PS 
 
2nU COPY, 
 
 1398,. 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; 
 
 (PS 3^// 
 Chap. Copyright No. 
 
 Shelf.^k-SJ'i'' 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH 
 
 -BY- 
 
 CREEDMORE FLEENOR. 
 
 AUTHOR'S EDITION. LliSflTED, 
 
 BOWLING GllEEN, KY 
 
 Courier Pub. Co.. 
 
 l,s;»,s. 
 

 ?1? 
 
 COPYRIGHT 1898. 
 
 l-^^'^' L,"" 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH! 
 
 I. 
 
 A change is come, selah ! The scold 
 Of bitter days we bid farewell ; 
 
 The biting winds are not so bold ; 
 
 The frost has left the ground and cold 
 
 Is nothing that earth's warmth can swell, 
 
 She basks wnthin the sun's bright rays 
 And nurtures all within her bourne, 
 She fondles, in capricious ways, 
 The offspring of her waxing days, 
 And quirks and jollies each in turn. 
 
 Old Winter's mantle that still clings, 
 
 She shakes from shoulders glowung fair ; 
 With prodigality she flings 
 The seed of everything that springs, 
 And tends each with a mother's care. 
 
 She ushers into life each -bud 
 
 That promises a blooming prime ; 
 
 She gives them drink Vv^ithin the fiood — 
 
 Her rushing torrent is the blood 
 That courses in the veins of Time. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 II. 
 
 The daring crocus through the snow 
 
 Doth raise his head; the buttercup, 
 And violet of modest glow, 
 And dandelion, too, would show 
 Their hardihood in struggling up 
 
 To brave inclemencies and prove 
 
 The glory of their being here, 
 Which renders brilliant field and grove, 
 And makes the world a thing to love 
 
 With all its beauties blushing near. 
 
 And grass and herb and shrubby tree. 
 
 In many colored liveries. 
 Bud out to blend the sky and lea 
 In rainbow tints ; and busy bee 
 
 Hums merrily upon the breeze. 
 
 The early rose with bursting bloom, 
 
 And May-bells that the fairies ring, 
 Now serve to dissipate the gloom 
 The winter knew and start the loom 
 Of Life aweaving in the spring. 
 
 III. 
 
 Hail to the Spring ! Fair infant year 
 That wails and sobs as any child ! 
 That shrieks with laughter till a tear 
 Steals from the frown that darkens cheer- 
 Now tempest-tost, now blandly mild! 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. c 
 
 Thou art the season of sweet youth ; 
 
 The Ragnarok of Essence sped : 
 And Life that felt the winter's ruth, 
 New blooms again to bless the truth 
 
 That Nature slept and was not dead : 
 
 Thy pallor blushes rosy hue, 
 
 Thy silence breaks into a song, 
 And hoary frost and clammy dew, 
 Warm into babbling brooks anew 
 
 To dance and birl and vault along. 
 
 And clothed in verdure is the scene 
 
 That late was grim and stark in death, 
 
 While lowering clouds, which hung between 
 
 The azure sky and earth, are seen 
 
 In fragments tost by Summer's breath. 
 
 We drink thy charms within the wind 
 
 That blows the buds of vernal bloom ; 
 We greet thy beauties unconfined. 
 Thy fragrance steals within the mind 
 That winter numbed with all its gloom. 
 
 IV. 
 
 O fickle Day of smiles and tears. 
 
 We laugh and weep thy humors too ! 
 In youth we chatter with our fears 
 And trust each phantom that appears ; 
 In age we find the hour's rue ! 
 
4 IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 How like thy tempests to this Soul 
 
 Tliat sinks or swells with every throb; 
 How like thy elements' control 
 That through vicissitudes would roll 
 To burst into a smile, a sob! 
 
 How like all earthly things we see 
 
 That feel the pulse of Time and Tide ; 
 How like the soul unto the sea, 
 The trembling main to man when he 
 Doth feel the shock of rage and pride : 
 
 And yet these Sentiencies, unlike 
 
 The duller molecules of clay, 
 Pass off the stage of life, and dike 
 Is earth for that which seemeth like, 
 
 And Youth is born but to decay ! 
 
 Could life forever be as thou, 
 
 So full of pleasure and of cheer, 
 Man would no thought of grief allow, 
 For every fancy would prove how 
 
 Love's pleasures brood from year to year 
 
 V. 
 
 For Childhood, in thy morn's delight. 
 
 Thy thoughts do revel in sweet dreams ; 
 Fair visions float before thy sight, 
 Thy powers feel a doughty might 
 
 To stem the rush of Stygian streams : 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 All space is peopled by thy guile, 
 And fancy lives and joy bestows, 
 
 And Love is cooing all the while. 
 
 And everywhere a happy smile 
 Tells of the heart that oveiflows : 
 
 Through haze the world in grandeur floats 
 
 With beauties full in its display, 
 And, like the miser's soul that gloats 
 O'er riches, thou to richer notes 
 
 Give sway to bless each happy day : 
 
 Thou livest in the checkered shade, 
 
 With bird and bee and wilder flower, 
 Where some fair Amaryllis played, 
 Or Daphnis vvath his shyer maid — 
 
 Sweet Chloris,of the woodland bower. 
 
 In amplitude of youth thy hope 
 Is king of life and its reward; 
 Thy nascent wisdom sees the scope 
 Of wish alone ; thy joy doth ope 
 The heart to every sounding chord. 
 
 VI. 
 
 O Day of Youth and Love! O Spring! 
 
 O Tide of human guile ! O Thought 
 That comes with all and gives us wing 
 To soar aloft, a voice to sing 
 
 The anthems of the heart : for aught 
 
6 IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 We know thou art some Sentiency 
 
 Eternal as the earth or sky ; 
 A spirit that doth come to free 
 The duller Soul and Latency 
 
 Bound here by some nefaric tie I 
 
 But whether Spirit, Time or Tide 
 That animates or ebbs or flows, 
 Thou art, O Spring, a season's pride, 
 A flux of joys with boundaries wide, 
 A day when simple Nature glows. 
 
 Thou art the season of sweet love : 
 
 For truly is it said of thee, 
 Thy day doth mark the mating dove, 
 Thy flood the swelling of each love 
 
 Here glowing for its company : 
 
 For thou art Eros of the lore 
 
 Delightful to the Grecian ear, 
 The Cupid that has gone before 
 To leave Love's courtship in the glow 
 Of romance, lingering year to year: 
 
 The Force that binds its power's might 
 
 In taming hearts too fierce or wild ; 
 That brings within the soul the light 
 Which casts its radiance to the night, 
 That fills the heart of winter's child ; 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 7 
 
 Fair season of the passion's glow, 
 
 Rejuvenation speaks welcome; 
 And all the roses thou canst blow, 
 Fling out and let old Winter know 
 
 That Age is dead and \outh is come! 
 
 VII. 
 
 For passions of the heart but stir 
 To prove that all the world is kin, 
 
 And that each soul's existence here 
 
 Depends on love, and every care 
 Arises from the strife to win 
 
 A happy home, a love, a life, 
 
 A sounding fame, a hope, a name, 
 A blissful peace, a joy, a wife, 
 A fierce contest with worldly strife, 
 And glory in each passion's flame ; 
 
 And in pursuit we find the chase 
 
 Alluring to the sense and mind ; 
 We so forget ourselves and place 
 The guerdon far above the race 
 
 That leaves us feeble in its wind. 
 
 When Spring brings love to every heart. 
 And opens flood-gates of the soul. 
 
 How cold were Life to know no part 
 
 Of love, nor feel the burning dart 
 
 Which amorous dreams would here control. 
 
b> IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 Phlegmatic is old Death ; its chill 
 
 The absence oF deific fire : 
 The pulse of Life is passion's thrill ; 
 The ichor of its god is still 
 
 The blood and flood of Youth's desire. 
 
 In courtship days how fair the sky, 
 
 How bright the world, how sweet the lays 
 
 Of cooing birds that carol high 
 
 In leafy bowers, and reply 
 
 In chirps of happy answering praise! 
 
 How sweet the flowers, and the breeze 
 Is warm with sensual breath of love ; 
 
 And happy laughter tells of ease, 
 
 And sun-rays flit among the trees 
 Like elfins in a fairy cove : 
 
 And so idylic is the dream 
 
 Of Youth w^ith sunny thoughts of peace ; 
 And burning love is what 'twould seem\ 
 And heart and soul with visions teem ■ — 
 
 Drunk with their own wild love's increase. 
 
 vSing out, bright Love, and let the heart 
 
 Rejoice in its youth and spring! 
 The soul is happy though thy part 
 Is mingled with some passing smart 
 That leaves a tittle of its sting. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 The sweet remains to cheer the day 
 
 When love is fled or is no more ; 
 For dream will ever covet lay 
 Which once awoke a joyous day 
 That held a love within its glow : 
 
 And, fleeting though the hour be, 
 
 Much good attends thy passing state ; 
 For cherished in rich memory 
 Are scenes which live forever free 
 / Of that to cloy or satiate : 
 
 And thoughts are always young, 'tis said, 
 Though brow is wrinkled, hair is gray, 
 And virile nimbleness is fled 
 To join the seasons that are sped 
 From chill December back to May. 
 
 X. 
 
 Thy humor. Spring, is lot of all ; 
 
 Thy love-tide moves each sensuous will 
 ' Tis not with man alone thy call. 
 But rapture would each heart enthrall 
 
 And teach each voice an aniorous trill : 
 
 And here within the slumberous shades, 
 
 As on the new spring swath I lie, 
 I hear the chirpings in the glades. 
 Frogs croaking their bass serenades 
 ■ To silent loves that hover nigh ; 
 
lO IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 And elytrons the crickets thrum — 
 
 Harps of the voiceless things of life ! 
 And in the brooks the fishes drum, 
 And all the earth seems roused to hum 
 Of lowly creatures in love's strife : 
 
 And birds within the tree-tops high, 
 
 Are trilling sweetest melody, 
 And, with their loves, so coy and, shy, 
 I drink the flood of song and sigh 
 For notes of such wild harmony! 
 
 If man could sing like these his sphere 
 
 Were one of bliss however low ; 
 For each s\veet note would rouse and stir 
 The soul of rapture, and the cheer 
 
 Were all his. being here would know. 
 
 He would not feel his narrow bounds. 
 
 Nor note the hobble of his gait ; 
 But, borne aloft on quivering sounds. 
 His soul were free of lowly bounds 
 And saltant in the blissful state! 
 
 XI. 
 
 Sing, birds! Within ethereal realms 
 
 Our mundane troubles know 3^6 not ! 
 Ye can not be disturbed with dreams 
 Which horror man, for joy seems 
 The measure of your happy lot. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. II 
 
 Above the earth and all its rue 
 
 That hangs an nicubus to me, 
 Ye float and sing as if ye knew 
 No earthly pain ; your azure blue 
 
 Were all divine and full of glee ! 
 
 ' Tis boastful man with god-like mind, 
 That fate has fettered to the earth : 
 
 Ye choristers of the sky, on wind 
 
 Can drift and be so unconfined 
 
 Ye scorn the things of lowly birth! 
 
 At morn some praise to Deity 
 
 Awakes the matins of your song ; 
 Ye soar aloft with gladsome cry — 
 I, here below, heave answering sigh, 
 
 And watch the earth's poor, madd'ning throng ! 
 
 At night your voice is lullaby 
 
 To rankling tumult of the day. 
 And sweet nocturnes of melody 
 Teach wakeful souls some harmony, 
 
 And lull the troubled thoughts away : 
 
 Away from strife and toil which left 
 
 Their stings to fester unto death ; 
 Which filled the souls of men bereft 
 Of hope or faith — which only left 
 
 A way for your sweet chanting breath ! 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 VII. 
 
 The unsubstantial is the lure 
 
 Of souls aspiring things most high ; 
 We live in dreams and deem as sure 
 The vagueness of our thoughts ; and pure 
 Each heart and soul by its own sigh. 
 
 And so we pass our idle times 
 
 And live in realms to us unknown ; 
 
 See pleasure worlds and tropic climes ; 
 
 Hear choral notes of heaven's chimes; 
 Build airy castles all our own ! 
 
 We clothe the lands in rainbow hues, 
 We note the smiling skies in seas ; 
 And virgin nature we would choose 
 For Romance to regale its views 
 
 And caich the languor of the breeze. 
 
 Could we forever live as when 
 
 The Golden Age blessed all mankind, 
 Our earthly home and Eden then 
 Were sure, and we in viny glen 
 
 Might romp in freedom, unconfined. 
 
 But we through sterner duty move 
 
 And load ourselves with vain concerns, 
 
 And labor only here to prove 
 
 The falacy of every move 
 
 We make in following human turns. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. I3 
 
 It matters not were born or how, 
 Or whether love bespoke our birth, 
 
 The seasons rriove ; the times allow 
 
 Brief respite to a youthful vow : 
 
 Prone are the children of this earth ! ' 
 
 A burden each must bear, forsooth. 
 Though lame and hobble be his gait ; 
 
 And howsoever blank his youth, 
 
 Or irksome be the w^eight of ruth. 
 He must still onward to his fate. 
 
 He must still onward though his dreams 
 
 Fade into vacancy and night ; 
 He must not loll in Fancy's beams. 
 Nor eddy on the sluggish streams 
 
 Where Romance loiters in delight. 
 
 xni. 
 
 Before us soon two roads stretch out — 
 
 The one to honor and to fame, 
 The other mediocre route 
 Where fortune is the idle bout 
 
 Of spirits that are weak and tame. 
 
 Which road now take who best can say. 
 Since pilgrims journeying are at odds? 
 
 Each would advise the other way ; 
 
 Each would recount the bitter pay 
 Rewarding manhood's lagging plods. 
 
14 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 We stand and list to passing sighs — 
 To choose the one of loudest boast ! 
 Unlike the Hero whose surmise 
 Was that each labor brought its prize 
 And nothing came without its cost. 
 
 We move but blindly and we find 
 A disappointment in the end ; 
 
 We turn aside from evil kind, 
 
 But in some other ill we bind 
 
 The error we had thought to mend. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Ambitions tempt us all. We think 
 
 Great ends are for us to achieve, 
 And vast our power to do. We shrink 
 Not from the labor, but we sink 
 Beneath its load. We so deceive 
 
 Ourselves and let a vain conceit 
 
 Unsettle reason and betray 
 What of contentment here we meet 
 Within this life so brief and fleet 
 
 In the sweet passage of its day. 
 
 Incongruous are desires. We feel 
 
 What it were best we should not do : 
 We do not all things wise. We steel 
 Our hearts against the soft appeal 
 Of a:entleness and love ; w^e rue 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 It to the end, and curse the day 
 
 We harkened to the siren voice 
 Of base Ambition, to betray 
 Our happiness and lead us 'way 
 From what was far a better choice. 
 
 Still move we to its nod, and strive 
 
 For all its vanities as though 
 They virtue had to keep alive 
 The soul itself, and seize and hiv^e 
 The shadows we pursue to know ! 
 
 The child aspires to be a man. 
 
 And man aspires -to be a god ; 
 They both conspiring 'gainst the plan 
 Of nature which doth rightly span 
 Desires of every earthly clod. 
 
 Remote the end will ever be 
 
 We vainly thus pursue and hail ; 
 And that which lures us on we see 
 Is some mirage of dream, and we 
 Are struggling on to sink and fail ! 
 
 XV. 
 
 Ambition mounts a prancing steed ! 
 
 No jaded Pegasus can soar 
 With Genius which is full of greed 
 And labors only for the deed 
 
 That proves its kindred here below ! 
 
l6 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 We must ascend unto the sky ; 
 
 Give wings to higher thoughts and creeds. 
 Teach hearts and wills how to deny 
 The wantonness of earth and fly 
 
 Beyond confines of evil deeds. 
 
 How much of pain, how much of toil, 
 
 Is "wrought by some ambitious aim. 
 The zest and humor to recoil 
 Upon the head which thought to foil 
 Conditions that the fates proclaim ? 
 
 The Catos and the Caesars fell. 
 
 And Bourbon rule and Spanish sway : 
 Each page of history can tell 
 Of man or nation that would swell 
 A clamor if but for a day ! 
 
 Diogenes within his tub 
 
 Was one man in a thousand who 
 Could here resist the world's hubbub. 
 And speak to Fame as Beelzebub, 
 And tell it of its wild ado ; 
 
 And that its aim was vanity; 
 
 Its doing naught of any worth ; 
 That peace alone ^vas true degree, 
 And mild content the sanity, 
 
 That measures wisdom of this earth. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 A greater coriquerer was he 
 
 Than Alexander by whose arm 
 
 The world lay prone. Alas that we 
 
 With that philosopher could see 
 
 That sunshine gives each heart its charm, 
 
 And yet each day will make a grave 
 
 Of hope wdiose pinions were too weak 
 To buoy ambition on the wave 
 Of clamor when its god but gave 
 
 It strength enough to rise and seek ! 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Contrast with all the greatness past 
 
 The satisfaction of its hour ; 
 Some reminiscences will last 
 And flitful shadows dimly cast — - 
 
 The cost w^as felt in pride of power! 
 
 Napoleon came upon the stage — 
 
 Napoleon of a day's renown ! 
 To him man was an open page; 
 He marked his passions to engage 
 
 Their force to vault him to a crown ! 
 
 He made men puppets to his name; 
 
 He moved each one as though a pawn ; 
 The goal of all his life was fame, 
 A chess-board strife ambition's game ; 
 
 And nations fell — their kinofs to fawn ! 
 
l8 IN PASSING THROUGFI. 
 
 He knew man's weakness and he wrought 
 
 His greatness at the fool's expense ; 
 Confiding in his heart the thought 
 ''Through fear and interest all are caught" 
 His fellows slaves in recompense! 
 
 In recompense for strife and blood ; 
 
 For hardships borne and labor lost; 
 For wreck and ruin ; ensanguined flood 
 That swept proud Honor's flag in mud, — 
 
 Repaying so ambition's cost! 
 
 In after years Bourriennes to tell 
 
 The secret motives of the great ; 
 Barras to slander and compel 
 Some conhrmation from the well 
 
 Informed — the Talleyrands of State! 
 
 Reward? O man, an history's page! 
 
 A mention and a moral, then 
 Our ov*^n affairs our thoughts engage 
 And with light trifles battles wage — 
 
 The hero's fame forgot again! 
 
 XVII. 
 
 So was it ever thus. But still 
 We struggle in ambition's strife 
 
 For end beyond our feeble skill ; 
 
 While blank futility doth fill 
 The briefness of our little life ! 
 
 '••■'■ 'Fear and interest are the only motives of man,' said Na- 
 poleon," — Bour.rienne, 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 1 9 
 
 We struggle and we fret, to fall 
 
 The victims of our own conceit ; 
 We labor but to taste the gall 
 That comes with vanity's recall 
 
 When we have faced each lie and cheat. 
 
 A. wild Bucephalus one mounts 
 
 Where many fall beneath his feet ; 
 
 The plaudit of the one recounts 
 
 The obstacles that he surmounts — 
 We crown him with our own defeat ! 
 
 We give him adulation, but 
 
 ' Tis tinged with jealousy and hate ! 
 We mock his actions, call a strut 
 His gait, and, Cassius like, would cut 
 His honor in our owm debate ! 
 
 And this is all the honor comes 
 
 Of mounting mighty things of fame : 
 
 A little clamor from the slums ; 
 
 A crown for Envy's sneer that sums 
 The little time bequeaths a name ! 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The great must ever live afar : 
 
 The eye is keen to see the fault 
 Of him who rises through the law 
 That measures genius to debar 
 
 The mediocre w'ith his halt : 
 
20 IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 When man is with us breast to breast, 
 
 His labor seen beside our own, 
 His power is ne'er full confest, 
 Since, arm to arm, we give the test, 
 To let our jealousy dethrone. 
 
 So distance and the lapse of time, 
 Must ever add to glory's star; 
 
 Each age and nation, every clime, 
 
 Will hold a memory sublime 
 
 That had its being low and far. 
 
 The heroes of the past have been 
 
 But pygmies to their fellowmen : 
 ' Tis time alone that shows them kin 
 To Titans in their strength to win 
 The victory denied them then. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Move on if there be aught to do ! 
 
 Move on though plodding be your gait ! 
 Move on if there be will in you 
 To find the goal reserved to few ; 
 
 For Progress never cares to wait. 
 
 Move on and maybe ages hence 
 
 Will cry your glories to the skies ; 
 And, struggling in your own defense 
 Against the world and its pretense. 
 
 You learn the truth in some vain wise. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 21 
 
 Move on ! You know the guerdon well, 
 
 And may oblivion find ere long! 
 Move on and let some other tell 
 What troubles here his hopes befell, 
 
 And lisp his melancholy song! 
 
 That song which told of action spent, 
 
 And toil that added trouble to 
 The moments claimed by rest, and bent 
 The head in sorrow while content 
 
 Was lost in vanity's ado : 
 
 For soon or late you'll find this true, 
 
 And idle all ambition's strife. 
 And that the world is full of rue 
 To everyone who hopes to do 
 
 Something of moment in this life. 
 
 XX. 
 
 The sage who wrote of Rasselas, 
 
 Warned man of hope's credulity ; 
 Told him that to a lowly pass 
 Come all vain aims : and proof, alas. 
 The ages give in verity ! 
 
 Who thinks that future time will crown 
 
 Ambitions of his daily toil. 
 Lives in conceit ! A name's renown 
 Is ever but an empty sound 
 
 That illy pays for life's turmoil. 
 
22 IN PASSING .THROUGH. 
 
 To-morrow comes the joy to bless ! — - 
 To-day we eke the hour in pain 1 
 
 Our dreams of bliss and happiness 
 
 Awaken ever to distress, 
 
 And all our hopes are futile, vain I 
 
 Each day but shov/s the happy thought 
 Was misconceived, and that the heart 
 
 In its sweet folly so was caught : 
 
 It all resolves itself to naught 
 
 When Time dissolves each feeble part. 
 
 Would that the dream could always be ; 
 
 The present hold the past, and yet 
 The pleasures of the future see 
 Unmarred by pains we pass to be 
 
 The hapless ci-eatures of regret 1 , 
 
 XXI. 
 
 But let these gloomy thoughts now pass 
 With dirges of their dismal train : 
 
 Ambition is a cheat, alas! 
 
 And peace comes not to any class 
 Who find their labors are in vain. 
 
 We'll turn us to another scene 
 
 And see what better comes of that. 
 W^e'U stray us in the woodland green 
 And dream of beauties we have seen, 
 Within some lone and vine-grown plat 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 23 
 
 We'll Stray like nature's children true, 
 Despite the frets that bar our way; 
 
 A freedom is beneath the blue 
 
 Found not in domiciles of rue 
 
 Where fierce contention holds the sway. 
 
 And then, withal, the country brings 
 The out-door sports that recreate ; 
 
 And from the first warm breath that springs 
 
 Till tear-drop of the autumn clings 
 An icicle of winter's fate, 
 
 The heart of man to nature turns 
 
 And claims relationship in love; 
 And wall-confinements then it spurns, 
 And for wild freedom ever yearns 
 
 And seeks the umbral woodland cove 
 
 To lose itself and thoughts as well, 
 
 Within the tangled copse and vine, 
 And be as one with things that dwell 
 Within the woods ; and let that swell 
 With rapture which was wont to pine. 
 
 With rod and boat on drifting stream, 
 
 Or dog and gun in fenny lands, 
 The matted shade and sunny beam 
 Lend romance to our placid dream, 
 
 And help us to forget demands 
 
24 IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 That Life makes on us every hour ; 
 
 For social functions bring us naught 
 That has not some contentious power 
 To stir or threaten or to cower 
 
 The will, or man's more daring thought. 
 
 XXIT 
 
 The sighing, crying, laughing Spring 
 
 That shakes and blows the budding flowers, 
 
 Brings Summer on its restless wing. 
 
 And then Apollo down doth fling 
 
 His scorching rays to drink the showers ; 
 
 And earth sleeps ' neath a blazing sky, 
 
 And sultry steals old Auster's breath : 
 Within the shady groves I lie 
 And watch with drowsy, listless, eye 
 The sbimmer on the sun-bathed heath. 
 
 I see beyond the rising knoll 
 
 That bares its crown to summer sheen, 
 And lazy revery fills my soul 
 With dreams beyond my thoughts' control, 
 
 And bare the spirit world, I ween. 
 
 Behold I nymphs and sylphs at play 
 
 As though in Arcady I muse 
 And here the haunt of elf and fay, 
 And this Love's own perennial day 
 
 Wherein no pleasure gods refuse. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 2j 
 
 My soul's transported with the spell 
 
 That comes with knowledge of this bliss ; 
 I here forget the earth to dwell 
 In bright empyreal realms that swell 
 Emotion's metamorphosis, 
 
 And, like a child in wild pursuit 
 
 Of butterfly that flits its grasp, 
 I chase each thought that might confute 
 My dream — to hear the fancied flute 
 
 Of Pan, though he elude my clasp! 
 
 In thus beholding mythic sights 
 
 Evanishment is sterner life ; 
 My soul is free and in its flights 
 It mingles with the fabled wights 
 
 That live within an epic strife. 
 
 Will man then wreck this paradise, 
 
 Or try explain the subtle dream? 
 Is not the pleasure felt suffice 
 To pay full recompense and price 
 
 For what in fact can only seem ? 
 
 O dryads ! O fair nymphs of trees ! 
 
 I love you and your wilds would share ! 
 Your cheerful laughter wakes the bees 
 And stirs again the slumbering breeze 
 
 That halted in the summer's g^lare. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 The summer's glare that parches earth 
 And seres fair Thallo.in her bloom ; 
 
 That dries the springs which babble mirth ; 
 
 That ripens Carpo in her dearth, 
 
 So wasting all Life would consume : 
 
 Then nature droops and pleads for rain. 
 The pitiless clouds reflecting heat; 
 
 And bird and beast in \voods remain, 
 
 Cicadas stridulating pain, 
 
 To pipe and die for some retreat. 
 
 So is the want of man unfilled 
 
 Within this halting place called home ; 
 
 And if his struggles here be willed, 
 
 His hands to labor are unskilled 
 
 Though death is futile labor's sum ! 
 
 And here is born the rankling doubt 
 That godly care for all provides ; 
 
 We see withal inglorious rout 
 
 Of living forces in the bout 
 
 Waged with Destruction's sweeping tides. 
 
 And then a thing of Chance we guess 
 Each impulse and the end it brings ; 
 
 And when a Force we must confess, 
 
 'Tis one insensible and less 
 
 A Being than the flux of things ! 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 2/ 
 
 Malthusian are the laws of life^ 
 
 And Want doth ever check increase ; 
 
 x\ Darwin sees within such strife 
 
 Conditions so selecting life 
 
 The ill-adapted gasp and cease ! 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 But whv^ contend and break our rest 
 
 In reconciling here a fact 
 With 'erring faith, thus spurring zest 
 To the support of what were best 
 
 Forgotten in each life's compact? 
 
 The thoughts aweary leave the head, 
 With troubles till the longing heart ; 
 
 Can not some earthly joy be led 
 
 To fill the heart of man instead 
 And prove a benefactor's part? 
 
 O Groves, within your depths let sleep 
 Come weigh my weary eye-lids down : 
 
 Let naught disturb me in the deep, 
 
 And vigils o'er my slumbers keep 
 
 And hide from me each trouble's frown ! 
 
 And Sleep, what charms come with thy sway ! 
 
 And with what subtleness thy drowse 
 Steals o'er the being to allay 
 The wild emotions that the day 
 
 Within the soul doth here arouse? 
 
28 IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 If thou art brother sure of Death, 
 
 Then Death must be a blessing, too ; 
 For how could Hkeness of thy breath. 
 Which soothes tired nature, prove a death 
 Whose object is to all undo? 
 
 True blessings both when weary Life 
 
 Would lay aside its burdens heie, 
 And there would come surcease of strife 
 And end of all things that keep rife 
 The diabolic dreams of fear. 
 
 Then whatsoever bringeth sleep. 
 
 Or lulls the slumberer to rest, 
 
 Is thing to bless and not to weep : 
 
 And here rapt Solitude doth creep 
 
 On me, and I am truly blest! 
 
 Sweet charm of Solitude, I find 
 In thee reward of all my toil : 
 What if man's fetters once could bind 
 His will? to freedom, unconfined, 
 It comes at last in the recoil, 
 
 XXV. 
 
 It leads us back to other days 
 
 That were not burdened with a care ; 
 It opens to us titter ways 
 In which to wend the terrene maze 
 That here environs all that's fair. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 O happy days of sport and ease 
 
 Wlien Youth and Innocence are free. 
 And jocund Love beneath the trees 
 Would fond Reciprocation tease, 
 Or woo a coy affinity ; 
 
 When timid eyes confess a tale 
 
 The bashful tongue could never tell ; 
 When dreams of brighter worlds prevail 
 To shed their luster o'er each vale 
 
 That Gloom would darken with its spell 
 
 When age is but a promised time 
 
 For freer love's enjoyment, 
 And life is but a lingering prime 
 Full of the melody and chime 
 
 Of chords that waken heart's content ; 
 
 When earth and sea and heaven's dome. 
 
 And every grotto found therein. 
 Is to some one a blissful home, 
 For flippant Fancy's merry roam, 
 And not a dreary waste of sin. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 In after life these thoughts come back 
 
 To halo shadows with their light ; 
 We tread again each happy track 
 And find much pleasure though we 1-ick 
 A confirmation of the sight. 
 
30 IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 An hour's dream can live for aye 
 
 Although it want wise faith and hope ; 
 It leaves within the soul a ray 
 That brightens many a gloomy day 
 That otherwise had birren scope. 
 
 Could man's environs ever be 
 
 The drapery of his conceit, 
 Could fancy live forever free, 
 Unconscious of mortality 
 
 And what distempers here would mete, 
 
 'Twould be an act of infamy 
 
 Unworthy one of tender heart, 
 To open eyes a grief to see 
 That here would otherwise be free 
 
 To revel out a happy part. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 The days may come, the days may go, 
 
 And bring their sunshine or their shade. 
 To me will memory ever glow 
 To bring back happy days of yore 
 
 When Youth and Love together played . 
 
 Together played and fancied life 
 
 The passage of a boon divine ; 
 The world a paradise and rife 
 With all the joys of mystic strife - 
 
 That weave Life's web to wind and twine 
 
IX PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 Affections in the v/oof of all 
 
 That clothes the naked heart of man 
 
 And keeps it warm within its thrall, 
 
 Yet binds alone its love, withal, 
 
 And makes it servile to God's plan. 
 
 With a^^e comes tendency to drift 
 
 From what in youth the heart would prize 
 
 And cares o'erhang and rarely shift 
 
 To let a sun-ray through the rift 
 To warm the chill of social ties. 
 
 When hearts are yor.ng they can not see 
 WHiat thorns beset the paths of life ; 
 
 They grasp at time too eagerly ; 
 
 The}' know not what the day will be. 
 Nor what is free of toil and strife. 
 
 xxvin. 
 
 The youths of either sex are wild 
 
 To taste of liberty and age ; 
 They put aside, with treason mild. 
 The thoughts and habits of the child. 
 
 And rush to sterner toils engage. 
 
 Their pride is in each mark that shows 
 
 The budding of maturity; 
 The wnll is set, the heart overflows 
 For share of those same human woes 
 
 The adult cries in misery! 
 
32 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 And, full of fire, they will not think, 
 
 But rather choose to ride the tide 
 Of dalliance, e'en to the brink 
 Of ruin — -but to quaff the drink 
 
 That passion's chalice holds to pride? 
 
 Could wisdom ever call a halt 
 To race whose goal is meritless. 
 
 There had been lives without a fault; 
 
 There had been races where the halt 
 Was premiumed with a happiness, 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 But wdiile the youth would hasten time 
 
 In the pursuit of happiness. 
 The adult weeps a speeding prime, 
 And age deplores each striking chime 
 That tells of dissolution's press : 
 
 For with this race and tide of things. 
 This nameless longing for the will 
 And freedom of each wish, time brings 
 Reward we wot not of and wrings 
 The heart with vainer longings still. 
 
 So Age must look upon the whim 
 
 Of Youth with scorn of its desire ; 
 For while life's chalice here is brim 
 With health and love, the end is dim ; 
 Or lost to sight by ardor's fire. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 33 
 
 XXX. 
 
 O woman, in thy maid-blush pause ! 
 
 vShort is the span from Youth to Age, 
 And stern is nature and her laws ; 
 She will resent the slightest cause 
 
 That mars a day's recorded page. 
 
 Thy youth at best is but a day ; 
 
 Thy rosiness ephemeral ; 
 Thy smile is but a flitting ray 
 To light thv face and then away 
 
 By some grim law satanical : 
 
 Thy pride is hut a foolish mark 
 
 For archers of thy destiny ; 
 Thy conscious thoughts are rendered stark 
 Thy fancy soars but as a spark 
 
 That dies in its im potency. 
 
 Thy span is short; for school days done, 
 Dame Fashion urges thee in life; 
 
 And so that blush, so new begun, 
 
 Is faded in vain folly's run, 
 
 Or t4iou art some poor plodder's wife! 
 
 Thy freshness gone ere life is blown 
 
 Into the mellowness of day ; 
 Or maybe child to matron grown 
 Ere wisdom is or age hath shown 
 
 The ripeness that comes with delay. 
 
34 
 
 IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 And Art is called to lend its aid 
 In patchinf^ up a lame machine ; 
 
 And what was once a blooming maid 
 
 Is soon a butterfly of trade 
 
 That fades and flutters in its teen ! 
 
 A butterfly that flits a day 
 
 In realms of fancy pilotless : 
 In thee man finds his willing prey, 
 Since thou art set the spoiler's way 
 And left alone in helplessness! 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Yea, Woman is Man's wage and prey, 
 
 His luring goal, his mad desire, 
 His passion's rage, his power's sway 
 That lets no curb him halt, or stay 
 The blood of lust when set on fire. 
 
 The very force in him doth move 
 As by magnetic charm, and he 
 Is fierce and eager in his love. 
 And scorns restraints it would behoove 
 Them both observe in truancy. 
 
 A Woman's strength is in her worth. 
 And not within a sensual deed ; 
 
 'Twere pity God should give her birth 
 
 To be a wanton on the earth 
 
 To bear and leave a worthless breed. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 3:^ 
 
 Her office is of love and cheer, 
 
 Of sweet companionship to man ; 
 She sure to all the world were dear 
 Should she deport herself with care 
 
 And lighten sorrows as she can. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Yet she but faintly sees, withal. 
 
 And trusts, perhaps, where faith is sin ; 
 A lonely soul can not recall ■ 
 Affections though they may enthrall 
 The better sentiments within. 
 
 Man's love is like a comet comie 
 
 Within the sky of woman's sphere ; 
 A flash, a pleasing smile like some 
 Strange Sun that flings his glory's sum 
 In radiance around her there! 
 
 His orbit's dark, but tongue is sweet 
 And knows the lore of flattery's art : 
 
 She trembles in her plane to meet 
 
 The fond caresses of his greet. 
 
 And gives for promises her heart ! 
 
 But she as planet here is hung 
 
 With an ecliptic that is known ; 
 Herself defined by Gossip's tongue ; 
 Her every fault and failing sung 
 
 By every idle breath that's blown ! 
 
■^6 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 Still unknown may that lover be 
 And black in heart as any Cain : 
 
 In night Romance can better see 
 
 Materials for its phantasy 
 
 And dight aright its grotesque train. 
 
 A sun is but a guess at best, 
 
 A comet but a trail of light ; 
 The one, as wearied, sinks to rest 
 And leaves the heart sick in its quest ; 
 The other scampers in the night! 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 In lieu she learns of quibs and art, 
 
 And practices a mild deceit ; 
 And seeks to hide a w^anton heart, 
 And tries to play a careless part 
 
 With rank intent to fraud and cheat 
 
 She nurses in her r . .u the thought 
 That some hy^ jcrisy may win ; 
 But oft in her own trap is caught 
 And all he; v/iles conceived for naught, 
 Or, \ orse. to steep her heart in sin. 
 
 i\nd beauty, if by nature not, 
 
 She seeks to paint upon her cheek, 
 To friz it in her hair, or blot 
 It somewhere in a " beauty-spot" — 
 To make herself a blazoned freak ! 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 37 
 
 vShe fills a bad form out to <^ive 
 
 Yon Hebe lines by tailor's art ; 
 Slie ambles, p^r;ices. makes believe, 
 And fondly smiles but to deceive — 
 
 To plav v/ith man an equal part ! 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 A little game in life we play 
 
 In passincr through its fleeting span ; 
 
 A little game, which, true to say. 
 
 Is not just what we honor, nay, 
 
 A game we play confounding man! 
 
 A little game of lie to cheat 
 
 A confidence new born of trust ; 
 A little game for faith's defeat ; 
 A game for mockery's repeat 
 
 To prove sincerity accurst. 
 
 Within a bragging age we find 
 
 These caricatured tru.ths that show 
 
 How little comes to man so !)iind 
 
 He can not see the trend .aid wdnd 
 Of Falsehood in a^;irs below ! 
 
 And so v^■e stj.mble day by day 
 
 To f..ll m snares Deceit has laid, 
 And all because this vital clay 
 Is wrong compounded and finds pay 
 
 In folly through the Devil's trade. 
 
3S IN PASSING THROUGH 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 A little game of love to lead 
 
 Some trusting heart into a snare , 
 A little game of hate to feed 
 The venom rankling in the seed 
 Of life that blossoms in despair : 
 
 A little more, of falsehood then 
 To fill the social state of man 
 And leave his soul as dark as when 
 It crouched within its savage den 
 Unconscious of its broader span. 
 
 The instinct of the brute is still 
 The moral guide of not a few, 
 
 And uncontrolled the savage will, 
 
 And bent to selfishness until 
 
 The lair's ethics homes imbrue! 
 
 We blush to see the smirking lie 
 
 Take full command of heart's control 
 
 We weep to see man's honor die ; 
 
 But what avails our tear or sigh 
 If we debase the human soul? 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 He is deceived who lets the eye 
 
 Be judge alone of all the world : 
 'Tis thus we oft mistake the Lie 
 And call " an honest man" the sly 
 
 Deceiver who would leave us churled. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 39 
 
 Are we traduced by bluntness here, 
 
 Or the pahiver of man's speech? 
 The iriannered man v/e rightly fear 
 l>ecause his conduct is not clear, 
 
 Nor acts within thought's lazy reach. 
 
 Far fairer is the rugged man 
 
 Of uncouth speech and simple ways; 
 
 Him and his methods we can scan ; 
 
 His cruder conduct is the plan 
 Of honesty that nauglit betrays. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 How profitless is all of this! 
 
 We note it but to let it pass! 
 We'd rather coax some thought of bliss 
 Than think of life just as it is, 
 
 For conscience to cry out, alas! 
 
 'Tis part of life to live in dreams ; 
 
 Build castles but to see them fall ; 
 A pleasure is but what it seems. 
 And he that dw^ells in fancy's realms 
 
 Knows most of earthly bliss, withal. 
 
 I've lived it through and comfort found 
 
 In visions that I knew untrue : 
 What did I care? I'd rather sound 
 A pleasure false than feel the wound 
 
 Of hope deferred I thought my due. 
 
40 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 It matters not what trend my thought 
 
 Has taken in its wanton flight ; 
 To me the image that is wrought 
 Is instinct with my life and fraught 
 
 With pleasure, though a passing light. 
 
 XXX van. 
 
 I've had bright visions of a home 
 
 That I might sometime see or know ; 
 Wherein I'd find a sweet welcome 
 And place to rest, and cease to roam 
 About the world with spirit sore : 
 
 For mine was e'er a restless soul 
 
 That battered 'gainst its narrow cage ; 
 My thoughts would soar beyond control, 
 Amid ethereal spheres would roll 
 And boundless platitudes engage ! 
 
 I've had bright dreams, I say : a fair 
 
 And lonely cove 'mid wildest scene ; 
 A cot upon a rugged square 
 Of mountain ledge, all lone and bare 
 Above and capped in glinting sheen, 
 
 Below great fertile plains, a sea 
 That rolls and swells in majesty, 
 
 A silvery stream that ploughs the lea 
 
 Meandering lazily to the sea 
 
 To lose itself with murmuring sigh. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 4I 
 
 'Tis here my restless soul would live 
 With all the freedom of the lark ; 
 
 Amid such grandeur Hope can give 
 
 Each pleasure liberty and live 
 Again as in the primal spark ! 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 I've pictured so my home : I'd live 
 
 'Mid balmy winds and babbling streams : 
 
 I'd coax the birds their songs to give 
 
 To hatmonize it all : I'd live 
 Forever in my languid dreams! 
 
 And what can fairer be than ihis.? 
 
 Or what thing happier to plan 
 Than dream-life full of happiness? 
 A region of unbounded bliss 
 
 Born of the wild conceit of man.^ 
 
 For, should I pall, I'd merely try 
 
 * The world again, and, sickened, soon 
 To eyrie back my soul would fly 
 As bird of wild unrest, to die 
 
 Amidst the comforts of this boon. 
 
 'Tis false to think one satisfied 
 
 With what he has of earth ; his lot 
 Is mean when he has once espied 
 A fellow's, though to him untried - — 
 'Tis fair because he knows it not ! 
 
4^ IN PASSING THROUGH 
 
 The weary wanderer seeks a home ; 
 
 And he beside the hearth-stone longs 
 For pleasures of an idle roam : 
 And so from cradle unto tomb 
 
 Comes discontentment's hiring songs, 
 
 XL. 
 
 I stray alone to view the world, 
 
 In silence seeking sympathy; 
 Ensanguined so my hopes unfurl 
 To temper spirit of the churl 
 
 That dwells within my misery : 
 
 And thought's conspiracy is dead, 
 And treason in the soul unknown ; 
 
 And my unrest is vanquished, fled 
 
 Beyond the pale of that it fed. 
 To leave me undisturbed, alone. 
 
 And so I revel in the sights 
 
 Fair nature stretches out to view ; 
 
 I people space and see delights 
 
 In idle fellowships with wights 
 Unreal and to fancy due. 
 
 And thus the dormant soul of man, 
 Full of the cliarms of life, awakes 
 And all the range of earth would scan 
 To find a breadth of love to span 
 
 The breach that Hell's distemper makes. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 43 
 
 XLI. 
 
 How beautiful the land and sea, 
 
 And the soft glowing sky above; 
 The lofty mountains and the lea 
 That stretches forth to meet and be 
 
 Horizon to the plains of Jove : 
 
 How beautiful each life that glows 
 
 To color everything in view ; 
 How beautiful the blushing rose, 
 And every flowering shrub that shows 
 
 The vSpirit vvdiich doth all renew . 
 
 How beautiful the peaceful day 
 
 And the serenity of night ; 
 How grand the storm that breaks its stay 
 And thunders o'er the world away 
 
 To wreck within its fury's might : 
 
 E'en to the narrow range of man 
 Bound to his lot by earthen gyves, 
 
 Though humble be his lowly span, 
 
 Yet of what grandeur is the plan 
 Of everything for which he strives. 
 
 How beautiful, how beautiful ; 
 
 And yet how strangely, truly sad 
 That man is here less dutiful 
 Than any creature beautiful 
 
 That makes or leaves the world so fflad I 
 
44 IN PASSING TIIFIOUGH. 
 
 Yea, true, 'tis man alone's deformed, 
 
 And he that mars the face of earth ; 
 And he that tortures and is harmed 
 By his own craft, and yet is armed 
 For the destruction of all worth ! 
 
 He builds and he destroys. He plays 
 
 With dangerous tools and thinks his deeds 
 
 Are wise ; and in this he displays 
 
 Noetic brain, perhaps, but \vays 
 In strange adjustment to his needs. 
 
 XLU. 
 
 But when beneath the arching skies 
 
 In lonely solitude we roam, 
 We this fotget and let our eyes 
 Pursue the fleecy cloud that flies 
 
 Within the heaven's azure dome. 
 
 Could we but live within that mass 
 
 And hie us in its billowy folds. 
 The earth and all its rue might pass, 
 No stricken soul to cry, alas! 
 
 Because of Nature's bites and scolds. 
 
 We'd drink the harmony of sound ; 
 
 We'd listen to the lisping wind ; 
 We'd free ourselves of all that bound ; 
 We'd feel no earthly jar or wound, 
 
 Nor binding cord that once confined ! 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 45 
 
 We'd be of truest likeness then 
 
 To that we boast, our image is, 
 Or as the Soul in nature when 
 Its pristine essence is again 
 
 Resumed to be dissolved in bliss. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 To be alone is company, 
 
 As Greek philosophy once said ; 
 And solitude can sometimes be 
 Amid the gayest company 
 
 If hearts to sober thoughts are wed. 
 
 I needed not this apothegm 
 
 To tell me of a mind's unrest ; 
 I've felt it, and I've tried to stem 
 My scurring thoughts, or hinder them 
 
 From bringing on a vexing quest. 
 
 I drift myself into tlie sea 
 
 Of troubles that I would avoid ; 
 I flounder, and my buoyancy 
 Is sunk by scorn and mockery. 
 
 And all life's pleasures are alloyed ! 
 
 XhlV. 
 
 But still in solitude is charm 
 
 More subtle than the poets say ; 
 For what know they of hearts' alarm? 
 Or measure of each damning harm 
 
 This solitude can soothe away? 
 
4^ IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 Instinct with dream they only see 
 The visions of their ardor born ; 
 
 The creatures of wild phantasy ; 
 
 The eidolons that can not be, 
 
 Or things of strange Athenic spawn ; 
 
 \Vhilst we, beset with mundane toil 
 And struggling in our narrow bounds. 
 
 Can feel more keenly life's turmoil, 
 
 Embitterment we can not foil, 
 To writhe in agony of wounds! 
 
 Because we can not speak as they 
 In wild and rhythmic rapsody, 
 
 Is it the proof of brighter way.? 
 
 Or that we stumble in our lay, 
 Too full of pain for harmony? 
 
 The deepest grief is dumb of tongue 
 
 And silent is the throb of death, 
 The pang that has in anguish wrung 
 Was, never to sweet music sung, 
 
 For gasping in its speech and breath, 
 
 XLV 
 
 But vSolitude, O Solitude! 
 
 How sweet to lie and dream with thee! 
 How gracious is thy voiceless mood. 
 Thy desert stillness, or the rude, 
 
 Fierce roarinjx breakers of the sea ! 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 47 
 
 For whether in the plain or wood. 
 
 The mountain or the ocean's cahii, 
 The heart has ever understood 
 The language of thy pensive flood' 
 
 That soothes to rest its wild alarm. 
 
 Oppressed with grief to thee would turn 
 
 Each soul for sympathy and rest ; 
 For thou wast never known to spurn 
 A spirit that could here once yearn 
 
 For that with w^hich thou art so blest. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 I lo.ve the coves of solitude ; 
 
 I love the silent dells and wood ; 
 I love the mountain and the rude 
 Waves of the beach, their amplitude, 
 
 And the w^ild dashings of their flood. 
 
 I watch the ocean waves and say, 
 
 Thalassa of wild billows, roll ! 
 Within thy froth fair Nereids play. 
 And Oceanides there spray 
 
 The rainbow of thy wrath's control : 
 
 Upon thy bosom ploughs the fleet 
 
 Of man in "golden argosies" ; 
 And silver though thy shining sheet, 
 A slave art thou to traffic feet — 
 
 Leviathan of human prize ! 
 
4S IN PASSING TI-IROUGH. 
 
 And Neptune or Poseidon eld, 
 
 With trident pricks thy liquid heart. 
 
 And leaping dolphins, too, would swell 
 
 Their reign, or Nautilus compel 
 Thee bear aloft her tiny yacht : 
 
 Thou kissest shores remote and near, 
 
 Thou liquid bridge of distant lands!. 
 Thou billow of a Pluvian tear 
 That fell to w^ater earth when sere, 
 
 And here remained for Life's commands! 
 
 We play within thy drifting sands, 
 
 We chase thy tides and ride thy waves ; 
 We compass thee within our lands, 
 And dare abuse thy law's commands 
 
 Though yawning are thy swirling graves. 
 
 O peaceful Stream that Nereus mild 
 Was want to govern in thy flow. 
 
 Is power in thee fierce and wnld. 
 
 Here docile as obedient child 
 But to. deceive the spirit so? 
 
 Yea, Proteus is thy god as well, 
 And changeable art thou as he ! 
 
 'I hy gentle undulating swell 
 
 May burst to wreck when none can tell 
 What cargos sunk and what at sea! 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 49 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 Thy name, O Ocean, sounds of fame! 
 
 Great Homer wound thee 'round the earth ; 
 Gave thee fair Tethys as thy dame, 
 And fairer offspring of thy name : 
 
 And all pronounced thee full of worth. 
 
 "Thalassa" by the Grecian host, 
 
 "Thalatta" in the Attic tongue, 
 As waves of thee dashed on the coast 
 To wreck the things of human boast — 
 
 Of thee onomatope they sung! 
 
 But what name fitting to the wail 
 
 That comes with all th}^ storm and roar? 
 When in thy seething floods the Sail 
 Sinks 'neath the billows of thy gale 
 
 That hurl strange fragments on the shore? 
 
 XLVIII. 
 I dreamed of thee and thought I savv' 
 
 A Demon sleeping on thy breast : 
 A Being wraught of nature's flaw, 
 A hideous Shape defying law% — 
 
 Huge, stretching north and south and west. 
 
 His breathing shook thy treacherous calm 
 And jarred the pendant heavens high ; 
 And when he moved all felt alarm, 
 And waves sprang up as though a harm * 
 Was in their sleeping so near by! 
 
50 IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 A sail flew o'er the sea and woke 
 
 This monster of the raging deep : 
 A flashing eye, a lightning stroke. 
 And thundering billows leaped and broke, 
 The frail thing with one fell sweep! 
 
 And mocking winds hurled fragments high, 
 
 And drifts w^ere broken on the shore, 
 And sea-gulls answered human cry, 
 And storms, deriding, passed on by, 
 And sunk debris forever more! — 
 
 Thou baffling oceanic Stream, 
 
 Awake not thoughts of storm and rage : 
 Thou now art calm, so let me dream 
 Of thee as some smooth, flowing stream 
 
 As in the fair archaic age. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 From birth to death this life is change. 
 New scenes to dawn with every day ; 
 Time's fleeting image sure can range 
 From hour to hour although each strange 
 Emotion halts as if to stay : 
 
 To-day our hearts are filled with joy, 
 
 To-morrow sorrow ekes the hour ; 
 And next some pleasure would decoy, 
 Or drown the troubles that annoy — ■ 
 
 And we the playthings of some Power! 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 The flying fronds, or siftino- sand, 
 That drift on winds of Destiny ; 
 
 The huddled leaves upon the land 
 
 Obeying fatuous command 
 
 And swirling till we lifeless lie! 
 
 L. 
 
 We light upon a certain place 
 And for a season call it home ; 
 
 We leave for each remembered face 
 
 To linger in its wonted grace, 
 
 So plaguing thence our aimless roam ! 
 
 Like birds of passage in their flight. 
 
 We come and go 'mid tempests swell ; 
 Our greeting but a passing light 
 That lends a radiance for the Night 
 
 To snuff and give us back " farewell " ! 
 
 And friends forget and deem us dead — 
 For Absence is Oblivion's host ! 
 
 And dreams that were are quickly fled 
 
 For newer ties to bind instead 
 
 And leave the heart an empty boast ! 
 
 LI. 
 I've seen a little bird uncaged 
 
 That fluttered 'round its prison home : 
 Uncertain freedom so engaged 
 Its hope and fear — and so have waged 
 
 Emotion's battles when I roam ! 
 
52 IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 A prison is in Freedom's wild 
 
 Where boundless vistas hove in view ; 
 For vastness renders impulse mild ; 
 Each soaring thought is natures child; 
 
 A home, a joy, is still life's due. 
 
 Unsatisfied we strive in vain 
 
 To find some peace and place of rest ; 
 'Tis not in snapping friendship's chain 
 To wander o'er earth's lonely main 
 
 Companionless that we are blest. 
 
 LII. 
 
 In solitude the charm we find 
 
 Is living o'er our lives again ; 
 Regaling thought in memory's wind, 
 Allowing love-hopes so to bind 
 
 All pleasures we would have remain : 
 
 See with a different light and eye 
 Life's incidents so near forgot ; 
 
 Recall the times for which we sigh ; 
 
 Hear songs of joy that drown the cry 
 Wailed by the waif of hapless lot. 
 
 But solitude and I have dwelt 
 
 Within this clay for, lo, so long! 
 I know his mood and he has felt 
 The gloom in me ; and such is pelt 
 To spirit that gives forth this song. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 LIII 
 
 53 
 
 " Farewell !" I say to dreams each day : 
 
 Farewell to scenes and friends I've known ; 
 
 ' ' Farewell ! " and in my feeble way 
 
 I try express the throbs that say 
 
 "Farewell" with depths to words unknown! 
 
 And yet I'm only half expressed 
 
 And misinterpreted and feared, 
 And all my heart has e'er confessed 
 Was disbelieved, or deemed the test 
 
 Of baseness that the cynic stirred! 
 
 Yet still I turn to say " farewell " 
 
 Though doubt may mock sincerity ; 
 I can not, will not, break the spell 
 That binds the past ; I hence would dwell 
 In realms of cherished memory. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 I love to hold a memory sweet, 
 
 I love to dream of pleasures past ; 
 1 love for pictures to repeat 
 Conceptions to old Time's defeat 
 
 And stamp impressions that will last : 
 
 I cherish them and, miser like, 
 
 Would gloat o'er their possession aye; * 
 
 I hoard each vision that can strike 
 The sympathetic chord I like 
 
 To sound its melody each day : 
 
54 IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 And so within safe keeping I 
 
 Hold much the world may deem as dross, 
 And with love's tenderness and eye, 
 I touch, and see, and, loving, sigh 
 
 For what may better be my loss ! 
 
 LV. 
 
 The pictures I have laid away 
 Are not Daguerreotypes of art ; 
 
 Nor chiseled in some -wasting clay ; 
 
 But photographed by finer ray 
 On sensor-tablets of my heart. 
 
 No magic sibyl ever held 
 
 Had half the power of these to bring 
 The joys back that once compelled 
 The heart to worship, or that swelled 
 
 The overflow of youth's bright spring. 
 
 I live again the moments through 
 
 As though no day had spaced my love ; 
 
 I feel a fellowship as true 
 
 As any that life ever knew — 
 
 Though answering spirit may not move. 
 
 Enough it is to feel the bliss 
 
 And know the dream is ever young ; 
 That Toil and x\ge the brow rriay kiss. 
 But naught can prove the heart remiss 
 That holds an image Fancy sprung. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 55 
 
 LVI 
 
 In train a myriad visions stand 
 
 Like sylphs in fairy-land of dream ; 
 
 Each holds a love at its command ; 
 
 Each waves submission by its hand ; 
 Each is, though it may only seem ! 
 
 It is, for by its subtle power 
 
 It frees oppression of my thought, 
 And, in the transport of its hour. 
 It sweeps the soul with magic power 
 To purge it of what frenzy wrought. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 My school-day's love I can't deny, 
 
 Nor how my sentiments w^ould fliow 
 When under trees I used to lie 
 And dream the future o'er and sigh 
 For that I never was to know. 
 
 For, school-days done, I drifted on 
 To other scenes and other loves, 
 For them in turn to leave upon 
 My mind impressions that will run 
 To end of memory's sportive roves. 
 
 Though sweetheart of my boyhood days 
 
 Could scarcely move affections now, 
 I can not yet forget her ways, 
 Or here deny that she still plays 
 
 The wanton with my heart, somehow ! 
 
56 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 I see. a maid bare-footed, tanned. 
 
 But beauty in both form and face ; 
 She trips across the new plowed land 
 While from her small and sun-burnt hand, 
 She drops the grain where furrows lace : 
 
 Her eyes are bright with youthful fire. 
 Her hair with sunlight frolic mad, 
 
 Her step is agile and desire 
 
 Would burn her cheeks when eyes admire 
 The rounded limbs so scantly clad. 
 
 She is to me a mountain fay ! 
 
 A wandering Knight I am to her! 
 A sweet romance with each would play — 
 I hold the vision, but the day 
 
 Is past to leave me but its cheer ! 
 
 LIX 
 
 I see a lady proud and grand. 
 
 With beauty that transcends a star ; 
 
 She greets and smiles : I lose command 
 
 Of heart and will, and, trembling, stand 
 
 A suppliant pleading at love's bar ! 
 
 She leads me hither, thither, ways 
 
 I dare not here confess because 
 'Twould show how weak the strongest stays 
 We boast ! The misanthrope obeys 
 
 The promptings of some social laws ! 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 ?/ 
 
 The real passes and the dream 
 
 Is all I have to mark the day. 
 I only know what love did seem ; 
 I would not shatter fancy's realm 
 
 By searching deeper in the play. 
 
 LX. 
 
 So seasons bring their gifts, and pain 
 Of parting ere true friendship's ripe : 
 
 Blue eyes or brown, in happv train 
 
 Flash on my life to leave again, 
 And I retain a passing type ! 
 
 I care not? Yes; though knowledge sees 
 All semblance of the real destroyed ! 
 
 I'd rather pass my life with these 
 
 And feel their warmth than know the freeze 
 That chills the hopes of all enjoyed. 
 
 'Twill vanish soon enough although 
 We hold each shadow as divine : 
 
 The truth contains much human woe : 
 
 We can not always see the glow 
 Of life when suffering in its pine. 
 
 LXI. 
 On moieties we live and thrive, 
 
 On shadows base our love and faith ; 
 We hope and dream and ever strive 
 To keep our feeble flanie alive 
 
 Though aimless as a shadow- wraith. 
 
SS IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 And these with recollections vain 
 Wove in the fabric of each life, 
 Defy Arachne's art again 
 To show the world a gayer train 
 Spun of her wild and fabled strife. 
 
 'Tis dreaming thus that poets find 
 The fair creations of their verse, 
 
 And let their brooding thoughts combine 
 
 In rhythmic cadences divine 
 
 The treasures of the mental purse. 
 
 And so we know, in sober truth, 
 The creature of each frenzied mind 
 
 Is one in fancy bred ; insooth, 
 
 An apparition of the Truth 
 
 That longings of the heart would bind 
 
 And that it isn't half so fair 
 
 As phantasy would make believe ; 
 But seen within the light of care, 
 We find its virtues strangely rare — 
 For 'tis Love's province to deceive! 
 
 As some one has so aptly said, 
 
 The most adorable is she 
 Whom we have never met, nor wed 
 To fickle thought to turn the head 
 
 A moment from reality. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 59 
 
 The wise will always love and sigh ; 
 
 The foolish only live in bliss! 
 When buoyant hopes would soar too high 
 Reflection shows the sham and lie 
 
 That are one half of all that is ! 
 
 LXII. 
 
 How happy must the yeoman be 
 Amid his fields and feeding flocks, 
 
 Where nature's rare simplicity 
 
 Is mirrowed in the sky and lea. 
 And even ruggedness of rocks. 
 
 No passions stir his bosom's calm. 
 
 Fraught of the wrangle of his kind ; 
 He views the world without alarm; 
 Sees pleasures in each sylvan charm, 
 
 And happiness wnth all combined : 
 
 He plows his lands, he sows his grain, 
 
 And reaps a harvest for his toil ; 
 He tends his herds upon the plain ; 
 Or drives the jolly, rumbling wain 
 
 For products of the fertile soil : 
 
 His cares are as the springtime cloud — 
 
 A passing shadow and no more : 
 An ill the sunshine has allowed 
 To sweep his soul ; a shifting cloud 
 
 That drops a tear in flitting so ! 
 
6o * IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 His prancing steeds, his lowing kine 
 
 That feed within the meadows green, 
 His h^rnbs agambol and the swine 
 That bask within the warm sunshine 
 So rendering picturesque the scene ; 
 
 The chirping birds, the chanticleer 
 
 That crows its freedom to the soul ; 
 The swans afloat on silver mere, 
 The plough-boy's happy song of cheer — 
 These are the joys of his control. 
 
 The morning finds him up and out 
 
 With sunlight and the sparkling dew ; 
 
 Fresh nature's glowing air about 
 
 Invigorating life to rout 
 
 The ills that languidness would brew^ ; 
 
 At noon the blast of horn recalls 
 The passing day and nature's need; 
 
 Within the shade of trees he sprawls, 
 
 And drowsily his mind recalls 
 
 Each season's wanno wings of seed. 
 
 At eve when sun is sinking red. 
 
 He wends him home in tuneful joy ; 
 At night he seeks his humble bed. 
 No thoughts tormenting heart or head, 
 And sleeps to dream of love's employ. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 6l 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 Contrast with this the city life 
 
 With all its bustle and its roar; 
 Its howling greed, its angry strife 
 That tramples down each feeble life 
 Which vainly struggles to the fore ; 
 
 Its brawling crime and snarling death ; 
 
 Its cries of want and wild despairs; 
 Its dust and smoke which stifle breath ; 
 Its foul effluvia of death ; 
 
 Its catacombs of human lairs ; 
 
 Its seed of whirlwind, crop of tares; 
 
 Its hells of woe, its devils' care; 
 Its folly-shops of sham-faced wares ; 
 Its tolls, its panders and its snares — 
 
 And these are what w^e can compare ! 
 
 Miasmas fill its alley ways, 
 
 And Want is fellow of the hour; 
 And Life a Life to ills betrays, 
 And with Contagion foully plays 
 For Death, the unrelenting Powder : 
 
 And some inventive Genius springs 
 
 A trap for Riches to ascend ; 
 A trap that to the many brings 
 A fall and downward slope of things 
 By making much on one depend : 
 
62 IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 The lazzaroni of the street 
 
 Are mocks of sympathy and wealth ; 
 And Opulence, with noisy feet, 
 Would drown the cries which might repeat 
 
 The tales told of its adroit stealth ! 
 
 How much was robbed and how much earned 
 
 By honest labor of the hand? 
 How much had better nature spurned _ 
 The methods of increase which turned 
 
 " An honest penny's " base command? 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 And yet the Youth on entering life 
 
 Is taught that power waits on wealth ; 
 
 Not that pursuit brings weary strife, 
 
 Possession sodidness of life 
 
 And pains attending wasted health. 
 
 He's driven into business cares 
 
 That bow his head, corrupt his heart ; 
 
 And promised but a goal that fears 
 
 Its exaltation and the sneers 
 
 Of those who know its crafty art ; 
 
 The art that Honesty disdains 
 
 As stepping stone of Fraud and Lie ; 
 
 The art that Artifice maintains 
 
 And never purpose base restrains 
 Though end be in a fellow's cry. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 63 
 
 And so the fairest mark of pride 
 
 Is graven on a gilded shaft 
 That tells how sympathy has died 
 And better purpose been denied 
 
 For base devices of a craft ! 
 
 LXV. 
 
 The greatest curse of man to-day 
 
 Is love of gold and its pursuit ; 
 The littleness that holds the sv^^ay 
 Of wills within their wily play, 
 
 To leave conditions of the brute ! 
 
 I hold it that a heart when set 
 
 On this pale drudge of avarice. 
 Is prone to any crime abet 
 Which clears the way or helps to let 
 
 An object pass for its increase : 
 
 And from the first when cattle meant 
 
 Pecunia of ancestral trade, 
 The pecus stood for vile intent 
 To seize, and hold aggrandizement 
 
 The aim of every barter made : 
 
 And even now when man would boast 
 
 Enlightenment and moral e3^e, 
 His traffic is the same in cost 
 As that which moved the barbarous host ; 
 
 His betterment a vanity ! 
 
^4 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 Young Hermes, Grecian god of Trade, 
 
 Was god as well of Theft and Lie ; 
 'S tho' theft and lie the traffic made. 
 Or barter little truth displayed, 
 Or honor showed within its ply! 
 
 This god was likewise god of Speech ; 
 
 Inventive source of Cadmean sign! 
 Speech for the wily tongue to teach 
 The will to make a moral breech 
 
 That promised profit by its whine! 
 
 What wonder then a custom born 
 Of such a source should find an end 
 
 In that alone which foster scorn. 
 
 Which teaches mankind how to fawn 
 To Powers that on wealth depend.^ 
 
 LXVIL 
 
 It is a trait of humankind — 
 
 Born with us in the savage state — 
 To entertain a grasping mind 
 That hopes in someway here to find 
 The treasures it doth meditate. 
 
 Mistaken are we all and blind 
 
 To truths of life as time will show; 
 The good of that we hope to find 
 Is lost within the maze and wind 
 Of byways Greed entangles so. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 6^ 
 
 Wealth is not sum of happiness, 
 
 Nor power measure of desire, 
 Nor worldly splendor all of bliss, 
 Nor charm of all in what we miss. 
 
 Nor love alone in sensual fire ; 
 
 Some spice must season everything 
 
 And render palatable sweets 
 Which cloy in surfeit ; so to bring 
 The human taste to earthly thing 
 
 And clear the mind of its conceits. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 Return again unto the scene 
 
 Of rural innocence and peace : 
 If soul be weary touch the green, 
 Antaeus-like, it w'ill be seen 
 
 To strengthen with the earth's increase! 
 
 We all were woodland fauns, perhaps, 
 Before we yoked ourselves as men ; 
 
 Before we forged deceitful traps 
 
 For human frailties and mishaps, 
 Or tempted dolts in social pen. 
 
 Before we fettered docile wills 
 
 To labor in our selfish use ; 
 Before we knew inventive skills. 
 Or dreamed of subjugating wills . 
 
 To their betrayal and abuse. 
 
66 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 We boast of freedom, to enslave 
 
 Each helpless thing that comes in way! 
 Un manumitted souls but crave 
 The freedom God to others gave — 
 
 Enslaved themselves by passion's sway. 
 
 We fetter selves and teach our hands 
 
 To forge the fetters of our dupes ; 
 A pfaoler-den we make all lands, 
 And proudly strut and give commands, 
 
 And brag of dumb-voiced, servile, troops! 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 Yea, freedom is in being free 
 
 To make a hell of all the world, 
 And letting human avarice be 
 The master passion, and the plea 
 Of all the baseness of the churl ! 
 
 And fairness is in being fair 
 
 When power is to here restrain ; 
 Or, 'tis in taking major share 
 Of everything for which we care 
 When no one dares bid us refrain ! 
 
 And justice is the thing we boast 
 
 When we have neither want nor will 
 
 To gratify, and all the cost 
 
 Is borne by others, or is lost 
 
 In test of some one's poorer skill. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH, 67 
 
 LXX. 
 
 ]3orn free we are : Equality 
 
 Is not a thing of birth, but worth. 
 
 'Tis stuff that makes the man ; degree 
 
 Of elements arranged to be 
 
 Perchance a power on the earth. 
 
 Some move this way and some move that- 
 
 These children in their passions blind. 
 Those as though some divine fiat 
 Predestined them to conquer that 
 
 Which blocks the way of dull mankind. 
 
 By prejudice and passion moved 
 
 The vast majority of men : 
 Throw off restraint and it is proved 
 All are but creatures it behooved 
 
 The wiser to restrain and pen ! 
 
 Anarchial in both thought and mood, 
 
 Destructive and of social flaw ; 
 Some Reason has to stir and brood, 
 Devise a means and rule of good 
 And force the regnancv of law ! 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 We've mocked the nature love confest ; 
 
 We've scorned the pristine chatm and sway; 
 We've filled our souls with fierce contest 
 To baffle all the dreams of rest ; 
 
 We're authors of our own dismay : 
 
68 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 We're moved to purpose and design 
 The god-like in us must deplore ; 
 
 We've set a gait and marked a sign 
 
 That generations may repine 
 
 In reaping what our errors sow : 
 
 And social state that promised peace 
 
 In plea for strength which it combined, 
 Has turned the force for ills increase, 
 Or for Contention's greater lease 
 In bring-iiiP- strutjp-les on mankind. 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 So Aristotle's postulate 
 
 That man was born a citizen, 
 
 Is called in question here of late, 
 
 And, by new canons of debate, 
 He's found the creature of a den ! 
 
 And if a polites at all, 
 
 A ramping, howling, "diplomat" 
 Whose social state is one of gall, 
 The "citizen," "political;" — 
 
 Transforming polites to that ! 
 
 Was ever word so misconstrued, 
 
 Or misinterpreted by use? 
 A term of fellowship for feud! 
 A word whose meaning would include 
 
 Within itself its own abuse! 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 69 
 
 We find, indeed, the " citizen," 
 
 Instead of being neighbor true, 
 Is oftener a partizan 
 Whose business is to cheat, and plan 
 
 The robbing of another's due ; 
 
 And that his " patriotism " is 
 
 What surly Johnson would define : 
 
 A scoundrel's apt lip-word in his 
 
 Defense of his own act remiss, 
 Or the disguise of his design. 
 
 Yet " politics " is still the cant 
 
 Of those who prate of polity ; 
 Of demagogue and sycophant, 
 And " statesmen " far more ignorant 
 
 Of statecraft than diplomacy ! 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 'Tis plain that if we view mankind 
 
 In any light our reason knows, 
 A tugging, fudging, mass we find 
 Of divers aims, and, passion blind. 
 
 Each holding all the rest as foes ! 
 
 In toils of rancor, din of sound, 
 
 Most labors seem but to estrange ; 
 Yet each is stung by selfish wound. 
 Which shows that all are linked and bound 
 By some concatenation strange. 
 
JO IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 Society, Society, 
 
 To what condition is thy name? 
 Once stood the term for God's decree 
 Spoke to the soul's affinity 
 
 That it wild impulses might tame. 
 
 From primal germ of savage state 
 
 Art thou advanced or lower borne? 
 Thy wisdom hoideth yet debate 
 With some instincts that here relate 
 Thee to a former plain of scorn. 
 
 And baser ends thy humors crave 
 
 Than Troglodytes conceived withal ; 
 For in the more exalted " cave " 
 That union built, thy freedom gave 
 A license for thy social thrall! 
 
 Now man is moved by thy decrees, 
 And virtue loses through thy claims, 
 
 Whilst Wealth holds greatest power to please, 
 
 And Sham enjoys fullest ease — 
 The tenor of thy vaunted aims ! 
 
 And is this what was promised \vhen 
 All gave their aid to help thee bind 
 
 The social tie that was to pen 
 
 The wild community of men 
 
 Into the noble caste " Mankind "? 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 Society, Society, 
 
 What dignity canst thou confer? 
 The state of nature, wild and free, 
 Is dignity to what we see 
 
 Exampled in thy social leer. 
 
 The man who once found pride in truth, 
 
 And scorned dissemblings of the lie, 
 Is now seduced, and from his youth 
 Is taught the lesson of thy ruth — 
 Himself deceived to falsify ! 
 
 We speak of savage red-man found 
 
 Within this land which we call ours; 
 We let not honest truth confound 
 Our pride by telling how we hound'd 
 A truer nature by our powers. 
 
 He brought a calmuet of peace ; 
 
 A faith conceiving us divine ! 
 We, " fire-water " to increase 
 His ills; a " forked-tongue's " release 
 
 In proof of our " benign " design ! 
 
 His Manitou we soon despised, 
 
 And forced a faith beyond his ken ; 
 We haggled and deceived, devised 
 New tortures for his hurt, reprised 
 His lands and slew his people, then — 
 
73 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 Our mission was of love, we say ! 
 
 Our faith a civilizing force! 
 The savage is our helpless prey ; 
 Evangelizing him we may 
 
 Enlighten so the world — of course! 
 
 Teach him the morals sprung of lie ! 
 
 The virtue of hypocrisy ! 
 The love of profit, and the sigh 
 Born of our selfishness; the cry 
 
 Of clamorous frivolity. 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 Society ! Society ! 
 
 When earth was young and man was new, 
 His soul knew no obscurity ; 
 His lowly intellect was free 
 
 Of Speculation's wise ado. 
 
 No drearning Nous pronounced him damn'd 
 
 Because of goblins in his mind ; 
 No mystic microcosm spann'd 
 Hiatus of a god's command 
 
 To find a Hell if he was blind I 
 
 His dream was real, his pleasures sweet, 
 
 Untrubled by a code of ill ; 
 He paired as birds pair, his retreat 
 Was home and full of all things meet 
 
 For simple happiness of will. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 73 
 
 Was Rome more happy than wild Gaul 
 Whose peoples lived in huts of straw? 
 
 She rolled in wealth and vice, withal, 
 
 But could not e'en so much as call 
 Her soul her own by will or law ! 
 
 Peace hung upon a tyrant's smile ; 
 
 It trembled at his passing nod ; 
 And virtue was a thing of guile, 
 Dcfloured for an idle while 
 
 As though a luckless gift of God! 
 
 The shrineless gods of German host 
 
 Dealt fairer with their devotees : 
 No chambered temples could they boast, 
 Nor altars smoking with lamb's roast, 
 
 But virtue dwelt among the trees. 
 
 The dames of lusty warriors sprung 
 
 Like Spartan matrons to the fight ; 
 They helped the lordly arm and sung 
 Encouragement, and, chastely clung 
 To all that was in honor right. 
 
 They bartered not themselves nor gave 
 Their lieges any cause for shame : 
 
 Their duties were to tend and save. 
 
 In battles fierce, the fallen brave, 
 Or keep alive his honored name. 
 
74 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 Well might a Tacitus cry out, 
 
 Comparing them to sensual drones 
 Of Romish ease, whose silly pout 
 Was love's device, a ruse for lout, 
 A voice inveigling in its tones! 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 Society, Society, 
 
 Art thou advanced on Gothic creeds? 
 Ah, Jezebels are born of thee. 
 And Sensuality is free 
 
 To mark thy progress with its deeds! 
 
 The savage virtues are debased 
 For social Sybarites to reign, 
 
 And style of Artemis defaced, 
 
 Or by Astarte now replaced 
 For base Propoetic love again. 
 
 An age that brags of chivalry 
 
 And equal rights to either sex. 
 Decadence shows in parity. 
 And not the progress faith would see 
 Wraught by the social part's contex ! 
 
 Disdain for manly qualities 
 
 Marks everything efFenimate ; 
 A languor born of wanton ease 
 Is humor w^hich perhaps may please 
 A feeble mind's more feeble state. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 75 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 Society, Society, 
 
 Who forced on woman sin and shame, 
 And filled her head with vanity. 
 And taught her inutility 
 
 In that for which she bears the blame? 
 
 Thy fashions wrecked a graceful form 
 And hugged diseases in their grip; 
 
 Thy arts to maiden's blush did harm ; 
 
 Thy manners lost her simple charm 
 And stole the truth from eye and lip ! 
 
 She ogles and denies, and plays 
 
 The hoiden to a soubrette's taste; 
 And by false acts the heart betrays 
 That beats for her, and breaks the stays 
 That bind the sacred married state ! 
 
 As Rousseau charged of old, she gives 
 
 Her babe into a nurse's care ; 
 Disports herself, and, if it lives, 
 A fine example then she gives 
 
 Of how the meretricious fare! 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 Society ! Society ! 
 
 In lieu of consort that proclaims 
 Our sires' superiority, 
 We hold concupiscence is free 
 
 To here embrace its sensual aims ! 
 
76 IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 Conjugal state is social woe : 
 
 The bachelor and " bachelor-maid," 
 
 Are evolutions come before 
 
 The Freeloveism we may know 
 When lawful wedlock is delayed. 
 
 Delayed to let the passions sway 
 
 The will to fancies of an hour; 
 Delayed to let hot lust betray 
 The head and turn its thoughts away 
 
 From sequence of a venal power. 
 
 And this we call Advancement now : 
 This low incontinance and lust ! 
 
 And acts untoward we allow, 
 
 While vain imaginings somehow 
 
 Prove false to each misguided trust. 
 
 Great Shakespeare truly understoo~d 
 
 These little weaknesses of man ; 
 His imp of satire wisely could 
 Discern each temperment of good, 
 And see each crafty devil's plan. 
 
 'Tis no less true of ages past 
 
 Than of the present which we see ; 
 
 And what Puck said will ever last 
 
 Man's verdant vanity to blast, 
 
 With, " O what fools these mortals be " ! 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 77 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 Society ! Society ! 
 
 To quibble, jest, with idle tongue, 
 And show a mental vacancy. 
 Is all the lesson learned of thee 
 
 To soothe the pang of conscience rung 
 
 By thy decrees and wilful acts 
 
 Which license mischief in mankind ; 
 
 The soul conceives of what it lacks 
 
 By thy disparagement of facts. 
 And by thy feebleness of mind. 
 
 From youth to manhood's eager prime 
 The passions are within thy school, 
 
 And modesty is deemed a crime 
 
 That dims the luster of the time. 
 Since frolic is the sanctioned rule : 
 
 And early in the day is taught 
 
 Thy light frivolity of will. 
 And spirit of presumption caught. 
 And act of indescretion's thought 
 
 That moves but to accomplish ill. 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 Society, Society, 
 
 Where rest the faults of thy estate? 
 Who turned the social impulse free 
 And taught it how to wreck and be 
 
 A farce for empty fools' debate? 
 
yS IN PASSING THROUGH.. 
 
 'Tis not so easy to undo 
 
 An error as to teach a vice : 
 A thought deep-rooted is as true 
 To him who holds it as the due 
 Of any act or sage advice. 
 
 Who then will stand for vicious deed, 
 Disgrace and social turpitude? 
 
 Society hath sown the seed, 
 
 Society will reap the weed 
 
 Grown in its own base servitude! 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 What gilded halls of wreck and sin 
 
 Wherein the flowing bowl is passed. 
 And where the die is cast to win 
 Or lose the fortunes chanced within 
 That wiser moments have amassed ; 
 
 What clinking glasses of champagne 
 
 And wines of amber or of red. 
 Or siren glances which contain 
 The ravishment and social bane 
 For carnal youth of giddy head ; 
 
 So is the ball-room of the gay 
 To debutantes in la heau-monde. 
 
 When peaceful night is changed to day 
 
 And Sensuality has play 
 
 Of passions in their fitful round. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 79 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 I catch a glimpse of passing show ; 
 
 I see a throng decollete; 
 And by the grand parade I know 
 Terpsichore doth rule below, 
 
 And these are signs of her rapt sway. 
 
 The flush of youth dyes cheek and brow, 
 
 And aided has the hand of art ; 
 Soft eyes here blaze as though somehow 
 Their liquid depths caught fire and now 
 Give light to show their passion's heart 
 
 And robbed the rainbow is of hues 
 To drape these butterflies of Night ; 
 
 And naught resplendant doth refuse 
 
 To add a luster for the use 
 
 Of Beauty in her brilliant dight ! 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 The gayest of the gay are here ; 
 
 The simple in their giddy plight ; 
 The shallowest of the sham appear 
 Commingling with the brilliant near, 
 
 And liberty doth give delight ! 
 
 lilyes promise much and preasures more, 
 
 And languidness entices love ; 
 The pulsing heart now quickens flow 
 Of passion but to crimson snow 
 
 Of bosoms throbbing dreams of love : 
 
8o 
 
 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 And then, as vines entwined, they wind 
 
 Their satyr-sylph-like arms around, 
 As tendrils so to hold and bind 
 In union here these polar kind. 
 
 Magnetic by the touch and sound ! 
 
 And, drunk with passion's melody, 
 
 They move with love's voluptuousness, 
 
 And swell with billows of the sea 
 
 That rolls within in mutiny 
 
 To wiser thoughts of soberness! 
 
 They glide as things unreal, insooth, 
 
 Like wild Gyrini On a pool ; 
 They reel and skirt in very truth 
 Like lambs agambol full of youth. 
 
 Or madcaps on the eve of Yule. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 If waltz delight you, whirl ye on : 
 
 The scene will change to find you lo\v 
 Of all the plain ye stood upon 
 Irradiant when your life begun — 
 And ye will never find it more ! 
 
 Youth will be past and blushes gone — 
 No rouge to bring them back to life ! 
 
 And honor ^vill be trampled on, 
 
 And virtue of its merit shorn 
 
 By midnight revels and love's strife ! 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 8l 
 
 And barriers down which held apart 
 
 Wild passions that should feel restraint. 
 
 Will open way to lusttul heart 
 
 For lecherous charm to play its part 
 And leave the soul a lasting taint! 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 The Dervish has his day and falls : 
 
 Ye with your dance of less excuse, 
 Arouse a nature that recalls 
 The social curse — though such befalls 
 One sex alone in its abuse ! 
 
 Man's jealousy doth urge on man 
 
 The purity of wife and maid ; 
 For what is chaste he lays his plan, 
 And to obtain her so he can 
 
 By spurning here the fallen jade. 
 
 He states his wants ; he makes demand, 
 
 And, howsoever low himself. 
 His manhood still will tirmly stand 
 And call for virtue though he plann'd 
 
 The downfall of the sex itself! 
 
 But woman on her part doth yield 
 To question not what she receives! 
 
 And this is her great moral wield ! 
 
 And this is how her virtues shield ! 
 She falls but ssldom self retrieves! 
 
82 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 LXXXVIl. 
 
 Her innate wish may be as wild 
 
 As any act that man can do ; 
 Her moral nature undefiled 
 Because by custom she's the child 
 Of man's selection and his rue. 
 
 She has no scruples as the man 
 
 In the selection ot her mate ; 
 If she but love the flame she'll fan 
 Although it be for vilest man 
 
 Found in the most degraded state ! 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 To thus contrast the sexes we 
 
 See much that seems not just or right ; 
 The man inordinately free, 
 The woman lost to all if she 
 
 But once embrace a social blight : 
 
 And yet the man can soon forget ; 
 
 For all the world is his engross : 
 While woman in her sphere must fret 
 And suffer martyrdom, and yet 
 
 Be comfort to some man, of course ! 
 
 The fault is Nature's, but the creed 
 
 Is writ in language as divine 
 As oracle which places deed 
 Of patience far above the seed 
 Of man that evils here incline. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 83 
 
 LXXXIX, 
 
 A woman's love or hate is spring 
 
 That moves her hands to any deed ; 
 In love her heart defies the fling. 
 Or Fate's or Fortune's sharpest sting: 
 She hides her wounds to let them bleed ! 
 
 A creature of divinest love 
 
 Whose soul with fondness overflows, 
 And sympathy of God above 
 Stands not superior, nor His love. 
 
 Than glows the spark her bosorri knows : 
 
 A patient grace of tenderness ; 
 
 A witch of passion that's divine ; 
 A nurse to all the ills that press ; 
 A cherub of sweet blessedness 
 
 Consoling all who may repine : 
 
 She glides an angel on this earth ; 
 
 She stands for that faith would proclaim 
 She gives to blessing lives their birth, 
 So proving mother of all worth 
 
 And sweet almoner of love's aim. 
 
 xc. 
 
 But woman's hate is that degree 
 Of hell as that her love is bliss ! 
 
 When scorned, neglected, then can she 
 
 Unburden spleen and so set free 
 The rancor of a Nemesis ! 
 
84 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 Hell holds no depth she can't explore 
 
 To fetch an ill to torture life ; 
 Medusa-like her hate would glow 
 To murder in its glance and show 
 
 The venom of her nature's strife. 
 
 She conjures ill and heaps her scorn 
 
 With spirit that a Harpy loved ; 
 She'll give a Judas kiss and fawn, 
 And e'en her sacred honor pawn 
 To hide the vixen in her moved! 
 
 XCL • 
 
 But why expatiate on this? 
 
 Why contrast man's or woman's wiles? 
 W^hy pry to wreck our little bliss 
 By proving natures are remiss 
 
 In all except their selfish guiles? 
 
 Is earth not full enougn of woe? 
 
 Are hearts too free, or spirits light? 
 Are dreams at fault because we know 
 Ephem'ral is the feeble glow 
 
 That lights a hope to mundane sight? 
 
 Return to nature ; gaze around : 
 Mark her vicissitudes and moods. 
 
 Forget the fetters that are wound 
 
 Confining us upon the ground 
 
 As prey entangled in the woods : 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 85 
 
 That Soul is free which yet can soar 
 
 In fancy realms though body lies 
 In dungeons cold and bare ; and more, 
 That Soul is free which tunes the roar 
 
 Of Death to anthems of the skies! 
 
 XCII. 
 
 I feel a humid breath of air; 
 
 I see a slumberous, lazy, haze ; 
 I note the heaven's darkening care, 
 And thistledown on languorous air 
 
 Come floating in the sultry rays ; 
 
 I hear the droning of a bee 
 
 That drifts upon the swelling wind ; 
 I catch a muffled song of glee 
 That bursts from throats I can not see, 
 And birds hie to their fellow-kind ; 
 
 I catch a bay from yonder wold 
 
 That tells a tale of sore distress, 
 And bleats and bellows from some fold 
 Are lowly sounds which speak the scold 
 
 Of higher Powers that repress : 
 
 The perfumes of some ladened bloom 
 
 Make rendolent the drowsy air : 
 Alack ! the scene is one of gloom ; 
 The sounds are knellings of the doom 
 
 That comes engulfing heie the fair! 
 
86 IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 XCIII, 
 
 The strato-mist we called a haze 
 
 Has swelled to cumuli of storm, 
 And all the heavens are ablaze 
 With flashes of the lightning's rays 
 
 That zigzag in their anger's form : 
 
 Like demons roused to wrath and hate, 
 Fire Jotuns leap from cloud to cloud. 
 And play as though aerial state 
 Was home of some wild, wrathful, Fate 
 That grinned to give the earth its shroud ! 
 
 Or Gnomes that snatch at fleeting prey 
 And such pursue : so seem the arms 
 
 Flashed from dark folds ; each grasping ray 
 
 More fearful by its scorching play 
 
 That spreads to strike e'en while it charms! 
 
 And presently there comes the roar 
 Of Winds let loose to howl apace : 
 
 They drive the raging Storm before 
 
 To wreck as some base living foe 
 That glories in a wanton chase . 
 
 And thunder is the chuckling laugh 
 Of this old demon we call Storm ! 
 The flash his smile, the rod his staff, 
 The Winds his charges ; the riffraff 
 Of formless things tell of his harm I 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH, 87 
 
 No reins of ^4i)o1lis can hold 
 
 The furies of the tempest's sweep; 
 
 He may as well return to fold 
 
 Whence issued forces uncontrolled, 
 
 Though ancients locked them in his keep. 
 
 Demons of the stormy sky, 
 
 What god- womb of the world can hold 
 Each thundering Shade or Deity 
 That stands the symbol of the sigh 
 
 The Tempest heaves when full of scold? 
 
 Can Greek or Roman Pantheon, 
 
 Or wilder y^sir of the north, 
 Or Deva where the gods begun, 
 Ahura of the burning sun, 
 
 Tell whence or when the Storm comes forth? 
 
 1 see in tempests Thor of old ; 
 
 I see in lightnings mjolnir hurl'd; 
 The crashing is his stride so bold ; 
 The howling winds his wrathful scold; 
 
 His frown the darkness of the world ! 
 
 I see a Hoder in the Gloom 
 
 The wrath of mighty Thor pursues ; 
 
 But Baldur soon will re-illume, 
 
 When, resurrected from the tomb, 
 He comes in all his vernal hues ! 
 
88 IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 I see a Zeus ; a Jupiter ; 
 
 A Ra of strange ethereal fire ; 
 An Indra of the Hindu seer; 
 Jehovah of the Hebrew fear, — 
 
 All gods of Storm and Heaven's ire! 
 
 Which one is God of all the rest 
 
 And shadowed in the others' glow? 
 Which one controls, and which is best. 
 Or which can better stand the test 
 Of reason here, I do not know. 
 
 I only know that nations have — 
 
 Each in its own peculiar way — 
 Defined their gods and counted slave 
 Him who believed in other save 
 
 Their own wise superstition's sway! 
 
 And so I turn my eyes about 
 
 To see them all, and reason why 
 
 Analogy, to help me out. 
 
 Turns all into a frenzied shout. 
 Their protestations much awry. 
 
 And thus but for the poet's dream. 
 
 Which made each wild conception fair, 
 
 We would acknowledge it a theme 
 
 Of barbarism, or the scheme 
 
 Of the more blatant man of care. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH, 89 
 
 And sacred Eddas of the Nord, 
 
 Or Sagas we once thought divine, 
 
 Are just as much in truth's accord 
 
 As Oriental tales of fraud 
 
 That give us now a faith and shrine. 
 
 xcv. 
 
 Akin religious faith ; akin 
 
 Desires which have brought them forth; 
 Akin the passions that have been ; 
 Akin the human race to sin 
 
 And every broken trust or oath : 
 
 Akin each age to that before, 
 
 And that decadence bids welcome ; 
 Akin the social states below, 
 The brute to man, the high and low ; 
 
 Each thing that calls this earth a home! 
 
 Our vanity may close our eyes, 
 
 Our egotism may control ; 
 But Truth will see the linking ties, 
 And how we magnify our size 
 
 And claim a god-like, lofty, soul! 
 
 I've seen man groping in the dark ; 
 
 I've seen him lost in grim despair; 
 I've seen him full of fear to hark 
 And catch an omen from the lark, 
 
 Or harmless leapings of the hare ! 
 
90 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 Or radiance he sees in flame 
 
 That is his own outo-da-fa; 
 And by some martyrdom proclaim 
 Reward hereafter and the fame 
 
 That lives with fools from day to day ! 
 
 XCVI. 
 
 Yea, like are we in barbarous deeds 
 
 To bestial ancestors we scorn ; 
 We loudly vaunt our senseless creeds, 
 And credit claim where it were needs 
 We blush for thoughts so lowly born ! 
 
 Our highest faiths are but the sum 
 
 Of totem dreams the savage knew ; 
 We give hallucinations home 
 And coddle every vagrant tome 
 That idly speaks of heaven's due. 
 
 The god of Wish our fathers knew, 
 
 When Norsemen they of simple faith. 
 Is yet the god of much we do. 
 The impulse that would here renew 
 The little hope which wisdom hath : 
 
 And to that god we bow and say, 
 
 'Since Reason here is blind or dumb, 
 We thank thee for the fatuous ray 
 Thou givest us to light the way 
 
 For Guess to see beyond the tomb!' 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 9I 
 
 XCVII. 
 
 The total of life's subtilties 
 
 Is not the sum of any faith : 
 Within them all some frenzy tries 
 To paint more brilliantly hope's skies 
 
 To please the fancy of earth's wraith! 
 
 And when men's faiths dispute and war, 
 
 It is the strife of fools, withal ; 
 ' ris bigotry that brings the jar 
 To social peace and helps debar 
 
 Love's scheme of brotherhood to all. 
 
 Arbitrament of war is death 
 
 Death to the faiths that stir the strife ; 
 Death to the soul's diviner breath 
 That wakes the hopes within, and death 
 
 To dreams which would enchant this life. 
 
 Stir man to see the little light 
 
 A faith can cast and he will scorn 
 
 Its feeble ray and find delight 
 
 In setting all the world aright. 
 
 Though disenchantment so is born : 
 
 A disenchantment that will blight 
 Our hopes in dreams of things to be ; 
 
 Philosophy the only light 
 
 To guide us through the starless Night 
 That falls when Faith can no more see ! 
 
92 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 Yet still each tongue should tell the truth 
 Though hope be lost and faith denied ; 
 What profits man to hide the ruth 
 That some experience will, forsooth. 
 Bring on us in our pomp of pride? 
 
 Whatever mysticism may 
 
 Our judgment for awhile confuse, 
 A reason will arise some day, — 
 If we'll but give our thoughts fair play, — 
 
 And proneing minds will disabuse. 
 
 XCVIII. 
 
 A faith in after-death depends 
 
 On vainer selfishness in man 
 Who cries his own exalted ends ; 
 But naught below him thither tends — 
 
 If egotism holds the plan ! 
 
 The subtleties he brings to bear 
 
 To prove divinity of life, 
 Are in behalf of his own care ; 
 The rest are all denied a share 
 
 In things immortal — though of strife ! 
 
 Yet, if analogy be true, 
 
 The least that lives is as divine 
 As any Spark that ever blew 
 In soul of him whose wisdom knew 
 
 The right from wrong as they entwine! 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 93 
 
 XCIX. 
 
 The vastness of the world is awe 
 
 To man or brute of finite mind; 
 We're seeking ever after Law, 
 But learn not that expression's flaw 
 
 Is in the words which have defined. 
 
 The bigot says that man alone 
 
 Has consciousness and eye of truth ; 
 
 And yet how know we that our scorn 
 
 Hides not a due more lowly born — 
 A due we owe the brute, insooth.? 
 
 Our moral sense is born of fear; 
 
 Of fear and profit got of peace : 
 We shoulder social state of care. 
 To let our selfishness compare 
 
 The burden with the ill's increase, 
 
 And, finding more of ill than good, 
 
 We lay it to some Deity : 
 Our own shortcomings then we hood 
 To wash with faith's " vicarious blood " 
 
 And claim " elected purity " ! 
 
 C. 
 O Vanity that would aspire 
 
 To Homes celestial but debar 
 Thy fellows from " ethereal fire " 
 Because by nature their desire 
 
 Is speechless at the earthly bar ! 
 
94 ^^ PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 Who knows but what the Spirit moves 
 
 As much in acorns as in men? 
 And that the throbbing- Forest proves 
 Some Animation that behooves 
 
 A patient mercy there again? 
 
 Humanity, thou framest laws; 
 
 But be thou governed by the tie 
 Of Sentiency! Plead thou the cause 
 Of mercy ere some Life doth pause, 
 
 Through man's abuse, to sink and die! 
 
 Bless, too, the creed that sees a soul 
 
 In tree or flower, beast or bird ; 
 That lets an angel's touch control 
 The impulse of a savage soul 
 
 Which laughs to give Destruction word : 
 
 For Pantheism is divine ! 
 
 What fairer God evolved by thought 
 Stands symbol for a brighter shrine 
 Than that all things etern combine 
 
 To leave us happiness so wrought? 
 
 CI. 
 
 Who has not seen a summer's dawn 
 
 Where peaks and clouds were tinged with red ; 
 Where light, like scimeter out-drawn, 
 Sharp cleaved the Night, so ghastly v\^an, 
 
 To splash its blood on skies o'erhead, 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 The blood to spread as blush of day 
 So bidding welcome to the Sun? 
 
 So comes the light of Truth : so may 
 
 A Genius rise with shooting ray 
 
 To light the gloom P'eat feeds upon ! 
 
 The rose of Fancy coyly blushed 
 
 Its richness in the brain of man, 
 And fertile Imagery was flushed, 
 And wild Invention, soaring, hushed, 
 When Genius came the world to scan. 
 
 When Genius came the world to scan 
 
 It saw a Homer lost in lore, 
 It saw a Shakespeare in the man, 
 It saw a Milton's range and span ; 
 
 It gave their souls impulse to soar; 
 
 To sweep the earth and skies of truth 
 
 To crystalize in gems of thought ; 
 To seize the world's departing youth, 
 Transfix its beauty and its blowth 
 
 And chain the image Time had wrought! 
 
 It taught a Pindar, nursed a Burns 
 
 I'o sing the psalms of pain and toil ; 
 It woke a Dante's soul with yearns 
 For Paradise and love that spurns 
 
 The doubt that hangs on Faith's recoil; 
 
 95 
 
96 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 It SO enriched the hampered mind 
 
 Imagination leaped to see 
 The beauties that were undefined 
 Though all around it here consigned. 
 
 Awaiting Genius to be free! 
 
 CII. 
 
 When Genius came upon the world 
 
 It met a cold reception there : 
 It found the human heart was churl'd, 
 And low all aspirations hurl'd 
 
 By mundane mockery and despair : 
 
 It found a barren field for work ; 
 
 Cocagne of brag for Paradise ! 
 A mental caliber to shirk ; 
 A spirit more depraved to lurk, 
 
 Bethwarting all that Honor tries I 
 
 It eked its day 'mid toil and pain ; 
 
 It labored for its visioned goal ; 
 With patience gathered little gain, 
 And for that bore the brunt and bain — 
 
 The stigma of a witless soul I 
 
 Too deep for fellowship, at first 
 
 Poor Genius was pronounced a fool ! 
 But shackles of the mind it burst 
 And lit the gloom of things accurst. 
 
 And gave each wandering thought a rule. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 97 
 
 Its force creative stirred, withal ; 
 
 A Titan was within the strife : 
 Volition leaped to duty's call — 
 Olympian heights could ne'er appall 
 
 The impulse born of such a life ! 
 
 The future pays the homage due 
 
 The heroes of the scornful past; 
 And Fame, thougli laggard with the new, 
 Adorns the dead, and hides from view 
 The rancor that could never last. 
 
 cm. 
 
 On wings we soar when thoughts have sway 
 
 Untrammeled by terrestrial bounds, 
 And phantom creatures people day. 
 And thoughts delight in elfish play 
 
 When Fancy plodding Fact confounds : 
 
 For slumbering in the soul is spark 
 Of wild, unmanumitted, thought ; 
 
 Strike fetters off, and, like a lark, 
 
 It soars aloft describing mark 
 
 Of that ethereal Forces wrought ! 
 
 x\nd thus was fashioned man's delight; 
 
 And from this source sprung songs of love 
 And many visions thus had flight 
 To blush the nadir of the Night 
 
 And trace a mock-dawn high above ! 
 
98 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 CIV. 
 
 The Kalpa of a world it sees ; 
 
 Annihilation in its end : 
 An Avatar of blissful ease 
 Wherein a Vishnu comes to please 
 
 And human strife with love to blend ; 
 
 Or threshold of Elysium 
 
 And naught but peace forevermore ; 
 Or dawn of Hope's Millennium 
 With rest of all that's wearisome, 
 
 Or what may start a thought of woe I 
 
 It matters not the faith or creed, 
 
 Nor what we call the goal and end ; 
 Each Age and Nation knows God's deed. 
 And claims as true alone its creed— 
 The rest to wild delusion tend ! 
 
 And Wisdom labors still in vain 
 
 To open minds locked in conceit ; 
 And though the world has borne the stain 
 Of warring faiths upon its plain, 
 No sect as yet will own defeat ! 
 
 For man is ever vain to boa^st 
 
 A truth beyond his mental grasp ; 
 And when in deepest mystery lost 
 And thought in chaos truly tost. 
 He claims to see Delusion's clasp! 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 99 
 
 And SO we pass from stage to stage 
 Reviewing Life's vain earthly span ; 
 
 Now marveling at the wit's engage, 
 
 Now laughing at the antic wage 
 That marks the pageantry of man, 
 
 cv. 
 
 The fairest of the flowers grown 
 
 In soil of man's existence here, 
 Is Truth, ani though but feebly blown, 
 Its perfume is the richest known 
 
 In making sweet the social sphere. 
 
 A tonic of the soul its balm 
 
 Can heal the wound a lie has rent, 
 Soothe Conscience of its aching qualm, 
 And bring to troubled thoughts a calm 
 Divine within its sweet content. 
 
 And wheresoever throned is Truth 
 
 There is the shrine of all that's good ; 
 And there may Virtue live in youth 
 Though seeing cumbent head of Ruth 
 Bowed to its rosary and rood! 
 
 CVI, 
 
 The hills are brown ; the trees show stains 
 Of gold and red 'mid fading green ; 
 
 The furrowed fields for winter grains 
 
 Stretch faraway o'er searing mains, 
 And lonely is the passing scene. 
 
lOO IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 The sky is clear and calm and blue, 
 
 And silence reigns within the day; 
 And all around the brilliant hue 
 Of dying Summer meets the view — 
 The blush of verdure in decay. 
 
 We know by drifting leaves and sighs 
 
 That sunny hours of joy are few ; 
 We know by opalescent skies 
 And russet woods, that Nature dies 
 To pay the rolling Seasons' due : 
 
 And now to Winter's ruthless care 
 
 The subtle charms of Summer hie ; 
 And trees to biting winds will bare 
 Their trunks to stand grim spectres there- 
 Bleak monuments to parts that die. 
 
 CVII. 
 
 Autumnal days, Autumnal days. 
 
 What sadness in your fleeting scene ! 
 What visions float within the haze 
 That comes with earth's departing rays, 
 The fading glow of summer's sheen? 
 
 Yea, like a funeral pyre of life, 
 
 A blaze of glory is your death ; 
 And all decadence here is rife 
 With sad remembrance of the strife 
 Harassing everything of breath. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH, lOI 
 
 The winds cry through your drooping boughs 
 
 'Stho' wailing death of all that's good; 
 While petals of frost-faded flowers, 
 And fronds of seed, in drifting showers, 
 Are scattered in the fields and wood : 
 
 And in the dying year we see 
 
 The symbol of Life's fleeting span ; 
 
 We see the Great stript as the tree, 
 
 And, reft of honor, left to be 
 The simulacrum of the Man ! 
 
 We see the goal of Faith and Hope 
 Fall from its sceptred throne on high ; 
 
 We see proud Grandeur's downward slope, 
 
 The narrow range of all its scope 
 Wherein to live and fight and die ; 
 
 And seeing this we know how vain 
 Is man to boast his might or worth ; 
 
 For in Time's reckoning it is plain 
 
 His glory cannot long remain 
 For exultation on this earth. 
 
 cvm. 
 
 In scenes like these what truths arise 
 
 Awakening dreams to thoughts profound? 
 Proud man may face with true surprise 
 The shifting of each fellow's guise — 
 
 Which brings all heads low to the ground ! 
 
I02 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 The Carpo season of the world 
 
 When man should gather harvests in : — 
 llist thou so garnered up each pearl 
 Of wisdom? or been dunce or churl 
 
 To fill thy coffers full of sin? 
 
 Thy day of need draws now apace : 
 Need of the riches fled and gone ! 
 Need of the happiness we chase 
 In childhood's blissful hour, or trace 
 In benisons the man hath known ! 
 
 The dole of Spring and Summer flies ; 
 
 'Tis Autumn brings us thought's regret 
 A buoyant heart 'neath brilliant skies 
 In gloomy weather often dies, 
 
 If other moods bid it forget ; 
 
 Forget that future days may want 
 
 The things so lavish to the youth, 
 When Plenty pines till lean and gaunt 
 The seasons find the man, his vaunt 
 The mock of senile hope and truth ! 
 
 CIX. 
 
 And yet these Autumn days that bring 
 
 Sad memories of pleasures past, 
 Or show us faults that left their sting, 
 Can also give us thoughts of Spring, 
 Reanimating all at last ! 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. lO 
 
 Earth dies, but Death is only sleep, 
 And, Baldur like, it wakes again 
 To bring us joy, and, while we weep 
 Its death, old Time doth slowly creep 
 To bring us Life, sunshine and rain ; 
 
 Sunshine and ram to quicken Life 
 And hurry pleasures to their place; 
 
 To stir the nascent germ of strife ; 
 
 To bud the fields with blossoms rife 
 With all the hues the rainbows trace : 
 
 For, Winter past, the earth again 
 
 Blooms forth in beauty and in cheer ; 
 And, what in gloom has fearful been, 
 May prove a good with power to win 
 The soul from its low groveling care. 
 
 So may it be with all ; and when 
 Senescent grown, may newer Light 
 
 Illume the sky and once again 
 
 Reanimate the Soul and then 
 
 Bid morning to the chill of Night ! 
 
 ex. 
 
 Farewell ye passing days of joy ! 
 
 Farewell ye seasons full of youth ! 
 Farewell, but let our hopes employ 
 Your visions left recalling joy 
 
 To spirits darkened by the truth : 
 
I04 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 Farewell ! we wait the advent here 
 
 Of Springtime with its skies of blue ; 
 And, 'round the lire-side's glowing cheer, 
 We'll sit and dream while seasons drear 
 Creep on to all the world renew : 
 
 We'll wait and while we eke the hour 
 
 We'll talk of moments once enjoyed ; 
 And through imagination's power 
 That colors thought's mysterious flower, 
 We'll live as though again employed. 
 
 Most of our pleasures are in dreams, 
 
 And absence stills each aching pain ; 
 Aloof, the past a heaven seems 
 So full the glow of mellowed beams 
 
 That fall entrancing Manhood's wane. 
 
 Most of our ills imagined, too, 
 Or self-inflicted without cause ; 
 
 The grusomeness of thoughts to do 
 
 The ill that ages long may rue 
 
 Unconscious of these sequent laws. 
 
 So Wisdom would the chalice fling, 
 
 All brimming with its poisoned draught, 
 Into the Past to let the sting 
 Left from its bitter contents bring 
 The thoughts of other potions quaft. 
 
N PASSING THROUGH. lO: 
 
 CXI. 
 
 Then fill the empty bowl of cheer ! 
 
 Heap fagots on the smouldering fire! 
 We'll toast and drink to seasons drear, 
 The bumpers sparkling ruby tear 
 
 Shed by old Summer to expire! 
 
 Around the hearth-stone of our home 
 We'll talk of days of joy and pain ; 
 We'll talk of times when weary roam 
 Oppressed each wanderer without home 
 Or social comfort in his plane ; 
 
 We'll watch the silhouetted dreams 
 
 Traced by the fire's soft flickering light; 
 Deciphering faces in the beams 
 Instinct with life : for truly seems 
 This fancy to the mind to-night. 
 
 We're young again and springtide stirs 
 The first impulse of youth, and Love 
 Is raptuous with each hope that purrs 
 To wish, and to the heart recurs 
 The image of departed Love ! 
 
 Too soon the soot mars fairness seen, 
 
 And we have blackened embers there 
 Of Fancy's dream ! A truth, I ween, 
 That lacks not vision that is keen 
 To pierce hallucinations fair! 
 
Io6 IN PASSING THR.OUGH. 
 
 For when the flames in ashes lie 
 
 The dream they shadowed forth is sped; 
 
 The wish that gave it birth to die 
 
 And leave the bosom with its sigh 
 That interest in it all is dead. 
 
 And interest is the zest of life, 
 
 The spice that seasons things, which, when 
 We lose, it leaves us but the strife 
 And eking of a dreary life 
 
 In routine of itself again. 
 
 CXII. 
 
 The dream dispelled, we see the fact 
 That rudely hurls our idols down : 
 Life is a season's strange compact 
 'Tween Growth and stern Decay ; an act 
 Omnific with a fatal crown ! 
 
 Each season is a symbol, too, 
 
 That marks the different stages here : 
 
 In Spring and Summer Force is new 
 
 And full of energy to do 
 
 The part that wish may hold as dear ; 
 
 In Autumn powers weaken fast 
 
 And shed their bloom for ripened thought ; 
 In Winter comes the leadened cast 
 When thoughts would linger in the past 
 
 And hoard what memory has caught : 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 'Tis then the May-day's song and sky, 
 
 And Youth and Love 'neath basking sun 
 And Autumn with its rich supply, 
 December's want, hoar Age's cry. 
 Are in our dreams compounded one : 
 
 ■'Tis then the virtuous acts of youth 
 
 Know their reward's vitality ; 
 'Tis then man feels the strength of truth. 
 The throb and sting of folly's ruth 
 
 If life was passed in vanity. 
 
 The Ages are as Life, each one 
 
 An epoch isof good or bad ; 
 A day of silly quib and pun 
 Where folly is the rule, or one 
 
 Wherein the senses are not mad : 
 
 Each leaves its mark to coming years : 
 
 The eon of the dunce to pass 
 Degenerating hopes and fears; 
 The age of Virtue into years 
 
 Bright with the deeds that merit has. 
 
 CXIIL 
 
 Belike this age unto the first 
 
 In which some folly was the rule ; 
 For true the world is foully curst 
 With pompous Vanity, and, worst 
 Of all, the iofnorance of the fool ! 
 
 :o7 
 
Io8 IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 We magnify our little wits 
 
 And think the dupe's diversions wise ; 
 We mumble Folly's choice tidbits 
 And move to sentimental fits, 
 
 And claim a knowledge by surmise! 
 
 A paresis has come, indeed, 
 
 To mark this vaunted age of man ! 
 Degenerate his social creed, 
 And lower still the thought and deed 
 Now circumscribed by Fashion's span ! 
 
 So, with the passing of the year, 
 
 We mark decadence of the race : 
 Each manly attribute is queer : 
 The woman takes the leading share — 
 To run the world with powdered face ! 
 
 A spasm of rare sentiment 
 
 For what is called a " bondage " here, 
 Has led the age to wild intent 
 That time will show irrelevant 
 
 To object of a woman's care. 
 
 If she indeed lacks liberty, 
 
 'Tis by her nature, not through man : 
 She is a slave to Fashion's plea ; 
 The dupe of vain Frivolity ; 
 
 The coquette of a fad and fan ! 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. IO9 
 
 First let her free herself and then 
 Lend helping hand for her advance 
 
 A mind so narrowed in its ken 
 
 That show is all supreme, again 
 
 Must strive for freedom's arm and lance. 
 
 CXIV. 
 
 Her present stride marks man's decay, 
 And not her own advancement here; 
 
 Effeminate -he is to-day. 
 
 And social fallacies betray 
 
 Conditions that the wise may fear. 
 
 He calls surrender ' chivalry ' ! 
 
 Surrender of his rank in life ! 
 Surrender of virility 
 For cozened smile Viginity 
 
 May cast him for his sensual strife ! 
 
 The " age of chivalry " must stand 
 
 The commentation of the fool ; 
 Not that a courtesy is bann'd, 
 But that a tournament is plann'd 
 
 By cockneys of a woman's rule. 
 
 We call " Dark Age " of history 
 
 The time man was the w^oman's slave; 
 When "Knighthood" was the vanity, 
 And strife for plume or glove, decree 
 Of Honor with the dolt and knave! 
 
no IN PASSING THROUGff. 
 
 Cervantes is not but the day 
 
 For his return is drawing nigh ; 
 
 The clamor is for marshal play ; 
 
 Reward is in a smile or lay 
 To gallantry that is aw^ry ! 
 
 cxv. 
 
 O modesty, O modesty, 
 
 Where art thou flown in this mad chase 
 Of brazen woman who would ply 
 Her arts to help her to decry 
 
 Distinction in the sex and race? 
 
 Attired as man she apes his ways 
 
 And claims a right to thwart the end 
 Of nature, and, in her wild craze, 
 To social functions gives a phase 
 
 That naught of virtue can commend. 
 
 The comely creature of our dream — 
 
 Which Romance loves to weave in tale- 
 Is but a barren thought, 'twould seem, 
 Throbbed to beguile the troubled stream 
 Of life, or hush love's piteous wail. 
 
 The bifurcated creature now 
 
 Despises all and is despised ; 
 Her way the world will sure allow, - 
 But man will make with her no vow 
 
 In that she lacks all he has prized. 
 
IN PASSING TPIROUGH. Ill 
 
 CXVI. 
 
 Ill literature the woman rules ! 
 
 Ideas of the man are low ; 
 tje wanders after certain '^ schools " ; 
 He mystifies himself and pules 
 
 Like any child for passing show! 
 
 For ' schools ' of imbecility 
 
 Where want of thought is merit shown ; 
 The writer of this day must sigh, 
 Ejaculate, and show how nigh 
 
 To simper madness he is grown! 
 
 Must deal in some uncouth conceit, 
 
 And drivel in his metaphors ; 
 Must prove his weary thoughts effete, — 
 And commentation is complete 
 
 When critic praise rewards his course! 
 
 CXVII. 
 
 A maudlin age has come upon 
 
 Us in this evil hour of grace ; 
 Around the things which we should shun 
 Is hung the halo duty won, 
 
 And Sin presents a smiling face! 
 
 For woman sways the world; her grief 
 She cries o'er judgment of the law ; 
 
 And for a brute she prays relief ; 
 
 Strews flowers in his path as if 
 The road of dalliance that he saw 
 
112 IN PASSIxVG THROUGH. 
 
 Was God's device to lead him in 
 And so accomplish end divine ! — 
 
 The will of God can be no sin ! — 
 
 A Paradise that brute will win 
 
 Although atrocious deeds combine 
 
 'Mong brutes to make this world a hell 
 More dreadful by His helpful hand ! 
 
 And so by woman's gentle spell, 
 
 We must to justice say farewell 
 
 And let the foolish take command ! 
 
 CXVIII. 
 
 " 'Tis better ninety-nine be lost 
 
 Than one be left alone in sin ! " 
 And this is what the fable cost 
 That told of prodigal once lost 
 
 But to return to fold again 
 
 For great rejoicing and love-feast 
 
 Of " Fatted Calf," and honor's place ! 
 
 Reward for being once a beast 
 
 Prone to the wallow and the yeast 
 Of passions that alone debase ! 
 
 " Each youth has sometime ' wild oats' sown, 
 And each must feel a ' whirl-wind's ' breath 
 For by iniquity is shown, 
 In contrast, God's care for his own. 
 And woeful end of Sin and Death ! " 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. II3 
 
 A fable sounding well, 'tis true, 
 
 But lacking wisdom and foresight ; 
 For should the world once turn to do 
 As such would teach, it would renew 
 The ages loathed as Reason's night. 
 
 CXIX. 
 
 The sowing of *•' wild oats " is done 
 When Life is withered to old age ; 
 
 And harvest of the " whirl- wind's " fun 
 
 Is a perennial, lasting one. 
 
 Recorded in each day and page! 
 
 The youth by some wild passion tost 
 
 May be reclaimed, but he is one 
 To thousands in their folly lost ; " 
 And reformations often cost 
 
 The worth of what an hundred won! 
 
 Sin as a hero can not pose 
 
 Without results we must deplore ; 
 
 And pleasures once begot of woes 
 
 Will find some relic of the throes 
 Remaining but to prick the sore : 
 
 For nature takes account of all : 
 
 You can not pay her with a word ! 
 
 She holds the debtor for his fall ; 
 
 She gives inheritance the gall 
 
 Bequeathed of ills we thought deferred ! 
 
114 IN PASSI^^G TIIIIOUGH- 
 
 cxx. 
 
 But yet this is the trend of thought — 
 Of modern thought effete and vain ! 
 And he who is not frenzy fraught 
 By luring sighs, is deemed as naught, 
 Or brute or madman to refrain ! 
 
 A thing of mystery and scorn ; 
 
 A creature wanting heart and soul; 
 Misogynist of woman's wain, 
 Because he does not fondle, fawn, 
 
 And give the petticoat control! 
 
 'Mid fawning life alone he seems 
 
 Because with thoughts more lonely sti] 
 He finds that pleasures all are dreams, 
 And that the mind with visions teems 
 When that it entertains the will. 
 
 Poor man to cherish no conceit — 
 
 For wantonness doth still disguise ! 
 How rude unto thyself to treat 
 The heart in its love-wakened beat 
 For what it profits to be wise! 
 
 CXXI. 
 
 I fear he can not love, and why? 
 
 Not that he lacks the sentiment. 
 Nor passion born of lust, nor sigh 
 Of fellowship, nor wish to cry 
 
 The need of any soul's content, 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 Nor eye for beauty, nor the heart 
 
 That holds in solace thoughts devout, 
 
 Nor brain for artifice or art, 
 
 Nor any impulse for tlie part 
 
 Of fancy nor in pleasure's bout; 
 
 Not these, but that he hath an eye 
 Which sellish secrets would discern; 
 
 A spirit that would lust defy 
 
 And stifle in the throat the lie 
 
 That here would spring to do Love's turn, 
 
 Man loves when selfishness doth reign ; 
 
 He hates when broken is its rule ; 
 He fears when knowledge would explain 
 The trend of passions, now they train 
 
 The will to make it folly's tool. 
 
 Love is of Lust, and Lust of Life, 
 
 And Life is spark through this desire; 
 
 It is a chain linked here in strife, 
 
 And every forging still is rife 
 With evils of the natal fire! 
 
 How low soever sprung that germ. 
 
 It kindred bears to all the past ; 
 And, though exalted, still a worm 
 Which stings and bites an earthly term, 
 To wiggle back to dust at last ! 
 
Il6 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 Survival in life's battle here 
 
 Has higher aim or lower mark 
 As rules the intellect, or fear, 
 Or wantonness, or driveling care, 
 Or lightest humor of the lark. 
 
 CXXII. 
 
 We'll not admit that Love is Lust, 
 
 Desire on which the race depends, 
 And yet once give the passions trust 
 And all restraints too soon will burst 
 To bare the heart to vicious ends ; 
 
 To bare the heart and leave it prone 
 
 To mischief and its nameless deeds ; 
 The light we thought within us shone, 
 So smothered in its sensual zone 
 
 It throws no ray on senseless creeds! 
 
 'Tis thus the closets still must bear 
 The skeletons of much professed ; 
 And virtue, which man doth declare 
 Is due to faith, finds little care 
 
 When faith is guide alone or test! 
 
 CXXIII. 
 Move on, O Time, we can not stay 
 
 The wheels of cycles slipping by ! 
 Each moment is a cam, each day 
 A splicing felloe on the way 
 
 To circuit of Eternity ! 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 Each change escapement of the flow 
 Recorded on the dial Earth ; 
 
 Each phase decree for Life to show 
 
 Its adaptation here to grow 
 And fix itself for future birth. 
 
 Before inventive brain or hand 
 
 Caught at thy fleeting images, 
 
 Thou hadst the power to command 
 
 And stamp thy changes on the land 
 
 And sea, in heaven's prodigies. 
 
 A god to ancients, yet to man 
 
 A fate that knows no sympathy; 
 Thou breakest up his boasted plan 
 And measurest off his little span 
 To give him Death's infinity! 
 
 Thou bringest labors which are vain ; 
 
 Thou settest him in divers ways; 
 He hopes some knowledge here to gain. 
 But moves at tangent by the strain 
 
 Of thy recurring change and phase ! 
 
 He strives and struggles and would give 
 
 Life's energies in hopes to know 
 The secret of Want's suppletive — 
 And when he has but learned to live. 
 Death comes to bid him rise and go! 
 
Il8 IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 O Time, thou abstract chain of woes! 
 
 Thou link of blisses forged to God! 
 Thou " fleeting image " of the pose 
 Eternity a moment shows 
 
 To change with swiftness of a nod! 
 
 For Father Chronos still devours 
 
 The offspring of his gat to-day : 
 The earth and sea and Being's powers, 
 The sun's fair rays, the blushing flowers, 
 And everything of breath and clay ! 
 
 CXXIV. 
 
 From Youth to Age and Age to Death, 
 Man would each life hold in review ; 
 Would trace each struggling thing of breath, 
 Count throbs from birth to pain of death. 
 And wonders note in passing through : 
 
 He would the purpose and the end, 
 
 And so the final Destiny ; 
 And what repays one to contend, 
 And what reward when actions trend 
 
 To ethics of philosophy ; 
 
 Philosophy of wisdom born, 
 
 Not cant of Epicurean brew ; 
 Nor cult of sterner Stoic's scorn ; 
 Nor any special ssytem's spawn ; 
 
 But all compounded in the new : 
 
IN PASSING THKOUGH. II9 
 
 The broad idea of the man 
 
 Begot of all the ages gone ; 
 Whose judgment, with its greater span, 
 The future may the better plan 
 
 And blaze the way that leads us on. 
 
 To such an eye the scene is one 
 
 Of fleckered lights and shades of strife. 
 
 Predominating now the Sun 
 
 With gladsome light of duty done, 
 And then the Shadows of each life ; 
 
 Unfolding so a tale of woe 
 
 That hangs upon a feeble breath, 
 Yet blasting hopes of fortunes glow. 
 And making of this life a bore 
 
 That ends but in the gasps of Death ! 
 
 But if man's wisdom can not see 
 Beyond this wild, abysmal, gloom ; 
 
 If all his hopes of bliss to be 
 
 Are lost in wise Philosophy, 
 
 Why shudder at a fancied doom? 
 
 'Twere better in the peaceful state 
 
 Oblivion promises to all, 
 Than all this rancor and debate 
 Aroused to tell the tale of fate 
 
 That none can alter or forestall. 
 
I20 IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 cxxv. 
 
 Life, Death, and the Hereafter, men 
 
 Come prating of as though they knew 
 Aught of God's purpose, how or when 
 He moves or wills, or, even then, 
 What He has set for us to do. 
 
 They would prescribe their Deity 
 
 And set a limit to His will ! 
 He who professes here an eye 
 That sees into the future, why. 
 
 He little knows his feeble skill ! 
 
 The utmost that each one can learn 
 Is that he simply nothing knows, 
 
 Save that to him the world is stern, 
 
 And labors rise at every turn 
 Harassing Life unto its close. 
 
 CXXVI. 
 
 We know that we know nothing, yet 
 
 The world is full of pedantry 
 That wisely looks and nods to let 
 True wisdom see its worth and get 
 A plumbing of mentality ! 
 
 We know that we know nothing, then 
 
 Why here profess an eye, or mind. 
 That sees, or comprehends God when 
 The knowledge in itself would then 
 
 Prove us but stumbling creatures blind? 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 Or if we know God's wish or word, 
 Why all these divers faiths and ways? 
 
 Are warring tenets here absurd 
 
 To give the Devil all the herd 
 Of wild fanatics of each craze? 
 
 CXXVII. 
 
 We know that we know nothing, but 
 
 We grasp at things intangible, 
 And blindly fall into the rut 
 Of Ignorance that's worn and cut 
 By folly indefensible. 
 
 We here conjecture, or we guess. 
 
 And trust ourselves to be deceived ; 
 We get our thoughts into a mess 
 x\nd horror minds with some distress 
 'Twere foolish, sure, to be believed! 
 
 The lesson Time would teach us all 
 
 Is that we only half can see ; 
 And that the story of "Man's Fall," 
 In such half-light, is fable all, 
 
 As well as knowing what's to be. 
 
 CXXVIII. 
 
 Believe or not, man's faith is shorn 
 Of much that lent a pleasing ray ; 
 We must confess that place and bourne 
 Of Death's dark Province is unknown. 
 And blank the speech of fanes each day 
 
122 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 Faith is not here advanced by sight, 
 
 Nor foresight cleared by help of Faith ; 
 The coming of the mental light 
 Estrange the two, and each with might 
 Assails the other's fading wraith! 
 
 'Tis hard to bring ourselves to say 
 
 The " light " we thought we saw in youth 
 
 Was but a feeble, flickering ray 
 
 Of egotism : when its day 
 
 Is past comes advent of the Truth ! 
 
 Though knowledge gives us wider range 
 
 For play of all the intellect, 
 The mind is rid of creatures strange, 
 And P'aith can never more arrange 
 
 Incongruous thoughts to such aspect. 
 
 Each age has martyred someone who 
 Denied the faith that ruled his day ; 
 
 And each accusor found his rue, 
 
 And Bigotry that rose and slew. 
 Lived to behold its own dismay ! 
 
 CXXIX. 
 
 Like flights of strange, migrating birds. 
 
 Or shadows chasing flying clouds, 
 We meet in wild, stampeding, herds, 
 To mingle, pass, or greet with words 
 Unheard, or lost within the crowds; 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 12^ 
 
 We meet within a narrow span. 
 
 We glance into a kindly face ; 
 We feel a kindredship in man ; 
 We seek a comrade there who can 
 
 Help us to eke the time and place : 
 
 We meet and dream a sweet conceit ; 
 
 We find an object then to love ; 
 But ere that dream is yet complete, 
 Some babbling fact will sure defeat 
 
 The end — and in the Night we move ! 
 
 We meet and pass and scarcely know 
 What thing did disenchant our dream ; 
 
 The dullness of the after-glow 
 
 We feel, but find the light no more. 
 And see alone a fancied beam ! 
 
 Love is the child of youthful days, 
 
 The sweet companion of old age ; 
 Consoling in its willful ways, 
 Tormenting if the truth portrays 
 
 The just demerit of its rage. 
 
 The light we saw in passing eye 
 
 Was but desire within our own ; 
 Reflection's cast too soon to die 
 And leave us but the wistful sigh 
 
 That comes to tell us hope is flown ! 
 
124 ^^ PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 cxxx. 
 
 We meet in highways of this life, 
 
 We nod and pass and then forget ; 
 Our thoughts insistent on the strife 
 We wage for station, rank and life : 
 And so it simply stands, ' we met ' ! 
 
 'Twere better we should meet and part 
 
 And strangers so continue still. 
 Than that we should awake a heart 
 To feel the keen and bitter smart 
 
 That comes with knowledge of its ill. 
 
 The dreaiii might stir a latent flame 
 
 That best were left in slumber deep ; 
 And passion might arouse to claim 
 A mastery and bring to shame 
 The spirit of our restful sleep. 
 
 Adieu, we say. and kiss our hand, 
 Departing on our several ways : 
 We thus retain our heart's command 
 And wisely see and understand 
 The danger of a passing craze ! 
 
 CXXXI. 
 
 And so we journey on to age 
 
 And winter of the dying year ; 
 Recording hope and joy and rage 
 And pain and death on every page 
 The Book of Life doth open here. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 A strange fatality it seems 
 
 Attends us on our lowly way ; 
 Lives frothing like fierce mountain streams 
 That leap wild cataracts — for beams. 
 Of light to flash the rainbow's ray! 
 
 But Dawn or Eve hath rainbow-ray, 
 
 And not the Noon-tide's burning light ; 
 
 The first forewarning for the day, 
 
 The other promise that we may 
 
 See less of Storm within the Night ! 
 
 They both betokening broken skies 
 That sift the sunshine of a hope ; 
 They speak of balmy seasons, dyes 
 Of spring, and not the winter skies 
 Which lower heaven's gloomy scope. 
 
 CXXXII. 
 
 In summing up the deeds of earth 
 
 We find more ills withal than bliss ; 
 Conflicting from the hour of birth 
 Are all the acts v/e deem of worth, 
 And none of themi gives happiness! 
 
 A serpent coils within the nest 
 
 Of happy bird that buildeth low ; 
 And lowly mortals seeking rest 
 May find a dungeon as their quest, 
 And peace but pain forevermore ! 
 
126 IN PASSING THROUGH, 
 
 All greatness is of little worth, 
 
 Tho' magnified to worldly eyes, 
 And equal is the lowest birth 
 To the most lordly one of earth, 
 For each is leveled when he dies! 
 
 N-o artifice can Time convince, 
 
 Nor trick devise a happiness ; 
 The old, the young, or pauper, prince, 
 All in some earthly stock must wince, 
 And here endure some painful stress. 
 
 Who finds contentment gropes it blind, 
 
 Is proverb learned too late in life ; 
 And strength is wasted in the wind 
 Of thought and deed we give to find 
 A way avoiding earthly strife. 
 
 No happiness, no earthly bliss 
 
 Awarding pains or sorrows borne ; 
 
 As light as silly Fancy's kiss 
 
 Is the caress of Happiness, 
 
 And we arouse to find it gone ! 
 
 To find it gone and in its place 
 The void of utter loneliness ; 
 Sweet memory alone to trace 
 The cherished hope, the wily grace. 
 That contrast here this evil press ! 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. I27 
 
 No happiness ! no happiness ! 
 
 I've reached the point where Envy cries 
 For lot of others, yea, in stress 
 Of anything that holds caress 
 
 For simple life or human sighs ! 
 
 The cynic laughs awhile but sneers 
 Oft hide a bleeding heart of woe! 
 
 The snarl is mark of wasted tears, 
 
 The lesson what the scornful years 
 
 Have taught a tender heart to know ! 
 
 'Tis Faith that soonest finds the road 
 
 Which leads to Doubt and Hope's despair; 
 A Timon bears the greatest load, 
 Since, trusting all the vicious horde, 
 He pays for laying bosom bare! 
 
 For throwing bosom bare for ' daws ' 
 To pluck the heart within their greed ; 
 
 Voracious here to fill their maws ; 
 
 Inhuman in observing laws 
 
 Professed to govern Christian creed! 
 
 CXXXIII. 
 
 In reason then we cry for change 
 
 And hope thereby to find less pain ; 
 Hath not old Nature wider range 
 Than walks confined which here estrange 
 By jostling ill on ill again? 
 
128 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 A change! a change! O Heavens, why 
 
 A lagging day, a lazy hour? 
 A tendium of thought, a sigh 
 For absent things while those near by 
 To satisf}' have not the power? 
 
 And yet if all things came at will 
 
 Our every wash to gratify, 
 Would we the happier be? or still 
 Dissatisfied and deem as ill 
 
 The fortune that attends a sigh? 
 
 The unattainable we seek ; 
 
 The thing possessed we oft dispise ; 
 Regrets and longings make us weak ; 
 We're constant only to the bleak 
 
 And chill despairs of earthly cries 
 
 Unsettled so is life. Content 
 
 Is something no man ever knew ; 
 And fruitless are his labors spent 
 Who thinks by force of his intent 
 To pfain a measure of his due. 
 
 CXXXIV. 
 
 The winter hath its moaning winds, 
 Its pall and shroud for earth's decay ; 
 
 A gloomy dome the eye confinds ; 
 
 The Spirit of the year repines 
 
 Within the barren woods and lay. 
 
IN PASSING THROUGH. 1 39 
 
 From leadened skies great flakes come forth 
 
 Like spotless doves from cote on high ; 
 They drift and scatter as though loath 
 To bide command that sent them forth 
 The fleecy troopers of the sky ! 
 
 They drift and marshal till the earth 
 
 Is covered with a robe of white, 
 As ermined for some deed of worth, 
 Or clothed within the shift of dearth 
 
 To hide its barrenness from sight : 
 
 And aged seems it then, withal, 
 And plaintive, too, its feeble cry ; 
 
 And mighty trees like spectres tall, 
 
 Or monuments of death, recall 
 
 The thoughts to mock of Destiny! 
 
 cxxxv. 
 
 When hair is colored as the snow. 
 
 And form is bent and eye is dim, 
 'Tis then man's feebleness we know, 
 And what repays for all his show 
 
 Of valor battling for life's whim. 
 
 He is the sport of Time, withal ; 
 
 The play thing of a passing day ; 
 A breath of momentary thrall ; 
 A sigh that flees its own recall ; 
 
 An impulse of an atom's play! 
 
130 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 His birth is Spark struck from the flint 
 
 Of Unknown Forces, and his youth 
 And age are rounds of labor's dint 
 In Nature's workshop ; but no hint 
 Is given of the natal truth ! 
 
 Nor of the pause which seasons bring, 
 And which we call his earthly death ; 
 
 The Unknowns to the Unknowns fling 
 
 This hyperbolic, flaming, Thing 
 We call a Life, a Soul, a Breath ! 
 
 Man is, and that is all we know : 
 
 He goes, and Speculation's dream 
 Tells where! No probing here below 
 Has reached as yet that " Other Shore," 
 However wisely Faith may " deem " ! 
 
 CXXXVI. 
 
 We see our friends around us die ; 
 
 We clasp their hands in gripless fold. 
 And close their eyes, and wonder why 
 The Beings can so silent lie 
 
 While bodies waste in earthly mould. 
 
 The deed is one of love : the thought 
 
 The child of its own mystery. 
 The Force that moved the one has wrought 
 Conditions of the other; taught 
 
 The mind its impotence to see! 
 
IN PASSING TII.lOUGil. i^I 
 
 The earth is parent and the grave 
 
 Of you and me and all we know ! 
 Within its bosom sleep the brave, 
 And winds sweep ihrough the vaulted na\e 
 
 Of Faith, deriding in their blow! 
 
 CXXXVII. 
 
 Blow, Winds of pitiless death, blow on! 
 
 Blow till your hate in fury dies 1 
 Blow, blow till chilling shades creep on 
 To drink the rays Hyperion 
 
 Would give the earth to light its skies ! 
 
 Blow till the Night of Destiny 
 
 Engulfs the cringing soul of Man! 
 
 Blow till this mundane sphere is free 
 
 Of Life and Love and Phantasy, 
 
 And Death and Hate the ages span ! 
 
 Blow through the night of Gloom and 111 : 
 Blow through the shadowy vale of Death! 
 
 Blow till the howl of Manes fill 
 
 The echoing cave and barren hill : 
 
 Blow till Destruction gasps for breath ! 
 
 Blow then on deathless earth your gale — 
 
 Maruts to wake its Life again ! 
 Blow till the buds of Youth regale 
 The scene once more to blush the pale 
 
 Of Death with blossoms that have been! 
 
133 IN PASSING THROUGH. 
 
 Blow! blow Rejuvenescence's dawn! 
 
 Blow life to Hope's perennial Spring! 
 Blow Youth and Beauty into brawn 
 Of Manhood with its strength unshorn : 
 
 Blow till the happy w^elkins ring! 
 
 Blow all your bitterness and then 
 Blow zephyrs of a soothing fame ! 
 
 Blow out the fears that once have been ; 
 
 Breathe peace and happiness again, 
 
 And fan to life Love's smouldering flame !