BY ALICE CARY.
/ I. 
BOSTON:
TICKNOR AND FIELDS.
M DCCC LV.




Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by
ALICE CARY,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern
District of New York.




&n RlufnS  itnlmnt &riiSnUi.
MY DEAR FRIEND:
IT is not to avert the censures of so judicious a critic that I dedicate
to you this collection of my poems. You were the first to praise my simple
rhymes, years before I met or dreamed of meeting you; and since we became
personally acquainted you have always been ready to counsel and encourage
me in those literary pursuits to which I was led by the natural inclination
of mlly mind, and which at too early an age, perhaps, I adopted as the principal means of hoped-for usefulness and happiness. 1 have been pleased, therefore, with the thought, that in such an inscription as this I might express
something of my gratitude to you, and my respect for you. I know, indeed,
that it is not an unusual distinction to have been an object of your kindly
interest -that there are many among our younger authors who owe much to
your wise advice and generous aid - so that if all who are sn this way your
debtors were so to manifest their feelings, you would be wearied with such
displays of their consideration; yet this is the only manner in which I can
render you that homage which is due for your genius and worth: especially
from me, who am under so many obligations to you; and I feel assured that
you will receive my offering with as much satisfaction as if it conferred on
you more than on myself a desirable honor.
Of the character of these Poems I have little to say: I submit them to the
world's judgment, not'withou t fears that the favor with which a considerable
number of them have been received, as from time to time they have been
separately printed, will not be preserved when they are read in so large a collection. It may be a woman's wneakness. but I confess that I could never learn
to blot or to revise, and after any effusion of a moment has gone from my
hands, have had no heart to look at it with the cold curiosity of a critic.
" What is writ is writ," I have been content to say, adding with a just sense
of its faults, "Would it were worthier," yet rarely or never feeling in the
mood to destroy and recreate. Nevertheless, while the pieces in this volume
have, for the most part, their original Imperfections, 1 am not without a pleasing belief that time and pains have done away with some of my earlier
faults, and that they will still enable me to improve. I feel very sensibly
that I have not redeemed the kind prophecies of my friends, nor fulfilled the
lopes I have had and have now for myself.




iv                    DEDICATION.
Born and reared in the midst of rural occupations, and all my most cherished memories keeping me still familiar with woods and fields, I have drawn
from my own past the imagery and chief accessories of my poems, which
have therefore in this respect a certain genuineness. It will be perceived
that I have not often attempted new rhythms, but have been content in some
cases to set my thoughts to music with which the world has sweetly rung
for ages.
The longest of these poems is based on an episode in Mr. Prescott's admnirable work. "The Conquest of Mexico," and is composed in the main with
fidelity to the representations of Prescott, Clavigero, Lord Kingsborough, and
the few other authors within my reach who have written of Aztec history and
civilization. I am not confident that I have always correctly understood the
proper pronunciation of Aztec names, but I have as far as possible avoided
the use of those which seemed the most difficult. To the objection sonetimes urged against such themes, based on the idea that poetry has to do only
with a high cultivation, accommodated to our own notions of taste and justice, I cannot assent; human nature is nearly the same in all conditions,
and in every condition has elements of beauty, not less poetical because displayed sometimes amid barbaric splendors and savage superstitions.
I will not dwell further upon these poems - the written cloud and sunshine
of so nmuch of my life. - but respectfully and gratefully dedicate them to you,
as a memorial of our long existing friendship.
N!ew York, October, 1854.                                      A. C.




CONTENTS.
PAGE.
LYRA      ~......                              11
IN ILLNESS                                                15
TO THE NIGHT..........   18
THE MINSTREL.                                             23
HYALA...........  27
PICTURES OF MEMORY.  31
AGATHA TO HAROLD..85
LEGEND OF SEVILLE...               89
TO THE WINDS......... 41
ANEMONES.... 43
LOST SIGHT.......... 58
PAUL                                                      61
To THE SPIRIT OF GLADNESS.63
THE TRYST                                                 6 5
DEATH'S FERRYMA..   67
JESSIE CARROL.69
HYPERION....   79
THE CONVENT.........   82
THE LEGEND OF ST. MARY'S..   8
THE DAUGOITER..                                   89
ANNIE CLAYVILLE.... 92
YESTERNIGHT.........                        95
WINTER..                                                97
WOOD NYMPHS....                                        1. ] 02
HIELVA..                                             105
OCTOBER..                                             07 
THE NEW YEAR... 1... 109
THE SUGAR CA-P..  115
RHYME OF MY I'LAYMATE.                                  117
THE COMING OF \iIGIT........ 119
FIRE PICTURES.                             121.   1
THE WOOD LILY...                                       123




vi                   CONTENTS.
PA(G
To THE SPIRIT OF SONG.                                125
A CHRISTMAS STORY.                     127
THE DESERTED FYLGIA.                   129
THE HAUNTED HOUSE.131
THE MURDERESS.......                               ] 38
CONTENT.......... 135
OF ONE ASLEEP.....,...                          137
IISSATISFIED.......    139
DYING SONG... 141
JILY LEE.....                   143
To THE EVENING ZEPHYR.                                145
MIRACLES........        147
TOKENS.......                                         149
To THE HOPEFUL.......    151
GOING TO SLEEP......... 153
THE DYINO MOTHER...... 155
THE LULLABY.....                            1.57
ALDA.......159
GLENLY MOOR.......  161
ROSEMARY HILL.......    163
MMr BROTHER........ 165
NELLIE WATCHING....... 7
ROSALIE.......171
JUSTIFIED..........  1 74
ISIDORE'S DREAM......... 177
BRRNS........           179
THE EMIGRANTS........  11
RINALDO...                                           ] 183
JULIET TO ROMEO.......    185
OF HOME    1.........    1 87
MY FRIEND... 189
THE HANDMAID.........   191
]'ARTNG AND MEETING........  193
A RUIN.......                                         196
TIE POET..........  199
ASPIRIATIONS.......  201
CHANGED.......203
WATCHING....... 205
W EAINESS.......,...  207
TIIE BETRAYAL........    209
EI)ITH TO HAROLD......  211
PARTING WITH A POET....... 213




CONTENTS.                   V11
PAGE
THE RECLAIMING OF THE ANGEL.215
ADELYN.                                       217
MADELA..219
THE BROKEN HOUSEHOLD...         221
To MARY..223
PARTING SONG.                                 225
THE BRIDAL OF W'O...                        227
A DREAM UNTOLD.                               229
THE CONVICT..232
SICK AND IN PRISON..                          235
OLD STORIES...                       237
VISIONS OF LIGHT..                            239
LONGINGS..241
THE TIME TO BE........   243
REMORSE.                     245
DESPAIR..                                     247
RESPITE.......                               249
OF ONE DYING..251
MAY VERSES....... 253
WURTHA........            255
THE SHEPHERDESS..                      257
WASHING THE SHEEP..                    259
GEORGE BURROUGHS...                           261
LUTHER...........   263
THE EVENING WALK..                            565
THE LAST SONG........  269
WEARINESS..... 270
PERVERSITY..                         271
WHEN MY LOVE AND I LIE DEAD.. 272
HIDDEN LIGHIT.........                     273
DEVOTION....  274
PROPHECY....  275
LIGHT OF LOVE........ 27
A RETROSPECT.......                           277
THE HOMELESS......... 278
KINDNESS.....   278
ENJOY.  280
A PRIL.....    281
AT THE GRAVE.                                 282
MULBERRY HILL.......  285
A RUSTIC PLAINT    ~..... 286
THE SPIRIT-HAUNTED....287




Viii            CONTENTS.
PAGE
ULALIE.....289
ON THE PICTURE OF A MAGDALEN.....  290
DEATH SONG........  I'91
YOUNG LOVE..........    292
MUSINGS BY THREE GRAVESB...... 293
THE MORNING......       297
AWAKENING........ 298
TIMES.....  298
THE PROPHECY.                          3. 300
WORSHIP..........    802
ONLY TWO........            30
THE ORPHAN GIRL....               303
A NORLAND BALLAD...... 5. 3 85
THE MILL MAID.....309
THE LOVER'S VISION.......           311
NOBILITY...                          313
DOOMED.....                            315
THE WAY.....   316
THISBE...... 17
SAFE.......                            318
ADELEID..........    319
WHAT AN ANGEL SAID......   20
MY PLAYMATE....                  321
THE WORKERS.....    322
LOOKING BACK....   323
HYMN.....                          324
LEILA......... 325
LIGHTS OF GENIUS..  ~....    32.
THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA...         327




P O EMS.








P OE E  S.
LYRA: A LAMENT.
MAIDENS, whose tresses shine,
Crown6d with daffodil and eglantine,
Or, from their stringehd buds of brier roses,
Bright as the vermeil closes
Of April twilights after sobbing rains,
Fall down in rippled skeins
And golden tangles low
About your bosoms, dainty as new snow;
While the warm shadows blow in softest vales
Fair hawthorn flowers and cherry blossoms white
Against your kirtles, like the froth from pails
O'er brimmed with milk at night,
When lowing heifers bury their sleek fianks
In winrows of sweet hay or clover banksCome near and hear, I pray,
My plainbd roundelay.              11




12                    LYRA.
Where creeping vines o'errun the sunny leas,
Sadly, sweet souls, I watch your shining bands,
Filling with stained hands
Your leafy cups with lush red strawberries;
Or deep in murmurous glooms,
In yellow mosses full of starry blooms,
Sunken at ease-each busied as she likes,
Or stripping from the grass the beaded dews,
Or picking jagged leaves from the slim spikes
Of tender pinks-with warbled interfuse
Of poesy divine,
That haply long ago
Some wretched borderer of the realm of wo
Wrought to a dulcet line;If in your lovely years
There be a sorrow that may touch with tears
The eyelids piteously, they must be shed
FOR LYRA, DEAD.
The mantle of the May
Was blown almost within the summer's reach,
And all the orchard trees,
Apple, and pear, and peach,
WTere full of yellow bees,
Flown from their hives away.
The callow dove upon the dusty beam
Fluttered its little wings in streaks of light,
And the gray swallow twittered full in sight;
Harmless the unyoked team
Browsed from the budding elms, and thrilling lays
Made musical prophecies of brighter days;




LYRA.                     13
And all went jocundly. I could but say,
Ah! well-a-day!What time spring thaws the wold,
And in the dead leaves come up sprouts of gold,
And green and ribby blue, that after hours
Encrown with flowers;
Heavily lies my heart
From all delights apart,
Even as an echo hungry for the wind,
When fail the silver-kissing waves to unbind
The music bedded in the drowsy strings
Of the sea's golden shellsThat, sometimes, with their honeyed murmurings
Fill all its underswells;For o'er the sunshine fell a shadow wide
When Lyra died.
When sober Autumn, with his mist-bound brows,
Sits drearily beneath the fading boughs,
And the rain, chilly cold,
Wrings from his beard of gold,
And as some comfort for his lonesome hours,
Hides in his bosom stalks of withered flowers,
I think about what leaves are drooping round
A smoothly shapen mound,
And if the wild wind cries
Where Lyra lies.
Sweet shepherds softly blow
Ditties most sad and lowPiping on hollow reeds to your pent sheepCalm be my Lyra's sleep,




14                   LYRA.
Unvexed with dream of the rough briers that pull
From his strayed lambs the wool!
Oh, star, that tremblest dim
Upon the welkin's rim,
Send with thy milky shadows from above
Tidings about my love;
If that some envious wave
Made his untimely grave,
Or if, so softening half my wild regrets,
Some coverlid of bluest violets
Was softly put aside,
What time he died!
Nay, come not, piteous maids,
Out of the murmurous shades;
But keep your tresses crowned as you may
With eglantine and daffodillies gay,
And with the dews of myrtles wash your cheeks,
When flamy streaks,
Uprunning the gray orient, tell of mornWhile I, forlorn,
Pour all my heart in tears and plaints. instead,
FOR LYRA, DEAD.




IN  ILLNESS.
No harsh complaint nor rude unmannered wo,
Shall jar discordant in the dulcet flow
Of music, raining through the chestnut wings
Of the wild plaining dove,
The while I touch my lyre's late shattered strings,
Mourning about my love.
Now in the field of sunset, Twilight gray,
Sad for the dying day,
With wisps of shadows binds the sheaves of gold,
And Night comes shepherding his starry fold
Along the shady bottom of the sky.
Alas, that I
Sunken among life's faded ruins lieMy senses from their natural uses bound!
What thing is likest to my wretched plight? —
A barley grain cast into stony ground,
That may not quicken up into the light.
Erewhile I'dreamed about the hills of home
Whereon I used to roam;
Of silver-leav6d larch,
And willows, hung with tassels, when like bells
Tinkle the thawing runnel's brimming swells;
15




16               IN  ILLNESS.
And softly filling in the front of March
The new moon lies,
Watching for harebells, and the buds that ease
Heart's lovelorn, and the spotted adder's tongue,
Dead heaped leaves amongThe verdurous season's cloud of witnesses;
Of how the daisy shines
White, i' the knotty and close-nibbled grass;
Of thickets full of prickly eglantines,
And the slim spice-wood and red sassafras,
Stealing between whose boughs the twinkling heatsSuck up the exhaled sweets
From dew-embalmed beds of primroses,
That all unpressed lie,
Save of enamored airs, right daintily,
And golden-ringed bees;
Of atmospheres of hymns,
When wings go beating up the blue sublime
From hedgerows sweet with vermeil-sprouting limbs,
In April's showery time,
When lilacs come, and straggling flag-flowers, bright,
As any summer light
Ere yet the plowman's steers
Browse through the meadows from the traces free,
Or steel-blue swallows twitter merrily,
With slant wings shaving close the level ground,
Where with his new-washed ewes thick huddled round,
The careful herdsman plies the busy shears.
But this was in life's Mlay,
Ere Lyra was away;




IN  ILLNESS.                 17
And this fond seeming now no longer seems —
Aching and drowsy pains keep down my dreams;Even as a dreary wind
Within some hollow, black with poison flowers,
Swoons into silence, dies the hope that lined
My lowly chamber with illumined wings,
In life's enchanted hours,
When, tender oxlips mixed through yellow strings
Of mulleinstars, with myrtles interfused,
Pulled. out of pastures green, I gaily used
To braid up with my hair. Ah, well-a-day!
Haply the blue eyes of another May,
Open from rosy lids, I shall not see,
For the white shroud-folds. If it thus must be,
Oh, friends who near me keep
To watch or weep,
When you shall see the coming of the night
Comfort me with the light
Of Lyra's love,
And pray the saints above
To pity me, if it be sin to know
SHeaven here below.




HYMN TO THE NIGHT.
MIDNIGHT, beneath your sky,
Where streaks of soft blue lie
Between the starry ranks
Like rivers with white lilies on their banks,
Frown not that I am come,
A little while to stay
From the broad light of day.
My passion shall be dumb,
Nor vex with faintest moan
For my life's summer flown
The drowsy stillness hanging on the air.
Therefore, with black despair
Let me enfold my browI come to gather the gray ashes now
That in the long gone hours
Were blushing flowers.
Give me some gentle comfort, gentle Night,
For their untimely blight,
Feeding my soul with the delicious sounds
Of waters washing over hollow grounds
Through beds of hyacinths, and rushes green
With yellow ferns and broad-leaved flags between;
18




TO THE NIGHT.                   19
Where the south winds do sleep,
Forgetting their white cradles in the deep.
The future is all dim,
No more my locks I trim
With myrtles or gay pansies, as I used,
Or with slim jasmines strung with pretty flowers,
As in the blessed hours
Ere yet I sadly mused,
Or covered up from my lamenting eyes
The two sweet skies,
With withered holly or the bitter rue,
As now, alas! I do.
Since Lyra, for whose sake the world was fair,
Is lost, I know not where,
Ah me! my sweetest song
Must do his beauty wrongTo his white hands I give my heavy heart,
Saying, Lovely as thou art,
Be kindly piteous of my hapless wo!Full well I know
How changed I am since all my young heart-beats
Were full of joyance, as of pastoral sweets
The long bright summer times
When Love first taught me rhymes.
Yet, dear one, in thy smile
The light they knew erewhile
My eyes would gather back, and in my cheek
Beneath thy lip the flush of spring would break.
Come, thou, about whose visionary bier




20              TO T H.E NIGHT.
I strew in softest fear
Pale flowers of mandrakes in the nightly dreams,
That fly when morning streams
Slant through my casement and fades off again,
Soothing no jot my painCome back and stay with me
And we will lovers be!
In the brown shadows of the autumn trees,
Lingering behind the bees
Till the rough winds do blow
And blustery clouds are full of chilly snow,
We'll sing old songs, and with love ditties gay
Beguile the hours away.
And I with ivy buds thydlocks will crown,
And when in all their pretty lengths of gold
Straightened with moisture cold
Sorrowfully drop they down,
My hands shall press them dry, the while I keep
Soft watches for thy sleep,
Weaving some roundelay,
Of that pale huntress, haply, whose blue way
Along the heavens was lost,
Finding the low earth sweeter than the skiesKissing the love-lit eyes
Of the fair boy Endymion, as he crossed
The leafy silence of the woods alone,
In the old myth-time flown;
Haply of Proteus, all his dripping floctks
Along the wild sea-rocks
Driving to pastures in'fresh sprouting meads,




TO THE NIGH'.                  21
His sad brows crowned with green murmurous reeds
For love of Leonora-she for whom
The blank blanched sands were shapen to a tomb,
Where, under the wild midnight's troubled frown,
With his pale burden in his arms, went down
HIer mortal lover. Moaningly the waves
Wash by two lonesome graves;
One holds the ashes of the beauteous boy
Whose harmless joy
Of playing the fifth season in the sun,
Was all untimely done.
Away, my dream, away!
Like young buds blackened in the front of May
And wasted in the rude and envious frost,
My early hopes are lost.
Oh angel of the darkness, come and make,
For pity's sake,
My bed with sheets as white as sheets may be,
And give me sweeter grace to go with thee,
Than e'er became my life. No lures have I,
To draw thee nigh,
Of beauty, wit, or friends to make ado;
Haply, or one or. two,
Seeing me in my shroud, would sigh, "Alas!"
As for a daisy golne out of the grass
Wherein bloomed better flowers. If so it fall,
It were an end befitting most of all
The close of my bad fortunes. Thou
Hearing my pleading now,




22              TO THE NIGHT.
Knowest well how true I speak,
There be no prints of kisses on the cheek
I hide against thy bosom, praying to go
Down to the chamber low,
Wherein I shall be wed
With L) ra, dead.




THE MINSTREL.
BENEATH a silvery sycamore
His willow pipe I saw him playing.
The heifer down the hill was strayingI1er lengthening shadow went before,Toward the near stubble-land: the lowing
Of labored oxen, pasturing,
Called her that way. The wind was blowing,
And the tall reeds against a spring
Of unsunned waters, slantwise fell,
But you might hear his song right well"I would that I were bird or bee,
Or anything that I am notSweet lady-love, I care not what,
So I might live and die with thee."
The grass beneath its flowery cover
Was softly musical with bees;
But well-a-day! what sights may please
The eyes of an enchanted lover?
In dusty hollows, here and there,
Among gnarled roots the flocks were lying,
O'erclomb by lambs; and homeward flying,
23




24              THE MINSTREL.
The birds made dusky all the air;
The yellow light began to fade
From the low tarn —the day was o'er;
And still his willow pipe he played,
Under the silvery sycamore:
"I would that I were bird or bee,
Or anything that I am notLost lady-love, I care not what,
So I might live and die with thee."
Down through the long blue silences
Came the owl's cry; fire-flies were trimming
Their torches for the night, and skimming
Athwart the glooms; between the trees,
Went the blind, wretched bat: Ah me,
The night and sorrow well agree!
The meadow king-cups and the furze
Were pretty with the harvest dew,
And in the brook the thistle threw
The shadows of its many burs.
I wis, he lovely was to see,
In the gray twilight's pallid shade,
As on his willow pipe he played,
Crowned with " buds of poesy ""I would that I were bird or bee,
Or anything that I am notA sound, a breeze, I care not what,
So I might live and die with thee."
Faint gales of starlight from above
Blew softly from the casement light




THE MINSTREL.                   25
Across the pillow, milky white,
WVhere slept the lady of his love,
The floating tresses, black as sloe,
Fell tangled round the dainty snow
Of cheek and bosom. Gentle seemed
The lady, smiling as she dreamed.
But not of him her visions are,
Who, for the sake of the sweet light
Within her casement, vexed the nightHer thoughts are travellers otherwhere.
At midnight on a jutting cliff,
A raven flapped his wings and cried;
Faintly the willow pipe repliedThe hands upon its stops were stiff.
Under the silvery sycamore
The mournful playing was all doneIf there be angels, he was one,
For surely all his pain was o'er.
At morn a lady walked that way,
And when she saw his quiet sleeping,
Upon the flowers, she fell a-weeping,
And for her tears she could not pray.
I had been little used to speak
Of comfort, but was moved to see
Her piteous heart so near to break,
For the pale corse beneath the tree;
And so, to soothe her grief, I saidThe way he died, and told his song;
"Alas, he loved me well and long,"
2




26               THE MINSTREL.
She sighed; "I would that we were wed
As lovers use, or else that I
Were anything that I am not,
Or bird, or bee, I care not what,
Here in the pleasant flowers to die."
The mist, with many a soft fold, shrouds
The eastern hills, birds wake their hymns,
And through the sycamore's white limbs
Shines the red climbing of the clouds.
Making my rhymes, I heard her sigh,
"Ah, well-a-day, that we were wed
As lovers use, or else that I
Here on the pleasant flowers were dead!"




HYALA.
Low by the reedy sea went ancient Ops,
Tracking for/crownless Saturn: quietly
From her gray hair waned off the sober light,
For Eve, that Cyclops of the burning eye,
Slow pacing down the slumberous hills, was gone.
Under the black boughs of a cedarn wood,
Weary of hunting, Dian lay asleep,
Kissed by the amorous winds. Close to her feet,
Cropping the scant ambrosia, Io came,
Her slender neck hung round with modest bellq
Of asphodel, the gift of Jupiter,
Who, for the jealous love that Juno had,
]Made her the milk-white heifer that she was.
So slept the huntress, while, hard by the wood
Where the slant sunset lay in crimson gores
Athwart the dimness, that most chaste of maids
Whom Dian loved, cold-bosomed Hyala,
Stood leaning on her slack bow, all aloneHer forehead smooth as ice, and ivy-bound,
And in her girdle of blue hyacinths
Three sharpest arrows.
All unconsciously,
Tripping barefooted through the violets,
27




28                  XI Y A L A.
Idalia, fairest shepherdess of allIn her white hands her silver milking-bowl,
And on her lip the music of a heart
Hungry for love —crossed the near field, her song
Sweetly dividing the blue silent air:
"0  fair Scamander, bed of loveliness,
When wilt thou give my naked limbs to lie
Among thy marriage pillows, white as foam!"
In the pale cheek of Hyala burned out
An angry color, as she saw her sit
Singing and milking in her silver bowl.
One lily shoulder, under rippling lengths
Of dropping tresses, pressing light the flank
Of a plump goat, with eyes as black as sloe,
And hoofs of pinky silver, dimpling deep
The wild green turf thick-sprouting on a ridge
That topt a flowery slope in Thessaly.
Scorn curled the lip of listening Hyala,
And drawing from her belt the nimblest shaft,
Straight from her steady hand it sped and sunk
Deep in the forehead of the harmless beast,
That moaning fell, and bled into the grass:
So tIyala went laughing on her way.




PICTURES OF MEMORY.
AMONG the beautiful pictures
That hang on Memory's wall,
Is one of a dim old forest,
That seemeth best of all:
Not for its gnarled oaks olden,
Dark with the mistletoe;
Not for the violets golden
That sprinkle the vale below;
Not for the milk-white lilies
That lean from the fragrant hedge,
Coqueting all day with the sunbeams,
And stealing their shining edge;
Not for the vines on the upland
Where the bright red berries be,
Nor the pinks, nor the pale, sweet cowslip,
It seemeth the best to me.
I once had a little brother,
With eyes that were dark and deepIn the lap of that old dim forest
lIe lieth in peace asleep:
29




30        PICTURES  OF MEMORY.
Light as the down of the thistle,
Free as the winds that blow,
We roved there the beautiful summers,
The summers of long ago;
But his feet on the hills grew weary,
And, one of the autumn eves,
I made for my little brother
A.bed of the yellow leaves.
Sweetly his pale arms folded
My neck in a meek embrace,
As the light of immortal beauty
Silently covered his face:
And when the arrows of sunset
Lodged in the tree-tops bright,.
He fell, in his saint-like beauty,
Asleep by the gates of light.
Therefore, of all the pictures
That hang on Memory's wall,
The one of the old dim forest
Seerneth the best of all.




GRAND-DAME AND CHILD.
THE maple's limbs of yellow flowers
Made spots of sunshine here and there
In the bleak woods; a merry pair
Of blue-birds, which the April-showers
Had softly called, were come that day;
Another week would bring the May,
And all the meadow-grass would shine
With strawberries; and all the trees
Whisper of coming blooms, and bees
Work busy, making golden wine.
The white-haired grand-dame, faint and sick,
Sits fretful in her chair of oak;
The clock is nearly on the stroke
Of all the day's best hour, and quick
rThe dreamy house will glimmer brightNo candle needed any more,
For Miriam's smile is so like light,
The moths fly with her in the door.
31




329        GRAND-DAME AND CHILD.
The lilies carv6d in her chair
The grand-dame counts, but cannot tell
If they be three or seven; the pair
Of merry blue-birds, singing well,
She does not hear; nor can she see
The moonshine, cold and pure, and bright,
Walk like an angel clothed in white,
The path where Miriam should be.
Almost she hears the little feet
Patter along the path of sands;
Her eyes are making pictures sweet,
And every breeze her cheek that fans,
Half cheats her to believe, I wis,
It is her pretty grandchild's kiss.
The dainty hood, her fancy too
Sees hanging on the cabin wall,
And from her modest eyes of blue,
Fair Miriam putting back the fall
Of her brown hair, and laughing wildHer darling merry-hearted child,
Then with a step as light and low
As any wood-birds in the snow,
She goes about her household cares.
"The saints will surely count for prayers
The duties love doth sweeten so,"
Says the pleased grand-dame; but alas!
No feet are pattering on the grass,
No hood is hanging on the wallIt was a foolish dreaming, all.




GRAN D-DAME AND CHILD.:33
The morning-glories winding up
The rustic pillars of the shed,
Open their dark bells, cup by cup,
To the June's rainy clouds; the bed
Of rosemary and meadow-sweet
Which Miriam kept with so much care,
Is run to weeds, and everywhere
Across the paths her busy feet
WTore smooth and hard, the grass has grownAnd still the grand-dame sits alone,
Counting the lilies in her chairHer ancient chair of carved oakAnd fretful, listening for the stroke
Of the old clock, and for the pair
Of blue-birds that have long been still;
Saying, as o'er the neighboring hill
The shadows gather thick and dumb"'T is time that Miriam were come."
And now the spiders cease to weave,
And from between the corn's green stems
Drawing after her her scarlet hems,
Dew-dappled, the brown-vested Eve
Slow to his purple pillows drops;
His tired team now the plowman stops;
In the dim woods the axe is still,
And sober, winding round the hill,
The cows come home. " Come, pretty one,
I'm watching for you at the door,"
Calls the old grand-dame o'er and o'er,
"'Tis time the working all were done."
2*




34         GRAND-DAME AND CHILD,
And kindly neighbors come and go,
But gently piteous; none have said,
"Your pretty grandchild sleepeth so
MWBe cannot wake her;" but instead
Piling the cushions in her chair,
Carved in many a quaint design
Of leaves and lilies, nice and fine,
They tell her she must not despair
To meet her pretty child againTo see her wear forever more,
A smile of brighter love than when
The moths flew with her in the door.




AGATHA TO HAROLD.
CoME there ever memories, Harold,
Like a half remembered song
From the time of gladness vanished
Down the distance, oh, so long!
Come they to me-not in sadness,
For they strike into my soul,
As the sharp axe of the woodsman
Strikes the dead and sapless bole.
Just across the orchard hill-top,
Through the branches gray and bare,
We can see the village church-yardI shall not be lonesome there.
When the cold wet leaves are falling
On the turfless mound below,
You will sometimes think about me,
You will love me then, I know.
In the window of my chamber
Is a plant with pale blooms crownedIf the sun shines warm to-morrow,
In that quiet church-yard ground
I will set it; and at noontimes,
When the school-girls thither wend,
35




36          AGATHA TO HAROLD.
They will see it o'er me blossom
And believe I had a friend.
Knowest thou the time, oh Harold,
When at many a green mound's head
Read we o'er the simple records
Love had written of the dead.
While the west was faintly burning,
Where the cloudy day was set,
Like a blushing press of kissesAh, thou never canst forget!' Thou art young" thou saidst, "thy future
All in sunlight seems to shineArt content to crown thy maytime
Out of autumn love like mine?
Couldst thou see my locks a fading
With no sorrow and no fears?.For thou knowest I stand in shadows
Deep to almost twice thy years."
In that time my life-blood mounted
From my bosom to my brow,
And I answered simply, truly(I was younger then than now)"Were it strange if that a daisy
Sheltered from the tempest stroke,
Bloomed contented in the shadow
Of the overarching oak?"
When the sun had like a herdsman
Clipt the misty waves of morn,
By the breezes driven seaward
Like a flock of lambs new-shorn;




AGATHA TO HAROLD.                 37
Thou hadst left me, and oh, Harold,
Half in gladness, half in tears,
I was gazing down the future
O'er the lapses of the years;
To what time the clouds about meAll my night of sorrow doneShould blow out their crimson linings
O'er the rising of love's sun;
And I said in exultation,
" Not the bright ones in the sky,
Then shall know a sweeter pleasure
Than, my Harold, thou and I."
Thrice the scattered seed had sprouted
As the spring thaw reappeared,
And the winter frosts had grizzled
Thrice the autumn's yellow beard;
When that lovely day of promise
Darkened with a dread eclipse,
And my heart's long clasped joyance
Died in moans upon my lips.
Silent, saw I other maidens
To a thousand pleasures wed"Save me from the past, good angel!"This was all the prayer I said.
Sometimes they would smile upon me
As their gay troops passed me by,
Saying softly to each other,
" How is she content to die l"




38          AGATHA TO HAROLD.
Oh, they little guess the barren
Wastes on which my visions go,
And the conflicts fierce but silent
That at last have made me so.
Shall the bright-winged bird be netted
Singing in the open fields,
And not struggle with the fowler:
Long and vainly ere it yieldsOr the heart to death surrender
Mortal hoping without strife?
But the struggle now is endedGive me, God, a better life!




LEGEND OF SEVILLE.
THREE men that three gray mules bestrode
Went riding through a lonesome roadDust from the largest to the least
Up to the fetlock of each beast.
The foremost was a stripling pale;
"Comrades," he said, " within our hail
I see a hostel, white as snow-'T is night-fall-shall we thither go?"
" Nay," said the other two, " in sooth'T is white enough, but of a truth,
Too lowly for our courtly needWe'll gain a fairer with good speed."
So, past the hostel white they rode,
These men that three gray mules bestrode,
Till led the pale young moon afar,
By her slim silver horn, one star.
Right wistfully then looking back,
Cried out the middle man, " Alack!
I spy a rude black inn —shalt see
If the host have good wine for three?"
39




40           LEGEND OF SEVILLE.
" Now," said the hindmost, "by my troth
Shamed is my knighthood for ye both."So, pricking sharply, on they rode,
These men who three gray mules bestrode.
Close where a whimpering river lay
Stood huts of fishers; all that day
Drying their loose nets in the sun.
They told how murders might be done.
A moorish tower of yellow stone
Shadowed that river-bridge, o'ergrown
With lichen and the marish mossForward the stripling rode to cross:
Close came the others man by man,
But farther than the shadow ran,
The legend says, they never rode,
These men who three gray m ales bestrode.




TO THE WINDS.
TALK to my heart, oh windsTalk to my heart to-night;
My spirit always finds
With you a new delight,
Finds always new delight,
In your silver talk at night.
G(ive me your soft embrace
As you used to long ago.
In your shadowy trysting place,
When you seemed to love me soWhen you sweetly kissed me so,
On the green hills long ago.
Come up from your cool bed,
In the stilly twilight sea,
For the dearest hope lies dead,
That was ever dear to me;
Come up from your cool bed,
And we'll talk about the dead.
41




42             TO THE WINDS.
Tell me, for oft you go,
Winds, lovely winds of night,
About the chambers low,
With sheets so dainty white,
If they sleep through all the night,
In the beds so chill and white:
Talk to me, winds, and say,
If in the grave be rest;
For, oh, life's little day
Is a weary one at best;
Talk to my heart and say
If death will give me rest.




ANNUARIES.
A YEAR has gone down silently
To the dark quiet of the Past,
Since I beneath this very tree
Sat hoping, fearing, dreaming, last;
Its waning glories, like a flame,
Are trembling to the wind's light touch —
All just a year ago the same,
And I-oh! I-am changed so much!
The beauty of a wildering dream
Hung softly round declining day;
A star of all too sweet a beam
In Eve's flu-shed bosom trembling lay;
Changed in its aspect, yet the same,
Still climbs that star from sunset's glow,
But its embrace of beauteous flame
No longer clasps the world from wo.
Another year shall I return,
And cross this solemn chapel floor,
While round me memory's shrine-lamps burnOr shall this pilgrimage be o'er?
43




44               ANNUARIES.
One that I loved, grown faint with strife,
When drooped and died the tenderer bloom,
Folded the white tent of young life
For the pale army of the tomb.
The dry seeds dropping from their pods,
The hawthorn apples bright as dawn,
And the grey mullen's starless rods,
Were just as now a year agone;
But changed is everything to me,
From the small flower to sunset's glow,
Since last I sat beneath this tree,
A year-a little year —ago.
I leaned against this broken bough,
This faded turf my footstep pressed;
But glad hopes that are not there now,
Lay softly trembling in my breastTrembling, for though the golden haze,
Rose, as the dead leaves drifted by,
As from the Vala of old days,
The mournful voice of prophecy.
Give woman's heart one triumph hour,
Even on the borders of the grave,
And thou hast given her strength and power
The saddest ills of life to brave;
Crush that far hope down, thou dost bring
To the poor bird the tempest's wrath,
Without the petrel's stormy wing
To beat the darkness from its path.




ANN U ARIES.                 45
Once knowing mortal hope and fear,
Whate'er in heaven's sweet clime thou art,
Bend, pitying mother, softly near,
And save, O save me from iny heart!
Be still, oh mournful memory,
My knee is trembling on the sodThe heir of immortality,
A child of the eternal God.
II.
When last year took her mournful flight,
With all her train of wo and ill,
As pale processions sweep at night
Across some lonesome burial hillMy soul with sorrow for its mate,
And bowed with unrequited wrong,
Stood knocking at the starry gate
Of the wild wondrous realm of song.
Hope from my noon of life was gone,
With all the sheltering peace it gave,
And a dim twilight stealing on,
Foretold the night-time of the grave.
Past is that time of wild unrest,
Hope reillumes its faded track,
And the soft hand of love has prest
Death's deep and awful shadows back.
A year agone, when wildly shrill
The wind sat singing on this bough,
The churchyard on the neighboring hill
Had not so many graves as now.




46                ANNUARIES.
Yet am I spared-God knoweth why,
And by the hand of Fancy led,
The same as in the years gone by,
Musing this idle rhyme I tread.
When the May-morn, with hand of light,
The clouds about her bosom drew,
And o'er the blue, cold steeps of night
Went treading out the stars like dewOne, whose dear joy it had been ours
Two little summer times to keep,
Folded his white hands from the flowers,
And, softly smiling, fell asleep.
And when the northern light streamed cold
Across October's moaning blast,
One whose brief tarrying was foretold
All the sweet summer that was past,
Meekly unlocked from her young arms
The scarcely faded bridal crown,
And in death's fearful night of storms
The dim day of her life went down.
Above yon reach of level mist
Bright shines the cross-crowned spire afar,
As in the sky's clear amethyst
The splendor of some steadfast star;
And still beneath its steady light
The waves of time heave to and fro,
From night to day, from day to night,
As the dim seasons come and go.




A NN UAR IES.                 47
Some eager for ambition's strife,
Some to love's banquet hurrying on,
Like pilgrims on the hills of life
We cross each other, and are gone;
But though our lives are little drops,
Welled from the infinite fount above,
Our deaths are but the mystic stops
In the great melody of love.
III.
Vailing the basement of the skies
October's mists hang dull and red,
And with each wild gust's fall and rise,
The yellow leaves are round me spread;'Tis the third autumn, aye, so long!
Since memory'neath this very bough,
Thrilled my sad lyre strings into song —
What shall unlock their music now?
Then sang I of a sweet hope changed,
Of pale hands beckoning, glad health fled,
Of hearts grown careless or estranged,
Of friends, or living, lost, or dead.
O living lost, forever lost,
Your light still lingers, faint and far,
As if an awful shadow crossed
The bright disk of the morning star.
Blow, autumn, in thy wildest wrath,
Down from the northern woodlands, blow!
Drift the last wild-flowers from my pathWhat care I for the summer now!




48                ANNUARIES.
Yet shrink I, trembling and afraid
From searching glances inward thrown;
What deep foundation have I laid,
For any joyance not my own?
While with my poor, unskilful hands,
Half hopeful, half in vague alarm,
Building up walls of shining sands
That fell and faded with the storm,
E'en now my bosom shakes with fear,
Like the last leaflets of this bough,
For through the silence I can hear,
"Unprofitable servant, thou!"
Yet have there been, there are to-day
In spite of health, or hope's decline,
Fountains of beauty sealed away
From every mortal eye but mine;
Even dreams have filled my soul with light,
And on my way their splendor left,
As if the darkness of the night
Were by some planet's rising cleft.
And peace hath in my heart been born,
That shut from memory all life's ills,
In walking with the blue-eyed morn
Among the white mists of the hills.
And joyous, I have heard the wails
That heave the wild woods to and fro,
When autumn's crown of crimson pales
Beneath the winter's hand of snow.




ANNUARIES.                  49
Once, leaving all its lovely mates,
On yonder lightning-withered tree,
That vainly for the springtime waits,
A wild bird perched and sang for me;
And listening to the clear sweet strain
That came like sunshine o'er the day,
My forehead's hot and burning pain
Fell like a crown of thorns away.
But shadows firom the western height
Are stretching to the valley low,
For through the cloudy gates of night
The day is passing, solemn, slow,
While o'er yon blue and rocky steep
The tnoon, half hidden in the mist,
Waits for the loving wind to keep
The promise of the twilight tryst.
Come thou, whose meek blue eyes divine,
What thou, and'only thou canst see,
I wait to put my hand in thineWhat answer sendest thou to me?
Ah! thoughts of one whom helpless blight
Had pushed from all fair hope apart,
Making it thenceforth hers to fight
The stormy battles of the heart.
Well,I have no complaint of wrath,
And no reproaches for my doom;
Spring cannot blossom in thy path
So bright as I would have it bloom.
5




50               A NNUARIE S.
IV.
Oh, sorrowful and faded years,
Gathered away a time ago,
How could your deaths the fount of tears
Have troubled to an overflow?
I muse upon the songs I made
Beneath the maple's yellow limbs,
When down the aisles of thin cold shade
Sounded the wild bird's farewell hymns
But no sad spell my spirit binds
As when, in days on which it broods,
October hunted with the winds
Along the reddening sunset woods.
Alas, the seasons come and go,
Brightly or dimly rise and set
The days, but stir no fbunt of wo,
Nor kindle hope, nor wake regret.
I sit with the complaining night,
And underneath the waning moon,
As when the lilies large and white
Lay round the forehead of the June.
What time within a snowy grave
Closed the blue eyes so heavenly dear,
Darkness swept o'er me like a wave,
And time has nothing that I fear.
The golden wings of summer's hours
Make to my heart a dirge-like sound,
The spring's sweet boughs of bridal flowers
Lie bright across a smooth-heaped mound.




A N N UA R I E S.             51
What care I that I sing to-day
Where sound not the old plaintive hymns,
And where the mountains hide away
The sunset maple's yellow limbs?
V.
ON the brown, flowerless meadow lies
The wraith of summer; oat flowers bright
Nod heavy on her death-blind eyes,
Smiling with melancholy light.
And Autumn, with his eyelids red
Drooped to her beauty, sits to-day,
His sad heart sweetly comforted
By storms upon their starless way.
Seasons continuous, mingling, thrill
Our souls, as notes that sweetly blend,
Until we cannot, if we will,
Tell where they or begin or end.
And while the blue fly sings so well,
And while the cricket chirps so low;
In the bright grass, I scarce can tell
If there be daisy-flakes, or snow.
But when along the slumberous blue,
And dreamy, quiet atmosphere,
I look to find the April dew,
I know the Autumn time is here.
The lampless hollow of the skies
Is full of mists, or blank, or dun;
Where all day, soft and warm, there lies
A shadow that should be the sun.




52              eANNUARIES.
The winds go noiseless on their way,
Scarcely the lightest twig is stirred;
Not through the wild green boughs of May
Slips the blue lizard so unheard.
Under the woolly mullen, flat
Against the dust, together creep
The shining beetles; and the bat
Is drowsing to his winter sleep.
The iron-weeds' red tops are down,
Wilted from all their summer sheen
The fennel's golden buds are brown,
And loneliest in all the scene:
Hither and thither lightly blows
A white cloud o'er the darkening wood,
Like some unpastured lamb that goes
Climbing and wandering for food.
But plenty gladdens all the world,
For corn is ripe, if flowers be o'er;
Autumn, with yellow beard uncurled
In summer's grave-damps, sigh no more!
Sigh no more, Autumn! sigh no moreFor if the blooming boughs have shed
Their pleasant leaves, the light will pour
So much the brighter on thy head.
And while thy mourning voice is staid
I'11 play my pipe; so adding on
Another to the rhymes I made
Ere youth, my pretty mate, was gone.




ANNUARIES.                   53
Winds, stirring through the pinetops high,
Or hovering on the ocean's breast,
Blow softly on the ways that lie
Sloping and brightening toward the West.
Blow softly, for my thoughts would sweep,
Upon your still and beauteous waves,
Back to the woodlands green and deep,
Back to the firesides and the gravesThe firesides of the rosiest glow,
The graves wherein my kindred rest;
Winds of the Northland, softly blow,
And bear me to the lovely West.
There linger sweetest voices yet,
That ever soothed from grief its pain;
There glow the hills with suns long set,
And there my heart grows young again.
The hope which in the crimson boughs
Shut up her wings dim years away,
Sits with her wan and crownless brows
Leaned on the sodded grave to-day.
For when the last sweet vision died
She nursed for me, there fell a night
Cloudy and black enough to hide
Her smile's almost eternal light.
When the unkenneled whining winds,
Went last year tracking through the snow,
Mity heart was comforted with friends
Gone on the last long journey now



54              ANNUARIES.
Who in the middle heavens can view
The noontide sun without a sighA yearning for the faded dew
Where morning's broken splendors lie.
And from the glory up above,
My eyes come down to earth and mark
The pain, the sorrow for lost loveThe awful transit to the dark.
Weak and unworthy, still I live,
Harvests and plenteous boughs to see;
My God! how good thou art to give
Such blessings as I have to me.
Oh! add to these all needful graceDivide me from that proud disdain,
Climbing against the sunless base
Of an eternity of pain.
VI.
ONCE more my annual harp! alas,'Tis the sixth season nearly run
Since the brown lizard through the grass
Crept slow, and took the autumn sun:
Since the wild maple boughs above
Shook down their leaves of gold and red,
The while I made my song of loveIf there be angels overhead
Methinks before their watchful eyes
They well may cross their wings and rest;
What need they guardians in the skies
Who with a human love are blest?




ANNUARIES.                   5
Ah me! what wretched storms of tears
Have made maturer life a dearth,For the white visions of young years
Grow dimmer than the common earth.
In vain! the swart October brings,
In its rough arms, no April dayThe ousel plunges its wild wings
But in the rainy brooks of May.
The rose that in the June time rain
Comes open, could not, if it would
Shut up its red-ripe leaves again,
And go back to a blushing bud.
And when the step is dull and slow,
And when the eye no longer beams
With the glad hopes of years ago,
What purpose has the heart with dreams?
Away, wild thoughts of sorrow's floodWild dreams of early love, away!
Inl calm and passionless womanhood,
Why come ye thronging back to-day.
And you, ye questionings that rise,
Of life and death and hope's surcease,
Seal up again your mockeriesPeace, peace! I charge you give me peace!
And let me from the pain and gloom
Gather-whatever seems like truth,
Forgetful of the opening tomb,
Forgetful of the closing youth.




66               ANNUARIES.
Fain would my thoughts a searching go
For one who left me years awayHaply the unblest grasses grow
Upon his sweet shut eyes, to-day.
Oft when the evening's mellow gleam
Falls slantwise o'er some western hill,
And like a ponderous, golden beam
Lies rocking-all my heart grows still.
Listening and listening for the fall
Of his dear step, the cold moon shines
Betimes across the southern hall,
And the black shadows of the vines
O'erblow the mouldy walls, and lie
Heavy along the winding walksWhere oft we set, in Mays gone by,
Streaked lady-grass and hollyhocks.
Within a stone's throw seems the sky
Against the faded woods to bend,
Just as of old the corn-fields lie;
But we, oh, we are changed, my friend!
Since last I saw these maples fade,
The locusts in the burial ground
Have wrapt their melancholy shade
About a new and turfless mound.
And one who last year heard with me
The summer's dirges wild and dread,
Has joined the peaceful company
Whom we, the living, mourn as dead.




ANNUARIES.                   57
Turning for solace unto thee,
Oh, Future! from the pleasures gone,
Misshapen earth, through mists I see,
That fancy dare not look upon.
God of the earth and heaven above,
Hear me in mercy, hear me prayLet not one golden stran of love
From my life's skein be shorn away.
Or if, in thy all-wise decree,
The edict be not written so,
Grant, Lord of light! the earnest plea
That I may be the first to go.
And when the harper of wide space
Shall chant again his mournful hymn.
While on the summer's pale dead face
The leaves are dropping thick and dimWhen songs of robins all are o'er,
And when his work the ant forsakes,
And in the stubbly glebe no more
The grasshopper his pastime takesWhat time the gray-roofed barn is full,
The sober smiling harvest done,
And whiter than the late washed wool,
The flax is bleaching in the sunThe friends who sewed my shroud, sometimes
Shall come about my grave: in tears
Repeating over saddest rhymes
From annuaries of past years.
3*




LOST LIGHT.
So, close the window! gray and blank the sky
Slopes to the nightfall, and the wintry woods
Stand black and desolate; I shall not see
Spring, like a sunrise running o'er the hills,
Nor yet the lark, for love's insanity
Fly at the stars, singing his heart away.
In other seasons, I was little used
To miss the wild green boughs: thick flaws of rain
Fell round me like the moonlight.
Once, I know,
A mower brought me some red berries home,
And in bright plats I wore them in my hair,
Playing along the meadow-side all day.
I wish that time were back. A foolish thought!
Its faith and love are fallen to dead dust
Where hope sets slips of roses all in vain;
And as the stormy, dull, and gusty eve
Shuts in the day, my day is closing too;
The playing in the meadows is all done.
Mine is the common error, to have given,
For shallow possibilities, the straight
And even chance of every probable good58




LOST LIGHT.                  59
From fields of flowers to have but singled out
The bright one that was deadly, and to strive
Through prayer and passion vainly to win back
My blind way into peace, crying to be
Needless of all excuse-to be a child,
Treading cool furrows scented with crushed roots,
To chase the stubble for the humming bird,
And sing out with the homely grasshopper.
That once sweet music, April's pleasant rain,
Plashing against the roof, grown thick with moss,
Comes to me as though muffled by the clods.
The tall reeds slant together as the winds
Go piping through them, shepherding the lambs
Where tiny fountains lie in hollow grounds,
Rimmed round with uncropt daisies and bright grass.
Birds mate and sing together, blossoming twigs
Swing down with golden bees, the anthills swarm,
And the black spider in his loom of limbs
Weaves busily. The sad crow calls alone,
The milk-maid plats her straw, the heifer's low
Runs through the twilight, quick the harmless bat
Flattens his thick damp wings against the pane,
Love makes its lullaby, brown crickets run
Along the hearth-light, proud bright hollyhocks
Grow in the village garden with the corn,
Lilies o'ertop the meadows, rough wild trees
Sprout out with verdure; for the pleasant time,
Glossy with purple plaits, out of their holes
Snakes travel limberly; blood-hungry beasts
Lean their great foreheads close and lovingly;




60                LOST LIGHT.
Moles wallow toward the light; the sentinel cock
Cries all the watches; yet no more the morn,
Upright and white, smiles, gathering out the stars
That redden, crown-like, round her yellow hair,
But, prone, along the earth, from hill to hill,
Slips noiselike, like some earth-burrowing thing,
That only lifts its pale throat in the sun.
Oh, if I dared to say these blushes climb
Up to my cheek from a heart full of sin,
Something might yet be done-my blind eyes be
Couched to some apprehension of delight.
Only the bad go sidling to the truth
Through fate, necessity and evil chance,
Saying, "I trifled with a tempting thingBerry or leaf-an ugly-headed wormCall it a viper-say I kissed its mouth,
Or once, or twice, or oftener, if you willAnd what of that, if it was but a part
That needs must be in life? Am I to blame?
Shrinking, yet drawn along by baffling power,
Even as the shamble's bloody enginery
Winds close against the windlass the beast's head.
Ay, who can be absolved by conscience so,
Or bring the lost light back into the world!




PAUL.
CROSSING the stubble, where, erewhile,
The golden-headed wheat had been,
I saw, and knew him by his smile.
Night, sad with rain, was flowing inI drew the curtains, soft and warm,
And when the room was full of light,
We sat-half listening to the storm,
Half talking-all the dreary night.
From their wet sheds, we heard the moan
Our oxen made-a pretty pairAnd heard the dead leaves often blown
In gusty eddies, here and there.
The dull-eyed spider ran along
The smoky rafters; the gray mouse
Crossed the bare floor; and his wild song
The cricket made through all the house.
Twisting the brown hair into rings,
Above his meditative eyes,
I counted all the long-gone springs
That we had sown with flowers; his sighs
61




E2                  PAUL.
Came thick and fast, as well they might,
But when I said, how on, and on,
For his sake, I had kept them brightThe slow, reproachful smile was gone.
And seeing that my spoken truth
Glowed in my silent looks, the same,
All the proud beauty of his youth
Back on his faded manhood came.
About my neck he clasped his arm,
As in affection's morning prime,
And said, how blest he was-that storm
Was sweeter than the summer-time!
But when I kissed him back, and saidThe embers never cast a gleam
Through our low cabin, half so red,
Sleep vanished-all had been a dream.




TO  THE SPIRIT OF GLADNESS.
UNDERNEATH a dreary sky,
Spirit glad and free,
Voyaging solemnly am I
Toward an unknown sea.
Falls the moonlight, sings the breeze,
But thou speakest not in these.
In the summers overflown
What delights we had!
Now I sit all day alone,
Weaving ditties sad;
But thou comest not for the sake
Of the lonesome rhymes I make.
Faithless spirit, spirit free,
Where mayst thou be found'?
Where the meadow fountains be
Raining music round,
And the thistle burs so blue
Shine the livelong day with dew.
Keep thee, in thy pleasant bowers,
From my heart and brain;
Even the summer's lap of flowers
o3




64      TO THE SPRIT  OF GLADNESS.
Could not cool the pain;
And for pallid cheek and brow
What companionship hast thou?
Erewhile, when the rainy spring
Filled the pastures full
Of sweet daisies blossoming
Out as white as wool;
WVe have gathered them, and made
Beds of Beauty in the shade.
Would that I had any fr;end
Lovingly to go
To the hollows where they blend
With the grasses low,
And a pillow soft and white
Make for the approaching night.




THE TRYST.
THE moss is withered, the moss is brown
Under the dreary cedarn bowers,
And fleet winds running the valleys down
Cover with dead leaves the sleeping flowers.
WVhite as a lily the moonlight lies
Under the gray oak's ample boughs;
In the time of June'twere a paradise
For gentle lovers to make their vows.
In the middle of night when the wolf is dumbh,
Like a sweet star rising out of the sea,
They say that a damsel at times will come,
And brighten the chilly light under the tree.
And a blessed angel from out the sky
Cometh her lonely watch to requite;
But not for my soul's sweet sake would I
Pray under its shadow alone at night.
A boy by the tarn on the mountain side
Was cruelly murdered long ago,
Where oft a spectre is seen to glide
And wander wearily to and fro.
65




C(;i             TElTHE TRYST.
The night was sweet like an April night,
When misty softness the blue air fills,
And the freckled adder's tongue makes bright
The sleepy hollows among the hills.
When, startled up fiom the hush that broods
Beauteously o'er the midnight time,
The gust ran wailing along the woods
Like one who seeth an awful crime.
The tree is withered, the tree is lost,
Where he gathered the ashen berries red,
As meekly the dismal woods he crossedThe tree is withered, the boy is dead.
Now nightly, with footsteps slow and soft,
A damsel goes thither, but not in joy;
Put thy arms round her, good angel aloft,
If she be the love of the murdered boy.
For still she comes, as the daylight fades,
Her tryst to keep near the cedarn bowers.
Bear with her gently, tenderly maids,
Whose hopes are open like summer flowers.




DEATH'S FERRYMAN.
BOATMAN, thrice I've called thee o er,
Waiting on life's solemn shore,
Tracing, in the silver sand,
Letters, till thy boat should land.
Drifting out alone, with thee,
Toward the clime I cannot see,
Read to me the strange device
Graven on thy wand of ice,
Push the curls of golden hue
From thine eyes of starlit dew,
And behold me where I stand,
Beckoning thy boat to land.
Where the river mist, so pale,
Trembles like a bridal veil,
O'er yon lowly drooping tree,
One that loves me waits for me.
Hear, still boatman, hear my call!
Last year, with the leaflet's fall,
Resting her pale hand in mine,
Crossed she in that boat of thilie.
67




68            DEATH S FERRYMAN.
When the corn shall cease to grow,
And the rye-field's sea-like flow
At~the reaper's feet is laid,
(Crossing, spoke the gentle maid),
Dearest love, another year
Thou shalt meet this boatmen here —
The white fingers of despair
Playing with his shining hair.
From this silver-sanded shore,
Beckon him to row thee o'er;
Where yon solemn shadows be,
I shall wait thee-come and see!
-There! the white sails float and flow,
One in heaven and one below;
And I hear a low voice cry,
Ferryman of Death am I.




JESSIE CARROL.
I.
AT her window, Jessie Carrol,
As the twilight dew distils,
Pushes back her heavy tresses,
Listening toward the northern hills.
"I am happy, very happy,
None so much as I am blestNone of all the many maidens
In the valley of the West,"
Softly to herself she whispered;
Paused she then again to hear
If the step of Allen Archer,
That she waited for, were near.
"Ah, he knows I love him fondly!I have never told him so!Heart of mine, be not so heavy,
He will come to night, I know."
Brightly is the full moon filling
All the withered woods with light,
" He has not forgotten surelyIt was later yesternight!"
69




70              JESSIE CARROL.
Shadows interlock with shadowsSays the maiden, "Woe is me!"
In the blue the eve-star trembles
Like a lily in the sea.
Yet a good hour later sounded,But the northern woodlands sway!Quick a white hand from her casement
Thrust the heavy vines away.
Like the wings of restless swallows
That a moment brush the dew,
And again are up and upward,
Till we lose them in the blue,
Were the thoughts of Jessie Carrol
For a moment dim with pain,
Then with pleasant waves of sunshine,
On the hills of hope again.
" Selfish am I, weak and selfish,"
Said she, " thus to sit and sigh;
Other friends and other pleasures
Claim his leisure well as I.
Haply, care or bitter sorrow'Tis that keeps him from my side,
Else he surely would have hasted
Hither at the twilight tide.
Yet sometimes I can but marvel
That his lips have never said,
When we talked about the future,
Then, or then, we shall be wed!Much I fear me that my nature
Cannot measure half his pride,




JESSIE  CARROL.                71
A:ld perchance he would not wed me
Though I pined of love and died.
To the aims of his ambition
I would bring nor wealth nor fame.
Well, there is a quiet valley
Where we both shall sleep the same!"
So, more eves than I can number,
Now despairing, and now blest,
Watched the gentle Jessie Carrol,
From the Valley of the West.
II.
Down along the dismal woodland
Blew October's yellow leaves,
And the day had waned and faded,
To the saddest of all eves.
Poison rods of scarlet berries
Still were standing here and there,
But the clover blooms were faded,
And the orchard boughs were bare.
From the stubble-fields the cattle
Winding homeward, playful, slow,
WTith their slender horns of silver
Pushed each other to and fro.
Suddenly the hound up-springing
From his sheltering kennel, whined,
As the voice of Jessie Carrol
Backward drifted on the windBackward drifted fiom a pathway
Sloping down the upland wild,




72             JESSIE CARROL.
Where she walked with Allen Archer,
Light of spirit as a child!
All her young heart wild with rapture
And the bliss that made it beatNot the golden wells of Hybla
Held a treasure half so sweet!
But as oft the shifting rose-cloud,
In the sunset light that lies,
Mournful makes us, feeling only
How much farther are the skies,So the mantling of her blushes,
And the trembling of her heart,'Neath his steadfast eyes but made her
Feel how far they were apart.
"Allan," said she, "I will tell you
Of a vision that I hadAll the livelong night I dreamed it,
And it made me very sad.
We were walking slowly seaward,
In the twilight-you and IThrough a break of clearest azure
Shone the moon —as now-on high;
Though I nothing said to vex you,
O'er your forehead came a frown,
And I strove, but could not soothe youSomething kept my full heart down;
When, before us, stood a lady
In the moonlight's pearly beam,
Very tall and proud and stately(Allan, this was in my dream!-)




JESSIE CARROL.                 73
Looking down, I thought, upon me,
Half in pity, half in scorn,
Till my soul. grew sick with wishing
That I never had been born.' Cover me from wo and madness!'
Cried I to the ocean flood,
As she locked her milk-white fingers
In between us where we stood,All her flood of midnight tresses
Softly gathered from their flow,
By her crown of bridal beauty,
Paler than the winter snow.
Striking then my hands together,
O'er the tumult of my breast,All the beauty waned and faded
From the Valley of the West!"
In the beard of Allan. Archer
Twisted then his fingers white,
As he said, " My gentle Jessie,
You must not be sad to-night;
You must not be sad, my Jessie,
You are over kind and good,
And I fain would make you happy,
Very happy —if I could!"
Oft he kissed her cheek and forehead,
Called her darling oft, but said,
Never, that he loved her fondly,
Or that ever they should wed;
But that he was grieved that shadows
Should have chilled so dear a heart;
4




7 4.JESSIE CARROL.
That the time, foretold so often,
Then was come-and they must part!
Shook her bosom then with passion,
Hot her forehead burned with pain,
But her lips said only, " Allan,
Will you ever come again?"
And he answered, lightly dallying
With her tresses all the while,
Life had not a star to guide him
Like the beauty of her smile;
And that when the corn was ripened
And the vintage harvest prest,
She would see him home returning
To the Valley of the West.
When the moon had veiled her splendor,
And went lessening down the blue,
And along the eastern hill-tops
Burned the morning in the dew,
They had parted-each one feeling
That their lives had separate ends;
They had parted-neither happyLess than lovers-more than friends.,
For as Jessie mused in silence,
She remembered that he said,
Never, that he loved her fondly,
Or that ever they should wed.'Twas full many a nameless meaning
My poor words can never say,
Felt without the need of utterance,
That had won her heart away.




JESSIE CARROL.                 75
O! the days were weary! weary!
And the eves were dull and long,
With the cricket's chirp of sorrow,
And the owlet's mournful song.
Out of slumber oft she started
In the still and lonesome nights,
Hearing but the traveller's footstep
Hurrying toward the village lights.
So, moaned by the dreary winterAll her household tasks fulfilledTill beneath the last year's rafters
Came the swallows back to build.
Meadow-piiks, in flakes of crimson,
Through the pleasant valleys lay,
And again were oxen ploughing
Up and down the hills all day.
Thus the dim days dawned and faded
To the maid, forsaken, lorn,
Till the freshening breeze of summer
Shook the tassels of the corn.
Ever now within her chamber
All night long the lamp-light shines,
But no white hand from her casement
Pushes back the heavy vines.
On her cheek a fire was feeding,
And her hand transparent grewAh, the faithless Allen Archer!
More than she had dreamed was true.
No complaint was ever uttered,
Only to herself she sighed,



76             JESSIE  CARROL.
As she read of wretched poets
Who had pined of love and died.
Once she crushed the sudden crying
From her trembling lips away,
When they said the vintage harvest
Had been gathered in that day.
Often, when they kissed her, smiled she,
Saying that it soothed her pain,
And that they must not be saddenedShe would soon be well again!
Thus nor hoping nor yet fearing,
Meekly bore she all her pain,
Till the red leaves of the autumn
Withered from the woods again;
Till the bird had hushed its singing
In the silvery sycamore,
And the nest was left unsheltered
In the lilac by the door;
Saying, still, that she was happyNone so much as she was blestNone of all the many maidens
In the valley of the West.
III.
Down the heath and o'er the moorland
Blows the wild gust high and higher,
Suddenly the maiden pauses
Spinning at the cabin fire,
And from out her taper fingers
Falls away the flaxen thread,




JESSIE  CARROL.                 *7
As some neighbor entering, whispers,
" Jessie Carrol lieth dead."
Then, as pressing close her forehead
To the window-pane, she sees
Two stout men together digging
Underneath the church-yard trees;
And she asks in kindest accents,
" Was she happy when she died?"
Sobbing all the while to see them
Void the heavy earth aside;
Or, upon their mattocks leaning,
Through their fingers numb to blow,
For the wintry air is chilly,
And the grave-mounds white with snow.
And the neighbor answers softly,
" Do not, dear one, do not cry;
At the break of day she asked us
If we thought that she must die;
And when I had told her, sadly,
That I feared it would be so,
Smiled she, saying,'Twill be weary
Digging in the churchyard snow!''Earth,' I said, "was very drearyThat its paths at best were rough;
And she whispered, she was ready,
That her life was long enough.
So she lay serene and silent,
Till the wind, that wildly drove,
Soothed her from her mortal sorrow,
Like the lullaby of love."




7'8,         JESSIE CARROL.
Thus they talked, while one that loved her
Smoothed her tresses dark and long,
Wrapped her white shroud down, and simply
Wove her sorrow to this song:
IV.
Sweetly sleeps she: pain and passion
Burn no longer on her browWeary watchers, ye may leave herShe no more will need you now!
While the wild spring bloomed and faded,
Till the autumn came and passed,
Calmly, patiently, she waitedRest has come to her at last!
Never have the blessed angels,
As they walked with her apart,
Kept pale Sorrow's battling armies
Half so softly from her heart.
Therefore, think not, ye that loved her,
Of the pallor hushed and dread,
Where the winds, like heavy mourners,
Cry about her lonesome bed,
But of white hands softly reaching
As the shadow o'er her fell,
Downward from the golden bastion
Of the eternal citadel.




HYPERION.
IN the May woods alone-yet not alone,
For unsubstantial beings near me treadAt times I hear them piteously moan,
Haply a plaint for the o'ergifted dead,
That, to the perfectness of stature grown,
Had filled for aye the vacant heart of time
With dulcet rhythms, and cadences unknown,
In all the sweetest melody of rhyme.
And yet alone, for not a human heart
Stirs with tumultuous throbbings the deep hush;
Almost I hear the blue air fall apart
From the delirious warble of the thrushA wave of lovely sound, untouched of art,
Going through air-" a disembodied joy:"
But in between each blissful stop and start,
(Belike such sweet food else our hearts would cloy,)
From the thick woods there comes into the vale
A long and very melancholy cry,
As of a spirit in that saddest baleClingling to sin yet longing for the sky.
Across the hill-tops crowned with verdure pale,
A gnarled oak stands above the neighboring trees,
Rocking itself asleep upon the galeThe proudest billow of the woodland seas.
79




80                HYPERION.
A thin dun cloud above the sunken sun
Holds the first star of evening's endless train,
Clasped from the world's profaneness, like a nun
Within the shelter of the convent pane.
Did the delicious light of such a one
Fleck his dark pathway with its shimmering fire,
Whose fingers, till life's little day was done,
Clung like charmed kisses to his wondrous lyre?
I've read, in some chance fragment of old song,
A tale to muse of in this lovely light,
About a maiden, flying from deep wrong
Into the chilly darkness of the night,
Upon whose milk-white bosom, cold and long,
Beat the rough tempest; but a waiting arm
Was reaching toward her, and, in hope grown strong,
Fled she along the woods and through the storm.
But how had he or heart or hope to sing
Of Madeline or Porphyro the brave,
While the thin fingers of wan suffering
Were pressing down his eyelids to the grave?
How could he to the shrine of genius bring
The constant spirit with the bended knee,
Ruffling the horrent blackness of Death's wing
With the clear echoes of eternity?
Hark! was it but the wind that swept along,
Shivering the hawthorn hedges, white with flowers?
The swan-like music of the dying song
Seems swimming on the current of the hours.




II Y PER IO N.             81
If Fancy cheats me thus, she does no wrongFor mists of glory o'er my heart are blown,
And shapes of beauty round about me throng,
When of that mus6d rhyme I catch the tone.
Tell me, ye sobbing winds what sign ye made,
Making the year with dismal pity rife,
When the all-levelling and remorseless shade
Closed o'er the lovely summer of his life:
Did the sad hyacinths by the fountains fade,
And tear-drops touch the eyelids of the mnorn,
And Muses, empty-armed, the gods upbraid,
When that great sorrow to the world was born?
Ere Fame's wild trumpet to the world had thrown
The echo of his lyre, or fortune bless'd
Pausing where " men but hear each other groan,
He felt the daisies growing on his breast."
Then sunk as fair a star as ever shone
Along the gray and melancholy air;
And from Parnassus' hoary front, o'erstrown
With plants immortal, moaned infirm Despair.'Weave, closely weave, your vermeil boughs to-nighlt:
Fresh-budding red woods —hide the crooked lmun
Soft-shining through the sunset, slim and bright
As in some golden millet field at noon,
Might shine a mower's scythe. Too much of light
Rtains through the boughs, too much is in the sky,
To sort with singing of untimely blight,
And mourning  all of Genius that can die,
4*




THE CONVENT.
COME, thou of the drooping eyelid,
And cheek that is meekly pale,
Give over thy pensive musing
And list to a lonesome tale;
F'or hearts that are torn and bleeding,
Or heavy as thine, and lone,
May find in another's sorrow
Forgetfulness of their own.
So heap on the blazing fagots
And trim the lamp anew,
And I'll tell you a mournful storyI would that it were not true!
The bright red clouds of the sunset
On the tops of the mountains lay
And many and goodly vessels
Were anchored below in the bay;
We saw the walls of the city,
And could hear its vexing din,
As our mules, with their nostrils smokinlg,
Drew up at a wayside inn:
The hearth wans ample and blazing,
For the night was something chill,
But my heart, though I knew not whlertfle,
Sunk down with a sense of ill.
e2




THE CONVENT.
That night I stood on the terrace
O'erlooking a blossomy vale,
And the gray old walls of a convent
That loomed in the moonlight paleTill the lamp of the sweet Madonna
Grew faint as if burning low,
And the midnight bell in the turret
Swung heavily to and fro
When, just as its last sweet music
Came back from the echoing hill,
And the hymn of the ghostly friars
In the fretted aisle grew still,
On a rude bench, hid among olives,
I noted a maiden fair,
Alone, with the night wind playing
In the locks of her raven hair.
Thrice came the sound of her sighing,
And thrice were her red lips pressed
With wild and passionate fervor
To the cross that hung on her breast;
But her bearing was not the bearing
That to saintly soul belongs,
Albeit she chanted the fragments
Of holy and beautiful songs.'T was the half hour after the midnight,
And, so like that it might be now,
The full moon was meekly climbing
Over the mountain's brow,
When the step of the singing maiden




84              THE CONVENT
In the corridor lightly trod,
And I presently saw her kneeling
In prayer to the mother of God!
On the leaves of her golden missal
Darkly her loose locks lay,
And she cried, " Forgive me, sweet Virgin,
And mother of Jesus, I pray!"
When the music was softly melting
From the eloquent lips of Morn;
Within the walls of the convent
Those beautiful locks were shorn:
And wherefore the veil was taken
Was never revealed by time,
But Charity sweetly hopeth
For sorrow, and not for crime.




A LEGEND OF ST. MARY'S.
ONE night, when bitterer winds than ours,
On hill-sides and in valleys low,
Built sepulchres for the dead flowers,
And buried them in sheets of snowWhen over ledges dark and cold
The sweet moon rising high and higher,
Tipped with a dimly burning gold
St. Mary's old cathedral spireThe lamp of the cohfessional,
(God grant it did not burn in vain,)
After the solemn midnight bell
Streamed redly through the lattice-pane.
And kneeling at the father's feet,
Whose long and venerable hairs,
Now whiter than the mountain sleet,
Could not have numbered half his prayers,
Was one —I cannot picture true
The cherub beauty of his guise;
Lilies, and waves of deepest blue,
Were something like his hands and eyes!




A LEGEND OF ST. MARY'S.
Like yellow mosses on the rocks,
Dashed with the ocean's milk-white spray,
The softness of his golden locks
About his cheek and forehead lay.
Father! thy tresses, silver-sleet,
Ne'er swept above a form so fair;
Surely the flowers beneath his feet
Have been a rosary of prayer!
WIVe know not, and we cannot know,
Why swam those meek blue eyes with tears;
But surely guilt, or guiltless woe,
Had bowed him earthward more than years.
All the long summer that was gone,
A cottage maid, the village pride,
Fainter and fainter smiles had worn,
And on that very night she died!
As soft the yellow moonbeams streamed
Across her bosom, snowy fair,
She said, (the watchers thought she dreamed,)
"'Tis like the shadow of his hair!"
And they could hear, who nearest came,
The cross to sign and hope to lend,
The murmur of another name
Than that of mother, brother, friend.
An hour-and St. Mary's spires,
Like spikes of flame, no longer glowNo longer the confessional fires
Shine redly on the drifted snow.




A LEGEND OF ST. MARY'S.               87
An hour-and the saints had claimed
That cottage maid, the village pride;
And he, whose name in death she named,
Was darkly weeping by her side.
White as a spray-wreath lay her brow
Beneath the midnight of her hair,
But all those passionate kisses now
Wake not the faintest crimson there!
Pride, honor, manhood, cannot check
The vehemence of love's despairNo soft hand steals about his neck,
Or bathes its beauty in his hair!
Almost upon the cabin walls
WTherein the sweet young maiden died,
The shadow of a castle falls,
Where for her young lord waits a'bride!
With clear blue eyes and flaxen hair,
In her high turret still she sits;
But ah! what scorn her ripe lips wearWhat shadow to her bosom flits!
From that low cabin tapers flash,
And, by the shimmering light they spread,
She sees beneath its mountain ash,
Leafless, but all with berries red,
Impatient of the unclasped rein,
A courser that should not be.thereThe silver whiteness of his mane
Streaming like moonlight on the air!




8~38      LEGEND OF ST. MARY S.
Oh, Love! thou art avenged too wellThe young heart, broken and betrayeld,
Where thou didst meekly, sweetly dwell,
For all its sufferings is repaid.
Not the proud beauty, nor the frown
Of her who shares the living years,
From her the winding-sheet wraps down,
Can ever buy away the tears!




THE DAUGHTER.
ALACK, it is a dismal nightIl gusts of thin and vapory light
Bloweth the moonshine cold and white
Betwixt the pauses of the storm,
That beats against, but cannot harm
The lady, whose chaste thoughts do charm
Better than pious fast or prayer
The evil spells and sprites of airIn sooth, were she in saintly care
Safer she could not be than now
With truth's white crown upon her browSo sovereign, innocence, art thou.
Just in the green top of a hedge
That runs along a valley's edge
One star has thrust a shining wedge,
And all the sky beside is drearIt were no cowardice to fear
if some belated traveller near,
To visionary fancies born,
Should see upon the moor, forlorn,
With spiky thistle burs and thorn;
89




90              THE DAUGHTER.
The lovely lady silent go,
Not on a "palfrey white as snow,"
But with sad eyes and footstep slow;
And softly leading by the hand
An old man who has nearly spanned
With his white hairs, life's latest sand.
Hope in her faint heart newly thrills
As down a barren reach of hills
Before her fly two whippoorwills;
But the gray owl keeps up his wailHis feathers ruffled in the gale,
Drowning almost their dulcet tale.
Often the harmless flock she sees
Lying white along the grassy leas,
Like lily-bells weighed down with bees.
Sometimes the boatman's horn she hears
Rousing from rest the plowman's steers,
Lowing untimely to their peers.
And now and then the moonlight snake
Curls up its white folds, for her sake,
Closer within the poison brake.
But still she keeps her lonesome way,
Or if she pauses,'tis to say
Some word of comfort, else to pray.
For'tis a blustery night withal,
In spite of star or moonlight's fall,
Or the two whippoorwills' sweet call.




T HE D A UGH T ER.              91
What doth the gentle lady here
Within a wood so dark and drear,
Nor hermit's lodge nor castle near?
See in the distance robed and crowned
A prince with all his chiefs around,
And like sweet light o'er sombre ground
A meek and lovely lady, there
Proffering her earnest, piteous prayer
For an old man with silver hair.
But what of evil he hath done
O'erclouding beauty's April sun
I know not-nor if lost or won.
The lady's pleading, sweet and lowAbout her pilgrimage of wo,
Is all that I shall ever know.




ANNIE CLAYVILLE.
IN the bright'ning wake of April
Comes the lovely, lovely May,
But the step of Annie Clayville
Falleth fainter day by day.
In despite of sunshine, shadows
Lie upon her heart and brow:
Last year she was gay and happyLife is nothing to her now!
When she hears the wild bird singing,
Or the sweetly humming bee,
Only says she, faintly smiling,
What have you to do with me?
Yet, sing out for pleasant weather,
Wild birds in the woodland dellsFly out, little bees, and gather
Honey for your waxen wells.
Softly, sunlit rain of April,
Come down singing from the clouds,
Till the daffodils and daisies
Shall be up in golden crowds;
92




ANNIE. CLAYVILLE.
Till the wild pinks hedge the meadows,
Blushing out of slender stems,
And the dandelions, starry,
Cover all the hills with gems.
From your cool beds in the rivers,
Blow, fresh winds, and gladness bring
To the locks that wait to hide youWhat have I to do with spring 
May is past-along the hollows
Chime the rills in sleepy tune,
While the harvest's yellow chaplet
Swings against the face of June.
Very pale lies Annie ClayvilleStill her forehead, shadow-crowned,
And the watchers hear her saying,
As they softly tread around:
Go out, reapers, for the hill tops
Twinkle,with the summer's heatLay from out your swinging cradles
Golden furrows of ripe wheat!
While the little laughing children,
Lightly mixing work with play,
From between the long green winrows
Glean the sweetly-scented hay.
Let your sickles shine like sunbeams
In the silver-flowing rye,
Ears grow heavy in the cornfieldsThat will claim you by and by.




94            ANNIE CLAYVILLE.
Go out, reapers, with your sickles,
Gather home the harvest store!
Little gleaners, laughing gleaners,
I shall go with you no more.
Round the red moon of October,
White and cold the eve-stars climb,
Birds are gone, and flowers are dying-'Tis a lonesome, lonesome time.
Yellow leaves along the woodland
Surge to drifts-the elm-bough sway.v,
Creaking at the homestead window
All the weary nights and days.
Dismally the rain is fallingVery dismally and cold;
Close, within the village graveyard
By a heap of freshest mould,
With a simple, nameless headstone,
Lies a low and narrow nlound,
And the brow of Annie Clayville
Is no longer shadow crowned.
Rest thee, lost one, rest thee calmly,
Glad to go where pain is o'erWhere they say not, through the night-tmlne,
"I am weary," any more.




YESTERNIGIIT.
YESTERNIGHT-how long it seems!3Met I in the land of dreams,
One that loved me long agoBetter it had not been so.
For, we met not as of oldI was planting in the mould
Of his grave, some flowers to be,
When he came and talked with me.
White his forehead was, and fair,
With such crowns as angels wear,
And his voice-but I alone
Ever heard so sweet a tone!
All I prized but yesterday
In the distance lessening lay,
Like some golden cloud afar,
Fallen and faded from a star.
Hushed the. chamber is, he said,
Hushed and dark where we must wed,
But our bridal home is brightWilt thou go with me to-night?
95




96              YESTERNIGHT.
Answering then, I sadly said,
I am living, thou art dead;
Darkness rests between us twain,
Who shall make the pathway plain?
Ah! thou lovest not, he cried,
Else to thee I had not died;
Else all other hope would be
As a rain-drop to the sea.
Farther, dimmer, earth withdrew,
Lower, softer bent the blue,
And like bubbles in the wine
Blent the whispers, I am thine,
Angels saw I to their bowers
Bearing home the sheaves of flowers,
And could hear their anthem swells,
Reaping in the asphodels.
O'er my head a wildbird flew,
Shaking in my face the dew;
Underneath a woodland tree,
I, my love, had dreamed of thee.




WINTER.
Now sits the twilight palaced in the snow,
Hugging away beneath a fleece of gold
Her statue beauties, dumb and icy cold,
And fixing her blue steadfast eyes below,
Where, in a bed of chilly waves afar,
With dismal shadows o'er her sweet face blown,
Tended to death by evening's constant star,
Lies the lost Day alone.
Where late, with red mists thick about his brows,
Went the swart Autumn, wading to the knees
Through drifts of dead leaves, shaken from the boughs
Of the old forest trees,
The gusts upon their baleful errands run
O'er the bright ruin, fading from our eyesAnd over all, like clouds about the sun,
A shadow lies.
For, fallen asleep upon a dreary world,
Slant to the light, one late unsmiling morn,
From some rough cavern blew a tempest cold,
And tearing off his garland of ripe corn,
6           97




98                  WINTER.
Twisted with blue grapes, sweet with luscious wine,
And Ceres' drowsy flowers, so dully red,
Deep in his cavern leafy and divine,
Buried him with his dead.
Then, with his black beard glistening in the frost,
Under theicy arches of the north,
And o'er the still graves of the seasons lost,
Blustered the Winter forthSpring, with your crown of roses budding new,
Thought-nursing and most melancholy Fall,
Summer, with bloomy meadows wet with dew,
Unmindful of you all.
Oh heart, your spring-time dream will idle prove,
Your summer but forerun your autumn's death,
The flowery arches in the home of love
Fall, crumbling, at a breath;
And. sick at last with that great sorrow's shock,
As some poor prisoner, pressing to the bars
His forehead, calls on Mercy to unlock
The chambers of the starsYou, turning off from life's first mocking glow
Leaning, it may be, still on broken faith,
Will down the vale of Autumn gladly go
To the chill winter, Death.
[-lark! from the empty bosom of the woods
I hear a sob, as one forlorn might pineThe white-limbed beauty of a god is thine,




WINTER.                    99
King of the season! even the night that hoods
Thy brow majestic, glorifies thy reignThou surely hast no pain.
But only far away
Makest stormy prophecies; well, lift them higher,
Till morning on the forehead of the day
Presses a seal of fire.
Dearer to me the scene
Of nature shrinking from thy rough embrace,
Than Summer, with her rustling robe of green,
Cool blowing in my face.
The moon is up-how still the yellow beams
That slantwise lie upon the stirless air,
Sprinkled with frost, like pearl-entangled hair,
O'er beauty's cheeks that streams!
How the red light of Mars their pallor mocks,
And the wild legend from the old time wins,
Of sweet waves kissing all the drowning locks
Of Ilia's lovely twins!
Come, Poesy, and with thy shadowy hands
Cover me softly, singing all the nightIn thy dear presence find I best delight;
Even the saint that stands
Tending the gate of heaven, involved in beams
Of rarest glory, to my mortal eyes
Pales from the blest insanity of dreams
That round thee lies.




100                 WINTER.
Unto the dusky borders of the grove
Where " gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone,"
Sat in his grief alone,
Or, where young Venus, searching for her love,
Walked through the clouds, I pray,
Bear me to-night away.
Or wade with me through snows
Drifted in loose fantastic curves aside,
From humble doors where Love and Faith abide,
And no rough winter blows,
Chilling the beauty of affections fair,
Cabined securely there, —.
Where round their fingers winding the white slips
That crown his forehead, on the grandsire's knees,
Sit merry children, teasing about ships
Lost in the perilous seas;
Or listening with a troublous joy, yet deep,
To stories about battles, or of storms,
Till weary grown, and drowsing into sleep,
Slide they from out his arms.
Where, by the log-heap fire,
As the pane rattles and the cricket sings,
I with the gray-haired sire
May talk of vanished summer-times and springs,
And harmlessly and cheerfully beguile
The long, long hoursThe happier for the snows that drift the while
About the flowers.




WINTER.                   101
Winter, wilt keep the love I offer thee?
No mesh of flowers is bound about my brow;
From life's fair summer I am hastening now.
And as I sink my knee,
Dimpling the beau.y~ of thy bed of snowDowerless, I can but sayOh, cast me not away!




WOOD NYMPHS.
WOOD NYMPHS, that do hereabouts
Dwell, and hold your pleasant routes,
When beneath her cloak so white,
Holding close the black-eyed Night,
Twilight, sweetly voluble,
Acquaints herself with shadows dull;
While above your rustic camp,
Hesperus, his pallid lamp
For the coming darkness trims,
From the gnarled bark of limbs
Rough and crabbed-slide to view!
I have work for you to do.
To this neighborhood of shade
Came I, the most woful maid
That did ever comfort glean
From the songs of birds, I ween;
Or from rills through hollow meads,
Washing over beds of reeds,
When, to vex with more annoy,
Found I here this sleeping boy.
102




WOOD NYMPHS.                  103
I must learn some harmless art,
That will bind to mine his heart.
Never creature of the air
Saw I in a dream so fair.
Wood nymphs, lend your charmed aidUnderneath the checkered shade
Of each tangled bough that stirs
To the wind, in shape of burs,
Rough and prickly, or sharp thornWhence the tame ewe, newly shorn.
Stained with crimson, hurries oft,
Bleating toward the distant croftDew of potency is found
That would leave my forehead crowned
With the very chrisms of joyThe sweet kisses of this boy.
These quaint uses you must knowPoets wise have writ it so.
When the charm so deftly planned,
Shall be wrought, I have in hand,
Work your nimble crew to please,
Mixed alone of sweetnesses.
This it is to bring to me
Fairest of all flowers that beOxlips red, and columbines,
Ivies, with blue flowering twines,
Flags that grow by shallow springs,
Purple, prankt with yellow rings;
Slim ferns, bound in golden sheaves;
Mandrakes, with the notched leaves;




104             wooD NYMPHS.
Pink and crowbind, nor o'erpass
The white daisies in the grass.
Of the daintiest that you pull,
I will tie a garland full,
And upon this oaken bough
Dropping coolest shadows now,
Hang it,'gainst his face to swing,
Till he wakes fiom slumbering;
Evermore to live and love
In this dim consenting grove.
Shaggy beasts with hungry eyesUgly, spotted, dragonfliesLimber snakes drawn up to rings,
And the thousand hateful things
That are bred in forests drear,
Never shall disturb us here;
For my love and I will see
Only the sweet company
Of the nymphs that round me glide
With the shades of eventide.
Crow of cock, nor belfry chime,
Shall we need to count the timeTuneful footfalls in the flowers
Ringing out and in the hours.




HELVA.
HER white hands full of mountain flowers,
Down by the rough rocks and the sea,
Helva, the raven-tressed, for hours,
Has gazed forth earnestly.
Unconscious that the salt spray flecks
The ebon beauty of her hairWhat vision is it she expects,
So meekly lingering there.
Is it to see the sea-fog lift
From the broad bases of the hills,
Or the red moonlight's golden drift,
That her soft bosom thrills?
Or yet to see the starry hours
Their silver network round her throw,
That'neath the white hands full of flowers,
Her heart heaves to and fro?
Why strains so far the aching eye?
Kind nature wears to-night no frown,
And the still beauty of the sky
Keeps the mad ocean down.
r6a*        105




106                 HELVA.
Why are those damp and heavy locks
Put back, the faintest sound to win?
Ah! where the beacon lights the rocks,
A ship is riding in!
Who comes forth to the vessel's side,
Leaning upon the manly arm
Of one who wraps with tender pride
The mantle round her form?
Oh, Helva, watcher of lone hours,
May God in mercy give thee aid!
Thy cheek is whiter than thy floweis —
Thy woman's heart betrayed!




OCTOBER.
NOT the light of the long blue Summer,
Nor the flowery huntress, Spring,
Nor the chilly and moaning Winter,
Doth peace to my bosom bring,
Like the hazy and red October,
When the woods stand bare and brown,
And into the lap of the south land,
The flowers are blowing down;
When all night long, in the moonlight,
The boughs of the roof-tree chafe,
And the wind, like a wandering poet,
Is singing a mournful waif;
And all day through the cloud-armies,
The sunbeams like sentinels moveFor then in my path first unfolded
The sweet passion-flower of love.
With bosom as pale as the sea-shell,
And soft as the flax unspun,
And locks like the nut-brown shadows
In the light of the sunken sun,
107




108                OCTOBER.
Came the maiden whose wonderful beauty
Enchanted my soul from pain,
And gladdened my heart, that can never,
No, never be happy again.
Away from life's pain and passion,
Away from the cares that blight,
She went like a star that softly
Goes out from the tent of night.
But oft, when the fields of the Autumn
Are warm with the summer beams,
We meet in the mystic shadows
That border the land of dreams.
For seeing my wo through the splendor
That hovers about her above,
She puts from her forehead the glory,
And listens again to my love.




THE NEW-YEAR.
LIKE the cry of Despair, where the war-weapons rattle,
Or the moan of a god in some mythical battle,
Rung out o'er the senses of pain and of swouning
Above the death woe of immortal discrowning,
There came yesternight in the midst of my dreaming
A wail, waking visions of terrible seeming.
The fires of the sunset had burnt from the shadows
Their leashes, and slipt, they ran over the meadows,
Deepening up from the dulness and grayness of ashes,
To the hue of that deep wave the night-time that washes,
Where sorrow's black tresses are gathered up never,
But sweep o'er the red pillows ever and ever.
Thus startled from slumber, I fearfully listened:
The frost had been busy, and phantom-shapes glistened
Along the cold pane where the dead bough was creaking,
When, close in my chamber, I heard a low speaking;
And I said, "Wheref6re comest thou, mystical spirit?
Have I evil or good at thy hands to inherit?"
Like a rose-vine entwining some ruinous column,
The sweet and the lovely were over the solemn,
As fell through the silence this cadence, replying:
"Watch with me, oh mortal, watch with me, I'm dying!"
109




110            THE NEW-YEAR.
And I answered, "I will, by the blessed evangel!"
Unknowing my guest, whether demon or angel.
It seemed, as I sat with the sad darkness holding
Communion, I almost could hear the shroud folding
About the still bosom and smoothly wound tresses
That love might imprison no more with caressesThe half-smothered sobs, and the orphan-like calling,
With passionate kisses the dust over falling.
"Art thou dead?" I said, " thus doth my watch have its
ending?
And needest thou not any more my befriending?"
"Nay, not dead, but fallen, and mortally wounded,"
The death-subdued accent along the dark sounded" Claimest thou of me largess?" "Yes," said I, "thy story,
So number me swiftly the days of thy glory."
Along the wild moorland the wind whistled dreary,
And low as a death-watch my heart beat, a-weary,
As like one beside the hushed portal of Aiden,
Awaiting the accent to soothe or to sadden,
I sat in expectancy, charmed and holy,
Till thus spake the spirit, serenely and slowly:
" On a bed of dead leaves and a snow-pillow lying,
The winds stooping round him, and, sorrowful, crying,
His beard full of ice, his hands folded from reaping,
My sire, when I woke into life, lay a-sleeping,
And so of my brief reign was given the warning,
Ere yet I beheld the sweet eyes of the morning.




THE NEW-YEAR.                  1I1'Blow winds of the wilderness,' cried I,'and cover
With dim dust the pallid corpse under and over,
For through the bright gates of the orient, sweeping,
The heralds of day come-I would not be weeping;'
And putting away from my lip sorrow's chalice,
I left him beside the blue wall of my palace.
So, a twelvemonth agone, with my young wing expanded,
On the shores of my kingdom, a monarch I landed;
Star-lamps were aglow in the cloudy-lined arches,
As I sent the first embassy hours on their marches;
And day, softly wrapt in a fleece that was golden,
Came up when my council with light first was holden.
The silvery rings of two moons had their filling,
When the north drew his breath in, so bitterly chilling,
And clad in a robe of red hunter-like splendor,
()n a hollow reed piping a madrigal tender,
Through meadow and orchard, came March, his loud
laughter,
Half drowned, in the whine of the winds, crouching after.
Next came from the south land, one, fair as a maiden,
Her lap with fresh buds and green sprouting leaves laden;
Her slight dewy fingers with daffodils crowded,
Her lip ever smiling, her brow ever clouded;
But the birds on her flowery wake that came flying,
Beside a thick blossoming hedge, found her dying.
f8lown, like a silvery cloud o'er the edges
Of morning, the elder-blooms swayed in the hedges,




112            THE NEW-YEAR.
The quail whistled out in the stubble, and over
The meadow the bee went in search of the clover;
When came, with a train of delights for her warders,
The dewy-eyed May, up the green river borders.
Bright ridges of bees round-the full hive were humming,
Away in the thick woods the partridge was drumming;
The rush of the sickle, the scythe-stroke serener,
Were pleasantly mixed with the song of the gleaner,
When under the shadows of full-blowing roses
The days of the virginal June had their closes.
When oxen unyoked laid their foreheads together,
And berries were ripe for the school-boys to gather;
When sultry heats over the hill-tops were winking,
And down in the hollows the streamlets were shrinking;
When birds hushed their musical glee to a twitter,
Came July, with a mist of gold over her litter.
Like the slim crescent moon through an amber-cloud
shining
Above the brown woods when the day is declining,
Among the ripe wheat-shocks the sickle was glowing,
And over the sumiler dark shadows went blowing,
When, crowned with the oat-flowers, heavy and yellow,
Came August, her cheek with the summer's sun sallow.
About the next comer deep calmness was lying,
And yet from her presence the wild birds went flying,
As out of the orchards and grape-woven bowers,
She gathered the fruit with no sigh for the flowers,




TIE NEW-YEAR.                  113
Anid shook down the nuts on the withering mosses,
Unmindful of all the bright summer-time losses.
When harvesters home from the cornfield were bringing
The baskets of ripe ears, with laughter and singing,
What time his past labor the husbandman blesses
In cups of sweet cider, just oozed from the presses,
Beneath the broad forest boughs, saddened in seeming,
And hooded with red leaves, October sat dreaming.
Winds for the dead flowers mournfully searching,
Tall phantoms that out of the darkness came marching,
Clouds, full of blackness and storms, fleetly flying,
Or on the bleak edges of winter-time lying,
Quenching with chilly rain Autumn's last splendorThese were the handmaids that came with November.
Making the gentle kine, sorrowful lowing,
Turn from the tempest so bitterly blowingNow lying on slopes, to the southern light slanted,
Now filling the woods with hymns mournfully chanted,
I saw-my steps weakly beginning to falter —The last Season lay his white gift on the altar.
Then I knew by the chill through my bosom slow stealilng.
And the pang at my heart, that my dark doom was sealing,
And seeing before me the ever-hushed portal,
I sought to reveal to some pitying mortal,
The while from my vision the life-light was waning,
The gladness and grief of my bright and brief reigning.
Ah, many a poet I had whose sweet idyls
Made vocal the chambers of births and of bridals,




114            THE NE:W-YEAR.
And many a priest, too, both shaved and unshaven,
To hide in the meal of the world the Word's leaven;
But still at the church and the merry mirth-making,
With the good and the gay there were hearts that were
breaking.
Deeds darker than night and words sharper than daggers
Have peopled my wilderness places with Hagars,
The wayfaring man has been often benighted,
Where never a taper for guidance was lighted,
But over the desolate cloud and the scorning
Has risen the gladness that comes with the morning.
On the white cheek of beauty the blushes have trembled,
Betraying the heart that would else have dissembled,
When the eloquent whisper of young Love was spoken;
But oh, when the burial sod has been broken
For dear, ones, with hands folded close for the sleeping,
The nights have been dismal with comfortless weeping.
Thus, mortal, I give to your keeping this story
Of transient dominion-its sadness and glory,
And while my last accents are mournfully spoken,
The sceptre I swayed, in my weak hand is broken,
And darkness unending my gray hair is hooding,
And over, and round me, the midnight is brooding."
The silence fell heavy; my watching was over,
The old year was dead, and though many a lover
He had in his lifetime, not one would there tarry
To mourn at his death-bed-for all must make merry
About the young monarch, some grace to be winning,
With welcome or gift, while his reign was beginning.




IN THE SUGAR CAMP
UPON the silver beeches moss
WVas drawing quaint designs,
And the first dim-eyed violets
Were greeting the March winds.'T was night-the fire of hickory wood
Burned warm, and bright, and highAnd we were in the Sugar Camp,
Sweet Nelly Grey and I.'T was merry, though the willows yet
Had not a tassel on;
The blue birds sung that year, I know,
Before the snow was gone.
Through bunches of stiff, frosty grass
The brooks went tinkling by;
We heard them in the Sugar Camp,
Sweet Nelly Grey and I.
Broken and thin the shadows lay
Along the moonlit hill,
For like the wings of chrysalids
The leaves were folded still.
115




116         IN THE SUGAR CAMP.
And so, betwixt the times we heaped
The hickory wood so high,
When we were in the Sugar Camp,
Sweet Nelly Grey and I,
I said I loved her-said I'd make
A cabin by the stream,
And we would live among the birdsIt was a pretty dream!
I could not see the next year's snow
Upon her bosom lieWhen we were in the Sugar Camp,
Sweet Nelly Grey and I.




RHYME OF MY PLAYMATE.
ALAS! his praise I cannot write,
Nor paint him true for other eyes;
For only in love's blessed light
Could you have known him good or wise.
Beside him from my birth I grew,
E'en to the middle time of youth,
And never was there heart so true,
Though shy of all the shows of truth.
Silent he often sat, and sad,
While on his lips there played a smile,
Which told you that his spirit had
Some lovely vision all the while.
Like flowers that drop in hidden streams,
Low under shelving weights of ground,
His thoughts went drooping into dreams
Though never trembling into sound.
The common fields, the darkening woods,
The silver runnels and blue skies,
He mused of in his solitudes
And gazed on with a lover's eyes.
117




118       RHYME OF MY PLAYMATE.
The hollow where we used to stray,
Gathering the rush with purple jointsTill, from the haycocks thick and gray,
The shadows stretched in dusky points,
And homeward with their glittering scythes
The mowers came, and paused to say
Some playful reprimand (the tithes
Of our thus idling all the day)Lay green beneath the crimson swaths
Of sunset, when I thither came,
And the thick wings of twilight moths
Flitted in circles all the same.
And the brown beetle hummed upon
The furrow as the day grew dim,
As, when in sunset lights long gone,
I trod the meadow-side with him.
The swallow round the gable led
Her fledgling brood, but far and near,
O'er wood and wold there seemed to spread
A dry and dreary atmosphere.
Unpraised but in my simple rhymes,
With sullen brow and foosteps slow,
Along the wilds of burning climes
Alone, unloved, I saw him go.
No heart but mine his memory keepsThe world will never hear his name,
Dreamless he lingers by the steeps
Whereon he might have climbed to fame.




TILE COMING OF NIGHT.
As white as the moonlight that fell at her feet
She stood, but for blushes, as many and sweet
As the tops of the blossoms that grew in the wheat,
And softly caressed meHer eyes on the light of the valley hard by;
I rose for the bidding, and kissed back the sigh
And the speaking to silence, that said " I would die
Where the love-story blessed me!"
The wind sung her lullabies out of the trees
With starlights betwixt them-her head on my knees,
She said to me only such sad words as these"Farewell, I am going."
And so fell the watches, and so on the flght,
Caine wider and wider the daybreak so white,
Till shadows of flying larks went through the light
Where the shroud must be sewing.
I felt on my bosom the burden grow cold,
And holding her closer, said, "Sweet one, behold,
The sunrise is turning the woodside to gold.
And birds go up singing!"
119




120        THE COMING OF NIG-HT.
She smiled not, and knowing my terrible loss,
I made her a pillow of loveliest moss,
And laid her down gently-her white hands across,
While mine fell a wringing.
I gathered her black tresses up from the ground,
Away from her forehead their beauty I wound,
And when with fair pansies and roses I bound
Their dim lengths from straying,
And smoothed out her garment so soft and so white,
Lying there in the shadows of morning and night,
She looked like a bride gone asleep in the light
Of the sweet altar-praying.
I knelt to the white ones who live in the blue,
And told them how good she had been and how true,
And then there was nothing more that I could do,
The need was all overLow down in a valley of quietest shade
With blossoms strewed over the shrowd which I made
On a bed very narrow and still she is laid,
To sleep by her lover.




FIRE PICTURES.
IN the embers all aglow,
Fancy makes the pictures plain,
As I listen to the snow
Beating chill against the paneThe wild December snow
On the lamp-illumined pane.
Bent downward from his prime,
Like the ripe fruit from its bough,
As I muse my simple rhyme,
I can see my father now,
WTith the warning flowers of time
Blooming white about his brow.
Sadly flows the willow tree
On the hill so dear, yet dread,
Where the resting-places be,
Of our dear ones that are deadWhere the mossy headstones be,
Of my early playmates dead.
6          1Z1l




14          F FIRE  PICTURES.
But despite the dismal snow,
Blinding all the window o'er,
And the wind, that, crouching low,
Whines against my study door,
In the embers' twilight glow
I can see one picture more.
Seeming almost within call,'Neath our ancient trysting tree,.
Art thou pictured, source of all
That was ever dear to me;
But the wasted embers fall,
And the night is all I seeThe night with gusts of snow
Blowing wild against the pane,
And the wind that crouches low,
Crying mournfully in vain,
And the dreams that come and go
Through my memory-haunted brain.




THE WOOD LILY.
BETWIXT the green rows of the corn,
Ne'er grew a wild blossom so sweet —
Her mother's low cabin was gay
With the music that followed her feet:
Combing now the white lengths of the wool
With hands that were whiter than they;
Spinning now in the mossy-roofed porch
Till the time when the birds go away.
Her hair was as black as the storm;
No maiden in all the green glen
Was so pretty, so praised, or so loved:
We called her the Wood Lily, then.
The church wall, so gray and so cold,
Is streaked with the vines which she set
And her roses beside the arched door,
In summer half smother it yet.
And often with pitiful looks
They pause, who put by the lithe shoots,
As if something said, " It were well,
If Lily lay down at the roots."
123




124            THE WOOD LILY.
Dull spiders reel up their white skeins
On the wheel where she comes not to spin,
And her hands have pulled all the bright flowers
From the locks that are faded and thin.
And if you go near to the door,
You will choke with the coming of sighs,
For by the dark hearth-stone she sits
All the day, singing low lullabies,
So low, they may scarcely be heard,
While the smile of her lip and her brow,
Like sunbeams are gone under cloudsAnd this is our Wood Lily, now.




TO THE SPIRIT OF SONG.
COME, sweet spirit, come, I pray,
Thou hast been too long away;
Come, and in the dreamland light,
Keep with me a tryst to-night.
When the reapers once at morn
Bound the golden stocks of corn,
Shadowy hands, that none could see,
Gleaned along the field with me.
Come, and with thy wings so white
Hide me from a wicked sprite,
That has vexed me with a sign
Which I tremble to divine.
At a black loom sisters three
Saw I weaving; Can it be,
Thought I, as I saw them crowd
The white shuttles,'tis a shroud?
Silently the loom they left,
Taking mingled warp and weft,
And, as wild my bosom beat,
Measured me from head to feet.
125




126       TO THE SPIRIT OF SONG.
Liest thou in the drowning brine,
Sweetest, gentlest love of mine,
Tangled softly from my prayer,
By some Nereid's shining hair?
Or, when mortal hope withdrew,
Didst thou, faithless, leave me too,
Blowing on thy lovely reed,
Careless how m y heart should bleed?
By this sudden chill I know
That it is, it must be so —
Sprite of darkness, sisters three,
Lo, I wait y6ur ministry.




A  CHRISTMAS STORY.'Tis Christmas Eve, and by the fire-light dim,
His blue eyes hidden by his fallen hair,
My little brother —mirth is not for himWhispers, how poor we are!
Come, dear one, rest upon my knee your head,
And push away those curls of golden glow,
And I will tell a Christmas tale I read
A long, long time ago.'Tis of a little orphan boy like you,
Who had on earth no friend his feet to guide
Into the path of virtue, straight and true,
And so he turned aside.
The parlor fires, with genial warmth aglow,
Threw over him their waves of mocking light,
Once as he idly wandered to and fro,
In the unfriendly night.
The while a thousand little girls and boys,
With look of pride, or half-averted eye,
Their hands and arms o'erbrimmed with Christmas toys.
Passed and repassed him by.
27




1]'8        A CHRISTMAS STORY.
Chilled into half forgetfulness of wrong,
And tempted by the splendors of the time,
And roughly jostled by the hurrying throng,
Trembling, he talked with crime.
And when the Tempter once had found the way,
And thought's still threshold, half-forbidden, crossed,
His steps went darkly downward day by day,
Till he at last was lost.
So lost, that once from a delirious dream,
As consciousness began his soul to stir,
Around him fell the morning's checkered beamI-e was a prisoner.
Then wailed he in the frenzy of wild pain,
Then wept he till his eyes with tears were dim,
But who would kindly answer back again
A prisoner-boy like him?
And so his cheek grew thin and paled away,
But not a loviiig hand was stretched to save;
And the snow covered the next Christmas-day
His lonesome little grave.
Nay, gentle brother, do not weep, I pray,
You have no sins like his to be forgiven,
And kneeling down together, we can say,
Father, who art in Heaven.
So shall the blessed presence of content
Brighten our home of toil and poverty,
And the dear consciousness of time well spent,
Our Christmas portion be.




THE DESERTED FYLGIA.*
LIKE a meteor, radiant, streaming,
Seems her hair to me,
And thou bear'st her feet like lilies,
Dark and chilly sea!
Wancish fires enclasp her bosom,
Like the Northern Light,
And like icicles her fingers
Glisten, locked and white.
On the blue and icy ocean,
As a stony. floor,
Toward thy boat, oh, dying Viking,
Walks she evermore!
Like a star on morning's forehead,
When the intense air,
Sweeping o'er the face of heaven,
Lays its far depths bare"' A Scandinavian warrior. having embraced Christianity. and being
attacked by disease which he thought mortal, was naturally anxious that a
spirit who had accompanied him through his pagan career should not attend
him into that other world, where her society might involve him in disagreeable
consequences. The persevering Fylgia. however, in the shape of a fair maiden,
walked on the waves of the sea, after her Viking's ship."
6*              129




130       THE DESERTED FYLGIA.
Is the beauty of her smiling,
Pale and cold and clearWhat, oh, fearful, dying Viking,
Doth the maiden here?
Moaningly his white lips tremble,
But no voice repliesStarlight in the blue waves frozen,
Seem his closing eyes.
Woman's lot is thine, oh Fylgia,
Mourning broken faith,
And her mighty love outlasting
Chance and change and death!




THE HAUNTED HOUSE.
THE winds of March are piping shrill,
The half-moon, slanting low,
Is shining down the wild sea-hill
Where, long and long ago,
Love ditties singing all for me,
Sat blue-eyed CoralinHer grave is now beneath the tree
Where then she used to spin.
Three walnut trees, so high and wild,
Before the homestead standTheir smooth boles often, when a child,
I've taken in my hand;
And that the nearest to the wall,
Though once alike they grew,
Is not so goodly, nor so tall,
As are the other two.
The spinning work was always thereThere all our childish glee;
But when she grew a maiden fair,
The songs were not for me.
131




132        THE HAUNTED HOUSE.
One night, twice seven years't has been,
When shone the moon as now,
The slender form of Coralin
Hung swinging on the bough
That's gnarled and knotty grown; in spring,
When all the fields are gay
With madrigals, no bird will sing
Upon that bough, they say.
And through the chamber where the wheel
With cob-webs is o'erspread,
Pale ghosts are sometimes seen to steal,
Since Coralin is dead.
The waters once so bright and cool,
Within the mossy well,
Are shrunken to a sluggish pool;
And more than this, they tell,
That oft the one-eyed mastiff wakes,
And howls as if in fear,
From midnight till the morning breaksThe dead is then too near.




THE MURDERESS.
ALONG the still cold plain o'erhead,
In pale embattled crowds,
The stars their tents of darkness spread,
And camped among the clouds;
Cinctured with shadows, like a wraith,
Night moaned along the lea;
Like the blue hungry eye of Death,
Shone the perfidious sea;
The moon was wearing to the wane.
The winds were wild and high,
And a red meteor's flaming mane
Streamed from the northern sky.
Across the black and barren moor,
Her dainty bosom bare,
And white lips sobbing evermore,
Rides Eleanor the fair.
So hath the pining sea-maid plained
For love of mortal lips,
Riding the billows, silver-reined,
Hard by disastrous ships.
133




134            THE MURDERESS.
Why covers she her mournful eyes 1
Why do her pulses cease,
As if she saw before her rise
The ghost of murdered Peace?
From out her path the ground-bird drifts
With wildly startled calls,
The moonlight snake its white fold lifts
From where her shadow falls.
Ah me! that delicate hand of hers,
Now trembling like a reed,
Like to the ancient mariner's,
Hath done a hellish deed;
And full of mercy were the frown
Which might the power impart
To press the eternal darkness down
Against her bleeding heart.




CONTENT.
MY house is low and small,
But behind a row of trees,
I catch the golden fall
Of the sunset in the seas;
And a stone wall hanging white
With the roses of the May,
Were less pleasant to my sight
Than the fading of to-day.
From a brook a heifer drinks
In a field of pasture ground,
With wild violets and pinks
For a border all around.
My house is small and low,
But the willow by the door
Doth a cool deep shadow throw
In the summer on my floor;
And in long and rainy nights
When the limbs of leaves are bare,
I can see the window lights
Of the homesteads otherwhere.
135




136                CONTENT.
My house is small and low,
But with pictures such as these
Of the sunset and the row
Of illuminated trees,
And the heifer as she drinks
From the field of meadowed ground,
With the violets and pinks
For a border all around,
Let me never, foolish, pray
For a vision wider spread,
But contpnted, only say,
Give me, Lord, my daily bread.




OF ONE ASLEEP.
ONCE when we lingered, sorrow-proof,
My gentle love and me,
Beneath a green and pleasant roof
Of oak leaves by the sea,
Like yellow violets, springing bright
From furrows newly turned,
Among the nut-brown clouds the-light
Of sunset softly burned.
Then, veiling close her pensive face
In clouds of transient flame,
The silent child of the embrace
Of light and darkness came:
We saw her closing now the flower
And warning home the bee,
Now painting with a godlike power
The arteries of the sea;
And heard the wind beneath nights frown
Displacing quick her smile,
Laughingly running up and down
The green hills all the while;
137




138            OF ONE ASLEEP.
Love to our hearts had newly brought
Sweeter than Eden gleams,
And no dark underswell of thought
Troubled the sea of dreams.
Low down beneath an oaken roof
Of dim leaves by the seaWhere then we lingered, sorrow-proof,
My gentle love and meWhile sunset softly lights the bower,
And wave embraces wave,
The shadow of the passion flower
Lies darkly on his grave.
And musing of his pillow low,
His slumber deep and long,
My heart keeps heaving to and fro
Upon the waves of song.
No more through sunset's sinking fire
Are Eden-gleams descried,
The sweetest chord of all life's lyre
Was shattered when he died.
Yet not one memory would I sell,
However woeful proved,
For all the brightest joys that dwell
In souls that never loved.




DISSATISFIED.
FOR me, in all life's desert sand
No well is made, no tent is spread;
No father's nor a brother's hand
Is laid in blessing on my head.
The radiance of my mortal star
Is crossed with signs of woe to me,
And all my thoughts and wishes are
Sad wanderers toward eternity.
Stricken, riven helplessly apart
From all that blest the path I trod;
Oh tempt me, tempt me not, my heart,
To arraign the goodness of my God!
For suffering hath been made sublime,
And souls, that lived and died alone,
Have left an echo for all time,
As they went wailing to the throne.
There have been moments when I dared
Believe life's mystery a breath,
And deem Faith's beauteous bosom bared
To the betraying arms of Death;
139




140              D I SSA T'ISF I ED.
For the immortal life but mocks
The soul that feels its ruin dire,
And like a tortured demon rocks
Upon the cradling waves of fire.
To mine is pressed no loving lip,
Around me twines no helping arm;
And like a frail dismasted ship
I blindly drift before the storm.




DYING SONG.
LEAVE me, O leave me! my o'erwearied feet,
O my beloved! may walk no more with thee;
For I am standing where the circles meet
That mortals name, Time and Eternity.
Tell me, O tell me not of summer flowers
In vales where once our steps together trod;
Even though I now behold the shining towers
That rise above the city of our God.
I know that the wide fields of heaven are fairThat on their borders grief is all forgot;
That the white tents of beauty, too, are fhereBut how shall I be blessed where thou art not?
Over the green hills, that are only crossed
By drifts of light, and choruses of glee,
How shall I wander like a spirit lost,
And fallen and ruiled, missing, mourning thee!
If any wrong of mine, or thought, or said,
Has given thee pain or sorrow, O forgive!
As wilt thou not, my friend, when I am dead,
And by my errors better learn to live.
141




142              DYING SONG.
There is not found in all the pleasant past,
One memory of thee that I deplore,
Or wish not to be in my heart at last,
When I shall fall asleep to wake no more.
Then leave, oh leave me! though I see the light
Of heaven's sweet clime, and hear the angel's call,
Where there is never any cloud nor night,
Thy love is stronger, mightier than all!




LILY LEE.
I DID love thee, Lily Lee,
As the petrel loves the sea,
As the wild bee loves the thyme,
As the poet loves his rhyme,
As the blossom loves the dewBut the angels loved thee, too!
Once when twilight's dying head
Pressed her saffron-sheeted bed,
And the silent stars drew near,
White and tremulous with fear,
While the night with sullen frown
Strangled the young zephyr down,
Told I all my love to thee,
Hoping, fearing, Lily Lee.
Fluttered then her gentle breast
With a troubled, sweet unrest,
Like a bird too near the net
Which the fowler's hand hath set;
But her mournful eyes the while,
And her spirit-speaking smile,
Told me love could not dispart
Death's pale arrow from her heart.
143




144                LILY LEE.
Hushing from that very day
Passion pleading to have wayFolding close her little hand,
Watched I with her, till the sand,
Crumbling from beneath her tread,
Lowered her softly to the dead,
Where in peace she waits for meSweetest, dearest Lily Lee.
As the chased hart loves the wave,
As blind silence loves the grave,
As the penitent loves prayer,
As pale passion loves despair,
Loved I, and still love I thee,
Angel-stolen Lily Lee.




TO  THE EVENING  ZEPHYR,
1 SIT where the wild bee is humming,
And listen in vain for your song;
I've waited before for your coming,
But never, oh! never so long.
How oft, with the blue sky above us,
And waves breaking light on the shore,
You, knowing they would not reprove us,
Have kissed me a thousand times o'er!
So sweet were your dewy embraces,
Your falsehood, oh! who could believe!
Some phantom your fondness effacesYou could not have aimed to deceive.
You told not your love for me ever,
But all the bright stars in the skies,
Though striving to do so could never,
Have numbered one half of your sighs.
Alone in the gathering shadows,
Still waiting, sweet Zephyr, for you,
I look for the waves of the meadows,
And the phantoms that trail o'er the blue
7            145




14(     TO TILE EVENING ZEPHYR.
The blossoms that waited to greet me
With heat of the noontide opprest,
Now flutter so lightly to meet me,
You're coming, I know, from the West.
Alas! if you find me thus pouting,'T is only my love that alarms;
Forgive, then, I pray you, my doubting,
And take me once more to your arms!




MIRACLES.
AN old man sits beside a wall,
Where grow two hollyhocks-one tall
And flowerless, one bright and small.
His hair is full of silver streaks,
The tears are running down his cheeks,
And his lip trembles as he speaks.
" Come, little daughter Maud, I pray,
And tell me truly why you stay
So often and so long away."
A moment, and two arms, so fair,
Are round his neck-a sunny pair
Of eyes look on him-Maud is there.
"See, pretty dear," the old man said,
"These hollyhocks, one fresh and red
With youthful bloom-the other dead.
"The stony wall whereby they be,
Is the hard world, and you'll agree
The hollyhocks are you and me.
147




148               MIRACLES.
" My weary, worn out life is done,
With all of rain, and dew, and sun,
Thine, darling, is but just begun.
" So take my staff and hang it high,
And kiss me: Nay, you must not cry,
I've nothing left to do but die!"
And Maud hath made her blue eyes dry,
And in a whisper makes reply,
" And if you die, I too must die!"
That night, beside the stony wall,
Where grew two hollyhocks-one tall
And flowerless-one bright and smallCovered with moonshine they were found,
Lying dead together on the ground,
Their arms about each other wound.
What miracle may not be true,
Since oft the hardest one to do
Is done-the making one of two?




TOKENS.
TRUTH, with her calm and steady eyes,
Looked sternly in my face one morning,
And of the night, that closes on
Life's worn out day, I saw such warning
As sunken cheeks and gray hairs give,
And faint smiles fading into sorrow;
And hiding from the light my face,
I cried, " Oh night, that knows no morrow!
Gather your solemn clouds away;
And leave me and my youth together,
And make its joys grow thick and bright
As apples in the summer weather."
And night was silent, and the sea
Was silent, and the eyes of heaven
Shut under lid-like clouds, and thus
An answer to my prayer was given.
I in a vision went, and saw
From the low grave, asunder breaking.
A face of beauty smiling like
A baby's in the cradle waking;
And heard a voice that said to me'Stay, if thou wilt, among the living;
149




150                TOKENS.
But earth thy ancient mother is,
And rest is only of her giving.
Plain is the creed of nature's book,
Daily you read the truthful story
That when the day is dim with clouds
The twilight has the most of glory.
The tassel of the corn must fadeThe ear will grow not in its shadow,
And for the winter snow there blooms
So much the brighter harvest meadow.
So, send no more instead of praise
Through God's good purposes, a sighing,
The gray hairs and the fading cheeks
Are tokens of the glorifying."




TO THE HOPEFUL.
HARK! for the multitude cry out,
Oh, watchman, tell us of the night;
And hear the joyous answering shout,
The hills are red with light!
Lo! where the followers of the meek,
Like Johns, are crying in the wild,
The leopard lays its spotted cheek
Close to the new-born child.
The gallows-tree with tremor thrillsThe North to mercy's plea inclines;
And round about the Southern hills
Maidens are planting vines.
The star that trembled softly bright,
Where Mary and the young child lay,
Through ages of unbroken night
Hath tracked his luminous way.
From the dim shadow of the palm
The tattooed islander has leant,
Helping to swell the wondrous psalm
Of love's great armament!
151




15'2          TO THE HOPEFUL.
And the wild Arab, swart and grave,
Looks startled from his tent, and scans
Advancing truth, with shining wave,
Washing the desert sands.
Forth from the slaver's deadly crypt
The Ethiop like an Athlete springs,
And from her long-worn fetters stript,
The dark Liberian sings.
But sorrow to and fro must keep
Its heavings.until evil cease,
Like the great cradle of the deep,
Rocking a storm to peace.




GOING TO SLEEP.
Now put the waxen candle by,
Or shade the light away,
And tell me if you think she'll die
Before another day.
She asked me but an hour ago,
What time the moon would rise,
And when I told her, she replied,
c" How fair'twill make the skies."
Then came a smile across her face,
And though her lips were dumb
I think she only wished to live
Until that hour were come.
And folding her transparent hands
Together on her breast,
She fell in such a tranquil sleep
As scarce seems breathing rest.
Was that the third stroke of the clock;
The hour is almost told.Above yon bare and jagged rock
Should shine the disk of gold.
153




154           GOING TO SLEEP.
The moon is coming up-a glow
Runs faint along the blue
How soft her sleep is! shall I call,
That she may see it too?
Nay, friend, she would not see the light,
Though called you ne'er so loud,
So bring of linen, dainty white,
The measure of the shroud.
The drowsy sexton may not wake,
He must be called betimes,'T will take him all the day to make
Her grave beneath the limes;
For when our little Ellie died,
The days were, oh, so long!
And what with telling ghostly tales,
And humming scraps of song,
To school-boys gathered curiously
About the bed so chill,
I heard him digging till the sun
Was down behind the hill.
Oh, do not weep my friend, I pray,
This rest so still and deep
Keeps all the evil-things away
That troubled once her sleep.




THE DYING MOTHER.
WE were weeping round her pillow,
For we knew that she must die:
It was night within our bosomsIt was night within the sky.
There were seven of us childrenI the oldest one of all;
So I tried to whisper comfort,
But the blinding tears would fall.
On my knee my little brother
Leaned his aching brow and wept,
And my sister's long black tresses
O'er my heaving bosom swept.
The shadow of an awful fear
Came o'er me as I trod,
To lay the burden of our grief
Before the throne of God.
Oh! be kind to one another,
Was my mother's pleading prayer,
As her hand lay like a snow-flake
On the baby's golden hair.
155




156         THE DYING MOTHER.
Then a glory bound her forehead,
Like the glory of a crown,
And in the silent sea of death
The star of life went down.
HTer latest breath was borne away
Upon that loving prayer,
And the hand grew heavier, paler,
In the baby's golden hair.




THE LULLABY.
I HEAR the curlew's lonesome call,
The cushat crooning in the treeThe sunset shadow on the wall
Fades slowly off-come nearer me.
Sweet Mary, come and take my hand
And hold it close and kiss my cheekThe tide is crawling up the sandO, Mary, sweetest sister, speak.
And say my fears are all untrue,
And say my heart has boded wrongHow slow the light fades-never grew
A twilight half nor half so long.
And Mary smiling a sad smile,
Looked wistful out into the night,
Combing the sick girl's hair the while,
(Death-dampened) with her fingers white.
And still the curlew's lonesome call
Went on —the cushat wildly well,
Crooned in the tree, and on the wall
Darker and darker shadows fell.
157




158             THE LULLABY.
How gustily the night-time falls!
Dear Mary, is the milking past? 
And are the oxen in their stallsHark! is't the rain that falls so fast?
Kneel softly down beside my bed(How terrible the storm will be,)
And say again the prayer you said
Last night; but Mary, not for me.
The cushat still went crooning onThe curlew made her lonesome cryThe sick girl fast asleep was goneThat prayer had been her lullaby.




ALDA.
You would have loved her, had you seen:
The beauty of her life was prayerThe blue sky never wet with showers
A bed of yellow primrose flowers
As pretty as the lovely sheen
Of her loose hair.
O'er the low casement her soft hands
Twined tenderly the creeping vines;
Out in the woodland's shady glooms
Loved she to gather summer blooms,
And where from yonder valley lands
The river shines.
The rain was falling when she died,
The sky was dismal with its gloom,
And autumn's melancholy blight
Shook down the yellow leaves that night,
And mournfully the low winds sighed
About her tomb.
At midnight near the gray old towers
That rise in lordly pride so high,
159




160                  ALD A.
Was heard the dismal raven's croak,
From the red shadows of the oak,
And with her pale arms full of flowers,
The dead went by.
An old man now, with thin white hair,
Oft counts his beads beneath that tree;
Sometimes when glows the noontide bright,
And sometimes in the lonesome night,
He breathes the dead girl's name in prayer
On bended knee.
A shepherd boy-so runs the taleOnce, as he pent his harmless flocks,
Crossed the sweet maid, her lap all full
Of lilies pied, and cowslips dull,
Weaving up fillets, red and pale,
For her long locks.
Sweetly the eve-star lit the towers,
When, homeward riding from the chase,
Down from his coal-black steed there leapt
A courtier gay, whose dark plumes swept
A cloud of ringlets bound with flowers,
And love-lit face.
Summer is gone-the casement low,
With dead vines darkened —winds are loud;
Alda, no mone the gay old towers
Shut from thee heaven's sweet border flowers!
Comb back the locks of golden glow,
And bring the shroud.




GLENLY MOOR.
THE summer's golden glow was fled,
In eve's dim arms the day lay dead,
Over the dreary woodland wild,
The first pale star looked out and smiled
On Glenly Moor.
Nor lonely call of lingering bird,
Nor insect's cheerful hum was heard,
Nor traveller in the closing day
Humming along the grass-grown way
Of Glenly Moor.
No voice was in the sleepy rills,
No light shone down the village hills,
And withered on their blackening stalks
Hung the last flowers along the walks
Of Glenly Moor.
Within a thin, cold drift of light
The buds of the wild rose hung bright,
Where broken turf and new-set stone
Told of a pale one left alone
In Glenly Moor.
161




162             GLENLY MOOR.
All the clear splendor of the skies
Was gathered from her meek blue eyes,
And therefore shadows dark and cold
Hang over valley, hill, and wold
In Glenly Moor.
Aiid the winged morning fiom the blue
Winnowing the crimson on the dew
May ne'er unlock the hands so white
That lie beneath that drift of light
In Glenly Moor.




ROSEMARY HILL.'TWAS the night he had promised to meet me,
To meet me on Rosemary Hill,
And I said, at the rise of the eve-star,
The tryst he will haste to fulfil.
Then I looked to the elm-bordered valley,
Where the undulous mist whitely lay,
But I saw not the steps of my lover
Dividing its beauty away.
The eve-star rose red o'er the tree-tops,
The night-dews fell heavy and chill,
And wings ceased to beat through the shadowsThe shadows of Rosemary Ilill.
I heard not, through hoping and fearing,
The whip-poor-will's musical cry,
Nor saw I the pale constellations
That lit the blue reach of the sky-.
1'-3




164           ROSEMARY  HILL.
But fronting despair like a martyr,
I pled with my heart to be still,
As round me fell, deeper and darker,
The shadows of Rosemary Hill.
On a bough that was withered and dying,
I leaned as the midnight grew dumb,
And told my heart, over and over,
How often he said he would come.
He is hunting, I said, in dim ArnauHe was there with his dogs all day long —
And is weary with winging the plover,
Or stayed by the throstle's sweet song.
Then heard I the whining of Eldrich,
Of Eldrich so blind and so old,
With sleek hide ermbrowned like the lion's,
And brindled and freckled with gold.
How the pulse of despair in my bosom
Leapt back to a joyous thrill,
As I went down to meet my dear lover,
Down fleetly from Rosemary Hill.
More near seemed the whining of Eldrich,
More loudly my glad bosom beat;
When lo! I beheld by the moonlight,
A newly made grave at my feet.
And when with the passion-vine lovely,
That grew by the stone at the head,
The length of the grave I had measured,
I knew that my lover was dead.




MY BROTHER.
THE beech-wood fire is burning bright'T is wild November weatherLike that of many a stormy night
We've sat and talked together.
Such pretty plans for future years
We told to one anotherI cannot choose but ask with tears.
Where are they now, my brother? 
Where are they now, the dreams we dreamed,
That scattered sunshine o'er us,
And where the hills of flowers that seemed
A little way before us? 
The hills with golden tops, and springs,
Than which no springs were clearer?
Ah me, for all our journeyings
They are not any nearer!
One, last year, who with sunny eyes
A watch with me was keeping,
Is gone: across the next hill lies
The snow upon her sleeping.
165




1 66             MY BROTHER.
And so alone, night after night,
I keep the fire a-burning,
And trim and make the candle bright,
And watch for your returning.
The clock ticks slow, the cricket tame
Is on the hearth-stone crying,
And the old Bible just the same
Is on the table lying.
The watch-dog whines beside the door,
My hands forget the knittingOh, shall we ever any more
Together here be sitting!
Sometimes I wish the winds would sink,
The cricket hush its humming,
The while I listened, for I think
I hear a footstep coming,
Just as it used so long ago;
My cry of joy I smother-'T is only fancy cheats me so.
And never thou, my brother!




NELLIE, WATCHING.
You might see the river shore
From the shady cottage door
Where she sat, a maiden mildNot a woman, not a child;
Butt the grace which heaven confers
On the two, I trow was hers:
Dimpled cheek, and laughing eyes,
Blue as bluest summer skies.
And the snowy fall and rise
Of a bosom, stirred, I weet,
By some thought as dewy sweet
As the red ripe strawberries,
Which the morning mower sees;
Locks so long and brown (half down
From the modest wild-flower crown
That she made an hour ago,
Saying, "I will wear it, though
None will praise it, that I know!")
Twined she round her fingers whiteSitting careless in the light,
Sweetly mixed of day and nightTwined she, peeping sly the while
Down the valley, like an aisle,
167




168          NELLIE WATCH ING.
Sloping to the river-side.
Blue eyes! wherefore ope so wide?
They are fishers on the shore
That you look on-nothing more.
Pettishly she pouts-ah me!
Saucy Nellie, you will see
Ere an hour has fled away,
Little recks it what you sayThat those eyes with anger frowning
Darkly, will be near to drowning,
And the lips repeating so
Oft and proudly "Let him go!"
Will be sighing.
Ah, I know!
I have watched as you have done
This fair twilight, pretty one,
Watched in trembling hope, and know
Spite of all your frowning so,
That the wave of sorrow, flowing
In your heart, will soon be showing
In the cheek, now brightly blushing,Hlark!'t is but the wild birds hushing
To their nests —and not a lover
Brushing through the valley clover!
Purple as the morning-glories
Round her head the shadows fall;
Is she thinking of sad stories,
That, when wild winds shriek and call,




NELLIE WATC11ING.               169
And the snow comes, good old folks,
Sitting by the fire together,
Tell, until the midnight cocks
Shrilly crow from hill to hillStories, not befitting ill
Wintry nights and windy weather?
The small foot that late was tapping
On the floor, has ceased its rapping,
And the blue eyes opened wide,
Half in anger, half in pride,
Now are closed as in despair,
And the flowers that she would wear
Whether they were praised or no,
On the ground are lying low.
Foolish Nellie, see the moon,
Round and red, and think that June
Will be here another day,
And the apple-boughs will grow
Brighter than a month ago:
Beauty dies not with the May!
And beneath the hedgerow leaves,
All the softly-falling eves,
When the yellow bees are humming
And the blue and black birds coming
In at will, we two shall walk,
Making out of songs or talk
Quiet pastime.
Nellie said,
8




1.70         NELLIE WATCHING.
"Those fine eves I shall be dead,
F'or I cannot live and see
Him I love so, false to me,
And till now I never staid
Watching vainly in the shade."
"In good sooth, you are betrayed!
For I heard you, careless, saying,
"''T is not I for love that pine,'
And I've been a long hour staying
In the shadow of the vine!"
So a laughing voice, but tender,
Said to Nellie: quick the splendor
Of the full moon seemed to fade,
For the smiling and the blushing
Filling all the evening shade.
It was not the wild birds hushing
To their nests an hour ago,
But in verity a lover
Brushing through the valley-clover.
Would all watches maidens keel),
When they sit alone and weep
For their heart-aches, ended so!




ROSALIE.
FROM the rough bark green buds were breaking;
The birds chirped gaily for the taking
Of summer mates; April was trilling,
Like a young psaltress, to the wind,
That stopt from dancing to unbind
The primrose; for the thawing weather
The runnels brimmed. We were togetherI singing out aloud, she stilling
Hier hurried heart-beats. While, that day,
Idly I hummed the poet's rhyming,
Her thoughts were all another way,
Where the white flower of love was climbing
Through sunshine of sweet eyes-not mine!
We were divided by that light:
The self-same minute we might twine
Our distaffs with new flax-at night
P~ut by our wheels at once; the gloaming
Fall just the same upon the combing
And braiding of our hair-in vain!
Our hearts were never one again.
Beneath the barn-roof thick with moss,
Rumbled the fanmill; uncomplaining,
1'71




172                ROSALIE.
The oxen from its golden raining
(One milky-white, the other dun)
Went the long day to plow across
The stubble, slantwise from the sun.
The yellow mist was on the thorns,
And here and there a fork of flowers
Shone whiter than, athwart the showers
Of winnowed chaff, the heifer's horns.
And while the springtime came and went
With showery clouds and sunny gleaming,
We were together: she a-dreaming,
I scarcely happy, yet content.
Alone beside the southern wall
I digged the earth; the summer flowers
In pleasant times, betwixt the showers,
I sadly planted, one and all;
And when they made a crimson blind
Before the window, with their bloom,
I spun alone within the room —
Right hardly did the wisps unbind,
So wet they were with tears. Ah, me!
Blithe songs they said the winds were blowing
From where the harvesters were mowing —
I only cared for Rosalie.'T was autumn; gray with twilight's hue,
The embers of the day were lying;
Athwart the dusk the'bat was flying,
And insects made their faint ado.




ROSALIE.                   173
So evening sloped into the night,
And all the black tops of the furs
Shone as with golden, prickly burrs,
So small the stars were, and so bright.
Close by the homestead, old and low,
A gnarled and knotty oak was growing,
And shadows of red leaves were blowing
Across the coverlid of snow.
Awake, sweet Rosalie, I said,
The moon's pale fires run harmlessly
Down the dry holts-awake and see!
She did not turn her in the bed.
My heart, I thought, must fall abreaking:
All-all but one wild wish-was past:
For that white sunken mouth, once speaking,
To say she loved me, at the last!
Two comforts yet were mine to keep:
Betwixt her and her faithless lover
Bright grass would spread a flowery cover;
And Rosalie was well asleep.




JUSTIFIED.
COME up, my heart, come from thy hiding-place:
Stern Memory grows importunate to make
Hard accusation; and if that I be
Not grossly misadvised, thou'rt much to blanme.
Was't thou, that on a certain April night,
WVhen sweetnesses were breaking all the buds,
And the red creeping vines of strawberries
Hung out their dainty blossoms toward the sunWhen first the dandelion from his cell
Came, like a miser dragging up his gold,
And making envious the poor traveler,
And the wild brook-thou wottest how it ran,
Betwixt the stubbly oat-field and the slope
Where, free from needlss shepherding, that night
The sheep went cropping thistle leaves, and I
For the soft tinkling of their silver bells
Staid listening, so I said, and said again,
To be unto my conscience justifiedWas't thou that tempted me to let the dew
Of midnight straiten all miny pretty curls,
And woo the bat-like clinging damps to come
And bleach the morning blushes from my cheeks?
Ah, me! how many years since that same night
174




JUSTIFIED.                   175
Have come and gone, nor brought a fellow to it!
Thou need'st not shake so, guilty prisoner,
For though those white hairs round my fbrehead teach
A judgment cold and passionless, and though
The hand that writes is palsy-touched, withal,
I cannot wrong so deeply, grievously,
The glorifying beauty of the world,
As to declare that thou art all condemned!
Yet stay, I pray thee: make some sweet excuse
To that staid saintly dame, Austerity;
For she and I have been a thousand times
At variance about her sober rule.
Once when I left my gleaning in the wheat,
(The time was June, sunset within an hour,)
And underneath a hedge, that rained down flowers
Of hawthorn and wild roses in my lap,
Sat idling with young Jocelyn, till that
The shadows of the mowers, stretching out
Like threatening ghosts, did cut our pastime off,
She rated me so mercilessly hard
That I was fain with fables to make peace.
I said that I was tired, and that a bird,
Soft-singing In the hedge, drew me that way;
And then I said I looked for catydids,
(It was three months before their chirping time,)
And that't was pleasant to look thence and see
The sunshine topping all the wide-leaved corn,
And the young apples on the orchard boughs
With the betraying red upon their cheeks.
What other most improbable conceits




176               JUSTIFIED.
I told to her, I now remember not i
But I remember that her frowning brows
So chid me to confusion that I said
It was not Jocelyn that kept me there!
She smiled, and we since then are enemies.
Silent? thou hast no eloquence to win
Her cold regard upon my waywardness.
Well, be it so! and though the great wide world
Stare blank that I do soften judgment so,
Thou stand'st acquitted, yea, and justified.




ISADORE'S DREAM.
I WANDERED in a visionary field:
Lilacs were purpling out, the ousel, fleet,
Plunged in the rainy brook; the air was sweet
With sprouting beech buds; and the full moon sealed
The red-leaved book of evening with pure white;
The golden falling of a bridal night
WTere scarcely to a lover's eyes so fairAnd yet my thoughts clung, bat-like, to despair.
I would not see the green and pleasant grass,
But willows dim and cypresses instead;
I said they made me sad, and sighed, Alas!
And said, Another year I should be dead,
And rest from labor and be done with careThat the May moon would wrap my grave with light;
And picking in my lap the daisies white,
I braided such a crown as corpses wear.
Walking the visionary meadow o'er,
My wreath upon my arm, and sighing so,
And praying to be dead, the day-break snow
Blushed red as any rose: Come, Isadore8*            177




178          ISADORE'S DREAM.
In the dim rainy East an hour agone
The sun was travelling; wake, I pray thee, sweet!
One kiss before we part, perhaps to meet
Next in eternity." My dream went on
The same sad way when I was wide awake,
And still through all the days and nights I sigh,
And try to make my heart believe that I
Am grieved for anything but love's sweet sake.




BURNS.'
HE died: he went from all the praise
That fell on ears unheeding,
And scarcely can we read his lays
For pauses in the reading,
To mourn the buds of poesy,
That never came to blushing;
For who can choose but sigh, ah me!
For their untimely crushing!
And when we see, o'er ruins dim,
The summer roses climbing,
We sadly pause, and think of him,
The beauty of whose rhyming
Spread sunshine o'er the darkest ill,Alas! it could not cover
The heart from breaking, that was still
Through all despairs a loverA lover of the beautiful,
In nature's sweet evangels;
For his great heart was worshipful,
For men, and for the angels.
I Written on reading in the Letters of Burns " We have no flour in the
house, and must borrow for a few days."
179




180                 BURNS.
The rank with him was not the man,
He knew no servile bowing;
And wee things o'er the furrow ran
Unharmed beside his plowing.
Lights flowing out of palaces
Dimmed not the candles burning,
Whereby the glorious mysteries
Of music he was learning;
And not with envious looks he eyed
The morning larks upgoing,
From meadows that were all too wide
And green for peasant mowing.
For by his cabin door the grass
Was pleasant with the daisies;
And o'er the brae, some bonny lass
Was happy in his praises.
Oh Thou who hear'st my simple strain,
The while I muse his storyHere knew he all a poet's pain,
Grant now he have the glory!




THE EMIGRANTS.
DON'T you remember how oft you have said,
Darling Coralin May,
"When the hawthorns are blossoming we shall wed,
And then to the prairie away! "
And now, all over the hills they peep,
Milkwhite, out of the spray,
And sadly you turn to the past and weep,
Darling Coralin May.
When the cricket chirped in the hickory blaze,
You cheerily sung, you klow,"Oh for the sunnier summer days,
And the time when we shall go!"
The corn-blades now are unfolding bright,
While busily calls the crow;
And clovers are opening red and white,
And the time has come to goTo go to the cabin our love has planned,
On the prairie green and gay,
In the blushing light of the sunset land,
Darling Coralin May.
181




182           THE EMIGRANTS.
"' How happy our lives will be," you said,Do n't you remember the day?" When our hands shall be, as our hearts are, wed!"'
Darling Coralin May.
"How sweet," you said, " when my work is o'er,
And your axe yet ringing clear,
To sit and watch at the lowly door
Of our home in the prairie, dear."
The rose is ripe by the window now,
And the cool spring flowing near;
But shadows fall on the heart and brow
From the home we are leaving here.




RINALDO.
A FISHERMAN'S children, we dwelt by the sea,
My good little brother Rinaldo and me,
Contented and happy as happy could beOf blossoms no other
Was fair as the bright one that bloomed on his cheek,
And gentle-oh never a lamb was so meekI wish he were living and heard what I speak,
My lost little brother!
One night when our father was out on the sea,
We went through the moonlight, my brother and me,
And watched for his coming beneath an old tree,
The leaves of which hooded
A raven whose sorrowful croak in the shade
So dismally sounded, it made us afraid,
And kneeling together for shelter we prayed
From the evil it boded.
At the school on the hill, not a week from that day,
The thick cloud of playing broke wildly away,
And the laughter that lately went ringing so gay
Was changed to a crying,
183




184                RINALDO.
And leaping the ditches and climbing the wall,'Twixt home and the schoolhouse came one at our call,
And told us the youngest and best of them all,
Rinaldo was dying.
There was watching and weeping, and when he was dead'Neath that tree by the seaside they made him a bed;
A stone that was nameless and rude at his headHis feet had another;
And the schoolmaster said, though we laid him so low,
And so humbly and nameless, we surely should know
For his beauty, where only the beautiful goMy good little brother.




JULIET TO  ROMEO.
NAY, sweet, one moment more, thy lips, mayhap,
Will soothe this heavy aching in my browsStay, while the twilight in the dusky boughs
Sits smiling with the moon upon her lap.
And dost thou kiss me to be free to go?
How royally the purple shadows sway
Across the gorgeous chamber of dead day;
Now pr'ythee, stay, while they are shining so.
That kiss has made me better-I shall be
Quite well anon-nay gentle Romeo,
I hear the vesper-chanting, soft and lowWhen the last echo dies thou shalt be free.
Could that have been the owlet's cry? the light
Is scarcely faded from the hill-tops yet,'T is not a half hour since the sun was set;
W'ait dear one, for the dim concealing night.
The bell is striking; hark!'t is only nine,
I counted truly, love, it was not tenWould you be falsest of all faithless men,
And leave me in the lonely night to pine?
185




186          JULIET  TO ROMEO.
I hear the watch-dog baying at the moon,
And hear the noisy cock crow loud and long —
Hie cannot cheat me with his shrilly songI know the midnight has not come so soon.
What ruddy streaks are running up the sky —
Is that the lark that past the turret flies!
Ah me,'t is morning's golden-lided eyes
Peeping above the hills; so, sweet, good-by!




OF HOME.
MY heart made pictures all to-day
Of the old homestead far away.
It is the middle of the May,
And the moon is shining full and brightThe middle of May, and the middle of night.
Darkly against the southern wall,
Three cherry-trees, so smooth and tall,
Their shadows cast-we planted all,
One morning in March that is long gone by,My brother Carolan and I.
I hear the old clock tick and tick
In the small parlor, see the thick
Unfeathered wings of bats, that stick
To moon-lit windows, see the mouse,
Noiseless, peering about the house.
I'm going up the winding stairs,
I'm counting all the vacant chairs,
And sadly saying, "They were theirs,The brothers and sisters who no more
Go in and out at the homestead door."
187




188                OF HOME.
hear my sweet-voiced mother say,
"Leave, children, leave all work to-day,
And go into the fields and play."
And the birds are singing where'er we goHow beautiful, to be dreaming so!
And yet, while I am dreaming on,
I know my playmates all are gone;
That none the hope of our childhood keep,
That some are weary, and some asleep,
And that I from the homestead am far away
This middle of night, in the middle of May.




MY FRIEND.
ALONG the west the stormy red
Burned blackest gaps afar and near;
Across the coverlid of snow
We saw the shadows come and go,
But no one to his neighbor said
His saddest fear.
Peered from his hole the bright-eyed mouse,
The winds were blowing wild and wide,
Up the bleak sand the tide ran white
And icy as the full mooD's light,
And in his lonesome hollow house
The brown owl cried.
IWe knew her pain, and care were o'er,
We knew that angels led the way,
Yet wept, and could not choose but weep
The while we saw her go to sleep
For the long night that falls before
The eternal day.
The starlight glimmering faintly through
The window, shone beside her bed,
189




190                A FRIEND.
But ere the solemn time had worn
To the white breaking of the morn,
It faded off. Alas, I knew
That she was dead.
I put my hair before my eyes,
And all my soul to sorrow gave;
My only comfort was to know
That she no longer saw my woAll heaven was gone out of the skies
Into the grave.
From off the windy threshing floors
The dust in golden flaws was blown,
The cock crew out, flail answered flail,
And limbs of apples, red and pale,
Beside the open cottage doors,
Together shone.
They kissed me, saying I must know
How sober plenty smiled for me,
But round my mortal life there lay
And shall do till my dying day,
Thy still and awful shadow, oh
Eternity!




THE HANDMAID.
WHY rests a shadow on her woman's heart?
In life's more girlish hours it was not so;
Ill hath she learned to hide with harmless art
The soundings of the plummet-line of wo!
Oh, what a world of tenderness looks through
The melting sapphire of her mournful eyes!
Less softly moist are violets full of dew,
And the delicious color of the skies.
Serenely amid worship doth she move,
Counting its passionate tenderness as dross;
And tempering the pleadings of earth's love,
In the still, solemn shadows of the cross.
It is not that her heart is cold or vain,
That thus she moves through many worshippers;
No step is lighter by the couch of pain,
No hand on fever's brow lies soft as hers.
From the loose flowing of her amber hair
The summer flowers we long ago unknit,
As something between joyance and despair
Caine in the chamber of her soul to sit.
191




19~i           THE HANDMAID.
In her white cheek the crimson burns as faint
As red doth in some cold star's chastened beam;
The tender meekness of the pitying saint
Lends all her life the beauty of a dream.
Thus doth she move among us day by day,
Loving and loved; but passion cannot move
The young heart that has wrapped itself away
In the soft mantle of a Saviour's love!




PARTING AND MEETINC(.
LIKE music in a reed, the light
Was shut up in the dim, wild night;
And'twixt the black boughs fell the snowingThe black March boughs together blowing,
Till hill and valley all were white
The windows of the old house glowed
With the dry hickory, burning brightly,
As in the old house burned it nightly;
So little cared they that it snowedThe two my rhyme is of. If tears
Or shadows filled the eyes, else lit
With sunshine it were best unwrit,
And all about sweet hopes and fears
Were best unsaid, too. Tares will grow
In spite of the most careful sowing;
We find them in the time of mowing,
Instead of flowers, we all do know.
So it were better that I write
No whit about the lady's sighing;'T were better said she had been tying,
To make it pretty for the night,
193




I 9        M'MEETING AND PARTING.
Bllds, white and scarlet, in her hair;And that the ribbon she should wear
Had sadly vexed her-not a hue,
Purple nor carmine that would do;
Or that the cowslips of the May,
Her little hand had freely givenNay, more, the sweetest star of heavenTo gain a rose the more that day
For her sad cheek: so foolish runs
In all of us the blood of youth
Ere wintry frosts or summer suns
Bleach fancy's fabrics, and the truth
Of sober senses turns aside
The images once deified.
It was a time of parting dreadFor middle night the cock was crowing,
The black March boughs together blowing,
The lady mourning to be dead;
And idly pulling down the flowers,
Tied prettily about her hairAlas! she had but little care
For any bliss of future hours!
That parting made the world all dim
To her, which ever way she saw;
I know not what it was to himHaply but as the gusty flaw
That went before the buds-if so,
Hers was a doubly piteous woe!




PARTING AND MEETING.                195
And years are gone, or fast or slow,
And many a love has had its making
Since these two parted, at the breaking
Of daylight, whiter than the snow.
Again't is March: thn lady's brows
Are circled with another light
Than that of burning hickory boughs,
Which lit the house that parting night.
And they have met: the eyes so sweet
In the old time again she seesHears the same voice-and yet for these
I1er heart has not an added beat.
If there be tremblings now, or sighs,
They are not hers; she feels no sorrow
That he will be away to-morrow,
Nor joy that bridal mornings rise
Out of his smiling-she is free!
Oh, give her pity, give her tears!
By one great wave of passion's sea,
Drifted alike from hopes and fears.




A RUIN.
A SILVER mist the valley shrouds,
The summer day is nearly by;
Like pyramids of flowers, the clouds
Are floating in the sunset sky.
Now up the hills the white mists curl,
The dew shines in the vale below,
And on the oak, like beads of pearl,
The white buds of the mistletoe.
The rustling shadows, dropt with gold,
Among the boughs of green and white,
Are mingling softly, soon to fold
In their embrace the fainting light.
"Lone one, above whose solemn brow
The oak leaves wave so green and slow,
Night, gloomy night is darkening now:
Sweet friend, arise and let us go."
Lifting his head a little up
From the poor pillow where it lay,
And pushing from his forehead pale
The long, damp tresses all awayHe told me with the eager haste
Of one who dare not trust his words,
196




A RUIN.                   197
IIe knew a mortal with a voice
As low and lovely as a bird's;
But that he saw once in a dell
Away from them a weary space,
A fragile lily, which as well
Might woo that old oak's green embrace,
As for his heart to hope that she,
Whose palace chambers ne'er grew dim,
Would leave the light in which she moved
To wander through the dark with him;
For that, once being out to sow
The rows of poppies in the corn,
She crossed him, and he, kneeling low,
Said, " Sweetest lady e'er was born,
Have pity on my love;" but quite
Her scornful eyes eclipsed the day;
And passing, all the hills grew bright,
As if the spring had gone that way.
And he, scarce knowing what he did
But feeling that his heart was broke,
Fled from her pitiless glance, and hid
In the cold shadows of that oak,
Where, as he said, she came at night,
And clasped him from the bitter air,
With her soft arms of fairest white,
And the dark beauty of her hair.
But when the morning lit the spray,
And hung its wreath about his head,
Tlhe lovely lady passed away,
Through mists of glory pale and red.




198                 A RUIN.
So bitter grew his heaving sighs,
So mournful dark the glance he raised;
I looked upon him earnestly
And saw the gentle boy was crazed.
How fair he was! it made me sad,
And sadder still my bosom grew,
To think no earthly hand could build
That beautiful ruin up anew.




TIlE POET.
UPON a bed of flowery moss,
With moonbeams falling all across
Moonbeams chilly and faint and dim,
(Sweet eyes I ween do watch for him)
Lieth his starry dreams among,
The gentlest poet ever sung.
The wood is thick-'t is late in night,
Yet feareth he no evil sprite,
Nor vexing ghost-such things there be
In many a poet's destiny.
Haply some wretched fast or praver,
Pained and long, hath charmed the air.
Softer than hymenial hymns
The fountains, bubbling o'er their rims,
Wash through the vernal reeds, and fill
The hollows: all beside is still,
Save the poet's breathing, low and light.
Watch no more, lady-no more to-night!Heavy his gold locks are with dew,
Yet by the pansies mixed with rue
199




200               THE POET.
Bitter and rough, but now that fell
From his shut hand, he sleepeth well.
He sleepeth well, and his dream is bright
Under the moonbeams chilly and white.
The night is dreary, the boy is fairHath he been mated with Despair,
Or crossed in love, that he lies alone
With shadows and moonlight overblownShadows and moonlight chilly and diml 
And do no sweet eyes watch for himn?
Nay, rather is his soul instead
With immortal thirst disquieted,
That oft like an echo wild and faint
He makes to the hills and the groves his plaint?
That oft the light on his forehead gleams,
So troubled under its crown of dreams? 
Watch no more, lady, no more, I pray,
He is wrapt in a lonely power away!
Sweet boy, so sleeping, might it be
That any prayer I said for thee
Could answer win from the spirit shore,
This were it, " Let him wake no more!"




ASPIRATIONS.
The temples, palaces and towers
Of the old time, I may not see;
Nor'neath my reverend tread, thy flowers
Bend meekly down, Gethsemane!
By Jordan's wave I may not stand,
Nor climb the hills of Galilee;
Nor break, with my poor, sinful hand,
The emblems of apostacy.
Nor pitch my tent'neath Salem's sky,
As faith's impassioned fervor bids;
Nor hear the wild bird's startled cry,
From Egypt's awful pyramids.
I have not stood, and may not stand,
Where Hermon's dews the blossoms feed;
Nor where the flint-sparks light the sand,
Beneath the Arab lancer's steed.
Woe for the dark thread in my lot,
That still hath kept my feet away
From pressing toward the hallowed spot,
Where Mary and the young child lay.
9*                201




22               AS' I A T I O N S.
But the unhooded soul may track
Even as it will, the dark or light,
From noontide's sunny splendors, back
To the dead grandeur of old night.
And even I, by visions led,
The Arctic wastes of snow may stem;
The Tartars' black tents view, or tread
Thy gardens, oh Jerusalem!
O'er Judah's hills may travel slow,
Or ponder Kedron's brook beside,
Or pluck the reeds that overgrow
The tomb which held the Crucified.
And does not He, who planned the bliss
Above us, hear the praise that springs
From every dust-pent chrysalis,
That feels the stirring of its wings?




CHANGED.
ALAS, the pleasant dew is drTy,
That made so sweet the mnorn;
And midway in the walk of life
He sits as one forlorn.
I knew the time when this was not,
When at the close of day
Hie brought his little boys the flowers
Ploughed up along his way.
The ewes that browsed the daisy buds
Erewhile (there were but twain),
Are now the grandams of a flock
That whiten all the plain.
The twigs he set his marriage-day,
Against the cabin door,
Make shadows in the summer now,
That reach across the floor.
The birds with red brown eyes, he sees
Fly round him, hears the low
Of pasturing cattle, hears the streams
That through his meadows flow.
203




204                CHANGED.
He sees the pleasant lights of home,
And yet as one whose ills
Seek comfort of the winds or stars,
He stays about the hills.
The once dear wife his lingering step
A joy no longer yields;
No more he brings his boys the flowers
Ploughed lap along, the fields.




WATCHING.
THY smile is sad, Elella,
Too sad for thee to wear,
For scarcely have we yet untwined
The rosebuds from thy hair.
So, dear one, hush thy sobbing,
And let thy tears be driedMlethinks thou shouldst be happier,
Three little months a bride.
Hark! how the winds are heaping
The snow-drifts cold and whiteThe clouds like spectres cross the skyOh, what a lonesome night!
The hour grows late and later,
I hear the midnight chime:
Thy heart's fond keeper, where is he?
MThy comes he not?-'t is time!
Here make my heart thy pillow,
And, if the hours seem long,
I'l wile them with a legend wild,
Or fragment of old song205




206               WA TCHIN G.
Or-read, if that will soothe thee,
Some poet's pleasant rhymes:
Oh, I have watched and waited thus,
I cannot tell the times!
Hush, hark! across the neighboring hills
I hear the watch-dog bayStir up the fire, and trim the lamp,
I'm sure he's on the way.
Could that have only been the winds,
So like a footstep near.
No, smile, Elella, smile again,
He's coming home-he is here!




WEARINESS.
OH, still, and dumb, and silent earth,
Unlock thy dim and pulseless arms;
Wandering and weary from my birth,
I seek for refuge from life's storms.
For a dark shadow-not the grave'sHas clasped the one I loved from me,
And winds have built their walls of waves,
Between us in the eternal sea.
No flowery, sheltering nook have I,
Wherein to lay my weary head;
Nature's fair bosom is drawn dry,
While I am hungry and unfed.
Oh, for the dream of long ago,
When to my raptured eyes't was given,
To see, in this wild world below,
Only a lower range of Heaven.
And still, sometimes, the shadow lifts,
And through my soul a lost voice thrills,
What time the sunset's golden drifts
Come sweeping from the western hills.
207




2038             THE L ULLABY.
But, in the noontide's broader beam,
I see how well the shadows lie,
And, turning from the twilight dream,
I bow my face to earth and cry.
Borne down, and weary with the storms,
0, earth! receive me to thy breast,
Unlock thy dim and pulseless arms,
And cool this burning heart to rest.




THE BETRAYAL.
TELL me when the stars are flashing,
In the northern sky so blue,
Or when morning's tender crimson
Sweetly burns along the dew,
Comes there no reproachful whisper
From the mornings and the eves,
When Hope's white buds into beauty
Opened like the faint young leaves?
Ay, thou feel'st, despite thy silenceThat betrayal burns thy cheek;
Even to Love's forgiving bosom
There be thoughts thou canst not speak!
From the roses of that bridal,
The dark price of nameless woe,
Thou mayst not unbind the curses
Till thy last of suns is low i
Lost and brokerr is the music
That with beauty filled the night,Melted from the frozen branches
Are the frost-stars glistening bright,209




2 0              T IT E B E  It A Y A L.
When a maid with trenll)llhg boc, l,:
Watched a ne'er returning steed,
Cleaving through the silver shadows,
On and on, his shaft-like speed!
Faint against the ringing pavement,
Fainter still the hof-strokes beat
Scarcely can sne tell tne shlmuner
Of the flint-sptarks firom the sleet.
Years are gone: the village hill tops
Redden with the sunset's glow;
With a lap all bright with blossoms
Still the summers come and go.
With a cheek grown thinner, whiter,
And the dark locks put away
From a brow of patient beauty,
Dwells the maiden of my lay)Dwells she, where the peaceful shadow
Of her native hills is thrown,
Binding up the wounds of others
All the better for her own.




EDITH TO HAROLD.*
SPEAK soft, and smile when you do speak, I pray,
For though I seem as gentle as the moon
in her white bed of clouds, or thrice as gay
As any robin of the April woods
You must not trust me wholly; I am like
Some mountain creature that will not be tamed,
But goes back to its nature when your hand
Caresses it most fondly. Even a look
May put between my heart and all the world
The heavy memory of my monstrous wrongs,
And make me hate you, sweetest, with the rest.
The fatal malady is in my blood,
And even when Death shall shear away the thread
That holds my body and my soul in one,
No flowers but poison ones will strike their roots
in my earthed ashes.'Tis a dreadful thoughtThe last May gras;s on little Thyra's grave
Was full of violets-:so bright and blue!
Nay, frown not, for the prophecy is true.
Look at me close, and see if in rmy eyes
Are not the half-reproachful, half-mad looks
Of beasts too sharply goaded-I do fear
The loosing of all fair humanities.
* See Sir Bulwer Lytton's "Harold, the last of the Saxon Kings."
211




21.          EDITH TO HAROLD.
Tell me you love me, kiss my cheek, my mouth,
And talk about that meadow with the brook
Brimful of sleepy waters, over which
A milk-white heifer leaned her silver horns,
Wound bright with scarlet flowers, and where the sheep
Graze sheperdless, save when of fairest nights
Some honest rustic walks and counts his lambs,
So making pastime with his lady-love,
The starry lighting of whose golden hair
To his pleased eyes makes all the meadow shine.
Once, when we stood before the eastern gate
Of Hilda's castle, you did tell it me,
With your white fingers combing the long mane
Of your brown charger-dead in the last war.
It was a pretty picture, and the end
Was harmless, happy love. It gave my heart
For a full hour such pleasant comforting,
That I did after makes the story mine,
And feign to be the damsel by the brook;
For of my shepherd I could be the queen,
As, sweetest, Harold, I may not be yours.




PARTING WITH A POET.
ALL the sweet summer that is gone,
Two paths I sighed to markOne brightly leading up and on,
One downward to the dark.
No prophecy enwrapt my heart,
No Vala's gifts were mine;
Yet knew I that our paths must partThe loftier one be thine.
For not a soul inspiredly thrills,
Whose wing shall not be free
To sweep across the eternal hills,
Like winds across the sea.
And, wheresoe'er thy lot may be,
As all the past has proved,
Love shall abide and be with thee,
For genius must be loved.
While I, the heart's vain yearning stilled,
The heart that vexed me long,
Essay with my poor hands to build
The silvery walls of song.
213




214        PARTING  WITH  A POET.
Still, through the nights of wild unrest,
That softer joyance bars,
Winding about my vacant breast
The tresses of the stars.
While at the base of heights sublime,
Dim thoughts forevermore
Lie moaning, like the waves of time
Along the immortal shore.




THE RECLAIMING OF THE ANGEL.
Oa smiling land of the sunset,
How my heart to thy beauty thrillsVeiled dimly to-day with the shadow
Of the greenest of all thy hills!
Where daisies lean to the sunshine,
And the winds a plowing go,
And break into shining furrows
hile mists in the vale below;
Where the willows hang out their tassels.
With the dews all white and cold,
Strung over their wands so limber,
Like pearls upon chords of gold;
Where in milky hedges of hawthorn
The red-winged thrushes sing,
And the wild vine, bright and flaunting,
Twines many a scarlet ring;
Where, under the ripened billows
Of the silver-flowing rye,
We ran in and out with the zephyrsMy sunny-haired brother and I.
Oh, when the green kirtle of May time,
Again over the hill-tops is blown,
215




216  THIE RECLAIMING  OF THE ANG EL.
I shall walk the wild paths of the forest
And climb the steep headlands alonePausing not where the slopes of the meadows
Are yellow with cowslip beds,
Nor where, by the wall of the garden,
The hollyhocks lift their bright heads.
In hollows that dimple the hill-sides,
Our feet till the sunset had been,
Where pinks with their spikes of red blossoms,
Hedged beds of blue violets in,
While to the warm lip of the sunbeam
The cheek of the blush rose inclined,
And the pansy's soft bosom was flushed with
The murmurous love of the wind.
But when'neath the heavy tresses
That swept o'er the dying day,
The star of the eve like a lover
Was hiding his blushes away,
As we came to a mournful river
That flowed to a lovely shore,
" Oh, sister," he said, " I am wearyI cannot go back any more!"
And seeing that round about him
The wings of the angels shoneI parted the locks from his forehead
And kissed him and left him alone.




ADELYN.
COME, comb my hair, good Hepsiba,
The sun is going down,
And I, within an hour must wela
My pretty wedding-gown!'T is bleached white upon the grass,
The rainy grass of May,
Go bring it, my good Hepsiba,
It is my wedding-day.
And Hepsiba looks out and sees,
Behind the windy hill,
The cloudy sun go down, and hastes
To do the bride's sweet will.
And from her sick-bed Adelyn
Was softly lifted down,
To have her black hair combed so smooth,
And wear her wedding-gown.
Oh! never o'er the windy hills
Came clouds so fast and dread,
And never beat so wild a rain
Above a marriage-bed.
10           217




~218                 ADELYN.
Uupastuved o'er the dry, brown sands.
The lioisy billows crept,
The cattle lowed, but Adelyn
Through all the tumult slept.
Upon her sweet shut eyes they laid
The roses from her hair,
And when the bridegroom kissed her c(hL ek.
She never looked so fair.
At morning, he who came to meet
The bridal train so brave,
Hung willows in his boat, and rowed
A (oirse I.across the wave.




MADELA.
" OH, my dear one! oh, my lover!
Comes no faintest sound to you,
As I call your sweet words over,
All the weary night-time through!
I)tearily the rain keeps fallingI can hear it on the pane;
Oh, he cannot hear my callinglie will never come again!"
So, a pale one, lowly lying
On her sick bed, often cried —' Come, my dear one, I am dying!"
But no lover's voice replied.' When the morning-light is shining
Over all the eastern hills,
Thou, whose heart is still divining
Every wish in mine that thrillsIf he come, and I am dying,
If my hands be cold as clay,
And my lips make no replying
To the wild words he will say,
As he fondly bends above me,
Just as you are bending now,
Saying how he used to love me,
Pressing kisses on my brow219




220                 MADE LA.
Take this ringlet ere from twining
Dampened in that dew so near;
lie has often praised its shiningWill he when I cannot hear?
Give it softly to his keeping,
Saying, as 1 would have said,'Go not through the world a-weeping
For the dear one who is dead;'
And, as you the shroud upgather,
That shall hide me from his eyes,
Tell him of the pitying FatherOf the love that never dies."
Through the eastern clouds the amber,
Burning, tells the night-time past!
Dark and silent is her chamberShe is sleeping well at last!
Is't the white hand of her lover
Puts her curtain's fold away?
Is it he that bends above her,
Saying, "Dear one, wake,'tis day!"
No; the wind, despite Death's warning,'T is, that in her curtain stirs,
And the blue eyes are the morning's,
That are bending down to her's.
Lay the hands, for love's sake lifted
Oft in prayer, together bound,
While the unheeded ringlet drifted
Lightly, brightly, to the ground.




THE BROKEN HOUSEHOTI).
VAINLY, vainly memory seeks,
Round our father's knee,
Laughing eyes and rosy chEeeks
Where they used to be:
Of the circle once so wide,
Three are wanderers, three have died.
Golden-haired and dewy-eyed.
Prattling all the day,
Was the baby, first that died;
Oh,'twas hard to lay
Dimpled hand and cheek of snow
In the grave so dark and low.
Smiling back on all who smiled,
Ne'er by sorrow thralled,
Half a woman, half a child,
Was the next one called:
Then a grave more deep and wide
Made they by the baby's side.
221




p222    THE  R  R  E N   OUS EHO L D.
WNhen  or w*here the othlr died
Only Heaven can tell;
Treading manhood's path of pride
Was he when he fell;
Haply thistles, blue and red,
Bloom about his lonely bed.
I am for the living three
Only left to pray;
Two are on the stormy sea;
Farther still than they,
Wanders one, his young heart din —
Oftenest, most I pray ior him.
WVhatsoe'er they do or dare,
WT heresoe'er they roam,
Ifavo them, Father, in Thy care,
Guide them safely home;
HIome, oh, Father, in the sky,
Where none wander and none die.




TO MARY.
OH, will affection's tendrils twine
About that summer time for aye.
When, midway'twixt thy home and inivie,
The quiet village churchyard lay! —
With stars beginning to ascend,
The nighthawks scooping through the air —
Dost thou remember, oh my friend,
How often we have parted there'?
That summer was a sunlit sea,
Reflecting neither cloud nor frown,
Yet in its bright wave noiselessly
Some ventures of the heart went down:
Blest be the one that still outrides
The silent but tumultuous strife
Of hopes and fears, the heaving tides,
That beat against the'shore of life!
The flowers run wild that used to be
So softly tended by thy hill —
Colors of beauty struck at sea,
And drifted backward to the land;
Breathing of havens whence we sailed,
Visions of lovelight seen and fled,
Swift barks of gladness met and hailedlOf beacon fires, and land ahead!
223




TO MARY.
To-night, sweet friend, the light and shade
Are trembling softly in my heart;
A hush upon my soul is laidOur paths henceforth must lie apart;
In the dim chamber where I sit,
Fears, hopes, and memories rise and blend,
Like cloud wastes with the sunshine litOnly with them art thou my friend!




PARTING  SONG.
BEHIND their cloudy curtains,
Over sunset's crimson sea,
Like fires along a battle field,
Intensely, mournfully,
The radiant stars are burning,
That will burn no more for me.
Ere on yon path of glory,
Which still the daylight warms,
Walks silently the midnight,
With the silence in her arms,
I shall be where longings trouble not,
Nor haunting fear alarms.
Nay, weep not, gentlest, dearest,
When joy should most abound,
That the dewy, tender clasping
Of thy arms must be unwound;
We have journeyed long together
In life's wilderness profound.
10*       225




226             PARTING  SONG.
Like the shining threads of silver
Which the showers of summer leave,
VWhen to webs of beauty woven
By the golden loom of eve,
Is the path that lies before me nowThen, dear one, do not grieve.
Mortalitv has been to me
A wheel of pain, at best,
And I sink, although thy gentle love
Has soothed and almost blest,
As a pilgrim in the shadow
Of the sepulchre, to rest.
Not when the morn is glowing,
Like a banner o'er the brave,
Nor when the world is bathing
In the noontide's amber wave,
Will I come, oh Love, to meet thee
From the chamber of the grave.
But through the silver columns
Leaning earthward from the arch,
When the pale and solemn army
Of the night is on the march,
I will glide, oh Love, to meet thee,
From the shadow of the larch.
As the poet's bosom trembles
With some awful melody,
Till he hears the dark procession
Of the ages sweeping by,
Lo! my heart is trembling, beating,
To the music of the sky.




THE BRIDAL OF WO.
DIMLY the shadows stretch across the seas,
With glistening frost the window pane is white;
And the blind winds go moaning through the treesOh!'tis a mournful night!
Under the rafters, where, in summer's heat,
The twittering swallow hung her nest of clay,
The new-milked heifer, sheltered from the sleet,
Chews the sweet-scented hay.
On southern slopes, hard by the leafy wold,
Where the stray sunbeams all the day kept warm,
Instinct is shepherding the harmless fold
From the ice-bearded storm.
The watch-dog, shivering couchant on the sill,
Watches the moon, slow sailing up the sky,
Nor answers, calling from the churchyard hill,
The owlet's frequent cry.
In the dim grass the little flowers are dead,
No more his song the grasshopper awakes,
And the pale silver of the spider's thread,
No wanton wild-bird breaks.
227




228          THE BRIDAL OF WO.
Yet does my soul, whose flights have sometimes stirred
The cloud that curtains back eternity,
Lie wailing in my bosom, like a bird,
Driven far out at sea.
On such a night my heart was wed to pain,
And joy along its surface can but gleam,
Like the red threads of morning's fiery skein
Along the frozen stream.




A  DREAM  UINTOLD.
BENEATH the yellow hair of May
The blushing flowers together lay,
The winds along the bending lea,
Kept flowing, flowing, like a sea
That could not rest,
When first a maid with tresses brown,
And blue eyes softly drooping down,
Sat in her chamber high and lone,
Locking a sweet dream, all her own,
Within her breast.
The elms around the homestead low
All night went swaying to and fro,
And the young summer's silver rain
Kept beating on the window pane,
So soft and low,
It could not trouble the fair maid
Who tremblingly and half afraid
Lay gazing on the village lights,
That glimmered o'er the neighboring heights,
In sleepless wo.
229




23 0          A DREAM  UNTOLD.
The summer's tender glow is fled,
The early budding flowers are dead,
But others, with their leaves scarce paled,
And their flushed bosoms all unveiled,
In bloom remain;
The hills are white with ripened rye,
The quails from out the meadows fly;
The mower's whistling, blithely gay,
_Makes answer to the milkmaid's lay,
In vain-in vain!'Tis one of autumn's lonesome eves,
And eddying drifts of withered leaves
Are scattered in the woods behind,
By the damp fingers of the wind;
But hope dies not,
And happy maids and youths are seen
Together straying on the green,
While trembling hand and blushing cheek
Tell better far than words can speak,
Each other's thought.
Winter is come-the homestead low
Is whitened by the falling snow;
In the warm hearth the cricket cries,
And the storm-shaken bough replies;
The watch-dog's bay
Is answered from the neighboring hill"'Tis very dark, the night, is chill,"
Is by the pale lips faintly said,
Of her beside whose dying bed
They kneel to pray.




A DREAM UNTOLD.                23.1
Morning is up-her wing of fire
Is shivering o'er the village spire,
And in the churchyard down below
Shining along the mounds of snow
Serenely bright,
The maiden with the hair so brown,
And blue eyes softly drooping down,
Her dream, whate'er it was, unknown,
Shall lie beneath the cross of stone,
Ere close of night.




THE CONVICT.
THE first of the September eves
Sunk its red basement in the sea,
And like swart reapers, bearing sheaves,
Dim shadows thronged immensity.
Wooing the tender Twilight, came,
And firom her tent, of soft blue light,
Bore her away, a bride of flame.
Pushing aside her golden hair,
And listening to the Autumn's tread,
Along the hill-tops, bleak and bare,
Went Summer, burying her dead;
The frolic winds, out-laughing loud,
Played with the thistle's silver beard,
And drifting seaward like a cloud,
Slowly the wild-birds disappeared.
Upon a hill with mosses brown,
Beneath the blue roof of the sky,
As the dim day went sadly down,
Stood all the friend I had, and I232




THE CONVICT.                 233
Watching the sea-mist of the strand
Wave to and fro in Evening's breath,
Like the pale gleaming of the hand
That beckons firom the shore of Death,
Talking of days of gladness flown,
Of Sorrow's great o'erwhelming waves,
Of friends loved well as they were known,
Now sleeping in their voiceless graves;
And as our thoughts o'erswept the past,
Like stars that through the darkness move,
Our hearts grew softer, and at last
We talked of friendship, talked of love.
Then, as the long and level reach
Back to our homestead slow we trod,
We gave our fond pure pledges each,
Of truth unto ourselves and God.
Forth to life's conflict and its care,
Doomed wert thou, Oh my friend, to go,
Leaving me only hope and prayer
To shelter my poor heart from wo.
"A little year, and we shall meet!"
Still at my heart that whisper thrillsThe spring-shower is not half so sweet,
Covering with violets all the hills.
Dimly the days sped, one by one,
Slowly the weeks and months went round,
Until again September's sun
Lighted the hill with moss embrowned.




234             THE CONVICT.
That night we met-my friend and INot as the last year saw us part:
He as a convict doomed to die,
I with a bleeding, breaking heartNot in our homestead, low and old,
Nor under Evening's roof of stars,
But where the earth was damp and cold,
And the light struggled through the bars.
Others might mock him, or disown,
With lying tongue: my place was there,
And as I bore him to the throne
Upon the pleading arms of prayer,
He told me how Temptation's hand
Pressed the red wine-cup to his lip,
Leaving him powerless to withstand
As the storm leaves the sinking ship;
End how, all blind to evil then,
Down from the way of life he trod,
Sinning against his fellow-menReviling the dear name of God.




SICK AND IN PRISON.
WILDLY falls the night around me,
Chains I cannot break have bound me,
Spirits unrebuked, undriven
From before me, darken heaven;
Creeds bewilder, and the saying
Unfelt prayers, makes need of praying.
In this bitter anguish lying,
Only thou wilt hear my cryingThou, whose hands wash white the erring
As the wool is at the shearing;
Not with dulcimer or psalter,
But with tears, I seek thy altar.
Feet that trod the mount so weary,
Eyes that pitying looked on Mary,
Hands that brought the Father's blessing,
Heads of little children pressing,
Voice that said, " Behold thy brother,"
Lo, I seek ye and none other.
Look, oh gentlest eyes of pity
Out of Zion, the glorious city;
235




236         SICK AND IN PRISON.
Speak, oh voice of mercy, sweetly;
Hide me, hands of love, completely;
Sick, in prison, lying lonely,
Ye can lift me up, ye only.
In my hot brow soothe the aching,
In my sad heart stay the breaking,
On my lips the murmur trembling,
Change to praises undissembling;
Make me wise as the evangels,
Clothe me with the wings of angels.
Power that made the few loaves many,
Power that blessed the wine at Cana,
Power that said to Lazarus, "Waken!"
Leave, oh leave me not forsaken!
Sick and hungry, and in prison,
Save me Crucified and Risen!




OLD STORIES.
No beautiful star will twinkle
To-night through my window-pane,
As I list to the mournful falling
Of the leaves and the autumn rain.
High up in his leafy covert
The squirrel a shelter hath;
And the tall grass hides the rabbit,
Asleep in the churchyard path.
On the hills is a voice of wailing
For the pale dead flowers again,
That sounds like the heavy trailing
Of robes in a funeral train.
Oh, if there were one who loved meA kindly and gray-haired sire:
To sit and rehearse old stories
To-night by my cabin-fireThe winds as they would might rattle
The pane, or the trees so tallIn the tale of a stirring battle
My heart would forget them all.
237




238              OLD STORIES.
Or if, by the embers dying,
We talked of the past, the while,
I should see bright spirits flying
From the pyramids and the Nile.
Echoes from harps long silent
Would troop through the aisles of time.
And rest on the soul like sunshine,
If we talked of the bards sublime.
But, hark! did a phantom call me,
Or was it the wind went by?
Wild are my thoughts and restless,
But they have no power to fly.
In place of the cricket humming,
And the moth by the candle's light,
I hear but the deathwatch drummingI've heard it the livelong night.
Oh for a friend who loved meOh for a grey-haired sire,
To sit with a quaint old story
To-night by nmy cabin fire!




VISIONS OF LIGHT.
THE moon is rising in beauty
The sky is solemn and bright,
And the waters are singing like lovers
That walk in the valleys at night.
Like the towers of an ancient city,
That darken against the sky,
Seems the blue mist of the river
O'er the hill-tops far and high.
1 see through the gathering darkness
The spire of the village church,
And the pale white tombs, half hidden
By the tasselled willow and birch.
Vain is the golden drifting
Of morning light on the hill;
No white hand opens the windows
Of those chambers low and still.
But their dwellers were all my kindred
Whatever their lives might be,
And their sufferings and achievenients
I-Have recorded lessons for me.
239




21 0          VISIONS OF LIGHT.
Not one of the countless voyagers
Of life's mysterious main
Has laid down his burden of sorrows,
Who hath lived and loved in vain.
From the bards of the elder ages
Fragments of song float by,
Like flowers in the streams of summer,
Or stars in the midnight sky.
Some plumes in the dust are scattered,
Where the eagles of Persia flew,
And wisdom is reaped from the furrows
The plough of the Roman drew.
From the white tents of the Crusaders
The phantoms of glory are gone,
But the zeal of the barefooted hermit
In humanity's heart lives on.
Oh! sweet as the bell of the Sabbath
In the tower of'the village church,
Or the fall of the yellow moonbeams
In the tasselled willow and birchComes a thought of the blessed issues
That shall follow our social strife,
When the spirit of love maketh perfect
The beautiful mission of life.




LONGINGS.
I AM weary of the mystery
Of life and death, and long to see
Into the great eternity:
The locked hands loose, the feet untied,
The blank eyes re-illumined,
The senseless ashes deified.
For as the ages come and go,
The tides of being ever flow,
From light to darkness, ending so.
A little gladness for the birth,
For youth a little soberer mirth,
For age, a looking toward the earthA listening for the spirit's call,
A reaching up the smooth, steep wall
Of the close grave-and this is all.
Hoping, we find that hope is vain;
Are pleased, and pleasure ends in pain;
Loving, we win no love again.
We bring our sorrow, a wild weight,
Praying inexorable fate
To comfort us, and when we wait11         241




242                L O N G I N G S.
W'inning no answer to the quest,
Madly with angels we contest,
Asking if that which is, is best.
So life wears out, and so the din
Goes on, and other lives begin
The same as though we had not been.
True, here and there in time's dead mould,
There stands some obelisk of gold,
For which, God knoweth, peace was sold.
For they must meet their fellows' frown,
And wear on throbbing brows the crown,
O'er whom death's curtain shuts not down,
Others for fame may do and dare,
For me it seems enough to bear
The ills of being while we are:
Without the strife, to leave behind
A name with laurels intertwined,
To be of evil tongues maligned.
And had I power to choose, to-day,
Some good to help me on my way,
I truly think that I wouild say" Oh thou who gavest me mortal breath,
And hold'st me here'twixt life and death,
I)ouble the measure of my faith!"




THE  TIME TO  BE.
I SIT where the leaves of the maple
And the gnarled and knotted gumi
Are circling and drifting around me,
And think of the time to come.
For the human heart is the mirror
Of the things that are near and far;
Like the wave that reflects in its bosom
The flower and the distant star.
As change is the order of nature,
And beauty springs from decay,
So in its destined season
The false for the true makes way.
The darkening power of evil,
And discordant jars and crime,
Are the cry preparing the wilderness
For the flower and the harvest-time.
Though doubtings and weak misgivings
May rise to the soul's alarm,
Like the ghosts of the heretic burnerls,
In the province of bold refornl.
243




244           THE TIME TO BE.
And now as the summer is fading,
And the cold clouds full of rain,
And the net, in the fields of stubble
And the briers, is spread in vain-.
I catch through the mists of life's river,
A glimpse of the time to be,
When the chain, from thetondman rusted,
Shall leave him erect and freeOn the solid and broad foundation,
A common humanity's right,
To cover his branded shoulder
With the garment of love from sight.




REMORSE.
BREAK sweetly, red morning,
I shudder with fear,
For dreaming at midnight
My darling, my dear,
My Mary, my lost loving Mary, was here.
Soft smoothing my pillow,
Soft soothing my woe,
She folded the coverlid,
Dainty as snow,
About my chill bosom, and kneeling so slow,
Meek clasped she together
Her hands, lily white,
While the flow of her tresses,
All golden with light
Of the world where there never is any more night,
Fell over my forehead,
And bathed it like dew,
As the pale mortal sorrow
In lifetime she knew,
Was nmixed with the fond whisper, "Pray I for you."
24;5




246                REMORSE.
And therefore this tremulous
Shudder of pain
Shakes my desolate bosom;
This agonized rain
Fills my eyes, that I thought not to vex me again.
Break sweetly, red morning,
Break sweetly, I pray;
In the darkness of midnight
As moaning I lay,
Fled this vision, this beautiful vision away.
On a hill where the larches
Trail low to the ground,
Till the moon lights but faintly
The headstones around,
Fast asleep lieth Mary beneath the hushed mound.
In her white shroud she lieth
Beneath the cold stoneMy life was the shadow
That darkened her own,
Vlnd my death-crown to-night is of thorns I have sown,




DESPAIR.
COME, most melancholy maid,
From thy tent of woful shade,
And with hemlock, sere and brown,
Keep the struggling daylight down.
From thy pale unsmiling brow
Wind the heavy tresses now,
And in whispers sad and low
I will tell thee all my wo.
The path watched and guarded most,.By an evil star is crossed,
And a dear one lies to day
Sick, in prison, far awayNaked, famished, suffering wrong;
Dreamed I of him all night long,
And each dreary wind o'erblown
Seemed an echo of his moan.
When he left me, long ago,
Brown locks, touched of summer's glow,
Beautified his boyish browThinned and faded are they now.
247




248                DESPAIR.
Seeing clouds like oxen stray
Through the azure fields all day,
And the lengthening sunbeams lie
Like bright furrows of the sky,
Underneath an oaken roof
We were sitting, sorrow-proof —
Cheating I with tales the hours,
HIeaping he my lap with flowers.
As yon elm, the ivied one,
Came between us and the sun,
And the lambs went toward the fold,
I remember that I told,
How the robin and the wren,
Friendless and unburied men
Cover with the leaves of flowers
From the twilight's chilly hours.
Now along the level snow
Glistening the frost specks glow,
And the trees stand high and bare,
Shivering in the bitter air.
-Come, oh melancholy maid,
From thy tent of woful shade,
That in whispers, sad and low,
I may tell thee all my wo.




RESPITE.
LEAVE me, dear ones, to my slumber,
Daylight's faded glow is gone;
In the red light of the morning
I must rise and journey on.
I am weary, oh, how weary!
And would rest a little while;
Let your kind looks be my blessing,
And your last "' Good-night" a smile.
We have journeyed up together,
Through the pleasant day-time flown;
Now my feet have pressed life's summit,
And my pathway lies alone.
And, my dear ones, do not call me,
Should you haply be awake,
When across the eastern hill-tops
Presently the day shall break.
For, while yet the stars are lying
In the gray lap of the dawn,
On my long and solemn journey
I shall be awake and gone;
11*     249




250                RE SPITE.
Far from mortal pain and sorrow,
And from passion's stormy swell,
Knocking at the golden gateway
Of the eternal citadel.
Therefore, dear ones, let me slumber —
Faded is the day and gone;
And with morning's early splendor,
I must rise and journey on.




OF ONE DYING.
IN the blue middle heavens of June
The sun was burning bright,
What time we parted-now! alas,'Tis winter-time and night.
The swart November long ago,
With troops of gloomy hours,
BWent folding the October's tents
Of misty gold, like flowers.
The wind hangs moaning on the pane,
The cricket tries to sing,
And a voice tells me all the while,
It never will be spring;
It never will be spring to her,
For in the west wind's flow,
I hear a sound that seems to me
Like digging in the snow.
She will not have to lay away
The baby fiom her kneesThe wild birds sung his lullaby
Last summer in the trees;
251




2532            OF ONE DYING.
The cedars and the cypresses,
That in the churchyard growBut little Alice will be leftHow shall we make her know,
When she shall see the pallid brow,
The shroud about the dead,
That the beloved one is in
The azure overhead? 
For scarcely by the open grave,
Have we of larger light
And clearer faith, the strength to shape
The spirit's upward flight.




MAY VERSES.
Do you hear the wild birds calling —
Do you hear them, oh my heart?
Do you see the. blue air falling
From their rushing wings apart?
With young mosses they are flocking,
For they hear the laughing breeze,
With dewy fingers rocking
Their light cradles in the trees!
Within nature's bosom holden,'Till the wintry storms were done,
Little violets, white and golden,
Now are leaning to the sun.
With its stars the box is florid,
And the wind-flower, sweet to view,
Hath uncovered its pale forehead
To the kisses of the dew.
While thousand blossoms tender,
As coquettishly as they,
Are sunning their wild splendor
In the blue eyes of the May!
253




254              MAY VERSES.
In the water softly dimpled —
In the flower-enameled sodHow beautifully exampled
Is the providence of God!
From the insect's little story
To the fartherest star above,
All are waves of glory, glory,
In the ocean of his love!




WURTHA.
TIIRouGH the autumn's mists so red
Shot the slim and golden stocks
Of the ripe corn; Wurtha said,
" Let us cut them for our flocks."
Answered I, " When morning leaves
EHer bright footprints on the sea.
As I cut and bind the sheaves,
Wurtha, thou shalt glean for me."
"Nay, the full moon shines so bright
All along the vale below,
I could count our flocks to-night;
Haco, let us rise and go.
For when bright the risen morn
Leaves her footprints on the sea,
Thou may'st cut and bind the corn,
But I cannot glean for thee."
And as I my reed so light
Blowing, sat, her fears to calm,
Said she, " Haco, yesternight
hi my dream I missed a lamb




256                 WURTIHA.
And as down the misty vale
Went I pining for the lost,
Something shadowy and pale,
Phantom-like, my pathway crossed,
Saying, " In a chilly bed,
Low and dark, but full of peace,
For your coming, softly spread,
Is the dead lamb's snowy fleece."
Passed the sweetest of all evesMorn was breaking, for our flocks:
" Let us go and bind to sheaves,
All the slim and golden stocks;
Wake, my Wurtha, wake" —but still
Were her lips as still could l1e,
And her folded hands too chill
Ever more to glean for me.




THE SHEPHERDESS.
SAT we on the mossy rocks
In the twilight, long ago,
I and Ulna keeping flocksFlocks with fleeces white as snow.
Beauty smiled along the sky;
Beauty shone along the sea;
"Ulna, Ulna," whispered 1,
This is all for you and me-!"
Brushing back my heavy locks,
Said he, not, alas! in glee,
"Art content in keeping flocks
With a shepherd boy like me?"Shone the moon so softly white
Down upon the mossy rocks,
Covering sweetly with her light
Me and Ulna, and our flocks.
Running wild about our feet
Were the blushing summer flowers"Ulna," said I, " what is sweet
In this world that is not ours?"
2537




258           THE SHEPIHERDESS.
Thrice he kissed my cheek, and sighed,
These are dreary rocks and coldOh, the world is very wide,
And I weary of my fold!
Now a thousand oxen stray
That are Ulna's, down the moor,
And great ships their anchors weigh,
Freighted with his priceless ore.
But my tears will sometimes flow,
Thinking of the mossy rocks
Where we sat, so long ago,
I and Ulna, keeping flocks.




WASHING THE SHEEP.
"OHi, Jesse go and wash the sheepThe hills are white with May,
The mossy brook is brimming full-'T is shearing time to-day.
And I will bring my spinning-wheel,
And tie the bands anew,
And when to-night, the lilac buds
Break open with the dew,
I'11 come and meet you, as I used,
The summer eves ago,
When first you loved me, Jesse dear —
Or when you told me so."'T was Emily, the fair young wife
Of Jesse thus who spake;
And, kissing her, he straight became
A shepherd for her sake.
She heard him singing to the sheep,
Across the hills, all day,
As one by one he plunged them in
The rainy brook of May.
But ere the eve, the shadows fell,
The sun in clouds was gone,
259




260         WASHING THE SHEEP.
And dreary through the western woods,
The windy night came on.
Her gold curls beaten straight beneath
The rain that wildly drove,
Sad Emily along the hills
Went calling to her love;
And calling by the brooks of May,
The grassy brooks o'erfull,
What sees she'mid the new-washed lambs,
Gleam whiter than their wool?
Oh never winter frost, nor ice,
So filled her heart with dread;
And never kissed she living love
As then she kissed the dead!




GEORGE BURROUGHS.
OH, dark as the creeping, of shadows,
At night, o'er the burial hill,
When the pulse in the stony artery
Of.the bosom of earth is stillWhen the sky, through its frosty curtain,
Shows the glitter of many a lamp,
Burning in brightness and stillness,
Like the fire of a far-off campM[ust have been the thoughts of the martyr,
Of the jeers and the taunting scornl,
And the cunning trap of the gallows,
That waited his feet at morn,
As, down in his lonesome dungeon
The hours trooped silent and slow,
Like sentinels through the thick darkness,
Hard by the tents of the foe.
* No purer hearts or more heroic spirits ever perished at the stake, than some
crushed and broken on the wheel of bigotry during the Puritan Reign of Terror.
Among them, I would instance the Rev. George Burroughs. who pravyed with
and for his repentant accuser the day previous to his execution, and whose
conviction demonstrated the righteousness of God to the Rev. Cotton Mlather.
After his execution, to which he was conveyed in an open cart, Mr. Burroughs
-was stripped of his clotlhing, dragged by the hangman's rope to a, rocky
excavatio,t: in which, being thrown and trampled on by the mob, he was
finally le;t partly uncovered.
261




262          GEORGE BURROUGHS.
Could he hear the voices of music
Which thrilled that deep heart of gloom?
Or see the sorrowful beauty
That meekly leaned by the tomb?
Could he note in the cold and thin shadow
That swept through his prison bars,
The white hand of the pure seraph
That beckoned him to the stars,
As, roused to the stony rattle
Of the hangman's open cart,
lie smothered, till only God heard it,
The piercing cry of his heart?
Can Christ's mercy wash back to whiteness
The feet his raiment that trod,
Whose soul, from that dark persecution,
Went up to the bosom of God?
Itath he forgiveness, who shouted,
"Righteously do ye, and well,
To quench in blood, hot and smoking,
This firebrand, which is of hell?"
Over fields moistened thus darkly
Wave harvests of tolerance nowBut the tombstones of the old martyrs
Sharpened the share of the plough!




LUTHER.
OH ages! add with reverend light
New splendors to the name of him
Who fought for conscience a good fight,
And sung for truth the morning hymn!
Who, when old sanctions like a flood
Drove wrathful on, to work his fall,
Put forth his single hand and stood
Sublimer, mightier than they all.
Stood, from all precedent apart,
The double challenge to preferA conflict with his own weak heart
As well as with the powers that were.
Who spake, and, speaking, clave in twaiii
The mocking symbols in his way;
Who prayed, and scoffing tongues grew fain
To pray the prayers they heard him pray.
Who, guided by a righteous aim,
Enkindled with his mortal breath
A beacon, on the cliffs of fame,
That shines across the wastes of death;
263




264                  LUTHER.
From cell to old cathedral height,
From cowled monk to vestal nun,
As, through the cloudy realms of night,
The fiery seams of daybreak runTill in the pilgrim's way, the reeds
Like unto strong red cedars thrive,
And free from wrappings of old creeds
The corpse of thought stands up alive.
Gone from the watchings of the night,
The wrestling might of lonely prayers;Oh, ages! add your reverend light
To the great glory that he bears!




THE EVENING WALK.
"MOTHER, see my cottage bonnet!
Never was it bleached so white;
I have put f'resh ribbons on it,
And three roses, for to-night.
Thiuk you, mother, they will fade
For a half hour in the shade?"'T was the coaxing Adelaide
Thus who said, the bonnet tying
Close about her golden hair.
Waiting nt for a replying
To her question, she must wear
The new ribbons and the flowersNone would see them-'t was her mood;
On the hill-side near the wood
She would be the next two hours.
"If you want me, mother dearCall, I shall be sure to hear."
So said joyous AdelaidePretty, self-deceiving maid.
Many times before that day
She had gone the self-same way,
12        235




266          THE EVENING WALK.
Singing. skipping here and there,
Where a daisy bloomed, or where
Patches of bright grasses lay.
She would pout if you should say
Sweeter music twilight cheers
Than the birds make, and with tears
Tell you, it is not the truth
She has ever seen a youth
Driving cattle any night
Down a meadow full in sightDown a meadow thick with flowers
Driving cattle, brown and white,
Slowly towards a shallow well,
Hedged with lilies all around,
Brighter than the speckled shell
Of the " sweet beast" Hermes fouXlnl.
What deceitful hearts are ours!
For't is true, say all she can,
That the farm-boy, Corolan,
Drives at night his cattle so —
Silent sometimes drives them, slowSometimes trilling songs of glee —
Treading very near the shade
Where, unconscious, it may be,
Sits the blushing Adelaide.
The huge leader of the flock
Often with a golden strand,
Made of oat straw, gaily bound
His black forehead round and round,




TIHE EVENING AWALK.               26 (7
Close to Corolan doth walk,
Gently guided by his hand.
Haply't is but for the pleasing
Of his own eyes he doth make
The gold cordage, and for sake
Of the green and flowery dells
His white oxen wear the bells,
And the song may be for easing
A young heart that loves the flowing
Of soft sounds in solitudes,
And the lonesome echoes going
Like lost poets through the woods.
Or all haply, happens soFor the maiden says with tears,
" On the white necks of the steers
Silver bells make music low
When the pastured cattle go
Toward the spring-but not a sound
Sweeter, ever echoes round "So it cannot be she hears!
And if thither Corolan strays,
She has seen him not, she says;
And if eyes so bold and bright
As you hint of, pierced the shade,
She would not be night by night
On the hill side.
Adelaide
Surely would not so declare
If she saw young Corolan there.




268              MY MOTHER.
So we will not wrong the maid
Guessing why the cottage bonnet
IHad fresh flowers and ribbons on it.
Or for what the hill side shade
Pleased her-beauteous Adelaide.
MY MOTHER.'T WAS in the autumn's dreary close,
A long, long time ago:
The berries of the brier-rose
Hung bright above the snow,
And night had spread a shadow wild
About the earth and sky,
When, calling me her orphan child,
She said that she must die.
She rests within the quiet tomb,
The narrow and the chillThe window of our cabin home
Looks out upon the hill.
Oh, when the world seems wild and wide,
And friends to love me few,
I think of how she lived and died,
And gather strength anew.




LAST SONG.
THE beetle from the furrow goes,
The bird is on the sheltering limb,
And in the twilight's pallid close
Sits the gray evening, hushed and dim.
In the blue west the sun is down,
And soft the fountain washes o'er
Green limes and hyacinths so brown
As never fountain washed before.
I scarce can hear the curlew call,
I scarce can feel the night-wind's breath;
I only see the shadows fall,
1 only feel this chill is death.
At morn the bird will leave the bough,
The beetle o'er the furrow run,
But with the darkness falling now,
The morning for my eyes is done.
Piping his ditty low and soft,
If shepherd chance to cross the wold,
Bound homeward from the flowery croft,
And the white tendance of his fold,
269




2 aO              W E A R I N E S S.
And find me lying fast asleep,
Be inspiration round him thrown,
That he may dig my grave down deep,
Where never any sunshine shone.
WEARINESS.
GENTLE, gentle' sisters twain,
I am sad with toil and pain,
Hoping, struggling, all in vain,
And would be with you again.
Sick and weary, let me go
To our homestead, old and low,
Where the cool, fresh breezes blowThere I shall be well, I know.
Violets, gold, and white, and blue,
Sprout up sweetly through the dewLilacs now are budding, tooOh, I pine to be with you!
I am lonely and unblestI am weary, and would rest
Where all things are brightest, best,
In the lovely, lovely West.




PERVERSITY.
IF thy weak, puny hand might reach away
And rend out lightnings froinm the clouds to-day,
At little pains, as, with a candle flame
Touching the flax upon my distaff here
Would fill the house with light, it were the sameA little thing to do. It is the far
Makes half the poet's passion for the star,
The while he treads the shining dewdrop near.
Of mortal weaknesses I have my sharePining and longing, and the madman's fit
Of groundless hatreds, blindest loves, despairBut in this rhymn6d musing I have writ
Of an infirmity that is not mine:
My heart's dear idol were not less divine
That no grave gaped between us, black and steep;
Though, if it were so, I could oversweep
Its gulf-all gulfs —though ne'er so widely riven;
Or from hot desert sands dig out sweet springs;
For I believe, and I have still believed,
That Love may even fold its milk-white wings
In the red bosom of hell, nor up to heaven
Measure the distance with one thought aggrieved.
271




272~   WHEN MY LOVE AND I LIE DEAD.
Why should I tear my flesh, and bruise my feet,
Climbing for roses, when, from where I stand,
Down the green meadow I may reach my hand,
And pluck them off as well?-sweet, very sweet
This world which God has made about us lies,Shall we reproach him with unthankful eyes?
WHEN MY LOVE AND I LIE DEAD.
WHEN my love and I lie dead,
Both together on one bed,
Shall it first be truly said,
"Fate was kindly: they are wed!"
When they come the shroud to make
Some sweet soul shall say, " Awake
From your long white sleep, and take
Feast of kisses for love's sake."
And though we nor see nor hearSafe from sorrow-safe from fear,
Both together on one bier,
We shall feel each other near.
Oh my lover, oh my friend,
This J know will be the endOnly when our ashes blend
Will our heavy fortunes mend.




HIDDEN LIGHT
THE rain is beating sullenly to-night;
The wild red flowers like flames are drenched away;
Down through the gaps of the black woods the light
Strikes cold and dismal. Only yesterday
It seems since Spring along the neighboring moor
Washed up the daisies, and the barks of trees
Cracked with-green buds, while at my cabin door
The brier hung heavy with the yellow bees.
Now all is blank: the wind climbs drearily
Against the hills, the pastures close are browsed;
Snakes slip in gaps of earth, gray crickets cry,
Ants cease from running, and the bat is housed.
No bright star, throbbing through the dark, one bai:an
Of comfort sends me from its home aboveI only see the splendor of a dream,
Slowly and sadly fading out of love.
I only see the wild boughs as they blow
Against my window, see the purple slant
Of twilight shadows into darkness go;
And yet again the whistling March will plant
12*        273




'.74           DDEVOTION.
The April meadows, wheat fields will grow bright
In their own time, the king-cups in their day
Come through the grass; and somewhere there is Light
If my weak thoughts could strike upon the way.
DEVOTION.
WITHIN a silver wave of cloud
The yellow sunset light was staid,
As on the daisied turf she bowed:
I saw and loved her as she prayedThy holy will on earth be done,
As in the heavens, all-hallowed One!
No evil word her lip had learned;
Her heart with love was overfull;
No scarlet sinfulness had turned
IHer garment from the look of wool:
Give us, oh Lord, our daily bread;
Keep us and guide us home, she said.
No violet, with head so low,
Were sweetly meek as she in prayer;
Nor rising from the April snow
A daffodilly, half so fair,
As her uprising from the sod,
Fresh from communion with her God.




PROPHECY.
I THINK thou lovest me-yet a prophet said
To-day, Elhadra, if thou laidest dead,
From thy white forehead would he fold the shroud,
And crown thee with his kisses. Nay, not soThe love that to thy living presence bowed,
When death shall claim thee will be quick to go.
Shall the wood fall to ashes, and the flame,
Feeding on nothing, live and burn the same?"
So, with my large faith unto gloom allied,
Sprang up a shadow sunshine could not quell,
And the voice said, Would'st haste to go outside
This continent of being, it were wellWhere finite, growing toward the Infinite,
Its robe of glory gathers out of dust,.
And, looking down the radiances white,
Sees all God's purposes about us, just.
Canst thou, Elhadra, reach out of the grave,
And draw the golden waters of love's well?
His years are chrisms of brightness in time's wave —
Thine are as dewdrops in the nightshade's bell!
275




276           LIGHT AND LOVE.
Then straightening in my hands the rippled length
Of all my tresses, slowly, one by one,
I took the flowers out. Dear one, in thy strength
Pray for my weakness. Thou hast seen the sun,
Large in the setting, drive a column of light,
Down through the darkness; so, within death's night,
Oh, my beloved! when I shall have gone,
If it might be so, would my love burn on.
LIGHT AND LOVE.
LIGHT waits for us in heaven: Inspiring thought!
That when the darkness all is overpast,
The beauty which the Lamb of God has bought
Shall flow about our saved souls at last,
And wrap them from all night-time and all woe:
The spirit and the word assure us so.
Love lives for us in heaven: Oh, not so sweet
Is the May dew which mountain flowers inclose
Nor golden raining of the winnowed wheat,
Nor blushing out of the brown earth, of rose,
Or whitest lily, as, beyond time's wars,
The silvery rising of these two twin stars!




A RETROSPECT.
DOWN in the west, the sunset gold
Is fading from the sombre cloud,
And a fixed sorrow, hushed and cold,
Is closing round me like a shroud;
Closing with thoughts of twilight hours,
When gaily, on the homestead hill,
Two children played among the flowersI would that they were children still.
For as I scan with tear-dimmed eyes
The future, till life's sun hangs low,
No white hand reaches from the skies,
With chrisms of healing for our wo.
And though it may be either mind
Has grown with toil and years and strife,
Experience, like a blightning wind,
Has made a barren waste of lifeA barren waste, whose reach of sands
Lies glowing in the noontide heat,
Where no bright tree of blossoms stands,
Dropping cool shadows round our feet.
277




THE HOMELESS.
As down on the wing of the raven,
Or drops on the upas-tree lie,
So darkness and blight are around me
To-night, I can scarcely tell why!
Alone in the populous city!
No hearth for my comning is warm,
And the stars, the sweet stars, are all hidden
Away in the cloud and the storm!
The thoughts of all things that are saddest,
The phantoms unbidden that start
From the ashes of hopes that have perished,
Are with me to-night in my heart!
Alas! in this desolate sorrow,
The moments are heavy and long;
And the white-pinioned spirit of Fancy
Is weary, and hushes her song.
One word of the commonest kindness
Could make all around me seem bright
As birds in the haunts of the summer,
Or lights in a village at night.
278




A PRAYER.
FORGIVE me, God! forgive thy child, I pray,
And if I sin, thy holy spirit move
My heart to better moods: I cannot say,
Disjoin my human heart from human love!
If, in the rainy woods, the traveler sees,
Through some black gap, a splendor fair and white,
Shining beneath the wild rough-rinded trees,
His steps turn thither. Through the infinite
Of darkness that would else be, as we pass
From silence into silence, round our way,
Love shineth so. Doth not the mower stay
His scythe, if that a bird be in the grass 2
If God be love, then love is likest God,
And our low natures the divineness mock,
If, when we hear the blest " Arise and walk,"
We turn our faces back against the sod.
The plowman, tired, among the furrowed corn,
Leans on the ox's shoulder; done with play,
Childhood among the daisies drops away
Into the lap of sleep, and dreams till morn.
279




280               XKINDNESS.
It is as if, when angels had their birth,
The one with heaviest glory on its wings,
Dropt from its proper sphere into the earth,
Where, piteous of our mortal needs, it sings.
Sings sweeter melodies than winds do make,
Playing their dulcimers for the young May;
Blessed Forever! if sometimes I take
Their beauty round my heart-forgive, I pray!
KINDNESS.
IN the dull shadows of long hopeless strife
I talked with sorrow-round about me lay
The broken plans and promises of life,When first thy Kindness crossed my friendless way.
Then felt I, hushed with wonder and sweet awe,
As with his weary banners round him furled
Felt ocean's wanderer, when first he saw
The pale-lipt billows kissing a new world.
The joy, the rapture of that glad surprise,
Haply some heart may know that inly grieves,
Some sad Ruth bowing from love-speaking eyes
Her trembling bosom over alien sheaves.




ENJOY.
THAT the dear tranced Pleasures of a night
Puts on her hood of thorns at break of dayPassing the cornfields, and the hedges gay
With honeysuckles, straight: her feet, so white,
Buried down deep in dust-aside from-all
The sweet birds making love-songs in the woods,
The way-side cottage with its cold green wall
Of moss against the sun, the fennel buds
Fringing the hay-fields-all of us do know;
And yet, for that we are not always blest,
Shall we be always weepers, and so burn
Our dainty bodies, slacking with our tears
The scorched stones our stumblings overturn,
And making double measurements of woe?
Nay, I do rather deem that road the best,
Which hath good inns beside; where oftenest cheers
The well, where man and beast may drink their fill,
Nor stint belated travellers one whit;
And all the house is with white candles lit
When day burns down, and where the housewife still
Hath some red earthen pot of marigolds
That look like sunshine when the withered wolds
2b1




282                 APRIL.
Are under the flat snow. For is it wrong
If human needs have human comforting?
Or shall the sweetness of our winter song
Keep the green April buds from blossoming?
APRIL.
IF, in the sunshine of this April morn,
Thick as the furrows of the unsown corn.
I saw the grave-mounds darkening in the way
That I have come, 1 would not therefore lay
My brow against their shadows. Sadly brown
May fade the boughs once blowing brightly down
About my playing; never any more
May fall my knocking on the homestead door,
And never more the wild birds (pretty things)
Against my yellow primrose beds their wings
May nearly slant, as singing toward the woods
They fly in summer. Shall I hence take moods
Of moping melancholy —sobbings wild
For the blue modest eyes, that sweetly lit
All my lost youth? Nay! though this rhyme were writ
By funeral torches, I would yet have smiled
Betwixt the verses. God is good, I know;
And though in this bad soil a time we grow
Crooked and ugly, all the ends of things




AT THE GRAVE.                 283
Must be in beauty. Love can work no ill;
And though we see the shadow of its wings
Only at times, shall we not trust it still!
- So, even for the dead I will not bind
My soul to grief: Death cannot long divide;
For is it not as if the rose that climbed
My garden wall, had bloomed the other side?
AT THE GRAVE.
THE grass grew green between us, and I said
There is no soul to love me —peace is lost;
Over my heavy heart my hands I crossed,
And mourned the sun away: " She is not dead
But sleepeth only; time is as a wall
Where death makes rents, and thro' which come and go
Hourly, the spirits which ye mourn for so,
Faithless, and faint, and blind." As if a call
Came out of heaven, I lifted up my eyes,
And thought to see white wings along the air;
The many stars, the single moon, were thereSeeing not, I felt, the might that deifies.




284            AT THE GRAVE.
The darkness had the quality of light;
I knew no soul that GOD had made could dieThat time is knitted to eternity,
And finite drawn into the Infinite.
The violets of seven bright times of bloom
Lay purple in the moonlight as before,
But I, who came a mourner, mourned no more;
An angel had been sitting at the tombThe stone was rolled away. A temple gate,
O'errun with flowers, and shining with the light
Of altar-fires, life seemed to me that night,
Where, for the marriage crowning, lovers wait.




MULBERRY HILL.
OH, sweet was the eve when I came from the mill,
Adown the green windings of Mulberry hill:
My heart like a bird with its throat all in tune,
That sings in the beautiful bosom of June.
For there, at her spinning, beneath a broad tree,
By a rivulet shining and blue as the sea,
First I saw my Mary —her tiny feet bare,
And the buds of the sumach among her black hair.
They called me a bold enough youth, and I would
Have kept the name honestly earned, if I could;
But, somehow, the song I had whistled was hushed,
And, spite of my manhood, I felt that I blushed.
I would tell you, but words cannot paint my delight,
When she gave the red buds for a garland of white,
When her cheek with soft blushes —but no,'tis in vain!
Enough that I loved, and she loved me again.
Three summers have come and gone by with their charms,
And a cherub of purity smiles in my arms,
With lips like the rosebud and locks softly light
As the flax which my Mary was spinning that night.
285




286           A RUSTIC PLAINT.
And in the dark shadows of Mulberry Hill,
By the grass-covered road where I came from the mill
And the rivulet shining and blue as the sea,
My Mary lies sleeping beneath the broad tree.
A RUSTIC PLAINT.
SINCE thou, my dove, didst level thy wild wings
To goodlier shelter than my cabin makes,
[ work with heavy hands, as one who breaks
The flax to spin a shroud of. April rings
With silvery showers, smiles light the face of May,
The thistle's prickly leaves are lined with wool,
And their gray tops of purple burs set full;
Quails through the stubble run. From day to day
Through these good seasons I have sadly mused,
The very stars, thou knowest, sweet, for what,
Draw their red flames together, standing not
About the mossy gables as they used.
No more I dread the winds, though ne'er so rough:
Better the withered bole should prostrate lie;Only the ravens in its black limbs cry,
And better birds will find green boughs enough.




THE SPIRIT-HAUNTED.
O'ER the dark woods, surging, solemn,
Hung the new moon's silver ring;
And in white and naked beauty,
Out from Twilight's luminous wing,
Peered the first star of the eve;-'T was the time when poets weave
Radiant songs of love's sweet passion,
In the loom of thought sublime,
And with throbbing, quick pulsations
Beat the golden web of rhyme.
On a hillside very lonely
With the willows' dewy flow
Shutting down like sombre curtains
Round the silent beds below,
Where the lip from love is bound.
And the forehead napkin-crowned, —
I beheld the spirit-hauntedSaw his wild eyes burn like fire,
Saw his thin hands, clasped together,
Crush the frail strings of his lyre,
As, upon a dream of splendor
His abraded soul was stretched,
287




288          THE SPIRIT  HAUNTED.
And across the heart's sad ruins
Winged imaginations reached
Toward the glory of the skiesToward the love that never dies.
In a tower, shadow-laden,
With a casement high and dim,
Years agone there dwelt a maiden,
Loving and beloved by him.
But while singing sweet one day
A bold masker crossed her way.
Then-her bosom softly trembling
Like a star in morning's lightFaithless to her mortal lover
Fled she forth into the night, —
A great feast for her was spread
In the Kingdom overhead.
Woe, oh woe! for the abandoned;
Dim his mortal steps must be;
Death's high priest his soul has wedded
Unto immortality!Twilight's purple fall, or morn,
Finds him, leaves him, weary, lorn.
In her cave lies Silence, hungry
For the beauty of his song;
Echoes, locked from mortal waking,
Tremble as he goes along,
And for love of him pale maids
Lean like lilies from the shades.




ULALIE.                    2S
But the locks of love unwind(ing
From his bosom as he  (Smay,
Buries he his soul of sorrow
In the cloud-dissolving day
Of the spirit-peopled shore
Ever, ever, evermore.
ULALIE.
THE crimson of the maple trees
Is lighted by the moon's soft glow;
Oh, nights like this, and things like these,
Bring back a dream of long ago.
For on an eve as sweet as thisUpon this bank-beneath this treeMy lips, in love's impassioned kiss,
Met those of Ulalie.
Softly as now the dewdrops burned
In the flushed bosoms of the flowers,
Backward almost seems time to have turned
The golden axis of the hours,
Till, cold as ocean's beaten surf,
Beneath these trailing boughs, I see
The white cross and the faded turf
Above lost Ulalie.
13




ON THE PICTURE OF A MAGDALEN.
To be unpitied, to be weary,
To feel the nights, the daytimes, dreary,
To find nor bread nor wine that's cheery,
To live apart,
To be unneighbored among neighbors,
Sharing the burdens and the labors,
Never to have the songs or tabors
Gladden the heart.
To be a penitent forever,
And yet a sinner —never, never
At peace with the Divine ForgiverAlways at prayer,
Longing for Mercy's white pavilion,
Yet all the while a stubborn alien,
Uprising proudly in rebellion,
Hell, Heaven, to dare.
To feel all thoughts alike unholy,
To count all pleasures but as folly,
To mope in ways of melancholy,
Nor rest to know;
To be a gleaner, not a reaper,
A scorner proud, a humble weeper,
And of no heart to be the keeper,
This is my wo!
290




DEATH-SONG.
FRIENDI, if there be any near.
Is the blesqed summer here?
Is't the full moon, are they flowers.
Make so bright, so sweet the hours?
Is't the wind from cowslip beds,
That such fragrance o'er me sheds?
Oh my kindred, do not weep;
Never fell so sweet a sleep
Over mortal eyes. At night,
All the hills with snow were white,
And the tempest moaning drearBut I wake with summer here.
Haste, and take my parting hand!
\WTe are pushing from the land,
And adown a lovely stream
Gently floating —is't a dream?
For the oarsman near me sings,
Keeping time with snowy wings.
291




2932             YOUNG LOVE.
Stranger, with the wings of snow,
Singing by me as we row,
Tell my dear ones on the shore,
I have need of them no more;
Weeping will not let them see
That all angel goes with me.
YOUNG LOVE.
LIFE hath its memories lovely,
That over the heart are blown,
As over the face of the Autumn
The light of the summer flown;
Rising out of the mist so chilling,
That oft life's sky enshrouds,
Like a new moon sweetly filling
Among the twilight clouds.
And among them comes, how often,
Young love's unresting wraith,
To lift, lost hope out of ruins
To the gladness of perfect faith;
Drifting out of the past as lightly
As winds of the May-timne flow:
And lifting the shadows brightly,
As the daffodil lifts the snow.




MUSINGS BY THREE GRAVES.
THE dappled clouds are broken; bright and clear
Comes up the broad and glorious star of day;
And night, the shadowy, like a hunted deer,
Flies from the close pursuer fast away.
Now on my ear a murmur faintly swells,
And now it gathers louder and more deep,
As the sweet music of the village bells
Rouses the drowsy rustic from his sleep
Hark! there's a footstep startling up the birds,
And now as softly steals the breeze along;
I hear the sound, and almost catch the words
Of the sweet fragment of a pensive song.
And yonder, in the clover-scented valeHer bonnet in her hand, and simply cladI see the milkmaid with her flowing pail:
Alas! what is it makes her song so sad?
In the seclusion of these lowly dells
What mournful lesson has her bosom learned?
Is it th~ memory of sad farewells,
Or faithless love, or friendship unreturned?
293




294     MUSINGS BY THREE GRAVES.
Methinks yon sunburnt swain, with knotted thong,
And rye-straw hat slouched careless on his brow,
Whistled more loudly, passing her along,
To yoke his patient oxen to the plough.'Tis all in vain! she heeds not, if she hears,
And, sadly musing, separate ways they go,Oh, who shall tell how many bitter tears
Are mingled in the brightest fount below?
Poor, simple tenant of another's lands,
Vexed with no dream of heraldic renown;
No more the earnings of his sinewy hands
Shall make his spirit like the thistle's down.
Smile not, recipient of a happier fate,
And haply better formed life's ills to bear,
If e'er you pause to read the name and date
Of one who died the victim of despair.
Now morn is fully up; and while the dew
From off her sunny locks is brightly shed,
In the deep shadows of the solemn yew,
I sit alone and muse above the dead.
Not with the blackbird whistling in the brake,
Nor when the rabbit lightly near them treads,
Shall they from their deep slumbering awake,
Who lie beneath me in their narrow beds.
Oh, what is life? at best a narrow bound,
Where each that lives some baffled hope survives —
A search for something, never to be found,
Records the history of the greatest lives!




MUSINGS BY THREE GRA VES.               295
There is a haven for each weary bark,
A port where they who rest are free from sin;
But we, like children trembling in the dark,
Drive on and on, afraid to enter in.
Here lies an aged patriarch at rest,
To whom the needy never vainly cried,
Till in this vale, with toil and years oppressed:
HIis long-sustaining staff was laid aside.
Oft for his country had he fought and bled,
And gladly, when the lamp of life grew dim,
Hie joined the silent army of the deadThen why should tears of sorrow flow for him?
We mourn not for the cornfield's deepening gold,
Nor when the sickle on the hills is plied;
And wherefore should we sorrow for the old,
Who perish when life's paths have all been tried?
How oft at noon, beneath the orchard trees,
With brow serene and venerably fair,
I've seen a little prattler on his knees
Smoothing with dimpled hand his silver hair.
When music floated on the sunny hills,
And trees and shrubs with opening flowers were drest,
She meekly put aside life's cup of ills,
And kindly neighbors laid her here to rest.
And ye who loved her, would ye call her back,
Where its deep thirst the soul may never slake;
And Sorrow, with her lean and hungry pack,
Pursues through every winding which we take?




296     MUSINGS BY THREE GRAVES.
Where lengthened years but teach the bitter truth
That transient preference does not make a friend;
That manhood disavows the love of youth,
And riper years of manhood, to the end.
Beneath this narrow heap of mouldering earth,
Hard by the mansions of the old and young,
A wife and mother sleeps, whose humble worth
And quiet virtues poet never sung.
With yonder cabin, half with ivy veiled,
And children by the hand of mercy sent,
And love's sweet star, that never, never paled,
Her bosom knew the fulness of content.
Mocking ambition never came to tear
The finest fibres from her heart away,The aim of her existence was to bear
The cross in patient meekness day by day.
No hopeless, blind idolater of chance,
The sport and plaything of each wind that blows,
But lifting still by faith a heavenward glance,
She saw the waves of death around her close.
And here her children come with pious tears,
And strew their simple offerings in the sod;
Aiid learn to tread like her the vale of years,
Beloved of man, and reconciled to God.
Now from the village school the urchins come,
And shout and laughter echo far and wide;
The blue smoke curls from many a rustic home,
Where all their simple wants are well supplied.




THE MORNING.                 297
The labored hedger, pausing by the way,
Picks the ripe berries from the gadding vine:
The axe is still, the cattle homeward stray,
And transient glories mark the day's decline.
THE MORNING.
BREAK, morning, break, I weary of the night,
Longing to see and know the truth of things,
To gather faith up, as the bird her wings,
And soar into the kingdom, where is light.
Arise, oh Sun! for while the midnight lay
Along the path we travelled-dense, profound,
The hands and feet of my sweet mate were bound,
And he is prisoned till the break of day.
Shadows, wild shadows, from the air be goneWhere shaken boughs of golden lilies stood,
Came up a black impenetrable wood,
When love was lost-I cannot journey on.
By the King's palace low my knees I bow,
On the dark porch beside the palace white
Waiting the morn which shall husk out the light
From the thick shell of darkness round me now.
13*




AWAKENING.
His hair is as white as the snow,
And I am his only child(How the wild storm beats on my chamber low-)
When we parted last he smiled.
He smiled, and his hand was laid
Like the summer dew on my head(Tis a fearful night, I am half afraid,)
God bless you, my child, he said.
On the meadow the mist hung low,
The beauty of summer was o'er,
And the winds as they went to and fro,
Shook the red-rinded pears at the door.
How well I remembered it all,
The brier-buds close at the pane,
And the trumpet-vine tied to the wallI never shall see them again.
I must sink to the shadowy vale-'Tis dreary alone to go,
O temper, sweet Pity, my tale,
His hair is as white as the snow.
298




TIMES.
TIMES are there when I long to know
The mystery beyond life's wave,
Even at the awful price, to go
Unmated through the grave.
Times, when our loves and hatreds, all
Of level vast, or skyey steep,
Seem only like the meadow wall
A very lamb might leap.
Times, when within my heart the grain
Of faith into a mountain grows,
As suddenly as in the rain
The bud becomes a rose.
Times, when in fancy's shining fold
Joys out of heaven are drawn to me,
As stars in twilight's net of gold
Out of the sunset sea.
Times, when rebellion so abounds
Within me, I, though Satan's mark
Would twist his fiery wings to crowns,
And glorify the dark.
299




300            THE PROPHECY.
Times, when I feel myself a wreck
And hear a voice say in my heart,
"Better a mill-stone round thy neck,
Than being what thou art."
So am I driven upon life's stream,
By every wave, by every breeze,
From good to ill-tmy life a gleam
Between the darknesses.
THE PROPHECY.
WE two were playmates,-Rosalie
Had lived full three years more than I.
One wild March day she said to me,
" Sweet, would you grieve if I should die?"
The black cock clapped his wings and crew
Loud, from the willow overhead:
I laughed for the good sign-she drew
Her gold hair through her hands and said,
The while the tears came, " We shall play
Under these boughs no more!" Alas!
I know now that she saw that day
The daises in the churchyard grass.




THE PROPHECY.                  301
I tried to see the squirrel climb
The silver beech-bole, —tried to see
The bees, thick-flying,-all the time
My eyes were fixed on Rosalie.
A week or more the March had worn
Upon the April's flowery way,And pale, and all her long locks shorn,
On our low bed sweet Rosy lay.
Across her pillow in bright strands
I saw them fall (and wept to see),
The self-same way her little hands
Had twined them'neath the willow tree.
I had been with her all the night;
Softly she slept the time away.
In the wet woods before the light
The little brown birds sang for day.
Over the locks that lay across
The pillow where so well she slept,
Long years has grown the churchyard moss,One golden tangle only, kept.




WORSHIP.
I HAVE no seasons and no times
To think of heaven; sometimes at night
I go up on a stair of rhymes,
And find the journey very bright:
And for some accidental good,
Wrought by me, saints have near me stood.
I do not think my heart is hard
Beyond the common heart of men,
And yet sometimes the best award
Smites on it like a stone; and then
A sunbeam, that may brightly stray
In at my window, makes me pray.
The flower I've chanced on, in some nook
Giving its wild heart to the bee,
Has taught me meekness, like a book
Of written preaching; and to see
A corn field ripe, an orchard red,
Has made me bow with shame my head.
Of stated rite and formula,
A formal use the meaning wears;
When mostly in God's works I see
And feel his love, I make my prayers,
And by the peace that comes, I know
My worshiF is accepted so.
302




ONLY TWO.
WHEN the wind shall come again,
The last leaflet will be cleft
From the bough that chafes the paneOnly two of us are left.
Two of us to smile or weep:
All the others are asleep.
Ah, the winds more softly blow,
But the wild rain falls instead;
And the last sad leaf must go:
All its pretty mates are dead.
So I sit in musing sad,
Of the mates that I have had.
And the while I make my rhymes,
Harking to the dim rain fall,
In between my dreams, sometimes,
They come smiling, one and allThey of whom we are bereft:
Only two of us are left.
303




3011          THE ORPHAN GIRL.
Many a time we lay across
Beds of softest, whitest down,
As it made the low roof moss
Green upon a ground of brown,
They who close beside me lay
Do not hear the rain to-day.
THE ORPHAN GIRL.
MY heart shall rest where greenly flow
The willows o'er the meadowThe fever of this burning brow,
Be cooled beneath their shadow.
When summer birds go singing by,
And sweet rain wakes the blossom,
My weary hands shall folded lie
Upon a peaceful bosom.
When, Nature, shall the night begin
That morning ne'er displaces,
And I be calmly folded in
Thy long and still embraces?
Dearer than to the Arab maid,
When sands are hotly glowing,
The deep well and the tented shade,
Were peace of thy bestowing.




A NORLAND BALLAD.
THE train of the Norse king
Still winds the descents,
Leading down where the waste ridge
Is white with his tents;
The eve star is climbing
Above where they lie,
Like hills at the harvest-time,
White with the rye.
Who comes through the red light
Of bivouac and torch,
With footsteps unslackened
By fasting or march?Majestic in sorrow,
No white hand, I trow,
Can take from that forehead
Its pale seal of woe:
Past grooms that are merrily
Combing the steeds,
To the tent of the Norse king
He hurriedly speeds;
30.5




306         A NORLAND BALLAD.
A right noble chieftain,That gloved hand I know,
Has swooped the ger-falcon
And bended the bow.
Outspeaks he the counsel
He comes to afford:
"As loves this engloved hand
The hilt of my swordAs loves the pale martyr
The sacrament sealMy heart loves my liege lord
And prays for his weal.
" I once wooed a maiden,
As fair to my sight
As the bride of the Norse king
I plead for to-night;
As thou dost, I tarried.
Her fond faith to prove,
And the wall of the convent
Grew up'twixt our love.
"Hold we to our marching
Three leagues from this ridge,
And we compass our rear-guard
With moat and with bridge:
Give one heart such shriving
As priest can afford,
And a sweet loving lady
The arms of her lord!




A NORLAND  BALLAD.
"Oh felt you sweet pity
For half I have borne,
The scourgings, the fastings,
The lip never shorn;
You fain would not linger
For wassail's wild sway,
But leaping to saddle,
Would hold on the way."
Outspoke then, the Norse king,
Half pity, half scorn,
"Go back to thy fasting
And keep thee unshorn;
No tale of a woman
Pause I to divine;"
And from the full goblet
He quaffed the red wine.
Then fell sire and liegeman
To feasting and song;
I ween to such masquers
The night was not long:
And but one little trembler
Stood pale in the arch,
When gave the king signal
To take up the march.
If danger forewarn him,
The omen he hides,
And mounting right gaily,
He sings as he rides:




308          A NORLAND BALLAD.
"Now, bird of the border,
Look forth for thy chief;
By the bones of St. Peter,
Thy watch shall be brief!"
" Stand forth, wretched prophet,"
He cries in his wrath,
As his foam-covered charger
Has struck on the path
Leading down to his castle:
" Stand forth! here is moat,
Here is drawbridge-we charge
Back the lie in thy throat!"
"Pause, son of the mighty,
My bode is not lost
Till the step of the master
The lintel has crossed;
And then if my counsel
Prove ghostly or vain"The king smiled in triumph
And flung down the rein.
Lo! passed is the threshold,
None answer his call;
Why starts he and trembles?
There's blood in the hall!
His step through the corridor
Hurriedly dies,'T is only an echo
That answers his cries.




THE MILL-MAID.                  309
One soft golden ringlet
That kissed the white cheek
Of the beautiful lady
They find as they seek:
There was mounting of heralds
In hot haste, I ween,
But the bride of the Norse king
Was never more seen.
THE MILL-MAID.
Now comb her golden hair away:
Meekly and sorrow-laden
She waited for the closing dayPoor broken-hearted maiden!
The ring from off her finger slip,
And fold her hands together;
No more love's music on her lip
Will tremble like a feather.
Each Sabbath-time along the aisle
Her step more faintly sounded,
The light grew paler in her smile
Her cheek less softly rounded;
But never sank we in despair
Till with that fearful crying,
"The mill-maid of the golden hair
And lily hand is dying!"




310            THE MILL-MAID.
When the dim shadows of the birch
Above her rest are swaying,
The pastor of the village church
Shall bless the place with praying:
Deeming the voiceless sacrifice
A loved and lovely blossom,
Blown by the winds of Paradise
To Jesu's folding bosom.
The mill-wheel for a day is still,
The shuttle silent lying,
The little homestead on the hill
Looks sadder for her-dying;
But ere the third time in the spire
The Sabbath bell is ringing,
Not one of all the village choir
Will miss the mill-maid's singing.




THE LOVER'S VISION.
THE mist o'er the dark woods
Hangs whiter than snow,
And the dead leaves keep surging
And moaning below!
What treads through their dim aisles?
Now answer me fair-'T is not the bat's flabby wing
Beating the air!
A sweet vision rises,
Though dimly defined,
And a hand on my forehead
Lies cold as the wind!
I clasp the white bosom,
No heart beats beneath;
From the lips, once so lovely,
Forth issues no breath.
The red moon was climbing
The rough rocks behind,
And the dead leaves kept moaning,
As now, in the wind 
311




312         THE LOVER S VISION.
The white stars were shining
Through cloud-rifts above,
When first in these dim woods
I told her my love.
Half fond, half reproachful,
She gazed in my face,
And, shrinking, she suffered
My fervid embrace:
And speaking not, lingered
With love's bashful art,
Till the light of her dark eyes
Burned down to my heart!
Like the leaf of the lily
When Autumn is chill,
The little hand trembled
That now is so still;
And I knew the sweet passion,
Her lips only sighed
In the hush of her chamberThe night that she died!
O'er the shroud of the pale one
I made then a vow
To kiss back the crimson
Of life to her brow,
If she from the still grave
Would come, as she hath,
And walk at the midnight
This lone forest path.




NOBILITY.                   31
The cloud-rifts are closing,
The white stars are gone,
But the hushed step of Darkness
Moves solemnly on.
I call the dead maiden,
But win no replyShe has gone, and for ever,Would I too could die.
NOBILITY.
HILDA is a lofty lady,
Very proud is sheI am but a simple herdsman
Dwelling by the sea.
Hilda hath a spacious palace,
Broad, and white and high;
Twenty good dogs guard the portalNever house had I.
Hilda hath a thousand meadowsBoundless forest lands;
She hath men and maids for serviceI have but my hands.
The sweet summer's ripest roses,
Hilda's cheeks outvie —
Queens have paled to see her beautyBut my beard have I.
14




3 14'             NOBILITY.
Hilda from her palace windows
Looketh down on me,
Keeping with my dove-brown OXCn
By the silver sea.
When her dulcet harp she playeth,
Wild birds, singing nigh,
Cluster listening by her white handsBut my reed have I.
I am but a simple herdsman,
With nor house nor lands;
She hath men and maids for serviceI have but my hands.
And yet what are all her crimsons
To my sunset skyWith my free hands and my manhoc d
Hilda's peer am I.




DOOMED.
OH demon waiting o'er the grave,
To plead against thy power were vain;
Turning from heaven, I blindly gave
My soul to everlasting pain.
Take me and torture me at willMy hands I will not lift for aye,
The flames that die not, nor can kill,
To wind from my poor heart away;
For I have borne and still can bear
The pain of sorrow's wretched storms,
But, love, how shall I hush the prayer
For the sweet shelter of thy arms?
Oh home! no more your dimpling rills
Would cool this forehead from its pain;
Flowers, blowing down the western hills,
Ye may not fill my lap again;
Time, speed with wilder, stormier wings,
The smile that lights my lip to-day,
As like the ungenial fire that springs
From the pale ashes of decay.
O! lost, like some fair planet-beam,
In clouds that tempests over-brim,
How could the splendor of a dream
Make all the future life so dim!
315




THE WAY.
I CANNOT plainly see the way,
So dark the grave is; but I know
If I do truly work and pray,
Some good will brighten out of woe.
For the same hand that doth unbind
The winter winds, sends sweetest showers,
And the poor rustic laughs to find
His April meadows full of flowers.
I said I could not see the way,
And yet what need is there to see,
More than to do what good I may,
And trust the great strength over me?
Why should my spirit pine, and lean
From its clay house; or restless, bow,
Asking the shadows, if they mean
To darken always, dim as now?
Why should I vainly seek to solve
Free will, necessity, the pall.
I feel —I know-that God is love,
And knowing this, I know it all.
316




THISBE.
SUNSET'S pale arrows shivering near and far!A little gray bird on an oaken tree,
Pouring its tender plaint, and eve's lone star
Resting its silver rim upon the sea!
In dismallest abandonment she liesThe undone Thisbe, witless of the night,
Locking the sweet time from her mournful eyes,
With her thin fingers, a most piteous sight.
O'er her soft cheek the sprouting grasses lean,
And the round moon's gray, melancholy light
Creeps through the darkness, all unfelt, unseen,
And folds her tender limbs from the chill nit1 t.
Pressing your cold hands over rushy springs,
And making your chaste beds in beaded dew,
About her, Nereides, draw your magic rings,
And wreath her golden-budded hopes anew.
For by the tumult of thick-coming sighs,
The aspect wan that hath no mortal name,
I know the wilful god of the blind eyes
Hath sped a love-shaft with too true an aim.
317




SAFE.
OH, stormy wind of winter-time,
Moan wildly as you will;
His rest you cannot trouble now,
His heart you cannot chill.
Lean to the earth, oh, summer corn,
Before the dim wet blast;
His eyes have seen the golden calm
Of harvests never past.
Deep in your bosom fold, oh earth,
Your shining flowers away;
His steps are in the lily fields
Of never ending May.
Draw your red shadows from the wall,
Oh beauteous ember-glow;
Drift cold about his silent house,
Oh white December snow;
Across the sparkle of the dew
Dry dust in whirlwinds pour;
Hide, new moon, in the cloudy skiesHe needs your light no more!
318




ADELIED.
UNPRAISED but of my simple rhymes
She pined from life, and died,
The softest of all April times
That storm and shine divide.
The swallow twittered within reach
Impatient of the rain,
And the red blossoms of the peach
Blew down against the pane.
When, feeling that life's wasting sands
Were wearing into hours,
She took her long locks in her hands
And gathered out the flowers.
The day was nearly at the close,
And on the eave in sight,
The doves were gathered in white rows
With bosoms to the light;
When first my sorrow flowed to rhymes
For gentle AdeliedThe light of thrice five April-times
Had kissed her when she died.
319




WHAT AN ANGEL SAID.
I DREAMED of love; I thought the air
Was glowing with the smile of GodAn angel told me all the sod
Was beauteous with answered prayerI looked, and lo! the flowers were there.
I could not tell what place to tread,
So thick the yellow violets run;
Along the brooks, and next the sun
The woods were like a garden bed;
And whispering soft, the angel said,
(While in his own he took my hand,)
"Dear soul, thou art not in a dream,
All things are truly what they seemThou art but newly come to land,
Through shallows and across the sand."
I felt the light wings cross my face,
My heavy eyes I felt unclose,
And from my dreaming I arose,
If I had dreamed, and by God's grace,
Saw glory in the angel's place.
320




MY PLAYMATE.
I LITTLE care to write her praise,
In truth, I little care that she
Should seem as pure in all her ways,
To others, as she seems to me.
At morn a sparrow's note we heard,
His shadow fell across her bed,
She smiled and listened to the bird;
And when the evening twilight red,
Fell with the dew, he came again,
And perching on the nearest bough,
Higher and wilder sang the strain -
She did not smile to hear him now.
Many and many years, the light,
Thin moonbeams, sheets for her have spread:
And scented clovers, red and white,
Have made the fringes of her bed.
Small care for sitting in the sun
Have I-small care to war with fate:
The wine and wormwood are as one,
Since thou art dead, my pretty mate.
14*        321




THE  WORKERS.
WHo are seers and who are sages?
They who know and understand -
Not the sphinxes of old ages,
With their dead eyes in the sand.
Every worm beside you creeping,
Every insect flying well,
Every pebble in earth's keeping,
Has a history to tell.
The small, homely flower that's lying
In your pathway, may contain
Some elixir, which the dying
Generations sought in vain.
In the stone that waits the turning
Of some curious hand, from sight
Fiery atoms may be burning,
That would fill the world with light.
Let us then, in reverence bowing,
IIonor most of all mankind,
Such as keep their great thoughts plowing
Deepest in the field of mind.
322




LOOKING BACK.
I HAVE been looking back to-day
Upon life's April promise hours,
Its June is with me now, but May
Left all her blushes in the flowers.
A still and sober gladness reigns
Where there was hopefhl mirth, erewhileHardly the soul its wisdom gainsThrough suffering we learn to smile.
The heart that went out beating wild
With visions of the bliss to be,
Ias come back weary, like a child
That sits beside the mother's knee.
The vision of a coming bliss —
A bliss from earth that never springs, —
In youth was but the chrysalis
That time has glorified with wings.
And if I see no longer here
The splendor of. a transient good,
A cloud has left my atmosphere,
And heaven is shining where it stood.
323




HYMN.
Bow, angels, from your glorious state
If e'er on earth you trod,
And lead me through the golden gate
Of prayer, unto my GOD.
I long to gather from the Word
The meaning, full and clear,
To build unto my gracious LORD
A tabernacle here.
Against my face the tempests beat,
The snows are falling chill,
When shall I hear the voice so sweet,
Commanding, Peace, be still!
The angels said, GOD giveth you
His love-what more is ours?
Even as the cisterns of the dew
O'erflow upon the flowers,
His grace decends; and, as of old,
He walks with men apart,
Keeping the promise, as foretold,
With all the pure in heart.
324




LEILIA.
GONE from us hast thou, in thy girlish hours,
What time the tenderest blooms of summer cease;
In thy young bosom bearing life's sweet flowers
To the good city of eternal peace.
In the soft stops of silver singing rain,
Faint be the falling of the pale red light
O'er thy meek slumber, wrapt away from pain
In the fair robes of dainty bridal white.
Seven nights the stars have wandered through the blue,
Since thou to larger, holier life wert born;
And day as often, sandaled with gray dew,
Has trodden out the golden fires of morn.
The wearying tumult of unending strife,
The jars that through the heart discordant ring,
Drive the dim current of our mortal life
Against the shore where reigns unending spring.
And though I mourn for Leilia, she who died
When all the tenderest blossoms ceased to be,
Her being's broken wave has multiplied
The stars that shine across eternity.
325




LIGHTS OF GENIUS.
THESE are the pillars, on whose tops
The white stars rest like capitals,
Whence every living spark that drops
Kindles and blazes as it falls;
And if the arch-fiend rise to pluck,
Or stoop to crush their beauty down,
A thousand other sparks are struck,
That Glory settles in her crown.
The huge ship, with its brassy share,
Ploughs on to lead their light its course,
And veins of iron cleave the air
To waft it from its burning source;
All, from the insectes tiny wings,
And the small drop of morning dew,
To the wide universe of things,
The light is shining, burning through.
The light that makes the poet's page
Of stories beautiful as truth,
And pours upon the locks of age
The glory of eternal growth.
326




THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.
A ROMANCE OF THE GOLDEN AGE OF TEZCUCO.
WHITE-LIMBED and quiet, by her nightly tomb
Sat the young Day, new-risen; at her feet,
Wrapt loose together, lay the burial clouds;
And on her forehead, like the unsteady crown
Of a late winged immortal, flarmed the sun.
All seasons have their beauty: drowsy Noon,
Winking along the hilltops lazily;
And fiery sandaled Eve, that bards of eld,
Writing their sweet rhymes on the aloe leaves,'
Paused reverently to worship, as she went,
Like a worn gleaner, with a sheaf of corn
Pressed to her bosom, lessening, down the west;
And thou, dusk huntress! through whose heavy locks
Shimmer the icy arrows of the starsAbout whose solemn brow onice blinded Faith
Wound the red shadows of the carnival,
Till o'er its flower-crowned holocaust waxed pale
* The ancient MSS. of the Mexicans were for the most part on a fine fabric
made of leaves of the aloe It resembled the Egyptian papyrus, and was more
soft and beautiful than parchment. The written leaves were commonly done
up in volurnes. —Prescott.
327




328         THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.
The constellation of the Pleiades —
Fair art thou: but more fair the rising  day!
And day was fully up: Along the hills,
Black with a wilderness of ebony,
Walked the wild heron; and in Chalco's wave
Waded the scarlet egret, while the Light,
Flitting along the cloisters of the wood,
Softly took up the rosaries of dew;
From stealthy trailing on the hunter's path
The ocelot drew back, and in her lair
Growled hungry, lapping with hot tongue her cubs;
While the iguana, gray and rough with warts,
Checkt round with streaky gold, and cloven tongued,
1 On the termination of the great cycle of fifty years, says Prescott, there
was celebrated a remarkable festival. The cycle would end in the latter part
of December, and as the dreary season of the winter solstice approached, and
the diminished light of day gave melancholy presage of its quick extinction,
their apprehensions increased; and as the last days arrived, they abandoned
themselves to despair. The holy fires were suffered to go out in their temples,
and none were lighted in their dwellings. Everything was thrown into disorder, for the coming of the evil genii, who were to descend on, and desolate
the earth. On the evening of the last day a procession of priests moved
toward a lofty mountain, two leagues from the city. On reaching its summit,
the procession paused till midnight, when, as the constellation of the Pleiades
approached the zenith, the new fire was kindled on the wounded breast of the
victim. Southey describes the scene, in Miadoc:
" On his bare breast the cedar boughs are laid;
On his bare breast dry sedge and odorous gums
Laid ready to receive the'sacred spark,
And herald the ascending Sun,
Upon his living altar."
The flame was soon communicated to a funeral pile, on which the body of
the slaughtered captive was thrown; and as the light streamed toward heaven,
shouts of joy and triumph burst from the countless multitudes. Thirteen
days were given up to festivity. It was the national jubilee of the Aztecs. like
that of the Romans or Etruscans, which few alive had seen before, or could
expect to see again.




THE MAIDEN OF T1'LAS( A  A.             329
Crept sluggish up the rocks-a poison beast;
And the slim blue-necked snake of Xalapa
Lifted its limber folds into the light.
From his black cirque of rocks, stood up alone
The monarch of the mountains;lon his breast,
The fiery foldings of his garment, bracked
And seamed with ashes, and his gray head bare,
The while, with crystals rough, Chinantla's pride,'
Sat, chiefest of a shining brotherhood,
His turquoise eyes fast shut'neath mossy lids,
Regardless of the clamorous sea that lay
Twining her wild green hair about his feet,
Betwixt her heavy sobs, for love of himFlat all her monstrous length along the sands.
Joyous, the ranks of cedars and of pines
Shook their thick limbs together, as the winds
Toiled past them toward the red gaps of the hills,
Through which the Morning came, and, where, for hours
Tanning her cheeks with kisses, they would stay.
But to the hopeless heaven itself were sad:
The darkened senses fail to apprehend
The elements of beauty; the dull gaze
Is introverted to the. world within,
Whose all is ruins-seeing never more
The all-serene and blessed harmony
That lives and breathes through Nature: to the air
Giving its motion and its melody,
The trees their separate colors, the wild brooks
Their silver syllables,'gainst fruitless stones
1 Pojahtecate.




330        THE  MAIDEN  OF  TLASCALA.
Joining bright grasses, knitting goldenly
The clear white of the day's departing train
Into the blank, black border of the night,
Dew raining on the dust, and on the heart
The comfortable influences of love.
So, things which if left single, had been bad,
Grow in affiliation, excellent.
Mindless of all the beauty of the time,
Prone on the wasting ruins of a shrine
Reared by the priests of Hometeuli,1 long
Gone down in still processions to the dark,
Lay fallen Hualco-his unmailed arms
Prostrate along the dust, while, like live coals,
His eyes, no longer shadowed by a crown,
Deep in their blue and famine-sunken rings
Burned hungry for the life of Maxtala,2In wrappings of the sunrise purples, grand,
In awful desolation, glorious.
Is not the eagle hovering toward the sun
In broken flutterings to keep its hold
Up level with the mountains, more sublime
Than in the steady flight of stronger wings?
Thus in his exile, thus in solitude,
His manly port -was nobler than a king's.
Not his the vain and groveling lust of power
That rounds the amnbitious aims of selfishness:
The general name by which, according to Lord Kingsborough, tht deity
was kndwn to the Mexicans.
2 Maxtala, Alaxtlaton, or Maxtla, was successor of the Tepanec conqueror,
and his tyranny was evinced first against the son of the defeated and slain
sovereign, whom he made an exile and a fugitive.




THE  MAIDEN  OF  TLASCALA.                       331
His broken people he would fain have built
Into a mighty column, that should stand,
The beacon of the unborn centuries;
From the blind statues where Idolatry
Sunk deep her bleeding forehead in the dust,
He would have stript the wreaths voluminous,
And on the altar of the living God,
Laid them, a broidery for the robe of faith.
As Thought went searching through his soul, his face
Now with the piteous pallor of despair
Was overspread, and now was all transformed
Into the stormy beauty of roused hate.
Such change is seen when o'er some buried fire
The gust shoves heavy, and the quickened sparks
Burn red together in the ashen ground.
Fragments of temples, sacred to the rites
Of the departed Aztecs, round him lay,
Lapsing to common dust; and, great and still,
With snowy mantle blown along the clouds,
Iztacihuatlal listened to the stars,
And cast the terrible horoscope of storms.
From its rough rim of rocks stretching away,
Dark, to the unknown distance, lay the sea,
Where that lost god2 took refuge, whose black beard
1 Called afterwards by the Spaniards, Sierra.Neveda.
2 Quetzalcoatl, god of the air, who visited the earth to instruct the people
in the arts of civilization. Incurring the wrath of one of the principal gods,
he was compelled to abandon the country, and as he went toward the sea, he
stopped at Cholula. where a temple was dedicated to his worship, of which
there are still gigantic ruins, regarded as among the most interesting relics
of Mexican antiquity. On the shores of the gulf he took leave of his followers, entered his wizzard skiff of serpent skins, and embarking for Tlapalan,




332       THE M Ar D E N  OF  T L A SCALA.
Heavy with kisses of the drowning waves,
Back from his wizzard skiff of serpent skins
Dragged, as he sailed for fabulous Tlapalan.
A prince, and yet a dweller in the woods
So long, that in his path the fiercest wolves
Walked tame as with their mates, and o'er his head
Howled that strange beast' that to his fellows cries
Till they devour the feast himself tastes not;
And flying rats gnawed their repasts, hard by,
From tawny barks of oily trees, or made
With black and wrinkled wings the sunshine dusk!
Cool in the shadows of the mountain palm,
The white stag rested, fearless of his step,
And the black alco, melancholy, dumb,
Fixed his sad eyes upon him as he passed,
And, sluggish, wallowing in his watery trough,
His loose mane gray with brine, the amyztli,2
Regardless of a kinglier presence, lay.
But to Hualco it was all the same
Whether the music of the Awakener,
Starting at twilight, rung along the woods,
Or whether Silence, fed of dreams alone,
Pressed the sweet echoes back to solitude:
Whether the ebony and cherry trees
Spread over him their cool and tent-like shade,
And pillows of the ceiba down lay white
was never heard of again. He was large and fair, w'ith long black hair and a
flowing beard. See Prescott, and all the Spanish writers who have written of
the Mexican mythology.
1 The ocotochtli, of whom this fable is related by Hernandez.
2 The sea-lion.




THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.              333
Upon his bed of moss, or whether hot
And sharp against his face, its iron leaves
The mirapanda thrust: To husk the sheathes
From the sweet fruitage of the plant of light,
Or, starved, to climb the rugged steeps wherein
The shelves of unsunned stone were folded full
Of slimy lodgers, were to him as one.
A bright bud, broken from a royal tree
And planted in the desert, how shall I
Sing his strange story fitly, and so make
A new moon in the sky of poesy?
The bards of fair Tezeuco long ago
Won from the mountains where he hid, forlorn,
Treasures of beauty shining still along
The dreary ways poetic pilgrims go,
Like fountains roofed with rainbows-making all
His wrongs and toils, in cloudy exile borne,
The brief eclipse of the most glorious day
That ever shone along the Aztec hills.
While in the broidery of a baby king
Yet swathed, unconscious, all the lovely maids
From Actolan to Champala had come,
And from their girdles loosening the pearls
And amethysts, had left them at his feet,
And, for his beauty, kissed him as he slept;
Praying the gods to spare from breaking, long,
The chain of precious beads then newly hung
About the empire's neck. Ill-fated prince!
When the glad music sounding at his birth
Was muffled by disaster, love's brief day




334      THE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.
Waned to untimely twilight, his bare arm
(The tiring of his royalty rent off)
Must cleave its way alone, or wither so!
Yet was he not ill-fated: when we see
The purposes God puts about our wo,
Behind the plowing storm run shining waves,
Like beetles through new furrows; the same hand
That peels the tough husk of the chrysalis,
Gives it its double wings to fly withal;
The rain that makes the wren sail heavily
Sets on the millet stocks their golden tops:
And earthly immortality is bought
At the great price of earthly happiness.
Only the gods from the blue skies come down,
Mad for the love of genius-Genius, named,
Also, the Sorrowful; and from the clouds,
That dim the lofty heaven of poesy,
Falls out the sweetest music; in the earth
The seed must be imprisoned, ere to lif
It quicken and sprout brightly; the sharp stroke
Brings from the flint its fiery property;
And that we call misfortune, to the wise
Is a good minister, and knowledge brings:
And knowledge is the basis whereon power
Builds her eternal arches. In the dust
Of baffled purposes springs up resolve,
The plant which bears the fruit of victory.
The old astrologers were wrong: nor star,
Nor the vexed ghosts that glide into the light,
From the unquiet charnels of the bad,




TIHE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.             335
Nor wicked sprite of air, nor such as leap
Nimbly from wave to wave along the sea,
Enchanting with sweet tongues disastrous ships
Till the rough crews are half in love with death,
Have any spell of evil witchery
To keep us back from being what we would,
If wisdom temper the true bent of us.
WE drive the furrow, with the share of faith,
Through the waste field of life, and our own hands
Sow thick the seeds that spring to weeds or flowers,
And never strong Necessity, nor Fate,
Trammels the soul that firmly says, I WILL!
Else are we playthings, and't is Satan's mock
To preach to us repentance and belief.
Sweet saints I pray in piteous love agree,
And from the ugly bosom of despair
Draw hack the nestling hand-heal the vexed heart
And steady it-what time the faltering faith
Keeps its own council with determinate Will,
The hardy pioneer of all success.
" Among the ruins of my rightful hopes
Shall I crouch down and say I am content?
It is not in my nature. I would scorn
The weakness of submission, though to that
Life's miserable chance were narrowed up.
Shame to the wearer of a beard who wears
No manhood with it; double shame to him
Whose plaything is the fillet of a crown.
Even beasts whose lower senses are shut in
From purposes of reason, have maintained




336      THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.
A lordly disposition; taming not
To the sleek touches of the keeper's hand.
The uses of humility are still
For underlings and women —not for kings.
And yet to fate, if there be any fate,
Even the gods must yield; they cannot make
The truth a lie, nor make a lie the truth;
And if to them there be a limit fixed,
Shall I, with my weak hands of dust, essay
To bend the untempered iron of destiny
About my foreheadS'T is most maddening,
The attempt and not the achievement-yet th' attempt
Is all the wedge that splits its knotty way
Betwixt the impossible and possible.
From the flat shrubless desert to the waves
Of willowy rivers, flowing bright and cool,
From flowery thickets, up into the clouds.
The bird may fly in its own atmosphere;
But from the long dead reaches of blank space
Its free wings fall back baffled. So it is
With gods and men: each have their atmospheres,
Which they are free to move in, and to which
From ampler quests, they needs must flounder dowi,
SMrVtimas, vha goaded to the utmvst Nerg
Of possible endurance-gathering all
My sorrows to one purpose, rebel like,
I would step out into the dark, when lo!
Fate ties my unwilling feet, and'twixt my eyes
And the great Infinite, full in the sun
Makes quiet pictures. But ere I can shape




THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.               337
This chaos of crushed manhood that I am
To any purposes, the faithless light
Breaks up, and all is darkness as it was.
So are we crippled ever. Even like
The snake some burden fastens to the ground,
Now palpitating into stiff, bright rings,
Now lengthening limberly along the dust,
But gaining not a hair's breadth for its pains,
Is thought: its lengths now stretched to overclimb
The steep high walls about us; now, alas!
Dragging back heavily into itself.
Like am I to a drowning man, whose hands
Hold idly to the unsubstantial waves;
Or like some dreamer, on whose conscious form
A wretched weight lies heavy, while his tongue
Refuses utterance to his agony.
I can not rise out of this living death,
More than the prematurely buried man,
Who, waking from his torpor, feels his limbs
Bound, from their natural uses, in the shroud,
And feebly strives to climb out of his grave.
"Is there no strength, in sorrow or in pray er,
To smite the brazen portals of the sun,
And bring some beam to lead me into hope?
Not so: the unoriginated Power
Sweeps back the audacious thought to emptiness.
What are the sufferings of one little life.
Nay, of a thousand or ten thousand lives,
Or what is all this large and curious world,
Its meditative sighs, its hopes and loves.
15




338      THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.
Rivers and mountains, rough and obstinate,
Primeval solitudes, and darknesses
Where the days drop like plummets-what are all,
Tumbled in one, and with a cerement bound,
But as a bundle going up and down,
In the vast ocean of eternity!
High as the sun above the drop of dew
The gods dwell over us, and have they need
To buy our favor with some piteous sign? 
Their bliss we cannot lessen nor increase.
But as we grow up to the topling heights
Of our ambitions, more and more we catch
Some dim reflection of their sovereignty.
The path is narrow that goes up, and on,
And Fame a jealous mistress. They who reach
To take her hand must let all others go.
" Borders and plaits of red and saphirine
Are pretty in the robe of royalty,
But to the drowning man, who strains against
The whelming waves, the gaud were cumbersome,
And straightway shredded off, and wet, wild rocks
Hugged to his bosom with a closer clasp
Than the young mother to her baby gives.
When from his steady footing hungry Death
Goes moaning back, the time has come to pluck
The honorable gear. I must be wise,
And clutching at whatever means I may,
Climb to the moveless stepping of my throne.
If youth were back again, or th' last year,
Or even if yesterday might break anew,




THE  MAIDBN  OF  TLASCALA.                  3339
I would be vigilant; do thus, or thus.
"So sit we idle, till another day
Dies, and is wrapt in purple like the rest.
Years run to waste, and age comes stealing slow
On our imperfect plans, till in our veins
The life tide, sluggish, like an earth-worm lies.
Where down yon mountain side the dragon's blood i
Drips till the rocks, in the close noontide heat,
Smoke mistily, the miztli2 couchant lies,
His muscles quivering with excess of life;
But should he lie there till his hungry howls
Crash through the shaken forest like a storm,
Would any beast divide his prey with him!
Or wild bird, in the flowing of his mane
Tangling its bright wings, sing his pain away?
WVeak, foolish grief, be dwarfed to nothingness!
Henceforth I will not listen to your moans.
Did Colhua's princess3 buy with mortal life
The honor to be mother of a god,
And shall her woman's courage shame a king's?
There is not air in all the blowing north
For me to breathe, with Maxtala alive!
Yet am IEbeggared, orphaned of all hope,
Herding with the coyotli,4 while he reigns
The monarch of my palace; and the rnaids,
1 " Dragon's Blood" runs from a large tree growing in tho mountains of
Quachinanco and Ihose of the Cubnuixcas.-Clavigero.
2 The Mexican lion.
3 Clavigero, i. 124, presents the curious details of the sacrifice and deification
of this princess.
4 The wolf.




340     THE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.
From Zalahua's shade to Tlascala,
Bend for his gracious favor till their locks
Flow in a bath of fragrance at his feet.
Pipers, with garlands prankt fantastical,
Blow on their reeds to please his idleness,
Making the air so sweetly musical
That the hushed birds hang listening on the boughs.
And, for his whim, victims are led to death,
Till the red footprints of his headsmen grim,
In the hot noon of summer never dry;
And masks unholy cheat the hours, what time,
Stringing black poppies round her forehead, Eve
Walks from her transient palace in the clouds,
Her dark robe trailing down its base of blue;
Or, when the morn, her sandals tied with light,
Along the fields of heaven gathers the stars,
Like blossoms, to her bosom. By the power
Of all the gods, his wanton lip shall drink
The wine of wormwood. I will husk full soon
The splendor from his ugly body down,
And whistle him out to run before my hate,
IJnkingdomed and unfriended, for his life.
He, too, shall have, as I have now, the winds,
At night, for chamberlains. My exile proves
The executioner's brief drawing off,
To strike betwixt the eyes-the sly recoil
Before the deadly spring-this, only this!"
On this wise spoke Hualco: otherwhiles,
The drowsy monotone of murmurous bees
Crept softly under pansied coverlids;




THE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.              341
Or the still flowing of the cool west wind,
Or sunset, haply, or the unshaken stars,
Or interfuse of fair things without nameBut of such wondrous, magical potency,
That Love, the leash of chance enchantment slipt,
Has in his bed of beauty drowsed sometimes,
While Goodness, clothed not of the beautiful,
Pined, dying for his whisper-to his heart
Gave all their sweetest comfort. As the bougli
Drops in the storm its weights of rainy leaves,
His roused soul dropt the heaviness away,
And he went, mated with most rare delight,
Through the green windings of the wilderness.
Nature is kindly ever, and we all
Have from her naked bosom drawn at times
Drafts sweet as crusted nectar.
Charily!
She gives us entertainment, if we come
With hearts unsanctified and noisy feet,
Into her tents of pious solitude.
But when we go in worshipful, she spreads
Her altars with the sacrament of peace,
And lifts into her solemn psalmody
Our spirits' else unuttered melodies.'T is not the outward garniture of things
That through the senses makes creation fair,
But the out-flow 6f an indwelling light,
That gives its lovely aspect to the world.
Sometimes his memory wandered to the hours




342       THE  MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA,
When in the Mexic capital,l a child,
And yet an exile, or in his own halls,
By sufferance of the usurper, who had slain.
(While he, concealed, look'd from the spreading palm
That swung its odorous censers in the court,)
Texcuco's sovereign, who at bay had held
The trampling foe, tumultuous, which Tepan
Sent, with a robber thirst and barbarous strength,
To subjugate the fair land of the worldMore fair for courtesy than even the arts
Which reared its temples and its palaces;
Held them at bay, until his chiefs and legions,
Borne down like cornstocks in a whirlwind, lay
Along the wide field of blood-wanting war; 2
And sometimes, past these scenes, to better hours,
Wherein he sought a mastery of the lore,
Far-reaching through the arches, low and dark,
Which are the entrance of the eternal worldThat greatest wisdom which a king should learn,
Who with the gods would find himself a friend.
But these were only sunbeams in his clouds,
And often from their flush of brief delight
An unseen spirit plucked him, and his soul
Went darkly out from its serenity.
For sometimes, keen and cold and pitiless truth,
In spite of us, will press to open light
1 The imperial families of Tezuco and Mexico were at this period allied,
and the young prince found a temporary refuge within the palaces of his
relations.
2 These events occurred, according to Ixtilxochitl, in 1418.




THE  MAIDEN  OF  TLASCALA.                     343
The naked angularities' of things,
And, from the steep ideal, the soul drop
in wild and sorrowful beauty, like a star,
From the blue heights of heaven into the sea.
In the dumb middle of the night he heard
The plaining voice of one 1 who died for him,
Saying, "Hualco, let my wasted blood
Cement the broken beauty of thy throne,
And so shine evermore upon thine eyes
Like bright veins in the marble." He could see
His pleading innocence, thrust by tyranny,
Over the grave's steep edges, to the dark,
And all the train of lovelight, hitherto
Diawn after his firm  footsteps, faded off
To gray, blank mildew; see the dying smile,
The soul's expression, falling into dust.
Sometimes, in pictures which his fancy made,
Along Tozantla's hills he saw him go,
With the wild scarlet of its running flowers,
Tying his bundles of sharp arrows up,
And in the shadows of the holy wood
Rest in the noontide-lithe-limbed antelopes,
And strings of wild birds, ruffled, open-winged,
Strewing the ground about him; and, at night,
He saw him cast his burden at the door
I Not long after his flight from the field on which his father had been slain,
the prince fell into the hands of his enemy, was borne off in triumph to his
city, and thrown into a dungeon. He effected his escape. however, through
the connivance of the governor of the fortress, a servant of his faimily, whc
took the place of the royal fugitive, and paid for his loyalty with his life. —
P'rescott.




3-14     THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.
Of the clay hut wherein his mother dwelt,
Her love bewildered into wonderment,
As, with a hunter's eloquence, he told
H-Iow his quick shaft had blinded a huge beast
That needs must stagger on his cunning trap.
The tzanahuei's warble seemed his voice,
Singing some boyish roundelay of love,
And murmurous fall of water, like his coo
To his pet tigress, penning her at night.
There was another picture, whose dark ground
No gleam of light illumined: hands, close-bound
From all the arrows, and the jetty locks
Clipt for the axe's edge; brows pale, with pain,
And sad eyes turned in mute reproach to him;
And this it was that wrung his misery
To that worst phase of all-the terrible sense
Of injury done, with utter impotence,
To lift the pallid forehead out of death,
And crown it with our sorrow.
I believe
Such griefs make many madmen, driving some
Into the lonesome wilderness, where all
That fine intelligence which shines intrenched
Fast in the mortal eyes of innocent men,
Throbs fitful through the film, obscured at last
To the scared glaring of a hunted heast:
And others, of more speculative souls,
Pushing to realms fantastic, where, athirst,
They see the fountains sucked up by the sand,
And hungry, pluck the red-cheeked fruits, to find




THE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.             345
The mortifying purples which make mad
Such as do eat and die not; and where dwell
Shapes incomplete, with brows of pale misease,
That in the moon's infrequent glimmering
Run from their shadows, gibbering their fear;
Where earth seems from its beauteous uses worn
As with a slow eternity of painBattered and worn, till no sweet grass can grow
Upon its old, scarred body, any more.
This was a grief indeed. No stabbing steel
Strikes through the dark like such a memory.
And every day he went into the past,
And lived his history over, setting up,
Against each false step, some excusing plea:
If this, or this transfixing point of time
Were a nonentity-if such an act
Had been beforehand of celerityAnd such a pretty dalliance with chance
Pressed into service, —he had held secure
In his 6wn hands, the destiny which now
Stood at a murderer's mercy. For us all,
Within some fortunate moment, good is lodged,
And chance may possibly tumble on the prizeBut vigilance is opportunity.
I think, of all the sweetest gifts that be
Strung in the rosary of the love of God,
And flung about us mortals, there is none
Hath such divine excess of excellence
As that creative and mad faculty
Which out of nothing strings the lyres that ring
15*




346     THE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.
Along the shadowy palaces of dreams,
And so ring on and echo down.the world,
Till, where time's circle meets eternity,
The trancing shivers of rapt melodies
Crumble away to silence, and fade off.
Blest is the wanderer out of human love
Who hath been answered by this oracle.
What need hath he of the poor shows of power,
Who can charm angels out of heaven, and cross
Their light wings on his bosom, in his song 2
What need hath he of mortal companyWeak heritors of passion and of painThat he should care to cower beneath their roofs?
What if his locks are heavy, drenched with dewBeings that duller mortals cannot see
Will stoop above him, and between their palms
Press them out dry, or the wild breeze may stop
And blow them loosely open to the sun.
Widen no rings about your fires for him
Who catches the white mantles of the clouds,
And round his bosom in the chilly night
Gathers the golden tresses of the stars;
For no abiding city men might build,
In the flat desert of their quietude,
Could stay him from his long bright wanderings.
The sea waves, roughly breaking on the rocks,
The terrible crash of the live thunderstroke,
Or the low earthquake's rumble, on his ear
Fall in a softer music than on yours
The lovely prattle of your lisping babes:




THE  MAIDEN  OF  TLASCALA.                     347
For in his soul is a transforming power
By you unapprehended and unknown.
And he of whom I sing, shaping his wo
To the charmed syllables of poesy,l
Built visionary kingdoms, and recrowned
His naked brows out of the light of dreams.
Even as the white steeds of the desert keep
Before the clouds of hot and blinding sand,
Ran his wild visions forward of the truth.
Sometimes he sung of maidens, shut in towers
Of unhewn rocks, cold bowers of beauty, where
The moonlight blew across the beds of love
Tinged with the scarlet of the sacrifice;
Of the blue sky sometimes, or of the moon
Walking nightis cloudy wilderness, as walks
The white doe through a jungle; of steep rocks
Burnt red and pastureless, where strings of goats
Climbed, hungry, to the rattle of picked bones
In the near eyry; sometimes of the hour
When in the sea of twilight the round sun
Sinks slow and sullen, and, one after one,
Circles of shadows crusted thick with stars
Come up and break upon the shore of night.
But mostly were his visions sorrowful;
For all the higher attributes of life
1 Neza-hualco-yotl, Clavigero says, excelled in poetry, and produced many
compositions, which met with universal applause. In the sixteenth century,
his sixty hymns, composed in honor of the Creator of heaven, were celebrated
even among the Spaniards. Two of his odes or songs, translated into Spanish
verse by his descendant, the historian Ixtlilxochitl, have been preserved into
our time; and Mlr. Prescott has given us prose and lyrical versions of one ot
them, in his Conquest of Mexico.




348      THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.
Have still some touch of sadness: love and hope
Dwell ever in the haunted house of Fear,
And even the God incarnate wept to see
The blanched and purposeless repose wherein
We lie at last-our busy cares all done,
Shut in the darkness by white heavy death,
Like dreams within the hueless gates of day.
So busy thought bloomed into poesy,
As buds bloom into flowers - bloomed and was
drowned
[n storms of tears, and fell back on his heart,
As falls back to the earth the pretty moth
That flies into the rain-its wild wings drenched
From beauty to the color of the ground.
And the spring sprouted, and the summer smiled,
And day went darkly down, and morn camne up
And ran between the mountains goldenly;
The wandering wasp shut up its thin blue wings,
Pricking the soft green bark of the capote
With mortices-a ceaseless builder he;
Nympha of bees hung on the oaken boughs,
Feasted the birds; and red, along the grass,
The heads of burning worms like berries shone.
Others, with yellow venomous prickles set,
And coiled in globes, stuck bur-like in the shrubs,
While from their nests came out into the light
The black-downed spider and brown scorpion.
At night, the shining beetles, flying thick,
Glimmered, his tent-lights, and the woods hung low




THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA               349
Their long bright boughs-green curtains shutting
down
About his slumber-while the blessed dew
Sunk pearl-like'twixt his long and uncombed locks.
For whether morn ran goldenly along
The mountain rifts, and with her kisses broke
The blue and ruby-hearted flowers apart,
Or whether night fell black along the hills,
Tezcuco's heir, alone and sceptreless,
Travelled the woods, a price upon his head.
There was a cabin, with an aloe thatch,
And gables of cool moss, whereby three trees
Ruffled their tops together, through the which
A red vine ran convolved, as in the clouds,
Blowing and blending in the twilight wind,
A vein of fire runs zig-zag. South from the door,
A fountain, breaking into golden snow,
Cut a soft slope of fresh and beautiful green,
With its superfluous wealth, at evening fringed
By goats, unprisoned, slowly feeding home.
Close by this fountain, screened by drooping boughs,
A wheel turned idly to the breeze's touch,
And from the unbusy distaff the teased flax
Twisted to tangly wisps. Here, until now,
Spinning among the birds, a peasant's child,
With eyes poetic, tawny cheeks, and hair
Dark as a storm in winter, hath been used
To sing the sun asleep.
Fate is discreet,
And grapples as with hooks of steel the ends




350      THE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.
Of her great purposes; therefore the maid,
Who sleeps beneath the aloe thatch at night,
And sings and spins among the birds all day,
Is gone to meet the exigence that weaves
The dark thread of her story with my song.
Ah, as she cuts the shining jointed stocks,
And packs them into heaps, tossing away
The heavy tresses from her stooping brow,
Little she deems their sable near to line
The pearly rimming of Tezcuco's crown!
A pall of clouds, bordered with dun faint fire,
Veiled the dead face of day, and the young moon,
Washed to her whitest splendor in the sea,
Took the audacious pelting of the waves
Betwixt her horns, nor staggered, and so clomb
To.fields of sweeter pasture. In the west,
A ridge of pines, that burnt themselves to flame
An hour ago, set their jagged tops
Black in th' horizon. Thence, suddenly,
Flitted a shape or shadow, and the feet
Of the Tlascalan maiden, Tlaaira,
Were touched with prayerful kisses. Well-a-day!
The ear too deaf to hear-though all at once,
Sung fifty nightingales, covering the woods
With undulating sweetness, as a cloud
Of yellow bees covers a limb of flowersDrinks eagerly the faintest sound of praise,
And the poor peasant was less firmly held
From quickly flying, by the hands that clung
To her robe's hem, than by the kingly brow




THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.              351
Dropping against the ground, obsequious.
Across the hills she heard the hot pursuit,
And, for a moment, came a blinding wave
From their far tops, of splendor; then, as one
Whose foot is on the serpent's head, she cried,
" Off, tempting fury! my weak woman's handsMock if thou darest!-have in them strength enough
To bind a thousand of thy black-winged crew,
And hold them level with their beds of fire.
It is most false that they are strong alone,
With a cold guard of virtue or of fear,
Who keep thee from them always. She who once
Hugs to her bosom any imp of thine,
And rends it after, or with desperate will,
Wrenches her heart from its infirmity,
And on the very edges of the pit
Shakes the red shadow from her soul, and turns
To front the demon that has dragged her thereBelieve me, she is stronger than they all
Who dare not wait to listen! "
Oh, to such
Doubt not but that some piteous god will come,
Beauteously whitening down the blue of heaven,
And feed their souls with the blest sweetnesses
Drawn out of Mercy's everliving wells,
Till the air round them, with tumultuous joy
Hangs shivering like a wilderness of leaves,
And drifts of light run rippling through the clouds
Like music through the wings of cherubim.
And so she hid him-in among the stocks —




352              THE  MAIDEN  OF  TLASOALA.
Smothering the whispered prayer, " I am  thy king,
Hunted to death: wilt have the damned price
That a usurper sets upon my head,
Or be my angel, as thou look'st to be?"
The hungry hunters of his life came on,
And saw the maiden at her quiet work,
Close to the reedy prison, and so went
Misguided forward.' Such tumultuous joy
As filled her bosom only they may know
Who, voyaging beyond mortality,
Feel the prow's grating, golden, on the stars.
Forgive her for that moment hesitant;
Forgive her, if she saw the aloe thatch
Of the clay cabin, where all day she spun,
Widen above a palace, broad and brave;
Forgive her if she saw, if so she did,
Her jetty trailing locks strung round with gems,
Drawing the eyes of princes after them;
Forgive, for she was human, and we all
At sometime have had need to say, Forgive!
Far from the banished Eden though we be,
Some beautiful provision meets our needSlumber, and dreamy pillows, for the tired;
1 The prince sought a retreat in the mountainous and woody district by
the borders of Tlascala, and there led a wandering life, hiding himself in
deep thickets and caverns, and stealing out at night to satisfy the cravings
of appetite; while kept in constant alarm by the activity of pursuers,
always hovering on his track. On one occasion, says Prescott, he was just
able to turn the crest of a hill, as they were climbing it on the other side,
when he fell in with a girl who was reaping chian; he persuaded her to
cover him up with the stocks she had been cutting; and when his pursuers
came up and inquired if she had seen the fugitive, the girl coolly answered
that she had, and pointed out a path as the one he had taken.




THE  MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.                353
For labor, plenteous harvests, and for- love
The crowning nuptial; for old age, repose,
And for the worn and weary, kindly death
To make the all-composing lullaby.
But nothing in this low and ruined world
Bears the meek impress of the Son of God
So surely as forgiveness. The last plea,
O'er slighted love and sorrow rising sweet,
Lit for a time the ancient realm of death,
As if within its still and black abysm
A new-born star ope'd its gold-lidded eye,
And for a season in the depths of hell
Cooled the red burning like a cloud of dew.
Like to two billows, tossed and worried long,
That on some fearful breaker meet and close,
Upon a desperate point of time there met
This youth's and maiden's unshaped destiniesMet, and so closed'to one. Oh, pitiful!
Oh, woful! that so bright a tide should ebb,
And leave along this good life as it does
Shoals of dry, barren dust.  Somewhere is wrong!
And night was past, and in the lap of day
The morning nestled, and yet other nights
Followed by other days had come and gone,
And the wild sorrow of the tempter's voice
Had dwarfed to utter silence, yet the maid
Had loosed her clasping never on the cross,'
1 It is curious that the cross should have been regarded as an object of reli
gious worship where the light of Christianity had never risen. See Peter
Alartyr's Decads, as quoted by Lord Kingsborough, in his Antiquities of
Mexico.




354      THE MAIDEN OF TLASC(ALA.
Bought at so great price of earthly famne.
But its rough, thorny wood, so heavy once,
Had budded bright with many a regal flower.
The heir of kingly generations laid
His crown upon her lap, for her sweet eyes,
And, for the zoning of her fond arms, gave
The warrior's belted glory: lovers they,
And blessed both-he calm in manhood's pride,
She trembling at the top of ecstacy.
HIow shall I paint the dear delicious hours!
No lilies swimming white in summer's waves,
No dove, soft cooing to her little birds,
No hushes of the half reluctant leaves,
When the south winds are wooing, passionful,
No bough of ripe red apples, streaked with white
And fiull in the fall sunshine, were so fair.
The blushes of a thousand summertimes,
Blent into one, and broken at the core,
Were in its sweetness incomparable
To the close kisses of the mouth we love.
In the voluptuous beauty of the clime,
That prisons summer everlastingly,
Tangling her bright hair with a thousand flowers,
Some large and heavy-reddening round her brows,
Like sunset round the day, what time she lies,
The cool sea billows climbing to her armsSome white and rimmed with gold, and purple some,
Soft streaked with faintest pink, and silver-edged,
Some azure, amber stained, and ashen some,
Dropt with dull brown and yellow, leopard-like,




THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.    355
WVith others blue and full of crescent studs,
Or jetty-belled, fringed softly out of snowSo prodigal is nature of her sweetsDwelt they, the past, the future, all forgot.
"Henceforth thy love, soft-burning like a star,
Shall stand above my crown and comfort me,"
Hualco said, and Tlaara's soft cheek
Flushed out of olive, scarlet, and her heart
Drank in the essence of all happiness.
It was as if humanity attained
The stature of its immortality,
And earth were gathered up into the heavens.
For Love makes all things beautiful, and finds
No wilderness without its pleasure tent,
While Genius goes with melancholy steps
Searching the world for the selectest forms
Of high, and pure, and passionless excellenceLarge-browed, unmated Genius-yearning still
For the divinities which in its dreams
Brighten along the mountain-tops of thought.
She could not pause, but birds pecked round her feet,
Fluttering and singing; if at eve she walked,
The clouds rained tender dews upon her head;
Meeting a hungry lion in the woods,
Grinding his tusks, he crouched and piteous whined,
Then turned his great sad face and fled awayLove was her only armor, yet he fled.
Her wheel spun round itself; the trickiest goat
Stood patient for the milking; jubilant,
The smooth-stemmed corn its gray-green tassels shook,




356      THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.
As she went binding its broad blades to sheaves.
Sunshine which only she could see, made fair
Even alien fields; and if Hualco sighed,
She put a crown of kisses on his brow,
And drew him, with her smiling, from the thoughts
That wandered toward Tezcuco's palaces.
And for the vague, unfriendly fear, that made
His lessening love a possibility,
She gave into his hand the secretest key
Of her heart's treasury. Sometimes they walked
Between the moonbeams slanting up the hills,
In ways of shadow, edged with white cold light,
Or sat in solitudes where never sound
Fed the dumb lips of echo; but the flat
Of desertness, low lying, bare, and brown,
Their praises like a verdurous meadow drew,
And the black nettle and rude prickly burr
Challenged of each some tender eloquence.
Along their paths mute stones grew voluble,
And sweeter voices than of twilight birds,
Filling Olintha's mountain solitudes,
Flowed out of silence to their listening:
For silence hath a language and a glance
May burn into the heart like living fire,
Or freeze its living currents into ice.
Sometimes he told of maidens, fair as she,
That for his sake had folded in their arms
The awful flames of martyrdom; but quick
The piteous flowing of her gentle tears
Dried, in the burning crimson of his kiss.




THE  MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.                 357
What was't to them, that in the hemlock woods 1
Sad priests kept fast and vigil, with stooped brows
Under their hoods of thorns, low from the light,
As once the chieftain of the Aztec hosts
Heard the wild bird, responsive to his thought,
Still sadly crying o'er and o'er, "Tihui," 2
Warning from Aztlan all his tribe away?
So they, in every murmurous wind, could hear
The sanctifying echoes of their hopes;
Daily, the tremulous arch above the world,
Resting upon the mountains and the waves,
For love's sake deepened its eternal blue;
In the red sea of sunset, not a star
Swam in its white and tremulous nakedness,
Doubling the blessed pulses in their hearts,
That seemed not for that office specially made;
Such wondrous power hath that fair deity,
Pictured sometimes as tyrannous as fairIf right or wrongfully, I cannot tell,
But I do truly think there be few hearts
For which at some time he hath not unloosed
The blushing binding of his nimble shafts.
Poor Tladra forgot that ugly death
Burrowed in mortal soil, when that her lord
Kissed her, and called her " sweetest;" all her joy
Was basemented upon a smile of his;
And if he frowned, the sun shut up his light
I For an account of the remarkable fasts kept, solitary, in the forests. by
the MNexican priests, in times of extraordinary calamity, see Clavigero, i. 23:6.
2 4 Let us go." —Clavigero, i. 112.




358      THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.
Ah, Tlaira, thou dream'st; awake, be wise
Already the sleek, golden cub, erewhile
Fondled and hidden in thy bosom, growls.
As some poor spinner puts a little wool
Among her flax, to save the web from fire,
So she has tried to twist with her poor name
Some little splendor. Fate has baffled her;
But when the mists of tears shall clear away,
She may attain to such majestic heights
And atmospheres of glory as shut up
Life's lower planes, with all the murmurs made
O'er the death-fluttering of fledgling hopesAll discords horrible, and rude complaints,
That rise, when at some direful exigence
Even courage staggers in its way, and lays,
Bestial, its radiant front against the dust,
Loud bellowing out its awful pain, alone.
When a friend dies, while yet the face has on
The smiling look of life,'t is wise to lay
The shroud about it, and so go again,
Aimong what joys are left, with decent calm.
When that which seemed the angel of our heaven
Shuts close its wings, and its white body shrinks
To a black, glistering coil,'t is little safe
To wait the growth of fangs. And when we find
That which, a little distant, seemed to us
The clambering of roses on the rocks,
To be the flag of pirates, shall we stay
Hugging the coast, and, dropping anchor, hunt
The bones of murdered men? or shall we wait



THE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.               359
Deserted, and betrayed, and scarce aliveTo front the arrows of Love's sinking sun,
And tempt the latest peril? Just as well
The obstinate traveller might in pride oppose
His puny shoulder to the icy slip
Of the blind avalanche, and hope for life;
Or Beauty press her forehead in the grave,
And think to rise as from the bridal bed.
But woman's creed knows not philosophyHer heart-beats are the rosary that tells
Her love off, even to the cross; and verily
In telling this, and telling only this,
Can they fill out her nature: so again
Come we to our sweet truster, Tlaara.
" What! goes my lord alone?" So spake she once;
"The spinning work is done, the milking past,
And past the busy cares. See! the green hills
Sit in the folding even-light, so fair,
The dark house could not hold me, but for thee.
Nay, chide me not, I will not speak a word,
But walk so softly, love-blest, oh so blest,
Treading the earth thy steps make proud before me!"
She stood on tiptoe waiting for the kiss
To give her, in the accustomed way, reply.
But there was silence at the first, and then
The sullen answer, "I would be alone."
The world fell sick and reeled before her eyes,
And in the dead and heavy atmosphere,
Where heaven had based itself a moment past,
A vulture spun down low, as if its wings




360     THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.
Could make no further head-all else was blank.
Poor simple girl! a little while the tears
Flowed faster than the blossoms from the bough'Gainst which she leaned, despairing. A great wo
Crushes the fading of a century
Into a moment; and fair Tlascala,
Smiling so lately through the purpling light,
Lay like a shoal of ashes, dry and bare.
But hope, however smitten or borne down,
Is quick to right herself, and once astir
The world grows young again. And Tlaiara
Chid presently her sighs and tears away,
For the seductive whispering, which said,
For her sake crown and kingdom had been lost;
Chid them away with quivering lip, and smiled,
And sought in cares, against her lord's return,
To wile the lengthening absence. As the bird,
Wounded, not death-struck, gathers up its wings,
True to its instinct, she, still true to hers,
Gathered up all her courage.  He, the while,
Her lord, Hualco, with drooped eyes, and brow
Sullen with sorrow and remorseless pain,
Talked to his troubled soul in this wild sort:
"So I am he, who in yet beardless years
Did plot the ways to unkingdom Maxtala;
To measure his vile body with my sword,
And find what space would rid the world of him;
Ay, he who even thought to be a kingPining and love-sick in a peasant's cot,
Where I can never rightly apprehend




THE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.    361
The distances betwixt me and my crown.
A king; my crown! Nay, it was all a dream,
That went before me from my youth till nowMore than a dream, it was a life-long lie
Reaching into the vale of years, and still
A brightness, wrapping up some old white hairs!
And can I see it fading, and yet smile?
It is as if a corpse had power to feel
The tying of its hands. My brain must crack
Or I must slip the dusty leash I wear,
And run into the dark.
"See! the dead day
Drifts out in scarlet light, and the round moon
Whitens like day-break through the sullen clouds.
I scarce can see our cabin through the gaps
Of hills and woods, the night comes on so fast.
Yes, I can see it now —the heavenly eyes
Of that sweet lady, pretty Tlaara,
Illumining the window toward the sea.
She loves me, even me, who have beside
No love in all the world; her little hands
Part softly back the redwood's rosy limbs,
Low swinging in the winds, lest they should hidle
This sullen, crownless front —dear Tlaara! —
And from that listening I was near to be
Plucked off by devils; I was well nigh blind,
Still gazing upon laurels that were knit
With the white light of immortality.
Sweet Tlaara, be patient, while I mourn
These last weak tears behind the heavy hearse
16




362     THE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.
That bears the old dream from me: then again
I will go singing, as we walk at eve
Under the raining of the forest flowers,
And count my homely verses once again
By the brown spots our gentle leopard has,
And beauty to our cabin will return."
Poor Tiaara, her tamest goat came close,
And leaned his head against her, and the wind
Rested a little, kissing her wet eyes,
And blowing down her hair, the while she stood,
Her sad thoughts dropping in the well of love,
To tell how deep it was; an evil signOnly despair can take its measurement.
A little time ago the sun came up,
Shearing the curly fleeces from the hills;
Now he is dead, and the pale widowed west
Hath slid the burial earth upon his face.
" Blind eyes of mine," she cries, "' you cannot see,
Though he should rise and climb the heavens again,
In the dim days to come; nor if, at night,
Under the silver shadows of the clouds,
With some red blushing star the moon keeps trystNo more, oh never more! blind, blind with tears!
Earth is stript bare of beauty, and, oh, lost!
I have forgone, close gazing upon thee,
The way struck open through the grave to heaven,
And needs must vaguely feel along the dark!"
" Forgive me, sweet, the shadow of a crown
Swept through love's sunshine, and my heart grew
chill "



THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.              363
So said the recreant prince; half penitent" But not, my little empress, false to thee.
Nay, look upon me close and tenderly,
For I am like the child that pettishly
Slips down the nurse's knees, and straight climbs up,
Ending his pout with kisses-prythee, smile,
And think this transient mood the thing it was,
A hollow bubble on the sea of love,
Which thou mayst break for pastime, pretty one."
As one, close pressing to the fountain's brim.
Crumbles the black earth off into the wave,
And with an empty pitcher goes awaySo turned she, thirsting, from the fount of joy.
" Sweet Tlaara, thou wrongst me," he replied;
"Thy hands put down the flames of martyrdom,
Dilating for me like the eyes of fiends,
And with their gentle tendance through long days
And nights of exile, made me strong enough
To repossess a kingdom, that, henceforth,
Shall brighten round thy beauty; on thy lip
I press the seal of true allegiance,
My joy, my queen forever: Art content?
Or shall I swear, by every soldier's tomb,
Sunken along the war-grounds of the past,
My soul is thine henceforward, nor in heaven,
Nor in the heaven of heavens, is light enough
To sweep thy shadow from my royalty.
Command it, and I make the sweet oath o'er,
Till yonder brightly rising planet creeps
Into the rosy bosom of the morn,




364     THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.
And the day breaks along the orient,
White as the snow-topt mountain. Dost thou weep? 
Well, let thy tears wash out the sad mistrust
Darkening the beauty of serener faith,
And we be lovers as we were before.
My life, young empress, is involved in thine
As water is in water: mingling waves,
Catching one light and shade, our lives shall flow
Till they strike broken on the ice of death.
But this, our happy summering of love
Must sometime have its ending. Yesterday
We had been just as ready as to-day,
To-morrow will not be a better time,
So let it touch its limit, here and now."
"Oh, my Hualco, oh, my best beloved,
If thou wilt leave me, yet remember thou,
When glory shall grow heavy in thy hands,
And, with its burdening circle, thy brows ache,
That sober twilight, when, erewhile, weak arms
Folded them up, thus, with a crown of love.
Oh, think of her who, pressing down thy cheek,
Dared to look up into thy eyes for hope,
Even though she felt its lately crimsoning flowers,
Burned to gray ashes, cold beneath her lip.
Think how her trembling hand swept off thy locks,
As one who lays the shroud back from her dead,
And gives the last wild kisses to the dust."
So Tlaara made answer, seeing not
How night stretched tempest-like along the sky,
And in the blustery sea the tumbling waves




THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.              365
Shattered the gold repeatings of the stars,
As through the rents of darkness they looked out;
Only the silence heard the anguished cry" Clasp me a moment longer; once again
Kiss me, and say you love me; once, once more,
Put back this fallen hair, as yesternight!
Is it not white and heavy, like dead hair?
This burning pain must bleach the blackness out.
I cannot hear you speak; I cannot feel
Your kisses-closer, sweet! nor yet-nor yet;
I cannot see the eyes that said to mine
Their speechless love so kindly-God! his needs
Are all above my answering-take me Thou."
The harvester is pleased who finds a flower
Blood-red or golden, in the dusky wheat,
Rustling against his stooping, but the child
Laughs for its beauty, and forgets to glean,
Crumpling its leaves with kisses manifold,
Till in her pastime, idly curious,
She turns it inside out, and finds it black
And rough with poisonous blisters. Such a child
Was Tlaara, and such a flower, her love.
She saw no more the hills of Tlascala
Crooking their monstrous bases in and out,
To give the light capricious stream its willNor saw nor heard the never weary sea,
Fretting its way through marl and ironsand
To fiery opal and bright chrysophrase:
For'twixt her eyes and all the sweet discourse
Nature, our quiet mother, makes for such




3G6     THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.
As wrap their pained brows in her green skirts,
Fear, like a black fen, stretched for muddy miles.
She only saw Hualco's glorious fate,
And in its shadow a poor peasant girl,
Pining forlorn. Over all sounds she heard,
Travelling across the wild and piny hills,
And over many a reach of juniper,
Prickly with brier and burr, the voice of war.
Regal with sunbeams, which the journeying days
Trenched in their ancient snows, the mountains seemed
To mock her low estate; though when Love's tongue
Talked of the self-same splendors once, they stood
Serene like prophets, under whose white hairs
The lines of victory-seeing thoughts are fixed.
Beyond their bright tops great Hualco strained
His staring eyes, in one far-reaching look,
Fixed on that glittering pinnacle, a throne;
All hope, all love, all utmost energy,
To one determinate purpose crucified.
So in her pictures Fancy fashioned him;
Nor did she with deceiving colors paint.
A nation from its slumbering was roused,
And centering to one mortal blow the strength
Of all its sinews. On ten thousand shells
The strings were stirred, axes were set to edge;
The while the morning music of the horn
Went doubling on the track of Tyranny,
And startling up the echoes, that ran wild
Along the trembling hill-tops, in full cry.
Ruffled lay Pazcuaro's silver waves




THE  MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.                367
Under the storm melodious, and the belt
Of black and shaggy pines that Arrio wore,
With deadly spears of itzli, bristled bright;
For the roused realm was risen to replace
The usurped scepter in the kingly hand
Of its long exiled but true sovereignty.
So ended "the sweet summering of love "The royal lover of the forest maid
Went back as from imprisonment, like himThe wondrous Mexic of the olden timeChanged to the morning star,1 henceforth to shine
Serenely in the sky of victory.
The maiden went again to solitude,
To fight alone the conflicts of the heart,
And pray that Homeyoca would, in love,
Crop the wild thoughts that climbed about a throne,
And modulate her dreams to qualities
Befitting chaste and sad humility,But oftener, to cry in bitterness,
As Totec2 from the house of sorrow cried.
The blue-eyed spring with all her blowing winds,
And green lap brimming o'er with dainty sweets,
Wakened no dulcet light about her heart;
Nor nimble dance of waves) at shut of eve,
Under the charmed moonlight, nor the groves,
With all their leafy arches full of birds,Not maddened Jurruyo's wild sublimity,
1 Tolpicin the first Mexican king, it was believed, w'ts changed into Venns,
the Morning Star, to which a slave was sacrificed on its first appearance in
every autumn.-Lord Kingsboroungh.
2 Lord Kingsborough, vi. 179.




368      THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.
When, from his hell of lava tossing high
His fiery arms, that redden all the heavensAs, from his forehead, down his beard of pines,
Trickle the blood-like flames-could fix her gaze,
Or keep her thoughts from wandering on the way
The footsteps of her kingly lover went.
The goats grew wild, for Tlaara forgot
The times of milking; idle stood the wheel,
A loom for spiders; to the heavy length
Of the dark shadow, keeping pace with death,
Her sighs drew out themselves, and listening low
She leaned against the faded face of earth,
As if its great dumb breast could move with life.
The lost wayfaring man, whose scanty lamp
In the wild rainy middle of the night
Burns sudden out-waits patient till he sees
The white-horned Daybreak pierce the cloudy east,
Travelling alone and slow, and the wet woods
Which from his mottled forehead parted, black,
Swing goldenly together. But, alas!
In the white dome of gentle womanhood
Love's sunrise knows no fellow. Sweetest heart!
How could she look for comfort? idols made
No answer to her praying; and at last,
Out of this sorrowful continent of life
Her visions failed of resting: mortal love
Drew back the hopes which vine-like clomb against
The columned splendors of eternity.
Forgive her, Thou, whose greatest name is Love,
If, with her heaven of ruins coupled against




THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.               369
The chasms that divide us from thy throne,
She saw imperfectly-saw not at allFor,'twixt the fartherest reach of human eves
And the eternal brightness round about thee,
There lies an unsunned shoal, a blank of gloom,
Which no keen continuity of thought
Can burn or blast its way through, till the grave
Opens its heavy and obstructive valves.
Sometimes she plaited berries in her hair,
And, sitting by the sea, called on each wave,
As it had been her lover, to come up
And put its quieting arm around her neck,
And hug her close, and kiss her into sleep;
"It is our fault, and not the gods'," she said,
"If we outstay our pleasures, pining pale
In barren isolation, when one step
Divides us only from the realm of restIs it not so, oh great and friendly sea? "
But the waves put their beaded foreheads down
Against the moon, late wasting in their arms,
Now blushing, bashful, for her beauty's growth,
And left her waiting on the wild, wet bank,
Her meditations all uncomforted.
Sometimes a kindly memory would pluck
A sunbeam from the midday of her love,
And grief was awed to silence, and her heart
Hushed into pulseless calm, as is the bard
What time some grander vision than the rest,
Swims, planet-like, along his starry dreams.
Oh, what a terrible day for Maxtala
16*




370       THE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.
Was hovering in the rousing of that host,
That, robbed unjustly of its majesty,
Cried, like a whelpless lioness, for blood!
As the cencoatli,1 with its fiery coils
Illumining the darkness, warns aside
The step of the unequal traveller,
So might the glitter of that hydra's front,
Under its bossy wilderness of shields,
Have warned the tyrant from the onslaught off.
For stripling lovers, maidens all the day
Busied themselves with plumes, or, sedulous,
Wrought into bracelets gems and precious stones;
Some green like emeralds, some divinely white,
And some with streaky brown in grounds of gold,
With milky pearls, and sea-blue amethysts,
All curiously inwoven, meet to please
The princely eyes of the discrowned king.
Through the green passes of Tlacamama
Struck the white 2 columns of young warriors,
Eager to wheel into the battling linesArmed with the triple-pointed tlalochtli,
The maquahuitl, and the heavy bow
Strung with the sinews of sea-cow, or lynx;
While stern old men, their gray hairs winding back,
With most serene and steady majesty,
From helms of tiger's or of serpent's heads,
Went forth to death as to a festival.
1 A serpent that in the dark shines like a glow-worm.
2 When first going to war, young men were dressed in a simple costume of
white.-Clavigero, i. 365.




THE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.               371
Along Mazatlan's summits, wild and high,
The gathered legions hovered like a fleet,
Dark in the offing. Ensigns mingled bright,
Above the long lines lifted, as sometimes
A cloud of scarlet-hooded zopilots 1
Hangs mute along the sky, foretelling storms.
Tizatlan's heron, wild and sad,  as there,
There couchant lay Tepetiepac's fierce wolf,
The bundle of sharp arrows in his paws,
With Mexic's dread armorial hard byThe eagle and the tiger, combatant;
While, under the sea-city's golden net,
Ocotelolco's green bird, on the rock,
In lonely beauty waited for the storm,
Quick sweeping like a sea loosed from its bounds.
So was Hualco's kingdom repossessed,
So was the tyrant Maxtala o'ercome.
Oh! it was piteous when the fight was done,
And the moon stood, o'er the disastrous field,
In pale and solemn majesty, as one
Fresh from the kisses of the dead, to see
His harmless corse decked out with all the shows
Befitting the fair form of royalty,
While all his locks, torn from their net of gems,
In bloody tangles hung about his eyes,
Blind, but wide glaring, and his unknit hands
Clutched at the dust in impotent despair.
And he whose hunger-sunken eyes erewhile
I Before a storm, these birds are often seen flying in vast numbers, high under the loftiest clouds.




372     THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.
Burned through the forests, where he wandered once
Like a lamenting shadow-was a king;
And the delights and pastimes of a court,
The expulsive might of absence, and the pride,
Unfolding and dilating, ring by ring,
Under the sun of triumph-these, ere long,
So ministered to soft forgetfulness,
That the low echo of forsaken love
Smote on his heart no longer, and the eyes
That of his praises gathered half their light,
With sorrowful reproaches vexed no more.
Cold god, reposing in the northern ice,
Whose white arms nightly reach along the heavens!
Search out the stars, malignant, that so oft
Have crossed the orbit of divinest bliss,
And draw them, with some pale enchantment, down
From the good constellations-all their lengths
Of shining tresses, making them so fair,
Coiling like dying serpents, as they sink.'T is not so much premeditated wrong
That fills the world with sorrow and dismay,
As influences of demons, mischievous,
Hurrying impassioned impulses to acts
That fast and penance never can undo.
This is my theory, and right or wrong,'T is surely higher pleasure to believe
That men are better than they seem, than worse.
And he, this prince of whom' my story is,
Was a good prince, as princes be, and gave,
On every day, sweet alms and charities,




THE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.               373
That made him named of thousands in their prayers;
His reign with deeds of glory was so strewed
That they still shine upon us from the past,
As emeralds and ivory shine along
The sand-track of some perished caravan.
Houses of skulls, that erewhile all the hills
Made ghastly white, he levelled, and instead,
Walled with tazontli, pinnacled with gold;
And strong with beams of cedar and of fir,
Along the ruins, sacred temples rose; 1
About his throne stood lines of palaces
Kissing the clouds, exceeding beautiful
With porphyry columns, and lined curiously
With that white stone dividing into leaves;
And baths and gardens, and soft-flowing streams,
Made all Tezcuco's vale a goodly sight.
Schemes pondering, or infirm or feasible,
To make his subjects happy, still he dwelt
In that unruffled air that may be peace,
But was, nor then, nor ever will be, bliss.
And all his people loved him more than feared,
Nor looked upon his crown with envious eyes:
Shall the small lily, growing in the grass,
Be envious of the aloe's dome of flowers,
That, keeps the blowing winds from its sweet home 2
Or shall the soft cenzontli hush its song
And pine, in the green shelter of the bough,
For that the eagle, silent on the rock,
Call dip his plumage in the sun at will?
I He dedicated his temple%, says Prescott, to the Unknown God-the Cause
of Causes.




374    TTHE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.
Once, feasting with the lord of TepechanA vassal warrior, whose mighty arm
Had hewn his way to many victoriesTo do him honors, with her ministries,
There came a damsel so exceeding fair,
That, with the light of her dark eyes withdrawn,
A shadow over all his kingdom went;
But in his heart, (for love is prophecy,)
He felt that she already was elect
The bride of him whose festive guest he was.
So, to himself, to justify his thought,
He said, " This old man must not wed this maid,
For that the grave will cover him too soon,
And so, young beauty be made desolate:
And yet, perchance, not absolute for that,
(For all the burdening weight of three~core years
Lies like a silver garland on his brow,)
But that I know he cannot have her love,
Or having, could not keep it: that were false
To all of Nature's unwarpt impulses;
It is as if a budding bough should blush
Out of a sapless trunk; it cannot beElse is harsh violence to reason done,
And all true fitness sunken from the noon
Into the twilight of uncertainty.
Can the dull mist, where the swart Autumn hides
His wrinkled front and tawny cheek, wind-shorn,
Be sprinkled with the orange light that binds
1 This cur;us history, so similar to that of David and Uriah, is related by
Prescott 




THE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.             37.5
Away from her soft lap, o'erbrimmed with flowers,
The dew-wet tresses of the virgin year?
Or can the morning, bridegroomed by the sun,
Turn to the midnight, and be comforted!
So for their larger amplitude of weal,
This vagrant fancy-for't is nothing moreMust not nor ever shall be consummate.
For this true soldier —ah, a happy thought!I'11 make an expedition presently;
For now that I bethink me, in the wars
His arm might wield a heavy truncheon yet;'T were good, I think, he wore his helmet upA brow so rounded with grave majesty,
Would strike a sharper terror to the foe
Than all the triple weapons of a host.
This strength of his't were pity not to show.
He hath no lack of courage, but, alas!
He does not know his own supremacy;
Aware of it, I'11 even dare be sworn
This harmless stratagem were rated right;
I'11 make a hint of it in some soft way;
And, for the princess, there may chance to be
Some vacancy i' the court-some office slight,
Meet for the gracing of her gentle hands.
If it so fall-I know not if it will,
(I think my women a full complemnent,)She shall not want my kingly privilege
For any pretty wilfulness she choose
To wing the hours and make away the grief
That needs must follow the great embassy,




376          THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.
(Forced on alone by sharpest exigence,)
That takes this old man back into the field,
For he will scarcely hope to come alive,
I sorely fear, from the encounters fierce
And perilous offices of bloody war.
When sleep that night came down upon the eyes
Of the good prince-for he was good, withal,
And did such acts as are immortalizedHe saw this famous lord of Tepechan
Thrust sidelong in a ditch, his white hair stirred
Under the howlings of a mountain dog,
That surfeited upon his shrunken corse;
But the maid came to him in fairer guiseHe heard her singing through the palace walls,
Her locks down-flowing from a wreath of pearls.
This was a dream, and when the king awoke
He said't was strange, indeed't was passing strange.
Nay, quite a miracle, that sleeping thoughts
Should take no guise or shape of reasoning
That ever hath possessed our waking hours,
But balance, rather, on insanity!
If dreams are not the mirrors of the past,
They sometimes do forerun realities;
And ere the day, white in the orient then,
Folded with striped wings the evening star,
The lord of Tepechan had taken his mace,
And sadly the fair maiden, in his shield,
Was weaving feathers for the field of war.
And if the king had any troubling thought
Of the old love, awakened by the new,




THE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.              377
He said,'T was pity it had ever beenUnequal loves were never prosperous:
Yet it was scarcely love-the chance caprice
Of hours of indolence-by Tlaara
Doubtless forgotten, for the self-same moons
Had filled and faded over her and him;
That woman's heart at best was like the stream
Which in its bosom fondly takes the flowers,
Sown idly on its margin by the winds,
Or palely simple, or of gorgeous pride;
And even if some chance wave of her life
Had closely held his image for a while,
The tender pallor of her transient grief,
Under the summer's golden rustleing,
Had long flushed back to beauty. But at worst,
Say that she loved, and of desertion died,
Why, thousands, perished in the wars, were ne'er
With pious tears lamented: and his realln
I-lad right to claim a princess for its queen;
And if long centuries of joyance sprung,
And flourished, from one little profitless life,
Who would dare call the sacrifice unjust 2
And thus he laid the ghost of memory.
So like a very truth a lie may seem
I think the elect might almost be deceived.
Love, that warm passion-flower of the heart,
Nursed into bloom and beauty by a breath,
Even on the utmost verge of human life
Dims the great splendor of eternity.
True, some have trodden it beneath their feet.




378      THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.
Led by that bright curse, Genius, and have gone
On the broad wake of visions wonderful,
And seemed, to the dull mortals far below,
Unravelling the web of fate, at will,
And leaning on their own creative power,
Defiant of its beauty: but, alas!
Along the climbing of their wildering way,
Many have faltered, fallen-some have died,
Still wooing, from across the lapse of years,
The roseate blushing of its virgin pride,
And feeding sorrow with its faded bloom;
For not the almost-omnipotence of mind
Can from its aching bind the bleeding heart,
Or keep at will its mighty sorrow down.
Our mortal needs ask mortal ministries,
And o'er the lilies in the crown of heaven,
Even in ruins, love's earth-growing flower,
While we are earthy, showeth eminent.
When the calm beating of the pulse of time
That keeps right on, nor for our joys or griefs
Quickens or flags, had measured years, unblest
Or bright, as fate their passage made,
HIualco's fair and gentle servitor,
Faithless and recreant to the veteran chief,
Within the folding arms of royalty
Sheltered the blushing of her crowned brows.
And Tlaara! Ah, could they only feel,
Who are the ministers of ill to us,
That we are hungry while they keep their feasts;
That in our hearts the blood is warm and bright,




THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.              379
Though our cheeks shrivel, and our feeble steps
Crack up the harvestless ridges where w6 starve!For desolate, wronged Tlhara, was left
Only the wretched change of misery.
The imperial triumphs sounded through the hills.
With undertones of the perpetual songs
Of gayety, and splendor, and delights,
Or, right or wrong, that most in palaces
Have had dominion from the earliest time;
And she as one doomed, innocent, to death,
Fast in the shadows of his columns chained,
Saw her brief visions faded to the hues
Of fixed and damnable realities.
Night had shut up her little day of love
With all its leafy whispers; in her sky
The sunset like a wivern winged with fire
Had burned the flowery thickets of the clouds
And left them black and lonesome, and, like eyes
In the wide front of some dead beast, the stars,
Filmy and blank, stared on her out of heaven.
I said she knew the change of misery,
The pain but not the glory of the crew
Of rebel angels, whose undying pride
Like a bruised serpent towers against their doom,
Even while their webbed and flabby wings, once bright,
Lie wrinkling, flat, on waves of liquid fire.
Sometimes she told the unbetraying ghosts
Of her dead joys-the story of her life,
Portraying, phase by phase, from love to hate:
" The day," she said, " was over: on the hills




380      THE MAIDEN OF TL ASCALA.
The parting light was flitting like a ghost;
And like a trembling lover eve's sweet star,
In the dim leafy reach of the thick woods,
Stood waiting for the coming down of night.
But it was not the beauty of the time
That thrilled my heart with tempests of such joys
As shake the bosom of a god, new-winged,
When first in his blue pathway up the skies,
He feels the embrace of immortality.
A moment's bliss, and then the world was chant
Truth, like a planet striking through the dark,
Shone clear and cold, and I was what I am,
Listening along the wilderness of life
For the faint echoes of lost melody.
The moonlight gathered itself back from me,
And slanted its pale pinions to the dust;
The drowsy gust, bedded in luscious blooms,
Startled, as at the death-throes of all peace,
Down through the darkness moaningly fled off.
God, hide from me the time! for then I knew
Hualco's shame of me, a low-born maid.
I could, I think, have lifted up my hands,
Though bandaged back with grave-clothes, in that hour,
To cover my hot forehead from his kiss.
And yet, false love! I loved thee-listening close
From the dim hour when twilight's rosy hedgeSprang from the field of sunset, till deep night
Swept with her cloud of stars the face of heaven,
For the quick music of thy hurrying step.
And if, within some cold and sunless cave




THE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.               3~1
Thou hadst lain lost and dying, prompted not,
My feet had struck that pathway, and I could,
With the neglected sunshine of my hair,
Thence clasped thee from the hungry jaws of death,
And on my heart, as on a wave of light,
Have lulled thee to the beauty of soft dreams.
"Weak, womanish imaginings, begone!
Let the poor-spirited children of despair
Hang on the sepilchire of buried hope
The fiery garlands of their love-lorn songs.
Though such gift turn6d on its pearly hinge
Sweet Mercy's gate, I would not so debase me.
Shut out from heaven and all the blessed saints,
I, from the arch-fiend's wing, as from a star,
Would gather yet some splendor to my brows,
And tread the darkness with a step of pride.
For what is love? a pretty transiency,
An unsubstantial cheat, which for a while
Makes glad the commonest way, but like the dew
Which sunbeams reach and take from us, it fadesOur very smiles do dry and wither it.
What is't to leave the washing of my cheeks
Out of its flower-cups, and go mateless on
Across the ages to eternity 
Far'ewell, my prince, my king, a last farewell!
My love is all for fame, and from this hour
Against my bosom with a fonder clasp
Than ever given to thee, I treasure it.
Thy queen is fair —-I give thee joy of her,
And in the shadow of thy royal state




582      THIE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.
Stoop low my knee to say I do not hate her;
She has no measure in herself wherewith
To gauge my nature; she is powerless
To lift her littleness into my scorn;
No thought of hers outreaches a plume's lengthIf any time I cross or tread on her,'T is that I see her not more than the worm
Knotting itself for anger at my feetMy feet, now planted on the burnt, bare rocks,
Under whose bloodless ribs the river of death
Runs black with mortal sorrow. Vex me not
With your low love; my heart is mated with
The steadfast splendor of the world of fame,
What care have I for daisies or for dew,
The quail's wild whistle or the robin's song,
Or childhood's prattlings, sweeter though they be
Than rainy meadows, blue with violets 2
The walls built firm against the massy heights
That stay me up so well, are seamed with gold,
Sparkling like broken granite, and green stalks
Run up the unfrequent paths, lifting their blooms
Into the long still sunshine, where no change
Shall ever earth them up. It is in vain
Ye tempt me from my steady footing back
To the dim level of mortality.
What! think you I would leave this pain-bought place
For Love's soft beckoning? Nay, ye know me not.
Though the wild stormy North with fretful winlgs
Flew at my fastness till it toppled hard
Against hell's hollow bosom, even then




THE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.             383
Rocked like the cradle of a baby-god,
I would not yield my glory a hair's breadth,
But gathering courage like a mantle up,
Would smile betwixt the harmless thunderbolts."
So, with a thousand idle vagaries,
She cooled the fire, slow-burning out her life;
And when the fit was gone, there came remorse,
And she would say, " Forgive me, piteous gods!
I had a maddening fever in my brain
That made me turn the thorny point of hate
Which should have been bent sharpest on myself,
Against the heart of my sweet lord, the king.
Nay, wherefore should I ask to be forgiven?
A maniac's bitter raving is not prayerThat is a hope, concentrate and sincere,
That reaches up to heaven; words that are lipt
By the anointed priesthood, day by day,
May need more to be prayed for than the curse
Of a profane, unmeditative mood.
" Mine! he is all mine! she may bear his name.
Or in the golden shadows of his crown
Strut a brief day; more, call herself his wife,
If that a sound can give her any joy;
But if, from the close foldings of my heart,
She can undo his love and make it hers,
And me forgotten-then she has more skill
Than any woman here in Tlascala.
In some green leafy closet of the woods
I will go fast, till that the maiden moon,
Walkiiig serene above her worshippers,




384     THE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.
With some cold angry shaft shall strike me dead.
My cunning soul shall free my body yet
From these wild wasting pains, and from the scorn
Of that bad woman whose most wicked wiles
Have wronged the excellent king, and me have wronged.
But that is nothing: why should I have said
That I had any harms?'they all are his.
Else will I go into some ugly cave
Where vipers lodge, and choke them till they sting
And make me but a spirit. I will build
A palace with a window toward the earth,
And train white flowers —my lord loves best white
flowersAnd if there be a language more divine
Than love knows here, I'11 learn it, though it take
Half the long ages of eternity."
There came into the groves of Tlascala
An old man from the wars, where he had worn
Commands and victories, and won such fame
That with the names of gods his, intertwined,
Was seen in temples, yet by some great pairn
So bowed that even the basest pitied him;
And he, to soothe her grief with other grief,
Recited all the story of his life:
How a king's hands unlocked from his gray hairs
The clasped arms of tenderness, and struck
His bright hopes into ruins, so that life
Had lingered on, a sorrowful lament,
Waking iro piteous echo but the grave's.
" But thou," he said, " fair maiden, thou and I



THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.               385
Complainings ill befit the sunset time
That folds earth's shadow, like a poison flower,
And leaves life's last waves brokenly along
The unknown borders of eternity.'T is an extremity that warns us back
From staggering on, alas! we know not what.
With hatred's damning seal upon our souls,
How shall we ask for mercy?  Shall the gods
Forgive the unforgiving? or sweet Peace
The red complexion of the scorner's cheek
Fold to her quiet bosom?2 Nay, my child,
We have not in the world an enemy
Bad as that pride, which sets its devil strength
Against the grave, the gods, and everything."
Then she who was so meekly calm before,
Half rising out of death, as if that plea
Tightened the coil of wo about her heart,
Answered, " What demon comes to torture me?
Forgive! The word sounds well enough, in sooth;
But say it to the tigress, when she licks
Their streaky beauty from the smoking blood
That drenches her dead cubs: and will she fawn,
And her fierce eyes grow meekly sorrowful,
And her dilated nostril in the dust
Cower humbly at your feet? I tell you, no!
That is a word for injury to use
In penitent supplication; not for her,
Whose heartstrings quiver in the torturer's hand.
I know no use for it; nor gods nor men,
Require of us forgiveness of a foe
17




386      THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.
Till his true grief give warranty to us
That the forgiven may be trusted too.
Dying! thou sayest I'm dying! yes,'t is true!
I feel the tide outflowing!-and for this
Shall I in womanish weakness falter out,'See, piteous gods! how I forgive this man,
And lovingly kiss his murderous hand, withal,
And so, sweet Homeyoca, rest my soul!'
Urge me no longer! in the close, cold grave
The heart is done with aching, and the eyes
Are troubled with love's changes never more.
The palace splendors cannot reach me there,
Nor pipes nor dances wake my heavy sleepThe dead are safe. Look, friend, is that the day
Breaking so white along the cloudy east?
Not since the fading of my lovelit dream
Have I beheld a light so heavenly.
Nature seems all astir; the tree-tops move
As with birds going through them, and the dews
Hang burning, lamp-like, thick among the leaves.
All the long year past I have risen betimes,
For sake of morning purples and rich heaps
Of red-brown broideries - shaping in my thc~ught
The gorgeous chamber of a queen, the while
I penned my goats for milking; but till now,
The sunstreaks have run glistering, round the rocks,
Or doubled up the clouds like snakes, dislodged.
Once I remember, when I staid, alone,
Hunting along the woods —my playfellows
Gone homeward, dragging cherry-boughs and grapes



THE MAID EN  OF TLASCA LA.            387
A brooding splendor, large about me shone,
As if the queen moon met me in my way,
And in her white hands held me for an hour.
That night my mossy bed was covered bright
With skins of ounces; drowsing into sleep,
I heard the simples simmering at the fire;
Heard my scared housemates whispering each to each
That I was marked and singled out for harm.
Like buds that sprout together on one bough,
B tightening one window, so we grew and bloomedI and those merry children;'some are gone
To the last refuge —some contented stay
Along the valleys where the hedgerows keep
The summer grass bright longest. When we played
On hill or meadow, oft I left the sports
To climb the rough bare sea-cliffs; when we sulng
I mocked the screaming eagle; when we sought
Flowers for our pastimes, I was sure to bring
The brightest and most deadly-'t was the bent
O)f my audacious nature. Like the dove,
That foolish sits upon the serpent's eggs,
Nor, till she feels beneath her pretty wings
The stirring of the cold white-bellied brood,
Flies to the shelter of her proper home,
So has it been with me; soft, I untied
The hands that set the pitfall. I am down,
Yet proud Hualco, girt in armor, fears
To leap into the dark with me, and take
The embrace of my weak arms. Erect and free
He dare not mock me, fallen and in bonds;




388     THE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.
For who would tempt the hungry lioness
With the fresh look of blood. Though I were dead,
If he were near, my stagnant life would stir,
And I would close upon immortal power
To crack the close grave open and come up,
To scare him whiter than his marriage bed.
It cannot be, if justice be alive,
That he shall hover, ghoul-like, round my corse,
And blight the simple flowers I change into;
It cannot be that the great lidless eye
Of Truth will never stare into his heart,
And search its sinful secrets, withering off
The leprous scales of perjury wherein
They are peeled up.
" Ye hated, monstrous things,
Whose trade is torment, in your troughs of fire
Rock idly, drawing back your ugly heads
Into their proper caverns: no sharp tooth
Wounds like the stinging of a conscience roused!
Leave him to that: he cannot'scape it long.
I pray no mercy; beyond mortal strength
Men may be tempted —I am human, too.
If, thirsting in a desert, one draw near
With golden cups of water in his hands,
How hardly do we fill our mouths with dust;
If fever parch us, pleasant is the dew
Of kisses dropping cold against the cheek;
And brows like mine that the wild rains have wet,
Take kindly to the shelter of a crown.
Plead with me as you will: since love is lost:




THE  MAIDEN  OF T 1ASCALA.              389
[ have small care for any blackest storm
That e'er may mock my gray unhonored hairs.
Life's unlinked chains, in the quick opening grave,
May rust together-this is all my hope.
I.scorn thee not, old man! no haunting ghost,
Born of the darkness of love's perjury,
Crosses the white tent of thy dreaming now;
And if thy palsy-shaken years, or death,
Move thee, in solacing confessional,
To register forgiveness of all foesI speak not now, my friend, to keep thee back,
But, for myself —I tell thee, I have loved,
More than I have the gods, this faithless king;
And feeling that for this my doom was sealed,
Have I in sorrow cried unto the saved,'From the high walls of Mercy lean sometines,
And, parting the thick clouds that roof the lost.
Give me the comfort of some blessed sign
That tells me he is happy.' That is passed!
Pray, if thou wilt-my lips are dumb of prayer."
Struck with the lovely ruin, ebbing life
Sent;for a moment its live currents back,
Swel'ling his shrunken veins to knotty blue;
And a faint hope illumined his old eyes,
iAs if the sea of anguish lost a wave;
And kneeling humbly at her feet, he said —
" Ye gods! reach lovingly across the grave'T1'o the great sorrow of this death-winged prayer,
And for its sake about this sweet soul wrap
Blest immnortalitv! be piteous, tIeaveil




390      THE MAIDEN OF TLASCA LA.
For she is murdered by inconstancy 
Bend softly low, and hear her cruel wrongs
Plead for her who will plead not for herself.
"I had a wound erewhile, and now, alas!
It Fleeds afresh to see her die so proud;
Yet doth she make pride beautiful, and lies
Drowsing to death in its majestic light,
Ti.lke a bee sleeping in a golden flower.
The hot salt waters brim up to my eyes,
To think of her, so fit for life's delights,
Buried down low in the hrown haQev.~ ectrth,
Where the rude beast may tread and nettles grow.
I have seen death in many a fearful form,
For I have been a soldier all my life;
Have pillowed on my breast a thousand times
Some comrade in his last extremity;
But now my heart, unused to such a strait,
Plays the weak woman with me.  Fighting once
In the thick front of battle, I beheld
Our grim foe open wide his red-leaved book;
I felt his cold hand touch me; saw him fix
His filmy eyes and write, I thought, nly name;
Yet I was calm, and laying clown my lance,
Sought to embrace him as a soldier should.
I was young then, and fair luxuriant locks
Hung thick about my brows; life had no chance
I feared to combat with a sihgle hand;
Now I am better spared-old and unfit
For wars or gamesome pastimes-but have lost
The sweet grace of a brave surrendering.




THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.'91
Oh, I have scarce a minute more to live;
I feel the breaking up of human scenes;
Time, block your swiftly moving wheels, I pray,
And make delay, for pity; Evening, keep
Your blushing cheek under the sun awhile,
And give my gray hairs one repentant hour!
My vision cannot fix you, my sweet child;
Undo my helm, and lay it with my bowNay-'t is no matter-lay it anywhere.
So, sit and sing for me some mournful song,
And I will grow immortal, in the dream
That you are that most fair and gentle maid
Who tended once the chief of Tepechan."
I know not if't is true, they often say
Of this intenser action of the mind,
That it is madness: she of whom I sing,,
Lost, loving Tladra, in realms apart
From joy or sorrow, made herself a world,
Nor sight she saw nor sound she heard they knew
WVho followed, pitying, all her wayward steps,
Or added wonder at her strange wild words.
One sunny summer day in Tlascala,
Midway from its warm fields to where its peak,
That slept in snows eternal, calmly shone,
She from a mountain gazed, as set the sun,
Down on the mightiest and the loveliest land
In history seen or in prophetic dreams.
But not Tezcuco Chalco, Xalcotan,
Upon whose waves gay moved the fisher's boats,
Nor towers, nor temples, nor fair palaces,




392      THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.
Nor groves that rose in green magnlificence,
One glance could win from her far-looking eyes.
In natural music died the beautiful day,
Grew black the bases of the terraced hills,
And their mid regions, of a slumberous blue,
Faded to roseate silver toward the skies,
Along whose even field the horn6d moon
Walked, turning golden furrows on the clouds.
At last was set the night's most dark eclipse,
And yet she saw or seemed to see arise
Tezcuco's capital, within whose walls
What maddening scenes her jealous fancy drew!
The midnight passed, and lifting up her eyes,
From that long vigil, she beheld afar
The awful burning of volcanic fires,
Which seemed as if had fled ten thousand stars
From all their orbits, leaving heaven in gloom,
Save where they crashed in terrible fire alone,
Crashed in tumultuous rage; as if each one,
Fearful of Night, claimed the most central heats.
She saw unmoved, for now was left no more
Or fear or hope —the ultinate secret read
Of that too common but dread history.
She only said, how calmly! "The slim reed
That grows beside the most untravelled road,
With its wild blossoms yet may bless the eyes
Of some chance pilgrim; over the dead tree
Mosses run bright together; in the hedtge
The prickles of the thistle's bluish leaves
Hold, all day, spike-like, shining globes of dew;




THE  M  IDEN  OF  TLASCALA.             393
Even from the stonyest crevice, some stray thion
May crook its knotty body toward the sun.
And give the ant-hill shelter, but my death
Will desolate no homely spot of earth.
No eyes, when I am gone, will seek the grounu,;
No voice will falter, when the flowers colne uI p —' If she were only with us! such a time
We were so blest together.'  I would leave:
(My frailty and my follies all forgot)
A pleasant memory somewhere.  As we look
With pining eyes upon the faded year,
Forgetful of the vexing winds, that took
The green tops of the woods down; picking bare
The limbs of shining berries and gay leavesSo would I leave some friend to think of me.
The wild bird, when its mate dies, stays for grief,
Sad, under lonesome briers; but, mateless, I
Fall like a pillar of the desert dust,
Struck from its barren drifting in the wasteNo twig left wilting, with its root unearthed,
White bleaching in the sau —no insect's whin',
Trembling, uncertain for its lighting, lost.
Like to the star that in night's black abysin
Trails itself out in light, the human heart
Wastes all its life in love-that sacrifice
The consummation of diviner bliss
Than he can feel, who, looking fiomn   dracn
Sees palpable, his soul's unclhal bered tlholghts
Moving along the ages, calm and brighlt,
Like mighty wings, spread level.  It is well
1Xsj




394      TIlE MAIDEN  OF TLASCALA.
Earth's fair things fade so soon, else for their slake
ZMortals would slip from their eternity,
And pleased, go downward fronm the hills of heaveel,
Hurtled to death like beasts; nay, even they,
Decked for the shambles, impotently shake
The flowers about their foreheads-madly wise.
Oh, Love, thou art almost omnipotent!
Thy beauty, more than faith or hope, at last,
Lights the black offing of the noiseless sea.'T is hard to leave thy sweetest company
And turn our steps into the dark, alone:
If he were waiting for me I could pass
Death and the grave-yea, hell itself, unharmed.
In the gray branches of the starlit oaks,
I hear the heavy murmurs of the winds,
Like the low plaints of evil spirits, held
By drear enchantments from their demon mates.
Another night-time, and I shall have found
A refuge from their mournful prophecies."
Then, as if seeing forms none else could see,
With deepening melancholy in each word,
She said, " Come near, and from my forehead smooth
These long and heavy tresses, still as bright
As when their wave of beauty bathed the hand
That unto death betrayed me. Nay,'t is well!
I pray you do not weep; no other fate
Were half so fitting for me.  On the grave
Light, from the open gate of Peace, is laid,
And Faith leans yearningly away to heaven;
But life hath glooms wherein no light may colic.




THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.              3(9)
There, now I think I have no further needFor unto all, at last, there comes a time
When no sweet care can do us any good!
Not in my life that I remember of,
Could my neglect have injured any one,
And if I have, by my officious love,
Thrown harmful shadows in the way of some,
Be piteous to my natural weaknessesI never shall offend you any more!
"And now, most melancholy messenger,
Touch mine eyes gently with Sleep's heavy dew;
I have no wish to struggle from thy arms,
Nor is there any hand would hold me back.
The night is very dismal, yet I see,
Over yon hill, one bright and ste(ady star
Divide the darkness with its fiery spear,
And sprinkle glory on the lap of earth,
And the winds take the sounds of lullabies.
Fretfill of present fortune are we all,
Still to be blest to-morrow; through the boughs
Murmurous and cool with shadows, we reach out
Our naked arms, and when the noontide heat
Consumes us, talk of chance, and fate.
Even from the lap of Love we lean away
Like a sick child from a kind nurse's arms,
And petulantly tease for any toy
A hand-breadth out of reach; and from the way
Where hedge and harvest blend, irregu'ar,
Their bordering of green and gold, we turn
And climb up ledges rough and verdureless.




396       TIlE MAIDE N OF TLASCALA.
And when our feet, through weariness and toil,
lHave gained the heights that showed so brightly wy-11,
Our blind and dizzied vision sees, too late,
The forks of thickets running in and out
Betwixt their jagged bases, and glad springs,
Wooing the silence with a silver tongue,
And then our feeble hands let slip the staff,
That helpt our fruitless journey, and our cheeks
Shrivel from smiles and roses; so our sun
Goes, clouded down, and to the young bold race,
Close treading in our footsteps, we are dust.
Thus ends the last delusion; well-'tis well."
A  noment, and as some rough wind that sweeps
The sunshine from the summer, o'er her fhace
Came the chill shadow, and her grief wa- s (done.
Maidens, whose kindling blushes soflJy burn
Through nut-brown locks, or golden, gartlan(led,
Bright for the bridal, take with gentlest hands,
Out of your Eden, any simple flowers,
And cover her pale corse from cruel scorn,
Who, claiming in your joy no sisterhood,
Took in her arms the darkness which is peace;
And that the bright-winged ministers of God
Shall, when she wakes in beauty out of dust,
Make kindly restoration, pray somietinmes.
And when that she was dead and in her grave,
A blaming and a mourning melancholy,
Sweetly commending all her buried grace,
Darkened the pleasant chambers of the kinlg,
Till in the ceremony of his prayers,




THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.               397
Often he stopt, for "aimen" crying out,
" Oh, Tlaara! best, gentlest Tlaara!"
Yet pain had still vicissitudes of peace,
Until Remorse, with lean and famished lips,
Hung sucking at his heart; then came Despair,
And, from his greatness sorrowfully bowedLike to that feathered serpent,l that of old
Went writhing down the blue air, weak and bruised
To hide beneath the sea the emerald rings
Erewhile uncoiled along the level heavensWent he from splendor to the deeps of wo.
No white dove, rustling back the darkness, came,
Raining out lovely music firom  its wings
Upon his troubled soul, as once there calme
To Colhua's mountain children; he was changedNot in his princely presence; not like himl,
Who, fasting in the mount of penitence,
Fell in temptation, and was so transformed
To a black scorpion; but his youth of heart
Dropt off, as from the girdled sapling drops
The unripe fruitage; hope was done with hilm.
With calm, deliberative eyes, he looked
Upon the kingdoms, parceled at his will;
Over his harvests saw the sun go down,
As though his rising on the morrow brought
The issue of a battle; as one lost,
Who, by the tracks of beasts would find his wa-v 
To human habitations, so he strayed
Farther and farther from the rest he sought.
I Quetzalcoatl, the god of air.




39I       THE MAIDEN OF TLASCALA.
Fronm the sweet altar where the lamp of love
Burned through the temple's twilight, his sad steps
Thenceforward turned aside, and entered ill
That dreadful fane, reared sacredly to himn
Of the four arrows and blue twisted club,
Whose waist is girdled with a golden snake,
While round his neck a collar of humlan hearts
Hangs in dread token of his nmurderous trade.
The green-robed goddess of the fiery wand
That on the manta's fleeces rides at nigdht
Across the sea-waves, beckoned him soimetimes,
And he would fain have gone, but that 1a hand
Like that which she of Katelolco held
Back from the river of Death what time she heard'iThe dead bones making prophecies of war,
Still held him among nmortals; but he saw,
Lovely as life and habited in snow
No youth upon whose forehead shone the cross,
Such as to that pale sleeper gave the power
To lift the cold stone of her sepulchre
And bear her mournful warning to the world.
For his soul's peace he built a rocky bower
And dwelt in banishment perpetual;
Wronging his marriage-bed, for solitude,
Uncomforting and barren.  When the morn,
Planting carnations in the hilly east,
Peeped smiling o'er the shoulder of the day,
He set his joined hands before his eyes,
Sighing as one who sees, or thinks he sees,
The likeness of a friend, untimely dead.




THE MAIDEN  OF TLA SCALA.              399
Nightly he watched the great unstable sea
Kneel on the brown bare sand and lay his face
In the green lap of Earth-his paramourAnd sobbing, kiss her to forgiving terms,
Then straightway, cruel and incontinent,
Go from her-tracking after the white moon;
Music constrained its sweetest melodies
To please his lonesome listening-all in vain;
Beauty grew hateful, and the voice of love,
Shrill as the sullen bickering of the storm,
Close-neighboring his rocky prison-house.
Under the vaulted ceiling of a tower,
Bright with all fragrant woods and shining stones.
Dwelt priests, in the dim incense, whose clay pipes
And rosy jangling shells, mixing with hymns,
Told to their melancholy king what times
To give his homage to the Invisible.
But from the darkening wake of his lost love,
The wild and desolate echoes evermore
Went crying to the pitying arms of God;
And the crushed strings of his complaining lyre
Under the kissing hands of poesy
Thrilled never with such sweetness, as erewhile,
Beneath the bloomy boughs of Tlascala.