaim 
 And hail of "Brother," after all these years — 
 ** Brother and seer! " Sweet face and mournful brow 
 Are known and loved of all men, as thy name 
 And sad soul-song and story, read through tears. 
 
 io8 
 
SWITZERLAND. 
 
 Six hundred years she has held up the light. 
 Six hundred years her loveliest of all faces. 
 Transfigured, £rm and fair above the spaces 
 
 Abyssmal where the melancholy blight 
 
 Of thrones and priests hangs Hke a dawnless night 
 That all men's souls embitters or abases. 
 Has shone a sign and symbol to all races 
 
 That dared or hoped a king or wrong to smite. 
 
 She has shone on, a signal of such splendor, 
 As shine her mountain heads beneath her sun. 
 
 While crowns and mitres darken nor defend her. 
 Nor any stain makes dim her proud deeds done; 
 
 The ancient thongs may neither bind nor bend her. 
 To whom her liberty and life are one. 
 
 109 
 
^-.J.. 
 
 BEETHOVEN, OP. 13. 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 He saw two visions of the solemn deep 
 
 Tone-built before him — here drives down the gale 
 A battered wreck of ship or soul with sail 
 
 Storm-sundered, flung from darkling steep to steep; 
 
 Green wrath of gloomy hollows, waves that leap 
 To pluck souls deathwards, lips and faces pale 
 And sounds of weeping, and behind a veil 
 
 Of thickening storm-clouds all fair lights asleep. 
 
 The other showed a haven fringed with green, 
 A white-armed bay with stirless depths between. 
 On whose unruffled purple, won at last, 
 The latest sunset from beyond the bar. 
 Where touched with gold the baffled breakers are, 
 A blessing beams on doubts and dangers past. 
 
 1 10 
 
BENEFICENCE. 
 
 So all this golden splendor is for man ; 
 For him alone the azure of the skies, 
 For him the temples of the clouds arise. 
 
 The great trees rear their solemn arch and span. 
 
 The breeze is sent alone his cheeks to fan, 
 And morning, with its ever fresh surprise, 
 Designed alone to please his wondering eyes. 
 
 That he may know the greatness of the plan. 
 
 But cycles ere man came the sunshine grew 
 
 Into this rosy softness on the hills. 
 And just such dreamy breaths of Summer olew. 
 
 Whose thymy fragrance from the woodside fills 
 These portals — and the blue-bells in the woods 
 
 Still bloomed in Cenozoic solitudes. 
 
 1 1 1 
 
"THE SLEEPLESS SOUL." 
 
 Sl Mary Redcliffe Churchy Bristol. 
 
 Lost face that in thy songs we fain had sought. 
 Face starward turned or with wild visions glowing ; 
 Head bowed intent when through the transept 
 flowing 
 
 Came solemn trumpet strains with old dreams fraught ; 
 
 Eyes in whose depths the restless soul-fires wrought, 
 And brow left bare by careless locks back flowing — 
 These, faded long from mortal sight or knowing, 
 
 Puzzle with fleeting forms our gainless thought. 
 Yet harken ! Now when sunset shadows creep 
 Down the dim chancel and the day winds sleep. 
 
 Silver and sure a voice as of one singing, 
 
 Attuned of hawthorn and the blossomed May, 
 Of shepster maidens and the midnight fay, 
 
 Dawns on the breathless darkness, clearly ringing. 
 
 I 12 
 
THE EMPRESS THEODORA. 
 
 [Benjamin-Constant.) 
 
 Strange reds and purples shine, shot through and 
 through 
 The robe that round her lithe slim body clings. 
 Strange like the red that subtly burns and stings 
 
 One looking past the clear untroubled dew 
 
 Of proud wide eyes that take the world in view 
 Into her soul, with soiled and weary wings. 
 Steeped in a furnace of all scarlet things, 
 
 Sick with sin's perfume and hot even hue. 
 
 Thy little feet hard pressed against the floor. 
 The shapely sweet erect imperial head, 
 Thine incense and thy beauty round thee shed. 
 That with more gazing grows and steals the more — 
 Nay, what are these? About thee and before 
 
 Crowd shapes of thine old years, and these — all 
 red ! 
 
 Municipal Museum^ Amsterdam. 
 
 in 
 
FRUITION. 
 
 What soil but bitter soil of pain may grow 
 The perfect petals of immortal song. 
 Whose seed, sown sure by some hot hate of wrong,, 
 
 Lies in a lap more lifeless still than snow 
 
 Except a grief has made the glebe-land glow. 
 
 And tears that fell unheard the whole night long 
 Drop as the dews that make the sweet stems strong 
 
 And odorous blooms athwart the dawn to blow ? 
 
 Yea, note what strange and soaring rhapsody 
 
 Floats through the boyish Rowley's lonely years. 
 
 What vision of the vast eternity 
 
 Before the sightless Milton's eyes uprears. 
 
 What wild sad strains of sorrow's ecstacy 
 
 There by the Thames the last great singer hears! 
 
 114 
 
CHANGE. 
 
 Another face at her old window pane 
 
 Where still her little vines and roses grow — 
 And all the glories of the sunset glow 
 
 Crimson the far-spun wrack for me in vain. 
 
 Change has its will through tides of loss and gain. 
 But I — I did not think that I should know 
 
 Another face at her old window pane 
 
 Where still her little vines and roses grow. 
 
 The same old house, the same strait shaded lane, 
 The same grey apple trees set in a row — 
 Here is no place, O soul, arise and go. 
 
 For there looks forth, while all dear memories wane. 
 
 Another face at her old window pane. 
 
 115 
 
MARCH. 
 
 When through the woods March as a huntsman goes 
 With brazen bugle at his tireless lips, 
 
 And all the beaten hillside while he blows 
 Crackles with echoes of his snapping whips 
 And clatter of the spear about his hips, 
 
 Before the redbreast shows a whirling wing 
 The smallest buds peer on the lilac tips 
 
 And blackbirds chide the tardy march of Spring. 
 
 Then with impatient steps, ere evening glows, 
 My lady from her pearly covert slips 
 
 Made in the hollow hills that no man knows. 
 And fast beneath the humming boughs she trips 
 
 ii6 
 
March. 
 
 All rosy to her slender finger tips. 
 She harkens where the hunting bugles sing 
 
 Yet stops to note how frost the red bud nips 
 And blackbirds chide the tardy march of Spring. 
 
 A chanson from her flying footsteps grows, 
 A woven thing of winter's swift eclipse. 
 
 Of coming woodbine in the odorous close, 
 Of scents and sounds among the clover strips 
 And one wee stream that down a green rock drips. 
 
 It is for her the joyous birches fling 
 
 Their arms abroad, his head the grey oak dips. 
 
 And blackbirds chide the tardy march of Spring. 
 
 Ah, loiterer, leave thy musty tomes and scrips 
 
 For sharp red boughs, and brakes where trumpets 
 ring; 
 
 My lady waits, the keen air stings and snips. 
 
 And blackbirds chide the tardy march of Spring. 
 
 117 
 
HELVETIA. 
 
 Ah land of greenest vales and stainless snow, 
 
 Freedom and all dear things were thine of yore : 
 Thine is the soil where all dear flowers grow. 
 
 Clear as the fires that on thy mountains glow, 
 
 Sweet as thy streams, thy fame has gone before. 
 Ah land of greenest vales and stainless snow ! 
 
 Thine was the sword that struck the earliest blow. 
 
 The hand that first the tyrant's ensign tore — 
 Thine is the soil where all dear flowers grow. 
 
 When night lay hard on other lands below. 
 
 Dawn on thy hills her flight prepared to soar. 
 Ah land of greenest vales and stainless snow ! 
 
 Still in the vanguard dost thy standard go. 
 
 Freedom means not the less to thee but more. 
 Thine is the soil where all dear flowers grow. 
 
 Speak now, Tell's land, to us that we may know 
 
 What lights shone all thy glorious pathway o'er. 
 Ah land of greenest vales and stainless snow. 
 Thine is the soil where all dear flowers grow. 
 
 ii8 
 
ft^^^^^^::> 
 
 Q::> 
 
 v^-'f- et 
 
 THE MUSIC OF MEIRINGEN. 
 
 Asleep beneath the vast bare depths of blue 
 The wide green valley is so warm and bright 
 
 That all the flying river takes its hue 
 
 And green seem all the lower shafts of light. 
 Full noon is here as calm as any night. 
 The wind, the bold-heart lover, will not dare 
 To twine his lingers in the wild-flower's hair 
 
 Because one long deep chord forever thrills 
 To silence all the wonder of the air — 
 
 The trumpets of the streams among the hills. 
 
 A long cloud slowly drifts the great vault through, 
 Like nothing on the earth so soft and slight, 
 
 119 
 
The Music of Meiringen, 
 
 And at its parting flashes into view, 
 
 With upHft forehead clear and wide and white, 
 The goddess from whose helm take instant flight 
 The lances of the sun. But not the glare 
 Of those bright glittering points that earthward 
 bear 
 
 Nor yet her strange and solemn beauty stills 
 The strains of that persistent chorus there. 
 
 The trumpets of the streams among the hills. 
 
 At midday in the glen the mad brook's dew 
 
 The leaves impearl, caught in its midmost flight. 
 
 Forlorn while these perennial youth renew 
 
 The grey old castle dreams and dreams upright ; 
 And dwarfed beneath measureless dim height 
 The little church half hides its dull gray square 
 Clasped round by boughs as with a loving care. 
 
 Hark now this music ! How it swells and fills 
 All hearts with ecstacy anigh despair. 
 
 The trumpets of the streams among the hills! 
 
 Alas ! the dull cold streets that blink and stare ! 
 Ah, Queen of Valleys ! Would I might be where 
 
 With lighter notes of fluting brooks and rills 
 Rises that symphony beyond compare. 
 
 The trumpets of the streams among the hills. 
 
 I20 
 
AT THUN. 
 
 So faint and sweet about the woven trees 
 
 I know at Thun the waves of music beat. 
 Alas! I hear no other melodies 
 So faint and sweet. 
 
 Across the little lake with glittering feet 
 
 The new moon slips, her shadowy draperies 
 Streaming behind her in her swift retreat. 
 
 Now as her last bright glimmerings shine and cease 
 
 I know just how along the lonely street 
 One footstep falls like rain on summer seas, 
 So faint and sweet. 
 
 121 
 
ON BARBARA'S BIRTHDAY. 
 
 A-tiptoe on the verge of life's sweet Spring, 
 
 Eager and fain, she stands, 
 With three bright pearls upon a golden string 
 
 Held in her rosy hands. 
 
 No lore of all the wise 
 
 Is deeper than her eyes. 
 
 In whose soft radiance lies 
 No shade of sorrow's pinions as lakelets mirror skies 
 
 By some rare wisdom that ye shall not know 
 She has this gift of grace, 
 
 122 
 
On Barbara s Birthday, 
 
 To heal each harrowed heart of all its woe 
 
 That looks upon her face ; 
 
 For old Grief may not dare 
 
 To lurk or linger where 
 
 With breath of balmy air 
 The Queen puts forth her sceptre and makes the 
 darkness fair. 
 
 If joy return like blowing bloom and leaf 
 
 Unto his hand that sows, 
 And through the sun to gold of garnered sheaf 
 
 The seed implanted grows, 
 
 In all thy days shall be 
 
 No fruit but joy for thee 
 
 That sowest only glee 
 And drivest forth old sorrow as mists drive on 
 the sea. 
 
 What shall the fourth pearl's magic mean 
 
 When on its slender strand 
 With its illumined fellows, O my queen, 
 
 Strung by thy slender hand? 
 
 So may its tenderest ray 
 
 Light all your widening way 
 
 And all its colors play 
 With music shed about you and hope like dawn of day. 
 
 123 
 
DEAD MUSIC. 
 
 I shall not hear again the notes 
 
 That once beneath her fingers grew. 
 
 What are all strains of warbling throats ? 
 
 I shall not hear again the notes. 
 
 Some tear-touched memory of them floats 
 Like dimmest clouds across the blue, 
 
 But I shall not hear again the notes 
 That once beneath her fingers grew. 
 
 124 
 
THE CHIMERA. 
 
 Museum of the Luxembourg. 
 
 He does not care how deep the sharp claws sink. 
 While all his eager soul starts from his lips 
 With mouth close pressed to her's the draught he 
 sips, 
 
 Tip-toe upon a soundless cavern's brink. 
 
 What is before he does not heed nor think. 
 
 Nor how the red blood from his torn side drips; 
 
 He does not care how deep the sharp claws sink 
 While all his eager soul starts from his lips. 
 
 The fierce sweet eyes above him flame and blink, 
 About his heart one fierce hand grips and grips. 
 Dark wings may flutter for his soul's- eclipse 
 But while those lips in one long rapture link. 
 He does not care how deep the sharp claws sink. 
 
 125 
 
MEMORIES OF THE RIFFELBERG. 
 
 The shadows of the hills were purple then. 
 
 What would they seem if with bowed head again 
 Retracing all the dear dead paths of yore 
 Slowly I went where we two went before 
 
 Along the river and up the winding glen ? 
 
 The mists would not seem blue, I think, as when 
 Rapt with vain dreams we crept from haunts of men. 
 Alone I should not love that splendor more. 
 The shadows of the hills. 
 
 The subtle change that passes all our ken 
 
 All sights and sounds of mountain, sea and fen 
 
 Have changed with mine own soul. The river's 
 
 shore 
 Is barren grown, harsh all the tuneful roar 
 Of streams, and now a darkness comes to pen 
 The shadows of the hills. 
 
 126 
 
DER SILBjERHORN. 
 
 [Bernese Oberland.) 
 
 What god must set it to his lips and blow? 
 
 Some god it is, for in the early morn, 
 Before the gold has touched the topmost snow. 
 
 Through far-off vales its great low chords 
 borne 
 
 From hill to hill, a flood so broad and deep 
 
 That all the oreads startle from their sleep. 
 Hushed now is all the clamor of the streams, 
 For rousing from her spell of vanished dreams. 
 
 Where on the sombre couch of night she lies. 
 The Jungfrau greets with reawakened gleams 
 
 Day's herald with sweet morning in his eyes. 
 
 are 
 
 127 
 
Der Silberhorn, 
 
 Strange are the notes, so solemn, sweet and slow, 
 As if for death of Nibelung or a Norn, 
 
 Or sightless souls along the vales should go 
 Seeking a mate, with heavy steps forlorn ; 
 While stifled sighs of other souls that weep 
 Rustle like winds from sterile steep to steep. 
 
 She has no care of these whose forehead seems 
 
 Kissed by the child of dawn with faintest leams, 
 She has no thought what lost soul lives or dies; 
 
 Of naught but of her boyish love she deems. 
 Day's herald with sweet morning in his eyes. 
 
 He has his other music too, I know. 
 
 This god that scatters silence with his horn. 
 
 Note when the sun-flood's golden overflow 
 
 Drenches the lowest rocks the streams have worn. 
 
 How jubilant his chantings then that keep 
 
 The leaves a-tremble through the valleys' sweep; 
 
 How soft when down the western verge the teams 
 
 Aurora loves are cloaked in ruddy steams ! 
 
 But though these were as sweet as her blue skies 
 
 One song of his far dearer she esteems. 
 
 Day's herald with sweet morning in his eyes. 
 
 Sweeter and lighter now the soft strains grow 
 As one by one the locks of night are shorn, 
 
 128 
 
Der Silberhorn, 
 
 The wild black locks in whose damp shades below 
 Hour after hour the nymphs enchanted mourn. 
 Now carven faces from the shadows creep 
 While slowly lapsing down the waveless deep 
 
 The dark subsides before the growing beams. 
 
 Mysterious fires above these lone supremes 
 
 Take up the songs that round her shrine arise. 
 
 And sprite to sprite among the grasses screams, 
 " Day's herald with sweet morning in his eyes ! ** 
 
 And next forgotten is the boding woe 
 
 That sounded first half melody, half scorn ; 
 
 And blither notes are his than winds that sow 
 The thistle-down or bend the rustling corn. 
 Forth from the trump the rippling measures leap 
 As prodigal he would his treasures heap. 
 
 Pouring his endless change of joyous themes 
 
 Beyond the valley's emerald extremes ; 
 
 For westward now night's last dim shadow flies. 
 
 And shines, while hill to hill with new light teems. 
 Day's herald with sweet morning in his eyes. 
 
 Fly from a world of sordid plots and schemes. 
 Where every aim debases or blasphemes. 
 
 O harken ! Full toned at last the great horn cries. 
 While half the world from guilt its voice redeems, 
 
 "Day's herald with sweet morning in his eyes!" 
 
 I 29 
 
CHATTERTON AT BRISTOL. 
 
 Along this lane, green-walled and starred with 
 flowers, 
 He walked with heart not too benumbed with pain 
 To note the depths of green in tree-arched bowers 
 Along this lane. 
 
 And like a tethered lark his heart in vain, 
 Captive to care that cankers or devours. 
 Soared and fell back upon its fated chain. 
 
 White daisies glistening from the fresh June 
 showers. 
 White hawthorne free as his own soul from stain — 
 Could all make bright his fleeting day as ours 
 Along this lane ? 
 
 130 
 
AT WILDERSWYL. 
 
 " How sweet the moonlight sleeps ! " 
 I did not know until at Wilderswyl 
 
 How sweet the moonlight sleeps, 
 
 For there above the vast and breathless deeps 
 The Jungfrau watches, spotless, stern and still , 
 And on that gleaming silver, pure and chill. 
 
 How sweet the moonlight sleeps ! 
 
 3^ 
 
THE TUNES OF MARCH. 
 
 What songs across the morning red, 
 Clear as the air, as crisp and keen, 
 Come when the maple buds first spread ? 
 
 The wind pipes hard in the oak long dead. 
 
 The redbreast twitters sharp and clean 
 What songs across the morning red? 
 
 For now all soft notes subtly bred 
 
 Deep in his heart as the grass turns green 
 Come when the maple buds first spread. 
 
 And with him freed from his frozen bed 
 
 The river hums his banks between 
 What songs across the morning red! 
 
 And sprites of flowers by the fairies led 
 
 With a hymn that heralds their radiant queen 
 Come when the maple buds first spread. 
 
 Oh, tunes of March, when the frost is fled ! 
 
 Like far off flute and tambourine 
 What songs across the morning red 
 Come when the maple buds first spread ! 
 
 132 
 
RINGGENBERG. 
 
 Crumbling, sad, forlorn and strange 
 Stands alone the grim grey tower, 
 
 Still defiant towards all Change 
 
 Though forlorn and sad and strange. 
 
 Through its halls the drear winds range. 
 Sighing for some sweet lost hour. 
 
 Crumbling, sad, forlorn and strange 
 Stands alone the grim grey tower. 
 
 133 
 
RETROSPECT. 
 
 Dead days and dreams beneath the full white moon 
 
 Come back like ghosts along the silent ways, 
 And night winds through the scarce-stirred leaves 
 attune 
 
 " Dead days." 
 
 No sunsets on the banks of purple haze, 
 
 No moonrise and no breathless autumn noon 
 But some lost strains of memory's music raise. 
 
 Yea, all sweet things the secret burden croon, 
 
 The doves, the waves, the word that childhood 
 says. 
 The moan of winter and the songs of June — 
 " Dead days." 
 
 134 
 
THE DREAMER. 
 I. 
 
 This maid of May with hlac in her hands, 
 
 With half-grown reddish maple in her hair 
 Touched with a fire of bronze across its strands. 
 
 And straight slim gown of white — is she not fair ? 
 
 Take now the light winged shoes she's wont to 
 wear, 
 Their little prints about the meadow streams; 
 
 What, shall not these heal every wound of care? — 
 But best, I think, are shadows, clouds and dreams. 
 
 135 
 
The Dreamer, 
 
 Or take the sunlight on the Autumn lands 
 
 When silent lies the wonder-smitten air 
 And every crimson oak-leaf moveless stands 
 
 And round-eyed asters on the hillside stare ; 
 
 Will grief still keep his well-remembered lair ? — 
 The symbols all of change, the wise man deems. 
 
 Sad change that hourly smites these wonders rare ; 
 But best, I think, are shadows, clouds and dreams. 
 
 Sometimes the frost comes silently and brands 
 Forest and brake with shining silver where 
 
 The white young limbs are bound in glittering bands ; 
 Then from the east that winds have swept all bare 
 The sudden sun strikes with a golden glare 
 
 And myriad jewels blaze with subtle gleams. 
 
 How now? Will never grief thy musings spare? — 
 
 But best, I think, are shadows, clouds and dreams. 
 
 Ah, temptress! Well I know thee singing there. 
 
 For all thy notes no less the wild world seems 
 Through leaves and lights to pipe a wild despair ; 
 
 But best, I think, are shadows, clouds and dreams. 
 
 136 
 
The Dreamer. 
 
 II. 
 
 With shining robes and helmet of new gold 
 
 Say fortune came, and in her outstretched hand 
 
 The sceptre of her power one might behold; 
 Say she before thy wondering eyes should stand 
 With all her glories at thy sole command 
 For but one crooking of thy stubborn knee ; 
 Now fresh as foam new blown upon the sea 
 
 She came, and thou — good lack ! how dull and grey 
 Would all thy foolish dreaming be to thee! — 
 
 But dreams endure ; all these shall pass away. 
 
 The splendor of the lists, the music rolled 
 
 From silver trumpets and from smiting brand. 
 
 The great fierce cheering throngs that close enfold 
 The joyous victor on whose brow the band 
 Of laurels twines by all sweet breezes fanned, 
 The homeward march with glorious din and glee. 
 All dreams to this are poor as poverty ! 
 
 Rise, take thy sword, have part in this great fray. 
 And make swift end of fruitless reverie ! — 
 
 But dreams endure ; all these shall pass away. 
 
 Thou seest the world's way, grown now wise as old. 
 What ! wilt thou be alone in all the land ? 
 
 13' 
 
The Dreamer, 
 
 Mark now : here runs with breakers dark and cold 
 Time's tide ; the world is as a golden strand 
 Whereon the wrecks lie scattered like the sand. 
 What boots it such a battered wreck to be ? 
 Make of the world a saving shore to lee. 
 
 Have use and profit of thy short-lived day — 
 A shadow's shadow seems all this to me. 
 
 But dreams endure; all these shall pass away. 
 
 Ah, harkeners to the world's mad melody. 
 Time of your utmost deeds shall take its fee ; 
 
 Of all your works what shall the dead years say ? 
 What stronghold buffets back their stern decree? 
 
 But dreams endure; all these shall pass away. 
 
 13' 
 
MARGUERITE. 
 
 She has no word to say. 
 Although she knows a heavy heart is mine. 
 
 She has no word to say. 
 But in the wise all-healing childhood's way 
 Her little arms about my neck entwine ; 
 Nay, while in tender eyes the sweet tears shine 
 
 She has no word to say. 
 
 139 
 
LAKE MICHIGAN IN JUNE. 
 
 The soft blue water sleeps and sleeps 
 
 Whatever change may pass above. 
 
 Dark still as brooding breast of dove. 
 The soft blue water sleeps and sleeps. 
 The summer wind-pufF creeps and creeps 
 
 And woos as with the kiss of love, 
 But the soft blue water sleeps and sleeps 
 
 Whatever change may pass above. 
 
 140 
 
TO BARBARA. 
 
 While you fare forth on your gracious way 
 You will not know what prayers I pray. 
 What songs I sing, nor how arise 
 Strange blinding mists before mine eyes. 
 Nor how for me the blue turns grey. 
 
 Hard grows the path and drear the day ; 
 But you — all things seem blithe and gay. 
 You have no sense of sobs or sighs 
 While you fare forth. 
 
 What are vain blasts that old hearts fray? 
 
 Or sad vain things that old lips say ? 
 Alas, lost face ! Between us lies 
 Too much of tears for any ties, 
 
 I know with measureless dismay 
 Wiiile you fare forth. 
 
 141 
 
BENJAMIN HARRISON. 
 
 Full on his forehead fell the expiring light 
 
 Of old wreathed altars where his fathers died. 
 While at his back the dull devouring night 
 Poured its advancing tide. 
 
 He would the ancient light relume, would fain 
 The dear old faith keep still without a blot. 
 The flag he fought for scathless of a stain. 
 The shield without a spot. 
 
 He sided with the weak and ceaseless strove 
 
 With failing hands against the tyrannous strong ; 
 Here was no place for him where unarmed Love 
 Is strangled by old Wrong. 
 
 Here was no place for him where Force and Greed 
 
 Upon the sacred fillets lay their hands 
 Red from the spoil of stricken souls that bleed 
 And wrecks of ruined lands. 
 
 142 
 
Benjamin Harrison. 
 
 He has won peace at last — the peace that knows 
 
 In dreamless tides no hint of hate or tears. 
 And falls where once his dauntless voice arose 
 The silence of the years. 
 
 And men walk by and gaze, and wondering ask. 
 Now that the white clear-visioned soul is fled[ 
 Where is the hand to seize the torch and task 
 New fallen from the dead? 
 
 Was all in vain ? Is any word of worth. 
 
 Though winged with truth and shot home to 
 the mark, 
 If all the answer is this silent earth 
 
 And lost voice in the dark? 
 
 But lost is never living word nor deed. 
 
 As toward great waves unseen the ripple flows. 
 As hour by hour, unguessed, the fervent seed 
 Up to the sunlight grows. 
 
 The true man's word, though sown in fallow soil 
 And fruitless lying many a day and night. 
 
 In its own way, beyond the sower's toil. 
 Bursts into deathless light. 
 March /^, igoi. 
 
 H3 
 
IN THE AUTUMN WOODS. 
 
 When the sun, low down, looks red and round 
 
 Across the dreaming Autumn haze. 
 And brown leaves tinkle along the ground 
 
 And brown birds pipe in the forest ways, 
 When dulled seems every common sound 
 
 To a far-off sense of lost summer days. 
 
 Then the nights are as lovely as the days 
 If chance the moon be full and round 
 
 And stainless shines through deserted ways 
 
 Where the boughs are traced on the leaf-strewn 
 ground. 
 
 And the winds have cleared the hovering haze. 
 Scarcely moving, without a sound. 
 
 And here is music, but never a sound, 
 The voiceless requiem of perished days 
 
 And of life that has finished its destined round. 
 In the sad-hued trees in the lonely ways 
 
 Sighing and mourning above the ground, 
 
 Wrapped in their mantles of dreaming haze. 
 
 144 
 
In the Autumn Woods, 
 
 For the strangest tints has this marvelous haze. 
 Colors that seem but the echoes of sound, 
 
 Tunes and chords in wonderful ways 
 
 As slowly it drifts the great hill around, 
 
 Red as the songs of summer days. 
 
 Purple as strains of the Autumn ground. 
 
 Sometimes it lies lovingly, close to the ground, 
 This lingering lover, the tinted haze. 
 
 Till a stray breeze scatters it round and round. 
 Or the noontide frights it up valley ways. 
 
 Where it hushes the lisp of the thin brook's sound 
 With a chilling whisper of frost-bound days. 
 
 Ah, slow is the march of the nights and days. 
 Crimson or gold on the yellow ground. 
 
 And yet too soon all the tender haze 
 Dies when the bugles of winter sound. 
 
 Hark ! from the depths of the hill-top ways 
 Ring the first notes of his choral round ! 
 
 Hence, lady ! hark ! round the shadowy ways, 
 
 Through the Autumn haze, on the mournful 
 ground. 
 The dead leaves sound but of vanished days! 
 
 145 
 
THE LONG FIGHT. 
 
 I. 
 
 Dreams ! but no dream is this, I know. 
 
 One cause through all the centuries ! Lo! 
 The chariot wheels go dripping blood as when 
 
 The chain-bound captives made them slow. 
 
 And gleaming spears, ranged row on row. 
 Flashed the imperial blight on souls of men. 
 
 Naught changes but the face and form. 
 Not often now, with sword to sharp sword set 
 And face to face opposed as sun to storm, 
 Man and his carnificial foe are met 
 In tense-drawn joy of open conflict. Yet 
 Not since the first dead tyrant lay along 
 The battle stays between the weak and strong. 
 Between the Truth and Wrong. 
 
 146 
 
The Long Fight, 
 
 II. 
 
 Because one thing has weaker grown. 
 
 Because the shadow of the throne 
 Dwells now less darkly in the wide world's breast. 
 
 Because less plain his might is known, 
 
 Or that his sceptre is not shown, 
 Think ye old Force is numb and laid to rest ? 
 
 Listen ! For this have heroes striven ? 
 This clank of unseen chain, as to his wheel 
 The fettered slave goes daily, lashed and driven. 
 This sound of hammered hearts like bits of steel. 
 This silent sentence wherefrom toilers feel 
 The long slow shadow, creeping like a blight. 
 Suppress, as some great starless darkness might. 
 The sovereign soul of light ? 
 
 III. 
 
 One cause ! For this in dimmer years 
 One man put by all doubts and fears. 
 
 Drew sword and smote till in the Southern sun. 
 Washed and made bright with many tears. 
 Proud and flung far amid its peers. 
 
 His flag flamed on a land made free and one. 
 So rose Italia ! But the strife 
 
 147 
 
The hong Fight, 
 
 That from her heart drove forth the vulture's beak 
 
 Knew never pause with her returning life! 
 
 Men in these pits of darkness turn to seek 
 
 A newer Garibaldi for the weak, 
 
 Whose sword ringed round with light that has not 
 
 waned 
 Leaves not the perfect Freedom still ungained. 
 The goal half way attained. 
 
 IV. 
 
 For this the blood of saints was shed, 
 
 The long roll of the deathless dead 
 For this has light and lustre like the sea. 
 
 From altar fires of old years fled 
 
 The future's portals glimmer red 
 With promise of the Freedom yet to be ; 
 
 For by the first bright glorious stain 
 Of Persian blood on Grecian sword, and by 
 The breast that gathered spears as golden grain. 
 The earliest light of morn in Concord's sky. 
 And those brave souls that by Colenso lie, 
 By all the deeds and daring of the past, 
 Reversed, prest on, she goes, or slow or fast. 
 To triumph at the last. 
 
 148 
 
The hong Fight, 
 
 V. 
 
 She knows all dark of bitter days, 
 She knows all thorns of stony ways ; 
 Of old her lighted fires, before her eyes. 
 Lost one by one their sanguine rays, 
 And from the temples to her praise 
 She saw the citadels of Force arise. 
 
 Defeat ! She hath drunk deep thereof 
 And known each smart of it and all the pain. 
 And wept for other sons that for her love 
 The voiceless darkness dared like these in vain. 
 But steadfast through all change of loss and gain. 
 From wasted blood heroic and old tears, 
 Democracy, this arch of coming years. 
 This perfect span, she rears. 
 
 London^ ^^Pretoria Day,*' June 5, igoo. 
 
 149 
 
Notes. 
 
 Page I. hiierlaketi. 
 
 In the little green park that fronts the main street of Interlaken 
 you shall see, on a fair day in summer, men and women seated on the 
 benches, gazing rapt, hour after hour, on that most wonderful of all 
 things wonderful and most beautiful of all things beautiful, the great 
 immaculate sheer front of the Jungfrau, towering between green foot- 
 hills. If you should gain the confidence of these obsessed ones they 
 might speak to you of strange matters, of the music they hear from 
 that awful beauty and gleaming brow, of things she says and dreams 
 she inspires. But so many better voices have sung of these mysteries! 
 
 Page 4. Le Triomphe de la Ripublique. 
 
 At the unveiling and dedicating of this magnificent monument and 
 fountain in the Place de la Nation, the procession consisted of the 
 artisans of Paris in their working clothes and bearing the tools of their 
 trades. The significance of this democratic ceremony should not be 
 overlooked in contemplating a work so noble, so graceful and so ex- 
 pressive of the aspirations, lofty ideals and exquisite aesthetic sense of 
 the great French nation. 
 
 Page 9. In the Church of St. Mary Redctiffe, Bristol. 
 
 1 
 Thomas Chatterton, born in Bristol, Nov. 20, 1852; committed 
 
 suicide in London, Aug. 25, 1770. The beautiful church of St. Mary 
 Redcliflfe, called by Queen Elizabeth the goodliest parish church in all 
 England, is, of course, peculiarly associated with his strange career, be- 
 ing his boyhood's haunt, the companion of his lonely hours and the 
 subject or inspiration of much of his beautiful song. The muniment 
 room over the north porch, whence, he said, came the Rowley manu- 
 scripts, is still shown to visitors. It is reached by a narrow winding 
 stone stairway, up which his feet must have often toiled. The north 
 churchyard has a not-over impressive statue of "the marvelous 
 boy," but the church itself, forever connected with his name, is his 
 truest monument. I would my poor little tribute were fitter of his 
 splendid soul. So sad and strange a story and so glorious a singer 
 are themes that deserve an abler celebrant, but at least to his unknown 
 shrine I have brought a reverent heart. 
 
Page jS. France! 
 
 President Kruger, of the Transvaal Republic, reached France No- 
 vember 23, 1900. The warmth and sincerity of his reception by the 
 French people left no room to doubt that the democratic spirit, how- 
 ever it may thrive or languish elsewhere, still reigns in France. It is 
 inspiring to reflect that the land that did so much at so great a sacri- 
 fice to advance the cause of democracy is unshaken in its faith at a time 
 of profound and world-wide reaction. 
 
 Page SS- The Rhone Valley at Leuk. 
 
 The road from the head of Lake Geneva to Brieg is lined with the 
 melancholy monuments of the wasted efforts and struggles of man. 
 The marks of the mediaeval barons are plainest, but records or sugges- 
 tions abound of the Crusaders, the northern barbarians, the Romans and 
 the earlier emigrants. The lading of rich argosies from the East was 
 borne along this international highway, and the Alemanni swarmed here 
 when the Roman power was crumbling. It was a great worn path- 
 way between east and west and north and south before the Britons 
 had heard of Caesar. The center of these reminiscences may be held to 
 be at Sion, with its extraordinary castle and church, but the quaint 
 mcldering old town of Leuk seems more eloquent of the change and 
 passing that characterize the whole region. No one, I think, can con- 
 template these remains without an impression of the essentially ridicu- 
 lous and evanescent nature of human endeavor. 
 
 I. The Castles and Churches. 
 
 II. The Crusaders. 
 
 III. The Romans and Barbarians. 
 
 IV. The Prehistoric Tribes. 
 
 Page 97. Before a Greuze. 
 
 Jean Baptiste Greuze, the great painter of children's faces, born 
 1725, died 1805. One may think that the purity and innocence of child- 
 hood were never so feelingly portrayed as he portrayed them. Alas. 
 the day! Where is the little American girl with "a Greuze face" 
 that moved one afternoon in the Louvre beside the painting of her pro- 
 totype? Even now I suppose she has lost something of the angel that 
 then looked forth from her eyes! 
 
Page io8. '■'Philip Massinger, a Stranger.'^ 
 
 The church of St. Saviour, adjoining the Southwark end of Lon- 
 don Bridge, should be dear to all Americans for its memories of John 
 Harvard and the ancestors of Ralph Waldo Emerson, to all students of 
 the English drama for its memories of Shakespeare, Beaumont and 
 Fletcher, Massinger, Nath/ Field, Philip Henslowe and Edward Al- 
 leyne, and to all lovers of English poetry for its memories of Chaucer, 
 Gower, James I. of Scotland and Oliver Goldsmith. Massinger lies in 
 the choir beside his dear friend John Fletcher, though the exact spot 
 is not known. In the last few years, the rector of St. Saviour's, the 
 Rev. Dr. W. Thompson (whose name should be revered in the history 
 of English literature and art), has succeeded, by indefatigable efforts, 
 in securing for the church memorial windows to Massinger, Beaumont 
 and Fletcher, Shakespeare, Alleyne and Chaucer. If it were without 
 other attractions, these windows, among the most beautiful in England, 
 would make the church profitable to any visitor, but for its hallowed 
 associations it must always be to the student of letters at least as in- 
 teresting as Westminster Abbey, and comparable with no other church 
 in the world. 
 
 The entry on the burial register, "Philip Massinger, a Stranger," 
 is still legible. 
 
 Page 121. The Roundel. 
 
 I have no right, I think, to make use of this stanza without ac- 
 knowledgment and humble apologies afar off to the great singer that 
 has endowed English poetry with this and so many other stanzaic 
 forms. But no words of mine could suffice to recount the world's in- 
 debtedness to the greatest English singer and greatest English soul 
 since Shelley, the master musician and master mind of modern song, 
 Algernon Charles Swinburne, 
 
 Page I2J. Der Silberhorn. 
 
 The object of art being to transfer a feeling, poetry may be deemed 
 for the transferring of the feeling of scenery as legitimate a vehicle as 
 pictorial art. Some risk may be involved, it is true, of the current re- 
 proach of "landscape" and "geographical" poetry, but the logical basis 
 of these strictures seems open to much doubt. 
 
Page 142. Benjamin Harrison. 
 
 "General Harrison's last words were of his sympathy with the 
 Boers in their struggle against overwhelming odds." Whoever has read 
 the luminous sentences that constitute this good man's last appeal to his 
 countrymen (those memorable sentences wherein he demonstrates the 
 justice of the Boer cause and warns us against the spirit of imperial- 
 ism and aggression that dominates Great Britain and threatens us), 
 must have been impressed with their irresistible logic, and with the 
 clear vision and earnest patriotism of the man that wrote them. Not 
 of General Harrison's political faith as to other matters, nevertheless I 
 have dared to lay upon his tomb a little wreath to the memory of a 
 great soul and true man. 
 
 Page 144. The Long Fight. 
 
 When the news reached London that General Roberts had entered 
 Pretoria the populace took possession of the streets and celebrated the 
 bloodless victory by getting drunk. From London Bridge to Picadilly 
 Circus the ways were impassable. Some observers estimated that one 
 million men, women and children must have been intoxicated in Lon- 
 don that night. More depressing than the bestiality of this exhibition 
 in what is called, for some reason unknown to me, "the capital of 
 civilization," was the reflection that the triumph celebrated with such 
 enthusiasm was the triumph of might over right, of the power of money 
 over justice, of the interests of a class over the interests of the plain 
 people everywhere, of an aristocracy over the cause of democracy. 
 The people of London were, in fact, rejoicing over their own defeat. 
 But the democratic cause has ever been familiar with reverses, and has 
 advanced in spite of them. It may well be supposed that the days of 
 the coup d'etat and the ascension of Napoleon the Little were as dark 
 as these; but nineteen years after the beginning of the Second Empire, 
 lo, the birth of the Third Republic! Nay, it is from the backward 
 wave, indeed, that the forward wave gathers strength. 
 
IfriT 
 
JAN 2 1902 
 
 ''''' ^^^' TO C,j, 
 
 IMt 
 
 i902 
 
 . 0/V.