BY TRE ~AME AJITllOR.
POEMS OF TllE ORIENT.
1 volume.  Price, 75 cents.
POEMS OF llOME AND TRAVEL.
1 volume.  Price, 75 cents.
TICKNOR ANI) FIELDS, Publishers. 
t3:LO ~~
THE
POET'S JOURNAL.
BY
BAYARD TAYLOR.
B Os TO N:
TICKNOR AND FIELDS.
1863. 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by
EAYARD  TAYLOR,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Conrt for the District of ~IaesachnoetL.
SECOND  EDITION.
UNIVERSITY Pa~ss:
`~ELCH  DInELoW, AND Co~e~~~,
CAMINInDE. 
PREFACE.
THE RETURN OF THE GODDESS.
NOT as in youth, with steps outspeeding morn,
And cheeks all bright, from rapture of the way,
But in strange mood, half cheerful, half forlorn,
She comes to me to-day.
Does she forget the trysts we used to keep,
When dead leaves rustled on autumnal ground,
Or the lone garret, whence she banished sleep
With threats of silver sound?
Does she forget how shone the happy eyes
When they beheld her, - how the eager tongue
Plied its swift oar through wave-like harmonies,
To reach her where she sung? 
Iv
llow at her sacred feet I cast me down?
llow she upraised me to her bosom fair,
And from her garland shred the first light crown
That ever pressed my hair?
Though dust is on the leaves, her breath will bring
Their freshness back: why lingers she so long?
The pulseless air is waiting for her wing,
Dumb with unuttered song.
If tender doubt delay her on the road,
o let her haste to find the doubt belied!
If shame for love unworthily bestowed,
That shame shall melt in pride.
If she but smile, the crystal calm shall break
Th music, sweeter than it ever gave,
As when a breeze breathes o'er some sleeping h~ke,
And laughs in every wave.
The ripples of awakened song shall die
Kissing her feet, and woo her not in vain,
Until, as once, upon her breast I lie -
Pardoned, and loved again!
B. T. 
CONT~NTS.
PAOE
INSCRIPTION                             7
THE POET'S JOURNAL.
FIRST EVENING                           9
DARKNESS                            18
THE TORSO                           20
THE DEAD MARCH                      23
ON THE HEADLAND                     25
MAEAH                               27
THE VOICE OF TIlE TEMPTER           30
FATE DEFIED                         32
EXORCISM                            34
SQUANDERED LIVES                    36
INDIFFERENCE                        38
A SYMBOL                             40
SECOND EVENING                         47
ATONEMENT                           50
DECEMBER                            53
SYLVAN SPIRITS                      55
THE LOST ~hY                        57
CHURCH-YARD ROSES                   60
AUTiTMNAL DREAMS                    62
IN WINTER                           65
YOUNG LOVE                          67
THE CHAPEL                          70
IF LOVE SHOULD COME AGAIN           72 
(3
THIRD RVENING                              77
THE RETURN OF SPRING                     82
MORMNG                                   84
QUESTIONS                                86
THE VISION                               88
LOVE RETURNED                            91
LOVE JUSTIFIED                           94
A WOMAN                                  96
THE COUNT OF GLEICHEN                    98
BEFORE THE BRIDAL                       101
POSSESSION                              103
UNDER THE MOON.                       105
THE MYSTIC SUMMER                       108
A WATCH OF THE NIGHT                    112
THE FATHER                              114
THE MOTHER                              116
THE FAMILY                              118
PASSING TllR SIRRNS                       127
VARIOUS POEMS.
PORPHYROGENITUS                           143
THE SONG OF THE CAMP                      146
THE VINEYARD-SAINT                        149
ICARUS                                    153
THE BATH                                  158
THE FOUNTAIN OF TREVI                     162
MY MISSION                                164
PROPOSAL                                  167
BENUNCIA~ON                               168
THE QUAKER WIDOW                          174
ANASTASIA                                 181
THE PALM AND THE PINE                     182
OVER-POSSESSwH. 186
ON LEAVING CALIFORNIA                     188
LUPHORION                                 191
SOLDIER'S SONG                            195
THE SHEPHERD'S LAMENT                     197
THE GARDEN OF ROSES                       199
THE THREE SONGS                           208 
INSCRIPTION.
TO TllE MISTRESS OF CEDARCROFT.
I.
THE evening shadows lengthen on the lawn:
Westward, our immemorial chestnuts stand,
A mount of shade; hut o'er the cedars drawn,
Between the hedge-row trees, in many a hand
Of brightening gold, the sunshine lingers on,
And soon will touch our oaks with parting hand:
And down the distant valley all is still,
And flushed with purple smiles the beckoning hilL
II.
Come, leave the flowery terrace, leave the beds
Where Southern children wake to Northern air:
Let yon mimosas droop their tufted heads,
These myrtle-trees their nuptial beauty wear, 
8
And while the dying day reluctant treads
From tree-top unto tree-top, with me share
The scene's idyllic peace, the evening's close,
The balm of twilight, and the land's repose.
"I.
Come, for my task is done: the task that drew
~Iy footsteps from the chambers of the Day, -
That held me back, Beloved, even from you,
That are my daylight: for the Poet's way
Turns into many a lonely avenue
Where none may follow.  lle must sing his lay
First to himself, then to the One most dear;
Last, to the world.  Come to my side, and hear!
Iv.
The poems ripened in a heart at rest,
A life that first through you is free and strong,
Take them and warm them in your partial breast,
Before they try the common air of song!
Fame won at home is of all fame the best:
Crown me your poet, and the critic's wrong
Shall harmless strike where you in love have smiled,
Wife of my heart, and mother of my child! 
TllE  POET'S  ~OITRNAL.
FIRST EVENING.
Tii~ day had come, the day of many years.
My bud of hope, thorned round with guarding fears,
And sealed with frosts of oft-renewed delay,
Burst into sudden bloom - it was the day!
"Ernest will come!" the early sunbeams cried;
"Will come!" was breathed through all the woodlands
wide;
"Will come, will come!" said cloud, and brook, and
bird;
And when the hollow roll of wheels was heard
Across the bridge, it thundered: "lIe is near!"
And then my heart made answer: "lle is here!"
Ernest was here, and now the day had gone
Like other days, yet wild and swift and sweet, -
1* 
10
And yet prolonged, as if with willAing feet
One troop of duplicated Hours sped on,
And one trod out the moments lingeringly:
So distant seemed the lonely dawn from me.
But all was welL  He paced the new-mown lawn,
With Edith at his side, and, while my firs
Stood bronzed with sunset, happy glances cast
On the famillar landmarks of the Past.
I heard a gentle laugh: the laugh was hers.
"Confess it," she exclaimed, "I recognize,
No less than you, the features of the place,
So often have I seen it with the eyes
Your memory gave me: yea, your very face,
With every movement of il~e theme, betrayed
That here the sunshine lay, and there the shade."
"A proof!" cried Ernest.  "Let me be your guide,"
She said, "and speak not: Philip shall decide."
To them I went, at beckon of her hand.
A moment she the mellow landscape scanned
In seeming doubt, hut only to prolong
A witching aspect of uncertainty,
And the soft smile in Ernest's watching eye:
"Yonder," she said, "(I see I am not wrong,
By Philip's face,) you built your hermit seat
Against the rock, among the scented fern,
Where summer lizards played about your feet; 
11
And here, beside us, is the tottering urn
You cracked in fixing firmly on its base;
And here - yes, yes! - this is the very place -
I know the wild vine and the sassafras -
~Wiere you and Philip, lying in the grass,
Disowned the world, renounced the race of men,
And you all love, except your own for him,
Until, through that, all love came back again."
Here Ldith paused; but Lrnest's eyes were dim.
He kissed her, gave a loving hand to me,
And spoke: "Ah, Philip, Philip, those were days
We Jare remember now, when only blaze
Far-oW, the storm's black edges brokenly.
Who thinks, at night,that morn will ever be?
Who knows, far out upon the central sea,
That anywhere is land?  And yet, a shore
Has set behind us, and will rise before:
A past foretells a future."  "Blessed be
That Past!" I answered, "on whose bosom lay
Peace, like a new-born child: and now, I see,
The child is man, begetting day by day
Some fresher joy, some other bliss, to make
Your life the fairer for his mother's sake."
Deeper beneath the oaks the shadows grew:
The twilight gllmmer from their tops withdrew, 
12
And purple gloomed the distant hills, and sweet
The sudden breath of evening rose, with balm
Of grassy meadows: in the upper calin
The pulses of the stars began to beat:
The fire-flies twinkled: through the lindens went
A rustle, as of happy leaves composed
To airy sleep, of drowsy petals closed,
And the dark land lay silent and content.
We, too, were silent.  Ernest walked, I knew,
With me, beneath the stars of other eves:
He heard, with me, the tongues of perished leaves:
Departed suns their trails of splendor drew
Across departed summers: whispers came
From voices, long ago resolved again
Thto the primal Silence, and we twain,
Ghosts of our present selves, yet still the same,
As in a spectral mirror wandered there.
Its pain outlived, the Past was only fair.
Ten years had passed since I had touched his hand,
And felt upon my lips the brother-kiss
That shames not manhood, - years of quiet bliss
To me, fast-rooted on paternal land,
~Iated, yet childless.  He had journeyed far
Beyond the borders of my life, and whirled
Unresting round the vortex of the world, 
13
The reckless child of some eccentric star,
Cai'eless of fate, yet with a central strength
I knew would hold his life in equipoise,
And bend his wandering energies, at length,
To the smooth orbit of serener joys.
Few were the winds that wafted to my nest
A leaf from him: I learned that he was blest, -
The late fulfilment of my prophecy, -
And then I felt that he must come to me,
The old, unswerving sympathy to claim;
And set my house in order for a guest
Long crc the message of his coming came.
In gentle terraces my garden fell
Down to the rolling lawn.  On one side rose,
Flanking the layers of bloom, a bolder swell
With laurels clad, and every shrub that grows
Upon our native hills, a bosky mound,
Whence the commingling valleys might be seen
Bluer and lovelier through the' gaps of green.
The rustic arbor which the summit crowned
Was woven of shining smilax, trumpet-vine,
Clematis, and the wild white eglantine,
Whose tropical luxuriance overhung
The interspaces of the posts, and made
For each sweet picture frames of bloom and shade. 
14
It was my favorite haunt when I was young,
To read my poets, watch my sunset fade
Behind my father's hills, and, when the moon
Shed warmer silver through the nights of June,
Dream, as`t were new, the universal dream.
This arbor, too, was Ernest's hermitage:
Here he had read to me his tear-stained page
Of sorrow, here renewed the pang supreme
Which burned his youth to ashes: here would try
To lay his burden in the hands of Song,
And make the Poet bear the Lover's wrong,
But still his heart impatiently would cry:
"In vain, in vain!  You cannot teach to flow
Th measured lines so measureless a woe.
First learn to slay this wild beast of despair,
Then from his harmless jaws your honey tear!"
Hither we came.  Beloved hands had graced
The table with a flask of mellow juice,
Thereto the gentle herb that poets use
When Fancy droops, and in the corner placed
A lamp, that glimmered through its misty sphere
Like moonlit marble, on a pedestal
Of knotted roots, against the leafy walL
The air was dry, the night was calm and clear,
And in the dying clover crickets chirped. 
15
The Past, I felt, the Past alone usui'ped
Our thoughts, - the hour of confidence had come,
Of sweet confession, tender interchange,
Which drew our hearts together, yet with strange
llalf-dread repelled them.  Seeing Ernest dumb
With memories of the spot, as if to me
Bdonged the right his secrets to evoke,
And Eslith's eyes on mine, consentingly,
Conscious of all I wished to know, I spoke:
"Dear Friend, one volume of your life I read
Beneath these vines: you placed it in my hand
And made it mine, - but how the tale has sped
Since then, I know not, or can understand
From this fi~ir ending only.  Let me see
The intervening chapters, dark and bright,
In order, as you lived them.  Give to-night
Unto the Past, dear Ernest, and to me!"
Thus I, with doubt and loving hesitance,
Lest I should touch a nerve he fain would hide;
But he, with calm and reassuring glance,
In which no troubled shadow lay, replied:
"That mingled light and darkness are no more
In this new life, than are the sun and shade
Of painted landscapes: di~tant lies the shore
Where last we parted, Philip: how I made
The journey, what adventures on the road, 
1(3
What haps I met, what struggles, what success
Of fame, or gold, or place, concerns you less,
Dear fi'iend, than how I lost that sorest load
I started with, and came to dwell at last
In the House Beautiful.  There but remains
A fragment here and there, - wild, broken strains
And scattered voices speaking from the Past."
"Let me those broken voices hear," I said,
"And I shall know the rest."  "Well - be it so.
You, who would write`1?csurgam' o'er my dead,
The resurrection of my heart shall know."
Then Edith rose, and up the terraces
Went swiftly to the house; but soon we spied
Her white dress gleam, returning through the trees,
And, softly flushed, she came to Ernest's side,
A volume in her hnnd.  But he delayed
Awhile his task, revolving leaf by leaf
With tender interest, now that ancient grief
No more had power to make his heart afraid;
For pain, that only lives in memory,
Like battle-scars, it is no pain to show.
"Here, Philip, are the secrets you would know,"
He said: "Howe'er obscure the utterance be,
The lamp you lighted in the olden time
Will show my heart's-blood beating through the rhyme: 
17
A poet's journat writ in fire and tears
At first, blind protestations, blinder rage,
(For you and Edith only, many a page!)
Then slow deliverance, with the gaps of years
Between, and final struggles into life,
Which the heart shrank from, as`t were death instead."
Then, with a loving glance towards his wife,
Which she as fondly answered, thus he read: -
B 
DARKNI~ S S.
THE thread I held has slipped from out my hand:
In this dark labyrinth, without a clew,
Grop~ng for guidance, stricken blind, I stand,
A helpless child that knows not what to do.
When all the glory of the morn was mine,
The sudden night surprised me unawares:
I see no pitying star above me shine,
I hear no voice in answer to my prayers.
At every step, I stumble on the road;
Fain would I rest, the wild hours whirl me on;
What business have I in this blank abode,
Whence Love, and llope, and even Faith, are gone? 
19
A child of summer, shivering~in the cold, -
A son of light, by darkness overcome, -
A bird of air, my broken wings I fold,
A harp of joy, my shattered strings are dumb.
And every gift that Life to me had given
Lies at my feet, in useless fragments trod:
There is no justice or in Earth or`leaven:
There is no pity in the heart of God. 
THE TORSO.
I.
IN clay the statue stood complete,
As beautiful a form, and fair,
As ever walked a Roman street
Or breathed the blue Athcnian air:
The perfect limbs, divinely bare,
Their old, heroic freedom kept,
And in the features, fine and rare,
A calm, immortal sweetness slept.
II.
O'er common men it towered, a god,
And smote thcir meaner life with shame,
For while its feet the highway trod,
Its lifted brow was crowned with flame
 
21
And purified from touch of blame:
Yet wholly human was the face,
And over them who saw it came
The knowledge of their own disgrace.
"I.
It stood, regardless of the crowd,
And simply showed what men might be:
Its solemn beauty disavowed
The curse of lost humanity.
Erect and proud, and pure and free,
It overlooked each loathsome law
Whereunto others bend the knee,
And only what was noble saw.
Iv.
The patience and the hope of years
Their final hour of triumph caught;
The clay was tempered with my tears,
The forces of my spirit wrought
With hands of fire to shape my thought,
That when, complete, the statue stood,
To marble resurrection brought,
The ~Iaster might pronounce it good. 
22
V.
But in the night an enemy,
Who could not bear the wreath should grace
My ready forehead, stole the key
And hurled my statue from its base;
And now its fragments strew the place
Where I had dreamed its shrine might be:
The stains of common earth deface
Its beauty and its majesty.
V'.
The torso prone before me lies;
The cloven brow is knit with pain:
Mute lips, and blank, reproachful eyes
Unto my hands appeal in vain.
My hands shall never work again:
My hope is dead, my strength is spent:
This fatal wreck shall now remain
The ruined sculptor's monument. 
TllL DEAD MAR CII.
I.
Tll~ April sky with sunshine filled the street,
And lightly fell the tread of pattering feet,
As on the last year's leaves the April rain.
The glaring houses wore a foreign grace;
A foreign sweetness shone on Labor's face,
And open lay, relaxed, the hand of Gain.
II.
~Iy sorrow slept; I breathed the peace of Spring.
One fiedgeling hope outreached a timorous wing:
Concealed, at least, and sacred was my pain, -
When, suddenly, the dreadful trumpets blew,
And every wind my gloomy secret knew,
And all the echoes hurled it back again. 
24
"I'
Before a stranger's corpse the trumpets cried
So bitterly, it seemed all love had died:
Thea hollow horns took up the fatal strain,
Till tongues of fire went flashing through the air,
The myriad clamors of a sole despair,
The cry of grief that knows its cry is vain.
I?.
The dead was fortunate, - he could not hear:
The mourners comforted, behind his bier:
Through happy crowds advanced the funeral train:
Mine was the sorrow, mine the deathlike pang,
And tears, that burned the eyelids as they sprang,
To hear the awful music of my pain. 
ON TllE llEADLAND.
I SIT On the lonely headland,
Where the sea-gulls come and go:
Tile sky is gray above me,
And the sea is gray below.
There is no fisherman's pinnace
llomeward or outward bound;
I see no living creature
In the world's deserted round.
I pine for something human,
~Ian, Woman, young or old,
Something to meet and welcome,
Something to clasp and hold.
I have a mouth for kisses,
But there`s no one to give and take;
I have a heart in my bosom
Beating for nobody's sake.
2 
26
Owarmth of love that is wasted!
Is there none to stretch a hand?
No other heart that hungers
Th all the living land?
Icould fondle the fisherman's baby,
And rock it into rest;
Icould take the sunburnt sailor,
Like a brother, to my breast.
Icould clasp the hand of any
Outcast of land or sea,
If the guilty palm but answered
The tenderness in me!
The sea might rise and drown me,
Cliffs fall and crush my head, -
Were there one to love me, living,
Or weep to see me dead!
 
MARAll.
TllI~ waters of my life were sweet,
Before that bolt of sorrow fell;
But now, though fainting with the heat,
I dare not drink the bitter welL
My God! shall Sin across the heart
Sweep like a wind that leaves no trace,
But Grief inflict a rankling smart
No after blessing can efface?
I see the tired mechanic take
His evening rest beside his door,
And gentlier, for their father's sake,
His children tread the happy floor:
 
28
The kitchen teems with cheering smells,
With clash of cups and clink of knives,
And all the household picture tells
Of humble yet contented lives.
Then in my heart the serpents hiss:
What right have these, who scarcely know
The perfect sweetness of their bliss,
To flaunt it thus before my woe?
Like bread, Love's portion they divide,
Like water drink his precious wine,
Wl~en the least crumb they cast aside
Were manna for these lips of mine.
I see the friend of other days
Lead home his flushed and silent bride:
His eyes are suns of tender praise,
Her eyes are stars of tender pride.
Go, hide your shameless l~appiness,
The demon cries, within my breast;
Think not that I the bond can bless,
Which seeing, I am twice unbiest.
 
29
The husband of a year proclaims
His recent honor, shows the boy,
And calls the babe a thousand names,
And dandles it in awkward joy:
And then - I see the wife's pale cheek,
Her eyes of pure, celestial ray -
The curse is choked: I cannot speak,
But, weeping, turn my head away 
THE VOICE OF THE TEMPTER.
LAST night the Tempter came to me, and said:
"Why sorrow any longer for the dead?
The wrong is done: thy tears and groans are naught:
Forget the Past, - thy pain but lives in thought.
Night after night, I hear thy cries implore
An answer: she will answer thee no more.
Give up thine idle prayer that Death may come
And thou mayst somewhere find her: Death is dumb
To those that seek him.  Live: for youth is thine.
Let not thy rich blood, like neglected wine,
Grow thin and stale, but rouse thyseli~ at last,
And take a man's revenge upon the Past
What have thy virtues brought thee?  Let them go,
And with them lose the burden of thy woe,
Their only payment for thy service hard:
They but exact, thou see'st, and not reward. 
31
Thy life is cheated, thou art cast aside
In dust, the worn-out vessel of their pride.
Come, take thy pleasure: others do the same,
And love is theirs, and fortune, name and fame!
Let not the name of Vice thine ear affright:
Vice is no darkness, but a different light,
~~hich thou dost need, to see thy path aright;
Or if some pang in this experience lie,
Through counter-pain thy present pain will die.
Bethink thee of the lost, the barren years,
Of harsh privations, unavailing tears,
The steady ache of strong desires restrained,
And what thou hast deserved, and what obtained:
Then go, thou fool! and, if thou canst, rejoice
To make such base ingratitude thy choice,
~Yhile each indulgence which thy brethren taste,
But mocks thy palate, as it runs to waste!"
So spake the Tempter, as he held outspread
Alluring pictures round my prostrate head.
`Twixt sleep and waking, in my helpless ear
His honeyed voice rang musical and clear;
And half persuaded, shaken half with fear,
I heard him, till the Morn began to shine,
And found her brow less dewy-wet than mine. 
FATE DEFIED.
Ir seed was meant to grow, or buds to swell
In vernal airs, or birds to mate and build,
Then this quick love, wherewith my heart is filled,
Was meant to bourgeon and to bloom, as well.
If sap was made, to mount in every tree,
And blood, to fill the million veins of man,
Then I was made, the hour my life began,
To share the universal destiny.
If; as ordained, each creature finds his mate
And gives to younger lamps his fading flame
Of life, then I a like fulfilment claim,
Nor ask release from my appointed fate.
This heart is ~esb, I cannot make it stone:
This blood is hot, I cannot stop its ~ow:
These arms are vacant - wheresoe'er I go,
~ve lies in others' arms, and shuns my own. 
33
I who have waited, served, performed my ta~k
For seven long years, and find my Rachel fled,
wI~t recompense shall now be mine instead?
Fate turns away, nor grants the least I ask!
Come,`t is enough! - Fate, Law, whatever rules
This wretched Larth, my hand is on thy throat:
Pour on these wounds il~e sole sweet antidote,
And keep thy tricks for cowards and for fools!
Too long I`ve lain, and with submissive will
Suffered: my rights I now demand of thee:
Give me the wife, the home, thou stol'st from me,
The children of the Future thou didst kill!
~Iiae thou hast chosen from a thousand lives
To bear thy malice: cruel Power, take heed!
Pierced unto death, the conquered heart may bleed, -
The vengeance of an injured man survives.
Give back, thou il~ie?, thy plunder!  Let me lie
In some low nook of earth, obscure, forgot,
But sharing still my brethren's blessed lot,
Or I will wresfle with thee till I die!
2*                      0 
LXORCISM.
0, TONGUES of the Past, be still!
Are the days not over and gone?
The joys have perished that were so sweet,
But the sorrow still lives on.
I have sealed the graves of my hopes;
I have carried the pall of love:
Let the pains and pangs be buried as deep,
And the grass be as green above!
But the ghosts of the dead arise:
They come when the board is spread:
They poison the wine of the banquet cups
With the mould their lips have shed.
The pulse of the hacehant blood
~Iay throb in the ivy wreath,
But the berries are plucked from the nightshade bough
That grows in the gardens of Death. 
35
I sleep with joy at my heart,
Warm as a new-made bride;
But a vampyre comes to suck her blood,
And I wake with a corpse at my side.
Shall I open your fatal graves?
Shall I drive a stake through the clay,
Till ye cease to drain from my bankrupt veins
The life ye have made your prey?
o ghosts, I have given to you
The bliss of il~e faded years;
The sweat of my brow, the blood of my heart,
And manhood's terrible tears!
Take them, and be content:
I have nothing more to give:
~Iy soul is chilled in the house of Death,
And`t is time that I should live.
Take them, and let me be:
Lie still in the churchyard mould,
Nor chase from my heart each new delight
With the phantom of the old!
 
SQUANDERED LIVE S.
T~ fisherman wades in the surges;
The sailor sails over the sea;
The soldier steps bravely to battle;
The woodman lays axe to the tree.
They are each of the breed of the heroe~,
The manhood attempered in strife:
Strong hands, that go lightly to labor,
True hearts, that take comfort in life.
In each is the seed to replenish
The world with the vigor it needs, -
The centre of honest affections,
The impulse to generous deeds.
But the sharl~ drinks the blood of the fisher;
The sailor is dropped in the sea;
The soldier lies cold by his cannon;
The woodman is crushed by his tree.
 
37
Each prodigal life that is wasted
In manly achievement unseen,
But lengthens the days of the coward,
And strengthens the crafty and mean.
The blood of the noblest is lavished
That the selfish a profit may find;
But God sees the lives that are squandered,
And we to Ilis wisdom are blind. 
INDIFFLRLNCE.
I.
WE Fools! that meekly take the bit
And drag the burden all our lives!
Poor, bllnded steeds, we all submit,
Nor know our load, scarce seeing it,
Ai~hough with stinging lash Fate goads us as she drives.
II.
What does it help, the gold we bear,
When we are worn, and halt, and lean?
No fresher tastes the dusty air
When Fame's triumphant trumpets blare,
And we the road would ]eave, to lie in pastures green. 
39
"I.
Nor profits mud~ a virtuous name,
So short a tiine the crown we wear:
In fifty years`t will be the same
As if it were a crown of shame,
For none will know our lives, or, if they knew, would
care.
Iv.
Life came to me: why should I take
The tasks I did not seek to do?
I did them for another's sake
Th vain: and now the yoke I break,
And let the world roll on, regardless of its crew.
V.
Here, take my days, whatever Fate
The worthless gift may choose to claim;
For I am weary of their weight:
Alike to me is love or hate:
Do with me as you please, all fortunes are the same. 
A SYMBOL.
I.
llBAYY, and hot, and gray,
Day following unto day,
A felon gang, their blind life drag away, -
Blind, vacant, dumb, as Time,
Lapsed from his wonted prime,
Begot them basely in incestuous crime:
So little life there seems
About the ~voods and streams, -
Only a sleep, perplexed with nightmare-dreams.
The burden of a sigh
Stifles the weary sky,
where smouldering clouds in ashen masses lie: 
41
The forests fain would groan,
But, silenced into stone,
Crouch, in the dull blue vapors round them thrown.
o light, more drear than gloom!
Than death more dead such bloom:
Yet life - yet life - shall burst this gathering doo~!
II.
Behold! a swift and silent fire
Yon dull cloud pierces, in the west,
And blackening, as with growing ire,
He lifts his forehead from his breast.
He mutters to the ashy host
That all around him sleeping lie, -
Sole chieftain on the airy coast,
To fight the battles of the sky.
He slowly lifts his weary strength,
His shadow rises on the day,
And distant forests feel at length
A wind from landscapes far away.
 
42
"I.
How shall the cloud unload its thunder?
How shall its flashes fire the air?
Hills and valleys are dumb with wonder:
Lakes look up with a leaden stare.
Hark! the lungs of the striding giant
Bellow an angry answer back!
Hurling the hair from his brows defiant,
Crushing the laggards along his track,
Now his step, like a battling Titan's,
Scales in flame the hills of the sky;
Struck by his breath, the forest whitens;
Fluttering waters feel him nigh!
Stroke on stroke of his thunder-hammer -
Sheets of flame from his anvil hurled -
Heaven's doors are burst in the clamor:
He alone possesses the world!
Iv.
Drowned woods, shudder no more:
Vexed lakes, smile as before: 
43
Hills that vanished, appear again:
Rise for harvest, prostrate grain!
Sliake thy jewels, twinkling grass:
Blossoms, tint il~e winds il~at pass
Sun, behold a woAd restored!
Vorld, again thy sun is lord!
Thunder-spasms the waking be
Thto Life from Apathy:
Life, not Death, is in the gale, -
Let the coming Doom prevail! 
TllUs far he read: at first with even tone,
Still chanilug in the old, familiar key, -
That golden note, whose grand monotony
Is musical in poets' mouths alone, -
But broken, as he read, became the chime.
To speak, once more, in Grief's forgotten tongue,
And feel the hot reflex of passion flung
Back on the heart by every pulse of rhyme
Wherein it lives and burns, a soul might shake
More calm than his.  With many a tender break
Of voice, a dimness of the haughty eye,
And pause of wandering memory, he read;
While I, with folded arms and downcast head,
Th silence heard each blind, bewildered cry.
Thus far had Ernest read: but, closing now
The book, and lifting up a calmer brow,
"Forgive me, patient God, for this!" he said:
"And you forgive, dear friend, and dearest wife,
If I have marred an hour of this sweet life
With noises from the valley of the Dead. 
45
Long, long ago, the lland whereat I railed
In blindness gave me courage to subdue
This wild revolt: I see wherein I failed:
~Iy heart was false, when most I thought it true,
~Iy sorrow selfish, when I thought it pure.
For those we lose, if still their love endure
Translation to that other land where Love
Breathes the immortal wisdom, ask in heaven
No greater sacrifice than we had given
On earth, our love's integrity to prove.
If we are blest to know the other blest,
Then treason lies in sorrow.  Vainly said!
Alone each heart must cover up its dead;
Alone, through bitter toil, achieve its rest:
Which I have found - but still these records keep,
Lest I, condemning others, should forget
~Iy own rebellion.  From these tares I reap,
In evil days, a fruitful harvest yet.
"But`t is enough, to-night.  Nay, Philip, here
A chapter closes.  See! the moon is near:
Your laurels glitter: come, my darling, sing
The hymn I wrote on such a night as this!"
Then Edith, stooping first to take his kiss,
Drew from its niche of woodhine her guitar,
With chords prelusive tuned a slackened string, 
46
And sang, clear-voiced, as some melodious star
Were dropping silver sweetness from afar:
UoJ, to wkom we look up blindly,
Look Thou dOwn ~pon us kindly:
We have sinneJ, but not Jesignedij~.
If our faith in Thee was shaken,
Pardon Thou our hearts mistaken,
Our obedience reawaken.
We are sinfut, Thou art ho!y:
Thou art mighty, we are lowly:
Let us reach Thee, climb~zy slowly.
Our ingratitude confessing,
On Thy mercy still transgressing,
Thou dost punish us with blessing! 
SLCOND LYLNING.
IT was the evening of il~e second day,
~Vhich switter, sweeter than the first had fled
~Iy heart's delicious tumult passed away,
And left a sober happiness instead.
For Lrnest's voice was ever in mine ear,
llis presence mingled as of old with mine,
But stronger, manlier, brighter, more divine
Its effluence now: within his starry sphere
Of love new-n sen my nature too was drawn,
And warmed with rosy flushes of the dawn.
All day we drove about the lovely vales,
Under the hill-side farms, through summer woods,
The land of mingled homes and solitudes
That Ernest loved.  We told the dear old taics
Of childhood, music new to Edith's ear,
Sang olden songs, lived old adventures o'er,
And, when the hours brought need of other cheer. 
48
Spread on the ferny rocks a tempting store
Of country dainties.`T was our favorite dell,
Cut by the trout-stream through a wooded ridge:
Above, the highway on a mossy bridge
Strode o'er it, and below, the water fell
Through hornblende bowlders, where the dircus flung
His pliant rods, the berried spice-wood grew,
And tulip-trees and smooth magnolias hung
A million leaves between us and the blue.
The silver water-dust in puffs arose
And turned to dust of jewels in the sun,
And like a canon, in its close begun
Mresh, the stream's perpetual lullaby
Sang down the dell, and deepened its repose.
Here, till the western hours had left il~e sky,
We sat: then homeward loitered through the dusk
Of chestnut woods, along the meadow-side,
And lost in lanes that breathed ambrosial mu~k
Of wild~rape blossoms: and the twilight died.
Long after every star came out, we paced
The terrace, still discoursing on il~e themes
The day had started, intermixed with dreams
Born of the summer night.  Then, golden-faced,
Behind her daybreak of auroral gleams,
The moon arose: the bosom of the lawn 
49
Whitened beneath her silent snow of light,
Save where the trees made isles of mystic night,
Dark blots against the rising splendor drawn,
And where the eastern wall of woodland towered,
Blue darkness, filled with undistinguished shapes:
But elsewhere, over all the landscape showered -
A silver drizzle on the distant capes
Of hills - the glory of the moon.  We sought,
Drawn thither by the same unspoken thought,
The mound, where now the leaves of laurel clashed
Their dagger-points of light, around the bower,
And through the nets of leaf and elfin flower,
Cold fii~e, the sprinkled drops of moonshine flashed.
Lrelong in Lrnest's hand the volume lay,
(I did not need a second time to ask,)
And he resumed the intermitted task.
"This night, dear Philip, is the Poet's day,"
lle said: "the world is one confessional:
Our sacred memories as freely fall
As leaves fi'oni o'er-ripe blossoms: we betray
Ourselves to Nature, who the tale can win
We shrink from utteAng in the daylight's din.
So, Friend, come hack with me a little way
Along the years, and in these records find
The sole inscriptions they have left behind."
3                     D 
ATONEMENT.
Ir tbou badst died at midnight,
With a lamp beside thy bed;
The beauty of sleep exchanging
For the beauty of tbe dead:
When the bird of heaven had called thee,
And the time had come to go,
And the northern lights were dancing
On the dim December snow -
If thou hadst died at midnight,
I had ceased to bid thee stay,
Hearing the feet of the Father
Leading His child away.
 
61
I had knelt, in the awful Presence;
And covered my guilty head,
And received llis absolution
For my sins toward the dead.
But the cruel sun was shining
In the cold and windy sky,
And Life, with his mocking voices,
Looked in to see thee die.
God came and went unheeded;
No tear repentant shone;
And he took the heart from my bosom,
And left in its place a stone.
Each trivial promise broken,
Each tender word unsaid,
~Iust be evermore unspoken, -
Unpardoned by the dead.
Un pardoned?  No: the struggle
Of years was not in vain, -
The patience that wearies passion,
And the prayers that conquer pain.
 
52
This tardy resignation
May be the blessed sign
Of pardon and atonement,
Thy spirit sends to mine.
Now first I dare remember
That day of death and woe:
Within, the dreadful silence,
Without, the sun and snow! 
DECEMBER.
Tll~ beech is bare, and bare the ash,
The thickets white below;
The fir-tree scowls with boar moustache,
lle cannot sing for snow.
The body-guard of veteran pines,
A grim battalion, stands;
They ground their arms, in ordered lines,
For Winter so commands.
The waves are dumb along the shore,
The river's pulse is still;
The north-wind's bugle blows no more
Reveili6 from the hill.
The rustling sift of falling snow,
The muffled crush of leaves,
These are the sounds suppressed, that show
llow much the forest grieves;
 
54
But, as the blind and vacant Day
Crawls to his ashy bed,
I bear dull echoes far away,
Like drums above the dead.
Sigh with me, Pine that never changed!
Thou wear'st the Summer's hue;
11cr other loves are all estranged,
But thou and I are true! 
SYLVAN SPIRITS.
T~u gray stems rise, the branches braid
A covering of deepest shade.
Beneath these old, inviolate trees
There comes no stealthy, sliding breeze,
To overhear their mysteries.
Steeped in the fragrant breath of leaves,
My heaft a hermit peace receives:
The sombre forest thrusts a screen
My refuge and the world between,
And beds me in its balmy green.
No fret of life may here intrude,
To vex the sylvan solitude.
Pure spirits of the earth and air,
From hollow trunk and bosky lair
Come forth, and hear your lover's prayer!
Come, Druid soul of ancient oak,
Thou, too, hast felt the thunder-stroke; 
56
Come, llamadryad of the beech,
Nymph of the burning maple, teach
~iy heart the solace of your speech!
Alas! the sylvan ghosts preserve
The natures of the race they serve.
Not only Dryads, chaste and shy,
But piping Fauns, come dancing nigh,
And Satyrs of the shaggy thigh.
Across the calm, the holy hush
And shadowed air, there darts a ~ush
Of riot, from the lawless brood,
And rebel voices in my hlood
Salute these orgies of the wood.
Not sacred thoughts alone engage
The saint in silent hermitage:
The soul within him heavenward strives,
Yet strong, as in profaner lives,
The giant of the flesh survivcs.
From Nature, as from human haunts,
That giant draws his sustenance.
By her own elves, in woodlands wild
She sees her robes of prayer defiled:
She is not purer than her child. 
TllI~ LOST MAY.
~Yn~~ May, with cowslip-braided locks,
N\~Ws through the land in green attire,
And burns in meadow-grass the phlox
llis torch of purple fire:
N\Then buds have burst the silver sheath,
And shifting pink, and gray, and gold
Steal o'er the woods, while fair beneath
The bloomy vales unfold:
N\~lien, emerald-bright, the hemlock stands
New-feathered, needled new the pine;
And, exiles from the orient lands,
The turbaned tulips shine:
3* 
58
When wild azaleas deck the knoll,
And cinque-foil stars the fields of home,
And winds, that take the white-weed, roll
The meadows into foam:
Then from the jubilee I turn
To other Mays that I have seen,
Where more resplendent blossoms burn,
And statelier woods are green; -
Mays, when my heart expanded first,
A honeyed blossom, fresh with dew;
And one sweet wind of heaven dispersed
The olIly clouds I knew.
For she, whose softly-murmured name
The music of the month expressed,
Walked by my side, in holy shame
Of girlish love confessed.
The budding chestnuts overhead,
Their sprinkled shadows in the lane, -
Blue flowers along the brooklet's bed, -
I see them all again! 
59
The old, old tale of girl and boy,
Repeated ever, never old:
To each in turn the gates of joy,
The gates of heaven unfold.
4iid when the punctual May arrives,
With cowslip-garland on her brow,
We know what once she gave our lives,
And cannot give us now! 
CllURCll-YARD ROS1~S.
THE woodlands wore a gloomy green,
The tawny stubble clad the hill,
And August hung her smoky screen
Above the valleys, hot and still.
No life was in the fields that day;
My steps were safe fi~m curious eyes:
I wandered where, in church-yard clay,
The dust of love and beauty lies.
Around me thrust the nameless graves
Their fatal ridges, side by side,
So green, they seemed but grassy waves,
Yet quiet as the dead they hide.
And o'er each pillow of repose
Some innocent memento grew,
Of pansy, pink, or lowly rose,
Or hyssop, lavender, and rue.
 
61
What flower is hers, the maiden bride?
What sacred plant protects her bed?
I saw, the greenest mound beside,
A rose of dark and lurid red.
An eye of fierce demoniac stain,
It mocked my calm and chastened grief;
I tore it, stung with sudden pain,
And stamped iu earth each bloody leaf
And down upon that trampled grave
In recklessness my body cast:
Give back the life I could not save,
Or give deliverance from the Past!"
But something gently touched my cheek,
Caressing while its touch reproved:
A rose, all white and snowy-meek,
It grew upon the dust I loved!
A breeze the holy blossom pressed
Upon my lips: dear Saint, I cried,
Still blooms the white rose, in my breast,
Of Love that Death has sanctified!
 
ATYTUMNAL DREAMS.
I.
WHEN the maple turns to crimson
And the sassafras to gold;
When the gentian`5 in the meadow,
And the aster on the wold;
When the noon is lapped in vapor
And the night is frosty-co~d:
II.
When the chestnut-burs are opened,
And the acorns drop like hail,
And the drowsy air is startled
With the thumping of the flail,With the drumming of the partridge
And the whistle of the quail:
 
63
`H.
Through the rustling woods I wander,
Through the jewels of the year,
From the yellow uplands calling,
Seeking her that still is dear:
She is near me in the autumn,
She, the beautiful, is near.
Iv.
Thrnugh the smoke of burning summer,
When the weary winds are still,
I ~aa see her in the valley,
I can hear her on the hill,In the splendor of the woodlands,
Th the whisper of the rill.
V.
For the shores of Larth and lleaven
]\Ieet, and mingle in the blue:
Si~e can wander down the glory
To the places that she knew,
Where the happy lovers wandered
In the days when life was true.
 
64
VI.
So I think, when days are sweetest,
And the world is wholly fair,
She may sometime steal upon me
Through the dimness of the air,
With the cross upon her bosom
And the amaranth in her hair.
VII.
Once to meet her, ah! to meet her,
And to hold her gently fast
Tdl I blessed her, till she blessed me, -
That were happiness, at last:
That were bliss beyond our meetings
Ia the autumns of the Past!
 
IN WINTER.
TilE va~ey stream is frozen,
The hills are cold and bare,
And the wild white bees of winter
Swarm in the darkened air.
I look on the naked forest:
Was it ever green in June?
Did it burn with gold and crimson
In the dim autumnal noon?
I look on the barren meadow:
Was it ever heaped with hay?
Did it hide the grassy cottage
Where the skylark's children lay?
I look on the desolate garden:
Is it true the rose was there?
And the woodhine's musky blossoms,
And the hyacinth's purple hair?
E 
6G
I look on my heart, and marvel
If Love were ever its own, -
Ifthe spring of promise brightened,
And the summer of passion shone?
Isthe stem of bliss but withered,
And the root survives the blast?
Are the seeds of the Future sleeping
Under the leaves of tile Past?
Ah, yes! for a thousand Aprils
The frozen germs shall grow,
And the dews of a thousand summers
Wait in the womb of tile snow! 
YOUNG LOYJ~.
Wi~ are not old, we are not cold,
Our hearts are warm and tender yet;
Our arms are eager to enfold
~Iore bounteous love than we have met.
Still many another heart lays bare
Its secret chamber to our eyes,
Though dim with passion's lurid air,
Or pure as morns of Paradise.
They give the love, whose glory lifts
Desire beyond the realm of sense;
They make us rich with laAsh gifts,
The wealth of noble confidence.
We must be happy, must be proud,
So crowned with human trust and truth;
But ah! the love that first we vowed,
The dear religion of our youth!
 
68
Voluptuous bloom and fragrance rare
The summer to its rose may bring;
Far sweeter to the wooing air
The hidden violet of the spring.
Still, still that lovely ghost appears,
Too fair, too pure, to bid depart;
No riper love of later years
Can steal its beauty from the heart.
o splendid sun that shone above!
o green magnificence of Earth!
Born once into that land of love,
No life can know a second birth.
Dear, boyish heart, that trembled so
With bashful fear and fond unrest, -
More ftightened than a dove, to know
Another bird within its nest!
Sharp thrills of doubt, wild hopes that came,
Fond words addressed, - each word a pang:
Then - hearts, baptized in heavenly flame,
llow like the morning stars ye sang!
 
69
Love bound ye with his holiest link,
The faith in each that asks no more,
And led ye from the sacred brink
Of mysteries he held in store.
Love led ye, children, from the bowers
Where Strength and Beauty find his crown:
Ye were not ripe for mortal flowers;
God's angel brought an amaranth down.
Our eyes are dim with fruitless tears,
Our eyes are dim, our hearts are sore:
That lost religion of our years
Comes never, never, nevermore! 
THE  CHAPEL.
LIKE one who leaves the trampled street
For some cathedral, cool and dim,
Where he can hear in music beat
The heart of prayer, that beats for him;
And sees the common light of day,
Through painted panes transfigured, shine,
And casts his human woes away,
Th presence of the Woe Divine:
So I, from life's tormenting themes
Turn where the silent chapel lies,
Whose windows burn with vanished dre~ms,
Whose altar-lights are memories.
There, watched by pitying cherubim,
Th sacred hush, I rest awhile,
Till solemn sounds of harp and hymn
Begin to sweep the haunted aisle:
 
71
A hymn that once but breathed complaint,
And breathes but resignation now,
Since God has heard the pleading saint,
And laid His hand upon my brow.
Restored and ~omtorted, I go
To grapple with my tasks again;
Through silent worship taught to know
The blessed peace that follows pain. 
IF LOVE SHOULD COME AGAIN.
IF Love should come again, I ask my heart
Th tender tremors, not unmixed with pain,
Couldst thou be calm, nor feel thine ancient smart,
If Love should come again?
Couldst thou unbar the chambers where his nest
So long was made, and made, alas! in vain,
Nor with embarrassed welcome chill thy guest,
If Love should come again?
Would Love his ruined quarters recognize,
Where shrouded pictures of the Past remain,
And gently turn them with forgiving eyes,
If Love should come again?
Would bliss, in milder type, spring up anew,
As silent craters with the scarlet stain
Of flowers repeat the lava's ancient hue,
If Love should come again?
 
73
Would Fate, relenting, sheathe the cruel blade
Whereby the angel of thy youth was slain,
That thon might'st all possess him, unafraid,
If Love should come again?
Invain I ask: my heart makes no reply,
But echoes evermore the sweet refrain;
Till, trembling lest it seem a wish, I sigh:
If Love should come again!
4 
"THE darkness and the twilight have an end,"
Said Ernest, as he laid the hook aside,
And, with a tenderness he could not hide,
Smiled, seeing in the eyes of wife and friend
The same soft dew that made his own so dim.
~Iy heart was strangely moved, hut not for him.
The holy night, the stars that twinkled faint,
Serfs of the regnant moon, the slumbering trees
And silvery hills, recalled fair memories
Of her I knew, his life's translated saint,
Who seemed too sacred now, too far removed,
To be by Ilim lamented or beloved.
And yet she stood, I knew, by Ernest's side
Thvisible, a glory in the heart,
A light of peace, the inner counterpart
Of that which round us poured its radiant tide.
We sat in silence, till a wind, astray
From some uneasy planet, shook the vines
And sprinkled us with snow of eglantines.
The laurels rustled as it passed away,
And, million-tongued, the woodland whisper crept 
75
Of leaves that turned in sleep, from tree to tree
All down the lawn, and once again they slept.
Then Edith from her tender fantasy
Awoke, yet still her pensive posture kept,
Her white hands motionless upon her knee,
Her eyes upon a star that sparkled through
The mesh of leaves, and hummed a wandering air,
(As if the music of her thought it were,)
Low, sweet, and sad, until to words it grew
That made it sweeter, - words that Ernest knew:
Love, Ifrllow, follow thee,
W4~e thine e~es and thou shalt see:
Sorrow makes thee blind to me.
T am with thee, 6lessing, blest;
Let th11 doubts be laid to rest:
l?ise, and take me to Uw breast!
Tn thy 6liss my steps behold:
Stretch thine arms and bliss enfold:
T is thy sorrow makes me cold.
L%fe is good, and i?fe is fair,
Love awaits thee everywhere:
Love! is Love's immortal prayer. 
76
Live for love, anJ t~ou skalt be,
Loviny others, true to me:
Love, I follow, follow thee!
Thus Edith sang: the stars heard, and the night,
The happy spirits, leaning from the wall
Of lleaven, the saints, and God above them all,
lleard what she sang.  She ceased: her brow was bright
With other splendor than the moon's: she rose,
Gave each a hand, and silently we trod
The dry, white gravel and the dewy sod,
And sllently we parted for repose. 
THIRD  EVENING.
FoR days before, the wild-dove cooed for rain.
The sky had been too bright, the world too fair.
We knew such loveliness could not remain:
We heard its ruin by the flattering air
Foretold, that o'er the fields so sweetly blew,
Yet came, at night, a banshee, moaning through
The chimney's throat, and at the window wailed:
We heard the tree-toad trill his piercing note:
The sound seemed near us, when, on farms remote,
The supper-horn the scattered workmen hailed:
Above the roof the eastward-pointing vane
Stood fixed: and still the wild-dove cooed for rain.
So, when the morning came, and tound no fire
Upon her hearth, and wrapped her shivering form
In cloud, and rising winds in many a gyre
Of dust foreran the footsteps of the storm, 
78
And woods grew dark, and flowery meadows chill,
And gray annihilation smote the hill,
I said to Ernest: "`T was my plan, you see:
Two days to Nature, and the third to me.
For you must stay, perforce: the day is doomed.
No visitors shall yonder valley find,
Except the spirits of the rain and wind:
llere you must bide, my friends, with me entombed
Iii this dim crypt, where shelved around us lie
The mummied authors."  "Place me, when I die,"
Laughed Ernest, "in as fair a catacomb,
I shall not call posterity unjust,
That leaves my bones in Shakespeare's, Goethe's home,
Like king and beggar mixed in Memphian dust.
But you are right: this day we well may give
To you, dear Philip, and to those who stand
Protecting Nature with a jealous hand,
At once her subjects and her haughty lords;
Since, in the breath of their immortal words
Alone, she first begins to speak and live."
I know not, if that day of dreary rain
Was not the happiest of the happy three.
For Nature gives, but takes away again:
Sound, odor, color - blossom, cloud, and tree
Divide and scatter in a thousand rays 
79
Our individual being: but, in days
Of gloom, the wandering senses crowding come
To the close circle of il~e heart.  So we,
Cosily nestled in the library,
Enjoyed each other and the warmth of home.
Each window was a picture of the rain:
Blown by the wind, tormented, wet, and gray,
Losing itself in cloud, il~e landscape lay;
Or wavered, blurred, behind the streaming pane;
Or, with a sudden struggle, shook away
Its load, and like a foundering ship arose
Distinct and dark above the driving spray,
Until a fiercer onset came, to close
The hopeless day.  The roses writhed about
Their stakes, the tall laburnums to and fro
Rocked in the gusts, the flowers were beaten low,
And from his pigmy house the wren looked out
~Yith dripping bill: each living creature fled,
To seek some sheltering cover for its head:
Yet colder, drearier, wilder as it blew,
We drew the closer, and the happier grew.
She with her needle, he with pipe and book,
l~Iy guests contented sat: my cheerful dame,
Intent on household duties, went and came,
And I nnto my childless bosom took 
80
The little two-year Arthur, Ernes~s child,
A darling boy, to both his parents true,
With father's brow, and mother's eyes of blue,
And the same dimpled beauty when he smiled.
Ah me! the father's heart within me woke:
The child that never was, I seemed to hold:
The withered tenderness that bloomed of old
In vain, revived when little Arthur spoke
Of "Papa Philip!" and his balmy kiss
Renewed lost yearnings for a father's bliss.
And something glittered in the boy's bright hair:
I kissed him back, but turned away my head
To hide the pang I would not have thee share,
Dear wife! from whom the dearest promise fled.
God cannot chide so sacred a despair,
But still I dream that somewhere there must be
The spirit of a child that waits for me.
And evening fell, and Arthur, rosy-limbed
And snowy-gowned, in human beauty sweet,
Came puttering up with little naked feet
To kiss the good-night cup, that overbrimmed
With love two fathers and two mothers gave.
The steady rain against the windows drave,
And round the house the noises of the night
Mixed in a luliing music: dry old wood 
81
Burned on the hearth in leaps of ruddy light,
And on the table purple beakers stood
Of harmless wine, from grapes that ripened on
The sunniest hill-sides of the smooth Garonne.
When Arthur slept, and doors were closed, and we
Sat folded in a sweeter privacy
Than even the secret-loving moon bestows,
Spoke Ernest: "Edith, shall I read the rest?"
She, while the spirit of a happy rose
Visited her cheeks, consenting smiled, and pressed
The hand he gave.  "With what I now shall read,"
lie ndded, "Philip, you must be content.
No further runs my journal, nor, indeed,
Beyond this chapter is there further need;
Because the gift of Song was chiefly lent
To give consoling music for the joys
We lack, and not for those which we possess:
I now no longer need that gift, to bless
~Iy heart, - wour heart, my Edith, and your boy's!"
Therewith he read: the fingers of the rain
In light staccatos on the window played,
~Iixed with the flame's contented hum, and made
Low harmonies to suit the varied strain.
4*                   F 
TllE RETURN OF SPRING.
IIAYE I passed through Death's unconscious birth,
In a dream the midnight bare?
I look on another and fairer Earth:
I breathe a wondrous air!
A spirit of beauty walks the "ills,
A spirit of love the plain;
The shadows are bright, and the sunshine fills
The air with a diamond rain!
Before my vision the glories swim,
To the dance of a tune unheard:
Is an angel singing where woods are dim,
Or is it an amorous bird?
Is it a spike of azure flowers,
Deep in the meadows seen,
Or is it the peacock's neck, that towers
Out of the spangled green? 
83
Isa white dove glancing across the blue,
Or an opal taking wing?
For my soul is dazzled through and through,
With the splendor of the Spring.
Isit she that shines, as never before,
The tremulous hills above, -
Or the heart within me, awake once more
To the dawning light of love? 
MORNING.
ALONG the east, where late the dark impended,
A dusky gleam is born:
The watches of the night are ended,
And heaven foretells the morn!
The hills of home, no longer hurled together
In one wide blotch of night,
Lift up their heads through misty ether,
Distinct in rising light.
Then, after pangs of darkness slowly dying,
O'er the delivered world
Comes Morn, with every banner flying
And every sail unfurled!
So long the night, so chill, so blank and dreary,
I thought the sun was dead;
But yonder burn his beacons cheery
On peaks of cloudy red:
 
85
And yonder fly his scattered golden arrows,
And smite the hills with day,
~Yhile Night her vain dominion narrows
And westward wheels away.
A sweeter air revives the new creation,
The dews are tears of bliss,
And Earth, in amorous palpitation,
Receives her bridegroom's kiss.
Bathed in the morning, let my heart surrender
The doubts that darkness gave,
And rise to meet the advancing splendor -
o Night! no more thy slave.
I breathe at last, thy gloomy reign forgetting,
Thy weary watches done,
Thy last pale star behind me setting,
The freedom of the sun!
 
QUESTIONS.
ONE thought sits brooding in my bosom,
As broodeth in her nest the dove;
A strange, delicious doubt o'ercomes me, -
But is it love?
I see her, hear her, daily, nightly:
My secret dreams around her move,
Still nearer drawn in sweet attraction; -
Can this be love?
Is`t love without his tender tumult?
Or passion purified ftom pain?
Th calmer forms the old emotions
Returned again?
So still the stream, towards her setting,
I whisper: Can it rise above
ller banks, and flood the guarded island
Where blooms her love?
 
87
Will she, to hear a voice so timid,
A shy and doubtful heart incline,
Though desperate hope and endless longing
Awakeinmine?
Ibreathe but peace when she is near me, -
A peace her absence takes away:
~Iy heart commands her constant presence:
Will hers obey? 
THE  VISION.
I.
SHE came, long absent from my side,
And absent from my dreams, she came,
The earthly and the heavenly bride,
Th maiden beauty glorified:
She looked upon me, angel-eyed:
She called me by my name.
II.
But I, whose heart to meet her sprang
And shook the fragile house of dreams,
Stood, smitten with a guilty pang:
Th other groves and temples rang
The songs that once for her I sang,
By woods and faery streams. 
89
ril.
Her eyes had power to lift my head,
And, timorous as a truant child,
I met the sacred light they shed,
The light of heaven around her spread:
She read my face; no word she said:
I only saw she smiled.
Iv.
"Canst thou forgive me, Angel mine,"
I cried; "that Love at last beguiled
~Iy heart to build a second shrine?
See, still I kneel and weep at thine,
But I am human, thou divine!"
Still silently she smiled.
V.
"Dost undivided worship claim,
To keep thine altar undefiled?
Or must I bear thy tender blame,
And in thy pardon feel my shame,
wIiene'er I breathe another name?
She looked at me, and smiled. 
90
VI.
"Speak, speak!" and then my tears came fast,
My troubled heart with doubt grew wild:
"Will`t vex the love, which still thou hast,
To know that I have peace at last?"
And from my dream the vision passed,
And still, in passing, smiled. 
LOVE RETURNED.
I.
HE was a boy when first we met;
His eyes were mixed of dew and fire,
And on his candid brow was set
The sweetness of a chaste desire:
But in his veins the pulses beat
Of passion, waiting for its wing,
As ardent veins of summer heat
Throb through the innocence of spring.
U.
As manhood came, his stature grew,
And fiercer burned his restless eyes,
Until I trembled, as he drew
From wedded hearts their young disguise.
Like wind-fed flame his ardor rose,
And brought, like flame, a stormy rain:
In tumult, sweeter than repose,
He tossed the souls of joy and pain.
 
92
III'
So many years of absence change!
I knew`ilni not when he returned:
llis step was slow, his brow was strange,
llis quiet eye no longer burned.
When at my heart I heard his knock,
No voice within his right confessed:
I could not venture to unlock
Its chambers to an alien guest.
Iv.
Then, at the threshold, spent and worn
With fruitless travel, down he lay:
And I beheld the gleams of morn
On his reviving beauty play.
I knelt, and kissed his holy lips,
I washed his feet with pious care;
And fi~om my life the long echpse
Drew off; and left his sunshine there.
V.
lle burns no more with youthful fire;
lle melts no more in foolish tears;
 
93
Serene and sweet, his eyes inspire
The steady faith of balanced years.
His folded wings no longer thrill,
But in some peaceful flight of prayer:
He nestles in my heart so still,
I scarcely feel his presence there.
VI.
o Love, that stern probation o'er,
Thy calmer blessing is secure!
Thy beauteous feet shall stray no more,
Thy peace and patience shall endure!
The lightest wind deflowers the rose,
The rainbow with the sun departs,
But thou art centred in repose,
And rooted in my heart of hearts!
 
LOVE JUSTIFIED.
WITllIN my heart`t is clear at last:
The haunting doubt in peace is laid,
Of faithlessness towards the Past,
Which made reviving love afraid.
For Love in abnegation lives;
His eye no sacrifice can dim;
He most is blessed when he gives
A greater bliss than comes to him;
And true to him is true to all
Whose brows are worth his crown to wear.
His chosen are not those who fall,
Through loss of him, to blank despair,
But those whom he has left awhile,
That in the dark their faith be tried, -
On whom his blessing yet shall smile,
If in the dark their faith abide. 
95
No treason in my love I see,
For treason cannot dwell with truth
But later blossoms crown a tree
Too deeply set to die in youth.
The blighted promise of the old
Th this new love is reconciled;
For~ when my heart confessed its hold,
The lips of ancient sorrow smiled!
It brightens backward through the Past
And gilds the gloomy path I trod,
And forward, till it fades at last
Th light, before the feet of God,
where stands the saint, whose radiant bro~
This solace beams, while I adore:
Be happy: if thou lovedst not now,
Thou never couldst have loved before!
 
A WOMAN.
I.
SllE is a woman: therefore, I a man,
In so much as I love her.  Could I more,
Then I were more a man.  Our natures ran
Together, brimming full, not {Iooding o'er
The banks of life, and evermore will run
In one full stream until our days are done.
II.
She is a woman, but of spirit brave
To bear the loss of girlhood's giddy dreams;
The regal niistress, not the yielding slave
Of her ideal, spurning that which seems
For that which is, and, as her fancies fall,
Smiling:the truth of love outweighs them alL 
97
"I.
She looks through life, and with a balance just
Weighs men and things, beholding as they are
The lives of others: in the common dust
She finds the fragments of the ruined star:
Proud, with a pride all feminine and sweet,
No path can soil the whiteness of her feet.
LY.
The steady candor of her gentle eyes
Strikes dead deceit, laughs vanity aw~y;
She hath no room for petty jealousies,
Where Faith and Love divide their tender sway.
Of either sex she owns the nobler part:
I~Ian's honest brow and woman's faithful heart.
V.
She is a woman, who, if Love were guide,
Would climb to power, or in obscure content
Sit down: accepting fate with changeless pride,
A reed in calm, in storm a staff unbent:
No pretty plaything, ignorant of life,
But 3\Ian's true mother, and his equal wife.
5                      G 
TllE COUNT OF GL1~ICllLN.
I READ that story of the Saxon knight,
~Vho, leaving spouse and feudal fortress, made
The Cross of Christ his guerdon in the fight,
And joined the last Crusade:
~Vhom, in the chase on Damietta's sands
Estrayed, the Saracens in ambush caught,
And unto Cairo, to the Soldan's hands,
A wretched captive brought:
~X?hom then the Soldan's child, a damsel brave,
Saw, pitied, comforted, and made him free,
And with him fled, herself a willing slave
In Love's captivity.
I read how he to bless her love was fain,
To whom his renovated life he owed,
Yet with a pang the towers beheld again
Where still his wife abode:
 
99
The wife whom first he loved: would she not scorn
The second bride he could not choose but wed,
The second mother to his children, born
Th her divided bed?
Lo! at his castle's foot the noble dame
With tears of blessing, holy, undefiled
By human pain, received him when he came,
And kissed the Soldan's child!
~Iy tears were on the pages as I read
The touching close: I made the story mine,
Within whose heart, long plighted to the dead,
Love built his living shrine.
I too had dared, a captive in the land,
To pay with love the love that broke my chain:
Would she, who waited, stretch the pardoning hand,
When I returned again?
Would she, my freedom and my bliss to know,
With my disloyalty be reconciled,
And from her bower in Eden look below,
And bless the Soldan's child?
 
100
For she is lost: but she, the later bride,
Who came my ruined fortune to restore,
Back from the desert wanders at my side,
And leads me home once more.
If human love, she sighs, could move a wife
The holiest sacrifice of love to make,
Thea the transfigured angel of thy life
Is happier for thy sake!
** 
BEFORI~ TllE BRIDAL.
Now the night is overpast,
And the mist is cleared away:
On my barren life at last
Breaks the bnght, reluctant day.
Day of payment for the wrong
I was doomed so long to bear;
Day of promise, day of song,
Day that makes the future fair!
Let me wake to bliss alone:
Let me bury every fear:
What I prayed for, is my own;
What was distant, now is near.
 
102
For the happy hour that waits
No reproachful shade shall bring,
And I hear forgiving Fates
In the happy bells that ring.
Leave the song that now is mute,
For the sweeter song begun:
Leave the blossom for the fruit,
And the rainI)~w for tite sun! 
POSSE5 SION.
I.
"IT was our wedding-day
A month ago," dear heart, I hear you say.
L~ months, or years, or ages since have passed,
I know not: I have ceased to question Time.
I only know that once there pealed a chime
Of joyous bells, and then I held you fast,
And all stood back, and none my right denied,
And forth we walked: the woAd was free and wide
Before us.  Since that day
I count my life: the Past is washed away.
II.
It was no dream, that vow:
It was the voice that woke me from a dream, -
A happy dream, I think; but I am waking now,
And drink the splendor of a sun supreme
That turns the mist of former tears to gold.
Within these arms I hold 
104
The fleeting promise, chased so long in vain:
Ah, weary bird! thou wilt not fly again:
Thy wings are clipped, thou canst no more depart, -
Thy nest is builded in my heart!
"I.
I was the crescent; thou
The silver phantom of the perfect sphere,
lleld in its bosom: in one glory now
Our lives united shine, and many a year -
Not the sweet moon of bridal only - we
One lustre, ever at the full, shall be:
One pure and rounded light, one planet whole,
One life developed, one completed soul!
For I in thee, and thou in me,
Unite our cloven halves of destiny.
God knew llis chosen time:
lle bade me slowly ripen to my prime,
And from my boughs withheld the promised fruit,
Till storm and sun gave vigor to the root.
Secure, 0 Love! secure
Thy blessing is: I have thee day and night:
Thou art become my blood, my life, my light:
God's mercy thou, and therefore shalt endure! 
UNDER TllE MOON.
I.
Fno~ you and home I sleep afar,
Under il~e light of a lonely star,
Under the moon that marvels why
Away from you and home I lie.
Ah! love no language can declare,
The hovering warmth, the tender care,
The yielding, sweet, invisible air
That clasps your bosom, and fans your cheek
With the breath of words I cannot speak, -
Such love I give, such warmth impart:
The fragrance of a blossomed heart.
II.
The moon looks in upon my bed,
Her yearning glory rays my head,
And round me clings, a lonely light,
The aureole of the winter night;
But in my heart a gentle pain,
A balmier splendor in my brain,
5* 
106
Lead me beyond tb~ frosty plane, -
Lead me afar, to meliower skies,
~There under the moon a palace lies;
N\Tliere under the moon our bed is made,
llalf in splendor and half in shade.
`IT.
The marble flags of the corridor
Through open windows meet the floor,
And ]\Ioorish arches in darkness rise
Against the gleam of the silver skies:
Beyond, in flakes of starry light,
A fountain prattles to the night,
And dusky cypresses, withdrawn
In silent conclave, stud the lawn;
While mystic woodlands, more remote,
In seas of airy silver float,
So hung in heaven, the stars that set
Seem glossy leaves the dew has wet
On topmost boughs, and sparkling yet.
Ty.
In from the terraced garden blows
The spicy soul of the tuberose, 
107
As if`t were the odor of strains that pour
From the nightingale's il~roat as never before;
For he sings not now of wounding thorn,
lie sings as the lark in the golden morn, -
A song of joy, a song of bliss,
Passionate notes that clasp and kiss,
Perfect peace and perfect pride,
Love rewarded and satisfied,
For I see you, darling, at my side.
y.
I see you, darling, at my side:
I clasp you closer, in sacred pride.
I shut my eyes, my senses fail,
Becalmed by Night's ambrosial gale.
Softer than dews the planets weep,
Descends a sweeter peace than sleep;
All wandering sounds and motions die
In the silent glory of the sky;
But, as the moon goes down the West,
Your heart, against my happy breast,
Says in its beating: Love is Rest. 
TllE MYSTIC SUMMER.
`T is not the dropping of the flower,
The blush of fruit upon the tree,
Though Summer rip ens, hour by hour,
The garden's sweet maternity:
`T is not that birds have ceased to build,
And wait their brood with tender care;
That corn is golden in the field,
And clover balm is in the air; -
Not these the season's splendor bring,
And crowd with life the happy year,
Nor yet, where yonder fountains sing,
The blaze of sunshine, hot and clear.
 
109
In thy full womb, 0 Summer! lies
A secret hope, a joy unsung,
Held in the hush of these calm skies,
And trembling on the forest's tongue.
The lands of harvest throb anew
In shining pulses, far away;
The Night distils a dearer dew,
And sweeter eyelids has the Day.
And not in vain the peony burns,
In burshug globes, her crimson fire,
Her incense-dropping ivory urns
The lily lifts in many a spire:
And not in vain the tulips clash
In revelry the cups they hold
Of fiery wine, until they dash
With ruby streaks the splendid gold!
Send do~vn your roots the mystic charm
That warms and flushes all your flowers,
And with the summer's touch disarm
The thraldom of the under powers,
 
110
Until, in caverns, buried deep,
Strange fragrance reach the diamond's home,
And murmurs of the garden sweep
The houses of the frighted gnome!
For, piercing through their black repose,
And shooting up beyond the sun,
I see that Tree of Life, which rose
Before the eyes of Solomon:
Its boughs, that, in the light of God,
Their bright, innumerous leaves display, -
Whose hum of life is borne abroad
By winds that shake the dead away.
And, trembling on a branch afar,
The topmost nursling of the skies,
I see my bud, the fairest star
That ever dawned for watching eyes.
Unnoticed on the boundless tree,
Its fragrant promise fills the air;
Its little bell expands, for me,
A tent of silver, lily-fair.
 
111
All life to that one centre tends;
All joy and beauty thence outflow;
Her sweetest gffts the summer spends,
To teach that sweeter bud to blow.
So, compassed by the vision's gleam,
Th trembling hope, from day to day,
As in some bright, bewildering dream,
The mystic summer wanes away. 
A WATCll OF THE NIGHT.
BLoW, winds of midnight, blow!
The clouds, fast-flying, chase
Across the pallid face
Of yonder moon, and go!
Sweep, as ye list, the land:
Hurl down the heavy corn,
And wrench the trees forlorn
That struggle where they stand!
Though mighty to destroy,
To me ye bring no fear;
But in your voice I hear
An echo of my joy.
Life - life to me ye bring:
The precious soul, that takes
Its life from mine, awakes,
And soon will crown me king. 
113
I stand with silent breath,
To hear one little cry
Ring through the roaring sky,
And worlds of Life and Death.
Wake, timid soul, and be!
Two Fathers wait thy birth:
The love of Heaven and Earth
Stands by to welcome thee!
H 
THE FATHER.
THE fateful hour, when Death stood by
And stretched his threatening hand in vain,
Is over now, and Life's first cry
Speaks feeble triumph through its pain.
But yesterday, and thee the Earth
Inscribed not on her mighty scroll:
To-day she opes the gate of birth,
And gives the spheres another soul.
But yesterday, no fruit from me
The rising winds of Time had hurled:
To-day, a father, - can it be
A child of mine is in the world?
I look upon the little frame,
As helpless on my arm it lies:
Thou giv'st me, child, a father's name,
God's earliest name in Paradise.
 
116
Like Him, creator too I stand:
His Power and Mystery seem more near;
Thou giv'st me honor in the land,
And giv'st my life duration here.
But love, to-day, is more than pride;
Love sees his star of triumph shine,
For Life nor Death can now divide
The souls that wedded breathe in thine:
Mine and thy mother's, whence arose
The copy of my face in thee;
And as tbine eyelids first unclose,
My own young eyes look up to me.
Look on me, child, once more, once more,
Even with those weak, unconscious eyes;
Stretch the small hands that help implore;
Salute me with thy wailing cries!
This is the blessing and the prayer
A father's sacred place demands:
Ordain me, darling, for thy care,
And lead me with thy helpless hands!
 
TllE MOTllER.
PALER, and yet a thousand times more fair
Than in thy girlhood's freshest bloom, art thou:
A softer sun-flush tints thy golden hair,
A sweeter grace adorns thy gentle brow.
Lips that shall cail thee "mother!" at thy breast
Feed the young life, wherein thy nature feels
Its dear fulfilment: little hands are pressed
On the white fountain Love alone unseals.
Look down, and let Life's tender daybreak throw
A second radiance on thy ripened hour:
Retrace thine own forgotten advent so,
And in the bud behold thy perfect flower.
Nay, question not: whatever lies beyond
God will dispose.  Sit thus, Madonna mine,
For thou art haloed with a love as fond
As Jewish Mary gave the Child Divine.
 
117
I lay my own proud title at thy feet;
Thine the first, holiest right to love shalt be:
Though in his heart our wedded pulses beat,
His sweetest life our darling draws from thee.
The father in his child beholds this truth,
His perfect manhood has assumed its reign:
Thou wear'st anew the roses of thy youth, -
The mother in her child is born again. 
TllI~ FAMILY.
DEAR Love, whatever fate
The flying years unfold,
There`5 none can dissipate
The happiness we hold.
Whatever cloud may rise,
The very storms grow mild
Where bend the blissful skies
O'er Husband, Wife, and Child.
The errant dreams that failed,
The promises that fled,
The roseate hopes that paled,
The loves tbat now are dead,
The treason of the Past,
All, all are reconciled:
Life's glory shines at last
On Father, Mother, Child!
 
119
To meet the days and years,
With hands that never part;
To shed no secret tears,
To hide no lonely heart:
To know our longing stilled,
To feel that God has smiled:
These are the dreams fulfilled
Th llusband, Wife, and Child, -
In Father, ~Thther, Child! 
TllUs came the Poet's Journal to an end.
His heart's completed music ceased to flow
From Ernest's lips: the tale I wished to know
Was wholly mine.  "I am content, dear friend,"
I said: "to me no voice can be obscure
Wherein your nature speaks: the chords I hear,
Too far and frail to strike a stranger's ear."
With that, I bowed to Edith's forehead pure,
And kissed her with a brother's blameless kiss:
"To you the fortune of these days I owe,
~Iy other Ernest, like him most in this,
That you can hear the cries of ancient woe
With holy pity, free from any blame
Of jealous love, and find your highest bliss
To know, through you his life's fulfilment came."
"And through him, mine," the woman's heart replied;
For Love's humility is Love's true pride.
"These are your sweetest poems, and your best,"
To him I said.  "I know not," answered he,
"They are my truest.  I have ceased to be
The ambitious knight of Song, that shook his crest 
121
In public tilts: tile sober hermit I,
Whose evening songs but few approach to hear,
Who, if those few should cease to lend an ear,
Would sing them to the forest and the sky
Contented: singing for myself alone.
No fear that any poet dies unknown,
Whose songs are written in tile hearts that know
And love him, thoiigh their partial verdict show
The tenderness that moves the critic's blame.
Those few have power to lift his name above
Forgetfulness, to grant that noblest fame
Which sets its trumpet to the lips of Love!"
"Nay, then," said I, "you are already crowned.
If your ambition in the loving pride
Of us, your friends, is cheaply satisfied,
We are those trumpets: do you hear them sound?"
And Edith smilingly together wound
Light stems of ivy to a garland fair,
And pressed it arddy on her husband's hair;
But he, with earnest voice, though in his eyes
A happy laughter shone, protesting, said:
"Respect, dear friends, the ~Iuse's sanctities,
Nor mock, with wreaths upon a living head,
The holy laurels of the deathless Dead.
Crown Love, crown Truth when first her brow appears,
6 
122
And crown il~e llero when his deeds are done:
The Poet's leaves are gathered, one by one,
In the slow process of the doubtful years.
wI~o seeks too eagerly, he shall not find:
who, seeking not, pursues with single mind
Art's lofty aim, to him will she accord,
At her appointed time, the sure reward."
The tall clock, standing sentry in the hall,
Struck midnight: on the panes no longer beat
The weary storm: the wind began to fall,
And through the breaking darkness glimmered, sweet
~Yfth tender stars, the flying gleams of sky.
"Come, Edith, lend your voice to crown the night,
And give the new day sunny break," said I:
She, listening first in self-deceiving plight
Of young maternal trouble, for a cry
From Arthur's crib, sat down in happy calm,
And sang to Ernest's heart his own thanksgiving psalm:
TJtou wlto sen Jest 5?~fl and rain,
T~ou wko sp en Jest 6liss and rain,
Good with 6ounteous hand bestowin~
Bvilfor Th~ will alLowing, -
Though Th~ wa~ we cannot see,
All is just that comes from Thee. 
123
In t~e reace of hearts at rest,
In U~e child at mothe?s 6reast,
In the lives that now surround us,
In the deaths that sorel~ wound us,
Though we may not understand,
Father, we 6ehold Thy hand!
li~ar the happy hymn we raise;
Take the love which is Thy praise;
Give content in each condition;
Bend our hearts in sweet submission,
And Thy trusting children prove
I~orthy of the Father's love!  
PASSING TllL SIRENS.  
PASSING TllE SIRENS.
ULYSSES.
THE headlands pale, the long, far-pointing cliffs
Of Circe's isle, are fading on the sea.
Our oars are idle, for the rising wind,
Strong Auster, fills the sail: the galley's beak
From every blllow tears the garland foam,
And trails the scattered sea-blooms in her wake.
~Ye should be near the islands: look, my men,
You, Perimedes, look, whose hawk-eyes peer,
Deep-set, beneath their many-wrinkled lids,
Tell me if yon be shores which rather float
On the unburdened seas, the isles of heat,
Delusive vapor-lands that come and go,
Than rise from under, lifling solid fronts
To meet the turmoil of the changing tides
A steady helm, my pilot! yonder lies
The broader channel: look not on the shores
That glimmering change from purple into green,
But mark the burning highway of the sun, 
128
Now to his bath descending, - follow that,
Straight through, and out on waters unexplored,
Ay, though we reach the Thunder's awful house,
The caverned hell of storms, than once touch keel
In these smooth harbors.  Turn away your eyes,
~Iy sailors, from the fair, fast-rising isles,
That drug the winds with many a musky flower
To sleep, that smooth the waters as with oil,
And open bowery laps of sunny coves,
To tempt your tempest-battered frames.  And me,
Who never gave ye toils I did not share,
Or tasted pleasures I denied ye, - who
In Chian ports the flaccid wine-skin filled,
And in the arms of soft lonian girls
Ye after storms long anchorage allowed, -
~Ie bind ye fast, here, at the mainmast's foot,
And stop my ears with wool, lest I should lose
The settled will that drives my purpose on,
And falter with slack sails, the shame of all,
Of ye, my men, and all who honored me,
Heroes and demigods, in Troy.  For I,
Wiser than ye in scheming, stronger proved
In much endurance, have the keener sense
Of all delights and all indulgences,
The more temptation to forbidden lusts.
Let me not hear the singing from the isles, 
129
Or see the Sirens, naked in the shade,
Spread their alluring couches!
Ye, who toiled
~~th me, whom now from Circe's sty I saved,
~Yhose fate and mine is one, hear these my words:
Brail up the slackened mainsail to the yard:
Strong Auster ft~ils: in order sit ye down,
Each on his bench, within the hollow ship,
And smite the billows of the hoary sea!
Let the white blades of fir keep even time,
Rattling together, - nor the helmsman fall
A hair's breadth from his course.  It comes at last!
~Vhate'er you hear, the tasks I set perform
In order!  Press the stoppers of my ears:
Nay, stop your own, - your faces grow too keen, -
Your eyes are full of wild and hungry llght.
Now, by Poseidon! my right arm is free,
Look shoreward, and I slay you! Orpheus, there,
Tightens the loose chords of his lyre: he leans
Against the spray-wet altar on the prow,
Gazing straight forward, as his soul were dropt
Into the ocean of the golden sky.
Ay, sing, and overtake it with your song,
And if the Sirens not more rugged be
Than pines of Thessaly, that lefl the hills
6*               1 
130
To hear your music, they will quit their isles,
Shorn of their spells, your captives, following us
In dumb subjection through the barren seas.
THE SIRENS.
They are rough with the salt of the sea,
They are brown with the brand of the sun:
They are weary, weary of the sea;
They are weary of the sun.
Tug at the heavy oar;
Heave at the stubborn sail, -
Tossed in the mid-sea gale,
Wrecked on the fatal shore
Here in our isles is rest,
Here there is rest alone:
Sweet is rest, ah, sweet is rest,
White the arms and warm the breast, -
Naught beyond but the unknown West,
Naught but the waves unknown!
From their foreheads wipe the brine,
Round their brows the poppies twine
Lay them on couches of balmy thyme,
Deep in the shade of the bee-loved lime! 
131
Let them sleep: the restless deep
liere no more compels to keep
The weary watches that baffle sleep:
Toil is here a thing unknown,
Peril is a stranger here;
Sweetest rest, and rest alone~
Waits the weary mariner.
ORPHEUS.
You sit serene upon your golden seats,
In the bright climate of eternal calm.
No pain can touch you, and the tumult raised
By foolish men dies in this lower air:
But Song - when from the Poet's perfect lips
Divinest song is shed - flads entrance there,
And bears his message even to your board.
Great Zeus lifts up his awful brow: his beard
Drops from its knotted coils, and sweeps his knees;
The thunder's edge grows keener in his grasp.
And the grave pleasure seated in his eyes
Brightens Olympian ether.  Pallas hears;
11cr brow's chill adamant is less severe:
And large-eyed llere' lifts the violet lids,
Shading the languid fountains of her eyes,
To look the joy her indolence makes dumb. 
132
You hear me, Gods! you hear and comfort me.
I see thee, whom in Delos I adored,
And unto whom, beyond the Thracian strait,
I built an altar on the windy isle
Beside the Tauric seas.  Thy splendid hair,
Spread by the swiftness of thy chariot-wheels,
Rays with celestial gold thy forehead's arch,
And thine immortal lips, too sweet for man,
Too eloquent for woman, half unclose,
Unuttered consolation in their smile, -
Unspoken promises, whence hope is born
Of something happier, somewhere in the spheres.
THE SIRENS.
You have toiled enough, mariners!
Labor no more:
Lower the canvas,
Leave the oar:
Over our island
Storms cannot come:
Winds are in slumber:
Thunder is dumb.
Only the nightingale
Sings in her nest:
Balmy our couches, 
133
Come to your rest!
Roses shall garland you,
Arms shall encircle you,
Lips shall be pressed!
Wine in the goblets
Shines ruby and gold, -
Strength to the weary,
Warmth to the cold,
Blood to the wasted,
Youth to the old!
Ah, and the rapture
Thousandfold dearer,
Ne'er to be told:
Learn ye the secret, -
Taste ye the sweetness, -
Beauty's possession
Belongs to the bold!
ORPHEUS.
Not Miflos, iron judge, alone shall speak
Our final sentence; but the balance hangs,
L~ven while we liye, in sight of all the Gods.
Our fates are weighed, and less unequal seem
To calm Olympian eyes, than ours, obscured
By films inseparate from this cloudy earth. 
134
As one who, sitting on the high~rowcd ship,
Sees not the rosy splendor of the sail
At mormug, when, a planet of the sea,
It shines afar to dwellers on the land;
So we the later rad~ance of our lives,
Now shining, see not.  We have toiled,`t is true:
Stared Danger's lion boldly in the face
LTntil he turned: borne wounds and racking pains;
The frosts of Coichian winters, and the fire
That darts from Cancer on the Libyan shore:
Brief joy, brief rest, stern labor, suffering,
Are ours, - yet have we kept, as heroes should,
The steady cheerfulness of temperate hearts,
Courage, and mutual trust.  We shall not leave
The vapid dust of idlers in our urns:
Behind our lives shall burn the shining tracks
Of splendid deeds, and men long after us
Shall build the steadfast mansion of our fame.
What here we lose, shall be our portion there
Among the liappy Fields, - divine repose
Eternally prolonged, and blameless joy.
We in that larger freedom of the blest
Heroic shades, shall find our chosen seats.
This restless life beneath the hollow sky,
And looking o'er the edges of the woAd
Far from the anchored shores, the tongues of air, 
135
The doubtful voices heard in sounding caves
N\~ere gods abide, dim whispers, teaching us,
God-like, the secrets of the elements,
liave smoothed our entrance to the ample realms
Where Youth returns, and Joy, so timorous now,
Drops, like a weary dove, to fly no more.
~fl1E  SIRENS.
Listen, ye mariners! hark to our promises!
Prouder than pleasure the gifts we confer:
Though unto passion the Siren gives passion,
lie who seeks power receives it from her!
Labor no longer, confronting the turbulent
Elements, ever opposing your will:
Secrets we know, knowing all things, immortal, -
Equal with gods your desires to fulfiL
Secrets that chain in his caverns the Thunder,
Fetter the winds when they eagerest are:
Loosen the stream from its urns in the mountain,
Ay, and the vaults of the earthquake unbar!
Come, and the delicate spell shall be spoken,
Subtly to seize, and securely to bind, -
Wisdom and eloquence, honeyed persuasion,
Giving ye mastery over your kind.
 
136
Men shall adore ye, and even Immortals
Stoop from their thrones in Olympian flame:
All that have conquered and triumphed before ye
Dust shall become at the feet of your fame!
ULYSSES.
It cleaves the mufiled sense; it penetrates
The guarded porches of the brain, no lance
llurled fi~m a giant's arm more sure: it hums
And stings within me, as the brown bee hums,
Shut in the folded heart of some rich flower,
Drinking its drop of honey, - so it creeps
Within the purple blossom of my heart,
That music: and the very thrills of fear
To hide the secret honey of my lust,
Aid the seduction and betray the spoil.
You see me tremble: will it never cease?
It tollows, follows, clearer as we pass
The channel's throat, the final isles abeam,
And sweeter, keener, more alluring still,
From looking on the unfriendly seas.  My men,
Sing me your loudest songs - the yo-heave-O!
Of Aulis, or the coarse carousal-glees
Of Tenedos and Troy!  What? are ye dumb,
With eyes that burn like half-extinguished brands,
Fanned with desires new-blown, and mutinous 
137
With thought of coming peril?  Nay, then, shout!
Yell with the rage of disappointed lust,
The spite of thwarted opportunity,
The frenzy which an unrelenting Fate
Smiles at, and so increases! Curse your chiet,
Even me, Ulysses, - lash yourselves to wrath,
Like Satyrs when the Bacchie madness takes
Autumnal hills, so ye but overcome
That still-pursuing music! Bravely done!
~Iy heart is tougher for that brawny roar,
Which, in the old time heard, could always turn
The battle's doubtful scale.
A fresher wind
Foreruns the presence of the rearward night
Salt scud flies over us, and pale sea-fire
Flashes around the rudder.  Set me free:
I am your captain, - you are still my men;
~Iy sailors, whose obedience makes me strong,
~Iy comrades, whom I love.  See! yonder sinks
The glimmering beach astern: the songs are still
The lovely Treachery withdraws at last
Its baffled spells.  Now, whatsoever waits
For us, of new adventure, hostile winds,
Deceitfiil reefs, leagues of unharbored shore,
Or combats with strange tribes, gigantic forms
Cyclopean, or of bestial shape abhorred, 
138
The worst is passed: and ye have proved to-day
Strong to resist, where mere resistance counts
Above all courage to confront the shocks
Wl~ereon true manly steel but rings unharmed;
But this assails us from the softer side,
~Ielting the hero's marrow.  Wherefore, now,
Broach we that skin of amber Cretan wine,
First pouring, as is meet, l~bations large
To Pallas, and Poseidon, and to Zeus.
Ro, Orpheus! Are you dreaming on il~e prow?
Or have the Sirens through your tranced ears
Rapt forth your soul? You cannot hear them now:
Come down: our hearts need festal music.  Sing
As when we skirted Delos, and the white
Uplifted temple shone like morning snow,
`Twixt the blue hemispheres of sky and sea!
ORPHEUS.
I looked on him whose marble mansion gleams
High over Delos, - did the Sirens sing?
Who hears their music, sitting in the light
Of his immortal features, breathing balm
Shook from the rich confusion of his curls?
lie gave me entrance to the happy meads
Beyond the rainbow's span: I breathed, with him, 
139
The perfect ether of Olympian skies:
I heard the piercing sweetness of his lyre
Strike harmony through all the shuddering heart
Of Chaos, while from blissful stars that slid,
Sparkling, around him, in their crystal grooves,
Sweet noises came, responsive.  I beheld
His music shape the world's eternal law.
Immortal Justice there was justified:
Fate span an equal thread: more vile became
Rebellion to the gods, obedience light,
Complaint unworthy.  They the soonest reach
The shining fields where shades of heroes walk,
N\ThQ spurning passion, rise with even souls
O'er this, your madness, as an eagle hangs
Above the thunder, in the sunshine poised.
Your voices call me from my lofty dream,
Yet think not that my spirit stoops to share
Your noisy gladness!  Rather let me breathe
This pulse of music throbbing at my heart,
Until the speaking wires shall give me back
Some fragments of the voices of the Gods.
THE SAILORS.
No doubt you know the language of the Gods,
You, Orpheus, with your eyes that look afar, 
140
Your ears, dumb to the thunder when you sing;
But you, our Captain, know the hearts of men.
liere, pour this cup of amber wine to Zeus,
This, to Poseidon, - this, to Pallas, - this
Drink, shipmates, to Ulysses, from your hearts!
Sing, Orpheus, if you like: we do not want
Your Samothracian songs that cheat our ears
Like wind among the pines, - but lusty staves,
"Down with the Dardans!" or " The Ciri of Cos,"
Songs that our captain loves: we sing with him.
Who knows us, suffers with us, feels for us,
Stands at the post of peril at our head,
Strong to subdue our hot, rebellious blood,
Free to forgive the easy vice, because
lie feels it tugging at his heart the same, -
llim will we follow, though ten thousand isles
Of Sirens tempted, to the utmost verge
Where Earth falls sheer away, and under where
The great sun rolls, and the stars hide at dawn.
Drink with us, Captain! strike hands once again!
We swear anew the obedient oath we took
When first you shipped us, wild, wayfaring knaves,
Among the scattered isles.  The watch is set;
The night is fortunate; the wind is fair;
Our hearts are happy, - let our compact hold! 
VAItIOUS POEMS.  
PORPllYROGI~NITUS.
I.
BORN in the purple! born in the purple!
lleir to the sceptre and crown!
Lord over millions and millions of vassals, -
~Ionarch of mighty renown!
Where, do you ask, are my banner-proud castles?
Where my imperial town?
II.
Where are the ranks of my far-flashing lances, -
Trumpets, courageous of sound, -
Galloping squadrons and rocking armadas,
Guarding my kingdom around?
Where are the pillars that blazon my borders,
Threatening the alien ground?
 
144
"I.
Vainly you ask, if you wear not the purple,
Sceptre and diadem own;
Ruling, yourseh, over prosperous regions,
Seated supreme on your throne.
Subjects have nothing to give but allegiauce:
~Thnarchs meet monarchs alone.
Iv.
But, if a king, you shall stand on my ramparts,
Look on the lands that I sway,
Number the domes of magnificent cities,
Shining in valleys away, -
Number the mountains whose foreheads are golden,
Lakes that are azure with day.
V.
Whence I inherited such a dominion?
what was my forefathers' line?
llomer and Sophocles, Pindar and Sappho,
First were anointed divine:
Theirs were the realms that a god might have governed,
Ah, and how little is mine! 
145
VI.
Hafiz in Orient shared with Petrarca
Thrones of the East and the West;
Shakespeare succeeded to limitless empire,
Greatest of monarchs, and best:
Few of his children inherited kingdoms,
Provinces only, the rest.
VII.
Keats has his vineyards, and Shelley his islands;
Coleridge in Xanadu reigns;
Wordsworth is eyried aloft on the mountains,
Goethe has mountains and plains;
Yet, though the world has been parcelled among them,
A world to be parcelled remains.
VIII.
Blessing enough to be born in the purple,
Though but a monarch in name, -
Though in the desert my palace is builded,
Far from the highways of Fame:
Up with my standards! salute me with frumpets!
Crown me with regal acclaim!
7                    J 
THE SONG OF THE CAMP.
"GIYE us a song!" the soldiers cried,
The outer trenches guarding,
When the heated guns of the camps allied
Grew weary of bombarding.
The dark Redan, in silent scoff~
Lay, grim and threatening, under;
And the tawny mound of the Malakoff
No longer belched its thunder.
There was a pause.  A guardsman said:
"We storm the forts to-morrow;
Sing while we may, another day
Will bring enough of sorrow."
They lay along the battery's side,
Below the smoking cannon:
Brave hearts, from Severn and from Clyde,
And from the banks of Shannon.
 
147
They sang of love, and not of fame;
Forgot was Britain's glory:
Each heart recalled a different name,
But all sang "Annie Lawrie."
Voice after voice caught up the song,
Until its tender passion
Rose like an anthem, rich and strong, -
Their battle-eve confession.
Dear girl, her name he dared not speak,
But, as the song grew louder,
Something upon the soldier's cheek
Washed off the stains of powder.
Beyond the darkening ocean burned
The bloody sunset's embers,
While the Crimean valleys learned
How English love remembers.
And once again a fire of hell
Rained on the Russian quarters,
With scream of shot, and burst of shell,
And bellowing of the mortars!
 
148
And Irish Nora's eyes are dim
For a singer, dumb and gory;
And English Mary mourns for him
Who sang of "Annie Lawne~'
Sleep, soldiers! still in honored rest
Your truth and valor wearing:
The bravest are the tenderest, -
The loving are the daring. 
THE VINEYARD-SAINT.
SHE, pacing down the vineyard walks,
Put back the branches, one by one,
Stripped the dry foliage from the stalks,
And gave their bunches to the sun.
On fairer hill-sides, looking south,
The vines were brown with cankerous rust,
The earth was hot with summer drouth,
And all the grapes were dim with dust.
Yet here some blessed influence rained
From kinder skies, the season through;
On every bunch the bloom remained,
And every leaf was washed in dew.
I saw her blue eyes, clear and calm;
I saw the aureole of her hair;
I heard her chant some unknown psalm,
Th triumph half, and half in prayer.
 
150
"Hail, maiden of the vines!" I cried:
"Hail, Oread of the purple hill!
For vineyard fauns too fair a bride,
For me thy cup of welcome fill!
Unlatch the wicket; let me in,
And, sharing, make thy toil more dear:
No riper vintage holds the bin
Than that our feet shall trample here.
"Beneath thy beauty's hght I glow,
As in the sun those grapes of thine:
Touch thou my heart with love, and lo!
The foaming must is turned to wine!"
She, pausing, stayed her careful task,
And, lifting eyes of steady ray,
Blew, as a wind the mountain's mask
Of mist, my cloudy words away.
No troubled flush o'erran her cheek;
But when her quiet lips did stir,
My heart knelt down to hear her speak,
And mine the blush I sought in her.
 
151
"0, not for me," she said, "the vow
So bghtly breathed, to break erelong;
The vintage-gaHand on the brow;
The revels of the dancing throng!
"To maiden love I shut my heart,
Yet none the less a stainless bride;
I work alone, I dwell apart,
Because my work is sanctified.
"A virgin hand must tend the vine,
By virgin feet the vat be trod,
Whose consecrated gush of wine
Becomes the blessed blood of God!
"No sinful purple here shall stain,
Nor juice profane these grapes afford;
But reverent lips their sweetness drain
Around the Table of the Lord.
"The cup I fill, of chaster gold,
Upon the lighted altar stands;
There, when the gates of heaven unfold,
The priest exalts it in his hands.
 
162
"The censer yields adoring breath,
The awful anthem sinks and dies,
Wliile God, who suffered life and death,
Renews llis ancient sacrifice.
"0 sacred garden of the vine!
And blessed she, ordained to press
God's chosen vintage, for the wine
Of pardon and of holiness!" 
ICARUS.
I.
lo trnumplte I  Lo, thy certain art,
My crafty sire, releases us at length!
False ~Iinos now may knit his baffled brows,
And in the labyrinth by thee devised
Ilis brutish horns in angry search may toss
The Minotaur, - but thou and I are free!
See where it lies, one dark spot on the breast
Of plains far-shining in the long-lost day,
Thy glory and our prison!  Either hand
Crete, with her hoary mountains, olive-clad
In twinkling silver,`twixt the vineyard rows,
Divides the glimmering seas.  On Ida's top
The sun, discovering first an earthly throne,
Sits down in splendor: lucent vapors rise
From folded glens among the awaking hills,
Expand their hovering films, and touch, and spread
In airy planes beneath us, hearths of air
Whereon the Morning burns her hundred fires.
7* 
154
II.
Take thou thy way between the doud and wave,
O Dadalus, my father, steering forth
To friendly Samos, or the Carian shore!
But me the spaces of the upper heaven
Attract, the height, the freedom, and the joy.
For now, from that dark treachery escaped,
And tasting power which was the lust of youth,
Whene'er the white blades of the sea-gull's wings
Flashed round the headland, or the barbed files
Of cranes returmag clanged across the sky,
No half-way flight, no errand incomplete
I purpose.  Not, as once in dreams, with pain
I mount, with fear and huge exertion hold
Myself a moment, ere the sickening fall
Breaks in the shock of waking.  Launched, at last,
Uplift on powerful wings, I veer and float
Past sunlit isles of cloud, that dot with light
The boundless archipelago of sky.
I fan the airy silence till it starts
Th rustling whispers, swallowed up as soon;
I warm the chilly ether with my breath;
I with the beating of my heart make glad
The desert blue.  llave I not raised myself
Unto this height, and shall I cease to soar? 
155
The curious eagles wheel about my path:
With sharp and questioning eyes they stare at me,
With harsh, impatient screams they menace me,
Who, with these vans of cunning workmanship
Broad-spread, adventure on their high domain, -
Now mine, as well.  Henceforth, ye clamorous birds,
I claim the azure empire of the air!
Henceforth I breast the current of the morn,
Bctween her crimson shores: a star, henceforth,
Upou the crawling dwellers of the earth
My forehead shInes.  The steam of sacred blood,
The smoke of burning flesh on altars laid,
Fumes of the temple-wine, and sprinkled myrrh,
Shall reach my palate ere they reach the Gods.
III'
Nay, am not I a God?  What other wing,
If not a God's, could in the rounded sky
Hang thus in solitary poise?  What need,
Ye proud Immortals, that my balanced plumes
Should grow, like yonder eagle's, from the nest?
It may be, ere my crafty father's line
Sprang from Lrectheus, some artificer,
Who found you roaming wingless on the hills,
Naked, asserting godship in the dearth 
156
Of loftier claimants, fashioned you the same.
Thence did you seize Olympus; thence your pride
Compelled the race of men, your slaves, to tear
The temple from the mountain's marble womb,
To carve you shapes more beautiful than they,
To sate your idle nostrils with the reek
Of gums and spices, heaped on jewelled gold.
Iv
Lo, where Hyperion, through the glowing air
Approaching, drives!  Fresh from his banquet-meats,
Flushed with Olympian nectar, angrily
He guides his fourfold span of furious steeds,
Convoyed by that bold Hour whose ardent torch
Burns up the dew, toward the narrow beach,
This long, projecting spit of cloudy gold
~YIiereon I wait to greet him when he comes.
Think not I fear thine anger: this day, thou,
Lord of the silver bow, shalt bring a guest
To sit in presence of the equal Gods
In your high hall: wheel but thy chariot near,
That I may mount beside thee!
- What is this?
I hear the crackling hiss of singed plumes!
The stench of burning feathers stifles me! 
157
My loins are stung with drops of molten wax! -
Ai! ai! my ruined vans!-Ifall! Idie!
Ere the blue noon o'erspanned the bluer strait
Which parts Icaria from Samos, fell,
Amid the silent wonder of the air,
Fell with a shock that startled the still wave,
A shrivelled wreck of crisp, entangled plumes,
A head whence eagles' beaks had plucked the eyes,
And clots of wax, black limbs by eagles torn
Thfalling: and a circling eagle screamed
Around that Iloating horror of the sea
Derision, and above llyperion shone. 
THE BATH.
OFF, fetters of the falser life, -
Weeds, that conceal the statue's form!
This silent world with truth is rife,
This wooing air is warm.
Now fall the thin disguises, planned
For men too weak to walk nublamed:
Naked beside the sea I stand, -
Naked, and not ashamed.
Where yonder dancing billows dip,
Far-off~ to ocean's misty verge,
Ploughs ~1orning, like a full-sailed sbip,
The Orient's cloudy surge.
With spray of scarlet fire before
The ruffled gold that round her dies,
She sails above the sleeping shore,
Across the waking skies. 
159
The dewy beach beneath her glows;
A pencilled beam, the light-house burns:
Full-breathed, the fragrant sea-wind blows, -
Life to the world returns!
I stand, a spirit newly-born,
White-limbed and pure, and strong, and fair;
The first-begotten son of Morn,
The nursling of the air!
There, in a heap, the masks of Earth,
The cares, the sins, the griefs, are thrown
Complete, as through diviner birth,
I walk the sands alone.
With downy hands the winds caress,
With frothy lips the amorous sea,
As welcoming the nakedness
Of vanished gods, in me.
Along the ridged and sloping sand,
Where headlands clasp the crescent cove,
A shining spirit of the land,
A mowy shape, I move: 
160
Or, plunged in hollow-rolling brine,
In emerald cradles rocked and swung,
The sceptre of the sea is mine,
And mine his endless song.
For Earth with primal dew is wet,
Her long-lost child to rebaptize;
Her fresh, immortal Edens yet
Their Adam recognize.
Her ancient freedom is his fee;
Her ancient beauty is his dower:
She bares her ample breasts, that he
May suck the milk of power.
Press on, ye hounds of life, that lurk
So close, to seize your harried prey;
Ye fiends of Custom, Gold, and Work -
I hear your distant bay!
And, like the Arab, when he bears
To the insulted camel's path
His garment, which the camel tears,
And straight forgets his wrath;
 
161
So, yonder badges of your sway,
Life's paltry husks, to you I give:
Fall on, and in your blindness say:
We hold the fugitive!
But leave to me tliis brief escape
To simple manhood, pure and free,
A child of God, in God's own shape,
Between the land and sea!
K 
TllE FOUNTAIN OF TREYL
THE Coliseum lifts at night
Its broken cells more proudly far
Than in the noonday's naked light,
For every rent enshrines a star:
On C~sar's hill the royal Lar
Presides within his mansion old:
Decay and Death no longer mar
The moon's atoning mIst of gold.
Still lingering near the shrines renewed,
We sadly, fondly, look our last;
Each trace concealed of spoilage rude
From old or late iconoclast,
Till, Trajan's whispering forum passed,
We hear the waters, showering bright,
Of Trevi's ancient fountain, cast
Their woven music on the night. 
163
The Genius of the Tiber nods
Benign, above his tilted urn:
Kneel down and drink! the beckoning gods
This last libation will not spurn.
Drink, and the old enchantment learn
That hovers yet o'er Trevi's foam, -
The promise of a sure return,
Fresh footsteps in the dust of Rome!
Kneel down and drink! the golden days
llere lived and dreamed, shafl dawn again:
Albano's hill, through purple haze,
Again shall crown the Latin plain.
Whatever stains of Time remain,
Left by the years that intervene,
Lo! Trevi's fount shall toss its rain
To wash the pilgrim's forehead clean.
Drink, and depart! for Life is just:
She gives to Faith a master-key
To ope the gate of dreams august,
And take from joys in memory
The certainty of joys to be:
Ai~d Trevi's basins shall be bare
Ere we again shall fail to see
Their silver in the Roman air. 
MY MISSION.
EYERY spirit bas its mission, say the transcendental
crew:
"This is mine," they cry; "Eureka! this the purpose I
pursue;
For, behold, a god hath called me, and his service I
shall do!
"Brother, seek thy calling likewise, thou wert destined
for the same;
Sloth is sin, and toil is worship, and the soul demands
an aim:
N\rh0 neglects the ordination, he shall not escape the
blame."
O my ears are dinned and wearied with the clatter of
the school:
Life to them is geometric, and they act by line and
rule -
If there be no other wisdom, better far to be a fool! 
165
Better far the honest nature, in its narrow path content,
Taking, with a child's acceptance, wh~tsoever may be
sent,
Than the introverted vision, seeing Self pre-eminent.
For the spirit's proper freedom by itself may be de      stroyed,
Wasting, like the young Narcissus, o'er its image in the
void:
Even virtue is not virtue, when too consciously enjoyed.
I am sick of canfing prophets, self-elected kings that
reign
Over herds of silly subjects, of their new aliegiance vain:
Preaching labor, preaching duty, preaching love with
lips profane.
With tile holiest things they tamper, and the noblest they
degrade, -
1~aking Life an institution, making Destiny a trade;
But the honest vice is better than the saintship they
parade.
Native goodness is unconscious, asks not to be recog      nized;
But its baser affectation is a thing to be despised.
Only when the man is loyal to himself shall he be prized. 
166
Take the current of your nature, make it stagnant if
you will:
Dam it up to drudge forever, at the service of your mill:
1~iirie the rapture alld the freedom of the torrent on the
hill!
Straighten out your wavy borders: make a tow-path at
the side:
Be the dull canal your channel, where the heavy barges
glide, -
Lo, the muddy bed is trauqui1, not a rapid breaks the tide!
I shall wander o'er the meadows where the fairest blos      soms call:
Though the ledges seize and fling me headlong from -
the rocky wall,
I shall leave a rainbow hanging o'er the ruins of my fall!
I shall lead a glad existence, as I broaden down the vales,
Brimming past the regal cities, whitened with the sea      ward sails -
Feel the mighty pulse of ocean ere I mingle with its gales!
Vex me not with weary questions: seek no moral to
deduce:
With the Present I am busy, with the Future hold a truce:
If I live the life He gave me, God will turn it to His use. 
PROPOSAL.
TllE violet loves a sunny bank,
The cowslip loves the lea;
The scarlet creeper loves the elm,
But I love - thee.
The sunsbine kisses mount and vale,
The stars, they kiss the sea;
The west winds kiss the clover bloom,
But I kiss - thee!
The oriole weds his mottled mate;
The lily`5 bride 0' the bee;
Heaven's marriage -ring is round the earth -
Shall I wed thee? 
RENUNCIATION.
I.
WORDS are but headstones o'er the grave of thought.
When some gigantic passion grasps the heart
Until its powers, to utmost tension brought,
Tug at the roots of life, no speech may start
The spell of silence.  Deepest moods are dumb,
Nor song, nor picture, nor the spells of sound
Fathom their dark profound,
The secret of their language overcome.
But farthest, subtlest, most elusive still
Are those dim shapes that haunt the Poet's brain,
Beyond all wish, or any grasp?~ will,
That come unsought - and, sought, retreat again:
The independent fantasies that fall
As meteors fall in clear November nights,
Sometimes a showery burst of wayward lights,
Or singly trailing gold celestial,
Or in auroral blushes fused afar,
Drowning the steady torch of every star! 
169
II.
There was a time when, like a child, I dreamed
The gold lay hidden where the meteor fell:
when some divine interpretation seemed
Unto the speech of Poets possible:
When Nature's face a mask of brightness wore,
Beyond the brightness of the moon or sun:
The hills I knew, their skyey temples bore;
I heard the streams to other music run.
I saw a fairer morn within the morn,
And would have painted it for other eyes;
I heard tile barmonies of twilight skies,
The rippling idylls of the harvest corn.
The gray old mountains many a rainbow spanned,
And trumpets clamored on the ocean-sand:
The summer valleys sang a minor strain,
Dying away in ft~r, aerial blue,
Until, diviaely saddened through and through,
I tried their song to echo, but in vaia!
Why speak of that for which there is no speech?
Why sing of light to those who cannot see?
All that the Poet's noblest song may reach
Is the regret for what unsung must be.
8 
170
lIT.
I gave to Nature more than she gave back:
The dreams that, vanished once, return no more;
Passion that left her colder than before,
And the warm soul her stubborn features lack.
It was an echo of my heart I heard
Sing in the sky, and chant along the sea:
My life the affluence of her own conferred,
And gave her seeming sympathy with me.
o stars! whose light was dimmed with tears of mine!
o sun, that smiled with more than May-day joy!
Ye do not sit upon your thrones divine
To feed the tender fancies of a boy.
Ye see the stern eyes weep, the strong heart break,
The courage conquered by a fate unkind,
In your own brightness blind,
Unmoved, unchanged for any creature's sake.
The voices which encouraged me, are dumb;
The Soul I recognized in Larth is fled;
I wait for answers which have ceased to come:
I press the pulse of Nature: she is dead.
The early reverence I gave her fails,
To know her apathy for human ills;
I only see the bleak, unpitying hills,
The drear, indifferent vales, 
171
The dark, dumb woods, the harsh, insulting sea,
The stolid sky in cold serenity, -
Cold as the ceilings are of palace-halls,
Above their painted walls,
To some hot life, that beats in passion there,
Barred in alone, with eyes all wet and blind,
Which in the splendid frescoes only find
The staring mockery of their own despair!
Iv.
Earth is our palace, and her zoned array
Of forms and colors its adornments are:
She gives the soul its garments of display;
She draws the wheels of its triumphal car.
But does the victor kiss the threshold-stone,
Or clasp the heartless pillar at his door?
And does the bush whereon his bays have grown,
Shine with a glossier emerald than before?
No - no!  His sun is risen in kindred eyes;
His morn, the brighter flush of friendly cheeks:
The music of his day of triumph speaks
In human voices, and the sullen skies,
When, palm to palm, beloved pnlses kiss,
Beam with the splendid sunshine of his bliss! 
172
He gives to Earth the joy that flows from him:
The vanquished gives her his defeat and shame:
Her ebimes, to different fates, at once proclaim
The bridal p~an and the burial hymn!
V.
0, not to know, the sunny mist that gilds
The mountain tops, my breath had thither blown!
0, not to feel that loftiest Beauty builds
In Man her temple, and in Man alone!
Henceforward I renounce the vain pursnit
To find without the secret hid within, -
To chase a phantom thin,
Masked in our own divinest attribute,
While rosy life, the beating Heart of God,
The dayspring of the glory of the earth,
Supplies the Poet's dearth,
If o'er its fountains move his wizard rod.
The spirit of the mountains, sought in vain,
Sits on the forehead of the mountaineer;
The forest's voice is heard in every strain
Of hunters' bugles, and the restless main
Sings in the sailor-songs it loves to hear. 
173
The slender girl, beside the tropic palm,
Stands, the completed beauty of the wild;
The sweet-brier blooms not with so sweet a balm
Beside the cottage, as the cotter's child.
The whirls of windy fire, on desert sands,
But faintly ~Ian's infuriate wrath express:
The desolation of the Arctic lands
Is warm beside his icy selfishness.
Love, passion, rapture, terror, grie?, repose,
Through him alone the face of Nature knows:
There is no aspect of the changing zones
But springs from something deeper in the heart:
Then, let me touch its chords with tender art,
And cease to chant in wind-harp monotones! 
TllI~ QUAKER WIDOW.
I.
THEE finds me in the garden, Hannah, - come in!`T is
kind of thee
To wait until the Friends were gone, who came to com     fort me.
The still and quiet company a peace may give, indeed,
But blessed is the single heart that comes to us at need.
II.
Come, sit thee down!  Here is the bench where Benja     min would sit
On First-day afternoons in spring, and watch the swal     lows flit:
He loved to smell the sprouting box, and hear the pleas     ant bees
Go humming round the lilacs and through il~e apple-trees. 
175
"I.
I think he loved the spring: not that lie eared for flow      ers: most men
Think such things foolishness, - but we were first ac      quainted then,
One spring: the next he spoke his mind; the third I
was his wife,
And inthe spring (it happened so) our children entered
life.
Iv.
He was but seventy-five: I did not think to lay him yet
Th Kennett graveyard, where at Monthly Meeting first
we met.
The Father's mercy shows in this:`t is better I should be
Picked out to bear the heavy cross - alone in age -
than he.
V.
We`ve lived together fifty years: it seems but one long
day,
One quiet Sabbath of the heart, till he was called away;
And as we bring from Meeting-time a sweet contentment
home,
So, Hannah, I have store of peace for all the days to
come. 
176
yI.
I mind (for I can tell thee now) how hard it was to
know
If I had heard the spirit right, that told me I should go;
For father had a deep concern upon his mind that day,
But mother spoke for Benjamin, - she knew what best
to say.
VI'.
fhen she was still: they sat a while: at last she spoke
again,
"The Lord incline thee to the right!" and "Thou shalt
have him, Jane!"
~Iy father said.  I cried.  Indeed,`t was not the least
of shocks,
For Benjamin was Hicksite, and father Orthodox.
VIII.
I thought of this ten years ago, when daughter Ruth we
lost:
Her husband`5 of the world, and yet I could not see her
crossed.
She wears, thee knows, the gayest gowns, she hears a
hireling priest -
Ah, dear! the cross was ours: her llfe`5 a happy one, at
least. 
177
Ix.
Perhaps she`11 wear a plainer dress when she's as old
as I, -
~~ould thee believe it, llannnh? once I felt temptation
nigh!
My wedding-gown was ashen silk, too simple for my taste:
I wanted lace around the neck, and a ribbon at the waist
x.
llow strange it seemed to sit with him upon the women's
side!
I did not dare to lift my eyes: I felt more fear than pride,
Till, "in the presence of the Lord," he said, and then
there came
A holy strength upon my heart, and I could say the
same.
n.
I used to blush when he came near, but then I showed
no sign;
With all the meeting looking on, I held his hand in
mine.
It seemed my bashfulness was gone, now I was his for
life:
Thee knows the feeling, llannah, - thee, too, hast been
a wife.
8*                     L 
178
XII.
As home we rode, I saw no fields look half so green
as ours;
The woods were coming into   lea?, the meadows full of
flowers;
The neighbors met us in the lane, and every face was
kind,`T is strange how lively everything comes back upon
my mind.
XIII.
I see, as plain as thee sits there, the wedding-dinner
spread:
At our own table we were guests, with father at the head,
And Dinah Passmore helped us both, -`t was she stood
up with me,
And Abner Jones with Benjamin, - and now they`re
gone, all three!
XIV.
It is not right to wish for death; the Lord disposes best.
His Spirit comes to quiet hearts, and fits them for His
rest;
And that He halved our little flock was merciful, I see:
For Benjamin has two in heaven, and two are left with
me. 
179
xv.
Eusebius never cared to farm, -`t was not his call, in
truth,
And I must rent the dear old place, and go to daughter
Ruth.
Thee`11 say her ways are not like mine, - young people
now-adays
liave fallen sadly off; I think, from all the good old ways.
xv'.
But Ruth is still a Friend at heart; she keeps the sim      ple tongue,
The cheerful, kindly nature we loved when she was
young;
And it was brougi~t upon my mind, remembering her,
of late,
That we on dress and outward things perhaps lay too
much weight.
Xv".
I once heard Jesse ICersey say, a spirit clothed with
grace,
And pure, almost, as angels are, may have a homely face.
And dress may be of less account: the Lord will look
within:
The soul it is that testifies of righteousness or sin. 
180
XVIII.
Thee must n't be too hard on Ruth: she`S anxious I
should go,
And she will do her duty as a daughter should, I know.
`T is hard to change so late in life, but we must be re     signed:
The Lord looks down contentedly upon a willing mind. 
ANASTASIA.
Too pure thy lips for passion's kiss;
Too fair thy cheek love's rose to be:
The brightest dream of Beauty's bliss
Is dark beside the dream of thee.
Thifle eyes were lit from other skies;
Thy limbs are made of purer clay;
And wandering airs of Paradise
Before thee breathe the mists away.
Go, Angel! on thy path serene,
The lily-garland in thy hair:
I shall not crown thee as my queen,
Or vex thee with my hopeless prayer.
Love follows those whose dancing feet
Like rose-leaves warm the summer sod:
Thy brow foretells the winding-sheet;
The coffin waits thee, and the clod.
 
THE PALM AND THE PINE.
WHEN Peter lea the First Crusade,
A Norseman wooed an Arab maid.
He loved her lithe and pahny grace,
And the dark beauty of her face:
She loved his cheeks, so ruddy fair,
His sunny eyes and yellow hair.
He called: she left her father's tent;
She followed whereso'er he went.
She left the palms of Palestine
To sit beneath the Norland pine.
She sang the mnsky Orient strains
Where Winter swept the snowy plains. 
183
Their natures met like Night and Morn
What time the morning-star is born.
The child that from their meeting grew
Hung, like that star, between the two.
The glossy night his mother shed
From her long hair was on his head:
But in its shade they saw arise
The morning of his father's eyes.
Beneath the Orient's tawny stain
Wandered the Norseman' 5 crimson vein:
Beneath the Northern force was seen
The Arab sense, alert and keen.
His were the Viking's sinewy hands,
The arching foot of Eastern lands.
And in his soul conflicting strove
Northern indifference, Southern love;
The chastity of temperate blood,
LInpetnons passion's fiery flood; 
184
The settled faith that nothing shakes,
The jealousy a breath awakes;
The planning Reason's sober gaze,
And Fancy's meteoric blaze.
And stronger, as he grew to man,
The contradicting natures ran, -
As mingled streams from Etna flow,
One born of fire, and one of snow.
And one impelled, and one withheld,
And one obeyed, and one rebelled.
One gave him force, the other fire;
This self-control, and that desire.
One filled his heart with fierce unrest;
With peace serene the other blessed.
He knew the depth and knew the height,
The bounds of darkness and of light;
And who these far extremes has seen
Must needs know all that lies between. 
185
So, with untaught, instinctive art,
He read the myriad-natured heart.
He met the men of many a land;
They gave their souls into his hand;
And none of them was long unknown:
The hardest lesson was his own.
But how he lived, and where, and when,
It matters not to other men;
For, as a fountain disappears,
To gush again in later years,
So hidden blood may find the day,
When centuries have rolled away;
And fresher lives betray at last
The lineage of a far-off Past.
That nature, mixed of sun and snow,
Repeats its ancient ebb and flow:
The children of the Palm and Pine
Renew their blended lives - in mine. 
OYER-POSSI~SSION.
WITH beating heart and crowded brain,
I wait the touch of song in vain.
The coy, capricious Muse retires
Before the flame herself inspires,
And for a calmer, colder hour,
Reserves her passion and her power.
The sweetness of the autumn skies,
The light that on the landscape lies,
Where yonder sloping wood-side nods
The sunshine of the golden-rods,
The noise of children at their play,
The crickets chirping out the day,
The music breathing from the Past,
The Future's pictures, vague and vast;
The beauty men but rarely seek,
The secret truths they never speak; 
187
The double life, - the outward show,
The hell and heaven that hide below;
The hopeless whirl of woe and wrong;
Eternal Wisdom's under-song, -
All these, by turns, possess my mind,
Yet none of these mine art can bind:
For she, my goddess, will be wooed
Alone in calm and solitude.
So, cheerfully, the weight I bear
Of hot emotions which outwear
The crowded brain, and dim the eye
Of single-sighted Poesy.
She, when the throngs around her hum,
Stands in the centre, blind and dumb;
But to the One unveils her charms,
And clasps him in inimortal arms. 
ON LEAVING CALIFORNIA.
O FAIR young land, the youngest, fairest far
Of which our world can boast, -
~Vbose guardian planet, Evening's silver star,
Illumes thy golden coast, -
How art thou conquered, tamed in all the pride
Of savage beauty still!
How brought, 0 panther of the splendid hide,
To know thy master's will!
No more thou sittest on thy tawny hills
In indolent repose;
Or pour'st the crystal of a thousand rills
Down from thy house of snows.
 
189
Butwhere the wild-oats wrapped thy knees in gold,
The ploughman drives his share,
~ndwhere, through canons deep, thy streams are rolled,
The miner's arm is bare.
~etin thy lap, thus rudely rent and torn,
A nobler seed shall be:
Mother of mighty men, thou shalt not mourn
Thy lost virginity!
Thyhuman children shall restore the grace
Gone with thy fallen pines:
The wild, barbaric beauty of thy face
Shall round to classic lines.
AndOrder, Justice, Social Law shall curb
Thy untamed energies;
AndArt, and Science, with their dreams superb,
Replace thine ancient ease.
Themarble, sleeping in thy mountains now,
Shall live in sculptures rare;
Thynative oak shall crown the sage's brow, -
Thy bay, the poet's hair. 
190
Thy tawny hills shall bleed their purple wine,
Thy valleys yield their oil;
And Music, with her eloquence divine,
Persuade thy sons to toiL
TillHesper, as he trims his silver beam,
No happier land shall see,
And Earth shall find her old Arcadian dream
Restored again in thee! 
EUPllORION.
"I will not longer
Earth-bound linger:
Loosen your bold on
Hand and on ringlet,
Girdle and
Leave them: they`re mine!"
"Bethlnk thee, bethink thee
To whom thou belongest!
Say, wouldst thou wound us,
Rudely destroying
Threefold the beauty, -
Mine, his, and thine?"
FAUST, - S~co~~ PART.
N~r, fold your arms, beloved Friends,
Above the bearts that vainly beat!
Or catch the rainbow where it bends,
And find your darling at its feet;
Or fix the fountain's varying shape,
The sunset-cloud's elusive dye,
The speech of winds il~at round the cape
Make music to the sea and sky:
 
192
So may you summon from the air
The loveliness that vanished hence,
And Twilight give his beauteous hair,
And Morning give his countenance,
And Life about his being clasp
Her rosy girdle once again: -
But no! let go your stubborn grasp
On some wild hope, and take your pain!
For, through the crystal of your tears,
His love and beauty fairer shine;
The shadows of advancing years
Draw back, and leave him all divine.
And Death, that took him, cannot claim
The smallest vesture of his birth, -
The little life, a dancing ~ame
That hovered o'er the hills of earth, -
The finer soul, that unto ours
A subtle perfume seemed to be,
Like incense blown from April flowers
Beside the scarred and stormy tree, -
 
193
The woadenug eyes, that ever saw
Some fleeting mystery in the air,
And felt the stars of evening draw
His heart to silence, childhood's prayer!
Our suns were all too fierce for him;
Our rude winds pierced him through and through:
But lleavea has valleys cool and dim,
And boscage sweet with starry dew.
There knowledge breathes in balmy air,
Not wrung, as here, with panting breast:
The wisdom born of toil you share;
But he, the wisdom born of rest.
For every picture here that slept,
A living canvas is unrolled;
The silent harp he might have swept
Leans to his touch its strings of gold.
Believe, dear Friends, they murmur still
Some sweet accord to those you play,
That happier winds of Eden thrill
N\Tith echoes of the earthly lay;
9                         M 
194
That he, for every triumph won,
Whereto your poet-souls aspire,
Sees opening, in that perfect sun,
Another blossom's bud of fire!
Each song, of Love and Sorrow born,
Another flower to crown your boy, -
Each shadow here his ray of morn,
Till Grief shall clasp the hand of Joy! 
SOLDIER'S  SONG.
FROM "FAUST."
CASTLES witli lofty
Ramparts and towers,
Maidens disdainful
In Beauty's array, -
All shall be ours!
Bold is the venture,
Splendid the pay!
Lads, let the frumpets
For us he sneing,
Calling to pleasure,
Calling to ruin!
 
19~
Stonny our life is;
Such is its boon:
~Iaidens and castles
Capitulate soon.
Bold is the venture,
Splendid the pay!
And the soldiers go marching,
Marching away. 
THE SHEPHERD'S LAMENT.
FROM GOETHE.
U~ yonder on the mountain
A thousand times I stand,
Leant on my crook, and gazing
Down on the valley-land.
I follow the ~ock to the pasture;
My little dog watches them still:
I have come below, but I know not
How I descended the hill.
The beautiful meadow is covered
With blossoms of every hue;
I pluck them, alas! without knowing
Whom I shall give them to.
 
198
I seek, in the rain and the tempest,
A refuge nnder the tree:
Yonder the doors are fastened,
-And all is a dream to me.
Right over the roof of the dwelling
I see a rainbow stand;
But she has departed forever,
And gone far out in the land.
Far out in the laud, and farther, -
Perhaps to an alien shore:
Go forward, ye sheep! go forward, -
The heart of the shepherd is sore. 
TllE GARDEN OF ROSES.
FROM URLAND.
Or the beautiful Garden of Roses
I wlll sing, with your gracious leave:
There the dames walked forth at morning,
And the heroes fought at eve.
"~Iy Lord is King of the country,
But I am the Garden's Queen;
"is crown with the red gold sparkles,
And mine with the rose's sheen.
"So hear me, ye youthful gallants,
~Iy favorite guardsmen three;
The garden is free to the maidens,
To the knights it must not be.
 
200
"They would trample my beautiful roses,
And bring me trouble enow," -
Said the Queen, as she walked in the morning,
With the garland on her brow.
Then went the three young gallants
And guarded the gate about;
And peacefully blossomed the roses
And sent their odors out.
Now came three fair young maidens,
Virgins that knew not sin:
"Ye guardsmen, ye gallant three guardsmen,
Open, and let us in!"
And when they had gathered the roses,
They spake, with looks forlorn:
"What makes onr hands so bloody?
Is it the prick of the thorn?"
And still the three young gallants
Guarded the gate about,
And peacefully blossomed the roses,
And sent their odors out.
 
201
Now came upon prancing stallions
Three lawless knights, and cried:
"Ye guardsmen, ye surly three guardsmen.
Open the portal wide!"
"The portal is shut and bolted:
Our naked swords will teach
That the price of the roses is costly;
Ye must pay a wound for each!"
Then touglt the knights and the gallants,
But the knights had the victory,
And the roses were torn and trampled,
And died with the guardsmen three.
And when the evening darkened,
The Queen came by with her train:
"Now that my roses are trampled
And my faithful guardsmen slain,
"I will lay them on leaves of roses,
And bury them solemnly:
And where was the Garden of Roses,
The Garden of Lilies shall be.
 
202
"But who will watch my lilies,
when their blossoms open white?
By day the sun shall be sentry,
And the moon and the stars by night!" 
THE THREE SONGS.
FROM URLAND.
K~G Siegfried sat in his lofty hall:
"Ye harpers! who sings the best song of all?"
Then a youth stepped forth with a scornful lip,
The harp in his hand, and the sword at his hip.
"Three songs I know; but this first song
Thou, OKing! hast forgotten long.
Thou hast stabbed my brother with murderous hand -
Hast stabbed my brother with murderous hand!
"The second song I learned aright
In the midst of a dark and stormy night:
Thou must fight with me for life or death -
~Iust fight with me for life or death!" 
204
On the banquet-table he laid his Ilarp,
And they both drew out their swords so sharp;
And they fought in the sight of the harpers all,
Till the King sank dead in the lofty hall.
And now for the third, the proudest, best!
I shall sing it, sing it, and never rest:
King Siegfried lies in his red, red blood -
Siegfried lies in his red, red blood!"
THE END.
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