LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

UNITJID STATES OF AMERICA.

^^^^© ^^^ 'mi^^^^

—BY—

Miles A. Davis.

^/2.^''^'^'^

1894:

PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR.

Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1894, by

MILES A. DAVIS,

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

I2SriDE2S:.

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PAGE:

TITLE:

PAGE:

An Afternoon,

First Snow-Fall,

A Sunset on Lake Erie,

Flown,

A Leaf,

Forgiveness,

106

A Cloud,

At Sunset,

107

Glimpses,

A Mountain Flower,

105

Gems of the Sea,

Anniversary,

Home,

A Ribbon,'

Her Hair,

Atlantic Cable,

Her Face,

108

Birds Beatitude, i

Invocation,

Blue Birds, ^

In Presenting Mother

a Volume, 28

Beautiful Hands,

In Albums,

71 and 90

Beauty,

Baffled,

. 83

Jot,

Country Atmosphere,

Keuka.— Scene,

Charity,

Lake Keuka,

Days of Yore,

Love Fantasy,

Daffodil,

Lyrical Moods,

101

Demand,

Moss,

Dry,

March,

December,

106

New Year,

105

Erato,

Northern Girl,

Fate,

107

Not All a Fancy,

Faith of Love,

104

Nile,

Fading Year,

November,

104

Freedom,

Old Year and New,

XJtTX

DEX.

—(Continued.)

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Of the Sun,

The Mocking Bird,

Parnassus,
Pine Trees,

The Prints,
The Robin,

98
63

Psalm of Life— In March,

Truth,

Quest,

Untold,

Quatrains,

Vista,

Rain-Echoes,
Rain-Sighs,

57
91

Wild Lily of The Meadow,
Wayside,

29
42

Seneca Tiake,

Wings In Winter,

Snow Birds,

Watch,

Surpassing Love,

Xiphias Gladius,

The Big Gully,
The Fire-Place,

14
17

Yearning,

The Stormy Petrel,

Zadee,

PMEHJBB.

Neither personal eo:otisin that presJiimes itself iiiviilneral>Io to criticism
because of presumptive merit iu a work of the mind, nor a yielding to
alleged clamoring of friends, have had anything to do with supplying the
incentive to this publication. It appears without the knowledge, request,
or consent of any one except the writer.

Why should a book go about apologizing or seeking some excuse to
oflfer in extenuation for having lieen brought into existence, any more
than an individual ? A greater power or a higher cumulative force than
either brought each upon the stage of being.

Inasmuch, however, as there is an unwiitten law of reciprocation
between a publication and the reader, it seems l)efitting that a new work
should be given such preliminary unfoldings as naturally urge themselves
upon the projectoi-.

An impelling cause of this appearance has been the simple gratification
of a desire to test the extent of a favoi-able reception on the one hand,
and to note such criticism as may be called forth thereby, on the other.

Usually, though not invaiiably, the general public passes judgment
with a fair degree of impartiality. The work has probably never yet
appeared that of itself silenced or disarmed unfavorable comment. This
is especially true of metrical origination. Standing at the head of
creative literature, poetry, in its true sense, is the ideal interpreter of the
most exalted phases of thought, feeling, emotion, and the sublime subtlety
of cause and efiect. It therefore invites the keenest analysis and the
closest inspection of its structui-al forms. No man or woman seems fully
prepared to estimate the scope or significance of the original properties
that have, consciously or unconsciously, been assimilated from the thoughts
of others in an offering to the world. Acknowledging this extraneous
or contributing cause, as the case may be, to whatever extent it exists,
the writer has no apology to offer on this ground, inasmuch as whatever

seeds have thus taken root or advanced to the stage of a visible stem,
have been carried thither by the birds of the air or the winds of heaven
while he has slept or been in search of the philosopher's stone.

A work, even by the greatest of minds, must be submitted, as in this
humble instance, with the full consciousness of certain imperfections, like
all other human efforts, trusting that it may find its way, nevertheless, to
some degree of appreciation of the actuating spirit of the writer. It is
hoped, in this instance, that thereby the reader will measurably forget
the sometimes rough exterior of construction in perceiving the interior
relief of an honest purpose.

This collection comprises such communings with the Muses, both in
earlier and later years, as have been considered in some degree deserving
of embodiment. Doubtless some that are included might have been
omitted with advantage to those remaining. A few pieces have been
admitted under the hospitable hope of affording such a variety as might
please or interest a wider range of taste or fancy, the writer's own judg-
ment being adverse to any claim of literary merit on their behalf.

Nearly all of these lines were written with no expectation of future
publication in this form, else they might have undergone a thorough
revision, while still others would have been cast in the mental moulds
with the hope of results better deserving of this lasting treatment.

It is not claimed for these lines that they represent the writer's ideals
of poetic production. They do not. They only voice those silent medi-
tations that have cast themselves as clouds athwart the sky to soften
the piercing rays of a mid-summer day, under the varying moods and
tenses of atmospherical influence. No one can determine, when medi-
tating upon the making of metrical measures what particular star shall be
in the intellectual ascendent. No one can tell what will be written only
as it is litei-ally cast in sections in the mind. You may discern the brook
flowing on toward and beyond you, but you do not perceive its source
and its termination under a i-olitary landscape view. Nature never dis-
closes the whole process at once. Evei-y step is measured, grooved, and
graduated. No poet, it must be conceded, has been the fortunate possessor

of the gold or gift of poesy without a single flaw of the baser metals
in his composition.

All great poets, as well as lesser ones, have undoubtedly written some
incomprehensible if not indefensible lines, viewed from any conceivable
standpoint of unbiased analysis. On the other hand, the merest amateur
of versification can scarcely fail of producing at least an occasional good
or fine line, though it nmy be extraneous to the general flow or the usual
possibility of production.

While the wi-iter is not oblivious to the fact that he may be oflfering
material for some of these objections, he is still conscious of the moving
caravan of objects as they ranged themselves upon the perspective plain.
However they may appear to the minds of others, they were a part of the
entities of a naturally shy and exotic career.

Perhaps, in a relative sense, no mental effort, honestly applied, should
be considered cause to bring a blush of self-reproach. Standards of hu-
man thought cannot be gauged eiitirely from the mountain "top. The
uplands, the praiiies, and the valleys are the level of concentrated forces.
All poets cannot soar to the same ethereal height. The eagle and the
condor may be kings of the sky, but there is a wide range of feathered
glory in forest, field, and meadow. Even the humblest and shyest of our
songsters fills a sphere that would otherwise be void.

VVhether or not this venture upon the resounding line of rhythmic
creation thiobs with new energies propelled by Piomethean influences,
or like a feather dropped from some unseen bird on unknown flight, and
espied by wandering human eyes in search of the wild flowers of the late
spring days, and upon which remnant of departed plumage only a passing
reflection is cast of the winged messenger conveying it, the writer is yet
hopeful that this offering may prove worthy of a place in the realm of
metrical literature, because of its faithfulness to such flights of fancy and
touches of real life as weie infused with its origin, if not for any discernible
merit.

Every complement of verse may be likened to an autumn leaf in the
wind. The world is the atmosphere in motion. The leaf is the symbol

upon which the four winds may exercise their wantonness. No prophecy
can determine the course the volume will take or the fate it will receive
m the eddying currents of public taste and opinion. It is quite as much
at the caprice of the ever-varying winds of personal sentiment as the ro-
tating leaf in the arms of the freshly rising blast. Its final destiny is
equally problematic. Some sunny nook screened from the severity of
wintry gales by thick forests, may be its place of repose; or it may find,
no quietus till lost in the impalpable disintegration of its elements.

With more opportunities for uninterrupted reflection and discriminating
deliberation in the acceptance or rejection of the materials of construction
ofi"ered at various times in life by the silent projector within, it is freely
acknowledged that a work deemed more worthy of perpetuation would
have been developed.

If a new light of more intense tenderness and appreciation of ideal
revelations finds its way into human eyes and minds as they pour over
these pages, the writer would feel, could he be made cognizant of having
thus effected higher and happier impressions on the spiritual nature of
any number of mortals, that his work, however humble, should worthily
survive more than a generation in the crucible of time. '

Miles A. Davis.

INVOCATION.

Su'cct soul of things, in light divine,
Creative thought, all life in line,
Where have the hidden fountains played ?
On what mysterious balance swayed
The incandescent gleam of mind ?
Each acts the pai-t tlirough time assigned.
'Tis hoped some raptui-ous thought appears
Above the stoi-my waste of years.

Interpretation loads the way

Through subtle forces we ol)ey.

And on the far lioj-izon s i-ini,

^Vhere world and space through ages dim

Have been the bound of iiuman hopes,

Whereat the Muse, on sunny slopes,

Hath leveled in the solar sti-oam

That north and south poured forth liis dream

iMay not the humblest pilgrim i)ause,
And with the meekness of his cause,
Trge tliat the forest, bird, and brook
His spiric never hath forsook,
But haunted with tiicii- minstrelsv—
Their wild and thrilling fisalinistrv—
liesought in simple modest rhymes
An index of alluring times?

BIRDS BEATITUDE.

Wliere are the birds of all the skies
Since first the fliglit of time began ?
Is thei'e some winged paradise,
Some favored clime where all the clan
Find Edenland for them alone,
Where air and watery wings doth rest?
Have they but flown some other zone
In which to build their final nest?

While in the earthly atmosphere.
With songs that i-aptured every spot,
They gave the earth such timely cheer
That roses bloomed 'round evei-y cot.
The myriad man hath never known
The soaring joy of airy wing,
Or in his grinding, grosser zone,
Heard what the woodland fairies l)ring.

Where doth the seraph Idue-bird dwell.
With plumage of the sea and sky ?
Doth he now sport in mystic fell
Wherein the spirit ages lie ?
Do deep and far-oflF forests lone
Eesound that harp of all the spheres —
The sweet supei-ior wood-thrush tone
Thnt melts in melody all ears?

On what supernal summer shore,
Where meadows bask in endless day,
Reverberate foreveiinore
The matchless merry roundelay
Of hob-o'-link, our jolly friond ?

Disports he 'round melodious bars
That with his raptures thrill and blend
In sweeter songs beyond the stars?

Is there some lark, or nightingale,
Some robin nesting in the spring,
Some whip-poor-will that stirs the vale
Whei-ein the sunshine linnets sing?
Where is the pretty yellow-bird,
And swallows circling 'round and 'i-ound ?
The partridge dium what ear hath heai-d
On shores where satin birds abound?

Where doth the snow bird build his nest
In northern pines or rocky dunes
Beyond the hope of man's behest?
Where thiough the whirling snow attunes
His frolic of the polar maze?
Where now the silvery chick a-dee
That rounds our dreary winter days
And cheers our solitudes with glee?

Flies he in far and balmier zones

The pretty pigeon of our woi-ld?

U|)on whose cars are gaily tones

Of our beloved oriole hurled?

Where pipes the quail his quaint '-bob white?"

Or hies in wayside nooks the wren ?

AVho notes the glorious grosebeck's fljoht.

Or hears the starling in the fen?

In what transcendent land ol goal
Doth that supeiioi- subtle sense
Migj-ation stir tlic plmnagod soul?

Where winter never comes, would hence
Toward the south the wild-goose hie
Fi'om force of habit, till 'twere seen
That 'round the mystic regions lie
Eternal living landscapes green?

Do tempting streams and lakes invito
The snowy swan to sail them o'er ?
Leaps there within, fai- (-ut of sight,
As if from some uncertain shore.
Our fearless lynx-eyed northern loon ?
Where duck and gull and "dipper" dwell
Content, like drowsy hour of noon.
Upon whose peace no hunters fell?

The blithe and winsome humming bird
Foreshadowing sprite of lioneyed flowers,
Whose tropic wing our summer stirred,
Could there for him be sunnier hours?
Doth bird of paradise pi-osage
On earth the joy of vei-nal Junes,
In some resounding hei-mitago
Where paired affinity attunes?

Where summer sliadows softly lie.
The timid scai-let tanag(;r
Seems like a di'eam to human eye,
In which the crimson sunsets stir.
Along the foi-est edges fall
In droning days of solar heat,
The sharpened cadence of a call,
Tlio cat-l)ir(l challenge of retreat.

Is thoi'o the nici-ry mocking l»ii-d.

The mimic of the solar zone,
The russet harp ^olus stirred
A single throat to play alone ?
Keflects he in another clime
The harmony of feathered joy,
Where sing the spirits that sublime
Enraptuied earth without alloy ?

No raptuie could exceed the voice

Where all the messengers of air

In immortality rejoice;

Without them earth were never fair.

If ever any creature lives

And does deserve perpetual bliss,

It is the bird, that transport gives

And blends all hope of life in this.

The mossy bank, the purling stream.
The woods in soothing, lofty might.
The gorgeous glens in summer's gleam,
The golden rainbows arch of light.
The silent charms of every shore,
The silver mists in clouds unfurled,
Would seem of life a part no more,
Were there no birds in all the world!

PSALM OF LIFE-IN MARCH.

Windy days of March doth blind us,
We can see no spring appear ;
Boisterous month ! no garden 'fore us !
Say, what are you doing here ?

THE JUG GULLY.

A stream that winds along: a rocky bed
Above which waves the hemlock's lofty head,
'Mid boundless woods where pioneers did dwell,
And giant pines with tovvei-ing shadows fell;
Upon whose shady banks the \yhite birch g:rew,
Within whose depths are many a forest hue
Reflected on the stream in summer time
When evei-y bouirh is in its leafy prime.

With moss and ferns and lichens doth abound
The rocks on which one's Ibotsteps scarce resound ;
A setting- most befit this emerald ,5:len.
Wherein for years the sly fox made his den.
There, too, down sudden slopes the cattle come
To drink where deers forgot the summer's hum.
There gathering- shadows all the dreamy day

In cooling- sweetness ling:er by the way.

Witji countless curves it winds its way along-,
As through the interlacing- leaves the soug-
Of thrush and cat-bird and of blue-jay call
In vai-ying- accents as the shadows fall.
While high above the clarion hawk is heard ;
And softly thi-ough the soothing air is stii-i-ed
The harnjony of timid waterfalls
'I'hat t]-ickle down in pools at intervals.

When sun ami rain and winds conspiring- blows
]n spring- doth liberate the winter snows,
'Tis then the rocky gorge is wild with glee,
Astir from roots of every living tree.
And either bank becomes a hemisj)here

or all the inii'lity uproar of the year;

A throbbing artei-y of life it seems,

Both cliild and parent of a thousand streams.

Yet when the glowing heat of summer fills
The air and hazes o'er Jerusalem hills,
'Tis then so thickly lorms a coat of green
That scaice a ray can peneti-ate between,
Save where the spoiling ax-men felled the trees,
And theie the unniossed rocks pi-otest with these.
The home of birds and flowers and plants that seem
As in anothei- world's disporting beam.

In rocky solitude, sweet purling stream,
A fountain flowing seaM-ard like a dream ;
How mellowei- still the brown and purple glow
(K autumn woodlands in the stream below;
Down through this i-ocky woodland water-way
Jn tuneful echoes ebbs and flows the day;
Each falling nut or leaf or stir of air
Pulsates anew harmonious here and there.

But like a prisoner with muffled sound, ^
'Gainst jjrison walls in icy fettei-s l)0und.
The stream in iron winter's clasp is dumb;
No more by mossy banks the ripples come,
No moi-e with foamy flake o'er rocks doth leap,
Or through the gravelled shallows murmurs keep,
But only barren limbs as if in pain
Sway in the wind a pitiless refrain.

Through all the light of fading years I love
To linger on the " Hog's Back," far above
The deep defiles where (rage's saw-mill stood,

And miiso on spirit raptures of tlie wood;
Or down along the narrow " Stony Flume,"
A score of early fancies to resume,
And even yet from source to mouth explore
Three sylvan miles along a rocky floor.

MOSS.

The velvet touch of Nature's hand
Outstretched to man in every land;
O'er lone and cold cathedral walls,
O'er grottoes where no sunlight falls,
In voiceless solitudes of old
Where only dreamy thoughts unfold,
Where night and day and stars outspread
Their silent raptures o'er thy bed.

In regions wild and desolate
Where ancient rocks are gray with fate,
Where shadows sit like Druids grim,
And eye and form of Time is dim ;
In woodland depths where ever green
The forest monarch's tower is seen.
Thy verdure soothes the harrowed soul
Where else were gloom from pole to pole.

O'er many a rock and ruin spread,
P^thereal plant by angels fed;
The mystic gard'ner of the past
Brought hither hopes that had been cast
Thi-ough countless ages and the forms
Of wind and calm, of sun and storms,
As if to recompense the loss
Of Edenland, and named it Moss.

THE FIRE-PLACE.

In boyhood days to muse heside the fire,

To watch the sparks fly upward high'r and high'r,

To see the fork of flames the foresticks Ibrge

And flame and smoke go up the chimney gorge,

To watch the hack- logs gnawing embers glow,

Willie thjough the burning wood-pile "sputtered snow,'

Was many a winter evening's simple cheer.

Resounding on a frosty atmosphere.

Fantastic foims in flickering shadows danced
'Round hearthstone, beam, and log, and fairies pranced
In dreamy fantasies about the room.
Gyrating oft and wild around the loom —
Grandmother's pi-ide — and o'er the oaken chest
Wherein the household gods did but invest
With hint of mystery the cabin store
Of plain antique upon the sanded floor.

Grandfather was the dearest, best of men,
Of joyous nature — pioneer — and when
With song and anecdote he did regale
The youngster at his hearth who loved the gale
The more that brought companionship beside
The fire-place of fagots blazing wide,
It sent its cheering fact and fancy free
Through all the life of one that was to be.

'Twas there Grandmother — best of cooks — did bake

And richly butter down the buckwheat cake,

Fit food for kings or princes, if you please,

If they in hours of idleness and ease

Have more than common taste. Her quiet w^ys

or clevornoss perennial as the days

Of which her pure sweet life was warp and woof,

Made ^lad the hoy beneath that humhle roof.

The iron crane within the chimney hung,
Whereon for hoiiing dinners kettles swung.
When there was bread to bake, the good housewife.
With simplest instruments the "staft of life"
Jn luscious loaves in that small oven 'done,"
That never were surpa.ssed beneath the sun.
Sometimes with kettle on a heap of coals,
Did bake n loaf 'twould tempt our \ory souls.

Foi- much of complement the andiions stood,
I'pholding foiesticks and the chinking wood.
Beside the chimney, painted red, was seen
Her pantiy shining like a silver sheen
With neatness and her pretty china-ware.
I'pon the other side the simple stair —
A ladder — leading u[) aloft, you know.
For st.oinge of the seldom used below.

Within that darkened loft did there not dwell
The myths of earth and every secret spell?
Did not the great uplifted chimney swell
With phantom things it nevei" dared to tell?
Here 'gainst the gable end one heard the roar
Of wind and chimney voices blend and soar;
In crack and cranny lurked the giant elf
Who fil'ed the childrens' stockings with his pelf.

IJefitting was the mantle shelf above,
A crowning grace with offerings of love ;
The iisefnl and the ornamental things

11>

A rutie priinoval habitation brings
Thiouj^h lonfT industrial paths our fathers trod.
Was there not something soaring from the sod,
Infolding man in lurrows of the plow —
A eastle-biiilding creature then as now?

Across the room, against the logs, behold

'J'he wooden eloek set forth with stories old

In that leverlterating pendulum :

Duiation's count of footsteps as they come,

Notation of the flying hands of time

That meet and part at noon and midnight chime !

Sometimes it seemed to soften every shock

To hear that dreamy " tick " of frran'ther's clock.

Allui-ing hopes and visionary joys.

That pleased alike the young and gray-haii-ed boys,

Came trooping 'round the cheerful evenino- fire —

The light of home, reflecting our desire.

Through wanderings of after years 1 find

In earth's great realm no soothing balm of mind

lAke that within the old log cabin door,

With sweet unsullied memory evermore.

YEARNING.

Appealing fi'om shores of splendor and song
To the car of the Muse for passage along
The annals of fame to a haven of bliss.
Where love in delight of a rapturous kiss
Begirts the sweet paths of an endless June,
1 saw a fail- face all wantonly strewn
With roses of beauty and angels to vie
In purest of deeps — the infinite sky.

May 25. 18f)3.

A SUNSET ON LAKE ERIE.

Above where sky and water meet
Was stretched a bar of light along
The far horizon's misty fleet
That lay at anchor, rife with song
Of boatmen's lore. A band of gold
Bent out of fading sunbeams' forge
In whicii were tints tradition told
Of days that out of time disgorge

A cyclorama of the sun.
The soft red light suffused the shore
Long after day and night were one
And rim of clouds were seen no more.
In that departing glory swayed
The lapping waves i-esounding notes
Whila over all the wind-harp played
Falsetto of a thousand throats.

There brooded over lake and sky
The lull of clouds; the hush of night
Shut down with radiance from on high
Through which the gull in circling flight
Swept meteor-like on snowy wing.
The throb in th' steamer's iron chest
Seemed all there was of life to bring
The eastei-n dreams unto the west.

OF THE SUN.

A primal glory, reign of days,
Of storm and calm and ripened rays,
Of frost and snow and furnace heat
And fanning breezes lull and beat.

KEUKA.— SCENE.

Along the country roads the dust lay deep
And all the hills and vales were Iialfaslee|)
In drowsy sfjiing-tinie destitute of rain,
As not a fai'ui house I'oof with wild lefiain
For weeks resounded with the scudding showei-s
That deck the world in holiday of flowers,
And men grew languid in unwonted heat
That northward sped as under furnace lieet.

Southwestern atmospheies' o'er-laden store
Of precious moisture warring winds held o'er
Far-off" Pacific depths from whence their flight,
Came looming up in spectral clouds of white.
Along the vine-clad hills al>ove the Lake,
As if from some aerial spring awake,
The caravan of hopes sped out in spray
Their truce-like sign of i-a in-refreshing day.

Then fell the rain, and every grateful sense
Of living things went up in sweet incense.
From thirsty fields and yearning meadow lands,
Keuka struck the key along her strands.
Bright diadem among the rolling hills,
Pure Lake, within thy crystal depths the rills
Come whispering of their love amid the vine
Whose fruit doth well enchant the Sacred Nine.

With legends of the Red Man's paradise,
Surrounding woods resound beneath the skies;
A land once red with panoramic lore —
Full-bloomed — was all Keuka's scenic shore.
The wigwam was a theater wherein

Another race threw dices of the din,

And Indian and Deer alon^ their track

Were doomed with Saxon shadows at their back.

Of loves and wars what freights the birch canoe

In times of eld bore on thy bosom, too !

And how the dusky Aborigine

In wilderness of woods was wont to be.

And like a star on some celestial grail.

Stole bow and arrow armed along the trail.

The moccasin o'er all Keuka's bounds

Like foot-falls on another world resounds.

Above the Lake, where 0-go-ya-go veers
Its rocky tome of many a thousand years,
Though dim tradition tints the tale of time
With Indian moons of waninsr rays sublime,
The earth of other men has records yet
In here and there a crumbling parapet;
Though all is night — ol whom or whence or where-
As only eagles see the gods of air.

Beneath the dome of fair Jerusalem hills,
The North Branch full of life the wide air fills.
Upon its brink, toward the setting sun,
Sa-go-ye-wat-ha owns his life begun.
Of fur and fin and feather'd solitude
The " crooked waters " harbor'd all prelude.
Where all the fruits of earth invite to joy,
Behold the country of the Iroquois !

PINE TREES.

The pine, the pine, the gorgeous pine !
On evergreen shores a stately line,
From Greenland's glittering peaks of snow
Where keen and wild the north winds blow,
To southern isles by breezes fanned,
'Mid all ihe climes doth proudly stand
This primal plant of all the zones
Through which the wind-harp ever moans.

Come list at the feet of a thousand years
And you shall thrill with thoughts and tears
That stir the harp-strings evermore,
If you but heed the forest lore.
The woodland bards and sylvan streams
Will pour a flood through all thy dreams;
Come lay thy plaints beneath the shade
And soothe thy spiiit in the glade.

Contrast with all the waste of snow
And wintry winds on plains below,
These lofty evergreens whose plume
The very skies of heaven illume;
Where all the sunless depths bestir
The snowy-laden arms of fir.
With prophecies of all the year,
Of bird and branch betokened here.

Cathedral of the wilderness !
Eternal youth the winds caress ;
Sweet solitudes' aeolian harp]

Wind-woven every flat and sharp,
From every clime and every clan
With more than all the notes of Pan,
Re-echo through the emerald Pine
And thrill with its resounding line.

0, home of deep and shadowy song !
Of all that's dreamy, wild, or strong!
Harmonica of tempest stilled,
Where fragrant founts of youth are filled ;
Within thy healing boughs are laid
The balsam of the summer shade,
And still within thy slumbrous roar
Are tuneful fancies evei'more.

The bars of muffled music sti-ong.

And wind and wave, in prose and song,

Hwell here from force of fiat zones.

In lulled harmonica of tones

That night and day tiirough all the year,

Resounding diapason here,

Plays all the notes that ear hath heard

Of man or beast, of brook or bird.

What swaying psalter — ancient time —
What soaring wing of tropic clime.
What sounding soul within these limbs
Rehearsing all the forest hymns?
The choii's of heaven and earth 1 ween.
In pine ti-ees sing though never seen.
The one who hears the winds' relrain
Jn these gieon boughs lives not in vain.

DA.YS OP YOEPl

Adown the dim and shadowy past

Are memories floatinijr thick and fast,

Like silveiy sunbeams o'ei- the sea

They lave the air encircling me,

And come in dreams that wilder seenjs

And ruddier glows their golden gleams.

0, beauteous bowers ! what heavenly flowers,

Unveiled through all of childhood hours,

Come drifting past the mossy shore —

Those dear delightsome days of yore.

Anon my castles in the air

I built when earth was young and fair,

Aloft were borne with evei-y breeze,

By vale or plain or towering trees

Weird fairy hopes about me lay

Through silent night or echoing day;

But skifls that shadowed my summer bay

Lie strewn on the strand of a desolate way,

And the song that drifts through my life evermore,

Flows sweetly back to the days of yore. '

JOT.

The clime where genius dwells alone
Is boundless, free, and yet unknown
Save in the fragments of a book.
Condensed to fill us with a look.
It is a grand immortal sphere.
The realm of thought and hope that's here;
0, wondrous world, the pen and press!
Without which all is wilderness !

VISTA.

The waving hemlocks i-ose ami fell
Like some far-off cathedral bell,
And through the haze of autumn days
There pour'd a million golden rajs.

It was as though a goddess fair
Unfurling all her golden hair
One afternoon, saw all the years
Of Time's disporting hopes and fears.

And there was shape to a shadowy sphere
And worlds on worlds the sun's compeer,
And light that fell on field and wold
Was like the Bethlehem of old.

To cite the lessons in a leaf,
The sermons bound in every sheaf,
The open books in every brook,
The world at home in every nook.

To see the clouds at evening glow
Like sapphire seas begirt with snow,
Prophetic fires of cottage hearth,
And all the secret things of earth ;

Fame soars on wings of borrowed light;
Each new creation, half affright,
Revamps some long forgotten age
And hands the world a standard gauge.

Still here and there the star-dust falls
And rainbows span the waterfalls,
While through the clouds to fairer founts
The kite of faith immortal mounts.

27
ERATO.

[In Mythology, one of the Muses, whose name signifies loving or lovely, having similar at^
tributes, dress, <tc., to Terpsichore, and presided over songs of lovers.]

Does not some spii-it of the aii-
Cling close about jou everywhei-e,
And touch your evei-y sense aglow
With something moj-e than moi-tals know ?

Have you not felt within your heart
A wild and thrilling tumult start,
]jike some lone blithsome foi-est bird
Whose haunt is by strange footsteps stirr'd ?

Come days of weary toil and care,

When common loads are hard to bear,

And clouds droop down and pain the earth —

White wings of peace brood 'round thy hearth.

Thi-ough hibernating winter's snow,
Through droning summer's vernal glow.
Through luring autumn's touch of gold,
All hope and joy doth thee infold.

The gentle prophecy of spring,
And balm of bud that all things bring,
Are raptures of thy seraph soul —
Star-guided magnet to the pole !

The magic of the hidden goal.
The bud of promise in the soul,
Disports within thy tender light
And tints with gold the rim of night.

LAKE KELTKA.

The waters of my native Lake
Are softly swelling to the breeze
That ever murmuring echoes wake
And roll forever to the seas.

Upon thy bosom oft recline
Canoes that drift to shores forlorn,
With human beauties, I opine,
Star-gazing from their bows at morri.

'Round birchen barks of shadowy time,
Keuka laved the Red Man's oar;
And finny tribes from deeps sublime
Made happy homes of men ashore.

Full oft shall ripple to the main
Thy shining flood of rainbow dyes,
And blend against the window pane
A soft siesta Irom the skies.

IN PRESENTING MOTHER A VOLUME OF POEMS.

Our life, whatever numbered years,
Is but a spray of song — or tears;
In the ocean of time the dip of an oar —
A drop of rain to Niagara's roar.

But there are tender thoughts in song,
And as the years bear thee along
Toward the time to be no more,
Rolrosh thee on this flowery shoi-e.

A century hence "what's in a name?"
Whose willing voice will sound the same
An empty word to all who hear,
Unheeding reader! unheeding ear!

29
WILD IJLY OF THE MEADOW.

In boyhood years no vision was ever greeted with such emotions of rapture as that of the
beautiful Meadow Lily with its rich luster of variegated hues, waving its glorious bloom just
above the top of the grass. Many a time, with boyish enthusiasm worthy of a nobler cause
than robbing the meadow of its blushing bride, was the verdure of the sod disfigured with a va-
grant path in quest of the transcendent Lily, which it seemed vandalism to pluck. Such, how-
ever, were the tendencies of boyish ideality, that, could the actual bag of gold have been found
and had at the foot of the rainbow, by a Journey thither, it would have been no temptation to
make it, compared to the exultation of seeing and obtaining a full blown Wild Lily in the
meadow. Those occasions were the supreme moments of my existence.

Bright golden flower, tlie gem of earth,
The queen of Flora's kingdom, rare,
That blooms alone in modest worth,
And glorifies the summer air.

Great Solomon was ne'er arrayed
In royal raiment like to thine;
No poet-painter ever paid
Deserving praise within his line.

No fairer flower on earth is seen.
The diadem of far-ofl" skies,
O'ercapping all the meadows green •

With glory of transplendent dyes.

The landscapes gleam with morning dews,
The rainbow decks a glowing world.
But thy supremely gorgeous hues
Are all of beauty yet unfurled.

Perchance a bird of ancient time
Let fall his song on meadows gay,
And there in colors most sublime
Was born the lily of to-day.

PARNASSUS.

Where all the gods of Poesy allure,

And where in silence reign the secret spells

Of spirit summit's Ideality,

In regal splendor with the sun and stars

Above the clouds and stormy tempests i-ange,

In regions of celestial light and love,

Where earthly strife is lost in dreams of dreams

In boundless solitudes sublime, serene,

O'ercast with canopy of human hopes

And crimson radiance of ethereal skies.

Since thought above the base of mountains old

Ascended through the ages of our i-ace,

As slowly climbs the vapor toward the sun.

Upward hath rolled the tide of offering

From countless minds o'erflowing in their prime.

What mists have mantled 'round thy sacred dome

That were the gentle morning touch of time.

How hath existence gentle and sublime

From far horizon sunsets' float of gold

With prophecy shone through imploring palms.

How hath exhilarating iires of song
Lit up the night-like gloom of groping souls.
And tui-nod the sombre earth to glowing scenes.
What ladiani messages have come adown
Thy slopes, propelled upon the wings of winds.
And brought again o'er wintry plain and wold
A breath of spring and I'apture of the birds.
What wandering psalmistry of Palestine
Reverberates within the Piloirim's ear,

As if Judean chords went 'round the world.

With smiles and tears and all the heaven of love
Enrichinj^ this inspiring region 'round,
As drops the Nile its wealth in Egypt's lap,
In endless expectation to be blest;
The elements that sway or soar at will,
Resolve themselves in scarcely measured tomes
Around thy pinnacle toward the heav'ns.
What if the baser forms of earth descend,
If but the flower blooms in the wilderness
And still the fruits of promise sow the seed?

As minds have leaped their natural boundaries.

As swept the ancient sea o'er all the land,

80 hath the scale of being mounted fast

Empyrean hights of free felicity

When thoughts have riven like a thunderbolt

Intolerant chains that bound a hemisphere.

O, realm of poetry and song and art.

Of scholarship and the Academe,

The primal home of history, and lore

Of every race, transparent and occult !

In that bright Spartan land there lived and wrote
The solons, savans, sages, and the muse
On whom the gods distil I'd heroic charms
Whose wisdom lapse of centuries behold.
There was the glory of the dawning race —
Development transcending every type —
And intellectual gi-owth beyond compare,
That in the light beyond th' Atlantic wave
Reflects the world-wide wonders of the East —

3-2

The magic of the flowery land of Greece !

Since music was inborn of gentle souls,
Since learning led our race toward the stars,
And aspiration bridged the yawning gulf
Between the finite and the infinite.
The mountain looms sublime above the storm
And breaks the broad monotony of lands,
Creative thought in accents like the brook
Uplifts and then outpours in harmony
Through all the volume of the rolling years
The panorama of material man.

DAFFODIL.

As if to show beneath the snow

A loving heart,
In spite of cold or forces old,

Of earth a part,
The daffodil is first to fill

The dormant ground
And longing eyes with sweet surprise —

The bud is found !

Narcissus blooms though winter glooms

Still linger here.
Prophetic rods above the sods

In green appear.
Let March winds blow and storm-gods go,

So there shall hold
This hope of spring, this living thing

With flower of gold.

QUEST.

What matter how or where one falls ?
Who notes the silence in the halls,
Or fading echoes of the walls,
The lesson of the falling leaves,
The soul'd arbutus heaven retrieves,
The lost companionship that grieves ?

Does not the rainbow arch the skies —
The miracle of all that's wise —
Three worlds in one before our eyes ?
What matters it though we have strewn
Our roses in the lap of June,
Or all the world gone out of tune?

Have we not seen the stariy spheres.
The wondrous world of Windermeres
Pulsating through the stormy years ?
Have not our faces felt the glow
Of Jungfrau rising through the snow
To hurl an avalanche below?

What matters now the bitter tear
Of gray-haired sorrow, twin of fear.
When hope no longer holds us here?
It is the violets' touch we feel —
'Tween worlds and worlds our senses reel-
Perchance some star doth set the seal.

'Twere better that the prison bar
Should bear a flower or ray of star
Than blood of souls from near or far.
'Tis better to have loved in vain
Through all the years of grief and pain,
Than reaped the whirlwind of the main.

SENECA LAKE.

In ages past the northei-n glacier liurl'd
Its grinding avalanche adown the world,
And in its path the continents were laid
With granite dust and newly tropics made.
Beneath a zone of ice was furrowed deep
The shelving torrents that through ages leap,
While rivers blocked with drift besought the sea
Through all the gateways of the earth to be.

Below the vortex of the prisoned gloom
The whirling forces of a boundless boom
Did delve the rocky cavern of the deep,
Wherein, becalmed, fair Seneca doth sleep.
And as a trail along the mighty trend.
The hills like crested waves did sway and bend
Till they were rolled and left as of the shore
Where trident Time sits singing evermore.

The wonders of the sky and shore portray
The glories of thy bosom night and day.
And all the matchless water tints and floes
Of misty fantasies and shimmering shows
Parade thy never duplicated sheen
Of waters drap'd in panoramic scene;
In sun or shade, in wind or calm, or storm,
An universe of ever changing form.

Thy joyous waves defy the reign of frost,

And on thy deep tuumltous bosom toss'd

By every wanton winds' defiant power.

Are sprays of hope that float through every hour.

A matchless gleam of life disports in thee,

Thou many times ensembled sounding sea,

And all the echoes of thy rocky bed

Thrill him who thoughtful on thy shores doth tread.

Here in the forest-bouuded days of eld

The loon communion with thy waters held,

And snowy swan and wild-goose spread their wings

Ere man, the spoiler, reft terrestrial things;

And all along adown the rocky glades

There sang the sylvan brooks through summer shades,

That now l)eneath the blazing ax are still,

And only drouth or flood prevail at will.

From rocky springs thy crystal depths supply,
Pure as the dews of heaven on mountains high.
What wonder that some mystic mirage shines
Upon thy l)eauteous lace in loving lines?
Or that the wandei-ing winds in foamy flake
Toss up thy living locks and frolic make
Of thy pellucid flood where still serene
Lie Nature's hidden founts of youth, I ween?

The Red Men of the Woods have tribute paid
By all their craft of peace or war or trade.
The l^ake of infinite ! proud man behold !
Transcending every thought that's new or old.
Reflecting rainbows, clouds, and countless rain,
Still smiling on through every wild refrain;
And murmuring waves upon the shores relent
Allure the pilgrim here to pitch his tent.

3(>

NORTHERN GIRL.

The native Northern Girl,
Of all on earth the pearl :
Her gentle loving eyes
Reflect the Northern skies
When they are calm and clear.
The Junes of every year
With roses flush her face ;
Her every move is grace.

Within her loving smile
Is heaven on earth the while :
Her voice is like a bird
In far-off forest heard,
Her laughter like the brook
Enchanting every nook
From mountain to the sea,
The joy of life is she.

Her presence is the dream —
The honeyed Lotus stream —
Where poets ply the Muse
That earth and soul transfuse.
In form she is ideal,
In beauty, sweetness, real ;
Of all on earth that's dear —
The charm of every sphere.

IN AN ALBUM.

Within thy smile I'd always dwell,
Could I conserve the magic spell
Tween thee and me, nor never end
The ffolden chain of friend to friend.

5i7

COUNTRY ATMOSPHERE.

'Mid Alpine solitudes there rose
Above the ever spangled snows
The oracle of Freedom's heights,
Whose lofty spirit in its flights
Bestirs through centuries the soul
That soars from tropic to the pole.
So let the school-hoy shout of Tell,
And what through him of old befell
The one who sought in chains to bind
The fearless eagle of the mind.
The country air is Freedom's clime
Where rise immortals of all time.
There suumier meadows sweetly lie
In soft enchantment of the sky.
'Tis there the music of the brook,
In charm of every curve and nook,
Goes singing through the farms at will.
There glorious sunset from the hill
O'erlays its balm upon the wold.
And soothing night with sleep the fold.

What mem'ries 'round the farm house cling.
Outlook of birds upon the wing.
Where spring looks in through melting snows,
Where by the i-oadside softly flows
The brook in which the water-mill
Of childhood fancy whirled at will;
Where swayed the pine trees in their might
When toin by winds, and all the night
We heard the grim orchestral roar

Of west winds sweeping all before.
What notes of Pan is in the breeze
That echoes through the hemlock trees :
What odorous hints of paradise
In latter spring when all the skies
Afresh on apple blossoms swell
With rapture only birds can tell.
Rejuvenating mystei'y teems
As from the wonderland of dreams,
When trees renew their youth of leaves.
In rainy days how fancy weaves
An in-door charm of lulling hours,
With books and papers — mental powers-
Reserved for all the moods of mind.
In winter when the storm gods blind
The traveler in the drifting snows,
When keenly raves nor'wester blows,
What comfort clusters 'round the fire;
Long evenings fill a world's desire;
Companionship and musing time ;
Folk-lore rehearsed and songs sublime;
The grand review of all the year;
Climax of every social sphere.

The balmy forest odoi' brings
The hues of health on airy wings.
In all the circling seasons 'round,
The pulse of life from earth abound,
Majestic glows in every breeze
That fans the land or rolls the seas.

39
GLIMPSES.
'Tis only slanting rays of light,
Perceived, perchance, by human sight,
Transforms the earth to June or snow,
. Or gilds the rivei- in its flow.
Tween night and day, 'tween joy and pain.
We never see the subtle chain.
We are but creatures of a day.
Like others of the world at play.

'Tis but the glimmer of a dream
Of what we know or what we seem ;
'Tis but the pressure of a hand,
Some silent tear-drop on the sand,
Some falt'ring ray of silent night.
Some blush of hope, with half affright.
Suspends the rainbow in the sky
Or paints a paradise on high.

'Tis oft the touch of other days
That leads us through our thorny ways.
We rarely feel the thrill of spring
Till northward l)irds are on the wing.
We never know what love is ours
Till tears bedew a grave with flowers.
We seldom show how dear are those
More dear than life, until the close.

Too much alone this life we lead ;
Forego companion joys we need ;
See not the smile or hear the voice
That can our doubting hearts rejoice.
We live in castles out of sight

And bar ourselves against the light ;
We shut the world too much without —
Our lives o'erhung with clouds of doul»t.

We sigh in vain for absent years,
And look for joy through bitter tears,
Yet ever in the present long
For thrilling themes of future song.
We never know what raptures dwell
Attuned within our hermit shell ;
Let love but take the place of gold
And human hearts will ne'er grow old.

THE STORMY PETREL.

Behold ! how flies the genii of the sea !

Have care ye brawny sailors by the lea !

Ear out of sight there looms the wind-blown wave

That laughs at the reeling sail of the helpless brave.

Controlling th' energies of th' billowy deep

That mystic eye undew'd where mermaids weep ;

The chamois gaze his answering eye ne'er caught.

Nor sea-gulls scream with teri-or ever fraught.

The stormy petrel wings his wonted way,

Prophetic bird, amid the mildest day.

Ye sailors, ho ! a storm ! a gale ! ahoy !

Haul in and reef your sails! Be quick, my boy !

Old Ne})tunc with his trident and sea shell

For boat, can ride no surf like this, and well

Each gallant tar may thank the timely bird

For warning e'er the coral depths were stirred.

A rousing cheer ! Huzza for the Ocean Fowl !

That rollicks in the spray when tempests howl !

BLUE BIRDS.

Now northward points the solar ray,

Streams o'er the world a new born day.

We hear the wind in frolic roar,

The stoimy passage as before

Of myriad wings from morn to night

Beat on the air in wild affright,

Where sun and cloud and storm appear —

Prophetic voices of the year.

What hint is there of morning light
That westward o'er the hills of night
Doth whisper in the blue bird bowers
That winter broods o'er northern flowers?
What secret springs are these that bring
A blue bird northward on the wing.
Or tells him of a milder clime
Ere spring has hinted of its time?

Teach us the instinct of the day

The blue bird revels in his lay.

He knows the breezes free and strong,

He brings the sunshine in his song ;

Whatever tender memories float

In rapture from his tuneful throat.

His wings have touched both hemispheres

Of sun and snow, of smiles and tears.

Though the rainbow of hope the blue bird brings
Be lost in the depths of a thousand things.
The heart that is thrilled, the soul that is stirred
By the flood of song from the joyous bird,
Brings back the dreamy days behest ;

The youth upon the mountain quest,-

The woods and streams of childhood hours,

The V)alm distillinaj summer showers.

Though March winds roar along our way,
Though tempests riot all the day,
Yet still above the stormy track —
As o'er the ocean diifts the wrack —
There gleams the light through boundless blue
To tint the earth with heaven's own hue,
And all the raptures ear hath heard
Resounding of the sea blue bird.

WAYSIDE.

The germ of every hope.
Strewn o'er each sunny slope.

Bears recompense in song and whirr of bird;
The soul of music moves
Through all the stari-y grooves

Of love and joy and aspiration stirred.

The quiet of a nook
Where ripples by a brook.

The shadowy lull of forest anthems rolled
From mountain, plain, and vale.
Surcharge with rapturous tale

The lore of savants in the age of gold.

Where l)i'Oods the ptace of prose.
Or dreams of verse disclose
The ecstacy of youth with all things sweet,
The pilgrim 'neath the palms

48
Of endless summer calms
Doth temper all the world beneath his feet.

Tell us is heav'n afar

Beyond life's sovereign star,
When with a loved one near our senses touch

The shoreless seas of bliss

Within a loving kiss —
Is there felicity surpassing such ?

What holier zone of earth

Than love's begilded hearth?
What meteors 'mong the star sown vault above

Flash on a paradise

Like woman's tender eyes
That kindle manly solitudes with love?

How oft the subtle force

Of planets in their course
Lies like a slumbering seed within a glen ;

Through rocks the trickling spring

Conveys on flowing wing
The trend of continents and thoughts of men.

A LEAF.

October breezes knew its fall,
Not much beneath the foot of him
Whom woodlands taught the text of all;
And yet, bereft of parent limb,
A dying world foreshadow'd lies
A plaything at the zephyrs' feet.
Whose life hath summon'd from the skies
All that which maketh glad and sweet.

SURPASSING LOVE.

I feel that every human soul must love

And throne unsullied as the stars above,

One life from first to last as most complete,

Reality of which to think is sweet;

In which all ties of tenderness unite

Like hopes upon the homing pigeon's flight;

A dear familiar face which all the way

Grew dearer yet until the latest day

Left naught but crowded memories of years

To fill my lonely hours with bitter tears ;

Full well I know my truest tested friend

Unselfishly did love me to the end ;

So blind by tears I cannot see 'twere best,

Dear Father, though thy weary soul 's at rest.

SNOW BIRDS.

I see the Arctic birds in bright array
Astir to winnow wintry winds away,
Are sailing in the snowy-laden gales.
And with their thrilling throats and feathery flails
Beat wild tattoos with whirr of wing and song,
More wild and gay when tempest howls prolong.
Blow winds that seem to rake the slanting eaves
Of roof and sky, and sift the frosty leaves.
And pour thiough every waiting aperture
When nothing man can from his home allure!
Then comes our breezy northland songster bold,
With coat of mail from lands forever cold.
A voice to man these messengers of air,
Which says for every fate your heart prepare.

4f>

FLOWN.

November fades upon the hi II
In rift of cloud or purling: HII,
As in some post mei-idian gleam
Disports in song and bloom the dream
■ Of singing- birds and shady bowers
Through long and droning summer hours.
The frosty fret- work of the night
Reveals a dip of polar light.

Aflown are the myriad wings that lent
To earth and sky their blandishment.
The solar path to southward ti-ends,
The daylight arc more sharply bends;
In bands disperse our feathered friends
To lands where summer never ends.
Emblem of hope the bird that flies,
The harbinger of finite skies.

DEMAND

1 Is written on the Ocean's heaving side,

1 Already nearly full, but not enough;

The million streams pour in unceasing floods;

Down deep through liis old bosom proud and strong

He draws them all and sports in summer caves

With germs despoiled from many a fertile land,

But still his cup with rain is never full.

Nor floods nor streams his goblet ever fill ;

But see yon fervid sun all luminous

With trooping vapors from the deeps upborne

And sweeping from the west to east, behold

The whirlwinds havoc play in waterspouts:

Evaporation equals sea and land

So seas cannot o'erflow nor land run drv.

4«

DRY.

[This playful pasquinade is founded upon facts. The steamer Holmes was slowly making
its way along over Lake Keuka, heavily laden with passengers, on the night of July 4th, 1893.
The steamer was in total darkness, except a solitary lantern used by the pilot. The day had
been exceedingly sultry. Conditions for love-making, or stirrirg up jealous natures. A young
woman, in the presence of a lover, became very restless, sighed in the expression of pain, and
begged him to excuse her, saying she was so dry she must go and get a drink of water, and said
she would return in a few minutes. As he did not see her again durirg the voyage, (because she
found another affinity on the boat) and did not see her in several days thereafter, he jocosely
concluded she must still be drinking, and he playfully expressed a fear that she would drink all
the water of the Lake. Hence these lines : ]

'Twas in a sweltering torrid zone
On Lake Keuka, dark and lone,
There was a girl quite out of tone —
A lover heard her sigh and moan.

Her girlish grief could naught assuage;
The dog star high in heaven did rage;
Behind the clouds the moon did age —
No light needs love to conquest wage.

The day had loaded all the night
With heat intense, yet out of sight
^ Sped on the steamer half affright

With human loads in every plight.

The steamer Holmes in darkness toiled,
While human hearts with burdens boiled
The "green eyed monster" surged and roiled,
And for a fracas lovers "spoiled."

It was a dire and drying reign ;
It was a holocaust of pain ;
It was Vesuvius on a train —
The sultry day sent down no rain.

The fire-works fused the ambient air,
The finny tribe were in their lair,
When lovers forth their fate to dare
Entwined in arms — oh ! my ! ah ! there !

A harrowing tale this Lake may tell
Of that whieh on this night befell
A jolly, girlish, sweet gazelle,
Who now among its mermaids dwell.

As if Sahara's rainless sands
O'erturned along Keuka lands
Had brought the Simoom's burning bands
And turned them loose with fiery hands,

To set on edge a quenchless thirst,
Of all the thirsty thirsts the worst,
Of all the girlish girls the first
• To drink a lake and never burst.

When summer travelers come to spy
Beneath the overarching sky
The sylvan depths wherein did lie
This dreamy Lake — they'll find it dry !

'T was all because in grim July —
The time when forth the festive fly,
And flaming Sol is rolling high —
A roguish girl got " awful dry ! "

4«

ZADEE.

Come summon your martyrs and prophets of old,

Let tales of the gibbet and cell unfold ;

On rack and wheel and tongue of fire

Pour out the ages burning ire ;

Stream forth the vast departed tlirong;

Whose weary footsteps wore along

Past angry gods and stormy plains

To that " dread bourn " each traveler gains.

But see the strongest ties of earth
That cluster 'round the human hearth,
A voluntary sacrifice —
Reversing warmest love to ice —
In turning instincts straightway 'round,
And thwarting Nature at a bound.
The tedious list that's gone before
Went never out through such a door.

Along the Ganges murky tide,
The Zadee to herself aside,
Doth utter one wild wailing prayer
That forth upon the nightly air
A wave of shudder sends ere yet
Those little locks with dews are wet —
Her darling babe beneath the wave
From her own hands doth find a grave.

Down daik and deep her child is thrown ;
llemorseless River ! sharks hath known
What tender flesh thy gods hath sent —
A repast rare to monsters lent !
Their jaws may crush thy dearest joy,

Yet strange the gods should spare the boy !
What blocks of wood, insensate stone
Can yield to thee cannot atone !

What other beast would kill its own ?
What other forth to sharks would thrown
its tender young? Man fi-owns at thee,
And scowls at thy idolatry,
Yet boasteth fine of intellect!
Let's see, pooi- Zadee, what the sect
Who vaunteth arts and man subdued
To gentle measures hath prelude.

Not far to go before a load
Shall burden thee upon the road :
Beneath all garbs religion stalks,
Foul murders gourd, lame beggars walks,
Bold robbery gloats, and every crime
Since first began the flight of Time,
Finds here a ready sheltering wing
To foulest broods of offering.

Contrast the world: How much of joy ?

How much of justice in the boy

To tottering age ? Are sharks confined

To Ganges banks? See rivers lined.

Not only in the flood, the main

Is teeming with a hungry train,

Each eagerly intent to gorge

And beat his fellow through his forge.

XIPHIAS GLADIUS.

Perchance mankind hath never learned,
Nor yet the origin discerned,
Of how one time in ages past,
When clouds of war came thick and fast,
When there were giants firm and strong,
And knew not arts of peace or song,
They came to ftishion first the sword:—
War's final emblem to afford.

'Twas on a day quite out of date,
Ere men were robed in civic state,
That fierce upon the northern coast
Of Egypt land, a motley host
Were grimly drawn in war's array ;
The blood of many a battle day
With force of clubs went trickling out
Through crimson streams the land about.

The cause and nations were unknown,
While men like grass were freely mown
By stalwart arms till day was done;
When o'er the field the morning sun
Revealed a twain of human forms —
The wreck of many battle storms —
Half prostrate then and glaring wild
O'er faces that had seldom smiled.

They looked and longed and gazed again
Upon the forms of prostrate men.
Long reveries becalmed their fears.
And men like these — unused to tears —
Bethought them where a quiet zone

Might peace secure to them alone.
Repairing thence beside the sea,
Few men were ever thus so free.

Now they lay basking on the shore,
Conversing oft misfortunes o'er;
The rudest of philosophy
Began to mix in colloquy :
The cause of wars and why a race
Should bleed and die because an ace
Within the pack of human kind
Doth sway the spots unto his mind.

One day while wand'ring on the beach —
The ceaseless tide, within its reach —
And little thinking perils near,
Though waters boomed upon the ear.
The rolling flood came on apace,
Though swift their footsteps to retrace.
It swept them on unto a limb
Of Linden tree up which they climb.

While perched upon this friendly tree
The tide rolled backward to the sea.
But left the strangest of the strange
Unheard of things the seas that range,
Entangled in a brushwood net
As firm as ever snare was set ;
A king fish of the mighty deep,
Whose ever-drawn sword his vigils keep.

Then forth unto this sudden snare,
This twain at once did swift repair.
Here floundering fierce and beating bold

5-2

'Gainst every thong whose subtle hold
Doth firmly brace or fetter in
Bold sword-fish from the waters' din,
Did stranger vision give their gaze
Than all the wonders of their days.

A riddle long for them to spend
Their wits upon before the end
Repaid their earnest depth of thought,
With trains of grief and bloodshed fraught.
Here was, indeed, the Ocean King
Who doth his armor ever bring,
To rule the monsters of the deep
Whose lawless course the waters sweep.

Though still before the iron age.
And long before a printed page
Revealed to man his high estate,
These men in rudest wisdom sate
And pondered well how best to make
A warlike saber to partake
The form and fashion of this blade
Which fate ensnared within the glade.

Repairing then within a wood
Close by the beach which long had stood
The brunt of breezes from the sea,
There fallen limb from off a tree
With tools of stone a model wrought.
Which served mankind till ages l)rought
The open mine of metal power,
Increasing ever to this hour.

Thus in the sea and on the land

The sword is that which doth command
The sum of life to war or peace,
A type of death till nations cease.
And whether they be e^ood or ill —
Machines mankind to swiftly kill —
Invention hath a counterpart
That betters every human heart.

THE MOCKING BIRD.

A winged orchestra of ambient air

Comes foith the scales of music to ensnare

And pipe them all in matchless roundelay.

No other bird doth all the harp-strings play

Of all his feathered fellows everywhere ;

None other could the very heavens dare

In piping forest, field, or meadow notes

That thrilled from many a thousand happy throats.

Wherever roses glorify the earth.

Wherever thrilling harmonies have birth.

This mimic of the sea and land outpours

In rippling song a world of troubadours.

Encaged or free in all the circling sky,

No winged messenger of air can vie

With him in voicing birds of every flight.

Who tribute takes and tunes in new delight.

IN AN ALBUM.

A trifling token of my heart to thee

These simple leaves contain. All wild and free

This snowy waste appeared before my eyes

Like some appealing spirit from the skies

And seemed to say, "Since you desire to scrawl.

Now let your minions answer to your call."

UNTOLD.

With words I cannot paint the color of a tear;

No language hopes outlive unless to thee I'm near;

Alone that soul of beauty graceful years impart,

Sped swifter streams through newest channels of my heart.

The sighs of gathered summers burden ship and shore,

Alike, and yet unlike the stories told of yore —

Most marvelous within the books; all ages fair

With faultless multitudes gave up in mute despair.

Reserve was fated to unfold the happy zone
Of innocence and love to willing eyes alone;
For love is timid, shy, and scarcely suiteth speech
To frame a sentiment its languages doth teach.
The rose in eastern lands a catalogue did claim
For every thought and wish its votaries could name ;
And thus in silence and in song the roses blush
To sweeter thrills of influence the lips are hush.

If years could add to ocean depth, to ether blue,
To fadeless beauty in thine eyes of heaven's own hue,
A love for thee that time and tears cannot invade.
To noon-day's sun the morning's flush, the evening's shade,
My early dreams, the morn and eve, the pretty past,
Then glows to-day another million beams that cast
From countless elements still higher forms ideal,
More fair and lovelier still, reality more real.

A million thoughts emotional of thee arise ;
Each hour within thy presence all is paradise;
And purer joy, a word, a look, a smile, a tone
From thee, and yes, the slightest recognition known
Outweighs affection proffei-s that a world could give ;

Without, in night of desolation doomed to live.
A boon so priceless worlds at naught, lady, say,
Can heart of mortal man one tithe from thee essay?

Could I but feel upon my cheek the soft impress

Thy velvet hand sustains, that too would thrill and bless

Thee every hour, as now my inmost soul doth pay

Upon the vacant air in tears from day to day

A world of rarest homage, gentle girl, for thee,

As mortal e'er to mortal poured humility,

And if forbidden thee to praise, the air I'd pour

My homage to in which thou lived, forevermore.

BEAUTIFUL HANDS.

O beautiful hands hath lovers pressed !
Askance of love by throbs confessed ;
Not half the story gods hath told ;
Magnetic hands through legends old
Gave not of types this index form.
Escorting Love through sun or storm.
And hands that seraph harpings hold
Are those of love that me infold.

Far wandered beauty in those hands,
That form and feature forth estrands ;
Resistless palms I my heart doth thrill
With every touch, nor overfill
Though all their velvet cushions me:
They oscillate my soul to thee —
Response in nerve and vein and will,
With prints of love profounder still.

NOT ALL A FANCY.

Far o'er the snow

I see the glow —
An ember lighted home.

I know a pearl,

A radiant girl
Who fills it like a tome.

The hazy trace

Of girlish grace,
With here and there repose,

Limns all the air

With fragrance rare,
Because she is the rose.

Tis heaven's own hue.

Her eyes of blue.
And in her witching smile

The fairies dance

And rainbows prance
With zephyrs all the while.

There is no form,

Through sun or storm.
That with her own can vie;

Creation's dawn

Or fabled fawn
May seem or dream and die.

From shore to shore.
The wide world o'er,

'Tis some sweet woman's face
Brings down a star.
From near or far,

To light the earth apace.

RAIN-ECHOES.

I'll build me a house by the sighinjj^ shore
Where soft summer winds come dancing o'er
My roof and 'round my portals pour
Their lulling beat forevermore.

The cadence of those loving lyres
I bring thy linger touch, desires
Full soul commune where mutual choirs
Makes sorrow straw to flaming fires.

Yon ether path my worn essay
Renews, and turns old winter day
Through summer solstice roundelay,
My globule race revamps the way.

Past cloud and mist and hail and dew,
I rise from depths of faultless blue;
Prime source hath seen the sailors' crew,
And eyes of all my changeless hue.

The poor man's wealth I patter down,
Refresh all homes, aspire renown,
By grim cathedral, palace, town,
By hovel, hut, and cottage brown.

My very name synoms to earth
A glorious good, the reign of mirth ;
The ax and plow to home and hearth,
Compared to mine are nothing worth.

To all mankind upon the main,
To all that arts and science gain.
That please or fret the mighty train,
Without my globes you toil in vain.

Through million ages past I gaze ;
Along their skirts my drowsy haze
Refracts ten thousand huefnl ways
That come and go with season days.

The spring-tide waits in my airy shroud

Till I ring in my wrath the thunderbolt loud,

By far-fleeing winds I gather a crowd

To fill the fair earth with contents of cloud.

I gladly come in my summer prime,
Distilling hints of olden time —
Propitious yield to sunburnt clime —
By every note the forests chime.

My progress I hold in the autumn decline,
1 cherish no season, I bow to no shrine,
I rise from the lakes and the fetterless brine
To compass more joy than the lyrical line.

E'en winter I treat to his robe of snow,
And sleigh-ride parties facial glow
To Sol's reluctant beams they owe;
Doth patient earth the reasons know?

The pine tree in its stately pride
Its long arms stretch above the tide,
And murmurs o'er yon hills that bide
My coming far fi-om ocean-side.

The springs, the birds, the plants, the flowers,
The buds, the blooms, the blands, the bowers,
Awoke their life my genial showers.
With sunshine thrills unnumbered hours.

From sunburnt plains the arid sky

With deep lament my ears drew nigh ;

Sahara longs my humid eye

To catch and hold ere yet it die.

Here local famine shares the Ibod
8ome starving natures need, that would
Call me to spare, but understood
No tongue save vultures from the wood.

An anxious world within each face
Denotes a common pi'ayer of race,
As though the clouds they could embrace
Did they but loom in any place.

Earth caught the fast contagious gloom,
And faster came the death simoom ;
Dry docks the shores too ample room —
All nature wails unnatural doom.

But came my floods on lawn and lea,
Came shifting, sifting down in glee.
Piled sheet on sheet on shore and sea,
My torrents filled the wide air free.

Zones tropic, polar, temperate smiled.
Unbosomed rills my mood beguiled,
Uproar of joy ran streamlets wild.
Sang songs unsung the forest child.

Dash down despair, gloat o'er thy goal,
In rivers of delight thy soul
Magnetic feels a southern pole;
Ungrates my keel on any shoal.

Broad eastward stalks my regal queen,
My vestures fold in lavish green ;

My toilet rooms the seas I ween,
Uprear from depths of waves unseen.

Anon on drowsy days I dream,
By harmony of powers I teem
With wondrous monotones that seem
Of silvery sprays one liquid stream.

Quaint memories mix the morning air;
On peaches cheek the impress fair,
A softer shading 1 repair,
That even roses ready share.

I freely confess the dark shadows I fling.
Beseech the high souls of proud earth to my spring;
Glad promise to all my rainbows bring,
By bubble of fountains unheeded 1 sing.

HER HAIR.

Combine all artful tortuosities.

Rack every senseless trill and tuck and friz

Upon thy graceful head ; wear waterfalls,

String curls and switches, rarest pattern-alls,

Prodigious chignons bandage to thy pate

With countless pins and combs, and alternate

To every curious whim or dire caprice

That Fashion's edict sends to thrall, or cease

As oft as every moon doth come and go.

Though robed in changeless hues of sea and snow.

And still the keenest critics' eye detects

No beauteous lack — save that which intersects

Thy silken hair — those useless foreign weights

Mayhap, intent, when made, for lacking pates.

61
WINGS IN WINTER.

It is the wise and brave who follow on

Where pathways never lead through drifting snows,

And have in mind some traveler of air

Belated with the plaint of Northern climes

And polar winds Ibrever out of tune;

A messenger of heaven, though but a bird,

A wanderer through the ether depths sublime

Come back to stay and cheer our solitude

Of fi"osty-prisoned dreams — of all they seem —

And hints of uproar in the joy of spring.

Four hundred years have vanished into time
Since Birds betokened far at sea the land
Columbus spied with eagle eye at morn.
The continent of Isabella's faith,
O'ertopping history's wildest, widest wave.
But for the prophecy of wings, I ween,
Th' Atlantic still would wash barbarian shores
Resounding under oriflammes of war.

When all the wild and wanton winds are blown
O'er cold and cheerless wastes of snow,
Come forth the Birds the hope of man to dare.
So long o'er sunny slopes, the gorgeous glen,
And piping woods and meadows trailed the song
Of summer gladness, that the heart is lost
As on some desert island castaway.

Go forth on your mission appointed by heaven, oh ! man ;
Make miniature houses for Birds, the waifs of the air;
Then scatter the seeds and the crumbs of your household store
All 'round their castles of che^r, for princes of praise.

Our innocent friends! all seasons on wings outspread!

Four winds of lieaven ! an azure world ! a rift

Through every cloud of every clime — the cheer

Of every zone. Protect the Birds! for since

The stars together sang creation's call,

The Birds have wafted o'er the world in songs

The voiceful harmony of ail the spheres.

A CLOUD.

One softened Autumn afternoon

October's gold had draped the world ,

In dreamy bands of liquid light

Let down o'er woods and fields among ;

Leaves and skies wore ripest hues.

Fields and meadows seemed an echo

Of the years on which to float

Two-folded lives in one romance.

But Time the spoiler came and went

With sun and shade and dream and dawn,

Sealed up the skies, congealed the stream,

Scrolled up the rainbows, tied the tides,

And streaming mists upon the winds

Scud lonely, wild, and fathomless

Past all the hopes and dreams of youth

Were faded flowers and birds aflown.

Past fragrance and song through th' bloom and th' blight

Through the gray-grown years with their garland of tears

While wanders one more lone than they

Beneath the shadowy ruin's gloom

That storm and wind in darkness wrought

From all the furies of the sky.

63
THE ROBIN,

'Tis all the same sweet songs I've heard
From throats of many a music bird,
Swung yearly 'round in colors gay
And all alike with thine to-day.
The same untiring songs I hear,
As old, as new, as full of cheer
As ever robin sang before —
Recalling scenes forever o'er.

My spirit hath been winter clad ;
A waste of white mine eyes made sad ;
By scores to six I count the days
Of polar warp and woof all ways,
But winter's keenest frost and wind
Thy southern home doth never find;
To thee the winters never come,
To thee is naught but summer's hum.

Adown the avenues of air
A fragrance lulleth everywhere;
O wondrous bird i what music waits
Apast the lawns and garden gates ;
A tremer thrills through forest shades,
Romancing all th' eternal glades
To satiate thy home at morn
And recompense for music born.

The amplitude of southern shores
To-day before our northern doors
Are spread upon thy dewy wing

In notes of sunny lands ye bring ;
Migiation northward through the sky
Portends the reign of summer nigh,
And bending blooms that 'round mo ope
Return the seasons annual hope.

The floating music in thy voice

Is bidding us with thee rejoice.

I fain would touch the wondrous keys

That dangle 'round the forest leas,

And feel the swell from hidden jars

That's sealed afar beyond the stars,

Or hear aeolian strains sublime

Come wafting through the woods of time.

ANNIVERSARY.

To paint upon the snowy canvas page

A year's pantology would make an age,

Borne swiftly past by wind and wave and tide.

Naught save a plume doth here and there abide,

Shook out of Time's far-spreading, dauntless wing.

Space-cleaving toward man's universe to bring

A pen that sweeps the sky and sea and shore,

May here and there o'er all the ample floor

Once garner in upon its page a sheaf

Of fragments energized with leaf on leaf.

Or furl a wave of thought for every mind

To see apart as for itself and find

Upon its foaming crest a crystal world

To him or her from summer fountains hurled.

MARCH.

The Biiows are melting off the hill and plain,
All day the wild brook lulls its lowini^ song
Of snowy haunts, and down the checkered main
It speeds with Freedom's joyous notes along;
While surging on through mud of thawy spring
Descends a hofirded store from winter's bed,
Engulfing valleys with their echoing
Of liberty in spi-ing's fantastic tread.

The wet earth storing fogs for summer use,
Is yielding to the skies a vaporous breath,
Yet freezing, thawing, transient in each cruise
As ebb of life upon the shore of death.
The winds around our dwellings howl and shriek,
And frost still keen doth load the quivering air.
Blow wild I ye northern blasts, which, moaning, seek
To desolate the spring of beauty, bare.

Ere long ye winds that rouse each slumbering pain
We fondly hoped had fled in by-gone days,
^hall soften down to summer's breath, amain.
Attuned the dreary voice to sunny lays;
And birds that now do scarce uplift a song
From out their woodland home or somber vale,
Shall flood the air with rapturous notes along,
As leaves that strew the wood in autumn's gale.

Keep close your smiling eyes, ye flowerets fair,
For still the storm-king treads his wintry path,
And only lulls to trap you in his snare
And blast your hopes with his exultant wrath;
Still clinging yet to winter's frost and snows,

Yet tempts your smilo betimes with radiant snn;
Life-like its flickering l>reath that comes and goes
Till fades the flower and race of man is run.

FIRST snow-fall.

A tremor that shook from the greenless boughs
Rare patterns of art in the autumn prime,
Came winged with the gold of October days,
With the gold of a million russet leaves ;
And I woke from a wondrous world, I ween,
Froni a world of shifting sun and shade,
From the magic land of doubtful dreams,
To a land of white, the purest white,
The white of heaven, but chill as death,
The death of an eventful year.

And here o'er buried hues a voice

Of winter spoke to fields and woods,

A voice that scarce was heard, yet sighed

With years pent up in single hours

Of weary, wild, and chill unrest;

The plash of oars in Northern seas,

The tramp of hieing reindeer feet.

Of spii'its lost, forever gone,

Of youth and l)eauty faded, flown;

The years against each blighting woe

Foretold the fate of living lands.

That voice is hastening on amain,

And voices sad by darkened years

Are mingled with its frigid tone.

Oct. 17, 1868.

TRUTH.

Whence came the light, the sun and moon and stars?

The jets of hue, the gleam of frost and snow ?

The zodiacal heat, the lire of Mai-s ?

What mystery in earth and clover blow?

The photosphere of suns that magnetize

Their solar circles into bloom and heat.

Inanimate to animate arise.

Put off to sentinence with finer feet.

Till man assumes the countless change of forms

From old chaotic nebulae and germ.

Beat out by many a billion flail of storms

To tutor reason to the ripening term

Of planetary life which long ingi-ows.

Go back and summon all, you'll see not one

Before the age of Mind, the Truth that knows,

In all the couises from the central sun.

For Tiuth is old, and hath not birth or date;

It sembleth with the planets feebly first;

Mythology and superstition wait

Upon the tender plant, till tried, as erst

It wont to be the long immortal yore.

Its branches wither oft for want of rain.

This lonely earth for lack of better lore

Goes back with Truth to Egypt's panting plain,

With all the gods in confidence conspires

Till Typhon leads the conspiration band.

When lesser gods were left around the fires

That lovely Truth enkindled in the land,

To hew her fairy form to atoms fine

For winds of heaven to winnow broad and wide,

And on the checkered floor in dust define
Through centuries where flecks of gold abide.

A RIBBON,

The fateful wind that rare autumnal day
Flung out from cheek of beauty, unsuipassod,
In hues of health that 'round her face did play.
A dainty piece of cloth was fluttering fast;
Its crimson, blue, and gold in colors vyed
With changling craftiness my sight to hold,
As modestly the fitful zephyrs shyed
To catch and twirl with fancy bold.

A thing so fragile infant hands could rend
Asunder in a breath your pretty life,
And seen in marts of trade you could not send
A single thrill or stir a single strife
Within the bosom of the scores that swift
Confess by earnest, fond, adoring gaze,
A multitude of centered loves, adrift.
Belike thyself, to wander in a maze.

How little recks a form inanimate,

Of hearts it twines to others' hearts, unknown.

Nor tempers winds that rife with passions prate;

Cares not if men, unmindful of their own

Impassioned states, transcend sublunar spheres.

And azure-like, ethereal soarings owe

To silks beneath the chin of youthful years

That 'round a fairy form doth freely flow.

ATLANTIC CABLE.

Another mighty march liigh up the steeps of time ;

To science everhasting fame; thi-ough evei-y clime

The nations link; while other Fields shall lay

Old Ocean's bed with chains to belt the briny way

Aci'oss the path the world shall ti-ead with lightning speed,

To hold commnne on telegraphic wiics that lead

Through all the wide domain of continent and sea,

And fire with hope the struggling millions to be free.

What news? what news? how's gold? the war? the markets, too?

What fate did Algiers meet? and all that noble crew?

And how does Europe feel to-day? is peace declared ?

This morning's news says China has the breach repaired

Of that stu[>endous wall of olden times that Mars

'Gainst Taitar race threw upward toward the twinkling stars.

Not Memnon's host, nor Goth, nor Vandal clan to scale

Again the mossy summit novv with age grown pale.

Each rolling year shall bind by this connecting link

The ties of man to man, nor never may they sink

Again below the zero of a glorious hope.

While grappling in with destiny, nor cease to cope

With human drones, or monsters that have checked our race.

VVe'll swing around the world and thought shall lightning chase,

While Sol, of old, may trudge along his wonted way

And we our pinions fling through his eternal da3\

A prophet peering down along the stream of time.
Could ne'er foretold the rising genius that should climb
The rugged mount of Sysiphus, to fill the soul
With daring zeal that vet shall clutch this glittering goal ;
Behold athwart the vast unfathomed ocean known

In future yet to be on earth's terrestrial zone,

When man shall quench his longing thirst for perfect joy

From Nature's nectared fount, unmingled with alloy.

And yet 'twas all a dream one hundred years ago ;

Methinks the centuries might all have sunk below

The lowest ebb of time and this would scarcely dream

Or feel such vacuum ; the glare of a single gleam

From ours, compared, would blot the moon and 'clipse the sun

Of Orieotal fame that 'round their courses run,

And sweep the lyre unstrung by bards of ages past

To serve a shading on the dial plate we've cast.

Ye monsters of the deep who plow tlie oceans' bed.
May delve her caverned soil, nor deem the brittle thread
That's stretched along the dark mysterious realms of earth.
Shall lift the world and usher in the glorious birth
Of Freedom, Knowledge, Truth, and Highest Human Good
Which superstition through the ages hath withstood.
And races yet unborn the history shall scan —
Our planet through its workings up to perfect man.

land of song ! of poets' dream, or Grecian lore !

Of Thebes, of Rome, with all thy philosophic store

That heaped the mart of empires with thy living thought!

Come feel a thrill of electric fire in realms unsought,

Unheard, unknown to Alchemic sages mystic art,

How time and space we pierce with unseen dart

That shoots through coral forests of the martial brine,

And hath no place too high, too low, nor throne nor shrine.

'Tis come at last, a true millenium dawn of light.
Dispelling gloom fiom cottage home and darkest night.
From banks of Nile, from Tigris' flood, or deserts' sand,

From dreams of human gods, or Ganges mystic strand,
The prairies wild, the polar snows, the tropics' heat,
Through din of toil, in summejs' rain or winters' sleet,
In domes of thought and haunts of men on evej-y shore,
The beacon light huth dawned that beams forevermore.

A ray from far-off dreamland isles shall fill with ours

The future ihythm of life that blends with their fragrant bowers;

Entwined by the garland wreaths enwove by a fairy hand,

Lie ti'ophies of a wondrous age along the strand.

And down the shadowy path our light o or the world shall gleam

Like a i-ainbow tint of the golden morn by the shimmering stream

Where the zephyrs dance by the soft red light of the dawning day

And float on the flowery breath of the summers' home away.

Oct. 18CG.

IN ALBUMS.

Right well I know that many a snowy page
Hath been despoiled by poetastei-'s rage
That had been better left at paper mills
Than bearing of imaginative ills.
But since the noblest and the best of thought
Fiom fond and friendly sympathy is wrought, '
Accept the highest tribute song can bring
As being what I'd make my offering.

Had 1 the gift, a landscape I'd poi-tray

Where you should see and hear what I've in mind

To })aint and voice with every dreamy day,

For in the balm of solitudes I find

That birds and brooks and woods and meadows bring

The songs and tributes I would fain unfold,

And they are each of friendly off"ering

Like drops of silver in a sea of gold.

LOVE FANTASY.

A story all new and that never on earth grows old

Is that of Love ; and yet 'tis old and cold

To millions gone and others still on earth ;

To them the name is barrenness and dearth.

We tire of reading stories o'er and o'er

That are the same effeminating lore, '

When to excess the novel passion runs.

But serve the pranks and pliglits and powers and puns

Of Cupid to us warm and fresh and trite

And we will audience give to ache thy sight.

Alone the mountain paths I trod when shades
Of sable night came creeping o'er the glades
Of glossy stillness underneath my feet;
The moon al>ove let down hei- silvery sheet,
And twilight quivering bars along the wood
Revealed grotesque profiles, half hidden hood
Of crazy mould, and giants of the dark
Smiled grimly to my gaze, all stiff and stark.

I paused to listen, if, indeed, I heard
The wood-gods menace note, or hum of bird.
What shadowy secret spell is on these haunts?
What power allures? what beauty mind enchants?
Have I not walked this self-same path before ?
And had a thought of wood nymphs nevermore?

VOICE OF THE WOODS:

You have not been in all my woody maze
With senses so acute and soul ablaze;
You start and tremble at my very breath
As if my res|)iration was your death.

You seek for omens if I stir a leaf;
You weie not always thus; you was a chief
Of stalwart hunters in the woodland wild,
And I no more thy brambly path beguiled
Than summer clouds, but now I see thee stare
Above the mountain cone into the air
That fills the boundless firmament of space,
As if the stai-s could all thy feelings trace.
But why detain thee, mountain, with my strain ?
Cans't thou not see in him the sighing swain
Who dallies with the straws that float along
The current of a life unknown to song?

LOVER :

Hang I not on the verge of sheer despair ?

In yonder cnstle dwells a maiden fair

Whose form doth fill my waking thoughts, my dreams;

On earth, beside, all beauty nothing seems.

To whom this now imprisoned heart is bent

Provide my soul no more with banishment;

'Tis not for thee to search the hearts of men —

'Tis woman only knows this boundless ken.

My path lay by a wood the other side

Of that on which the mountain talk did bide

Me in my solitary soul commune.

And on a ledge of rocks before were hewn

The characters of strange unnatural things ;

My footsteps stirred the partridge's drum of wings,

The wood-thrush oped his full melodious throat

And piped the whip-poor-will his lonely note.

To fill the piny I gave my creature wings

To soar when tired of transitory things.

A sylph-like form, said Jove, unshadowy,

Of semblance something animate it be.

Then Vesta pleaded for her happy hearth,

And Bacchus for the vintage of the earth,

Urania soared among the shining stars,

Anubis held the key which death unbars,

Minerva wisdom, war, and liberal arts.

While Mercury interprets all their parts

Of speech, to each, and forthright hies away

To compeer find in Calliope, whose sway

Of eloquence, unmoved, they cannot hear,

While lesser gods attend with willing ear.

But man, the foolish prodigy of all

This chattering stuff, stares vacant o'er the wall.

Too long I toy with fate, too long delay
My medley medium — this strange affray
Of mine that rends the globe of hate, and makes
So many millions mourn, from sleep awakes
Refreshed, and then goes forth to work weird will
On human hearts whose purpose I fulfill —
The language breathed abroad of Love to one
Who caught its accent ere the day was done.

But what to me are signal sounds of night ?

Across yon meadow gleams a window light ;

Its very rays electrical I feel

Are flashing 'round my heart like steel to steel.

I tremble at the gate! what oracle

In palpitations almost audible

Of that I dare not speak, is here confessed

Where none can see or feel my heart's behest.

Did gate a language ever hang on hinge,

Or latch, or string, whose vocal tongue could tinge

A thousand colors swinging in the air

Of such a night? Then what if she were there

In listening attitude this mantling cloud

Against, and heard my inward throbs aloud?

Could heart withstand the eloquence Td pour

Within her own ? Could ear i-efuse the lore

Of climes congenial Nature gave to mine?

Can adoration surfeit homage's shrine?

O, gentlest words ! 0, perfect tongue to speak

This all-pervading love I how vain I seek!

Essaying lucidness of speech, it dies

Upon my lips before those rapturous eyes!

O, could this swelling heart its fountains gush

By that unfathomed dell, the twilight hush

Requited natures pour in mutual streams,

Would quell this tumult in its liquid beams.

Would then my soul of passion starve in sighs?

Or bend to beg a pinion ei-e it rise ?

Was Love so masterful of cunning arts

That all the gods to him gave up their darts

So he could pierce the deepest springs of thought,

And bring a tear-responsive form to naught

Before this matchless god with silken strings,

Who folds the races 'neath his willing wings?

The full-fledged moon hath dipped his ample horn

Beneath a canopy of sheeted morn.

And turned his i-ealm of star-bespangled blue

Rij^ht down before my eyes of his own hue ;

Old winter shakes his grim and grizzly beard

Before my vei-y face, as though I feared

His hoary locks would fall and cling to me ;

lie drifts and shifts and tacks his wild winds free

A.nd blows and blusters o'er the lonely heath

Like a demon of war all afresh, and scabbard beneath

Unloosed from his sword ; swift pinions of wrath glitter far

Through the frost-bearing wastes that of old he had chained to his car,

And to-night in my chamber I laugh at his howl and his frown ;

Bid defiance in my attic to his throne, or his power, or his crown.

King Carbon was made before man in the soil of the world,

To illumine and quicken all coming events that are whirled

O'er the scrolls of the ages like a far flaming metaphor light;

To the palace a cheer, and the cottager's home a delight;

E'en now as 1 gaze o'er the work King Fiost hath wrought

With such exquisite infinite skill on my window, I'm taught,

By the fagots that blaze and the rockets up the chimney they send

That sooner or hitei" combustible natui-o will end

In dissolving again this picture of flowers and of frost.

Behold! ere my [ten had a glim})sc of their beauties I lost

The magical Hplendoi-s of the crescent that glittered my dream,

'Twas melting away in a miniature spring, it would seem,

And even the winds that old Neptune had sent from his home

O'er the summerless seas where the men of our globe seldom roam, *

Are tossing and moaning without like the last ebbing groan

Of despair that the wounded man heaves when dying alone.

And now to my couch with utterless feelings T turn

To wrap myself dose in a fancy that embers shall burn

While I dream, and the glow and the warmth and the glimmer and glare

Shall dance on the roof of the morrow in the redolent air.

And I see and conjiire in mv dieams more wonderful things

Than the books can reveal in their treasures of wisdom that wings
From the press to the millions that throng the borders of earth,
Though silent its power, yet moving the world at its birth.

A lad of tenderness reared it were pain to recall

The bright visions of joy as they flew while I danced o'er the wall

Of the world's paradise. Downfallen the fruit as it hung

In rare clusters of beauty and gold, and soon to be flung

With eager eyes and youth's impassioned haste

Upon the full autumnal earth — that chaste

Mysterious mother peopling all the zones

With such a medley host as oft bemoans

Existence, though in all ailoted spheres

To inward or to outwaid gaze appears

The cheering rainbow with its half caress

O'er storm-surrounded coasts of happiness,

In some unique or half protruding shape,

Or smiling face beneath the sable crape,

Some stainless soul of aspiration high

Whose wreck of hopes looks out each liquid eye,

Or negative of all that's good or great

To trace some worn and antecedent date —

Primeval beauty bundled in a god —

Before the vii'gin forest soils were trod

By high-born intellectual race of men.

Some student in the dimly-lighted den

Of primal literature in which were packed

The lore of brains expiring ages racked

Upon her torturing forces to produce.

Sweet solitude, essential minds recluse.

O whv do we vet read of others' love?

And why pet names revere — my rose, my' dove?

Why prate of novel writers' happy skill

To sway u^by their glowing tale at will ?

Why list to men and matrons' legends stale,

Since youthful cheeks were never made to pale ?

'Tis reason plain and patent to our eyes,

'Tis inspiration borrowed of the skies.

So pure and deep and vast eternal space

Throbb'd Shakspeare's soul, looked on his matchless face,

And then was read in language all unknown

To common minds the secrets of its own.

A spell on flowers and fields and woods and lawns.

On in-door haunts where the playful kitten yawns.

O'er fallow fields all drear and desolate —

Delight doth linger near a door-yard gate —

Perchance an ample bower, a giant tree.

Some sea-side nook to watch old Ocean's glee.

Exulting chimes unconscious of the twain

Who worship stars that blend with their refrain.

Or walk together on some mountain base

Where moonbeams thrill and kiss each fervid face,

Forth syllal>le the light of other days

From eyes that glance a thousand winsome ways.

Pray why do crowds annoyance prove to me ?

Vexations feast on noise and revelry.

Among the rabble little depth is found,

The air is full of symbols, and the ground

A monitot- beneath the modest mien ;

Full on me poms the flood of an ancient sheen.

One day so far in ashes of the past

That pen can never penetrate, I cast

An iuia^e of my Ideality.

I summoned from my cave of chastity

All elements of human blessedness,

And superstitions, too, a single tress

Did claim of that fair head whereon did shine

A gloiy far above the Apennine

Upon whose lofty summits ranged the sun

Of centuries and stars ere day begun.

Since roamed arboreal man the ambrosial bowers

Upon the planet rich with tiopic flowers —

Like some lost angel out of paradise —

Through time hath beamed her ever matchless eyes,

And unto earthly habitations gave

The only human light and joy to save

From melancholy waste our groping race.

A nameless charm within her girlish grace,

The symbol of all loveliness her face

Wherein perpetual beauty hath a place,

And what of mortal sweetness doth remain

Along the thunderous track of man, and faiu

Becomes the type of human happiness

'1^0 which the very Stoics must confess

In person and in manner felt and seen.

Is she, seraphic girl, and woman — queen

Of boundless love. Within her circle rife

With seciets of the foaming fount of life,

There springs eternal hope of human minds

Wherein each passing geneiation finds

The only consolation earth affords

For every shock and biding ill that boards
Our mortal craft that sails the rolling deep
Across whose bosom mad ambitions sweep.
'Tis woman stills the storm, who lulls the wave,
Who doth with balm of mercy plead and save
The hopeless castaway on every shore,
And fill his life with blessings o'er and o'er.

Through aeons flown since from the dawn of time
O'er all the map of continents sublime
Along the mighty trail of nations came
With olive branches bearing peace and fame
This creature of the skies to soothe and bless
The wearv wanderer of the wilderness.

WATCH.

So steadily, O watch ! I dread your power —
Your slumbrous tick this silent midnight hour.
What have I done that thus you harass me
In counting out my hours of life with glee?
That awful tick ! 0, why not stop awhile
And stay with mortals on thy race that smile ?
O, ciazy, mad, incessant watch, to run
When seasons laugh and mortals want their fun?

You care not how or when you shorten life !
You come and go with every sun on strife ;
Outwind him you will not, of course, for he
Ran centuries high with boundless beings free
Ere thy mechanic tick was measured back
To human hands who cut thy timely track.
So what at last ait thou but human, say,
With all thy wheels worn out and laid away?

81
NILE.

The source of Nile ! the source of Nile ! a hue and cry

The puzzled ages raised and kept afloat

The buoyant tide of time till "Source of Nile "

Passed down the path of centuries unknown

To those who spoke the puzzling countersign ;

And those who credence gave the "Source of Nile "

As problem past the ken of man to solve,

Were numbered full three thousand years or more,

For Nile is older than the oldest race,

And numbers since have nmltiplied by scores.

Whei-e rose the Nile defied discovery.

Exploring parties sent from every clime.

And gathered from the " corners of the world,"

Were sent on futile errand forth to trace

Revolving circles 'round the mystic flood

Whence poured the mighty majesty of Nile.

But trace him far and trace him long and wide,

And dip their paddles deep and deeper still,

Go on while day and night and seasons wane.

And backward ever came the " Source of Nile "

Without a drop of water from the fount

Of search once stirred or seen by mortal eyes.

And thus for ages ran the mystei-y,

Unknown to even Anglo-Saxon skill,

Till Stanley traced to many heads the source

In that " dark continent ; " then poured abroad

A mastery of travel to the shores

Of speculative time that rose afar

And mingled with the flames that lit the dome

Of nineteen centuries, through last of which

Fair temples loomed of arts and sciences
To which the past was dull and shadowless.

Effulgent Homer jumps terrestrial phase

And sees the " Sacred Nile " from heaven rise ;

While halting Ovid Voids conjecture ground,

As riddle past his mental vision flies,

And mystifies to ignorance of such.

The harnessed horses of the Sun were fleet

And needed not the goad of luckless men

For furious charge or fiery battlement ;

But dashing Phaeton reigned confusion 'round,

Free-booty everywhere, and flames ran wild

To compass all within the reach of fire ;

He razed and burned till panic-stricken Nile

Fled past the haunts of men and hid its head

Beyond the sight of every living race.

The lyrical Virgil goes back through borders of fame

And kindly provides on margins of Persia a source;

Lucretius hurls forth from haunts of Ethiop tribes,

"First bubbling distant o'er the burning line,"

A happy hit, yet meaningless to those

VVho trace no more than equinoctial line

For settlement of where the source was hid.

From far beyond Nyanza's ample sheet.

Some say amid the Mountains of the Moon,

At last the sources of the Nile arise.

The copious tropic rains come rolling down

Upon the equatorial plains with force

That strews the rainless earth along its banks

With wealth Golconda's mines cannot compare;

The sediment of ripe and garnered years,

Old Nile upon its bosom wide and free,

Brings forth from tropic climes to spread the zones

Of Nubia and of Egypt's burning sands.

Thy mighty and thy numerous mouths attest

The richness that a million years hath wrought;

On old 'Terranean floors thy sheaves are laid,

The gi-ain of ages for the ages hence,

Spontaneous iertility secure.

Thy bed from south of equinoctial line

By three degrees, deep bul»bling springs are hid,

Four hundred miles or more inwalled around,

And down thy tuibid currents to the sea

The deserts paid a tribute year by year.

BAFFLED.

In vain essays the glorious man

In whom the planetary light

Is blent and floweth fierce and free,

Through depths of thought original

And soul of fine and warmest mould ;

The pent-back splendors mock his call ;

A hollow echo through the hall

Of garnished plush and golden sheen

Ring back the sighs he daily wafts.

What boots the keenly impulse his?

But let the Fates upon him wait,

And all things yield their magic force

As if the universe were tuned

To give him sway o'er all the keys.

FREEDOM.

Solicit powers above, below, around,

To right, to left, to speed the gladsome morn

When men and women breathe the equal air

Of liberty in speech, in thought and deed,

Without desire to stint the rapturous cup

Of heaven-born social friendliness to one;

When caste and creeds and baneful bigotry

Shall sink beneath the swelling flood of truth;

When war and law and hate and wrong and grief J

Shall wither in the dust of rising right; • 1

When Freedom is not bottled up for sale,

Nor Poverty a crime to Capital ; .

And genius honest labor doth create I

Approved by every one throughout the world ;

When tyrants, lords, and knaves are forced to plow

Or starve in ignominious wretchedness.

When men acknowledge no superior men

In those whom skillful Nature granted great.

And if they do exceed the conjmon herd

In craftiness and clever arts why sure

'Tis not themselves that made themselves thus great,

But only Nature in her subtle moods.

The common men are steam and hulk and mast

And rigging of the ship, while these are sails

And wheels that can be moved and tacked and gibbed

To suit the wind, and those the multitude.

CHARITY.

Betimes I've been upon the fiozen road
In chill December's day, and there have seen
A tender girl in tattered garments haste
Along with breathless eagerness to gain
The stupid ear of wealth- besotted man,
For him to spare another day on earth
Her mother lying ill on garret floor.
I've seen that heartless nabob scowl and sneer,
" Foi- beggars I have but contempt!" and back
To darkness turns again the sobbing girl.
O, soul of mortal mould ! could you but feel
The heart you trample on and rend with pain,
But hear the sigh from lips of flowers you crush,
The hopeless wail of martyred innocence,
But see the fl(X)d of tears your rudeness opes,
And taste that bitter cup you've mixed for her.
Ah, no ! I cannot think you would deny
The gentle being kinder words at least;
Perchance your iron will might condescend
To listen to that plea that's at thy gate.
With coid and weary feet the shivering girl
A momentary respite craves, and fire
To kindle and recall again the glow
That meaningly forsook her slender limbs.
Remand the crimson currents from her heart
And glimmer once again the lamp of life.

Forsooth a heart that's used to cash assets
And title deeds and legal writs and notes,
To dividends of capital and stocks.

May have some sunny spot, to eyes unseen,

Where once a tender child an echo woke

That now is vacant — moss-o'ergrown with age —

May thrill with some electric sentiment

And spring to childhood years with pulse of love.

BEAUTY.

All arts bestowed upon such loveliness

As thine seem vacant waste and meaningless,

For art cannot increase the depth I see

or beauty in thy naturalness to me.

In thee personified is beauty's own;

The rarest work of art hath never shown

A solitary line commensurate

To image thee, with heart for every fate ;

And on that well remembered eve could I

At once abroad thy loveliness descry,

With all thy silken hair unfurled and free,

I know of lovers I should call to thee.

But " fix " thy pretty head as seemeth best

To thee, or " fix '' it not at all, the rest

Of womankind cannot with thee compare

Though they may look their best. The very air *

Oi' all the world's delightful loveliness

Doth fondly linger in thy locks' caress.

I'm puzzled oft, fair one, which most to praise,

Thy hair, thine eyes, thy face, or winsome ways,

Or still thy radiant form, thy pearly neck,

Or yet thy hands, so beautiful they'd deck,

1 know, the fairies with their fairest pearl.

For she was never half so fair a girl.

GEMS OP THE SEA.

O gems of the sea !
What beauties are ye !
The stars that above,
O'errun with love,
Look never down
On merman town
But hidden and deep
Thy treasures sleep.

Where the Peris lies
Beyond all eyes,
Likewise is clime
For wrecks sublime;
The ancient floors
With centuries' stores,
Sea-built and strong
Lie ye along.

Within each shell
Doth music dwell;
The roar of seas
From Hebrides
To stormy Horn
Are ever born
With monotone
O'er oceans lone.

Museums' fair
Had finest there,
In human pearl —
Seraphic girl
Blent all the grace
Of Venus' face-^

The fairest flower
That worlds embower.

Bright coraline bays,
Where Time his plays
Full oft prepares
On giddy stairs
To draw the lore
Forevermore
Of ages spent
To full content.

QUATRAINS.

O, never did groom impatient chide
The long delay of bridal day
As I of Spring, when vernal May
Comes flinging flowers all paths beside.

Daybreak hath brought the sweetest thought.

The elixir of sentinence

In one sweet hour of recompense

For all the nightly phantoms brought.

The Ides of March, seen in the fire,
When snows on snows come blustering past
From ether avalanches cast,
Map out a world of deep desire.

One word the depth of hope to phrase.
The gist of thought to signify.
Draw back the curtains of the sky
And Love is monarch of the days.

HOME.

Tlie sweetest haunts of memory's zone
Attune their harpings thine, mine own,
Where thou dost reign illumed alone.

Fair harbinger, o'er all to thee

Relumes the semaphoric sea

That sweeps the world 'tween thee and me.

And oft through 'trancing slumbers roam
I 'mid that dear delightsome home
Upon the hill-tops' purple dome.

I note the sunbeams' early glow,
The seasons as they come and go
Like snow-flakes o'er the world below.

The butterfly chase through meadows brown
The cliff"-tops scramble up and down
With truant boys about the town.

I sing and shout a merry boy,
No cares are mine, no griefs annoy,
The wide earth 'round is but a toy.

The lawns are mine, the flowery main,
Each woodland thrush's nectaral strain,
The thousand berries crimson stain.

Old orchard's juicy apples rare.
Transcending joys the seasons share
In simple cheer of ambient air.

The world's a dream that seems to seem
Like rainbows dancing o'er a stream
Of golden days' supernal gleam.

FADING YEAR.

Within the dying embers of a year
Like one of these, are all to man that's dear ;
He sees the flick 'ring shadows on the wall,
And knows what's written as the lot of all.
To come and go in voiceless measure 'round
Through throbbing days and painful years abound
This longing life, this weary, wild unrest.
This toil-worn path toward th' sun in th' west.
Shall never the mower his keenly scythe lay by ?
Must ever the beautiful flowers of humanity die ?
Must ever the pauseless world be formed anew,
Built out of countless forms it latelv slew?

IN AN ALBUM.

A thought came speeding through my mind
As gazing on these leaves I find
A line of strangers coursing through
With writings quaint but fair to you.
If these you know do memories bring
By scrawl of pen on hidden wing,
What then shall be the stranger's claim
Who onlv dares to write his name?

IN AN ALBUM.

Though lips no words revealed
Of thoughts in each concealed,
I still, somehow, have guessed,
Were all we felt expressed,
We warmer friends would be
Than half of those we see.
But souls in silence bide
The voice on either side.

RAIN-SIGHS.

All day against the window pane
Beat shiveied worlds in sad refrain,
Till earth and sky inlooked no more,
Nor sun nor space aslant the floor,
But past the gate in wild affright
A phantom lone and dark as night,
With sti-eaming hair, on ashen steed,
Went riding far with noiseless speed.

Profusely sweeps a sunder'd song
Of solitude and bitter wrong
Adown all coasts of thought and age,
Which yeai-s stay not nor time assuage.
Still list, heart of shattered years,
Nor shadows weigh in sorrowing tears ;
Some gulf of space may recompense
Thy rend of grief through time's extense.

What though this heart one dreary zone
Upon the globe hath ever known,
And none have echoed back a line
Sent trembling forth with hopes divine;
My life 's all been one rainy day,
Except in dreams 'twas never May ;
Through all my soul of fiercest fire
The floods have flown and drowned desire.

A form of beauty water prints.
And beauty's own the sunset tints.
The day hath curious-handed wrought,
And night by stealth deep lessons taught.

AN AFTERNOON *

Old Time his scythe one afternoon
Lay prone upon the meadow plot
Where he had mown the aftermath
O'er many a lost forget-me-not.

Unto a cabin lowly, old,
And built of logs, he came, to mind
Why tarried there the gray-haired man.
The secret of his life to find.

What subtle forces pent within.
What power in earth and air to him
Had lengthened life to ninety years,
With movement still to trunk and limb.

What kept the speech and hearing clear.
What hope the mind kept still as young
As though the May of life ran on
The morning air, a song unsung.

It is a curious world wherein
So much of youth and beauty fade
And die and leave no sign to tell
Of that beyond this everglade.

It is at best a brief surprise ;

And Time who paused this afternoon

For us to see his diamond scythe,

Mows on as mute as the man in the moon.

* Samuel Davis, grandfatJior of the writer, who had then (1874) passed
his 90th year, and who loved to linger in the log cabin he had erected
when all that reoion was a forest.

OLD YEAR AND NEW.

O watchnian wary on the walls of night,

Glim sentinel, Time, through all the days,

Come lay aside thy cerements of age.

Mankind's attentive ear awaits to hear

The wondrous tale to man thou mayest tell,

Of fairy beings, elfin shapes, and strange

Unnatural things within tlie cycle past,

In which our wandering planetary life

Hath swung its oblate pendulum of flight

Five hundred million miles or more around

An airy groove through ether paths sublime ;

Star clusteis gazing on our growing globe.

Influx of tides upon our shrinking coasts,

The planetary influence of moons,

The zodiacal light, the heat of stai-s,

The wonders of the distant orient.

The ceaseless rounds the seasons still pursue,

Auroras' wondrous gleams through northern skies,

Phenomena of solar life and light ;

And man — the great misnomer of the earth —

A problem ever to himself, I ween.

What tidings hast thou brought, O Time, to him?

The glad millenium of truth and right.

The reign of peace, the ebbing tide of woe ;

Say what of virtue can with man abide ?

^^'hat gentleness from out the moaning sea

Shall fling its softened billows on the beach?

The sighing ships that sti-and upon the shore,

What hope in future for the castaway?

Shall waves forever wail o'er sullen seas,

Mankind be never blest, but yet to be ?

A voice that's sweet but sad comes ringing up
From depths of time to answer those who ask ;
The wan earth turning sad and cold and gray,
Betimes is full of symbols and of power ;
Deep voices ring through all the echoing spheres;
Sweet spirits speak through every blooming flower.
And every wayside germ is full of thought
Surpassing all the sweets of utterance.

Old Father Time hath ships that strain their keels

On every shore of every clime, to bring

Olympian feasts to heart of every one.

He scatters seeds of strange and varied worth

Against the blighting blasts of every zone ;

His golden sheaves are tossed by every wind

And swift or slowly whirl to mystic lands.

By him the fair and good of earth install

An Eden where their happy being is ;

A counterbalance to the woes we feel,

Or dream or fear, and all that's lone and sad

Finds ready record on the written page

In all that's pure and true and firmest good.

A song that toucheth sweetness yet unknown,
Sways gently on the winsome wavelets play,
Rekindling memory's slowly mouldering fires
With silvery lays of ''Nevermore night than day;"
And sweeter songs than pen hath ever penned.
Perchance lie slumbering in a winter's grain,
Or drifting on the frigid atmosphere

That paints a frostwork on yon window light.
Old Time hath rare and curious works of art,
And stranger things than ever came to light
Reveal their quaintly forms forever hence.
All nature hath a kindred voice to man;
There's music in the realm of every verb ;
All things voluptuous a tendency
To sense of fine and keener things possess ;
The winter apple ripens in the hreeze
That rustles color on the maiden's cheek ;
The crimson blush of beauty on the peach,
And all the gorgeous tints the monthly rose
Flings out through fragrant breath upon the air,
Conjure the dullest brain to student life.
Bring out the intellectual race and see
Who've worn their toilsome fibers gray and dim
In paving out a great highway of peace ;
In sending broad upon the troubled sea
A calm, a buoy, an anchor firm
To brace the hopeless ship upon the lee.
And guide the sailor on to summer bays.

Long lines upon the brow of Time, old year,
You've drawn with faithful pencil as of old.
Ajax would have an ample field in which
To swing his glowing pen could he re-touch
The wondrous architecture of thy hand.
A century of war across the deep,
Condensed in one convulsive shock of gloom ;
Gravelotte and Metz, Sedan, and on the Rhine,
And lesser crimson floods of wasting war,

O'erthrew an empire in their livid path,

Around whose smouldering fires the " powers that be "

Sweep dust and ashes in each other's eyes,

Or pile on fagots wet or dry as best

Befits their brawling moods, to smoke or burn

Or quench the modern flame of Mars, a flame

Which through all ages of the past hath swept

Kin, sex and age from ofl" the continents

And on the seas in one wild wreck of graves.

Engines of war and peace alike confront

Each other 'mid all grades and planes of life.

For life is made of contrarieties :

The light and beauties of the vernal day,

Night's sable pall of shadowed phantasies,

All lights and shades between and in the two;

This life a medley prose and poetry.

Of rain and drought and fragmentary calms.

Yet intellectual life dependeth not

Upon the elemental moods alone,

And men have seldom yet aspired to write

Beyond demands the age doth seem to make.

The year hath been most lavish of its good
To our own land ; withheld Egyptian plagues,
Kept wolves of want and famine from our doors,
The seasons came and went and brought their loads
Of harvest wealth as they were wont of old ;
The l)ending orchards gave their ample fruit ;
Men plodded on in science and in art ;
Railroads were built o'er prairies lone and wild,
Where glides the iron horse of mighty nian.
In the celestial hemispheres a star

Whose light had never flecked the telescope

Before appears among the galaxy

That girds the vast iniinity of space,

While blazing comets with their streaming trails

Swept onward in their lawless course of flight.

By slippery paths of deep obscurity

Mankind must wander yet for centuries,

Or e'en for ages up and down the stream

Whose voiceless current moves through mystic lands,

Ere threading out upon those verdant shores

Where man may bask in endless summer hours,

From war and stormy passions' fearful sway,

From superstitions thrall and bigots rage.

From puerile claims of aristocracy

In man, made free, and all the race go right,

Regardless of the clarion voice of men,

When selfish schemes, the latitude and base

Of all desire, their mad ambition fills.

May days of present cloudland float away,

The sun of purest freedom shine instead.

When men shall beat their swords to pruning hooks.

Their cannons into plows or sundry spades.

When industry shall thrive by braver deeds.

Invention rule where fashion reigns supreme ;

When man no longer is a slave of creed.

Nor measures life's free thoughts by other's cup.

But each shall vie in reason's parliament

To speed the glorious morn of liberal thought,

And that millenium to usher in

A taller and a better race of men.

THE PRINTS.*

The " art preservative of arts," methinks,

Hath been the greatest boon that ever came

To bless and build and perfect groping man.

Without it, reader, you must be deprived

Of reading all 'ts afloat as current news ;

Your home would been a hovel or a hut,

Or yet the solitude of primal woods,

And you, perchance, companion of the owls ;

Your mind unlearned to read, your hand to write ;

Intelligence at naught, save Nature's own.

Unmeasured good to Anglo-Saxon race,

To Greek and Turk, to Fin and Laplander,

To isies within the seas, and every zone

Where humans hath a language and a name.

The art is that which keepeth mankind man.

Then bless the heart of him who toils for you

Through long and weary seasons of unrest;

Who standeth at his " case " of thankless toil

And " sticketh type " to that mysterious tome

Of " copy " hanging on the " hook " of time.

Whose "ins" and "outs" perplex a weary brain.

Be they the fault of him who writes or " sets ; "

When " proof" appears his " take " he must correct,

Though night shall draw her sable mantle 'round

And darken all the eager world without

Before " revise " comes back from error free.

Headlong through wretched " copy " oft must wade,

And what hath neither form nor slightest shape

Of English manuscript, forsooth, must guess,

* lg70_1871. This, and " Old Year and New," preceding it, formetl the principal portion of
newspaper Carrier's Address.

And run his chances for a sweat in " proof: "

Vexatious " pi " oft meets him in the " form,"

Before the same is " justified " and " locked ; "

The "devil" drops a "galley" on the floor,

Or wastes the "quoins" in plumping people's heads

And flings the " slugs " at straying mongrel dogs

Who seek the marts of trade along the streets.

For all the pains and ills of " typo " life

The "jours " may vent their petty spite and spleen

On him who "rolls" and "colors" o'er the "forms;

The great fish eat the little ones, you know.

If 'gainst this "rule" obtrude from other "fonts,"

"Quads" "pica," "nonpareil," or firm "brevier,"

Straightway a "handful" of the "matter" "pi's;"

Xerotes to the sponge will never do;

Cabals in all the transient course of life

Bring trains of grief. In this an axiom.

The editor whose brain is oft perplexed

With grinding everybody's ax when they

Want offico, spoils, and notoriety ;

Wlio " pufls " the nostrums of the day and garbs

" Ye local " phantasies fi-om week to week.

To suit the taste of those who advertise ;

Behind the scenes he feeleth all the springs

That lift or pull or drive or wheedle men

To power and place. The empty bauble, fame,

Pastelx)aid and printer's ink and wooden type

In flaming handbills herald on the wall

The mushroom glory man so doteth on.

Golconda's mines of wealth are open wide

100

To those who advertise in cunning ways ;

Who keep the public posted on their wares,

Who deck the streets with gorgeous bills, and pay

The printer all his dues; who deal on terms

Of strict equality, and who supply

Zetetic Yankee tastes with every want,

Or work in curious arts and needful trades.

A motto here, if fully carried out,

Will pay your debts, leave money in your purse.

And give you moral standing at the bank :

Use printer's ink in lavish quantity

In all that calls for public patronage :

Akin to this, I think you won't deny.

The papers you must take, and when you take

Don't do as did the dog who took the cheese

From hungry puss, and said "I'll take your part,"

But pay the little due in full advance.

And then the ghost of debt won't haunt

You like a nightmare in your sleep, but sleep

Will come on downy beds of ease and glide

On angel wings about your couch, and lave

In Eden-scented balms your every nerve.

Till golden-gated heaven itself hath naught

So beautiful in all its landscapes bright

As those that skirt thy dreams Elysium.

Nor keenly-cutting wintry winds and snow
From Labrador and Newfoundland when deep
The dreary drifts lay on one's toil-worn track,
• Nor howling tempests o'er the plains around
Shall stop the mails that bring the paper home.

101
LYRICAL MOODS.

Here in my quiet chamber shall my thought

Come home to me like birds with message fraught.

Sweet music ever floating on through time

To some green isles in pleasure lands sublime,

Comes softly floating down from forest shores

Of ancient melody that long inpours

In raptured resonance a waiting heart.

A fairy god who doth these strains impart,

A solitary sun to every soul

Of earth hath been, and is the light and goal

That kindleth fires of every enterprise

Born 'mid the sunny temper of the skies.

His wondrous skill in touching all the keys

From old and polar north to southern seas.

Of that world-wide and saftly sweeping lyre

Brought out of time to fill a world's desire,

Hath swept all souls with swift vibration through ;

Thrown spells broadcast o'er human hearts like dew,

And blossojned like the rose the wilderness

In one brief hour of tuneful tenderness.

The god of Love, beyond all gods of earth.
Comes winged with rosy light to every hearth
Where cloistering integers of senseful clay
Count blushes by the score, and while away
The maiden longings yet unsatisfied,
Or boyish wooings warm and at full tide.
Which scope immensity and all its power
In one rare radiance of human flower.
Pervading all the years with golden light

102

Blent softly o'er like morn from darkest night.

All fact or form or fancy can create,

All language keen or simple or sedate,

All flowers of rhetoric or storm of soul.

Extravagant or senseless to the pole

Of pure absurdity, or dreamy prose,

Bound in like puny plants 'neath northern snows.

All sages and the Muse whose " sacred nine "

Compi-iseth goodly things served up in line.

All schools of thought and passions rainbow rays

Brought bolted through the magic screen of days.

Paint not that thrill of thought in touch or look.

Or preface pen to Love's unbounded book.

A dream is e'en not all a dream, I ween.

Or shadows nothingness — a simple screen

Between the shores of mortal life and death :

For dreams on dappled horses mount and ride,

And traverse mains and oceans' heaving side

In one brief revolution of the wheel

That points the circuit out and marches steal

From million wary human creatures hence,

Nor never ask they rest or recompense.

But dreams from pia mater at its will are born,

Or like the sun upon the hills at morn.

A carpeting of thoughts upon the floor

Of nightly cushioned brains on velvet lore,

A tutorship of knowledge all unsought,

Brought home upon your pillow ready taught.

Drank in and gone the rounds you never knew

Before oi- since, of every depth and hue ;

Careering microcostic tomes at will

And pouring from their shelves a deluge still

103

Of weird and wild and shapeless phantasies;
Quaint pictures there of all that fancy is,
Hewn out of all the universe of form
From every attitude of sun and storm,
And placed upon the network of the brain
To roll forever with its mighty train.

So Love, the purest passion of the soul

Hath senses keen or blind to every goal.

He conies not at the beck of girl or boy,

Nor lieth at their feet a wanton toy

Which they may toss or spin or cast away

To suit the varying whims of grief or play.

But all unbidden enters he their cot,

And flowery fancies fling o'er every spot,

More dear as days and years their sunshine throw

Past summer isles and glittering grooves of snow ;

Comes he with sunny cheeks and mellow eyes,

All blent with softer tints than April skies.

Voluptuous and rare as ruby rays

That scintillate in Time's revolving plays.

A single rift this cloudland o'er
Breaks not to me the ages lore ;
Mythology themes to the atlas brain
Imprints profuse as dew on main ;
Prometheus bound to a rock of prey
.Sees not the dawn of this Vulcan day,
A form of beauty water prints
And beauty's own the sunset tints.
A million globes in colors seven
Flush floors of earth, fill skies of heaven,

104

FAITH OF LOVE.

My heart says " trust thee," though the years
Roll slowly on through tide of tears ;
Though never a word from lips of thine
Come thrilling through this heart of mine,
Though nevermore thy form I see,
Though years of absence keepeth thee
As on some spirit-haunted shore,
Perchance it be forevermore.

I know the fickle god is blind ;
That Cupid hath a wayward mind ;
And still he is the intellect,
And every thought doth intersect.
One day he saw thy matchless face
Reflected in a flowei-y vase :
Since then paths he used to haunt
Doth evermore his presence want.

November blasts come chilling through their way
That swept with ruthless hand the autumn glade,
Come drifting, moaning, all the dreary day
On winter's 'proaching path with trophies laid ;
Bright summer's yield of fruits the husbandman
Hath garnered from the earth with honest toil,
Presume not mocking pleasures cloy his scan,
For 'round the wintiy hearth and board, despoil,
Entranced by frosty music of the spheres,
Comes not to human paradise like this
Great vintage of the warm and fruitful years.
Defiant storms like thine. With shut in bliss
May close of life with lipening wisdom shine
Rich luster o'er the seasons everv line.

105

A MOUNTAIN FLOWER.

A mountain path that winds a tortuous way
'Round beetling cliffs that frown in grim dismay,
Gray granite walls o'erhung with sterile moss,
Old rocks that lichens thread their roots across,
Wheie vegetation starves upon the air
And aspiration lays her diamonds bare ;
One summer day thereon above the sod
On which the foot of man hath rarely trod,
There bloomed upon that lofty lonely wild
A flower as if from tempest paths beguiled.
Had it from Nature's garden-keeper strayed
To live a hermit where the storm-god stayed?

All hail the approaching dawn of New Year's morn

From out infinitude's depths successively born,

That ushers in another round of yeai-s

With all its unknown weight of hopes and fears.

Take heed a foot-print of relentless Time

That's left along his trackless path sublime.

The full eventful year that's numbered now

Has left a line on Time's triumphant brow.

Transcending legends that to us unfold

More marvelous than first discovered gold :

A Nation through a fiery ordeal passed

For Fieedom through all ages till the last

Great umpire of our fearless Northern zone

Shall lift the millions loftily alone.

106

FORGIVENESS.

Ah ! yes, 'tis fate our passions sway,
Or we no cruel words had passed ;
For friendship's flame unquenching lay
Upon our zealous hearts, and cast
A halo 'round our hearthstone's fire
Whose embers warmed our very souls
That vyed with each in pure desire,
Till all was lost upon the shoals.

Forgive the past with all its need.
The world's a bark on dangerous seas
When soul from soul withholds the meed
For noble sacrifice of these
Unseemly strifes we've mingled in ;
Fond memory broods with wiser care.
That all those cherished hopes yet win
A blessing each fond heart shall share.

From wintry winds that howl through naked boughs

Where hungry shivering lieids are left to browse,

Fai' o'er the lonely moor a somber surge

Comes welling up through lone December's dirge,

O'er a leafless waste spread out through all the fields

Of laden snow, and all the earth it shields

'Gainst piercing frosts when north winds rudely blow

Through mountain passes far the whirling snow;

'Mid all the struggling gloom and glare without.

The herdsman's watchful care, the hunter's shout,

Pi-oclaims the world congealed in stern embrace

Of winter's icy arms and frozen face,

Whose glim and ghostly mien through sullen air

Appears with glistening pinions everywhere.

10^

AT SUNSET.

The mellow rays of day's decline
Across the world of western blue,
Fill all the air and interline
The hoary hills and falling dew;
The fading sun adown the gloam
Is tinting pictures on my mind ;
Once more I see a happy home,
The long lost joys again I find.

'Tis sweet at dewy eve to rove

Where Nature's smiles are lavished 'round.

By bank of stream or sounding grove,

And stalking on the grassy ground

A higher aspiration feel

Than known in all the halls of men;

A pride in all advancing weal,

Without a limit where or when.

'Tis rare there doth a century come

With not a tinge too deep on some.

Too long hath strayed the thoughtful few,

Erratic genius time-wrecks drew.

What loads hath Fate as prizes won !

Queer Fate, what myriad minds undone !

Dispensing sorts without a care;

A jostling host of false and fair

Some level seeks with courage shrewd :

Philosopher in solitude,

And prating clown and stilted oaf.

Each office-gormand's public loaf,

The wild ambitious vortex fill.

While mocking Fate mocks whom it will.

108

HER FACE.

Sweet face of that entrancing loveliness,

With purest depth of beauty pictured there,

So full of tenderness, yet sad betimes.

So sweetly sad, all pure and womanly,

I've fell to thinking as I gazed spell-bound, .

What star of fate had brightly beamed afar

In some rare tinie agone that could bestow

The sum of beauty on a single face,

The sweetest loveliness within the power

Of curious Nature's skill to glorify.

Surpassing all the roses of the past

In this enchanting and transcendent face.

But thoughts by day surpass the evening dreams,
Those dreams so full of shadowed vagaries,
Calm daylight cleared the mountain hights above,
And I had stood as at the base and looked
On merely vestiges of that which rose
Sublime above my eager longing eyes ;
And tinged with morning's golden Il>eams, I knew
By those far distant rainbows I beheld
Encircling eyes with heaven's blue volume filled,
That cloudland curtains folded me, while winds
Of strangest melody had harped between
And waved their sable edges to and fro.
While I such rosy rapturous tracings caught
As words can never paint, and far away
Above my grandest soarings stood a form
So infinite in pure and perfect grace,
I know no thought but worship evei'more.