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fi COLLECTED POEMS 
 
 J.lf OF 
 
 I vo.^ tr ARTHUR UPSON 
 
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THE 
 
 COLLECTED POEMS 
 
 OF 
 
 ARTHUR UPSON 
 
 EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD BURTON 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
 MINNEAPOLIS 
 
 EDMUND D. BROOKS 
 
 1909 
 
Copyright 1900, 1906 <rA^\ 
 
 By Aethur Upson "T* ^3 ^ 
 
 Copyright 1902 ,\\ s(\0 
 
 By Edmund D. Brooks 
 
 Copyright 1903, 1905 
 By The Macmillan Company 
 
 Copyright 1909 
 By Julia C. Upson 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 THE UNTVERSITY PBISS, CAMBEIDOE, U. S. A. 
 
 LIBRARY Of CONGRESS 
 Two Cooies Received 
 
 JUN 16 18U9 
 
 Copyriicnt Entry 
 
NOTE 
 
 These collected poems include the previously published 
 volumes of Arthur Upson's verse, with such exclusions as 
 seemed wise, together with poems written later or for some 
 reason not printed therein. 
 
 The copyrights to certain books not published by Mr. 
 E. D. Brooks were held by Mr. Upson and are now the 
 property of his estate. The volume entitled "The City and 
 Other Poems/' published by The Macmillan Company, has 
 also been acquired by the estate. Thanks should be ren- 
 dered to the "Pall Mall Magazine " of London, " The Century 
 Magazine," the Minneapolis "Bellman," and various other 
 American periodicals, for permission to publish the poems 
 originally printed in their columns. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 Volume I 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE HARP 
 
 Paoe 
 
 Introduction xi 
 
 Foreword 3 
 
 'Neath the Walls of Naishapur 5 
 
 Dust o' Books 7 
 
 Praise of Rain 9 
 
 " The Little White Home with 
 
 the Lawn " 12 
 
 Her Meclilin Eau .... 14- 
 The Florentine Frame ... 15 
 
 After the Opera 16 
 
 A Portrait 17 
 
 Amabel 18 
 
 Songs 19 
 
 I. Say, Little Maiden . . 21 
 
 11. Gloriana 23 
 
 III. Mein Stem .... 24. 
 
 Paob 
 
 Since the Children Learned to 
 
 Sing 25 
 
 In Memory Lock'd .... 27 
 
 To Estelle 29 
 
 Soul of Baza 30 
 
 To Bertha, Sleeping . . . 
 
 33 
 
 A September's Day . . . . 
 
 34. 
 
 The Inward Service . . • 
 
 37 
 
 On Rock River — Evening 
 
 39 
 
 The Lost Brother . . . 
 
 40 
 
 After the Sinking of the 
 
 
 "Merrimac" . . . . 
 
 42 
 
 The Difference . . . . 
 
 43 
 
 The Old Cathedral . . . 
 
 44 
 
 Venture 
 
 45 
 
 The Greater Treasure . . 
 
 46 
 
 WESTWIND SONGS 
 
 I — Heaut and Soil 
 
 Arlington 49 
 
 Washington's Birthday . .50 
 The Sequoia, "William McKin- 
 
 ley " 51 
 
 Benjamin-Constant's Painting 
 
 of Queen Victoria ... 52 
 Wheat Elevators . . . .53 
 
 Failures 54 
 
 The Sobbing Woman . . .55 
 
 Exemption 56 
 
 Golden Rod 57 
 
 Gospel of the Fields . ... 58 
 The Way of the World . . 59 
 
 October Song 60 
 
 In the Wood 61 
 
 In October 62 
 
 The Unforgiving .... 63 
 
 The Two Hearts 64 
 
 "All's Well" 65 
 
 The Open Furrow .... 66 
 
 An Envoy 67 
 
 Fame 68 
 
 Irrevocable 69 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Arthur Upson, — or Arthur Wheelock Upson, as he was 
 baptized, — like so many western Americans, was an east- 
 erner by birth. He was born in Camden, N. Y., January 10, 
 1877. 
 
 His father, Spencer Johnson Upson, was a native of Camden 
 and for many years engaged in the Insurance business there ; 
 a citizen much respected and prominent, who held various 
 positions of responsibility in the social, political and religious 
 life of the town. He was for a long time Secretary of the 
 Board of Education. 
 
 The poet^s mother was Julia Claflin of Boonesville, N. Y., 
 a woman whose delicacy of nature, refinement and deep appre- 
 ciation of her son's literary aspirations and later accomplish- 
 ment made the bond between them peculiarly close so long 
 as they both lived. 
 
 The lad's early education was received from the Camden 
 Academy and, quite as important, from the influences of a 
 cultured home. Arthur was of frail body, visionary in his 
 imagination but active and full of outdoor play ; he had his 
 own pony to ride and grew up in an environment happily com- 
 bining the country and the town. The good times were many 
 in the pleasant house with its hospitable porch and ample 
 grounds ; and it was but a step into all the beauty which nature 
 offers man. When the boy was but nine, he lost an only 
 sister (commemorated in a poem in the present volume), and 
 
[xii] 
 
 the shock imperilled his life. At ten he was writing verse 
 and prose ; a drama in French was the most ambitious effort, 
 and all his writing showed remarkable facility in handling 
 the literary forms and in the feeling for artistic expression. 
 While a mere boy he drew a little literary circle around 
 him, and by means of the letter exchange in " Wide Awake " 
 and other children's periodicals, established a correspondence 
 wliich widened his outlook and added to his power of ex- 
 pression. In one instance this led to a friendship of twenty 
 years with Miss Sharlot Hall of Los Angeles, whose poems 
 of Arizona life are among the best that have come out of 
 the West ; the two never met, and yet Miss Hall writes : 
 " I doubt if there ever was such a friendship. ... He shared 
 to a wonderful degree his world of books and people with me, 
 and I gave him all of my desert land that I could translate.''^ 
 From the ages of ten to seventeen, severe illnesses interrupted 
 his school life, and it seemed doubtful if he could survive 
 maturity. 
 
 In 1893, when he was sixteen, Upson attended the World's 
 Fair at Chicago ; and thence went on to the pretty Mississippi 
 river town of Faribault to visit friends ; with them he also 
 journeyed to St. Paul and Minneapolis, coming East by the 
 Great Lakes. He was graduated the next summer from 
 the Camden Academy, receiving the gold medal for the gradu- 
 ating poem, and that autumn removed with his family to St. 
 Paul, and entered the University of Minnesota as a member of 
 the class of 1898. 
 
 In the sophomore year his health became uncertain ; finan- 
 cial reverses also came to the family. The result was that 
 for four years of suspended college work Upson earned his 
 living travelling about the country as a book agent ; for 
 one summer he was employed as a guide in the Yellowstone 
 Park, along with other collegians. Full of courage, he did 
 
[ xiii ] 
 
 what was necessary, and during this period of work and travel, 
 broadened his knowledge of life and continually wrote verse 
 which was sent home as a sort of chronicle of his wanderings. 
 
 The fruit of this was the first of his books of verse, pub- 
 lished with the imprimatur of the University Press and called 
 " At the Sign of the Harp." After a summer trip abroad in 
 1900, he resumed college that autumn, and the volume ap- 
 peared later in the year. That first European jaunt, keenly 
 enjoyed and doing much for the young man^s development, 
 brought forth some charming descriptive letters and a number 
 of articles for American newspapers, as well as the poems 
 which throughout his life he wrote as the most natural vent 
 for his deeper self. 
 
 The University work was pursued into the senior year, 
 when the health of this brilliant collegian again interfered 
 with the prosecution of his studies ; but in recognition of the 
 high quality of his scholarship and his creative endeavor as 
 expressed in the poem drama "The City,^^ his degree was 
 granted by the college authorities, despite the technical fail- 
 ure to complete his course. 
 
 During Upson's college career the present writer became 
 deeply attached to the promising young scholar poet ; he was 
 handsome in person, with an air of good breeding in all his 
 ways ; eager for culture, a passionate lover of literature and 
 the arts ; one of those exceptionally gifted and charming 
 young men it is the joy of a teacher to watch as he expands, 
 and, if possible, to help in the shaping of his powers. 
 
 He was respected and admired by his fellow students, loved 
 of his intimates ; he had a genius for friendship. His quality 
 in literature was recognized early by his associates, for, as has 
 been said, he published his maiden book as an undergraduate. 
 Various honors and posts of trust were conferred upon him 
 by the college community. He was one of the committee of 
 
[xiv] 
 
 three to write the class play ; he added a stanza to the Uni- 
 versity Ode^ which is sung by all loyal Minnesotans. 
 
 After graduation, he found congenial labor as an associate 
 of Edmund D. Brooks, whose Bookrooms are a Minneapolis 
 institution. Upson''s wide knowledge of literature and his 
 taste for the niceties of bibliography made him valuable 
 to Mr. Brooks, who had faith in his friend^s ability and 
 published in beautiful editions several of the young man's 
 volumes of verse. 
 
 Not only did the poet develop special skill as a cataloguer, 
 but to those who dropped in to price a first edition or finger 
 lovingly some unique manuscript, he seemed an indispensable 
 part of the Bookrooms' higher atmosphere. 
 
 Upson was well-nigh as much at home in the domain of art 
 and music as in that of literature ; his love for the art world 
 brought him one of the most helpful and valuable friendships 
 of his life, that with Mr. John L. Bradstreet of Minneapolis, 
 widely known as an artist decorator; and his intimacy with 
 Dr. Alfred Owre of the University of Minnesota, whose won- 
 derful collection of cloisonne was a bond of interest between 
 the two, further enriched his life, as did many acquaintances 
 among musicians ; his lyrics richly reflect these interests. 
 
 In 1906 he was appointed to a position in the English de- 
 partment of the University, entering upon it in the autumn with 
 high heart, for it was work he had always believed he should 
 love. He did good service until the spring, when the connec- 
 tion came to an end through his illness. There followed a res- 
 pite for recuperation, which included some delightful months 
 abroad. During this sojourn he attended the summer school 
 at Jena, and afterwards took lectures at the University of 
 Berlin, where he was invited to conduct conversation classes 
 in English. He did not accept the offer, however, for his 
 father's serious illness brought him suddenly home in Decern- 
 
[ XV ] 
 
 ber, 1907; six months later, after protracted suffering, his 
 father died. While abroad, he visited the quaint town of 
 Pornic in Brittany, to study the legend of Gold Hair, which 
 he had made the motive of his last work, " Gauvaine of the 
 Retz,'' upon which he wrought with great industry and 
 courage through the wearing days when his father^s sick- 
 ness bore heavily on his heart. 
 
 On his return he rejoined Mr. Brooks, giving his after- 
 noons to the Bookrooms and using the mornings for his own 
 literary work. He had been laboring hard on his play, when 
 in mid-summer of 1908 he left Minneapolis for a vacation, 
 and on the evening of August 14 was drowned from his 
 boat in Bemidji Lake, Minnesota. He had that very day com- 
 pleted the drama, the manuscript of which he had carried 
 with him for the purpose; but it has not been found. 
 
 During the last two years of his life Arthur Upson was 
 quietly gaining recognition in his vocation of song ; his nature 
 was deepening, his work was steadily of broader note and 
 firmer art. A few months before his passing he was affianced 
 to one who brought him sympathy and appreciation. His 
 health, always precarious, seemed more constant than before. 
 There was much of encouragement, a promise of success and 
 happiness in the outlook. The young singer felt that his 
 Rubicon was passed, victory within his grasp. But he was 
 to lay down his life work at thirty-one, when the best of his 
 achievement seemed to lie before him ; in the flush of young 
 manhood his earthly activities ceased. Yet he left to his 
 friends the memory of a nature as high, pure and noble as it 
 has been their lot to know ; and to all who love poetry, a 
 body of song which, it is the editor^s belief, will ensure him a 
 place among the lyrists of his native land. 
 
 Some statement as to the quality and significance of his 
 work mav now follow. 
 
[xvi] 
 
 n 
 
 To deserve serious attention, a poet must have a vision 
 of beauty and be able adequately to give it voice. The first 
 requirement means that he must conceive life imaginatively 
 and seize on its deeper significance, its spiritual values. The 
 second means the possession of skill in saying his say. It 
 implies a diction fit and fine, an ear sensitive to the music 
 of measures and the control of form. Sometimes there is the 
 gift without the skill ; sometimes the skill with nothing truly 
 worth while to say. Hence a world full of haK-poets. 
 
 Arthur Upson, it would seem, stands the twin tests. His 
 poetic testament is considerable, despite his early death. 
 It consists of the seven volumes published during his life, 
 together with a large number of pieces printed in the present 
 volumes as a final group : poems either late written or for 
 some other reason not included in the previous books. As one 
 reads the poetry in its due sequence, one cannot but notice 
 that Upson begins to write with little of that clumsiness of 
 hand common to the novitiate of any art, and that the work 
 steadily gains in breadth and a truer perception of the great 
 meanings of the human soul. What of limitation there may 
 be in the earliest volume, for example, is surely that of depth 
 rather than of technic or poetic feeling. The young verseman 
 is content to sing of the lovely things he knows with delicacy, 
 grace and charm. As the Eev. John W. Chadwick said on 
 reading "At the Sign of the Harp," a poet judging a poet : 
 " All is bright and sweet ; everywhere there is a quaintness 
 and a perfume as of linen cool and lavendered ; everywhere 
 a subtle and pervasive charm, a quality in the verse that is 
 more than thought or form. They might have been written in 
 Arcadia." And so they were ; in the Arcadia of a young man^s 
 
[ xvii ] 
 
 spirit, whither he fled for solace and whence he returned to tes- 
 tify thereof. Naturally, the inspiration is largely what may 
 be called literary ; these early poems are bookish, as the work 
 of young bards generally is. But they are their own excuse 
 for being, and already promise is made of what was to come. 
 Indeed, both promise and performance are in the first book. 
 
 In the three volumes of verse which appeared in the year 
 1902, this growth is clearly shown. One of them, simply 
 called "Poems," and written in collaboration with a fellow 
 collegian, George Norton Northrop, is tentative and experi- 
 mental; chiefly interesting, perhaps, for certain attempts to 
 widen his power over metres and the subtleties of tone color. 
 In " Westwind Songs '' the gamut is wider, the touch firmer ; 
 it is a charming collection, beyond doubt testifying to the 
 maturing of the poet's gifts. The grave sweetness of " Thou 
 Didst Not Die,-" the noble " Mothers and Sisters," the lyric 
 cry of '^May Night," — these are widening harmonies, one 
 feels. But in the third book, published, like the " Westwind 
 Songs," in the autumn of that year, the progress is still more 
 noteworthy in all that goes to make poetry. "Octaves in 
 an Oxford Garden " possesses a distinction, a mellowness 
 of thought and art, such as to set it apart. It is a group of 
 some thirty lyrics registering the mood, half happy, half sad, 
 of one from overseas who sits a-dream amidst the tranced and 
 storied loveliness of an English university. Surely, it must 
 always rank high among this young singer's production. It 
 was conceived under an ancient yew in the garden close of 
 Wadham College and perfectly expresses that sense of beanty 
 commingled of history, nature and humanity which was char- 
 acteristic of Upson. It is a thing so exquisite in execution, 
 so lovely in kind, as to produce a deep, albeit quiet, satisfac- 
 tion in all who respond to adequate phrasing, tender feehng 
 and an unobtrusive but very potent music. 
 
[ xviii ] 
 
 When two years later he published the poem drama entitled 
 " The City/' he obviously gave a further pledge of his power ; 
 the maturing poet turned instinctively to the most exacting 
 and robust of all the forms of verse. Three poetic plays 
 were completed by him : this, " The Tides of Spring " and 
 the lost " Gauvaine " ; others were planned. It is evident 
 that dramatic poetry was to be increasingly a favorite form of 
 expression as he went on. It is entirely reasonable to believe 
 that his dramatic writing would have met stage conditions 
 more closely as he continued to make plays, and so done 
 their part in the welcome rebirth of poetic drama in the 
 English-speaking lands. The remark is all the more justified 
 in the fact that " The Tides of Spring " was accepted by 
 Donald Eobertson for presentation in Chicago and will have 
 been presented ere these words are read. 
 
 This first drama is one to read rather than to see, though 
 strong in pictorial effects. In it the student soul is revealed 
 vibrant with the sense of the beauty of ancientry ; the technic 
 is firm, the blank verse, interspersed with some fascinating 
 lyrics, of varied modulations and often great felicity. The 
 composition exhibits a far deeper feeling for the psychological 
 contrasts of human character than he had as yet shown. The 
 motive is true and impressive. When that exquisite artist 
 of verse, the late T. B. Aldrich, read this play, he wrote: 
 "I especially admire the Scriptural piece called 'The City.' 
 It is original in design and shows most skilful workmanship. 
 Mr. Upson is certainly a poet of rare quality." 
 
 The edition of " The City " published by the Macmillan 
 Company the next year was augmented and enriched by a 
 few added sonnets and lyrics in other forms ; then in 1907 
 came the lovely Scotch history play " The Tides of Spring,'' — 
 and the tale of books to appear during the singer's lifetime 
 was complete. The present edition is, however, greatly en- 
 
[xix ] 
 
 riched and broadened by the fortunate inclusion of a good 
 number of additional poems^ often expressing the maturest of 
 his thought, the finest of his art. 
 
 For conception, construction and verbal execution it is 
 hard to find a flaw in the one-act Scotch play ; a love story 
 steeped in the magic of the past, highly pictorial, rich in 
 character portrayal, noble and gentle in its ideals, all in a 
 ravishing setting of springtime and of song, — little more 
 could be asked of this kind of literature. It is interesting to 
 know that it was but one of a planned series of dramas based 
 on Scotch historical material, which strongly attracted the 
 poet. 
 
 And the last- written and lost play, "Gauvaine of The 
 Retz,'' was, by the testimony of the privileged few who heard 
 it, the best expression of the poet's maturity. It had the 
 following dedication : 
 
 " To that distinguished lover of the antique and the beautiful, 
 
 John S. Bradstreet, 
 This reading from the faded tapestries of Romance is affectionately 
 inscribed." 
 
 As the writer himself described it, it was a tragic love story 
 told in dramatic form, the scene of which is laid mainly in the 
 Retz country of Lower Brittany in the middle of the fourteenth 
 century. The heroine, Audile, was the Gold Hair of Robert 
 Browning's Story of Pornic ; the hero, Gauvaine, a young 
 warrior on the side of Charles of Blois in the violent conflict 
 with the Montforts for ducal supremacy in Brittany. 
 
 The action of the piece involved an explanation of the de- 
 posit of gold pieces discovered in the chateau-maiden's hair, 
 on her exhumation a century or more after her death. This 
 varies entirely from the " Story," in which Browning has un- 
 fortunately preserved the village superstition of Audile's vulgar 
 
[xx] 
 
 avarice, and varies in a manner not only intensely dramatic, 
 but psychologically consistent in the working out. Besides 
 a careful use of historical material, the author made special 
 visits to remote and primitive parts of Celtic France, the half 
 Druidical and wholly romantic scenes of which form the back- 
 grounds of the story. It will be well to give here a letter he 
 wrote to Mr. Brooks, in itself a charming piece of prose, for 
 the light it throws upon a work which can be known only 
 thus indirectly : 
 
 Hotel Belle Vite, 
 
 Kerhuon, riNISTi:RE, 
 
 July 2, 1907. 
 
 My dear Mr. Brooks, — It does not seem three weeks 
 since the day I hurried over from Charing Cross, stepped from 
 train to boat at Folkestone, from boat to train at Boulogne, 
 rushed across Paris in a cab, and found you at Chartres, 
 where, in the supper-room of the Grand Monarque, we talked 
 over our plans for the next five days. 
 
 The evening journey from Paris to Chartres seemed, at 
 the time, interminable ; but I can remember only four episodes 
 in connection with it : how the cabman cheated me at Mont- 
 parnasse ; how at Versailles the palace and the gardens glided 
 past ; how at Le Perray the frogs croaked and dogs bayed in 
 the farmyards, and I came to the darker borders of twilight 
 where poppies ceased to flame in the fields and the lights of 
 the villages gleamed out among the poplars ; lastly, how the 
 courtyard of the Grand Monarque shone cheerfully through 
 rain. It was good to see you there. 
 
 Our plans included cathedrals, chateaux, ancient walled 
 cities, and even the (then unimagined) glory of Mont St. 
 Michel. But it was, above all, a little fishing village near 
 the mouth of the Loire, the home of Gold Hair, which 
 drew us, because a certain poet had written of it and lived 
 
[xxi] 
 
 there, finding much food for his philosophical fancy in its 
 remote quietude. 
 
 In the morning we loitered long in the precincts of the 
 vast cathedral, marvelling at Gothic grandeur and the richness 
 of painted windows. Going on to Le Mans in the afternoon, 
 just as the sun was setting over the Sarthe we came unex- 
 pectly upon that madrigal in stone, the hill-cresting apse of 
 St. Julian's with its encircling chapels and airy buttresses. 
 Next day, in the city of Geoffrey Plantagenet, we saw the 
 cathedral seven centuries old, and that coeval castellated bulk 
 which overfrowns the Maine, hung with soft mauve of lilas 
 d'Espagne and pennoned with scarlet poppies ; from Angers 
 to Nantes, where we drove through streets ancient and 
 modern, and sipped after-dinner cordials to good music in 
 front of that paragon of hostelries, the Grand Hotel de 
 France. Then, another day, to commence auspiciously with 
 a perfect cup of chocolate and that train to Pornic from which 
 none warned us we should change ; the gratuitous excursion 
 into Poitou, the return from Coex — Coex, with its flat, red- 
 tiled cottages, and wooden ploughs, pulled by oxen — to St. 
 Pazanne and its memorable dejeuner with the three jovial 
 commis voyageurs ! 
 
 Finally, at Pornic we explored steep and winding streets, 
 rows of villas, lanes deep in ivy and pink locusts, fields of 
 buckwheat, long white-washed walls hung with little golden 
 flowers — on to Ste. Marie and the rocks that Browning 
 loved. There were roses all the way to Ste. Marie, and the 
 afternoon was full of soft mist, now and then shot through 
 with momentary sunlight. From this "wild little place in 
 Brittany," where Browning used to " walk on the edge of the 
 low rocks by the sea for miles,'' we saw the fishers' sails, 
 copperas-blue and rust-red, slowly drifting up the bay on the 
 tide in the windless afternoon. These were the sails and rocks 
 
[ xxii ] 
 
 and water which James Lee's wife knew, and this the bay of 
 the philosopher in " Fifine at the Fair/' whose titanic poem is 
 filled with the color and sound of what his passion clung to 
 " on Pornic's placid shore, abundant air to breathe, sufficient 
 sun to feel ! " 
 
 As to Gold Hair, the maid of Pomic, whose "boasted 
 name in Brittany '' Browning would not write, where else 
 could she have dwelt but in the chateau whose rose-grown 
 courtyard we explored ? The old church of Ste. Marie, as we 
 knew from Browning's letters, has been torn down and sup- 
 planted by a smart new one. But in the new one there is 
 preserved the ancient knight in stone of which Touchard- 
 Lafosse, the antiquarian, wrote in 1840 : 
 
 " He has the costume of a knight. It is a large rock 
 placed on a level with the ground, on which is sculptured the 
 said figure in relief. There are around it Gothic characters 
 which no one has been able to interpret. The costume of 
 the knight and the form of the characters should refer the 
 monument to the thirteenth or fourteenth century." 
 
 Touchard-Lafosse describes tlie old church, only lightly 
 alluded to in Browning's letters ; and it was from his monu- 
 mental work, " La Loire, Historique, Pittoresque et Biograph- 
 ique " (Nantes, 1840-45), that I received the clues for certain 
 descriptions in this dramatic romance. If Gold Hair was 
 laid in the chancel or near the altar of the old church of Ste. 
 Marie, her family must have had large means to pay for the 
 honor, and if they were of Pornic, as the story goes, my 
 assumption that they were the people of the chateau is most 
 likely to be correct. 
 
 After we had visited the chateau, and while we were 
 driving on the opposite side of the bay from which is had 
 the loveliest view of it and of the rock-built village, we 
 talked about the first scenes of this story of mine. I had 
 
[ xxiii ] 
 
 read them to you on the train from Coex to St. Pazanne, and 
 you had applauded. But we saw that, in fact, the chateau 
 was differently situated from the manner in which I had de- 
 scribed it, and that the church of Ste. Marie was further from 
 it than my requirements demanded. 
 
 We agreed there at Pornic that one may rearrange for 
 dramatic purposes, and thereby heighten, so far from lessen- 
 ing, the effect of truth. I shall continue in this way until 
 the piece, which now rests as you saw it, is finished and in 
 the hands of the printers. 
 
 The view across the estuary of the Lauderneau, from 
 where I write, is so beautiful that I wish you and other good 
 friends could share it with me. Eain has left a silver mist 
 over the green slopes of the hither shore, which throws into 
 double perspective the gigantic granite rocks across the 
 passage on the Plougastel peninsula. But the sun is fidl 
 upon the face of earth and waters, and shines splendidly 
 along my terrace. Far away on the other side of the long 
 hill the village of Plougastel is basking; her church spire 
 just arises above the ridge. I spent five days in that still 
 Breton commune, and my story has taken fuller shape there 
 among the somber-minded peasants, whose strange rites I 
 have seen on the Eve of St. Jean and at the Pardon of 
 St. Pierre. 
 
 These lines pursue you to the western rim of the Ameri- 
 can continent, with many good wishes and pleasant memories 
 of days in Brittany together, and of many other days in our 
 well-loved city among the Minnesota lakes. 
 
 ARTHUR UPSON. 
 
 But what now, looking at Upson's work as a whole, are 
 those distinctive qualities which mark him out from other 
 followers of the Muse? That he loved to build the lofty 
 
[ xxiv ] 
 
 rhyme, and earnestly pursued Beauty, none knowing his life 
 will gainsay. But this is not enough. I have already ex- 
 pressed the conviction that he did more, that his verse is 
 poetry in the larger, more permanent sense. 
 
 These qualities come out plainly, I think, from a thought- 
 ful acquaintance with the body, of his work. He had, as has 
 been said, a firm grasp on the materials of his art. His 
 technic was not timorous; it does not illustrate the slavish 
 obeyance of rules, but the rejoicing freedom of the artist who 
 realizes the truth of Goethe^s saying that it is within the 
 confines of law that liberty is to be found. Upson^s verse 
 abounds in those artistic irregularities which delight the 
 connoisseur. Take, for instance, the fine line of "Tragic 
 Winds,'' 
 
 " Viols throbbing out some earth-impassioned hymn," 
 
 and note the surplusage of syllables, the cumulative effect of 
 music. Such lines, scanned by the rule of thumb, are imper- 
 fect; rightly heard, they are rhythmic triumphs. 
 
 Whether in the delicately intricate forms like the sonnet, 
 in the art-concealing art of the song, or when the more virile 
 demands of the drama with its medium of blank verse con- 
 front him, the difficulties are easily met and beauties take 
 their place. Technic should be simply a deft, hidden way 
 to produce a result, not a thing to parade for its own sake. 
 Never, except in work so early as to be discarded by his 
 judgment, did he err in this discrimination. Hence, his verse 
 is conserved by his mastery of the ars poetica. 
 
 Another trait which makes his work admirable is the hu- 
 manity, the love for fellow man which pulses through the 
 song, growing notably strong at the close. Naturally, at 
 first it is less general, expressed more often in some love 
 lyric where the chosen one is addressed, or when friendship is 
 
[ XXV ] 
 
 lauded. Later, this note becomes broader and deeper, until 
 you hear in it a universal sentiment, the spirit of such a 
 poem as " The Sons of Men." 
 
 This fine, fraternal note clarifies and gives red blood to 
 work that otherwise, because of its delicate art and aloofness 
 from vulgar and obvious themes, might have failed to reach 
 a general audience. 
 
 It should be added that the sweetness and sanity of the 
 song are notable characteristics. Often subtle in form and 
 feeling as it may be, there is an underlying common-sense, an 
 insistent and instinctive avoidance of anything morbid or de- 
 generate ; nay, more ; there is the frequent play of a charm- 
 ing, sunny humor when in lighter moods the poet depicts 
 the gladness and grace of life. Alleviations come to him by 
 way of human intercourse, through the gentle ministries 
 of nature, or from the divinating whispers of the soul; he 
 translates them for our pleasure. The verse is never misty, 
 meaningless, pessimistic. Of course it has, at times, the ex- 
 quisite sadness of all true poetry ; a poet is a poet, among 
 other reasons, because he feels more keenly than is common 
 the dissonance between our dreams and our doings. But 
 whoever turns to Arthur Upson's writings for the bizarre and 
 the dubious will be disappointed. His appeal is to that 
 robuster taste which outlasts mere literary fashions. 
 
 Last of all, and best of all, permeating this work like an 
 atmosphere, is its spirituality. Upson bravely accepted the 
 facts of life and showed their symbolic significance. He 
 realized that the test of living is soul growth, that we are 
 here on a battle ground where victory is for him whose char- 
 acter is strengthened by the struggle. He lets us hear, above 
 the din of conflict, and set to luring music, the " still small 
 voice " that speaks the coveted " well done." While enam- 
 oured of beauty that is of the eyes, he is aware that the high- 
 
[ xxvi ] 
 
 est beauty is of the soul ; that the phrases " the holiness of 
 beauty '' and "the beauty of holiness^' are interchangeable. 
 In lyrics like " To a Poet/' " The Eival Quests " and many 
 another we feel that we are getting more than phrasing and 
 melody and the deft handling of forms ; namely, a message 
 for the spirit; that here again poetry, the divine art, is 
 justified of one of her children. 
 
 In a word, Arthur Upson is an aristocrat of verse, whose 
 song has in it somewhat of seership. So it must appear to a 
 contemporary. For this very reason he was less known at 
 his death than might have been, had his appeal been of the 
 catchpenny kind. But already his own sort knew him ; warm 
 words of appreciation have been spoken by Mr. Stedman, 
 Mr. Gilder, Mr. Aldrich and yet others. Wrote Mr. Aldrich 
 in a private letter : 
 
 " I am afraid he is too fine for immediate popularity ; but 
 that does n't matter. It is not the many but the few that give a 
 man his place in literature. The many are engaged in canning 
 meat and manipulating pious life insurance companies." 
 
 Time, the great corrective, will take care of that. Mean- 
 while, here is the work, with its wistful loveliness, its quiet, 
 unprotesting, unsensational perfection, its touch of the pathos 
 which must inevitably hover over the incomplete, its lasting 
 dower of Beauty. Such a message may always be thankfully 
 received, whether from the hand of one of the masters whose 
 position has long been assured, or from one nearer, and less 
 clearly seen because so close, whose tongue nevertheless is 
 touched with the same sacred fire : 
 
 " Here a boy he dwelt, through all the singing season, 
 And ere the day of sorrow departed as he came." 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE HARP 
 
I 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 BY A REGULAR LODGER 
 
 The Gentle Reader shall labor under no Misappre- 
 hension : the Verse in this Book disclaims the lofty 
 title and rank of Poesy. It is, as it were, a Record 
 of Echoes from many-keyed Melodies heard by a 
 back-stairs Lodger in an old rambling Inn. This 
 Inn is one not come upon in the main Thoroughfare 
 and for that reason those who haunt its Chimney 
 Nook find perennial Charm in the quaint Restful- 
 ness pervading it. 
 
 Down a green Yew Lane a Sonnet's length, or 
 thereabouts, from the Highway, one discovers the 
 brown, moss-edged gables of the Harp Tavern, whose 
 Rafters have rung with sweetest Music from the days 
 of Sidney and Spenser to our own. It cannot escape 
 one, for the Lane turns at the Tavern Gate and then, 
 too, there is the ancient Sign. It is a place of Solace, 
 tidy Hearths and rare Bread and Ale ; and so sweet 
 is the Companionship withal, that many a day the 
 present Scribe has overtarried there, to the sad neg- 
 lect of his proper Duties. 
 
 A Winter's Night there, my Masters, is good for 
 the Soul of Man ! A roaring Fire of oaken billets 
 
[4] 
 
 attracts its circle of Deep Chairs and into each Chair 
 is sunken a Contented Guest. Nightlong a whim- 
 pering Wind is at the Casement ; nightlong the Sign 
 on its hinge and the ancient Yews groan together, 
 and the girders of the sturdy Hostel crack in the 
 tightening clutch of vindictive Frost. The housed 
 Heartlover is wrapped in a Luxury these contrasting 
 Asperities of the Season serve to intensify, for whilst 
 the Brook in the Meadow becomes hard and still 
 without, congealed Springs of Song melt delight- 
 somely within; Mugs go round; Talk babbles on, 
 till at length one retires drowsily happy into some 
 lavendered Chamber of Sleep. 
 
 Prom time to time these Pieces were dropped into 
 an old Portmanteau which had become so stuffed 
 with the ilk that the Jaws of the distorted Receptacle 
 refused to meet. For no other reason, therefore, 
 than to relieve the Poor Thing of its Embarrassment, 
 have these been taken out and done into a little 
 Book. And if this be not reason enough, why, 
 then, those who read it may invent more; for the 
 World still has a Pew not grown too busy to nurse 
 the old Love, frank and warm, for their accustomed 
 Chimney Corner at the Sign of the Harp. 
 
[5] 
 
 'NEATH THE WALLS OF 
 NAISHAPUR 
 
 " A JUG of wine, a loaf and thou " — 
 Oh, to sit beneath the bough 
 Singing in the wilderness, 
 With a southern breeze to bless 
 Book and bloom and purple lure 
 'Neath the walls of Naishapur ! 
 
 Oh, to feel the subtle Spring 
 Rouse the fire in everything, 
 As she once in Khorassan 
 Round the old rose-gardens ran. 
 Keeping with the Poet-wooer 
 Her sweet trjst at Naishapur ! 
 
 Roses turn a tenderer red — 
 Once they circled Omar's head ; — 
 Southwinds fetch a plaintive psalm 
 Prom the shrine of old Khayyam, 
 Taught them on some pilgrim tour 
 By nightingales at Naishapur. 
 
[6] 
 
 Otherwhere the Springtime may 
 Leave her old familiar way, 
 And the nightingale forget 
 How to sing an eyelash wet — 
 But the scent and song endm-e 
 'Neath the walls of Naishapur. 
 
 Life were life enough to close 
 With a quatrain and a rose ; 
 Death were death enough to be 
 Shut away from such as he 
 Who for both found ample cure 
 'Neath the walls of Naishapur. 
 
[7] 
 
 DUST O' BOOKS 
 
 Slantwise one long starbeain finds 
 Access through the jealous blinds, 
 Lingeringly, lance at rest 
 On the Poet loved the best, 
 Feeling softly down the shelves 
 Where my books reveal themselves ; 
 And, beneath its trembling glow, 
 Taint, fine blooms, like plam-mist show 
 Bust Books, I love you so / 
 
 Wrecks of olden minstrelsy 
 
 When the lilting tide is lee. 
 
 Ride at flood into our cove 
 
 To protest unaltered love ; 
 
 Or, difi'used into the night. 
 
 Some sweet Spirit of the Past, 
 
 Poising in an airy flight. 
 
 Doth behold a home at last 
 
 Here with books he fathered when 
 
 He was tangible to men 
 
 — Mew /lis soul up in some sphere 
 
 When he might be basking here ! — 
 
 Now the Lady Moon looks in, 
 
 Searching with her finger thin 
 
[8] 
 
 To detect the gentle fluff 
 Prom some rose of long ago, 
 Whicli, once found, doth seem enough 
 To provoke her tenderest glow — 
 Bust Books, she loves you so ! 
 
 Watch Diana set the name 
 Of her lover-bard aflame, 
 Through the casement golden streets 
 Flooding to the name of Keats ! 
 And the silken dust she tries 
 That on my table-Browning lies. 
 Pollen of the Reddest Rose 
 Our Parnassus-garden grows. 
 Dust ? Nay, their own ashes rest 
 On the works their love caressed : 
 Out of linen and levant 
 Thoughts of masters emanant, 
 Prom the outer wash of air 
 Their sweet ashes settled there ! 
 This is creed to all of us 
 And dust of earth, unluminous, 
 Hath no gold like this we know 
 Of an otherworldly glow — 
 Bust d Books, we love you so ! 
 
[9] 
 
 PRAISE OF RAIN 
 
 I LOVE the rainy day, the quiet room, 
 
 The books, the pictures and the glowing fire j 
 I love the nursing of a dear desire 
 
 And all the fancies weaving in the gloom. 
 
 I love the daylong woodland wind anear 
 Down sodden slopes and dripping avenues ; 
 For, come the twilight, he hath tuned the flues 
 
 Into sweet panpipes, wonderful to hear. 
 
 I love the friend that reads to me again 
 Old stories 'mid the soothing monotone 
 Of singing flame and eave-caught sprites that moan 
 
 And murmur through the lisping of the rain. 
 
 And each pale joy the dreary day unnests 
 Is driven within the compass of this hall 
 Where, fearing still the Autumn's hunting-call. 
 
 They hide themselves within our warming breasts. 
 
 Ere evening lamp is brought and while along 
 The flrelit floor dance faeries of the grate, 
 There comes a museful interpause : I wait 
 
 And tap the pane and hum a twilight song : 
 
[10] 
 
 The day is dying, 
 The rain is kind, 
 
 Leaves are flying 
 Before the wind. 
 
 Drops are blotted 
 
 Upon the pane, 
 Red leaves have spotted 
 
 The swimming lane. 
 
 The rain is gentle ; 
 
 It brings to me 
 A transcendental 
 
 Ecstasy. 
 
 When it is hushing 
 I hear the wind : 
 
 This storm a-rushing 
 Is kind, is kind. 
 
 It is kind to the reader ; 
 
 It brings to him 
 The sough i' the cedar. 
 
 The creak o' the limb. 
 
 The pool-caught splatter 
 Of storm-pluckt cones. 
 
 The wind's wet patter 
 On pavement stones 
 
[11] 
 
 That rise in the darking 
 
 Chill of night 
 To meet him harking 
 
 In warmth and light. 
 
 And in it there lingers, 
 
 Above, below, 
 Touch of rain fingers 
 
 In tremolo. 
 
 These days are after 
 Old ways of years — 
 
 Within is laughter, 
 Without are tears ; 
 
 Within is greeting, 
 Without, the rain — 
 
 And hearts are beating 
 Both sides the pane. 
 
 Now dim are tracing 
 Of twig and tree ; 
 
 The fire on the casing 
 Shines ruddily. 
 
 Leaves go flying 
 Before the wind ; 
 
 Day is dying. 
 
 The rain is — kind ! 
 
[12] 
 
 "THE LITTLE WHITE HOME 
 WITH THE LAWN " 
 
 " Tlie Little White Home with the LawUy* 
 It is ever so far away, 
 But into its midst I am drawn, 
 
 By the sweetness it seems to emhay. 
 
 I KNOW it though I have not seen 
 Even its fringe of leafy green : 
 A little stoop with roses tied 
 Along its benches either side, 
 In-latticed cosily with vines 
 Wherethrough the morning thinly shines ; 
 Above, a classic pediment 
 Along whose stately Doric lines 
 Lurks consciousness of high descent ; 
 A tar-walk swerving to the gate 
 Where tall syringa chaplets wait, 
 Underneath whose emerald line, 
 Tay-filched from a thorn-tree's stores, 
 Atalanta's apples shine 
 Luresome down the fairy course. 
 (Are there nightly races run 
 With some sprite Milanion ?) 
 
[13] 
 
 This is every whit a home, 
 Just the place a heart would come 
 With its sorrow and its pain, 
 From the city's toil and stain — 
 Just the place a heart might stay 
 And lark it through a summer day. 
 I have not seen it, yet I know 
 That it stands and waits me so. 
 
[14] 
 
 A RONDEAU ON HER 
 MECHLIN FAN 
 
 Her Mechlin fan night after night I dare 
 And graciously each night she holds it there 
 As some proud queen a scepter to her slave 
 Might lift to reassure the trembling knave. — 
 Paith, and it well becomes her noble air I 
 
 Oh, 't is a wee thing : ivory mounts with rare 
 Light wreathings a Titania might wear ; 
 But ah, it wields a fate in every wave, 
 
 Her Mechlin fan I 
 
 Were I to dash to bits this slim affair 
 
 And, staking all, my mutiny declare, 
 
 What might I gain ? — the welcome that I crave, 
 A tear-washed haven or a smile-sunned grave ? 
 
 (In either case I 'd have to buy somewhere 
 
 A Mechlin fan !) 
 
[15] 
 
 THE FLORENTINE FRAME 
 
 By the walls of old Firenze, 
 
 Loved of Fra Angelico, 
 Through what summer necromancy 
 
 Did the carver-poet go 
 
 When, this tender wood selecting. 
 
 He so deftly in their place 
 Wrought these gracile forms, perfecting 
 
 Such a frame for such a face ? 
 
 Or, amid sweet shadows moving 
 
 On the heights of Fiesole, 
 Carved he thus his heart's great loving, 
 
 Tendrilwise, rememberingly ; 
 
 While below through leafy lattice 
 Shines the Arno to the sea — 
 
 Westward to the maiden that is 
 Smiling from her shelf on me. 
 
 Had he caught a premonition 
 Of these features, carving so. 
 
 He 'd have sought no saintlier vision 
 Of the good Angelico 1 
 
[16] 
 
 AFTER THE OPERA 
 
 Curtain and the moment's pause, 
 Then the stirring of the crowd 
 
 And their chatter, but there was 
 Still the music crying loud — 
 
 Violins that never had 
 
 Seemed to me so tender-mad. 
 
 True, the orchestra was gone 
 And the people and the light. 
 
 But the music sounded on 
 As I rode into the night — 
 
 Violins and Elsa's face 
 
 Prayed across the starlit space. 
 
[17] 
 
 A PORTRAIT 
 
 Erewhile in a dream I saw 
 
 Fleetingly, a face. 
 And on waking tried to draw 
 
 Something of its grace ; 
 
 But the lines my patient pen 
 Traced across the sheet. 
 
 Could in no wise fetch again 
 Features half so sweet. 
 
 Haunted years that hurried round 
 Ne'er an answer brought. 
 
 Till I saw this face and found 
 More than all I sought. 
 
[18] 
 
 AMABEL 
 
 Last night when day had sunk to rest 
 
 And he was waiting at the gate, 
 When tenderly against his breast 
 
 He felt her pulses palpitate, 
 There stood in heaven a wondering star 
 
 That gazed and gazed at Amabel, 
 Till, drunk with love, it leaned so far 
 
 It lost its parapet and fell. 
 
 Then through the balsams came the breeze, 
 
 And all the little sounds of night. 
 Each singing that her heart was his 
 
 And humming in a long delight. 
 The word was trembling on his tongue — 
 
 He tried but could not say farewell ; 
 How could he leave while heaven swung 
 
 One star that winked at Amabel ! 
 
SONGS 
 
[21] 
 
 SAY, LITTLE MAIDEN 
 
 Say, little maiden with dewdrop eyes 
 
 Caught in a moonbeam's silver trace, 
 What is the meaning of this surprise 
 
 Written across your lily-face ? 
 Thrice has the cricket said good-night 
 
 In the sleepy valley below you there, 
 And still I look at the starry light 
 That gleams in your golden hair. 
 Maiden ajloat on the emerald stream 
 
 Of the mighty Slmnher Sea, 
 In all of the beautiful dreams you dream 
 Is there one little _place for me? 
 
 II 
 
 What do you see in the wonderlands 
 Along the starbright thoroughfare. 
 
 Led by the touch of spirit hands, 
 
 And what do the spirits whisper there ? 
 
[22] 
 
 Are there silver worlds we know not of 
 
 They lead your immaculate soul among ? 
 Are there songs they sing of an unknown love 
 That never on earth were sung ? 
 
 And do they as they hang der the bloom-set 
 stream 
 To loop you a diadem, 
 Ask, too, if in all of the dreams you dream 
 Perchance there is one for them ? 
 
[23] 
 
 II 
 GLORIANA 
 
 In a country of moonshine and shadow, 
 
 Dwelt a maid 'neath a mistletoe bough, 
 
 And her hair went in folds of rich auburns and golds, 
 Like a sunset wound over her brow. 
 
 Gloriana, how I love you ! 
 Won't you, won't you promise to be mine ? 
 
 Stars are dim to-night above you, 
 Gloriana, how you shine ! 
 
 Each night as she tripped through the valley, 
 
 The moon on the tip of the fir 
 Wove itself a pale shroud out of shimmering cloud 
 
 And left all the shining to her. 
 
 Gloriana, how I love you ! 
 Won! t you, won t you promise to be mine? 
 
 Stars are dim to-night above you, 
 Gloriana, how you shine! 
 
[24] 
 
 III 
 
 MEIN STERN 
 
 Du, Du bist meines Lebens Stern, 
 
 So hell und rein bist Du ; 
 Du strahlst mir durch die Wolken fern 
 
 Mit sanftem Leuchten zu, 
 Und ich, ich folge bis ich lern' 
 Der Liebe heil'ge Ruh'. 
 
 TJnd ueheraU wohin ich geJi , 
 In Feld und Thai, auf Berg und See, 
 Mit ivunderbarem Sternenschein 
 Du segnest mir das Lehen ein ! 
 
 Es giebt Nichts in der ganzen Welt 
 
 So schoen wie dein Gesicht 
 Das auf den Weg so lieblich faellt 
 
 Mit heitrem Himmelslicht ; 
 Auf Berg und See, in Thai und Feld 
 Die Glorie fehlt mir nicht. 
 Denn ueherall wohin ich geJi , 
 In Feld und Thai, auf Berg und See, 
 Mit wunderbarevi Sternenschein 
 Du segnest mir das Lehen ein ! 
 
[25] 
 
 SINCE THE CHILDREN LEARNED 
 TO SING 
 
 (TO A TEACHER) 
 
 No more in wide and tuneless ways 
 Does wistful childhood throng, 
 
 Or file as in the other days 
 In voicelessness along ; 
 
 Por now the smile of service plays 
 Upon the lips of song ; 
 
 And, down those deep recesses whence 
 
 A child his love may bring, 
 There streams a silver opulence 
 
 Of voices carolling, 
 Since by your music's eloquence 
 
 The children learned to sing. 
 
 Of all the lovely lore that slips 
 
 Into a childheart so, 
 The songs that linger on the lips 
 
 And sweeter seemed to grow, 
 Shall be first come of comradeships 
 
 And prove the last to go. 
 
[26] 
 
 And thus, of all the after-bloom 
 
 Their thoughts will backward fling 
 
 When larger tasks their place assume 
 And memory voices ring, 
 
 The best will be for you of whom 
 The children learned to sing. 
 
IN MEMORY LOCK'D 
 
 " Ophelia — ^Tis in my memory lock'd 
 And you yourself shall keep the key of it," 
 
[29] 
 
 TO ESTELLE 
 
 Sweet, for the days that were I 'd give 
 All the days that are yet to live ; 
 For the bloom once lining the deep, white tree 
 I 'd barter the fruit of the years to be — 
 For the first blush-petals that drift and blur 
 In the old dear days that were. 
 
 Sweet, for the days that were I 'd thread 
 The maze of the years unanswered, 
 If, in those shadows and after all, 
 I could hear thy whisper return my call. 
 Or the satin sound of thy nearing stir. 
 Just once, as in days that were. 
 
[30] 
 
 SOUL OF BAZIL 
 
 I 
 There she lay so still and white 
 In the tender folds of night, 
 Three white tapers at her head 
 Lighted for the saintly dead, 
 Over which methought did shine 
 Yet another, light divine, 
 Brighter and more calmly clear — 
 Soul of Bazil hovering near. 
 
 II 
 
 Soul of Bazil, white and whole. 
 In upon our sorrow stole 
 As, beside the wreathed pall, 
 We were watching ; and a call 
 Half a whisper, half refrain 
 Of some wondrous angel-strain 
 Low but clear, suffused the gloom 
 Of the consecrated room : 
 
 " / am resting, resting ivell — 
 Should gou weep for this ? 
 
 Could gou grasp it I loould tell 
 WJiat mg welcome is!' 
 
[31] 
 
 III 
 Roses grew beside the wall 
 To twine her resting place withal ; 
 Violets in whispering bands 
 Bloomed for Bazil's folded hands ; 
 Someone wrought these candlesticks 
 And the clasped crucifix 
 Just to light her home a way, 
 Just to lift her into day. 
 
 IV 
 
 Not forgotten, little one, 
 Shall the works be you have done ; 
 Toiled nor these frail hands in vain 
 Nor the weary woman-brain 
 Dwelling in the troubled head 
 That is now quite comforted ; 
 Little child, the hearts you knew 
 Now are images of you ! 
 
 Roses that remember well — 
 Violets that used to tell 
 All about you, each to each, 
 Needing so no priest to preach — 
 Carved cross and candles — all 
 Evermore upon you call ; 
 
[32] 
 
 And, self-answering, seem to say 
 To us wlien we bow to pray : 
 
 " She is resting, resting well — 
 Should you weep for this? 
 
 Could you grasp it she would tell 
 What her welcotne is." 
 
[33] 
 
 TO BERTHA, SLEEPING 
 
 (B. E. C, DIED IN PARIS, AUGUST, 1898) 
 
 Home at last from the overseas, 
 
 Ah, Bertha, what welcomes strange are these I 
 
 Strange yet tender, and sweeter far 
 
 Than all of our mortal welcomes are ; 
 
 Arms are open, arms cool and deep ; 
 
 Kisses are given, the kisses of sleep. 
 
 Tenderly there in the dear home sod 
 
 Are resting your feet where of old they trod ; 
 
 Folded your hands in the meadow where 
 
 They gathered the daisies ; — and loosed the hair 
 
 Where over and over the breeze may tell 
 
 How lately it loved those riches well. 
 
 Ah, but the eyes that I used to know 
 
 And the lips that were smiling, are smiling so ! 
 
 Even your laughter and lilt and bloom 
 
 Tollow you down to the restful tomb. 
 
 Warm, happy France ! 'T is the land for you 
 
 To have sought the gates of the Happier through. 
 
[34] 
 
 A SEPTEMBER'S DAY 
 
 (FORT SNELLING) 
 
 I HEARD the river past the fortress sing 
 When the wide woods were faintly yellowing, 
 And up the hills and through the autumn air 
 The blur of dreams was drifting everywhere. 
 The wind caught up a wandering bugle tone 
 From the green court of some far barrack blown. 
 Whose startled echoes, over tower and tree. 
 Pelted from cliff to cliff right silverly. 
 Past many a rocky headland toward the town 
 The Mississippi swept benignly down. 
 His wimpled waters glassing brokenly 
 Red leaves and gold and sunny fields of sky. 
 
 Crowning the southern brink, against the wood 
 
 The old, six-sided tower is cameoed. 
 
 Guard of the dim horizon's level sweep. 
 
 Gray sentinel of a valley, still and deep. 
 
 Along whose leaf}'- lap, half hidden, glide 
 
 The sun-kissed waves of Minnesota's tide. 
 
 Verging the further heights, Mendota lifts 
 
 Her quaint, brown gables through the woodland rifts ; 
 
 And over all the scene there seems to play 
 
 The mellow light of some lost Yesterday. 
 
[35] 
 
 I leaned far out against the sightly wall, 
 To hear the wild birds through the valley call. 
 And, from the woodbine on the parapet 
 That wreathed in many a windy coronet, 
 I heard, or in my daydream thought I heard, 
 The reminiscent carols of a bird 
 Singing me such faint music as would fit 
 Into the delicate thought preceding it : 
 
 September is her same old self, 
 Carmine, gray and gold again, 
 
 As she down the foreland shone 
 Fourscore years ago and ten. 
 
 Here the Island breaks the stream 
 And the mingled waters flow 
 
 On together as they ran 
 Ninety years and more ago. 
 
 Still the ragged ledge is cut 
 On the amber Autumn sky. 
 
 And the melancholy breeze 
 Whispers echoingly by. 
 
 Still the maple twigs are traced 
 On the limestone buttress sharp, 
 
 And the oak leaves flutter down 
 From the russet counterscarp. 
 
[36] 
 
 But the hands that patient wrought 
 
 In the wildernesses then, 
 Shaped their own oblivion 
 
 Pourscore years ago and ten ; 
 
 Now their man-forgotten names, 
 Once within the valley said. 
 
 By the woodland birds are sung. 
 By the breeze remembered. 
 
 There are forms along the wall. 
 Footprints in untrodden ways, 
 
 Sounds the busy morning winds 
 Up around the treetops raise. 
 
 Does the lonely sentinel, 
 To his lofty beat confined, 
 
 Hear or see these traces ? Nay, 
 Man alone is deaf and blind. 
 
 But the hands that patient wrought 
 In the unblazed wilderness, 
 
 Nature, through the bird and breeze. 
 Doth forever repossess. 
 
 September is her same old self. 
 Carmine, gray and gold again, 
 
 As she down the foreland shone 
 Fourscore years ago and ten. 
 
THE INWARD SERVICE 
 
 " Laertes — For Nature, crescent, does not grow alone 
 In thews and hulk ; but as this temple waxes, 
 The inward service of the mind and soul 
 Grows fvide withal." 
 
[39] 
 
 ON ROCK RIVER — EVENING 
 
 On sucli a river, in such a night 
 
 As hfted old longings up to light, 
 
 In the liquid, low, melodious sound 
 
 Of oars and waters inter wound. 
 
 In the stars' young lights that shimmered by 
 
 Through underchannels of changing sky. 
 
 Like those of some strange lantern feast 
 
 On sacred rivers of the east — 
 
 A man might throttle earth's whimpering blight. 
 
 On such a river, in such a night, 
 
 And half his battle and all his care 
 
 Might dwindle into the shadows there. 
 
 By some still river such as this, 
 
 Ruffled by a zephyr-kiss, 
 
 Turning ever so the eyes 
 
 Rest where new embankments rise ; 
 
 Sanctified from daylit streams 
 
 By a holy touch of dreams. 
 
 And trailing on her trembling breast 
 
 The lingering opal of the west — 
 
 Let life regain her emphasis 
 
 By some still river such as this. 
 
 Whilst half the battle and all the care 
 
 Dwindle into the shadows there. 
 
[40] 
 
 THE LOST BROTHER 
 
 Palters now the storm-song, 
 Winds are a- waning, 
 
 Only the steady rain 
 
 Keeps on complaining. 
 
 Throw up the blinds now, 
 Fetch me the candles ; 
 
 Hark ! 't is a footstep. 
 
 Touch of his sandals. 
 
 List ! ah, an Someone come 
 Out of the storming. 
 
 He will find welcome here, 
 Welcome and warming ! 
 
 Hushed is the wind-song. 
 Silent remaining — 
 
 Only the mournful rain 
 
 Keeps on complaining. 
 
 Were he to come to-night. 
 Brother and brother, 
 
 Heart warm to heart warm, 
 Forgiving each other — 
 
[41] 
 
 Were he to follow 
 
 The light I am placing, 
 Up through the darkness 
 
 My woodpath tracing. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 Dead is the rain-song. 
 Silent remaining ; 
 
 Only a lonely soul 
 
 Keeps on complaining. 
 
[42] 
 
 AFTER THE SINKING OF THE 
 "MERRIMAC " 
 
 (1898) 
 
 Quite simply do the Great-at-Heart 
 
 Their creed of hfe confess 
 They pray no chance, they know no art 
 
 Save Self-forgetfulness. 
 
 No casual hand of favoring Fate 
 Doth kindle life's high star ; 
 
 'T is true we may not all be great. 
 But more can be than are. 
 
[43] 
 
 THE DIFFERENCE 
 
 The Virtuoso dined with friends 
 And made them serve ambitious ends ; 
 He shaded off his tones a bit 
 To bring them to his patrons' wit. 
 
 The Second Fiddle, all alone, 
 Searched his Amati tone by tone, 
 Dwelling apart because he found 
 No voices like his fiddle's sound. 
 
 Both had the skill of equal pains — 
 Only the former's name remains. 
 
[44] 
 
 THE OLD CATHEDRAL 
 
 Moquent of the Evermore 
 
 The old cathedral calmly stands 
 
 And blesses, as with outstretched hands. 
 
 The city j)lodding past its door. 
 
 The furrowed steps, the walls' gray stone. 
 The arched windows, plain and high, 
 
 That snatch white squares of sunlight down 
 Prom the brimmed bosom of the sky, 
 
 Are symbols of the hoary faith 
 
 Whose steps lead up a footworn way, 
 
 And through whose misnamed window, Death, 
 There glances the abundant day. 
 
 Within, vague whisperings of hope 
 Go trembling by where, echo-trod, 
 
 Prayer-crowded incense pathways grope 
 Their dim way upward unto God. 
 
 Though priestly chant may backward roll, 
 Heavy with weight of conscious bass, 
 
 The faltered prayer of one faint soul 
 Mounts the light incense to His face. 
 
 Here the mute, quivering heart may rest, 
 
 However slight its wisdom be. 
 And beat its cares out on the breast 
 
 Of an omniscient Sympathy. 
 
[45] 
 
 VENTURE 
 
 Where such haze as light winds carry 
 
 Up the eviternal blue 
 Cuts the orbit round his eyrie, 
 
 Fearlessly the eagle flew : 
 Soul, why in thy cloudlet tarry, 
 
 When a stroke would wing thee through ? 
 
[46] 
 
 THE GREATER TREASURE 
 
 My rarest Quarto, to have been 
 With Chaucer at the Tabard Inn 
 When April with her showers sweet 
 Spread blossoms for the Pilgrim's feet ! 
 
 My choicest Sevres, to have heard 
 Poor Palissy's ecstatic word 
 When, after years, the sullen kiln 
 Responded to his patient skill ! 
 
 My Stradivarius, to know 
 The Master's thought when, long ago 
 In quaint Cremona, first there came 
 The intimations of his fame ! 
 
 My all — books, porcelain and Strad, 
 Por something sweet these craftsmen had : 
 The Poet's spirit, blithe and true, 
 The patience of the other two ! 
 
WESTWIND SONGS 
 I 
 
 HEART AND SOIL 
 
[49] 
 
 ARLINGTON 
 
 No tap of drum nor sound of any horn 
 
 Shall call them now from this unbattled height. 
 No more the picket dreads the traitor night, 
 
 Nor would the marcher tired delay the morn. 
 
 Fell some upon the field with victory torn 
 
 Erom weakening grasp ; and some before the fight, 
 Doomed by slow fevers or the stray shot's spite ; 
 
 And some old wounds through quiet years have worn. 
 
 And all are folded now so peacefully 
 
 Within her breast whose glory was their dream — 
 From her own bloody fields, from isles extreme, 
 
 From the long tumult of the land and sea — 
 Where lies the steel Potomac's jewelled stream 
 
 Like the surrendered sword of Memory. 
 
[50] 
 WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY 
 
 (The first celebration in the new century) 
 
 Earth, that hast countless aeons of swift days 
 
 Spun from thy poles — and like a mote been 
 swirled 
 
 Fleet years about thy Master Orb — and hurled 
 With all thy starry fellows into space 
 Silent and irresistible on the face 
 
 Of heavens and of heavens' heavens unfurled — 
 
 And yet remainest our remembering world, 
 Our kindly home and our familiar place, — 
 Thou dost not fail, sweet, immemorial Earth, 
 
 To number o'er thy sons that were thy kings ; 
 
 Chants royal raisest thou among the rings 
 Celestial of old stars for their great worth 
 Whose birth was not as is our common birth. 
 
 But was foreplanned with elemental things. 
 
[51] 
 
 THE SEQUOIA, 
 "WILLIAM McKINLEY" 
 
 (CHRISTENED OCTOBER 21, 1901) 
 
 He who in dying blessed the peaceful trees 
 That lulled the slow grief of the lapsing year 
 Towards tranquil death, is best remembered here. 
 
 He leaves a name that shall make holier these 
 
 Huge temple pillars where the organing breeze, 
 Always at requiem, fills the atmosphere, 
 And does to their eternal roof uprear 
 
 Perpetual music of great memories. 
 
 Men raised rich temples in the days antique 
 To serve memorial unto virtues wan 
 Beside his. Him no rites shall celebrate 
 
 Gold-bought, ephemeral as their altar-reek — 
 But, while time is, he here in solemn state 
 Shall hold fit place in Nature's pantheon. 
 
[52] 
 
 BENJAMIN-CONSTANT'S PAINTING 
 OF QUEEN VICTORIA 
 
 Apart, with centuries which she doth illume, 
 The sunset on her face, around her throne 
 Tapestried legends and heraldic stone, 
 
 Silent she sits within that gorgeous gloom. 
 
 Eyes narrowed in far retrospect assume 
 Sorrows of empire. Not her dream alone 
 Occident glories, Orients homage-prone, 
 
 But more and more of Lucknow and Khartum. 
 
 Along the past with heavy-lidded eyes 
 
 She looks as one who knows the vision well, 
 A quiet woman whom stately powers compel 
 
 To splendor and to silent sacrifice — 
 
 Por in the clare-obscure of her deep years 
 What counter of gains hath likewise told her 
 tears ? 
 
[53] 
 
 WHEAT ELEVATORS 
 
 Castles, or Titans' houses, or huge fanes 
 
 Of ancient gods that yet compel men's fear — 
 What powers, what pomps, do these betoken 
 here 
 Looming aloft upon the plough-seamed plains ? 
 Souls of ripe seasons and spirits of sweet rains 
 Flock hither ; and the sinewy, yellow year 
 Heaps their high chambers with Pactolian gear 
 More precious than those golden Lydian grains. 
 Nor fortresses, nor demi-gods' abodes, 
 These are upraised to well-feared deities 
 
 Whose power is iron, and whose splendid 
 sway 
 Is undisputed now as when great Rhodes, 
 
 And Tyre, and Carthage, flourished serving 
 these, 
 Or Joseph stored Egyptian corn away. 
 
[54] 
 
 FAILURES 
 
 They bear no laurels on their sunless brows, 
 
 Nor aught within their pale hands as they go ; 
 
 They look as men accustomed to the slow 
 And level onward course 'neath drooping boughs. 
 Who may these be no trumpet doth arouse, 
 
 These of the dark processionals of woe, 
 
 Unpraised, unblamed, but whom sad Acheron's 
 flow 
 Monotonously lulls to leaden drowse ? 
 These are the Failures. Clutched by Circumstance, 
 
 They were — say not too weak ! — too ready prey 
 To their own fear whose fixed Gorgon glance 
 
 Made them as stone for aught of great essay ; — 
 Or else they nodded when their Master-Chance 
 
 Wound his one signal, and went on his way. 
 
[55] 
 
 THE SOBBING WOMAN 
 
 I HEARD a woman sobbing in the night 
 
 Against a casement high. And as she cried 
 Our heartless world's deliberate homicide, 
 Our tragic badinage, our mortal slight 
 Of elemental claims, and the dark plight 
 Of the poor I faced there, rigid, open-eyed. 
 Across the unechoing street in silence died 
 Her weary moaning. Whether in her sight 
 Some star appeared to soothe her present pain 
 
 With memories sweet, or quiet sleep's strong hand 
 Blunted her keen-edged woe, or other fear 
 Came smothering down too close for sob or tear, 
 I could not guess ; — some Fate may understand 
 That spins unseen her endless umber skein. 
 
[56] 
 
 EXEMPTION 
 
 Us would-be wise they mock — those from of old 
 Who down the shuddering centuries with no sound 
 Tread by men evenly as keen souls that hound 
 
 A slayer. When the days turn strange and cold 
 
 Who of us up dim, woody byways hold 
 
 No protest with vague beings ? Thick around 
 What mover among multitudes are not found 
 
 Close but untouched companions ? — In a fold 
 
 Of a still, midnight, winter hill one time 
 Came they about me ! Fearful as I stood, 
 The moon streamed up before me in a wood. 
 
 And lit a frozen pool where swayed sublime 
 In world-forgetfulness and young, swift joy, 
 A skater, a wild, singing, thoughtless boy. 
 
[57] 
 
 GOLDEN ROD 
 
 Doubtless 't was here we walked but yesterday, 
 Seeing not any beauty save the green 
 Of meadows, or, where sUpt the brook between, 
 
 A ribbon of blue and silver ; yet the way 
 
 Is strange ; in golden paths I seem astray. 
 Do you remember, comrade, to have seen 
 Aught forward in these meadows that should mean 
 
 A culmination in such fair display? 
 
 We noticed not the humble stalks amid 
 The many roadside grasses ; but, it seems, 
 They were preparing this ! And, when their 
 dreams 
 
 Were ripe for doing, they could no more be hid 
 Than golden thoughts that bloom to action when 
 Their hearts make heroes out of common men. 
 
[581 
 
 GOSPEL OF THE FIELDS 
 
 Have you ever thought, my friend, 
 
 As daily you toil and plod 
 In the noisy paths of man, 
 
 How still are the ways of God ? 
 
 Have you ever paused in the din 
 
 Of traffic's insistent cry, 
 To think of the calm in the cloud, 
 
 Of the peace in your glimpse of sky ? 
 
 Go out in the growing fields 
 That quietly yield you meat, 
 
 And let them rebuke your noise 
 Whose patience is still and sweet. 
 
 They toil their aeons — and we 
 Who flutter back to their breast, 
 
 A handful of clamorous clay, 
 Forget their silence is best I 
 
[59] 
 
 THE WAY OF THE WORLD 
 
 Aloof by something hidden held, 
 Though yearning for companionship, 
 
 He toiled ; and need, that so compelled, 
 Wrung no word from his lip. 
 
 Some said he scorned the human part ; 
 
 Others, that self was all his care ; 
 A few saw suffering in his heart, 
 
 But shrank from entering there. 
 
 They let him tread his lonely mile 
 And toil apart as best he might. 
 
 Nor sought a meaning in the smile 
 He wore into the night. 
 
 He died one day ; and when they found 
 Him smiling in his final rest. 
 
 An old, immedicable wound 
 They saw within his breast. 
 
 And those who oft with eye of stone 
 Denied his soul their comfort's bliss, 
 
 Said, " Why, if we had only known ! 
 We had good anodynes for this ! " 
 
[60] 
 
 OCTOBER SONG 
 
 If this be October 't is the maid I 've sought so long ! 
 I have traced her through the dying 
 
 Summer with a song ; 
 I have seen her garments flying 
 Niffhts in June 
 Down the crimson West beneath the moon ! 
 
 If this be October, then, this dark-eyed, ruddy maid, 
 With the amber in her tresses, 
 
 All in gold arrayed, 
 Let me sing yet while she dresses 
 The still woods 
 And the scarlet sumach solitudes ! 
 
 Let me sing, nor think of gloom, the while she 
 crowns her brow 
 With the woodbine reddening 
 
 Round the yellow bough ! 
 Nothing sorrowful or saddening 
 Brings she here. 
 Only ripe fulfilments of the year ! 
 
[61] 
 
 IN THE WOOD 
 
 No shrill praise nor thanks confessed 
 Clamorous to be understood. 
 
 Troubles here the Sabbath rest 
 Of the solitary wood. 
 
 (There are ways to live and be 
 
 Praiseful, thankful, silently.) 
 
 Flowers fear not their God will blight 
 If they shout no praises loud ; 
 
 Trees attain their normal height 
 Waving worship to a cloud. 
 
 (Why should mortals anxiously 
 
 Reassure the Deity ?) 
 
 Thanks there are in everything 
 Growing down the woodland way. 
 
 Rendered through developing 
 Fullest life and freest sway. 
 
 (Let me find how I may be 
 
 Thankful unobtrusively.) 
 
[62] 
 
 IN OCTOBER 
 
 The maples their old sumptuous hues resume 
 Around the woodland pool's bright glass, and 
 
 strong 
 The year's blue incense and recession-song 
 
 Sweep over me their music and perfume. 
 
 Dear Earth, that I reproached thee in my gloom 
 I would forget as thou forgot'st ; I long 
 To make redress for such a filial wrong 
 
 And praise thee now for all thy ruddy bloom ! 
 
 So fond a mother to be used so ill ! 
 
 Yet this poor heart of mine hath ever been 
 Prey to its own unwarranted alarms. 
 
 Shall fret, and beg forgiveness so, until 
 Thou fold my thankless body warmly in 
 And draw me back into thy loving arms. 
 
[63] 
 
 THE UNFORGIVING 
 
 The unforgiving one forgot 
 
 And sinned, for he was flesh and blood, 
 And deemed it cruel his dearest friend 
 
 Forgave him not, nor understood. 
 
 Long pored he o'er his wrongs until 
 Trom his high window once he saw 
 
 An outcast whom his arm had thrust 
 Beneath the ban of certain law. 
 
 Him hailed he in a frantic hope 
 
 As one whose woes he would repair — 
 
 But far and faint came his reply : 
 " It is beyond thee now. Forbear ! " 
 
 Then in he called his righteous friend 
 And cried : " Thou wilt not yet forgive ? 
 
 I pass the curse along to thee, 
 
 That thou mayst sin — and know — and live ! " 
 
[64] 
 
 THE TWO HEARTS 
 
 " So long my heart hath held its full of joy. 
 
 Bring on your tears ! I am made strong by 
 
 these 
 Sweet cordials of blood-stirring memories ; 
 
 Some pain, perhaps, is better, lest they cloy." 
 
 II 
 
 " So long my heart, the chill abode of pain, 
 Hath been contracted narrowly, I know 
 That now this hot, new joy it drinketh so 
 
 Must shatter it. Heart, drink quick again ! " 
 
[65] 
 
 "ALL'S WELL" 
 
 This in a dream at night : A flying start — 
 
 A waving of white arms — a shroud — a bell — 
 
 A sudden turning of a trusted heart — 
 Some frantic errand over peak and fell : 
 
 At dawn you wake : All 's well ! 
 
 This in a life. The strain for what is not, 
 A snatching at the sunbeam in your cell — 
 
 The hope that fades — the sacrifice forgot — 
 The frozen smile — the chime that dies a knell : 
 
 At dawn you wake : All 's well ! 
 
[06] 
 
 THE OPEN FURROW 
 
 It rains today ; the dark clouds lend 
 
 All earth deep sorrow, 
 And heavy blasts of grief descend 
 
 On field and new-turned furrow, 
 Which wait the springing seed to take 
 
 Upon the sunny morrow. 
 
 It rains to-day ; the soul from gloom 
 
 One light doth borrow : 
 Near blessings through the mists uploom 
 
 Above the open furrow, 
 And welcome give the healthful seed 
 
 Sown there by holy sorrow. 
 
 It rains to-day ; but in the dark 
 
 The new-turned furrow 
 Doth wait the song which meadow-lark 
 
 From heaven above shall borrow 
 With which to hail the waving grain 
 
 That springs upon the morrow. 
 
[07] 
 
 AN ENVOY 
 
 There is a River thou and I in storm 
 
 Or in the purple windy dusk have watched ; 
 
 And thou, when the quick surface of the stream 
 
 Fled backward from his course before that breath, 
 
 Hast said, " Oh, see the River flowing up ! " 
 
 For thus it seemed. And then thine eyes have smiled. 
 
 Mother, there 's a river floweth up — 
 
 A sort of little tributary stream 
 
 To the great seas — where clouds look and the morn. 
 
 Where goes the wind, and many a wind hath gone, 
 
 That, Mother, is the river of my song 
 
 Whose running is to thee, though most it seem 
 
 Those waters for another bourne are bound 
 
 And there be quiet moments when all airs 
 
 Suspend, and strong the current is revealed, 
 
 And sudden to each other's eyes we turn. 
 
[68] 
 
 FAME 
 
 In quiet, day by day, 
 
 Does worth to greatness win its upward way. 
 
 Alone to him who toiled 
 
 The arduous steps undaunted and unspoiled 
 
 'T is granted to emerge 
 
 Upon the envied goal's exalted verge. 
 
 Unbidden then comes Fame, 
 
 An issue of the journey, not its aim. 
 
[69] 
 
 IRREVOCABLE 
 
 Can the smiling ocean waft 
 
 Into port again 
 Yesternight's storm-shattered craft ? 
 
 Is all smiling vain ? 
 
 Can the lips once proved untrue 
 
 Ever quite recall 
 Old-time trust to hearts that knew 
 
 Once their truth as all ? 
 
[70] 
 TO A SICK ACTOR 
 
 (DECEMBER, 1899) 
 
 Without the northwind, sad and stern, 
 How could we love of fireside learn ? 
 The sun would shine unthanked if we 
 Had never known inclemency. 
 Thus come the clouds to show how true 
 A nation's friendship shines for you. 
 
[71] 
 
 TO ALGOL 
 
 " Such light was his," so may she dreaming say 
 In thought of one beneath thy changeful glow. 
 " Such light was his when in the long ago 
 He used to fret the night out with his lay 
 Half-finished, and, forestalling the faint day, 
 
 Creep from his couch while slipt the wan moon low 
 
 For some poetic glimmer, sweet and slow, 
 O'er which he hovered till the East was gray. 
 Such light was his — and then he used to wait 
 Long nights in darkness at the very gate 
 
 Against whose far side beat the utmost light. 
 Till, wearied straining at those bars in vain. 
 He fell on dreams of light that went again 
 
 To leave him starting in the empty night." 
 
[72] 
 
 IDENTITY 
 
 Trust me ; I must be myself. 
 
 And, if thou 'rt the friend I thought thee, 
 All thy doubts of me will rest 
 
 By the open heart I brought thee, 
 Unconfessed. 
 
 Trust me ; thou shalt be thyself. 
 
 In no deed wherein thou movest 
 Shall a curious question pry. — 
 
 And thou 'It thank me if thou lovest 
 As do I. 
 
[73 J 
 
 THREE SONGS FROM THE 
 LIGHTHOUSE TOWER 
 
 (ONTARIO) 
 
 I SAW him climb the lighthouse tower ; 
 
 The sea was singing of the day, 
 The East was pink with promises, 
 
 And all the West was sullen gray. 
 He gazed to East and he gazed to West, 
 
 (And oh, there was a sea light-blown !) 
 He strained his eyes to dim sky-line 
 
 Then pressed my hand within his own : 
 
 SONG 
 
 The kindly act, the worthy strife^ 
 
 Are infinitesimals upward bent. 
 The slow, sure growth of a noble life 
 
 Wliose God will reckon each increment. 
 Try and try and try : 
 
 What's the Shadotv I'm pursuing ? 
 After all that 's said and done, 
 
 Something better waits my doing. 
 
[74] 
 
 Be it at night when vaulted arch 
 
 Rang with the music of our feast, 
 Be it when, scattering her faint stars, 
 
 The silver Morning rode the East ; 
 With him upon the lighthouse tower, 
 
 Or pink or gray or black the sky, 
 I only heard the songs he sang, 
 
 I saw alone his friendly eye. 
 
 SONG 
 
 There 's tender thought to pay you hack 
 For all the charities you lack ; 
 There 's a kind word to show you how 
 You might have made a friend hut now. 
 I build my house and you build yours ; 
 The winds and rains shall try us all ■ 
 'Tis its own timber that secures 
 Each from its own downfall. 
 
 I cannot see the lighthouse tower 
 
 For all the misty waste of years 
 Since ships have come and ships have gone 
 
 Across Ontarios of tears ; 
 But as I look I see his hand 
 
 As though he waved from fields of air. 
 And feel the light wind of the sea 
 
 Waft me the songs he sings up there. 
 
[75] 
 
 SONG 
 
 Headlands three 
 
 Guard the sea, 
 
 Faith, Hope, Charity : 
 
 Faith is firm against the storm ; 
 
 Hope is higher than its spray ; 
 Love, in bending to its arm. 
 
 Turns it pacified away. 
 
[76] 
 THE WINDOW LAMP 
 
 (FOR A MONOTYPE) 
 
 The tremor of a transient light 
 
 Came softly through the yielding shade, 
 And startled into guilty flight 
 
 The phantoms loneliness had made. 
 
 This forest he had groped in long, 
 Not without heart, but all alone ; 
 
 And now his soul sent forth a song — 
 For once he such a light had known. 
 
 " Somewhere 't is Home, it seems ! " he said ; 
 
 " Though strange am I in all this night ; " 
 And then he blessed the hand that sped 
 
 The tremor of that transient light. 
 
[77] 
 THE RETURN OF THE CRANES 
 
 (CRANE ISLAND) 
 
 When Spring's first tender signals come 
 The crane flock northward flies, 
 
 And their ancestral island home 
 Echoes again their cries. 
 
 Their long flight falters not nor rests 
 
 Till weary pinions fold 
 Where, round these lofty elm bough crests, 
 
 Fair waters sweep their gold. 
 
 And walking once where evening lay 
 
 Along this island wood, 
 I found, slow dying with the day, 
 
 One of that brotherhood. 
 
 The fingers of the gentle tide 
 Light touched him where he fell 
 
 Secure upon the beachy side 
 The young flock loves so well. 
 
 I stroked him and he lay as tame 
 
 As any dying thing, 
 While the dull westward sunset flame 
 
 Lit his long-broken wing. 
 
[78] 
 
 Above, wide- circling in the air, 
 His flock grieved not for one ; 
 
 And he, alone, lay quiet there. 
 His journey bravely done. 
 
[79] 
 
 INCONSISTENCY 
 
 Once a Poet praised a Bird 
 That his praises overheard. 
 
 Thought the Bird, " Oh, rare delight ! 
 I will sing to him all night ! " 
 
 Long he sang, and somewhat shrill, 
 On the Poet's window-sill. 
 
 Till the Bard, grown wroth and grim, 
 Made a Silent Bird of him. 
 
 But next day this Poet signed 
 Sixteen sonnets ere he dined, 
 
 Having heard that someone is 
 Quoting certain lines of his. 
 
[80] 
 
 SAYONARA, BRADI SAN! 
 
 Sayonara, Bradi San ! 
 
 Not for Ind, nor glad Nippon, 
 
 Trim I any sail ; yet wind 
 
 Vast horizon-breadths behind 
 
 Ways we friends have wandered late 
 
 To your buddhas consecrate. 
 
 Life, that for the moment showed 
 Glimpses of a common road, 
 Now dissevers us ; you turn 
 Where the blinding glaciers burn. 
 And along perpetual ice 
 Skirt a snowy paradise. 
 
 Your peaks of rime and mountain walls 
 
 In sublime recessionals, 
 
 And, where chasm cedars lean. 
 
 All my River's mirror-green — 
 
 Scenes that many dawns evolve 
 
 Many dusks shall yet dissolve 
 
 Ere for us the torri shine 
 Ruddy welcome to your shrine. 
 
[81] 
 
 Or the melancholy gong, 
 Sounding, bear our souls along. 
 But our day shall come anon, 
 With " Ohayo, Bradi San I " 
 
 Now I laze amongst the weeds 
 Where the big bee growls and feeds ; 
 I the hammock's easy state 
 Assiduously cultivate, 
 And all night in doze and dream 
 Hear the wind along the stream. 
 
 Moves the River, wide and brown, 
 
 Far from village, far from town, 
 
 Through the oak wood's singing shades. 
 
 Past the painted palisades 
 
 Where the purply bergamot 
 
 And yarrow grace my tenting-spot. 
 
 Here the goldfinch flashes by, 
 And the rust-red butterfly 
 Tacks unsteady into port — 
 Some weed-lady's crimson court ; 
 Green the ironwood tassels stir 
 Round the jewel tanager. 
 
 River, nights all moon-inlaid. 
 Hath bright rugs of foreign braid, 
 
 6 
 
[82] 
 
 Of strange glistenings and glooms, 
 Stuffs from out the breezes' looms ; 
 Rock-dyed in their gauzy thread 
 All day long they spread and spread. 
 
 There the shadow merchantmen 
 
 Moor to orient docks again ; 
 
 As in some Burmese bazaar 
 
 Here the filmy fabrics are ; 
 
 Bales strange-lettered here lie sunned 
 
 On the Nagasaki bund. 
 
 Sobs my tender mourning-dove 
 Through a crypto meria grove. 
 While the bunting's deep blue wings 
 Seem fair Nikko blossomings, 
 And his tinkling notes, a bell 
 By some shrined and sacred well. 
 
 Spell o' the East ! It glows and grows 
 Like a splendid burning rose 
 Round the heart you set it in ! 
 All the clouds of distance thin 
 When its mystic, odorous sleep 
 Draws my soul within its deep ! 
 
 Distance is no longer. These 
 Stars that gem the filigrees 
 
[83] 
 
 Of the oak bough, and the bright 
 Tent-roof-sifted moon-dehght. 
 They your Persian lamp, and fields 
 Are of your loved Jeypore shields. 
 
 For the good, the brave, the kind. 
 Ships a fair home-breeze shall find : 
 Yours again of nights to look 
 In some old familiar book 
 By your own lamp ; I may stray, 
 Undeserving, far away. 
 
 And if there we meet not more, 
 Make for the Remembered Shore : 
 Thence I, or my ghost, shall hail 
 Joyfully your whitening sail 
 And, with soft airs of Nippon, 
 Sigh, " Ohayo, Bradi San ! " 
 
 Lower Palisades, 
 Red Cedar River 
 
[84] 
 
 TO THE GRAND ARMY OF THE 
 REPUBLIC 
 
 (NATIONAL ENCAMPMENT, 1896) 
 
 Long has the cannon's angry mouth been mute, 
 Muffled with garlands tearful Freedom twines 
 
 For brave hearts stilled that bounded to refute 
 The slander on her shrines. 
 
 Victorious banners that through blackened air 
 Went quivering in the war's hot agony, 
 
 Thrice sacred in their tatters and thrice fair, 
 We furl full reverently : 
 
 Long cold is many a hand that held them high 
 To shot and sheH and battle's withering breath ; 
 
 Speaks many a voice that woke the rallying cry 
 Dumb eloquence of death. 
 
 But patriot thrill and proud remembrance start 
 Not only at these trophies of long truce ; 
 
 Not only here the quick, responsive heart 
 Unstops its tear-brimmed cruse. 
 
 Something to lift us from the sordid aim 
 Goes with you heroes of the outlived strife ; 
 
 With you the present sweeps past heights of fame 
 And soars to newer life. 
 
[85] 
 
 To grasp the hands that, braving scorch and scar, 
 Broke slavery's chain to mend the bond of state, 
 
 That plunged into the seething pit of war 
 To grip our Country's fate ; 
 
 To feel the pulse of Victory down the street 
 In measured cadence of the drum's quick roll, 
 
 The martial music thrilling high and sweet 
 Into the echoing soul : 
 
 To catch such flash from memory-kindled eyes 
 As met Death's eager face unflinchingly, 
 
 When out beneath gray, hope-forsaken skies 
 You charged for Liberty ; 
 
 To hail you here — the Nation's heart outpours 
 Warm welcomes on your long triumphal way ; 
 
 We wreathe your laurels on our city doors, 
 And fling them wide to-day. 
 
 Here in a fresh Republic, rich and new, 
 
 Peace rests her hand in Victory's furrowed palm- 
 
 A hand unscarred, but no less strong and true 
 Through years of blood-bought calm. 
 
 You sentries of her rights in doubt and dread, 
 The strong Republic's bounty she assures : 
 
 Her hearths your campfires for the years ahead. 
 Her hearts forever yours. 
 
[86] 
 THE DEAD STATESMAN 
 
 (MARCH 13, 1901) 
 
 What of the man ? His character was hewn 
 From patriot quarries on the height of seers ; 
 
 With honors was his way to honors strewn 
 And calm indorsements of the critic years. 
 
 Who says " no crisis wrought his fiber's test " ? 
 
 Why, from of old the exacting gods asked not 
 More proof of worth in heroes after-blessed 
 
 Than that they kept their love of duty hot ! 
 
 What, then, are " crises " ? They are action-peaks, 
 Decision's moments towering into light ; 
 
 But what are they of which man never speaks 
 That rise by thousands just beneath our sight ? 
 
 He knew the stress of state, the slow appeal 
 Of righteous aims, the thankless, unseen tasks. 
 
 Untiring service to the widest weal 
 And, save the glory, all a hero asks. 
 
 What of the silence ? This must be for all. 
 
 But there 's a grandeur in some silences ; 
 And while the hush and mist around us fall 
 
 Our hearts are lifted for such life as his. 
 
[87] 
 
 Up to such silence who would not be keen 
 To struggle finely and at length withdraw — 
 
 Henceforth in statutes wise to walk unseen, 
 And be a presence in the juster law ! 
 
[88] 
 RENAN 
 
 (ON A FLYLEAF OF MADAME DARMESTETER'S " LIFE ") 
 
 Once in Montraartre I looked through the door of 
 
 his tomb : 
 Outside lay the morning; within, dull twihght and 
 
 dust. 
 I look in his Soul, round about me the mist and the 
 
 gloom : 
 Within, serene, beams the light of the Pure and the 
 
 Just I 
 
II 
 
 EX LIBRIS 
 
[91] 
 
 THE PATHMASTER 
 
 (1301-1901) 
 
 Ere Florence sowed that seed of woe 
 Which yet her vain remorse doth reap 
 The harvest of, and scorned to keep 
 
 Her Dante in her halls, (for so 
 It is beyond the Apennines 
 He sleeps where foreign Summer shines) 
 
 'T is said, before the factious Guelf 
 Grew such a prodigal of spleen 
 His quarrel with the Ghibelline 
 
 Had bred black schism in himself, — 
 That Alighieri, wise and good, 
 Among the priors of Florence stood 
 
 And him a chief the city made 
 Of those whose strict official cares 
 Should be in lanes and thoroughfares 
 
 To see the skilless builder stayed. 
 To beautify the paths unclean, 
 And render broad the straight and mean. 
 
[93] 
 
 And further we this word do hold 
 From such scant fact as faintly stirs 
 From quills of chary chroniclers, 
 
 Those self-unconscious scribes of old, — 
 Unto that end his earnest prime 
 Bent Dante through the lotted time. 
 
 From this and like old writ we deem 
 That somewhere under palace eaves 
 The bard divine some relic leaves 
 
 Of widened ways : scarce more than dream. - 
 Had Florence not more weighty heeds 
 Than setting down a Dante's deeds ? 
 
 What street of all thy ancient streets, 
 
 Thou Lily of the Arno, say, 
 
 Dost thou allure men down to-day 
 Where legend not that name repeats ? 
 
 What road but some old memories tell 
 
 Of walls that serve it sentinel ? 
 
 One road he paved (the records show) 
 
 " So that unlet at their desires. 
 
 The commons may approach the priors ; " 
 Which was, men said, San Procolo. 
 
 But what saith one of subtler wit ? 
 
 Far other Road than this was it ! 
 
[93] 
 
 thou fair Dreamer of the Dead, 
 
 When Night with swift remembering-pangs 
 Her pale gold lamp above thee hangs, 
 
 And round thy windless squares is tread 
 Of phantom feet, — oh, whisper low 
 Which way his measured footsteps go. 
 
 For, maybe, at such magic hour 
 
 One might slip forth some quiet way, 
 While sleeps the body, to the gray. 
 
 Cold flagstone, thence by font and tower. 
 Till whisper saith : The Road was this 
 And passed the house of Beatrice. 
 
 Pale Singer of the Song Divine, 
 
 Who toiled and dreamt and sang apart, 
 Unto these latter days thy heart 
 
 Is better known ; such song as thine 
 And the stern mark upon thy brow. 
 Then dark, are not all riddle now. 
 
 Six centuries, a hard, steep maze. 
 
 The world hath climbed since thou in shade 
 
 To Paradise thy soul-path laid 
 Through heart-ache and long, bitter days ; 
 
 Till now, from loftier plane, it turns 
 
 Unto thy lore and, wondering, learns 
 
[94] 
 
 Thy Road was that severer Love 
 Out widening to the place of Law 
 Whereto we commons may withdraw 
 
 And prove our right to things above, — 
 And over which, as to thy friends. 
 Calm Beatrice her hand extends. 
 
[95] 
 
 THOUGHT OF STEVENSON 
 
 High and alone I stood on Calton Hill, 
 Above the scene that was so dear to him 
 Whose exile dreams of it made exile dim. 
 
 October wooed the folded valleys till 
 
 In mist they blurred, even as our eyes upfill 
 Under a too sweet memory ; spires did swim. 
 And gables rust-red, on the gray sea's brim — 
 
 But on these heights the air was soft and still. 
 
 Yet not all still : an alien breeze did turn 
 Here as from bournes in aromatic seas. 
 
 As round old shrines a new-freed soul might yearn 
 With incense to his earthly memories. 
 
 And then this thought : Mist, exile, searching pain, 
 
 But the brave soul is free, is home again ! 
 
[96] 
 FROM VAEA 
 
 (MARCH, 1899) 
 
 (One of the inscriptions on Stevenson's tomb on Mount Vaea is 
 a translation of Kuth i. 16-17.) 
 
 Again from out the Southern Seas 
 We hear their bawling batteries ; 
 Again where shift the pleasant airs, 
 The fouling breath of cannon fares, 
 And leaves to girdle Upolu 
 A long, red stain upon the blue. 
 Roused from their tender reveries, 
 
 The Vailima gardens wring 
 
 With red rose-mallows quivering, — 
 But yonder, up Vaea's stairs, 
 
 Unfooted by a battle-thought. 
 The godless noises find surcease, 
 
 And Tusitala, undistraught. 
 Remains in peace, remains in peace. 
 
 Down Summer seas they blare and blot 
 And hurtle wide their Christian shot 
 Among the villaged cocoa-palms, 
 A sudden wealth of leaden alms — 
 Reason, forsooth, a native king 
 Waxed weary of their bullying. 
 
[97] 
 
 But there in his lone mountain spot, 
 He who loved well the island race 
 In silence turns away his face, 
 
 Albe his voice from those far calms 
 Unto the Northern conscience cries : 
 
 " Indeed no kith of mine be these 
 Who hold sweet life so light a prize 
 
 Leave us in peace, leave us in peace ! " 
 
[98] 
 
 ALBA LONGA 
 
 I HAVE read in tales of the heroes 
 
 That lived in the days of eld, 
 Of that city built in Latium 
 
 By the Alban Mount upheld, 
 Along the white crest winding, 
 
 Buttressed and citadelled. 
 
 I have heard how her long walls guarded 
 
 The Tiber's vale afar, 
 How they gleamed through years of quiet. 
 
 And glowed in the years of war ; 
 I have dreamt how the pale moon lit them 
 
 To the exiled Numitor. 
 
 I can close my eyes and behold it. 
 
 That city so long and white. 
 With her columned temple rising 
 
 Under the star-ceiled night, 
 And the vestal Rhea flitting 
 
 Within by the pallid light. 
 
 And oh, for some chord of music. 
 
 And oh, for the voice divine. 
 To echo softly and sweetly 
 
 Across this dream of mine. 
 While Rhea's white robes flutter 
 
 By Vesta's spotless shrine ! 
 
[99] 
 
 Some nights when the plangent murmurs 
 
 Of rivers of wind go by, 
 I am one with their undulations, 
 
 Their eddy and sweep and sigh : 
 We mingle and flow together 
 
 Under the storm-filled sky. 
 
 And then we are chilled with sorrow, 
 As we flow and flow and flow 
 
 Back through the channels of ages 
 To the sources of ancient woe. 
 
 Back in the Tiber valley 
 
 Those long white hills below. 
 
 A light in the temple of Vesta 
 Around the shrine was shed ; 
 
 And oh, but it leaped and flickered 
 To one great orb o'erhead : 
 
 The flame of Rhea was golden, 
 But the flame of Mars was red. 
 
 A sigh, a sigh in the nightwind 
 For the awful shields that gleam 
 
 Of a Vestal's sons turned warriors 
 Beside the Tiber stream : — 
 
 So my purple Rome has swallowed 
 The Long White City of dream ! 
 
[100] 
 
 FOR A FLYLEAF 
 
 (RUSKIN'S "ROADSIDE SONGS OF TUSCANY") 
 
 Since the hearth-smoke of the world 
 
 First into the azure curled, 
 
 Men have hummed them by the fire, 
 
 Women crooned their sweet desire 
 
 In low, minor melodies, — 
 
 Just such little songs as these. 
 
 Simple words but towering love, 
 Each-day feelings speaking of; 
 And the heart that beats within 
 Breast where suffering has been 
 Will know its own and quickly seize 
 Just such little songs as these. 
 
 When the improvising wind 
 Flutes across the cottage blind 
 With a music new, but old. 
 It will always pause to hold 
 Some sweet note — at mother-knees 
 Children singing songs like these. 
 
[101] 
 
 Such a song claims little wit. 
 For anyone can fathom it ; 
 But 't will cling to lips that sing, 
 Like a kiss of some far Spring, 
 Gotten when your fancy-breeze 
 Sang to you such songs as these. 
 
 Out of hearts that feel the pain, 
 Knowing it will heal again ; 
 Out of souls that do not care 
 What the form be if so there 
 Linger something that will ease - 
 Come such simple songs as these. 
 
[102] 
 
 MOTHERS AND SISTERS 
 
 Mothers and sisters whom no sacrifice 
 
 Dismays, nor whom yom' long, laborious hours 
 Do anywise appall, ye are the powers 
 
 By whom the swift are girded for the prize 
 
 They reach in the light of your believing eyes. 
 Ye are the hidden oil the shrine devours ; 
 Soil of the garden whence the great rose flowers ; 
 
 The silent force that bids a star arise. 
 
 Ye ask of men nor honor, nor regret, 
 
 Nor memory, save one's whose love is all. 
 
 Renouncement ? Living daily the divine ! 
 
 EfFacement ? Still the world your names shall call 
 
 Monica was the mother of Augustine ; 
 
 Pascal had Jacqueline ; Renan, Henriette ! 
 
[103] 
 
 AFTER AN AMATEUR PERFORM- 
 ANCE OF LES ROMANESQUES 
 
 It was all just a play — 
 
 They will both tell you so I 
 We believe what they say : 
 *' It was all just a play." 
 Still, " Sylvette " — " Percinet " — 
 
 Wherever they go. 
 Was it all just a play ? 
 
 They will both tell you so ! 
 
[ 104] 
 TO SYLVETTE 
 
 (AN ACROSTIC RONDEAU) 
 
 (The first amateur representation in America of Eostand's 
 " Les Romanesques " occurred in February, 1901, at the Lyceum 
 Theatre in Minneapolis. It was given by the Dramatic Club of 
 the University of Minnesota, Miss Inez Helen Lord playing Syl- 
 vette, and Mr. Thomas Swem, Percinet.) 
 
 Is it, Sylvette, young Percinet's 
 
 Naivete, impulsive ways, 
 Engaging chivalry, or yet 
 Zeal for the old Romance, hath set 
 
 Heart sweet as thine in Love's amaze ? 
 
 Enchantments out of other days 
 Love weaves : and the design he lays 
 Easy to learn is. To forget. 
 Is it, Sylvette ? 
 
 Nay ! And the Cynic's questioning phrase 
 Let us, in silence only, raise — 
 
 Of to the Wall how large a debt 
 
 Romantic Love herein hath met. 
 Dissect Love not : it never pays, 
 
 Does it, Svlvette ? 
 
[105] 
 
 IN THE BODLEIAN 
 
 And am I heir to all this lore 
 
 Of the great men gone before — 
 
 To the infinite, fair renown 
 
 That the generous years hand down ? 
 
 Youngest son, yet held to be 
 
 Worthy such a legacy ? 
 
 Nay, scarce worthy. Yet few fears 
 
 Chide the charitable years 
 
 By whose terms their whole estate 
 
 Doth widen as we dissipate : 
 
 I inherit but so far 
 
 As my powers of spending are. 
 
 All is freely left me, yet 
 Must I toil for all I get. 
 Living happier for this 
 Condition of the benefice : 
 Rich but thrifty, as I were 
 A millionaire day-laborer. 
 
[106] 
 
 "^X LIBRIS' 
 
 In an old book at even as I read 
 
 Fast fading words adown my shadowy page, 
 
 I crossed a tale of how, in other age 
 At Arqua, with his books around him, sped 
 The word to Petrarch ; and with noble head 
 
 Bowed gently o'er his volume, that sweet sage 
 
 To Silence paid his willing seigniorage. 
 And they who found him whispered, " He is dead ! " 
 Thus timely from old comradeships would I 
 
 To Silence also rise. Let there be night, 
 Stillness and only these staid watchers by, 
 
 And no light shine save my low study light — 
 Lest of his kind intent some human cry 
 
 Interpret not the Messenger aright. 
 
Ill 
 
 ROSELEAVES 
 
[109] 
 
 MAY NIGHT 
 
 Again my slender thorn is white 
 
 And as of old its odor blows 
 Up through the lit and lovely night 
 
 To me within my garden close. 
 
 In unforgotten, holy Mays, 
 
 All on a night that else was still, 
 
 Thou sangest up the country ways 
 
 And borest me bloom from yonder hill. 
 
 Now, as in other Springs, I wait 
 For thy familiar voice — in vain ; 
 
 The moon and I have listened late 
 For that remembered music-strain. 
 
 Of song and thee I dream — and round 
 My rest the night-bird's note is borne ; 
 
 And here, a slim girl blossom-crowned. 
 Arms wide to me, the bridal thorn ! 
 
[110] 
 
 THOU DIDST NOT DIE 
 
 Thou didst not die when thou didst leave my vision, 
 Nor art thou distant now thy face is gone ; 
 
 Thou hast not fled to some dim, trans-Ely sian, 
 Uncalled-from shore, where'er thy form be flown. 
 
 Thou whom the days continually gave pleasure, 
 Whom the warm nights in happiness shut round, 
 
 Thou seekest not for any blossoms fresher 
 
 In strange, bright fields, than in our own were 
 found. 
 
 Thou hadst not looked to other constellations, 
 Being unwearied with thine own and mine ; 
 
 Thou hast not sought new, heavenly occasions ; 
 Here and by me the Universe is thine. 
 
 Thou art so near these nights no more seem sober, 
 Nor thy loved flowers sad around me here. 
 
 Than when we watched together in October 
 The eye of Taurus flaming low and clear ; 
 
 Then when we made the woodland echo startle 
 With long halloos in the sweet Autumn air ; 
 
 Or laughed to see the vistaed brooklet dartle. 
 Or strung a harp with strings of maidenhair. 
 
[Ill] 
 
 Nay, thou art by me in a subtler presence, 
 
 That makes my world less earth and more a star ; 
 
 For in my soul thou hast poured acquiescence 
 From interstellar wells of rest afar. 
 
 And I grow wise in the wide ways of heaven 
 With thee beside me to explain all things — 
 
 With thee, once mine, still mine ! to whom 't is given 
 To sweep the stars, yet folding here thy wings. 
 
 Thou on long eves, interpreted of roses, 
 
 Dost teach me utter lore; and perfume-shod 
 
 Each meaning comes, and calmly fair uncloses 
 As sweet girls' spirits at the feet of God. 
 
[112] 
 
 THE WHITE ROSE 
 
 By a pleasant garden walk once there grew a slender 
 
 stalk 
 Where at eve a pair of sweethearts used to love to 
 
 dream and talk ; 
 It was they who in the Maytime, in the flush of 
 
 Maytime fair, 
 Brought the rose and set it there. 
 
 And the Lover said, " 'T will be as a pledge 'twixt 
 
 thee and me, 
 For the first sweet bloom upon it shall be consecrate 
 
 to thee — 
 Shall be thine to keep forever, and upon its petals 
 
 white 
 Shall our solemn troth be plight ! " 
 
 And the bud that heard him speak, from that slender 
 
 stalk and weak 
 Nourishment took heed to gather, favoring foods 
 
 began to seek. 
 When each night the lovers marked it, how its little 
 
 leaves did swell, 
 They would say, " The Rose doth well ! " 
 
[113] 
 
 Bright and busy days were those for the eager, 
 
 swelling Rose, 
 Fairest petals ever whitened in a lover's garden 
 
 close ! 
 Thought the bud, "Ah, soon the hour, soon the 
 
 drooping on her breast, 
 Next her heart to be at rest ! " 
 
 One still hour of reddening sun when the dew-time 
 
 was begun 
 Came the Lover to the blossom — came the Lover. 
 
 only one. 
 And strange dews fell silently as he took the Rose 
 
 full-blown, 
 Took, and bore it off alone. 
 
 In a still and sacred gloom, in a hushed and dim-lit 
 
 room, 
 Did he leave his plighted flower with its consecrated 
 
 bloom, 
 Hers to keep forever shielded from the shattering 
 
 of the blast. 
 And the White Rose sighed, " At last ! " 
 
[114] 
 
 OLD GARDENS 
 
 The white rose tree that spent its musk 
 
 For lovers' sweeter praise, 
 The stately walks we sought at dusk, 
 
 Have missed thee many days. 
 
 Again, with once-familiar feet, 
 
 I tread the old parterre — 
 But, ah, its bloom is now less sweet 
 
 Than when thy face was there. 
 
 I hear the birds of evening call ; 
 
 I take the wild perfume ; 
 I pluck a rose — to let it fall 
 
 And perish in the gloom. 
 
[115] 
 
 IN A DREAM 
 
 Last night I dreamed God let you come again 
 To the old place we loved so long ago ; 
 
 And all my burning lips could utter then 
 
 Was, " Love, I did not know ! I did not know ! " 
 
 I dreamed you were as sweetly fragile-fair 
 As in the days when you began to fade — 
 
 As in those days when walking with you there 
 I wondered that you often were afraid. 
 
 There was the same appeal of widened eyes, 
 The flutter of the hand within my arm ; — 
 
 And now I was not strange to this surprise. 
 
 But sought to clasp you from the shadowed harm. 
 
 And in your eyes reproach, filmed o'er by love, 
 And softened by the tender, absent years, 
 
 Renewed the heartbreak I am subject of, 
 And flooded all the sources of old tears. 
 
 It seemed not you that spoke, yet 't was your voice ; 
 
 Still-lipped, you seemed to make unwilling moan. 
 As if the outer powers had left no choice 
 
 But you must answer, " Ay, but should have 
 known ! " 
 
[116] 
 
 SONG AFTER PARTING 
 
 It is over. Like sweet dreams 
 
 Let it be, 
 Or a summer-haunted stream's 
 
 Melody. 
 Even so thy passing seems 
 
 Unto me. 
 
 But the dream most dear and bright 
 
 May Hve yet, 
 Fading not along the night 
 
 In regret — 
 While the heart love faileth quite 
 
 Must forget ! 
 
 And the river sings and flows 
 
 Ever on, 
 Born, like love, of mountain snows 
 
 And the sun — 
 While thy love, unlike it, goes 
 
 And is gone ! 
 
[117] 
 
 SINCE WE SAID GOOD-BYE 
 
 Kissed we not and said good-bye ? 
 
 Then why wilt thou haunt me thus 
 With thine eyes in all my dreams 
 
 Making night-time luminous ? 
 Art thou haunted, dear, as I, 
 Since we kissed and said good-bye ? 
 
 Had we kissed not, parting so, 
 
 This were only just in thee ; 
 Had we kissed and said no word 
 
 Thou hadst right to torture me ; 
 But thou knowest, well as I, 
 First we kissed, then said good-bye ! 
 
 That good-byes may last too long — 
 Is it this thine eyes would tell ? 
 
 Or do they reproaching plead 
 Kisses do not last so well? 
 
 Art thou lonelier than I 
 
 Since we kissed and said good-bye ? 
 
[118] 
 
 THE TWO PRAYERS 
 
 At night one leaned from earth's dim edge, 
 
 (Oh, but he seemed alone !) 
 And looked down, down, below his ledge 
 
 Where a calm planet shone. 
 
 Some pain — a common thing — had bent 
 
 His looks out over heaven ; 
 The sorrow of a day ill-spent, 
 
 The still remorse of even. 
 
 In which (oh, quite in vain !) he yearned 
 
 Unto the lustrous star 
 That with more steadfast beauties burned 
 
 Than in the earthhghts are. 
 
 He flashed a prayer from his far height. 
 
 And down the dark blue well 
 Where lone and splendid swam that light, 
 
 He watched it as it fell. 
 
 Out far he strained to mark its course — 
 
 And sudden was aware 
 That upward from such golden source 
 
 A prayer had crossed his prayer ! 
 
[119] 
 
 His on serenely to its goal 
 Had fluttered like a flame ; 
 
 Yet gazed he still with wondering soul 
 The two prayers were the same. 
 
[120] 
 
 CONSUMMATION 
 
 As the clear fountain sparkles on the hill 
 
 In some flowered basin at a cool, sweet height, 
 Yet comes from we guess not what galleried night. 
 
 Devious, untraced, and altogether ill, — 
 
 So doth my love from other days distil, 
 
 Through channels occult groping up to light, 
 Deeming all labors past as thrice requite 
 
 If once thou stoop thy hollowed hand to fill. 
 
 Clear eyes that bend upon my love thou hast ; 
 I would have them thereon meet no dismay : — 
 
 I thank the chastenings of that cryptic past 
 
 Where those soiled waters crept their stains 
 away, — 
 
 Those slandered days whose riddle now, at last. 
 Grows plain before this fair and ultimate day. 
 
[121] 
 
 AFTER ALL 
 
 When, after all, you come to Love and lay 
 Your weary hands within his hands and say, 
 
 " Love, thou art best ! " how can you know that 
 then 
 He will not laugh and turn his face away ? 
 
 When, after many conflicts, your proud heart, 
 Seamed with old scars, would take Love's quiet 
 part — 
 Ah, to make fair that place for him again 
 Which of all Love's physicians has the art ? 
 
[122] 
 
 THE AMBER LOOP 
 
 ( Amber was believed by the ancients to be the crystallized tears of 
 wood nymphs.) 
 
 He found it in a quaint bazaar, 
 
 This amber for her auburn hair. 
 And pictured to himself afar 
 
 Its beauty coiling there. 
 
 He saw its shining length uptwist 
 Through visions of her lovelit face, 
 
 And let it nestle round his wrist 
 In delicate embrace. 
 
 An exquisite proportioning, 
 
 From end to end of every strand. 
 
 He noticed as the yellow thing 
 SHpt idly through his hand. 
 
 " Five men no fewer toilsome years 
 It took to sort the stringful, sir ! " 
 
 He bore it oflF to leave in tears 
 The doting jeweller. 
 
 As with the gems he, smiling, went 
 
 Down that strange city's winding street. 
 
 The odor of the Orient 
 
 Rose from them, pungent-sweet — 
 
[123] 
 
 A scent so dear to some lost day. 
 
 So consecrated to the past, 
 That ere he knew it tears broke way 
 
 And hotly held him fast. 
 
 And were these not wrought out in tears, 
 By hands that trembled in their place 
 
 Through long and maybe loveless years 
 To consummate this grace ? 
 
 And will she, too, recall it so. 
 
 When, after many days, they greet — 
 Their half-forgotten, common woe. 
 
 Heart-filling, pungent-sweet ? 
 
[124] 
 
 HUGO: RODIN'S BUST, CHAP- 
 LAIN'S MEDAL 
 
 (For C. M. A., in Paris, who sent me the Centenary Medal, 1902) 
 
 Both Hugo: that, mid-struggle, titanic in triumph- 
 strain ; 
 
 This, poised, secure, like a god who looks down on 
 the toils of the plain ! 
 
[125] 
 
 WHEN ROSELEAVES FALL 
 
 When roseleaves fall in evenings cold 
 To mingle with their mother mold, 
 Look to it lest thy heart be set 
 To seek strange blossoms and forget 
 Thy roses and their ways of old ! 
 
 Run not to lesser blooms ! nor fold 
 Unto thy heart the creed those hold 
 Who stand like Stoics by and let 
 Their roseleaves fall ! 
 
 But gather them as precious gold ; 
 Rich-spiced, high-placed and orient-bowled, 
 
 They shall be Summer to thee yet. 
 
 What though they fade and thou regret, 
 Thou canst make theirs a boon untold 
 When roseleaves fall. 
 
BEYOND THE HILLS 
 
[129] 
 
 CROSS COURSES 
 
 Where Summer skies glint silver-blue 
 The dark, cliff-clinging larches through, 
 Where foam and spray and sounding swell 
 Commingle from the inland seas 
 In solemn, heart-reechoed keys 
 Up piney crest and cedar dell, 
 
 Pive souls whose love went out to thee, 
 
 Dim Spirit of lost Arcady, 
 
 Whose hopes breathed in the balm of prayer 
 
 From benedictions of the air — 
 
 Five souls crossed courses from far seas 
 
 And thrilled to sudden sympathies. 
 
 They parted. The continuous sea 
 Made of it but a memory. 
 One feels the pulse of freedom throb 
 In surges on the Pilgrim shore ; 
 One hears the Mississippi sob 
 The sorrows of forgotten lore ; 
 
 One touches Ocean's healing hems 
 Below the busy tide of Thames ; 
 
[130] 
 
 One, by the amber Baltic, lights 
 A Northland home with love's pure gleam 
 And one, ah, one, upon the Heights 
 Is safe across the shadowed stream. 
 
 Five friends, a dash of jewelled spray, 
 A twilight shadow drifted down 
 Across the ledge's larchen crown ; 
 Farewells, and through the hidden way 
 Love pilots toward an unseen beach 
 Each to the haven best for each. 
 
[131] 
 
 ALOHA OE! 
 
 (TO W. S. W.) 
 
 Behold, we clasp our sundered hands 
 Across the kind and faithful deep. 
 
 You on the gold Hawaiian sands, 
 I here among the cows and sheep. 
 
 I thanked the waters that so well 
 Had borne you to the Island friend, 
 
 And thank them thrice for every swell 
 That bears me back the words you send. 
 
 Strange currents, the untamable air 
 Between us moving, and the rhyme 
 
 Of epic oceans, wax and wear ; 
 And lightly slip the feet of Time. 
 
 And you will tread the Island Hills, 
 And you will learn the Island grace, 
 
 Before your gift of daffodils 
 Shrivels in my Benares vase. 
 
 Only come back and I '11 be strong 
 With wine of hope and country cheer ; 
 
 Still begging for another song 
 
 And laughing just to see you near ! 
 
 WOODEND FaKM 
 
[132] 
 
 A MEMORY 
 
 In the hush of holy twihght 
 
 A trembling sea of red ; 
 A purple cloud dipped lakeward 
 
 Where the dead sun's pall is spread, 
 And a gray-tiled walk for shadows 
 
 Leading to years long dead. 
 
 I lean on the arched palings 
 Of a bridge in a city grand : 
 
 There are turrets of chastest silver 
 Arising on every hand, 
 
 And such domes of fire-tipped crystal 
 As would dazzle in fairyland. 
 
 Dark gondolas go sweeping 
 
 On burning ponds below, 
 With songs of old Venezia 
 
 In tender notes and low ; 
 Round them in ceaseless rhythm 
 
 The red waves come and go. 
 
 Now they drift in the torchlight, 
 And under a canopy 
 
[133] 
 
 Fair eyes look out in wonder 
 At the glory they may see, 
 
 And a fairy hand is tapping 
 To the gondoliere's glee. 
 
 Now they drift into the shadow, 
 And the cantilena's notes 
 
 Rise and fall in measure 
 
 With the dipping of the boats, 
 
 Till vague in the melting distance 
 Their pensive cadence floats. 
 
 It is wafted into the chambers 
 
 Of my dearest memory, 
 There to bide and make me music 
 
 When the world weighs heavily. 
 And to echo its simple sweetness 
 
 To all eternity. 
 
[134] 
 
 THE DEAD GEYSER 
 
 I SAT in the forest at sundown. 
 On the trunk of a fallen tree ; 
 
 There were calm, low lights to westward, 
 But shadows over me. 
 
 And the gold beneath the branches 
 Was wonderful to see. 
 
 Before me lay a circle 
 
 In the glow of the fading sky. 
 The rim of an outworn geyser 
 
 That brothered an age gone by, 
 With roots grown down in its fissures 
 
 As thick as a good man's thigh. 
 
 A hemlock, rough and distorted. 
 
 Stood at the circle's head, 
 And beneath it were ivy and yarrow 
 
 And little gold daisies spread, 
 Like such as they loop in the Springtime 
 
 To cover the noble dead. 
 
[135] 
 
 I mused on the buried giant 
 That, hundred of years before, 
 
 Up through the mossgrown crater 
 From his narrow dungeon tore — 
 
 And half in a dream I hstened 
 To catch his approaching roar. 
 
 Then up in the evening silence, 
 And up in the westward light, 
 
 And over the widening shadow. 
 He seemed to take his flight, 
 
 Alone in the awesome stillness, 
 So solemn and weird and white. 
 
 A chipmunk peeped from his burrow 
 Where the white dead pine-stem lay; 
 
 A night-hawk rose from his tree-tip 
 To spiral the muffling gray ; 
 
 And the wandering breath of Summer 
 Seemed all at once taken away. 
 
 With never a plash nor a murmur 
 
 The beautiful spectre stood. 
 Gold-vested, scarlet-mitred 
 
 Of fires behind the wood, 
 And his white hand pointing heavenward 
 
 In earth's dim solitude. 
 
[136] 
 
 A catbird called through the gloaming 
 And shook the woodland deep ; 
 
 The folded gentian quivered 
 In the quiet of her sleep, 
 
 And my heart that had been so tranquil 
 Came up with a sudden leap. 
 
 The molten brass in the tree-boles 
 
 Had dwindled to a span ; 
 So I rose with great thoughts crowding 
 
 In solemn caravan, 
 And crept through the shade, a shadow, 
 
 Who had set me down a man. 
 
[137] 
 
 A SUNDOWN IN THE YELLOW- 
 STONE 
 
 Clear-cut against a windswept sky, beneath the 
 
 fading day. 
 The long, low ridges calmly lie, a cameo in gray : 
 'T is night at home, and here am I a thousand miles 
 
 away. 
 
 I watch through gray-green hyaline the geyser-vapors* 
 
 flight — 
 Stray underworldlings made divine by contact with 
 
 the light, 
 Like souls fresh-freed from earth's confine and bound 
 
 for realms more bright. 
 
 The sun, from out his gilded car, looks back along 
 
 the West ; 
 His red steeds brush the evening star athwart the 
 
 mountain crest, 
 And bring me messages afar from one I love the best. 
 
 A hundred cloudlets swim beside, translucent silver 
 
 through. 
 And others mauve and crimson stride adown the 
 
 pallid blue; 
 And freighted well I know they ride with tender 
 
 thoughts from you. 
 
[138] 
 
 But all the light that e'er has lain before the sunset 
 
 throne, 
 And all the wings of vermeil stain through golden 
 
 portals flown. 
 Would leave me with the after-pain of wondering 
 
 alone. 
 
 If, when, beyond the lowest hill the red has all turned 
 
 gray, 
 And my lone heart has ceased to fill with wealth of 
 
 dying day, 
 I paused to think that you are still a thousand miles 
 
 away. 
 
[139] 
 
 IN A WYOMING FOREST 
 
 Now it is twilight, and a yellow fire 
 
 Streaks through the narrow aisles of singing pines. 
 
 Low the old sexton, Night, lets down his blinds, 
 Leaving me in his sanctuary choir 
 To hear my own heart inwardly aspire. 
 
 Chanting with all the trees the same sweet lines ; 
 
 While, overhead, one bent cloud dimly shines 
 Like an archangel pleading my desire. 
 Sunset across the level woodland floor. 
 
 And calm within the forest of my soul ; 
 A softer light I had not known before 
 
 Now radiates from my beclouded goal. 
 And in a tranquil glory through the door 
 
 Of the dun future seems to rise and roll. 
 
[140] 
 
 MACKINAW 
 
 Can I forget the perfect day 
 
 When, drifted from the world away, 
 
 I hfted up my eyes and saw 
 
 The shining chffs of Mackinaw ? 
 
 Can I forget the limpid lake, 
 
 That mock-a-day that to and fro 
 
 A busy mirror ran below, 
 
 And streamed white wonders in our wake ? 
 
 Forget the long, delicious drive 
 
 Where freshly I could feel the live 
 
 Young spirit of old woods survive? 
 
 Forget the hillsides junipered, 
 
 The gloomy hemlock zephyr-stirred, 
 
 That in the winking waters draw 
 
 Their aquarelles at Mackinaw ? 
 
 Her tapered pinnacles and domes. 
 
 Her straits beyond the larch-browed walls 
 
 Afar in glistening intervals. 
 
 Below the heights of old Fort Holmes ? 
 
 Ah, no. I cannot reason that 
 Where beauty once in vision sat 
 All life's defacing after-storms 
 Can level its imprinted forms. 
 
[141] 
 
 Each cliff, each curve, each mirrored tree, 
 
 On tablets of my memory 
 
 Shall evermore recorded be — 
 
 Intaglio of that perfect day 
 
 When, drifted from the world away, 
 
 I lifted up my eyes and saw 
 
 The lovely isle of Mackinaw, 
 
[ 142] 
 
 THE SONGS THE ENGINES SANG 
 
 EoR days the lordly engines trod 
 
 To foam the subject sea, 
 And gloried in their power to plod 
 
 Long paths untiringly. 
 
 They bore us down the swirling deep, 
 
 Watchful from light to light ; 
 Their rhythm, throbbing through our sleep. 
 
 Soothed us in dream all night. 
 
 And when we rose, the world made new, 
 
 To breathe the morning air, 
 Their music on the dancing blue 
 
 Made all the day more fair. 
 
 In them a Pilgrims' Chorus woke, 
 
 A chant serene and strong. 
 Which from our voices did evoke 
 
 Sweet intervals of song. 
 
 And, as our comradeships grew warm, 
 
 And loud our carols rang, 
 It seemed our lips began to form 
 
 The songs the engines sang. 
 
[143] 
 
 Words flew to aid the blending tones 
 
 And make them fit to be 
 The rich, respondent antiphones, 
 
 To heavier harmony. 
 
 As when, from some cathedral niche, 
 
 One hears the organ roll, 
 And let its diapason pitch 
 
 The anthems of his soul. 
 
 So we, at noon or twilight dim. 
 Heard that great voice below, 
 
 And on our lips we found a hymn 
 Whether we would or no, — 
 
 A hymn of comfort and of health 
 
 That into being burst 
 From the still soul's unmeasured wealth, 
 
 Unconscious, unrehearsed. 
 
 And now, amid the city throng. 
 
 Where smoky vapors hang, 
 Our memory keeps us fresh and strong 
 
 With songs the engines sang. 
 
[ 144] 
 
 DAWN IN CUMBERLAND 
 
 Our eager train to northward sped 
 Through shadow till the East was red, 
 When, lo, the dawn's reviving brand 
 Kindled the hills of Cumberland. 
 
 Our track, along an upland crest. 
 Shone first ; but down the quiet West 
 Each faint-lined hollow still was full 
 Of the slow mist's unwinding wool. 
 
 Penrith lay wrapped in fairy smoke 
 Till winds among the valleys woke 
 And stirred within it, as it seems 
 Reluctant risers move in dreams. 
 
 Beyond all this was that I saw 
 The lofty brow of stern Skiddaw ? 
 I know not for my heart did hold 
 An image of a gentler mold : 
 
 Wordsworth, whose name these hillsides own, 
 And waters' tender undertone 
 Makes music of forevermore 
 In Derwent, Duddon or Lodore. 
 
[ 145] 
 
 From those fresh heights rich store have I 
 Of upland lovely thoughts laid by : 
 From the soft mist below them hung 
 New dreams that yet I walk among. 
 
 10 
 
[146] 
 
 THE AVON AND THE THAMES 
 
 If, in all Albion's storied sweep, 
 
 No other wave were seen. 
 The Avon and the Thames would keep 
 
 Her romance gardens green. 
 
 Two silver cords are those she wears, 
 
 Fast by her side to hold 
 Her book of songs, her book of prayers, 
 
 As did the dames of old. 
 
 Fine lyric lore the first book reads. 
 
 Of woodland wanderings ; 
 The other, ancient, holy deeds 
 
 And orisons of kings. 
 
 Mitres and crowns continually 
 Allure the chanting Thames ; — 
 
 The Avon lilts to any lea 
 For cowslip diadems. 
 
 The Thames, at Oxford turned the sage. 
 The prince at Windsor grown, 
 
 Betakes himself in pilgrimage 
 To Lambeth's reverend throne. 
 
[147] 
 
 But Avon, gentle Avon, goes 
 
 Far from such loud renown, 
 Beneath old Warwick's porticos 
 
 To quiet Stratford town. 
 
 And there — sweet home of high romance ! 
 
 It loiters, giving praise 
 For him whose consecrating glance 
 
 Sought once its leafy ways. 
 
 Gold reveries, silken dreams, beside 
 Its marge their glamour blend, 
 
 Till, shpping to the Severn's tide. 
 It smiles an envied end. 
 
 While Thames and Avon onward sing, 
 
 Their music's spell shall fall. 
 The one's on warrior, priest and king. 
 
 The other's upon all. 
 
AT WILMCOTE 
 
 (Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, was a girl at Wilmcote, a pic- 
 turesque hamlet in Warwickshire.) 
 
 So soft the dusk that Summer night 
 
 The still moon like a stranger came, 
 And ere we missed the sunset light, 
 
 Made us aware of whiter flame. 
 Fair rose she o'er the steading wall, 
 
 Poised there as though she loved to hang 
 And let her fairy splendors fall 
 
 Where Mary Arden walked and sang. 
 
 The shadows in the hollyhocks 
 
 That trailed their crimson bloom along 
 The paling of her garden walks, 
 
 Were shaken with a sudden song : 
 Some bird, a stranger to this sphere, 
 
 Smitten mid-wing with beauty's pang, 
 Sought easement of his rapture here 
 
 Where Mary Arden walked and sang. 
 
 This moon, the same that followed her 
 Among the shining orchard trees 
 
 Where still her garments seem to stir 
 The ghosts of ancient fragrances ! 
 
[ 149] 
 
 That bird, the same that died of bhss 
 Long since, but for a sweet hour sprang 
 
 To life and song a night like this 
 Where Mary Arden lived and sang ! 
 
 We may not know what sort of song 
 
 Lured here the prescient nightingale. 
 Or whether it was fair and strong, 
 
 Or fitted to a homely tale ; 
 We only guess that some far voice 
 
 From future ages to her rang, 
 And bade her woman's heart rejoice 
 
 While Mary Arden walked and sang. 
 
[150] 
 
 IN HOLYROOD 
 
 In Holyrood, up yellow stair 
 
 I sought the turret chamber where 
 
 On Summer evenings long ago 
 
 The mandolin of Rizzio 
 Made Mary music, rich and rare. 
 
 And, pausing in the shadows there, 
 Methought some echo of his air 
 Along the halls came ringing low 
 In Holyrood. 
 
 Ah, 't was a sighing wind that bare 
 The burthen of old heart-despair, 
 And trembled at the casement so 
 Like dying hope or love in woe, 
 Remembering days when life was fair 
 In Holyrood ! 
 
OCTAVES IN AN OXFORD 
 GARDEN 
 
TO MRS. EDMUND D. BROOKS 
 
 (On the Fly-Leaf of a Copy of the First Edition of the 
 " Octaves in an Oxford Garden/') 
 
 " Blest spirit, who with loving tenderness" 
 
 Thus courteously saluted Angelo 
 
 Gracious Vittoria : and my octave so 
 One tender woman s loving soul would bless. — 
 Soul, which in asking naught, doth all possess. 
 
 Which, giving freely, all good gifts shall know. 
 
 My rime, that unto you this book doth owe. 
 Returns to you with gratitude^ s caress. 
 
 December 25, 1903. 
 
OCTAVES IN AN OXFORD 
 GARDEN 
 
 The day is like a Sabbath in a swoon. Wadham 
 
 Slow in September's blue go fair cloud-things 
 Poising aslant upon their charmed wings, 
 
 Stilled to the last faint backward smiles of June. 
 
 Softly I tread, and with repentant shoon, 
 Half fearfully in sweet imaginings, 
 Where broods, like courtyards of departed kings, 
 
 The old Quadrangle paved with afternoon. 
 
 II 
 
 No footfall sounds within the empty hall ; 
 
 No echoes people corridor and stair ; 
 
 The sunlight slumbers on the silent square, 
 Forgetful of slow shadows by the wall. 
 Yon is the passage where low lights do fall 
 
 And linger longest (I have watched them there), 
 
 Beyond which you will find a spot most fair, 
 A comfortable and a holy spot withal. 
 
[154] 
 
 III 
 
 There dwells the very soul of quietness, 
 Seclusion's spirit deep within the green. 
 Secure from fame as some unsung demesne 
 
 In far Ionian hills. There waits to bless, 
 
 With her all-healing, mother-soft caress, 
 The Sympathy of Trees, that friend unseen. 
 Soother of moods, on whom all hearts do lean 
 
 Sooner or later, and their cares confess. 
 
 IV 
 
 As one whose road winds upward turns his face 
 Unto the valleys where he late hath stood, 
 Leaning upon his staff in peace to brood 
 
 On many a beauty of the distant place. 
 
 So I in this cool garden pause a space, 
 Reviewing many things in many a mood, 
 Accumulating friends in solitude 
 
 From the assembly of my thoughts and days. 
 
 As here among the well-remembering boughs 
 Where every leaf is tongue to ancient breath, 
 Speech of the yester years forgathereth. 
 
 And all the winds are long-fulfilled vows — 
 
[155] 
 
 So from of old those ringing names arouse 
 A whispering in the foUate shades of death, 
 Where History her golden rosary saith, 
 
 Glowing, the light of Memory on her brows. 
 
 VI 
 
 What hath she uttered that should make me 
 dread — 
 
 That brown-robed Abbess with her beads soft- 
 told, 
 
 Who hath her seat upon the fragrant mold 
 And sees the gliding Centuries perfected ? 
 Naught. Only good things saying, she, with head 
 
 Bowed to her task submissively, doth fold 
 
 An era by for every bead of gold, 
 And smileth on the glory of the Dead. 
 
 VII 
 
 Here did Wren make himself a student home 
 
 Or e'er he made a name that England loves. 
 
 I wonder, as he watched yon chapel doves, 
 If he did have some foresight of that dome 
 On Lud's old Hill where now their coveys come, 
 
 With them that bear his name, in lofty coves. 
 
 I wonder if this straying shadow moves 
 Adown the wall as then he saw it roam. 
 
[156] 
 
 VIII 
 
 Blake hither brought his book — to con the sky, 
 Commanding squadrons of the upper seas 
 That streamed, impatient of Time's slow degrees, 
 
 Their pennoned fleets of phantasy on high. 
 
 wind-shod Time, that we should bid thee fly ! 
 Five hundred years good Bishop Wykeham's trees 
 Down there at New have known such lads as these, 
 
 And they are patient still and standing by. 
 
 IX 
 
 All things seem ordered sweetly in the Nature's 
 
 - Calmness 
 
 calm, 
 
 Full measure of the even-marching years. 
 
 This elm I love hath never fought with fears 
 And sickening heartbreak ; but the steady psalm 
 Of one who trusts not vainly issues from 
 
 His quiet depth — such psalm as lifts and cheers 
 
 Each tiny stalk or tender blade that rears 
 A nostril to the breeze-bestowed balm. 
 
 X 
 
 Primrose, and Phlox, and Clytie (as I call 
 The lady Sunflower, never to forget 
 The faithful nymph she was — ah, yes, is yet !), 
 
 These sway unto its heartsome rise-and-fall 
 
[157] 
 
 With ivies undulating up the wall ; 
 
 And thought, to inarticulate rhythm set, 
 Joins harmony, while far the World's vain fret 
 
 And discord dreamwise vanish from it all. 
 
 XI 
 
 Soon will sweet Primrose be a faded crone, 
 Yet seeks she now nor flattery nor fame ; 
 And Phlox upon the morrow lays no claim 
 
 When her shed bloom shall be around her blown. 
 
 This Beech, 'neath whom their many kindred shone 
 As fair, hath ne'er heard any wish a name, 
 And even he hath reckoned it no shame 
 
 To live in silence and to pass unknown. 
 
 XII 
 
 This is my lost inheritance. I look Lost 
 
 With brotherliest affections yearning 
 forth 
 
 To the flower-bearing sod. Oh, what is worth 
 The strange estate of flesh I strangely took ? 
 In the soft soil the garden breezes shook 
 
 From the wall chink but now, there 's measure of 
 earth 
 
 To match my body's dust when its re-birth 
 To sod restores old functions I forsook. 
 
[158] 
 
 XIII 
 
 Strange that a sod for just a thrill or two Vicissitude 
 Should ever be seduced into the round 
 Of change wherein its present state is found 
 
 In this my form ! forsake its quiet, true 
 
 And fruitfullest retirement to go through 
 
 The heat, the strain, the languor, and the wound ] 
 Forget soft rain to hear the stormier sound, 
 
 Exchange for burning tears its peaceful dew ! 
 
 XIV 
 
 It was the lip of murmuring Thames Old Song 
 
 - and a River 
 
 along 
 
 When new lights sought the wood all strangely fair. 
 
 Such quiet lights as saints transfigured wear 
 In minster windows crept the glades among. 
 And far as from some hazy hill, yet strong, 
 
 Methought an upland shepherd piped it there. 
 
 Rousing a silvern echo in her lair : 
 " Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my sony." 
 
 XV 
 
 My Spenser lay the dewy grass upon, 
 His pages shone before me as I read — 
 Like the gold daisies gleaming round his bed 
 
 H's lantern verses upward to me shone. 
 
[159] 
 
 End never yet his song's rich note hath known ; 
 " Sweet Thames " ran softly by his burthen sped. 
 And shall, while hymns are sung and prayers are 
 said, 
 
 Low chanting his glad Prothalamion. 
 
 XVI 
 
 I never thought until one night i' the The Same 
 dark ®^ 
 
 When one I love was on the labouring seas, 
 
 How constantly the stars' white companies 
 Stand watch o'er all — yea, when horizons stark 
 Are swept of every other sign and mark 
 
 So it were utmost desert but for these. 
 
 (And then, I think, my spirit found its knees 
 And asked them to guide well my dear one's barque.) 
 
 XVII 
 
 It is the same sky over sea and land : Constancy 
 
 The same pure stars attend great London 
 
 town 
 That tremble where the Channel thunders down ; 
 
 'T is we that vary, running on the strand. 
 
 Life bounds no fresher from the eternal hand 
 Here in the Wadham branches than out yon, 
 Where blurs the dusty highway wide and wan : 
 
 Good is within all, having all things planned. 
 
[160] 
 
 XVIII 
 
 There is a picture — you have seen it Ford Maddox 
 
 P, Brown^s "Christ 
 
 ^^^ • washing the 
 
 The Master at unwilling Peter's feet Feet of Peter" 
 
 Ennobling evermore and making sweet 
 Each humble service wrought with mind aloft. 
 Such mystic splendour shines serene and soft 
 
 ('T was dreamt out through long years and made 
 complete 
 
 From visions ripe) that, turning thence, we greet 
 A new world, where dull conscious self is dofft. 
 
 XIX 
 
 He who this limned is gone. They treasure The 
 
 ..,, Absence 
 
 still 
 
 The wooden wafer once he loved to hold 
 
 Which (can we question ?) now his hand is mold 
 Yearns ever for his touch of tender skill. 
 This ochre, longs it not to meet his will 
 
 About the head of Jesus aureoled ? 
 
 And that sad patch of umber some slight fold 
 Of Peter's garment would so gladly fill 1 
 
 XX 
 
 Even so our fancies' colours, keen of yore, 
 
 When one we love lays by this earth-constraint. 
 Upon our palettes do wax dull and faint, 
 
 Fulfilling not commissions first they bore. 
 
[161] 
 
 For he is gone, and never holy lore 
 
 Nor shining nimbus of transfigured saint 
 May anywhere the fragment ochre paint ; 
 
 And the rich umber waits for evermore. 
 
 XXI 
 
 One time from that gray close I did St. Paul's 
 
 emerge 
 Wherethrough I had been toiling, and to me, 
 Like some benignant rock above the sea, 
 
 St. Paul's great brow above the mist and surge 
 
 Loomed kindly, and methought did kindly urge 
 All men up to it, till there came to be 
 A hush on hearts, a deep tranquillity 
 
 Of healing virtue, round the minster's verge. 
 
 XXII 
 
 Thus Friendship. As a sacred citadel 
 
 Above the hurrying crowd of men it towers ; 
 There in or sun or frost, or shine or showers, 
 
 Invites to worship with no beating bell. 
 
 This world's a city, and it loves full well 
 
 The mid-street sanctuary that is ours 
 
 Whither to steal away renewing powers 
 
 Whose sources only at that Altar dwell. 
 
 11 
 
[162] 
 
 XXIII 
 
 Some dust of Eden eddies round us yet. Bust of 
 
 Some clay o' the Garden, clinging in 
 the breast, 
 
 Down near the heart yet bides unmanifest. 
 Last eve in gardens strange to me I let 
 The path lead far ; and, lo, my vision met 
 
 Old, forfeit hopes. I, as on homeward quest. 
 
 By recognizing trees was bidden rest. 
 And pitying leaves looked down and sighed, " Forget." 
 
 XXIV 
 
 To one tired heart I said : If it be true Restoration 
 That, in the sad much-winding of your ways, 
 Your thread is broken out of other days. 
 
 And you know not what joy is lost to you, 
 
 I pray you, turn aside awhile and through 
 This quiet garden think on some old place 
 Dear to the child you were, and that loved face 
 
 That once in many a labyrinth was your clew. 
 
 XXV 
 
 Fair crystal cups are dug from earth's Roman Giass- 
 
 1 , ware pre- 
 
 Old crust, served in the 
 
 Shattered but lovely ; for, at price of all ^^'^'^^^^^'^ 
 Their shameful exile from the banquet-hall. 
 They have been bargaining beauties from the dust. 
 
[163] 
 
 So, dig my life but deep enough, you must 
 
 Eind broken friendships round its inner wall — 
 Which once my careless hand let slip and 
 fall — 
 
 Brave with faint memories, rich in rainbow-rust. 
 
 XXVI 
 
 Tell them, sweet evening breeze poised Life's 
 
 1 T Usurpation 
 
 here, no less 
 I love their memory whom thou goest to greet 
 Out there at heaven's gate, but that I meet 
 
 Less oft the idle thoughts of old distress. 
 
 Tell them the thought of them still lives to bless. 
 But since I learned how much, despite defeat. 
 My life demands that I shall make complete, 
 
 I must yield up my cherished loneliness. 
 
 XXVII 
 
 Something of sorrow am I not denied, — Traces 
 Share of the earth 's old, universal pain 
 I own, — though but as hillsides own the rain, 
 
 Or solid sands the long wave's stroking side. 
 
 Still, though no rains upon the steep may bide. 
 And harmlessly the sea-floods rise and wane. 
 The downward torrent-traces do remain, 
 
 And sands bear record of the sedulous tide. 
 
[164] 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 Before an inn hearth's tale-begetting flame, The One 
 Or sooth, or fable, yielded of the store 
 A white old man from perilous country bore, 
 
 I heard of a strange tree without a name 
 
 Whose shade the brinks of fuming gulfs did claim 
 And the precipitous torrents of that shore. 
 Beauteous and straight it was, and uniflore 
 
 With purest bud that e'er to blossom came. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 As those great petals burst asunder there, 
 
 A wondrous fragrance on the breeze was fanned, 
 Solace unique of that unfriendly land 
 
 Wafted remote along the treasuring air. 
 
 But then, the old man said with trembling care, 
 A little raising his blue, withered hand, 
 " The flower droops straightway ere it doth expand. 
 
 And never another bloom that tree may bear." 
 
 XXX 
 
 Oh, sometimes, in the years since then, I too 
 
 Through dangerous and deserted lands have wended. 
 And many a stark and chasmy steep descended 
 
 Which crumbling cataracts shed their vapour through. 
 
[165] 
 
 But where such lone, mysterious blossom grew 
 I have not sought to learn, by one more splendid 
 Along the dimmest verges close attended — 
 
 The all-enfolding, deathless love of you ! 
 
 XXXI 
 
 Early at eve on Onchan Head, because Separation 
 
 The crimson lustre was upon the 
 bay, 
 
 And much bright melody began to sway 
 Upward from gay pavilions, and there was 
 None there to speak with in the music's pause, 
 
 I sickened of the glory and turned away. 
 
 Oh, that red sun had sealed a perfect day 
 Had I but heard your low, sweet laugh's applause ! 
 
 XXXII 
 
 He is no lover of the sea who loses 
 
 Sound of her voices, inland wandering. 
 
 Still should her old melodious mystery spring 
 
 Around him, wend he wheresoe'er he chooses ; 
 
 And so within me rhythmic life refuses 
 By any other pulse than yours to swing, 
 Par from your friendship's ocean though I 
 sing 
 
 Where the hills tire and the rough pathway bruises. 
 
[166] 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 A great nelumbo heavy on the breast 
 
 Of heaven's tranquil lake must be the moon 
 Above this garden in the still night's noon, 
 
 Bending the gold of her refulgent crest. 
 
 Thus to the surface of these days of rest 
 
 Through all my absent idlesse, late and soon, 
 The thought of you doth blossom and the boon 
 
 Of the dear face that waits me down the West. 
 
THE CITY 
 
 " For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose 
 builder and maker is God "... 
 
 IN A COPY OF "THE CITY AND OTHER 
 POEMS" 
 
 (to MR. AND MRS. EDMUND D. BROOKS) 
 
 Who sowed calm islands in the swelling sea. 
 Hath scattered life with friends for you and me, 
 
 NOVEMBEB, 1905. 
 
Persons 
 
 UcHOMO, surnamed Abgar, King of Edessa in Meso;potamia. 
 
 Cleonis, an Athenian icoman, his Queen. 
 
 Ananias, a Chamberlain. 
 
 Agamede. 
 
 Stilbe. 
 
 A Physician. 
 
 Belarion. 
 
 Body Slave to Abgar. 
 
 A Messenger. 
 
 Slave-Boy. 
 
 Women, companions and attendants of the Queen. 
 
 Soldiers. 
 
 The scene throughout is an enclosed garden of planes and pome- 
 granates some distance outside Edessa. The river Daisun, with 
 occasional sails, and a winding military road, are seen at intervals 
 in the rolling fields beyond the garden walls. Against the horizon 
 in the left background arise the walls and towers of a Greco- 
 Parthian city. In the middle background there is a massive gate, 
 closed and barred; its hinge posts are termini carven with Janus 
 heads. In the right foreground the portico of a summer palace in 
 the Doric style projects into the scene through a wealth of oleanders. 
 The centre is occupied by a marble dais surmounted by a long semi- 
 circular Greek settle of stone, aud banked with luxuriant flowers. 
 Near this, a sun-dial. 
 
 The time is in the sixteenth year of the reign of the Roman 
 Mnperor Tiberius, late in the spring. 
 
 The action covers a period of one day from dawn to dark. 
 
I. DAWN 
 
 A group of the Queens women attired in flowing 
 white pepli, one bearing a lyre, some sitting, some lean- 
 ing against pillars of the portico. Soft music. They 
 sing to a slow measure. 
 
 Chorus 
 
 Of old it went forth to Euchenor, pronounced of his 
 
 sire — 
 Reluctant, impelled by the god's unescapable fire — 
 To choose for his doom or to perish at home of 
 
 disease 
 Or be slain of his foes, among men, where Troy surges 
 
 down to the seas. 
 
 Polyides, the soothsayer, spake it, inflamed by the god. 
 Of his son whom the fates singled out did he bruit it 
 
 abroad ; 
 And Euchenor went down to the ships with his 
 
 armour and men 
 And straightway, grown dim on the gulf, passed the 
 
 isles he passed never again. 
 
[170] 
 
 Why weep ye, women of Corinth ? The doom ye 
 
 have heard 
 Is it strange to your ears that ye make it so mournful 
 
 a word ? 
 Is he who so fair in your eyes to his manhood 
 
 upgrew 
 Alone in his doom of pale death — are of mortals the 
 
 beaten so few ? 
 
 weep not, companions and lovers ! Turn back to 
 
 your joys : 
 The defeat was not his which he chose, nor the 
 
 victory Troy's. 
 Him a conqueror, beauteous in youth, o'er the flood 
 
 his fleet brought, 
 And the swift spear of Paris that slew completed the 
 
 conquest he sought. 
 
 Not the falling proclaims the defeat, but the place of 
 the fall ; 
 
 And the fate that decrees and the god that impels 
 through it all 
 
 Regard not blind mortals' divisions of slayer and 
 slain. 
 
 But invisible glories dispense wide over the war- 
 gleaming plain. [^Enter Agamede in the portico. 
 
[171] 
 
 Agamede 
 
 Go, gentle sisters, and sweet rest be yours. 
 Ere noon comes hither Abgar's embassy 
 From the great Healer in Jerusalem. 
 Get what repose ye may, for Ananias 
 Hath sent his courier to our waiting Queen 
 Begging some converse here with her, and we 
 Doubtless shall then be needed. 
 
 Stilbe {stepping from amongst the women) 
 
 Abgar sleeps ? 
 
 Agamede 
 
 Like a tired boy, Cleonis also rests. 
 
 And the old doctor in his ante-room. 
 
 The Queen commands me thank her faithful ones 
 
 Who all night long this slumber have implored 
 
 For Abgar's couch with lulling of their song. 
 
 Stilbe 
 
 Is this the morning? I began to think 
 
 That, like Persephone, we, too, perchance 
 
 Might have transgressed in this half-yearlong night. 
 
 Green pomegranates being irresistible 
 
 And the only cheer the dark earth offered us. 
 
 Pluto provided ripe ones for his guest. 
 
[172] 
 
 Agamede 
 
 Yonder the city 's waking. Eunoe, 
 
 Straight to thy bed. Dear child, thy blossom head 
 
 Hangs heavy as the dewiest poppy ! Thou, 
 
 Erigone, whose lyre hath brought the morn, 
 
 And little Nyseis of the silver voice, 
 
 Speed now while slumber broods above these halls 
 
 And even Abgar sleeps. 
 
 Thee, Stilbe, yet 
 Would I detain a space. Some things there are 
 Befitting us alone as nearest her 
 And tenderest in her love to weigh together 
 Of our Cleonis. [Exeunt Women, except Stilbe. 
 
 Stilbe {coldly) 
 
 You, being cousin to her, 
 Have preference in her intimacy. Much, 
 Therefore, I 'm honoured by your interview. 
 Pray, madam, first, whose song was that we sang 
 The last ere you dismissed us ? 
 
 Agamede 
 
 Abgar's song j 
 Thou knowest he made it in the garden here. 
 
 Stilbe 
 I had forgotten Cleonis sings but love. 
 
[173] 
 
 Agamede 
 
 Yea, and a love the dream of which men die 
 for! 
 
 Stilbe 
 
 And the Hfe of which, I see, they sicken of. 
 The fighter for me, and songs of sounding war ! 
 
 [A pause. 
 
 Agamede 
 
 Glaucon, my husband, died to save his king ; 
 
 Yonder, amid the blossoms, lies entombed 
 
 Our little child, our little Charmides. 
 
 gods ! take not away my joy in her. 
 
 This fair-faced creature I had learnt to love ! 
 
 Stilbe, thou hast seemed like a fresher self 
 
 To me a widow and bereft of youth 
 
 In whom so many hopes have been consumed. 
 
 My little sister left in Argolis 
 
 Must now be tall as thou, a woman grown. 
 
 \_Confronting her. 
 Tell me, loved Stilbe, what hath stung thy heart 
 That, since our summons, thy sweet lips so oft 
 Speak bitterly ? 
 
 Stilbe 
 Stale sweetness oft turns bitter. 
 
[174] 
 
 Agamede 
 
 Thou art so fair ! Yet many a winged thrust 
 At our sad, gentle Queen I hear of thee. 
 Oh, hadst thou earher from Edessa come 
 To stand beside her through this lingering grief, 
 Thou, too, wouldst curb the quick scorn of the 
 world ! 
 
 Stilbe 
 
 Thrice o'er these marbled pools the moon hath 
 
 filled 
 Since Uchomo she lured to dwell off here. 
 While Ananais trudges to Judaea 
 For Galilean charms. The very pause 
 She claps upon our city gaiety. 
 Cries out against her. With the king fled hither 
 The town is like a tomb dead-garlanded. 
 I, who this selfsame week was to have wed, 
 Am like to die a virgin, being called — 
 The maidens decked, as one might almost say. 
 And the libation poised above the altar — 
 Called with new relays to attend her spouse 
 And sing these dull songs to him evermore. 
 Belarion, too, our nuptial rites delayed, 
 Grows angry in his speech. 
 
[175] 
 
 Agamede 
 
 Then thou hast speech 
 With him ? 'T is of Belarion I would warn thee 
 As one who hates the Queen and would rejoice 
 To see the end of this long dynasty. 
 How gains he access to thee, and for what ? 
 
 Stilbe 
 
 He is a man of promise. Heard you not 
 What the oracle declared ? 
 
 Agamede (after a pause) 
 
 Who is this woman ? 
 Not she who suckled at the same fond breast, 
 Sicilian Praxinoe's, with her 
 She rails on now — bred up in watchful care 
 Her foster-sister in Athenian halls ! 
 
 Stilbe 
 
 Milk is not blood ; and even blood will chill 
 Before a thwarted love — such love as mine ! 
 
 Agamede 
 
 Such love as thine ? Why, girl, thou 'rt mad ! Dost 
 
 dream 
 That ever love hath sprung from such a soul ? 
 
 [Stilbe laughs scornfully. 
 
[176] 
 
 Ah ! The old tale — that thou wast courted first 
 When Uchomo to Athens came. Why, that 
 Belongs among the old forgotten things. 
 
 Stilbe {starting away) 
 
 Oh, some remember still. Yea, even yet 
 
 This royal pair among the oleanders 
 
 Shall well remember ! [kGAMMi'E. follows her. 
 
 Do not follow me. 
 I, too, have biddings. Follow not, I say ! 
 I '11 cry and start Edessa's dreamer up 
 Where he lies dozing in her arms I I '11 shriek ! 
 
 Agamede {in a low voice as they move into the trees) 
 
 Poor, blighted flower ! What thou revealest me 
 Confirms injurious whispers round thy name 
 Of poisonous growths about thee, poisoning thee. 
 I will know all. I will not leave thy side 
 Till the last shred thou dost confess to me. 
 
 \_Exeunt among the trees. 
 
[ 177] 
 
 11. MORNING 
 
 Four hours later. 
 
 The Physician is discovered near the sun-dial, ner- 
 vously pacing a short distance to and fro. 
 
 Enter Ananias with attendants, from the gate which 
 is swung open for him hy guards. 
 
 Physician {starting towards him) 
 At last I Thrice welcome home, Lord Ananias ! 
 
 Ananias 
 
 I greet thee. Pray, call not Cleonis yet ; 
 
 My courier told me of her weariness. 
 
 Sit here. How hath the King done in mine absence ? 
 \_He hands the Physician to a place on the 
 settle and remains standing. During the 
 following he paces slotvly and firmly to and 
 fro hefore the dais, pausing occasionally 
 with military abruptness. 
 
 Physician 
 
 I scarce had hoped myself to have the honour 
 Of your advices. The Asklepiad 
 Came not along ? 
 
 12 
 
[ 178 ] 
 
 Ananias 
 
 How doth my lord the King ? 
 He hath not rashly left this healing place ? 
 Be brief. How is his fever, sir ? 
 
 Physician 
 
 My lord, 
 Last night 1 deemed his fever slower, stole 
 Forth for an hour to offer up to Paion 
 Such rites as the old, pious world pronounced 
 For his disease, and left him soothed in sleep — 
 Or so he seemed — the Attic women singing 
 Hygeia's hymn, with paeans to the god ; 
 And she, Cleonis, by his couch. — Ah, sir. 
 She hath not left his side this many a week. 
 But they together wander all the day 
 About these gardens or within the palace ; 
 And nights she lays her down beside his bed 
 Upon her ready pallet, not content 
 To let sweet slumber steal her cares away 
 Till first she see him peaceful. Like a child 
 Is she for the mild beauty of her love. 
 
 Ananias 
 I ask for news. Pray, sir, how is the King ? 
 
[179] 
 
 Physician 
 
 I left him with a sleeper's pulse, moist-lipped ; 
 The low lamp softly shining, at his head 
 His faithful Karamanian, on his breast 
 The Queen's hght hand that gently rose and fell 
 With his deep breaths, and all the medicines 
 Of my prognosis ranged conveniently ; — 
 For, though I follow Erasistratos, 
 That learned doctor at Seleukos' court, 
 Our art's chief glory, in him I love less 
 What Hippokrates and the school of Kos 
 Instilled, and rather take his slant to Knidos : 
 Each humour of the four three changes hath. 
 And each degree of change hath its own drugs. 
 
 Ananias' 
 
 Great Zeus ! I had not guessed that so profound 
 My question was ! 
 
 Physician 
 
 In due course, Chamberlain. 
 I, anxious, on returning through the halls, 
 Hearing clear voices from the royal chamber. 
 Sped thither. — One brief hour away, so long 
 As might suffice to lay fresh myrrh and vervain, 
 Erom Epidaurus which Cleonis hath 
 For healing rituals, on Apollo's shrine. — 
 
[180] 
 
 Found him, despite all previous reproofs, 
 
 Risen from rest and pacing round his floor 
 
 Dressed as for journeys, girded with his blade. 
 
 The Queen, who calmlier looked, sat meekly by, 
 
 And I did overhear much feverish talk 
 
 Of dreams and sloth, and work and war ; and, last, 
 
 I made it clear he sudden had resolved 
 
 No longer here within this wholesome house 
 
 To tarry, but so soon as you, my lord, 
 
 Your grateful presence should again bestow 
 
 Upon this troubled realm, he would return 
 
 With all the court unto Edessa. 
 
 Ananias 
 
 Well, 
 What more heardst thou a-listening ? 
 
 Physician 
 
 Only what 
 One may while in surprise held hesitant. 
 He spoke of these two months awaiting you 
 And this Jerusalem thaumaturgus whom 
 Strangely he sets much hope on ; but in chief 
 He did reproach himself for idling here. 
 For, " whom the gods will bow must face the gods 
 With a self yet unbowed," quoth he ; " Both selves 
 Of me are rotting here. What malady 
 Save sloth consumes both soul and body too ? " 
 
[181] 
 
 Ananias 
 'T was wisely listened, and remembered well. 
 Passing the rest, let us arrive at length 
 To where thou vanqaishedst surprise. What then ? 
 
 Physician 
 I then, with my sick-room authority. 
 Drew back the arras and appeared to them. 
 Placed soporific leaves upon the brazier. 
 Besought Cleonis leave us for her chamber. 
 And proffered Abgar a composing draught. 
 
 What think you ? Rather than accept my skill 
 And the soft dulling ministries of drugs 
 That bring the body rest, he spurns my hand, 
 And rising violently on his bed 
 Commands Cleonis stay and me depart ! 
 I wavered 'twixt two judgments ; but I saw 
 Such glance of anger under his dark brow 
 I turned and left him in his weakness. Since 
 All which I have been deep distraught to know 
 How him I serve, and, I do swear you, love, 
 I may best bring to reason. 
 
 Ananias 
 
 'Twill be hard. 
 Exasperation is an angry wound 
 Thy surgery but inflames, Asklepios. 
 Keep thou remote from him : there 's means for thee. 
 
[182] 
 
 Physician 
 
 Thank you, my lord ! I am rejoiced to find 
 Your first so like my last deliberation ! 
 It will be best to leave him for a space, 
 Perhaps until he send for me ; and yet 
 I love him and I would not seem displeased. 
 
 Voice of a Guard 
 None pass without the royal sign ! 
 
 Voice of a Messenger 
 
 Behold it. 
 \_Unter Messenger, in haste. Bows and presents 
 despatches to Ananias. 
 
 Messenger 
 
 These from the prefect Mithradates — beg 
 Instant reply. 
 
 Ananias (Beads. Takes stilus and tablet from girdle 
 and writes hurriedly) 
 
 To Mithradates this. 
 
 \_Exii Messenger. 
 Here 's service for you if you love our lord : 
 Read over this despatch and make it yours ; 
 
 [ Writes. He gives the Physician the Mes- 
 senger's despatch. 
 
[183] 
 
 Then to the city post, seek out these men, 
 Both veterans in the service of this house 
 And scarred in old campaigns against its foes. 
 Speak with them privily. Antigonus 
 Will summon guards, and John the Magistrate 
 Suppress the public brawl with sterner force 
 Than this seal's lack would warrant him. 
 
 [He seals ivith a ring two packets^ and gives 
 them to the Physician. 
 
 Physician 
 
 This hour 
 Doth Abgar with Cleonis haunt this spot. 
 You '11 meet him here, my lord ; 't is better so. 
 His humour is more genial in the air 
 For taking news of ill. Commend my love 
 With an apology to Abgar who, 
 Knowing the pressure, will condone mine absence. 
 One thing : Tell him not all at once ; but first 
 Only as darkening probabilities 
 Assert them, then — 
 
 * Ananias 
 
 'T is sixteen stadia thither, 
 And thou must seek Antigonus by noon. 
 Pray, get to horse at once. 
 
 The Queen approaches ; 
 She must not know the matter of our speech. 
 
[184] 
 
 Physician 
 I go. [Exit. 
 
 [Enter Cleo'sis from the portico. 
 
 Friend ! 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 Ananias (kneeling) 
 
 Lo, I am returned, dear Queen. 
 
 Cleonis {raising him, smiling sadly) 
 What weary journeys we have all been taking ! 
 
 Ananias 
 I would all had such welcome at the end. 
 
 Cleonis {seating herself upon the dais) 
 
 These many weeks hath Abgar longed for you 
 With a deep, earnest longing of the soul. 
 A brief dull slumber torn from fever's rage 
 Now binds him ; for his nights are tedious. 
 You have been informed as much but now ? 
 
 Ananias 
 
 As much, 
 But with more rhetoric. 
 
[185] 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 The poor old leech 
 Is very learned, but his ministries 
 Have not availed. I look with perfect hope 
 Toward the arrival of the Healer. So 
 Tell me of him, and of your travel, all, 
 And Uchomo shall straightway learn from me. 
 
 Ananias 
 
 " All " is summed up in this : the thought of him 
 Whose body's rest I 'd give my life to win. 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 Your absence lent us pause to measure you : 
 
 Your putting by of prejudice, your pure, 
 
 Yea, sacrificial friendship. Oft whole days 
 
 As he hath paced these prisoning gardens round, 
 
 Subduing his proud soul within a frame 
 
 Inadequate, that he might bear the long 
 
 And well-nigh insupportable delay 
 
 Of the great Healer's answer, then of you, 
 
 Of your long, tireless vigilance, your strong 
 
 Mid-manhood's quiet, unprotesting love, 
 
 To me he spake. And once he said, " Of such 
 
 I '11 build my state when I am whole again ; 
 
 Or, lacking others like him, base all there I " 
 
[186] 
 
 Ananias 
 
 Only the usual grace my service bears 
 
 Of an hereditary loyalty 
 
 To worth unusual. I served Bar-Abgar ; 
 
 My father, his. I am a soldier, plain. 
 
 And not much given to visions ; yet sometimes 
 
 For Uchomo there 's bred in my regard 
 
 A sudden tenderness for that he dreams, 
 
 Moving along some higher plane than ours. 
 
 And seeks to found our city in his dreams. 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 And never will our dull world learn that dreams 
 
 Are all that fact hath ever issued from. 
 
 But yet you have not spoken of the Healer. 
 
 I had dared half-believe that he would come 
 
 Prepared to make our palace his abode, 
 
 As ran our invitation sent by you. 
 
 Much did this thought alleviate his pain 
 
 While Abgar yearned for that strong being's touch. 
 
 Delay suits not his temper, and I fear 
 
 The issue. — He but follows you ? His train 
 
 Could not accommodate them to your haste ? 
 
 [_A pause. She speaks with growing anxiety. 
 How long must we await him ? 
 
[187] 
 
 Ananias 
 
 Cleonis, 
 Forgive that I ne'er learned the courtier's phrase 
 To sweeten bitter news ! Your heart is strong, 
 Made so in many troubles early borne. 
 
 CLEONis {smothering her fear) 
 
 Only as it must seem for Uchomo. 
 I am too weak a woman to bear well 
 A loved one's pain. 
 
 Ananias 
 
 His pain so much is thine 
 That 'twill be bravely borne, dear Queen. Know, 
 
 then, 
 The Hebrew prophet, called the Nazarene, 
 Declined Edessa's princely offer. 
 
 Cleonis {leaning forward in excitement) 
 
 Ah, 
 Avert such woe, Athena Paionia ! 
 
 Ananias {approaching her as he speaks, and seating 
 himself at the opposite end of the dais) 
 
 This is the hardest part of all my mission. 
 Compared to this, those stony Syrian hills 
 Are smoother than the broad Palmyran road. 
 
[188] 
 
 I know not of what power that Healer worked, 
 Nor if he wrought at all the cures they tell. 
 Having seen his face but once. He had a look 
 Most kind. I thought of Uchomo's fair brow. 
 And of the steady light of his deep eyes 
 When he discourses of his ideal city. 
 
 Cleonis {meditatively) 
 They say he, too, hath powerful enemies. 
 
 Ananias 
 From whom the court of Abgar promised refuge. 
 
 Jerusalem swarmed. From up and down the 
 
 kingdom 
 Thronged the barbarians for their sacrifice. 
 It seems their god hath rites that once each year 
 In the mid-spring exact their celebrations ; 
 And I must hit it at the very time 
 When all their hostels choke, and every hole 
 Teems with their tribesmen gaunt from hill and 
 
 plain. 
 It was most fortunate I had of you 
 The letter to the lady Berenis. 
 She, as Tiberius' niece, holds high estate 
 Amongst the Romans of Jerusalem. 
 As for the servants of our retinue, 
 
[189] 
 
 They needs must fare ill, like the pilgrims. Me 
 
 She of her generous hospitality 
 
 Most courteously those days did entertain 
 
 In honour of the Osrhoenic House 
 
 Whose latest prince by fair repute she loves 
 
 For his just laws and life. 
 
 From her I heard 
 Much of this preaching carpenter who builds 
 Such wondrous edifice of charity 
 Amongst those fierce uncharitable Jews, 
 And something of his marvellous cures, on which 
 I pressed much question while within her gates. 
 Berenis, having friends among his school. 
 Herself a half-disciple, unrevealed 
 For reasons politic, obtained me one 
 Philip, a humble Galilean, who 
 Through the packed alleys entered where he taught 
 And learned an hour when we more privately 
 Together might converse. I sought him then. 
 This Philip guiding me, in Bethany, 
 A hamlet up an olive-sprinkled hill 
 Just out the eastern walls. There found we him 
 Surrounded by the trees and some few friends. 
 The village gentry whose loved guest he was. 
 
 ^Beckons to an attendant and takes a 'parchment 
 scroll from a casket in the attendant's hand. 
 
[190] 
 
 Cleonis 
 Tell me of his appearance. What said he ? 
 
 Ananias 
 He had prepared this scroll and gave it me 
 With courteous words, yet, as I after thought, 
 Most singularly free from deference 
 Eor one who ranks with artisans. His look 
 Betrayed no satisfaction with our suit ; 
 Yet he did emanate a grave respect 
 Which seemed habitual, much as Stoics use, 
 Yet kinder ; and his bearing had more grace 
 Than any Jew's I ever saw before. 
 
 As for his words, I own I scarce recall them. 
 
 And have been wondering ever since that I, 
 
 Bred at a court and tutored to brave deeds. 
 
 Should be so sudden silenced. For I stood 
 
 Obedient to unknown authorities 
 
 Which spake in eye and tone and every move. 
 
 In that his first mild answer of refusal. 
 
 He seemed to have foreknowledge of our case ; — 
 
 Mayhap the Galilean gave him news 
 
 Of our perplexity and long delay 
 
 In matters urgent to the city's welfare 
 
 Which I had hinted of to Berenis. 
 
 He looked on me with such compassionate gaze 
 
[191] 
 
 I had an impulse to renew my plea ; 
 But he, as if he read my inmost mind, 
 Bade me tell Abgar to contemplate this 
 
 [Indicating the scroll. 
 And shortly all should be made clear to him. 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 Are you he who would yield his life to win 
 
 Peace for his tortured master's body ? Shame ! 
 
 Oh, had I gone I would have so besought him, 
 
 And stormed him with the passion of my prayers, 
 
 That he had never dared refuse me ! Love, 
 
 Love 't was you lacked to burn your words in him ! 
 
 Had you loved Abgar even as duty bids. 
 
 Even as your father loved Bar-Abgar when 
 
 He made the pilgrimage to Epidaurus 
 
 And slept upon the slain goat's skin, and begged 
 
 Asklepios' image for his master's life. 
 
 And so prevailed ; — oh, had you loved one half 
 
 As yonder Karamanian slave who stands 
 
 All night on guard at Abgar's weary head ; — 
 
 Or even one little, little part as I 
 
 Who, a poor helpless girl, can only stroke 
 
 The feverish temples, hold the throbbing wrist — 
 
 Oh, you had begged with tears, and he had come 
 
 And healed the hidden canker of our lives I 
 
[192] 
 
 Ananias {arising) 
 
 My love counts not its duties ; nor, I think, 
 Is love summed up in all its victories : 
 'T is larger, and includes defeat. In this 
 All I could do I did, since there was power 
 Would dumb the boldest suitor. Written here 
 Is his deliberate determination. 
 
 Cleonis (arising. Her fingers are strained together) 
 
 I '11 go myself and grovel on my knees ! 
 
 He who hath made the leper whole, hath caused 
 
 The blinded eyes to flood with heaven's light. 
 
 And, ye gods ! they say restored the dead — 
 
 Him shall I travel to by night and day, 
 
 And, having found, shall warm so with my tears 
 
 That his indifference shall melt away 
 
 Like April ice upon Hymettus. Oh ! 
 
 [She sinks, weeping, to the seat. 
 
 Ananias {gently) 
 
 Cleonis, I have twice thy years. I know 
 Both love from hate, and duty from indifference. 
 'T was only love for Abgar took me hence 
 In perilous times ; and it was not indifference 
 Detained the man : a thing to ponder on. 
 
[193] 
 
 Cleonis 
 Show me the way to him, I do command you I 
 
 Ananias 
 
 Your journey to him would be all in vain, 
 Your prayers and tears in vain, unless, as some 
 He lived among believed, he was a god 
 Who may be sought by sorrow anywhere. 
 
 What mean you ? 
 
 Sav on. 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 Ananias 
 He is dead. 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 So are the gods, then ! 
 
 Ananias 
 
 Even as I tarried the last day 
 At the kind house of Berenis, we heard 
 He was condemned to death. My mission done, 
 I bade my horsemen make all ready, spurred 
 Out of the city, and with haste departed. 
 
 13 
 
[194] 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 What, waited not to search the matter out ! 
 Subsequent haste might well have bought you hours 
 To learn this master's fate ! How then, say you 
 They killed him ? On what charge proved they his 
 guilt ? 
 
 Ananias 
 
 That I know not. It seemed a common clamour 
 For blood — not blood of guilt, but innocence. 
 Their god must have, it seems, a human victim 
 Along with the twice seven-score thousand lambs 
 They slay at each of these strange feasts of theirs. 
 
 Cleonis 
 What time stayed you within their savage city ? 
 
 Ananias 
 
 Three days. My interview was Wednesday. On 
 
 The Friday as I left the lady's gate. 
 
 She with her household gave us company 
 
 Unto the open highway, and there called 
 
 Afresh on us the favour of the gods 
 
 To cheer our long return. 
 
 Just down the street 
 We, not ten paces from the friendly door, 
 Beheld a noisy rabble that so pressed 
 
[195] 
 
 The narrowing way, we reined our steeds aside 
 To wait its passage. 'T was a dreadful sight : 
 A criminal condemned by Roman law 
 To drag the wretched beam he was to die on, 
 As is the usage towards the baser sort 
 Who should not stain the honourable sword, 
 Surrounded by a hateful mob kept off 
 By the centurions of the procurator. 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 What poor, doomed wretch was he ? — Oh, 't was not 
 — not ... 
 
 Ananias 
 
 As they drew nearer, from my horse I saw him. 
 
 And it was he ; but that I only learned 
 
 By the loud banter of the bullying crowd. 
 
 He had transgressed some law those Hebrews have. 
 
 And went to pay for it upon the cross. 
 
 As the way widened past the high-walled house 
 
 Of Berenis, the throng thinned, and I saw 
 
 Plainer the moving figure of the man 
 
 And the huge beam laid on him. Suddenly 
 
 Prom the great gate I saw a form dart forth 
 
 Straight towards him, pause and seem to have some 
 
 speech 
 With the condemned, as, by old privilege. 
 Sometimes the pious ladies do with those 
 
[196] 
 
 Who tread the shameful road. Her speech was brief. 
 She turned, and, as I saw 't was Berenis, 
 Towards me she came, and her eyes, wet with tears, 
 Smiled sadly, as she said these final words : 
 
 " Such shame a mighty purpose led him to. 
 Yet he shrinks not, but steadfast to this end 
 Inevitable hath he come his way. 
 A woman of my house was healed of him 
 By kissing once the border of his garment. 
 Take your King this, and say that as he dragged 
 His cruel but chosen cross to his own doom, 
 Some comfort in its cooling web he found. 
 And left a blessing in its pungent folds." 
 
 [He takes a small square of linen from his hosom. 
 
 A keenly odorous linen from her hand 
 
 I laid within my bosom next the scroll. 
 
 And so we said farewell, and I spurred on, 
 
 The hoarse mob's laughter down the blazing street 
 
 Making us glad to quit the fearful city. 
 
 [He gives the linen into the hand of Cleonis. 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 Oh, let them never leave their quiet hills. 
 These prophets that dream well for all the world ! 
 Let them remain in mountains far from man 
 Where nothing fiercer than the lion roams, 
 
[197] 
 
 Communing with the kindly elements — 
 
 The earth that is their mother, and the winds ' 
 
 That are such spirits' brothers, and the fire 
 
 Of splendid storms that like their words breaks forth, 
 
 And waters that flow out like their great love ! 
 
 They are of other worlds and strangers here : 
 
 Let them remain in mountains — or in gardens ! 
 
 Ananias 
 Ay, but we need such in this world of men. 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 Ye need them as the tiger needeth blood ! 
 Come, show me one great soul that taught you good 
 Whom your wild world would have; one bold emprise 
 Without Protesilaus at the prow ? 
 
 The Carthaginians exiled Hannibal ; 
 The Romans, Scipio ; Cicero they stabbed ; 
 Athens gave Socrates the poison cup 
 Because she feared his truth ; Jerusalem 
 Doth crucify him who would make her whole. 
 
 Ananias, this thy tale for me 
 Brings ominous forebodings. Pray, beseech 
 With all your long-used freedom that the King 
 Go not yet to the city. I have heard 
 Slight rumours of a restless populace 
 
[198] 
 
 That, like caged eagles, fight the hand would free. 
 And look suspiciously on Uchomo. 
 Is it not true that gathering troubles brood 
 Within the city ? 
 
 Ananias 
 Yes. 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 I felt it. Now 
 Give me the whole truth. 1 've the heart for it. 
 
 Ananias {handing her the Messenger's despatch) 
 
 This word but now despatched to me tells all. 
 
 \_A pause. She reads. 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 'T is all my fears condensed into a line. 
 
 Now must your prayers with mine urge him remain. 
 
 Towards evening, at the old accustomed hour, 
 
 Here meet us and conclude your narrative 
 
 Which I will give to Uchomo complete 
 
 Up to the Healer's shameful death ; and that 
 
 Will I in silence leave till custom dull 
 
 The lesser sadness. 
 
 Are the guards informed ? 
 Is all precaution taken ? 
 
[ 199 ] 
 
 Ananias 
 
 All is ready ; 
 But I go now to double-warn his watch 
 Against the morrow. Be not anxious. We 
 Who long have served this house will prove our love. 
 
 \_Exit. 
 
 Cleonis 
 Bear with nie, Ananias. My heart aches. 
 
[200] 
 
 III. AFTERNOON 
 
 Eight hours later. 
 
 The full court is assembled, tvith Abgar, Cleonis, 
 Ananias, and Attendants. Afterwards, 
 Agamede. 
 
 Abgar is seated at the end of the stone settle nearest 
 the portico. His right arm rests on the hack of 
 the seat, its hand supporting his head. His gaze 
 is fixed upon the distant city, so as to leave 
 discernible only the left side of his face. His 
 soldierly short black hair and strong profile are 
 accentuated by the eager forward thrusting of 
 the neck. A flowing white chlamys is throivn 
 aside from his left shoulder, revealing a severe 
 military dress. The free hand rests upon and 
 clasps the hilt of a sword suspended ai the 
 hip. 
 
 Cleonis sits full front, a little removed from Abgar, 
 on the settle, her hands folded before her, and 
 her head resting somewhat wearily against the 
 high bach of the seat. Her garment is a pep- 
 lus of azure wool. 
 
 Ananias sUs behw her on the steps at her right, his 
 gaze directed to Abgar. His attitude, that 
 of interrupted rmrration, presents the right 
 
[201] 
 
 side of his face and form prof led against the 
 oleander leaves. A scroll lies open in his 
 hands. 
 
 The Slave-boy stands in waiting at some distance on 
 the ground to the left of Abgar, immediately 
 behind whom stands his great Body Slave. 
 
 In the middle background, grouped in the foliage, stand 
 the Queens tvomen in fresh garments of various 
 bright colours. 
 
 Armed guards are stationed in the extreme back- 
 ground. 
 
 The soft light of advancing dusk fiUs the garden^ but 
 the undulating plain seen through the trees, and 
 the tvhite walls of the city, are suffused with rich 
 sunlight. 
 
 Music of lyres. The women are singing. 
 
 Chorus 
 
 ^gina's foam is high and wild 
 Where Pan immortal sits enisled ; 
 But thou and I with flying oar 
 Seek Psyttaleia's sacred shore. 
 
 The City of the Violet Crown 
 Well knows that rocky island's frown ; 
 But thou and I together learned 
 What fires upon her altars burned. 
 
[ 202 ] 
 
 Oh, many a sail goes gleaming there 
 Bound for some olive-garden fair ; 
 But thou and I made fast to her 
 And found her cypress lovelier. 
 
 The shrines of Aphrodite lift 
 Their smoke in every village-rift ; 
 But thou and I remote from man 
 Propitiate the Woodland Pan. 
 
 [As the song ends, Cleonis waves dismissal 
 to the women. 
 
 Abgar, 
 
 More music while I think. Some martial air. 
 There 's one of Alexander's men. Sing that. 
 
 Cleonis (speaking over-shoulder to the women) 
 
 That song of Arbela. 
 
 {To herself) 
 
 Unsoothing sound ! 
 
 Chorus 
 
 I see the Macedonian's foes 
 Where Zab, the fatal river, flows ; 
 A million, chariot and horse, 
 And spearmen of the Persian's force 
 
[ 203] 
 
 Orontes and the Euxine gave, 
 The Oxus and the Caspian wave ; 
 Jaxartes, Kashgar, Indus, far 
 Swell the bright rushing tide of war I 
 
 I see the Persian innermost 
 Of all his vast assembled host. 
 Around him in protecting groups 
 Legions of mercenary troops : 
 
 Melophori, and Mardian bows, 
 Albanians, Carians interpose, 
 With Indian elephants, between 
 The monarch and his foe unseen. 
 
 A score and five the nations are 
 Preceded by the scythed car. 
 And Cappadocia's cavalry 
 For numbers like the waving sea. 
 
 Who comes upon them ? O'er the plain 
 
 The Macedonian sweeps amain ! 
 
 I see his phalanx solid-speared. . . . 
 
 Abgar {arising suddenly) 
 
 'T is thus a world 's won ! Alexander led 
 But two-score thousand men, but them he led ! 
 
[204] 
 
 Ha, how the many-captained Persians ran 
 Before that Godlike youth ! 
 
 \_He unsheathes his sword and diagrams on the 
 ground. 
 
 Darius' centre, 
 Bared of the Bactrian cohorts at his left 
 Who would outflank the slantwise charging right 
 Of Macedon, exposed both front and side 
 To Alexander's horse and spearmen. Here 
 Plunged in that son of Philip, whose assault 
 Pilled the great King with terror, so he fled 
 Treading his crumbled empire in the dust. 
 
 \He drops to his seat, taking former ^position. 
 Yet Alexander and Darius both 
 Are dead. And what avail the conqueror 
 Issus and Arbela ? — Do they comfort him 
 Down there among the shades ? What victory 
 Won Alexander that his naked soul 
 May deck him with where dwelleth Socrates ? 
 
 \_A pause. He turns, quietly, addressing Ananias. 
 Conclude the Hebrew's letter, Ananias. 
 
 Ananias {reading) 
 
 "As to the part of your epistle which 
 Concerns my going hence to visit you, 
 Know that I have a mission to fulfil 
 In mine own city, and must here remain 
 
[205] 
 
 Till all its ends be satisfied. Yet you 
 Of your infirmity shall know full cure, 
 And those most dear to you have peace. 
 
 "Farewell." 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 See, he doth promise healing ! Reads not more 
 On any margin, or betwixt the lines, 
 To indicate how such a joy may be ? 
 
 Ananias 
 Nay, I have now read every word to you. 
 
 Cleonis {hending forward) 
 
 Hand me the letter. 
 
 [Ananias arises, and gives her the scroll. 
 Why, these very lines 
 We did pass over lightly, they seemed charged 
 With hidden meaning. \^She reads, thoughtfully. 
 
 "Abgar, forasmuch 
 As ye believed on me whom ye knew not. 
 Shall happiness be yours. For it is wrote 
 Concerning me that they should not believe 
 Who have beheld, that those who dwell afar 
 And see not might have faith and life abundant." 
 
 See you not something there, Abgar ? 
 
[206] 
 
 Abgar 
 
 Much. 
 Did I not ask for music, hearing that ? 
 
 I shall be healed ! The ebbing springs of life 
 
 Will flow again as full they flowed of yore ! 
 
 My city, my city ! thou shalt know 
 
 Again the joyous tread of other days, 
 
 When all thy booths and palaces and shrines 
 
 With multitudes of helpless, longing folk 
 
 First knew me theirs to build, protect, and love ! 
 
 I have not yet resolved the Healer's words 
 
 Into clear meaning ; but their crystal soon 
 
 In the still cup of contemplation may 
 
 Give up its precious drug to heal our cares. 
 
 What said he of it, Ananias ? " Shortly 
 
 Should all be clear that 's written in this scroll " ? 
 
 Ananias 
 
 Those are the words, my lord, in giving me 
 His answer spake the Nazarene. 
 
 Abgar 
 
 Consider. 
 I offered him my realm's protection ; peace ; 
 A sanctuary of philosophy ; 
 
[207] 
 
 And a disciple not without an arm. [^4 pause. 
 
 Now, more than ever, do I long to see him ; 
 What won my reverence now provokes my love. 
 His city hates him. Oh, that he were here ! 
 
 [He springs to his feet, and paces up and down 
 the dais. 
 
 Ananias 
 
 I think, my lord, he weighed all this, so firm 
 
 His speech revealed him, as if all debate 
 
 He, silent, had passed through at once forever. 
 
 Abgar {eagerly) 
 
 How well thou hast divined this sort of soul ! 
 Planted upon his rock, he sees all else 
 As drift and wreckage of the stormy seas 
 That surge around him, yet can touch him not. 
 
 There is but one decision for such man. 
 And, after that, concession, compromise, 
 Expediency — these enter not at all 
 Into the fabric of his meditation. 
 To such death is not. For untainted is 
 The source of life, and solid is the rock. 
 To those who go down in the trough upon 
 Their own poor broken spar, that rock is hid 
 
[208] 
 
 With him upon it, and they call him dead. 
 
 I will send other embassies to him — 
 
 Not importuning him, but to have words 
 
 To ponder on, or, maybe, go myself, 
 
 For I already feel renewed within 
 
 By the great soul of him who hath opposed me. 
 
 Cleonis {approaching Abgar, and laying her hands 
 
 in his) 
 
 Uchomo, hast thou all the love for me 
 That thou didst woo me with those perfect days 
 Amid the cloves and laurels where the sea 
 Elung its M^hite arms among J^gina's isles ? 
 Still the old love that bore me in our barque 
 Ear on those sunlit waters where but faint 
 The cry of men, and even the gleam of sails, 
 Came to us in our niche among the hills ? 
 
 Yes, yes, I know ! I ask to be assured 
 By the old light rekindled in thine eyes. 
 
 Uchomo, the constancy of love 
 
 Hath not performed its service until pain 
 
 Doth weld both hearts inseparably. 
 
 Not all 
 At once to-day did I repeat to thee 
 Of what our Ananias hath brought back. 
 
[209] 
 
 Abgar 
 I felt that more would come in love's own time. 
 
 Cleonis {taking the linen from her bosom) 
 
 This brought he back to thee with him. It 
 
 bears 
 The dying benediction of the Man. 
 
 She who bestows it, lady Berenis, 
 Invoked his healing power upon its folds. 
 
 Abgar 
 His city slew him ? 
 
 Cleonis 
 Took away his life ! 
 
 Abgar {receiving the linen) 
 
 Not that ! For he shall live forever here, 
 
 And in the bosoms of philosophers. 
 
 Such life shall grow and blossom, and bear 
 
 fruit — 
 Yea, here in mine own city shall it grow ! 
 
 [^A pause. He turns away suddenly, with out- 
 spread arms, and uplifted head. 
 
 14 
 
[210] 
 
 I feel it now ! All through these withered veins 
 I feel it bound and glow ! life, life, life ! 
 \^He clasps Cleonis in his arms. 
 [ Voices at the gate. Enter from thence Aga- 
 MEDE, exhausted. Her long, white gar- 
 ment of the morning is stained and disar- 
 ranged, and her grey hair is loose. She 
 walks uncertainlg towards the dais. 
 [Cleonis, in surprise, runs and supports her in 
 her embrace. 
 
 Agamede {breathless) 
 Yet not for this — this even — deem friendship vain, 
 And sister a light name ! — Vow that to me ! 
 
 Cleonis 
 Sweet sister Agamede ! 
 
 Abgar [to Slave-hoy) 
 
 Fetch her wine. 
 [Boy brings wine, of which Agamede partakes. 
 {Lifting his hands to her) 
 Be sure of us, dear Agamede ! All 
 Assembled here are bound to thee by love 
 And thy long, tender years of care for us. 
 The world is full of beauty, strength, and love ! 
 
 [Cleonis leads Agamede to a seat, and sits 
 beside her comfortingly. A pause. 
 
[211] 
 
 Agamede {to Cleonis) 
 
 What words and looks are these from Uchomo ? 
 
 Oh, was it all a frightful dream that I 
 
 Since dawn this day have fought with Nemesis ? 
 
 Cleonis 
 That was thy dream, dear one. 
 
 Abgar 
 
 Some dream this was. 
 
 Agamede 
 
 Thou splendid youth ! What god hath wrought on thee 
 Whilst I was dreaming ? Came he hither, then, 
 That Galilean Healer long desired ? 
 
 Abgar 
 Thou seest me healed by him. We dream no more. 
 
 Agamede {passing a handover her eyes) 
 
 Oh, but I dreamt not ! 
 
 {Reluctantly) 
 
 Abgar, of thy house 
 One hath turned traitor and conspired with those 
 Who long have wished thee ill. More, too, I find, 
 
[212] 
 
 King : lords Umbar and Athmantides 
 Have been beset by the wild populace 
 And are imprisoned by them in the Tower. 
 
 Abgar 
 How learn you this ? 
 
 Agamede 
 
 Fresh from those scenes I come. 
 
 Cleonis and Abgar 
 What ! From the city thou ? 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 What stains are these ? 
 What woe hath overtaken thee ? 
 
 Abgar 
 
 Spare not. 
 A great peace dwells in this abode. Not thou, 
 O wife of Glaucon, canst bring anguish here, 
 Nor bow our hearts with any woe but thine ; 
 On which, if aught there be, the kingdom shall 
 Be spent for remedies. Speak slowly all. 
 
[213] 
 
 Agamede 
 
 It is my woe, mine own familiar woe 
 As I had learned it in forgotten ages. 
 Two kinds of woe which I had known before 
 Shall never seem so old a woe as this ; 
 And there is ransom from all other kinds, 
 When we go back into the earth ; but this, 
 Once known, shall be a terror in the soul 
 And in Elysium even cloud it o'er 
 With memories that Lethe cannot quell ! 
 
 Ananias 
 'T were well to speak directly of this matter. 
 
 Agamede (to Abgar) 
 
 Forgive, Abgar, first, that how and why 
 I came into the city, or with whom, 
 I now conceal. Let it suffice that one 
 I followed fleeing thither who confessed, 
 In part because I persecuted so, 
 In part that, sure of their complete design, 
 The traitors fear not now if it be known. 
 
 What I found in the city first I tell : 
 
 Of all your officers of public works 
 
 Who build and broaden, cleanse and sweep away. 
 
 These twain have most incurred the rabble's wrath. 
 
[214] 
 
 The stewards Umbar and Athmantides ; 
 
 Because their duties — as chief overseers 
 
 Of the new sewers — do seem sacrilege 
 
 In that the city's soil so deep is dug 
 
 That antique gods of stone, once worshipped there 
 
 By the old Syrian fathers of the folk, 
 
 Have been disturbed in their forgotten slumbers. 
 
 And certain who oppose themselves to all 
 
 The strange reforms that are pushed forward so, 
 
 Have used this pretext of indignant gods 
 
 To stir the people and arrest the works. 
 
 Abgar 
 
 How comes it Delius lets the mobs prevail? 
 Where is Belarion that such passion rules ? 
 
 Agamede 
 
 Belarion 't is — I choke to say his name ! — 
 Who stirs them to revenge. 
 
 Abgar 
 
 Athmantides 
 And Umbar have their sovereign's instant care. 
 My chariot and guard within an hour 
 Shall bear me to Edessa. 
 
 I 
 
[215] 
 
 {To Slave-boy) 
 
 Hasten, boy; 
 Bid Moschus have the new Arabians combed. 
 And all prepared for travel in the hour. 
 
 {Exit Slave-boy. 
 What ! is it thus, my city, whom these dreams 
 Have glorified with perfectness ? And ye, 
 people of my ceaseless watch and care. 
 Could ye not be content a little while 
 Till my poor body was made sound for you ? 
 
 Cleonis {in pain) 
 Uchomo, I forbid thee leave our sight ! 
 
 Ananias 
 Nay, Abgar, go not ! 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 Thou wilt straight undo 
 All the slow betterment of these long weeks. 
 
 Ananias 
 
 My word commands, being given authority. 
 The seal I bear persuades with eloquence. 
 
[216] 
 
 Abgar {sitting. He looks towards the city) 
 
 I am the King. Prom my deliberation, 
 Revolved in silence when the vrorld 's asleep, 
 I am not easy moved by hate or love, 
 Nor do I rise by impulse to bold deeds ; 
 But it hath ever been my studious care 
 So ripened for emergency to be 
 That through my meditations naught can fall 
 I may not welcome with the fittest deed. 
 
 Cleonis 
 Yet go not ! Oh, thou knowest not ! 
 
 Ananias 
 
 Our tongues 
 Till now were justified in secrecy. 
 I must inform you, Abgar, that a band 
 Of impious men who fear nor god nor man 
 Plot for your life. A treble guard is placed 
 Around these walls lest any of their spies 
 Steal to you unperceived ; while yonder now 
 Within the city trusty officers 
 Under the Prefect Mithradates' eye 
 Take evidence to blot out that perfidy. 
 
[217] 
 
 Agamede 
 
 For days hath nested 'twixt these garden walls 
 
 A withered and implacable Erinys 
 
 Ready to give the signal for assault. 
 
 It wanted only Ananias' presence 
 
 To ripen it, and they intend this night 
 
 With all the force Belarion can assemble 
 
 To make attack. 'T is no mere mutiny. 
 
 Beginning such, the poison hath been spread 
 
 Till now a revolution threatens all. 
 
 This flew I back to tell the sentinels 
 
 And Ananias' guard which paces here. 
 
 Cleonis (as though suddenly enlightened) 
 Where is Stilbe? 
 
 Agamede {shrinking) 
 
 There is no Stilbe more. 
 Abgar {'placing one hand out upon the heads of the two 
 women, who have drawn together, and with the 
 other inviting Ananias up to a seat beside him) 
 
 Peace, peace ! They have but once to see their King 
 Strong as of old, and riding with his guard ! 
 
 {To a Slave) 
 Ho, Imbros, run to Moschus and make speed 
 With preparations for departure. Standards, 
 
[ 218 ] 
 
 Torches and all the trappings of the mews 
 Provide my escort. See all busy. Thou, 
 
 ( To Ms Body Slave) 
 Gyges, make ready the new armour — that 
 Tiberius had forged and sent to me 
 From Capri. — They will cheer the casque of gold. 
 
 [Exit Slaves. 
 You, faithful friends, and thou, Cleonis, hearken. 
 
 \Puring the following, the scene gradually dark- 
 ens till the garden is left entirely in the dusk. 
 Then a few stars shine through the trees, and 
 the moon begins to rise. 
 Last night, to complement two wondrous dreams 
 Had on the two preceding nights, there came 
 A third, most vivid, and most wonderful. 
 
 In the first vision like to this I dreamed : 
 
 I stood upon a height. Spread out below. 
 
 Dark, silent, shapeless, a vast city — dead — 
 
 Where in far ages of this furrowed world 
 
 Strong men and women took their taste of life. 
 
 All now was desolation absolute ; 
 
 And through that wreck of fortress, mart and 
 
 fane, 
 And fallen mausoleum crowded o'er 
 With characters for evermore unread. 
 Only the wind's soft hands went up and down 
 
[219] 
 
 Scattering the obliterative sands. 
 I, led in trance by shapes invisible, 
 Approached a temple's splendid architrave 
 Half sunk in sod betwixt its columns' bases, 
 And there by sudden divination read 
 The deep-cut legend of that awful gate : 
 
 APPEASE WITH SACRIFICE THE UNKNOWN POWERS. 
 
 Between the roofless, tottering pillars there 
 
 A countless flock had fed the holocaust — 
 
 Numberless innocents drenched the steaming altars. 
 
 Outpouring their propitiative blood. 
 
 And prayers and tears and cringings of a world 
 
 Through them did seek the appeasing way — in 
 
 vain. 
 And the black night came down upon my dream. 
 
 Next night I found me in a twilit place 
 Wherein the same compelling, gentle hands 
 Held me. And from mine eminence I saw 
 A newer city builded on like dust — 
 A trodden sand that could afford to wait. 
 Streets hummed, and multitudes on multitudes 
 Along their river-quays, in highways broad, 
 Or up their little ramifying lanes, 
 Unceasing plied their single life away. 
 They toiled, or played, or fought, or sued the 
 gods, 
 
[220] 
 
 Absorbed each in his own pecuUar lust, 
 As if there were no morrow watching them ; 
 Yet each was happier in the morrow-dream 
 Than ever in all achieved yesterdays. 
 
 I was so high above them as to see 
 
 Their little deeds and mean anxieties, 
 
 Wholly, as one surveys a mound of ants 
 
 At their laborious atom industries. 
 
 Above them spread the splendid heavens filled 
 
 With palpitating sunlight ; all around, 
 
 The sources inexhaustible of life. 
 
 And plenitudes of peace. But there they swarmed, 
 
 Striving — some bravely ; offering — some in truth ; 
 
 But all with inward thought and eyes on earth. 
 
 And so I saw them grow, and grieve, and die. 
 
 And as I looked, I saw a man who long 
 
 In upward meditation on his roof 
 
 Sat all alone, communing with his soul. 
 
 And he arose, and presently went down, 
 
 Down in the long black streets among his kind. 
 
 And there with patience taught them steadfastly. 
 
 But, for the restless souls he made in them. 
 
 They turned and slew him and went on their 
 
 ways. 
 And a great fog crept up and covered all. 
 
[221] 
 
 Again the third time I was lifted up. 
 
 A mighty, living, beautiful walled town, 
 
 A-wave with trees, lay shining on the plain. 
 
 And underneath her walls a river glided, 
 
 Safe bearing her full many a peaceful sail. 
 
 And there lived folk who all day worked and 
 
 sang. 
 And folks that to and fro sped silently ; 
 And here and there some sat apart and thought. 
 From all whom throbbed a joy in unison 
 With the warm earth and her enfolding heavens ; 
 Through all, the strong, perpetual streams of 
 
 life 
 That through the universe unceasing flow. 
 And this dream ended not with cloud or mist, 
 But slow receded in its radiance 
 Till it grew small as towers and sails and stream 
 That whiten yonder to the rising moon. 
 And as it went I heard a voice that said : 
 " Thou, Abgar, art the King of cities three : 
 The Past, the Present, and the Yet-to-Come. 
 Out of the Past the Present by slow pain 
 And undiscerning upward agonies ; 
 Out of the Present, by as many throes. 
 The city of Celestial Harmony." 
 
 Then faded all, and I awoke and saw 
 Through the wide window of my prison here 
 
[ 222 ] 
 
 My city gleaming on its tree-plumed levels, 
 And waiting in its troubled sleep — for me ! 
 
 Fear not for me : I go unto the city. 
 
 [Cleonis clings to Abgar's necJc. He, erect, 
 
 the left arm holding Cleonis, the right 
 
 pointing to the city which is now full in the 
 
 light of the risen moon. 
 [The distant noise of preparation for departure 
 
 fills the garden with sound. 
 
[223] 
 
 IV. EVENING 
 
 An hour later. 
 
 The only light is that of the moon, which enfilades the 
 little open spaces among the leaves and along the 
 ground, and shines full over the open country 
 beyond the garden. 
 
 The garden is empty of people. There are sounds of 
 stamping hoofs, shouted orders, hurried footsteps, 
 within the palace and beyond the wall. In the 
 pauses of these sounds far in the distance from 
 the direction of the city come indistinct murmurs 
 like human cries. Presently a faint bugle-call 
 thrice repeated. The sounds decrease. 
 
 Agamede and Cleonis in the shadow of the portico. 
 Agamede stands with arms stretched out towards 
 the oleanders, and is softly singing. 
 
 Agamede 
 
 Grow, grow, thou little tree. 
 His body at the roots of thee ; 
 Since last year's loveliness in death 
 The living beauty nourisheth. 
 
[224] 
 
 Bloom, bloom, thou little tree, 
 Thy roots around the heart of me ; 
 Thou canst not blow too white and fair 
 From all the sweetness hidden there. 
 
 Die, die, thou little tree, 
 And be as all sweet things must be ; 
 Deep where thy petals drift I, too, 
 Would rest the changing seasons through. 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 Let us sit here and wait for Uchomo. 
 
 \_They sit on the steps of the portico. 
 These last strange quiet moments spent with thee 
 Have wrought some change in me, I know not 
 
 what. 
 Whereas I was half-girl, this day of storm, 
 woman of sorrow, hath made me calm as thou ; 
 Hath shown me heights and deeps, and swallowed up 
 All fear of death or life. We are secure. 
 
 Agamede 
 
 Not in an hour was wrought this change in thee. 
 Thyself hast wrought it day by day in toil 
 For what thou lovest, forgetting what thou art. 
 These final moments show thyself to thee. 
 
[225] 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 Thou hast known all these things for many years. 
 
 \_Enter Abgar, armed, tvearing his golden helmet, 
 [He bends over Cleonis, who arises and joins 
 
 him. They descend to the garden. 
 [Agamede remains on the steps a moment, her 
 hands extended as in blessing towards the 
 receding pair, then steals into the palace. 
 
 Abgar 
 
 Dost thou, love, feel a strange, new sense of peace ? 
 
 To me it is as if another air 
 
 Had suddenly enveloped our sad earth. 
 
 Cleonis 
 The atmosphere of oceans tranquillized. 
 
 Abgar 
 
 Wherein our barque doth move on steadily 
 As by some other force than chance of winds. 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 In the old days when far we searched the seas 
 In our light-skimming pinnace, thou and I, 
 Sometimes it bended in and out the isles 
 
 15 
 
[226] 
 
 And no wind seemed to have the care of it. 
 Then thought I, like a foolish, dreaming girl, 
 That beautiful, strong hands beneath us bore 
 Our barque of love. 
 
 We have lived inland long. 
 
 Abgar 
 
 To me there is no inland, having thee ! 
 
 Our love 's a golden sea set thick vrith green 
 
 And aromatic islands whose shores know 
 
 Such wreckage only as bright, tide-plucked flowers 
 
 That grow, unguessed, too deep for touch of storm. 
 
 Come to our garden-seat. The moment nears 
 When we must for a little while be parted. 
 
 [They mount the dais and sit. 
 
 \_A pause, during which the murmur from the 
 city is renewed. 
 He said that shortly all should be made clear. 
 I think his words grow plainer to me, yet . . . 
 Is there no other way our world will learn ? 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 Only through abnegation's sacrifice ; 
 
 Only renouncement, that shall raise dead hearts. 
 
 None may believe who have beheld, because 
 This mortal vision makes them blind of soul. 
 
[227] 
 
 Men may not see with soul and body both : 
 This now I see who was till now one blind, 
 And under the charm of fear. The man spake well. 
 
 Abgar 
 
 Not distance, nor yet death, shall separate 
 The souls of those whose vision is made clear. 
 Lo, he abideth with us evermore 
 Who would not come to us the way of flesh, 
 And in the spirit makes us whole. 
 
 That mind 
 Hath turned my course of longing utterly : 
 I longed for healing only of this flesh 
 That I might serve my state — asked not for more ; 
 Yet how in his refusal he transcends 
 My widest prayer ! 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 " Of your infirmity 
 Shall you know yet full cure ; and those have peace 
 Who are most dear to you." 
 
 That peace is here. 
 
 Abgar 
 
 love, I never saw thee till this hour 
 
 So beautiful ! How all the world is changed ! 
 
 Let us grow old together in this way. 
 
[ 228 ] 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 Always together, well or ill betide : 
 
 Promise me this, love — till death's own hour ! 
 
 Abgar 
 
 Yea ! For no ill can ever meet us so ! 
 
 \_Sound of the chariot at the gate. 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 I have thy promise. Listen, at yon gate 
 Moschus is standing with the chariot. 
 I go with thee ! Oh, never, never apart 1 
 
 Abgar 
 
 I will return to thee to-morrow, love. 
 
 Stay me not thus ; the numbered moments fly. 
 
 Knowest thou not I am made strong for this ? 
 
 Cleonis {clinging to him) 
 
 But thou hast said ill cannot meet us so. 
 Together, always, even to the hour of death ! 
 
 Abgar 
 
 Yea, that I know ! Come, then. Not all earth's power 
 Shall snatch us twain asunder. To the city ! 
 
[ 229 ] 
 
 Cleonis 
 It is the promise : Peace and life abundant. 
 
 {They descend to the ground, and are inter- 
 rupted in their exit by the Body Slave, 
 who enters, running, from the palace. 
 
 Slave 
 Flee, flee ! Armed bands of thrice our guard's full 
 
 strength 
 Ride here ! 
 
 [He runs centre, mounting the dais and shading 
 his eyes towards the city. 
 I see their helmets on the plain. 
 King, your chariot quick ! and southward turn : 
 Thapsacus is our ancient ally. Flee ! 
 That friendly city may be reached in safety. 
 One of her trading craft lies on the river 
 Waiting for dawn to slip her anchorage. 
 Moschus and I will bear you with the Queen 
 Swift charioting thither. 
 
 Abgar 
 
 To Thapsacus, 
 To the old, noble town where Xenophon 
 With the Ten Thousand crossed Euphrates' flood, 
 I, fleeing at night away from foes unseen ? 
 
 {He mounts the dais, his arm still encircling 
 Cleonis. They look towards the city. 
 
[ 230] 
 
 Return thou to thy duty at the postern, 
 
 And fortify thy heart with the calm night. 
 
 The guards without are ready ; we within 
 
 Are confident and undisturbed. [Uxit Slave. 
 
 Cleonis 
 
 Look, love. 
 How beautiful ! Along that road of gold 
 Which in and out among the new-sown fields 
 Mocks with its shining course the winding river, 
 They sparkle like heroic panoplies, 
 With helmet, shield, and spear beneath the moon. 
 
 Abgar 
 
 It is indeed, most beautiful and strange. 
 
 [^Thei/ stand some mometiis in silence, facing 
 the city and the open country, and watch- 
 ing the advance of the troops. Again the 
 sullen murmur of the city. Twice or 
 thrice Cleonis lifts her hand to the scene 
 and turns her head half round to Abgar. 
 \The sound of galloping hoofs groivs near. 
 The horses at the gate paw and neigh. 
 There are movements among the guard, 
 and within the palace. 
 [A red light flares from one end of the city. 
 city ! many a time and oft have I 
 Preserved thy peace through toil and bitter pain. 
 
[231] 
 
 Turning away the foeman from thy gates ! 
 
 Oh, I have loved with yearnings infinite 
 
 Even as a father pitieth his child ! 
 
 But what can save thee from thyself? Not love. 
 
 What needest thou ? What wilt thou of me more ? 
 
 My life ? Can that avail thee in the end ? 
 
 If mortal vision make thee blind of soul 
 
 Can death — can that appease, and bring thee sight ? 
 
 \_There is an onset at the gate. 
 
 [_Enter women from the left, flying into the palace. 
 
 First Woman 
 Flee, flee ! 
 
 Second Woman 
 There 's murder at the gate ! 
 
 Third Woman 
 
 Oh, flee ! 
 [The gaie hursts open, hut is still defended. 
 
 The fighting is along the wall. 
 \_Enter Ananias from the gate, wounded. 
 
 Ananias 
 
 Where 's Uchomo ? Where 's Cleonis ? Where 's my 
 King? 
 
[ 232] 
 
 We cannot hold them off. They beat us down 
 Like sudden whirlwinds. Oh, I think I die. 
 
 [Cleonis tears a strip from her role; then, as 
 if by a fortunate recollection, plucks the 
 square of linen from the bosom of Abgar, 
 and binds it over the wound with the 
 strip. 
 Oh, cowardly to yield thee up a day 
 Prom my long watchful care ! Oh, base to turn, 
 When needed most, even at thy own command ! 
 
 Abgar {supporting him tenderly) 
 
 Dear friend, thou art the other side the loom. 
 Thou canst not see what wondrous web is wrought 
 By this blind weaver Fate ! All 's well with us. 
 
 Ananias 
 
 Two months — two months away from thee ! Indeed 
 There was delay — the mountain roads were rough. 
 But — pray, forgive me — this I spake not of : 
 I made not haste sufficient. 
 
 Thanks, dear Queen. 
 Your touch is like my Chloe's. 
 
 This, see thou — 
 It was among the hills of Lebanon 
 We met the robbers — on our homeward journey. 
 
[233] 
 
 I had a wound of them. And even now 
 
 It breaks afresh — before Belarion's blade. 
 
 Oh . . . oh . . . forgive me, Queen, I brought not 
 
 back . . . 
 Brought not ... the Healer. ... All I could ... I 
 did 
 
 \^He falk, dying, into the arms of Abgar, who 
 
 lays him gently upon the dais at his feet. 
 \_The conflict ends suddenly. 
 
 Voice of Stilbe 
 
 The gate ! The gate ! Edessa shall be free ! 
 
 [Belarion bursts through the gate wUh soldiers, 
 in the midst of whom, borne aloft on the 
 shoulders of slaves, enter Stilbe clothed in 
 white and gold, and bearing garlands. 
 
 Stilbe 
 
 Hear Ares ! Spilth of Persian vintages. 
 And splendid altar-garlands, laurel and rose ! 
 Thighs of a thousand bulls, great Artemis ! 
 
 [In passing, flings a garland to Abgar. 
 Thy roses I return thus, Uchomo ! 
 
 [She is borne laughing across the garden. 
 Ha, but once more Edessa shall be gay ! 
 Yet will I give command that every Spring 
 
[234] 
 
 One night my women shall remember thee, 
 
 Queen, with love-songs in the garden here. 
 
 \_Exit into the palace. 
 
 l_The soldiers of Belarion ^11 the scene. Some 
 with torches pass into the palace, as though 
 to take possession. In the midst of them, 
 enter the Physician, in terror. 
 
 Physician 
 
 Drive me not thus, I say. 'T is ill respect 
 
 To one of my position. ( Catching sight of Abgar.) 
 
 dear King I 
 Speak not reproachfully that I did fail 
 To notify Antigonus and John. 
 
 1 met an ancient actor on the road 
 Who read a trilogy of ^Eschylus ; 
 
 And " Prove thyself the Paion of this dread," 
 
 So ran the line, on which I, pondering, came. . . . 
 
 A Soldier (urging him on) 
 
 Come, thou old prattler, show us to the treasure. 
 
 [Exeunt, into the palace. 
 
 Belarion 
 
 The hour's come round. Here, brave guards of 
 
 Edessa ! 
 Looks he too frail to fight and live like us. 
 
[ 235 ] 
 
 He there of the bright eye and crimson cheek ? 
 *T is fine life in a garden with a woman ! 
 His creatures in the city can pull down 
 And build up as he bids them, spite of all 
 The rites and usages of gods and men ! 
 
 Behold the man. What shall we do with him ? 
 
 Soldiers 
 Kill him ! 
 
 Belarion 
 
 Ay, kill him ! But not instantly. 
 Let him, and her who styles herself our Queen — 
 The Greek wench there — let them acquit themselves. 
 What word, King ? 
 
 \_In advancing, he stumbles over the dead hody 
 of Ananias. 
 
 Ah, the old dog 's licked his last ! 
 
 Abgar 
 
 No word have I for thee to pluck at, thou 
 
 Who murderest beauty, truth, and all fair things ! 
 
 No word have I ; but o'er that faithful man 
 
 Who gave his life to cure his King's unrest, 
 
 Have I a more than word for thee. That 's death ! 
 
 \JELe steps forward quicHy, unsheathing his 
 blade, and strikes Belarion a mortal bloiv. 
 
 [Belarion falls, groaning. 
 
[236] 
 
 Belarion 
 
 Up there, ye cowards ! See my vengeance full ! 
 
 \_He dies. 
 
 [Abgar, defended at the rear hy the stone settle, 
 protects himself and Cleonis during an 
 attack of the soldiers, who fall back as if in 
 awe of his commanding front. 
 
 [During the pause Agamede, in silence, forces 
 her wag through the ranks, and joins 
 Cleonis and Abgar on the dais, 
 
 Cleonis {pointing to the body of Ananias) 
 " And those most dear to you have peace." 
 
 Thy blade ! 
 
 [Abgar hesitates, then yields her his unsheathed 
 
 sword. She lightly steps downward and 
 
 lays it upon the body of Ananias, then 
 
 returns to Abgar, and they stand defenceless, 
 
 facing the soldiers. 
 
 Abgar {half turning toi^ards the city, from which the 
 
 red flame breaks afresh and irradiates his helmet 
 
 of gold) 
 
 Together, love, we go unto the city ! 
 
[237] 
 
 NOTE 
 
 Eusebius Pamphili, the fourth-century church historian, 
 cites the public archives of the city of Edessa as authority 
 for the story of Abgar's appeal to Jesus. He relates that 
 Ananias was sent to Jerusalem with the following letter : — 
 
 "Abgarus, King of Edessa, to Jesus the good saviour, who 
 appears at Jerusalem, greeting. 
 
 " I have been informed concerning you and your cures, which 
 are performed without the use of medicines and herbs. For it is 
 reported that you cause the blind to see, the lame to walk, do both 
 cleanse lepers, and cast out unclean spirits and devils, and restore 
 them to health, who have been long diseased, and raisest up the 
 dead ; aU which when I heard, I was persuaded of one of these 
 two, namely, either that you are God himself descended from 
 heaven, who do these things, or the son of God. 
 
 " On this account therefore I have wrote to you, earnestly to 
 desire you would take the trouble of a journey hither, and cure a 
 certain disease which I am under. For I hear the Jews ridicule 
 you, and intend you mischief. My city is indeed small, but neat, 
 and large enough for us both." 
 
 A paraphrase of the reply of Jesus occurs in the drama in 
 this volume. The promise of cure at the end of this reply is 
 more definite as recorded by Eusebius ; but since the subse- 
 quent fate of the king is obscure, no detailed tradition is 
 violated in the present working out of the story. 
 
 There is also a tradition that the napkin of Veronica (or Bere- 
 nice) came into the possession of Abgar, it having thence gone 
 through many hands to its present resting-place at Eome. 
 In the drama advantage has been taken of this legend to 
 work out the fulfilment of the healer's promise. To com- 
 
[ 238] 
 
 plete the harmony of the story, it only needs to assume the 
 identity of Ananias and his retinue with the " Greeks " 
 alluded to in the twelfth chapter of John's Gospel : — 
 
 " And there were certain Greeks among them that came np to 
 worship at the feast. The same came therefore to Philip, which 
 was of Bethsaida of GaKlee, and desired him, saying, * Sir, we 
 would see Jesus.' 
 
 " Philip cometh and telleth Andrew, and again Andrew and 
 Philip tell Jesus. And Jesus answered them, saying : — 
 
 " ' The hour is come that the son of man should be glorified. 
 Verily, verily I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the 
 ground and die, it abideth alone ; but if it die it bringeth forth 
 much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it ; and he that 
 hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.' " 
 
SONNETS 
 
[241] 
 
 SONNETS 
 
 LIFE'S TAVERN 
 
 Night-refuge, set aloft this travelled hill, 
 
 'T is deemed by many a lodger but an inn ; 
 Others look round them better and scarce fill 
 
 Their first cup ere its mystery doth begin. 
 And they are led by some divine desire 
 
 Where, midmost of an inner room, there bends 
 Clear flame on golden altar, to vrhich fire 
 
 A wide-eyed vestal changelessly attends. 
 And most, so led, have joy to serve that light 
 
 And with the jealous priestess vigil keep ; 
 But woe to any wearying neophyte, 
 
 And woe to him who serves with eyes of sleep : 
 To such is she more bitter than to those 
 On whom, unlit, her doors forever close ! 
 
 16 
 
[242] 
 
 SULTAN'S BREAD 
 
 Remote behind the Sultan's palace wall 
 That silent rises out of teeming Fez, 
 A foreign guest, who oft broke bread there, says 
 
 On6 day at food a morsel was let fall ; 
 
 And Abd-ul, keen of eye, did gently call 
 
 Devout slaves to restore the slighted shred — 
 So prized in his religion is mere bread 
 
 To the great lord of that imperial hall. 
 
 Up to the table of this life we sit. 
 
 With sultan some, and some with tribesman placed. 
 The fare is wheat or barley on our plate. 
 
 And as we break the brittle loaf of it 
 
 'T is well to think what fragments we do waste 
 Which our companions may deem consecrate. 
 
[243] 
 
 WITH A COPY OF THE MONA 
 LISA 
 
 'T IS said of Mona Lisa, that those years 
 She gave us that we might behold her face 
 In all its indefinable rare grace, 
 
 As on the immortal canvas it appears, — 
 
 'T is said those were from trouble, and from tears. 
 Exempted years ; and that, all through the place 
 Where Leonardo painted her, the days 
 
 Found ever scents that charm, and sound that cheers. 
 
 Dear one, no Leonardo paints thy smile ; 
 Pew flowers, and little music, oft there be 
 To charm away the world's anxiety ; 
 
 Yet, oh, thy patient face hath all the while 
 A more mysterious loveliness than stirs 
 The heart of him who hath seen only hers ! 
 
[244] 
 
 THE REZZONICO PALACE 
 
 (" A Roberto Browning, morto in questo palazzo ") 
 
 Low stars and moonlight beauty disavow- 
 That death has ever known her ; but around 
 Her melancholy portals only sound 
 
 Of waters makes her music ; and the brow 
 
 Of stately wall records the legend how 
 
 " Died in this palace " a poet Love once crowned. 
 Here the cold Angel that strong harp unbound : 
 
 How chill and silent seem her chambers now ! 
 
 World, if ever moon should wander here 
 
 Where builds my heart its palace for your song, 
 And find such tablet in the outer wall. 
 
 The poet dead, the chambers still and drear, 
 Let not its hollow beauty win the throng 
 To reverence, but let it perish all ! 
 
[245] 
 
 MOTHERS AND SISTERS 
 
 Mothers and sisters, whom no sacrifice 
 
 Dismays, nor whom your long, laborious hours 
 Do anywise appall, ye are the powers 
 
 By whom the swift are girded for the prize 
 
 They reach in the light of your believing eyes. 
 Ye are the hidden oil the shrine devours — 
 Soil of the garden whence the great rose flowers — 
 
 The silent force that bids a star arise. 
 
 Ye ask of men nor honour, nor regret, 
 Nor memory, save one's whose love is all. 
 
 Renouncement ? Living daily the divine ! 
 
 Effkcement ? Still the world your names shall call : 
 
 Monica was the mother of Augustine ; 
 
 Pascal had Jacqueline — Renan, Henriette ! 
 
[246] 
 
 AFTER READING "THE GOLDEN 
 TREASURY " IN GREEN PARK 
 
 Off Piccadilly with its pavement cries, 
 
 Its maddening monotone of wheel and hoof, 
 Here in Green Park primeval summer lies, 
 
 How near, how yearning, yet how far aloof! 
 O city, symbol of a world that still 
 
 Heedless of beauty under heaven rolls ; 
 And thou, blithe meadow all with larks a-thrill 
 
 Like poetry, that pasture of great souls — 
 Ye twain so sundered shall forever dwell, 
 
 A tumult and a blessing side by side : 
 Here, as to toil-worn Argo once befell 
 
 A singing island on a thundering tide, 
 Where men might stretch them out in glad release. 
 We too, much-wandering, hail this hour of peace ! 
 
[247] 
 
 TO GEORGE CRABBE 
 
 Dusk falls, and through the deepening silence where 
 
 Red afterglows yon ashen roof do paint 
 Whose dormer children's tapers gild so fair, 
 
 Far vesper chimes disperse their music faint. 
 Beneath an ancient arch the river turns 
 
 Full of his inexpressive melody : 
 With tenderest longing my whole being yearns 
 
 To set his old, imprisoned story free ! 
 Unto this gloaming world, thou, Spirit sweet. 
 
 With me art come ; thou art of village things 
 A low-voiced, love-enfolding paraclete 
 
 Who soothest all their sleepy murmurings, 
 And lurest from river, chime, and thatchen stead 
 Tales of the inarticulate, and the dead. 
 
[248] 
 BONINGTON 
 
 (1801-1828) 
 
 Who mourns his life was brief? He who forgets 
 
 Work is the master's measure, and not years ! 
 There on his sands that trailed their Norman nets. 
 
 Far from the fluctuant city's joys and fears, 
 Or in the long Louvre's golden-glorious streets, 
 
 Prodigious in accomplishment he dwelled : 
 A Chatterton of fancies, colour's Keats, 
 
 Swift visitant, by other worlds compelled ! 
 Much beauty had this boy to leave on earth ; 
 
 Grieve not, for he did leave it, hurrying hence 
 To some more radiant art, some starred rebirth 
 
 Where Truth most needed his soul's eloquence, 
 And where he toils those stately minds among 
 Who dare glance backward smiling, and with song. 
 
[ 249 ] 
 
 ORPAH 
 
 My heart is with thee, Orpah 1 Meekly thou 
 Out of the tender chronicle dost wend 
 Back, lonely, unto Moab. Wordless friend, 
 
 By those great tears, and that averted brow, 
 
 (If anywhere thy loving spirit now 
 
 My backward-turning heart's long cry attend !) 
 I swear to thee soul-homage to the end. 
 
 And speed thee my allegiance in one vow : 
 
 " Silently I from out Love's chronicle 
 Will wend alone : of me is little need. 
 Silently will I go, and leave her this 
 
 Sweet other friend, whose passion words can tell." 
 — Orpah, know that thou art blest indeed, 
 For thou couldst weep — thou hadst Naomi's kiss ! 
 
[250] 
 
 A MOTIVE OUT OF LOHENGRIN 
 
 Unearthly beauty of soft light persuadeth 
 This castle which to shadows did belong ; 
 And through its farthest vaults sweet mellow song 
 
 The silence of my wintry halls upbraideth ; 
 
 Gently as saffron dawn that smiling fadeth 
 The sable, yielding hours, these search along ; 
 And with them, souls of roses dead — faint throng 
 
 Of odours of old years that all-pervadeth. 
 
 Lady, this thing I speak not — do not fear it. 
 'T were more than friendship, yet no better name 
 Dares my most grateful heart's allegiance claim 
 
 Lest this, as I do think, be brother-spirit 
 
 To him, swan-brought to Brabant's castled shore, 
 Who, named aloud, was lost for evermore. 
 
[351] 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF BEAUTY 
 
 For whom is Beauty ? Where no eyes attend 
 
 As richly goes the day ; and every dawn 
 
 Reddens along green rivers whereupon 
 None ever gaze. Think, could earth see an end 
 Of all the twilight lovers whose thoughts blend 
 
 With scents of garden blooms they call their 
 own, 
 
 Would not as close the yellowest rose outblown 
 Be, after them, the unmurmurous evening's friend? 
 Then wherefore Beauty, if in mortal eye 
 
 That loves them stars no challenge read to shine, 
 And all the wonder of a sunset sky 
 
 Wax not more wondrous for such smile as thine ? 
 Why, pray, if not for Love which cannot die — 
 
 This old earth-loving Love of thine and mine ! 
 
[252] 
 
 II 
 
 When we two from our Summer hills have passed, 
 And Autumn burns beneath thy praise no more, 
 Nor any Winter's raving at our door 
 
 Shuts each within the other's heart more fast ; 
 
 Neither Spring's roses learn what lips thou hast- 
 Oh, then this thing called Beauty to its core 
 Our wedded souls shall penetrate before 
 
 One thought unto Eternity is cast ! 
 
 Then shall we know the violet's pretext ; learn 
 More definite a promise of the rose. 
 
 And its fulfilment ; when the maples turn, 
 Be part of all the glory among those ; 
 
 Or help the May with her uncoiling fern. 
 
 And breathe the trillium open where it grows ! 
 
[253] 
 THE COAL BREAKER 
 
 (PENNSYLVANIA) 
 
 This is the house where, up from ages gone, 
 Huge forests, root and leaf and bough and bole. 
 With every bend of breeze and tempest-roll 
 
 Preserved in crystal from earth's distant dawn, 
 
 Again to light laboriously are drawn. 
 No continent's tumultuous throes control 
 Their phalanx more : they are black seams of coal 
 
 And are upheaved by human will and brawn. 
 
 But see, here in this ogre's castle weaves 
 A magic power to make those forests glad 
 And charm away their thousand age's sleep. 
 
 For more than all the beauty once they had 
 Returns, with song of bird and rush of leaves, 
 In the bright waving hearth-fire calm and deep. 
 
[254] 
 THE STATUE OF LIBERTY 
 
 (NEW YORK HARBOUR, A.D. 2900) 
 
 Here once, the records show, a land whose pride 
 Abode in Freedom's watchword ! And once here 
 The port of traffic for a hemisphere. 
 
 With great gold-piling cities at her side ! 
 
 Tradition says, superbly once did bide 
 
 Their sculptured goddess on an island near. 
 With hospitable smile and torch kept clear 
 
 Por all wild hordes that sought her o'er the tide. 
 
 'T was centuries ago. But this is true : 
 
 Late the fond tyrant who misrules our land. 
 Bidding his serfs dig deep in marshes old. 
 
 Trembled, not knowing wherefore, as they drew 
 From out this swampy bed of ancient mould 
 A shattered torch held in a mighty hand. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
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