PS 3505 
 .R95 U5 
 1907 
 Copy 1 
 
Class _^^_,£li2vr 
 
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 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
UNDER THE LAUREL 
 
By the Same Author 
 
 PiCTORIS CARMINA 
 
 A Painter's Moods 
 Tales in Metre 
 
Under the Laurel 
 
 By 
 Frederic Crowninshield 
 
 New York 
 
 Dodd, Mead & Company 
 1907 
 
fuff^^-fiY 3' COMGRESS j 
 iwu Coole? P.acelvecf i 
 OCT 23 »90^ 
 S(^py^s^f Entry 
 
 ' CLASS A XXc, No. 
 OOFY B. 
 
 
 Copyright, 1907, by 
 DoDD, Mead & Company 
 
 Publufud October y igoy 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 «* Plant More Laurels " 3 
 
 Concessions 4 
 
 Not Too High 5 
 
 The Peace of Spring 6 
 
 " First Painter to the King " 7 
 
 A Tomb in the Certosa of Pavia 14 
 
 Renascence 17 
 
 To Filippo Lippi 17 
 
 A July Dawn 19 
 
 A Painter's Prayer 20 
 
 Song — With My Lady 21 
 
 Song— In White 21 
 
 Aria 22 
 
 Bicycling 23 
 
 In Torrid Days 23 
 
 Commensurate 24 
 
 Orison 24 
 
 Song— What Wilt Thou Bring ? 25 
 
 The Nymph and the Swain 26 
 
 The Skipper's Song 27 
 
 The Ringed Moon 28 
 
 Distinction 29 
 
 The Armistice 30 
 
 No More! 31 
 
 A Comparison , 32 
 
 The Metropolis 33 
 
 After Sundown 33 
 
 Let the Past Go ! 34 
 
 Dead! 35 
 
 Rest in Peace ! 39 
 
 The Last Gleam 40 
 
 V 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Winter in the Streets 40 
 
 December Sabbath 41 
 
 Sweet April Days 42 
 
 Corydon Sings 43 
 
 Spring Madrigal 43 
 
 Parley with the Winds 44 
 
 White Noon 45 
 
 The Thirst of Age 46 
 
 The Mother 47 
 
 Moriturus 48 
 
 By an Obscure Grave 49 
 
 New- Year in the Studio 49 
 
 To a Year's Mate 52 
 
 SONNETS 
 
 " Dio mela Diede, Guai a Chi la Tocca " 55 
 
 To Thee, O Sun ! 55 
 
 The Taint of Gold 56 
 
 A Fallen, Trusted Friend 57 
 
 The Declaration of Independence 60 
 
 Russia- Japan, 1904 60 
 
 Righteous Wrath ? 61 
 
 Eclipse • . 61 
 
 Revulsion 62 
 
 The Light Beyond 63 
 
 Golden Silence 63 
 
 On Reading Whittier's Life 64 
 
 Veteran Bores 64 
 
 A Masquerader 65 
 
 A Visitant 65 
 
 On Springtide Eves 66 
 
 Oh, Heed Not Soul ! 66 
 
 Ars Immortalis 67 
 
 Landor 68 
 
 To Tolstoi 68 
 
 Some Japanese Paintings 69 
 
 Guido's Aurora "Jo 
 
 On a Landscape by Old Harpignies 70 
 
 The Rich Man's Need 71 
 
CONTENTS vii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 From Oblivion 71 
 
 Ancestry 72 
 
 To Passata 73 
 
 Mourners 74 
 
 From Paradise 74 
 
 Lines Written in Stockbridge 75 
 
 The Golden Bond 77 
 
 O South ! 78 
 
 The Remedy 79 
 
 And Then ? 79 
 
 Voyages 80 
 
 If I Might Kiss Thy Soul 80 
 
 In Autumn 81 
 
 The Bards Endure 82 
 
 Not Youth Alone 82 
 
 The Touchstone 83 
 
 Living Classicism 83 
 
 " The Last Straw " 84 
 
 Life's Autumn 85 
 
 Studio-Bound 85 
 
 Vexations 86 
 
 Murat's death 86 
 
 « The Social Fabric " 87 
 
 E. H. W 88 
 
 Saint Francis 88 
 
 To Berenice . 89 
 
 At Dead of Night 89 
 
 Estimates 9° 
 
 The "Century" 91 
 
 Heroes? 9^ 
 
 To Age 92 
 
 At Vespers 92 
 
 The Best Book 93 
 
 Chill April 93 
 
 Better So ! 94 
 
 Compactness 95 
 
 " Fall Campaigns " — An Orison 95 
 
 Politics 96 
 
 At Election Time 9^ 
 
viu CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Lonely Christmas 97 
 
 Roman Pictures 97 
 
 The Archer 98 
 
 De Senectute 99 
 
 CHARACTER STUDIES AND NARRATIVE POEMS 
 
 The Model 103 
 
 Nuptial Choice 108 
 
 In an Artist's Studio no 
 
 Concerning Women ill 
 
 On a Hillside . 135 
 
 Hubert and Lois 135 
 
 Victims, 1861--65 158 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 "PLANT MORE LAURELS" 
 
 I" Defense of Poesy " ; Sir Philip Sidney.] 
 
 Let not their noxious breath, 
 Whose speech would compass Poesy's death, 
 Upon her crystal fountains blow ; 
 Rather more laurels plant, he saith, 
 The knightliest of all our white- dawn singers, 
 The kingliest of all our springtide bringers 
 Of lyric garlands, which have burgeoned so, 
 That none more sumptuous in the world-wide mead- 
 ows grow. 
 
 Oh, more, more laurels plant 
 Along the purfled vales the Muses haunt, 
 That bards may wear their precious leaves. 
 And share the crowns that Honor weaves 
 For glorious captains who in triumph shine 
 Upon grim legioned fields, or fields of keel-churned 
 brine. 
 
 More laurels plant, oh, more ! 
 That all the winged bards who soar 
 Above the highest human worth 
 May show their godlike birth 
 To all on earth ; 
 Nor mid the uncrowned throng unhonored go. 
 Oh, plant more laurels ! let them grow 
 Up to the very marge of sempiternal snow. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 Aye, let them massy blow 
 In every sweet Tempean glade, 
 Until they glisten in the sunlight's glow, 
 
 While from the gracious shade 
 Their glassing, satiate leaves will backward fling 
 The azurn tints of unincumbered skies, 
 And all the dales with heavenly tinctures ring ! 
 Oh, plant more laurels that will never fade 
 Upon those brows the Gods immortalize ! 
 
 CONCESSIONS 
 
 Success in the forums of Law — say, what doth it mean, 
 
 White Angel of Truth? 
 Adjustment of conscience to end, of the soul to the 
 sheen 
 
 Of delectable gold ! 
 Success in the chambers of State — say, what doth it 
 cost, 
 
 O Angel ? Forsooth 
 The paring of precious ideals, dear liberty lost, 
 
 Sweet purity sold ! 
 Success in the popular pulpit — say, what is its price, 
 
 Grave Angel of Truth ? 
 A pruning of primitive speech to a taste supernice. 
 
 To Fashion's decree ! 
 Say, who is thy servant, O white One, that curbs not 
 his tongue. 
 
 That in age as in youth 
 Stands loyal — say, is it not he who sings and has sung 
 
 All things as they be ? 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 NOT TOO HIGH ! 
 
 Fierce eagles gauge the limit of their flight 
 
 into the light ; 
 Nor would they vainly wheel to top the sun : 
 Beneath the snow-capped peaks their race is run, 
 
 But yet they soar above all human sight. 
 
 Pale sands define the frontiers of the sea : 
 
 whether it be 
 The glassy duplicate of heaven's blue dome, 
 Or swarthy surge inwove with angry foam, 
 
 It floods and ebbs within its boundary. 
 
 The dark, perennial pine doth not aspire 
 
 into the higher 
 Spaces where gleams the white, continual snow : 
 And though it scoff at weakling growths below. 
 
 It doth not blight itself in vain desire. 
 
 There seems to be unto the human soul 
 
 no constant goal : 
 It looks into unfathomable skies — 
 The far-beyond where its ideal lies — 
 
 And hopes to win therein its aureole. 
 
 Alas ! the golden crown may be so high, 
 
 that if man try 
 To reach and wear this pure celestial thing, 
 He needs must fall with displumed, broken wing, 
 
 And in a living tomb unguerdoned lie. 
 
6 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 Is it not well in all our flights to know 
 
 that here below — 
 Whatever bliss may be in heavenly life — 
 The human crown is worth the human strife, 
 
 That 'yond the peaks 'twere barrenness to go? 
 
 God gave fair land, and beauteous sea and sky ; 
 
 oh, therefore why 
 
 Should he who has ideals these gifts contemn — 
 
 These jewels in his earthly diadem, 
 If he but make his earthly standard high ? 
 
 'Twere vain, I think, to raise ideals so, 
 
 that all we owe 
 
 To God seems but a praiseless, paltry thing ; 
 
 Oh, let us soar on sagest, human wing, 
 Until angelic vans in Heaven we grow ! 
 
 THE PEACE OF SPRING 
 
 Fair are the hills with buds that tint the ramage gray, 
 Gently the spring wears on, as winter wanes away. 
 O God, grant me thy Peace ! 
 
 Flushed is the orchard's bloom upon the enamored 
 
 sky, 
 Sweetest its fragrance sweet, before its blossoms die. 
 O God, grant me thy Peace ! 
 
 Soft are the issuing leaves upon the flaring elms, 
 The lilac's perfume dense my spirit overwhelms. 
 O God, grant me thy Peace ! 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 7 
 
 Hushed are the quartered winds ; the silvery sunshine 
 
 sheens 
 Upon the spruces dark, upon their fresh-tipped greens. 
 O God, grant me thy Peace ! 
 
 Pallid the young vines' leaf, faint-fringed with tender 
 
 pink, 
 All Nature is divine, my swooning senses sink. 
 O God, grant me thy Peace ! 
 
 Mute is the balsamed air, save when some birdling 
 
 sings 
 Songs of the coming life, that quickening radiance 
 
 brings. 
 O God, grant me thy Peace ! 
 
 "FIRST PAINTER TO THE KING" 
 
 [Nicolas Poussin] 
 
 Though Norman bom his genius winged its youthful 
 
 flight to Rome, 
 And there it cast its roving plumes to make itself a 
 
 home 
 Amid the maze of mighty works beneath the mightier 
 
 dome. 
 
 It was a time when thither flocked the pundits of the 
 
 Earth 
 To gaze upon old upheaved things, to which the art 
 
 lent worth. 
 Or set in type pontifical to what their brains gave 
 
 birth. 
 
8 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 And he a seeker too for truth, examined, probed, and 
 
 drew 
 The relics of an antique world, which he deemed far 
 
 more true 
 Than all the prized ^^ vaghezza'' sweets, or the ^^fa 
 
 presto " crew. 
 
 He measured fair Antinous, and limned in full detail 
 Praeneste's famed mosaic floor, and matched the fresco 
 
 pale 
 Where Peleus takes his nereid bride, enveloped in her 
 
 veil. 
 
 And what Vitruvius did write, Alberti did compile, 
 And great da Vinci's tract he read; while leisure to 
 
 beguile 
 He mused upon the classic page to dignify his style. 
 
 Yet most of all, I deem, he loved to watch the tawny 
 
 flow 
 Of Tiber coursing to blue seas beyond Saint Angelo — 
 The type of those Arcadian streams that in his pic- 
 tures show — 
 
 Or wander o'er the arch-bespanned and melancholy 
 
 waste « 
 
 So dear to every pensive eye, or satisfy his taste 
 Amid the sombrous ilex groves, or 'neath the columns 
 
 chaste 
 
 Of Sibyl's temple crowning vales through which the 
 
 torrents foam, 
 O'erbrowed by immemorial cliffs (where poets built 
 
 their home) 
 To form the gentle Anio that wests its way to Rome. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 9 
 
 From out the ranks of humble folk, he chose himself 
 
 a wife, 
 And in his unpretentious house he led the tranquil life, 
 Dispensing with all servile aid to hold aloof all strife. 
 
 For fifteen years he never swerved from his laborious 
 
 aim, 
 Until his mastery conquered him a far transalpine 
 
 fame. 
 Till out his natal Northern land from royal lips there 
 
 came 
 
 The blandishments of gold and state, and every ease- 
 ful thing. 
 
 If he would leave his Roman life, and to gay Paris 
 bring 
 
 His chastened art, and title take <* First Painter to the 
 King." 
 
 *' A thousand crowns for traveling, a thousand crowns 
 
 a year. 
 If thou wilt pass from poor estate to wealth that waits 
 
 thee here, 
 And all the noble works to do, that to thy guild are 
 
 dear." 
 
 And unelated Poussin heard, and turned it in his mind : 
 ** Why should I choose imagined joys for those I leave 
 
 behind. 
 Or strut a painter-prince abroad, when in my home 
 
 enshrined 
 
lo MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 Abides sweet Peace a certainty ? " And so two years 
 
 were spent 
 With this or that excuse until he could no more 
 
 invent : 
 Then with reluctant journeying to Paris north he 
 
 went. 
 
 There Richelieu embraced him, and Royalty did deign 
 To bid <* Sieur" Poussin welcome at the lordly Saint 
 
 Germain, 
 And in the presence of its Court his genius did main- 
 tain. 
 
 Returning to his sumptuous house, full well-equipped, 
 
 behold ! 
 A velvet purse distended with ten thousand crowns of 
 
 gold; 
 Oh, what a garniture compared with austere ways of 
 
 old! 
 
 *' It is a little palace fair — for I must call it so — 
 With every need, and even wood (he wrote with pen 
 
 aglow) 
 And wine expressed from luscious grapes two mellow 
 
 years ago ! " 
 
 The warrant signed by royal hand brave Poussin did 
 create 
 
 *' First Painter to his Majesty," with power to reg- 
 ulate 
 
 The embellishment by art and craft of all the King's 
 estate. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS ii 
 
 And noble patrons decked his life with flowers, lest 
 
 should irk 
 Their gilded importunities for famed **Sieur" Pous- 
 
 sin's work, 
 Or all the mean annoyances that 'neath the laurel 
 
 lurk. 
 
 A "Holy Supper" this one asked to decorate his 
 
 shrine, 
 And Jesuits craved the " Miracle " of Xavier the 
 
 divine, 
 While others begged for every sort of secular design, 
 
 Not heeding the full-weighted task to paint with his 
 own hand 
 
 Some twoscore panels for the Louvre, with patent to 
 command 
 
 The brush and brains of all the arts — a grieved, cabal- 
 ling band 
 
 Exasperate to see their work upvamped by one, for- 
 sooth, 
 
 Who had but scant diplomacy : for speech seems oft 
 uncouth 
 
 Upon a tongue peremptory, that trumpets out the truth. 
 
 And all the while for wife and home, and Latin sun 
 
 he sighs 
 (He fears the sullen influence of gray, transalpine 
 
 skies), 
 His loved antique, sweet classic groves — and what 
 
 " these Goths " despise. 
 
 To be avenged upon the rout who in his eyes blas- 
 pheme, 
 
12 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 He paints an allegory clear of which the haughty 
 
 theme 
 Is Hercules triumphant o'er the Vices he did deem 
 
 Were in his foes personified — crass Ignorance and 
 
 Spite. 
 Alas, he never dreamed his sweets might prove as 
 
 aconite 
 On other lips ! that he himself was moulder of his 
 
 plight ! 
 
 Nay, e'en the Intendant of the King did scarcely dare 
 
 to tell 
 The royal wish — but why describe the mood wherein 
 
 he fell ; 
 Is not a soul unparadised, forsooth in very hell ? 
 
 And so he fashioned " pressing needs " (half true) 
 
 for grace to leave 
 His "palace in the Tuileries " — nought but a short 
 
 reprieve 
 From his accepted stewardship was all he asked. 
 
 Conceive 
 
 A longing heart once more among the things it holds 
 most dear, 
 
 An untormented, tranquil home, a heavenly atmos- 
 phere ; 
 
 What think you ? would it back to hell ? I judge the 
 answer clear. 
 
 Oh, what a joy it was again to see the poppy bloom 
 In scarlet livery against some gray, dismantled tomb, 
 Or hear the plash of argent jet beneath the cypress 
 gloom I 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 13 
 
 Oh, what a joy it was to face transfigured toward the 
 East, 
 
 And watch Gennaro's bluish peak as silver dawn in- 
 creased. 
 
 Or note it pass to blushing rose as golden eve sur- 
 ceased I 
 
 \ hat bliss to stand on Pincian hill and gaze into the 
 West 
 
 Where distant pine-trees spread their copes above the 
 purple crest, 
 
 And great Saint Peter props the sky in glory mani- 
 fest ! 
 
 Here Poussin lived yet twenty years without a sole 
 
 regret 
 For that small palace 'yond the Alps, and all the 
 
 splendid fret 
 That comes to him whose hungry heart on blazonry 
 
 is set. 
 
 Nor cared he whit for large returns ; in age he asked 
 
 no more 
 For canvases than in his youth j *'it was a man's 
 
 devoir 
 To gauge emolument by pains " — for fame he did 
 
 ignore. 
 
 His life, alike the art he lived, was governed by re- 
 straint — 
 
 An art both orderly and sweet, and free from every 
 taint 
 
 Of those improvisations the Barocco men did paint. 
 
14 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 And when at length the eye congealed betokened he 
 was dead, 
 
 Reft friends did weep, and at their task perfunctory 
 priests did shed 
 
 Hot, unaccustomed tears about this late-born Gre- 
 cian's bed. 
 
 O Reader, if incredulous, consult the dighted page 
 On which he brushed his classic poems — so musical 
 
 and sage — 
 That hold their own on walls elect from Louvre to 
 
 Hermitage. 
 
 A TOMB IN THE CERTOSA OF PAVIA 
 
 [Ludovico Sforza — il " Moro," 1451-1508, Beatrice d'Este, 
 1475-1497.] 
 
 What peaceful majesty, what sweet repose 
 Within thy predilect Carthusian shrine, 
 O Moro vanquished, vanquisher, is thine ! 
 While by thy side lies Beatrice divine. 
 
 And though it be that no recorder knows 
 What earth assimilates thy scanty dust. 
 
 Whether some bleak transalpine tempest blows 
 About thy charnel-house, or, as we trust 
 
 Thou sleepest in the warmth of native air, 
 
 Thy spirit bides within this convent's pale — 
 This carven casket on a mighty scale, 
 This jewel-case of stone ; 
 Nor yet alone. 
 
 Nor yet alone ; but an immortal pair. 
 
 Proud Milan's sumptuous Lord, and Beatrice the fair ! 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 15 
 
 Aye, "vanquished, vanquisher! " for thou dost reign 
 Through what Rapacity hath grudging spared ; 
 And though but time-worn tithings we have shared 
 Of thine estate, yet have these shards declared 
 
 The truth of what would seem but boasting vain. 
 Yea, all thy works were incensed with the taste 
 
 That breathed itself abroad the Lombard plain, 
 So delicate, so fanciful and chaste ! 
 
 Yea, all thy works were worthy of thy care — 
 Parchment or bronze or stone — all, all impart 
 Thine ardent, universal love of Art, 
 Which for thy faults atone. 
 Not thee alone. 
 
 Alone we praise ; but a transcendent pair, 
 
 Gay Milan's Lord of feste, and Beatrice the fair ! 
 
 The gracious Muses at thy bidding came, 
 
 And garlanded thy days with rarest flowers 
 Unfolding 'neath the warm Parnassian showers — 
 Choice minstrelsy and lore and all that dowers 
 
 The hfe complete. Yet if the lesser name 
 Of thy deft celebrants be somewhat dim. 
 
 Time amplifies the rightful, brilliant fame 
 Of two who glitter as the cherubim — 
 
 The architect who set in sapphire air 
 
 Blest Mary's dome, and he who limned below 
 On fading wall the great <* Cenacolo," 
 To every Christian known. 
 To thee alone 
 
 Not all the praise ; but to the radiant pair, 
 
 Moro the gallant Lord, and Beatrice the fair ! 
 
 Dear Beatrice, so childlike, yet so old 
 
 When thou wert called upon to helm the state ! 
 
1 6 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 Nay, not a jot of all the joys that wait 
 
 On youth's caprice wouldst thou forsooth abate — 
 
 Ribbons of irised hues, brocades of gold. 
 The flush of venery, the zest of dance 
 
 And joust and song, and pleasures manifold ! 
 
 But yet with highest thoughts didst thou enhance 
 
 Thy girlish life, since thou wouldst freely share 
 Thine hours with artist, humanist, and bard, 
 Who gave thee of their best — a laureled guard 
 Encircling thy sure throne. 
 Not thee alone. 
 
 Alone we hymn ; but a resplendent pair, 
 
 Moro the gala Lord, and Beatrice the fair I 
 
 Blithe, lovely bride, thank God thou didst not hear, 
 Stark in thy tomb, the northern vulture scream 
 From off the Alps, nor see the ribald stream 
 Of foreigners defile thy cult supreme ! 
 
 Thank God thou couldst not shed a piteous tear 
 When the foul herd thy lord did alienate 
 
 To gnaw his heart out in a dungeon drear ! 
 
 And though he held the honor of the state 
 
 Mere servile mesh a foeman to ensnare. 
 
 Still do we weep (albeit we curse a crime 
 That surely draws the wreak of vengeful time), 
 And his great sin condone. 
 Not him alone. 
 
 Alone we weep ; but a pathetic pair, 
 
 Moro the exiled Lord, and Beatrice the fair ! 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 RENASCENCE 
 
 Sweet is the mountain-ash 
 
 When May- month airs are blowing ; 
 With dew the furrows flash 
 
 When early swains are sowing. 
 
 Fragrant my new-born dreams 
 When crabbed gales are leaving ; 
 
 With pearls my fancy gleams 
 
 When spring her mesh is weaving. 
 
 TO FILIPPO LIPPI 
 
 How you hearten, Fra Filippo, all your brothers of 
 
 the brush ! 
 Bless your red blood's gaillard globules, that improvi- 
 
 dently rush 
 Through your veins of fifty summers, seething through 
 
 the checks of age ! 
 You (so adipose and ugly, old enough to be more 
 
 sage). 
 Win a girl just past her twenties, amply fair, forsooth, 
 
 to pose 
 For the blessed Queen of Heaven, fragrant as an 
 
 earthly rose, 
 
1 8 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 That gives courage to us painters ! Is the brush for 
 
 aye to be 
 Of a flowering girlhood's fancy through our years the 
 
 guarantee ? 
 Was it eloquence that did it ? or the halo of the trade ? 
 Yes, methinks it was the poetry out of which we all 
 
 are made. 
 Carping dry-as-dusts do tell us that Lucrezia left her 
 
 cell 
 Since it irked her — no, she left it, all because she 
 
 loved you well. 
 Loved you as the women ever love the artist young or 
 
 old. 
 Love the poets, love the workers who transmute crass 
 
 clods to gold. 
 Fifty summers ? Why, Vasari tells us when at sixty- 
 three 
 (I for one believe dear Giorgio — he is true enough 
 
 for me) 
 You laid down the brush forever, 'twas the kinsman 
 
 of some love 
 Helped you with a pinch of powder to a cooler home 
 
 above. 
 More the pity, jocund Frate ! had you touched your 
 
 hundredth year, 
 Still you would have meshed the maidens, still have 
 
 rallied all us here, 
 Who perchance have passed our threescore — but why 
 
 draw a noxious line ? 
 Lines were naught to you my Frate — may our loves 
 
 endure as thine ! 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 19 
 
 A JULY DAWN 
 
 I rose at earliest dawn 
 And saw the hueless light, 
 Born of Cimmerian night, 
 Engendering the virid lawn, 
 
 The vale, the verdured hill. 
 All, all as pallid, rigid Death was still. 
 
 Then suddenly I heard 
 Upon the air serene. 
 From out the covert green. 
 The tuneless cherup of a bird — 
 First herald of the day — 
 Prime pursuivant of filmy morning gray. 
 
 Anon a burst of song, 
 An inharmonious quire. 
 From feathered throats that tire 
 Of shortest nights— and yet so long ! 
 While tardier chanticleer 
 Augments the strain with his shrill, lusty cheer. 
 
 It seemed as though the air 
 Were vocalized with joy — 
 Gladness without alloy — 
 As though it must for aye be fair ! 
 And as the day increased 
 How glad I was my travailed night had ceased ! 
 
20 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 I sat and gazed awhile, 
 Scenting the fresh-mown hay, 
 The breath of breaking day. 
 And sweets that morning doth compile. 
 Until at last the sun 
 Gave pledge his daily coursing had begun. 
 
 Whereat there was surcease 
 Of quiring matin bird — 
 Not e'en a trill was heard — 
 As golden glowed the clouds of fleece. 
 And as I pondered deep, 
 I fell into the sweetest second sleep. 
 
 A PAINTER'S PRAYER 
 
 Give me thy Strength, O Sun — thy glorious Strength, 
 That my dim work may shine, 
 And gleam divine. 
 As all thy lumined things throughout the length 
 
 And breadth of this fair span of Earth ! 
 Give me thy Gold, O Sun — thy burnished Gold, 
 That all the marveling peoples may behold 
 Upon the painted page my visions aureoled ! 
 Then would there be no dearth 
 Of puissant means wherewith to light 
 The bosky hills, the streams, the meadows dight. 
 
 Nor lack of austere shade 
 To drape in swarthy folds the gloomiest glade. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS zi 
 
 SONG— WITH MY LADY 
 
 'Neath the solemn willows shady, 
 
 Cooled by gracious breezes blowing, 
 On an olive stream soft flowing, 
 
 I am sailing with my Lady — 
 
 Lady of the sun-born tresses. 
 
 Lady with the eyes of heaven. 
 Fairer than the wonders seven, 
 
 Who doth madden whom she blesses. 
 
 O my heart be as the willows 
 
 Proof to sunlight's piercing glances ! 
 O my head be as the billows 
 
 Cool and quiet ! unavailing 
 
 Be the lures that Love enhances, 
 While I'm with my Lady sailing. 
 
 SONG— IN WHITE 
 
 The moon in a mist shines over the tree— 
 Faint white mist. 
 Great white moon — 
 I wait by the tryst till she cometh to me 
 Out of the mist — oh, when will it be ? 
 
22 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 Through the low light a pale form I see— 
 Low white light, 
 Sweet white form — 
 Slowly it moves o'er the glimmering lea 
 In all its wan beauty — oh, can it be she ? 
 
 Arms that are white as the froth of the sea ■ 
 Soft white froth, 
 Firm white arms — 
 Encircle my heart ; and mine girdle thee, 
 O Love of the Mist ! Yes, yes it is she ! 
 
 ARIA 
 
 The autumn sun had risen 
 
 From his chill, nocturnal prison, 
 
 And his rays were streaming, streaming 
 O'er meadows streaked with white ; 
 
 While my soul was dreaming, dreaming 
 Supernal day-dreams bright. 
 
 The sky was clear and pearly 
 
 In the crisping hours early. 
 And the trees were flaunting, flaunting 
 
 Their opulence of hue ; 
 While my heart was vaunting, vaunting 
 
 Its wealth of color, too. 
 
 And though the land was mellow 
 With vibrant reds and yellow. 
 
 And the welkin beaming, beaming, 
 Yet I thought of far-ofl" night ; 
 
 For I knew the gleaming, gleaming 
 Must end in hueless blight. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 23 
 
 BICYCLING 
 
 The Moon flies over roof-ridge and tree, 
 As I roll along on my wheel ; 
 
 And she alone keepeth pace with me, 
 As down the white road I steal. 
 
 IN TORRID DAYS 
 
 Come thou, East Wind ! 
 From over the fluent, ungrassed sea, 
 From over the plains unburnt, unbrowned, 
 From out of the barrens where fogs abound, 
 With rush of thy pinions gray and free, 
 
 Oh, come, dear wind ! 
 
 Pity a city's pain. 
 
 Pity the hands like fire, 
 
 Sate the palate's desire. 
 Bring with thee mists that taste of the brine, 
 Bring with thee chilling vapors benign, 
 
 Oh, bring sweet rain, 
 Giving the tossing ones yearned-for sleep ; 
 Oh, come, cool Wind, from the sunless deep I 
 
24 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 COMMENSURATE 
 
 Large life — large lines — a landscape broad and drear, 
 Wide, barren coasts, rough dunes heaped by the 
 
 surge. 
 And swart sea-waves that with swart heavens merge. 
 
 Large grief — large wastes — a great terrestrial mere, 
 A growth of stones, gray tombs in lieu of trees — 
 A Nation's dregs — the red blood's ashen lees. 
 
 Small life — small scope. At times I cry in pain, 
 **0 lovely hills, O daisy-dowered plain." 
 
 ORISON 
 
 So tender is my heart this mom, 
 
 O Lord of shine and rain, 
 I would not for the Inds take up 
 
 The intertangled skein 
 Of tedious toils and goodly works. 
 
 Until I here again 
 Outpour from its translucent depths 
 
 A pure, mellifluent strain. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, 25 
 
 SONG— WHAT WILT THOU BRING? 
 
 What wilt thou bring me, O Day ? 
 
 Wilt thou not say ? 
 Oh, bring me my love so sweet, so sweet, 
 With limbs like the willow, with gold-sandaled feet, 
 
 Bring her, dear Day ! 
 
 What wilt thou bring me, O Morn ? 
 
 Wilt thou adorn 
 My love with thine opals that gleam, that gleam. 
 And bring her enwreathed in her smile supreme, 
 
 Wilt thou, O Morn ? 
 
 What wilt thou bring me," O Noon ? 
 
 Grant me this boon — 
 Oh, bring me my love so white, so white. 
 With hair like the sun at the blue zenith's height, 
 
 Grant me this boon ! 
 
 What wilt thou bring me, kind Eve ? 
 
 Wilt thou not weave 
 A crown for my love so gay, so gay 
 As the bright saffron clouds that dapple the gray, 
 
 Wilt thou not. Eve ? 
 
 What wilt thou grant me, O Night ? 
 
 Grant me the light 
 From all thy clear lustres in all thy dim sphere, 
 That I may behold her so dear, so dear. 
 
 In thy shadows, O Night ! 
 
26 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 THE NYMPH AND THE SWAIN 
 
 She knew she loved him not 
 
 For her heart was far away 
 
 In a cool sequestered grot, 
 
 Where a lustrous triton lay. 
 
 Yet a love-fledged shaft she shot : 
 
 And the arrow smote a swain 
 
 A-piping midst the grain. 
 
 She gave her grace full sway 
 
 In this fascinating play, 
 The privilege of every sweet nymph's lot. 
 
 The skies were coaxing, too. 
 
 And the land of garden-hue, 
 
 While the madrigal he blew 
 
 As zenith-sun was hot. 
 
 Yet to his roundelay 
 
 She durst not carol " yea," 
 
 And would not murmur "nay," 
 
 Because, forsooth, she knew 
 
 Her nymphish heart was true — 
 But, oh, she loved this fascinating play ! 
 
 Consenting lips, conniving eyes. 
 If I should steal a kiss. 
 
 Ye would not overmoralize. 
 Ye would not weep, I wis. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 27 
 
 THE SKIPPER'S SONG 
 
 Bend sail, bend sail, my lads, bend all your sail ! 
 What if the scouring rack portend the gale. 
 Would ye for that, my lads, your canvas brail ? 
 
 Close haul, close haul, my lads, and pound the sea ! 
 Down, down the rail a-smoking through the lea, 
 No running soft on even keel for me ! 
 
 Send up topgallant yards afore and aft ! 
 Press, press more sail upon our eager craft ! 
 Have we not sea-foam to our heart's-ease quaffed? 
 
 Set, set the gaff my lads and royal sail, 
 Then let the sullen tempest snarl and wail ! 
 What lurid wave-caps ever turned ye pale ? 
 
 House not a mast, my lads, house not a mast ! 
 Heave on, my lads, heave on against the blast ! 
 Who minds the storm-curse though it be his last ? 
 
 Would ye wear ship, my lads, for very fear ? 
 Would ye beneath bare poles to safety steer. 
 Because your craven lives to ye are dear ? 
 
 Bend all your sail, my lads, bend all your sail ! 
 What if the shivering keel proclaims the gale, 
 Would ye for that, my lads, your canvas brail ? 
 
28 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 THE RINGED MOON 
 
 A great white circle surrounds the moon ; 
 
 What does it mean 
 
 This girdUng sheen ? 
 Does it mean a calm, or some huge typhoon, 
 The peace of the world, and a lasting boon, 
 Or a war of the nations bursting soon 
 
 Out of a sky serene ? 
 
 Can so mighty a light a portent be 
 
 To beings so small, 
 
 Vile worms that crawl ? 
 Can it be an omen to atoms like me — 
 A billionth drop in the welkin's sea? 
 Would a thing of so high a majesty 
 
 Mere midges deign to appal ? 
 
 Or might it be a heavenly sign 
 
 Beyond our ken, 
 
 And not for men, 
 A Seraph signaling orders divine 
 To hosts of angels in infinite line — 
 Orders too awful for hands like mine 
 
 To write with a conscious pen ? 
 
 Whate'er it may mean in Paradise, 
 'Tis a marvelous sight 
 This glorious night 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 29 
 
 To wondering, rapturing, mortal eyes, 
 This great bright circle that rings the skies, 
 While at its centre the cold moon lies 
 Emitting its glacial light ! 
 
 DISTINCTION 
 
 How glorious was the morning sun-sprent sheen 
 
 O'er the wide sweep of green ! 
 The dazzling clouds unfashioned to shed rain, 
 Existing but to paint the hills deep blue, 
 And all the vales with gold to intervein — 
 The gold that lifts the blue to higher hue 
 And is itself upraised to livelier strain. 
 Yet when I saw this later view, 
 These tender birch-leaves of so quiet tone 
 Swaying upon a sky of pearly gray — 
 Nimbus above ; but where it softly lay 
 Upon faint hills, a filmy argent zone — 
 I raptured at these tranquil tints alone ! 
 No urgent dark or light, 
 The highest quiet white 
 Being the pallid ramage of the girl-like tree. 
 
 That might a hamadryad be 
 Chitoned in sombre green — her white arms free. 
 Yea, when I saw this uninsistent scene, 
 
 So lovely in its low tonality. 
 The morning fulgent gold and blue and green 
 
 Seemed clamorous vulgarity. 
 
30 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 THE ARMISTICE 
 [An incident related by Gen'l John B. Gordon, C. S. A.] 
 
 Soft twilight dusked the waning April day, 
 The cleaving river lapsed its seaward way, 
 Now many unembattled years ago : 
 The Southern hills were dappled with the gray. 
 The Northern heights were variegate with blue. 
 
 And there was Peace, although 
 Grim bayonets glistened with the sanguine hue 
 Dyeing the clouds — the Sun-lord's retinue. 
 
 From off the slopes, by foot and hoof tramped bare, 
 Rolls the reverbing anthem of the North 
 With all the ravishment of trumpet blare ; 
 While from a hundred thousand throats pour forth 
 
 A simultaneous "hurrah" ! 
 Anon upon the facing austral crests 
 The Southern song its love of land protests 
 With fiery blast and hot, voluminous throat. 
 Ringing its music-challenge — note on note — 
 
 With chivalric *' huzza " ! 
 Then silence for a moment holds its sway, 
 And armed hosts are mute as darkling day. 
 When lo ! upon the acquiescing gloam, 
 From every unit in that ranged throng, 
 From every trump, from every rapturous mouth, 
 From myriad soldiery both North and South 
 Rise the sweet strains of undeliberate song 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 31 
 
 Up to the pale gold stars aloft the dome — 
 The touching, tear-mist bars of "Home, Sweet 
 
 Home." 
 And alien hearts all quire as one — 
 Hearts that will fiercely strive ere the next day be 
 
 run. 
 
 NO MORE ! 
 
 I can no more ! 
 
 The fretted skies their choicest tinctures bring. 
 The gladsome birds their noontide descant sing, 
 
 All sing — all bring. 
 
 And urge as oft before : 
 
 But oh, sweet Heart, thy soul hath taken wing ! 
 
 I can no more ! 
 
 It may not be ! 
 White breezes of the dawn through hemlocks flute, 
 The vermeiled airs of eve through aspens lute. 
 
 They lute — they flute 
 Their melodies to me : 
 But thy inspiring voice, alas, is mute ! 
 
 It may not be ! 
 
 I'll sing no more ! 
 Though 'neath soft winds proud purple lilies sway, 
 Though o'er the starry meads fair maidens stray. 
 
 All stray — all sway, 
 
 As oft they did of yore : 
 
 Since thou, dear Heart, canst never hear my lay, 
 
 I'll sing no more I 
 
32 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 A COMPARISON 
 
 As thou passest dainty maid, 
 
 With thy calling, calling eyes, 
 
 With an arch demeanor staid 
 
 That thy purpose all belies. 
 
 In thy raiment tender-gay 
 
 Like the garniture of May ; 
 
 As thou passest pretty girl, 
 
 Yes, I note the graceful swirl 
 
 Of thy golden, golden hair 
 
 Above an ear divine. 
 
 And I would that mobile pair 
 
 Of dimples, ah ! were mine. 
 
 But yet thou art less fair 
 
 Than that drab across the street, 
 
 Than that frowzy wench a-bearing 
 
 Her faggots on her head, 
 
 That queen-like wench a-wearing 
 
 The ripped corsage in red, 
 
 Nor in her squalor caring 
 
 For whomever she may meet — 
 
 The splendid creature faring 
 
 On bruised, unshodden feet ! 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 33 
 
 THE METROPOLIS 
 
 Mean braggart man, and naught but man 
 With all his murky gear 
 Do I see here. 
 Oh, would mine eyes might freely scan 
 Wide manless sweeps on Nature's plan 
 'Neath heavens clear. 
 
 AFTER SUNDOWN 
 
 I saw the white moon through a deep-red tree 
 That gloomed from a crest o'erhanging a lea 
 As calm as a soul's serenity ; 
 While feathery rack swirled far on high 
 Over a tea-rose western sky. 
 
34 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 LET THE PAST GO 1 
 
 Swift as the northwest gales dear memories wing, 
 That through the wan green, spiring larches sing 
 The songs of lovelier lands beyond the hills, 
 Breathing of fonder lawns and groves and rills, 
 And alien raptures bring, 
 And foreign fragrance blow : 
 But oh. 
 Let the Past go ! 
 
 Thick as the daisies in an unscythed field — 
 Gold-hearted daisies that complacent yield 
 To clover-perfumed Zephyrs' urgent play — 
 White, far-off thoughts throughout the summer day 
 Lie everywhere revealed. 
 And all the landscape strow : 
 But oh. 
 Let the Past go ! 
 
 I cannot raise my color-loving eye 
 Upon the ever-changing, marvelous sky. 
 But that there breaks upon my wondering view 
 A fairer gold, or rose, or pearl, or blue 
 Which serve to glorify 
 The homelier show : 
 But oh, 
 Let the Past go ! 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 35 
 
 The sullen crests that thresh the shelving shore, 
 And from antarctic floes their message roar, 
 Bring to my ear the azurn, low-voiced wave 
 Of softer seas that olive margins lave, 
 And whispered words of yore 
 That dearer, clearer, grow ; 
 But oh. 
 Let the Past go ! 
 
 Nay, in the city's crowded, canoned street 
 If I behold the tenting clouds that fleet 
 From airy cornice-line to cornice-line. 
 My heart harks back to some old belfried shrine, 
 Lancing the heavens sweet 
 I used so well to know : 
 But oh. 
 Let the Past go ! 
 
 DEAD! 
 
 Ah, who in the joy of his being. 
 
 In the flood of his life, in the tide 
 Of his hearing, and feeling, and seeing. 
 With a flower of spring at his side. 
 Hath unexpectedly heard 
 That terrible, terrible word — 
 That irreclaimable " dead " ? 
 And lo 1 the flower hath shed 
 Its white and its gold and its red. 
 
36 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 Aye, " dead " — beauty no more — 
 
 And all the infinite graces 
 
 Gone ! and leaving no traces 
 
 Save those the time-surf effaces 
 On the sands of Memory's shore. 
 
 All gone ! nothing left but regrets 
 
 That we might have grappled with Death, 
 That we might have safeguarded the breath 
 
 Of fair life, and remorse that besets, 
 And self-accusations. Perhaps, 
 Even now the heart's blood might lapse 
 Through the gold the red and the white 
 Had we used our resources aright. 
 
 Hateful, the haunting song 
 That wails its iterate " wrong " ! 
 And cursed the reproaches insisting 
 In ears unwillingly listing, 
 That every move which we made, 
 And every plan that we laid 
 Was error piled upon error. 
 Till grief is no grief — but a terror ! 
 
 Ransack the house high and low ! 
 
 Scrutinize every nook. 
 
 Each casket and folio and book, 
 For whatever image may show 
 
 The mien of our fair-petaled flower — 
 For every tinct that doth glow 
 
 As the red the white and the gold — 
 For every trait that did dower 
 
 The lost with lurings untold, 
 
 With fascinations tenfold 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 37 
 
 The irised flakes of the shower, 
 Or the bloom of a paradised bower ! 
 
 Range them on table and wall, 
 O'er all available space, 
 That turn as we list we may face 
 The radiant features revealing 
 A past we fain would recall, 
 
 Till over our heart-hurt comes stealing 
 A respite from suffering's thrall. 
 
 No, no ! — take them away ; 
 They only serve to sustain 
 The shrieking pitch of the pain 
 
 That grows with the growth of the day. 
 For this was begotten in laughter, 
 And that in the mind which comes after 
 The gentle rebuff of a breeze 
 Floating over the bee- pollened leas. 
 Just enough to sober a flower 
 Sweet fruit of sunshine and shower — 
 
 Oh, take them, take them away ! 
 
 But would it be loyal to think 
 
 Of ought else ? to cease to create 
 The image that scathes ? to drink 
 
 Some nepenthe ? or in anguish abate 
 A tithe of self-torture by bending 
 
 To inexpugnable Fate 
 Or to Solace her blessings protending ? 
 
 O Death, **why not I, why not I," 
 In an outpour of passion we cry, 
 '* With the life so cruelly fled " ? 
 
38 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 Would we not in an ecstasy lie 
 In the same terrestrial bed, 
 
 While our souls would reecho the laughter 
 And the sweetly grave mind that comes after, 
 In heaven beyond the deep sky ? 
 
 ***** 
 
 Peace, peace — no longer war : 
 And the white kirtled hours pour 
 
 From their fair- chiseled vases the balm 
 
 That o'er our heart's turmoil dispreading — 
 Its opal with murkiness wedding — 
 
 Brings billowless sadness and calm. 
 No need to hang or to hide 
 The traits of our spring-tide flower, 
 That neither gladden nor lower : 
 For they ever and ever abide. 
 In vision close by our side 
 In conference boon as of yore, 
 Evincing now as before 
 The red the gold and the white, 
 The weaving of shadow and light. 
 The purling of soft-flowing laughter 
 And gravity sweet that comes after — 
 The mood of the sky before night. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 39 
 
 REST IN PEACE ! 
 
 Now thou art free, 
 Poor girl ! I never knew thee well, 
 Yet those who love me used to tell 
 Of thy brave life ; nor can I quell 
 
 The tears that rise for thee. 
 
 Hard was the strife 
 To win thy daily bread in pain, 
 And bear the sceptic's cold disdain — 
 As though it were a joy to feign 
 
 The tragedy of life ! 
 
 Yet such thy doom : 
 For thy dark days were but a shade 
 That swept along a gilded glade ; 
 Or like some sunless flowers that fade 
 
 Even before they bloom. 
 
 This song I lay 
 Upon thy bier. It cannot heal 
 Thy cruel past : yet what I feel 
 I must to gentle hearts reveal 
 
 Before I close my day. 
 
40 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 THE LAST GLEAM 
 
 The years creep on 
 Like violet shadows from a westering light 
 Up, up the hill 
 With failing force until 
 They touch the orient sky yet bright, 
 
 Albeit the work-day sun be almost gone. 
 Blest radiance of the things well done 
 Before we faint into a dreamless night ! 
 
 WINTER IN THE STREETS 
 
 Stinging gales of winter — 
 
 Romping forth 
 
 Out the glinting north — 
 Sweep the frozen river, 
 Till the ice-floes shiver. 
 Till the thin air quiver ! 
 
 Then they fleet — 
 Swift as mountain runnels — 
 Through the stone-girt tunnels 
 
 Of the street ; 
 Dust-clouds charioteering. 
 Monster-like careering, 
 Their huge crests uprearing, 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 While they trail 
 
 A lingering tail 
 On the snowless earth ; 
 Quickly disappearing 
 
 To give birth 
 To another, steering 
 
 Through the streets ; 
 
 Whom it meets 
 Flouting, jostling, jeering. 
 Such are blasts of winter 
 
 In the streets. 
 
 DECEMBER SABBATH 
 
 [In town.] 
 
 Dull the morn and scant the light 
 From the murky clouds o'erhanging, 
 Absent is the week-day clanging — 
 
 'Tis as cheerless as the night, 
 
 Gloomy night. 
 
 Muffled people breathing smoke 
 
 Churchward o'er chill streets are wending, 
 Mayhap to their souls attending, 
 
 Mayhap felonies to cloak. 
 
 Deep to cloak. 
 
 Patient nurses slowly roll 
 Babies furred to ruddy faces 
 Up and down with sullen paces, 
 
 Sullen as the belfry's toll. 
 
 Dismal toll. 
 
42 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 Here and there along the street 
 Shrilling boys are coasting, sliding, 
 Sabbath sanctity deriding — 
 
 What to them is quiet sweet, 
 
 Sunday sweet ? 
 
 Rebel boyhood, were I young. 
 
 We would play and shout together, 
 Mock at glowering Sunday weather. 
 
 Leave no song of mirth unsung, 
 
 Of joy unsung. 
 
 But in sportless age I pray ; 
 
 " Come, oh, come, gay Monday morrow, 
 Go, oh, go, sad seventh-day sorrow, 
 
 Sunday gloom-clouds, fleet away, 
 
 Far away 1 '* 
 
 SWEET APRIL DAYS 
 
 Sweet blissful April days, 
 
 So kindly soft, so still. 
 
 Listen ! a glad bird's trill 
 Doth welcome ye : but yet I praise 
 
 Your mild quiescent ways 
 
 With no bold burst of song. 
 
 Nay, in a gentle mood 
 
 Informed with gratitude 
 That wintry blasts and cold nights long 
 
 Have left my soul yet strong. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 43 
 
 I reverently pray 
 
 In rhythm soft and low 
 
 As these sweet days, and so 
 Inaudible that only they 
 
 May hear who love my lay. 
 
 CORYDON SINGS 
 
 O great white cloud, prithee say, prithee say, 
 What news, oh, what news dost thou glisten to-day ? 
 Doth my free-cinctured love roam o'er the soft hills 
 Where the bluish-green boscage shadows cool rills ? 
 Doth she wish it were I when she tangles the breeze 
 In her wildering hair ? Or down on the leas 
 Doth she halt thee, white cloud, on thy lazuli sky 
 To waft thee her secret ? Is it I — is it I ? 
 
 SPRING MADRIGAL 
 
 Ye deep blue shades that course the barren hills 
 Bring me my love ! Ye tender leafing trees, 
 That flash all gold and green upon the leas, 
 Bring me my love ! The young year's radiance fills 
 My bourgeoning heart with longing uncontrolled. 
 
 O Love, let me enfold 
 Thy spring- tide life ere falling blossoms swirl 
 Like snow-drifts drown soft lanes. Sweet girl 
 
 Oh, come ! Behold 
 The broidered meads ! See how fair clouds are rolled 
 Athwart kind skies, and how the vales are flecked 
 With hues divine — how all the world is decked 
 
 With grace untold ! 
 
44 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 PARLEY WITH THE WINDS 
 
 Whence comest thou Wind of the South 
 That makest soft willows to sigh, 
 That filmest the pitiless sky — 
 
 The pitiless blue of the drouth ? 
 
 I come, I come from the sea, 
 Loaden with mists like the pearl, 
 With moans from cool breakers that curl 
 
 On a barren, white-margined lee. 
 
 And I sob, and I sob all the day 
 Amid the sad larches and pine, 
 While I veil the clear ridges that line 
 
 The welkin with meshes of gray. 
 
 Then I weep on the fiery earth. 
 
 On the things that imploringly swoon, 
 And I come as a heavenly boon 
 
 To the life awaiting its birth. 
 
 And I bring to the brain thoughtless rest, 
 To the nerves overwrought by the heat 
 Relaxation ineffably sweet, 
 
 With the balm of the slumbering blest. 
 
 Whence comest thou, Wind of the North 
 That lyrest through oak-leaf and elm, 
 That dost the dark storm-rack o'erwhelm, 
 
 From what kingdom wingest thou forth ? 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 45 
 
 I come from the kingdom of Gleam, 
 From the uttermost ice of the pole, 
 From snowdrifts white as the soul 
 
 A Vestal might languishing dream. 
 
 And I drive o'er the blue-spanning space 
 Great clouds that as opals do glow, 
 And swift as fell shafts from the bow 
 
 Of Artemis, Queen of the chase. 
 
 And I toss the far shades on the hills 
 
 All purple and azure and green, 
 
 And I gild with intolerant sheen 
 Pale reaches the husbandman tills. 
 
 But I bring no anodyne rest ; 
 
 For I string to its verge every nerve, 
 
 And all the resources that serve 
 To lift from lowland to crest. 
 
 WHITE NOON 
 
 How beautiful the noonday's radiance white, 
 Unmasking every precious local hue. 
 Painting the far-off ridges heavenly blue. 
 
 Glinting all nature with its diamond-light ! 
 
 The rich suffusion of the nascent sky, 
 The greater glory of the couching hours. 
 The florid opulence of rainbowed showers. 
 
 Seem fashioned for the less instinctive eye. 
 
46 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 E'en as 1 sing the dark gray-purple crest 
 Is stained witli flaslies of autumnal sheen — 
 Gold lights that twixt deep shadows intervene — 
 
 While over all the vibrant heavens rest. 
 
 At morn my spirits rise with rising day, 
 At eve they fall with falling of the light, 
 At noon they touch the acme of their flight ; 
 
 Can this be why I love the zenith's ray ? 
 
 If all be true of what is psalmed above, 
 If angels shine in robes of spotless tone. 
 If dazzling, whitest light floods from the throne, 
 
 Oh, then I know why gleaming noon I love ! 
 
 THE THIRST OF AGE 
 
 As the year grows old 
 All Nature sways to gold. 
 Lift up thy lids and see 
 On yonder frondent tree 
 Yet young, yet green and stanch, 
 
 An aureate branch. 
 The nuncio of its gorgeous destiny — 
 
 All gold, all gold ! 
 
 Thus men do turn 
 As they collect the years ; when naught is left 
 Of youth ; when their love-lute is cleft ; 
 When joyances they spurn. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 47 
 
 At first a mild desire, 
 
 The harbinger of age — 
 A flash upon the green— and then a raging fire — 
 A fearful thirst for gold that nothing can assuage, 
 Except the dark-plumed one, who slakes the funeral 
 pyre. 
 
 THE MOTHER 
 
 Often was she sadly seen. 
 Gentle mother, softly gliding 
 Through Death's tillage, there abiding 
 
 By a hummock ever green. 
 
 'Neath the sod her life-love lay — 
 Not the lover's love enthralling. 
 Coy, capricious, surging, falling, 
 
 But the love that blights decay : 
 
 Love of mother for the son ; 
 
 Stronger when his ways are weaker, 
 Warmer when his skies are bleaker, 
 
 Freshest when his days are run. 
 
 Steadfast mother ! on his grave 
 Did she plant a rose-bush, tending 
 It with holiest care transcending 
 
 What her virgins Vesta gave. 
 
 Till at length she felt the breath, 
 Icy-cold and blood-congealing, 
 Pain-obscuring, light-revealing. 
 
 Of her kindly healer— Death. 
 
48 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 Then she summoned kith and kin, 
 Whom with solemn words adjuring, 
 Bade them make an oath assuring — 
 
 When her heart should die within. 
 
 And her anguish find repose — 
 That, her mortal body burning, 
 And her gathered ash unurning, 
 
 They would spread it round the rose. 
 
 Oh, what fragrance must there be 
 From such flowers ! and how tendei 
 All the visions they engender 
 
 'Mid our harsh mortality I 
 
 MORITURUS 
 
 Blow swift ye blasts of mountain ! 
 
 Blow swift ye gales of shore ! 
 What matters it ? I course not 
 
 O'er crag or sea-plain more. 
 
 Bend down ye lashing tree-tops ! 
 
 Shrill loud the storm's refrain ! 
 What boots it ? I shall never 
 
 Behold your throes again. 
 
 Crouch low ye lithesome grasses 
 Beneath the winds that rave ! 
 
 I care not, so ye gather quick 
 Upon my fresh-made grave. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 49 
 
 BY AN OBSCURE GRAVE 
 
 O transcendental Pride ! 
 That couldst not in God's consecrated earth 
 Give room to one thou deemedst of lower birth ! 
 But thou her unescutcheoned corpse did hide 
 Within an inconspicuous, dingy nook. 
 
 Thou couldst not brook 
 That her dull slab should gloom beside 
 Thy bright, complacent stones. And yet, O Pride, 
 Not on thy gleaming monuments I look, 
 But on her rankly-hidden, sombre grave. 
 O'er which the darkling, pitying branches wave ! 
 
 NEW- YEAR IN THE STUDIO 
 
 Oh, all but me ! 
 Blithe Nature chimes the new year in ; 
 From South to North rolls up the din 
 Of natal rites and jubilee. 
 
 All souls are glad ; 
 And galliards shout **a happy year" 
 O'er wassail-cup and ample cheer. 
 While I alone — aloof — am sad. 
 
50 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 Dawn breaks to day 
 
 Fair-garbed in blue-celeste and white, 
 
 Sun-haloed— oh, what splendent sight ! 
 
 But she to me seems cinder gray, 
 
 And passionless, 
 Awhile my sullen, halting tongue, 
 Alike a riven lyre unstrung, 
 
 Can scarcely mask its tunelessness. 
 
 For while the world 
 Moves on its swift, titanic way, 
 And men are marching stanch and gay, 
 With all their bannerets unfurled ; 
 
 Alas ! 'tis mine 
 To brood amid a displumed past 
 Of hopes, of griefs, the toil amassed 
 Of year on year — old things that twine 
 
 Around the brain, 
 The heart, the sinews, aye, the life. 
 That are the parent, offspring, wife — 
 Things born in joy, yet born in vain. 
 
 What joy divine. 
 If eager hands would only take 
 Our rose-fresh produce — all we make 
 In verse or marble, hue or line. 
 
 Before they sear ! 
 Before they lose their morning light. 
 Before they fade to murky night. 
 Before illusions disappear ! 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 51 
 
 Oh, why this Art ? 
 Oh, why the eye to penetrate, 
 Or why the god-gift to create 
 If we to no one can impart 
 
 Our Hfe-blood's work ? 
 If chance vouchsafeth not to share 
 Our ecstasies ? Ah, how they stare 
 
 These unwed ghosts ! Ah, how they irk 
 
 These incubi — 
 These joyous births accumulate. 
 Mere mummies now degenerate — 
 A smile degraded to a sigh 1 
 
 All dead, all dead — 
 Ambitions, loves, the hot heart's bliss, 
 The half-attained, the shafts that miss 
 Their zenith-aim, and in their stead 
 
 Mere things — brute things, 
 Unwooed, unloved — rank rubbish- waste — 
 Old broken shards — crass dregs unchaste, 
 Though born to rise on whitest wings ! 
 
 Ah, not for me 
 
 This gladsome greeting of the year, 
 The wassail-cup with ample cheer, 
 Nor natal rites, nor jubilee ! 
 
 Yet while I brood 
 Within a grave-yard so forlorn. 
 Where lie ideals sweetly bom. 
 It may be that another mood 
 
52 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 Will come to me ; 
 Another impulse seize my soul, 
 Another force my hand control 
 To trace the marvels I shall see. 
 
 TO A YEAR'S MATE 
 
 Dear friend, there is a time 'tween Eve and Night, 
 The hour crepuscular, when neither light 
 From out a sky that hesitates before 
 It suffereth stars, nor from the lamps that pour 
 Adown the streets their doubtful radiance white — 
 When neither beam from heaven or earth more bright 
 The other lesser one doth dominate. 
 And so unabsolute appears the state 
 
 Which still illumined by the paling flame 
 Of vigorous youth, doth now begin to shine 
 
 With wisdom clear and virtues that acclaim 
 The star-sown dusk of age. Oh, such is mine 
 Good friend of equal years, and such is thine ! 
 
SONNETS 
 
SONNETS 
 
 " DIO MELA DIEDE, GUAI A CHI LA TOCCA" 
 
 " God gave it me, hands off" ! God gave thee what? 
 The right to ply laborious hand and head, 
 The right to win unsleuthed my daily bread, 
 The right to shape my undetermined lot. 
 
 God gave it me, hands off ! Then should I not 
 Give wing to every gift inherited, 
 Or won by rigid toil, unbalked, unled 
 By domineering gold, or brawling sot ? 
 
 God gave it me, hands off ! Yea, I would range 
 As free as Auster o'er the weltering grain. 
 Or Boreas o'er white wolds; and all I feel 
 
 I would fling far and wide, nor counterchange 
 
 This dower for worlds. But yet I would not pain 
 A gentle heart, nor mar the common weal. 
 
 TO THEE, O SUN! 
 
 To thee my season's toil I dedicate 
 
 O Sun, who dost the lingering winter's gloom 
 Enamel with the flushing apple-bloom. 
 And freak the fields with flowers passionate 
 
 When June is full ; who dost delineate 
 
56 SONNETS 
 
 The hills with pale-blue shadows, and illume 
 With argent light the vale, the errant flume, 
 And all the wealth of Summer's high estate. 
 
 Then with what red and gold dost thou brocade 
 
 Rich Autumn's robe, when days are near divine, 
 And nights are chill with winter's warning breath ! 
 
 How opulent the colors ere they fade ! 
 
 Oh, could but mortal hours so splendid shine 
 As these transcendent hues before their death ! 
 
 THE TAINT OF GOLD 
 
 I. 
 
 'Tis not so much vast Wealth that I deplore 
 With all its pageantry of silly show. 
 The liveried clowns, the shams, the jeweled glow 
 From purchased brows, the overbrimming store 
 
 That only aggravates the lust for more : 
 
 Not Wealth so much, which, as the ages grow 
 In wisdom 'tis my fondest hope will flow 
 More equal o'er the world than heretofore. 
 
 But this the Pity, this the eternal Shame, 
 
 That golden holdings loose the meanest traits 
 In him that hath, in him that hath them not ! 
 
 The Parasite will ever seek the flame 
 
 That warms and gilds and aye degenerates : 
 But must we see our very Flower rot ? 
 
SONNETS 57 
 
 II. 
 
 If frequently a fierceness rules my verse, 
 And if too oft at human flaws I rail, 
 And sterner days, and simpler life bewail, 
 And bane of noxious gold too shrilly curse ; 
 
 Think not, good friends, that I would not immerse 
 Myself at times in perfumed airs, nor sail 
 On un tossed seas, nor bathe in moonbeams pale, 
 Nor bask in rays unclouded suns disperse. 
 
 But oh, ye balmy Airs, ye unheaved Seas, 
 
 Ye Splendors of the great and lesser light, 
 Are ye not sweeter to the saner soul ? 
 
 Do ye not make the glorious Day more bright. 
 And garb the Dark with lovelier mysteries. 
 When Life is sometimes hard, but always whole ? 
 
 A FALLEN, TRUSTED FRIEND 
 
 Comrade, oh, why beneath a star malign 
 
 Didst thou to unaffectionate impulse yield ? 
 Surely thou couldst not think I would not shield 
 Thee in thy strait from punishment condign ? 
 
 Oh, why, good Friend, didst thou not make some sign ? 
 Hadst thou to former guileless days appealed, 
 Hadst thou thy former sweeter self revealed, 
 I should have left thy crime to courts divine. 
 
 But thou wert silent in thine awful shame. 
 
 Nor opedst the door that waiting stood ajar. 
 To close again upon thy guilt unknown, 
 
 To give thee chance to clear thy tarnished name. 
 
58 SONNETS 
 
 To keep the carpings of the world afar, 
 To wrestle with thy perjured soul alone I 
 
 II. 
 
 The wise, the just, the virtuous all said, 
 
 " Wouldst thou a flagrant felony compound? 
 Nay, 'tis thy duty to the State to hound 
 The villain to a judgment merited. 
 
 List not the heart, but rather heed the head : 
 
 Upon the Commonwealth blinked crimes redound, 
 Like sundering surges on a ship aground, 
 Till every plank be spHntered to a shred." 
 
 Yet hast thou then no claims O pleading Heart ? 
 They say not so. Alack ! I can pretend 
 No anger at the deed ; no rancor mars 
 
 The old-time, gracious memories ; no part 
 
 Have I in others' wrath. My friend, my friend. 
 Oh, must I see thee pale behind strong bars ? 
 
 III. 
 
 Alas ! I saw thee guarded, pale indeed, 
 
 Along with ribald rogues and waifs obscene, 
 Standing distinguished, if ashamed, between 
 The agents of the Law. And they did lead 
 
 Thee thus before the judge, and thou didst plead 
 
 A "guilty" — oh, thank God ! — and all thy mien 
 Was penitent : withal thou wert serene 
 As he who wins at last his dreaded meed. 
 
 In moments of emotion one doth fling 
 
 All meditated act or speech or thought. 
 As parched sciroccos fling the Lybian sand 
 
 Into dun air. E'en so abrupt did wing 
 
 My purpose preconceived : for when I caught 
 Thy desperate eye — I grasped thee by the hand ! 
 
SONNETS 59 
 
 IV. 
 
 And later when brow-based thou didst appear 
 Before the judgment seat to take thy doom 
 In that guilt-garnished, unimpassioned room, 
 I spake low words into the judge's ear, 
 
 Imploring clemency : '' For many a year — 
 Aye, ever since the far-off boyish bloom 
 Did flush his cheek, and Youth his eye illume — 
 He hath been loyal friend to me and dear ; 
 
 Yea, honorable too, and arch-upright, 
 And faithful to my worldly interest, 
 To everything that did advantage me, 
 
 Ontil he was enmeshed in fiend-spun night : 
 
 Oh ! let his worst be balanced by his best * * * 
 What hast thou said, O Judge, that he is free ? " 
 
 V. 
 
 So thou art satisfied, O Heart, and thou, 
 
 clamorous Right, hast won thy legal due ! 
 Alas ! It seemeth that I never knew 
 
 The hardness of the just who disallow 
 AH frailty ; of the pure who to Christ vow 
 
 An untried life, nor take his kindlier view — 
 ** To others what ye would that they to you" : 
 Alas ! I never dreamed these things till now. 
 Hadst thou been rich, old Friend, and robbed the 
 poor 
 To minister to some bedizzened need, 
 
 1 would have tracked thee into blackest Hell ! 
 But poverty from righteous ways did lure 
 
 Thee to a fate so oft the pauper's meed. 
 Had I been poor as thou ? — ah, who can tell I 
 
6o SONNETS 
 
 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 Take no exception to the instrument 
 
 That fired our fathers through the bitter cold 
 Of wintry rout and sufferance untold ; 
 Nor plead it was not their entire intent 
 
 To sanctuary all ; nor yet invent 
 
 Some deft interpretation, nor withhold 
 Its large beneficence, nor try to mould 
 Its language to a purport different. 
 
 It had but one intent, the manifest — 
 
 That none should domineer by pedigree. 
 Or privilege of caste, or right of race — 
 
 That all were equal born by God's just grace, 
 Tawny or black or white from East to West, 
 Or bred on peaks, or by the awful sea ! 
 
 RUSSIA-JAPAN, 1904 
 [Before the Issue.] 
 
 O God, give overwhelming Victory 
 
 To these brave dusky warriors of the East ! 
 
 Oh, now vouchsafe to them — thou who hast leased 
 
 Them life — by their avenging agency 
 
 To lower the white man's pride ! Aye, bend his knee 
 In suppliance awhile, O War's high Priest 
 Until his hateful insolence hath ceased, 
 
SONNETS 6i 
 
 Until he learn all Birth's equality 1 
 What miserable cant we daily hear 
 
 Of Liberty and universal Love ! 
 Forsooth our alien brother is most dear 
 
 When he is far below — and we above. 
 Fell God of War, that needed lesson teach 
 
 Which all Philosophy can never reach ! 
 
 RIGHTEOUS WRATH? 
 
 Forgive, kind friends, if I o'errave or curse, 
 And only seem to harp upon the bad, 
 And to the universal discord add 
 My tuneless raillery of jarring verse ; 
 
 For I would rather sing in numbers terse. 
 
 And sweep the strings with inspirations glad, 
 Descant on happy themes, evade the sad, 
 And all my being in pure joy immerse. 
 
 When Storm portends and hail-charged clouds uproU, 
 When moaning thunders bruit a coming hell, 
 
 The vintager in terror hastes to toll 
 
 In clanging discord the parochial bell. 
 
 If I foresee the storm that quails my soul. 
 
 And clang harsh, brazen chords — is it not well ? 
 
 ECLIPSE 
 
 A glorious cloud floats nobly o'er the sky 
 
 This fulgent morn when but to breathe is joy : 
 Soft, siren gales its gleaming mists convoy 
 Above the checkered fields of mellow rye 
 
 And myriad grasses red of ripe July ; 
 
62 SONNETS 
 
 The purest, whitest thing without alloy ! 
 
 But lo ! a darker cloud that doth destroy 
 
 Its brilliance, o'er its face sweeps slowly by. 
 E'en thy sweet soul, dear Love, so chaste, so white, 
 
 That beams to me clear rays of happiness — 
 
 Like yon bright cloud upon its azurn sea — 
 Methinks must have its hours of irksome night, 
 
 Since every now and then I note some stress 
 
 Eclipse its prevalent serenity. 
 
 REVULSION 
 
 One autumn morn on my glad way to thee, 
 
 When softest mist was toyed by mildest breeze, 
 I saw two metamorphosed, sumptuous trees ; 
 The one pure gold in its integrity, 
 
 From all despoiling dross completely free ; 
 The other red, like velvet Genoese 
 Wrought for a Monarch's mood — fit harmonies 
 For Titian's taste — a painter's jubilee ! 
 
 But when I found thy welcoming door was barred, 
 And thou hadst flown to some far alien scene, 
 
 The red stared tawdry in mine eyes, and jarred 
 Upon the vulgar gold ; while what had been 
 
 A combination sweet seemed harsh and hard — 
 A gaudy blazon on the hills of green. 
 
SONNETS 63 
 
 THE LIGHT BEYOND 
 
 They say that every cloud is silver-lined, 
 However swart or baleful it may be, 
 That on its further face propitiously 
 The placid sunbeams lie, and that behind 
 
 The terror of the dark, there dwell enshrined 
 In opaled tints, from every shadow free, 
 All peace, all gladness, all complacency. 
 Oh, come thou then, oh, come, most mighty wind, 
 
 And with thy whirling energy revolve 
 
 That yonder black and soul-dejecting cloud ! 
 Oh, come thou then, and all its night dissolve 
 
 To orient bloom ! Come thou and lift the shroud 
 That like a cerement wraps my abject heart. 
 And thine own puissant spirit to it impart ! 
 
 GOLDEN SILENCE 
 
 In the cool morning shade of classic trees — 
 The low green shade of immemorial time. 
 That with the Latin skies makes sweetest rhyme, 
 And tames the torment of the August breeze — 
 
 I loiter through the scarred frivolities 
 
 Deep-glazed by age ; and mossy ramps I climb. 
 And gaze into fresh pools of hues sublime. 
 While naught there is that may the eye displease. 
 
 And sapphired peacocks, iris-necked and sleek, 
 
 Flaunt near me in their sumptuous, jeweled dress, 
 Like some fair, fastuous women whom I know. 
 
 Who make in gay attire gayest show. 
 Who radiate all joy and loveliness. 
 And as the peacocks — perfect — till they speak ! 
 
64 SONNETS 
 
 ON READING WHITTIER'S LIFE 
 
 There is on earth, I think, no sadder sight 
 Than man in an unbeautiful decay 
 Of what had been his shining, golden day, 
 Waiting disheartened for the blurring night. 
 
 All toil, all hardship is the intrinsic right 
 
 Of fair-limbed Youth on his transcendent way 
 Parnassus- ward. But oh, with what dismay 
 We watch his fall ere he attain the height ! 
 
 Thine was the sweeter lot, O virtuous Bard, 
 In age mature to gain the laureled crest, 
 
 And timely reap from thy devotions hard — 
 
 Thy thorny years — the meed of flowerful rest. 
 
 And thou didst hear upwaft the high regard 
 
 Men held for thee, and see thy sowing blest. 
 
 VETERAN BORES 
 
 IVe known some gnarly gaffers in my day — 
 Insistent, selfish, reminiscent bores, 
 Shrilling amain like strident orators, 
 Until their meekest listeners slink away 
 
 As lambkins shorn from Boreas' boisterous play. 
 Oh, can it be before I touch the shores 
 Of Letheland, that what my soul abhors 
 'Twill flaunt unblushing in its sad decay? 
 
 But yet I know some sweet, serene old men 
 
 Who hold fair speech with each degree of age, 
 Who have a courteous eye for current things. 
 
 And deem the now as virtuous as the then ; 
 
 Who cheerful make their thorny pilgrimage ; 
 Who seem on earth to grow their heavenly wings. 
 
SONNETS 65 
 
 A MASQUERADER 
 
 One whom I knew but in a casual way, 
 
 And looked upon as an unbailed buffoon — 
 A sort of merry-andrew who might soon 
 Become a social pest should I betray 
 
 A civil interest in his boorish play — 
 
 Once bravely came to me, and asked the boon 
 Of audience. " If not inopportune, 
 Pray give an ear to what I have to say. 
 
 My jest is but a masquerading mood 
 
 To hide the pain that racks an anguished fr .me. 
 
 If I have overplayed, or been o'errude, 
 
 Good friend, whom I esteem, forgive the same : 
 
 Forgive, forget, and earn my gratitude." 
 
 Hot tears stood in his eyes: in mine burned 
 shame ! 
 
 A VISITANT 
 
 Would that our heavenly dreams might prove to be 
 The harbingers of yearned-for actual things, 
 Odorous with the aura sweet Sleep brings, 
 And Sleep alone ! Last night thou cam'st to me 
 
 In all thy grace, as I remember thee, 
 
 Resplendent like the shining morning's wings, 
 White as the mist that to the summit clings, 
 Fragrant as flowers that diaper the lea. 
 
 But yet upon thy lips there dwelt a sigh 
 
 In lieu of smiles, and in thine eyes lodged tears — 
 
66 SONNETS 
 
 Great tears that thy large orbs did amplify — 
 Seeming to voice thy griefs, thy hopes, thy fears. 
 Oh, can it be that through the abraiding years 
 Thou too hast suffered — suffered e'en as I? 
 
 ON SPRINGTIDE EVES 
 
 On springtide eves when " Berenice's Hair '* 
 Flames near the zenith of the doming sky, 
 When every star like Aphrodite's eye, 
 Rays love upon the blossom-laden air ; 
 
 Ah, then my being's purpose I declare, 
 
 O dearest Muse — my only mission high 
 Is to commune with thee until I die — 
 With thee, my laurel-browed, without compare ! 
 
 What boot the strivings for a crown of gold. 
 
 If with the golden-crowned my ways must be ? 
 
 Why should I quest for guerdons manifold, 
 
 If they bring naught but height of pride to me ? 
 
 Sweet, deathless one, I would in sooth grow old, 
 If I might live engarlanded by thee. 
 
 OH, HEED NOT SOUL! 
 
 Oh, heed not soul, the things that be awry, 
 Nor in thine anger justified declaim 
 Against the trickster's methods that defame 
 Our country's honor, nor in wrath outcry 
 
 Upon the horrors that torment the eye. 
 
 Nor overharp upon the sanctioned shame 
 
SONNETS 67 
 
 That money-mongers bring upon our name, 
 
 E'en though the Right thine ire doth ratify ! 
 Shall not thy sweeter will, O soul, be done 
 
 If thou unvexed dost champion Beauty's cause ? 
 If with the favors that thy toil hath won 
 
 Thou laud* St the glory of her lovely laws? 
 Be not rude Boreas in thy shrilling lay, 
 
 But rather Zephyr in his balmy play. 
 
 ARS IMMORTALIS 
 
 With apathy I hear the moving tale 
 
 Of glorious Greece beneath Byzantium's rule, 
 Whose pettiest exploits when a boy at school 
 Spelled my alertest ear, and still exhale 
 
 Parnassian strains. Whether the Goth prevail 
 Or Saracen, or Plague like a foul ghoul 
 Ravin her corpse, or the rank ridicule 
 Of Slav and Vandal her sweet fame assail — 
 
 I care not ; for it is her art supreme 
 
 I loved and love — her wondrous art alone ; 
 Since all the rest from that pure fountain springs. 
 
 So will it ever be. That which we deem 
 
 Of mightiest import will like chaff be blown, 
 Unless we weight it with immortal things ! 
 
68 SONNETS 
 
 LANDOR 
 
 When I would seek a literary guide, 
 
 Lost in the labyrinths of verbosity, 
 
 Or cloyed with sugared preciosity, 
 
 I take a book forever at my side. 
 And in full confidence I ope it wide. 
 
 Assured that on whatever page there'll be 
 
 Some noble thought as monumentally 
 
 Expressed, as it were carved in stone. Thy pride, 
 Thy righteous indignations, aye, thine ire 
 
 Indocile Landor, all I reverence. 
 I love to feel the heat of thy fierce fire 
 
 Downwrit in terms of classic continence. 
 Like Milton thou didst smite no cringing lyre — 
 
 Thou, too, didst pass in manly indigence. 
 
 TO TOLSTOI 
 
 [On reading his Life.] 
 
 For him who would not live an anchorite 
 In some incarcerated solitude, 
 To imitate Christ's life were to delude 
 His saner self. Yet it were well to fight 
 
 For high ideals — if smitten, not to smite ; 
 
 To turn the angry with the sweeter mood ; 
 To share the glebeman's toil, to eat his food ; 
 To spread with tongue and pen the gospel light. 
 
 This thou hast done. But oh, what must have been 
 
SONNETS 69 
 
 The unexpressed disheartenment to see 
 Thy second self, and thine own seed remiss 
 in all that was most sacrosanct to thee — 
 Aye, see it with a countenance serene ! 
 Was Christ's grave cross more hard to bear than 
 this? 
 
 SOME JAPANESE PAINTINGS 
 
 [Of the new School.] 
 
 How delicate, refined, withal so slight, 
 
 Are these sweet pictures from the new Japan — 
 Mere airy floatings, like the winds that fan 
 A lilied field, and vague as mists of night, 
 
 Or early dawn that take the roseate hght ! 
 Yet not all vagueness ; for the artisan 
 Some loved detail (as only artists can) 
 Has wrought to highest pitch, and placed a-right. 
 
 A fair, suggestive, decorative whole ! 
 
 Not '' Nature's self," but nature seen afar 
 Through half-veiled eyes — through some true 
 Poet's soul, 
 
 As dreamlike as an unsubstantial star — 
 A May-time petal poising in the air, 
 Translucent, perfumed, exquisite, and rare ! 
 
70 SONNETS 
 
 GUIDO'S AURORA 
 
 I love the fresco still, nor does it tire. 
 
 Say it is classic, say the taste is cold, 
 
 That these broad-shouldered Hours are of a 
 
 mould, 
 That not sweet life, but sculpture did inspire ; 
 
 Yet see with what nobility they gyre 
 
 Linked hand with hand in raiments manifold — 
 A splendid garland to the god of gold ! 
 And see the heavenly boy who bears the fire ! 
 
 A lovely composition without fault — 
 
 A tuneful synthesis of draped and nude 
 That must the chastened fancy aye exalt. 
 
 And note how charming is the narrow view. 
 Beneath the lifting vapors' altitude, 
 Of hill and tree and tower, and Ocean's blue. 
 
 ON A LANDSCAPE BY OLD HARPIGNIES 
 
 "The classic beauties have not passed," I said. 
 When I beheld the sombre opulence 
 Of deep-bronzed, clustered trees, whose foliage 
 
 dense 
 Loomed massive on the sapphired skies o'erhead, 
 
 With many a candid, breezy cloud bespread. 
 Between their immemorial boles immense 
 Broke glimpses of Arcadian lands, from whence 
 Sweet siren-songs might scale, and tenanted, 
 
 Mayhap, by fauns and white-limbed oreads. 
 
SONNETS 71 
 
 Oh, what a joy so fair a scene imparts 
 To well-schooled, tasteful eyes ! How it endears 
 Anew the eternal past ; and how it glads 
 
 All faltering, hopeless, death-approaching hearts 
 This glorious work of more than fourscore years ! 
 
 THE RICH MAN'S NEED 
 
 Alack ! we bleared philanthropists concern 
 
 Ourselves o'ermuch with culture of the poor, 
 
 Esteeming this a panacea sure 
 
 For all the ails that in the State sojourn. 
 
 And yet the laborers who sorely earn 
 
 Their daily wage, at least all cant abjure, 
 And are sincere, albeit they endure 
 A loveless life — too loveless oft to learn. 
 
 Nay, we must educate the unsane rich — 
 
 Pretentious, with disnatured sympathies — 
 
 Dull as proverbial water in the ditch — 
 All silly affectation ! Ah, here lies 
 
 Our task — to use the pedagogic switch 
 
 On Midas' back, until we make him wise. 
 
 FROM OBLIVION 
 
 With soulless toil and conscience-sacrifice 
 
 They raise — these Croesus-men — their golden 
 
 pile 
 In flash, bombastic, pure Plutonic style — 
 Equipped with every mechanism nice, 
 
 With every latest science-born device 
 
72 SONNETS 
 
 Of luxury — that lasts a little while, 
 
 Then fleets. But oh ! they cannot reconcile 
 
 Themselves to pay mere passing riches' price 
 
 Oblivion. And so it comes to be, 
 
 In order their remembrance to ensure. 
 Some marvel-thing by genius they secure 
 
 And place it in a fane, where men may see 
 
 Their names associate with the glorious poor 
 Who are enthroned in immortality. 
 
 ANCESTRY 
 
 What man is there who rouseth more our scorn 
 Than that void, gilded fool who grossly feeds 
 On forbear-glory ? or the oaf that needs 
 The radiance from a far-off, splendent morn 
 
 To light his sunless, waning day forlorn ? 
 But as for him who hungereth for deeds, 
 Who to an honorable name succeeds. 
 Who would an ornate history adorn — 
 
 What sharper goad than keen desire to peer 
 The flight of ancestors, and wing as high 
 Into the vaulting empyrean clear ? 
 
 With tensioned neck he hears their eagle-cry, 
 ''Up unto us — up to our towering sphere." 
 And he flings back, *' Yea, even so will I." 
 
 II. 
 
 What if he have no glorious ancestor ? 
 
 And if no morning sun illume his day. 
 Nor guide him with its true, inspiring ray ? 
 
SONNETS 73 
 
 What if no forbear-eagles, from their frore 
 And gleaming lofts upon the azure, pour 
 
 Their piercing, kindling song ? Oh, then I say 
 He must his hard-won faculties display, 
 And unhallooed up to the zenith soar. 
 Thence down the run of the swift lapsing years 
 Will he his emulating offspring see. 
 And hear his epic-chant mid women's tears 
 And men's sonorous, hot, unenvious cheers. 
 And happy know his laureled name to be 
 A spur to good — a bar to infamy ! 
 
 TO PASSATA 
 
 I touched thy kinsman's hand ; and instantly 
 My long-chilled being felt a grateful glow ! 
 If a vicarious touch can kindle so. 
 What tropic ardors would envelop me 
 
 Should thy dear hand clasp mine — should Fate decree 
 That after dreary years of separate woe, 
 Once more where lovers* crimson roses blow, 
 Thou shouldst swear faith to me, and I to thee ! 
 
 And yet I would not ever meet thee more : 
 
 It might be that the years have torn the light 
 From out thy flaming eyes. Now as of yore 
 
 I see thy radiant presence benedight : 
 
 And if thine orbs did gleam with light before, 
 Each year they burn a thousand times more bright. 
 
74 SONNETS 
 
 MOURNERS 
 
 We talk of minor things irrelevant 
 
 To what predominates in our sore hearts — 
 
 Of Nature's shifts, of letters, of the arts, 
 
 The health of States and politicians rant — 
 But not a moment does our speech supplant 
 
 The ruling thought. And while no tear-gleam 
 starts 
 
 From thine impassioned eye, yet grief imparts 
 
 To thy calm face a hue significant. 
 For she to thee in sooth, was all in all. 
 
 Helpmate and wife and mother of thy home ; 
 
 To me she was the gracious, kindly friend 
 Whose voice from out the past will oft recall 
 
 The cheerful hours, wherever I may roam. 
 
 But, oh, what love-words she to thee will send ! 
 
 FROM PARADISE 
 
 She came to me last night and sadly said, 
 
 '' I am not happy with the souls that dwell 
 
 Amid the amaranth and asphodel — 
 
 Pure, sexless, white-robed ones who never wed, 
 
 Who roam the Elysian fields all overspread 
 
 With choicest bloom, or down some arbored dell, 
 Where never carillons the marriage-bell. 
 Where ne'er are heard grave knollings for the 
 dead. 
 
SONNETS 75 
 
 For I would share with thee the praise, the jeers, 
 And ecstasies of brief terrestrial love ; 
 
 And I would voyage with thee o'er stormy meres, 
 And shaggy, briered ways, when stars above 
 
 Are spent; then wouldst thou calm my quivering 
 fears. 
 Gleaming a god to me through glistening tears." 
 
 LINES WRITTEN IN STOCKBRIDGE 
 
 I. 
 
 All gentle hearts must feel the rural grace 
 Of these harmonious hills that rim a sky 
 Pavilioned with soft shaded clouds which lie 
 In utmost languor on the windless space. 
 
 Sweet valleys open at their wooded base, 
 
 Mottled with tawny grass and golden rye. 
 With wandering willow-brakes that certify 
 The furtive streams, and all their windings trace. 
 
 And if perchance a jocund Zephyr rush 
 
 Across the vales, and bend the grasses low, 
 Until they seem gold waves of weltering sea ; 
 
 Or if against the willow-wands he brush 
 
 Till all their silvery under-leaves they show — 
 What blither scene than this on Earth can be ? 
 
 II. 
 
 * Tis afternoon : from out the rumbling west 
 
 There ominous looms a dark, conglobing cloud. 
 Spreading o'er ridge and dale its purple shroud. 
 Now birdlings seek a safe, sequestered nest 
 
 While yet the air is hush, and winds at rest. 
 
^6 SONNETS 
 
 The purple turns to dun, and crashes loud 
 Peal overhead, and stanchest trees are bowed, 
 While naught but nearest things are manifest. 
 
 The wrath has passed, and quiet holds the air 
 So lately torn by fierce, diluvial rain ; 
 And freshened earth its redolence expels. 
 
 The glowing western skies are mute and fair. 
 
 While gently wafts across the sparkling plain 
 The pensive carillon of vesper bells. 
 
 III. 
 
 The storm and sunshine both alike are dear 
 In this lush country of embowered hills, 
 Whose modest history the mind fulfills 
 With many an image picturesque. 'Tis here 
 
 E'en where I write the Indian chief sincere 
 
 His wigwam rears ; the farmer-soldier drills 
 On yonder village sward ; and there he thrills 
 To his high theme the preacher-pioneer 
 
 Who shows the red-man Christ. All this is gone;, 
 Yet there are pleasing remnants of the past — 
 A whitened steeple gleaming mid the green ; 
 
 A Doric-columned porch that glares upon 
 
 The leafy road ; and sombre pines that cast 
 Deep shadows on a mounded garth serene. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Yes, gracious Landscape, modest History, 
 That tranquillize the over-restless mind ! 
 Yet there are throbbing moments when I find 
 Its loveliness an insufficiency, 
 
 Its legends starved ; and then I yearn to be 
 In some heroic land — a land designed 
 In larger way, with larger deeds entwined — 
 
SONNETS 77 
 
 A fitting theatre for an epopee. 
 
 And I would see no whitened, wooden spire, 
 
 Nor shafts impoverished, but nobler things — 
 Great Parian columns capped with beaming gold. 
 
 And massive domes, and purfled towers that tire 
 
 The straining, upturned eye, and all that springs 
 In Life and Art from genius manifold ! 
 
 Again, when in more solemn mood I feel 
 That soon immeasurable Time will end 
 My short-spanned life; oh, then these hills tran 
 
 scend 
 The loftiest peaks ; these placid vales reveal 
 
 A lushness unapproached ; these rills appeal 
 
 More movingly than floods : these legends lend 
 Their quiet charm, while porch and steeple blend 
 With those soft dreams that o'er my spirit steal. 
 
 And though it matter not where our scant dust 
 May find finality; whether it blow 
 O'er far-off alien fields ; or yet may lie 
 
 Fathom on fathom deep ; or friends entrust 
 It to the grave ; albeit this I know — 
 Yet do I long in these sweet lands to die. 
 
 THE GOLDEN BOND 
 
 England ! you stand for Commerce — not alone ; 
 Your adamantine hulks plough every sea 
 Convoying in the name of Liberty 
 Great argosies of gold. In every zone 
 
 You set your goddess on her gem-wrenched throne, 
 
78 SONNETS 
 
 Awhile you prate of blest philanthropy. 
 
 England ! you stand for Commerce — so do we, 
 
 Leal children who the mother ne'er disown. 
 This is the bond between us — gold, god Gold — 
 
 Not friendship. What can worshipers of caste 
 Care for the common breeds who would uphold 
 
 The lack of it — a brotherhood unclassed ? 
 Aye, long as Commerce shall be aureoled, 
 
 So long our vaunted *' friendship " will be fast ! 
 
 O SOUTH ! 
 
 Reluctantly, O South, I take the pen 
 
 To give to conscience-thoughts clear utterance. 
 God knows I would not jauntily advance 
 A strife-engendering tenet, nor again 
 
 Convert calm brothers into wrangling men ! 
 Yet call to mind thy fateful arrogance, 
 O South, that shivered thine heroic lance — 
 Oh, be not ever more as thou wert then ! 
 
 Remember now the awful cost of war, 
 Its horrid harvest and the aftermath ! 
 Tread not again its red enmired path, 
 
 But let sweet Justice be thy counselor ! 
 
 Whatever may thy social preference be, 
 Stand thou, O South, for civic Liberty I 
 
SONNETS 
 
 79 
 
 THE REMEDY 
 
 Not easily evaded Law will cure 
 
 The villainy of men who cumulate 
 
 Vast wealth upon the wreck, the wrath, the hate 
 
 Of plundered brother man. What guard is sure 
 
 Against the craft omnipotent to lure 
 
 With ostentation of its savoury bait 
 The church, the virgin, aye, the very state ? 
 What strength 'gainst such temptation shall en- 
 dure? 
 
 And yet there is a guard, and simple too — 
 That all the decent world entreat this pack 
 
 Of monster thieves as it knows how to do 
 The lesser knaves — not doubtfully attack 
 
 Them through the courts — but give them ample view 
 Of its contemning, ostracizing back I 
 
 AND THEN? 
 
 From day to day heart-sickened do we read 
 Of rank chicanery in the market-place, 
 Till lauded ^'Business" doth connote disgrace 
 In honest eyes, while " Barter " seems to breed 
 
 Naught but corruption. Whither will it lead 
 The flaccid scions of a sturdy race — 
 To what black deeps of infamy abase, 
 
8o SONNETS 
 
 This cursed lust of gain — this bullion greed ? 
 In unenlightened times to be in trade 
 
 Was deemed by uncult, blazoned men a blight ; 
 Because they held that dealing must degrade — 
 
 That bartering must their chivalry benight. 
 O lettered Moderns, can it really be 
 
 That those rude barons rightlier judged than we ? 
 
 VOYAGES 
 
 Those mariners who took the awful sea 
 
 Of Hope or Horn to ply their parlous trade — 
 Who dared the hurricane and pirate's blade, 
 Or confiscation on some paltry plea 
 
 By licensed guardians weaponed cap-a-pie, 
 Or balmy islands' savage ambuscade — 
 At least their fortune wrecked, or fortune made 
 In a firm-knitted, friendly company. 
 
 But I upon my ventures for the gain 
 
 Of wider knowledge, or an art more chaste, 
 
 Or rightlier mode of life, and who would fain 
 Consort with many of a kindred taste — 
 
 Alas ! I find the further I attain. 
 
 The lonelier is my voyage upon the waste. 
 
 IF I MIGHT KISS THY SOUL ! 
 
 I wish that I might rapturous kiss thy soul 
 As I so often kiss thy features sweet ; 
 Then would my happiness be aye complete ! 
 
SONNETS 8 1 
 
 For I should grim, deflowering Time cajole, 
 And cheat the blasting years that careless roll 
 
 O'er thy dear head ; while at thy cherished feet 
 
 I should forever utter phrases meet 
 
 For a first flame — and Love would have no goal. 
 Yea, I would kiss the Joy that vivifies 
 
 Thy smile, with greater fervor than thy lips : 
 
 My kiss upon thy Kindness would eclipse 
 The one impressed upon thy glorious eyes ; 
 
 And I would kiss thy Truth as even now 
 
 I kiss the splendor of thy flawless brow I 
 
 IN AUTUMN 
 
 O Summer, Summer, come again to me ! 
 
 Oh, let me feel the warmth that vivifies ! 
 Oh, let me breathe the aura from thy skies. 
 And scent again the flowerful, fragrant lea 
 
 Basking 'twixt shady hills. Oh, let me see 
 Thine intertwining emerald harmonies, 
 Which make of our poor earth a paradise, 
 Where blessed angels well might long to be ! 
 
 O Love, O Love, return thou here once more ! 
 Return, I pray, and let me sun awhile 
 
 In those sweet sultry charms that I adore — 
 
 Warm, answering lips and limbs, and glowing 
 smile. 
 
 With eyes that have in song no metaphor, 
 And all the wordless graces that beguile. 
 
82 SONNETS 
 
 THE BARDS ENDURE 
 
 There looms a column on Ferrara's square 
 Intended for a petty despot's fame : 
 But circumstance forbade. It then became 
 The aerie of a pope, who nested there 
 
 More than a century, until the air 
 
 Resounded with the shout of Freedom's name ; 
 Whereon sweet Liberty encrowned the same 
 For three short years, and then the shaft was 
 bare — 
 
 Ungarnished by the royal Austrian's hate. 
 Anon the statue of an Emperor 
 
 Throned over it, until his fallen state 
 
 Left the lone column widowed as before. 
 
 Since then a bard hath weathered nations' fate, 
 For aye aloft doth Ariosto soar ! 
 
 NOT YOUTH ALONE 
 
 Not Youth alone hath privilege to sing 
 
 Of Love's fierce throes. It may be competent 
 To lute a young heart's wild astonishment 
 At new-born ecstasy, and joys that spring 
 
 From handseled sense, or languishments that bring 
 A first unmutual flame. It may give vent 
 To exaltations, fresh and innocent 
 As dovelings' bliss upon their maiden wing. 
 
 But passions like the storm-clouds come and go : 
 
SONNETS 83 
 
 The white-flecked azure follows on the black, 
 While heavens swoon and meadows sleep below ; 
 
 Anon the dark, impetuous clouds whirl back. 
 Who but the practiced registrar shall say 
 
 Which turmoiled cloud-burst made the stormier 
 day? 
 
 THE TOUCHSTONE 
 
 When my sad spirit weepeth as the skies 
 
 That o'er the swaying, moaning forests lower; 
 When every minute draggeth like an hour, 
 And a disordered vision magnifies 
 
 Each petty contretempts, until it rise 
 A veritable ill ; when every power 
 With which indulgent Nature doth endower 
 The virile human frame, enervate lies — 
 
 Oh, then it is I seek the needful zest 
 In soothing, fortifying, lifting song ! 
 
 Oh, then it is there comes the crowning test 
 Of what in verse is lovable and strong ! 
 
 And then it is to me that lyre seems best 
 
 Which makes the interminable day less long ! 
 
 LIVING CLASSICISM 
 
 Not a dead past those groves of Helicon 
 
 Where Phoebus twined his sweet, triumphant 
 
 lyre 
 With laurel ever green, to lead the quire 
 Of Muses mine ; nor those calm forms that shone 
 
 From out the color-glowing Parthenon — 
 
84 SONNETS 
 
 Nay, but a quickening present that doth fire 
 The reverent soul of him who would aspire 
 To found his not unlasting art upon 
 
 Incomparable taste ! So marvelous 
 
 Is this our vital vision of the antique ; 
 
 So free from actual defects ! 'Tis thus 
 
 We image to ourselves a thing unique — 
 
 A flawless dream — more beautiful to us 
 
 Than ever to the beauty-loving Greek ! 
 
 "THE LAST STRAW" 
 
 I saw two woodmen hew a giant tree 
 
 With constant arm, while each alternate blow 
 
 Worked nearer to its pending overthrow. 
 
 The air was quiet as a halcyon sea. 
 And every axe- stroke rang athwart the lea. 
 
 At last the merest shred of core did show 
 
 Beneath the mighty, branching trunk : yet lo, 
 
 The Giant stood in all his majesty ! 
 Thereat a Zephyr, scarcely strong enough 
 
 To bend the willow-withes that marged the 
 meads, 
 Frisked round the field, and with a sportive puff 
 
 Crashed down the stately mass. Ah, he who 
 reads 
 May know too well how oft some slight rebuff 
 
 Will topple o'er a Babel of misdeeds ! 
 
SONNETS 85 
 
 LIFE'S AUTUMN 
 
 If one could break before the hour supreme 
 Into transcendent glory as the leaves 
 That tender-kirtled, comely Spring conceives, 
 That summer ripens to a deeper scheme, 
 
 That Autumn raises to a pitch extreme ! 
 
 How splendid are the harmonies she weaves 
 Before white winter ruthlessly bereaves 
 Her of this dazzling, aureate color dream ! 
 
 Should not the autumn of an earnest life 
 
 Increase in splendor with increasing years ? 
 Its purpose in a glorious blaze fulfill, 
 
 Intensely colored by the weathered strife — 
 Its jubilations, agonies, and tears ? 
 In sooth it should — if one but had the will. 
 
 STUDIO-BOUND 
 
 The timeliest, sweetest rain did close the door 
 To labor in the gold and purple field ; 
 And I, abandoned to what raptures 5deld 
 The god-born bards, did o'er those verses pore 
 
 Where wise Ulysses on the Stygian shore 
 
 Communed with shrilling shades that round him 
 
 wheeled. 
 And, oh, how sad it was when he revealed 
 Himself to her — her — who his great heart bore ! 
 
 Another bard I chose, and it chanced so 
 
86 SONNETS 
 
 I read Carducci's dream — Letitzia's shade, 
 Standing upon her threshold wan with woe, 
 
 When skies crepuscular to blackness fade, 
 Stretching her arms above the savage sea. 
 
 Her sadder plight brought sadder tears to me. 
 
 VEXATIONS. 
 
 Oh, could I but command the Wisdom high 
 To bear with waspish trifles that abound 
 Throughout the shining day, and oft confound 
 The sweet-paced hours of Sleep that pacify ! 
 
 What shame it is my fancy to deny 
 
 Its exercise, which might to Fame redound. 
 Yet wastes itself as doth a furious hound 
 Absurdly snapping at a teasing fly ! 
 
 If I could but command it I — not the mask 
 Of a serenity that seems to be 
 
 Spontaneous — oh, not for that I ask, 
 
 But heart-core calm, alike the deeps of sea. 
 
 Is this, forsooth, a superhuman task ? 
 Is this an altitude too high for me ? 
 
 MURAT'S DEATH 
 
 It might have been a yester tragedy 
 
 So deeply was I moved. Oh, what an end 
 For one who did in gallantry transcend 
 The squadroned world — ^whose plumes were 
 guarantee, 
 
SONNETS 87 
 
 Fronting the flashing ranks, of Victory ! 
 
 For these same jeweled plumes they did contend, 
 The brigands ! and his pageantry did rend, 
 And his proud person foul, hard by the sea 
 
 Laving Calabrian shores ! Against a wall 
 
 They backed him in a gloomy cell, so small 
 
 That he upgathered in his reaping arm 
 
 The muskets to his heart, lest they should harm 
 
 His warrior face — a flash — his soul was flown. 
 And this to keep a Bourbon on his throne I 
 
 '^THE SOCIAL FABRIC" 
 
 The social Fabric ? What a structure mean ! 
 
 Low-linteled are the doors, their span too strait 
 
 For ingress of a lofty thought or great : 
 
 And narrow are the windows, pierced, I ween, 
 
 To give an issue to the air unclean, 
 And all the inner foulness liberate. 
 Drawn, too, are all the shades to violate 
 God's clarity, and Satan's work to screen ! 
 
 Within no light of heaven. Jet on jet 
 
 Of guarded glare doth glamourously shine 
 
 On fards and falsities : but none regret 
 The truer, sweeter, purer ray divine 
 
 In this perverted domicile. And yet 
 
 We hallow it, as though it were a shrine ! 
 
88 SONNETS 
 
 E. H. W. 
 
 [S. J.] 
 
 He gave his all to God, and joined that band 
 Which heeds no danger-beacon here below, 
 Which for His glory wrestles with the foe 
 From drear Alaska to Van Diemen's Land, 
 
 Its fiery zeal by Christ's own breathing fanned. 
 Making thereof no individual show, 
 No selfish vaunt, but laboring all aglow 
 With fealty to the Order's stern command. 
 
 I rarely saw him, yet his mien is clear, 
 
 Refined by book and vigil, speaking soft 
 
 With accent sweet, as he who hath no ear 
 
 For worldly brawls, and who by walking oft 
 
 With tuneful souls in visions doth appear 
 
 Like one of those calm saints who dwell aloft. 
 
 SAINT FRANCIS 
 [" Mortem cantando suscepit."] 
 
 Sweet poet Francis, every genuine bard 
 Must feel thine inspiration as his own. 
 In ravening, plundering ages thou alone 
 Didst chant the law of Love, and lesson hard 
 
 Of Poverty. And thou didst aye regard 
 
 All nature as thy kin. To him who shone 
 For thee by day, enthralled, thou didst intone 
 Thy praise. And all the firmament bestarred. 
 
 The clouds and bitter wind were dear to thee ; 
 
SONNETS 89 
 
 And fearful fire was beautiful and strong ; 
 E'en thou didst laud thy '' sister " Death in song ! 
 Sweet brother, may as thine ray ending be — 
 
 When swiftly ebbing days seem drear and long — 
 To sing myself into eternity ! 
 
 TO BERENICE 
 
 Men call the star by a less lovely name, 
 But in my agony I gave it thine, 
 Dear Berenice. From thy realms divine — 
 Where day and night are but the eternal same 
 
 I love to think that thy pure earth-spent flame 
 Doth on my groping desolation shine. 
 To me such thoughts are a sweet anodyne. 
 To me thy lustre is a heavenward aim. 
 
 When all the turmoiled world has gone to rest. 
 And light is dimming in the hemisphere, 
 
 I gaze into the regions of the blest, 
 
 Watching until the herald-star appear — 
 
 Till thy white, saintly soul is manifest — 
 Till thou, O Berenice, thou art here ! 
 
 AT DEAD OF NIGHT. 
 
 I saw thee standing in celestial light 
 
 Brighter than argent beams of summer's noon, 
 Softer than softest rays of harvest moon 
 When first she launches on the void of night. 
 
 And thou didst stoop from thine immortal height 
 
90 SONNETS 
 
 To take my nerveless hand, and whispered '* Soon 
 The years will grant thy dearest, longed-for boon. 
 And thy reft heart with utter joy requite." 
 
 Thereon in gratitude I clasped thy feet. 
 
 Not daring yet to touch thine heavenly eyes ; 
 For I had feared that in thy paradise 
 
 Thou mightst have mated with a soul more meet. 
 Then didst thou read my unexpressed surmise, 
 And chased the bitter thought with kisses sweet. 
 
 ESTIMATES 
 
 Just Death, thou standest by a lonely grave, 
 
 And to thy handmaid Praise dost solemn say, 
 "I see no laurel on this headstone gray. 
 Moss-masked, obliterate, where rankly wave 
 
 Persistent weeds : Come, Maiden, make it brave 
 With lustrous leaves that know not sere decay, 
 That ever to Parnassian breezes sway. 
 The leaves that Phoebus to immortals gave." 
 
 Then turn'st thou to her sister, hard Dispraise, 
 
 "What mean those garlands on yon sumptuous 
 tomb? 
 
 Those sculptured frets, the fulsome phrase on phrase ? 
 Wrench off the chaplets ! with thy wrath consume 
 
 The pomp and lie ! — Hold ! rather let them blaze 
 A beacon to the builders. 'Tis their doom." 
 
SONNETS 91 
 
 THE "CENTURY" 
 
 Kind, steadfast friends? Oh, yes, we meet them 
 there, 
 
 In that well-famed, selectest company. 
 
 That leafy islet on a sterile sea, 
 
 That lush oasis mid the reaches bare, 
 Uncultivate — ^the thirsting soul's despair ! 
 
 Yet other haunts, and other groups there be 
 
 Where wit prevails with brilliant repartee ; 
 
 And as for love — we have it everywhere. 
 Why is it then we hold the place so high ? 
 
 For its fair culture ? for its standard pure. 
 And those sweet mutual deeds that justify 
 
 Man's life ? Oh, no, it is because the lure 
 Of gleaming gold hath not the power to buy 
 
 Predominance, nor Honor's forfeiture. 
 
 HEROES? 
 
 Each bore his part of genial eloquence 
 
 Around a board adorn with gleaming plate. 
 Where Church verged on the Law, and Law the 
 
 State, 
 And where were trencher-men of excellence 
 
 With pen and brush. Then one in reverence 
 Did say, "who doth his talent dedicate 
 To Art in these commercial days ingrate 
 Stands forth a hero in soul eminence." 
 
92 SONNETS 
 
 Oft have we faltered in our faith, dear Muse, 
 
 Not deeming our poor gifts could e'er suffice 
 To claim thy lustrous, heavenward roaming eyes ; 
 
 Because the ungodlike world did oft refuse 
 Its lower gaze. Oh, can it really be 
 That, heroes y we abide on heights with thee ? 
 
 TO AGE 
 
 Cling not like lonely fruitage to a tree 
 
 Bereft of its fair canopy of leaves ! 
 
 Cling not to ghostly Memory that grieves 
 
 A pageant-past, and all the mad-cap glee 
 Of youthful circumstance ! but rather be 
 
 Companioned to the flushing flower that cleaves 
 
 To bourgeoning boughs — to Spring that inter- 
 weaves 
 
 Her tapestries upon the blooming lea. 
 Not age to age alone, as proverbs hold — 
 
 One vast sad harmony of pale decay 
 Voicing unheeded lore of purest gold ; 
 
 But Age to Youth in its wild primal day, 
 That youth may share the wisdom of the old, 
 
 And age retain what years would wear away. 
 
 AT VESPERS 
 
 Oh, heed it not poor menial acolyte 
 
 That thou art but a gamin, gutter-bred ! 
 
 For, as thou standest 'neath the radiance shed 
 
 From yonder altar-candles softly bright — 
 
 As is a love-charged moon on harvest night — 
 
SONNETS 93 
 
 A cloud of incense swirling round thy head, 
 Thou seem'st a shining angel heaven-sped — 
 A raptured soul in garments lustrous white ! 
 
 And so it is that some celestial thought — 
 
 Some deed that hath its root in paradise — 
 
 Will ecstasy an earthling's heart distraught 
 By selfish, soiling cares — will canonize 
 
 Unsaintly men mid worldly ways upbrought — 
 Will perishable flesh immortalize. 
 
 THE BEST BOOK 
 
 The book that in the hour of awful need 
 
 Doth solace most, that book I hold the best 
 In this o'erlettered world, while all the rest 
 Our vagrant curiosities but feed. 
 
 Oh, did I not this springtide morning read 
 How a dust-fallen emperor of the west, 
 When his heart-agonies were cruelest, 
 Did turn to a romance that he might lead 
 
 His anguished mind from off the gory gloom 
 
 Of a disastrous field, and meanwhile dream, 
 
 Until the white truce-flag should bring his doom ? 
 Ah, what availeth it to know the theme 
 
 Of that romance, its name, or yet by whom 
 
 'Twas writ — enough — it was the book supreme ! 
 
 CHILL APRIL 
 
 I would not commerce with* thee. Poesy 
 
 In these wild tardy days of spring, for fear 
 My spirit winter-scourged and ah ! so drear, 
 Should discord with thy heavenly harmony 
 
94 SONNETS 
 
 Exacting numbers sweet. For mine would be 
 Prosaic as yon meadows dull and sere, 
 And sad as sand-dunes by the moaning mere, 
 And bitter as the dreams that harrow me. 
 
 Wait, wait, my gentle one, for soon will call 
 
 From out the soughing, roseate-budding wood, 
 The gleaming pool, the soft, green-girding lea, 
 
 Clear, quickening, urgent voices that would thrall 
 Even a boorish soul ! Oh, then my mood 
 Will link its lute to thy pure minstrelsy ! 
 
 BETTER SO 1 
 
 In one of those sequestered bights of rest. 
 
 That off the churned tracks of commerce lay, 
 I chanced to make an anchorage to-day. 
 Upon a wall funereal wreaths expressed 
 
 His fellow- craftsmen's grief; and all the best 
 Of a young artist's life — just passed away 
 Ere hand could scarce the budding soul obey — 
 Beneath Death's blazonry were manifest. 
 
 Why should we grieve ? is it not better so. 
 
 To pass in full effulgence of young hope ? 
 
 To cease to be in young ambition's glow, 
 
 In ignorance of ripe achievement's scope ? 
 
 Alas ! the master veterans too well know 
 
 The hopeless dark through which arch talents 
 grope. 
 
SONNETS 95 
 
 COMPACTNESS 
 
 I showed a friend the treasures of a place 
 
 Wherein were housed the marvels of the hand 
 From every quarter of the artist-land, 
 From every inspiration of the race — 
 
 Religion, love, virility, or grace — 
 
 Of heavenly orient hues, and forms so grand 
 As wrought the sculptors of the Phidian band, 
 Or Angelo upon his vault did trace. 
 
 But when I asked " O friend, of all these things 
 That in the throngM chambers thou hast seen, 
 
 Which is it that the foremost swiftly springs 
 Into thy memory, and full serene 
 
 Doth lodge within thy soul ? " At once he said, 
 
 <*That small gold coin with the consummate 
 head." 
 
 " FALL CAMPAIGNS "—AN ORISON 
 
 What law have we transgressed that we should share 
 The fermentations of the '* fall campaign " ? 
 Good Lord, if we have foully sinned we fain 
 Would suffer as the saints : but oh, forbear 
 
 To drive us to the Thule of despair 
 
 With " delegations," ^< platforms," and the bane 
 Of "nominating" fume, and fustian vain, 
 Infecting all the sweet autumnal air I 
 
 Oh, spare us, too, the bores that "notify " 
 
96 SONNETS 
 
 In pompous words the prescient " candidate,** 
 And his "accepting" speech. If in thine eye 
 
 We favor find, just Lord, eliminate 
 The betting man, the fools that prophesy — 
 
 And all like nuisances, dear God, abate ! 
 
 POLITICS 
 
 *' To dicker with the devil " — that must be 
 The politicians' rubric — to adjust 
 The conscience to the overweening lust 
 Of lofty place or parish primacy. 
 
 Not only politicians ! Yea, but he, 
 
 To whom a grateful Nation yields its trust 
 Is lured unto the act that would disgust 
 A soul who lives in high philosophy. 
 
 Kind hast thou been to me, my white-robed Muse, 
 To let me linger by Castalian springs. 
 To wander through thy laurel-clustered haunts, 
 
 And suffer me thy mateship pure to choose ; 
 For now I soar o'er craft, as wingdd things 
 Soar o'er swart troops of feverish, futile ants ! 
 
 AT ELECTION TIME 
 
 ** You care not for your country's weal," they say, 
 Because I smile with bland indifference 
 At party cant, and miserable fence 
 Of hackneyed words, and everlasting bray 
 
 Of tonguester politicians who purvey 
 
SONNETS 97 
 
 The sordid epithet, who shock the sense 
 With torrents of a nauseous eloquence, 
 Whose glory is the patriot's dismay. 
 
 Too well I love my land to lower my flight 
 From soaring peaks of ideality ; 
 Too well I love the high celestial light 
 
 To redescend into a noxious night : 
 
 Dear Country ! would that I might bring to thee 
 The sweet perfection I enraptured see 
 
 LONELY CHRISTMAS 
 
 Alone with household gods ! while all mankind 
 With frenzied joy the day doth celebrate. 
 And not a soul appears to bear the weight 
 Of Memory save mine. Those wreaths combined 
 
 With jocund red, those gemlike toys enshrined 
 In lustrous green, the jets that scintillate, 
 The dazzling smiles, the sparkling eyes that mate 
 With stars — all, all of happier years remind. 
 
 Benignant gods ! — dear faces grave and sweet, 
 Ye precious things it was their wont to use, 
 
 How tenderly my loneliness ye greet, 
 
 What warmth o'er all my chill ye soft diffuse ! 
 
 So soon, so soon — but nay, it is not meet 
 
 That we should mar the day my sad-eyed Muse. 
 
 ROMAN PICTURES 
 
 Take them away ! So hard is it to bear 
 
 The leaden thoughts these pictured scenes awake, 
 The loveliness that makes the heart to ache, 
 
98 SONNETS 
 
 The yearned-for beauty that hath no compare . 
 
 Those opal hills that tremble in the air, 
 The lucid blue above the gold opaque 
 Of gleaming walls, the aqueducts that strake 
 The vast champaign — so barren yet so fair ! 
 
 O stately pines, and cypress loved of those 
 Who seek the solemn note, O travertine 
 Storing the beams of years, O ilex dark 
 
 Whose groves the classic mysteries enclose. 
 Will ever ye surcease to be divine 
 To souls that kindle to the sacred spark? 
 
 THE ARCHER 
 
 O starry Sagittarius, bright Sign 
 
 Whose high effulgence rayed upon my birth. 
 Remorseless thou hast brought me neither mirth, 
 Nor solace of good cheer, nor love of wine 
 
 Or wassail, nor the ease of wealth. But mine 
 Hath been the briered portion of the earth — 
 Travail and strain, and ceaseless care, and dearth 
 Of mindless sleep, kind Nature's anodyne. 
 
 Great starry Archer, what doth mean for me 
 
 Thy tense-drawn bow ? thy quivering shaft of fire 
 
 Which gleams in dark-blue fields eternally ? 
 
 That I should bend my bow in pain, nor tire 
 
 Of futile shafts ? Futile ? Oh, it may be 
 
 That one will pierce the mark ere I expire I 
 
SONNETS 99 
 
 DE SENECTUTE 
 
 How hard it is when Death is looming nigh, 
 
 And Life's thin thread hangs 'twixt the awful 
 
 shears, 
 To pass with grace our residue of years ; 
 When loveliness has left the glorious eye 
 
 Now filmed with shadowy ghosts that flutter by, 
 
 When fire is spent, when hopes become pale 
 
 fears, 
 And smiles are metamorphosed into tears. 
 When boding vapors gloom our limpid sky. 
 
 And yet experience should guarantee 
 
 The ripest work, the amplest, richest, best : 
 Aye ! we should strengthen to our latest breath 
 
 Could we but will it — will the energy : 
 
 Could we but tear from out our craven breast 
 The senseless, palsying fear of certain death ! 
 
CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 AND 
 
 NARRATIVE POEMS 
 
CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 AND 
 
 NARRATIVE POEMS 
 
 THE MODEL 
 
 Of what an unimaginable blend 
 
 Is this our human integer ! Although 
 
 Long years, propinquity, the bond of blood, 
 
 And closest scrutiny would seem to pledge 
 
 Us knowledge of 't, surprises never cease. 
 
 We think experience teaches Nature's laws ; 
 
 That if in parching times we hear at night 
 
 The whippoorwill's set, mournful monody; 
 
 Or if well-versed in cloud-lore we behold 
 
 The striate rack — "mare's tail" the glebesmen 
 
 say — 
 Higher than Himalayas, then we think 
 There will be rain ; or if again the wind 
 Veer suddenly from east to west and sweep 
 Great plumes adversely from the storm-capped 
 
 waves, 
 Bronzed seamen will predict an open sky. 
 But yet when tested signs prognosticate 
 Or fair, or wet, the surer mercury 
 Will oft confound our vaunted weather-ken. 
 Oh, what a goodly friend a gauger true 
 Of man's impenetrable soul would prove ! — 
 Not of its angry cloud-bursts, or its heats 
 Of love or hate, since these give vanguard signs, 
 
I04 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 Which even careless watchers signalize ; 
 
 But those deep thoughts that lie beneath its calm, 
 
 As unsuspected wreckage lies below 
 
 The level roof of the secretive sea. 
 
 Yet in default thereof we must keep on 
 
 Our annotating course, in hopes at least 
 
 That these our notings, if sincerely made, 
 
 May service some soul-student who would guess 
 
 The wherefore of its strangely errant ways. 
 
 At all events a character portrayed 
 
 Affords diversion to a curious few. 
 
 With this apology I portrait one 
 
 That chanced my way, and made me starkly stare ; 
 
 And would have roused a laugh had there not been 
 
 (To use the terminology of coins) 
 
 A serious obverse to the trivial face. 
 
 Image, if you will, a stately girl, 
 In stature topping well the average man, 
 Who confidently walks into a room — 
 High-ceiled, north-lighted, decked with dusty 
 
 casts, 
 Unfashioned clay, great half-wrought sheeted 
 
 forms, 
 All dipped in that gray atmosphere which floods 
 A sculptor's lair — who unabashed observes 
 '* I am a model ; those who've worked from me, 
 And copied as they could my actual form. 
 Say I'm the best there is — and that is true. 
 My legs are splendid — long and elegant — 
 So are my arms — you cannot see a bone, 
 Just dimples at the joints." " Dian ? " asked I. 
 " Oh, yes, the sculptors say so, and I've posed 
 For her. But then, you know, I also work 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 
 
 105 
 
 As a stenographer : and if by chance 
 
 An artist wants to use me in this way 
 
 I write his letters for him — they're not much 
 
 In that line — or at least it bores them so ! " 
 
 All this in commoner speech than I have writ — 
 
 Too racy even for unclassic verse — 
 
 The reader must enrich it with the spice 
 
 Of voguish, vulgar slang : I merely give 
 
 The gist of her unpunctuated talk. 
 
 ** And you must know, too, that my family 
 
 Is fine — among the first in all the State. 
 
 (Thereon she gave an anticlimaxed name 
 
 That started in the skies to end in depths). 
 
 I left my country home when father died, 
 
 Because I like a free, bohemian life. 
 
 I'm studying for the boards, and know a man 
 
 Who runs a syndicate, that runs the stage. 
 
 He says I've got first-rate, dramatic stuff. 
 
 I'm only posing now to pass the time 
 
 Till I'm a full-blown actress, and to pay 
 
 For food and lodging." On the table lay 
 
 My open Milton, which I often scan 
 
 To give the pitch whene'er I would impart 
 
 A monumental air to some idea 
 
 Condensing in the concrete, plastic clay. 
 
 She took it up, and to my sheer surprise 
 
 Showed ken of it, and with a roaming glance 
 
 From off the page half-scrutinized, she gave 
 
 The sonnet '' On his Blindness," and excerpts 
 
 From other immortalities : and then 
 
 She fingered favorite books that always lie 
 
 Within my arm's reach (overthumbed and soiled 
 
 With sculptors' grayish grime; but white at core), 
 
 Reciting fragments that ne'er fail to fire. 
 
io6 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 " Great Caesar ! " cried I, " how on earth is it 
 
 You learned these things ? " ''In my Academy," 
 
 Said she, giving a name magniloquent. 
 
 "Besides, you know, my mother taught at school, 
 
 And father had a lovely library, 
 
 And let me read his books when I was ill, 
 
 That being often ; for I was not strong. 
 
 Nor tall, nor well-formed as you see me now — 
 
 But haven't you some work for me to-day? " 
 
 '* Unfortunately not " (as on that day 
 
 I happened to be busy with the boots 
 
 And spurs of our great country's Father), " but 
 
 There are some women near at hand I know 
 
 Who paint or sculpture, possibly they need 
 
 A model, I will write a line for you." 
 
 *< Women? — don't like them — only work for men.*' 
 
 And this the answer I have oft received 
 
 From comely maidens who have come to pose, 
 
 As far as I know virgin as the stars. 
 
 Nor yet unready to slip off their gear 
 
 (Which cost their nearly-all) for the small pay 
 
 That goes to purchase them. Why ! I believe 
 
 If one should advertise for comely nudes. 
 
 His doors would be dammed up till dinner-time 
 
 With self-charmed women of all heights and hues, 
 
 Spanning the gamut ethical ! Pray heed, 
 
 Good ladies, that I only say believe, 
 
 And merely reason in Baconian way : 
 
 For if I tell you that there once applied 
 
 For this ungarnished situation's work 
 
 A spectacled New England school-marm, who 
 
 Barring her spectacles was fine enough 
 
 To stand for Amaryllis — then I say 
 
 'Tis fair to urge my bold hypothesis. 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 107 
 
 But to our model. Just to draw her out 
 I asked if she were heart-enthralled or free : 
 Although to those who know not occult ways 
 It may be unbelieved that maidens trothed 
 (And even married women 'neath the rose) 
 Will increment their income in this wise — 
 This casting off the artificial skin : 
 Yet vangel truth it is. Whereat I learned 
 That she had been engaged a short time since 
 To some young fellow in a distant town : 
 But now that she had left him to pursue 
 Her varied vein, and do her uncramped will 
 (Her undressed will one might in satire say), 
 She found her freedom sweeter than his love ; 
 And so had written him. I suavely asked 
 If liberty should not be propped by purse, 
 Or some propitious balance at the bank — 
 A goodly friend when all's inimical. 
 The laughing answer came that she '' could work,'* 
 And while she had not sixpence to the good. 
 She had no fear of drifting to the bad. 
 Then marking in my eyes a wearying look — 
 Since even pious listeners cannot bear 
 More than a modicum of monologue — 
 She moved reluctant towards the door. <* Good- 
 bye, 
 I'm sorry you've no work for me to-day," 
 She said, ''I want two dollars awfully." 
 
 Good reader, draw your moral as you will : 
 We sculptors are but men of temperament, 
 Having no proneness to psychology ; 
 Nor care to carve a soul up, nor describe 
 The limitations of sex- energy, 
 
io8 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 Nor cast the future, when the women choose 
 The larger, rougher liberties of men. 
 We fellows are a wayward lot ourselves, 
 Nor would we trammel any tugging soul ; 
 Because our business is to ferret out 
 Accommodating legs and arms and torse, 
 And make good statues. As for casuistries, 
 Soul-problems and the like — confound them all ! 
 
 NUPTIAL CHOICE 
 
 I SAW her first from out penumbral aisles 
 Unpeopled, on a placid afternoon, 
 As she was pouring out celestial song 
 Inweaved with organ strains ; and all I kenned 
 From my dim, unbeholden coign below 
 Was a cool silvery light like shivering dawn's 
 That drifted sidewise through an aperture, 
 Contouring with an argent filament 
 One half her graceful head — a lovely ear 
 Fair-lobed and nacreous, a songster's neck 
 On shoulders draped in weightless, gauzy white, 
 Such as the angels wear in art and verse. 
 No more could I perceive ; yet I divined 
 What only glimmered unprecise in shade 
 To be consistent with the part illumed, 
 As we divine the full circumferenced glow 
 Of the ripe moon from its thin new-born arc. 
 And when into the empty church's night 
 Her song had died, she issued from the porch 
 Communing with a friend — her fervency 
 Yet lingering on her face, her mien a-glow 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 109 
 
 With music's fire, and a white smile to make 
 Abjuring, macerating men to fall — 
 Oh, then was divination verified ! 
 But were she as the holy-one she seemed, 
 Or incarnation of demoniac snares 
 To tangle up in hell a lover's life, 
 'Twould not have qualified a whit my choice — 
 Nor mine nor any man's unbound by ties, 
 Or old or young : for youth and gravest age 
 Are well-paired dolts, ne'er looking at the sun 
 Of Beauty through Discretion's dusking glass. 
 Man takes a mate because he hotly loves. 
 If he deliberate — why, then Love's cool : 
 Cool Love's a paradox. And so we say 
 To every one who gaspeth in the snares 
 (Like netted gladiators scanning hard 
 The uncertain thumb), *<God help thee, suffering 
 friend." 
 
 The issue proved that God in sooth helped me. 
 Now many years have lapsed since then — sweet years 
 Of lasting bloom, of undeciduous joy. 
 Through her wise offices and wistful care 
 My house has thrived, my children have enhanced 
 Their fair name's heritage, and more than once 
 Have I escaped what seemed impending death, 
 And oft have held at bay that worse than death, 
 Incompetence to meet the daily task, 
 Or exercise of eager faculties. 
 If He should take her ere to-morrow's disk 
 Brushes in couchant hues around blue shades. 
 The memory of what has been would paint 
 In golden tones the residue of days 
 Gleaming about my shadowed widowhood. 
 
no CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 'Twas Providence, not Choice deliberate, 
 Young friends, that turned me this well-rounded 
 
 life; 
 Or if you will, good Luck — good Luck to you I 
 
 IN AN ARTIST'S STUDIO 
 [A Monologue] 
 
 Dost need a model for thy work to-day ? 
 Or wouldst thou like to see and annotate 
 My figure for some future exigence ? 
 No ? — Not to-day ? — nor yet for future days ? 
 Thou givest me but scanty glance, because 
 My face attracts thee not. Thou dost not know 
 The ravishments that lie concealed beneath 
 This garb enforced. Should I discover them, 
 A marvel wouldst thou see of faultless form — 
 Not an anatomy submerged by pulp, 
 The beau-ideal of Fashion's votarists, 
 But subtle modelings announcing life. 
 And purpose of a woman's entity : 
 Here low reliefs just peering underneath 
 A garb of pearly, undulating flesh, 
 As some smooth, polished stone just variegates 
 The shining level of the shoreward sea j 
 There, dimples like the languid, whorling stream's 
 Looping through wide, recumbent, grassy lands — 
 Those two, for instance, so divinely wrought 
 Upon the back — upon the rising wave 
 Of splendid flesh that sweeps from out the waist, 
 And where the color passes to faint rose. 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 1 1 1 
 
 And thou shouldst see the gently springmg hips — 
 No suddenness, or overcharge of mass, 
 But one sweet quiet curve from girth to knees 
 As pink as morn-flushed clouds, and feet alike 
 To unshod goddesses* who walk on mists, 
 Uncramped and fall, and nacreous as a shell. 
 Thou starest at my words ! Thou thoughtst I was 
 Mere animal ! Wouldst know my history. 
 And why I'd pose for thee? My secret, that. 
 Wait but a moment's space — 'tis quickly done. 
 
 S|C 3jC 3|C ?(€ 3|C 3fC 
 
 Look ! Have I lied to thee ? Hast lost thy speech ? 
 
 CONCERNING WOMEN 
 
 It was our wont on summer afternoons 
 To stroll beneath centurial vaults of green 
 Ceiling the ample, navelike village road, 
 Or sit beneath a foliate dome of elms, 
 And feel upon our cheeks a fountain's spray 
 That zephyrs flung from off its cresting plumes ; 
 Or, when the deeper gold of couching Sun 
 Glazed all the purple-shaded, placid land. 
 And made poor weeds to pass for haughty flowers, 
 To ramble o'er the level, cooling fields. 
 And breathe their grateful, earthy issuance. 
 Yet all the while we held a converse brisk 
 On matters that to us imported much. 
 But Clifford was more eloquent than I, 
 
112 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 And glad to talk whenever he could find 
 Indulgent auditors to give him play, 
 Nor interrupt o'ermuch — though just enough 
 To stimulate, and keep him to the key. 
 
 One afternoon our conversation turned 
 On woman's preference — a theme to men 
 Insoluble as is the song of birds. 
 " How can these women," in his warmth he cried, 
 "These lovely women with their tastes refined 
 Bear up with men so coarse and money-mad, 
 Imbruted traders without heart to rise, 
 Paraders of their ways indelicate? 
 Just figure to yourself this state of things : 
 Here is a woman with intrinsic taste 
 For what is fair — an artist by her birth 
 With native eye for eurythmies of form 
 And color symphonies, with natural ear 
 For what is beautiful in speech and song — 
 Who only needs a guiding word or so 
 To comprehend and feel all harmonies. 
 Or prove the counter-shock of what discords. 
 Such guiding words are thronging everywhere; 
 Articulate in lecture ; visible 
 In book and photograph ; exhibited 
 In many a rich museum open-doored ; 
 And audible in myriad concert-halls. 
 Aye, all these things she sees and hears and feels, 
 Being elated by their influence, 
 While he, her mate, is following baser bents ; 
 Not having appetence for things that yield 
 No obvious return in property. 
 Nor taste for pleasures higher than his aims. 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 113 
 
 ** Thus every day she rises in the scale, 
 And every day he in like ratio falls. 
 Of course we must except the few elect, 
 Bell-wethers of the flocks who lead the ewes 
 Into the upland pasturage of Life, 
 And would persuade their fellow males to browse 
 In higher, saner, if less opulent fields — 
 A somewhat barren toil since few give heed. 
 
 ** Yes, every day the cultured draw recruits 
 From out the toiling ranks of female life : 
 For do not wistful daughters daily see 
 Their back-bent mothers prematurely old, 
 Raw-boned, cracked-skin, abominable hags, 
 Worn out with parturition and a toil 
 As ceaseless as the seasons ? They, too, see 
 What freedom from such drudgery grants elsewhere. 
 Open the girlish eye and give fair way 
 To instinct, with the added stimulus 
 Of good exemplars, such as we to-day 
 Are moving mind and thew and purse to give, 
 And let the male keep on his present course — 
 Why, sir ! if this persist, as well it may, 
 Will girls in their un-Adamed paradise, 
 Permissioned to eat freely from the Tree, 
 Come out of it to consort with a man 
 Whom knowledge-fruit has shown to be an oaf? 
 Great Heavens ! the race will soon become extinct ! 
 
 I laughed rejoinder to this fierce tirade, 
 To this perfervidness of utterance 
 (Though usually the unsuspected truth 
 Lies patent underneath the froth of speech). 
 **Nay, nay," said I, " there is no fear of that, 
 
114 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 Nor all the other ills that you forebode, 
 
 Since lean of sex to sex will ever be 
 
 As it has always been since Eden's bloom. 
 
 Assuredly our Teuton ancestors, 
 
 Who lived imbruted in their bogs and fens 
 
 And dusky bosks, though mettlesome in war — 
 
 Which they oft bellowsed up to see its sparks, 
 
 And hear its fearful, pleasurable roar, 
 
 And scent its flesh-spiced fumes — but who in peace 
 
 Caroused and brawled and gamed and roundly 
 
 cursed, 
 Were well-beloved by their own women-folk 
 Of chastity unchallenged, who were held 
 In honor high by these beer-bibbing braves. 
 Then think of all those doughty chiefs who fought 
 Upon Scamander's plain — the King of Men — 
 The Swift of Foot — and he who tossed his Crest — 
 The Wife-purloiner and the rest — all loved 
 Of white-armed ones — aye, giving ten years' life 
 For one white-armed supreme — and yet half 
 
 brutes ! 
 Why, when I see Achilles in the trench. 
 His head engarlanded with awful fire. 
 And at his side the goddess azure-eyed. 
 Both shrieking like wide-mouthed demoniacs — 
 I say * what beasts. ' Or when again I think 
 Of this divine Achilles giving way 
 To poor old Priam's tears and prayers to yield 
 The desecrated body of his son 
 Fouled by its triple charioteering round 
 The god-built walls of Troy — yes, giving way, 
 But pocketing the ransom — then say I, 
 Such chivalry is not for like of me. 
 And yet Briseis loved him, beast or no. 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 115 
 
 And Clifford answered, " Very well for then 3 
 What women crave the most in men is force 
 (At least a splendid woman said so once, 
 Who looked like that inspired, laureled Muse 
 Found at Cortona not so long ago) : 
 But force is of another strain to-day. 
 A dozen men of mental calibre 
 With pipe-stem legs and arms, and sloping torse 
 Would sweep Scamander meadows hero-free. 
 Besides, the beauty of those demigods 
 Would count for much — if they resembled aught 
 What marble or the painted clay aver. 
 Whose fairness even takes the modern girl. 
 (And be it said much of this plastic charm 
 Lies in refinement and a rhythmic grace 
 Half feminine.) But travesty your god 
 In tweeds of modern cut ! Why, man ! the fact 
 We use such toggery proves the point I make 
 That charm no more is vested in the thews. 
 Confront Achilles' armor with our gear — 
 The ' five-fold ' shield all bravely story-wrought, 
 The corselet brighter than the sheen of flames. 
 The golden crested helm that shone like stars — 
 Confront this armory with silly braid. 
 And pompous epaulettes, and gaudy stripes, 
 (That must be canceled on the battle-line) ! 
 Or take again the splendors of the joust — 
 The quaintly broidered blazonry of knights, 
 The plumes, the gleaming steel ; and all around 
 The lists the jeweled vesture of the dames. 
 Now place beside this picturesqueness — what ? 
 The grotesque armor of the football field ; 
 The costumes of the ' diamond ' or the * crease ' ! 
 But this is by the mark, and after all 
 
1 6 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 I really never could enucleate 
 
 From out its tough, and baffling, masking rind 
 
 The kernel of a woman's preference. 
 
 I merely make a note of what I see 
 
 And offer it as evidence ; because 
 
 All testimony has a certain weight 
 
 Until rebutted by compelling facts. 
 
 Now this is what I noted not long since 
 
 Which happened, in a little neighboring town 
 
 Where I was sojourning awhile to change 
 
 The scene, and sap the hours by turning o'er 
 
 The town-hall records to affirm some dates. 
 
 ** The parents were of honest, average sort, 
 Such as we often see behind the plough, 
 Or bustling in and out the kitchen door 
 Shirt- sleeved, or aproned, following the sex — 
 Fair types of worthy, plain New-England folk, 
 Or almost any tillers of the glebe ; 
 Since occupation has a tendency 
 To label all its votaries alike. 
 The daughter had distinction of her own, 
 Nor yet defaced by that hard, manual toil 
 Which turns to hagdom sweet, engaging girls — 
 Which grants to flowering beauty but the boon 
 Of a few favoring, full-blown, brilliant months. 
 Wasting like roses from a sumptuous red 
 To lurid purples ere their petals fall ', 
 Or supernatural clouds that paint the west 
 With undreamed hues, then sudden pass to ash. 
 And it would seem she had a bodement fixed 
 Of this sad evanescence of her charm. 
 Her power, her all in all — a talent's match. 
 If her fair skin beneath the massy hair — 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 117 
 
 That snared the bluish sky-tones in the lights, 
 
 But burned in shade hke oaken autumn leaves — 
 
 Should brown and corrugate with over-work, 
 
 If her neat form should knot and gnarl likes pines 
 
 That battle with the winds on saltish dunes, 
 
 What then could Fortune bring her but the End ? 
 
 For, mark you, she was not the duplicate 
 
 Of her progenitors, for whom sufficed 
 
 The stubborn rearing of heroic schools 
 
 That made them what they were, or dull, or wise — 
 
 But yet the Nation's bulwark at the pinch. 
 
 The schools have changed, and now their larger 
 
 scheme 
 Suggests expatiation into fields 
 Of wider boundaries. Old tastes have passed ; 
 And she was permeated with the new. 
 
 **l saw her frequently about the Inn 
 Where she performed some office clerical ; 
 And as occasion prompted I was wont 
 To talk with her : and she forsooth was pleased 
 To barter words with one who knew a life 
 Revealed to her through print and dream alone. 
 Thereon I quickly gleaned that trite old tale 
 We know so well in these unrestful days — 
 The parents* bUnd desire to see their sons 
 And daughters rise, in what is called the world, 
 From their low station to a something vague 
 And bright as flimsy mists upon the heights, 
 Whose life is quickly quenched by the same sun 
 That breeds the glister of their moment's charm. 
 And yet they spend their all to gain this end, 
 And mortgage all to float this mere balloon 
 That once a-wing, God knows where it may fall. 
 
ii8 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 Ah, if a dexterous aeronaut may once 
 Cast out his kedge, and anchor on safe land, 
 We shall forever, I suppose, forget 
 The lost adrift on lone convulsive seas ! 
 
 '*So my fair lady was initiate 
 In music-mysteries, books, and such an Art 
 As our proud high-schools give : of all enough 
 To prod the appetite for lofty things, 
 But not enough to gain a livelihood 
 With choice, exacting tools — and just enough 
 To cause dissatisfaction with a lot 
 That looms uncouth beneath a glamouring light. 
 * How can I mate,' she used to say, * with those 
 Who go not forth, with men who stagnate here 
 Like festering, springless pools in airless woods, 
 Mere butchers' boys, or mongers of green truck, 
 Or boorish, rancid laborers on a farm, 
 Or at the very best a druggist's clerk. 
 Why educate a girl to such a fate. 
 And teach refinement that she may be coarse, 
 Infect herself with daily vulgar ways ? 
 For 'tis the law that coarser taints the fine — 
 And rather than be hindrance to the home, 
 Not having like to be a blowsy drudge, 
 I make a more congenial living here. 
 Where by reflexion I half-see the world.' 
 
 *' This is a version free of what she said 
 In my own somewhat high-hued rendering, 
 A paraphrase of her own simpler words 
 Spoken naively. Oft she talked with me. 
 And often at the close of work she sang ; 
 And speech and song were burdened with one fixed, 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 119 
 
 One sad refrain — the heart's desire to go; 
 To what she scarcely knew — but yet to go. 
 And this is what she sang — an artless thing. 
 
 What will the fair years bring ? 
 I do not know : 
 It might be weal and it might be woe, 
 A garland of rue or a wedding ring 
 Meet for the bride of an orient king — 
 Oh, I must go ! 
 
 Why do I linger here 
 
 From bloom to snow ? 
 The same sun shines and the same winds blow 
 The livelong seasons from year to year. 
 And the harmonies grade from green to sere — 
 
 Oh, I must go ! 
 
 Sweet Years, be kind to me ! 
 For I would flow 
 Like eager brooklets that wider grow 
 As nearer they run to the unknown sea, 
 Gleaming through glade and flowerful lea — 
 Oh, I must go ! 
 
 " And * go ' she did, drawn cityward by glare 
 And glamour and the fripperies that lure. 
 
 "Then what became of her amid the blaze? 
 Scorched, or enhanced by fulness of the flame ? " 
 I asked with interest. " I am not sure," 
 Said he; " but ugly village tales were rife. 
 Which quick were spread by women supple- 
 
 tongued — 
 Oflicious harpies unto whom a Fall 
 
I20 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 Is asset in their scandaling routine. 
 
 Thus much 1 heard from one who nursed me through 
 
 A tedious malady, nnd who, it seems, 
 
 Lodged in the house with her for some few weeks. 
 
 According to this nurse she spent her time 
 
 In moping o'er her comely indigence, 
 
 And longing for the opulent woman's cates, 
 
 The which she could not have in honest wise. 
 
 And if by chance there passed an equipage 
 
 Of trim appointment such as rich folk have, 
 
 Or if she read of jeweled, social queens 
 
 Whose silly doings certain noxious sheets 
 
 Deem worth their while to air in print ; why then 
 
 She used to fling herself upon the bed 
 
 Weeping from stark chagrin — a frame of mind 
 
 To preface any downright foolishness. 
 
 When I was up again, I saw her — where ? 
 
 Upon the stage, a tricked-out chorus-girl ! 
 
 * * iti it: :H: H: 
 
 I rather think those harpies spoke the truth, 
 
 "Too bad," said I, " and what a pity 'tis, 
 What pity that a Fall should flare no light — 
 No danger-beacon to foreguard the rest — 
 So it would seem. The world's as black as pitch ! 
 
 But Cliflbrd heeding not my platitudes 
 Continued : " Here's another tale that came 
 Within my ken, and seems to emphasize 
 My statement that in every woman's veins 
 There flows an artist's blood — a drop, mayhap, 
 Which is discovered in a crudish taste 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 121 
 
 To decorate her hat, her frock, her hair — 
 But yet to decorate ; or floods of it 
 Which sweep her to an ecstasy — or doom ! 
 
 '' Beyond that arbored range of blue-green hills. 
 There lies a township which in olden time — 
 Before the locomotive racked the vales — 
 Had some importance ; now 'tis parcel-dead. 
 But here and there along the uncoached road, 
 Still may be seen some ample, hipped-roofed house, 
 Elm-shaded, unrepaired, with shabby barn 
 And offices dependent in the rear ; 
 While unpruned scraggy apples ramble o'er 
 The weedy close of once a garden trim. 
 Deciphered now by a few flowering shrubs 
 Or sparse perennial, wastrels from the past. 
 The girl I speak of lived in such a place — 
 Her people not unlike the sheltering roof, 
 Once hale, now worn, but yet of good estate. 
 And she was dowered with New England eyes. 
 And hair that might have crowned a sea-king's mate^ 
 And form as svelt as any oread*s, 
 And tastes refined as your Aspasias*, 
 Colonnas', d'Estes', but without of course 
 Their climate to develop and expand. 
 She seemed to have a passion for the fair 
 In song, or tale, or art, or Nature's realm, 
 With almost hatred for unseemliness. 
 She used to sit beneath the Doric porch 
 All trellised by the ramping woodbine sprays : 
 And once at dusk I heard her caroling 
 To no one but herself and her fair dreams. 
 All Nature with romance was permeate : 
 Upon a green, transparent sky there rayed 
 
122 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 Long golden bars from voids behind the hills ; 
 
 And higher up upon the grayer fields 
 
 Thin zenith-rack took shape of purple plumes, 
 
 While from the granges in green, gloaming vales 
 
 The bluish smoke-shafts bent to Evening's breeze. 
 
 Her song was sweet and melting as the light ; 
 
 A sort of penitential orison 
 
 To Beauty for our desecrating ways. 
 
 How fair thou art ! how fair ! 
 
 Beauty, thou wouldst aye abide. 
 Nor least of thy sweet graces hide, 
 And we should see thee everywhere, 
 
 So fair, so fair, 
 Did we to thee true fealty swear. 
 
 Oh, thou art fair, so fair ! 
 And yet we cross thee for our gain, 
 Thy loveliest aspects we profane, 
 We care not for thee — no — not care, 
 
 So fair, so fair. 
 Turn not away in thy despair ! 
 
 O Beauty, thou art fair ; 
 
 1 see thee roam the Earth the Sky, 
 The green below, the blue on high ; 
 All, all, save us, thy love declare, 
 
 So fair, so fair, 
 O Beauty, bear with us, oh, bear ! 
 
 " Not far from this green trellised, Doric porch 
 There stood another home of the same mould, 
 But of a sterner cast, that had for years 
 Sheltered a sturdy race of preaching men, 
 True shepherds of their flocks in every wise, 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 123 
 
 Who gripped the temporal and the spiritual crook 
 
 That none might stray abroad — yet wolf-secure. 
 
 Our maid had given both her heart and hand 
 
 To the last scion of this clergy-stock, 
 
 Inheriting their lusty will to preach 
 
 The Faith to every cantle of the earth, 
 
 But leavened with the tolerance of the times, 
 
 And less insistent than his forbears were 
 
 To hammer home the truth in stubbornness. 
 
 When 'twas too near his cotes. Perhaps he thought 
 
 It would be greater glory to the Lord 
 
 Could he present him with a score of souls 
 
 Virgin of any faith save stocks and stones. 
 
 Howbeit, he chose to serve his Maker thus, 
 
 And 'vangelize in some outlandish place 
 
 Where dusky swarms verge on the apish breed. 
 
 He was well-looking — quite enough to please 
 
 Fastidious, feminine taste — strong featured, dark, 
 
 A shock of almost Indian hair, a nose 
 
 Slightly accipitrine, while from the eyes 
 
 There welled deep currents of fanatic zeal. 
 
 His form showed nerve-ascendency — a poet's 
 
 You would aver, or rapt tragedian's. 
 
 Like many a man of ardent temperament 
 
 He was neglectful of appearances, 
 
 And preened himself but little 'fore his glass. 
 
 But he was young, and youth condones, nay, oft 
 
 Exalts a picturesque neglect, which age 
 
 Forsooth can ill afford to manifest. 
 
 " The circumstance of home and purse was such 
 That long deferment of the marriage-bond 
 Seemed so assured, that they both deemed it best 
 For him to gather up at once his crop 
 
124 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 Of waiting, savage, equatorial souls. 
 
 They yet were young, and could with vantage wait 
 
 A lustrum's length, or even twice as much. 
 
 And so she waved her kerchief as his ship 
 
 Ebbed out to sea ; and when it was hull-down, 
 
 And only placed by a thin fumous streak, 
 
 She took her solitary heart a-home 
 
 Among the mild, reminding hills and vales. 
 
 " As the long months increased, so did augment 
 Her idealities, until he seemed 
 Unparagoned in traits of flesh and soul — 
 A quasi-demigod enchristianized. 
 
 " 'Tis proverbed that there is a term to all — 
 That all things come to patience in the end. 
 So after dreamy years she took the deep, 
 And watched the misting, lessening landmarks drop 
 Into the west below the level sea : 
 Then turned her vision eastward with her heart. 
 'Tis not my purpose to draw out the tale 
 As novelists are wont to dreariness 
 With prolix soul-dissection, or debauch 
 Of words, or sleight of phrase, or tediousness 
 Of landscape-painting, or environment, 
 Oblivious of the docile reader's rights; 
 But merely give the climax in a line 
 To validate my prefatory claim 
 That every girl's an artist in her way. 
 
 " It happened through an unforeseen mischance. 
 That when her goodly vessel sighted land, 
 Our missionary, a few miles or so 
 From off the coast, was herding with a tribe 
 Of semi-brutes, to whom a crockery bead 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 125 
 
 Was of more worth than bushels of sheer truth ; 
 
 And he was wrestling to enhance the price 
 
 Of Truth, and to depreciate the bead's. 
 
 Such was his zeal combined with ingrained drift. 
 
 That outwardly he was akin to those 
 
 Whom he would cleanse of spiritual noisomeuess. 
 
 I cannot give you intimate details 
 
 Of their long-dreamed of meeting, nor the words 
 
 That passed, unless I arrantly invent. 
 
 This only was I told ; that when she cast 
 
 Her high expectant gaze upon a thing 
 
 She scarce could recognize— unclean, unkempt, 
 
 Incrusted with the frowsy scurf of years, 
 
 Imbruted by contagion with half-beasts — 
 
 She turned her back on it, and shipped herself 
 
 Forthwith aboard the hull that brought her there ! 
 
 <' And what became of him ?" I childlike asked. 
 " I do not know," said he, '' not having heard : 
 The moral stands the stronger as it is 
 Without the futile ' envoi ' ; come ! for now 
 I feel the night-chill sagging on the fields 
 'Tis supper-time, and I'm in appetite. 
 
 ON A HILLSIDE 
 
 (A dialogue) 
 
 " How fair thou art, sweet Sister ! thy great eyes 
 Vibrate like harebells in the unscythed grass 
 That yellows 'neath the vanguard August rays; 
 And thy dark upmassed hair doth beetle o'er 
 
126 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 Thy brow like hemlocked scars o'er frosted fields ; 
 
 And thy full height keeps measure with thy soul — -■ 
 
 Too lofty oft I think : for from its perch 
 
 It hath not vision of our lowland ways, 
 
 Our cults, our customs, and our social curbs. 
 
 Thine ardent gaze is ever upward turned 
 
 On some aerial splendor far from us 
 
 That ranges skyey deeps, beyond our sphere. 
 
 And what seems good to us seems ill to thee ; 
 
 And those stanch monoliths that pillar up 
 
 Our edifice, like Samson, thou wouldst tug 
 
 And strain, till wall and roof-tree thundering fall. 
 
 *' Mere edicules, abodes for pigmy souls. 
 
 ** What vantageth to move in giant-wise, 
 
 An isolated mammoth amid men 
 
 Who make their laws for average calibre ? 
 
 We talk of holy things, and thou dost say 
 
 * These ways dogmatical are not for me. 
 
 Better my own discriminating sense 
 
 Of what is right or wrong 1 ' We talk of love 
 
 And consequential hallowed marriage ties, 
 
 And thou dost curl thine autocratic lip ! 
 
 " Too often have I seen their ugly yield, 
 
 And heard the sickening wail from fettered hearts. 
 
 Listen, my tender One, 'twas told me once 
 
 That some great woman of the world refused 
 
 To join herself in wedlock to the man 
 
 She loved, though he implored it ; for she saw 
 
 That men were happier with their mistresses 
 
 Than with their wives. And so she chose that life. 
 
 Nay ! start not, when I say that such a love, 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 127 
 
 One-thoughted, self-sustaining, nor up-propped 
 By sacrament, alone is worth the name. 
 Who but distrustful hearts would rather not 
 Be bounden by the bond of Love than Law ? 
 For should Love's bond fray to a filament 
 Then snap — so better than a chafing chain 
 Welded by legal smiths, that only they 
 Can rive again with mortifying blows. 
 If slight the obligating strands, then stout 
 Will be the anxious heart's desire to please ; 
 To keep the splendors of the flesh aglow, 
 (As it were made of ivory and gold 
 Like Athens' maiden polished to the pitch) ; 
 To keep the mind upburnished till it shine 
 Like heirloomed silver out some darkened coign 
 Of ageless, carven oak, nor ever dims 
 Beneath the lustring hands of pious sons ; 
 To keep the manners gracious, kind and sweet, 
 More gracious day by day to substitute 
 Of what the flesh may lose despite all care. 
 But if one's love must needs be fenced about 
 With fortalice, and scarp, and all the guards 
 Of Church and State, what motive would there be 
 To hold by personal charm a thing secured ? 
 And mayhap one would soon degenerate 
 Into the slattern we so often meet 
 Shackled to men who must abominate 
 Those intimacies that alone are dear 
 When glamoured by the aureole of Love. 
 
 *' O Darling, I love not to hear thee rail 
 Against the sanctity of sanctioned Law. 
 Tumultuous is thy will, and thy great heart 
 Cast in a mould of too heroic form. 
 
128 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 And all in vain thou flingest thy fierce speech 
 Against the bulwarks of the customed world, 
 As furious waves project their ponderous mass 
 Against habitual cliffs — then pass in smoke. 
 
 ** Dear timid One, indeed thou shouldst have been 
 
 The wimpled inmate of some white-walled home 
 
 Upon an olived hill, where naught is heard 
 
 Save tuneful orisons from guileless throats ; 
 
 Or better still thou shouldst have chirped a bird 
 
 Prisoned within the bower of some mild maid. 
 
 Yet hear, my tender Dove, nor cast a plume 
 
 In thy frayed ruffling. Thou dost speak of Law, 
 
 As it were sweet coincident of Love 
 
 (I think it harsh concomitant of Hate) ; 
 
 Among who are accounted gentlemen 
 
 The courts are held to be of mean repute. 
 
 And such call * debts of honor ' where the word 
 
 Alone stands guarantee of settlement. 
 
 And where compulsion of the court is deemed 
 
 Unchivalric, unmeet for knightly blood. 
 
 The curb of witnessed oath I hold to be 
 
 Unworthy warden of surrendered love, 
 
 Apt only for distrusting, timorous folk. 
 
 For me no pledge at all, or sworn-to words, 
 
 Save such as may in superfluity 
 
 Of passion's utterance be dropped in ears 
 
 Scarce recking — mere redundancy of speech — 
 
 As surplusage of yield is dropped from boughs 
 
 That bend with overclustered, swelling fruit. 
 
 What if the flame of some new splendent love 
 
 Should roll its sudden disk above the hills, 
 
 Awhile the old floats fainting in the west, 
 
 A piteous thing, paling on cruel skies? 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS i2( 
 
 What would'st thou do my gentle, loving One ? 
 Roll back the disk behind the orient ridge 
 With prayers, processions, threats and ogreish laws, 
 Like superstitious oafs in direst shift ? 
 And even if thou couldst arrest its course 
 Inflamed with fierce desire unfulfilled, 
 Would'st thou live on beneath its alien rays, 
 Holding a heart that had no warmth for thee ? 
 
 "But Time, my Sister, and the drift of Right 
 Would fan to freshened life the waning fire. 
 
 ''That which is pallid ash can ne'er relume. 
 
 " Better spent ash than an unhallowed flame. 
 
 " Death is a surer medicine than Time. 
 
 " The gift of Death resides with God alone. 
 
 ** So bondsmen to a trite routine maintain. 
 Yet granted that slow, hoary Time would heal, 
 And in the end a displumed Love return. 
 Or, likelier. Pity take the place of love, 
 What of the lacerated hearts that throe 
 While days and even years lag drearily ? 
 
 ** The consciousness of Virtue would relieve. 
 
 "The knowledge of lost Love-bliss would torment. 
 
 " Not Love-bliss born of seed unsanctified, 
 Sinister weed among the frowning flowers. 
 
 "Thou talkest like the weavers of the Tale, 
 Or makers of the sanctimonious Play, 
 Wherein to suit conventionalities. 
 
I30 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 A mawkish virtue triumphs in the end, 
 
 Untrue to Life, which teaches naught but sin — 
 
 For sin I hold it when a wounded heart 
 
 Is hospitaled at length beneath the roof 
 
 Of some rejected, puling suitor's love, 
 
 Whom authors paint in Virtue's dullest grays. 
 
 *' I talk as those who know the weight of words 
 And the far reach of inconsiderate speech. 
 But tell me, thou, who lovest loveliness, 
 Has permanence of Home no charm for thee ? 
 No charm for thee the Hearth's divinities ? 
 Do not the joys of Domesticity 
 Allure thee from thy would-be outcast ways ? 
 Call to thy graphic mind those pictures sweet 
 Of love maternal that young Raphael traced 
 When in the lily-scutcheoned town he worked. 
 While yet the Umbrian aura chastely played 
 About his tender brush. Have they no charm 
 For thee, those groups of sempiternal grace — 
 Sweet mothers fostering their seraphic babes 
 In faultless harmony of thought and line ? 
 Do not they cradle in thy lofty soul 
 The cult of humbler, sweeter, holier joys ? 
 Or would it overtop all sanctities? 
 
 ** Humbler, perhaps, dear girl, but sweeter, nay ! 
 Even the Urbinate refused these joys 
 Awhile he painted them ; since best he loved 
 His unarrested art by Children's whims ; 
 And Fornarina gave him kiss for kiss. 
 Emancipate from dull maternity. 
 Hast ever noticed how the painter-craft 
 Makes of St. Joseph mere accessory 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 131 
 
 To culminate the so-called ' pyramid ' — 
 
 A composition aye in high repute — 
 
 Or cancel him as flat encumberment ? 
 
 And right they were those clever painter-men — 
 
 Or those, at least, who gave them formulae — 
 
 For though the good St. Joseph needs must play 
 
 A minor role — being the babe divine — 
 
 They blazed the eternal truth that mother's love 
 
 Turns from the procreator to the life 
 
 Created — an all else excluding trust. 
 
 But when I yield my heart it must persist 
 
 Entire, unminished by a cleaving claim, 
 
 The heart I take, unsevered as my own. 
 
 '' Yet love of offspring blows a wasting flame. 
 
 " And dims the splendor of the fullest fire. 
 
 " This joint affection is itself a bond. 
 
 <* So often sundered by diverging views. 
 
 *' Dear children buttress parents in their years. 
 
 " More often they desert a crumbling house. 
 
 " The love of Home consoles for loss of Heart. 
 
 " What consolation when the hearth is cold. 
 
 " Four walls at least protect and keep alive. 
 And where thy walls in age, what time thy mate 
 Unbound by law shall leave thee woe-begone ? 
 
 *' Woe's cause, at least, would not be caged therein 
 Persistent reminiscence of the past : 
 
132 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 Nor should I hear the intolerable voice 
 Once effluent from Love, now rasped with gall. 
 And thinkest thou, as many others do, 
 That man alone is subject to heart change? 
 Nothing in Nature dureth — nay, not Love : 
 It undergoes some change, and wisely so. 
 Else we should be consumed by force of flame. 
 The hurtling rapids meet the even lake ; 
 The seething waters cool in some flat pool ; 
 And bride-love chills beneath the stagnant roof 
 Of home, and humdrum domesticity. 
 If I may judge from daily evidence — 
 Even of friends — it would be venturesome 
 To guarantee my own heart's permanence, 
 Much less to shackle it with legal links. 
 It might be my sad fate to feel the rage 
 Of fresh, ' unlicensed ' love, as codists say. 
 Could I live happy 'neath the fiery beams 
 That erst did generate responsive Love, 
 But now engender but responding Hate ? 
 And as for thy protecting walls and roof 
 We have the wherewithal to shelter self 
 In these just days when every bar is down 
 To woman's energies. We can as men. 
 
 "Should accident or illness supervene? 
 
 " There's ever risk : but rivers flow as aye. 
 
 And drugs are cheap — sure shelter for the stressed. 
 
 " I shudder at thine irreligious words. 
 
 That which thou dost not mould thou shouldst not 
 
 break. 
 A curse it is to antedate the end ! 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 133 
 
 And list ! O swift of Heart, if there be naught 
 Of joy to thee in artless infant ways — 
 In dimpled smiles, or sweet activities 
 Of rosed, cherubic limbs, nor in the cares 
 So dear to motherhood, is there no charm 
 For thee in thy beloved native land ? 
 Now cast thine eyes abroad from our high perch 
 On this fair July morn, when warm winds blow, 
 And all the ruddy barn-vanes point due west ; 
 When racing clouds pavilion cobalt skies ; 
 When all the trees and fragrant grasses rock 
 With full delirium of the amplest life. 
 And the hot air feels cool upon the cheek. 
 The Sun is now o'erhead ; but when he sinks 
 O'erlabored out of sight, the western skies — 
 Like tiger-lilies basking in the shine — 
 Black-spotted with the dozing clouds, will blaze 
 Their orange banners o'er subjacent hills, 
 And every glooming vale will whisper ' Peace.' 
 There may be fairer lands, but none will speak 
 To thee with such a homely eloquence — 
 So fresh, so verdant, pastoral and pure. 
 Yet all their joyance would be barred to thee 
 Shouldst thou persist in thy contumacy. 
 
 "But landscape brings no anodyne to hearts 
 Abraded by contention, and at best 
 Is mere accessory to weal or woe — 
 A foil to happiness or misery. 
 
 " Not so ! A tempered man once said to me — 
 One who had passed his half-a-hundred years, 
 Had tasted both the sweet and rue of Love, 
 Had felt the throb of halest Life, and borne 
 
134 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 In patience hours of hidden Agony — 
 That with accumulation of the years, 
 The pure delight in Nature gathered ground, 
 And of itself was a sufficiency. 
 
 * ' But other lands there are where one may prove 
 These landscape joys of thine — historic lands 
 Of monumental mould, where castles gleam ; 
 Where oleanders ring upon the blue ; 
 Where solemn cypresses moan ancient myths ; 
 Where languid foam-drifts silver classic shores ; 
 And others where the palm consorts with seas 
 More 'tense than malachite or lazuli. 
 
 " No land is lovely as a permanence 
 
 Where one doth never see the friendly smoke 
 
 From kinsmen's hearth waft white against noon's 
 
 shade, 
 Or sag upon the meads at evening's cool. 
 But, Sister, speak ! so barbed are thy words 
 That they do frighten me ! They seem to spring 
 From some unuttered impulse — not begot 
 Of love of argument, or fence of word. 
 It cannot be that thou hast veiled the truth 
 With masquerading jeer and poignant wit? 
 That thou hast jeoparded thy noble heart 
 To some unholy claim ? What ! no response? 
 And thou dost turn to go? Art gone ? O Christ 
 Have mercy on her ! What she wills she wiliy 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 135 
 
 HUBERT AND LOIS 
 
 **The afternoon is wondrous sweet," she said, 
 
 " So mild and stirless is the October air; 
 
 Come, drive with me. I know your whims of yore, 
 
 My dear, platonic friend, and you shall hold 
 
 Free commerce with your reveries, awhile 
 
 I, too, make silent discourse with myself : 
 
 To chatter irks when Nature spreads her wares.'* 
 
 And by my faith she ranged them royally ! 
 
 The hills were mantled with delicious browns 
 
 And russets, brinded oft with yellow pale, 
 
 (The birches' cope, reluctant to disrobe 
 
 And bare their pearly limbs to winter's gaze). 
 
 The brown and gold concording with a sky 
 
 Of thin and limpid blue straked with white swirls. 
 
 Making it seem immeasurably far. 
 
 Then dappled, russet hills, and cloud-racked blue 
 
 Evoked the past ; and since my year's-mate friend 
 
 Kept compact with her promise not to talk, 
 
 I wrote in fancy, on its actual site. 
 
 The heart's experience of a goodly man. 
 
 With whom I used to ramble in warm moons. 
 
 When city-sated we renewed the gust 
 
 Of soul and body by our touch with earth. 
 
 And inhalation deep of heaven-born air. 
 
 His name was synonym for what he was, 
 Hubert, " the bright of soul." A poet he 
 
136 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 By birth, but not self-advertised as such, 
 
 Though his performance gave the unchallenged right. 
 
 For few dare claim the lustrous-berried bays 
 
 In life, and seek to crown themselves therewith — 
 
 As did that Emperor who in his pride 
 
 Wrested the jeweled emblem from the hands 
 
 Of an astounded pope — but leave the act 
 
 To Death who sole hath warrant to gird the brow 
 
 Imparadised with sempiternal leaves. 
 
 Not his the care to blazon forth the fact 
 
 On some commercial page in neat-wrought rhyme 
 
 Intoning vaporous thoughts unsanative : 
 
 Rather to live the poet's life, and watch 
 
 The human heart's vicissitudes between 
 
 Its goal's extreme of bliss and agony; 
 
 To till the glebe of Beauty ; to uplift 
 
 The soul in contemplation ecstasied ; 
 
 To apprehend and blaze the eternal truth — 
 
 The poet's privilege — to gird against 
 
 The panoplied oppressions of the great ; 
 
 To curb the encroachments of the vulgar rich ; 
 
 To check the license of the untaught poor ; 
 
 To fan his indignations to a flame — 
 
 Such was his choice. And as for audience — 
 
 Mayhap there might be none. Could he but catch 
 
 The public ear, 'twere well ; if not, 'twere well 
 
 To liberate a winged thought which might 
 
 In unforeshadowed time or place cast seed, 
 
 And bear some fruit benign amid the tares. 
 
 And he could lead this poet-life, because 
 
 He had inherited the wherewithal 
 
 To gratify his moderate appetites. 
 
 By sacrificing certain worldly gauds, — 
 
 Pretty enough, but lacking gravity. 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 137 
 
 Moreover these mild abnegations touched 
 Only himself — nor having wife nor child. 
 But most of all his competence was prized, 
 Because he could stand up with level eye 
 'Gainst any man, nor be constrained for bread, 
 Or craved advancement, or increase of gain, 
 To fawn upon an opulent smile, or brook 
 An insolent brow, or autocratic tongue. 
 So much for Hubert ; save I superadd 
 His looks were well enough, and that he neared 
 The age when it is credited by some 
 That mind and body spread their widest bloom. 
 
 'Twas in this very place and at a time 
 When black-boled pollards languidly do shoot 
 Their full-fledged arrows into sultry skies 
 Of violet hue, and untorrential streams 
 Rehearse their inverted flight, that Hubert met 
 The maid who helmed his hot, adventurous heart 
 Into unmanageable seas. Her name 
 Was Lois. She was young enough to court 
 Meridian light, and undismayed to brush 
 Her cheek against the May-month's apple-bloom ; 
 Withal mature enough to reverence 
 The aspirations of ideal souls. 
 
 Not mine to picture here a paragon, 
 A flawless maidenhood one rarely finds 
 On Nature's canvas ; but to document 
 Frank forms and tones, with truthful lights and darks, 
 As candid Life portrays — a virtue here 
 Emphatic on a calm, resplendent brow ; 
 A love of lurement in the perfumed hair ; 
 An ideality in heavenly eyes ; 
 
138 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 A merriment in dimple-dipping lips ; 
 
 A certain worldliness in grace of limb 
 
 (For youth is youth and oft will up and show 
 
 That at the core it is half bacchanal) ; 
 
 And as for cast of voice, hers seemed to match 
 
 Those sotto-voce notes a tenor wafts 
 
 Across the lights to myriad ravished ears. 
 
 From out white dunes of snow 
 The fierce North wind may blow 
 Above the brown, unsodded earth, 
 Nor quicken life awaiting birth ; 
 Nay, not a spear will show, 
 Until warm Auster come a-wooing. 
 Fruitful Land with whisperings suing : 
 Then tepid showers 
 Dark beds imbrue, 
 And forth spring flowers 
 Of gorgeous hue. 
 
 We say the fields are green, 
 And blue yon sky serene ; 
 But should a flaring poppy spread 
 Amid the grass its flaming red. 
 What splendors supervene ! 
 Or should the sky be brushed with gold, 
 'Twould seem more blue a hundred fold : 
 For colors plain 
 Must find their mate 
 Would they attain 
 To sovran state. 
 
 A heart from day to day 
 Some uninspired lay 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 139 
 
 Will thrum athwart an unstrung lyre, 
 Nor lift to flame its latent fire, 
 But pass to cinder gray : 
 Unless its counterpart come winging 
 Across its course, sweet lyrics singing : 
 
 Ah, then what bliss ! 
 
 Oh, limbs that twine ! 
 
 Oh, kiss on kiss ! 
 
 O joy divine ! 
 
 Aye, aye, all life has its affinity, 
 
 The happy ambient that animates. 
 
 Maugre the blemish, kindred feelings trance. 
 
 How oft we may have wished to ease the note 
 
 Of ponderous Angelo ; or harshened here 
 
 The song of Raphael; or e'en emend 
 
 A poet's mighty line; yet in despite — 
 
 Perhaps because of petty grievances — 
 
 We worship at their shrine. So Hubert's heart 
 
 Was captivate by its own complement ; 
 
 And Love was mutual — blemishes or no. 
 
 Ten thousand temptings may annul themselves 
 
 In foam when wreaked against a solid will. 
 
 And yet one deft-adjusted wile may dash 
 
 Its cliff-like stanchness into veriest dust. 
 
 Albeit he oft had played the pretty sport 
 
 Of archery, with hearts for target, yet 
 
 Had he most prudently unbarbed the shafts 
 
 Before the game, knowing that Hymen's thrall 
 
 Was not for hirrj^ This time the fanged bolt 
 
 Winged home and home in flight reciprocal. 
 
 O reader, has thou ever whiled away 
 The courteous summer hours with thy beloved ? 
 Hast thou at sparkling prime seen dew-drops gleam. 
 
I40 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 And eyes to glimmer as the gleaming dew ? 
 Hast thou at higher noon in gardens leafed 
 Beheld the pomponed larkspur — light and dark — - 
 Swaying its tufts of blue to mild west winds, 
 Like plumes of tourneying knights in listed fields 
 And heard tlie rumorous bee, all honey smeared 
 Reecho thine own dulcet murmurings ? 
 Or 'neath the bevel rays of afternoon 
 Upon some marish-lane luxuriant, 
 Selvedged with luscious purple, green, and gold, 
 Hast ever freed thine ardent utterance ? 
 Or when at eve great drops of molten brass — 
 Poured from the sun's last segment — overbrim 
 The dark blue hills that edge the western sky. 
 Hast thou outpoured thy molten, flaming heart ? 
 Or when at night the tender citron moon 
 Doth seem to swim on a black arctic sea 
 Immensely deep and still — O reader, what ? 
 Wert thou alone with thy blest all-in-all. 
 
 So passed with them the summer-solsticed days 
 On uplands where huge candid, errant clouds 
 Defined the sequent ridges with blue shades ; 
 On lowlands where the bright, metallic sun 
 Chased lovers to the cool of earless groves, 
 Now giving verse for verse from favorite bards, 
 Now bartering thoughts on high and august themes, 
 And then again like fluting birds at noon 
 Singing some pretty nonsense to the air. 
 
 Duef 
 O Love, we play 
 
 The while, the while 
 You sweetly smile ; 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 141 
 
 And yet they say 
 There comes a day 
 When hearts do tire 
 Of heart's desire, 
 Nor even you can reconcile. 
 
 He 
 
 But yet 'tis said 
 
 That oft, that oft 
 The Gods aloft, 
 
 Ambrosia-bred, 
 
 In pets are led 
 
 To high disdain. 
 
 Yet Love again 
 Doth harmonize with coaxing soft. 
 
 She 
 Oh, yes, we know 
 If true, if true 
 That Love like dew, 
 Where flowers blow 
 And planets glow, 
 Will always stray 
 Throughout the day, 
 But homes at eve to bliss renew. 
 
 Duet 
 
 O Love we play 
 
 Awhile, awhile 
 You soothly smile. 
 
 Oh, stay, oh, stay 
 
 And join our lay ! 
 
142 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 We may not heed 
 Where Time may lead, 
 Sweet Love, if you the hours beguile. 
 
 As some sheer scar of ice, or deep crevasse, 
 
 Doth bar the climber's path to shining peaks. 
 
 So frowned the obstacles that barred the way 
 
 To Eros' culmination — Hymen's crest — 
 
 Not insurmountable to time, and wit. 
 
 And fertile patience, albeit for the nonce 
 
 A disconcertment to their natural hope. 
 
 Domestic opposition on her side. 
 
 On his the lack of means for dual life : 
 
 Two valid hindrances — accepted each. 
 
 For who may sing his true, impartial song 
 
 To an awaiting world, if he be swayed 
 
 By hard Necessity's compelling ways ? 
 
 Or who may list enwrapt to such a song 
 
 If she be all-concerned with make-shift schemes, 
 
 Or tortured by the sordidness of Want ? 
 
 Yet Summer smiled ; and they meanwhile rejoined 
 
 Smile to a smile, not uncontent to taste 
 
 What joys the luscious present sanctified. 
 
 But when the golden leaf- fall *gan to change 
 
 The color of soft mossy forest-floors. 
 
 And capering leaves swirled down the wind-swept 
 
 roads. 
 And one no more did hear the lay of life ; 
 When Summer's death announced the long sojourn 
 Within the city's nigh to skyless lanes, 
 Where frenzied obligations (deemed as such) 
 Would mortify all liberal intercourse 
 Between the two — he, knowing worldly ways, 
 And the aye-readiness of human ears 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 143 
 
 To harbor unsubstantiated talk 
 
 That hath so often wrecked a sundered heart, 
 
 Did take her loyal hand within his own, 
 
 Saying '< for Love's sweet sake make oath to me, 
 
 That should some tonguester bear a tale malign 
 
 To thee, or lisp an innuendo dark. 
 
 Thou wilt not heed, till from my very lips 
 
 Thou hast corroboration. Swear me this." 
 
 And she made solemn answer ; *' yea, I will." 
 
 II 
 
 An armlet of the mighty Eastern sea — 
 Which coys or quarrels with its guardian shores, 
 As the wind lists or no — bends gracefully 
 Into the verdant land. Its margent waves 
 Lap languidly small ruddy capes that lift 
 The ocean's summer blue. Between these capes 
 Sweep gleaming beaches of the fairest sand 
 Forever drinking up the creamy foam — 
 White flotsam of the slow redounding surge. 
 Behind the soughing border of the sea 
 Rise the stern pines, and kind deciduous trees 
 That all but mask the pretty summer homes 
 Whereon the ingenious architect hath spent 
 Both taste and happy plan — a peopled spot, 
 But scarce apparent to the casual eye, 
 So artful hath been wrought the virid screen. 
 Here townsfolk congregate in sultry times : 
 And here it was I met a man who pleased, 
 Yet did not please — and rather more not please. 
 Behind a few engaging traits there lurked 
 To a refined, discriminating eye 
 A score of qualities that ruffed the nerves. 
 Having his larder (in commercial sense), 
 
144 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 Well lined with bonds and crisp certificates — 
 
 To mention naught of realty and cash — 
 
 He gratified a curiosity 
 
 To see the world. So roaming up and down 
 
 With sedulous care to note the routined things 
 
 (But without flair to use a foreign term) 
 
 He gleaned a specious knowledge, that with some 
 
 Passed for a connoisseurship, and which gave, 
 
 In justice be it said, a certain air 
 
 Of culture. And perchance to gratify 
 
 A vanity, he patronized the haunts 
 
 Where artists gathered, learnt their dialect, 
 
 And aired it pompously to wondering folk. 
 
 The artists — needy fellows for the most — 
 
 Were not reluctant to exploit his purse 
 
 (To keep hard importunities at bay), 
 
 Or dust a cobwebbed bottle now and then, 
 
 Or taste some lordly-condimented dish. 
 
 Or sample rare, exotic luxuries. 
 
 In counterchange he claimed a deference 
 
 That did inflate his personality, 
 
 Until the non-practitioners took him for 
 
 A real Mecsenas. All his moods and mien 
 
 Were vulgar, too. More clamorous was his garb 
 
 Than that of gentle caste — not over loud, 
 
 But loud enough to speak supremacy 
 
 Of purse. And when in company that lunched 
 
 Or dined in modesty, he could be picked 
 
 By an environment more numerous 
 
 Of appetizers, liquors, pungencies, 
 
 Which emphasized his tawdry patronage. 
 
 Black, shaggy brows he had that beetled o'er 
 
 A gluttonous, bulging eye, and puffy jowl. 
 
 And sensual lips. Athletic was his frame, 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 145 
 
 Of sporting — squire-like type. His passion was ' 
 
 To kill some mild-eyed, antlered animal, 
 
 Or wing an iridescent water-fowl, 
 
 Or land some swooning, long-tormented fish, 
 
 Then brag of it. And this was joy more keen 
 
 To him, I trow, than all Mecaenasdom. 
 
 Yet mark, O gracious reader, what I note 
 
 Was not too obvious. He might pass — and did — 
 
 Before unburrowing eyes for what he played. 
 
 But did he pass as such in Lois' eyes — 
 
 Eyes that had lingered on the world's elect, 
 
 That had envisaged Nature's loveliness 
 
 Companioned by a poet's guiding gaze? 
 
 And yet she was the consecrated mate 
 
 Of this pretentious patron of the Arts ! 
 
 Fly south sweet bird upon thine easy wing : 
 Dost thou not hear the shivering oreads sing 
 
 Their song of woe ? 
 
 The ghostly frosts already spread their veil 
 'Neath the cold eyes of stars adown the dale. 
 
 'Tis time to go. 
 
 No more the Sun dawns early o'er the hills; 
 No more he hearkens to ecstatic trills 
 
 That joyous flow 
 
 From every throbbing throat in wood, or wold, 
 Or marshy pool, to greet his matin gold. 
 
 O sweet One, go ! 
 
 Why shouldst thou linger on to blench and quail ? 
 What can thy tuneful tenderness avail. 
 
 Beneath grim snow ? 
 
146 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 Or what against the blast thy preendd plumes, 
 That oar the zephyrs when the Spring-tide blooms, 
 
 And violets grow ? 
 
 Fly south, my comely bird, oh, take thy flight 
 To lands where fragrance hangs upon the night, 
 
 Where soft stars glow. 
 
 Mild Auster waits thee, redolent and warm ; 
 Fly south, O sweet One, ere the arctic storm 
 
 Upon thee blow. 
 
 Fly south, dear girl-like bird, fly south ! Thou art 
 Too young the anguish of a wintry heart 
 
 To undergo. 
 Fly south where calm seas flow ! 
 
 O fatal sunshine, fatal calm and flowers ! 
 Did they outvalue all the tenderness. 
 The mutual mantling 'gainst the glacial blast 
 Of Poverty ? outvalue laurel crowns. 
 The leafier for a wife's inweaving hands? 
 Would not the approving glance of sapient eyes, 
 Or the half-envious tongues of average folk 
 Whispering in awe " She is the wedded Muse 
 Who prompts his pregnant verse," have brought thee 
 
 more. 
 Poor Lois, than far Ophir's golden yield ? 
 What caitiff" wind did sweep thee to this strait. 
 Rock-tenanted, and white with death-damp foam? 
 E'en now I see thy pallid countenance. 
 And thy disheartened eye, in olden days 
 Intrepid as an eaglet's ; and thy lips 
 A-tremble with unuttered wretchedness ; 
 Thy stricken, downcast mien ; thy halting step, 
 Erewhile so buoyant with the thrill of Hope ! 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 147 
 
 An elder sister, strong of will there was, 
 Whom an uncalculating, thriftless love 
 (Now disavowed by Law) had brought to see 
 The rasping, not the euphonious incidents 
 Of wedlock. She had mated with a man 
 Galliard and gay of plume as any cock 
 That fore his harem flaunts his finery 
 With self-sufficing strut : and his ideas 
 Of constancy were almost parallel. 
 As writ before, divorce had rescued her 
 At length from this light-conscienced libertine, 
 But left her indigent, and bittered 'gainst 
 A sugared bond, love-forged. She knew that age 
 Did cumulate desires for luxury. 
 To which alone stanch wealth doth minister. 
 She looked through clear Experience's lens, 
 Yet failed with unimaginative eye 
 To penetrate the veil that mists the view 
 Of empires unexplored, nor could forecast 
 The utter hatefulness of bastard love — 
 If Love may so be called. With every wile 
 She armed herself to thwart sweet Lois* choice; 
 Deft-painting with an opulent brush the gauds 
 Of pleasure — equipages trim ; a home 
 Decked with the spoils of ransacked Italy ; 
 Or Chinese loot ; or Indian curios 
 That reeked of blood ; or precious canvases 
 Worth diamond -weight ; quick, deferential hands 
 To abrogate self-service ; and the means 
 To see and hear the choicest, or to lend 
 Some happy help to clamoring Distress — 
 In sum, the myriad dear amenities 
 That ease the strain of years. And in her zeal 
 She probed the mysteries of Hubert's life — 
 
148 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 Those accidents of sheer environment 
 
 That fall to most ; not heinous in themselves — 
 
 Untoward rather — things one would forget. 
 
 For though uncircumspect he oft had been, 
 
 He never yet had guiltily transgressed 
 
 With maid or matron. Oh, may Satan sear 
 
 The accurst, malignant memory of those 
 
 Who foster with persistence year on year 
 
 A neighbor's fault, who on the warp thereof 
 
 Weave specious figments simulating truth 
 
 To unenquiring eyes ! Aye, one there was 
 
 Who cherished in her hell-hag's heart a tale — 
 
 Embroidered with her gossip aptitude — 
 
 To Hubert's hurt. The sister heard content ; 
 
 And passed it on to Lois, now nigh spent 
 
 By argument opposed to cottage-love. 
 
 Did she forget the solemn promise given, 
 
 When Autumn's leaf-rain tinctured all the land 
 
 To credit no derogatory tale 
 
 Till she had affirmation of the same 
 
 From Hubert's lips ? Or was she overwrought 
 
 By blinding jealousy ? Or yet too weak 
 
 To stand against a domineering will ? 
 
 Ah, who may know ; mayhap the triple force 
 
 Conjointly broke her to submissiveness. 
 
 Howe'er may be, when her vitality 
 
 Was on the ebb, there came into her life 
 
 Our sciolist — wealthy, and plausible, 
 
 And captivate at once by her arch-charm — - 
 
 A prideless sciolist, unchivalric. 
 
 Not unabashed to take of Love's caress 
 
 A smaller measure than he gave, nor saw 
 
 The effort in the meagre, cold return. 
 
 The sister was of course all ecstasied, 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 149 
 
 Playing presiding genius at these rites 
 
 Which would have chilled and foiled a brute's intent. 
 
 Then ere a long probationary time 
 
 Could make its revelations, Hymen came 
 
 To sanctify the thing. The twain were one. 
 
 O Hymen, hail ! Thou comest flower-crowned, 
 With gleaming-kirtled maidens in thy train. 
 Attended each by her fair, fresh-limbed swain. 
 
 While rose-cheeked cherubs blossom-strow the ground 
 
 Before the bridal pair. Now ritual joins 
 
 Two separate, yearning hearts, and they are one, 
 Until their goodly glass of life be run. 
 
 Peal ! trembling tubes, let all the arching groins 
 
 That lift the roof their high approval give 
 
 To what the dusking hours will consummate — 
 The lawful joyances of Love's estate — 
 
 The sanctioned nuptial bliss unfugitive ! 
 
 O Hymen, hail ! Thou comest sombre-browed, 
 And in thy girl-like arms thou bearest chains 
 Invisible, and thorns, and mortal pains : 
 
 Yet no one marks ; for still the pipes peal loud. 
 
 And still each gleaming-mantled maiden smiles 
 
 Upon her fair, attending, young-limbed swain, 
 And still the lovelets sweetest blossoms rain, 
 
 And all the ceremonial pomp beguiles. 
 
 O Hymen, hail ! What reveler may heed 
 
 The agonies, the chains, the gathering frown 
 Upon thy brow beneath the orange-crown ? 
 
 Peal all ye pipes ! and let thy feste proceed 
 
 Great Hymen ! Hail ! 
 
I50 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 *Twas when the organ-waves no longer surged 
 Through transept, nave, and vault, when flowers were 
 
 sere, 
 And cherub cheeks were thinned, when coursing 
 
 months 
 Had full-disclosed the half-suspected truth — 
 'Twas then I saw her in her misery — 
 A misery but parcel- veiled by art. 
 As Hubert's friend, her wifely attitude 
 I scrutinized. It was impeccable. 
 Oft have I noted in my saunterings 
 Beneath the early summer's genial sky, 
 How June, the prodigal, the beautiful, 
 Doth garnish in her perfect color-taste 
 With golden butter- cup and comely herb 
 Some uncouth derelict of human toil. 
 Or gash unsightly on sweet Nature's face. 
 So will a tactful woman try to mask 
 With her self-sacrificing loveliness 
 An undiscerning husband's boorish ways. 
 And thus did Lois ; but the exacting role 
 Did break her. Even as I daily watched 
 Through that brief season by the fresh-fanned shore 
 I saw her spirit falling as a tide 
 That ebbs its way to far horizon lines, 
 Leaving upon the corrugated sands 
 Its signature of ceaseless travailing. 
 
 Ill 
 
 In those decreasing, low-orbed autumn days. 
 When Hubert took from her his blithe farewell 
 (Blithe for the future largesses of Love), 
 He deemed it not without the churlish pale 
 Of chance, that he and Lois might not meet 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 151 
 
 For some long, tedious while. Nor chafed he much, 
 
 Nor feared untoward fate, because he held 
 
 Her solemn word to give no audience 
 
 To compromising tale, except his tongue 
 
 Gave evidence thereto. Nor did he know — 
 
 Although experienced of the unequal world — 
 
 The absolute prepotency of wealth 
 
 Over the slim resources of the poor. 
 
 He hoped, as versed before, to gain his goal 
 
 With time, with patience, and his wit. So when 
 
 Was brought to him the downright cruel fact 
 
 That Lois was apostate to her word, 
 
 Her principles, her idealities. 
 
 He stood dumbfounded. Oh, what need is there 
 
 To picture in detail the laborings 
 
 Of heart- wreck — the forlorn dismemberment 
 
 Of a stanch soul, pounding on fatal sands ? 
 
 In sooth, no need. Who hath not often seen. 
 
 Or heard, or read, or (may God help him !) felt 
 
 The costly, hard control throughout the day — 
 
 By night the unleashed fever? in the light 
 
 The pride-curb ; in the dark the shameless tear ? 
 
 And Hubert passed through all vicissitude 
 
 Of heartache like the rest ; bracing himself 
 
 Before the obdurate world. Yet did he dread 
 
 The inevitable, awful coming hour 
 
 When he should learn — perhaps from careless lips — 
 
 The consummation of the unhallowed rites, 
 
 Lest he might fail of poise. And every morn 
 
 He turned with tremulous hand the daily sheet, 
 
 Scanning the print with eye all terrified 
 
 To see if yet it were. And when it wasy 
 
 The moment's wrath prevailed o'er every sense : 
 
 With gall and wormwood in his soul he cried, 
 
152 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 "Women ! oh, damn them all — aye, let us buy 
 
 Our concubines adept to satisfy 
 
 The momentary passion's need, then sell 
 
 Them to a waiting neighbor's urgency ! 
 
 No commerce permanent ! For in their snares 
 
 They would entangle us, as did that birth 
 
 Of hell, red Clytemnestra, tangle fast 
 
 Great Agamemnon in her gory mesh. 
 
 And so 'twill ever be till day of doom. 
 
 Yea, let them herd together if they will, 
 
 And in their isolation free, pursue 
 
 Mannish professions ; let them uncurbed lead 
 
 The so-called * higher life' — do anything — 
 
 Do all — unchecked within the wide world's reach; 
 
 But only let them leave us men alone — 
 
 Aye, damn them all ! " 
 
 So cursed he in his pain. 
 But when the wrath-cloud black had broke to blue. 
 And normal light once more illumed his ken. 
 He flushed at his unchivalric tirade : 
 Since no one more than this heart-foundered man 
 Did ever rest in woman tenderer faith ; 
 And none more craved her soothing sympathy ; 
 And none did ever cede her higher rank 
 In aptitudes for what is good and fair. 
 For was there not inwoven with the male 
 Fine female strands in his life's tapestry — 
 Those threads of quiet hue that bind the strong 
 Into a congruent whole ? those golden threads 
 That gather lustre in the leaden shades ? 
 Is not all knighthood half of woman strain ? 
 So had he always held. And as the moons. 
 Tranquil and white, did in their progress kind 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 153 
 
 Drowse into calm the turmoil of his heart, 
 He turned again to Woman — not in Love 
 (UnwilHng now to test Love's surest cure, 
 The like with like), but in Philosophy. 
 
 Time brings relief, 
 Yet not enough to smooth away 
 The furrows of our grief. 
 
 Though crescent green 
 May cloak the ploughshare's channels gray, 
 When June of earth is Queen, 
 
 The steel's deep scar 
 Will o'er the green itself display 
 In lines that stretch afar. 
 
 When after storm 
 Calm gently cometh, one would say 
 That Nature multiform 
 
 Beams as before — 
 
 So beautiful and sweet and gay — 
 
 Aye gay, and even more. 
 
 Yet here there shows 
 A gash where fumed a torrent's spray, 
 Whiter than mountain snows ; 
 
 And there the eye 
 Detects a garden's disarray, 
 That once aglow did lie 
 
 Like jewels fair 
 Upon a Hebrew's hashing tray. 
 Or clouds on sunset air. 
 
154 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 IV 
 
 The radiance of a summer's falling day 
 Gleamed opulently on the fleecy fringe 
 Of a benignant, soft-withdrawing shower : 
 The air was burdened with the odors sweet 
 Leached by warm rain from Nature's greenery: 
 Even the languid breezes paused to quaff 
 The nectarous emanations from the earth. 
 Silent we stood within a hallowed close — 
 Hubert and I — high-walled by hemlock hedge. 
 On either side the sunHght-dappled paths 
 Great darkling pines — funereal sentinels 
 To ward perfervid beams or icy gales — 
 Reared solemnly above inscribed stones 
 Shaped into forms revivalists had brought 
 From Greece or Rome, urn-crowned and garlanded, 
 And patterned with anthemion or fret. 
 The marble's glow was dulled by artist Time, 
 Who streaked the white with black, and toned with 
 
 moss 
 The harboring nooks and sheltered chiselings, 
 Until the graven candor of the stone 
 Made happy concert with the swarthy pines. 
 Nor was this mounded acre of the dead 
 Grim and repellent — or by tawdry taste, 
 Or overpeopling of the growing dust, 
 As oft are those dense charnel-houses huge 
 That touch a city's bound. For high above 
 The hemlock-hedge ranged pleasant, grassy hills 
 With graceful villas capped, and tufts of trees. 
 While near at hand there shone the village spire 
 Topping a sallowy stream that took its ease 
 For nigh a meadowed league twixt mill and mill. 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 155 
 
 Within the hedge sweet open places basked, 
 Unshadowed by the pine, with sunlight garbed, 
 Glossing neat grass that isled the head-stones white, 
 As greenish seas infold a sparkling berg. 
 And oft the harmonizing, sheeny stem 
 Of some frail birch caught up the marble's gleam 
 And bore it to the clouds. Who would not say 
 It was a beauteous, blessed spot wherein 
 A travailed heart might love to lie at rest ! 
 
 Near to a stone we stood that afternoon, 
 Whose sharp-cut lettering deliberate Time 
 Not yet to easy legibility 
 
 Had lined with moss. Her name was writ thereon. 
 Upon the mound a mourner had imposed 
 Dark violets, sweet symbols of a grief. 
 "Not he the murderer? " cried I in wrath, 
 "Not he whose poignant boorishness did stab 
 Her shrinking heart ? Not he who let her blood 
 Doth mourn it? " And I glanced to Hubert's face, 
 Thinking to find consenting anger there. 
 Yet not a muscle twitched, nor was the eye 
 Tear-dewed, nor did the lip depress itself 
 To bitterness, nor did he modulate 
 A voice as even-throated as a ghost's ; 
 But in a lulled and kindly monotone 
 He said, " His surely was the right — not mine. 
 What rights have they who truly love through years 
 Against the moment's sanction of a priest ? 
 A signature upon a formal sheet 
 (Whether gold-plumed Love subscribe or no), 
 Outponders all the throb of Christendom. 
 A sounding phrase, a ring, a facile oath — 
 The unholy thing is done. Love has no rights 
 
156 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 Unsupplemented by a ritual 
 
 To hallow them before a buckram world. 
 
 A candid heart balked of its dear desire, 
 
 By mere caprice, or chance, or stronger will, 
 
 Must gloze an instant's villainy with lies 
 
 To gratify humanity's ideals. 
 
 And so methinks the evil will endure 
 
 Until man ceases to dissimulate 
 
 And learns to act the truth like lesser life — 
 
 Life unsophisticate. It may be then 
 
 That minds emancipated will devise 
 
 Some substitute for this our faultful scheme. 
 
 Good friend, till then 'tis ours to acquiesce, 
 
 And bear like paladins the things ordained." 
 
 " Hubert, I know not whether it be meet 
 To bear with knightliness a sanctioned wrong : 
 Rather a cursM wrong it seemed that day 
 When on the Eastern coast, whose ruddy capes 
 Protrude into the implacable great sea, 
 I saw her fading in her misery. 
 Her splendid eyes deep-sunk in gloomy caves 
 Still sparkled through the dark, encircling flesh 
 Like double beacons on a night-rimmed shoal : 
 Her whilom unschooled smile, that gleamed as moons 
 Illumed by some great sun of Happiness, 
 Was like the coaxed, artificial smirk 
 Of unspontaneous women of the world : 
 Her bearing that of a poor pendant flower 
 O'erburdened with the load of heaven's tears." 
 
 '* Yes, a frail, pendant flower,*' Hubert joined, 
 ** I loved her well. We love because we love — 
 Unreasonably. We do not diagnose 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 157 
 
 A heart in science-wise, nor carry scales 
 
 On errands of our unadvised desires 
 
 To weigh its character. If by good chance 
 
 Love's object be heroic, that were good. 
 
 No heroine Lois, who was much as are 
 
 All women. Not a Berenice she 
 
 Whose temple-dedicated locks did give 
 
 A name to stars : no Artemisia she 
 
 To stand Devotion's type adown the years; 
 
 Nor one of many an unsung recusant 
 
 Holding life cheap ; but lovable and sweet, 
 
 And beautiful as flushing clouds at dawn — 
 
 Such as I hope to see her once again. 
 
 When I, too, roam amid the asphodel 
 
 To greet the angel-shades of those that were." 
 
 Happy the flowers 
 That live but one sweet day, 
 That through the golden hours 
 In purfled garments gay 
 Laugh to the laugh of skies, then pass away. 
 
 Not theirs the pain 
 To feel the cruelty 
 Of sleet or sheeted rain ; 
 Not theirs the grief to see 
 Their broidered beauty bruised upon the lea, 
 
 Or wake at morn 
 
 And in the blanching light 
 
 Behold a flower new born 
 
 More beautiful and bright. 
 
 As radiant as the day — softer than night. 
 
15$ CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 Theirs is the bhss 
 
 To know not Love's dechne, 
 
 To hold the day's long kiss 
 
 Through pallors vespertine, 
 
 And then to Death their satiate souls resign. 
 
 Since that fair summer's golden afternoon 
 I have not seen him, but I read his verse, 
 Which seemeth to exhale the violet scent 
 That hung above her grave, and hath the tone 
 Of those dark, solemn, sentineling pines — 
 All sweet and sad, yet not without its balm 
 To those pale hearts whose mission 'tis to bear. 
 
 The carriage briskly wended up the hill 
 Into a wide white moon that crowned the slope. 
 Then swerved into an avenue of spruce 
 Up to the porch. My year's-mate friend was first 
 To break the silence, *< Have I kept my word ? " 
 She asked. And then half jestingly did add, 
 >* Surely your nursehngs soon will cry aloud ! " 
 And so this tale was prompted. That same night 
 Was roughly sketched the outline of my muse, 
 Which later on I fashioned into song. 
 
 VICTIMS 
 
 1861-65 
 
 Sad partings were there in those tempest-days 
 When clarions summoned all the Nation's thews, 
 When ardent warriors kissed their maids forlorn, 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 159 
 
 When downcast mothers wept their sad adieus 
 To chafing, flushing sons — their love of loves. 
 And there were greetings, too, for furloughed men — 
 Marked men by reason of a crutch, or scar, 
 Or uplooped sleeve, or inconspicuous badge 
 That signed a famous corps, or laurels won. 
 And fifes there were, and drums, and blaring brass, 
 Victorious huzzas, and cursed defeats, 
 And moaning, mufiled dirge — but after all 
 'Twas only war. Oh, how they headlong flocked, 
 The boyish knights, from out the college halls 
 To the clear notes, as though to festival ! 
 Oh, how the under-aged in reverence 
 Gazed on these soldier-lads as paladins. 
 Eager to do them homage by a stare. 
 Presuming in a courage-burst to touch 
 A^scabbard or a musket — then what bliss ! 
 Oh, how the pretty, heart-whole girls would clap 
 Their little pinkish palms as ranks passed by. 
 And how the anxious-browed, heart-harrowed ones 
 Would garner tremblingly fond farewell words ! 
 Our hero Arthur scarcely passed the bound 
 That gave him title to gird on a sword. 
 Was of that bravely budding florilege 
 Which bloomed the brighter in an atmosphere 
 Half dimmed with battle-murk. And ofl" he marched 
 One of a thousand in a bluish line 
 O'ercanopied by "God-speeds " hurtling up 
 From dense-packed throats along the thoroughfare. 
 From peopled windows, balconies and roofs — 
 A wide, reverberating span of sound — 
 Clear, dainty trebles mingling with the bass. 
 And one there was who caught young Arthur's eye 
 Called Nora, whom he had for long time loved. 
 
i6o CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 But not as yet dared ask to be his wife. 
 
 A glance, a smile all tears, a kerchief-wave 
 
 From her, and he was gone ! We wait for hours 
 
 To see a face among the marching ranks, 
 
 Or masquerading throngs that frolic on 
 
 To jocund airs, or through unpeopled ways 
 
 Passing without a note — and in a trice 
 
 All's o'er; yet for some glimpses we would wait 
 
 Our life's due, proffering gratitude to God 
 
 For their fulfilment brief. 
 
 Then trailed long months 
 For Nora killing time with lagging tasks, 
 Cross-harrowed by her lacerating fears — 
 Fears unallayed by reassuring news — 
 Nor yet a joy for dread of what might come. 
 *< Had he but spoken," so she sadly mused, 
 " And authorized the overtensioned nerve 
 Whereon doth play each rumor from the field, 
 It would be easier now to front the world, 
 Reaping its golden, ripening sympathy. 
 But this suppressed expression of despair — 
 This beating of fierce qualms within a heart 
 TJpwalled and issueless is strain too great 
 For woman — heroine or no. At best 
 No one is duped by my chicanery ; 
 Do what I may, my love is on my face." 
 
 Meanwhile o'er distant southern hill and dale 
 Arthur had tramped and countertramped, had fought, 
 Advanced, withdrawn, lived through drear winter 
 
 nights 
 Upon his wilding post, and trailed the dust 
 'Long torrid roads. And he had lodged the lead 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS i6i 
 
 Unwelcome ; had been healed, and off again 
 
 To stand an easy mark ; had won a bar 
 
 For gallantry ; and what was fairer prize, 
 
 A narrow furlough to his home and heart. 
 
 It was the time when April weds with May, 
 
 When bluets innocent the lowlands frost. 
 
 When jonquil and narcissus — firstling flowers — 
 
 Bestar the brown, fresh-spaded garden plots. 
 
 And when the bluebird, born of spring, flits glad 
 
 Among the nascent greens of leafing trees. 
 
 Oh, happy birdlings they to flit among 
 
 The firstling flowers that gleamed above the months* 
 
 Dull barrenness ! Unmated birdlings they ; 
 
 But not for that less blest ! The glance, the touch, 
 
 The smile, the innuendo of a phrase. 
 
 The tryst unsanctioned by a formal bond, 
 
 The glad good-bye with fond remembrances 
 
 Nursed and rehearsed throughout a restless night 
 
 The hope of consummation ultimate — 
 
 Aye, and the petty doubts and jealousies 
 
 Give tenfold zest to the sweet game of Love ! 
 
 But why, O Time, in thy fell power assured 
 Shouldst thou assert thyself through day and night ? 
 Why shouldst thou mar the lovers* ecstasy 
 By grim, perpetual urgence of thy self? 
 Why fliest thou the fastest, like swift clouds. 
 When whirlwinds dominate ? God knows thou 
 
 dragg'st 
 Thy sluggish length along the thorny ways. 
 When all the sullen air is thick and dead : 
 But given embowered paths fanned by the gales 
 Of fresh, delirious joy, thou sweepest on 
 More fleet of wing than they ! 
 
i62 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 So now arrived 
 The inevitable day when Arthur's fate 
 It was to counterchange his arbored hours 
 For tented life, his rosy dalliance 
 For briered play of war. Its eve he passed 
 At gentle Nora's home — an ample house 
 Where guests might make their separate gatherings, 
 Nor incommode by their propinquity. 
 And while some parleyed 'neath the clustered blaze 
 Of many jets, the lovers sat apart 
 In the sweet twilight of a high-ceiled hall. 
 Above them loomed a gemel-window dight, 
 Athwart whose opalescence rippling poured 
 The argent radiance of a full-disked moon, 
 Transmuted into beams of gold, of red, 
 Of springtide green, and sapphire as the sky. 
 Nor could the fancy dream an atmosphere 
 More fairly tinged with ideality. 
 And chance would have it that the portraitures 
 That thus did vibrate 'neath the raying moon 
 Did illustrate the scene about to be. 
 Within the opening on the left was traced 
 With lead, and lustrous glass, and vitreous stain — 
 All framed about with fret and rich palmette — 
 The piteous image of Andromache 
 With doomed Astyanax, her lovely babe, 
 Couched on her fragrant arm, and half-afraid, 
 As venerable Homer says. And she 
 Soft-clad in clinging white and palish gold, 
 With saddest eyes towards Hector slowly moves 
 Who stands within the opening on the right — 
 Saving the crested helm — full panoplied 
 With polished greaves, defensive plate and shield, 
 With sword insistent, and aggressive spear ; 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 163 
 
 Yet free of brass were both the arms and thighs, 
 
 And feet unsandaled, as we see them drawn 
 
 With crafty stroke on vases black and red — 
 
 The pride of fictile art. And Hector turns 
 
 His battle-weathered face unto his spouse 
 
 Beloved and infant son — his household's hope j 
 
 But his huge torse and massive, sunburnt limbs. 
 
 Impatient of delay, confront the hosts 
 
 Of long-haired, threatening Greeks. His love doth 
 
 call 
 Him homeward ; yet more loudly in his ear 
 Resound the battle-shout and clanging bronze : 
 And shout and bronze will always overdin 
 The fainter pulsings of a woman's heart ! 
 
 Now Arthur heretofore had held his peace, 
 Thinking the boding time unmeet for cult 
 Of Love ; and wiser deeming it to wait 
 Till untumultuous winds should waft him home 
 A veteran scarred, safe-guarded from the storm ; 
 Or if not spared — then kinder unsaid words. 
 But often, nay, nigh always, purpose melts 
 As ice-gorged torrents in the tepid spring. 
 Before the frenzying breath of flaming love. 
 God ! could he hold his speech with Wisdom's leasb 
 In that provoking ambient of light 
 And opportunity ? Out gushed the words 
 Like huddling waters from a riven dam : 
 Nor did he give occasion for response 
 So urgent was his mood. *' O Nora, love, 
 Too well thou knowest what for years hath been 
 The obvious purport of my speech, my ways. 
 My exaltations and despondencies ; 
 Of those unheeded moments passed with thee 
 
1 64 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 Upon the willow-garnished, envious stream 
 
 Turning aback in eddying, lingering tide 
 
 To read again my perfect happiness ; 
 
 Or there upon the hills beneath the shade 
 
 Of courteous trees that in their sympathy 
 
 Rustled for joy, while through their rugged boles 
 
 The shifting sky-tones called the passing hours ; 
 
 Of those keen rambles o'er the frozen meads 
 
 Thick islanded with leafless, grayish brake ; 
 
 The pointings of those sweet anthologies. 
 
 Culled from selectest bards, I read to thee 
 
 Were patent as the golden-greenish rays 
 
 Which silted through the leafy tapestries 
 
 Imbuing deep the page ! And thou dost know 
 
 That those long silences of mine derived 
 
 From lack of confidence, or jealousy 
 
 Unwarranted — yet always mating love — 
 
 Were far more eloquent to thee than speech 
 
 Or protestation such as all men make. 
 
 Be they but stammering clowns, or gentle born : 
 
 Yet now, like all, I voice the common words 
 
 * I love thee ' — out they must, though I had sworn 
 
 Forbearance up to heaven." And Nora heard 
 
 With joy ineffable ; nor did she lower 
 
 Her glorious head in maiden modesty, 
 
 Nor village-wise let fall her timorous lids, 
 
 Too ecstasied to fall, but with a smile 
 
 That matched the rippling moon, and (laved with light 
 
 Beaming upon her from the pallid robes 
 
 Of sad Andromache) she simply said 
 
 ** 'Tis mutual, Arthur, for I love thee, too." 
 
 Oh, moments sweet that are vouchsafed to those 
 Who have controlled expression till the bound 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 165 
 
 Of Love's last sufferance is attained, and then 
 
 Let tongue, and eye, and lip, and fostering hand, 
 
 And fast engirdling arm have fullest sway ! 
 
 To those whose chiefest ravishment hath been 
 
 To feel a garment's fold, or yet to touch 
 
 Cold, timorous fingers when the hour came 
 
 To say *< good-night," or kiss some sacred flower, 
 
 Nor ever daring more than this in dreams — 
 
 Sweet caterers alone of tasted things ! 
 
 When we have reached this goal of perfect bliss, 
 
 Have madly kissed, embraced, and kissed again, 
 
 And when Love's fever is at parching height. 
 
 Then God should kindly take us to Himself, 
 
 And let us lead our life in Paradise ; 
 
 Since more than this on Earth there cannot be ! 
 
 But now the ruddier light from Hector's arms 
 Fell full on Arthur's form, and lit the bars 
 Upon his shoulder-straps — his captain's badge — 
 And in his ears delirious from the song 
 Which Eros, golden-winged, had madly sung. 
 There seemed to ring the far-off bugle-call, 
 Sweet soldier-music on the legioned field. 
 But blaring discord in the myrtled courts. 
 Then gathering up his disembodied will, 
 And giving one last desperate embrace, 
 In Hector-wise he took a hard farewell 
 From his Andromache unreconciled. 
 Since chances were that he would no more see 
 His idoled love — nay, not much more were they 
 Than death-predicted Hector's ; for so high, 
 So long, so fatal was the ghastly strife 
 That made of boys precocious manikins 
 To minister to age and widowhood ! 
 
i66 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 The knightly Trojan, flower of chivalry, 
 Glutted the nether gates in wardenry 
 Of cherished spouse and helpless infant son 
 From the accepted lust of Victory. 
 And sometimes it doth happen even now — 
 When Victory is companioned by Restraint — 
 That a great Cause involving more than life 
 Doth justify a hecatomb of hearts, 
 Which women freely give, albeit great — 
 Aye greater than the sacrifice of men 
 Who yield God's rarest dower upon the field. 
 Alas ! more often man doth rush to arms 
 On some trumped-up excuse ; and though he give 
 His life — or be enforced by circumstance 
 To give — he little recks that for this life 
 That ebbs in sudden agony afar, 
 At home its counterpart (but oftener more 
 Than one lorn loving heart) will agonize 
 Through tarrying, bitter years. A bulletin 
 Will read " a thousand slain " ; but were it writ 
 Five-fold, it would come closer to the truth. 
 
 Meanwhile the battle's course was bending north 
 From out the oozing soil incarnadine 
 Into fair countries virgin yet of blood, 
 Where tilth of summer checkered all the land, 
 Where grassy waves were weltering in the breeze, 
 Where only reapers' ranks marched slowly down 
 The ripened, swaying, tawny tracts of grain, 
 Binding and stacking with a unison 
 Of soldiers on their formal dress-parade — 
 Yet all so soon to be in wrath defaced ! 
 And every orchard here, and every rise 
 Of vantage-ground, and every rustic fence, 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 167 
 
 And reedy marsh, and rocky rural nook, 
 And copse, and level sweep of yellow corn, 
 And barn and cot — yea, every tombstone too, 
 Was now to be a witness carnage-stained 
 To that stupendous fight which thrice the Sun 
 Surveyed with reddened orb before he fell 
 With natural flame into a smokeless west. 
 
 In those colossal struggles that have changed 
 A nation's chart, and turned the thoughts of men 
 Into fresh grooves, the world alone recalls 
 In after days some culminating feat — 
 The apex of the bickering battle flame 
 Soaring spectacular above the smoke, 
 Nor heeds the roaring, feeding mass below. 
 Yet in such battles many a proud exploit 
 Unblazoned, by some company elect 
 Is modestly achieved at lurid cost 
 To waft aloft that dominating flare. 
 And thus it was with Arthur's regiment, 
 Updrawn upon the right extreme to guard 
 The army's flank. Ah, what a gathering 
 Was there of perfect youth in rarest bloom — 
 Scholar and athlete standing side by side 
 Nor one superior in his chivalry. 
 O reader would you know the goodly names, 
 Of those who left their heart-beat on the field. 
 Go seek them on the pallid carven stones 
 Of that dim Hall where Learning mourns her sons. 
 Or in the archives of the sturdy State 
 Which stanchly stood in those most perilous days — 
 And, God so willing, will forever stand 
 Perpetual bulwark 'gainst dismembering foes. 
 
1 68 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 Between two bosky hills there lies a field 
 Scarce channeled by a runnel, wandering 
 Across its lap into a rocky creek. 
 In after years when all the land rayed peace, 
 I saw this grassy mead and rivulet, 
 And thickly wooded western rise beyond, 
 Then bristling with a dense victorious foe, 
 Unnerved as yet by withering reverse, 
 While Arthur's regiment lay stretched along 
 The eastern woodland's verge, awaiting word. 
 Alas ! it came — a folly — to advance 
 And clear the facing forest foeman-free. 
 So off they leaped expectant to their fate 
 This unsupported handful of youth's bloom 
 To be unpetaled by deflowering Death. 
 Mine not the muse to sing the heroic deeds 
 Of those fair boys — for boys they seem to me 
 Adown the dim perspective of long years. 
 More eloquent than rhetoric of mine 
 Is the laconic utterance of the bronze 
 Which curtly tells in figures unadorned 
 The ampler story of their gallant charge. 
 And better so : what need of foul detail 
 Or circumstanced recital of Hell's work 
 To gorge the gluttony of morbid taste? 
 No portraiture so hideous for my pen ! 
 My task alone to say that Arthur fell 
 Leaping the brook with unintentioned shriek. 
 And helpless lay until Occasion came 
 To bear him with the comrades who yet breathed 
 Beneath whatever shelter there might be 
 Of house, or cot, or barn. The surgeon said 
 His chances for recovery were good : 
 And this he wrote a-home in charactry 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 169 
 
 All tremulous — a brief and buoyant scrawl, 
 
 Effusing pathos, bringing piteous tears 
 
 To those who read it after lapse of days. 
 
 But what might be a chance in hospital 
 
 Well-ventilate, miasma-free, and pure, 
 
 And sentineled by therapeutic art, 
 
 Is small, indeed, where battle-mangled men 
 
 (If flesh unmoulded can be called a man) 
 
 Are crowded into bedless, airless space 
 
 With only such attendance as Need's pinch 
 
 Can give — of small avail to save a life — 
 
 And all the festering chamber reeks decay. 
 
 What wonder is it that the poison lodged 
 
 In Arthur's lacerated limb, and spread ; 
 
 That fever pulsed its venom to the brain 
 
 Until he knew not what was here or there. 
 
 What present was or past, or who it was 
 
 That motherlike did minister his wants ! 
 
 For now had hastened to the moaning field 
 
 A band of saintly women unto whom 
 
 A cry of pain is as the bugle-call, 
 
 The God-sent call of Opportunity ; 
 
 Who seek what strong, yet flinching men evade; 
 
 To whom a sickening sight is as a crown. 
 
 And one of these angelic, fearless souls 
 
 Stood over Arthur in his stress and cared 
 
 For him, and caught his raving, wandering speech 
 
 Dissevered by the parching fever's heat. 
 
 And stored it in her memory to sate 
 
 The hunger of poor Nora's empty heart. 
 
 Avid of every crumb, in dearth of news 
 
 (For they were comrades in their girlish days). 
 
 And much she understood ; but more there was 
 
 That seemed an aftermath from college books — 
 
I70 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 Fruitless — mere Recollection's freakish crop — 
 
 Not knowing of that parting, moonlight scene 
 
 Beneath the argent, rippling, pictured glass ; 
 
 And this was mingled incoherently 
 
 With animating words and curt commands 
 
 Flung out in ardor of the onward rush ; 
 
 With tender utterance of a lover's thrill, 
 
 Both reminiscent, and of trysts to be. 
 
 ** How soft thy lips are, Nora, and how warm I 
 
 So soft and warm as peaches* velvet bloom 
 
 Espaliered on a sunny, ripening wall — 
 
 O poor Andromache ! how sad thy gaze, 
 
 Shadowed with foresight of the dismal years, 
 
 As golden grain is shadowed by the sweep 
 
 Of some dark, ominous cloud — the golden grain ? 
 
 Look there ! another glittering, compact corps 
 
 Onmarching through the corn — the blue on gold - 
 
 What splendid spectacle ! What timely aid ! — 
 
 See Hector ! how he shines in burnished brass 
 
 Eager to go, and take his death foredoomed 
 
 From swift, implacable Achilles' spear — 
 
 Never again to see Andromache 
 
 Sad-eyed, and robed in gleaming white and gold, 
 
 Gold as the yet untrampled grain — if I 
 
 Like Hector ne'er should see thee more nor kiss 
 
 Thee once again beneath the pictured glass ! — 
 
 Ah, he was death-appointed by the gods, 
 
 But I shall see thee, Nora, soon, so soon — 
 
 The surgeon says my ill is trivial thing, 
 
 And they will carry me into the North — 
 
 The warless North — no battle-torment there ; 
 
 For as the sun declined we stemmed the tide 
 
 Of northward flowing blood — from time to time 
 
 A keenish pang — that's all — and that will end." 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 171 
 
 Thereon he upward bent his brow in pain 
 
 Like that reft Niobe we know so well, 
 
 Nor did he seem unlike her ; for so young 
 
 Was he, with features almost womanish, 
 
 And white as she by pallor of his ill. 
 
 Anon he broke again his reticence 
 
 With roaming thoughts in death-approaching voice. 
 
 " The order, men, has come to take the wood, 
 
 'Tis murder, yet we must — close up, my boys, 
 
 And steady there — the colonel's down — the flag. 
 
 The flag has shifted hands, but still — I'm hit — 
 
 O poor Andromache, thou never more 
 
 Wilt see thy living Hector ; oh, but I 
 
 Shall soon be with my loving, promised bride — 
 
 What awfulness it must be ne'er to see 
 
 Again in throbbing life one's heart of hearts ! 
 
 Dear God ! I thank Thee that Thou hast vouchsafed 
 
 To me another night beneath the rays 
 
 That ripple through the moonbeam lighted glass. 
 
 O Nora, love, what joy — so soon — so soon — 
 
 O Lord ! how good to let me live — and Nurse, 
 
 It can't be long — before — before — before * * * " 
 
 And then he swooned into eternity. 
 
 Oh, close his weary lids, and let him sleep ! 
 
 Hark ! the slow music moans upon the ear, 
 And mingles with the fluting of glad birds; 
 Hark! the Dead March reverberates its woe 
 Throi:gh placid college-garths and leafy elms. 
 From out the chapel-porch is slowly borne 
 By comrade arms, the ebon coflin draped 
 With red and white, and stars on azure field — 
 The Nation's flag, for which he gave his all — 
 While on the lid there lies the ball-rent hat 
 
172 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 With veteran sword, the gift of one beloved 
 
 Who held him knightlier than other men. 
 
 Then follow weeping, sabled relatives 
 
 And solemn, silent groups of foretime friends 
 
 Wending their journey to the awaiting grave. 
 
 A volley — and the obsequies are o'er 
 
 Well-nigh unheeded by the listless world. 
 
 A thousand laurels garlanded the tombs 
 
 Of those first few who fell spectacular 
 
 In what was deemed beginning and the end, 
 
 (Yet which was merely prelude to the play) 
 
 While every tongue and print outblared their names. 
 
 But as the smoke-encumbered years rolled on, 
 
 And the black cannon's deep, continuous roar 
 
 Knolled the out-crushing of unnumbered lives 
 
 Lying like windrows on the close-scythed field, 
 
 One life, or e'en a hundred, scarcely claimed 
 
 The indurated public sympathy. 
 
 And all is habit. A mere scratch will draw 
 The tears from girlish eyes — those very eyes 
 That later view drop-dry the appalling scenes 
 Presided over by the surgeon's knife, 
 Wherefrom an unused man would shrink ash-lipped. 
 And those pure Vestal Virgins who flung down 
 Their sacred thumbs, and shrieked away the life 
 Of some ennetted victim on the sand 
 Blood-mottled of the Colosseum's floor, 
 Who knows ? may have drawn practice from some game 
 As semi-brutal as a sport of ours — 
 Not bloodless — that doth fascinate our fair. 
 
 How heardest thou, sweet girl, the announcing 
 word 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 173 
 
 That brought thee death in hfe ? Didst thou, indeed, 
 
 Like fair Andromache when at thy loom 
 
 Catch the shrill cry of women through the house 
 
 And let thy shuttle fall ? Or hadst thou it 
 
 Point-blank from some officious, downright friend ? 
 
 Or did some tender one with cautious tongue 
 
 Lead gently on to half-expected doom ? 
 
 We would not know, where not to know is gain. 
 
 Often we saw thee in thy mourning robes, 
 
 With eyes dark-housed, telling of heavy days 
 
 And long oppressive nights, which were as one 
 
 For cruel negligence of craved for sleep — 
 
 Capricious sleep that fosters unimplored 
 
 The drunkard and the glutton, yet which leaves 
 
 The righteous anguished to consort the night 
 
 With counted hours that never greet pale dawn ! 
 
 Some grief there is which like an Eastern storm 
 
 Fumes fiercely on the scabrous, rock-bound coast 
 
 And edges all the land with plunging foam. 
 
 Making a man to pray for those at sea. 
 
 Then westward shifts the sudden wind and smokes 
 
 The thwarting billows till they seem afire. 
 
 Anon the gloom is sundered by the beams 
 
 Of a victorious sun, and every wave 
 
 Flashes a bright-hued radiance, as the drops 
 
 Of sparkHng dew on a clear summer mom. 
 
 But otherwise was sad-eyed Nora's grief 
 
 After the stress of passion was foregone. 
 
 It seemed alike to one of those soft days 
 
 That Autumn generates in northern climes, 
 
 When all is stirless in the silent air. 
 
 And the veiled sun illuminates the land, 
 
 Nor is there clear-drawn shade nor sharp edged light, 
 
 But everywhere gleam lucent rays diffused 
 
174 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 Upon the meadow's lingering summer green, 
 
 Upon the gala trees, upon the pines 
 
 That fang their roots into the craggy seams 
 
 Of crests soft -limned against unazured skies. 
 
 So in an unharsh atmosphere of grief 
 
 Illuming all the coigns of Memory 
 
 (That else were shadowed by some joy too bright), 
 
 She lived her charitable life — a life 
 
 Port-open to all claims for sympathy. 
 
 Nor was she suitorless. It had been well, 
 
 Perhaps, could she have ta'en that frequent cure — 
 
 Which has the warranty of virtue proved 
 
 By countless happy lives — of second love 
 
 Whereto the first is but a portico 
 
 Opening on chambers richly decorate — 
 
 Substantial dwellings of a sterUng joy. 
 
 It had been well : but yet her vacant heart 
 
 Could lodge none else save phantoms from the past 
 
 That winged and moaned through it in cadence sweet, 
 
 Though sad, shedding a temporal balm that lulled ; 
 
 As nocturn breezes lute upon the trees 
 
 Embosoming a grieving home, and bring 
 
 Unbroken sleep to the bereaved within. 
 
 The routined hours fulfilled her daily life 
 
 With pious act — with all those delicate deeds 
 
 Grief knows so well to minister to Grief. 
 
 But when at shut of day the leisure came. 
 
 And the queen moon paced stately up the sky 
 
 All diamond-crowned, it was her wont to sit 
 
 Beneath the gemel-window where of yore 
 
 She sat inlocked, and heard the interweave 
 
 Of colored phrase, Love's music-tapestry, 
 
 Awhile great Hector cast his ruddy beams, 
 
 And his fair Trojan spouse shed silver rays 
 
AND NARRATIVE POEMS 175 
 
 Upon the parting pair. Some cynics say 
 
 Nor man nor woman dies of broken heart : 
 
 False ! false ! Each day heaps up its hecatomb 
 
 Uncharted, unbeknown to coroner 
 
 Or him who heals, or maybe even those 
 
 Who stand same-blooded round the open grave. 
 
 When some fierce malady assails a life 
 
 Hanging in equilibrium between 
 
 Two clamorous worlds ; when convalescence counts 
 
 On every small, restorative ally. 
 
 Then who shall say that buoyancy of soul 
 
 Avails not ? Or if Death shall sink the scale, 
 
 Would not a leaden heart effect the plunge ? 
 
 Howbeit the diagnosis authorized 
 
 Would credit loss of life to the disease 
 
 Authenticate by obvious evidence. 
 
 In her blest ministrations to the poor, 
 Mewed noisomely in airless, dayless dens, 
 A fell infection poisoned Nora's blood 
 Depleting life down to its very dregs. 
 Nor could the guardians of health foretell 
 The end, content to issue bulletins 
 Proclaiming pulse-rate and degree of heat. 
 Leaving solution to the questioner. 
 And long her gentle spirit fluttered thus 
 Between the light and dark ; though what were dark 
 To most, to her was craved, celestial light. 
 And this continued longing for her heaven. 
 Where she would rest in rapt, companioned bliss, 
 Guided her willing footsteps thitherward, 
 As one is often guided without ken 
 Toward what the mind exclusively portrays. 
 The experts said *' the crest of the disease 
 
176 CHARACTER STUDIES 
 
 Has foamed itself away, and calm prevails : 
 Her bark should weather — yet it slowly sinks." 
 
 Upon the wall there hung where she could see — 
 When first the glimmering light of waking day 
 Sieved through the latticed panes, and its last flare 
 Dropped into night — her dear memorials. 
 His sword and sash, the eagled belt, the hat 
 Shot-pierced, the twice-barred, war-dimmed shoulder- 
 straps. 
 The crutch — historian of his former wounds — 
 Former to that his last. O sacred things ! 
 Will ye be so when she their celebrant 
 Hath passed ? But while the flickering spark of life 
 Still measurably gleamed in her deep eyes. 
 And warmed the paling lip, they were to her 
 His symbol, sign, his very angel self 
 Poised on his wide, ethereal, sunny vans, 
 Stretching his urgent arms from higher realms, 
 Taking her hands in his with greeting smile, 
 Waiting to waft her to celestial joy. 
 Thus when her tide had ebbed to earthly bourne 
 And lapped the gates of Paradise, she cried, 
 " How good Thou art, O Lord, to let me pass 
 With Arthur hand in hand, nor agonize 
 On some untended, bloody field as those 
 Who fell defaced on that most awful day ! 
 How good Thou art, O Christ, to send to me 
 Thy white-plumed messenger — and mine — to lead 
 Me from the torturing dark to blessed light ! 
 Poor Hector, he received the stroke alone. 
 Far from Andromache his loving spouse 
 Weaving at home ; but I — but I, dear Christ, 
 I die with him — dear Lord — dear Christ — we come 1 
 
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