LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 ?S 3 BI0 
 
 (II|3p Qcptingy '^n. 
 
 Shelf Ml\3 F^ 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
THE FLUTE-PLAYER 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 BY FRANCIS HOWARD WILLIAMS 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 l?<^h-z^ 
 
 / 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 The Knickerbocker Press 
 
 \-=^ 
 
 ^^x 
 

 Copyright, 1894 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCIS HOWARD WILLIAMS 
 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 
 
 By G. p. Putnam's Sons 
 
 Printed and Bound by 
 
 Ube Iknichcrbocher iprees, mew ISorh 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Flute-Player i 
 
 To Beauty : An Ode . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 The Inner Vision 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 13 
 
 Rizzio .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 19 
 
 Woman o' the- Watch 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 24 
 
 Magdalene 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 37 
 
 The Wood Robin 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 41 
 
 Servus Servorum Dei 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 43 
 
 The Sea 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 46 
 
 An Answer . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 47 
 
 Ars Loquitur 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 48 
 
 Winter Rain 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 49 
 
 Ph^dra 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 51 
 
 An Ionian Frieze 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 52 
 
 A Dreamer 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 53 
 
 Compensation 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 55 
 
 Ave America : An Ode 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 57 
 
 Sonnets. 
 
 Uncrowned 67 
 
 Karma 68 
 
 Earth and Night 69 
 
 Sic Itur ad Astra 70 
 
 An Early-April Morning 71 
 
 Finis Coronat Opus 72 
 
 Electra 73 
 
 Bedtime 74 
 
 Decoration Day 75 
 
 A Sonnet of Silence 76 
 
 iii 
 
iv Contents. 
 
 Victor Hugo (May 22, 1885) . 
 Walt Whitman, (May 31, 1886) . 
 Walt Whitman, (March 26, 1892) 
 To John Keats .... 
 To Herbert .Spencer . 
 
 An Idle Day : A Sequence of Sonnets. 
 I. Salve 
 
 IT Heart of the Night 
 III. Promise of Dawn 
 IV. Daybreak in the Woods 
 V. A Woodland Poet . 
 VI. The Farmyard 
 VII. Blended Voices 
 VIII. Clover . 
 IX. Whispers OF the Corn 
 
 X. Mid-Morn 
 XI. A Way-side Spring . 
 XII. Half Way to Arcady 
 
 XIII. A Wild Rose 
 
 XIV. Roadway Dust 
 XV. Wheat Billows 
 
 XVI. Remembrance 
 XVII. Aspiration 
 XVIII. Cloud-Magic 
 XIX. The Brook 
 XX. The Twilights 
 XXI. Perspective 
 XXII. Fantasy . 
 
 XXIII. Nocturne 
 
 XXIV. Vale 
 
 77 
 
 78 
 
 79 
 80 
 81 
 
 85 
 86 
 
 87 
 
 90 
 
 91 
 92 
 
 93 
 94 
 
 95 
 96 
 
 97 
 
 98 
 
 99 
 
 100 
 
 lOI 
 
 102 
 103 
 104 
 105 
 106 
 107 
 108 
 
 A Primrose Path 
 Between 
 Cradle Song 
 Caprice 
 A Serenade . 
 
 Songs and Trifles. 
 
 Ill 
 112 
 114 
 "5 
 
Contejits. 
 
 A Primrose Path : Songs and Trifles. 
 
 fCofi 
 
 t.) 
 
 
 Love Came TO Me ii6 
 
 Flower o' the Sea 
 
 
 
 
 117 
 
 Marguerite 
 
 
 
 
 119 
 
 The Way o' the World 
 
 
 
 
 120 
 
 Philosophy-in-Little 
 
 
 
 
 121 
 
 Cupid and Justice 
 
 
 
 
 122 
 
 A Rondeau of Vassar 
 
 
 
 
 123 
 
 Evolution of the Poet 
 
 
 
 
 124 
 
 Ballade to a Bookman 
 
 
 
 
 124 
 
 A Rondeau in Reply . 
 
 
 
 
 125 
 
 Ballade .... 
 
 
 
 
 126 
 
 Rondeau .... 
 
 
 
 
 127 
 
 Acknowledgments are due to the Publishers of J'he Atlantic Monthly, 
 Harpet-' s Weekly, Lippincott^ s Magazine, The hidependent, and other 
 periodicals, for permission to reprint in this volume certain pieces of verse 
 which originally appeared in the pages under their control. 
 
THE FLUTE-PLAYER. 
 
 'T^HRICE a score of candles, flaring, ah bravely flare 
 ^ Fashion shadows on the wall, fetafhaii''^ ""' 
 
 While the loftier lights are glaring piay"s"be''gin 
 Over all the festival ; the symphony. 
 
 With a visage melancholy 
 Meditates the dark Bassoon, 
 
 Glows the 'Cello's face as jolly 
 As a yellow harvest-moon. 
 
 Lean the Oboe and eager. 
 With a sharp, uplifted chin ; 
 
 Bald and red, and seeming meagre 
 In his brains, the first Violin ; 
 
 And albeit each 
 one thinketh 
 but of his own 
 part, yet the 
 wholeness of the 
 symphony suf- 
 fereth no mar- 
 ring thereby ; 
 
 For, of a truth, it 
 is here as with 
 the music of 
 humanity, to the 
 which tho' all 
 must contribute, 
 many an one 
 furnisheth a 
 
 note that is but a discord to that of his fellow. 
 
 But the Flute with shoulders bended 
 And his scantly silvered head, — 
 
 Ah ! what present joys are blended 
 With the sorrows that are fled. 
 
 And one player 
 
 thinketh but of 
 
 being done with 
 
 as small pain as 
 
 may be, and 
 
 another reckon- 
 
 eth how he shall 
 
 expend the wage 
 
 of his labor in rioting and wantonness. 
 
 Why, tho' haply he remembers 
 Vanished gleams of Paradise, 
 
The Flute-Player. 
 
 But the Flute- 
 Player, who 
 sitteth well 
 stricken in 
 years, seemeth 
 to have learned 
 somewhat of the 
 secret of life, 
 even as a soul 
 that hath found 
 Truth in the 
 sweet shows of 
 Nature. So that 
 no sooner hath 
 the music begun, 
 than he seeth, 
 as it were by the 
 inner eye of the 
 spirit, himself a 
 lad. 
 
 Glow love's unextinguished embers 
 Deeply in his faded eyes ? 
 
 Strange that songs forever borrow 
 From the past their sweetest lay ! 
 
 Strange that every silver morrow 
 Has a golden yesterday ! 
 
 Strange ! the flutist, bowed and 
 slender, 
 
 Marks no more the baton's lead, 
 As he breathes a message tender 
 
 Thro' his mild and mellow reed. 
 
 And the gay 
 Allegro 
 quickeneth his 
 pulses. 
 
 For the player in his dreaming 
 Sees himself again a boy, 
 
 Finding real all the seeming 
 Of life's sudden cup of joy ; 
 
 And full soon 
 he groweth 
 'ware of the 
 touch of man- 
 hood. 
 
 Hears the fretted music ringing 
 Down the corridors of art, 
 
 Hears love's voice eternal singing 
 Thro' the chambers of his heart ; 
 
 For his sweet-o'- 
 heart cometh 
 tripping adown 
 a green country 
 lane. 
 
 Feels a touch of tenderest meaning 
 Steal into his soul again. 
 
 As a maid o'er April greening 
 Saunters down a country lane ; 
 
TJic Flntc-Playcr. 
 
 There is nothing to dissemble, 
 Naught to fear in love's behest, 
 
 Where the violets lie a-tremble 
 In the heaven of her breast. 
 
 And lo ! she is 
 very fair to look 
 on, and her 
 gentle seeming 
 IS as a balsam 
 to his eyes. 
 
 Is it but the morning's blessing 
 That the maiden looks so fair ? 
 
 Is it but the warm caressing 
 Of the sunlight in her hair ? 
 
 The Player 
 dallyeth with 
 the vision. 
 
 (Suddenly a dulcet blending 
 Of the strings and oboe 
 
 Marks the gay allegro's ending 
 In a flood of harmony. 
 
 Then Cometh a 
 change in the 
 measure and he 
 awakeneth all 
 regretful 
 thereof. 
 
 Then in slow and solemn number ^"dy Ada^o 
 The adagio begins, "'°°^'^' ^^MT' 
 
 o o > again to dream. 
 
 Fraught with harmonies that cumberA"'^ ''^^ 
 
 ° svmDhor 
 
 Gloriously the violins.) 
 
 Haply some melodious motion, 
 Born of music's eloquence, 
 
 Lulls to slumber like a potion 
 Ravishing the spirit's sense ; 
 
 For again the old Flute-Player 
 Dreams away o'er land and sea, 
 
 Idle as a sunburnt strayer 
 In the fields of Arcady. 
 
 symphony goeth 
 well, and 
 forasmuch as all 
 the players obey 
 the wand of him 
 who leadeth, the 
 end thereof is 
 Beauty ; 
 for verily 
 Obedience is 
 the gate to 
 Knowledge, and 
 Knowledge is 
 Truth, and 
 Truth is Beauty, 
 
The Flute-Player. 
 
 Yet the players 
 are sordid, 
 being but blind 
 followers, 
 wedded each to 
 his own husks. 
 
 There, within his vision standing, 
 Smiles the love of all his life. 
 
 Like a maiden bud expanding 
 To the flower he calls his wife. 
 
 And the stately, cadenced measure 
 
 Of the rich adagio, 
 Woven thro' remembered pleasure, 
 
 Woofed of half-forgotten woe. 
 
 And betimes 
 the aged 
 Flute-Player 
 seeth his 
 sweet-o'-heart ; 
 
 Comes with wisdom of the ages 
 Pulsing in its ebb and flow. 
 
 Laden with the lore of sages 
 From the land of Long-Ago. 
 
 Now become 
 his good-wife. 
 
 And a cottage in the sunlight 
 Sheds the glory of the sun, 
 
 Wherein magic, from his one light. 
 Many lights of love has won ; 
 
 And he heareth 
 the babble of 
 children in the 
 glow of the 
 ingle. 
 
 For the low voice of a woman, 
 Children's laughter, merry cries. 
 
 Come in tones divinely human 
 From an earthly Paradise. 
 
 And ere he well 
 knoweth, the 
 time hath pas't 
 to the ripe o' the 
 year, and 
 middle-age hath 
 come. 
 
 " Well I love them ! " in a broken 
 Whisper 'neath the murmurous trees; 
 
 " Well I love them ! " partly spoken 
 Thro' the sympathetic keys. 
 
The Flute-Playcr. 
 
 5 
 
 " Is it better pain and pleasure 
 To remember or forget ? 
 Is it—? Ah! they change the measure;""!'^ changeth 
 
 -' ° 'to the stately 
 
 And lo ! he 
 starteth as the 
 measure of the 
 
 This is sure the minuet ! " 
 
 Minuet. 
 
 And the player all sedately 
 
 Scans his notes with eyesight worn 
 While the movement lapses stately 
 
 As a breeze among the corn, 
 
 Till the tones a subtler meaning 
 Garner from the vanished years, 
 
 O'er life's fields of harvest gleaning 
 Aftermath of many tears. 
 
 Fleet before him evanescent 
 Seasons thro* their courses run, 
 
 Light as dewdrops iridescent 
 In the laughter of the sun ; 
 
 Again the 
 pageant of his 
 dreams ariseth 
 before him, and 
 time, which ever 
 hasteth apace, 
 hath silvered 
 o'er his hair, 
 and corded his 
 faded hands 
 with great veins, 
 and dulled the 
 lustre of his 
 eyes. 
 
 And the robin of the ring-time 
 Learns to pipe a lovelier tune ; 
 
 And the bride of early springtime 
 Is the aweeter wife of June. 
 
 Comes the warm, sun-soaked Septem- 
 ber, 
 
 Life's wine red upon the lees ; 
 Comes the rimy-lipped November, 
 
 Children's children at his knees. 
 
 And it pleaseth 
 him well to 
 fancy that 't is 
 the laughter 
 of his 
 grandchildren 
 
The Flutc-Plnycr. 
 
 and their right 
 merry pother 
 that come unto 
 him from the 
 bars of the 
 lively Scherzo. 
 
 Onward, ever onward speeding, 
 What is this the old man sees ? 
 
 'T is the baton deftly leading 
 Thro' the scherzo's harmonies. 
 
 Suddenly in tones supernal, 
 
 Earthward borne in lordlier rhyme, 
 
 Mayhap his 
 dream hath put 
 
 of re'iity!'"""'' Comcs the boom of waves eternal, 
 
 Breaking on the sands of time. 
 
 For lo ! the 
 lights fade, and 
 from his ears the 
 sound of the 
 instruments 
 dieth away. 
 
 Whence the rapture in the gazing 
 Of the aged flutist's eyes ? 
 
 Whence the tenderness amazing 
 In the wedded harmonies ? 
 
 He seeth no 
 more the wand 
 of the leader. 
 
 Why should he, thro' every turning 
 Of the mellow symphony, 
 
 Play his single part, then spurning 
 All control, seem but to be 
 
 The clouds roll 
 asunder and 
 there conieth a 
 Divine beckon- 
 ing from the 
 firmament. 
 
 Fluting fast and ever faster 
 
 Thro' the music's crowded bars, 
 
 Led by a celestial master 
 
 Beating time among the stars ? 
 
 The Flute- 
 Player's ears 
 are ravish't with 
 vast harmonies 
 ineffable. 
 
 Ah ! he hears a cadence woven, 
 As a thread of song might be, 
 
 By a more divine Beethoven 
 Thro' a mightier symphony. 
 
The Flute-Player. 
 
 In his fading eyes the story 
 Of a life is written fair ; 
 
 O'er his brow a summer glory 
 Warms the winter in his hair. 
 
 And as down remembered valleys 
 Love and youth together stroll, 
 
 Thro' the flute's mellifluent alleys 
 He is breathing out his soul. 
 
 And he breath- 
 eth a strange 
 melody through 
 his flute. 
 The tones grow 
 celestial, for lo ! 
 the Flute-Player 
 is uttering his 
 soul, and it pass- 
 eth out divinely. 
 
 Struck with sudden admiration, And all the 
 
 Falls the leader's nerveless hand ; dumb, being 
 
 ^ . r J- • 1 ^- wrought upon 
 
 Conscious of divine elation, by a deep awe ; 
 
 All the men in wonder stand ; 
 
 In their eyes strange fires are burning ; 
 
 Each melodic voice is mute. 
 Save the pure impassioned yearning 
 
 Of the liquid-throated flute. 
 
 Every movement has been rendered 
 Sanctified from days of yore, 
 
 All the instruments have tendered 
 Reverence to the glorious score. 
 
 All have mingled in the heaven 
 Born of wedded tone and tone ; 
 
 The finale must be given 
 By the soulful flute alone. 
 
 But the flute 
 continueth. 
 
 It is the Finale. 
 
 And, of a truth, 
 may we not say 
 th.<t 't is even so 
 in all of life ? 
 For albeit many 
 tones be blended 
 in harmony and 
 discord, yet 't is 
 the pleading of 
 the single voice 
 that reacheth to 
 the everlasting 
 ears. 
 
The Flntc-Playcr. 
 
 Many men shall 
 mingle in the 
 world, but 't is 
 the naked soul 
 which must 
 come alone to 
 the altar-steps 
 of God. 
 
 Ay, the symphony, tho' blended 
 In accordance loud and long. 
 
 Sinks at last, when all is ended. 
 To the pleading of a song. 
 
 Still the candles, weirdly flaring, 
 Fashion shadows on the wall, 
 
 Still the loftier lights are glaring 
 Over all the festival. 
 
 The fluting 
 dieth into 
 silence. 
 
 Hark ! Is this a sigh or singing 
 Dying on the listening air ? 
 
 'T is the flute's voice, upward winginj 
 Like a music-laden prayer. 
 
 The dead fingers 
 lie, loving.across 
 the keys. 
 
 The symphony 
 is finish't, but 
 its last chords 
 havebeen sound- 
 ed beyond the 
 stars. 
 
 'T is only the 
 Flute-Player 
 who hath heard 
 the final 
 harmony. 
 
 And a hush in benediction 
 O'er the bended man is shed ; 
 
 Death that glorifies affliction 
 Wreathes an aureole 'round 
 head. 
 
 And his fingers still are pressing 
 Voiceless keys with loving art. 
 
 Still the silent flute caressing 
 On the silence of his heart. 
 
 his 
 
TO BEAUTY: AN ODE. 
 
 T^HERE comes a sure uplifting of the soul ; 
 
 Forth leaps a light late shadowed in eclipse ; 
 Before my seeking gaze the vapors roll 
 
 Backward, and bursts the new apocalypse ! 
 In this large moment, Spirit of Beauty, thou 
 That dost possess me with thy loveliness, 
 I am elate to feel thee, know thee mine, 
 To wrap my being in the sense of joy 
 Which is thy being, till thou dost endow 
 My soul with love heroic and the stress 
 Of high endeavor. Life hath no alloy, 
 So touched upon by thee, but grows divine 
 In potency of action, power of nobleness. 
 
 An hour of youth that dreams of no hereafter, 
 A day of toil amid encircling fears. 
 
 The comradeship of human loves and laughter, 
 The sanctifying grace of human tears ; 
 
 A weary waiting through the years that cumber, 
 A weary sowing that the world may reap, 
 9 
 
10 To Beauty : An Ode. 
 
 A silent drooping of the head to slumber, 
 
 A silent closing of the eyes to sleep. 
 And this is life, which thy fair ministries 
 
 Have made to me a dream of solemn joys, — 
 In candid sunlight, with the somnolent bees, 
 In glorious glooms of forest sacristies. 
 
 In green recesses where the fret and noise 
 Of the defeated, despicable world 
 
 Come not to break the bliss of solitude. 
 Ah ! beacon hurled 
 
 From God's hand into trackless nights of 
 
 mind. 
 By thy fair light I find 
 The hidden flaws of the philosophies, — 
 
 The nerveless food 
 Of earth-bred natures barren of the skies. 
 
 III. 
 
 What time the Spring had wantoned with the trees 
 And wrought a pallor over Arcady, 
 Thou camest to me robed as one might be 
 Who ministered to Love's high revelries. 
 And didst uplift me with thy starry eyes. 
 Till I, divine in thy divinity. 
 Encompassed heaven in being loved of thee, 
 And drew from Paradise 
 
 Delight to a sad world all rapturously. 
 To touch thy hair the sun had quit the skies ; 
 And joy upon thy brow had fallen on sleep, 
 Being surfeited with sweets which still did keep 
 The portals of thy uncompanioned lips ; 
 
To Beauty : A h Ode. 1 1 
 
 And in the woven cadence of thy sighs 
 
 I heard Love's song wherethrough light 
 
 laughter slips, — 
 Life's undertone that cannot choose but weep. 
 And I spread wide my arms, but thou wert gone ; 
 Naught left but memory's mocking counterpart, — 
 
 The wafted fragrance of thy outblown hair. 
 Subtle as odors of the Summer's heart ; 
 
 And in the lambent and unpeopled air 
 A vision fading as a dream at dawn. 
 
 Is it but Fancy that doth sometimes cheat 
 Our wayward pulses into quietude, — 
 A stern necessity of joy, a mood 
 Begotten of much yearning upon thee. 
 
 Spirit that bearest wings upon thy feet 
 
 And laurel on thy white unageing brows, — 
 Spirit of streams and woodland minstrelsy 
 And Art's high heritage that with faith endows 
 
 Lives else all incomplete ? 
 
 I only know thou dost vouchsafe delight, 
 Born of the morning and the sweet-breath'd 
 night 
 
 And silent hills that lift their fronts to woo 
 The upper air's yet deeper silences, 
 The while the thoughtful twilight hovers nigh 
 
 To stay the fretting of the leaves, as who 
 Should murmur : " Peace a little, it is I," 
 And ever in profounder whispers, " Peace " ; 
 
1 2 To Beauty : A n Ode. 
 
 The pale light fading from clear winnowed skies 
 
 As fleeting colors from the face of Fear ; 
 A bird-song that releases rhapsodies, 
 And dies into the lucent solitude 
 With such divine decadence, that I hear 
 Remembered music in an interlude 
 Of visions alien grown to un remembering eyes. 
 
 And I shall never lose thee ; thou dost keep 
 Tryst with my soul. 
 In patins wrought of daisies on the meads. 
 In violets lifting scented lips to God, 
 Haply in songs that flood the aisles of sleep, 
 Upon the fretting of unceasing needs 
 I feel the soothing and the sure control 
 Of thy cool fingers. In each greening sod 
 Is written thy evangel, and the ways 
 Thy feet have trod 
 Are redolent of all fair flowers that are, 
 
 While in thy deep commemorative gaze 
 Peace lingers like an upward-pointing star. 
 
THE INNER VISION. 
 
 A^^HERE the sky in sleep and silence dreams 
 
 away the drowsy days, 
 And the sunlit spaces shimmer in the films of 
 
 golden haze, 
 Great Antonio, he of Spezzia, slowly thro' the 
 
 seasons wrought. 
 Striving ever to embody that which his profounder 
 
 thought '-^ 
 
 Found elusive as a perfume, or the melody that 
 
 dwells 
 (Heard thro' misty miles of distance,) in the pulses 
 
 of the bells ; 
 ^ Till at last the storied canvas in triumphant colors 
 
 bore, 
 Perfect as a strain of music 'prisoned thus forever- 
 more, 
 One fair form enfolded in the rare celestial light 
 
 it wore. 
 
 Here, where fountains lightly lisp of love to roses 
 
 leaning low, 
 Staunch in friendship, dwelt the kinsmen Valentine 
 
 and Angelo ; 
 Valentine was brave and brawny, hot the blood 
 
 within his veins ; 
 
 13 
 
14 TJie Inner Vision. 
 
 His the strength to show compassion to the weak- 
 ness it disdains ; 
 
 His the supple nerve and sinew, and the step which 
 Hghtly trod ; 
 
 His the shoulders of a hero and the temples of a 
 god. 
 
 But for Angelo the thoughtful, dreaming ever of a 
 goal. 
 
 Where eternal wreaths of laurel wait to crown the 
 victor soul, 
 
 J.ife was but the budding promise of a later, fairer 
 flower ; 
 
 Joy the prelude to an anthem ; love the folly of 
 an hour ; 
 
 Pride of strength the badge of weakness ; gentle- 
 ness the test of power. 
 
 So when wide the fame was bruited of Antonio's 
 
 matchless skill, 
 And the finished picture proved the triumph of 
 
 creative will, 
 These two, singly, looked upon its tender curve 
 
 and living line, 
 Gloried in its wealth of color, recognized the 
 
 touch divine, 
 Saw and loved and praised it, each to other, with 
 
 unstinted breath. 
 Saying, " 'T is a thing immortal, Tonio was not 
 
 made for death ! " 
 And as Valentine enkindled with the beauty and 
 
 the grace 
 
The Inner Vision. 1 5 
 
 Of the masterful creation, stirred his life to quicker 
 
 pace, 
 And the wild blood, in its flood-tide, painted 
 
 passion on his face. 
 
 "Ah!" he sighed, ''what deeper rapture, in a 
 
 world grown gray with prayer, 
 Than to lose one's sense of being in the perfume of 
 
 her hair ; 
 In one mad transcendent moment, — " Quick, Avith 
 
 hand uplifted high, 
 " Hold ! " cried Angelo in pallor, "Stay thy word 
 
 of blasphemy ! 
 By Our Lady's gracious presence," (here he crossed 
 
 himself in haste) 
 " Thou, tho' more than friend or brother, shalt not 
 
 find mine ear debased 
 To the level of thy lewdness. Hath some Circe 
 
 turned us swine ? 
 Is the world with dregs so drunken that it cannot 
 
 taste the wine ? " 
 Then, hot flaming in his anger, "Thou art mad," 
 
 quoth Valentine ; 
 " Mad the word and mad the gesture ; thou hast 
 
 o'er thy parchments bent 
 Till thy blood hath lost true color and thy flame of 
 
 life is spent ; 
 Thou wouldst preach a stern evangel as our 
 
 holiest heritage, — 
 On youth's fair unruffled forefront write the mes- 
 sages of age. 
 
1 6 The Inner Vision. 
 
 Is it sin to worship Beauty wheresoe'er its shrine 
 
 may be ? 
 Is it shame to wed the pulses of a wide humanity ? 
 Thou, mayhap, canst chant a paean to the joys of 
 
 dead desire, 
 Since no Circe hath debased thee till thou darest to 
 
 admire 
 Fair and fatal Aphrodite, born of Foam and bred 
 
 of Fire ! " 
 
 " What ! " spake Angelo, uprising, " Aphrodite ! 
 
 Heaven be kind ! 
 Nay, 't is thou art mad of surety ; overfeeding dulls 
 
 thy mind ; 
 'T is Antonio's chiefest glory that his work bespeaks 
 
 his heart ; 
 He ne'er found in pagan harlots lips to lure the 
 
 kiss of Art. 
 That fair form upon his canvas is our Blessed 
 
 Lady, she 
 More divine for being human, earthlier for divinity. 
 In the false pride of thy power, thou hast scorned 
 
 to kiss the rod ; 
 Thou hast dared to flaunt thine offal in the very 
 
 face of God ! 
 But enough ! Words fall to folly ; test of truth 
 
 alone is wise ; 
 'T is the master who shall tell us whether in those 
 
 radiant eyes 
 Gleams the fire of wanton Venus or the Virgin's 
 
 Paradise." 
 
TJic Inner Vision. \J 
 
 So they strode with eager footsteps to the cool 
 pavilion where 
 
 Sat Antonio, grave, and aureoled in a wealth of 
 wintered hair ; — 
 
 Put before him all the quarrel which so deep their 
 souls had stirred ; 
 
 Vehemently questioned, then awaited his decisive 
 word. 
 
 As they ceased the master slowly lifted his pro- 
 phetic eyes, 
 
 While a smile, half hid, betokened more of sadness 
 than surprise : 
 
 "Ye, my sons, have yet to learn the deepest, 
 holiest truth in art ; 
 
 Kach beholder sees before him only that which 
 fills his heart ; 
 
 Eyes anointed by the spirit's finer touch to nobler 
 sight 
 
 Ever catch the dawn of angel faces through Cim- 
 merian night ; 
 
 But to him whose soul is fettered in the meshes of 
 desire 
 
 Saints are satyrs tho' the artist dip his brush in 
 living fire. 
 
 Thou, oh Angelo, hast pondered long on visions 
 heavenly fair, 
 
 Till the beautiful Madonna smiles upon thee every- 
 where ; 
 
 But for thee^ my strong-thewed, lusty Valentine, 
 with heart of flame. 
 
1 8 TJic Inner Vision. 
 
 Thy luxurious Venus tempts thee till thy lips pro* 
 
 nounce her name. 
 For the answer to your question, know, my sons, 
 
 ye both are wrong. 
 All the beauties on my canvas to humanity belong ; 
 Through the weary years I labored, seeking a 
 
 celestial sign, 
 Then I painted simply Woman, finding nothing 
 
 more divine." 
 Here Antonio paused. In silence, heart to heart, 
 
 and hand to hand, 
 Stood the friends with lowered eyelids, humbler 
 
 each to understand ; 
 And their chastened ears grew conscious of the 
 
 callings of the sea. 
 Lighter than the lambent rumor of the wind across 
 
 the lea, — 
 Softer than the sunlight sleeping on the slopes of 
 
 A ready. 
 
RIZZIO. 
 
 (a fragment.) 
 
 HoLYROOD, March 9, 1566. A banquet table 
 in disorder. At back, the Countess of Argyle, 
 swooning in her chair. Grouped apart, their swords 
 red with the blood of Rizzio, stand the lords 
 Darnley, Morton, Ruthven, Lindsay, and George 
 Douglass. Seated near the centre is Mary Stuart, 
 leaning despairingly upon the table, her face buried 
 in her hands. Rizzio, wounded unto death, is at 
 her feet, clinging to her girdle and striving to reach 
 her face. 
 
 Rizzio. 
 
 O EE how they stand apart, these lords, whose 
 
 hands 
 Have bungled i' the work, else had their points 
 Made me a cleaner exit. They mayhap. 
 Granting short shrift, would yet bestow a balm 
 To soothe the pang and poison of the end. 
 My Queen ! thy throat is stung to sudden flowers, 
 Tinct with strange colors new begot of love ; 
 May I not kiss thee on the mouth and eyes. 
 Seeing how sternly this gaunt foe denies 
 All quarter to the vanquished ? 
 19 
 
20 Rizzio. 
 
 Let me hear 
 The old, quick breathing, breaking to desire, 
 To lull the sense and turn the pulses mad, 
 I am a penitent ; ah, gracious Love, 
 Be thou my rosary, and let me tell 
 My sins upon thy perfectness ; as here. 
 Where shadows make a twilight of thy hair, 
 I 've dared to feel myself a very god. 
 Or here, renascent in thy eyes, have dreamed 
 That no diviner beacon burns in heaven. 
 O ! little mouth, half rounded to a song, — 
 Swift shuddering with an indrawn lisp of love, 
 My soul hath lost itself to compass thee 
 And rues no whit the barter. 
 
 Mary, 
 
 Prithee peace 
 
 rrii 
 For God's love turn thy gaze to heaven. 
 
 Rizzio. 
 
 And so 
 Gaze still, my Queen, on thee. 
 
 Nay, nay, fear not 
 The poisoned chalice destined to my lips 
 Is sweeter that I drain it at thy feet. 
 Ah ! the wounds rankle ! It will not be long. 
 For see how gorgeous the cold stone hath grown 
 In colors of my life 
 
Rizzio. 2 1 
 
 Mary. 
 
 Mother of pain ! 
 Be thou compassionate 
 
 Rizzio. 
 
 There were no need 
 To pray compassion did God please to grant 
 But one hour longer ; but the ebb hath set 
 Strong on the scarlet sea. 
 
 Cease weeping, Sweet, 
 Libations such as this become divine 
 In being offered. 
 
 Mary. 
 
 Ay. But on the same 
 Sad altar of my heart I lay a heart's 
 Petition. I, who brought a song from France, 
 Have heard but thunder from these Scottish hills. 
 And for the cates and dainties of delight 
 Have been made drunk with blood. 
 
 Sweet Heaven, hear 
 A prayer for justice, and endow the arm 
 Of him whose life is yet a part of mine 
 With puissance to right a hideous wrong. 
 
 Rizzio. 
 Nay, nay ; leave justice ; I would speak of love. 
 
22 Rizzio. 
 
 Mary. 
 
 And love is justice. 
 
 Ah, poor clammy brows ! 
 And kindly eyes that I have found so fair ! 
 Would God a queen were not so poor a thing, 
 Beggared of easement to a friend . 
 
 Rizzio. 
 
 But stoop 
 A little nearer till I feel thee through, 
 And catch life's light distilment spent like wine 
 Upon the lip's curve. So ! thine eyes are fires. 
 Quenched and relighted where the drooping lids 
 Turn gold to umber. Ah, yet nearer, Sweet ; 
 My lips are hot, but soon shall wed wet clay. 
 And grow less passionate when my mouth is filled 
 With pitiless earth. 
 
 Methinks, in faith, to ask 
 A hearing loverwise were little now, 
 For that the warmth of my embrace falls off 
 In touching Death. 
 
 Mary. 
 
 Nay, I am here, look up ; 
 Start not so wild ! 
 
 Rizzio {brokenly). 
 
 The fragrance of thy breath 
 Fades to the faint remembrance of a joy 
 Too fine to linger. 
 
Rizzio. 23 
 
 Prithee, — speak more close, — 
 My ears are strangely dull, — and yet, — and yet 
 I hear the wrack of bursting worlds ! 
 
 More close, — 
 God ! I am blind. — More close, — and guide my 
 
 hands 
 To find again thy face. 
 
 Ah, Heart of mine ! 
 Death is so potent ! — It is very dark, — 
 Night hath no stars. — 
 
 I drain this stirrup-cup 
 For love — and for the Queen ! 
 
 (He clings to Mary's knees, and then rolls over 
 upon the floor. George Douglass snatches Darn ley's 
 dagger, and, reaching across Mary's lap, drives it 
 into the dead body of Rizzio.) 
 
 Douglass. 
 
 This for the Kins ■' 
 
WOMAN-O'-THE-WATCH. 
 
 A SLOPING stretch of beach that bore away 
 Monotonously northward, while beyond, 
 Across the glintings of a little bay 
 Indented in the coast-line, lay more beach 
 That feathered off to mist and lost itself 
 In indistinguishable haze of sand and sky. 
 Nearer, a reef that ever at low tide 
 Rose with bared head and looked askance to land 
 Like some poltroon detected in a lie ; 
 While over all there hung the neutral tints 
 Of a cool sea-sky, cumbered at its edge 
 With masses of gray cloud, and flecked across, 
 Nearer the zenith, with pale nimbus strips 
 That scudded to the South before the wind. 
 A path ran backward from the beach's edge, 
 Beginning at the place where the scant sedge 
 Made a path's presence visible, and thence, 
 Leading o'er bits of firmer ground, it wound 
 With indirect directness to the mill, — 
 The mill, a crazy tower with arms atop. 
 That caught a fragment of the untamed wind 
 And chained it to the bidding of the town. 
 Half a mile back the streaks of south-blown smoke, 
 24 
 
Woman-0 tJic-Watch. 25 
 
 Which left the cottage chimneys palely blue, 
 Whitened and faded, and in fading formed 
 The dim horizon's dusk. 
 
 Below, the shore 
 Grew bolder, and a little wharf was built, 
 Littered with anchors, nets, and half worn ropes, 
 And quaint, mysterious masses of hard hemp 
 Smelling of tar and salt. A sloop there was 
 That rode with lazy motion on the swell 
 And curtsied to the strand, while fishing-boats, 
 Bearing bright-blazoned titles 'thwart the sterns, 
 Bespoke the occupation of the town. 
 
 Now the slant shadows of the dipping masts 
 Tapered to spar-like spindles, long and lean 
 As nodding needles, for the day declined 
 And the flat-falling, low-reclining rays 
 Told that the time lacked but a transient hour 
 Of sunset. 
 
 Hence it was that silent steps 
 Which lately lingered on the yielding sand 
 Grew quicker, — steps of two whose threads of life 
 Seemed confluent : one a man with sun-browned 
 
 face, 
 Broad shouldered, heavy limbed ; not lacking 
 
 grace. 
 Yet of all grace unconscious ; such an one 
 As years of sea life might be looked to make : 
 The other a slight girl, with form as lithe 
 As willow, and her hair as full of lights 
 And deepening shadows as a forest stream. 
 And these two seemed intent on their one theme, 
 
26 Woman-d-t he-Watch. 
 
 Unmindful of all else without the world 
 Which held their love, for they were to be wed 
 — God willing — on the morning of the day 
 Which brought another week, and even now 
 The man (Edward she called him) whispered low 
 Sweet sentences of what the future held, 
 — A waiting treasure-trove of untold joys, — 
 To fill her soul and his. So long, indeed, 
 Upon the unrestful bosom of the deep 
 He like a waif had wandered, that the thought 
 Of home and hearth and her he loved, — all his, — 
 Of tidy curtains drawn to half conceal 
 The Paradise within from him who stood 
 Without, perhaps the glow and hallowed light 
 Of childish faces pressed against the pane. 
 Seemed like a long-sought haven of repose 
 To over-weary hearts. 
 
 Such pictures now 
 He drew, while she, with quickening tumult filled, 
 Drank in his words and dared not lift her eyes 
 Lest, lifted, they betrayed more light of love 
 Than heart had faith to utter. Then he laughed 
 And said : " It is not long — to-night I go 
 To gather store will ease the coming hours 
 Of our sweet honeymoon ; but I shall come 
 To thee again on Thursday, — mark the time, — 
 On Thursday ere the sun begin to sink." 
 And full of happy hopes of that near day, 
 He sang in undertones an old love song, 
 Tender and quaint, sea-savoured, and withal 
 Melodious : 
 
Woman-d -the- WatcJi. 27 
 
 My love, my love, the tide is flowing 
 
 And slipping under our polished keel ; 
 My love, my love, the breeze is blowing. 
 And over the waves the red sun glowing 
 Tips the spars as they rock and reel. 
 
 But tide may flow, 
 
 And breeze may blow. 
 
 Yet love, my love ! 
 
 While Heaven 's above 
 
 I am thine, love, I am thine ! 
 
 Sweetheart, sweetheart, the wind is droning 
 
 And sighing sadly among the shrouds ; 
 Sweetheart, sweetheart, the timbers groaning 
 Sound i' the air like a spirit moaning 
 Under the gray of the angry clouds. 
 
 Let timbers groan, 
 
 And spirits moan. 
 
 But, sweetheart, sweet ! 
 
 Tho' time fly fleet 
 
 Thou art mine, love, thou art mine ! 
 
 And drawing closer that half drooping head 
 Till all its burnt gold saddened into brown 
 Under his shoulder's shadow, Edward led 
 Their steps close to the little wharf, and then. 
 Half-playful, half in earnest, drew from out 
 His rough sea-jacket's ample inner folds, 
 A curious scarf of brilliant-colored stuffs 
 Inwoven with much pain of cunning hand 
 Into quaint emblems, meaningless or not. 
 
28 Woman-d -tJie- Watch. 
 
 According to the power of him who sought 
 
 To find a meaning. All the colors, bright 
 
 As painted rainbows on a screen, quick caught 
 
 The eye, and thus had Edward, when he voyaged 
 
 In the last trading trip, seen at a booth 
 
 In some brisk Indian port this gewgaw which 
 
 He bought and carried home to please a whim 
 
 For brilliant hues. Now, drawing forth the scarf, 
 
 He held it to the girl and laughing cried : 
 
 " This be the sign love's duty first shall give 
 
 Of love's own sweet remembrance ; fasten thou 
 
 This, as a flag, upon some bit of staff 
 
 From out the scattered rubbish of the beach. 
 
 And when, heart-hungered, I shall sail near home 
 
 On Thursday, ere the sun begin to sink, 
 
 There, first of all land signals which I see, 
 
 Shall be this emblem fretting in the wind 
 
 And painting all its length against the sky ; 
 
 And so my heart shall gather firmer strength 
 
 To stay its further waiting, and the sign 
 
 Will waft assurance over leagues of air, 
 
 Saying, " Sweetheart, I wait, thy Ethel waits ; 
 
 Oh lover, husband, come ! " And then he turned 
 
 Quickly to catch the blood upon her cheek 
 
 Which that last word had brought, for well he 
 
 knew 
 How surely it would bring it, and so leaned 
 And kissed her. And, ere either knew, they 
 
 reached 
 The wharf. There Edward, once more cautioning : 
 " Forget not Thursday, ere the sun go down." 
 
Woman-0-the- Watch. 29 
 
 And whispering that whereof no man may know, 
 Save that it drew a flood of tender light 
 Across the violet shadows of her eyes, 
 Turned from her and was gone, and Ethel stood 
 Still as a statue, looking out to sea, 
 The scarf of inwrought emblems in her hand. 
 And on her face emblems yet deeper wrought, 
 Till clear-cut cordage barred across the sun, 
 And he had sailed into the West. 
 
 II. 
 
 Time moves 
 With fateful fingers on the dial, and oft 
 Resteps in his old footprints ; so I came 
 To that same stretch of beach that bore away 
 Monotonously northward. Now there stood 
 A thriving, bustling town, compactly built 
 And cut with streets rectangular, and neat 
 As woodbine tacked against a cottage wall. 
 Whereon the eye rests, with a wish the while 
 To see it tangled and half lost in grass. 
 The path that forty years before had led 
 With indirect directness to the mill 
 Was blotted out and covered o'er with flag. 
 And at the place where once the wharf had been 
 Arose a ponderous pier, its space o'erpacked 
 With merchandise piled in long tiers and placed 
 In orderly confusion. Out beyond, 
 A goodly show of shipping, taut and trim. 
 Spoke of the commerce of the little port, 
 
30 Woman-d -tJie- Watch. 
 
 And led the eye to wander, as did mine, 
 
 Seeking the farther limits of the view 
 
 Half hid in haze. But soon, as though a spell, 
 
 Wielded by some resistless outer force, 
 
 Had fallen upon me, motionless I gazed 
 
 Upon a single object, wan and weird 
 
 As troubled dreams at dawn. There, in relief. 
 
 Sharp drawn against the background of the sky, 
 
 I saw the figure of a woman, tall. 
 
 But bent as with the weight of added years, 
 
 Stand peering out o'er misty miles of sea. 
 
 As though between the dull red vapor globe 
 
 Which marked the sun's position and herself 
 
 She looked to see some vision of a god 
 
 Float landward with the tide. Her left hand held 
 
 A slender rod, from whose half-splintered top 
 
 Fluttered a rag, flag-fashion, flapping hard 
 
 To rush away upon the gusty wind. 
 
 While with the right she shaded well her brow. 
 
 Nor seemed to know of aught without that space 
 
 Of sea and sky whereon her gaze was set. 
 
 And as I paused, regarding closer yet 
 
 That strange, quaint figure, close to wliere I stood 
 
 There passed a waterman, with slouching gait, 
 
 Who whistled a quick-changing sailor tune, 
 
 Full of queer grace-notes and untuneful trills. 
 
 That broke the current of my thought, and him 
 
 I beckoned, and, as being one who knew 
 
 The local gossip of the port, I begged 
 
 That I might learn who the wan woman was 
 
 That stood so still facing the wind. And he. 
 
Woman-d-tJic- Watch. 3 1 
 
 Half doubting if the question asked were asked 
 In jest or earnest, raised his brows and smiled 
 That it were asked at all. 
 
 " I thought," he said, 
 "That all who ever came here knew the tale 
 Of Woman-o -the- Watch ! Why there she stands 
 Where she has stood once every week for more 
 Than forty years. I mind me of the times 
 When I, a lisping child playing among 
 The anchors and the nets, saw that same hand 
 Uphold that same split flag-staff, and those eyes 
 Look out to sea with that same longing look. 
 Master, I think I be full come to years 
 Of manhood, and that woman stood as now 
 Ere I was born." 
 
 And here he paused, with arm 
 Outstretched, pointing his words with gesture. 
 
 Then 
 Reflectively, as one who conjured up 
 Remembrances of childhood, he went on : 
 " I oft have heard my father tell the tale 
 How that old Ethel (she who stands there now) 
 Once on a time was deemed as fair a lass 
 As sailor's heart could pine for, and that when 
 One loved her and had won her love as well, 
 And they were to be wed, he that she loved 
 Had left her to be gone but half a week. 
 For he was, like the rest, a fisherman, 
 And thought to swell his store by one more trial 
 Against their coming marriage. But or e'er 
 Two days had marked his going there arose 
 
32 Woinan-d -the-Watch. 
 
 A tempest such as those whose frosted heads 
 First saw the sunlight on this coast had ne'er 
 Before beheld — a tempest wild as war 
 And pitiless as death. 
 
 " Full well all knew 
 No fishing boat could live in such a sea, 
 And those whose fathers, husbands, brothers, sons. 
 Were out, like stricken deer, rushed up and down, 
 Some raving, others praying, and all wild ; 
 The women wrung their hands and wept, save one 
 (This one before us), who stood cold and white, 
 And never spake a word. The long night through 
 She seemed like some stone sculpture of despair 
 Or terror turned to ice. And when the day 
 Broke she was left like some dismantled barque. 
 Her eye despoiled of lustre, and across 
 Her sweet brow written nothingness. Her wits 
 Had gone out in the darkness of that night, 
 And naught was left but love. 
 
 " Thus sore bereft, 
 She, as it were, became a little child, 
 Pleased with a plaything, frightened by a frown ; 
 And even as a little child will find 
 In the same toy which yesterday beguiled. 
 Another toy quite fresh and new to-day. 
 To tire of now and want again to-morrow ; 
 So Ethel, with all ideas lost save one. 
 Because her lover, ere he went away, 
 Had bade her look on Thursday for his sail, 
 Has kept her curious calendar encased 
 Within her heart of heart, forgetful as 
 
Woinan-o-the- Watch . 3 3 
 
 Each Thursday's sun goes down that Thursday's sun 
 
 Has risen. Thus each week for forty years, 
 
 Like a wan worshipper at a sacred shrine, 
 
 She comes on Thursday ere the sun goes down. 
 
 Unfurling her poor pennon to the breeze 
 
 Upon the pier. She never fails, and so 
 
 The sailors call her Woman- o'-t/ie- Watch. 
 
 That, master, is her story." 
 
 As the man 
 Finished, we came quite close to where she stood 
 (For we had walked the while he told the tale), 
 And I regarded well those far-off eyes. 
 Seeking their solemn secret. O'er her face 
 There glowed a strange flush, centering in the 
 
 cheeks, 
 Which told of lying hope, — hope long deferred 
 And feedmg on itself. Her hair, outblown, 
 Was nearly white, and all her figure seemed 
 But an embodied dream. Then, as the sea 
 Brake far adown the shore, — a harmony 
 Of fast incoming tides, — I heard her sing. 
 In tones so weakened with o'er-freighted days 
 The melody seemed drowned in half-spent tears : 
 
 " My love, my love, the tide is flowing 
 
 And slipping under our polished keel ; 
 My love, my love, the breeze is blowing. 
 And over the waves the red sun glowing 
 Tips the spars as they rock and reel. 
 But tide may flow, 
 And breeze may blow, 
 
34 Wotnan-o -the- Watch. 
 
 Yet love, my love ! 
 
 While Heaven 's above 
 
 I am thine, love, I am thine ! " 
 
 And I, who watched her closely, saw the light — 
 The strange perennial light of those sad eyes — 
 Flame dully, as a dying ember flames. 
 And half athwart her visage stole a smile 
 More pitiful than weeping, and anon 
 The eager tension of the muscles drew 
 The anxious look into her face again, 
 And she was once more peering out to sea 
 Silent as stone. But still the restless deep 
 In minor chords its requiem rolled abroad, 
 And once again she sang : 
 
 " Sweet-heart, sweet-heart, — " 
 
 There the voice broke and faltered for a space. 
 As a dim memory of the shipwrecked mind 
 Stung the hurt heart to anguish, but ere long 
 She seemed upborne by some supernal force 
 That stirred the slumbering fires of her soul 
 And gave her youth and beauty. Once again 
 Erect she stood, her eye far-flashing with 
 The light of old, her form, remoulded, drawn 
 In gracefuller curves against the leaden sky. 
 The wind, which came in wet gusts from the sea, 
 Tore at her skirts and wrappings, and again, 
 Tugging with baffled malice at the flag, — 
 The poor, frayed rag whose emblems, once in- 
 wrought, 
 
Woman-o-thc-Watch. 35 
 
 Had wept themselves to whiteness in the storms 
 Of forty years, — howled yet intent to drown 
 All voices save its own. Yet still her tones 
 Upswelled, defiant with their new-found strength ; 
 Her blood coursed quickly and the breath of youth 
 Came to her lips, and so the melody 
 Bore forth the words of that old, tender song, 
 Like the triumphant cry of him who fights 
 And conquers all : 
 
 " Sweet-heart, sweet-heart, the wind is droning 
 
 And sighing sadly among the shrouds : 
 Sweet-heart, sweet-heart, the timbers groaning 
 Sound i' the air like a spirit moaning 
 Under the gray of the angry clouds. 
 
 Let timbers groan, 
 
 And spirits moan, 
 
 But, sweet-heart, sweet ! 
 
 Tho' time fly fleet 
 
 Thou art mine, love, thou art mine ! " 
 
 The strain rose glorified as though it held 
 A love outlasting death, and backward hurled 
 Defiance to the moth and rust of time ! 
 Rose as that wondrous cry, triumphant, yet 
 So tender, which of old broke on the ears 
 Of Thracian women as they looked upon 
 The trunkless head of Orpheus, rushing on 
 Adown the tide of Hebrus, — that wild cry : 
 " Eurydice, Eurydice, my own ! " 
 Then, as she finished, all her new-found fire 
 Faded and sank as sank the setting sun ; 
 
36 Woman-0-the- Watth. 
 
 And I turned sadly. And the woman stood 
 There in the deep'ning twilight. 
 
 Now the wind 
 Rose to a gale, and ere, with hasten'd steps, 
 I reached the nearer edges of the town, 
 Swirled the dry sand in circles, and anon 
 Broke 'round the angles into wails of woe ; 
 Yet once — but for a moment — bore along. 
 As it had been the fragment of a song. 
 Sung in the rhythm of another sphere, 
 A dying cadence, sad as falling leaves : 
 
 "Sweet-heart, sweet-heart, — " 
 
 And then the mad wind veered. 
 And I heard nothing save its own wild chords 
 And the low sobs of the eternal sea. 
 
MAGDALENE. 
 I. 
 
 T^HERE is a headland that o'erlooks the West 
 
 And on its forehead at each set of sun 
 Takes the warm farewell kisses of the day. 
 A windmill, too, with empty arms that plead 
 In desolation, widowed of the wind ; 
 And long unused stones, grown granulous, 
 As though the petulance of age and dearth 
 Cankered their disposition. 
 
 Half adown 
 The sloping hillside, walled from careless feet 
 And all the mild mutations of the field. 
 Stands in its sanctity a little plot 
 Set off forever to the silent dead, — 
 The beautiful, wise dead, — and here in peace 
 Sleep generations dreaming of the sun, — 
 The footsore travellers of the island town 
 Who rest and wait the morrow. 
 
 Faring once 
 Across the headland, down the hillside, I 
 Came to this warm God's acre, and drew near, 
 Reading, as one who cons remembered lore, 
 The brief mfemorials cut in cumbering stone, 
 37 
 
38 Magdalene. 
 
 The names of men revered and women loved, 
 
 Of children broken even as unoped buds 
 
 From stems that never healed them of the hurt, 
 
 Of kindred honored and friends gone before. 
 
 The headstones stood like sculptured sentinels 
 
 Anticipant in posture. One there was. 
 
 Partly in shadow of the loving grass, 
 
 Which drew my gaze by its elusive spell 
 
 And struck me into wonder. Over half 
 
 The legend-bearing stone the moss had grown. 
 
 Weaving a green, impenetrable veil, 
 
 And lichen, closer clinging than doth cling 
 
 Love's lips to lips that falter a farewell, 
 
 Covered it deeper into mystery. 
 
 So stood the tablet, bearing to the light 
 
 One half a history, while the shrouding bloom 
 
 Of reticent nature blotted out the rest. 
 
 I read a name, Honoria. To the right 
 
 A fair sunlit inscription. To the left 
 
 Naught but the masking greenery. 
 
 II. 
 
 So I came 
 And knelt before the cryptic stone, and bent 
 The sunburnt grasses back, and read the clear 
 Uncovered story of the sleeper : 
 
 " Here 
 Lies one whose hands were wrought to sacrifice 
 She visited the poor ; she served the sick ; 
 She did the Christ's work in a weary world." 
 
Magdalene. 39 
 
 Then I, with heart that knew the weight of te^rs 
 And ever a haunting sense of Hfe's strange coil, 
 With mine own soul communed : " In very truth 
 This woman was as one elect of God." 
 And yet the moss-grown riddle was unread ; 
 What message 'neath that mantle should I find ? 
 Wherefore this mutilated epitaph, 
 This tribute marred of half its meaning, blurred 
 To imperfection by the touch of Time ? 
 
 I stooped and painfully sought how to force 
 The moss and lichen from their stony soil ; 
 I clave the uprooted tendrils, piece by piece. 
 And tore the green delights whose cool caress 
 Lay like a storied palimpsest. Yet still 
 Those firm fond lingers of a dryad maid 
 Clung to the stone as love to life, and I 
 Won with hard toil a letter, then a word, 
 Wringing from weeping Nature what she held 
 In sacred trust of secrecy, and so 
 Filching a sentence from her shielding hand 
 In characters tear-stained to darker hue, — 
 The record of a maimed life : 
 
 "She loved 
 Nor well nor wisely, and fell off apace, 
 And lived, alas ! unfaithful to her vows." 
 
 III. 
 
 Over the headland grieved the cadenced wind. 
 And fell among the grasses, and died off ; 
 A little ghost of perfume from a rose 
 
40 Magdalene. 
 
 That nestled to the slielter of the mounds, 
 Touched me like spiritual fingers. 
 
 May not, then. 
 The sense of human justice be appeased, 
 That thus it graves a frailty into stone ? 
 Honoria, that hast ministered to need 
 And heard the low voice of the Nazarene, 
 Why has thy brother blazoned here thy sin ? 
 For this thy tomb thy noble deeds alone 
 Were fitting record. Nature's mercy knows 
 More than man's rigor dreams of, and has woven 
 Her careful web o'er his impeachment ; ay, 
 Even in thy fall, Honoria, thou hast found 
 The kiss of God upon thy ruined brow. 
 
 I climbed the hillside where the windmill stands 
 With pleading arms ; no sails, lateen and lank. 
 Shall ever again entice the breeze to sing 
 Light-hearted at its work ; and yet I thought 
 There came a whispered promise on the air 
 That loitered mid the field flowers, voluble : 
 " Much is forgiven, for she loved much." 
 
 And all the warm gold of the setting sun 
 Hallowed the headland that o'erlooks the West. 
 Nantucket. 
 
D 
 
 THE WOOD ROBIN. 
 
 |EEP in the hooded aisles, 
 Green-gloomed recesses, 
 Where solitude beguiles 
 My mobled grief to smiles, 
 And half expresses 
 Dreams of song-music mystically sung ; 
 As one who bows to share 
 The benison of prayer, 
 My soul confesses 
 Madness in melody like fragrance flung 
 Fair over bloomy miles. 
 
 What art thou that canst bring 
 
 Such sweet nepenthe. 
 That I, who hear thee sing. 
 Elated, seem to wing 
 
 To Him who sent thee, 
 Far thro' the luminate and spacious sky ? 
 How from thy dulcet throat 
 Distillest thou the note 
 Delight hath lent thee 
 To ravish hearts till lips forget to sigh. 
 Lost in thy carolling? 
 41 
 
42 TJie Wood Robin. 
 
 From collied depths of trees, 
 
 In rhythmic motion, 
 Thy quavering gospel frees 
 Lays liquid as the seas 
 Sing to the ocean — 
 Or leaves list in the whisper of the rain. 
 Messiah of the sky ! 
 Incarnate Rhapsody ! 
 In thy devotion. 
 Like Love's breath breathed across the lips of Pain, 
 Song shudders down the breeze. 
 
 Brother of Philomel, 
 
 Impassioned singer, 
 In thy full-throated swell 
 Such rest and rapture dwell 
 That joy, Joy-bringer, 
 Throbs thro' the threnody of weary years. 
 A-tremble down the green 
 Of married dusk and sheen 
 Thy wood-notes linger 
 In cadences whose laughter breaks to tears. 
 Forth faltering " Farewell." 
 
SERVUS SERVORUM DEI. 
 
 (from a picture.) 
 
 A SCENT of olive faltered in the air, 
 
 And Era Anselmo, with his well-fed lip 
 Drawn up in contemplation, felt his brow 
 And pondered o'er his cards ; his brother there 
 Had thrown an ace, and smiling even now 
 As though he held the game, placed hand on hip 
 And half winked at Anselmo. 
 
 These two sat 
 Within the monastery garden, snug 
 And comfortable, with a flask of wine 
 And fruit upon a salver at their hand, — 
 Era Bartolomeo, lean and featured fine, 
 And Era Anselmo, sensuously fat, 
 While on the breeze, as from a distant land, 
 A dreamful voice of bells hung rapturously 
 And broke to splintered music 'mid the boughs 
 That bended South and seemed intent to hug 
 The sun-soaked coping of the garden wall. 
 '' Brother, I played an ace." The holy vows 
 Of Bartolomeo had not hurt his love 
 Of winning hands at cards. " Oh, is that all ?" 
 43 
 
44 Servus Servorum Dei. 
 
 Anselmo laughed, " I'll cover it with this, 
 The diamond is the trump, I think, you said." 
 
 And ere he ceased to speak, a haggard man 
 Peered through the fretted gate, — a man above 
 Whose brow were lines of toil, and whose bent back, 
 Grown callous by long journeyings, seemed wed 
 To the hard angles of his cumbrous pack. 
 A child was with him whose bewildered eyes 
 Held that within them which in time should fan 
 A man's heart into flame, but now there dwelt 
 Naught there but sadness and the light to seize 
 The rainbows hid in tears. These two had felt 
 Hard want together, and their postures plead 
 More eloquently than all spoken words. 
 Then from his pack the wayworn peddler drew 
 Some crucifixes carved in olive wood 
 And strung with chains of -cunning handiwork, 
 And holding out his wares, in reverence stood 
 And begged the monks to purchase : " May it 
 
 please, 
 I have sold naught to-day." Anselmo threw 
 An angry glance, and with impatient jerk 
 Of his shaved head, ordered the man away. 
 The while the child looked wonderingly and wept 
 To see the sacred emblems sadly placed 
 Again within the pack : " Naught, naught to-day," 
 She murmured, and they passed adown the road. — 
 
 " I threw an ace," Fra Bartolomeo said. — 
 The echoes of receding footsteps chased 
 
Serviis Scri'onun Dei. 45 
 
 Each other into distance, — steps that strode 
 
 And steps that pattered, — man and child who kept 
 
 Together on their weary way. And so 
 
 The image of the dying Christ passed, too, 
 
 And in the dusty highway disappeared. 
 
 Then mid the whispering leaves a note of woe 
 
 Seemed mingled with the chimes, and ever through 
 
 The music of the vespers wove a sigh. 
 
 " I threw an ace," Fra Bartolomeo said ; 
 
 And Fra Anselmo answered : " Yes, and I 
 
 Have thrown a diamond, 't is the trump that wins 
 
 (Whether the cards be spotted black or red). 
 
 Most of the games played in this world of sins." 
 
 And once again a sob was in the bells : 
 Fra Bartolomeo sipped his wine and smiled. 
 The sun was setting, and the East grew wan 
 As one whose pallor hasting death foretells. 
 Anselmo dealt his cards. — The sad-eyed child, — 
 The bended man, — the broken Christ — were gone. 
 
THE SEA. 
 
 T LLIMITABLE Brahman of the Earth ! 
 
 Great Self to which the World-Soul gravitates ! 
 Thou dost contain all essences, enfold 
 All secrets in the hollows of thy heart 
 Where bide unending love, — preventing law. 
 Teach me but half the knowledge hid in thee, 
 But half the peace within thy silent cells, 
 And I shall know my godhead, as I know 
 Here for a little while my sad humanity. 
 
 46 
 
AN ANSWER. 
 
 T QUESTIONED : Why is evil on the Earth ? 
 
 A sage for answer struck a chord, and lo ! 
 I found the harmony of little worth 
 
 To teach my soul the truth it longed to know. 
 
 He struck again ; a saddened music, rife 
 With wisdom, in my ear an answer poured : 
 
 Sin is the jarring semitone of life^ — 
 The needed minor in a perfect chord. 
 
 47 
 
ARS LOQUITUR. 
 
 T AM the means ; they do degrade me most 
 Who make of me the end of life's desire ; 
 I do interpret Beauty, but am not 
 That Beauty's self ; I ever bend to hear 
 Divine Imagination's high commands, 
 Obeying that which is immutable. 
 They serve me best whose gaze transcends my law, 
 And know me least who wear me as a gyve. 
 I am the Living God of little men, — 
 The tool of great men I. 
 
 48 
 
WINTER RAIN. 
 
 T IKE driven smoke the rain among the trees 
 
 Slants silently to find the sodden grass, 
 There is a living shudder in the breeze 
 
 And every shrub an icy vesture has ; 
 
 No shape of loveliness but, ere it pass, 
 Doth turn and thrill me with immortal eyes ; 
 
 No voice but stills its song to sigh "Alas ! " 
 No cloud but blots the blue of naked skies. 
 While I stand mute and mourn a vanished Paradise 
 
 Summer, that once within thy scented lap 
 Pillowed my head, as on a daisied hill 
 
 We sat together, thou and I, mayhap 
 
 Too much enamoured of each other's will, 
 Why hast thou left me, desolate and chill. 
 
 To fashion ghosts upon the viewless air? 
 
 Why should more favored suitors have their fill 
 
 Of joy and sunlight, while my biiter fare 
 
 Brings hunger to my soul and to my heart despair? 
 
 Is it that flesh grows gross in tasting joy, — 
 That Pain's sword gives the accolade divine? 
 
 Is it that sorrow mingles its alloy 
 
 To touch men's gilded lives to issues fine ? 
 Ah ! that the seeker for life's glorious wine 
 4 49 
 
50 Winter Rain. 
 
 Must rend each pulsing heart from which it flows ; 
 
 Ah ! that the working out of love's design 
 Should crush the perfume from each velvet rose, 
 And rudely wake the soul from Summer's soft 
 repose. 
 
 Yet hark ! the liquid whisper of the rain 
 
 Is riven by a song that high and higher 
 Soars and fades faintly till the rare refrain 
 
 Seems of its own soft rapture to expire. 
 
 Is it pale Winter singing to the lyre 
 Of barren branches and ungarneped sheaves ? 
 
 Is it the hymning of a vernal choir, — 
 The immortal spirits of the unborn leaves ? 
 I know not, yet my inner sense the song receives. 
 
PH^DRA {Loquitur). 
 
 T TNLOOSE the triple serpents at my throat 
 
 And let me bare my bosom to the night ; 
 Then leave me, ye whose blood is held in leash 
 To do a matron's bidding, ye unstained 
 Troezinian women, with white horror writ 
 Stark in your bended brows ! 
 
 T may not tell 
 What question seeks an answer in my soul, 
 Seeing I am half human at the best. 
 And stung by loves that suck the breasts of Fear. 
 Look, where the sleeve falls open, how my arm 
 Borrows new pallor from the impassioned moon,- 
 Herself a borrower, bankrupt e'en as 1 
 When light and love must be repaid in kind. 
 May I not follow, with unsandaled feet, 
 The scented wood-ways leading to bowered joy, 
 And sate mine eyes, though all my body die 
 Of baulked desire, whereat the sad gods frown ? 
 I seek Hippolytus, and though he slay, 
 Still will I seek him, still from 'venging heaven 
 Braving the bolts ye prate of. 
 
 Back, I pray ; 
 Give me a little air upon my eyes. 
 Upon my throbbing brows the night's caress ; 
 Go ye, and win your lords to softer ways : 
 For me Delight is married to Despair, 
 And I woo both within the arms of Death. 
 51 
 
AN IONIAN FRIEZE. 
 
 TTORSES rampant and curbed, compactly close, 
 With polished hooves that quiver from the 
 earth. 
 And mane-enfringed necks, whose rondure shows 
 
 In silhouette against the pale sky's girth. 
 Beneath chaste marble, jewelled of chrysolite, 
 
 A gracile girl, with fillet-girdled hair. 
 Stands half revealed through folds of shimmering 
 white, 
 
 Her carmine lips wed to a silver flute, 
 
 As though their budding beauty to transmute 
 
 To music dying off along the air. 
 In sage processional pass bearded priests, 
 
 And acolytes with pink and boyish limbs. 
 
 Chanting to all the gods strange bardic hymns, 
 Less tuned to sacrifice than fit for feasts. 
 And over all the antique light, the old 
 
 Divine perfection, the lost art which drapes 
 
 In fairest majesty heroic shapes 
 Enwrought upon a field of beaten gold. 
 
 52 
 
A DREAMER. 
 
 T_T E loved the Morning with her lips a-cold, 
 
 He drank large wisdom at Noon's nippled 
 breast, 
 And, like a later Jason, sought his gold 
 
 Among the fleeces of the winnowed West. 
 Through days divinely blent of love and light, 
 
 By reedy runnels he was wont to sit, 
 Till broke upon his sense-enraptured sight 
 
 The Everlasting Poet's epic, writ 
 In stars upon the placid forehead of the Night. 
 
 He loved to feel the pulses of the Spring, 
 
 Thrilling with life that struggled to the sun, — 
 To list the message that the blossoms bring 
 
 And count the roses as a guerdon won. 
 Within the Summer's deep blood-tinctured heart. 
 
 To squander days beneath the murmurous trees, 
 Till through his dreams the cunning hand of Art 
 
 Inwrought the splendor of such fantasies, 
 That Earth, which spake of God, became His 
 counterpart. 
 
 Fain were his feet to follow vagrant ways 
 When resinous odors filled the eager air, 
 
 He loved to wander through the amber haze, 
 Across the meadows, to the upland where 
 53 
 
54 -^ Dreamer. 
 
 Sat Autumn pensively amid her sheaves, 
 Marking the alchemy which all too soon 
 
 Transmutes to gold the treasure of her leaves, 
 In the long season's mellow afternoon, 
 
 And touches naked boughs wherethrough the sad 
 wind grieves. 
 
 He was a dreamer, yet he loved his friends ; 
 
 He gained no gold, nor ever garnered care ; 
 He strove not to attain ambition's ends, 
 
 Content that other men should do and dare. 
 Perhaps he was not noble, yet no fears 
 
 Made up the aftermath of his emprise ; 
 For swift success he never bartered tears 
 
 Wrung from the fountains of another's eyes. 
 Nor marred the melody Love sings among the 
 Spheres. 
 
COMPENSATION. 
 
 A BOAT went out with the ebbing tide, 
 "^^ A-throb with the pulse of the heart of the sea, 
 And curtsied low to the rushy shore, 
 And dimpled the waves where the stream grew 
 
 wide, 
 Then rounded the light on the lower lea ; 
 And the boat had never a sail nor oar. 
 Nor rudder to temper her destiny. 
 And Hope was the name that her gunnel bore, — 
 But she came not back to me. 
 
 A ship sailed into the silent West, 
 The dearest pride of my heart was she. 
 And fair on the sunset's face of gold 
 Her tapering spars stood clear confest ; 
 And ah ! 't was as sad as sad could be, 
 For the days went by and I grew old. 
 And night spread over the slumbering sea, 
 But my ship vvas forgot as a tale that is told, 
 Nor ever sailed back to me. 
 
 I gave a song to the listening air, 
 
 It trembled aloft with a new delight, 
 
 And bore, in the voice of a strange, sweet bird, 
 
 A measure of joy that was half despair ; 
 
 55 
 
56 Compensatioji. 
 
 And the song was a part of my soul, my might, 
 My innermost thought and tenderest word, 
 But it sank to a moan and was silenced quite. 
 Like memoried melodies long since heard, — 
 Lost stars in a starless night. 
 
 A woman fair with the grace that clings 
 
 To moonlit eyes and sun-kissed head, 
 
 Leaned low and lightly spake to me, 
 
 Till my man's heart leaped with a sense of wings 
 
 " Thy hope to an unknown land is sped, 
 
 Thy pride is wrecked in a soundless sea. 
 
 And the fragrant flower of song is dead, — 
 
 Lost to the world and lost to thee, — 
 
 But love is left," she said. 
 
AVE AMERICA ! 
 
 AN ODE. 
 I. 
 
 "T^EAR Land, my Mother ! To thy feet I bring 
 The amplest measure of a faltering song ; 
 
 Hope's starlike harbinger ! Wherever wrong 
 Hath wrought the work of her imagining, 
 Wherever men have felt the gall of chains 
 And through the dark have whispered Liberty, 
 
 Or women, widowed of divinest dowers. 
 Have smiled between their sobs to dream of thee, 
 There hast thou given the solace of thy plains, 
 
 The shelter of thy battlemented towers. 
 Thy hills are mine, O Land made doubly dear 
 
 By hallowed homes and yet more hallowed 
 graves ; 
 Thy coasts whose marge perennially doth hear 
 
 The husky murmurs of innumerous waves : 
 Thy forests, too, with shades more soft than sleep, 
 
 And sanctities of solitude wherethrough 
 Strange beauty, which from alien eyes doth keep 
 
 Her fair perfection, steals in ever new 
 And ever growing wonder. Mine thy bowers, 
 
 And all the mellow comfort of thy fields 
 57 
 
58 Ave A nierica ! 
 
 Nourished with sunHght and the breath of flowers 
 And aftermath perfumes whose parting yields 
 
 An incense fine as prayer. Could I but pass 
 Long days in silence on thy sloping meads, 
 
 Amid the populous rumors of the grass, 
 
 Unrest had grown to graciousness, whereof con- 
 tentment breeds. 
 
 II. 
 
 And yet, dear Land, a Nation's vows 
 
 Are graven on thy laurelled brows ; 
 
 For thou wast perfected of fire. 
 
 Fair fruitage of the World's desire, 
 
 Thy mother Justice, War thy sire. 
 
 War when a tyrant's mailed hand 
 
 Sent freedom thrilling through the land ; 
 
 War when again oppression sought 
 
 To dwarf the rights which blood had bought ; 
 
 And War, War, War when Treason's mouth 
 
 Spat poison through the amber South, 
 
 And thy own children struck the blow 
 
 Which, aimed aright, had laid thee low. 
 
 Hark to the bells ! 
 The large alarm that onward speeds, 
 Forerunner of undying deeds, 
 Outrung from spire to spire. 
 
 To touch the mild 
 Peace-pipings with heroic ire ! 
 
 How the call swells ! 
 
 Strenuous, wild, 
 
A7'i' Aiiii-rica ! 59 
 
 Impatient I And the guns, the guns ! 
 
 From Sumter booms 
 
 The signal to thy thousand looms, — 
 The summons to thy million sons, 
 
 Dear Country, to put off the ways 
 
 And works of honeyed quietude ; 
 
 To meet the rude 
 Awakening with unquickened breath ; 
 
 And with unflinching gaze 
 To look into the sodden eyes of death. 
 See the battalions splendidly sweeping 
 
 r3own from the North ! 
 
 With unwavering lines, coming forth 
 To bring sunlight of day 
 To the marshes where Treason is stealthily creeping, 
 Black in a habit of gray. 
 
 III. 
 
 But ah ! the sons who at their mother's feet 
 Kissed Death's pale lips and knew their joy com- 
 plete ! 
 
 Ah ! thou supreme civilian, tender, wise, 
 With fair j)eace-offerings in thy rugged hands, 
 
 And such divine forgiveness in thy eyes 
 As knows no counterpart in all the storied lands ! 
 
 The world's vast harmony by thy devotion 
 Is made complete; and through its concords ring 
 
 The notes of thy fair life, in ordered motion, 
 Like melody from some earth-nurtured spring. 
 
 Or streams that in the throbbing heart of ocean 
 
6o Ave A mcrica ! 
 
 Flow on forever and forever sing. 
 
 From thee humanity in every clime 
 A deeper love of human freedom gains, 
 While rings the echo of the falling chains 
 
 Struck off by thee and made by thee sublime. 
 x\nd as o'er some imperishable bower 
 
 The gentle hand of brotherhood might crave 
 Love's benediction tenderly to shower, 
 
 So were I -fain, strong leader of the brave, 
 To fling the fragrance of this fading flower. 
 
 Across the fadeless verdure of thy grave. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Rare is the recompense of mighty deeds, 
 And high the heritage of lofty souls; 
 
 And tho' the memory of the past recedes 
 
 Into the mist of unremembering years, — 
 Tho' Time's wheel rolls 
 
 Swift on its axle, scorning human tears 
 
 And men's sad laughter, — yet the spirit lives 
 
 Which makes immortal all great labor done. 
 All noble thought translated into act. 
 
 And ever gives, 
 
 Finer than fable, the undying fact 
 
 Which lies behind each radiant victory won. 
 And thou, my Mother, with eternal youth 
 Set like a pearl above thy unruffled brows, 
 
 Art grown more fair that thou awhile didst feel 
 
 The bite of steel, 
 
Ave A merica ! 6 1 
 
 And in the darkest of thy days wore truth, 
 The chiefest jewel in thy diadem. 
 
 No further need thy fervor to arouse, 
 For thou art victress and the unpriced gem 
 
 Of Uberty is thine, 
 
 And all the graces that in perfect-statured wo- 
 manhood combine. 
 I see thee now, resplendent, prodigal. 
 
 With royal opulence of field and mine 
 Poured in thy broad lap ; with thy granaries all 
 
 Bursting to hold the gifts of generous earth ; 
 
 I mark thy mellow fruitage, thy red wine, 
 Sun-tinctured in a million purple hearts ; 
 
 The song of comfort that doth mock at dearth ; 
 I hear the hum which from unnumbered marts 
 Bruits of thy commerce circling land and sea, — 
 A nation's life-blood pulsing endlessly ; 
 
 I hear the clack of laboring looms, and long 
 
 Listen elated to the shuttle's song ; 
 Before the crescent sickles of the free 
 
 A continent's fair harvest bows, and shrill. 
 Unceasing invocations speed the flight 
 Of tireless messengers, to carry art 
 To regions that but late have seen the light, 
 
 Through nerves which thrill 
 To bear the deep pulsations of a heart 
 
 Which falters not, companioned with a never- 
 faltering will. 
 Behold ! great Land, thy majesty, and raise 
 In deep-voiced ecstasy a song of praise. 
 
62 Ave America ! 
 
 V. 
 
 What of the future, O Land of the World's 
 aspiration ? 
 Land of large symmetries wrought on the prairies' 
 broad faces, 
 Land ever lulled by the somnolent kiss of the ocean, 
 Ever enthralled with the azure-eyed lakes, con- 
 summation 
 And pride of a continent, deep in whose bosom 
 no traces 
 Of tyranny ever have marred a glad nation's 
 devotion, — 
 What may anointed eyes see 
 Of the future for thee ? 
 Deep are the signs and portents, wide in the skies 
 
 are they glowing ; 
 Onward and upward eternally, fleet as thy rivers 
 are flowing. 
 Speeds thy divinely appointed destiny, ever and 
 ever 
 Seer and Prophet and Bard, glad in their calling, 
 bestowing 
 Prophecy, promise, and song, pledge that no 
 power shall sever 
 Thee from thy glory, dear Land ; us from thy love, 
 
 gentle Mother ; 
 Thee from the fervor of hearts welded as brother 
 
 to brother ; 
 Us from thy beauty and truth ; thee and thy sons 
 from each other. 
 
Az>e America ! 63 
 
 All hail to thee, Beautiful One ! deep reverenced, 
 
 love of a nation ! 
 To thee be the hand horizontal uplifted, in grave 
 
 salutation ; 
 In thee are the potencies wrapped, new lights 
 
 springing forth of thy being 
 As the stars from the womb of the night. Press 
 
 on, in the vision all-seeing. 
 Through darkness and dread and despair, to the 
 
 dawn and the light and the glory. 
 Thy 'scutcheon the worth of mankind, thy annals 
 
 humanity's story. 
 
SONNETS. 
 
 65 
 
UNCROWNED. 
 
 T OVE looked upon me with immortal eyes, 
 
 And I became a god with heart of flame ; 
 Faith, with a woman's lips, pronounced my name 
 
 Full tenderly, entreating, loverwise. 
 Each spake unto me in the other's guise ; 
 
 Love said : Believe. Unfaith is true love's shame. 
 And like a benison Faith's whisper came : 
 
 Love is the deepest of my mysteries. 
 
 Then I who lacked fine fibre to perceive 
 Life's high beatitudes, trailed in the dust 
 
 The chaplet Heaven had placed upon my head ; 
 Alas ! in loving I could not believe ; 
 
 I dallied with the courtesan Distrust ; 
 
 I questioned ! Faith and Love together fled. 
 
 67 
 
KARMA. 
 
 OlRTH and desire and death and birth again. 
 The purgatory of a deathless soul, 
 Elusive bubbles which forever roll 
 
 Down restless rivers to the moaning main ; 
 
 The seasons open and the seasons wane, 
 Eternal bells for dead millenniums toil, 
 Karma endures, and lays its weight of dole 
 
 Upon the tablets of the aching brain. 
 
 The deeds of men are eddies in the wave, 
 
 Forever forming fainter, wider rings ; 
 Alas ! there is no potency to save, 
 
 Nor for the pain of life a healing balm. 
 
 Oh, for the Buddha's holy chastenings ! 
 
 The blest Nirvana ! The unending calm ! 
 
 68 
 
EARTH AND NIGHT. 
 
 (paraphrase of WALT WHITMAN.) 
 
 T WALK beneath the tender, growing night, 
 
 Where darkness makes a mystery of the sea. 
 Chanting beatitudes, as one made free 
 And soaring skyward in ecstatic flight. 
 Upon my lips the south wind breathes delight, 
 And thro' the slumbering trees pours melody ; 
 Press close, bare-bosomed joy, for I am he 
 With eyes anointed to diviner sight. 
 
 Still, nodding Night ! that for my solace keepest 
 A beauty which no touch of tempest mars ; 
 Sad Earth ! that for departed sunset weepest, 
 I read a stern evangel in thy scars. 
 I am the lover in whose heart thou sleepest, 
 O Night ! that hast the largess of the stars. 
 
 69 
 
SIC ITUR AD ASTRA. 
 
 "\^7'H0 builds on Reason builds upon the sand 
 A fabric mortal as the human brain, 
 
 A fetich-temple crumbling 'neath the strain 
 Of Love's first touch, and razed at her demand. 
 Mind is a function, by Omniscience planned. 
 
 Dull as digestion, earthly-bred as pain ; 
 
 Thought's final triumph is to prove thought vain. 
 And logic's life is quenched by logic's hand. 
 
 The Spirit's intuition, strong and pure, 
 Alone soars fetterless to realms above, 
 
 Leaping in scorn past reason's bounds, secure 
 Where sentient knowledge dies, true life to prove ; 
 
 Emotion, feeling, these alone endure ; 
 
 Thank God ! God is not Intellect, but Love. 
 
 70 
 
AN EARLY-APRIL MORNING. 
 
 A CROSS the sky the rifted clouds pursue 
 
 Rare shapes en wrought to wonders manifold, 
 And robins glance obliquely to behold 
 The cawing caravans that speck the blue ; 
 Thy jewels are half a frost and half a dew, 
 And o'er the earthy stretches of the wold 
 A warm caress, from fingers still a-cold, 
 Falls like an old song in a cadence new. 
 
 Dear Morning ! with thy maid's hair unconfined 
 
 By virgin fillets of a later spring, 
 
 Risen as from a rounded dream to find 
 
 The world a-riot for a bourgeoning, 
 
 Thy eyes spill sleep and sunlight, while the wind 
 
 Beats blood to blushes with his gusty wing. 
 
 71 
 
FINIS CORONAT OPUS. 
 
 A MBITION'S finger beckoned and I ran 
 "^^ With bleeding feet o'er rugged paths and 
 
 drear, 
 Spurning the inward whispers, soft and clear. 
 Which said : " In vain ! Thy life is but a span ; 
 The grave shall cover all." Still, in the van 
 Of human action, I thought soon to rear 
 Some mighty monument to vanquished fear, 
 — A shaft to mark the triumph of a Man. 
 
 Poor fool ! My gold was lost amid the dross ; 
 Hope died within me, and, as one who mourns, 
 I bowed before a bitter sense of loss, 
 Clinging despairing to the altar's horns, 
 And raised my eyes to where, upon the cross, 
 In sad reproval, hung a crown of thorns. 
 
 72 
 
ELECTRA. 
 
 1\ /TY Love too stately is to be but fair, 
 
 Too fair she is for naught but stateliness ; 
 She bids me Nay, and yet a silent Yes 
 
 Dwells in the dusk her shadowy eyelids wear. 
 
 My Love's step makes a music in the air, 
 Touching the sense with a divine caress. 
 And all the rapture of the dawn doth bless 
 
 The light that leaps to life across her hair. 
 
 Her mouth is just the love-couch for a song, 
 And 'mid the fragrance of its riven flowers 
 Low laughter breaks and trembles close to tears 
 Mingled of mirth and melody, as a throng 
 Of bird notes wakes to joy the drowsy hours 
 And weaves delight through all the grieving 
 years. 
 
 73 
 
BEDTIME. 
 
 A S children, who, through all the sunburnt day, 
 Have tossed aside their playthings, one by 
 one. 
 Ceasing each frolic ere 't were well begun 
 To taste the joyance of some newer play. 
 When bedtime comes, turn from their games away, 
 With little feet too heavy now to run 
 And eyes too full of sleep to miss the sun 
 Whose beams still on the mother's forehead stay ; 
 
 So we, tired children of the garnered years, 
 Grown weary of our toys of gold and place, 
 Nor craving uncompanioned days to reap 
 The harvest of our half remembered tears. 
 Look in the universal mother's face, 
 
 And murmuring : " It is bedtime," fall asleep. 
 
 74 
 
DECORATION DAY. 
 
 T ET fall the roses gently. It may be 
 
 That in the sunlight of a fairer clime 
 They shall rebloom to beauty as sublime 
 As this departed flower of chivalry ; 
 And ever as the sobbing of the sea, 
 
 Breeze-rippled, breaks to chants of lordlier 
 
 rhyme. 
 Silence your dirges, and in martial time 
 Let loud-lipped trumpets blazon victory ! 
 
 Yield not to grief the solace of a tear, 
 
 But 'neath the forefront of a spacious sky 
 
 Smile all exultant, as they smiled at fear 
 Who dared to do when doing meant to die. 
 
 So best may comrades prove remembrance dear. 
 So best be hallowed earth where soldiers lie. 
 
 75 
 
A SONNET OF SILENCE. 
 
 'T^IPTOE, with finger at her lip, and rare 
 
 Red-rose mouth rounded to a song unsung, 
 A mute maid half a-dream her flowers among,- 
 
 Nature, whose love the loves of all men bear, 
 
 Whose eyes the eyes of all men have found fair, 
 Feels in the changes on her spirit rung 
 The melody of an unspoken tongue, 
 
 The eloquence of silence everywhere. 
 
 Hushed is the poesy of Summer flowers, 
 Silent the vast evangel of the stars. 
 
 And Time, whose noiseless fingers tell the hours 
 
 Like beads upon a vestal's rosary. 
 
 Hears voiceless music writ in golden bars, — 
 
 The mirth of moonlight silent on the sea. 
 
 76 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 (may 22, 1885.) 
 
 "C* VANGELIST of truth, whose sovereign glance 
 Encompassed centuries, and from the fen 
 Of passion wrested beauty ; thou whose pen 
 
 Ennobled love and glorified romance ; 
 
 Great champion of liberty, whose lance — 
 A beacon to the wavering hearts of men — 
 Impaled the false, and ever and again 
 
 Bare death to tyranny and fame to France. 
 
 To thee immortal laurel wreaths belong, 
 To us a memory that the world reveres ; 
 
 'T was thine to know the good, to right the wrong 
 'T is ours to glean the fruitage of thy years ; 
 
 Thou gav'st to us a gift divine — thy song. 
 We give to thee our human tribute— tears. 
 
 77 
 
WALT WHITMAN. 
 (may 31, 1886.) 
 
 13 OLD innovator in the realm of thought ; 
 
 Strong-sinewed Titan, fighting for the right, 
 And wresting from the panoplies of night 
 
 The glories that the patient stars have caught 
 
 From an evanished sun ; brave teacher taught 
 By Nature's lips to see with Nature's sight. 
 And so to shed day's fair, unsullied light 
 
 Upon the work your rugged hands have wrought. 
 
 You stand serene upon your mountain crag, 
 Unmindful of the shallow hum which fills 
 The valleys with derision. You can wait. 
 And waiting, find your own, when prescient Fate 
 Shall grant slow justice, and unfurl the flag 
 Of Innocency on a thousand hills. 
 
 78 
 
WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 (march 26, 1892.) 
 
 "n\ ARKNESS and death ? Nay, Pioneer, for thee 
 The day of deeper vision has begun ; 
 There is no darkness for the central sun 
 
 Nor any death for immortality. 
 
 At last the song of all fair songs that be, 
 At last the guerdon of a race well run, 
 The upswelling joy to know the victory won, 
 
 The river's rapture when it finds the sea. 
 
 Ah, thou art wrought in an heroic mould. 
 
 The modern man upon whose brow yet stays 
 A gleam of glory from the age of gold, — 
 
 A diadem which all the gods have kissed. 
 Hail and farewell ! flower of the antique days, — 
 Democracy's divine protagonist. 
 
 79 
 
TO JOHN KEATS. 
 
 T^EEP in the whisp'ring pine whose profile bars 
 ■^-'^ The moon's white face ; hush'd in the per- 
 fumed bowers, 
 Where, languid with the breath of sleeping flowers. 
 
 The summer night lies panoplied in stars ; 
 
 High on the mountain crags of brakes and scars, 
 A spirit sought to find in poesy's powers 
 Some beauty to bedeck time's conquering hours, 
 
 Like roses on the flaming front of Mars. 
 
 Yet still, tho' lovingly, he sought in vain, 
 
 Till nature's blossom bore the bloom of art, — 
 
 Till ecstasy of joy had wedded pain 
 
 In bonds which never hand of man shall part ; 
 
 Then found within the chambers of thy brain 
 The sacred fire to light Endymion's heart. 
 
 80 
 
TO HERBERT SPENCER. 
 
 ' I ^HINKER of ages ! probing pregnant deeps 
 Of potent science, till your trained eye saw, 
 Amid the maze, a unity of law, — 
 
 An ordered motion whose pulse ever keeps 
 
 Its time-beat while the silent cosmos sleeps, 
 Calm in its poise ! The glory yours to draw 
 From myths of special causes the hid flaw 
 
 That marks them false. Humanity so reaps 
 
 The fruitful harvest that your hands have sown. 
 And finds in Force, evolved, dispelled, the trace 
 
 Of that design which, knowing, yet unknown. 
 Thrills through a universe from crown to base. 
 
 The fact is ours, — the honor yours alone 
 To fling this beacon into trackless space ! 
 
AN IDLE DAY: 
 
 A SEQUENCE OF SONNETS. 
 
 83 
 
ONE O CLOCK. 
 
 SALVE. 
 
 LEEP, soft begetter of our fantasies ! 
 
 Inconsequent philosopher of dreams ! 
 I give thee greeting as a friend who seems 
 
 To link my spirit to the slumbering trees ; 
 
 Yet farewell for a season ; hours like these 
 
 Bear golden freightage on their hurrying streams, 
 — Brave argosies of thought enriched by gleams 
 
 Divinely dowered of deepest mysteries. 
 
 1 am in love with Earth, and find it fair 
 
 To lie within the rondure of her arms 
 Beneath a plenitude of stars, caressing 
 The moony midnight of her tressed hair. 
 
 And draining from her fruitful lips the blessing 
 
 And guerdon of her immemorial charms. 
 
 85 
 
TWO O CLOCK. 
 
 HEART OF THE NIGHT. 
 
 OiLENCE, that art the harbinger of thought, 
 And Fancy, foster-child of Solitude ; 
 Companions of the meadow and the wood, 
 Whose cheer my early morning steps have sought ; 
 How fair the fabric by your cunning wrought 
 Upon my mild and meditative mood, 
 The while the unneighbored stars do bend and 
 brood 
 Above the vasty darkness vision-fraught ! 
 
 Ah ! beating heart of the soft sandaled night ! 
 Slow pulse of sad hours orphaned of the sun ! 
 Your rhythm is timed to measures of that song 
 Which strong seraphic voices roll along, 
 From mountain height to towering mountain height, 
 Like the proud psean for a victory won. 
 
 86 
 
THREE O CLOCK. 
 
 PROMISE OF DAWN. 
 
 A POTENCY and promise. Far away 
 
 Gaunt figures grow to being in the mist ; 
 A woven wonder of pale amethyst, 
 Shot through with filaments of paler gray, 
 Spreads like a vestment for the unborn day. 
 
 Trailing imperial skirts where clouds have kissed 
 The silence-haunted hills which lean and list 
 The utterance of the everlasting Yea. 
 
 Let there be Light ! I seem to hear the cry 
 Down all the ample corridors of Night, 
 
 And dark infinitudes of lonesome sky 
 
 Grow voluble with that majestic calling, 
 Reverberant echoes ever faintlier falling 
 
 Through leagues of viewless air : L^et there be Light ! 
 
 87 
 
FOUR O CLOCK. 
 
 DAYBREAK IN THE WOODS. 
 
 NT IGHT falls away and fades along the breeze, 
 Lost in the turning of diurnal tides, 
 The morning, like a pallid virgin, glides 
 
 In cool seclusion 'mid the spectral trees ; 
 
 And I, more early risen than the bees 
 
 Whose tardy wooing the laburnum chides, 
 Am ravished by an undersong that bides 
 
 The lapsing of the leafy harmonies. 
 
 I lift my lips to meet the kiss of Morn, 
 
 Breathing the breath of Day's sweet maiden- 
 time. 
 And feel within my spirit, loverwise, 
 The deep, divine elation sometimes born 
 Of strains of music or a far-off chime 
 Or love-liglit lambent in a woman's eyes. 
 
FIVE O CLOCK. 
 
 A WOODLAND POET. 
 
 A LIQUID music wrought of many a trill, 
 Light as low laughter o'er a summer lea, 
 Pours down the greenwood aisles an ecstasy, — 
 Utters its rapture, falters and is still. 
 Wood Robin ! Sylvan Poet that dost spill 
 
 Such dear delights through listening leaves ! 
 
 Thou free 
 Spendthrift of joy and hoarded melody ! 
 What strange love philter hath beguiled thy will ? 
 
 For I do think there live within thy breast 
 The faith and fervor of an antique age, 
 
 Tuning thy note, at Beauty's soft behest. 
 Our sordid aspiration to assuage. 
 
 And to our dull ears making manifest 
 The pulse and passion of our heritage. 
 
SIX O CLOCK. 
 
 THE FARM-YARD. 
 
 T JNHARROWED by the toiling town's alarm, 
 In blest seclusion from the daily fret 
 Which avarice and blinded greed beget, 
 Bask the broad acres of the peaceful farm ; 
 And in its special angle, walled from harm. 
 
 The barn-yard, deep with husks of corn which 
 
 yet 
 Smell of the fields and tell of honest sweat, 
 Lies in the morning sunshine, wide and warm. 
 
 Here huddled fatlings slumber in the pens. 
 
 While the cocks' shrill defiances outsoar 
 The soft staccato of maternal hens ; 
 
 And from the populous tangles of a vine 
 Pert sparrows perch upon the stable door ; 
 And bright pails foam beneath large-uddered 
 kine. 
 
 go 
 
SEVEN O CLOCK. 
 
 BLENDED VOICES. 
 
 "\J ATURE is full of voices ; some that plead 
 
 And some that sorrow and yet more that 
 sing ; 
 Forever keeping for my questioning 
 A satisfying answer. This frail reed 
 Along the marshes whispers of its need ; 
 And in the whirring of a sudden wing 
 I catch the lilt of love, wherein the sting 
 Yet lingers of love's half-forgotten creed. 
 
 I hear a ditty made of woven sighs — 
 
 A heart-break in a cadence ; and again 
 The little lisping of a crippled child 
 Full of the tender eloquence of pain ; 
 And evermore a monotone of mild 
 And mellow music born in Paradise. 
 
 91 
 
EIGHT O CLOCK. 
 
 CLOVER. 
 
 JUST where the maples whisper morning vows 
 To the quick runnel with its mimic tides, 
 I know a field of clover which divides 
 The meadow grasses from the orchard boughs ; 
 And there, knee deep, stand contemplative cows, 
 With eyes benignant and swift shuddering hides 
 And beaded noses and a breath where 'bides 
 The garnered sweetness of the scented mows. 
 
 They stand, unmindful of a world of strife 
 
 Wherein men's souls are battered to a lie, 
 And hoarded dollars are the goal of life, 
 
 And every mart is tolling Beauty's knell, — 
 Where he 's a hero who can cheapest buy, 
 And he a god who can the dearest sell. 
 
 92 
 
NINE O CLOCK. 
 
 WHISPERS OF THE CORN. 
 
 1^7" HAT sunlit spaces ! Is the world asleep, 
 
 Lulled by the murmurous voices of the morn, 
 The while amid the serried ranks of corn 
 
 The keen-edged leaves their idle gossip keep ? 
 
 Perhaps it is but fancy that some deep 
 
 And mythic message to my sense is borne, — 
 Half a light song, and half a sigh forlorn, 
 
 Like laughter on the lips of them that weep. 
 
 Indeed I know not ; yet within my ears 
 
 Linger such honeyed accents as beteem 
 
 Strange sweetness to the melody of tears. 
 
 And to rejoicing new delights which seem 
 
 The tender lays of long-forgotten years. 
 
 Reechoed softly through a tranquil dream. 
 
 93 
 
TEN O CLOCK. 
 
 MID-MORN. 
 
 OEAUTY is never wholly lost to sight, 
 
 For though she shrink affrighted at the din, 
 Haply her presence still does enter in 
 
 The open doorway of our hearts to light 
 
 Our lives to righteousness. Nor may the might 
 Of Mammon or the manacles of sin 
 Prevent her perfectness, nor ever win 
 
 The scent from roses or the stars from night. 
 
 So, lying prone along the summer grass, 
 
 I am content with all things ; and the air 
 
 Comes laden with a song, and clouds that pass 
 Above me to my soul a promise bear ; 
 
 And every meadow-lark a message has, 
 And every meadow flower is a prayer. 
 
 94 
 
ELEVEN O CLOCK. 
 
 A WAYSIDE SPRING. 
 
 T^HRICE-BLEST Tranquillity that dwellest 
 -*■ here ! 
 
 How like a guardian soul with silent wing 
 Thou hoverest above this wayside spring 
 
 Outgushing in mellifluence cool and clear ! 
 
 Faring along the dusty road, I near 
 
 The dripping stones whereto wet mosses cling, 
 And sit me down in sheer content, and sing, 
 
 And hearken to the far-off chanticleer. 
 
 What art could so have satisfied my whim 
 As this half cocoanut ? I take it up 
 And dally with anticipation, then 
 Dip deep and drink to all wayfaring men 
 In liquid ecstasy which wooes the brim 
 Of this inimitable drinking cup. 
 
 95 
 
NOON. 
 
 HALF WAY TO ARCADY. 
 
 ' I ""HE faultless fervor of a day in June ; 
 An insect-whisper vibrant in the air ; 
 The breath of daisies shedding everywhere 
 
 Soft wafture o'er the lids of nodding noon. 
 
 Deep in the listening woods an ancient croon 
 Of hermit crickets weaving a fanfare 
 Through slender undertones, elusive, rare 
 
 As songs in sleep sung to an antique tune. 
 
 The far-off Sabbath-voice of chiming bells 
 A peace evangel murmurs to the heart ; 
 
 A scent, half clover's and half asphodel's, 
 
 Falters through dusks wherein strange n 
 dwells ; 
 
 Is it the echo of Pan's pipe which tells 
 Its story to the ravished ears of Art ? 
 
 96 
 
ONE O CLOCK. 
 
 A WILD ROSE. 
 
 ^71 rHERE the warm upland melts against the blue, 
 An ancient fence, o'er which the lichen 
 grows. 
 Meets a more ancient wall ; and rare repose 
 Dwells in the myriad little sounds which sue 
 The aged silences in accents new ; 
 
 And in that sun-soaked angle blooms a rose, 
 Whose heart, blood-tinctured by the joy it knows, 
 Just forms the chalice for a drop of dew. 
 
 There will I lie and dream and idly wreathe 
 The tender grasses till my heart discover 
 
 Somewhat of their content ; and there, beneath 
 The vines o'er which pale butterflies do hover, 
 
 I '11 listen while the passionate rose doth breathe 
 Her soft love-secrets to her powdered lover. 
 
 97 
 
TWO O CLOCK. 
 
 ROADWAY DUST. 
 
 A LONG the honest turnpike honest dust 
 
 Keeps its true color, mindless of the fields, — 
 Scorning the brighter tints which summer yields, 
 Nor aping flowers that bloom because they must ; 
 It is a type of individual trust 
 
 In one's own selfhood, — a true force that wields 
 The power which moves the world, and ever 
 shields 
 Man from servility that breeds disgust. 
 
 I '11 bow to genius, every reverence show, 
 And sit all meekly at the feet of art, 
 
 Albeit I will not imitate a king, 
 Nor strive to be another's counterpart, 
 For though 't is great to be an Angelo, 
 
 To be one's self is yet a greater thing ! 
 
THRFE O CLOCK. 
 
 WHEAT-BILLOWS. 
 
 T^HE ground slopes upward towards a little h i 
 Drenched in the sunlight, and within the 
 space 
 A field of wheat, o'er which the breezes trace 
 Tremors of light and shade that throb and thrill 
 In billowy undulations, quickening till 
 The field lies like a love-enamored face 
 Upturned to let the warm caresses chase 
 Each other, that the wind may have his will. 
 
 So have I seen a woman luring love 
 
 With quivering silk lips and breath of fire. 
 
 The while across her cheek in colors clear 
 The swift blood chased the pallors of desire. 
 And strange mistrust her tender bosom clove. 
 
 And half her heart was flame and half was fear. 
 
 99 
 
FOUR O CLOCK. 
 
 REMEMBRANCE. 
 
 A QUICK commotion in the startled leaves, 
 A shudder of the living green ; I know 
 It was a bird that winged its flight, although 
 I saw no creature. So my soul receives 
 Time's fleeting passage as my life it cleaves 
 With human happiness or human woe ; 
 Such are the memories that come and go, 
 The while the sun his dappled patchwork weaves. 
 
 And I, who lean and dream, am half in love 
 
 With things unreal and passion's whitened em- 
 bers, 
 Embracing shadowy shapes, nor asking why 
 A vanished beauty holds a joy above 
 
 All others, as the saddened night remembers 
 Dead meteors that have once illumed a sky. 
 
FIVE O CLOCK. 
 
 ASPIRATION. 
 
 "T^ROWSING beneath the hum of summer bees, 
 '^"'^ Marking with half-closed eyes the liberal sky, 
 
 Lulled to soft slumbers by the lullaby 
 Of winds grown voluble among the trees, 
 My seeking soul, as one who fain would seize 
 The passing passion of a song on high, 
 Leaps upward with the immemorial cry 
 Which God has echoed down the centuries. 
 
 The kindred spirits of the sunburnt day 
 Make earth a heaven and existence bliss, — 
 
 Plume with Mercurial wings my feet of clay 
 And touch my brows with a celestial kiss. 
 
 Till lips that faltered lisp a loftier lay, 
 
 And from a fairer world bring peace to this 
 
 101 
 
SIX O CLOCK. 
 
 CLOUD-MAGIC. 
 
 IMAGINATION is the highest truth ; 
 
 And I, upgazing through the spaces clear 
 
 To mark the clouds' caprices, am a seer, 
 From Fancy's fabric fashioning uncouth 
 Yet faithful images, — such forms, in sooth, 
 
 As tempt to favor while they touch with fear ; 
 
 Misshapen giants with a changeful leer ; 
 Nude naiads glorious in perennial youth. 
 
 Then passionate faces yearning towards the West, 
 The nostrils palpitant with strange desire, 
 A shudder quickening the nether lip, 
 
 Wherefrom the blood dies of its own unrest ; 
 Again a sudden change ; a helmless ship ; 
 The chaos of the red sun's funeral pyre. 
 
SEVEN O CLOCK. 
 
 THE BROOK. 
 
 T IGHT-HEARTED babbler of a thousand tales, 
 Half sung, half spoken, and in broken trills 
 Borne lightly to my ear, thy music fills 
 My heart with joy when summer daylight pales, 
 And through the murmurous glooms of shadowy 
 
 dales 
 Thou bearest whispers from the distant hills ; 
 
 And as the iterant voices of thy rills 
 Sing among pebbles, visions of white sails 
 
 That top quaint fishing craft upon the river 
 Wherein thou find'st at last thy resting-place. 
 
 Rise up before me and in silence quiver 
 Like sudden smiles across a questioning face ; 
 
 Till wider fancy seems to picture thee 
 
 Enfolded, yet still singing, in the sea. 
 
 103 
 
EIGHT O CLOCK. 
 
 THE TWILIGHTS. 
 
 A LIGHT wind loiters down the wooded ways, 
 Bearing the breath of orchards and replete 
 With such an essence as alone should greet 
 A sense grown fine through many vagrant days. 
 A sigh among the slender leafage stays, 
 
 And married lights break into shafts and meet 
 Where weary Nature, in her green retreat, 
 Upon her lips a hushing finger lays. 
 
 A dying radiance through the thicket gleams. 
 The colors of the day are slowly furled, 
 A mystery trembles onward silverly, — 
 A lily on the bosom of the world, — 
 Elusive as the pageantry of dreams 
 
 Or moonlight sleeping on a summer sea. 
 
 104 
 
NINE O CLOCK. 
 
 PERSPECTIVE. 
 
 T PAUSE upon a mystic borderland 
 
 Wherefrom the visible world seems all besprent 
 With flowers of changeful hue and colors blent 
 
 In strange confusion. I do think a band 
 
 Of those Greek heroes who once, hand to hand, 
 Fought for the prizes which the gods had sent. 
 Sometime their glowing presence must have lent 
 
 To these green aisles where wooded sentries stand. 
 
 How weirdly, through the glooms of yonder tree, 
 Wavers the owl's cry, with its minor strains 
 Fateful as dirges sung to murdered joy, — 
 Sad as the sobs of pale Andromache 
 
 To see her Hector, foul with gory stains, 
 Dragged pitilessly 'neath the walls of Troy ! 
 
 105 
 
TEN O CLOCK. 
 
 FANTASY. 
 
 A S some luxurious beauty of the East, 
 
 Grown languid in the cassia-scented air, 
 With narrowed eyes looks through her sultry hair. 
 And toys the sweetmeats at a regal feast, 
 The while her bodice, from its cords released. 
 Stays still a-warm to know her bosom there, — 
 So seems the night, with constellations fair, 
 Heavy with scents left when the breezes ceased. 
 
 Am I alone ? Is not some spirit here ? 
 Across the waiting air there comes a call ; 
 High overhead the tasselled branches nod. 
 With just a whisper flattering the ear. 
 
 And silence, with its million tongues, fills all 
 The woodland spaces with the name of God. 
 
 1 06 
 
ELEVEN O CLOCK. 
 
 NOCTURNE. 
 
 A NIGHT bird, from the hollow of the dark, 
 
 Beats upward through the pulseless air and 
 dies 
 Into the mighty mystery of the skies 
 That bend, with large imperial brows, to mark 
 Earth's slumbering perfectness, mayhap to hark 
 Her little breathings as she lightly lies, — 
 To-morrow's sunlight prisoned in her eyes, 
 And in her heart songs of to-morrow's lark. 
 
 So thoughts which will not wear the yoke of words. 
 Fretting the stillness with their whispering wings, 
 
 Take flight more swift and silent than the bird's. 
 Into a heaven of vaster fashionings ; 
 
 And unknown beauty all my vision girds. 
 And voiceless music through my spirit sings. 
 
 107 
 
MIDNIGHT. 
 
 VALE. 
 
 /^H ! tender benison of darkness, cast 
 
 ^-^^ Upon the throbbing bosom of the earth, — 
 
 Dropt as a mantle over all the mirth 
 And madness of the day, — thou ever hast 
 A sweet compassion for us, and at last 
 A poppied peace ! I gaze upon the girth 
 Of heaven, heavy with the rare new birth 
 Of beauty crescent through the spaces vast, 
 
 The while the unruffled forehead of the night 
 Lifts royally its diadem of stars ; 
 
 Then, as a sleeper fares adown his way 
 'Mid dreamy meadows, lying still and white, 
 
 I thread the moonlit lane, pass through the bars. 
 And close the record of an idle day. 
 
A PRIMROSE PATH 
 
 SONGS AND TRIFLES. 
 
 109 
 
BETWEEN. 
 
 DETWEEN the sea sand and the sea 
 The yellow foam flakes lightly lie, 
 A very dross of waves, till free 
 
 Quick-kissing breezes surge and sigh, 
 And all the laurels on the lea 
 
 Bend low to listen as bends the sky 
 Where spaces throb with melody. 
 
 Then foam is wrought to gold, and I, 
 Silent, find Heaven surrounding me — 
 
 In gilded fringe — in breeze's sigh ; 
 Between the sea sand and the sea 
 
 Where yellow foam flakes lightly lie ; 
 Where spaces throb with melody 
 
 Between the skylark and the sky. 
 
 Between the sunset and the sun 
 
 Night slumbers on the sleeping bars, 
 And through its curtain, one by one. 
 
 Gleam tender glances of the stars 
 Between the sunset and the sun. 
 And so between my love's lips lies 
 
 An untold message meant for me ; 
 Whether 't will bring me sweet surprise 
 Or dole or doubt or Paradise 
 
 Is known alone to destiny. 
 
1 1 2 Cradle Song. 
 
 Yet, as I wait, a dream of tears 
 
 Between her eyelids and her eyes — 
 
 A mystery of mist — appears. 
 
 That hints of hope and flatters fears, 
 And on her lips a shudder of sighs. 
 And on her lids a red that dies 
 To slumberous shadows that fall and rise, 
 
 Till as I seek some sign to see. 
 Between her eyelids and her eyes 
 
 Love lights his lamp and laughs at me. 
 
 CRADLE SONG. 
 [from the drama "marie del carmen."] 
 
 S' 
 
 LEEP, my pretty one. 
 Sleep, my little one, 
 Rose in the garden is blooming so red ; 
 
 Over the flowers the fleet-footed hours 
 Dance into dreamland to melody wed 
 
 To the voice of the stream — to a song in a dream. 
 Sung low by the brook to its stone-covered bed. 
 Sung soft as it goes ; 
 And the heart of the rose 
 Gives a tremulous leap 
 As the melody flows. 
 Ah, little one, sleep, 
 Sleep. 
 
Cradle Sottg. 113 
 
 Peace, my little one, 
 Peace, my pretty one, 
 Lilies bend low to the breath of the breeze ; 
 
 Lithe as a willow, the boat on the billow 
 High tosses the spray for the sunlight to tease 
 
 With a kiss and a tear — with a rainbow, a fear. 
 For the light is the sun's and the spray is the sea's. 
 And the wind o'er the lea 
 Breaks to cadences free 
 As the waves that release 
 The low laugh of the sea. 
 My pretty one, peace. 
 Peace. 
 
 Joy, my pretty one, 
 Joy, my little one. 
 Fairies of night from their bright-jewelled cars 
 Fling a faint sheen and shimmer on ripples where 
 glimmer 
 The up-gazing eyes of the down-gazing stars ; 
 And the boat, while it glides, sings the song of 
 the tides 
 As they kiss into languor the sand of the bars. 
 Oh, river flow fleet, 
 Ere the melody meet 
 The sea's breath to destroy 
 What the echoes repeat : 
 My little one, joy, 
 
 Joy! 
 
1 14 Caprice. 
 
 CAPRICE. 
 
 A SUMMER night with perfumed breath 
 ■** Told love-tales to the listening trees, 
 And hedge-row buds, in guise of death. 
 
 Dreamed of the kisses of the bees. 
 While, wheeling, circling, faint and far, 
 
 A firefly showed its shimmering spark. 
 And, like an evanescent star. 
 
 Painted its life along the dark ; 
 And I, who wandered in the lane. 
 
 Grew envious of a thing so free, 
 And sighed and gazed and sighed again. 
 
 And cried : " Kind Heaven give to me 
 The firefly's liberty." 
 
 My love came tripping down the lane ; 
 
 The boughs bent low to touch her head ; 
 The clover never felt the pain 
 
 Of death beneath so light a tread ; 
 And ere I knew, the firefly's wings 
 
 Were tangled in her burnished hair, 
 The intermittent glimmerings 
 
 Illumining a face more fair ; 
 Then I, who felt my heart beat wild 
 
 The love-light in her eyes to see. 
 Became capricious as a child, 
 
 And prayed : " Sweet Heaven grant to me 
 A like captivity." 
 
A Serenade. 115 
 
 A SERENADE. 
 
 /^N roses asleep in the starlight, 
 ^-^ On daisies that dream of the sky, 
 The tremor and touch of a far light 
 
 Falls faint through the spaces on high,- 
 Falls fair where the tendrils are clinging, 
 
 Lies light where the lilies are flinging 
 Perfumes to the winds that are singing 
 
 A song that is born of a sigh. 
 
 II. 
 
 Low brows for a thousand caresses. 
 
 Lithe throat for a season's delight, 
 Ah ! spice-scented wonder of tresses 
 
 Dim-shadowed and duskily bright. 
 Pale passionate arms that embower 
 
 Light love that endures but an hour, 
 Lips pressed like a flower on a flower, 
 
 Eyes dark with the spell of the night. 
 
 in. 
 
 Bitter-sweet though the pang and the pleasure, 
 I would rather be bounden than free ; 
 
 Life treadeth a statelier measure 
 
 With the finger of Love on the key ; 
 
1 1 6 Love Came to Me. 
 
 Pain kisses the rod of the Giver, 
 As the ripples in ecstasy quiver 
 
 Where breaks the sad heart of the river 
 In the turbulent heart of the sea. 
 
 LOVE CAME TO ME. 
 
 I OVE came to me when I was young ; 
 •*— ' He brought me songs, he brought me flowers ; 
 Love wooed me lightly, trees among, 
 And dallied under scented bowers ; 
 
 And loud he carolled : " Love is King ! " 
 For he was riotous as spring 
 
 And careless of the hours, — 
 When I was young. 
 
 Love lingered near when I grew old ; 
 
 He brought me light from stars above ; 
 And consolations manifold 
 He fluted to me like a dove ; 
 And love leaned out of Paradise 
 And gently kissed my faded eyes 
 
 And whispered : " God is Love," — 
 When I grew old. 
 
Flower <?' the Sea. wj 
 
 FLOWER O' THE SEA. 
 
 A LITTLE maiden debonair 
 ■**■ With sunshine tangled in her hair, 
 Along with me, beside the sea. 
 Trod yellow sands, and clapped her hands 
 To see the foam come rolling home, — 
 Come rolling home right royally. 
 
 She never dreamed that she was fair, 
 This little maiden debonair. 
 Nor questioned I the reason why 
 I found to stray with her alway 
 Was veriest joy, — I but a boy 
 With small feet brown and bare. 
 
 And once a wave broke high in air. 
 
 Scattering foam flakes everywhere. 
 
 And something bright flashed in the sight 
 
 Of her, my maiden debonair ; 
 
 And when the tide went out, she cried : 
 
 "See, see ; a pearl ! The breakers hurl 
 
 Their gems to land for our delight." 
 
 And so we strayed, my little maid 
 
 And I, beside the sea ; 
 
 And onward sped the silent years, 
 
 And silenter grew we, 
 
 For I was thoughtfuller, and she 
 
 Was not the same to me. 
 
1 1 8 Flotver o the Sea. 
 
 There grew a wonder in her eyes, — 
 My maiden dainty, debonair, — 
 And voices tuned to subtler art 
 Were voluble within her heart 
 And to her soul made questioning ; 
 She felt the spell, yet could not tell 
 Whence sudden shame so strangely came ; 
 Whence hopes and fears and tremulous tears 
 And sweet surprise and quivering sighs, — 
 Half laughter, — laid on lips that sing. 
 She could not tell ; she scarce need care. 
 My maiden slender, debonair. 
 
 But I knew well. The child had fled 
 
 And left a woman in her stead : 
 
 My maiden shy and debonair 
 
 Had 'wakened in her Paradise, 
 
 And, fairer grown, had grown more wise, 
 
 Alas ! as wise as fair. 
 
 And as again beside the sea 
 
 We wandered homeward silently, 
 
 I leaned and lightly touched her hair. 
 
 And said : " Sweet maiden debonair, 
 
 A little girl once found a pearl 
 
 Left by the deep mysterious tide, — 
 
 A thing of beauty from the wide 
 
 Unfathoraed sea ; nor faltered she. 
 
 But in her hair the treasure fair 
 
 Set like a dew-drop in a rose. 
 
 And now, my maiden debonair, 
 
Marguerite. 119 
 
 Your heart has found a gem more rare, — 
 A pearl from out the sea of life, — 
 Love^ that the flowing tides enclose. 
 The child knew not ; the woman knows ; 
 And knowledge ever bringeth strife ; 
 Yet where the pearl lies, is repose, — 
 Repose which I would have you share 
 With me, dear maiden debonair." 
 
 She paused a space, then gently drew 
 From out her breast a pearl, and said : 
 " Forth from the sea it came to me. 
 And from my heart it goes to you." 
 And lo ! the starlight of the skies 
 Lay sleeping in her lifted eyes. 
 And on her brow a glory shed. 
 And faint across the meadows fell 
 The calling of a vesper bell 
 That high above sang Love ! and Love ! 
 And ah ! my maiden debonair, 
 How fair you were ! How passing fair ! 
 As through the sand we trod the strand 
 And gazed far out to sea. 
 
 MARGUERITE. 
 
 117 AIR Marguerite, the red of parted lips 
 
 Grows deeper, and the glory of thy brow 
 More glorious yet, as lowered lids allow 
 Swift glances, fleeting, but as sweet as sips 
 
1 20 The Way d the World. 
 
 Of honey from the hearts of flowers. So now, 
 Poised in the halo of the sun that dips 
 
 Behind the empurpled hills, thy presence seems 
 The realized perfection of my dreams. 
 
 Sweet, silent Marguerite ! How may I name 
 
 The hundred-tinted shadows of thy hair ? 
 
 Or count the liquid lights of eyes as rare 
 As polished pearls beneath white jets of flame. 
 
 Or soft stars scintillant through lambent air 
 In the hushed night ? How, seeing thee, proclaim 
 
 The love I fain would bring, a sacrifice 
 
 To offer at the altar of thine eyes ? 
 
 Nay, Marguerite, I cannot ; for the soul 
 
 That reigns transcendent in the dwelling-place 
 Of thy fair form, irradiates thy face 
 
 With lustre pure as words writ on the scroll 
 Of God's own law. I would not dare erase 
 
 One faintest tracery, although the goal 
 
 Which whispered words of love ensured to me 
 Should be an answering whisper felt by thee. 
 
 THE WAY O' THE WORLD. 
 
 "NT ELL and I set out together 
 
 In the spring — the heyday ; 
 Nell and I, thro' fickle weather, 
 Fared afield where cows at tether 
 Waited for the May-day. 
 
Philosophy-iii-Littlc. 1 2 1 
 
 When the birds were all a-feather 
 
 Nell and I, like true loves, 
 Danced thro' sun and summer weather, 
 Singing all the while together, 
 
 Scorning thoughts of new loves. 
 
 But when frost had nip't the heather 
 
 And each hill and valley 
 Donned its gown of russet leather, 
 Nell and Ned went off together, — 
 
 I made love to Sallie. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY-IN-LITTLE. 
 
 A DAY of toil amid the moil 
 ^^ And muddle of the city, 
 I passed in vain and sordid pain 
 
 And worry, more 's the pity ! 
 I had no heart for books or art 
 
 Or labor of the scholars. 
 So crept to bed, with aching head. 
 
 And dreamed of dust and dollars. 
 
 Upon the lawn, at early dawn, 
 
 A robin fluted sweetly. 
 He sang to me so joyfully 
 
 That up I rose all fleetly ; 
 Then out I went and all day spent 
 
 Amid the April greening,— 
 Came back at night, enamored quite 
 
 Of nature and her meaning. 
 
122 Cupid and Justice. 
 
 CUPID AND JUSTICE. 
 
 'T^HE little God of Love one day 
 
 While walking chanced to lose his way, 
 And being, as the poets say, 
 
 Incapable of seeing, 
 Flung himself prone upon the grass, 
 To wait until some friend should pass. 
 And, as he lay, a comely lass 
 
 Adown the road came fleeing. 
 
 Her face was fair, her temples white. 
 And tho' her step was soft and light. 
 She too, alas ! had lost her sight, 
 
 And moved a trifle slowly ; 
 She too, alas ! had lost her way. 
 And, ever going more astray, 
 Soon came to where the Love-God lay 
 
 Among the grasses lowly. 
 
 Then Love uprose, with just a trace 
 Of mischief on his handsome face, 
 And said : " My lady, grant me grace 
 
 That I appear so stupid ; 
 But may I beg to know your name ? " 
 "I am called Justice," said the dame, 
 Then blushed, as low his answer came : 
 
 "And, madam, / am Cupid." 
 
A Rondeau of Vassar. 123 
 
 He lisped sweet nothings in her ear, 
 
 She frowned, yet could not choose but hear ; 
 
 And tho' she strove to look severe, 
 
 Her heart was in a flurry. 
 Too late they learned the Fates designed 
 They nevermore their way should find, 
 For neither knew the other blind, 
 
 And both were in a hurry. 
 
 A RONDEAU OF VASSAR. 
 
 (~\^, Vassar girl, who fain would rise 
 ^"^^ Superior to Love's charming lies ; 
 You who prefer the themes that be 
 Modelled on Kant's philosophy ; 
 Potential ballots in your eyes, 
 
 And bridge of nose, judicial, wise — 
 In fact a very Bridge of Size 
 And intellectuality. 
 Oh, Vassar girl ! 
 
 You 're fair, yet from you Cupid flies 
 
 With cramps as though he 'd dined on pies ; 
 
 For, suaviter in modo, he 
 
 Finds you too for titer itt re, 
 And so to lesser culture hies. 
 Oh, Vassar girl ! 
 
124 Ballade to a Bookman. 
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE POET. 
 
 "\'\ /"HEN dryads lived and sought to bring 
 
 Ladona to the sparkling spring 
 Where shaggy Pan was wont to sit 
 And pipe his ditties, poets writ 
 With pens plucked from the swelling wing 
 Of Pegasus, nor felt the sting 
 Hid in the average critic's fling : 
 Poeta nascitur nan fit. 
 When dryads lived. 
 
 But nowadays the proper thing 
 \^ first to get within the ring, 
 And, having made a single hit, 
 An ounce of sense, — a grain of wit, — 
 Will do the rest ; no need to sing 
 " When dryads lived." 
 
 BALLADE TO A BOOKMAN. 
 
 /CROTCHETY delver in books, 
 
 ^-^ Hater of all that is new, 
 
 Seeker of cosiest nooks 
 
 Known to the favorite few, 
 Why should you ever ask who 
 
 Fateward defiance hath hurled ? 
 Delver in books it is you — 
 
 You who have conquered the world. 
 
A Rondeau in Reply. 125 
 
 Snuffy old fellow, whose looks 
 
 Hint of a wig and a queue, 
 Scorning the cates of the cooks 
 
 For a pewter of ale and a stew. 
 
 Why should you ever be blue. 
 Seeing that runnels have purled, 
 
 Since the beginning, for you — 
 You who have conquered the world ? 
 
 Intim Ue friend of Home Tooke's, 
 Chum of the Wandering Jew, 
 
 Rating reformers as " crooks " 
 And lovers as enfants perdus, 
 Why should you ever pursue 
 
 Ways of the folk who are swirled 
 Into the popular view — 
 
 You who have conquered the world ? 
 
 ENVOI. 
 
 Dream, as you ruminate through 
 Smoke into canopies curled ; 
 
 Dream, for you 've nothing to do — 
 You who have conquered the world. 
 
 I 
 
 A RONDEAU IN REPLY. 
 
 N fallow fields I long to lie — 
 A bookman lost in Arcady ; 
 Or, steeped in grasses to the knees, 
 To follow fast where fancy flees ; 
 
126 Ballade. 
 
 Though musty lore and legend die, 
 I 'd give my conquered world to sigh 
 An answer to the lullaby 
 
 Hot-hummed by honey-loaden bees 
 In fallow fields. 
 
 A-dream 'neath circumambient sky, 
 To list the crow's remoter cry, 
 
 The while the love-begetting breeze 
 Flutters the leafy hearts of trees 
 And turns the heads of foolish rye 
 In fallow fields. 
 
 BALLADE. 
 
 1\ /r AIDEN, if within thy breast 
 
 Lurks the trust that thou shalt seize 
 
 From life's love the purest, best, 
 Quafiing nectar, while the lees 
 Mingle not ; upon thy knees 
 
 Quickly fall for guidance. Never 
 
 Dally with false dreams that please ; 
 
 Love and wine deceive us ever. 
 
 Youth, who, at the soft behest 
 Of the ruddy wine-cup, ease 
 
 And the sense of being blest 
 Seekest, know thy destinies 
 But await fulfilment ; these 
 
 Shall not stay though thou be clever ; 
 
Rondeau. 127 
 
 Follows fate where fortune flees ; 
 Love and wine deceive us ever. 
 
 Lover, who, upon the crest 
 
 Of the waves of Paphian seas, 
 Think'st to find ecstatic rest 
 
 Mid love's charms and panoplies, 
 
 Drown thy dreams in medias res ; 
 Happiness waits on endeavor ; 
 
 Joys unearned are miseries ; 
 Love and wine deceive us ever. 
 
 ENVOI. 
 
 Youths and maids of all degrees, 
 
 Heads must learn though hearts should sever ; 
 Butterflies have stings of bees ; 
 
 Love and wine deceive us ever. 
 
 RONDEAU. 
 
 T N days of old, when gods divine 
 
 Quaffed potent draughts of golden wine 
 From crystal goblets, and in glee 
 Sported with dolphins in the sea. 
 Or strayed beneath the oak and pine, 
 
 The poet but waited for a sign. 
 And through his pen the immortal Nine 
 Spake all delicious things that be 
 In days of old. 
 
128 Rondeau. 
 
 But now the gods have grown so fine 
 They keep at home, and not a line 
 The muses give to you and me ; 
 But, having come to drinking tea, 
 Lose brilliance, and so only shine 
 In days of old. 
 
 THE END.