OEM ROBERT IINE ERWOOD JOHNSON m]£L m mm m H mm m »1 n : ': ill' H ;,; : : Class f S^ .raS Book oS^_ Copyright N°__^i^ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. POEMS 3BE tbe Same Butbor, PUBLISHED SEPARATELY! THE WINTER HOUR, AND OTHER POEMS (1892) SONGS OF LIBERTY, AND OTHER POEMS (1897) SAINT-GAUDENS: AN ODE AND OTHER VERSE BY ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON BEING THE THIRD EDITION OF HIS "POEMS" NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1910 .J r T"^ fl' Copyright, 1892, 1897, 1902, 1908, 1910, by Robert Underwood Johnson Copyright, 1909, by Harper & Brothers THE DEVINNE PRESS // Zo ©CI.A347193 *4t CONTENTS PAGE The Winter Hour, and Other Poems. Invocation: To the Gorse i The Winter Hour 3 With Interludes: Hearth-Song. The Lost Rose. A Madonna of Dagnan-Bouveret. Love in Italy. A Spring Prelude 28 Before the Blossom 30 Love in the Calendar 32 A September Violet 34. September's Eve 36 October 38 In November 39 On Nearing Washington 41 "As a Bell in a Chime " 42 In the Dark 44 Good Measure of Love 47 Noblesse Oblige 49 On a Candidate Accused of Youth. (Theodore Roosevelt: 1886.) 50 v CONTENTS PAGE Washington Hymn. (Sung at the laying of the corner-stone of the Washington Me- morial Arch, New York, May 30, 1890.) . 51 To Ralph Waldo Emerson. (On the Death of Garfield.) 53 Illusions 55 To-morrow 56 Inscription for a Burial Urn 57 Quality 58 Luck and Work 60 On a Great Poet's Obscurity 61 Written in Emerson's Poems 62 Amiel. (The "Journal Intime.") 64 "The Guest of the Evening." (Read at the dinner to Richard Watson Gilder, on his birthday, February 8, 1884.) 65 Salvini 66 For Tears 67 Apprehensions 68 Browning at Asolo 69 At Sea 71 Moods of the Soul 72 I. In Time of Victory. II. In Time of Defeat. To Leonora. (At her Debut, October 1 8, 1 89 1 .) 75 Herbert Mapes. (Drowned August 23, 1891.) 76 A Wish for New France 77 Divided Honors. (Written for the dinner to CONTENTS vii PAGE James Whitcomb Riley at Indianapolis, October 18, 1888.) 78 A Tracer for J*** B******** S3 II. Songs of Liberty, and Other Poems. Apostrophe to Greece. (Inscribed to the Greek People on the Seventy-fifth Anni- versary of their Independence.) .... 93 Song of the Modern Greeks 103 To the Housatonic at Stockbridge . . . .105 Farewell to Italy 108 A Chopin Fantasy 112 In Tesla's Laboratory 116 The Wistful Days 117 " Love Once was Like an April Dawn " . . .118 An Irish Love-Song 119 "Oh, Waste no Tears " 121 Her Smile 123 Song for the Guitar 124 Ursula 125 A Dark Day 126 The Surprised Avowal 127 The Blossom of the Soul 129 "I Journeyed South to Meet the Spring " . .130 Paraphrases from the Servian of Zmai Iovan Iovanovich (after Literal Transla- tions by Nikola Tesla) : Introductory Note on Zmai by Mr. Tesla . 135 viii CONTENTS PAGE The Three Giaours 141 Luka Filipov 146 A Mother of Bosnia 150 The Monster 154 Two Dreams 157 Mysterious Loye 159 The Coming of Song 161 Curses 163 A Fairy from the Sun-shower 164 " Why," you ask, " has not the Servian Per- ished? " 165 " I Begged a Kiss of a Little Maid " . . .166 Why the Army Became Quiet 167 The Gipsy Praises his Horse 168 The Voice of Webster 177 Hands across Sea 191 III. Italian Rhapsody, and Other Poems. Poems of Italy: Italian Rhapsody 207 The Hour of Awe 215 Titian's Two Loves, in the Borghese . . . .217 Poems on Public Events: The Listening Sword 221 Dewey at Manila 222 The Welcome of Our Tears 227 An English Mother 229 CONTENTS ix PAGE "The White Man's Burden" 232 On Reading of Atrocities in War 234 The Keeper of the Sword 236 Remember Waring ! 237 Poems of Heart and Soul: To One Born on the Last Day of November . 243 Music and Love 245 At a Concert 246 After the Song (To E. J. W.) 247 Song for Youth 248 Song of Remembrance 250 Star-Song 251 Song for a Wedding-day 252 With a Toast to the Bride 253 To June . 255 A Lover's Answer 256 The Guest 257 To One who Complained of a Lover's Per- sistence 258 Interpreters 259 The Tryst 260 " Love the Conqueror Came to Me " . . . .261 The Stronger Summons 263 The Flower of Fame 264 The Dread before Great Joy 266 Reincarnation 269 Premonitions 270 x CONTENTS PAGE IV. Moments of Italy, and Other Poems. Moments of Italy: To One Who Never Got to Rome ( Edmund Clarence Stedman ) 275 The Spanish Stairs 279 The Name Writ in Water 280 Spring at the Villa Conti 282 Como in April 284 The Vines that Missed the Bees 285 The Poet in the Children's Eyes 286 Poems of Moral Beauty or Conflict : To Dreyfus Vindicated 287 The Absent Guest (Edward MacDowell) . .291 The Czar's Opportunity 293 The Lover of his Kind 295 Together 297 Something in Beauty Binds us to the Good . 298 On a Lady's Chatelaine Mirror 300 The Scar 301 Compelling Love 302 The Marching-Song 305 Recognition 308 A Message Back to Youth 310 CONTENTS xi PAGE Miscellaneous Poems: Daphne 313 The True Bibliophile 315 " Pelleas et Melisande " 318 Waters of Song 319 Saint- Gaudens: An Ode 321 I THE WINTER HOUR AND OTHER POEMS TO RICHARD WATSON GILDER INVOCATION: TO THE GORSE "When the gorse is out of bloom, then love is out of season. "- English Proverb. Hardy gorse, that all year long Blooms upon the English moor, Let me set thee at the door Of this little book of song. When the dreary winter lowers, Vainly dost thou seek a fellow To thy blossom brave and yellow — Color of the cheeriest flowers. Thou of love perennial art Such a symbol that they say : " When no gorse-bloom greets the day, There 's no love in any heart." INVOCA TION Thus all days are Love's and thine. — Spicy flower on thorny branch, In Love's service thou art stanch — Wilt thou, wilding, enter mine? THE WINTER HOUR THE WINTER HOUR Of all the hours of day or night Be mine the winter candle-light, When Day's usurpers of Love's throne — Fame, Pride, and tyrant Care — are flown, And hearts are letters of hid desire Yielding their secrets at the fire. Now beauty in a woman's face Glows with a sympathetic grace, And friend draws closer unto friend, Like travelers near a journey's end; In casual talk some common hope Finds fresher wing and farther scope ; The eye has language fit to speak Thoughts that by day 't were vain to seek Out of their silence ; and the hand Grasps with a comrade's sure demand. Pile high the winter's cheer and higher, — The world is saved, not lost, by fire! THE WINTER HOUR HEARTH- SONG When November's night comes down With a dark and sudden frown, Like belated traveler chill Hurrying o'er the tawny hill,— Higher, higher Heap the pine-cones in a pyre! Where 's a better friend than fire? Song 's but solace for a day; Wine 's a traitor not to trust; Love 's a kiss and then away; Time 's a peddler deals in dust. Higher, higher Pile the driftwood in a pyre ! Where 's a firmer friend than fire? Knowledge was but born to-night; Wisdom 's to be born to-morrow; One more log — and banish sorrow, One more branch — the world is bright. Higher, higher Crown with balsam-boughs the pyre I Where 's an older friend than fire? THE WINTER HOUR II O silent hour that sacred is To our sincerest reveries! — When peering Fancy fondly frames Swift visions in the oak-leaved flames; When Whim has magic to command Largess and lore from every land, And Memory, miser-like, once more Counts over all her hoarded store. Now phantom moments come again In a long and lingering train, As not content to be forgot — (O Death! when I remember not Such moments, may my current run, Alph-like, to thy oblivion ! ) : The summer bedtime, when the sky — The boy's first wonder — gathers nigh, And cows are lowing at the bars, And fireflies mock the early stars That seem to hang just out of reach — Like a bright thought that lacks of speech; The wistful twilight's tender fall, When to the trundle comes the call THE WINTER HOUR Of fluting robins, mingling sweet With voices down the village street; The drowsy silence, pierced with fear If evil-omened owl draw near, Quaking with presage of the night; The soft surrender when, from sight Hid like a goddess in a cloud, Comes furtive Sleep, with charm endowed To waft the willing child away Far from the margin of the day, Till chanticleer with roystering blare Of reveille proclaims the glare. Remember? — how can one forget (Since Memory 's but Affection's debt) Those faery nights that hold the far, Soft rhythm of the low guitar, When not more sweetly zephyr blows And not more gently Afton flows Than the dear mother's voice, to ease The hurts of day with brook and breeze, To soothing chords that haunt the strings Like shadows of the song she sings ! And as the music's lullaby Locks down at last the sleepy eye, THE WINTER HOUR Green visions of a distant hill The fancy of the singer fill, While spreads Potomac's pausing stream, And moonlight sets her heart adream Of that old time when love was made With valentine and serenade. Now, too, come bedtimes when the stair Was never climbed alone. — Ah, where, Beyond the midnight and the dawn, Has now that other footstep gone? Does sound or echo more reveal When thirty winters may not steal That still-returning tread, — that voice, That made the timid child rejoice Against the terrors of the wind, — That tender tone that smoothed the mind? Great heart of pity ! it was then God seemed a father, denizen Of His own world, not chained to feet Of some far, awful judgment-seat. Then was revealed the reverent soul Whom creed nor doubt could from the goal THE WINTER HOUR Of goodness swerve; who need not bend To be of each just cause the friend. Of whose small purse and simple prayer The neediest had the largest share; Beloved of child, and poor, and slave, Nor yet more lovable than brave; Whom place could not allure, nor pelf, — To all men generous save himself; Whose passion Freedom was — with no Heat-lightning rage devoid of blow, But as a bridegroom might defend His chosen, to the furious end. Still other moments come apace, Each with fond, familiar face: The pleasures of an inland boy To whom great Nature was a toy For which all others were forsook — A spirit blithesome as a brook Whose song in ripples crystalline Doth flow soft silences between; The dormant soul's slow wakenings To dimly- apprehended things; THE WINTER HOUR The sudden vision in the night As by a conflagration's light; The daily miracle of breath ; The awe of battle and of death ; The tears of grief at Sumter's gun, The tears of joy when war was done, And all the fainting doubt that masked As hope when news of war was asked. And oh! that best-remembered place, That perfect moment's melting grace, — The look, the smile, the touch, the kiss, The halo of self-sacrifice, — When Nature's passion, bounteous June, To Love's surrender added boon, As though the heir of every age Had come into his heritage. THE LOST ROSE There was a garden sweet and gay, Where rarest blossoms did delay The look that Fanny bent to find The flower fairest to her mind, Till, at her word, I plucked for her A rose of York-and-Lancaster. io THE WINTER HOUR The red did with the white agree, Like passion blent in purity; And as she blushed and blushed the more, Till she was like the bloom she bore, I said, "Dear heart, I too prefer The rose of York-and- Lancaster." 'T is years ago and miles away ! For oh ! nor rose nor maid could stay To freshen other Junes. And yet How few who do not quite forget ! — Or know to which the words refer : " Sweet rose of York-and-Lancaster." In vain, when roses do appear Upon the bosom of the year, I search the tangle and the town Among the roses of renown, And still the answer is — ■" Oh, sir, We know no York-and-Lancaster." But ah, my heart, it knows the truth, And where was sown that seed of youth j And though the world have lost the rose, There 's still one garden where it grows — Where every June it breathes of her, My rose of York-and-Lancaster. THE WINTER HOUR II III Now call the Muses' aid to flout The bleak storm's roaring rage without; And bring it hail, or bring it snow, It shall be Love's delight to show What Fire and two defenders dare Against the legions of the air, Whose sharpest arrows shall not find Cleft in the armor of the mind. Why dread we Winter's deep distress, His pale and frigid loneliness, When here at hand are stored, in nooks, All climes, all company, in books! A moving tale for every mood, Shakspere for all, — the fount and food Of gentle living, — Fancy's link 'Twixt what we are and what we think, — Fellow to stars that nightly plod Old Space, yet kindred to the clod. Choose now from his world's wizard play What is frolicsome and gay; 'T was for such evening he divined Not Juliet but Rosalind. 12 THE WINTER HOUR Put the storied sorrow down, — Not to-night, with Jove-like frown, Shall the mighty Tuscan throw Fateful lightnings at his foe, Nor Hawthorne bend his graceful course To follow motive to its source. No, let gladness greet the ear: Cervantes' wit, or Chaucer's cheer, Or Lamb's rich cordial, pure and sweet, Where aromatic tinctures meet; Or princely Thackeray, whose pages Yield humor wiser than the sages; Or, set in cherished place apart, Poets that keep the world in heart: Milton's massive lines that pour Like waves upon a windward shore; Wordsworth's refuge from the crowd — The peace of noon-day's poised cloud; That flaming torch a jealous line Passed on to Keats from Beauty's shrine; Visions of Shelley's prophet-soul, That, seeing part, could sing the whole, Most like a lark that mounts so high He sees not earth but from the sky. THE WINTER HOUR 13 And of the bards who in the grime And turmoil of our changing time Have kept the faith of men most pure The three whose harps shall last endure : Browning, Knight of Song, — so made By Nature's royal accolade, — Whose lines, as life-blood full and warm, Search for the soul within the form, And in the treasures of whose lore Is Love, Love, ever at the core; Tennyson, of the silver string, Wisest of the true that sing, And truest singer of the wise; And he whose " stairway of surprise n Soars to an outlook whence appear All best things, fair, and sure, and near. IV Upon the wall some impress fine Of Angelo's majestic line — Seer or sibyl, dark with fate; Near, and all irradiate, 14 THE WINTER HOUR Bellini's holy harmonies, Bringing the gazer to his knees; One group to hint from what a height Titian with color dowers the sight; A pageant of Carpaccio, Flushed with an autumn sunset-glow; Then, of Luini's pensive race, The Columbine's alluring grace; And, echo of an age remote, Beato's pure and cloistered note. And be not absent from the rest Some later flame of beauty (blest As a new star), lest it be said That Art, that had its day, is dead. Let Millet speak in melting tone — Voicing the life that once was stone, Ere Toil had found another dawn Of Bethlehem at Barbizon. Nor is it winter while Dupr6 With daring sunlight leads the way Into the woodland rich and dim; Who love the forest, follow him; And they who lean the ear to reach The whispering breath of Nature's speech, THE WINTER HOUR 15 May with Daubigny wait the night Beside a lake of lambent light And marged darkness — at the hour (Soul of the evening !) when the power Of man, that morn with empire shod, Is shattered by a thought of God! And ah, one more: we will not wait For Death to let us call him great, But, taking counsel of the heart Stirred by his pure and perfect art, Among the masters make a place For Dagnan's fair Madonna's face. A MADONNA OF DAGNAN-BOUVERET Oh, brooding thought of dread ! Oh, calm of coming grief! Oh, mist of tears unshed Above that shining head That for an hour too brief Lies on thy nurturing knee ! How shall we pity thee, Mother of sorrows — sorrows yet to be ! 1 6 THE WINTER HOUR That babyhood unknown With all of bright or fair That lingers in our own By every hearth has shone. Each year that light we share As Bethlehem saw it shine. Be ours the comfort thine, Mother of consolations all divine ! Nor be the lesser arts forgot On which Life feeds and knows it not, That everywhere from roof to portal Beauty may speak of the immortal: Forms that the fancy over-fill; Colors that give the sense a thrill; Soft lights that fall through opal glass On mellow stuffs and sturdy brass; Corners of secrecy that invite Comfort, the handmaid of Delight; The very breath of sculptures old Held poised within a perfect mold; THE WINTER HOUR 17 A dainty vase of Venice make, Fashioned for its one rose's sake — Ay, winter's miracle of flowers To cheat the mood and mask the hours: Love's velvet-petaled pledge of June, That, on the wings of Passion strewn, Made courtly Persia conqueror Of thrice the world she lost in war; — Jonquils, that Tuscan sunshine hold Within their happy hearts of gold; — Narcissus, such as still are found By Marathon's mountain-envied mound — Food of the soul, well bought with bread, As sage Hippocrates hath said. All these perchance shall faintly yield Odors from some Sicilian field Where young Theocritus deep-strayed In blooms celestial — where his shade, Haunting his storied Syracuse, Finds balm for his neglected Muse. Add wanton smilax to entwine Your Dancing Faun or God of Wine, And you shall summon in a band The joys of every summer land. 18 THE WINTER HOUR VI But there 's a vision stirs the heart Deeper than books or flowers or art, — When Music, mistress of the mind, Lender not borrower from the Wind, Rival of Water and of Light, Adds her enchantment to the Night. What thoughts ! what dreams ! what ecstasies When heart and fingers touch the keys! Across what gulf of fate Love springs To Love, if Love caress the strings! By this mysterious amulet One shall remember or forget; When words and smiles and tears shall fail, The might of Music shall prevail; Shall move alike the wise and weak; All dialects alike shall speak; Outglow the rainbow to the doomed, — Consuming all, be unconsumed; Shall save a nation in its throes, Luring with concord grappling foes; Shall madden thus, yet shall be glad (Oh, paradox!) to soothe the mad. THE WINTER HOUR 19 This rhythmic language made to reach Beyond the reticence of speech — Bland as the breeze of May it sighs, Or rolls reverberant till the skies Tremble with majesty! Not the mote Most hid of all creation's rote But holds some message that shall be Transmuted into harmony. Already, since the lisping-time When music was but chant or chime, What spirits have to man been lent From God's discordless firmament! — Beethoven, brother of the Nine, But with a birthright more divine, — Whose harmonies that heavenward wend Wings to the laden spirit lend Until, serenely mounting higher, It melts into the starry choir; Wagner, in whom the Passions meet To throw themselves at Music's feet, — Whose murmurings have charm to wring From Love the secret of the Spring, — And in whose clamor sounds the siege Of heaven when Lucifer was liege. 20 THE WINTER HOUR Handel, whose aspirations seem Like steps of gold in Jacob's dream; Mozart, simplest of the great, Heir of Melody's estate, Who did blithe pipes of Pan prolong And heighten to a seraph song. Schumann, rare poet, with a lyre Stringed in Imagination's fire; And oh, that one of human strain! — Chopin, beloved child of pain, To whom the whole of Love was known- Marvel, and mystery, and moan, The joy secure, the jealous dart Deep-ambushed in the doubting heart, And all the perilous delight That waits on doubt, as dawn on night. Ah, who shall wake the charm that lies Past what is written for the eyes In such a scroll? The poet's need Is that a poet's heart should read. Happy the winter hour and fleet When flame and waiting passion meet THE WINTER HOUR 21 In her pure fire whose chords betray The St. Cecilia of our day! Oh, velvet of that Saxon hand So lately iron to command! — Like, at the shower's sudden stop, The softness of the clinging drop. What tender notes the trance prolong Of that famed rhythmic cradle-song! How faery is her woven spell Of minuet or tarantelle! Who would return to earth when she Transports us with a rhapsody! And when in some symphonic burst Of joy her spirit is immersed, That path celestial fain to share, We vow to breathe but noble air! VII Warmed with melody like wine, Lighted by the friendly shine Of the rich-replenished hearth, Let us drink of wine and mirth 22 THE WINTER HOUR While waning evening's aftermath Grows pleasant as a winding path With wit's surprises and the tale Adventurous, spreading sudden sail For Arcady and hallowed haunts Along the shores of old Romance: Now shall fare the fancy forth To pillared grottoes of the north, Where circling waters come again Like thoughts within a sleepless brain; Or, coursing down a softer coast Whose beauty is the Old World's boast, Shall pause for words while memory's flame Kindles at Taormina's name. And now in shifting talk appears Pomp of cities clad with years: Gay or gloomy with her skies, Gray Paris like an opal lies Sparkling on the front of France. A.vignon doth hold a lance In a tourney-list with Nimes. Fair Seville basks in helpless dream THE WINTER HOUR 23 Of conquest, as in caged air Dreams the tamed lion of his lair. Regal Genoa still adorns Her ancient throne; and Pisa mourns. Now we traverse holy ground Where three miracles are found: One of beauty — when with dyes Of her own sunset Venice vies. One of beauty and of power — Rome, the crumbled Babel-tower Of centuries piled on centuries — Scant refuge from Oblivion's seas That swept about her. And the third? — O heart, fly homeward like a bird, And look, from Bellosguardo's goal, Upon a city with a soul! Who that has climbed that heavenly height When all the west was gold with light, And nightingales adown the slope To listening Love were lending hope, Till they by vesper bells were drowned, As though by censers filled with sound— 24 THE WINTER HOUR Who — who would wish a worthier end To every journey? or not blend With those who reverently count This their Transfiguration Mount? LOVE IN ITALY They halted at the terrace wall; Below, the towered city lay; The valley in the moonlight's thrall Was silent in a swoon of May. As hand to hand spoke one soft word Beneath the friendly ilex-tree, They knew not, of the flame that stirred, What part was Love, what Italy. They knew what makes the moon more bright Where Beatrice and Juliet are, — The sweeter perfume in the night, The lovelier starlight in the star; And more that glowing hour did prove, Beneath the sheltering ilex-tree,— That Italy transfigures Love, As Love transfigures Italy. THE WINTER HOUR 25 VIII And thou, who art my winter hour — Book, picture, music, friend, and flower — If on such evening, dear, I trace Paths far from Love's divine embrace, Wandering till long absence grows Into brief death — less death's repose — Let me be missed with love and cheer, As miss we those of yesteryear With whom we thought (beguiling hope!) To stray together down Life's slope, While Age came on like gentle rain. They who but ceased their joyous strain — Where may the limit to the sea Of their bereaving silence be? Yet sorrow not: we may prolong, If not the singer's voice, the song. And if beyond the glorious strife Of this good world, I tread new life, Reluctant, but, by Heaven's aid, With infant instinct unafraid, 26 THE WINTER HOUR May Memory plead with thee to save Out of my song its happier stave. From the Dark Isthmus let not gloom Deepen the shadows of thy room. For me no ban of smile or jest: Life at its full is holiest. Let all thy days have pure employ In the high sanity of joy; Be then, as now, the friend of all, Thy heart a thronged confessional, A fount of sympathy, a store Of jewels at an open door. Here do I falter, love, for fear Of sacrilege to what is dear. Not now — not here; some luminous time, Some perfect place, some fortunate rhyme May yield that sacrificial part That poets fitly give to Art. Ever the moment most elate Must for a speech sufficient wait; Only the happiest know, alas! How soundless is the brimming glass. THE WINTER HOUR 27 But, though Love need nor praise nor oath, And silence oft is firmer troth, Yet know that if I come no more, 'Tis fault of sail, or sea, or shore, Not of the pilot, — for the heart Sees its way homeward from the start. If Death have bond that Love can break, It shall be broken for thy sake. If spirits unto mortals teach Some rudiment of subtler speech, My presence shall about thee stay To prompt the word it cannot say. So when, with late farewell and slow, The guests into the night shall go, Each pulse by sympathy more warm, Forgetting the forgotten storm, And thou alone into the blaze, Thrilled with the best of life, shalt gaze With hunger for the life divine, Oh, be that blessed moment mine! — With thee, who art my winter hour, Book, picture, music, friend, and flower. 28 A SPRING PRELUDE A SPRING PRELUDE O tardy April, is thy full choir here ? The redbreast, picket of the swarming spring, Whistles a sudden chirrup of alarm Before his level flight; and soft at eve His melody, on grass half-robin high, Falls like a vesper's throbbings from aloft. The sparrow tempts the turf to faster growth With her coy nesting, while her happy mate, High in the promise-reddened maple-top, O'er-bubbles with ecstasies of hoarded song. The mellow tunings of the oriole's flute, Rich as his coat, foretell his summer joy And pitch the key of gladness for the year. Here is the bluebird, best of mates and sires, And pewee, restless as a lover's fear, With cousin phoebe, bleating tearfully. The humblebee, that, nectar-drunk, shall soon Linger within the sybaritic flower, A SPRING PRELUDE 29 Feeds his impatience at the cautious bud; And from the furrows' wet and windy reach, Where March but lately swung his icy scythe, Ripples the velvet air about the cheek, Laden with faintest chorusings, as though The brimming silence overflowed in sound. O tardy April, is the full choir here ? Alas for me ! thou hast forgot to bring Out of the South one childish, bird-like voice, Whose absence doth delay the year, and makes My songs and thine but preludes till she come. 30 BEFORE THE BLOSSOM BEFORE THE BLOSSOM In the tassel-time of spring Love 's the only song to sing; Ere the ranks of solid shade Hide the bluebird's flitting wing, While in open forest glade No mysterious sound or thing Haunt of green has found or made, Love 's the only song to sing. Though in May each bush be dressed Like a bride, and every nest Learn Love's joyous repetend, Yet the half-told tale is best At the budding, — with its end Much too secret to be guessed, And its fancies that attend April's passion unexpressed. BEFORE THE BLOSSOM 31 Love and Nature communing Gave us Arcady. Still ring — Vales across and groves among — Wistful memories, echoing Pan's far-off and fluty song. Poet! nothing harsher sing; Be, like Love and Nature, young In the tassel-time of spring. 32 LOVE IN THE CALENDAR LOVE IN THE CALENDAR When chinks in April's windy dome Let through a day of June, And foot and thought incline to roam, And every sound 's a tune; When Nature fills a fuller cup, And hides with green the gray, — Then, lover, pluck your courage up To try your fate in May. Though proud she was as sunset clad In Autumn's fruity shades, Love too is proud, and brings (gay ladi Humility to maids. Scorn not from nature's mood to learn, Take counsel of the day: Since haughty skies to tender turn, Go try your fate in May. LOVE IN THE CALENDAR 33 Though cold she seemed as pearly light Adown December eves, And stern as night when March winds smite The beech's lingering leaves; Yet Love hath seasons like the year, And grave will turn to gay, — Then, lover, harken not to fear, But try your fate in May. And you whose art it is to hide The constant love you feel: Beware, lest overmuch of pride Your happiness shall steal. No longer pout, for May is here, And hearts will have their way; Love 's in the calendar, my dear, So yield to fate — and May! 34 A SEPTEMBER VIOLET A SEPTEMBER VIOLET For days the peaks wore hoods of cloud, The slopes were veiled in chilly rain; We said: It is the Summer's shroud, And with the brooks we moaned aloud, — Will sunshine never come again? At last the west wind brought us one Serene, warm, cloudless, crystal day, As though September, having blown A blast of tempest, now had thrown A gauntlet to the favored May. Backward to Spring our fancies flew, And, careless of the course of Time, The bloomy days began anew. Then, as a happy dream comes true, Or as a poet finds his rhyme, — A SEPTEMBER VIOLET 35 Half wondered at, half unbelieved, — I found thee, friendliest of the flowers! Then Summer's joys came back, green-leaved, And its doomed dead, awhile reprieved, First learned how truly they were ours. Dear violet! Did the Autumn bring Thee vernal dreams, till thou, like me, Didst climb to thy imagining ? Or was it that the thoughtful Spring Did come again, in search of thee ? 3$ SEPTEMBER'S EVE SEPTEMBER'S EVE T is Nature's temple, and the day Is full of worship as of light. A sigh from now and 't will be night; The lordly vision will not stay. With dusky incense throbs the gray Half dome of sky. A cloistered note Of lingering bird-song sounds remote As the last echo of a hymn Sung in recessional, cold and dim. I worship, but as though the praise Must pass through Nature's priestly ways, For God doth seem as lone and far As yonder uncompanioned star, September's Eve. SEPTEMBER'S EVE 37 II Along the mountain's altar crest The russet deepens in the West, As when to richer chords the close Of noble music softly flows. Now speed my footsteps through the dark, I see my leaping hearth, and hark ! Th' expectant children's view-halloo Rings out a melody of cheer. The rushing feet approach; I hear The lavish welcome panting through. How bright the sudden stars appear In friendly groups ! Now God is near, For Love is in her temple, too, September's Eve. 38 OCTOBER OCTOBER Soft days whose silver moments keep The constant promise of the mora, When tired equinoctials sleep, And wintry winds are yet unborn: What one of all the twelve more dear — Thou truce and Sabbath of the year? More restful art thou than the May, And if less hope be in thy hand, Some cares 't were grief to understand Thou hidest, in the mother's way, With light and mist of fairy-land Set on the borders of the day. And best of all thou dost beguile With color, — friendliest thought of God! Than thine hath heaven itself a smile More rich ? Are feet of angels shod With peace more fair ? O month divine ! Stay, till thy tranquil soul be mine. IN NOVEMBER 39 IN NOVEMBER Here is the watershed of all the year, Where, by a thought's space, thoughts do start anear That fare most widely forth : some to the mouth Of Arctic rivers, some to the mellow South. The gaunt and wrinkled orchard shivers 'neath The blast, like Lear upon the English heath, And mossy boughs blow wild that, undistressed, Another spring shall hide the cheerful nest. All things are nearer from this chilly crown, — The solitude, the white and huddling town; And next the russet fields, of harvest shorn, Shines the new wheat that freshens all the morn. From out the bursting milkweed, dry and gray, The silken argosies are launched away, To mount the gust, or drift from hill to hill And plant new colonies by road and rill. 40 IN NOVEMBER Ah, wife of mine, whose clinging hand I hold, Shrink you before the New, or at the Old? And those far eyes that hold the silence fast — Look they upon the Future, or the Past? ON NEARING WASHINGTON \\ ON NEARING WASHINGTON City of homes and in my heart my home ! (Though other streets exact a grudging fee): How leap my pulses when afar I see The dawn creep whitening down thy solemn dome! For now my care-restricted steps may roam Thy urban groves — a forest soon to be — Where, like thy shining river, placid, free, Contentment dwells and beckons me to come. Ah, city dear to lovers! — that dost keep For their delight what Mays and what Novem- bers ! — Kindling the flame, and if it ever sleep, New-lighting it within the breathing embers; Dear even in their sorrow! for when they weep 'T is for rare joys, scarce known till Love remem- bers. 4 2 "AS A BELL IN A CHIME" "AS A BELL IN A CHIME" As a bell in a chime Sets its twin-note a-ringing, As one poet's rhyme Wakes another to singing, So, once she has smiled, All your thoughts are beguiled And flowers and song from your childhood are bringing. Though moving through sorrow As the star through the night, She needs not to borrow, She lavishes, light. The path of yon star Seemeth dark but afar: Like hers it is sure, and like hers it is bright. "AS A BELL IN A CHIME'' 43 Each grace is a jewel Would ransom the town, Her speech has no cruel, Her praise is renown; 'T is in her as though Beauty, Resigning to Duty The scepter, had still kept the purple and crown. 44 IN THE DARK IN THE DARK At dusk, when Slumber's gentle wand Beckons to quiet fields my boy, And day, whose welcome was so fond, Is slighted like a rivaled toy, — When fain to follow, fain to stay, Toward night's dim border-line he peers, We say he fears the fading day: Is it the inner dark he fears? His deep eyes, made for wonder, keep Their gaze upon some land unknown, The while the crowding questions leap That show his ignorance my own. For he would go he knows not where, And I — I hardly know the more; Yet what is dark and what is fair He would to-night with me explore. IN THE DARK 45 Upon the shoals of my poor creed His plummet falls, but cannot rest; To sound the soundless is his need, To find the primal soul his quest. In vain these bird-like flutterings, As when through cages sighs the wind: My clearest answer only brings New depths of mystery to his mind, — Vague thoughts, by crude surmise beset, And groping doubts that loom and pass Like April clouds that, shifting, fret With tides of shade the sun-wooed grass. O lonely soul within the crowd Of souls ! O language-seeking cry ! How black were noon without a cloud To vision only of the eye ! Sleep, child! while healing Nature breaks Her ointment on the wounds of Thought; Joy, that anew with morning wakes, Shall bring you sight it ne'er has brought. 4$ IN THE DARK Lord, if there be, as wise men spake, No Death, but only Fear of Death, And when Thy temple seems to shake 'T is but the shaking of our breath, — Whether by day or night we see Clouds where Thy winds have driven none, Let unto us as unto Thee The darkness and the light be one. GOOD MEASURE OF LOVE 47 GOOD MEASURE OF LOVE One twilight was there when it seemed New stars beneath young eyelids gleamed; In vain the warning clock would creep Anear the hour of beauty-sleep; In vain the trundle yearned to hold Far-Eyes and little Heart-of-Gold; And love that kisses are the stuff of At last for once there was enough of, As though of all Affection's round The fond climacteric had been found — Each childish fancy heaping more, Like spendthrift from a miser-store, 48 GOOD MEASURE OF LOVE Till stopped by hug and stayed by kiss — The sweet contention ran like this: " How much do I love you ? " (I remember but part Of the words of the troth of this lover) "I love you" — he said — "why — I love you — a heart Brimful and running over. " I love you a hundred ! " said he, with a squeeze. "A thousand!" said she, as she nestled; :t A million ! " he cried in triumphant ease While she with the numbers wrestled. "Aha! I have found it!" she shouted, "aha!" (The red to the soft cheeks mounting) " I love you — I love you — I love you, Papa, Over the last of the counting ! " NOBLESSE OBLIGE 49 NOBLESSE OBLIGE What is diviner than the peace of foes ! He conquers not who does not conquer hate, Or thinks the shining wheels of heaven wait On his forgiving. Dimmer the laurel shows On brows that darken; and war- won repose Is but a truce when heroes abdicate To Huns — unfabling those of elder date Whose every corse a fiercer warrior rose. O ye that saved the land! Ah yes, and ye That mourned its saving! Neither need forget The price our destiny did of both demand — Toil, want, wounds, prison, and the lonely sea Of tears at home. Oh, look on these. And yet- Before the human fail you — quick! your hand! 5© ON A CANDIDATE ACCUSED OF YOUTH ON A CANDIDATE ACCUSED OF YOUTH* " Too young " do they call him ? Who say it ? Not they Who have felt his hard stroke in the civic affray, When elders, whom veteran fighters had taught Till they knew all the rules by which battles are fought, Fumbled weakly with weapons his foresight had sought. Who thinks of his youthfulness ? Surely not they Who stood at his side through the wavering day, And knew the quick vision, the planning exact Of parry and thrust, till the stout helmet cracked 'Neath the bold and true blow that is better than tact. Yea, the strength of the arm is the strength of its use, Not its years; and when fighting is on, better choose Not the rust-eaten sword from the library wall, But the new blade that leaps in its sheath at the call. Ask the foe by which weapon he fears most to fall! * Theodore Roosevelt, 1886. WASHINGTON HYMN 51 WASHINGTON HYMN SUNG AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNER-STONE OF THE WASHINGTON MEMORIAL ARCH, NEW YORK, MAY 30, 1890, TO THE AIR OF THE AUSTRIAN HYMN BY HAYDN Praise to Thee, O God of Freedom, Praise to Thee, O God of Law, Thee the goal of Israel's dreaming, Thee the flame that Moses saw; Light of every patriot dungeon, Home of exile, hope of slave, Loved by just and feared by tyrant, Comrade of the true and brave. Would we pray for new defenders, Thou art with us ere we call; Thou wilt find new ranks of heroes For the heroes yet to fall. 52 WASHINGTON HYMN Back we look across the ages, Forward Thou beyond the sun, Yet no greater gift we ask Thee Than another Washington. TO RALPH WALDO EMERSON 53 TO RALPH WALDO EMERSON ON THE DEATH OF GARFIELD, SEPTEMBER, 1 88 1 Poet of every soul that grieves O'er death untimely: whose lament Lights up the farthest Dark, and leaves A bow across the heavens bent: Dead in an upper room doth lie A nation's hero; can it be Thy ear too faintly hears the cry The West wind utters to the sea ? Thy Concord paean may have caught Glow from an elder Garfield's name: What fitter aureole could be sought For such a son than such a flame! 54 TO RALPH WALDO EMERSON Bard of the Human: since we yearn For that one manly heart in vain, Forgive the reverent eyes that turn Toward the low stream in Concord plain. Warned by the favoring touch of Death, Thy Nunc Dimittis thou hast sung; No more the thunder's stormy breath Shall sweep the lyre with lightnings strung. And yet, for him, remains — unsigned, Unspoken — all thy noble praise, When (port more worth the cruise !) thou find His sail beyond the final haze; But us? O Seer, to whose gift Looms large the Future's better part, What other prophet voice shall lift This burden from the people's heart! ILLUSIONS 55 ILLUSIONS Go stand at night upon an ocean craft, And watch the folds of its imperial train Catching in fleecy foam a thousand glows — A miracle of fire unquenched by sea. There in bewildering turbulence of change Whirls the whole firmament, till as you gaze, All else unseen, it is as heaven itself Had lost its poise, and each unanchored star In phantom haste flees to the horizon line. What dupes we are of the deceiving eye ! How many a light men wonderingly acclaim Is but the phosphor of the path Life makes With its own motion, while above, forgot, Sweep on serene the old unenvious stars! 56 TO-MORROW TO-MORROW One walks secure in wisdom-trodden ways That lead to peaceful nights through happy days Health, fame, friends, children, and a gentle wife, All Youth can covet or Experience praise, And Use withal to crown the ease of life. Ah, thirsting for another day, How dread the fear If he but knew the danger near ! Another, with some old inheritance Of Fate, unmitigated yet by Chance, — Condemned by those he loves, with no appeal To his own fearful heart, that ever pants For newer circlings of the cruel Wheel! Ah, thirsting for another day, What need of fear If he but knew the help that 's near? INSCRIPTION FOR A BURIAL URN 57 INSCRIPTION FOR A BURIAL URN Fire is older than Earth, Swaddled her at her birth, Shall be her windy shroud. Fear whispers, Earth with fire endowed Is all of Life : but the Soul's Desire Is something other than earth and fire, And cannot mold or burn. Of this is Honor made, and Truth, And Love that shall out-light the star. Go find when these began their youth, Then guess their age's farthest bar ; But look not for it in grave or urn. 58 QUALITY QUALITY Take, ere the bee hath sipped, The courtly, maiden-lipped, And dewy oleander, And breathe, and dream, and wander. But ah! take not another, Lest fragrance fragrance smother. ii What all your wreathed wine To what I taste of mine ? See the spilled jewels run, Red as an autumn sun! — Each holding warm and clear The vintage of a year. QUALITY 59 III Stranger, thy passing word My waiting heart hath stirred; My life to thee I lend! This hour thou art my friend, And could not dearer be Loved an eternity. 6o LUCK AND WORK LUCK AND WORK While one will search the season over To find the magic four-leaved clover, Another, with not half the trouble, Will plant a crop to bear him double. ON A GREAT POET'S OBSCURITY 61 ON A GREAT POET'S OBSCURITY What means his line? You say none knows? Yet one perhaps may learn — in time: For, sure, could Life be told in prose There were no need at all for rhyme. Alike two waters blunt the sight — The muddy shallow and the sea; Here every current leads aright To deeps where lucent wonders be. 62 WRITTEN IN EMERSON'S POEMS WRITTEN IN EMERSON'S POEMS (for a child) Midnight or morning, eve or noon, Torn March or clover-scented June, — Whene'er you stand before this gate, 'T will open — if but not too soon You knock, if only not too late. Well shall it be if, boyhood gone, A boy's delight you still may own To play the dawn-new game of life, — If what is dreamed and what is known In your still-startled heart have strife. Ere you have banished Mystery, Or throned Distrust, or less shall be Stirred by the deep and fervent line Which is the poet's sign and fee: Be this your joy that now is mine. WRITTEN IN EMERSON'S POEMS 6$ When comes the hour, be full and bright Your lamp, as the wiser virgins' light! Choose some familiar, shrine-like nook, And offer up in prayer the night Upon the altar of this book. Always new earth, new heavens lie The apocalyptic spirit nigh: If such be yours, oh, while you can, Bid unregretted Youth good-bye, For morning shall proclaim you Man. 64 AMIEL AMIEL (the "journal intime") A few there are who to the troubled soul Can lay the ear with that physician-art Which by a whispered accent in the heart Follows the lurking treason that hath stole Into the citadel; — a few whose scroll Of warning bears our safety, — is a chart Of our unsounded seas, and doth impart Courage to hold the spirit to its goal. Of such is Amiel, lonely as a saint, — Or as an eagle dwelling on peaks, in shade Of clouds, which now he cleaves for one wide look At the green earth, now for a circle faint Nearer the sun. Once more has Truth betrayed Secrets to Sorrow not in the sibyl's book. THE GUEST OF THE EVENING" 65 "THE GUEST OF THE EVENING" (READ AT THE DINNER TO RICHARD WATSON GILDER, ON HIS BIRTHDAY FEBRUARY 8, 1 884) Good actions are a fruit so ripe and rare They bear not fingering. Let me then beware To touch with venturous hand this curving branch, Nor lean too heedlessly against the tree Thus, at its prime, o'erladen heavily With golden harvest full and sweet and stanch, — Lest I by some rude shock, at this light hour, Bring down the Virtues in a mellow shower. To drop the figure, friends, — let 's be content The guest shall fancy less than we have meant; Speak not too closely of his special good, That we are here tells more than trumpets could. Our friendship holds his virtues as the light Holds the hid rainbow — storm but makes them bright; The modest veil they wear I may not raise Lest he should blush to hear, and I to praise. 66 SALVINI SALVINI "Dead is old Greece," they mourned ere yet arose This Greek — this oak of old Achaian graft Seed-sown where westward tempests wept and laughed, As now when some great gust of heaven blows From lair levantine. How the giant grows! — Not to lone ruin of a withered shaft, But quaffing life in every leafy draught, — Fathered by Storm and mothered by Repose. Nay, doubt the Greeks are gone till, this green crest In splendor fallen, round the wrack shall be Prolonged, like memories of a noble guest, The phantom glory of the actor's day. Then, musing on Olympus, men shall say The myth of Jove took rise from lesser majesty. FOR TEARS 6? FOR TEARS Some birches from the winter snow unbend, And some lie prone the happy summer long: Is grief but weakness ? May it be, blithe friend, The heavier burden stays but on the strong? 68 APPREHENSIONS APPREHENSIONS Seven days we sought the horizon line, elate, Without a sea-born doubt of things to come, Then on the eighth, upon the sill of home, A fog, not of the sea, fell with a weight Upon our spirits. Where was noon's rich freight Of summer cheer, the darkness spoke of doom, Till thoughts familiar did such dole assume We could but cling before the coming fate. In port — what greeting? From beloved lips The same "All 's well!" that could not charm our woe Chanted an ocean litany against harm; Our happiness swung forth from fear's eclipse. Alas ! upon a fearless friend the blow Fell like first lightning from long-gathered storm. BROWNING AT A SOLO 69 BROWNING AT ASOLO (INSCRIBED TO HIS FRIEND MRS. ARTHUR BRONSON) This is the loggia Browning loved, High on the flank of the friendly town; These are the hills that his keen eye roved, The green like a cataract leaping down To the plain that his pen gave new renown. There to the West what a range of blue! — The very background Titian drew To his peerless Loves. O tranquil scene! Who than thy poet fondlier knew The peaks and the shore and the lore between ? See! yonder 's his Venice — the valiant Spire, Highest one of the perfect three, Guarding the others: the Palace choir, The Temple flashing with opal fire — Bubble and foam of the sunlit sea. 7© BROWNING AT A SOLO Yesterday he was part of it all — Sat here, discerning cloud from snow- In the flush of the Alpine afterglow, Or mused on the vineyard whose wine-stirred row Meets in a leafy bacchanal. Listen a moment — how oft did he! — To the bells from Fontalto's distant tower Leading the evening in . . . ah, me! Here breathes the whole soul of Italy As one rose breathes with the breath of the bower. Sighs were meant for an hour like this When joy is keen as a thrust of pain. Do you wonder the poet's heart would miss This touch of rapture in Nature's kiss And dream of Asolo ever again ? " Part of it yesterday," we moan ? Nay, he is part of it now, no fear. What most we love we are that alone. His body lies under the Minster stone, But the love of the warm heart lingers here. " La Mura," Asolo, June 3, 1892. AT SEA 71 AT SEA Some things are undivined except by love — Vague to the mind, but real to the heart, As is the point of yon horizon line Nearest the dear one on a foreign shore. 72 MOODS OF THE SOUL MOODS OF THE SOUL I. — In Time of Victory As soldiers after fight confess The fear their valor would not own When, ere the battle's thunder stress, The silence made its mightier moan: Though now the victory be mine, 'T is of the conflict I must speak, Still wondering how the Hand Divine Confounds the mighty with the weak. To-morrow I may flaunt the foe — Not now; for in the echoing beat Of fleeing heart-throbs well I know The bitterness of near defeat. O friends! who see but steadfast deeds, Have grace of pity with your praise. Crown if you must, but crown with weeds,- The conquered more deserve your bays. MOODS OF THE SOUL 73 No, praise the dead! — the ancestral roll That down their line new courage send, For moments when against the soul All hell and half of heaven contend. II. — In Time of Defeat Yes, here is undisguised defeat — You say, " No further fight to lose." With colors in the dust, 't is meet That tears should flow and looks accuse. I echo every word of ruth Or blame: yet have I lost the right To praise with you the unfaltering Truth, Whose power — save in me — has might? Another day, another man: I am not now what I have been; Each grain that through the hour-glass ran Rescued the sinner from his sin. 74 MOODS OF THE SOUL The Future is my constant friend; Above all children born to her Alike her rich affections bend — She, the unchiding comforter. Perhaps on her unsullied scroll (Who knows?) there may be writ at last A fairer record of the soul For this dark blot upon the Past TO LEONORA 75 TO LEONORA (AT HER DEBUT, OCTOBER l8, 1891) Fair sister of the Muses, 't is the hour, Dearest of all, when thou dost wed thy Art. No bride more radiant a more single heart Gave to her chosen — and what noble dower! Graces akin to forest and to flower; A spirit blithe as dawn; a soul astart; A nature rich, to keep thee what thou art — A star of beauty and a flame of power. Now, while the tranced throng turn each to each Sharing their joy, think'st thou on those young years When many a day and night was unbeguiled Save by this love that lightened toil and tears? Thy music melts upon the verge of speech; Fame greets the artist — I, the constant child. 76 HERBERT MAPES HERBERT MAPES (drowned august 23, 1891) Last night, what kingdom on his brow! What mellow music in his Voice! What strength to make the eye rejoice! What life! what flush of youth! . . . and now! O brow dethroned ! O muffled bell Of speech ! O net too loosely wove ! O sunken freight of hope and love ! Come back till we have said farewell! A WISH FOR NEW FRANCE 77 A WISH FOR NEW FRANCE (fragment) For her no backward look Into the bloody book Of kings. Thrice-rescued land ! Her haunted graves bespeak A nobler fate: to seek In service of the world again the world's command. She, in whose skies of peace Arise new auguries To strengthen, cheer, and guide — When nations in a horde Draw the unhallowed sword, O Memory, walk a warning specter at her side! 7 8 DIVIDED HONORS DIVIDED HONORS* Nature had late a strife with Art To prove which bears the worthier part In poets' fame. The words ran high While Justice, friend to both, stood by To name the victor. Nature rose, Impressive in her artless pose, And in a few words fitly chose (Confined to generalities) Pleaded the nature of the thing — That singers born to sing must sing, That it could not be otherwise; Spoke of the poet's " flight of wing," His " flow of song," his " zephyr sighs," And hid in trope and allegory A whole campaign of a priori. Then Art began to plead her cause; Said Nature's windy words had flaws — * Written for the dinner to James Whitcomb Riley at Indiana- polis, October 18, 1888. DIVIDED HONORS 79 That e'en the larklet soaring high Must surely once have learned to fly And eke to sing. Moreover, Song Is something more than baby-prattle; Or plow-boy's carol to the cattle; Or love's acrostic — though it be Faultless (at one extremity); Or verse that school-girls spoil a day for, Found good to print, but not to pay for. This well she with herself debated, And, lacking points, elaborated, And, like a lawyer closely pressed, Naught having proved, assumed the rest. But Justice, knowing how to prick The airy globes of rhetoric, Said, " Friends, your theories are ample, Yet light upon the case we need, And, me judice, she '11 succeed Who shall present the best example." A moment both were still as death, Then shouted "Shakespeare!" in a breath; 80 DIVIDED HONORS And then, confounded by each other (While pondering moderated pother), Ran down the list of English charmers, As in a fugue of two performers: 'Twas "Chaucer!" "Philip Sidney!" "Donne!" " George Herbert!" "Milton!" "Tennyson!" And, quick as either one would name them, The other would be sure to claim them! — Till Justice — blindfold all these years Because she can't believe her eyes — Convinced that hearing, too, belies, Now pulled her bandage o'er her ears. Then Nature, in affected candor, Renounced all ownership in Landor, And said : " Let 's both make fair returns ; I '11 give you Keats — you give me Burns." " No, no," said Art, " you have a fit man, — Your whole contention lies in Whitman." Then, she not wanting from her rival A gift of what was hers by right, At once there followed a revival Of acrimony — till in fright Pale Justice, with a sly suggestion Of dining, moved the previous question. DIVIDED HONORS 81 But Nature, conscious of her force, Had in reserve a shrewd resource, And, while the judgment hung uncertain, She quickly drew aside a curtain, And, full of confidence, said dryly : " I rest my case on Whitcomb Riley ! And further to enforce my right, He has consented to recite, That all may see by how large part He has possession of my heart." Five minutes ! and the wager 's o'er : A ballad, homely, simple, true — And then, and ever after, you See Nature as you 'd ne'er before. First is the kind eye's twinkling ray So lit with human sympathy That, kindled by its flash, you say Humor 's the true democracy. The next note 's deeper — there 's no guile Mixed with the shrewdness of that smile That breaks from sadness into joy — The man's glad memory of the boy. 82 DIVIDED HONORS Then tears, ah! they are Nature's rain, The tears of love and death and grief And rapture — the divine relief That gives us back the sun again. No more need Nature nurse her fears, For look ! e'en Art herself 's in tears, And in the general acclaim The jade has nigh forgot her name. Yet has she left one arrow more, And, proudly rising to the floor, " Not yet," she says, " for what you take For Nature's work is mine, who make Jewels of stones that else would lie Unnoticed 'neath the searching sky. Receive the secret — mine your tears: He % s been my pupil fifteen years! " Then Justice said : " Since there 's no winner, 'T is fair the two should pay a dinner; Nature shall furnish, Art prepare it, And Riley, and his friends, shall share it." A TRACER FOR /*** B ******** 83 A TRACER FOR J*** B******** 1 Dear English Cousins : We have lost — And crave your help to find him — A farmer-poet, ocean-tossed, With no address behind him. Yes, though of song he write no stave, We yet will call him poet: His lines, as wave with following wave, Make rhythm and never know it. His pages grow rare fruits of thought, Rare fruits of toil his furrows; His name ? Why hide it when you 've caught The rhyme I seek? — John Burroughs. I doubt if in the London round His eager feet will loiter, While hedge and copse of Kentish ground Are left to reconnoiter. 84 A TRACER FOR J*** B******** There he '11 compare, in lulls of rain, Your thrushes with our cat-bird, And quiz the lads in every lane For news of this or that bird. Him leaners over Stratford gates Shall mark, by Avon strolling. A poacher? Ay, but on estates Not near their vision rolling. When Shakespeare tribute he has brought Across the loyal ocean, He '11 seek some haunt that Wordsworth sought To pay his next devotion. His "next" — ah! rather say his first, Since friend is more than sovereign; Of poets be the truth rehearsed : To reign is not to govern. To him the moor shall not be lone, Nor any footstep idle Where Nature hoards each lingering tone Of the human voice of Rydal. A TRACER FOR J*** £******** 8$ By poets led, he will not grope, But be, from Kent to Cumberland, At home as on his Hudson slope Or Rip Van Winkle's slumberland. ii How shall you know him? — by what word, What shibboleth, what mole-ridge? — Him who will find an English bird Just by a line of Coleridge ? Of outward mark the quickest test Is that he wears the shading That sober Autumn loves the best — Soft gray through iron fading. Tinged, too, are beard and hair; and keen His eye, but warm and witty; A rustic strength is in his mien, Made mild by love and pity. 86 A TRACER FOR J*** B ******** A man of grave, of jolly moods, That with the world has kept tune — You 'd call him Druid in the woods, And in the billows Neptune. Another sign that will not fail: Where'er he chance to tarry, — In copse, or glen, or velvet vale, Or where the streamlets marry, Or on the peaks whose shadows spread O'er Grasmere's level reaches, — You '11 note shy shakings of his head Before his Saxon speeches. in Ah me ! by how poor facts and few A stranger may detect us, While friends may never find the clew, Though keenly they inspect us. A TRACER FOR y*** £******** 87 Of things that make the man — alack I I 've hardly even hinted; We speak of them — behind his back, But here? — this might be printed. Still ... he 'd not know the portrait his — His modesty so blinds him — But no ! ... to learn what Burroughs is Shall be his fee who finds him. II SONGS OF LIBERTY AND OTHER POEMS TO MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN APOSTROPHE TO GREECE* From the Parthenon (inscribed to the greek people on the seventy- fifth ANNIVERSARY OF THEIR INDEPENDENCE) O land of sage and stoic — Of human deeds heroic, Of heroes' deeds divine! What braggart of the nations Shall scorn thy proud narrations — Thou who hast named the stars from thy Olympian line ! * This ode, begun on the steps of the Parthenon in 1886, was published in the New York " Independent " of April, 1896, and, in part, in modern Greek in the " Hellas," a record of the Olympic Games of that year. 93 94 APOSTROPHE TO GREECE In spite of Moslem crime Thou livest! Hungry Time Can but the dead devour. Though asphodel hath strewed This marble solitude, The silence thrills with life, the ruins rise in power. Yon sea's imperial vastness Was once thy friend and fastness ; By many a curving strand, 'Twixt purple capes, on edges Of seaward-looking ledges, Rose the white cities sown by thy adventurous hand. Nor couldst thou think of these As lonely colonies Wherewith rich Corinth lined The West, while Dorian sails Outrode y£gean gales ; Nay, suburbs were they all, molds of Athenian mind. Then could thy galleys pass From Tyre to Acragas, By Grecian islands gray That dreamed of Athens' brow, And gaily to the prow Harnessed the pawing winds to seek some Attic bay. APOSTROPHE TO GREECE 95 Here to Athene's feast, From West, from North, from East — Through Jason's fabled strait Or round Malea's rock — The homesick sails would flock, Oft with an Odyssey of peril to relate. And what exultant stir When the swart islander, Bound for the festal week, First saw Colonna's crest Give back the glowing West Far past ^Egina's shore and her prophetic peak! I hear his cheery cries Though Time between us lies More wide than sea and land. The gladness that he brings Thrills in the song he sings, Beaching his welcome craft on Phaleron's level strand. O harbor of delight! Strike the torn sail— to-night On Attic soil again! When joy is free to slaves What though the swarming waves Follow each other down like the generations of men! 96 APOSTROPHE TO GREECE Now, for a time, to war And private hate a bar Of sacred armistice ; Even in the under-world Shall the rough winds be furled That tell of wrangling shades that crowd the courts of Dis. 'T is Peace shall bring the green For Merit's brow. What scene, O Athens, shall be thine ! Till from Parnassus' height Phoebus' reluctant light Lingers along Hymettus' fair and lofty line. With dance and song and game And oratory's flame Shall Hellas beat and swell, Till, olive-crowned, in pride The envied victors ride, Fellows to those whose fame the prancing marbles tell, O antique time and style, Return to us awhile Bright as thy happy skies ! Silent the sounds that mar : Like music heard afar The harmony endures while all the discord dies. APOSTROPHE TO GREECE 97 Not yet the cloister-shade Fell on a world afraid, Morbid, morose — the alloy Found greater than the gold Of life. Like Nature old Thou still didst sing and show the sanity of joy. Thine is that wisdom yet That Age from Youth must get, Age pay to Youth in kind. Oh, teach our anxious days Through thy serener ways How by the happy heart to keep the unclouded mind. ii But thou wert Freedom's too As well as Joy's. She drew From every mountain breast An air that could endure No foreign foe — so pure That Lycabettus neighbors the Corinthian crest. Nor was thy love of life For thee alone. Thy strife Was for the race, no less. Thee, to whom wrong is done While wrong confronts the sun, The oppressor cannot crush, nor teach thee to oppress. 7 98 APOSTROPHE TO GREECE By thee for lands benighted Was Freedom's beacon lighted That now enstars the earth. Welcome the people's hour! Passed is the monarch's power, Dread waits not on his death that trembled at his birth. As down a craggy steep Albanian torrents leap Impetuous to the sea — Such was thy ancient spirit, Still thine. Who that inherit Hatred of tyranny inherit not from thee? Look to the West and see Thy daughter, Italy — Fathered by Neptune bold On Cumse's sheltered strand (Forgot but for the hand That saved to Art her sibyl many-named and old) ; That temple-sated soil, Whose altar-smoke would coil To hide the Avernian steep, Grows the same harvest now — Best increase of the plow, Fair Freedom, of thy seed, sown for the world to reap. APOSTROPHE TO GREECE 99 Though regal Rome display The triumphs of her day ; Though Florence, laurel-hung, Tell how she held the van In the slow march of man — Greek was the path they trod , Greek was the song they sung. Look farther west and there Behold thy later heir, Child of thy Jove-like mind — Fair France. How hath she kept The watch while others slept? Hath Wisdom hastened on while Justice lagged behind? Like thee, full well she knows Through what maternal throes New forms from olden come ; Her arts, her temples, speak A glory that is Greek, And filially her heart turns to the ancestral home. For her no backward look Into the bloody book Of kings. Thrice-rescued land ! Her furrowed graves bespeak A nobler fate : to seek In service of the world again the world's command. IOO APOSTROPHE TO GREECE She in whose skies of peace Arise new auguries To strengthen, cheer, and guide- When nations in a horde Draw the unhallowed sword, d Memory, walk, a warning specter, at her side! Among thy debtor lands, See, grateful England stands ; Who at thy ranging feet Learned how to carry Law Into the jungle's maw, And tempers unto Man or cold or desert heat. All that thou daredst she dares Till now thy name she bears — Mother of Colonies. What if thy glorious Past She should restore at last, And clothe in new renown the dream of Pericles! If she but lean to thee Once more thy North shall be Uplifted from the dust. Mother of noble men, Thy friends of sword and pen, England, though slow to justice, shall again be just. APOSTROPHE TO GREECE 101 And now from our new land Beyond two seas, a hand! Our world, for ages dumb, Part of thy fable-lore, Gathers upon her shore Each dying race as soil for one chief race to come. But of our beating heart Thy pulse how large a part! Our wider sky but bounds Another Grecian dawn. Lament not what is gone ; Pentelicus grieves not, for Fame hath healed his wounds. in Then, Hellas! scorn the sneer Of kings who will not hear Their people's moaning voice, More deaf than shore to sea! The world hath need of thee — The world thou still canst teach to reason and rejoice. Yes, need of thee while Art Of life is but a part — Plaything or luxury. Greek soil perchance may show Where Art's hid stream doth flow — To rise, a new Alpheus, near another sea. 102 APOSTROPHE TO GREECE Yes, need of thee while Gold Makes timid traitors bold To lay republics low ; Not ignorant nor poor Spread for their feet the lure— The kind, the loved, the honored, aim the brutal blow. Yes, need of thee while Earth Each day shows Heaven a girth Of want and misery ; Wherein there is not found Beyond thy happy bound A people brave, sane, temperate, thrifty, chaste, and free. Then, though by faction's blunder, And boasts, of mimic thunder, Again thou art betrayed, Vain this, vain every treason ; With thee are Hope and Reason, Nor Past can be forgot, nor Future long delayed. Troy was, but Athens is — The World's and Liberty's, Nor ever less shall be! Though fallen are old fanes The vestal fire remains Bright with the light serene of immortality. SONG OF THE MODERN GREEKS 103 SONG OF THE MODERN GREEKS Liberty, beloved of Hellas, Lend us once again thy sword ; Turn thy glorious eyes that tell us Thou art still to be adored. Hail thee, spirit! hover over Salamis and Marathon, Till each corse that called thee lover Rise with thee to lead us on. Slumbered Hellas long in sadness, Waiting thee to call her forth ; Hushed the very cradle's gladness By the tyrant of the North. Long she dwelt with buried heroes In the fame of other years ; But against a horde of Neros What availed or pride or tears ? 104 SONG OF THE MODERN GREEKS Then at last thy summons called us, And as one we followed thee, Till the rusted chains that thralled us Fell, and Greece once more was free. Ah, but while our kin are weeping Over sea and over land, Let us not again be sleeping, Wake us with thy warning hand. Though the Moslem swarm to slay us, Though false friends, within, without - Kings or cowards — shall betray us, If thou lead us, who shall doubt? Greece's blood made many an altar For the nations then unborn ; Will they with her peril palter— Give her gratitude, or scorn? Oh, could Earth and Time assemble All thy legions, Liberty, At their tread the world would tremble With the passion to be free. TO THE HOUSATONIC AT STOCKBRIDGE 105 TO THE HOUSATONIC AT STOCKBRIDGE Contented river! in thy dreamy realm — The cloudy willow and the plumy elm : They call thee English, thinking thus to mate Their musing streams that, oft with pause sedate, Linger through misty meadows for a glance At haunted tower or turret of romance. Beware their praise who rashly would deny To our New World its true tranquillity. Our " New World "? Nay, say rather to our Old (Let truth and freedom make us doubly bold) ; Tell them : A thousand silent years before Their sea-born isle— at every virgin shore Dripping like Aphrodite's tresses— rose, Here, 'neath her purple veil, deep slept Repose, To be awakened but by wail of war. About thy cradle under yonder hill, Before thou knewest bridge, or dam, or mill, Soft winds of starlight whispered heavenly lore, Which, like our childhood's, all the workday toil Cannot efface, nor long its beauty soil. Thou hast grown human laboring with men At wheel and spindle ; sorrow thou dost ken ; 106 TO THE HO USA TONIC AT STOCKBRIDGE Yet dost thou still the unshaken stars behold, Calm to their calm returning, as of old. Thus, like a gentle nature that grows strong In meditation for the strife with wrong, Thou show'st the peace that only tumult can ; Surely, serener river never ran. Thou beautiful! From every dreamy hill What eye but wanders with thee at thy will, Imagining thy silver course unseen Convoyed by two attendant streams of green In bending lines,— like half-expected swerves Of swaying music, or those perfect curves We call the robin ; making harmony With many a new-found treasure of the eye : With meadows, marging smoothly rounded hills Where Nature teemingly the myth fulfils Of many-breasted Plenty ; with the blue, That to the zenith fades through triple hue, Pledge of the constant day ; with clouds of white, That haunt horizons with their blooms of light, And when the east with rosy eve is glowing Seem like full cheeks of zephyrs gently blowing. Contented river! and yet over-shy To mask thy beauty from the eager eye ; TO THE HO USA TONIC AT STOCKBRIDGE 107 Hast thou a thought to hide from field and town? In some deep current of the sunlit brown Art thou disquieted— still uncontent With praise from thy Homeric bard, who lent The world the placidness thou gavest him? Thee Bryant loved when life was at its brim ; And when the wine was falling, in thy wood Of sturdy willows like a Druid stood. Oh, for his touch on this o'er-throbbing time, His hand upon the hectic brow of Rhyme, Cooling its fevered passion to a pace To lead, to stir, to reinspire the race! Ah ! there 's a restive ripple, and the swift Red leaves— September's firstlings— faster drift; Betwixt twin aisles of prayer they seem to pass (One green, one greenly mirrored in thy glass). Wouldst thou away, dear stream? Come, whisper near! I also of much resting have a fear : Let me to-morrow thy companion be By fall and shallow to the adventurous sea! i°8 FAREWELL TO ITALY FAREWELL TO ITALY We lingered at Domo d'Ossola— Like a last, reluctant guest— Where the gray-green tide of Italy Flows up to a snowy crest. The world from that Alpine shoulder Yearns toward the Lombard plain— The hearts that come, with rapture, The hearts that go, with pain. Afar were the frets of Milan ; Below, the enchanted lakes ; And — was it the mist of the evening, Or the mist that the memory makes ? We gave to the pale horizon The Naples that evening gives ; We reckoned where Rome lies buried, And we felt where Florence lives. FAREWELL TO ITALY 109 And as Hope bends low at parting For a death-remembered tone, We searched the land that Beauty And Love have made their own. We would take of her hair some ringlet, Some keepsake from her breast, And catch of her plaintive music The strain that is tenderest. So we strolled in the yellow gloaming (Our speech with musing still) Till the noise of the militant village Fell faint on Calvary Hill. And scarcely our mood was broken Of near-impending loss To find at the bend of the pathway A station of the Cross. And up through the green aisle climbing (Each shrine like a counted bead), We heard from above the swaying And mystical chant of the creed. Then the dead seemed the only living, And the real seemed the wraith, FAREWELL TO ITALY And we yielded ourselves to the vision We saw with the eye of Faith. Then she said, " Let us go no farther : *T is fit that we make farewell While forest and lake and mountain Are under the vesper spell." As we rested, the leafy silence Broke like a cloud at play, And a browned and burdened woman Passed, singing, down the way. 'T was a song of health and labor, — Of childlike gladness, blent With the patience of the toiler That tyrants call content. " Nay, this is the word we have waited," I said, " that a year and a sea From now, in our doom of exile, Shall echo of Italy." Just then what a burst from the bosquet— As a bird might have found its soul ! And each by the halt of the heart-throb Knew 't was the rossignol. FAREWELL TO ITALY Then we drew to each other nearer And drank at the gray wall's verge The sad, sweet song of lovers, — Their passion and their dirge. And the carol of Toil below us And the paean of Prayer above Were naught to the song of Sorrow, For under the sorrow was Love. Alas ! for the dear remembrance We chose for an amulet : The one that is left to keep it — Ah ! how can he f oreret ? 112 A CHOPIN FANTASY A CHOPIN FANTASY ON REMEMBRANCE OF A PRELUDE Come, love, sit here and let us leave awhile This custom-laden world for warmer lands Where, 'neath the silken net of afternoon, Leisure is duty and dread care a dream. {The music begins) That cliff 's Minorca, that horizon Spain. There in the west, like fragrance visible, Rises the soft light as the sun goes down Till half the sky is palpitant with gold. Follow it eastward to the gentle blue, With faith and childhood in it, and the peace Men agonize and roam for. See that fleet That flutters in the breeze from the Camargue Like white doves, huddled now, now scattering. (They say all native boats are homeward bound Against to-morrow's annual festival.) What rest there is in looking from this height A CHOPIN FANTASY 113 On palms and olives, and the easy steps By which the terrace clambers yonder hill! How dark those hollows whence the roads of white Ascend in angles to the high-perched town! Needless the music of the convent bell : 'Tis vespers in the heart as in the air. This is the hour for love, that, like the breath Of yonder orange, sweetest is at eve. Here, safe entwined, what could be wished for two Hid in an island hidden in the sea ? Now let me lay my head upon your lap, And place your rose-leaf fingers on my lids, Lest, catching glimpse of your resplendent eyes, My ardor should blaspheme the coming stars! How fast it darkens ! One must needs be blind To know the twilight softness of your voice. And Love, — not blind, but with a curtained sight, — Like one who dwells with Sorrow, can discern The shading of a shadow in a tone. There 's something troubles you, my sweet-of-hearts, A hesitance in that caressing word ; Nothing unhappy — a presentiment Such as from far might thrill the under-depths Of some still tranquil lake before a storm. Be happy, love, not ponder happiness. U4 A CHOPIN FANTASY Unerringly I know your woman's soul, Content to have your happiness put off Like well-planned feast against to-morrow's need, And more enjoyed in planning than in use. But oh, we men, God made us— what was that? A drop upon your hand? Perhaps a tear Lost by an angel who remembers yet Some perfect moment of th' imperfect world, And goes reluctantly her way to heaven, Still envious of our lot? Another drop! Why, 't is the rain. Stand here and see that sky— Blackness intense as sunlight. What a chasm Of silver where that lightning tore its way! That crash was nearer ! Here 's our shelter— quick ! Now it 's upon us! Half a breath, and — there! No wonder you should tremble when the earth Sways thus and all the firmament 's a-reel. Tremble, but fear not— Love created Fear To drive men back to Love, where you are now. What rhythmic terror in the tideless sea That wildly seeks the refuge of the rocks From unknown dangers (dangers known are none) ! God! did you see within the headland's jaws That drifting sail ? Wait the next flash and— look ! Oh, heaven ! to cruise about a hundred coasts, Safe past the fabled monsters of the deep, A CHOPIN FANTASY 115 To break supinely on familiar shoals Where one in childhood digged a mimic grave! Thank God for those few, momentary stars, And that slow-lifting zone of topaz light, Like parting guest returning with a smile. We care not now that the insatiate storm Plunges with leaps of thunder on the east. ( The music ceases) Give me thy hand, dear one, though unto pain I crush it to be sure that this be dream, Knowing 't was Death that passed, and oh, how near! Il6 IN TESLA'S LABORATORY IN TESLA' S LABORATORY Here in the dark what ghostly figures press ! — No phantom of the Past, or grim or sad ; No wailing spirit of woe ; no specter, clad In white and wandering cloud, whose dumb distress Is that its crime it never may confess ; No shape from the strewn sea ; nor they that add The link of Life and Death, — the tearless mad, That live nor die in dreary nothingness : But blessed spirits waiting to be born — Thoughts to unlock the fettering chains of Things ; The Better Time ; the Universal Good. Their smile is like the joyous break of morn ; How fair, how near, how wistfully they brood ! Listen ! that murmur is of angels' wings. THE WISTFUL DAYS 117 THE WISTFUL DAYS What is there wanting in the Spring ? The air is soft as yesteryear ; The happy-nested green is here, And half the world is on the wing. The morning beckons, and like balm Are westward waters blue and calm. Yet something 's wanting in the Spring. What is it wanting in the Spring ? O April, lover to us all, What is so poignant in thy thrall When children's merry voices ring ? What haunts us in the cooing dove More subtle than the speech of Love, What nameless lack or loss of Spring? Let Youth go dally with the Spring, Call her the dear, the fair, the young ; And all her graces ever sung Let him, once more rehearsing, sing. They know, who keep a broken tryst, Till something from the Spring be missed We have not truly known the Spring. n8 "LOVE ONCE WAS LIKE AN APRIL DAWN "LOVE ONCE WAS LIKE AN APRIL DAWN" Love once was like an April dawn : Song throbbed within the heart by rote, And every tint of rose or fawn Was greeted by a joyous note. How eager was my thought to see Into that morning mystery ! Love now is like an August noon, No spot is empty of its shine ; The sun makes silence seem a boon, And not a voice so dumb as mine. Yet with what words I'd welcome thee— Couldst thou return, dear mystery ! AN IRISH LOVE-SONG 119 AN IRISH LOVE-SONG In the years about twenty (When kisses are plenty) The love of an Irish lass fell to my fate — So winsome and sightly, So saucy and sprightly, The priest was a prophet that christened her Kate. Soft gray of the dawning, Bright blue of the morning, The sweet of her eye there was nothing to mate ; A nose like a fairy's, A cheek like a cherry's, And a smile— well, her smile was like— nothing but Kate. To see her was passion, To love her, the fashion ; What wonder my heart was unwilling to wait! And, daring to love her, I soon did discover A Katharine masking as mischievous Kate. o AN IRISH LOVE-SONG No Katy unruly, But Katharine, truly— Fond, serious, patient, and even sedate ; With a glow in her gladness That banishes sadness — Yet stay ! Should I credit the sunshine to Kate ? Love cannot outlive it, Wealth cannot o'ergive it — That saucy surrender she made at the gate. O Time, be but human, Spare the girl in the woman ! You gave me my Katharine— leave me my Kate ! "OH, WASTE NO TEARS" 12] "OH, WASTE NO TEARS" Oh, waste no tears on Pain or Fate, Nor yet at Sorrow's dire demand ; Think not to drown Regret with weight Of weeping, as the sea the strand ; When was Death's victory less elate That Grief o'er-sobbed his grasping hand? Not for the flaws of life shall fall The tear most exquisite— ah, no ; But for its fine perfections all : For morning's joyous overflow, For sunset's fleeting festival, And what midwinter moons may show ; For wild-rose breath of Keats's line ; For Titian's rivalry of June ; For Chopin's tender notes that twine The sense in one autumnal tune ; For Brunelleschi's dome divine, In wonder planned, with worship hewn. "Oil, WASTE NO TEARS" Save them for heroes— not their blood, But for the generous vow it sealed ; For babes, when mothers say, " This bud Will be the blossom of the field " ; For women, when to Vengeance' flood They hold for Guilt a stainless shield. And when two hearts have closer come, Through doubts and mysteries and fears, Till in one look's delirium At last the happy truth appears, When words are weak and music dumb Then perfect love shall speak in tears. HER SMILE 123 HER SMILE The odor is the rose ; The smile, the woman. Delights the bud doth sheathe, Unfolded, all may breathe. So joys that none could know Her smiles on all bestow, As though a rose were happy to be human! 124 SONG FOR THE GUITAR SONG FOR THE GUITAR I grieve to see these tears — Long strangers to thine eye— These jewels that fond years For me could never buy. Weep, weep, and give thy heart relief. T grieve, but 't is not for thy grief : Not for these tears— they were Another's ere they fell — But those that never stir The fountain where they dwell. I 'd smile, though thou shouldst weep a sea, Were but a single tear for me ! URSULA 125 URSULA I see her in the festal warmth to-night, Her rest all grace, her motion all delight. Endowed with all the woman's arts that please, In her soft gown she seems a thing of ease, Whom sorrow may not reach or evil blight. To-morrow she will toil from floor to floor To smile upon the unreplying poor, To stay the tears of widows, and to be Confessor to men's erring hearts ... ah me ! She knows not I am beggar at her door. 26 A DARK DAY A DARK DAY Gloom of a leaden sky Too heavy for hope to move ; Grief in my heart to vie With the dark distress above ; Yet happy, happy am I — For I sorrow with her I love. THE SURPRISED AVOWAL 127 THE SURPRISED AVOWAL When one word is spoken, When one look you see, When you take the token, Howe'er so slight it be, The cage's bolt is broken, The happy bird is free. There is no unsaying That love-startled word ; It were idle praying It no more be heard ; Yet, its law obeying, Who shall blame the bird? What avails the mending Where the cage was weak? What avails the sending Far, the bird to seek, When every cloud is lending Wings toward yonder peak? 128 THE SURPRISED AVOWAL Thrush, could they recapture You to newer wrong, How could you adapt your Strain to suit the throng? Gone would be the rapture Of unimprisoned song. THE BLOSSOM OF THE SOUL THE BLOSSOM OF THE SOUL Thou half-unfolded flower With fragrance-laden heart, What is the secret power That doth thy petals part? What gave thee most thy hue — The sunshine, or the dew? Thou wonder- wakened soul! As Dawn doth steal on Night On thee soft Love hath stole. Thine eye, that blooms with light, What makes its charm so new — Its sunshine, or its dew? *3Q "/JOURNEYED SOUTH TO MEET THE SPRING ! "I JOURNEYED SOUTH TO MEET THE SPRING" I journeyed South to meet the Spring, To feel the soft tide's gentle rise That to my heart again should bring, Foretold by many a whispering wing, The old, the new, the sweet surprise. For once, the wonder was not new — And yet it wore a newer grace : For all its innocence of hue, Its warmth and bloom and dream and dew, I had but left — in Helen's face. PARAPHRASES FROM THE SERVIAN OF ZMAI IOVAN IOVANOVICH AFTER LITERAL TRANSLATIONS BY NIKOLA TESLA INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY Mr. TESLA ZMAI IOVAN IOVANOVICH THE CHIEF SERVIAN POET OF TO-DAY Hardly is there a nation which has met with a sad- der fate than the Servian. From the height of its splendor, when the empire embraced almost the entire northern part of the Balkan peninsula and a large por- tion of the territory now belonging to Austria, the Ser- vian nation was plunged into abject slavery, after the fatal battle of 1389 at the Kosovo Polje, against the overwhelming Asiatic hordes. Europe can never repay the great debt it owes to the Servians for checking, by the sacrifice of their own liberty, that barbarian influx. The Poles at Vienna, under Sobieski, finished what the Servians attempted, and were similarly rewarded for their service to civilization. It was at the Kosovo Polje that Milosh Obilich, the noblest of Servian heroes, fell, after killing the Sultan Murat II. in the very midst of his great army. Were it not that it is an historical fact, one would be apt to consider this episode a myth, evolved by contact with the Greek and Latin races. For in Milosh we see both 135 136 INTRO D UCTOR Y NO TE ON ZMAI Leonidas and Mucius, and, more than this, a martyr, for he does not die an easy death on the battle-field like the Greek, but pays for his daring deed with a death of fearful torture. It is not astonishing that the poetry of a nation capable of producing such heroes should be pervaded with a spirit of nobility and chivalry. Even the indomitable Marko Kraljevich, the later incarnation of Servian heroism, when vanquishing Musa, the Mos- lem chief, exclaims, "Woe unto me, for I have killed a better man than myself! " From that fatal battle until a recent period, it has been black night for the Servians, with but a single star in the firmament — Montenegro. In this gloom there was no hope for science, commerce, art, or industry. What could they do, this brave people, save to keep up the weary fight against the oppressor? And this they did unceasingly, though the odds were twenty to one. Yet fighting merely satisfied their wilder instincts. There was one more thing they could do, and did : the noble feats of their ancestors, the brave deeds of those who fell in the struggle for liberty, they embodied in immortal song. Thus circumstances and innate quali- ties made the Servians a nation of thinkers and poets, and thus, gradually, were evolved their magnificent national poems, which were first collected by their most prolific writer, Vuk Stefanovich Karajich, who also compiled the first dictionary of the Servian tongue, containing more than sixty thousand words. These national poems Goethe considered fit to match the finest productions of the Greeks and Romans. What would he have thought of them had he been a Servian? While the Servians have been distinguished in national INTROD UCTOR Y NO TE ON ZMAI 137 poetry, they have also had many individual poets who attained greatness. Of contemporaries there is none who has grown so dear to the younger generation as Zmai Iovan Iovanovich. He was born in Novi Sad (Neusatz), a city at the southern border of Hungary, on November 24, 1833. He comes from an old and noble family, which is related to the Servian royal house. In his earliest childhood he showed a great desire to learn by heart the Servian national songs which were recited to him, and even as a child he began to compose poems. His father, who was a highly cultivated and wealthy gentleman, gave him his first education in his native city. After this he went to Budapest, Prague, and Vienna, and in these cities he finished his studies in law. This was the wish of his father, but his own inclinations prompted him to take up the study of medicine. He then returned to his native city, where a prominent official position was offered him, which he accepted ; but so strong were his poetical instincts that a year later he abandoned the post to devote himself entirely to literary work. His literary career began in 1849, his first poem being printed in 1852, in a journal called "Srbski Letopis" ("Servian Annual Review") ; to this and to other jour- nals, notably " Neven " and " Sedmica," he contributed his early productions. From that period until 1870, besides his original poems, he made many beautiful translations from Petefy and Arany, the two greatest of the Hungarian poets, and from the Russian of Lermon- tof, as well as from German and other poets. In 1861 he edited the comic journal, "Komarac" ("The Mos- quito"), and in the same year he started the literary 1 38 INTROD UCTOR Y NO TE ON ZMAI journal, "Javor," and to these papers he contributed many beautiful poems. In 1861 he married, and during the few happy years that followed he produced his admirable series of lyrical poems called " Giulichi," which probably remain his masterpiece. In 1862, greatly to his regret, he discontinued his beloved jour- nal, "Javor" — a sacrifice which was asked of him by the great Servian patriot, Miletich, who was then active on a political journal, in order to insure the success of the latter. In 1863 he was elected director of an educational institution, called the Tekelianum, at Budapest. He now ardently renewed the study of medicine at the uni- versity, and took the degree of doctor of medicine. Meanwhile he did not relax his literary labors. Yet, for his countrymen, more valuable even than his splen- did productions were his noble and unselfish efforts to nourish the enthusiasm of Servian youth. During his stay in Budapest he founded the literary society Preod- nica, of which he was president, and to which he de- voted a large portion of his energies. In 1864 he started his famous satirical journal, "Zmai" (** The Dragon "), which was so popular that the name became a part of his own. In 1866 his comic play "Sharan" was given with great success. In 1872 he had the great pain of losing his wife, and, shortly after, his only child. How much these misfortunes affected him is plainly perceptible from the deeply sad tone of the poems which immediately followed. In 1873 he started another comic journal, the "Ziza." During the year 1877 he began an illustrated chronicle of the Russo- Turkish war, and in 1878 appeared his popular comic INTROD UCTOR Y NO TE ON ZMAI 139 journal, " Starmali." During all this period he wrote not only poems, but much prose, including short novels, often under an assumed name. The best of these is probably " Vidosava Brankovicheva." In recent years he has published a great many charming little poems for children. Since 1870 Zmai has pursued his profession as a phy- sician. He is an earnest advocate of cremation, and has devoted much time to the furtherance of that cause. Until recently he was a resident of Vienna, but now he is domiciled in Belgrade. There he lives the life of a true poet, loving all and beloved by everybody. In recognition of his merit, the nation has voted him a subvention. The poems of Zmai are so essentially Servian that to translate them into another tongue appears next to impossible. In keen satire free from Voltairian venom, in good-hearted and spontaneous humor, in delicacy and depth of expression, they are remarkable. Mr. Johnson has undertaken the task of versifying a few of the shorter ones after my literal and inadequate readings. Close translation being often out of the question, he has had to paraphrase, following as nearly as possible the original motives and ideas. In some instances he has ex- panded in order to complete a picture or to add a touch of his own. The poems which follow will give some idea of the versatility of the Servian poet, but come far short of indicating his range. Nikola Tesla. New York City. THE THREE GIAOURS 141 THE THREE GIAOURS In the midst of the dark and stormy night Feruz Pacha awakes in fright, And springs from out his curtained bed. The candle trembles as though it read Upon his pallid face the theme And terror of his nightly dream. He calls to his startled favorite : " The keys ! the keys of the dungeon-pit ! Cannot those cursed Giaours stay There in their own dark, rotting away, Where I gave them leave three years ago ? Had I but buried their bones ! — but, no ! They come at midnight to clatter and creep, And haunt and threaten me in my sleep." " Pacha, wait till the morning light ! Do not go down that fearful flight 142 THE THREE GIAOURS Where every step is a dead man's moan ! Mujo to-morrow will gather each bone And bury it deep. Let the Giaours freeze If thy bed be warm." 11 Nay, give me the keys. Girl, you talk like a wrinkled dame That shudders at whisper of a name. When they were living, their curses made A thousand cowards : was I afraid ? Now they are dead, shall my fear begin With the Giaour's curse, or the skeleton's grin ? No, I must see them face to face In the very midst of their dwelling-place, And find what need they have of me That they call my name eternally." As groping along to the stair he goes, The light of the shaking candle shows A face like a white and faded rose ; But if this be fear, it is fear to stay, For something urges him on his way — Though the steps are cold and the echoes mock — Till the right key screams in the rusted lock. Ugh ! what a blast from the dungeon dank ! — From the place where Hunger and Death were wed ; Whence even the snakes by instinct fled, THE THREE GIAOURS 143 While the very lizards crouched and shrank In a chill of terror. 'T is inky black And icy cold, but he cannot go back, For there, as though the darkness flowers — There sit the skeletons of three Giaours Ghost- white in the flickering candle-gleam ! — (Or is it the remnant of his dream ?) About a stone that is green with mold They sit in a group, and their fingers hold Full glasses, and as the glasses clink The first Giaour beckons him to drink. " Pacha, here is a glass for thee ! When last on me the sunlight shone I had a wife who was dear to me. She was alone — no, not alone ; The blade in her hand was her comrade true, As she came to your castle, seeking you. " And when she came to your castle gate She dared you forth, but you would not go. Fiend and coward, you could not wait For a woman's wrath, but shot her, so. Her heart fell down in a piteous flood. This glass is filled with her precious blood. " See how fine as I hold it up ! Drink, Feruz Pacha, the brimming cup ! " 144 THE THREE GIAOURS Spellbound the Pacha now draws nigh ; He empties the glass with a sudden cry: The skeletons drink with a laugh and toss, And they make the sign of the holy cross. Then speaks the second of the dead : " When to this darkness I was led, My mother asked, ' What sum will give Your prisoner back to the sun ? ' You said, 'Three measures of gold, and the dog shall live.' Through pinching toil by noon and night She saved and saved till her hope grew bright. " But when she brought you the yellow hoard, You mocked at the drops on her tired brow, And said, 'Toward the pay for his wholesome board Of good round stones I will this allow.' She died while her face with toil was wet. This glass is filled with her faithful sweat. " See how fine as I hold it up ! Drink, Feruz Pacha, the brimming cup ! " Haggard the Pacha now stands by ; He drains the glass with a stifled cry : THE THREE GIAOURS 145 Again they drink with a laugh and toss, And the third one says, as his comrades cross : " When this black shadow on me fell, There sang within my mountain home My one pale lad. Bethought him well That he would to my rescue come ; But when he tried to lift the gun He tottered till the tears would run. " Though vengeance sped his weary feet, Too late he came. Then back he crept, — Forgot to drink, forgot to eat, — And no slow moment went unwept. He died of grief at his meager years. This glass is laden with his tears. " See how fine as I hold it up ! Drink, Feruz Pacha, the brimming cup ! " The Pacha staggers ; he holds it high ; He drinks ; he falls with a moan and cry : They laugh, they cross, but they drink no more— For the dead in the dungeon-cave are four. 10 146 LUKA FILIPOV LUKA FILIPOV (AN INCIDENT OF THE MONTENEGRIN WAR OF 1 876-78) One more hero to be part Of the Servians' glory ! Lute to lute and heart to heart Tell the homely story ; Let the Moslem hide for shame, Trembling like the falcon's game, Thinking on the falcon's name — Luka Filipov. When he fought with sword and gun Doughty was he reckoned ; When he was the foremost, none Blushed to be the second. But he tired of the taint Of the Turk's blood, learned restraint From his sated sword— the quaint Luka Filipov. LUKA FILIPOV 147 Thus he reasoned : Though they fall Like the grass in mowing, Yet the dead Turks, after all, Make a sorry showing. Foes that die remember not How our Montenegrins bought Our unbroken freedom— thought Luka Filipov. So, in last year's battle-storm Swooped our Servian falcon, Chose the sleekest of the swarm From beyond the Balkan : Plucked a pacha from his horse, Carried him away by force, While we cheered along his course : "Luka!" "Filipov!" To the Prince his prize he bore Just as he had won him — Laid him at the Prince's door, Not a scratch upon him. " Prince, a present ! And for fear He should find it lonely here, I will fetch his mate," said queer Luka Filipov. 148 LUKA FILIPOV Back into the fight he rushed Where the Turks were flying, Past his kinsmen boldly brushed, Leaping dead and dying : Seized a stalwart infidel, Wrenched his gun and, like a spell, Marched him back— him heeding well Luka Filipov. But the Moslems, catching breath Mid their helter-skelter, Poured upon him hail of death From a rocky shelter, Till a devil-guided ball Striking one yet wounded all : For there staggered, nigh to fall, Luka Filipov ! Paused the conflict — all intent On the two before us ; And the Turkish regiment Cheered in hideous chorus As the prisoner, half afraid, Turned and started up the glade, Thinking — dullard ! — to evade Luka Filipov. LUKA FILIPOV 149 We 'd have fired— but Luka's hand Rose in protestation, While his pistol's mute command Needed no translation ; For the Turk retraced his track, Knelt and took upon his back (As a peddler shifts his pack) Luka Filipov ! How we cheered him as he passed Through the line, a-swinging Gun and pistol — bleeding fast — Grim — but loudly singing : " Lucky me to find a steed Fit to give the Prince for speed ! Rein or saddle ne'er shall need Luka Filipov ! " So he urged him to the tent Where the Prince was resting— Brought his captive, shamed and spent, To make true his jesting. And as couriers came to say That our friends had won the day, Who should up and faint away ? Luka Filipov. 150 A MOTHER OF BOSNIA A MOTHER OF BOSNIA Three sons she has of Servian mold As balsam for her widow's grief, While in her Danka all behold A treasure precious past belief. Oh, lovely Danka ! happy she, More fortunate than all beside, To be the pride of brothers three, Themselves of Bosnia the pride ! In her they glory ; she inspires To freedom's never-ending fight, And in their hearts burn patriot fires, As stars upon the Turkish night. And often at the mother's door Tears mingle with the words that bless A MOTHER OF BOSNIA 15 O gods of battle ! guard my four— My falcons and my falconess." 11 Her radiant beauty nothing hides— What wonder that the Turk has seen, And as before her door he rides The Raven- Aga calls her queen ! For three nights has he lain awake — To call on Allah ? Nay, till dawn Calling on Danka, for whose sake His heart is sore, his brow is wan. He gathers warriors ere the sun ; They gallop quickly through the murk ; And Danka, at the signal-gun, Cries, " Save me, brothers ! —'tis the Turk ! " Now flash the rifles, speeds the fight, Till, shamed, the Raven- Aga flies. Alas for Danka ! in her sight One lion-hearted brother dies. 152 A MOTHER OF BOSNIA Again the infidel appears, And at his heels ride forty guns ; But at the voice of Danka's fears Red many a Turkish stirrup runs. But, oh, at vespers, when once more The baffled Raven back has fled, Across the sill of Danka's door There lies another brother, dead. The Turkish devil once again Summons each savage wedding-guest, And half a hundred to be slain Go forth at midnight toward the west. Once more the stealthy Moslems ride, Once more the Servians gather fast, As Danka summons to her side Her brother — and her last. The fight grows fiercer, till the dead Fill the dim street from wall to wall. Call on thy mother, Battle-wed— Thou hast no brother left to call ! The Raven seizes her and croaks: " At last thou art my bride, proud maid ! " A MOTHER OF BOSNIA 153 Not thine— my yataghan's ! " Two strokes — Her warm heart weds the loyal blade. in Dark is the night as on the slopes Of that deserted battle-ground The mother, crazed with sorrow, gropes Until her sons' three swords are found. And as she roams through Servian lands (Her mirth more piteous than tears) She bears a blade in her thin hands To right the wrongs of many years. And offering Danka's plighted knife Or one of those three patriot swords, She calls the coldest rock to strife,— " Take, and repel the Turkish hordes ! " And as the rock no word replies, She asks, " Are you not Servian too ? Why are you silent then ?" she cries; " Is there no living heart in you ? " She treads the dreary night alone ; There is no echo to her moan. . . . Is every heart a heart of stone ? 154 THE MONSTER THE MONSTER " In place of the heart, a serpent ; Rage — for the mind's command ; An eye aflame with wildness ; A weapon in the hand ; " A brow with midnight clouded ; On the lips a cynic smile That tells of a curse unmatchable — Born of a sin most vile. " Of longing, or hope, or virtue, No vestige may there be ; You, even in vice inhuman — What can you want of me ? " You in its maddest moment The Deepest Pit designed,— Let loose to sow confusion In the order of mankind ; THE MONSTER 1 55 " Here Hatred found you crawling Like vermin, groveling, prone, Filled you with blood of others And poisoned all your own. " Your very thoughts are fiendish — Smoke of the fires of Hell. Weird as you are, how is it I seem to know you well ? " Why with your wild delirium Do you infect my sleep ? Why with my daily footstep An equal measure keep ? " The monster mutely beckons me Back with his ghostly hand, And dreading his fearful answer I heed the grim command. " Nay, softly," he says ; " I pray thee, Silence thy frightened moan, And wipe the sweat from thy forehead ; My kinsman thou, my own ! 156 THE MONSTER " Look at me well, good cousin ; Such wert thou fashioned of ! Thou, too, wouldst me resemble Without that magic — Love!" TWO DREAMS 157 TWO DREAMS Deep on the bosom of Jeel-Begzad (Darling daughter of stern Bidar) Sleeps the rose of her lover lad. It brings this word : When the zenith-star Melts in the full moon's rising light, Then shall her Giaour come — to-night. What is the odor that fills her room ? Ah ! 't is the dream of the sleeping rose : To feel his lips near its velvet bloom In the secret shadow no moonbeam knows, Till the maiden passion within her breast Kindles to flame where the kisses rest. By the stealthy fingers of old Bidar (Savage father of Jeel-Begzad) Never bloodless in peace or war Was a handjar sheathed ; and each one had Graved on its handle a Koran prayer — He can feel it now, in his ambush there ! 158 TWO DREAMS The moon rides pale in the quiet night ; It puts out the stars, but never the gleam Of the waiting blade's foreboding light, Astir in its sheath in a horrid dream Of pain, of blood, and of gasping breath, Of the thirst of vengeance drenched in death. The dawn did the dream of the rose undo, But the dream of the sleeping blade came true. MYSTERIOUS LOVE 159 MYSTERIOUS LOVE Into the air I breathed a sigh ; She, afar, another breathed — Sighs that, like a butterfly, Each went wandering low and high, Till the air with sighs was wreathed. When each other long they sought, On a star-o'er-twinkled hill Jasmine, trembling with the thought, Both within her chalice caught, A lover's potion to distil. Drank of this a nightingale, Guided by the starlight wan — Drank and sang from dale to dale, Till every streamlet did exhale Incense to the waking dawn. Like the dawn, the maiden heard ; While, afar, I felt the fire /6o MYSTERIOUS LOVE In the bosom of the bird ; Forth our sighs again were stirred With a sevenfold desire. These we followed till we learned Where they trysted ; there erelong Their fond nightingale returned. Deeper then our longings burned, Deeper the delights of song. Now, when at the wakening hour, Sigh to sigh, we greet his lay, Well we know its mystic power — Feeling dawn and bird and flower Pouring meaning into May. Jasmine, perfume every grove ! Nightingale, forever sing To the brightening dawn above Of the mystery of love In the mystery of spring ! THE COMING OF SONG 16 THE COMING OF SONG When the sky darkened on the first great sin, * And gates that shut man out shut Hope within, Like to the falcon when his wing is broke, The bitter cry of mortals then awoke : " Too heavy is our burden," groaned the two. " Shall woes forever on our track pursue, And nest within these empty hearts ? Or, worse, Shall we be withered by the cruel curse ? Already less than human, shall we fall By slow succession to some animal ? " Then, filled with pity at the desperate cry, Came from His throne of thunder the Most High : " That you should suffer " (spake the Voice) " is just *T is you have chosen for a feast a crust. But not so unrelenting I — the least Of all your kind shall be above the beast. That erring mortals be not lost in fear, Come from My shining courts, O daughter dear ! 11 1 62 THE COMING OF SONG Thou dost to heaven, shalt to earth belong." She came ; she stayed : it was the Muse of Song. Again the day was radiant with light, And something more than stars illumed the night. Hope, beckoning, to the desert took its flight. Where is Pain and dire Distress, Song shall soothe like soft caress ; Though the stoutest courage fails, Song 's an anchor in all gales ; When all others fail to reach, Song shall be the thrilling speech ; Love and friends and comfort fled, Song shall linger by your bed ; And when Doubt shall question, Why ? Song shall lift you to the sky. CURSES 163 CURSES Fain would I curse thee, sweet unkind! That thou art fair ; Fain curse my mother, that not blind She did me bear ; But, no ! — each curse would break, not bind, The heart ye share. 1 64 A FAIRY FROM THE SUN-SHOWER A FAIRY FROM THE SUN-SHOWER [When the Servians see the sun-rays of a summer shower they say it is the fairies combing their hair.] Over the meadow a shower is roaming ; Just beyond is the summer sun ; Fair is the hair that the fays are combing— Myth come true ! here 's my dainty one Tripping the path in the wind's soft blowing ; Her slender form through her gown is showing, Her foot scarce whispers the way she 's going. " Come, my bright one, come, my soul, Let my kisses be your goal." But the path has heard my sighing, Turns aside, and leads my fay Into the forest, love defying. Path, accursed be ! — but stay ! Lost to love each moment gliding, What if in the woodland hiding Still for me my fay be biding ! . . . " Wait, my bright one, wait, my soul, Your sweet kisses are my goal." FRAGMENT FROM THE " GIULICHE" 165 "WHY," YOU ASK, "HAS NOT THE SERVIAN PERISHED?" FRAGMENT FROM THE " GIULICHE " (" JEWELS") " Why," you ask, " has not the Servian perished, Such calamities about him throng ? " With the sword alike the lyre he cherished : He is saved by Song! i66"I BEGGED A KISS OF A LITTLE MAID "I BEGGED A KISS OF A LITTLE MAID I begged a kiss of a little maid ; Shyly, sweetly, she consented ; Then of a sudden, all afraid, After she gave it, she repented ; And now as penance for that one kiss She asks a poem — I '11 give her this. But how can my song be my very best When she, with a voice as soft as Circe's, Has charmed the heart from my lonely breast- The heart, the fountain of all true verses ? Why, oh, why should a maid do this ? No — I must give her back her kiss. WHY THE ARMY BECAME QUIET 167 WHY THE ARMY BECAME QUIET Some said they did but play at war, — How that may be, ah ! who can tell ? I know the gallant army corps Upon their fleeing foemen fell, And sacked their camp, and took their town, And won both victory and renown. Now home returning, wild with song, They come, the colors flying free. But as within the door they throng, Why does the army suddenly Hush the fierce din, and silence keep ?— Why, little brother is asleep. 1 68 THE GIPSY PRAISES HIS HORSE THE GIPSY PRAISES HIS HORSE You 're admiring my horse, sir, I see. He 's so light that you 'd think it 's a bird — Say a swallow. Ah me ! He 's a prize ! It 's absurd To suppose you can take him all in as he passes With the best pair of eyes, Or the powerful aid Of your best pair of glasses : Take 'em off, and let 's trade. What ! " Is Selim as good as he seems ? " Never fear, Uncle dear, He 's as good as the best of your dreams, And as sound as your sleep. It 's only that kind that a gipsy would keep. The emperor's stables can't furnish his mate. But his grit and his gait, THE GIPSY PRAISES HIS HORSE 169 And his wind and his ways, A gipsy like me does n't know how to praise. But (if truth must be told) Although you should cover him over with gold He 'd be worth one more sovereign still. " Is he old ? " Oh, don't look at his teeth, my dear sir ! I never have seen 'em myself. Age has nothing to do with an elf ; So it 's fair to infer My fairy can never grow old. Oh, don't look— (Here, my friend, Will you do me the kindness to hold For a moment these reins while I 'tend . To that fly on his shanks ?) . . . As I said — (Ah — now — thanks !) The longer you drive The better he '11 thrive. He '11 never be laid on the shelf ! The older that colt is, the younger he '11 grow. I 've tried him for years, and I know. " Eat ? Eat ? " do you say ? Oh, that nag is n't nice About eating ! Whatever you have will suffice. 170 THE GIPSY PRAISES HIS HORSE He takes everything raw — Some oats or some hay, Or a small wisp of straw, If you have it. If not, never mind— Selim won't even neigh. What kind of a feeder is he ? That 's the kind ! " Is he clever at jumping a fence ? " What a question to ask ! He's immense At a leap ! How absurd ! Why, the trouble 's to keep Such a Pegasus down to the ground. He takes every fence at a bound With the grace of a bird ; And so great is his strength, And so keen is his sense, He goes over a fence Not across, but the way of its length ! " Under saddle ? " No saddle for Selim ! Why, you 've only to mount him, and feel him Fly level and steady, to see What disgrace that would be. No, you could n't more deeply insult him, unless You attempted to guess And pry into his pedigree. THE GIPSY PRAISES HIS HORSE *7 Now why should you speak of his eyes ? Does he seem like a horse that would need An eye-glass to add to his speed Or, perchance, to look wise ? No indeed. Why, not only 's the night to that steed Just the same as the day, But he knows all that passes — Both before and behind, either way. Oh, he does n't need glasses ! " Has he any defect ? " What a question, my friend ! That is why, my dear sir, I am willing to sell. You know very well It is only the horse that you give or you lend That has glanders, or springhalt, or something to mend : 'T is because not a breath Of defect or of death Can be found on my Selim that he 's at your pleasure. Alas ! not for gipsies the care of such treasure. And now about speed. " Is he fast ? " I should say ! Just listen— I '11 tell you. One equinox day, Coming home from Erdout in the usual way, A terrible storm overtook us. 'T was plain There was nothing to do but to run for it. Rain, I7 2 THE GIPSY PRAISES HIS HORSE Like the blackness of night, gave us chase. But that nag, Though he 'd had a hard day, did n't tremble or sag. Then the lightning would flash, And the thunder would crash With a terrible din. They were eager to catch him ; but he would just neigh, Squint back to make sure, and then gallop away. Well, this made the storm the more furious yet, And we raced and we raced, but he was n't upset, And he would n't give in ! At last when we got to the foot of the hill At the end of the trail, By the stream where our white gipsy castle was set, And the boys from the camp came a- waving their caps, At a word he stood still, To be hugged by the girls and be praised by the chaps. We had beaten the gale, And Selim was dry as a bone — well, perhaps, Just a little bit damp on the tip of his tail.* * Readers will be reminded by this conclusion of Mark Twain's story of the fast horse as told to him by Oudinot, of the Sandwich Islands, and recorded in " The Galaxy " for April, 1871. In that veracious narrative it is related that not a single drop fell on the driver, but the dog was swimming behind the wagon all the way. THE VOICE OF WEBSTER THE VOICE OF WEBSTER 177 THE VOICE OF WEBSTER Silence was envious of the only voice That mightier seemed than she. So, cloaked as Death, With potion borrowed from Oblivion, Yet with slow step and tear-averted look, She sealed his lips, closed his extinguished eyes, And veiling him with darkness, deemed him dead. But no ! — There 's something vital in the great That blunts the edge of Death, and sages say You should stab deep if you would kill a king. In vain ! The conqueror's conqueror he remains, Surviving his survivors. And as when, The prophet gone, his least disciple stands Newly invested with a twilight awe, So linger men beside his listeners While they recount that miracle of speech And the hushed wonder over which it fell. What do they tell us of that fabled voice? Breathing an upper air, wherein he dwelt 'Mid shifting clouds a mountain of resolve, And falling like Sierra's April flood 12 I7 8 THE VOICE OF WEBSTER That pours in ponderous cadence from the cliff, Waking Yosemite from her sleep of snow, And less by warmth than by its massive power Thawing a thousand torrents into one. Such was his speech, and were his fame to die Such for its requiem alone were fit : Some kindred voice of Nature, as the Sea When autumn tides redouble their lament On Marshfield shore ; some elemental force Kindred to Nature in the mind of man — A far-felt, rhythmic, and resounding wave Of Homer, or a freedom-breathing wind Sweeping the height of Milton's loftiest mood. Most fit of all, could his own words pronounce His eulogy, eclipsing old with new, As though a dying star should burst in light. And yet he spoke not only with his voice. His full brow, buttressing a dome of thought, Moved the imagination like the rise Of some vast temple covering nothing mean. His eyes were sibyls' caves, wherein the wise Read sibyls' secrets ; and the iron clasp Of those broad lips, serene or saturnine, Made proclamation of majestic will. His glance could silence like a frowning Fate. THE VOICE OF WEBSTER 179 His mighty frame was refuge, while his mien Did make dispute of stature with the gods. See, in the Senate, how his presence towers Above the tallest, who but seem as marks To guide the unwonted gaze to where he stands, First of his peers — a lordly company. Each State still gave the others of its best — Our second race of giants, now, alas ! Buried beneath the lava-beds of war. Not yet had weaklings trod the purchased path To a feigned honor in the curule chair, Holding a world's contempt of them for fame — As one should take the leaves stripped from his scourge To wreathe himself a counterfeit of bay. An age is merely Man, and, thus compact, Must grimly expiate paternal sins ; That age's shame stands naked to the world, And no man dares to hide it ; yet one boast Palsies the pointing finger of to-day : 'Twas slave, not master, that we bought and sold. Oh for fit word of scorn to execrate Our brood new-born of Greed and Liberty ! Not the blind mass of stumbling ignorance (For the dread portent of a blackening cloud 180 THE VOICE OF WEBSTER May by bold shafts of sunlight be dispersed), But those who lead them to the nation's hurt— These our kind neighbors, semblances of men, The Church's bulwark, the beloved of homes, Locked fast in friendship's ever-loyal pledge, Yet to whom treason is their daily breath. Not Lucifer, on each conspiring wind Rallying his abject crew to new assaults ; Not all the recreant names that spawning War Has cursed with immortality, can match The craft of their betrayals. All is sold : Law, justice, mercy, and the future's hope — This land that buoys the fainting fears of Man. Yet to praise Webster one of these has dared ! — Webster, undaunted by the hour's reproof, Webster, untempted by the hour's applause, Who scorned to win by any art but truth! Who, had he heard the impious flattery, Across the Senate would have launched his wrath, Like Cicero on cowering Catiline, In one white passion that forevermore Had saved to Infamy an empty name That now he spurns in silence from his grave. Yet had he frailties, which let those recount Who have not seen the nigh-o'erwhelmed state THE VOICE OF WEBSTER I Rescued from peril by some roisterer's skill While all the petted virtues of the home Stood pale and helpless. Time 's a mountain-wall That gives a fainter echo to one's best, But unto weak or wanting, mere disdain. He had his passions — all but one are dead : That was his country. Never lover loved, Soldier defended, poet praised, as he, Who marveled all should worship not his queen, And- unto whoso loved her much forgave. And when, one desperate day, the threatening hand His hand so long arrested, he being gone, Felt 'neath its pillow for the unsheath'd sword, Who spoke for Union but with Webster's voice? Who struck for Union but with Webster's arm? Forgetful of the father in the son, Men praised in Lincoln what they blamed in him. And though, his natural tenderness grown grave, He lives not in Love's immortality Like Lincoln, shrined within his foeman's heart ; Though he trod not the path of him whose soul Triumphed in song that beckoned armies on More than persuading drum, dare-devil fife, Or clarion bugle ; though no battle-flame Rose to a peak in him : yet was his blood In heroes and his wrath in righteous war. 1 82 THE VOICE OF WEBSTER Then did the vision of his patriot hope, Pictured in pleading but in warning words, Inspire the inspirers, nerve the halting brave, Make triflers solemn with the choice of death. And when at last came Peace, the friend of all, Grateful and wondrous as first drops of rain After the long starvation of the drought, Men harkened back to that prophetic hour When two protagonists, like chosen knights, Made long and suave epitome of war : When Hayne arose 't was Sumter's gun was heard, When Webster closed 't was Appomattox field. But oh, his larger triumph was to come! His voice, in victory potent, was in peace Predominant. His all-benignant thought That, never wavering through the strife of words, No Alleghanies, no Potomac knew, Searching the future to bring olive back, Lived like a fragrance in the heart of Grant, And at the perilous moment of success Pointed the path to concord from the grave. And what famed concord! —not a grudging truce, Nor interlude of hate, but peace divine : When hands with blood still wet again were clasped, Each foe forgiving what is ne'er forgot; THE VOICE OF WEBSTER 183 The hacked sword eager for the scabbard's rest, Not from the fear, but for the love of man. O loftier conquest of the Blue that warred For freedom, not for conquest! Victory, Unsought, of all the hardly vanquished Gray! Marvel of Europe staggering in arms ; Message of Hope unto the souls that herd Dumb at the slaughter for the whim of kings ; Lusus of History until wars shall cease. My country! since nor memory of strife, Nor natural vengeance, nor the orphan's tears Can from Love's nobler triumph hale thee back : Who worthier than thou to lead the way Unto the everlasting Truce of God, When brothers shall toward brothers over sea Stretch not the sword-blade, but the open palm, Till on Time's long but ever-upward slope They mount together to unreckoned heights, And grateful nations gladly follow them ! So sang I, proud to be but one of all The sands upon a shore whereon there breaks, Freighted with purpose vast, the will of Heaven— When a rude clash I heard, that yet I hear, As Discord grasped again her rusted harp And struck new terror from the raveled strings, 1 84 THE VOICE OF WEBSTER Calling Ambition blindfold to the lead Of Want, Dishonor, Perfidy, and Crime, Who in their turn misguide the innocent, Groping their way by the last firebrands Plucked from their holocaust of hoarded truth. The air we fancied peaceful as the noon Was dark with sudden hatred, as with cloud Blown, in long-gathered tempest, from the West, Like a wild storm of summer heat and wind Circling in passion, bruited by dismay, And dragging death and chaos in its train, As some old myth of savagery come true, And Nature had turned demon, rending Man. This madness Webster still can medicine, Who was physician to its earlier taint. He did not fury then with fury meet, But to the sanity of eternal law Wooed back the wandering mind. Who could forget His calming presence when, ere he began, Confusion fled before his morning look Of power miraculously new and mild ; The speech as temperate as a wind of May ; The mind as candid as the noonday light ; The tones deliberate, confident, sedate, Waking no passion, and yet moving all THE VOICE OF WEBSTER 185 With such a high compulsion that at length Reason, the king that well-nigh had been lost Upon the confines of his sovereign realm, Remounted to the throne with steady step, And men again were proud of his control. So, in these days of hopeful hearts' despair, When perils threat, ay, throng the ship of state, And less from gale without than torch within, Who — who but Webster with his faith serene Shall rouse the sleeping to command their fate, Shall bid them steer by the unswerving stars, And in them troth with Liberty renew? Imagination gave his spirit wings, That, seeing past the tempest and the flame, He might remind us of our destiny : To save from faction what was meant for Man ; To cherish brotherhood, simplicity, The chance for each that is the hope for all ; To guard the realm from Sloth, and Greed, and Waste — The sateless Gorgons of democracy ; And above all, whatever storm may rage, To cling to Law, the path of Liberty, The prop of heaven, the very pulse of God. Thus our new soil, the home of every seed, Where first the whole world meets on equal terms, 1 86 THE VOICE OF WEBSTER Shall such new marvels show of man's estate In knowledge, wisdom, beauty, virtue, power, The Past shall fade in pity or in scorn, While fresher joys shall thrill the pulse of earth. No, Webster's fame not Webster's self can blot. Fair is perfection's image in the soul, And yearning for it holds the world to good. Yet is it such a jewel as may not Unto a single guardian be entrust, But to the courage of a multitude Who all together have what each may lack. Though men may falter, it is Virtue's strength To be indelible : our smallest good By our worst evil cannot be undone. The discords of that life— how short they fall, Like ill-strung arrows! But its harmonies — Harmonious speech large with harmonious thought - Dwell in a nation's peace, a nation's hope, Imperishable music ; not the rhythm Of some remembering moment, but the peal And crash of conflict unforgettable Piercing the mid and thick of night. No, no, That voice of thunder died not with the storm, But in the dull and coward times of peace Long shall its echoes rouse the patriot's heart. HANDS ACROSS SEA The War of Independence was virtually a second Eng- lish civil war. The ruin of the American cause would have been also the ruin of the constitutional cause in England; and a patriotic Englishman may revere the memory of Patrick Henry and George Washington not less justly than the patriotic American. — John Morley, on Burke, HANDS ACROSS SEA 191 HANDS ACROSS SEA England, thou breeder of heroes and of bards, Had ever nation manlier shield or song! For thee such rivalry have sword and pen, Fame, from her heaped green, crowns with equal hand The deathless deed and the immortal word. For which dost thou thy Sidney hold more dear, Defense of England or of Poesie? Cromwell or Milton — if man's guiding stars Could vanish as they came — which wouldst thou spare? Lost Kempenfelt indeed, were Cowper mute! To victory, not alone on shuddering seas Rode Nelson, but on Campbell's tossing rhyme. Hark to thy great Duke's greater dirge, and doubt For which was Waterloo the worthier won, To change the tyrant on a foreign throne, Or add a faultless ode to English song. Great deeds make poets : by whose nobler word, In turn, the blood of heroes is transfused 192 HANDS ACROSS SEA Into the veins of sluggards, till they rise, Surprised, exalted to the height of men. Nor can Columbia choose between the two Which give more glory to thy Minster gloom. They are our brave, our deathless, our divine — Our Saxon grasp on their embattled swords, Our Saxon numbers in their lyric speech. We grudge no storied wreath, nay, would withhold Of bay or laurel not one envied leaf. Then, on thy proud cliff fronting Europe-ward, Strong in thyself, not by some weaker prop, Give to the greeting of a kindred voice A moment in the ebb of thy disdain. 11 Is it' but chance that in thy treasured verse There is no paean, no exulting line, No phrase of martial fervor, to record The Briton's prowess on our Western shore? There was no lapse of valiance in thy race — Or else had Time forgot to mark the years. Nor hast thou since had lack of many a voice Whose words, like wings to seed, on every air From land to hospitable land import HANDS ACROSS SEA 193 Thy progeny of courage, justice, truth. Why, then, when all our songs were resonant, Were all thy singers silent? Candor, speak! There is a daemon makes the Muses dumb When they would praise the wrong: but Liberty From Nature has inheritance of speech — The forest harp, the flood's processional, The glorious antiphone of every shore. When these are dumb, then poets may be mute ! in Taught by thy heroes, summoned by thy bards, Against the imperious folly of thy kings Twice our reluctant banners were arrayed. What matter if the victors were not thine, If thine the victories? Thou art more secure Saved from the canker of successful wrong. Thou dost not blush for Naseby, where, of old, England most conquered, conquering Englishmen. So when thou hear'st the trumpets in our verse In praise of our new land's deliverance, Hard won from Winter, Hunger, and from thee, And from those allies thou didst hire and scorn, Deem it not hatred, nor the vulgar pride Of the arena, nor the greed of fame. 194 HANDS ACROSS SEA (Twixt men or nations, there 's no victory Save when an angel overcomes in both.) Would all our strife were blameless! Some, alas! Hath trophies hoarded only to be hid, For courage cannot hallow wanton war. Be proud our hand against thee ne'er was raised But to wrench English justice from thy grasp. And, as to landsmen, far from windy shores, The breathing shell may bear the murmuring sea, Still in our patriot song reverberates The mighty voice that sang at Hampden's side. IV True, there are those of our impassioned blood Who can forget but slowly that thy great Misread the omens of our later strife, And knew not Freedom when she called to thee. These think they hate thee! — these, who have embraced Before the altar their fraternal foes! Not white of York and red of Lancaster More kindly mingle in thy rose of peace Than blend in cloudless dawn our blue and gray. Already Time and History contend For sinking rampart and the grassy ridge That with its challenge startles pilgrim feet HANDS ACROSS SEA 195 Along the fringes of the wounded wood. The bedtime wonder of our children holds Vicksburg coeval with the siege of Troy, And the scorned slave so hastened to forgive The scar has lost remembrance of the lash. Since Love has drawn the sting of that distress, For one with wrath to compass sea and years Were but to make of injury a jest, Holding the occasion guiltier than the cause. But Hate 's a weed that withers in the sun ; A cell of which the prisoner holds the key, His will his jailer ; nay, a frowning tower Invincible by legions, but with still One secret weakness : who can hate may love. Oh, pausing in thy cordon of the globe, Let one full drop of English blood be spilled For Liberty, not England : men would lose Their fancied hatred in an ardor new, As Minas Channel turns to Fundy's tide. Hate thee? Hast thou forgot red Pei-ho's stream, The triple horror of the ambuscade, The hell of battle, the foredoomed assault, When thou didst stand the champion of the world, Though the awed sea for once deserted thee? Who then sprang to thee, breaking from the bonds Of old observance, with a human cry, 19 6 HANDS ACROSS SEA Thirsting to share thy glorious defeat \ As men are wont to covet victory? Hate thee? Hast thou forgot Samoa's reef, The day more dark than any starless night, The black storm buffeting the hopeless ships, The struggle of thy sons, and, as they won, Gaming the refuge of the furious deep, The immortal cheers that shook the Trenton's deck, As Death might plead with Nature for the brave? Stands there no monument upon that strand? Then let remembrance build a beacon high, That long its warning message may remind How common danger stirs the brother heart. Why turn the leaf back to an earlier page ? To-day, not moved by memory or fear, But by the vision of a nobler time, Millions cry toward thee in a passion of peace. We need thee, England, not in armed array To stand beside us in the empty quarrels That kings pursue, ere War itself expire Like an o'er-armored knight in desperate lunge Beneath the weight of helmet and of lance ; But now, in conflict with an inner foe Who shall in conquering either conquer both. HANDS ACROSS SEA 197 For it is written in the book of fate : By no sword save her own falls Liberty. A wondrous century trembles at its dawn, Conflicting currents telling its approach ; And while men take new reckonings from the peaks, Re weigh the jewel and re taste the wine, Be ours to guard against the impious hands That, like rash children, tamper with that blade. Thou, too, hast seen the vision : shall it be Only a dream, caught in the web of night, Lost through the coarser meshes of the day? Or like the beauty of the prismic bow, Which the sun's ardor, that creates, consumes? Oh, may it be the thing we image it! — The beckoning spirit of our common race Floating before us in a fringe of light With Duty's brow, Love's eyes, the smile of Peace ; Benignant figure of compelling mien, Star-crowned, star-girdled, and o'erstrewn with stars, As though a constellation should descend To be fit courier to a glorious age. VI O thou that keepest record of the brave, Something of us to thee is lost, more worth Than all the fabled wealth of sibyls' leaves. 198 HANDS ACROSS SEA Not with dull figures, but with heroes' deeds, Fill up those empty annals. Teach thy youth To know not North's but Byron's Washington ; To follow Hale's proud step as tearfully As we pale Andre's. And when next thy sons Stand in Manhattan gazing at the swirl Of eddying trade from Trinity's brown porch, Astonished, with the praise that half defames, At the material greatness of the scene, — The roar, the fret, the Babel-towers of trade,— Let one stretch forth a hand and touch the stone That covers Lawrence, saying, " To this height Our English blood has risen." And to know The sea still speaks of courage, let them learn What murmurs it of Craven in one bay, And what of Cushing shouts another shore. (Find but one star, how soon the sky is full! One hero summons hundreds to the field : So to the memory.) Let them muse on Shaw, Whose bones the deep did so begrudge the land It sent its boldest waves to bring them back Unto the blue domed Pantheon where they lie, The while his soul still leads in martial bronze ; Tell them of sweet-dirged Winthrop, whom to name Is to be braver, as one grows more pure Breathing the thought of lover or of saint ; HANDS ACROSS SEA 199 Grim Jackson, Covenanter of the South, And her well-christened Sidney, fallen soon; Kearny and Lyon. Of such hearts as these Who would not boast were braggart of all else. Each fought for Right— and conquered with the Best. Such graves are all the ruins that we have— Our broken arch and battlement— to tell That ours, like thine, have come of Arthur's race. O England, wakened from thy lull of song, Thy scepter, sword, and spindle, fasces-like, Bound with fresh laurel as thy sign of strength, When shalt thou win us with a theme of ours, Reclaiming thus thine own, till men shall say : " That was the noblest conquest of her rule " ? New York, 1897. Ill ITALIAN RHAPSODY AND OTHER POEMS TO WILLIAM FAYAL CLARKE POEMS OF ITALY ITALIAN RHAPSODY 207 ITALIAN RHAPSODY* Dear Italy! The sound of thy soft name Soothes me with balm of Memory and Hope. Mine, for the moment, height and sweep and slope That once were mine. Supreme is still the aim To flee the cold and gray Of our December day, And rest where thy clear spirit burns with unconsuming flame. 11 There are who deem remembered beauty best, And thine, imagined, fairer is than sight Of all the charms of other realms confessed, Thou miracle of sea and land and light. Was it lest, envying thee, The world unhappy be, Benignant Heaven gave to all the all-consoling Night? * Read before the Mother Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Fra- ternity, William and Mary College, February 10, 1902. 208 ITALIAN RHAPSODY III Remembered beauty best? Who reason so? Not lovers, yearning to the same dumb star That doth disdain their passion — who, afar, Seek touch and voice in velvet winds and low. No, storied Italy, Not thine that heresy, Thou who thyself art fairer far than Fancy e'er can show. IV To me thou art an ever-brooding spell ; An old enchantment, exorcised of wrong; A beacon, whereagainst the wings of Song Are bruised so, they cannot fly to tell ; A mistress, at whose feet A myriad singers meet, To find thy beauty the despair of measures full and sweet. Of old, ere caste or custom froze the heart, What tales of thine did Chaucer re-indite,— Of Constance, and Griselda, and the plight Of pure Cecilia, — all with joyous art! ITALIAN RHAPSODY 209 Oh, to have journeyed down To Canterbury town, And known, from lips that touched thy robe, that triad of renown! VI Fount of Romance whereat our Shakspere drank! Through him the loves of all are linked to thee By Romeo's ardor, Juliet's constancy. He sets the peasant in the royal rank ; Shows under mask and paint Kinship of knave and saint, And plays on stolid man with Prospero's wand and Ariel's prank. VII Another English foster-child hadst thou When Milton from the breast of thy delight Drew inspiration. With a vestal's vow He fed the flame caught from thy sacred light. And when upon him lay The long eclipse of day, Thou wert the memory-hoarded treasure of his doomed sight. 14 2IO ITALIAN RHAPSODY VIII Name me a poet who has trod thy soil ; He is thy lover, ever hastening back, With thee forgetting weariness and toil, The nightly sorrow for the daily lack. How oft our lyric race Looked last upon thy face! Oh, would that I were worthy thus to die in thine embrace ! IX Oh, to be kin to Keats, but as a part Of the same Roman earth! — to sleep, unknown, Not far from Shelley of the virgin heart, Where not one tomb is envious of a throne ; Where the proud pyramid, To brighter glory bid, Gives Cestius his longed-for fame, marking immortal Art. Or, in loved Florence, to repose beside Our trinity of singers! Fame enough To neighbor lordly Landor, noble Clough, And her, our later sibyl, sorrow-eyed. ITALIAN RHAPSODY 211 Oh, tell me— not their arts, But their Italian hearts Won for their dust that narrow oval, than the world more wide! XI So might I lie where Browning should have lain, My " Italy " for all the world to read, Like his on the palazzo. For thy pain In losing from thy rosary that bead, England accords thee room Around his minster tomb — A province conquered of thy soul, and not an Arab slain ! XII Then take these lines, and add to them the lay, All inarticulate, I to thee indite*: The sudden longing on the sunniest day, The happy sighing in the stormiest night, The tears of love that creep From eyes unwont to weep, Full with remembrance, blind with joy, and with devotion deep. 212 ITALIAN RHAPSODY XIII Absence from thee is such as men endure Between the glad betrothal and the bride ; Or like the years that Youth, intense and sure, From his ambition to his goal must bide. And if no more I may Mount to Fiesole . . . Oh, then were Memory meant for those to whom is Hope denied. XIV Show me a lover who hath drunk by night Thy beauty-potion, as the grape the dew : 'T were little wonder he were poet too, With wine of song in unexpected might, While moonlit cloister calls With plashy fountain-falls, Or darkened Arno moves to music with its mirrored light. xv Who can withstand thee? What distress or care But yields to Naples, or that long day-dream We know as Venice, where alone more fair Noon is than night ; where every lapping stream ITALIAN RHAPSODY 213 Wooes with a soft caress Our new-world weariness, And every ripple smiles with joy at sight of scene so rare. XVI The mystery of thy charm— ah, who hath guessed? 'T was ne'er divined by day or shown in sleep ; Yet sometimes Music, floating from her steep, Holds to our lips a chalice brimmed and blest : Then know we that thou art Of the Ideal part— Of Man's one thirst that is not quenched, drink he howe'er so deep. XVII Thou human-hearted land, whose revels hold Man in communion with the antique days, And summon him from prosy greed to ways Where Youth is beckoning to the Age of Gold ; How thou dost hold him near And whisper in his ear Of the lost Paradise that lies beyond the alluring haze! 214 ITALIAN RHAPSODY XVIII In tears I tossed my coin from Trevi's edge,— A coin unsordid as a bond of love, — And, with the instinct of the homing dove, I gave to Rome my rendezvous and pledge. And when imperious Death Has quenched my flame of breath, Oh, let me join the faithful shades that throng that fount above. THE HOUR OF AWE 215 THE HOUR OF AWE Not in the five-domed wonder Where the soul of Venice lies, When the sun cleaves the gloom asunder With pathways to Paradise, And the organ's melodious thunder Summons you to the skies ; Not in that rarest hour, When over the Arno's rush The City of Flowers' flower Looms in the sunset flush, And the poignant stroke from the tower Pierces the spirit's hush ; Not Rome's high vault's devising That builded the heavens in, When you know not the anthem's rising From the song of the cherubin, Where, sight and soul surprising, Dusk utters your dearest sin : 216 THE HOUR OF AWE Not these— nor the star-sown splendor, Nor the deep wood's mystery, Nor the sullen storm's surrender To the ranks of the leaping sea, Nor the joy of the springtime tender On Nature's breast to be ; But to find in a woman's weeping The look you have longed to find, And know that in Time's safe-keeping, Through all the ages blind, Was Love, like a winged seed, sleeping For you and the waiting wind. TITIAN'S TWO LOVES, IN THE BORGHESE 217 TITIAN'S TWO LOVES, IN THE BORGHESE One forgets not the first dead he sorrowed over ; One forgets not the first kiss of the first lover. Not the dust of ages could remembrance cover How in Titian's golden kingdom first I strayed. Oh, that Roman morning's azure, softly sifting Through the gray, the while the rapt eye caught the rifting Of the sun's rich fire where molten mists were drifting, As one looks upon an opal gently swayed. Ah! but in the palace there was sun more golden! Art for once to Nature was no more beholden. Man to his beloved had the passion olden Sung in color, and his mighty Love grew Fame. For I guessed, while hotly others were contending Which was Love Divine, that each to each was lending Supplemental graces for a perfect blending — That to paint one twofold woman was his aim. 218 TITIAN'S TWO LOVES, IN THE BORGHESE One without the other's beauty were but torso : Human needs divine, ah, yes, and— maybe more so— By divine is needed. (Singing down the Corso I, elate, enthralled, went, happy just to be ! ) Yet till thee at last I knew— each blended feature Where the two Loves meet in rightly balanced nature— Never had I known a tithe of Titian's creature : God, the master limner, painted both in thee. POEMS ON PUBLIC EVENTS THE LISTENING SWORD 22 1 THE LISTENING SWORD (WRITTEN ON THE EVE OF THE SPANISH WAR) Still on the hilt, O Patience, keep thy hand! Though in the sheath the uneasy sword may leap That waits, and, for its waiting, cannot sleep. For it doth envy Arthur's knightly brand And each fame-wreathed weapon, hero-manned, That the world's freemen in remembrance keep. Oh, how can steel be deaf when nations weep With the loud sobbing of the desolate strand! Are there who think, " The hilt hears, not the blade, Snug in its silence"? Ah, from storms upcaught Fall not too soon the lightnings of the Lord. Justice, thou God in Man, when thou hast weighed All in thy balance, show us what we ought. Then, Patience, not till then, loose the appointed sword. March 30, 1898. 222 DEWEY AT MANILA DEWEY AT MANILA 'T was the very verge of May When the bold Olytnpia led Into Boca Grande gray Dewey's squadron, dark and dread - Creeping past Corregidor, Guardian of Manila's shore. Do they sleep who wait the fray? Is the moon so dazzling bright That our cruisers' battle-gray Melts into the misty light? . . . Ah! the rockets flash and soar! Wakes at last Corregidor! All too late their screaming shell Tears the silence with its track. This is but the gate of Hell ; We 've no leisure to turn back. Answer, Boston — then once more Slumber on, Corregidor! DEWEY AT MANILA And as, like a slowing tide, Onward still the vessels creep, Dewey, watching, falcon-eyed, Orders : " Let the gunners sleep ; For we meet a foe at four Fiercer than Corregidor." Well they slept, for well they knew What the morrow taught us all— He was wise (as well as true) Thus upon the foe to fall. Long shall Spain the day deplore Dewey ran Corregidor. ii May is dancing into light As the Spanish Admiral, From a dream of phantom fight, Wakens at his sentry's call. Shall he leave Cavite's lee, Hunt the Yankee fleet at sea? O Montojo, to thy deck, That to-day shall float its last! Quick! To quarters! Yonder speck Grows a hull of portent vast. 223 224 DEWEY AT MANILA Hither, toward Cavite's lee Comes the Yankee hunting thee! Not for fear of hidden mine Halts our doughty Commodore. He, of old heroic line, Follows Farragut once more, Hazards all on victory, Here within Cavite's lee. If he loses, all is gone ; He will win because he must. And the shafts of yonder dawn Are not quicker than his thrust. Soon, Montojo, he shall be With thee in Cavite's lee. Now, Manila, to the fray! Show the hated Yankee host This is not a holiday — Spanish blood is more than boast. Fleet and mine and battery, Crush him in Cavite's lee! Lo, Hell's geysers at our fore Pierce the plotted path — in vain, Nerving every man the more With the memory of the Maine/ DEWEY AT MANILA Now at last our guns are free Here within Cavite's lee. " Gridley," says the Commodore, " You may fire when ready." Then Long and loud, like lions' roar When a rival dares the den, Breaks the awful cannonry Full across Cavite's lee. Who shall tell the thrilling tale Of Our Thunderbolt's attack, Finding, when the chart should fail, By the lead his dubious track, Five ships following faithfully Five times o'er Cavite's lee ; Of our gunners' deadly aim ; Of the gallant foe and brave Who, unconquered, faced with flame, Seek the mercy of the wave — Choosing honor in the sea Underneath Cavite's lee! Let the meed the victors gain Be the measure of their task. Less of flinching, stouter strain, Fiercer combat — who could ask ? 15 225 226 DEWEY AT MANILA And "surrender"— 't was a word That Cavite ne'er had heard. Noon— the woeful work is done! Not a Spanish ship remains ; But, of their eleven, none Ever was so truly Spain's! Which is prouder, they or we, Thinking of Cavite's lee? Envoy But remember, when we Ve ceased Giving praise and reckoning odds, Man shares courage with the beast, Wisdom cometh from the gods. Who would win, on land or wave, Must be wise as well as brave. May io, 1898. THE WELCOME OF OUR TEARS 227 THE WELCOME OF OUR TEARS (ON THE RETURN OF A REGIMENT FROM THE SPANISH WAR) Now is the time to be glad ! Now is the time to be gay! With welcome the city is mad, And the flags and the wind are at play. There, down the street full of faces (Like a furrow that Joy has plowed), The heart and the eye run races Which first shall greet the proud. Nearer and nearer they come ! I can tell by the cheer and the shout That keep just ahead of the drum Where the little flags break out. I can tell by the blood's quick leaping My sluggish veins along, I can tell by my footstep keeping The rhythm of battle-song. Against them the sword of the Cid In the hand of a haughty foe ; Against them the jungle that hid Iron-fanged serpents a-row ; 228 THE WELCOME OF OUR TEARS Against them the storm and the baking Of sun on the rain-drenched skin ; Against them the fever's aching, Against them our civic sin. Here they are ! father and lad. Now let us cheer them— -but stay! Too haggard that face to be glad, Too weary those feet to be gay. God! are these phantoms the handsome Young knights that went, eager to save? O Freedom, is this then the ransom We give for the starved and the slave? They whom we welcome to-day — Why do the shout and the cheer Lining each step of their way Seem like a dirge and a tear? Is it that some may be wearing Laurels of others? Ay, see! Count the thin ranks of the daring : Each wears his laurels for three! And we thought it a time to be glad! And we thought it a time to be gay! New York, September 22, 1898. AN ENGLISH MOTHER 229 AN ENGLISH MOTHER Every week of every season out of English ports go forth, White of sail or white of trail, East, or West, or South, or North, Scattering like a flight of pigeons, half a hundred home- sick ships, Bearing half a thousand striplings— each with kisses on his lips Of some silent mother, fearful lest she show herself too fond, Giving him to bush or desert as one pays a sacred bond. —Tell us, you who hide your heartbreak, Which is sadder, when all 's done, To repine, an English mother, or to roam, an English son? You who shared your babe's first sorrow when his cheek no longer pressed On the perfect, snow-and-roseleaf beauty of your mother- breast, 230 AN ENGLISH MOTHER In the rigor of his nurture was your woman's mercy mute, Knowing he was doomed to exile with the savage and the brute? Did you school yourself to absence, all his adolescent years, That, though you be torn with parting, he should never see the tears? Now his ship has left the offing for the many-mouthed sea, This your guerdon, empty heart, by empty bed to bend the knee! And if he be but the latest thus to leave your dwindling board, Is a sorrow less for being added to a sorrow's hoard? Is the mother-pain the duller that to-day his brothers stand, Facing ambuscades of Congo or alarms of Zululand? Toil, where blizzards drift the snow like smoke across the plains of death? Faint, where tropic fens at morning steam with fever- laden breath? Die, that in some distant river's veins the English blood may run— Mississippi, Yangtze, Ganges, Nile, Mackenzie, Amazon? AN ENGLISH MOTHER 2 ^i Ah! you still must wait and suffer in a solitude untold While your sisters of the nations call you passive, call you cold — Still must scan the news of sailings, breathless search the slow gazette, Find the dreaded name . . . and, later, get his blithe farewell! And yet — Shall the lonely at the hearthstone shame the legions who have died Grudging not the price their country pays for progress and for pride? — Nay; but, England, do not ask us thus to emulate your scars Until women's tears are reckoned in the budgets of your wars. 1899. 232 THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN' THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN What is the White Man's burden? Does destiny demand His back be laden higher By every dusky hand? Am I my brother's keeper— Or keeper of his land? What is the White Man's burden? Is it the mounting flood Of treasure, vain to vanquish The tides of patriot blood, While our supremest jewel Is trampled in the mud? What is the White Man's burden That weighs upon his sleep? To hear the hundreds dying? To see the thousands weep? Oh, wanton war that haunts him! Oh, seed that he must reap! THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN" What is the White Man's burden— The burden of his song That once was " Peace and Justice ; The Weak beside the Strong"? He falters in the singing At memory of the wrong. What though our vaunt of Freedom Must evermore be mute, And the trading of men's vices Drag both below the brute? Go bribe new ships to bring it — The White Man's burden— loot! 233 234 ON READING OF ATROCITIES IN WAR ON READING OF ATROCITIES IN WAR Mild is the air of April, Gentle the sky above, And the budding and the mating Call for a song of love ; But the season on my singing Has lost its olden spell Because of a shame and sorrow Men close their eyes to tell. I see but the tears of women In the rain of the springtime flood ; I cannot brook the flowers — They only smell of blood. Sad is the playground frolic — Its joy and laughter melt In the moan of children sobbing From jungle and from veldt. O ye in the halls of council, You may conquer the distant foe, But still before a higher court Your needless wars must go. ON READING OF ATROCITIES IN WAR 235 Too much you ask of silence ; Too fierce the iron heel. Because one statesman blundered Must every heart be steel? O Britain! O Columbia! Too much of sodden strife. Back to the banished gospel— The sacredness of life! Else shall our ties of language And law and race and fame Be naught to the bond that binds us In one eternal shame. April 8, 1902. 236 THE KEEPER OF THE SWORD THE KEEPER OF THE SWORD* (APROPOS OF THE DREYFUS TRIAL AT RENNES) Hail to that Breton law by which a lord, Fate-hounded, — he whose sires had sought the Grail, — Left with the State his sword, as Honor's bail, While on a western isle he won reward Of his brave patience, in a golden hoard ; — Speeding from exile (the wide sea a jail If but the wrong wind filled his yearning sail!) To claim once more his heritage and sword. France, dost thou heed the omen? 'T was at Rennes ! — Where one who loved thee, cruel,— loved thee, blind, — Now fronts thee proudly with the old demand. Oh! ... thou hast broke it! ... Haste! the fragments find, And in the forge of Justice weld again That undishonored blade for his forgiving hand. August 7, 1899. * Readers of the "Sentimental Journey" will recall Sterne's account of the custom here referred to, as narrated in the chapter entitled "The Sword: Rennes." REMEMBER WARING! 237 REMEMBER WARING! (THE CITY AGAINST TAMMANY, I901) Again the bugle-blow To meet the common foe Summons the daring. Can ye not hear the call Echo from every wall— " Remember Waring "? He stormed the fetid street Where Death with rapid feet Strode fierce and glaring. Shall we forget, alone, When every grateful stone Remembers Waring? He, to your service true ; He, in his love of you Himself not sparing ; Whom gold could not allure ; Guardian of rich and poor — Our soldier Waring! 238 REMEMBER WARING! He found a wretched throng- Rescued from ancient wrong — New burdens bearing ; And babes that he did save Cry from a later grave : " Remember Waring." He dared a tropic hell Of fever— till he fell, And we, despairing, Knew that for us he died, And in our grieving cried : " Remember Waring! " Shall we be less than they Who make the poor their prey, No least one sparing? They praise him, though they fill Each tainted purse ; they still Remember Waring. How shall our deed atone That nowhere bronze or stone His name is bearing? His ashes in their urn With his old ardor burn, And plead, for Waring: REMEMBER WARING! "Oh, if the work I wrought Be to your memory aught, Now Greed is tearing The crown from Freedom's brow, Strike harder that you now Remember Waring." Then, ere the heart grow cold, Let us on altars old New vows be swearing : "Perish the people's foe! Scorn for his tool ! " and so Remember Waring. 239 POEMS OF HEART AND SOUL TO ONE BORN ON THE LAST OF NOVEMBER 243 TO ONE BORN ON THE LAST DAY OF NOVEMBER Upon this day, divinely blest, When thou wert born, as to their guest, Three seasons gave thee of their best. March brought the graceful stir of Spring ; April, a tender song to sing ; May, the most winsome blossoming ; June gave sweet breath, and that pale flush July has deepened in thy blush. Repose came with the August hush. September blent thy glowing hair With glowing temple, as the air Of twilight blendeth dark and fair. October's dower was so rife With treasure, futile further strife, And so November gave thee— life. 244 TO ONE BORN ON THE LAST OF NOVEMBER So keen and icy was the smart Of Winter (since he had no part In fashioning thy radiant heart), He bade December so to plead For thee, petitioning his need, That the relenting Fates took heed ; And though November's thou must be, Yet nearest Winter (they decree) Is set thy gracious ministry. MUSIC AND LOVE 245 MUSIC AND LOVE Who longs for music merely longs for Love. For Love is music, and no minstrel needs Save his own sigh to breathe upon the reeds From heart too full, and — like the adoring dove That cooes all day the darling nest above, Content if hour to happy hour succeeds — Nor morning's song, nor noon's rich silence, heeds, Nor the old mysteries evening whispers of. But when the voice is echoless, the hand Long empty, then, O wedded harp and flute, Remind us Love 's eternal, not Time's toy. O viol, at whose brink of pain we stand, Love in thy muted anguish is not mute, But thrills with memory's new-remembered joy. 246 AT A CONCERT AT A CONCERT Music inspires me but to think of thee, For thou art of the music of the world — A strain of that imperishable voice That speaks in beauty, harmony, and love. When Mozart wakes the gladness of my youth I see perpetual childhood in thy face. When Chopin, hand in hand with Love, leads on Through meadowy pleasures to the brink of pain, How near, how tender is thy beating heart! And oh, when from the skies Beethoven sounds His sure, triumphant song, how it vibrates Deep memories of thy reposeful soul! AFTER THE SONG AFTER THE SONG (to e. J. w.) If to your wondrous voice and art I give not plaudits with the throng, 'T is lest I spill my brimming heart And in the singer lose the song. Too soon the sweetest cadence dies ; The vanished vision leaves but this : The burden of the things we prize, The pathos of the things we miss. Oh, for a silence that should hold These echoes of delicious sound As depths of a still lake enfold Brooks that fall fainter bound by bound. Yours is the art of Orphic power To charm the soul from out its hell — Deserts of absence to reflower With rose instead of asphodel. Like dew on gossamer, a tear Lies on the fabric of our dream : Despairing hope ! that we who hear Might be as noble as you seem. 247 248 SONG FOR YOUTH SONG FOR YOUTH O flower-like years of youth, Delay, delay! Old Time shall soon, forsooth, December make of May. Bid him away! O flower-like years of youth, Oh, stay ; oh, stay ! Nor covet Age uncouth, When all is warm and gay For you to-day. O flower-like years of youth, Delay, delay! Let others seek for Truth ; Yours is the time for play And dance of fay. O flower-like years of youth, Oh, stay ; oh, stay ! Time with remorseless tooth Shall gnaw your bloom away ; Then say him nay. SONG FOR YOUTH O flower-like years of youth, Delay, delay! Age knows for you no ruth ; Then, till your latest day, Hold him at bay. 249 250 SONG OF REMEMBRANCE SONG OF REMEMBRANCE Bird of the swaying bough (Like the voice of a lover's vow), You shall hold for me ever, as now, The thrill of your morning song. Bubble of April light (Like the glance of a lover's sight), You shall into my winter night The soul of the noon prolong. Cloud of the wind-swept land (Like the touch of a lover's hand), In the memory you shall stand Though you flee from the flaming sky. Rose of the scattered bower (Like Love's most fragrant hour), When shall you lose your power? When I no more am I. STAR-SONG 251 STAR-SONG When sunset flows into golden glows, And the breath of the night is new, Love, find afar yon yearning star — That is my thought of you. And when your eye doth scan the sky Your lonely lattice through, Choose any one, from sun to sun — That is my thought of you. And when you wake at the morning's break To rival rose and dew, The star that stays in the leaping rays — That is my thought of you. SONG FOR A WEDDING-DAY SONG FOR A WEDDING-DAY Poplar, straight and fair and tall : Graceful though your sway, Well for your soft rise and fall That Helen is away. Bud, about whose fragrant side All the pleasures play : Rose, remember in your pride That Helen is away. Heart, whose hope she never knew Though other hearts be gay, None need ever tell to you That Helen is away. WITH A TOAST TO THE BRIDE 253 WITH A TOAST TO THE BRIDE They met, they looked, they sighed, they loved ; Straight each the other chose. (Why wait till slow-paced years have proved What each by instinct knows?) Whate'er mistake we mortals make, Sure, none is made above. Give prudence to the prudes ; there is No substitute for love. Howe'er the worldly-wise may mate, Apart from soul or sense, And as undying passion rate Their tepid preference, Love is the wing that 's sure to bring Back to the ark the dove. What all their wisdom? Ah, it is No substitute for love. And those who by ambition blind Would with a title wed, That, when they are not sore maligned, They may be envied, 254 WITH A TOAST TO THE BRIDE Heaven sends them pride wherewith to hide The loss they know not of— To find— too late, alas! —there is No substitute for love. Then here 's success to youth and maid Who hold in hopeful hands And weave together, unafraid, Life's old mysterious strands. " Love is enough "—that is the stuff Fortune is fashioned of. To face the fickle world, there 's naught To substitute for love. TO JUNE 2 55 TO JUNE Month of the perfect love, Month of the perfect leaf, — The mellow-mourning dove Thine only note of grief,— Oh, let me hide within thy shade a sorrow past relief! Thou, unto whose employ All Nature's arts belong— Fragrance and warmth and joy : Admit me to thy throng. Thou canst not dull the pang, but oh! tune every chord to song! 256 A LOVER'S ANSWER A LOVER'S ANSWER Thou seekest, "Where is heaven?" Oh, Love, 't is where Thou shalt be, though thou be in hell. "And what is hell? " Oh, darling, 't were to dwell In highest heaven and thou not there. THE GUEST 2 57 THE GUEST I have a guest, but cannot tell If he were bid or sent, Yet welcome, as by desert well The Arab to the tent. How long will he consent to stay To give a reason for the day? And if he go, can I unlearn His songs of joy and pain? His torch, that was so quick to burn, How can I quench again — That torch that lights with fadeless flame One face, one memory, one name! 17 258 TO ONE WHO COMPLAINED TO ONE WHO COMPLAINED OF A LOVER'S PERSISTENCE You hear but the moans that break On the rocks at your feet— but hark! Perchance through the dreary dark A cry from a drifting wreck! INTERPRETERS 259 INTERPRETERS One conned my simple lines with cynic art, Then smiled, as though he found a friend in me, And read : " If Love alone possess your heart, Then can you never more unhappy be." Another, feeling still Love's bitter dart. Smiled through her joyful tears triumphantly, And read : " If Love alone possess your heart, Then can you nevermore unhappy be." 26o THE TRYST THE TRYST The panting north wind staggers A-clutch with the sullen tide, And the blast with a hundred daggers Is piercing the rower's side. They say he was mad to venture, They moan on the icy shore ; But pleading, or fear, or censure Shall carry him back no more. For what is the cold wave's seething, Or the rush of the white-speared storm, To the thought of the sweet South, breathing From lips that are pure and warm ; Or the thrust of the angry billow To the rise of her tranquil breast That to-night shall be his pillow Where, welcome, he may rest? LOVE THE CONQUEROR CAME TO ME n 261 "LOVE THE CONQUEROR CAME TO ME Love the Conqueror came to me,— He whom I did long deride, — Gave humility for pride, April voicing My rejoicing. I — who fancied I was free- Glad to be with garlands tied! ii Love the Awakener came to me ; Called my sleeping soul to strife, Offered gift of fuller life (Wish, the measure Of my pleasure) ; And the bud that knew no bee Burst, a rose with beauty rife. 262 "LOVE THE CONQUEROR CAME TO ME' III Love the Tester came to me ; For the paean gave the dirge, For caresses gave the scourge (Ay, though Fortune Did importune), Till my breathing seemed to be Sorrow's tide at ebb and surge. IV Love the Ennobler came to me, With the cross as his device, Saying, " Shrink not from the price (Pain the burden, Peace the guerdon) ; Sorrow bravely borne shall be Doubly sweet as sacrifice." v Love the Revealer comes to me On this battled height, and shows Yonder river of repose : " Not by creeping, But by leaping, Learns the rill the harmony That within the river flows." THE STRONGER SUMMONS 2 6$ THE STRONGER SUMMONS* i How May doth call us with her sweetest voice, Fragrant with blossoms on this moonlit night! " Take of my wine, and in new birth rejoice ; Leave care and toil, the sordid city's plight. Oh, dying Man, come to the source of Life, And hush in Nature all the sounds of strife." ii Wondrous the vision, and we fain would go But that a nobler pleasure calls us here. Charm, Nature, as thou wilt, thou canst not throw A spell to win us like the smile and tear. In what Love, Friendship, Duty, Service can, We know God's greatest miracle is Man. * Written in honor of the distinguished physician Dr. Abraham Jacobi, and read at the banquet given to him in New York city, May 5, 1900, to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of his birth, and included with the Festschrift then presented to him by mem- bers of the medical profession. 264 THE FLOWER OF FAME THE FLOWER OF FAME He sought it before the billow of spring on the meadow was seen, When only the flush of the willow was tracing the river with green; He scanned to the edge of the fraying snows that dappled the mountain-slope, And ever too late the March sun rose : for he searched the world with hope. I saw him at noon of the summer day, and that was the favorite hour To one who had hunted from March to May, and never had found the flower ; For the light was full, as though the sun were aiding his eager quest, And there were no warning shadows to run o'er his path from east or west. And still in September's purple and gold he was hunting the grudging ground, But not with the steady eye of old or the springtime's joyous bound ; THE FLOWER OF FAME 265 If he stopped in his feverish roaming, 't was to question the darkling air; Too early came the gloaming: he was searching with despair. And while, for a chance of the rarest, he wanders in storm or heat, He is blind to the charm of the fairest ; he is crushing beneath his feet The Flower of Every Valley, the Flower of All the Year, Deep in whose broken blossom the dew lies like a tear. 266 THE DREAD BEFORE GREAT JOY THE DREAD BEFORE GREAT JOY Within, what gracious store Of pleasures throng : Rest, beauty, firelit lore, Love-breathing song. Why at the open door Wait you so long? ii Oh, why delay to touch The splendid flower? Why tremble ere we clutch The perfect hour? Is it too near, too much, The certain dower? THE DREAD BEFORE GREAT JOY III Beneath the bride's attire Her heart stands still — Half-way from porch to choir — For joy, not ill (We shiver before fire As well as chill). IV Home-bound, beyond the bar I heard again, An exile from afar, The tide's refrain : What did the moment mar? Ah! 't was not pain. Well may the victor shrink Aghast at Fame To hear, on Fortune's brink, His land's acclaim, That with its great doth link His own strange name. 267 268 THE DREAD BEFORE GREAT JOY VI We raise the precious bowl — To sip and sigh : The starving takes but dole Lest he may die ; Must, then, the famished soul Its feast put by? VII What if our mortal fear Were but the dread Before great joy! How near Were the loved dead! Then were the grave more dear Than bridal bed. REINCARNATION 269 REINCARNATION " Another world! Another life! " we cry, And for new chances toward far regions reach Yet squander teeming treasure as we sigh, While every day a new life waits for each. 270 PREMONITIONS PREMONITIONS There 's a shadow on the grass That was never there before ; And the ripples as they pass Whisper of an unseen oar ; And the song we knew by rote Seems to falter in the throat, And a footfall, scarcely noted, lingers near the open door. Omens that were once but jest Now are messengers of fate ; And the blessing held the best Cometh not or comes too late. Yet, whatever life may lack, Not a blown leaf beckons back, "Forward!" is the summons. "Forward! where the new horizons wait." IV MOMENTS OF ITALY, AND OTHER POEMS TO GRACE DENIO LITCHFIELD TO ONE WHO NEVER GOT TO ROME 275 TO ONE WHO NEVER GOT TO ROME (EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN) [On his long-deferred and only trip to Italy Stedman entered the country from the north for what proved to be a very brief sojourn, for soon after reaching Venice he was suddenly obliged to return to America. It remained his cherished desire to see the Eternal City, and the Roman Committee of the Keats-Shelley Memorial long hoped that he might be present at the proposed dedication of the Keats House, contemplated for the 23d of February, 1908. He died five weeks before that day, when the lines which follow were written. As the active and devoted Chairman of the Amer- ican Committee he took a leading part in this project. Probably his last words written for publication on a literary topic were in praise of the two poets, to which he added a transcription from "Ariel," his ode on Shelley.] You who were once bereft of Rome With but the Apennines between, And went no more beyond the foam, But loved your Italy at home As others loved her seen : You knew each old imperial shaft With sculpture laureled to the blue; Where martyr bled and tyrant laughed ; Where Horace his Falernian quaffed, And where the vintage grew. 276 TO ONE WHO NEVER GOT TO ROME The Forum's half-unopened book You would have pondered well and long ; And loved St. Peter's misty look, With vesper chantings in some nook Of far-receding song. Oft had you caught the silver gleams Of Roman fountains. To your art They add no music. Trevi teems With not more free or bounteous streams Than did your generous heart. I hoped that this Muse-hallowed day Might find your yearning dream come true That you might see the moonlight play On ilex and on palace gray As 't were alone for you ; — That your white age might disappear Within the whiteness of the night, While the late strollers, lending ear To your young joy, would halt and cheer At such a happy wight ; — TO ONE WHO NEVER GOT TO ROME 277 That you, — whose toil was never done, — Physicianed by the Land of Rest, Might, like a beggar in the sun, Watch idly the green lizard run From out his stony nest ; — That you, from that high parapet That crowns the graceful Spanish Stairs, (Whose cadence, as to music set, Moving like measured minuet, Would charm your new-world cares), Might see the shrine you helped to save ; And yonder blest of cypresses, That proud above your poets wave. Warder of all our song, you gave What loyalty to these ! The path to Adonais' bed, That pilgrims ever smoother wear, Who could than you more fitly tread ? — Or with more right from Ariel dead The dark acanthus bear ? 278 TO ONE WHO NEVER GOT TO ROME Alas ! your footstep could not keep Your fond hope's rendezvous, brave soul ! Yet, if our last thoughts ere we sleep Be couriers across the deep To greet us at the goal, Who knows but now, aloof from ills, The heavenly vision that you see— The towers on the sapphire hills, The song, the golden light— fulfils Your dream of Italy ! THE SPANISH STAIRS 279 THE SPANISH STAIRS [It will be recalled that the house in which Keats died adjoins the Spanish Stairs in Rome. It has been proposed to remove the fountain below them to make room for the tramway in the piazza.] Rome, symbol of all change, oh, change not here ! Thou, ever avid of beauty, who shall say Thou hast forsworn it in a vain display And blare of discord, as though eager ear Listening for nightingale heard chanticleer? Oh, leave these sunny stairs, that float and stray From fountain blithe and flowers' rich array To beckoning bells and chanting nuns anear. Of all the dead that loved them, hear that voice Whose sorrow and last silence once they knew, Whose spirit guards them with his flaming theme, The immortal joy of beauty. Oh, rejoice, And stay thy hand : that future ages, too, By them may mount to heaven, like Jacob in his dream. Piazza di Spagna, St. Agnes' Eve, 1903. 280 THE NAME WRIT IN WATER THE NAME WRIT IN WATER (PIAZZA DI SPAGNA, ROME) The Spirit of the Fountain speaks ; Yonder 's the window my poet would sit in While my song murmured of happier days ; Mine is the water his name has been writ in, Sure and immortal my share in his praise. Gone are the pilgrims whose green wreaths here hung for him, — Gone from their fellows like bubbles from foam ; Long shall outlive them the songs have been sung for him; Mine is eternal— or Rome were not Rome. Far on the mountain my fountain was fed for him, Bringing soft sounds that his nature loved best : Sighing of pines that had fain made a bed for him ; Seafaring rills, on their musical quest ; Bells of the fairies at eve, that I rang for him ; Nightingale's glee, he so well understood ; Chant of the dryads at dawn, that I sang for him ; Swish of the snake at the edge of the wood. THE NAME WRIT IN WATER 2 8i Little he knew 'twixt his dreaming and sleeping, The while his sick fancy despaired of his fame, What glory I held in my loverly keeping : Listen! my waters will whisper his name. 282 SPRING AT THE VILLA CONTI SPRING AT THE VILLA CONTI Of Time and Nature still the fairest daughter, Low-voiced Repose! Here thou dost ever dwell, While Fancy wills no more to wander on. With how few simples dost thou steep the sense, Holding in soft suspense, Like pauses in the tolling of a bell, The beauty coming and the beauty gone. Nothing is here but woods and water, Spaces, and stone, and a sculptor's wit Simply to fashion it Into one long line of many niches, Whose fountains are fed by the rushing riches That, bowl to bowl, from the woodland pool Fall in a rhythm clear and strong, Singing to Nature her eldest song, Prattling their paradox— restfully restless. O March, with never a moment zestless, Nor the sun too warm nor the shade too cool! O May, and the music of birds now nestless! Come soon and brood o'er the woodland pool! SPRING AT THE VILLA CONTI 283 (For lover or nightingale who can wait? Whenever he cometh he cometh late.) The light plays over the ilex green, Turning to silver the somber sheen, And Spring in the heart of the day doth dwell As the thought of a loved one dwells with me, And only three cypresses to tell " This is not Heaven, but Italy." Frascati, March, 1903. 284 CO MO IN APRIL COMO IN APRIL The wind is Winter, though the sun be Spring : The icy rills have scarce begun to flow ; The birds unconfidently fly and sing. As on the land once fell the northern foe, The hostile mountains from the passes fling Their vandal blasts upon the lake below. Not yet the round clouds of the Maytime cling Above the world's blue wonder's curving show, And tempt to linger with their lingering. Yet doth each slope a vernal promise know : See, mounting yonder, white as angel's wing, A snow of bloom to meet the bloom of snow. Love, need we more than our imagining To make the whole year May? What though The wind be Winter if the heart be Spring ? THE VINES THAT MISSED THE BEES 285 THE VINES THAT MISSED THE BEES (TO COUNT COSIMO RUCELLAI OF FLORENCE WITH A COPY OF HIS ANCESTOR GIOVANNI RUCELLAl'S POEM "THE BEES") Once, when I saw the tears upon your vines You told me they were "weeping "—but for what? I find their secret in your kinsman's lines : They missed the honeyed music he has caught. Florence, April, 1906. 286 THE POET IN THE CHILDREN'S EYES THE POET IN THE CHILDREN'S EYES (TO COUNTESS EDITH RUCELLAI, DESCENDANT OF JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE, — IN HER ALBUM, CONTAINING LINES BY BROWNING, LONGFELLOW, LOWELL, AND OTHERS) Thou of a poet's blood, and many a tie Of kin or friendship with the singing race : How shall I dare, without a throb or sigh, Near these lost bards beloved my name to place! One wish I offer, though with halting fingers : That in thy brood, of eager eyes divine, The poet that within the mother lingers May find a voice worthy the deathless line. Florence, April, 1906. TO DREYFUS VINDICATED 287 TO DREYFUS VINDICATED' Soldier of Justice, — fighting with her sword Since thine was broken ! Who need now despair To lead a hope forlorn against the throng! For what did David dare Before Goliath worthy this compare — Thou in the darkness fronting leagued wrong? What true and fainting cause shall not be heir Of all thy courage— more than miser's hoard! In times remote, when some preposterous 111 Man has not yet imagined, shall be King, While comfortable Freedom nods,— And Three shall meet to slay the usurping thing, Thy name recalled shall clinch their potent will, And as they cry, "He won— what greater odds! " They shall become as gods. 11 Oh, what a star is one man's steadfastness, To reckon from, to follow, and to bless! * See also page 236. 288 TO DREYFUS VINDICATED Thou that didst late belong To every land but France— the unribboned Knight To whom her honor and thine own were one : Now, on the morrow of thy faithful fight When once more shines the sun And all the weak are strong, — No less we call thee ours That thou art doubly hers, the while she showers On thine unhumbled head Her penitential laurels and her flowers, As might we on one risen from the dead : — France, generous at last, Impassioned nobly to retrieve her passion overpast. Ours, too, thy champions! Who shall dare to say The sordid time doth lack of chivalry, When men thus all renounce, all cast away, To walk with martyrs through a flaming sea ! Picquart! — how jealously will Life patrol The paths of peril whither he is sent. Zola!— too early gone! Whose taking even Death might well repent, Though 't was to enrich that greater Pantheon Where dwell the spirits of the brave of soul. TO DREYFUS VINDICATED 289 III Yet doth thy triumph find its better part, Soldier of Mercy, in thine own great heart, That, in the vision of thy loneliest time, Learned, like the poet, " All revenge is crime." But though thine enemies may never feel The gyves that with injustice mangled thee, Pierced shall their souls be by a sharper steel — The blade of conscience— faultless weaponry! Though, free from Law's reprisal, They lie within no dank and sheathing cell Where horror doth approximate to hell ; — Though they may never, near the brink of death, Accuse with proud, pure hands the God of Light ; — Yet is the day their night ; Yet is the world their prison, and their breath But the slow poison of the world's despisal. Leave them— so deaf to pity — unto Him Who taught thee pity in thine exile caged and dim. 19 290 TO DREYFUS VINDICATED ENVOI Oh, tremble, all oppressors, where ye be— Throne, senate, mansion, mart, or factory ; One against many, many against few ; Ye poor, once crushed, that crush your own anew ; Ye vulgar rich, new-risen from the mud, Despoilers of the flower in the bud : For justice is the orbit of God's day, And He hath promised that He will repay. THE ABSENT GUEST 291 THE ABSENT GUEST (READ MARCH 20, I907, AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OP THE MACDOWELL ASSOCIATION, FOUNDED TO PROMOTE EDWARD MACDOWELL'S PLANS FOR A SYMPATHETIC COOPERA- TION OF THE ARTS) Go, wreathe his chair with laurel, And brim his glass with wine, And let one silent place proclaim The presence we divine. To sorrow for so pure a soul, So warm a heart as he, Makes never discord at a feast Given to Harmony. The dream he dreamed by starlight Is not less fair by sun : That Beauty may to Beauty join Till all the arts be one ; 292 THE ABSENT GUEST That each who serves the Muses, And weaves the magic thrall With words, or sounds, or speechless earth, May brother be to all. On this wide hearth he lighted A new-inspiring flame, Whose torch to kindling torch for aye Shall whisper of his fame. Join hands for that Ideal He loved and worshiped most. . . . Our absent guest, I said? . . Ah, no! He is our absent host. THE CZAR'S OPPORTUNITY 293 THE CZAR'S OPPORTUNITY THE SUNDAY MASSACRE, ST. PETERSBURG, JANUARY 2 2 *9°5 He heard his loyal people cry- Like children to a saint : " Help, Little Father, or we die ! We starve, we freeze, we faint. The noble hears not for his crimes, The soldier, for his drum, The Procurator, for his chimes — To thee at last we come. 14 To-morrow, when the bells have ceased, Before thy palace door A throng shall stand, as at a feast, Thy mercy to implore. And that with favor it be crowned, The prayer we bring to thee Shall on the Holy Cross be bound As Christ on Calvary." 294 THE CZAR'S OPPORTUNITY Then the good angel of the Czar Spake with a sibyl's voice : " Let no mischance this moment mar, 'T is sent thee to rejoice. Go meet thy people as they trudge Toward thee their weary way, To find in thee a righteous judge ; And go unarmed as they. " Enough, through centuries of wrong, Thy line's inverted fame, The Romanoff has been too long The synonym of shame. Then haste to meet the cross afar, Do thou what courage can, And thou shalt be the greater Czar If thou but show thee man." He rose, resolved; but— fortune dire! One glance his purpose crossed : An impulse from some recreant sire Triumphed, and he was lost. The flower is trampled in the sod ; False dawn delays the day : And once again the Will of God Marches the bloody way. THE LOVER OF HIS KIND 2 95 THE LOVER OF HIS KIND Wreaths for the Soldier, if it be His sword be sworn to Liberty ! Wreaths for the Poet who shall bring New light to Dawn, new joy to Spring ! Wreaths for the Hero who shall brave The peril of the flame or wave ! But keep one wreath for him whose days Too happy for the need of praise— Glow with the love and hope that plan A richer heritage for Man. He keeps his faith amid the grime And scramble of our modern time. His eyes are sight to countless feet That else would stumble in the street. Riches the poor would throw away He saves to make their better day. Taught both by sorrow and by sin, His great heart's portals open in, 296 THE LOVER OF HIS KIND And, though not reckoned with the great, His hidden labors prop the State. For ages History pondered long The flaunted records of the strong. To-day she craves the subtle power To know the soil that grows the flower. To-morrow she perchance may speak The judgments of the voiceless weak. TOGETHER 297 TOGETHER All life is but one and man's nature not lower or higher If true to his finest he be, whether body or soul. Each some time seems loftier, bidding the other aspire ; Lift both to the height of their best and make per- fect the whole ! 298 SOMETHING IN BEAUTY SOMETHING IN BEAUTY BINDS US TO THE GOOD Helen 's of the goddess-height, Formed to lavish on the sight Lines to give the world delight ; Rest and Motion there contend Which to her the more may lend, Grace and dignity to blend. Gentle as the turning tide Is her breathing, scarce espied Where the virgin gown doth hide ; Yet increase of sympathy Makes her throbbing, like the sea, Fit your sorrow or your glee. For her quick responses reach Into regions beyond speech, Mating with the mood of each ; BINDS US TO THE GOOD Heaven having matched her form With a woman's heart as warm As first firelight after storm. Not less graciously was planned Her large, perfect, helpful hand With its hint of soft command ; Fairest at her face it shows When her lips caress a rose, While her laughing lids half close. White and noble is her brow With the pureness of a vow Such as I am breathing now. Ever so, if Beauty could Be by mortals understood, It would bind us to the good. 299 3 oo ON A LADY'S CHATELAINE MIRROR ON A LADY'S CHATELAINE MIRROR (to m. l. u.) Were there a mirror for the soul To give report of joy or dole, How we should o'er thy shoulder peer To find the secret of thy cheer. THE SCAR THE SCAR 301 But one the scar had ever seen. Some said 't was got in valiant fight With foe too strong ; some hinted flight, And wondered where " the scratch " had been, And marveled he survived its might ! Month upon month, and year on year Passed, and his dumb lips gave no sign. But men remarked, like some rare wine, The smile, that brought to joy new cheer, And gave to grief an anodyne. While he lay dead, there drew apart Two, whispering ; then, their courage found, They tore aside the band that bound ; A third, with woman's gentle art, Hid with her hair his open wound. 302 COMPELLING LOVE COMPELLING LOVE I sing not Love prose-mated With Pride or Sense, soon sated, Where give and take are rated In terms of bargain-buyer ; Nor Love that sells her dearly For so much shelter yearly, As Cupid's torch were merely To light the kitchen fire ; Nor Love that lingers, longing, In reasoned absence, wronging The soul's desires, thronging As pleading angels bend ; Nor Love that never misses The mate's estranged kisses, And is, of former blisses, Content to keep — a friend; COMPELLING LOVE 303 Nor prudish Love repressive That, lest it seem aggressive, With modesty excessive Deems maiden more than wife ; Nor Love that fain would fetter The spirit with the letter, As there were something better Than holy human life. But Love, of Fate elected, That, coming unexpected, Can never be rejected— The sea no shore can stop ; That waits not to be bidden, And answers not when chidden, And can no more be hidden Than flame on mountain-top. Such Love need not beleaguer A garrison so meager With its commander eager To say the craven word, — Who prays not heaven to send her A champion to defend her, Rejoicing to surrender When Love's demand is heard. 3<>4 COMPELLING LOVE Give me the Love Overflowing, The fond eye's fervent glowing, The tranced heart out-going To meet both soul and sense The Love whose years are reckoned By day, by hour, by second When some new wonder beckoned To some new joy intense. No calculated passion Of artificial fashion, But nature's daily ration — The feast of Youth and Age; Defying Time's estranging, Untiring and unchanging, Without a thought of ranging — The song without the cage. THE MARCHING-SONG 305 THE MARCHING-SONG Lonely the forest to him who threads it without a companion ; Lonely the sea when its lonely fog lifts upon sail-less horizon ; Lonelier populous city to one without comrades or kindred ; Lonelier still when the moonlight — in language invented by lovers — Speaks of the nights that are gone and the places it, only } remembers. Thus, longing for forest or sea, I sat, in the heat of the city, My only companion the friend to whom I was writing my envy, When out of the distance there floated a beautiful choral of voices. Nearer and nearer they came while I, from my balcony leaning, Drank with the thirst of the desert the gladdening draught of the music. 3 o6 THE MARCHING-SONG Twenty the count of the striplings who marched with a rhythmical footfall, Joyous the trebles, exultant the tenors, and solemn the basses,— They and their song of a harmony perfect and full and reciprocal, Music that moistened the eyes long after the singers departed. Who could they be— thus to add to the beautiful night a new beauty ? Friends, of some serious purpose, united more strongly in singing. Surely not sons of the rich, for the rich are united in nothing. Riches divide, and scant is the friendship based only on plenty. These were no roysterers breaking the rhythm of night with their discord, Who find no diversion worth while that makes not unhappy their fellows ; Rather some guild of the poor returning from study or pleasure, Stronger by toil or by rest, each with the strength of his fellows ; THE MARCHING-SONG 3°7 Buoyant with youth, glad with hope and in sympathy banded, Marching serenely as one, helpfully, shoulder to shoulder. Back to my letter I went and with shame I destroyed my repinings. I thought how the song would have fitted the eloquent vision of Whitman, — Pondered the spirit of comradeship shown in these marchers courageous. Lonely though sometime it seems, our wine-press of toil or of sorrow, Brothers, we move to one ultimate goal, in invisible phalanx, In columns as wide as the world and as long as the slow-growing ages. I know you are there by the grasp of your hands and the cheer of your voices. 308 RECOGNITION RECOGNITION "O friend of other days " — You start, at our first meeting, To hear the cordial greeting, And search the past for warrant of the phrase. " My soul," you say, " have I forgot Some memorable hour and spot When, with long-clasping hand And confident demand, Mine eye its tribute took In level, lingering look ? Or, in some age of yore Trod we this path before ? " But why look back for treasure ? Many a star Was undiscovered once. Our choicest good Was erst an unseen angel ; long she stood So near we knew not and esteemed it far, For what to her was veil to us was bar. RECOGNITION 309 No, not quite yet that moment, rich but dumb, Of friendship's troth the sum. We tread the same path toward it : we but hear The inland tide to know the ocean near. 'T is to the future, not the past, must be Your staunchest loyalty, O Friend of other days— to come ! 3io A MESSAGE BACK TO YOUTH A MESSAGE BACK TO YOUTH They told me " Youth is all revolt, And age is all repose " ; That Time would medicine my fault, As every graybeard knows ; Him whom the misty Morn deceives Sage Noon from doubt would wean, As the sapling of the restless leaves Becomes an oak serene. They told me Love was strongest there, Unbridled by Content; Life's tame meridian years could ne 'er Know passion so unpent. I heard their whispered counselings : " Be patient with his dreams, Time to the best ideal brings The verdict ' It but seems.' " A MESSAGE BACK TO YOUTH But I have found not as they planned The scheme of good and ill. Though full in sight of age I stand, I am a rebel still. For me and for my kind I feel The pathos of mistake, And covet knowledge for my zeal To help the world awake. I find in labyrinthine wrong But one— Love's silken — clew. The way from what we know, how long It lies, to what we do! Since there be wings the blue to cleave. Why be content to plod ? Were man less laggard, he might leave The patience unto God. Still the weird figures in the mist, That held my youth in awe, Defy the toil of analyst To range them into law. 312 A MESSAGE BACK TO YOUTH And Love?— What all the youthful fire (They said would die so soon), To wiser man's mature desire But dawn compared to noon? And though within my happy sight My children's children play, I find no fading of the light That made my magic day. The clearer vision but discerns The needs that Youth foreknew : More wonderful the sun that turns To rainbow in the dew. The world's heart still in Music beats Against this heart of mine, That, more than ever, gladly greets Day's pageantry divine. Still unappeased the boy's desire, Still tireless is the quest ; As to the summit leaps the fire, The better seeks the best. DAPHNE 3 1 3 DAPHNE Yes, I grant you, she is pretty, with the pink of early morn, Pretty as the palest rose-leaf ever blushed above a thorn ; And her backward look is saucy, and the quick toss of her head — Well, a boy likes chasing better if the colt be thorough- bred. And her mouth— 't was made for smiling, winning you against your will With its Cupid's bow and dainty teeth, like young cadets a-drill, And the careless pagan laughter, such as by the river's brink Charmed Apollo in his Daphne as 't were some de- licious drink. 3H DAPHNE Yes, I own my heart does answer to the blitheness of her call. Still, there 's something that is wanting in our Daphne, after all. I, who hold no woman perfect sans a spice of the coquette, Find a curving eyelash lovelier that it sometimes should be wet. And they say the way is weary for the man that fol- lows whim Till the brilliance of the little lawless graces shall grow dim ; And the girl's piquant surprises may be tedious in the wife, And the pin-pricks of the sapling toughen to the goads of life. Then, my boy, beware of Daphne. Learn a lesson from the rat : What is cunning in the kitten may be cruel in the cat. In the game of life the trump is, not the spade of crafty art, Power's club, or riches' diamond, but, believe me, boy, Love's heart. THE TRUE BIBLIOPHILE 315 THE TRUE BIBLIOPHILE What is a bibliophile? Mere lover Of Whatman page and Mearne-made cover, Of crushed levant whereround doth hover A rare aroma? Whose bookcase, double-locked, affords Such ancient treasures bound in boards One has suspicions that it hoards An MS. Homer? What is a bibliophile? Mere seeker For finds to make all rivals meeker— Now down in Ann Street, now in Bleecker, To lose no chance That some neglected shop may show A fine unopened, pristine Poe, Flanked by an unfoxed Folio, With provenance? 3 i6 THE TRUE BIBLIOPHILE What is a bibliophile? Mere sigher For Trautz, Derome and Payne ? A buyer Of Incunabula by wire, Or tall Bodoni? — Who, in his dreams, of sales doth rave, To others' bidding still a slave, And oft to many a bookish knave Who claims him crony? These things I do not hold as guile ; But must one, as a bibliophile, Be captive on a treasure isle And live as lonely? 'T were better not to hoard or spend, Better to borrow books— or lend— And know, like Field's o'er-pitied friend, Their insides only. Give me the man who 's always finding His heart imbedded in the binding, With threads of love about it winding — A book no longer ; Who laughs with Lever, smiles with Lamb, Spouts " rare Ben Jonson," or with Sam Learns to despise the great world's sham, And so grows stronger. THE TRUE BIBLIOPHILE Ah! though you have all Rosinantes Were ever drawn for blithe Cervantes, And all the text of all the Dantes, 'T will little profit If you shall feel not in the Knight The pathos of his human plight, Or share not in the Stygian sight The terror of it. 3i7 3 1 8 " pell£as et m£lisande '■ "PELLfiAS ET MfiLISANDE" (INSCRIBED TO MISS MARY GARDEN IN ADMIRATION OF HER BEAUTIFUL IMPERSONATION) What is there more of love to tell in rhyme Than in this piteous chronicle is told— This year-long epic of the heart, as old As ivied tower deep in dust and grime, And yet as new as the young leaves that climb To lovers' casements? 'T is a tale of gold— Crown, ring, and tresses — slipping from the hold Of woodland innocence, the sport of Time. Read the dark legend told in terms of light : The mist-hung sea ; the somber forest noon ; Swift clouds of peril ; twilight's closing gate To what were prison but for the amorous moon ; Then weep, with tears that make us wise, her plight Who, dove-like, flutters in the net of fate. WATERS OF SONG 319 WATERS OF SONG Time was when Avon's unrenowned stream, Save for its beauty, unregarded flowed ; Once Arno even as other rivers glowed, For then it had not mirrored Dante's dream. How vague the gray Levantine sea did seem Ere Homer charted all the stormy road! The Psalmist who by Babylon abode Forever linked with grief the willow's gleam. Think you there are no other waters fit To be rechristened with a poet's name? Is Nature bankrupt? — man's last beacon lit? Believe it never! Unborn bards such fame On undiscovered rivers may bestow As shall to fable banish Nile and Po. SAINT- GAUDENS: AN ODE TO FRANK HALL SCOTT SAINT-GAUDENS* BORN IN DUBLIN, IRELAND, MARCH 1, 1848 — DIED IN CORNISH, NEW HAMPSHIRE, AUGUST 3, 1907 Uplands of Cornish ! Ye, that yesterday Were only beauteous, now are consecrate. Exalted are your humble slopes, to mate Proud Settignano and Fiesole, For here new-born is Italy's new birth of Art. In your beloved precincts of repose Now is the laurel lovelier than the rose. Henceforth there shall be seen An unaccustomed glory in the sheen Of yonder lingering river, overleant with green, Whose fountains hither happily shall start, Like eager Umbrian rills, that kiss and part, For that their course will run One to the Tiber, to the Arno one. O hills of Cornish ! chalice of our spilled wine, Ye shall become a shrine, * Read, in part, November 20, 1909, in New York at the pre- sentation to Mrs. Saint-Gaudens of the gold medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters awarded to the sculptor's work. 22 325 326 SAINT-GAUDENS For now our Donatello is no more ! He who could pour His spirit into clay, has lost the clay he wore, And Death, again, at last, Has robbed the Future to enrich the Past. He, who so often stood At joyous worship in your Sacred Wood, He shall be missed As autumn meadows miss the lark, Where Summer and Song were wont to keep melodious tryst. His fellows of the triple guild shall hark For his least whisper in the starry dark. Here, in his memory, Youth shall dedicate Laborious years to that unfolding which is Fate. By Beauty's faintest gleams She shall be followed over glades and streams. And all that is shall be forgot For what is not ; And every common path shall lead to dreams. 11 Poet of Cornish, comrade of his days : When late we met, With his remembrance how thine eyes were wet ! Thy faltering voice his praise SAINT-GAUDENS 327 More eloquently did rehearse Than on his festal day thy liquid verse. Since once to love is never to forget, Let us defer our plaint of private sorrow Till some less unethereal to-morrow. To-day is not the poet's shame But the dull world's ; not yet Shall it be kindled at the living flame Whose treasured embers Ever the world remembers. Not so the sculptor — his immediate bays No hostile climate withers or delays. Let us forego the debt of friendly duty ; A nation newly is bereft of beauty. Sing with me now his undef erred fame, — For Time impatient is to set This jewel in his country's coronet. When all men with new accent speak his name, And all are blended in a vast regret, There is no place for grief of thee or me : One reckons not the rivers in the sea. Sing not to-day the hearth despoiled of fire : Ours be the trumpet, not the lyre. Death makes the great The treasure and the sorrow of the State. Nor is it less bereaved By what is unachieved. 328 SAINT-GA UDENS Oh, what a miracle is Fame ! We carve some lately unfamiliar name Upon an outer wall, as challenge to the sun ; And half its claim Is deathless work undone. Although the story of our art is brief, Thrice in the record, at a fadeless leaf, Falls an unfinished chapter ; thrice the flower Closed ere the noonday glory drank its dew ; Thrice have we lost of promise and of power — The torch extinguished at its brightest hour — His comrades all, for whom he twined the rue. But though they stand authentic and apart This is in our new land the first great grief of Art. in Yet, sound for him the trumpet, not the lyre — Him of the ardent, not the smouldering, fire : Whose boyhood knew full streets of martial song When the slow purpose of the throng Flamed to a new religion, and a soul. He knew the lure of flags ; caught first the far drums' roll; Thrilled with the flash that runs Along the slanted guns ; SAINT-GAUDENS 329 Kept time to the determined feet That ominously beat Upon the city's floor The firm, mad rhythm of war. With envious enterprise He saw the serried eyes That, level to the hour's demand, Looked straight toward Duty's promised land. Then to be boy was to be prisoned fast With the great world of battle sweeping past, While every hill and hollow Heard the heart-melting music, calling ' ' Follow !" The day o'er-brimmed with longing and the night With beckoning dreams of many a dauntless fight, As though doomed heroes summoned us to see Thermopylae and Marathons. — Ah, had he known who was to be Their laureate in bronze ! But who can read To-morrow in To-day? Fame makes no bargain with us, will not say Do thus, and thou shalt gain, or thus and lose ; Nay, will not let us for another choose The trodden and the lighted way. She burns the accepted pattern, breaks the mould, Prefers the novel to the old, 330 SAINT-GAUDENS Revels in secrets and surprise ; And while the wise Seek knowledge at the sages' gate The schoolboy by a truant path keeps rendezvous with Fate. IV This is the honey in the lion's jaws : That from the reverberant roar And wrack of savage war Art saves a sweet repose, by mystic laws Not by long labor learned But by keen love discerned ; For this it bears the palm : To show the storms of life in terms of calm. Not what he knew, but what he felt, Gave secret power to this Celt. Master of harmony, his sense could find A bond of likeness among things diverse, And could their forms in beauty so immerse That to the enchanted mind Ideal and real seem a single kind. Behold our gaunt Crusader, grimly brave, The swooping eagle in his face, SAINT-GAUDENS 331 The very genius of command, And her not less, with her imperious hand, — The herald Victory holding equal pace. Not trulier in the blast Moves prow with mast ; Line mates with flowing line, as wave with following wave — Rider and homely horse Intent upon their course As though she went not with them. Near or far One is their import : she the dream, the star — And he the prose, the iron thrust — of War. So, on the traveled verge Of storied Boston's green acropolis That sculptured music, that immortal dirge That better than towering shaft Has fitly epitaphed The hated ranks men did not dare to hiss ! When Duty makes her clarion call to Ease Let her repair and point to this : Why seek another clime? Why seek another place? We have no Parthenon, but a nobler frieze,- 332 SAINT-GA UDENS Since sacrifice than worship nobler is. It sings — the anthem of a rescued race ; It moves — the epic of a patriot time, And each heroic figure makes a martial rhyme. How like ten thousand treads that little band, Fit for the van of armies ! What command Sits in that saddle ! What renouncing will ! What portent grave of firm-confronted ill ! And as a cloud doth hover over sea, Born from its waters and returning there, Fame, sprung from thoughts of mortals, swims the air And gives them back her memories, deathlessly. VI I wept by Lincoln's pall when children's tears, That saddest of the nation's years, Were reckoned in the census of her grief ; And, flooding every eye, Of low estate or high, The crystal sign of sorrow made men peers. The raindrop on the April leaf Was not more unashamed. Hand spoke to hand A universal language ; and whene'er The hopeful met 't was but to mingle their despair. SAINT-GAUDENS 333 Our yesterday's war-widowed land To-day was orphaned. Its victorious voice Lost memory of the power to rejoice. For he whom all had learned to love was prone. The weak had slain the mighty ; by a whim The ordered edifice was overthrown And lay in futile ruin, mute and dim; O Death, thou sculptor without art, What didst thou to the Lincoln of our heart ? Where was the manly eye That conquered enmity? Where was the gentle smile So innocent of guile — The message of good-will To all men, whether good or ill ? Where shall we trace Those treasured lines, half humor and half pain, That made him doubly brother to the race? For these, O Death, we search thy mask in vain ! Yet shall the Future be not all bereft : Not without witness shall its eyes be left. The soul, again, is visible through Art, Servant of God and Man. The immortal part 334 SAINT-GAUDENS Lives in the miracle of a kindred mind, That found itself in seeking for its kind. The humble by the humble is discerned ; And he whose melancholy broke in sunny wit Could be no stranger unto him who turned From sad to gay, as though in jest he learned Some mystery of sorrow. It was writ : The hand that shapes us Lincoln must be strong As his that righted our bequeathed wrong; The heart that shows us Lincoln must be brave, An equal comrade unto king or slave ; The mind that gives us Lincoln must be clear As that of seer To fathom deeps of faith abiding under tides of fear. What wonder Fame, impatient, will not wait To call her sculptor great Who ke.eps for us in bronze the soul that saved the State ! VII Most fair his dreams and visions when he dwelt His spirit's comrade. Meager was his speech Of things celestial, save in line and mould ; But sudden cloud-rift may reveal a star SAINT-GAUDENS 335 As surely as the unimpeded sky. The deer has its deep forest of retreat : Shall the shy spirit have none? Be, then, The covert unprofaned wherein withdrew The soul that 'neath his pensive ardor lay? Find the last frontier — Man is still unknown ground. Things true and beautiful made a heaven for him. Childhood, the sunrise of the spirit world, Yielded its limpid secrets to his eye. He was in Friendship what he was in Art — Wax to receive and metal to endure. Looking upon his warriors facing death, Heroes seem human, such as all might be — Yet not without the consecrating will ! Age is serener by his honoring ; And when he sought the temple's inmost fane The angels of his Adoration lent Old hopes new glory, and his reverent hand Wrought like Beato at the face of Christ. But what is this that, neither Hope nor Doom, Waits with eternal patience at a tomb? A brooding spirit without name or date, 336 SAINT-GAUDENS Or race, or nation, or belief; Beyond the reach of joy or grief, Above the plane of wrong or right ; A riddle only to the sorrowless ; the mate Of all the elements in calm — still winter night, Sea after tempest, time-scarred mountain height ; Passive as Buddha, single as the Sphinx, — Yet neither that sweet god that seems to smile On mortal good and guile, Nor wide-eyed monster that into Egypt sinks And Beast and Nature links ; But something human, with an inward sense Profound, but nevermore intense; And though it doth not stoop to teach, It will with each Attuned to beauty hold a muted speech ; In its Madonna-lidded meditation Not more a mystery than a revelation ; Listen ! It doth to Man the Universe relate. O Sentinel before the Future's Gate ! If thou be Fate, art thou not still our Fate? For those who fain would live, but must breathe on Prisoners of this prosaic age — Ah, who for them shall read that page Since winged Shelley and wise Emerson are gone? SAINT-GAUDENS 337 VIII How shall we honor him and in his place His comrades of the Old and Happy Race Whose Art is refuge Sorrow comes not nigh, Though Art be twin to Sorrow? They reply From all the centuries they outsoar, From every shore Of that three-continented sea To which the streams of our antiquity Fell swift and joyously: "How, but to live with Beauty?" Across our Western world without surcease How many a column sounds the name of Greece ! The sun loth-lingering on the crest of Rome, Finds here how many an imitative dome ! O classic quarries of our modern thought, What blasphemies in stone from you are wrought ! For though to Law, Religion, or the State, These stones to Beauty first are dedicate, Yet to what purpose, if we but revere The temple, not the goddess? — if whene'er The magic of her deep obsession seem To master any soul, we call it dream? Come, let us live with Beauty! 338 SAINT-GAUDENS Her name is ever on our lips ; but who Holds Beauty as the fairest bride to woo? The gods oft wedded mortals : now alone May man the Chief Immortal make his own. To Time each day adds increment of age But Beauty ne'er grows old. There is no gauge To count the glories of the counted hours. Flowers die, but not the ecstasy of flowers. Come, let us live with Beauty! What infinite treasure hers ! and what small need Of our cramped natures, whose misguided greed, Hound-like, pursues false trails of Luxury Or sodden Comfort ! Who shall call us free- Content if but some casual wafture come From fields Elysian, where the valleys bloom With life delectable? Such happy air Should be the light we live in ; unaware It should be breathed, till man retrieves the joy Philosophy has wrested from the boy. Come, let us live with Beauty! Who shall put limit to her sovereignty? Who shall her loveliness define? Think you the Graces only three? — The Muses only nine? Beyond our star-sown deep of space SAINT-GAUDENS 339 Where, as for solace, huddles world with world (A human instinct in the primal wrack), Mayhap there is a dark and desert place Of deeper awe With but one outer star, there hurled By cataclysm and there held in leash by law : If lonely be that star, 't is not for Beauty's lack. She was ere there was any need of Truth, She was ere there was any stir of Love ; And when Man came, and made her world uncouth With sin, and cities, and the gash of hills And forests, and a thousand brutish ills, Regardless of his ruth She hid her wounds and gave him, from above, The magic all his happiness is fashioned of. IX Knights of the five arts that our sculptor prized : How shall ye honor him and, in his place, Those others of the Old and Happy Race Who lived for beauty, and the golden lure despised ? Painter of music, Architect of song, Sculptor in color, Poet in clay and bronze, 340 SAINT-GAUDENS And thou whose unsubstantial fancy builds Abiding symphonies from stone and space ! Mount ye to large horizons : ever be As avid of other beauty as your own. As nations greater are than all their states, More than the sum of all the arts is Art. High are their clear commands, but Art herself Makes holier summons. Ever open stand The doors of her free temple. At her shrine In service of the world, whose hurt she heals, Ye, too, physicians of the mind and heart — Shall ye not take the Hippocratic oath ? Have ye not heard the voices of the night Call you from kindred, comfort, sloth and praise, To lead into the light the willing feet That grope for order, harmony and joy? — To reach full hands of bounty unto those Who starve for beauty in our glut of gold? How shall we honor him whom we revere 1 — Lover of all the arts and of his land? How, but to cherish Beauty's every flower? — How, but to live with Beauty, and so be Apostles of Rejoicing to mankind? NIAV 1 \% LIBRARY OF CONGRESS