LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
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 UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. 
 
ALDORNERE, 
 
 AND TWO OTHER 
 
 PENNSYLVANIAN IDYLLS; 
 
 TOGETHER WITH 
 
 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 By Howard Worcester Gilbert. 
 
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 ndvTa de ayadd plato. 
 
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 COPYBIGHT BY HOWABD WORCESTER GILBERT, 
 
 1890. 
 
 Franklin Printing Company, 
 514 and 516 Minor St. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Of the three idylls in this volume, and which constitute a sort of 
 idyllic trilogy, Aldornere, the first, which was dedicated to Sydney 
 Howard Gay, Esq., was published anonymously, in 1872, by John Pen- 
 ington & Son, of this city, and illustrated with nine original etchings of 
 uncommon excellence, by Mr. Lloyd Mifflin. This idyll was received 
 by the few literary critics to whom it was sent by the author, with 
 greater favour than he could have anticipated. Among them were the 
 late Dr. Mackenzie, of this city, and the late George Ripley, Esq., of 
 the New-York Tribune. The remaining two idylls, now given to the 
 public for the first time, have long lain in manuscript, in an unfinished 
 condition. 
 
 The fugitive pieces which follow are selected from among a large 
 number of others which were printed at different periods, and under 
 various circumstances, many of them in early boyhood, and for which 
 the author could desire even a more speedy oblivion than the partiality 
 of his personal friends would accord to them. Premature publication is 
 the fault of ambitious youthful writers ; and in this age of abounding 
 literary production, but little judgment is required to see that a large 
 exercise of the right of suppression is the dictate of good sense. All 
 of the poems contained in the present volume have been subjected to a 
 careful revision, a few alterations have been made, and the whole freed 
 from the innumerable blunders of the printer, who is constantly found 
 lying in ambush, in the most unexpected places, ready to slay the spirit 
 with the letter. Several poetical licences have been discarded ; but two 
 or three have been retained. The fugitive pieces were all originally 
 published either in the National Anti-Slavery Standard, under the man- 
 agement of Mr. Gay ; The Pennsylvania Freeman ; Mr. Conway's Dial ; 
 or The Liberty Bell, or The Index, of Boston. 
 
 If the reader should observe any incongi-uity of a theological charac- 
 ter in the volume, he may account for it on the ground of a gradual 
 change of views in the mind of the author. 
 
 The indignant tone of several passages in different poems of the col- 
 lection will need no apology to those readers who have any knowledge 
 
 3 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 of the depth of degradation to which the political and ecclesiastical 
 demagogues of the North had sunk before the breaking out of the Slave- 
 holder's Rebellion, and which had led a distinguished politician, after- 
 wards Secretary of State, to declare that if it went much further he 
 would make up his pack, and seek liberty in some foreign country. 
 
 Philadelphia, 8th January, 1885. 
 
 P- S. — The author had hoped that the previous edition of the poems 
 would be free from all typographical errours. But his hopes were frus- 
 trated by the diabolical ingenuity of the printer, which goes far toward 
 justifying the monkish conception of the origin of his art. One is al- 
 ways thankful when he makes nothing worse than nonsense of what one 
 has written. 
 
 Philadelphia, ist January, 1890. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 The filial editor of a recent selection from the writings of a very fine 
 American author, says, in his preface, that he hesitated for a long time 
 whether he should republish the works he had selected, as the prevalent 
 taste in literature demanded so much of the emotional and passionate, 
 (qualities which were far from conspicuous in the writings selected,) 
 that he doubted whether they would be acceptable to the public. But, 
 as has been frequently observed, the most profound and lasting feelings 
 are not the most violent, any more than the most tumultuous streams are 
 the deepest. 
 
 The word poetry, like thousands of others, is often uttered by both 
 the learned and unlearned, without a suspicion that they are talking 
 about what they would find themselves greatly embarrassed to define ; 
 and most people would be quite surprised if any one should demand 
 such a definition, tacitly assuming that the meaning of the word is so 
 obvious as to render all definition superfluous. 
 
 With the majority, rhyme more or less con-ect, and with many, metre, 
 or something resembling it, are requisite elements of what they term 
 poetry ; and, with a very large class, nothing, or at least very little more 
 than these is regarded as necessary. A metrical jingle, more or less 
 musical, if not absolutely destitute of sense, is sufficient. True, discrim- 
 inating appreciation of poetry is quite as rare as delight in the finest 
 music or the highest art. 
 
 An anonymous writer in one of the great British reviews once said 
 that the two principal sources of poetry are beauty and sorrow. This 
 dictum will, upon careful examination, be found correct; at least it will 
 be felt to be so by all but those who are fond of philosophical disquisi- 
 tions in metre, and of that literary anatomy which has become so com- 
 mon in this century, or of the metrical delineation of revolting horrours. 
 
 The anatomical dissection of every spiritual nerve, vein, and artery, 
 however skillful, is not productive of poetry, any more than the botanical 
 analysis of a flower awakens a sense of beauty. The spiritual analysis 
 is as necessary for the attainment of accurate critical knowledge as the 
 
 5 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 dissection of the flower ; but in both cases the symmetry of the object 
 dissected is destroyed. A few clear, skillful strokes of the true artist 
 give the essentials of a portrait, the impression of unity — of character. 
 
 Under the term beauty is, of course, comprised not only all intellec- 
 tual and moral, but also, all natural beauty ; and the theatre on which 
 any drama is displayed is by no means a matter of indifference. The 
 increasing love of the infinite beauties of nature is especially character" 
 istic of this century, and cannot exercise any other than a healthy and 
 elevating influence. 
 
 The spectacle of a noble nature steadily maintaining its own distinct 
 personality and independence in the midst of successful fraud and cor- 
 ruption, and cowardly acquiescence therein, is surely the grandest 
 earthly object for human contemplation. But, like the finest picture 
 the most beautiful group in marble, the most magnificent symphony, or 
 the noblest poem, it will be fully appreciated by but few, since the w orld 
 in the main, has not yet attained to very clear conceptions concerning 
 truth and justice. 
 
 The true artist, therefore, in whatever field he may labour, hopes for 
 the appreciation only of the select few, whose verdict will prove final, 
 just as the original discoverer in the scientific field addresses himself to 
 the small number alone who are able to estimate the value of his dis- 
 coveries and the accuracy of his demonstrations. He whose pecuniary 
 necessities force him to work for the general public, and, therefore, to 
 descend from this higher ground, does so reluctantly, and with a neces- 
 sary deterioration in the quality of his work. Everything that causes 
 any restraint of that freedom of expression which is the necessity of 
 true inspiration, limits the field of his genius and cramps his powers. 
 \\lien perfect freedom of utterance on moral questions is hindered, liter- 
 ature dwindles into mere aesthetic imbecility, without nerve or vigour. 
 
 Many critics seem to regard distance and obscurity in the history of a 
 life as furnishing the necessary halo of romance for a poem ; but he who 
 possesses the deeper insight knows that contemporaneous events have 
 all the charm of those of the far-off" past, which differ from them only 
 in being less vivid. 
 
 " The poetry of earth is never dead." 
 
 Philadelphia, ist January, 1890. 
 
PRELUDE. 
 
 Untouched, yet sweetly strung, the silent lute 
 Will echo when the skillful master's hand 
 
 Sweeps other, kindred chords, — no longer mute 
 It answers to the lays of every land. 
 
 The bard, too, will all kindred souls allure, 
 If with a skillful hand he touch the strings. 
 
 He knows the everlasting laws are sure 
 In this, as in all universal things. 
 
 But even if within a kindred heart, 
 
 His touch might never wake an answering chords 
 Still the great choral music is his part. 
 
 Eternal beauty is his rich reward. 
 
 The winding Susquehanna's shores and isles, 
 
 Her flower-white deeps that scent the summer-wind. 
 
 Here lie, where shadows float or sunlight smiles. 
 Haunted by beings of the poet's mind. 
 
 Perchance some kindred soul with beauty fraught. 
 Who wanders gladly nature's scenes among. 
 
 May think again these thoughts that he has thought, 
 And sing again these songs that he has sung. 
 
 He thus, perchance, may mingle still, in soul. 
 With them who here may live life's pleasant day. 
 
 After the passing bell his dirge shall toll 
 
 And from these scenes he long has passed away. 
 7 
 
ALDORNERE/' 
 
 'Twas autumn in the woods of Aldornere, 
 The chestnut-burs were bursting in the sun, 
 With their rich wealth of fruitage ripe and brown 
 That crackled down all day from bough to bough, 
 Where gathered restless troops of noisy crows 
 
 On the warm southern slopes that else were still. 
 The squirrel there was busy all day long 
 Hoarding his store deep in the hollow bole, 
 Down in the silence of those autumn woods. 
 
 But, though scarce other sound of life was heard, 
 Save now and then the cawing of the crows, 
 Faint-heard and distant, all the woods were filled 
 
 9 
 
10 ALDORNERE. 
 
 With a continual voice in iinder-tone, 
 
 Of the great stream that through the dreamy liaze 
 
 Of softest bhie which veiled the crimsoned hills 
 
 And isles, together fading faint and far, 
 
 Went winding, shimmering on forever down — 
 
 Here dim, there flashing in a mellow gold — 
 
 At last to mingle with the distant sea, 
 
 Far by the wandering waves and shifting sands. 
 
 And where amid those forests gnarled and old. 
 Like to some mighty Sachem of the Woods, 
 With muffled voice the Susquehanna met 
 In council all his many sagamores, 
 'Mid winding ways, upon its sunny knoll. 
 There stood the ancient Grange of Aldornere. 
 
 The moss of many a year was undisturbed 
 Upon the stained walls of Aldornere, 
 And now the many-coloured autumn leaves 
 Lay thickly strewn in all the woodland-ways. 
 There was the warbler busy all day long 
 Among the bowery deeps of shadowy elms 
 Slow fading into autumn's paly gold. 
 And his continual ditty on the ear 
 Fell like the silver voice of woodland stream. 
 
 And in this (juiet refuge dwelt, apart 
 From the vain tumult of the envious crowd 
 And all the frivolous world's most empty noise, 
 In sable velvet robed — her widow's weeds, — 
 The Lady of the House of Aldornere. 
 Two children, only, graced her simple halls, 
 A daughter fair as morn, with golden hair, 
 Scarce brighter than the locks of twilight-brown, 
 Of her young brother ; — they together grew 
 
ALDORNERE. II 
 
 In that sweet woodland-home in sylvan grace, 
 As two fair trees whose beauty daily sends 
 To the gladdened heart of the rude forester 
 A thrill of joy. And quiet, health and peace 
 Dwelt in the olden halls of Aldornere. 
 
 The dreamy afternoon had lapsed away 
 In golden stillness, and the sun liad set. 
 But from the snowy mountains of the air 
 That lay, with changeful and slow-fading forms, 
 In rosy glory where the day had past, 
 The light fell on the broad and sleeping stream 
 Where, on a yellow curve of sanded shore, 
 Sat Edith Brandon by her brother's side. 
 And silently they gazed upon the stream 
 That shone with tints ethereal, tenderer far 
 Than any hues that glow amid the sky, — 
 Now every wavelet crinkling in a line 
 Of clear vermillion — then of steely gray, 
 Or delicate green — then flushed with tender rose — 
 Then the long lines upon the unbroken swells, 
 Fading into the watery tints that told 
 Of coming twilight. 
 
 " If my destiny," 
 She said, ''should call me from this quiet shore, 
 It seems to me the murmur of this stream 
 Would sound forever in my ears — I deem 
 That like the Switzer, exiled from his home, 
 I should die pining for my native land. 
 Its voice, dear George, would haunt me in my dreams, 
 In whatsoever land my lot were cast." 
 
 And he, "This voice is now, forevermore. 
 Part of my inmost being. As I mused 
 
ALDORNERE. 
 
 In such an evening-hour as this alone, 
 The voice we hear was moulded into words- 
 This was the song the river sang to me : 
 
 ' My current made of many streams, 
 
 From wells unknown and dark that flow, 
 I come as from a land of dreams, 
 And to the glimmering ocean go, — 
 
 ' My song one grand accord of all 
 
 The songs of mountain-stream and mere, 
 And bubbling beck and waterfall, 
 
 And meadow -brooklet cold and clear. 
 
 ' By many an isle with plume of green, 
 By many a mountain still and grand, 
 By deeps with water-lilies sheen. 
 And boulder in the beaten sand, 
 
 ' By sunnier dale and shadowy dell, 
 By dingle deeiJ and cliiT of gray, 
 And hamlet with its sounding bell — 
 By many a thoughtless wight away, 
 
 ' With olden and deep-hidden lore, 
 
 I come from those mysterious springs, — 
 To thee, upon this solemn shore, 
 I sing of deep, mysterious things. 
 
 *To him who hears aright the tunes 
 
 Of murmuring waters, wandering winds, — 
 To him who reads aright the runes 
 That carved in the rocks he finds. 
 
 To him, with voice profound and clear, 
 I tell my tale of boundless range ; 
 
 To him who hath an ear to hear 
 I roun a weird of endless change. 
 
ALDORNERE. 1 3 
 
 ' And whether he who stands by me 
 Can rede or not my murmuring, 
 I sing not less, and wandering free, 
 And wandering free, forever sing.' " 
 
 His voice was hushed, but still the deeper strain 
 Went murmuring on, while in a dream the two 
 Still mused as if it were on Lethe's shore, 
 While river, hill and isle were fading fast, 
 And then, at last, the nearer boulder dim. 
 And saw the great gray heron, spirit-like. 
 Silently flitting on to some lone haunt 
 Far through the twilight vague that veiled the stream, 
 When 'mid their trance the clattering of hoofs 
 Upon the stones and pebbles of the strand, 
 Aroused them from their reverie. They turned, 
 And, on his liard, leaning toward them, saw 
 The form of Alfred Wyndham. " Do I dream? — 
 Or else what blessed spirits do I see 
 On the forgetful shore of Lethe stream, 
 That linger yet, and still the draught delay. 
 That takes away all memory of the past?" 
 
 " We are but mortals of the work-day world," 
 She said, " and if my ear deceive me not. 
 And horse and rider are not i)hantoms both. 
 Seen only in the twilight shadows dim, — 
 I bid you to the accustomed annual feast — 
 The Bancjuet of the Fruits amid the woods. 
 Which, as you know, we hold at Aldornere. 
 Rustic it is, but plenteous, — of the fruits 
 Of forest and of field, — and, on the lawn, 
 Toward the close of day, the evening dance. 
 I bid you to the feast — 'tis the behest. 
 The Lady of the House of Aldornere 
 
14 ALDORNERE. 
 
 Has given. Come, George, the shades are deepening fast, 
 We must return." And, with obeisance low, 
 She vanished in the shadows of the shore. 
 
 Screened by the maple's deep-stained foliage 
 From the mild lustre of the autumn sun. 
 The rustic board was spread. Great melons there 
 Lay cloven deep through the rich, crimson core, 
 Pictured with garlands of their ebon seeds ; 
 Others of luscious amber, that diffused 
 A delicate fragrance as of orient musk — 
 The peach with downy rind of palest gold. 
 Sprinkled with carmine — from the heavy vines, 
 Grapes that had drawn rich ripeness from the sun — 
 Plums of a deeper purple, gathered near. 
 And some from trees unpruned, in woodland-glades. 
 Their golden drops, sun-crimsoned with rich stains, 
 And violet with an amethystine bloom. 
 And apples bursting with their ripeness piled 
 In fragrant heaps — their vermeil and pale green, 
 Had the ripe tints of the autumnal leaves — 
 And the brown nuts, fresh gathered from the burs. 
 Poured round, added their woodland-wealth to all ; 
 While cooling draughts from goblets as of gems, 
 Drawn from yet other fruits, of other climes. 
 And ripened under stranger suns, as though 
 The overflowing fruitage of the land 
 Were not enough to fill the banquet-board. 
 And dainties rare, made by the most delicate hands 
 Filled up the feast which, at the gray old Grange, 
 Was yearly spread for all the country round. 
 
 The myriad ghost-like shadows in the woods. 
 Behind the barky boles of mossed trees, 
 
ALDORNERE. 1 5 
 
 Were hiding from the prying sun away, 
 
 Far in the middle of the afternoon, 
 
 When, on the checkered sward of forest-turf, 
 
 Dappled with golden flecks of mellow sun. 
 
 The dance began. The gazer might have deemed 
 
 'Twas Dian, with her nymphs, where, through the wood, — 
 
 The silver arrow in her golden hair — 
 
 Went Edith Brandon with her stately tread. 
 
 To the rich mingled sound of chord and horn. 
 
 And thus, amid alternate dance and song. 
 
 Through deepening twilight, rose far in the east, 
 
 The amber moon, and poured her mellow beams 
 
 Upon those woodland groups, that, scattered now, 
 
 'Neath the low-spreading trees, had pleasant tales 
 
 Of bygone days and of the annual feast. 
 
 But few had missed the queen of dance and song. 
 Who, summoned to the Grange, had now returned, 
 When to a group beneath the beechen shade. 
 She said, " The lady of the house commands 
 That Alfred Wyndham, Henry Fairfield come 
 Into her presence in the hall. She has 
 Behests to give which do concern them both ; — 
 Forthwith I will conduct them to the Grange." 
 
 They rose and followed. When the stately dame 
 Had greeted them with friendly words, she said, 
 " I lay a task upon you not befits 
 The day of banqueting ; but well you know 
 Obedience to duty is more sweet 
 Than any other pleasure of our life. 
 It makes immortal him who lays his life 
 Upon the altar, and ennobles e'en 
 The smaller social charities. Yet full well 
 I know that what I ask, to many were 
 No pleasant duty. But no more delay. 
 
1 6 ALDORNERE. 
 
 " Under the shelter of the friendly night 
 Five dusky thralls from far Virginian fields, 
 Led stealthily, and by a faithful guide, 
 From their last place of refuge in their flight 
 Have reached this mansion, now, as heretofore, 
 A shelter for distress. The bridge above, 
 Beleaguered by the minions of the law, 
 Affords a passage to their hunters, none 
 To them. Unless they are to fall a prey 
 To those who have despoiled them from their birth. 
 They must in secret here be ferried o'er. 
 My only son is young, and with the oar 
 Is so unskilled, that in this difficult spot 
 I dare not trust these exiles to his charge. 
 You have the stronger arm and finer skill, — 
 A boat is lying in the cove below 
 Chained to the rock, — I pray you, therefore, now 
 To ferry them across below the isle. 
 Where friends are doubtless waiting them e'en now. 
 To guide them farther on their perilous way." 
 
 Then Edith Brandon, with beseeching voice, 
 " These are the poor, indeed. They have rehearsed. 
 In their rude, broken language, hastily. 
 The many fearful dangers they have passed 
 In forest and by flood. If none there were 
 To ferry them across, myself would take 
 The oar and brave the dangers of the stream." 
 
 Then Henry Fairfield murmured forth some words. 
 Quite indistinct and vague, yet understood 
 By those who heard them only all too well, 
 Words which they all had heard ofttimes before. 
 About the constitution and the laws, 
 And of the pains awaiting those who broke 
 
ALDORNERE. 
 
 17 
 
 The statutes by our senate lately made. 
 He would be glad, he said, to do the best 
 The Lady of the House of Aldornere 
 Had laid upon him, but the vested rights 
 Of friends in states where slavery was a part 
 And parcel of their life, and his regard 
 For comity and order, cjuite forbade 
 That he should aid in violations such 
 As this of the great fundamental law 
 Framed by the founders of the Commonweal. 
 Yet would he not betray the trust reposed. 
 But faithfully the secret keep. He ceased. 
 
 Till now had Alfred Wyndham sat unmoved, 
 And stern and steady beamed his eye of blue, 
 As to the Lady of the Grange he turned 
 And quiet said, " You may rely on me." 
 
 Then rose the dame and said, " I will conduct 
 You straightway to your charge. The rest, at once, 
 Will to the banquet in the woods return. 
 Lest any one perchance should make surmise 
 Of what has here befallen." She led the way. 
 And soon the plashing sound of dripping oars 
 Was heard anear the shore, then died away 
 And all was still. Ere long the banqueters 
 Dispersed, and each one went his separate way. 
 
 And now again the sound of distant oars 
 Was heard above the murmur of the stream, 
 Then all was still, and then the measured stroke. 
 And flash where in the white moonlight the waves 
 Crinkled in silver ; now within the cove, 
 The grating of the keel upon the sand ; 
 Then, through the woodland way, the steady step 
 
ALDORNERE. 
 
 Of Alfred Wyndham ; and an eager group 
 Received him in the twilight shadows deep 
 In the great hall. There, till the midnight hour 
 Had slowly tolled from the far Grainthorpe towers, 
 They sat conversing of the sad event 
 Which had befallen, and the gloomy times 
 That overhung the country like a cloud 
 Heavy with storm. 
 
 The Lady of the Grange 
 Spoke grandly of the meanness of the lives 
 That statesmen, as she said they called themselves, 
 Were leading, — fostering among the mob, 
 Hatred of race, envy and malice, — all 
 The grovelling passions, those which most degrade 
 The soul, and drag it down to deeper deeps 
 Of spiritual darkness, and how all 
 The tender charities which ennoble all, 
 Even the poor, who, when they give their mite, 
 Hard-earned, and saved through self-denial, rise 
 To nobler heights than any of the rich — 
 The rich who, of their great abundance give 
 Abundantly — and richly are repaid 
 By the great boon of self-forgetfulness. 
 Oblivion of the petty miseries 
 Which make our daily lives so poor and mean, — 
 How charities like these were scorned and held 
 In great derision — they who practiced them 
 By priest and politician openly 
 Held up to public hate. On such a land 
 Must come some direful fate, for that the laws 
 Of compensation were forever sure. 
 And all great wrongs are balanced in the end. 
 
 Long Alfred Wyndham listened to her words. 
 Then said, " The wretched land is overrun 
 
ALDORNERE. I9 
 
 AVith paltry tricksters — statesmen, as you say, 
 
 They call themselves — but they are nothing more 
 
 Than tricksters, for, between the men who mould 
 
 The fortunes of the state and such as these 
 
 Who lead a grovelling life from day to day, 
 
 By means of the base tricks of their base tribe, 
 
 Now pandering to a faction, fostering now, 
 
 Hatred between the nations — enemies 
 
 They are of the whole human race — between 
 
 The statesmen and these men, the difference 
 
 Is this : The statesman, with large mind, foresees 
 
 The possible evil and the possible good, 
 
 And with a generous heart he fosters this, 
 
 Represses that. But sympathizing quite 
 
 With the great herd, the politician seeks 
 
 To gain his ends through small expedients. 
 
 And often in a net-work which himself 
 
 Has woven, but which his unskillful hands 
 
 Cannot unravel — though his cunning wrought — 
 
 In his own toils is taken and o'erwhelmed. 
 
 And sinks in utter ruin and deserved. 
 
 He leads the herd and compasses what they 
 
 Forever call success. But scarcely has 
 
 The grave closed over him ere they are caught 
 
 By other empty names and empty cries, 
 
 And he is quite forgotten from the world. 
 
 "A dark and ominous shadow seems to me 
 To rest above the land, and daily more 
 And more I feel the dim presentiment 
 Of coming ill. What form that ill may take 
 I know not, but I feel that it must come. 
 As smaller eddies, in November days, 
 Foretell the tempest, so our petty feuds 
 A mightier conflict, on a wider field." 
 
ALDORNERE. 
 
 Then Edith Brandon, earnestly, "The way- 
 Is plain ; for when the many go astray 
 Corrupted by injustice, 'tis for them 
 Who see the right, to follow in the path 
 And list obediently the call august 
 Of holy Duty, labouring quietly, 
 Heralds of that great time when nobler men 
 And women shall have made these glorious shores 
 More beautiful by lovely deeds. He strives 
 In vain who hopes to make his single voice 
 Heard 'mid the clamour of this crowd. 'Tis now 
 As it has always been. Truth will be loved 
 For her own sake — therefore she makes it pain 
 To serve her, even to the falling off 
 Of friends. But the brave heart will never quail. 
 I know a maiden young and delicate. 
 Poor, but with manners might have graced a court, — 
 Who with her needle earns her daily bread, — ■ 
 And whose grand bravery, in these paltering times, 
 Has daily made me feel how small and poor 
 The sacrifices are which I have made. 
 
 And then their guest, " In years that now are gone,. 
 I sat upon the mossy corner-stone 
 Of a ruined stronghold in an Alpine glen. 
 Where scarce the sunlight entered at high noon. 
 There had the Austrian, in the times gone by, 
 Forged, for the Switzer, fetters. There remains 
 Of all his stronghold but the corner-stone ; 
 And of his history who there lorded it 
 Over his fellows, little but the tale 
 Of his great tyranny and its great fall. 
 This is the story which the ages tell. 
 But seem to tell in vain. Man will not learn,. 
 And thus the history of the mighty world. 
 
ALDORNERE. 21 
 
 Though oft repeated, seems but little more 
 
 Than one great record, written in tears and blood, 
 
 Of fearful lessons given and laughed to scorn. 
 
 "And 'tis not they alone are blameworthy 
 Who indiscriminately laud the past, 
 But also they who thoughtlessly condemn 
 That past, made bright by many glorious deeds 
 And glorious lives — while undervaluing them, — 
 And shadowing a radiance given to light 
 Us unto generous action, and diffuse 
 Its warmth through cold and calculating minds 
 That need such life as nerved the noble hearts 
 Who with sad-eyed Riego strove and failed, 
 And with our fearless Hampden fought and fell." 
 
 Pondering these words, on a still autumn day, 
 The youthful haunter of those quiet woods 
 Wandered adown through calm October meads, 
 'Mid fallen and falling leaves, with thoughtful tread, 
 And following in its course the brook, he reached. 
 At last, the greater stream, and seating him 
 Where the continual waters flowed away 
 By rock, and boulder, and the beaten sand. 
 In everlasting change, he heard again. 
 The stream, far winding to the moaning sea ; 
 And there, alone, he sang this simple lay, — 
 A prelude to the sorrows which befell. 
 
 " On Grainthorpe meads of tender green 
 The autumn sun beams mild and still, 
 And the field-sparrow, in its sheen, 
 Runs o'er his ditty sad and shrill. 
 
 " Wild singer, e'en at early morn, 
 
 And till the day to night must yield, 
 I hear thee on thy lonely thorn. 
 Within the solitary field. 
 
. ALDORNERE. 
 
 " And when these fields are pale and sere, 
 And thou to other climes art flown, 
 Thy song still ringeth in my ear, 
 Subdued, and in an under-tone. 
 
 " Oh ! why along this changeful shore. 
 
 Where hurrying waves are murmuring. 
 Why is it that forevermore 
 
 I hear, or seem to hear thee sing ? 
 
 " So sad, yet sweet, and all serene. 
 
 That piercing voice still seems to say, — 
 The burden of its simple threne, — 
 ' The beautiful has passed away.' 
 
 " Therefore it is that e'en unheard, 
 
 Thy mournful song seems echoing still, 
 Therefore forever, warbling bird, 
 I hear thee trill thy ditty shrill." 
 
 The snow lay deep upon a hundred hills 
 And choked the hollows of the woodland-dells. 
 Under the ice the streams flowed noiselessly 
 And all the forest-trees were stark and bare. 
 The gaunt gray wolves, among their mountain-holds. 
 Grew fierce with famine, and the snowy owl, 
 Swept from his northern wastes by mighty storms, 
 Sought for his prey around the homes of men. 
 At silent midnight, from the unwonted pole, 
 Dawned a peculiar morning, wider-spread 
 Than the auroral flushes of the east, 
 And through its glowing crimson, golden rays 
 Streamed to the zenith, where the augmented stars 
 Glittered in steely splendour — the white robe 
 Of earth was reddened with the ethereal dye. 
 In nights such as that dreary winter knew, 
 Were told in Saxon forests, mossed and old, 
 
ALDORNERE. 25 
 
 Tales of the were-wolf by the yule-fire red, 
 
 While the wild storm whirled the white-gathering snows 
 
 Into the thickening darkness far away. 
 
 Thus passed the dreary winter o'er a land 
 Clouded with dread anticipations long, 
 And after many a weary day, at last. 
 Fled at the coming of the genial spring — 
 The spring that melts away the wide-spread snows, 
 Into tumultuous and rejoicing streams. 
 When on the ominous stillness sudden boomed 
 One cannon on a far and southern shore. 
 And civil war began. O'er all the land 
 Was heard the hurrying tramp of myriad men, 
 Suddenly called from anvil and from plough 
 And from the quiet student's voiceless room. 
 To mingle in the fierce and deadly fray 
 And fall into unknown and nameless graves. 
 
 But not the less, serene and undisturbed, 
 As if no mighty ruin had been wrought. 
 The delicate influence of the tender spring 
 Ran through all nature, pulsed through every vein. 
 And filled the woods and fields with peace and joy. 
 The brown song-sparrow quickly felt again 
 Its subtle magic, and straightway began 
 His half- forgotten warblings and along 
 The southern borders of the quiet woods. 
 The early flicker's vernal note was heard. 
 As in his fitful flights he suddenly 
 Spread out the golden lining of his wings. 
 In the bare woods the bloodroot's crimson bulb 
 Shot up a flower as white as e'er of yore, — 
 The downy wind-flower showed as deep a blue. 
 Rich mosses o'er the brown and mouldering bole 
 
24 ALDORNERE. 
 
 Crept many-tinted, with their broidery rare, 
 And others gemmed the shadowy runnel's side 
 With ckistered stars green as the emerald-stone, 
 While the arbutus trailing lowly near 
 Her fragrant and auroral buds and bells 
 Made pale with greater beauty now once more, 
 The matchless carpet which they wove anew. 
 
 The veil-like verdure of the early spring 
 Thickened and deepened to the green of May. 
 The lady's-slipper, in the hidden dell, 
 Once more her frail and rosy bubble hung. 
 And lace-like vines the summer decks with bells. 
 Mantled the towering rocks moss-stained and gray, 
 While from the clefts the scarlet columbine 
 Her golden-lined horns hung lower still 
 Heavy with black wild bees that murmuring 
 Were gathering honey there the livelong day. 
 
 The bowery elms by all the streams once more 
 Were green and full of shadows, and anear, 
 The wilding, with its wealth of rosy blooms, 
 Made fragrant all the still and sunny mead. 
 Within the peaceful quiet of the field 
 The birds were busy, hurrying to and fro ; 
 Alone the thrush, upon his errand bent. 
 In bevies there the grackles, here — a pair — 
 The sheeny doves, and in the white-thorn one 
 Without a name, repaired a ruined nest. 
 
 Again the prancing Hard pawed the turf 
 Under the elms that in the twilight loomed 
 More vast and shadowy, a deeper gloom 
 Throwing around the Grange of Aldornere. 
 And in the high, arched doorway stood the form 
 
ALDORNERE. 25 
 
 Of Alfred Wyndham — in the deeper shade 
 Stood Edith Brandon with her queenly mien, 
 The silver arrow in her golden hair. 
 
 '' Our doom," he said, " is on us, as you know ; — 
 The land is filled with noise of hurrying feet 
 And blare of bugles. Me, too, has this fate 
 Drawn into the vast whirlpool, and I go 
 To-morrow to the battle's front. I come 
 To say farewell." He paused, then said, " In times 
 Of greatest trial nothing makes so strong 
 As love. In life there are two twin-delights. 
 To love and to be loved ; but, of the two 
 To love is greater — from a fountain deep 
 Of fullness welling evermore, love is 
 Exhaustless as the unfailing ocean tides, 
 And as the warmth and radiance of the sun. 
 I knew a lady lovely as the dawn, 
 Who moved to melody — her girlish form 
 Had a peculiar grace, accorded well 
 With the sweet, lofty beauty of her face. 
 Her mind was like the golden light that flows 
 O'er all things in its splendour rich and warm, 
 And woven of a thousand hues whose beams 
 Mingled in dazzling beauty. Her I love." 
 
 A soughing wind swept through the twilight deeps 
 •Of verdure, dying like a sigh away. 
 
 "And if I knew," he then began again, 
 •" That your sweet love forever followed me, 
 My soul would be forevermore at peace." 
 
 Then all was still. " i\nd if," at last she said, 
 ''I were right worthy of so great a love. 
 
26 ALDORNERE. 
 
 I, too, could bear the burden greater still 
 Than all that in this life I yet have borne, 
 Of such a parting, on a day like this." 
 
 He spoke no more, but on her lips he pressed 
 A kiss so tender that no time thereof 
 Could ever take the memory away. 
 Then in the shadow vanished, like a thing 
 That has been, but is not forevermore. 
 
 Upon the heart of him who now was left 
 Without his friend, there fell a gloom so deep 
 That scarce disaster could have made it more ; 
 And in the woods of Aldornere he found 
 A solitude befitting his sad mood. 
 Far in those depths there is a woodland stream 
 That wells from springs within the silent hills. 
 Here, o'er its ledge, a tiny waterfall. 
 Pouring into its basin in the rock, 
 There sleeping quietly, a fairy mere. 
 On snowy pebbles set in golden sand. 
 Here, by a murmuring fall he dreamed by hours 
 Gazing upon the water as it fell 
 Into its cup of moss all emerald-green, 
 Limpid and calm in its continual flow ; 
 With line of liquid silver here, and there. 
 Where the sun fell, a spot of blazing gold. 
 Anear, amid the quiet woods, the thrush. 
 Sweet greenwood-fluter, all day long was heard. 
 In the still shadows of his beechen tree. 
 Not wotting of the ruin of the times. 
 
 It could not last ; and though so young in years, 
 After a direful battle where the Wrong 
 Was victor, then he plunged into the fray 
 
ALDORNERE. 27 
 
 With many of his comrades, firm resolved 
 Boldly to do for freedom, or to die. 
 
 Amid such changes years had passed away, 
 And a great domineering Tyranny 
 Yielded, reluctant, to its fate at last, 
 No more to ply the scourge with cruel hand, 
 No more to mould the conscience of the State, 
 To menace all the nations now no more. 
 
 The leaves fell brown and dead upon the streams 
 And in the many winding woodland -ways. 
 And the blue haze again upon the hills 
 And o'er the sleeping waters spread its veil 
 All faint and dim, and from the misty deep 
 Of the great stream was heard the lonely cry 
 Of the solitary loon that lingered still 
 Upon its bosom. Through the glimmering air 
 At noonday came sometimes the snowy swan 
 With bugle-note, leading his glittering lines — 
 Their white wings flashing in the golden sun, — 
 Then, after the great calm, and pulsing slow. 
 The mighty undulations that foretold 
 The coming of the storm. The wailful winds 
 Moaned with their spirit-voices and afar 
 Swept through the shuddering woods down to the sea. 
 
 All nature fell into a quiet deep, 
 Like that through which we sink into a dream. 
 From the dim aii: the bluebird's mournful note 
 Was faintly heard again, as wearily 
 He floated on his airy journey far 
 Southward and sunward, and the cricket's chirp 
 Came from the long and matted grass that lay 
 Sere by the hedge-rows where the sparrow's nest, 
 Deserted now and ruined, lay quite bare. 
 
28 ALDORNERE. 
 
 The clouds were thickening all the weary day 
 On rock and stream, and now a lowering storm 
 Hung dark and heavy on the Thornton Hills 
 That dimly loomed afar, like veiled ghosts ; 
 And now and then the bells in Grainthorpe towers 
 Tolled for some soldier, while the long array 
 Wound silent to the quiet churchyard's rest, 
 And earth to earth, and dust to dust again 
 Was duly rendered. — And the rain still fell. 
 
 And in the midst there came a messenger. 
 His mantle dripping with the beating wet, 
 Who, having doffed his storm-drenched garments, soon 
 Demanded of the Lady of the Grange 
 A speedy audience. With few, simple words, 
 He said he brought sad tidings of her son, 
 And sadder still of one they long had known, 
 A friend, the colonel of the regiment. 
 For a great battle had been fought, he said. 
 And Alfred Wyndham, bravely leading on 
 His men, in the fierce onset had, at last. 
 Fallen to rise no more, and by his side, 
 Her son, too, wounded with most cruel wounds. 
 But not, he hoped, to death. He who had brought 
 These mournful tidings, having known them both. 
 And loved them for their passing gentleness — 
 He being a soldier in their regiment, — 
 Had borne the living from the battle-field, 
 And cared for him as tenderly as for 
 A brother, and had left him, when he came 
 Upon this errand, in most gentle hands. 
 The slain were many, and no time there was 
 For more than the most hasty burial 
 In hasty graves. Himself had closed the eyes 
 And decently had laid the dead to rest. 
 
ALDORNERE. 29 
 
 But 'mid the maddened flight of hurrying hosts 
 And tumult of the battle could no more, 
 Nor on the distant field where they had fought, 
 Retrace his way, nor find the nameless grave. 
 " But this remembrancer from him I bring ;" 
 The soldier said, with eyes now dimmed with tears. 
 " He murmured something with his dying breath, 
 About some other shore — I could not catch 
 His faint and faltering words." 
 
 The stranger drew 
 Forth from his vest a trinket rich and rare, 
 A case of gold whose tracery fair enclosed 
 A living likeness of the lover dead. 
 And round about the shell of glittering gold 
 Was wound a stained scroll which bore some words 
 Whereof the first were washed away with blood. 
 
 " Would I could send it with thy wing 
 
 Far through the blue thou wandering dove, 
 That seek' St on distant shores the spring, 
 To Edith, whom I love. 
 
 But if my weary feet that shore 
 
 With her may never tread again, 
 Yet shall my soul forevermore," 
 
 The rest by deadly bolt was torn away 
 
 And stained with blood of a most faithful heart 
 
 Even in death most tender and most true. 
 
 Then on the House of Aldornere there fell 
 A mighty silence such as ever comes 
 Companion of a great calamity ; 
 
JO 
 
 ALDORNERE. 
 
 And Edith Brandon knew that evermore 
 
 A shadow rested on the glorious world, 
 
 That henceforth all things sad should sadder be, 
 
 And every mournful thing be mournfuller, 
 
 And that the light from out her life was gone. 
 
 And still another year had passed away. 
 The Lady of the Grange of Aldornere 
 Sat in the twilight of her olden halls, 
 And at her side a stranger, young in years, — 
 Her form seen in the twilight vague and dim. 
 The wailing winds told of the vast wreck without, 
 And turned their minds to wreck of other things. 
 
 "This mighty tempest, with its ruin vast, 
 Seems to me but a symbol of the storm 
 Which, sweeping o'er the land, has left it like 
 An ocean after some dread whirlwind past. 
 Far, in the midst of tumult, some great bark 
 We saw was foundering, and, at last, it sunk. 
 Here, one still firmly weathering all the wild 
 And merciless beating of the leaden waves, — 
 There, when the day was spent, some ponderous hulk 
 Drifting, a wreck, upon the weltering sea. 
 My house has, also, suffered direful fate, 
 Such as, perforce, must follow in such times. 
 And this dear home, the refuge once of peace. 
 Is left quite desolate. Alfred Wyndham lies 
 Among his slaughtered fellows, all unknown ; 
 And George and Edith sweetly, side by side. 
 Under their mounds of green sleep their calm sleep 
 In everlasting peace. Yet evermore 
 These halls are sacred, for their feet have trod 
 These floors. In this sad, solitary time 
 'Tis meet that you, the lone and orphaned child 
 
ALDORNERE. 3! 
 
 Of my lost brother, — yours a kindred grief, — 
 Should watch my life's decline. I shall have time 
 To make my house all ready ere the day 
 Of the great journey to the unknown land. 
 
 " Yet in the midst of this calamity 
 Which has o'ertaken all my house and left 
 Me desolate, in such a time, my grief 
 Perchance were all too great to bear ; but when 
 I gaze around and see what has befallen 
 The thousands who must henceforth struggle on, 
 'Mid sorrows great, with poverty and care, 
 I feel how ill it even me beseems 
 To brood o'er private griefs. There is no need 
 Idly to pine in such a world as this — 
 The poor and wretched suffer everywhere. 
 The remnant of my life I shall devote 
 To deeds of charity." 
 
 She left the tale 
 Unfinished. In the councils of the state 
 Stood Henry Fairfield, and, in eloquent words. 
 Told to a listening senate that his heart 
 Had always beat for freedom. All believed 
 Save the superiour few who silently 
 Had watched his course. The many, as is their wont. 
 Accepted what not thwarted their own ends. 
 Applauding loud his empty words ; — his crimes 
 Against the truth, in hours of greatest need, 
 They had forgot, or never cared to know. 
 
 After long pause resuming, then she said, 
 "Now sing the requiem George, when dying, dreamed. 
 He fell into a slumber great and deep. 
 And slept a sleep so sweet we feared to move 
 
32 ALDORNERE. 
 
 Lest we should wake him from his peaceful rest. 
 When he awoke he said that he had dreamed 
 A dirge of peace." 
 
 After a prelude, then, 
 Whose tones were tears, the maiden sang these words ; 
 
 " Of thy stream, Amelete, who reaches the shore, 
 O'er the mountains shall wearily wander no more, 
 
 " But blissfully deeming his sorrows are past, 
 He shall gladly lie down by thy waters at last. 
 
 " He shall drink of that draught of oblivion deep, 
 And shall fall, as at evening, serenely to sleep, 
 
 " And for aye, from the regions of light and of day 
 He shall fade in the land of the shadow away, 
 
 " Like the mist, as it melts in the blue of the sky, 
 Or the wave that dissolves on the shore with a sigh, 
 
 " Like the dying away of the wind on the wold, 
 And the ending at evening a tale that is told. 
 
 " And whether the spirit be only a breath 
 Sleeping, also, at last, in the quiet of death. 
 
 " Or, whether beyond the oblivious stream. 
 It abandons the land of the shadow and dream, 
 
 " And afar, on the peaceful Elysian plain. 
 Embraces the friend of its bosom again, 
 
 " Still we know, as they knew, — on that rock we rest sure — 
 That 'tis better forever to strive and endure. 
 
 " We will lay them to rest with their glorious mien. 
 And chaunt o'er the mortal, our tenderest threne, — 
 
 " We will weep o'er their beauty, as mortals must weep. 
 Knowing we, too, shall follow and enter that sleep, 
 
ALDORNERE. 
 
 33 
 
 " In the hope that at last, when life's battles are o'er, 
 We shall meet them again and be severed no more." 
 
 The voice had ceased, and through the sounding halls. 
 The echo of the organ died away, 
 And Quiet, with her boon of peaceful rest, 
 Brooded in shadow over Aldornere. 
 
 -^^o 
 
MARY CRAVEN.^ 
 
 The April morn was tempting, and we strolled- 
 The master now of Wyndham and myself — 
 To Lowthorpe, down among the wooded hills ; 
 And in the forge, we whiled away an hour, 
 Gazing with pleasure ever fresh and new 
 
 On the brown workmen with their wondrous skill 
 Kneading the iron which they deftly drew 
 Forth from the mighty rollers, moulding it 
 With giant power, in glowing crimson bars 
 That slowly faded as they cooled. And one 
 Or two there were among those brawny men 
 Who, not unread in the marvelous history 
 They find recorded in the sunless mines, 
 35 
 
36 MARY CRAVEN. 
 
 And in the runic mysteries of the rocks, 
 
 Spoke with the certain knowledge that we draw 
 
 From nature's records, which will not mislead 
 
 The men who, with the eye to see, thereto 
 
 Add the calm patience which alone can read 
 
 The intricate language, older, infinitely, 
 
 Than oldest human tongue, — their speech had all 
 
 The native freshness of the man who tells 
 
 Not what he gets from books, but what he knows. 
 
 Upon our homeward way we passed again 
 Through the familiar woods of Aldornere, 
 Revolving pensively the truth that moods 
 As wide asunder as our separate lives, 
 As morning is from evening, day from night, 
 Yet follow, as the shadow does the sun. 
 We sat us down beneath the beechen tree 
 Where we had sat full many a time before, 
 With the lost friends of days forever gone. 
 The place was haunted with the shadowy past ; 
 There were familiar voices in the halls — 
 There were strange shadows on the winding stair ; 
 But still the pewit, as in other years. 
 Was swinging careless on the delicate spray, 
 Whose bursting buds showed the first early green 
 Of April, uttering his pleasant note 
 Like rain-drops falling into water. Near 
 The bloodroot sunned it snowy buds with cups 
 Of palest green 'mid the damp woodland-leaves — 
 The fallen foliage of a bygone year. 
 
 At Aldornere the grass is green, 
 The woods are budding too, at last, 
 
 As in the vernal days serene 
 Of years that are forever past. 
 
MARY CRAVEN. 37 
 
 But from the splendour of the light 
 
 That shone of yore at Aldornere, 
 A something sweet has vanished quite, 
 
 And left behind the silent tear. 
 
 O'er all the wood and widening lea, 
 
 Has passed a still and nameless change — 
 
 Here, in this spreading beechen tree, 
 There, in the gray and altered Grange. 
 
 And from the many-windowed hall. 
 
 And from the shadowy, open door. 
 And from the whispering elms — from all — 
 
 I hear the murmur, " Nevermore ! " 
 
 And as I pass these scenes where rang 
 
 The songs in which I bore a part, 
 A sudden and a stifling pang 
 
 Seizes, with iron hand, my heart. 
 
 The song of home — on alien strand — 
 The highland peasant's lay that sings. 
 
 Of seas that sunder land from land. 
 With their mysterious murmurings, 
 
 These tell, with low and pensive tone. 
 That only change and death are sure. 
 
 And in the heart they leave alone 
 A sorrow quite without a cure. 
 
 'Twas there that Edgar Wyndham told this tale : 
 
 " That memorable night can never be 
 Forgotten while life lasts. We gathered there 
 In the grand Temple of the Mtises, reared 
 In the fair city by the Delaware, 
 Which, in an age gone by, the Founder planned 
 For a green coiuitry town, and named its ways 
 
38 MARY CRAVEN. 
 
 With pleasant woodland-names that hinted all 
 Of brown nuts crackling down from bursting burs 
 In the autumnal days — of bowery vines 
 Festooned from branches of the oak and elm, — 
 Of fragrant walnuts twinned upon their sprays, — 
 Of pines that give a murmur like the sea, 
 Yet whisper of their distant mountain-haunts, 
 And of all pleasant forest-sights and sounds — 
 Of greenwood-vistas, of the waterfall. 
 Where all the air is filled with rainbows — then 
 The plashing brook — the spotted thrush that sings 
 Deep in a glen. 
 
 "A gala night it was. 
 And all was splendour. In the midst there sat, 
 Grand above all, the Lady of the Grange, 
 And by her side, with wealth of golden hair 
 Falling in waves over the Clytie-brow, 
 Sat Edith Brandon. At the lady's right 
 Was Mary Craven who had lately come 
 From over sea. All words were vain to tell 
 The peerless beauty — of the pure Grecian face, 
 With cheek of palest rose, the wealth of hair 
 That crowned the brow and melted into gold 
 Along the temples — of the queenly mien — 
 A mien that seemed to hold in lofty scorn 
 All homage to her beauty. Of that scene, 
 The shadowed background, as in picture grand, 
 Showed, in its grouping, men to brave the times — 
 The Wyndhams, and with many others there 
 Sat Edgar Mowbray. Something winning, what, 
 I know not, was there in his bearing, — still 
 A hint of something fleeting and untrue. 
 Was in the expression of his changeful face 
 And in his graceful mien. 
 
MARY CRAVEN. 39-; 
 
 " O'er all were shed 
 The rainbow-splendours of the crowning light 
 That hung above, showering its jewels down 
 Upon the thousands gathered there ; before, 
 A dreamy scene on an Italian mere, 
 Bore us, in fancy, into other lands, 
 As in a vision, leaving the real world 
 To fade away. 
 
 " Then came the opening tones 
 Of a great symphony, that seventh hymn 
 Of the high German master, him who stands 
 Supreme among the lords of harmony ; 
 And, on through mazes of his mighty theme. 
 Swept the grand music with triumphant flow, — 
 Wandering on, as down through pleasant vales 
 Forever opening into something fair 
 And fairer still — dreamy idyllic dales 
 And glimmering streams with shadowy isles that lured 
 To linger in Elysium, — then rose 
 In many-voiced and mighty symphony. 
 That seemed to tell of meetings sweet of friends, 
 Of glorious days together passed — and then 
 Of sunderings forever. And through all 
 Again, and yet again, in under-tone. 
 Was heard one deep and solemn note that seemed 
 A sound of warning, saying in a voice 
 Deeper than words, ' Beware ! and yet Beware !' 
 
 " But none, I deem, dreamed in that mystic hour„ 
 What web the Fates were weaving ; for the woof 
 Is wrought by hands unseen, and silently 
 Is thrown the shuttle in the weft of life. 
 
 " And from that day they often welcomed him 
 At Aldornere. The city's din, he said. 
 
40 MARY CRAVEN. 
 
 Its noise and conflict, all its passions mean, 
 Made the fresh country-life so doubly sweet 
 That when he reached those still and pleasant fields, 
 And heard again the murmur of the stream, 
 He longed to leave the toiling, moiling crowd 
 Behind forever. 
 
 " When the great civil war 
 Had wrought its ruin, and all had passed away 
 But the still stately Lady of the Grange, 
 Was Edgar Mowbray quietly betrothed 
 To the fair English girl. The marriage was 
 Of the simple Quaker fashion. A few friends 
 Witnessed the plighted troth, with neither priest 
 Nor magistrate. Then, having ranged her house 
 Eor her departure, the Lady of the Grange 
 Passed from this life into the stranger-land 
 Unto her fathers, and the two were left. 
 
 " And thus a quiet twelvemonth passed away 
 In uneventful flow, and in the Grange 
 There reigned a calm that none had ever dreamed 
 Was herald of the storm. The sun arose 
 And set with but the common change, — the stars 
 Beamed in alternate splendour with the day — 
 Spring followed winter, and the falling leaf 
 Told in its pensive language that the year 
 Was passing. 
 
 "But, although no outward change 
 Was visible in the life of Aldornere, 
 And though from hour to hour the daily round 
 ■Of household duties there was undisturbed. 
 The life was not the same. A shadow seemed 
 To dim the sunshine. In the genial warmth 
 
MARY CRAVEN. 
 
 41 
 
 Of vernal days there was a sullen cold, 
 As of a sky noiselessly overcast 
 By unseen influence. O'er the woods and fields 
 There came a change which has no name ; it came 
 At first like to a shadow faint and dim 
 Of a summer-cloud the gazer scarcely sees, 
 Which soon is followed by a deeper shade 
 That leaves no doubt that 'tis a shadow. Then 
 Like to some unseen, ghostly presence stood 
 Between the two, boding some evil thing, 
 -An ominous phantom, vague and undefined, — 
 The spectre Alienation. The change had come. 
 But Mary Craven knew not why. 
 
 ''At last, 
 Like to a bird of evil omen, robed 
 In weeds funereal, there came one night, 
 A priest, and Edgar Mowbray threw away 
 The deep disguise. The wily monk that bred 
 In falseness, had been taught all subtle arts 
 Of fine insinuation, and had learned 
 His lesson well, strove, with a steady will 
 To make his way with delicate flattery. 
 Rather implied than uttered. In a land 
 Beyond the sea, and by a brotherhood 
 That had declared all means are holy, men 
 Can use for holy ends, from early youth 
 He had been moulded, and from them had learned 
 To study with a stealthy cunning, all 
 The artless movements of the youthful heart, 
 That he might better lead the mind matured, 
 Yet rouse not its distrust. A master in 
 The arts of flattery and intrigue, a monk 
 Whose head was bowed with years, had given him 
 The maxim, ' Study well the boy, and you 
 Will understand the man.' 
 
42 . MARY CRAVEN. 
 
 " And willingly 
 Had Edgar Mowbray yielded up his soul 
 Unquestioning and blind to the arrogant 
 Behest given by that Great Conspiracy 
 That has no lesser aim than to subdue 
 The noble mind of man from pole to pole. 
 
 " Thus, like the noiseless bird of dubious night 
 That hides in shadow all conspiracy, 
 Flitted the priest and then returned again, 
 And vanished and returned once more ; but in 
 What dark and secret haunts he lurked — with whom- 
 Bound in a hidden league, and how he held 
 Fast in his toils the man whom she had loved — 
 These mysteries Mary Craven never knew. 
 Yet her fine spirit, though she stood alone, 
 Was all undaunted 'mid the mystery ; — 
 The subtle cunning and the deep intrigue 
 She could not fathom, since no clue she had, 
 To thread the mazes ; but she felt o'er all 
 The shadow of a falsehood, and no art 
 Nor wearying persistence aught of power 
 Wielded to mould her high, imperial will. 
 
 ''Thus after absence that had been prolonged 
 In a distant city many weary days. 
 Came Edgar Mowbray to the silent Grange, 
 And brought with him the priest in gloomy garb 
 Of mediaeval fashion. Soon 'twas clear 
 Why, in the lonely evenings at the Grange, 
 His talk had been so much of bygone times, 
 And all their glories — of the solemn aisles 
 Of dim cathedrals and their gorgeous streams 
 Of light so many-stained that richly fell 
 Through the dim twilight on the holy floors 
 
MARY CRAVEN. 43 
 
 Worn by the tread of sainted feet, and why 
 He pored for hours on tomes of churchly lore, 
 And seemed to live but in the shadowy past. 
 
 "Thus, on an ever-memorable day, 
 The priest with stealthy guile returned again 
 With smile on face, but treachery in his heart. 
 After some converse and a brief repast 
 In the great hall, the master of the Grange 
 Pleading some business in the hamlet, down 
 By the riverside, from whence he would return 
 After short absence of an hour or two, 
 Departed, and the lady and the priest 
 Were left alone. 
 
 " After some commonplace — 
 The splendour of the season and the grand 
 And glorious shores that made the ancient Grange 
 A refuge sweet, to which the weary soul 
 Worn with the struggles of this earthly strife, 
 Could turn for peace, the priest, with subtle skill 
 Fell gradual, seemingly without design, 
 Into the praise of the still calmer life 
 Of those who had withdrawn them from the world 
 With all its wearying conflicts, thus to fix 
 Their hearts in holy meditation on 
 The things that are not fleeting, but endure 
 Forever, — and he said that most of all 
 For woman was this life contemplative 
 A fitting life, for that her gentle soul 
 111 bore encounter with the endless strife 
 Of evil passions in this sinful world — 
 And that it was her own peculiar grace 
 To yield her spirit to the guidance sure 
 Of those who were, by a divine command, 
 
44 MARY CRAVEN. 
 
 Ordained to lead her in the only way 
 That led into the everlasting peace. 
 
 " She listened calmly till his tale was done, 
 And then replied, ' This life is not for me. 
 Even if all your picture were quite true. 
 In outline and in colour, this were yet 
 A poor and barren life. To hide myself 
 Within the convent-walls, — at stated hours, 
 To kneel before a crucifix and count 
 Even golden beads upon my rosary. 
 Would make my whole existence but a tale 
 Told by an idiot ; and 'tis not my mood 
 To add another instance but to show 
 The mighty genius of the master-bard.' 
 
 " He said, ' But many mighty bards have found 
 Their peace at last within the sacred walls 
 Of Holy Church. Masters of harmony, 
 Great limners and immortal geniuses 
 Whose hands have freed from out the shapeless stone 
 Those forms divine that have entranced the world 
 With unimagined beauty, — all have been 
 The loving and obedient servitors 
 Of her whose only wish is to embrace 
 All tribes and races in her loving arms.' 
 
 " ' The time,' she answered, ' for your dream is past ; 
 Her temples and the priceless offerings 
 Of genius need not perish. They were all 
 Tributes of the unconquerable mind 
 She seeks to fetter, so that she may rise 
 Triumphant o'er its ruin. Ne'er again 
 Will man repeat this history. He has passed 
 Through narrow portals from the dusky aisles, 
 
MARY CRAVEN. 45 
 
 Where gorgeous splendours through the twihght 
 
 streamed, 
 Into that Temple whose grand oriel glows 
 With the far greater splendours of a dawn 
 Which is the herald of a mighty day 
 Full of all joyous light and happy life ! ' 
 
 " ' Your house,' he said, ' is built upon the sand. 
 Your travail and your struggles are in vain. 
 Vain are all human things — the only true 
 And lasting thing on earth is Holy Church. 
 Factions and even nations pass away, — 
 The Church remains — forever will remain. 
 Whole peoples who against her power divine 
 Have risen in rebellion, have returned 
 And bowed submissive to her sovereign will.' 
 
 " ' Her hope is in the hordes ! ' the lady said, — 
 I have a higher faith than to believe 
 The hordes shall rule the world. 'Tis true, I know, 
 Monarchs of mighty empires are with her 
 In secret league ; and even in lands like this, 
 Where princes rule no more, the herd are led 
 Through envy, malice and all passions base. 
 By men, co-mates with her in low intrigue, 
 Yet dream not that this people will be caught 
 Within your toils, or fettered in your bonds. 
 You cannot chain the winds nor bind the streams — 
 How will you rivet on the godlike mind, 
 Whose great pulsations you can never see, 
 Your brutal shackles ? Suffering and tears 
 Your Holy Church has, doubtless, yet in store 
 For the sad, tired world. Long centuries 
 Like a dread nightmare she has brooded o'er 
 The noblest nations — with her sorceries, 
 Her childish pomp and tinsel, gaudy show, 
 
46 MARY CRAVEN. 
 
 Prevailed o'er many nations. But her might 
 In passing, and will fade before the day.' 
 
 " The priest, as one astound, awhile was dumb, 
 Then muttered forth some incoherent words, 
 To which the lady did not deign reply. 
 
 " ' Moreover, it is written,' then she said, 
 ' On the imperishable tablets where 
 Rome's history is recorded with a pen 
 Of steel, that all her ways are marked with blood. 
 As for the rest, I speak not.' 
 
 " Angrily, 
 The priest replied, his prudent wiles forgot, 
 ' He whom your will is plighted to obey, 
 Summoned me hither to this holy task. 
 Long since he entered, secretly, the pale 
 Of the one only Church, and soon will be 
 Enrolled among her priesthood. She allows 
 No other union but the marriage she 
 With holy rites can sanction — she alone. 
 And yet I am empowered by her to grant 
 Full absolution for your error great 
 Though all unwitting, and thus innocent. 
 
 " ' A company of sainted sisters, known 
 For their great purity and piety, 
 Consent to ope to you the doors of peace. 
 Your great example will be widely felt, — 
 Your gold, under the blessings of the Church, 
 Will swell her sacred charities. He whom 
 You long have loved would gladly see you thus 
 Renounce the empty world.' 
 
MARY CRAVEN. 47 
 
 " ' Insolent priest !' 
 She instant said, Mepart from out these halls, 
 That ne'er before were tainted by the tread 
 Of one so base !' He vanished like a bird 
 Of evil omen, smitten by the day. 
 
 ' ' Long hours she passed as one who had been stunned 
 By some great blow. There was no spoken word, 
 Yet all was clear before her vision — that 
 Her fate was wrecked. Some quiet days she gave 
 'To thought for her changed future, ordering all 
 With the calm judgment of a spirit clear. 
 
 " One day there came to the now voiceless Grange 
 Two exiles from a distant land, who sought 
 To win their bread with cithern and with song. 
 With a sweet voice that thrilled the inmost heart. 
 The woman sang — her fellow exile swept 
 With skillful hand the strings. This song they sung : 
 
 * O ! sky of blue and air of balm ! 
 O ! quiet of this golden day ! 
 Would that an everlasting calm 
 
 Like this might soothe my pain away ! 
 
 ' O native hamlet, far and still, 
 
 Where heart with heart could meet and blend, 
 With mingled song and cithern thrill, 
 And converse of the faithful friend, — 
 
 ' Those days of peace for me are o'er, — 
 The despot there his sceptre wields ; — 
 Thy ways I now shall tread no more. 
 Nor see again my native fields.' 
 
 The exiles ceased. The lady seized her lute 
 And sang this simple songlet in reply : 
 
\o MARY GRAVEN. 
 
 ' The exile though he ne'er again 
 
 Embrace the hearts his friendship knew. 
 Still knows, amid that bitter pain, 
 Those hearts are ever leal and true. 
 
 ' But is not this the greater need, 
 
 When soul from soul is torn apart ? 
 This is the wreck of life indeed, 
 The exile of the broken heart ! 
 
 ' The lute with tender music made 
 
 An idyll once of wood and field ; — 
 Their splendours with its music fade — 
 The fountain is forever sealed.' 
 
 " She rose and gave the weary wanderers gold 
 As one who was their debtor. Though her eyes 
 Were tearless, there was that within her voice, 
 Which passed all weeping. As the exiles went 
 Their eyes were blinded with the falling tears. 
 
 " One night in the great hall at Aldornere 
 With Edgar Mowbray silent and alone. 
 She wrought with busy fingers at some work 
 Of beauty, but her thought was wandering far 
 To other themes and other lands, while he 
 Turned over leaf by leaf the yellow page 
 Of a great tome of monkish lore. At last 
 He said, ' Long have I waited in the hope 
 
 That you might see the opening dawn of truth 
 
 Of that great day which shall illumine soon 
 This land that in the mists of errour lies. 
 And greet, with heart renewed, the triumph sure 
 Of the great cherishing Mother, Holy Church. 
 Yet have I hoped in vain. The healing words 
 Of the holy father of all souls that shall 
 Inherit bliss, here uttered by the lips 
 
MARY CRAVEN. aq 
 
 Of his meek servant, who has deigned to come 
 To this lost house, to save ' . 
 
 " ' Spare me all praise 
 Of her whom I have fathomed to the depths 
 Of all her deep and dark duplicity, 
 So far as her disguise allows. 'Tis she 
 That moves the spirit, — other, grosser hands 
 Move the material world ; but this is she 
 Who is familiar with all various keys 
 Of passion, avarice and ambition, she 
 Whose mastery of the instrument is such 
 She plays them in the dark. She needs nor bridge 
 Nor highway to the tributary lands 
 That teem with millions of her thralls. She binds 
 The ignorant boor who toils for his daily bread 
 With her weird sorcery, and steals away 
 The half that he has won, to feed the horde 
 Of shavelings she has trained to bind his soul, 
 In that subjection. Like the warriour 
 That leads his army into friendly lands. 
 She makes her plunder pay her stealthy war 
 Against the human soul.' 
 
 '''Hold, hold,' he said, 
 Your frantic parsons with their frenzied herds, 
 Are they not blindly leading, blindly led ? - 
 And they, indeed, in errour ; but the Church 
 Crowned with the crown of high authority 
 Leads to eternal life. ' 
 
 '"Talk not tome,' 
 She said, ' of priest or parson. When I ask 
 For warrant of your safe authority. 
 Your words are vague and wandering. It is said 
 
5© MARY CRAVEN. 
 
 That woman cannot reason — that her jmrt 
 Is evermore to follow. I had dreamed 
 That we should tread the paths of lofty thought 
 Aided and aiding, thus throughout all time. 
 For though the soul may never reach the Source 
 Unknown, imfathomable toward which 
 It strives unceasing, still the glorious light 
 Forever brightening beams upon our way. 
 At last, the truth is plain that I must stand 
 Alone, and you, the man, you who have led 
 The active life among your fellows, bow 
 In blind obedience to a shaveling monk 
 And bid me follow. This I cannot do 
 But as the hypocrite, and thus it is 
 Your holy Mother Church intrudes between 
 And rends our love.' 
 
 " ' No love was ever true,' 
 He said, ' that asks the ruin of a soul.' 
 
 " She deigned no answer, but with haughty calm 
 Resumed the tale unfinished, of the griefs 
 In which her own great sorrows bore no part. 
 * The symbolism of your crimes is drawn 
 From the great abyss of nature — bats that fly 
 Only at night, and fearful birds of prey 
 That hunt amid the darkness — slimy forms 
 That lurk in sea-depths where the light above 
 Can never enter, lying there in wait 
 For those that pass along the abysmal ways, 
 And seize them with inexorable arms — 
 Spiders that ever spin invisible webs 
 In unsuspected places, for their prey. 
 And lie, themselves, in ambush, till that prey 
 Inextricably is entangled — fierce. 
 
MARY CRAVEN. 
 
 51 
 
 Remorseless feline forms that roam at night 
 And snuff their prey afar. ' 
 
 " ' The one true Church 
 Of right has silenced, and will silence here, 
 Those siren voices leading men astray 
 And quench those wandering lights that over marsh 
 And moor lead ever to his ruin, him 
 Who fascinated, follows.' 
 
 " ' In the lands 
 Ruled by your sable armies, they have spread 
 Ruin and desolation. Where they reign 
 Man cannot trust his fellow. Doubt, Distrust 
 And Dread, the fearful Three, dire as the Fates 
 The Greek has feigned, were the dread couriers 
 That told their coming ; ever after them, 
 There followed Treachery, Torture and Despair. 
 They loose all evil passions, foster all 
 The base desires that fill the teeming hearts 
 Of the most brutal — envy, malice, hate 
 And murder. Where they pass they leave behind 
 Whole lands laid waste ; where grew the nourishing grain 
 Nought to be seen biit desolation, — where 
 The ploughman traced the fertile furrow, nought 
 But weeds and brambles ; where the hamlet stood 
 A silent and yet eloquent heap of stones. 
 Yet dream not that you can extinguish quite 
 The free and noble soul of man. The dark 
 And gloomy god they serve with willing heart, 
 Like to the Brocken Phantom vast and dim, 
 Is but the image of themselves, which fades 
 Away, as they shall fade, in floods of light. 
 Thus, while you ever prate in lowly guise 
 And feigned voice of your humility 
 
52 MARY CRAVEN. 
 
 You grasp at sway before whose mighty power 
 The rule of princes fades abashed away.' 
 
 " She said, and Edgar Mowbray who had learned 
 His priestly lesson well, replied, ' The tale 
 Your parsons tell — have told a thousand times — 
 You have repeated all in vain ; yet, if 
 'Twere true I would not swerve a single hair. 
 The Church has warrant for what she has done. 
 And yet may do ; her mission is divine, 
 And Deity will lead her steps, as He 
 Has led them ever. 
 
 " ' x\nd what claim have you 
 Who in your stubl)orn schism still abide. 
 To match with hers? The altars she has reared, 
 The glorious temples where, for centuries. 
 The faithful of all climes have knelt, and ownied 
 Her rule imperial, where the mighty souls 
 Of builder and of artist willingly 
 Have laid their grandest offerings at her feet, 
 Whose aisles have echoed to the strains divine 
 Of souls inspired to chaunt her rule supreme, — 
 What is there in your cold and barren world 
 Of intellect to match with this?' 
 
 " 'The tale,' 
 She thus continued, ' of her matchless crimes, 
 Was never written. Fragments, it is true, 
 We have of that great history, here and there. 
 But only fragments. She has taught the world, 
 In guise unknown before, what 'tis to be 
 The neighbour. Suddenly from her ambush dark^ 
 Where long in wily cunning she has lain, 
 Waiting her time, she leaps upon her prey. 
 
iMARV CRAVEN. r^ 
 
 Then, through her dread behest, the world has seen 
 
 The neighbour, at the alarum of her bells, 
 
 Fall, without warning, on his innocent 
 
 And unsuspecting neighbour, him with whom 
 
 In peaceful friendshii), he had broken bread. 
 
 And, with enormous slaughter, thus prepare 
 
 Her reign of peace. Through her weird sorcery, 
 
 The brother then the brother has betrayed, 
 
 And in the stead of sweet, confiding trust. 
 
 She has established treachery and fear.' 
 
 " 'And have your saintly parsons never led 
 Their dull malignants in the selfsame wise, 
 To murder others for their sullen creed ? 
 AVho lighted up the slow and lingering fire 
 By the Helvetian mere?' 
 
 " T see their long processions treading slow 
 The path of exile into foreign lands, 
 Never again to see their native fields, 
 To sink at last, after life's weary day. 
 In nameless graves where none but strangers shed 
 A tear over their alien destiny. 
 If all the myriad voices that have cried 
 Unheard, in vain, against the fearfiil wrong 
 And outrage they have suffered at her hand. 
 The mighty lamentation swelling on 
 And gathering through the centuries — a wail 
 Such as earth never yet has heard, would awe 
 The universe to silence. Never dream 
 That with her shaveling army chaunting on 
 Their ominous plain-song on their dreaded way, 
 Your church shall ever march to conquest more. 
 
 " 'I had been all content with you to pass 
 The mere-stone of the boundaries of time — 
 
54 MARY CRAVEN. 
 
 To journey thus from everlasting on 
 To everlasting. You have spoiled my life ; 
 And now I know that henceforth I must tread 
 The way that yet remains to me alone.' 
 
 " Then Edgar Mowbray rose and said, ' The troth. 
 The only troth that ever could have joined 
 Us twain together with its sacred bond, 
 The blessing of our Holy Mother Church, 
 Has never yet been uttered, and we twain 
 Married have never been.' 
 
 " She turned away 
 With but one glance of most supreme disdain, 
 As who should say, ' Forever !' 
 
 " Midnight now, 
 With its ethereal shadows filled the sky. 
 And Mary Craven 'neath that Temple grand 
 Bared to the cooling air her queenly brow. 
 A crown of stars hung over, and afar 
 A threefold star blazed in the soundless deeps. 
 And a long line of kindred splendours led 
 Away into infinity. 
 
 " The die 
 Was cast. Then with a decent haste she placed 
 Her ruined house in order, gathering up 
 The fragments of her fortune and returned 
 Back to her native country, sick at heart 
 Beyond all hope of healing, and there found 
 A quiet refuge where the Cornish sea 
 Moans with its muffled voice through day and night. 
 Baffled upon the rocky shores that stay 
 Its billows, heeding not and fearing not 
 
MARY CRAVEN. 
 
 55 
 
 That weird and cruel voice of mystery 
 That with great lamentation dies away 
 Over the waste of lone and windy dunes." 
 
 This is the story ; and its memory cast 
 A shadow o'er my spirit while alone 
 We lingered in the woods of Aldornere, 
 Which, as we left them, gradual passed away, 
 Under the warmth and light of the April sun 
 And the cool flow of the fresh morning air, 
 That like a subtle and ethereal wine 
 Sent the pure blood all glowing through our veins. 
 
 And over mead and over knoll we went 
 And reached at last the bourne. Upon the sward 
 Before my cottage sloping down, we saw 
 The children playing, shouting in the sun. 
 Each had his cup and pipe — their pretty play 
 Was blowing bubbles, which, when blown, they tossed 
 With careless grace out in the lustrous air. 
 
 Out in the sun, on a vernal day, 
 
 A group of children, with joyous laughter, 
 
 The bubbles they blow are flinging away. 
 And merrily shouting, are following after. 
 
 Each deems the bubble himself has blown 
 
 Than every other bubble is fairer, 
 And hither and thither he follows his own 
 
 And fancies its beauty is rarer and rarer. 
 
 Over those globes with their crystal walls, 
 
 The crimson and green and gold are streaming. 
 
 And now, where the sunshine brightly falls. 
 With more ethereal splendour are beaming. 
 
56 MARY CRAVEN. 
 
 In unseen currents each elfin world 
 Rising and falling, is silently floating, 
 
 And, as through the air 'tis quietly whirled, 
 Each bubble-blower longs for such boating. 
 
 And, when it bursts, as it soon will do. 
 He gives not a moment to melancholy, 
 
 But launches, into the ether blue, 
 Another venture of harmless folly. 
 
 A fleeting hour he whiles away. 
 
 Thus mingling pleasure and dearer duty, — 
 
 His play with labour,- — his labour with play, — 
 And fills his soul with visions of beauty. 
 
 Meanwhile he finds that his life is a train 
 Of even such changes and trivial troubles ; 
 
 And learns to look with a light disdain 
 
 On the blowing and bursting of all its Inibbles. 
 
WYNDHAM/ 
 
 The sun beamed in a deep October sky 
 With splendour such as when the Grecian feigned 
 Apollo drove his car across the blue 
 And limpid depths, and with a mystic light 
 -Shone on the mountain-snows and azure sea 
 
 And the Arcadian meads and dells. But here 
 The magic genius of the splendid Greek 
 Was not, and all things wore the literal guise 
 Of a hard, unimaginative life 
 'That boasted 'twas the real. 
 
 'Twas a day 
 For a great civil gathering set apart — 
 
 57 
 
5^ WYNDHAM. 
 
 And Henry Pairfield sought the suffrages 
 
 Of those whose favouring voices had the power 
 
 To place him in the nation's parliament, 
 
 The councils of the state. The forest-shade 
 
 Was chosen for its screen against the sun, 
 
 And there, in front of the great multitude. 
 
 Upon the rostrum quietly he sat. 
 
 Not in the Roman fashion, robed in white, — 
 
 That satire truly had been all too keen, — 
 
 But quite as one secure of victory ; 
 
 And by his side sat Edgar Mowbray, now 
 
 A priest in holy guise, to give the scene 
 
 The proper sanction of the sanctity 
 
 Of the one only Church. And gathered there 
 
 Were many in whose accent was the tone 
 
 Of a fair island far beyond the sea 
 
 Whose children long had struggled in the bonds 
 
 Of priestly thra.ldom, by their oppressors taught 
 
 To look on them as foes who sought no less 
 
 Than their supremest welfare, and to hate 
 
 The only hand that could or would have saved. 
 
 Here, in this alien land, they were enrolled 
 
 By the same priestly arts, upon the side 
 
 Of tyranny, and trampled on the weak. 
 
 The choral minstrels played a favourite air. 
 And when 'twas finished, from the multitude 
 Arose tumultuous greeting, and the man 
 For whom the subaltern leaders marshalled them 
 To shout applause, stood forth to say his say. 
 And this it was that Henry Fairfield said : 
 
 " This is the great and glorious era when 
 The sovereign people take command. The day 
 
WYNDHAM. 
 
 Of kings and nobles wanes. Yet, in this land 
 
 Long dedicate to liberty, by men 
 
 Whose fame has filled the world, there linger yet 
 
 Despisers of the people— men whose hearts 
 
 Beat only for the despots who so long 
 
 Have trampled on the noble poor man's rights 
 
 And ground him in the dust. Let them beware ! 
 
 The people are arising — are aroused ! 
 
 And with the thunder of their mighty voice, 
 
 Nay, with the lightning of their anger, they 
 
 Will smite the cravens, blasting them as with 
 
 The ire of heaven ! We march to victory 
 
 Under the banner of the stripes and stars. 
 
 Whereat the desjiot trembles ! High in the sun 
 
 The all-triumphant eagle soars and screams ! 
 
 " These men, the friends of nobles and of kings. 
 Would overthrow, with sacrilegious hands. 
 The glorious temple of our liberties. 
 And sink its dome and pillars in the dust. 
 They seek to break our sacred, plighted faith 
 To sister commonwealths 'neath sunnier skies, 
 Their laws and institutions to o'erwhelm 
 In mighty ruin, thus imperilling 
 All that is dearest to the nation's heart, — 
 To free from bonds sanctioned and proven divine, 
 And sanctified by Church, a sei^vile horde 
 Condemned by holy writ for aye to be 
 Hewers of wood, drawers of water, for 
 The nobler race of which you are a part — 
 A noble part. They seek to drag you down, 
 Consort you with this low and servile race 
 That they themselves may lord it over you 
 And thrive and batten on your toil and blood." 
 
 59 
 
6o WYNDHAM. 
 
 Much more with tawdry rhetoric like this 
 He uttered to his willing listeners, 
 Who echoed all his words with loud applause. 
 
 We sat apart, as being alien (juite 
 To demagogue and priest, and wretched herd 
 Who came to shout approval of whate'er 
 The twain might say. Thus, while we sat alone, 
 With pencil on his ivory tablets there 
 Recorded, Edgar Wyndham gave to me 
 These lines, befitting well the shameful day : 
 
 " The victor, crowned with laurel-crown, 
 Passed, in his hand the jewelled rod ; 
 The grovelling herd they bowed them down 
 As in the presence of a god. 
 
 " Exulting through the servile herd, 
 
 He held with haughty brow his way ; 
 And heard the venal flatterer's word 
 Of soul more servile still than they. 
 
 " But on his right there went before 
 Three veiled forms of fateful mien, 
 Who swept with feet untainted o'er 
 
 The ground, and though of him unseen, 
 
 " Yet saw, with changeless visage bland. 
 His myriad weeping victims writhe, 
 And bore each in her shadowy hand, 
 A shadowy and immortal scythe ; 
 
 " Whose viewless scythes, of temper keen 
 Should bring his haughty spirit low 
 Before he reached his goal, I ween, — 
 Who chaunt forever as they go — 
 
WYNDHAM. 6 I 
 
 " Who chaunt forever as they go 
 
 To right all wrongs beneath the sun, 
 With soothing for the innocent woe, 
 ' Thus is the eternal justice done 1' 
 
 " And though the laurel on his brow 
 
 Seem green to those who worship him. 
 He feels the wreath, he knows not how. 
 Is withered, and its lustre dim. 
 
 " None shall escape the ghostly hand 
 Of the avenging deity, — 
 Elude her wheel upon the land, — 
 Her rudder following in the sea." 
 
 After the noisy crowd had quite dispersed 
 1 strolled with Edgar Wyndham through the wood, 
 Adown the knolls and o'er the pleasant fields 
 To Wyndham, hidden in its beechen shade. 
 Into his study, through the open door 
 And window came the cool, refreshing air 
 And shimmering sunshine, and we sat us down 
 And one by one recalled the day's events, 
 For comment free, as friends are wont to do, 
 In social converse, while he gradual fell 
 Into the story of his earlier life. 
 
 There was a fascination in the theme 
 Under whose spell the hours fled swift away, 
 And hardly ended was the story ere 
 The twilight shadows had begun to fall. 
 
 " I was from early boyhood's pleasant days. 
 The most faiiiiliar guest at Aldornere. 
 George Brandon and niyself were of one age 
 And chosen brothers, for we had the same 
 
WVNDHAM. 
 
 Deep love of nature, of all beautiful things, 
 
 And thought the best of our peers, and only they ; 
 
 And so we deemed ourselves Arcadians both, 
 
 Like shepherds of Virgilian song. His soul 
 
 Was tuned to music, as the finest lute ; 
 
 And any other friendship than our own 
 
 We needed not. 
 
 "Oft, in the pleasant days 
 We roved the woods together — in the long 
 Dark winter-nights, by the warm, blazing hearth, 
 At Wyndham now, and now at Aldornere, 
 We read together on the magic page 
 Of England's darling, nurtured at her heart. 
 Her midland fields and quiet meadow-streams. 
 
 "And 'twas on such a night we read the page 
 Of the old chronicler who tells the tale 
 Of the Northumbrian king, that long ago, 
 Sat with his nobles in his castle-hall, 
 Around the glowing hearth, amid the gloom, 
 Debating of the mystic life to come, — 
 In council sat. But, of the nobles one 
 Said to the king, ' This present life of ours 
 Is as when on some wald and wintry night 
 It rains, and snows, and hails, and storms without, 
 And from the tempest through the window comes 
 A sparrow, fleeing from the beating storm. 
 A little while it flutters through the hall, 
 Cheered by the light and warmth, then out again 
 Into the darkness and is seen no more. 
 And whence it came and whither now 'tis borne 
 No one can tell. Thus is it with our life ; — 
 We enter and abide a little while 
 But whence we came and whither now we go 
 We know not.'* 
 
WVNDHA.M. 63 
 
 "After silence long, we fell 
 Into deep converse fitting such a theme. 
 He said that even if this life were all, 
 Yet would he spend it nobly — that to live 
 In friendship such as that which bound us twain, 
 And linked with other friends both firm and true, 
 And with the noble of all ages thus, — 
 This thought, worn ever in our inmost heart, 
 Would be a precious amulet, to ward 
 All wavering from the soul away. And thus 
 We felt it light to brave the mighty world. 
 Even those whom death had hallowed bound us still 
 With golden links of memory to the true, 
 And thus repaid us more than hundredfold 
 For the poor lack of favour and applause 
 Such as the fickle multitude can give. 
 Thus passed the evening and the night away ; 
 Of all we spent together 'twas the last. 
 
 " But from this life, before the civil war 
 Had come upon us, I had crossed the sea, 
 To foreign climes, and like the wandering Greek, 
 Both many men and many cities saw. 
 I drank sweet draughts from the perennial springs 
 Where, by the sylvan Neckar's castled hills. 
 The Muses with their melodies preside 
 Over immortal fountains, — and entranced 
 I floated down the ways of storied streams, — 
 Mused 'mid the ruins of a bygone age. 
 I heard the voice of mountain-waterfalls, 
 Mingled forever with the muffled roar 
 Of avalanches loosened by the sun. 
 And gathered by the mountain -path, amid 
 The falling sleet, the little tassel-flower. 
 And listened, as in dream, while overhead. 
 
64 WYNDHAM. 
 
 The skylark, circling, singing in the sun, 
 Bore on his wing the dew. 
 
 " At once I stood 
 At sunset, on the moor of Col de Balme, 
 And saw the mighty mountain seated still, 
 With crown of everlasting snows, where gold 
 And rose and violet followed in a change 
 That seemed of magic, — seated as a king 
 Among his kindred princes, while before. 
 Spread out the twilight vale that faded far 
 'Mid amethystine shadows, and no sound 
 Disturbed the silence but faint-tinkling bells 
 Of distant herds upon the mountain-side. 
 
 " But when, at last, there came the cruel war,. 
 I hastened home to bear therein my part, 
 And found that wounded in the same he died." 
 
 Resuming, after silence long, he said : 
 "Time, the unfailing soother, has subdued 
 The sorrow. But, within my inmost heart. 
 His memory lingers sweetly, like a strain 
 Of tender music, mingling evermore 
 With all my highest moods ; — the tumult great 
 Of life can never drown that music deep. 
 I think of him with all things fair and grand, 
 The woods, the streams, the sea, the universe — 
 A symphony, a dirge, — he is to me 
 As is the sunshine and the pleasant spring. 
 
 " Sometimes I muse with sorrow on his fate,. 
 Dying so young, a beauteous future spread 
 Before him, as a country yet untried. 
 Yet passing in his youth, he thus escaped 
 
VVVNDHA.M. 
 
 All future evil, sorrow and disgrace. 
 
 Thus is he hallowed in my memory, 
 
 And thus has crossed the bounds where Mystery 
 
 Sits with her finger on her marble lips 
 
 In silence which no turmoil can disturb. 
 
 '•' These lines, a record of our parting hour. 
 May seem of grief too keen, but they were true. 
 
 ' 'Twas on a mild autumnal day, 
 
 We slowly wandered, arm in arm, 
 
 Through field and woodland, far away, 
 
 Lured by the season's subtle charm. 
 
 ' We heard the airs of autumn mourn 
 Among the rustling rushes sere, 
 And reached at last the churchyard-bourne 
 Wliose oaks were fading with the year, 
 
 ' Faintly the fields and meadows o'er 
 
 We heard the grouse's muffled strokes ; 
 The purple leaves fell more and more 
 
 From those great, branching churchyard-oaks. 
 
 ' There was the wandering thyme as deep 
 As in the summer days we see ; 
 Its fragrance lured to endless sleep , 
 With drowsy murmuring of the bee. 
 
 ' Among those mounds of fading green 
 We lingered long, I know not why ; 
 Perchance it was the air serene. 
 Or the serener autumn sky, 
 
 ' Or that serenest, thoughtful place 
 
 Whose sleepers slept without a breath. 
 And lay in calm and matchless grace. 
 The marble-still repose of death. 
 
 65 
 
66 WYNDHAM. 
 
 ' The fleeting days have grown to years 
 
 Since, when we knew that we must part, 
 I gathered from thy cheek the tears, 
 And stored them in my heart of heart. 
 
 ' Those years in many a distant scene 
 
 With me too soon have passed away ; 
 And, 'mid these mounds of fading green, 
 I stand, as then we stood, to-day. 
 
 ^ But thou, whom here no more I see. 
 Hast made beneath the turf thy bed. 
 Hast joined the silent company. 
 The increasing city of the dead. 
 
 ' To thee, in that most distant land. 
 No messenger can ever reach ; 
 There none can hear or understand 
 This now disused, forgotten speech. 
 
 •' If by its silent denizens 
 
 We, too, forever are forgot. 
 
 No longing mortal ever kens, — 
 
 The silent city answers not. 
 
 ' But could I know that thou art still 
 The same that thou wert wont to be. 
 My soul with silent bliss would thrill, 
 And wait till, in eternity, 
 
 ' Some infinitely distant time, 
 Some infinitely far-off shore, 
 Should still, at last, this grief sublime 
 And give thee back forevermore. 
 
 ' But quite in vain are thoughts like these, — 
 This grief nepenthe cannot still, 
 This pain no poppy-draught can ease, 
 Nor soothe away this master-ill. 
 
WYNDHAM. 67 
 
 ' And though I win those starry crowns 
 We strive for in this earthly strife, 
 This drop, exceeding bitter, drowns 
 All sweetness in the cup of life. 
 
 ' Therefore these unavailing tears, 
 Therefore this sorrow, passing all 
 Our other sorrows, other fears. 
 
 For what is gone beyond recall.' " 
 
 And now, before the quiet, gliding days 
 Of dreamy autumn had passed quite away, 
 There gathered in the shadowy Wyndham woods 
 The men who with a firm resolve had said 
 The country's grand device should not be made 
 A lie before all nations, nor the name 
 Of hypocrite be branded on the brow 
 Of Freedom, on whose altar they had sworn 
 With loyal hearts and true. And now, indeed, 
 Quite other were the men who gathered there. 
 Quite other were the calm and thoughtful words 
 Which Edgar Wyndham to the listeners said : 
 
 '' Would that I had such power to light the minds 
 And warm the hearts of you, my fellow-men, 
 As has the glorious sun we all behold 
 To light and warm the beauteous world around 
 With its free, genial beams. This earth is not 
 Of need, a place for sorrowing and despair ; 
 But if pure justice ruled there would be peace. 
 And kindliness would follow in their train. 
 For us, we ask but perfect justice for 
 The poorest of the poor — nought of his race. 
 For those who for themselves and theirs demand 
 All rights, in bonds to hold their fellow-men 
 Is it not base indeed ? Many there are 
 
68 WYNDHAM. 
 
 Who ask the question which in days of old 
 
 The Roman noble asked the Nazarene — 
 
 What is the truth ? But this, at least, we know, 
 
 That in a land where Justice does not reign 
 
 Supreme, her sister Peace cannot abide. 
 
 The ages teach this truth — the overthrow 
 
 Of many cities and the mighty fall 
 
 Of nations which had gathered to themselves 
 
 The various treasures of the world, all teach 
 
 This selfsame lesson. In the human heart 
 
 This truth is as its life-blood, that no man 
 
 Of right can lord it o'er his fellow-man. 
 
 The eagle, soaring in the blue serene, 
 
 Descries afar the coming storm, — the herd 
 
 Below are overtaken and destroyed. 
 
 The statesman, with a mind embracing all. 
 
 Knowing the laws that never bend or fail, 
 
 Sees where the storm will burst, and faithfully. 
 
 He warns his fellows, but they heed him not. 
 
 " Time will outweary all the petty frauds, 
 And all the petty schemes to quell the Truth, 
 Who yet upon her fair and rightful throne 
 Shall sit supreme. Be not disheartened, then. 
 Though Wrong and Falsehood triumph for a day — 
 For, they who triumph through the mob depraved 
 Sink finally from grade to lower grade, 
 Through dull indifference, then broad contempt, 
 Into eternal blank oblivion, 
 And through all time are never heard of more." 
 
 He ceased, and sudden silence fell o'er all ; 
 Then, after friendly greeting, all returned 
 The road they came, each to his separate home ; 
 But for the triumph of the right the day 
 
WYNDHAM. 69 
 
 Had not yet dawned. The demagogue, once more. 
 
 Won through the voices of the multitude, 
 
 And soon, among his kind he took his seat 
 
 So easily won. But after many years, 
 
 In which he had pursued the low career 
 
 He thus had chosen for himself and sunk 
 
 Lower and lower, from afar there came 
 
 A rumour vague that in a foreign land 
 
 'Mid strangers, he had fallen, whether with 
 
 The suicidal dagger in his hand. 
 
 Or by an opiate draught was never known. 
 
 For Edgar Mowbray, from these wonted scenes 
 He, too, had vanished. Of his after-fate 
 No word was e'er returned. His lurking-place 
 Was doubtless in the shadow of the great 
 Conspiracy that holds in many lands 
 Places of refuge numberless, unknown, 
 For such as he. 
 
 To Wyndham now, once more, 
 We sauntered, full of thoughts of that which was, 
 And that which ought to be, and scarcely saw 
 The mighty vistas down the river dim, 
 Or the blue-budded gentian by the brook. 
 Amid our earnest parley. On the lawn. 
 Beneath a spreading beech, our favourite seat, 
 We sat us down at last and made review 
 Of what was past, and sought to shadow forth 
 The history to come. 
 
 Firmly to stand 
 For right, against the clamour of the crowd — 
 This was the touchstone of the troublous times. 
 The brave and noble then were proven gold ; 
 
7© WYNDHAM. 
 
 Others declined the test, or openly 
 
 Sided with the great Wrong. And everywhere 
 
 Around about us in the commonweal, 
 
 Ambitious men, to please the populace. 
 
 Held back the truth, or uttered falsehood base, 
 
 And finally to the low level sunk 
 
 Of the dull herd ; then, being underbid. 
 
 Bid lower still. The hireling demagogue 
 
 Was found no nobler than the grovelling king. 
 
 Then Edgar Wyndham said, " This field was new, 
 The outspread page was fresh and white and clean ; 
 The priest and demagogue have spoiled it all. 
 But he who yields the thing he knows is true 
 A prey to baseness, and ignobly fails 
 Has nothing when he falls ; and though it be 
 Unseen of men, the vulture Envy gnaws 
 Unceasing at his vitals. But that man 
 Who to the truth and to himself is true. 
 E'en though he seem to all the world to fail. 
 Bears peace forever in his heart. He leads 
 Who does not seem to lead, and he who seems 
 To lead is oftenest led. These only keep 
 The leader's place by watching warily 
 Until they see which way the current flows." 
 
 And I, " Brief space great clamour at their names, — 
 Then follows the eternal silence deep 
 Of all the after-centuries. Why should we 
 Be troubled when their baseness is success ? 
 We cannot have the fellowship of all — 
 That of the noble is enough for me, — 
 The noble of the present and the past. 
 The herd have no convictions, and are swept 
 Into whatever popular current draws 
 
WVNDHAM. 71 
 
 With strongest force, like driftwood in the stream. 
 The many turn with frivolous hearts away 
 From Justice and the men who dwell with her, 
 And therefore I, who this have seen, must praise 
 The man who looks alone unto the good. 
 
 "And one I know of genius grand and rare, 
 Who gives, through every manly word and deed, 
 Newer and fuller meaning to the best 
 That all the noblest of the poets say, 
 Who, knowing well the utter worthlessness 
 Both of the leaders and the led, — how all 
 The prizes of the state are borne away 
 By base intrigue, with cold and settled scorn 
 Has turned from all, and grand ensample given 
 To those who wait for better times. A few 
 There have been, in the ages past who strove 
 For fame and jewelled crowns and empery, 
 Nor were deterred by fear of bitter death ; 
 But now, that age of greatness passed away, 
 The many for all paltry prizes strive. 
 And though without great guerdons in their view,. 
 Yet shrink not from the many meaner crimes 
 More than the mightier ones in days of yore 
 From fearful deeds of blood. I cannot hold 
 Those places to be honours which are gained 
 By grovelling and intrigue alone. The men 
 Who win them, with a fate but slightly changed,. 
 Had been but fitting slaves to delve the mines. 
 When such as these are lauded by the mob, 
 It makes their boasted honours cheap and mean." 
 
 "I, too," he said, "have known who pitched his tent. 
 On a few, barren acres and thence draws 
 His living, free from all base servitude ; 
 
72 
 
 WYNDHAM. 
 
 The lichen lives and draws its sturdy life 
 Even from the bare and naked flint. To me 
 'Tis sweet to know he holds me worthy quite 
 To be his equal friend that will not change." 
 
 '' The great enigma, still remains," I said ; 
 *' Is there no retribution for the wrong. 
 The cruelty and outrage ? Must we deem 
 The oppressor shall forever trample thus 
 The weeping poor, and selfishly pursue 
 Unworthy ends, throughout his dread career, — 
 Horrours and crimes untold, unnamable, 
 From which the Muse of history severe 
 Turns with a silent and immovable scorn ? 
 
 " Rise, ye indignant shadows, and proclaim 
 The myriad wrongs that none but you could tell, 
 The secret murders of the silent night, 
 The slow assassinations of the day, 
 Of countless victims, who through hopeless fear 
 Uttered no murmur, waiting but for death, — 
 Longing for nothing but its sleep and rest — 
 The story of the enormous slaughters wrought, 
 On those who to the tyrant would not bow. 
 Rise ! ye indignant myriads and unfold 
 The awful records of the dungeon deep — 
 The fearful secrets of the voiceless grave !" 
 
 At last we parted, for the twilight now 
 Was deepening. Far along the shadowy plain, 
 The iron steed upon his winding way 
 Led his long train, one plume of snowy white 
 And one of pearly gray, and all was still. 
 
WYNDHAM. 73 
 
 Homeward I wended now through darkening paths, 
 And sought the sweet repose of peaceful sleep, 
 And woke not till the coming of the dawn. 
 
 The seasons follow with their endless change ; 
 And autumn faded into winter frore. 
 In the wide woodlands then the forest-trees 
 Wore all their jewels. When the golden sun 
 In princely splendour in the orient rose, 
 Not all Golconda, from its blazing mines, 
 Gave such a wealth of diamonds to the light, 
 While nature silent for the pageant lay. 
 
 Then, after winter, came the genial spring. 
 That sends a thrill through heart and nerve and brain. 
 That makes the poor forget the bitter cold, — 
 The poor so poor with them all pride is dead, — 
 That soothes away the sorrows of the heart, 
 That strengthens once again the noble soul 
 That in its labours for the right has failed. 
 That makes all men forget their brooding cares. 
 With influences magical and sweet. 
 
 Yes, 'twas the spring ; and the gray willow now 
 And the red-flowering maple bloomed again — 
 The alder hung its tassels o'er the brook, 
 Freed from its thrall. The sunshine's subtle gold 
 Melted into my veins, — the April air 
 Wrought in my veins once more its wonted thrill. 
 The great rose-window of the glowing east 
 Shone gloriously with its auroral hues 
 A grand and splendid oriel, fitting well 
 For the great temple of the universe ! 
 On such a morn I sang this joyous song — 
 This joyous song of life and liberty : 
 
74 WYNDHAM. 
 
 " I am the dauntless spirit brave 
 
 That never yet the gyve has worn ; 
 I rend the bonds that bind the slave, 
 But never yet his chain have borne. 
 
 " I burst the iron prison-bars, 
 
 The threefold walls I raze amain ; 
 I greet the sky, the sun, the stars, — 
 Exult again, and yet again. 
 
 " Who tread the mount with footstep sure, 
 With them I dwell in clearer light ; 
 I haunt the heathery mountain-moor 
 And mountain-mere by day and night ; 
 
 " But dwell not less with them who flee 
 O'erpowered from enslaved lands. 
 And find a refuge by the sea, 
 
 'Mid billows, mists and shifting sands, — 
 
 " Whose pulses rhyme with chainless flow 
 Of mountain-winds, with breezy swell,— 
 With the wild waves that come and go, — 
 With these, with these, I gladly dwell. 
 
 " My forehead fair no crown beseems 
 But crown of amaranth or stars, — 
 No light but dawn or noonday-beams ; 
 No twilight dim my beauty mars. 
 
 " For I am of the glorious morn — 
 The herald that foretells the day ; 
 My youth no time has ever worn — 
 I go before — I lead the way. 
 
 " My spirit free they seek in vain 
 To fetter with the bond or gyve ; 
 I smile with high and calm disdain 
 On all who with that striving strive. 
 
WYNDHAM. 
 
 75 
 
 For my eternal freedom still 
 
 With deathless love the nations long 
 For my miconquerable will, 
 
 My matchless beauty fair and strong 
 
 • My voice has led on every shore, 
 The battles of the mighty past. 
 And now, again, is heard once more 
 In this defiant bugle-blast !" 
 
HOW THE RHINEGRAVE EVIL-ENTREATED 
 THE STRANGER, AND WHAT FOL- 
 LOWED THEREAFTER.! 
 
 A BALLAD. 
 
 It was in mild September, the gossamer it lay, 
 A billowy thread of silver, then slow through air away, 
 It floated o'er the river that scarcely bent the reed, 
 Where violet safl'ron-blossoms made purple all the mead. 
 
 The Rhinegrave with his nobles through the castle-gate 
 
 they went, 
 On joyance and on pastime their listless minds were bent ; 
 They talked of the fields and forests they were wont to 
 
 wander through. 
 And the heron from the waters that soared to the sky so 
 
 blue. 
 
 "But who," then cried the Rhinegrave, with wonder in 
 
 his eyes, 
 '' Are they who journey yonder, in seeming stranger-guise?" 
 Then turning to his pages, " Haste one of ye," said he, 
 ''And ask of them what manner of men and whence 
 they be." 
 
 Then, at his lordly bidding, the strangers forward came. 
 In front of them, their spokesman, trode one of goodly 
 
 frame. 
 And of right noble presence, but neither bent the knee, 
 Nor yet before the Rhinegrave his head uncovered he. 
 
 77 
 
78 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 " Our home," he said, " is England ; we thither wend again, 
 Through the Nether Lands that border upon the 
 
 Northern Main ; 
 And to the German Countries, in the name of God, our 
 
 Lord, 
 We bear the glad evangel of the everlasting Word." 
 
 "But why," then cried a courtier, ''thus covered do ye 
 stand 
 In the presence of these nobles, and the lord of all the 
 
 land ? 
 And know ye not to princes, e'en the boor, though dull 
 
 and rude, 
 W^ill doff his cap as surely as they of gentle blood?" 
 
 Replied the English Saxon, with countenance serene, 
 With voice all mild and gentle, and an unaltered mien, 
 " Of nought that is unseemly in our bearing here we wot, 
 And of any word ungentle we have uttered, know we not. 
 
 "■ Men bend the knee to princes ; we yield not in this thing, 
 Li the fair land of our fathers, e'en to our lord the king. 
 All men are of one brotherhood, we bare our heads alone, 
 To Him who rules all nations from an eternal throne." 
 
 "These," quoth the Rhinegrave quickly, "are of the 
 
 Quaker herd. 
 Who lead astray the rabble, with stubborn deed and 
 
 word. 
 And teach that from the people, all power and glory 
 
 springs. 
 That nerves the arms of princes, and crowns the brows 
 
 of kings." 
 
MINOR POEMS. 79 
 
 Replied the Angle calmly, with mildness in his eye, 
 With heart all sweet and humble, yet with a spirit high, 
 <'For righteousness and justice we would be bold and 
 
 strong, 
 And work good deeds and kindly, and only fear the 
 
 wrong. 
 
 " For on the people's blindness our hearts have looked in 
 ruth. 
 We bear to all a message of gentleness and truth ; 
 We bring good tidings only to thee and unto thine, 
 And bear ye loving kindness, O Lord of Falkenstein." 
 
 But his men at arms the Rhinegrave he called unto him 
 
 then. 
 And said, " From out my borders see that ye hale these 
 
 men." 
 Then, with the surly soldier the Angle went away. 
 And the lordling of the Rhineland he had his will that 
 
 day. 
 
 But the seeds the English Saxon, within that land had 
 
 sown. 
 Not all on ground so barren his generous hand had 
 
 strown ; 
 In castle and in cottage, there were whose hearts received 
 The words of truth and justice, which all their souls 
 
 believed. 
 
 And they nursed the sacred fire, while in his fatherland, 
 For the rights of man's great brotherhood, again did the 
 
 Angle stand, 
 With Sidney, 'gainst the tyrants, who sought, with 
 
 haughty sway. 
 To lord it o'er the lowly, in England's evil day. 
 
So MINOR POEMS. 
 
 And in a day of danger, of great and bitter stress, 
 He left the dales of England, for the distant wilderness ; 
 To lay the broad foundation of a great Commonweal, 
 With corner-stones of justice, not through the warriour's 
 steel. 
 
 In his brave barque, all boldly, he launched a goodly freight, 
 None other than the fortunes of a most noble State ; 
 And o'er the sounding ocean, through storm and foam 
 
 it passed. 
 Till, on the Arasafa, the Welcome slept at last. 
 
 And out of the sunny Rhineland, from many a quiet 
 
 hearth, 
 By the shore of the echoing Lorelei, and cloistered Non- 
 
 nenworth, 
 And from still pastoral valleys, where the smoke-wreath 
 
 rises through 
 The apple-orchards, melting in a sky of softer blue. 
 
 From many a hidden hamlet, from many a lowly cot, 
 Came they, who the Angle's lessons, had never yet forgot ; 
 And to the blue-eyed German, within this stranger-land, 
 In love his English brother stretched forth the friendly hand. 
 
 Where Conowingo's waters through dales of quiet flow, 
 And in the mighty shadow of sylvan Pokono, 
 And by the Susquehanna, on green Wyoming's breast ; 
 And beautiful Ohio, that seeks the golden West ; 
 
 Not without tears of sorrow, they reared the peaceful home. 
 Regretful tears for each fatherland, beyond the blue sea's 
 
 foam ; 
 And, having compassed freedom, for them and theirs, they 
 
 gave 
 The boon to the bondman, first to rend the fetters of the slave. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 
 
 8i 
 
 Then let us sing the Saxon, who launched the Welcome's 
 keel, 
 
 And laid the broad foundations, of our dear old Common- 
 weal ; 
 
 And the blue-eyed German with him, who sought our 
 peaceful shore, 
 
 To liijht the fires of freedom, we will guard forevermore ! 
 
 THE BALLAD OF MARGARET GARNER.-' 
 
 The housewife, on the midnight hearth, she stirred the 
 
 smouldering brands, 
 And kissed her boy that slumbering lay with silent-folded 
 
 hands, 
 Nor knew a mother, with her babes, in hunger and in pain, 
 Far in the woods was shivering in the Autumnal rain. 
 
 That weary thrall had delved amain on distant fields whose 
 
 dew 
 Was of those tears that are outpoured for aye by inly rue — 
 Where the day she spent in weary toil from morn till 
 
 evening drear. 
 And the night was passed in heavy sleep broken by sudden 
 
 fear. 
 
 Now the midnight flash of the etiuinox, it came with blind- 
 ing gleams, 
 
 And through the wilderness the roar of swoll'n and sullen 
 streams — 
 
 Slow treading o'er the wild morass she sotight a footing sure. 
 
 While the night-heron croaked far o'er the drenched and 
 dreary moor ! 
 
82 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 And still at morn that wandering thrall to journey on was 
 
 fain, 
 While o'er the woodlands steadily there fell the heavy rain ; 
 And save the falling of the rain, the wilderness was dumb — 
 Or the chirj) of the sparrow banqueting on the gold-and- 
 
 crimson plum. 
 
 The gray hawk, in the air above, was soaring for his prey, 
 And then, all wildly screaming, wheeled o'er the woods away; 
 And as she led her little brood on that journey long and drear, 
 The shadow Doubt it went before — behind there followed 
 Fear I 
 
 The wildswan led hisfollowers in lengthening lines and slow, 
 Winging their way far southward before the coming snow ; 
 But she into the coming snow, and the winter fierce and wild, 
 Hurried with hasting feet, as to the mother's arms her child. 
 
 And still before her foe she fled, like to the wounded deer, 
 With the hungry vulture following fast uixui her flank and 
 
 rear. 
 Or like the dove that wildly flies, in her most bitter need, 
 Before the swift and arrowy flight of the i)ursuing glede ! 
 
 She came to a great stream. The wave it murmured low 
 
 and meek, 
 And in the Beauteous River she bathed her burning cheek ; 
 In the pirogue, chance-found, awhile, her dizzy brain did 
 
 reel, — 
 Then on the rounded pebbles grated the sudden keel. 
 
 But still through all this pain and fear her weary toil was 
 
 nought ; 
 And even on this new-found shore still weariless she sought 
 For her worn feet awhile to find some safer resting-place. 
 And by the hearth-stone secretly to rest a little space. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 
 
 «3 
 
 But even there the chief of state and the chief of law they 
 
 lay 
 In the law's dread, wily ambush, her footsteps to bewray, 
 And with their human beagles from their covert on her 
 
 sprang, 
 And fastened wild upon her with fierce and cruel fang ! 
 
 She seized the knife for murder and said, "Thou shalt 
 
 be free, 
 My child, and wait a little while and I will come to thee — 
 Free from their pitiless talons whose prey is still the weak, 
 That through death's portals only can find the rest they 
 
 seek. 
 
 <' They spread their shameful fame far o'er the earth's most 
 
 distant lands, 
 But bind their thralls with heavy chains, and scourge 
 
 with cruel hands ; 
 With the gold they wring from our worn thews, their 
 
 barque of life they deck — 
 My only freight was little, and that is utter wreck." 
 
 Then, 'mid a craven people, this woman grand they bound. 
 
 The canting priest, the placeman mean, and the dooms- 
 man standing round ; 
 
 And she who in the olden time scarce finds her (jueenly 
 mate, 
 
 Thus vainly having struggled, she yielded to her fate. 
 
 And she of whom, in after-times, the world shall proudly 
 
 speak, 
 As of the imperial Roman, or of the haughty Greek, 
 Was led down to the waters by vile and hireling hands, 
 A great despair within her heart and gyves upon her 
 
 hands. 
 
84 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 Before her foes she quailed not, nor closed her eyes in sleep, 
 Far on the rushing river, with dark and moaning deep. 
 Nor when on the stranger-waters 'mid the wreck, at dead 
 
 of night. 
 She saw, on the lips of her drowning child, death's ghastly, 
 
 ghostly white ! 
 
 And on the ([uay the l)argain, as the day before, was made. 
 And in the mart the chapman still plied his paltry trade ; 
 And from his gloomy rostrum, the parson's whine still 
 
 rang. 
 As he told his threadl)are story, with a more ghostly 
 
 twang. 
 
 And there was also strife of them who, for the placeman's 
 place, 
 
 And badge of shame, unceasing strove with bold and 
 brazen face, 
 
 " But God, who reigns forevermore," she said, •' with ven- 
 geance sure, 
 
 Shall come on them who, night and day, do spoil His 
 weeping poor." 
 
 And far, among the stranger, they sought her out again. 
 And offered her surcease, at last, from thraldom's bitter 
 
 pain ; 
 She grasped the draught of freedom — but ah ! these cruel 
 
 slips : 
 Again the pitiless doomsman he dashed it from her lips ! 
 
 And whither now she drifted she recked not, neither wist, 
 While the black wherry southward, into the thickening 
 
 mist, 
 Fast lessening, floated, laden with her anguish and her 
 
 fears, 
 Adown the sullen river that drains the Vale of Tears ! 
 
MlNdR POKMS. 85 
 
 TO A WINDHARP. 
 
 Of many far-off voices faint that swell 
 
 And mingle gradual in an unseen choir, 
 
 That near and nearer float, and then retire, 
 Dying away as in a distant knell, 
 Of deep, unutterable moods, that tell — 
 
 Then sweetly swell again, and rising higher. 
 
 Slow in the infinite depths afar e\i)ire. 
 As in a last, ineffable farewell. 
 Lyre of the Wind, through es-ery extpiisite change, 
 
 The soul, from out its depths doth answer thee. 
 Far wandering on through symphonies new and strange, 
 
 That hint of niDods else^vh^re. perchance to be, 
 While in those harmonies of boundless range. 
 
 Thou murmurest of the infinite mystery. 
 
 Those mingled voices seem to call away 
 
 From this great tumult, where the myriads moil 
 
 Amid its baseness and its endless toil, 
 Into some country of serener day, 
 Through regions new and all unknown to stray, 
 
 And quite beyond all echo of the coil 
 
 Where fate our efforts can forever foil. 
 In the fair Islands of the Blest alway ; 
 Far from this changeful life where many dream. 
 
 And o'er their saddened lot where many weep, 
 And never more to be 'twere better, deem, — 
 
 Beneath the turf to rest in endless sleep, — 
 To gain, at last, a great repose supreme 
 
 Where all were hushed in an eternal sleep 1 
 
86 
 
 MINOR FOF.MS. 
 
 NIAGARA. 
 
 Far-Stretching in the morning beams, 
 And blazing in the golden gleams, 
 The mingling of a thousand streams ! 
 
 And trembling many-hued, among 
 Thy shifting mists, the rainbow hung 
 Before thee, o'er thy gulf is flung. 
 
 Over thy wave of tender green 
 That falls forever down serene, 
 Then foams into the whitest sheen, 
 
 Its gauzy veil the mist-film throws, 
 
 Through which the shimmering sunshine glow: 
 
 Down to thy deep of watery snows. 
 
 The avalanche, from mountain-height. 
 Sweeps, shuddering, in its awful might, 
 And robed in mantle dim and white. 
 
 Slow gathering, in its downward sweep, 
 Into some gulfs unfathomed deep. 
 With wild, and long, and fearful leap, 
 
 Down, down, into the abysmal mist 
 Whose mysteries mortal never wist. 
 No eye hath seen nor ear may list ; 
 
 And silence all the air doth fill 
 
 Save of some moorland-bird the trill, 
 
 Or trickling of the mountain-rill. 
 
MINOR POKMS. 87 
 
 But ever-changing thou dost pour, 
 Yet still the same, with solemn roar, 
 O'er thy dim cliff for evermore. 
 
 And standing on thy shore, I seem, 
 
 As one who in a silent dream. 
 
 And launched on some mysterious stream. 
 
 Is borne, from whence he knows not, hither, 
 And with vast sweep is hurried thither. 
 He knows not why, he knows not whither ; 
 
 While through my brain, in sounding rhyme, 
 All thoughts eternal and sublime. 
 Course slow, the universe, and time, 
 
 And endless change that ceaselessly 
 Hymns of eternity through thee, 
 And I enter into Infinity. 
 
 Published 25th June, 1859. 
 
 HORICON.-' 
 
 Wild mere, upon thy bosom deep and still, 
 
 P'ar from life's meanness and its feverish strife, 
 
 How soon I could forget all wrong and ill. 
 And sorrow in the world forever rife. 
 
 All malice too I soon could tpiite forget 
 
 Here where life's low desires and passions cease, 
 
 And 'neath the solemn gaze of nature yet 
 Could yield myself into the arms of peace. 
 
 The white stag here at noonday drinks his fill 
 By brooklets black with fir-trees dropping dew ; 
 
 Then far o'er hazy hills, to fresher still 
 
 He wanders, and to well-springs wild and new. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 
 
 The drowsy wavelets, crinkling, ever run 
 Over the noiseless sands of silver here ; 
 
 And the white waterfowl far in the sun 
 
 Lies dreaming on the dim and glimmering mere. 
 
 He and his mate the summer long there find. 
 The snowy water-blooms that lie asleep, 
 
 And give their sweetness to the wandering wind 
 That glides unseen al)ove the slumberous deep. 
 
 There ever at the rosy morning hour, 
 
 Where rests the wave or in green eddies whirls, 
 
 Linked light from leaf to leaf, from flower to flower. 
 The gossamer hangs heavy with its pearls. 
 
 The birdlet brown here trills his warblings fleet, 
 O'erjoyed with his own music, in the sun. 
 
 And running o'er all changes wild and sweet 
 Returns unto the theme he had begun. 
 
 On yon Dark Mountain slow and silently 
 
 The great, broad shadows in the sunshine die. 
 
 And soft, deep shadows in each sleeping tree 
 Like a green twilight here forever lie. 
 
 When down o'er all these hills, and dells, and isles, 
 The slumberous twilight lowers like a dream. 
 
 We wonder if the world that round us smiles 
 Is real, or to fancy do but seem. 
 
 Wild mere though ne'er I gaze upon thee more. 
 Still here or wandering far in foreign lands, 
 
 Thy beauty all is mine — thy lovely shore — 
 These hours of peace upon thy silent sands. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 89 
 
 TO A SKYLARK. 
 
 Written on seeing one restlessly endeavouring to escape from its cage, 
 -at a bird-fancier's, in Philadelphia. 
 
 Against thy prison-bars still fiercely beating 
 With restless wings, striving to find thy way 
 
 Out from thy gloomy cell and give thy greeting 
 Triumphant to the broad and glorious day, 
 
 In vain endeavour thus thy short, and fleeting, 
 And cheerless life thou here wilt wear away. 
 
 Poor alien, can it be that thou art haunted 
 By visions such as the sad exile sees. 
 
 Of some deep, amethystine gulf, enchanted, 
 Far in the bosom of the Pyrenees, 
 
 Where, by no hand of mortal ever planted, 
 
 Wild blooms are reddening for the golden bees? 
 
 Or, maddening dreams of some blue lakelet lying 
 'Mid the white Alps, mirrouring but the sun, 
 
 A star, or warbling skylark o'er it flying 
 
 To meet the morn, or, when the day was done. 
 
 Sinking unto his mate, and sweetly trying 
 His vespers o'er his nest so nearly won ? 
 
 Or, yet, of England's hills, and of the auroral 
 And crimson beams flushing the orient through ; 
 
 Ui)on her highland-moors the rose-tints floral 
 
 Deepening on heath-bells wet with sweetest dew, 
 
 Longing, with longing vain, to join the choral 
 And excpiisite chaunt far in those skies of blue? 
 
90 iMINOR POEMS. 
 
 Thy alien fellow-captives never greeting, 
 Gathered in this dim cell from many lands, 
 
 Thou wearest out thy little life and fleeting, 
 Striving all vainly with thy prison-bands, 
 
 Beating against them with a restless beating, 
 
 To gain that Temple grand not made with hands 
 
 THE LADY OF LIEBENSTEIN.* 
 
 A BALLAD. 
 
 The wandering swallow at twilight went 
 To her home neath the castle battlement. 
 
 And gently down, in her clay-built nest. 
 With drowsy twitter she dropped to rest, 
 
 And proud through the gateway opening wide, 
 Went the red-cross knight, with his Grecian l)ride,. 
 
 And the shadows settled below on the Rhine, 
 And over Sternfels and Liebenstein, 
 
 And the festal lights they beamed afar. 
 And Sternfels shone like the evening star. 
 
 Through the halls all hung with the spear and lance^ 
 Went the knight and the maid in the winding dance,. 
 
 And golden goblets, with roses bright, 
 
 Were filled with the red wine's crimson light. 
 
 And the harp was swept by the minstrel l)old. 
 As he grandly chaunted the legend old. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 91 
 
 And the hours went by like a gliding dream. 
 As they pass in Elysian fields we deem. 
 
 But hushed were the halls of Liebenstein — 
 There was neither dance nor the crimson wine, 
 
 And Silence, gloomy and lowering. 
 Brooded above like an evil thing. 
 
 From under the gateway, with sorrow bent, 
 A grim and mailed warriour went, 
 
 And stood in the halls of Sternfels lone, 
 For the dance was over, the feast was done ; 
 
 And there strode to meet him, in armour bright, 
 Through the opening ])ortal, the red-cross knight. 
 
 And the brothers, grimly fronting stood 
 A moment still, ere the deadly feud. 
 
 Short space and silent they held their breath. 
 As gazing each on the spectre Death ; 
 
 And slowly, with neither sigh nor word. 
 
 Each drew from its scabbard his flashing sword. 
 
 When, with tresses bright as their armour's shine, 
 Trode 'twixt them the Lady of Liebenstein. 
 
 " Cease, brothers mine, for more to me 
 Ye now can never, never be. 
 
 '■'■ Ah ! when your sire now gray with grief. 
 And trembling aye like the Autumn leaf. 
 
92 MINOR K)Ei\lS. 
 
 " Under his roof, to his own hearth-stone 
 Took me, an orphan weak and lone, 
 
 "Forsaken, with neither power nor place, 
 Albeit come of a knightly race, 
 
 " To dwell with ye all side by side, 
 And he won my heart, as his future bride, 
 
 '' Who far through other climes to rove 
 But went to find him another love, 
 
 " How could I dream that thus for me 
 This deadly feud should ever be ? 
 
 " Or ever I enter the cloister dim. 
 To chaunt in secret the holy hymn, 
 
 " Thou who hast broken to me thy faith. 
 And thou who hast loved to the bitter death, 
 
 " From hatred dire and deadly cease ; 
 (rive and receive the kiss of peace. 
 
 " Mine eyes refuse their wonted flood. 
 But my heart, in secret, weeps tears of blood ; 
 
 " From off my soul this burden take, 
 I pray, for Jesu Christ his sake 1" 
 
 The beadsman by her side that stood. 
 He made the sign of the holy rood. 
 
 Each brother-heart, from hate at rest. 
 Then warmly beat on a brother's breast ; 
 
MINOR POKMS. 93 
 
 And slowly out on the night-wind's swell, 
 The maiden murmured her last farewell, 
 
 And never more her footsteps fell 
 
 In those ancient halls she had graced so well, 
 
 But all unknown, as erst she came, 
 She jjassed away with a feigned name. 
 
 With a lover new the fickle Greek 
 Fled, as the rose on her fading cheek ; 
 
 x\nd the knightly brothers i:>assed away 
 Under the watch of the warder gray. 
 
 The names of all in the past are lost; 
 This story only time's waste hath crossed. 
 
 The knight and the maid have passed away, 
 And the falling walls with moss are gray, 
 
 The halls are fearfully still and lone, 
 
 And the bramble covers the broad hearth-stone. 
 
 And the cony there hath made his house, 
 And the nightly owl, and the flittermouse. 
 
 The sere leaves fall on the rising gale, 
 That wails through the ruin a dreary wail. 
 
 And the Autumn clouds begin to lower. 
 And the raven croaks on the ruined tower. 
 
 And often here, in the after-time. 
 
 Shall the wanderer come from a distant clime. 
 
94 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 And down l)y the Rhine his way shall wend 
 As he leans on the arm of his chosen friend, 
 
 And mournfully tell the tale I have sung 
 In the alien tones of his stranger-tongue, 
 
 And add, as he muses of time and death, 
 " 'Tis thus that the ancient legend saith." 
 
 LISSAU.'' 
 On Lissau shone the rising sun, 
 The lark his carol had begun, 
 Far-soaring from his night's repose. 
 The dew was in the opening rose. 
 
 But singing lark nor morning rays 
 Awoke to life the Lissau ways, 
 And in her streets there was no tread 
 To break the unwonted silence dead ; 
 Yet morning twilight there would soon 
 Burst forth into unwonted noon. 
 
 In Lissau hamlet, life had run 
 From father on to stalwart son. 
 Calm gliding on, from age to age, 
 Without a mark on history's page ; 
 Yet many a life of sturdy worth 
 Had passed beside the hamlet-hearth, 
 And after quiet life's surcease 
 Had vanished there in death and peace. 
 
 But southward far, with deepening awe 
 Astound, the men of Lissau saw 
 A sign of fear. 'Twas not the rain, — 
 The tempest deluging the plain 
 With mighty flood. 
 
MINOR POEMS, 95 
 
 As one in haste, 
 The reeling whirlwind leaves a waste 
 Behind, and on, with heavy tread, 
 A thing of wonder and of dread, 
 Whereat the cheeks of men grow pale, 
 Armed with the lightning and the hail, 
 O'er harvest fields of blasted corn, 
 And lordly forest oaks uptorn. 
 O'er wreck of homes, and houseless men, 
 Nor turning on its path again, 
 It stalks upon its fearful way, 
 With none its blind career to stay. 
 
 But this was not the formless form 
 
 Of fear, — the blind and blinding storm. 
 
 The darkening cloud, with deepening awe 
 
 The silent men of Lissau saw, 
 
 Was of a vast and moving horde, 
 
 Whose symbols were the cross and sword. 
 
 With couriers robed in sable stole, 
 With ominous plain-song, and the toll, 
 The warning toll of sullen bell, 
 They came with steady purpose fell. 
 
 Before that league of power and hate 
 That lowered afar, — a coming Fate, — 
 The dwellers of the hamlet knew 
 Nor justice fair, nor courage true. 
 Could aught avail. With dauntless heart, 
 They bravely chose the nobler part, 
 Gathered their little all in haste, 
 And left of Lissau but a waste. 
 
96 
 
 Upon the mount, above the flood, 
 The dwellers sad of Lissau stood, — 
 The maiden in her youthful charms, 
 The mother, with her child in arms, 
 The stalwart son, with heart of ire. 
 And with toil-hardened palm, the sire, 
 Who, 'mid the hurrying tumult wild, 
 Led by the hand his little child. 
 
 As faithful friends, they left behind. 
 In deadly league, the flame and wind, — 
 Made of their homes one mighty pyre. 
 That 'mid the all-destroying fire. 
 Vanished in mingled smoke and flame, 
 And left of Lissau but a name. 
 
 They banished, as they could, their fears, 
 Brushed from their eyes the blinding tears. 
 Then, turning sadly as they must, 
 They from their garments shook the dust. 
 With last embrace and severing hands 
 Departed into sundered lands. 
 
 TO A DAISY. 
 
 "The Daisie, 
 
 That well, by reason, men it call may 
 The Daisie ; or els the eye of the day." 
 
 Chaucer. 
 
 I found thee far upon an English field. 
 Sunning thyself upon that golden day 
 
 When, through idyllic meadows rich and green, 
 I wandered from the city wide astray. 
 
 Deep in the blue and beamy air above, 
 Unseen, the skylark trembled in the sun. 
 
 Yet, o'er his ditty sweet of joy and love, 
 I heard him warbling run. 
 
MINOR POKM^ 
 
 97 
 
 Then, ere thy name was told 
 
 By her who reigns within thy reahii a queen, 
 Whose fitting crown were a rich daisy-wreath 
 
 Woven of blooms gathered in meadows green. 
 Warm, summery suns beneath, — [gold, — 
 
 Blooms snow-white, crimson-fringed, with heart of 
 With loving divination I divined 
 
 Thou wert the daisy of my boyhood's dreams, 
 But which I then had never dreamed to find 
 By Knglish streams 
 
 And wandering far through other lands, I found 
 
 Under the shadow of the walls of Rome, 
 Thy sister-blooms that broidered all the ground 
 
 Above two English hearts that, far from home, 
 Lay buried there ; 
 And, later still, I gathered others where 
 
 The Svvitzer's little son, with eyes of blue, 
 That spoke the language of his German heart, 
 
 Found them amid the dew, 
 Uttering thy name in his sweet stranger-tongue — 
 His heart its little song of loving sung, 
 
 And in that harmony beat well its part. 
 
 And where the Neckar and the lordly Rhine 
 Went winding down together to the sea, 
 
 I found on (rerman ground fair sisters thine 
 That turned my heart to England and to thee. 
 
 Now, in the dreamy Indian Summer, here 
 
 In this wild western land. 
 Amid the quiet of the fading year. 
 
 Musing of Chaucer and old Saxon times. 
 With book in hand. 
 Bright with the beauty of the ' Flower and Leaf,' 
 I sing this songlet brief 
 
 Of thee, oft sung in many a hundred rhymes. 
 
98 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 LA NOTTE DI MICHELANGIOLO.7 
 
 Pale Dawn that struggles with a dream of Day, 
 
 And beaming Day, that crowned with golden light, 
 Seems glorying in his own radiance bright, 
 
 And Twilight, fading into Night away. 
 
 Those forms that o'er the fleeting Hours hold sway. 
 And o'er the changeful lives of men have might. 
 And long have ruled the nations in their flight, 
 
 What, in thy heavy swoon to thee are they? 
 
 There is an infinite sorrow in thy mien, — 
 A sorrow wearied into endless sleep, 
 
 As thou hadst drank, in thy despair serene, 
 Of poppy or mandragora some deep 
 
 And sluggish draught, and thus hadst drowsed been, 
 And the dead silence of thy woes didst kee]>. 
 
 In San Lorenzo's chapel gray and dim, 
 
 Hath the old master wrought this thought in stone. 
 
 And toiling there in silence and alone, 
 Has for all ages left this dream of him. 
 The tyrant, too, in armour clad and grim. 
 
 Looks down in sullen gloom from off his throne. 
 
 And Mary, mother, o'er her child doth moan. 
 And over all steals the cathedral-hymn. 
 While ever, in the throbbing city round. 
 
 Life is one scene of wide and stifled woe ; 
 The mournful-eyed Italian aye hath found 
 
 The fate so drear, embodied long ago 
 For his sad land, sunk in her heavy swound. 
 
 By the great, sorrowing soul of Angelo. 
 
MINOR POEMS. ' g^ 
 
 Columbia, steering through these stranger-seas 
 To thee, oh, could the Italian pilot bring 
 No eastern tidings of the young dayspring 
 
 Nor golden day, but only such as these? 
 
 Let not this heaviness thine eyelids seize 
 
 And o'er thy heart a death-cold slumber fling, 
 Leaving thee in an endless slumbering. 
 
 Thy draught dull-drained to the drowsy less. 
 
 Ah, though the morn is beaming gloriously. 
 The night with all its dusky shadows past, 
 
 Of all the nations thou alone shalt lie 
 
 Sunk in thy sluggish dream, when, at the last. 
 
 The Angel bright of Freedom, hurrying by, 
 
 Shall rouse all nations with his trumpet-blast ! 
 
 ISIS.^ 
 
 I am whatever was and is, 
 
 And also all that is to be ; 
 No magian wise with magic his. 
 
 Hath e'er unveiled the mystery. 
 
 They name me with unnumbered names, 
 In every age, in every land, — - 
 
 On snow-fields red with polar flames. 
 And on the barren desert-sand. 
 
 By widely-sundered tribes my praise 
 Beneath both sun and stars is sung ; 
 
 They chaunt of my mysterious ways, 
 In every clime, in every tongue. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 
 
 The bard, lone musing by the sea, 
 
 Hears, in its wide and wandering swell, 
 
 A whisper of the mystery 
 
 He dimly feels, but cannot tell. 
 
 ^Vhile musing thus, he strives in vain 
 To grasp the thought that baffles him, 
 
 A wider, more mysterious main 
 
 Spreads out before him, vast and dim. 
 
 And baffled in the end he stands 
 On the last mountain-top of mind, 
 
 Seeking o'er glimmering seas and lands, 
 The mere-stone which he cannot find. 
 
 In depths unknown, in worlds unseen, 
 That in your language have no name, 
 
 'Mid starless night or solar sheen, 
 
 I am, through every change, the same. 
 
 The grass that creeping robes the ground, 
 Renews through me its emerald warm, — ■ 
 
 The oak, with crown of leafage crowned, 
 So manifold and multiform. 
 
 The iris, trembling in the sun. 
 Or paler in the moon's white ray, 
 
 A type of forms through which I run 
 By night no less than glowing day; 
 
 And the green billow of the sea. 
 Dissolving on the winding shore, 
 
 A changeful symbol is of me, 
 In endless round forevermore. 
 
MINOR POEMS. iOI 
 
 And though forever I return 
 
 Again, yet is it not to stay ; 
 And though for me ye ever yearn, 
 
 Still, from your grasp I haste away. 
 
 Preluding witli grave murmurings 
 
 Through melodies that need not words, 
 
 With hand unseen I touch the strings, 
 
 And rise through higher, grander chords, 
 
 And wandering on through infinite themes. 
 
 And varying infinitely still, 
 I chaunt my changes, as of dreams, 
 
 Which all the soul with longing fill. 
 
 These symphonies through life that roll. 
 Whose meaning ne'er has been divined, 
 
 Leave in the tranced and listening soul 
 A music vague and undefined. 
 
 Thus, waking deathless longings deep 
 Which are the soul's immortal breath, 
 
 I ward away the fatal sleep 
 
 Which were the spirit's final death. 
 
 And though 1 leave unsatisfied. 
 
 Yet is it all without annoy. 
 For, wandering through mine empire wide, 
 
 Ye find a calm, perpetual joy. 
 
 And thus I stir within the soul 
 
 The striving sweet, withouten strife, — 
 
 Your aspirations deep controul ; 
 I am, indeed, your proper life, — 
 
MINOR POEMS. 
 
 The life that fills all space, and sways 
 The evil with its justice strong, 
 
 That moving on through hidden ways, 
 Serenely overthrows the wrong, — 
 
 The life that strengthens all who know 
 The Right, and in its name have bled,- 
 
 Who overthrow the Wrong that so 
 The Right be stablished in its stead. 
 
 I am Truth that was and is, 
 
 And shall throughout all aions be ; 
 
 No magian grand with magic his. 
 Shall e'er unveil the Mystery. 
 
 ABDALLAH, SON OF AMROU. 
 
 Abdallah, Son of Amrou, sat alone, 
 
 Amid the ruins of a city vast 
 
 That in the immemorial, shadowy past, 
 Discrowned kings her servile slaves had shown. 
 The stork upon his column, as a throne, — 
 
 Back through the twilight-crimson, fading fast, 
 
 Returned from distant waters, — sunk at last. 
 And settled down as moveless as the stone. 
 From granite lips of sphinxes and of kings 
 
 No whisper fell u])on the listening ear, — 
 The Nile, from his far-off, mysterious springs. 
 
 Flowed silent by, as if in awe and fear ; 
 The Son of Amrou, musing on these things, 
 
 As in a dream gazed o'er the desert drear. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 103 
 
 TO ENGLAND. 
 
 Written on my return, after a residence on the Continent. 
 
 Land of my fathers ! though a western sun 
 
 Shone on my birth, thy free and peaceful shore 
 With warmly-beating heart I tread once more, 
 
 In stranger-lands my wanderings being done ; 
 
 For I return not unto thee as one 
 
 Who is an alien ; in my heart's deep core 
 There is of love for thee a generous store. 
 
 And shall be till my sands their course have run. 
 
 Of all the nations manifold that dwell 
 
 Upon the continents and isles of earth, 
 
 How few are they who feel and show so well 
 
 The brotherhood of common human birth ; 
 
 And there are none whose bosoms ever swell 
 
 With manlier courage or more solid worth. 
 
 By thy white cliffs forever at whose feet 
 
 The waves unroll, the snowy seafowl play, 
 Amid the flashing of the sunny spray, 
 
 Or on whose walls the surging billows beat ; 
 
 Or where thy waters, welling pure and sweet, 
 Far from the tumult of the shore away. 
 In quiet though sequestered valleys stray 
 
 Or in the sleeping mere's still bosom meet. 
 
 Thy master-poets have, with colours warm, 
 
 Hallowed, in our dear common tongue, the ground, 
 
 The daisied field, all filled with many a form 
 Of beauty moving to melodious sound, 
 
 Until ' our very hearts have caught the charm 
 That sheds a beautv over earth ' around. 
 
104 IVIINOR I'OKMS. 
 
 The mitred monk who rules at Rome would fain 
 
 Have these fair realms once more within his power, 
 And with his stealthy aliens, hour by hour. 
 
 Is labouring for thine overthrow amain. 
 
 Be wise and show thy humblest that thy gain 
 
 Is their great gain — raise n[) thy ])oor who cower 
 In ignorance and vice ; — all storms that lower 
 
 Around thee then shall threaten thee in vain. 
 
 The memory of thy rule of former time 
 
 Hath lost its bitterness, its olden smart. 
 
 With us, and but one unrepented crime 
 
 Of ours hath jjower to keep us still apart : 
 
 And but for this in l)rotherhood sublime 
 
 We should embrace each other, heart to heart. 
 
 Rest sure that what there is of good and true. 
 Of love of freedom and unchanging right. 
 Of all that is the strength of lasting might, 
 
 Must be for thee, thine every trial through. 
 
 And we who the same pathway tread anew. 
 In a new-risen sun's increasing light. 
 And, haply, to a goal far-off and bright, 
 
 Feel that our honour were thine honour too. 
 
 Ne'er to his level stoop whose crown was won 
 By dyeing in his brother's blood his hands. 
 
 In order's holy name, and blush has none 
 
 Before the world in whose broad gaze he stands, 
 
 For Truth and Freedom everywhere are one. 
 
 And they shall reign at last o'er manv lands. 
 
 Nor stoop to make thy soil a hunting-ground 
 
 For him who comes with freedom on his tongue, 
 And slavery in his heart, who all hath wrung 
 
 From his worn bondmen, 'neath his footsteps ground ; 
 
 Nor yet bewray the exile who hatli found 
 
MINOR POEMS. 105 
 
 A refuge on thy shore, and who hath ching 
 
 To thee in trust ; — thy glorious bards have sung 
 That shore is free — let Freedom guard it round. 
 Thus may we out into the future go 
 
 With hoi^eful hearts to try its wide unknown 
 Together, faithful to the true, and so 
 
 Sure of grand contiuest through the right alone — 
 Not the sword's conquest, with its infinite woe. 
 
 But clad in armour by the Truth beshone ! 
 
 Dover, England, 1854. 
 
 TO CHARLES C. BURLEIGH. 
 
 Jeder grosse Mensch will fiir die Ewigkeit gearbeitet haben. 
 
 SCHILLBR. 
 
 There is no nobler sight in life — 
 In silvered age or stalwart youth — 
 
 Than 'mid the meaner common strife 
 A heart right loyal to the truth. 
 
 A heart like thine that can endure 
 
 The failure of the right to see, 
 Unfaltering, still deeming sure 
 
 For truth the final victory. 
 
 From the broad chest and tireless thew 
 In agony great sweat-drops start, 
 
 And suffering wild throbs madly through 
 The pulses of the world's great heart. 
 
 But now the crowned king must flee, 
 The kaiser tremble on his throne. 
 
 And Freedom's watchword gloriously 
 Is passed from zone to farthest zone — 
 
Io6 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 Where silence o'er the desert reigns — 
 The sands the Bedouin wanders o'er, — 
 
 Over the vast and snow-white plains 
 Around the pole sea's regions frore- — 
 
 O'er earth's broad continents where smiles 
 The golden sunshine, full and free ; 
 
 To all her green and palmy isles, 
 O'er every wide and sunny sea. 
 
 And the strong league of mind and power 
 God's trembling poor no more shall dread^ 
 
 But sing, with brimming hearts, the hour 
 When Liberty and Genius wed. 
 
 Then shall the weary slave no more 
 Weep at her labour in the sun, 
 
 Nor groan upon her cabin-floor 
 At nightfall when her toil is done. 
 
 Nor Power nor Pride, with iron tread, 
 Trample upon the weak again — 
 
 Unheard the hungry cry for bread 
 Among the suffering sons of men. 
 
 I'his age of glory to foretell 
 
 'Tis thine — a fitting task sublime ; 
 
 'Tis thus, with trusting heart, right well 
 Thou labourest for all coming time. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 107 
 
 TO PARKER PILLSBURY. 
 
 My friend revered, you who have seen, 
 With vision clear and soul serene, 
 Whole decades of the history mean 
 With which our nation has defaced 
 The stainless page whereon it traced 
 The record of its shameful deeds, 
 For future times, I know there needs 
 No word of mine to place your worth 
 Among the noble names of earth, 
 Even if these, my simple rhymes, 
 Could hope to reach those after-times 
 When what is life to you and me 
 To others shall be history. 
 
 Here, on a broader, vaster field 
 Than the world's story has revealed 
 Before, with purpose base and vile, 
 With cunning low and stealthy wile, 
 The demagogue still holds his place, 
 And boldly shows his brazen face — 
 Like to the poisonous mushroom. 
 That springs to life 'mid sultry gloom — 
 And, withering like a thing of ill. 
 Is followed soon by viler still. 
 On the dead level — drear expanse — 
 Of their own insignificance. 
 Here microscopic statesmen toil 
 For notoriety and spoil. 
 And fawn and cringe for wealth and place- 
 Most abject of the human race — 
 
lo8 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 Far-stretching, in their motley dress, 
 In a long line of littleness ; 
 While that vast army's hosts are led 
 By one who lends a deeper dread 
 Unto that name of hate and fear. 
 The abhorred name of buccaneer, — 
 And steers the pirate-ship of state 
 Straight on the hidden rocks of fate. 
 
 Here the weak mariner in the tide 
 Of the dark river, deep and wide, 
 Is onward swept, with mighty sweep, 
 Into that wide, unbounded deep 
 Where, the sole needle cast away 
 That shows the star of steady ray, 
 He laughs to scorn the God who yet 
 His bark, the swelling sails all set. 
 In wreck complete shall dash away 
 And leave no vestige to the day ! 
 
 The weary exile here once more 
 Who, fleeing from his native shore. 
 Seeks, unsuspecting, now to stand 
 On Freedom's side, in Freedom's land. 
 By Despot Power is singled out, 
 Led to his hosts with deafening shout. 
 And with those cohorts dread is told. 
 And, will he, nill he, is enrolled ; 
 And though he fruitless struggle, still 
 Is moulded by that mighty will ; 
 And by the side of beauteous youth, 
 That, knight-like, vows his heart of truth, 
 Looks on while Slavery twines and holds 
 Fair Freedom in its snaky folds. 
 And coldly lists his anguish-cry, 
 Laocoon in his agony I 
 
MINOR FOKMS. 
 
 Freedom 1 thou word of olden fame — 
 
 How little is there in a name, 
 
 And yet how much ! A thoughtless herd. 
 
 Led captive by that magic word, 
 
 Here shout the praise of those who scorn 
 
 The man to honest lal)our born. 
 
 And to earth's lessons add this last. 
 
 That, after all the dangers jjast, 
 
 Freedom must feel the deadly steel 
 
 Most in the slumbering Commonweal ! 
 
 My friend revered, your highest praise 
 
 It is that in these evil days — 
 
 These long, these wearing, wearying \ears, 
 
 Marked by dark millions' unseen tears — 
 
 Firm and undaunted you have stood, 
 
 Still battling for the true and good ; 
 
 Forever steadfast for the right 
 
 While others, in ignoble flight, 
 
 Have left our scattered ranks and thin. 
 
 Where treachery oft has entered in — 
 
 With stalwart arm in battle brave. 
 
 And eye still fixed upon the slave, 
 
 Whom you have sought and seek to save. 
 
 109 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES F. HOVEY. 
 
 Our friend beloved, with whom we went 
 Along life's hot and dusty way, 
 With cheerful hearts for many a day, 
 
 Unto a distant land is sent. 
 
 We know that with a loving hand 
 
 God never yet hath ceased to give, 
 And that some other one may live 
 
 In that deserted place to stand. 
 
no MINOR POEMS. 
 
 But though we know that this is true, 
 We cannot other do than fear. 
 Upon thy hand I droj) this tear, 
 
 Brave friend ! as now I say adieu. 
 
 And though God's universe is grand 
 And vast, yet still we do believe 
 (Nor, therefore, will too greatly grieve) 
 
 That we once more shall clasp thy hand. 
 
 TO A DEMAGOGUE. 
 
 The waiting nation to the truth to win 
 
 How easy, hadst thou had that purpose vast ; 
 
 Willing had then with thee the people cast 
 Their lot, and on the future entered in. 
 Then, far above the world's ignoble din. 
 
 In heights where nevermore a place thou hast, 
 
 Within that deepening night, the solemn past, 
 Thy name an ever-beaming star had been. 
 Thou didst prefer the emi)ty clamour loud 
 
 Of ignorance and baseness meanly born, 
 And to thy fall, thy princely head hast bowed 
 
 Like to the bright and glorious star of morn ; 
 Therefor thou hast the applauses of the crowd. 
 
 And of the noble, deep, undying scorn ! 
 
 THE WANDERING JEW. 
 
 He passed across the twilight waste, 
 A spectral shadow, dimly traced, 
 And vanished far, as one in haste. 
 
MINOR POEMS. Ill 
 
 And ne'er, through night or weary day, 
 He may his endless wandering stay. 
 Though generations jjass away. 
 
 And fading, as the fading grass. 
 The fleeting generations i)ass, — 
 Or visions in a magic glass. 
 
 And seeking evermore, in vain, 
 A respite from his inly pain. 
 He comes again, and yet again. 
 
 Once, as he sat beside his tent, 
 
 A stranger came, with wandering spent 
 
 And 'neath his heavy burden bent. 
 
 An hungered and with travel sore, 
 Deep sorrow in his face he wore, 
 And sought to rest beside the door. 
 
 Upon the stranger sad he turned, — 
 His heart with sudden anger burned, — 
 And from his threshold fiercely spurned. 
 
 Whereat, a deadly shudder went 
 Through all the earth and firmament, 
 As of the heart of nature rent. 
 
 And straightway, on his burdened breast, 
 A hand of iron, stifling, pressed, 
 And drove him forth in wild unrest, 
 
 Through that inexpiable crime, 
 
 To goad him on, from clime to clime, 
 
 Throughout the flight of coming time. 
 
 And evermore, from waste to waste. 
 A spectral shadow, dimly traced, 
 He swiftly flees, as one in haste. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 
 
 Threading the city's crowded street, 
 With none his stranger-form to greet, 
 He passes on with hurrying feet. 
 
 And where Pahnyra, ruined, stands, 
 
 Alone amid the desert sands, 
 
 Who ruled, a queen, o'er antiijue lands. 
 
 He finds no rest where wearily 
 
 He ploughs, unknown, the weltering sea 
 
 That moans in lone immensity, 
 
 Nor where, through waxing, waning moons,. 
 The billows chaunt their mystic runes 
 Along the wide and windy dunes. 
 
 He treads the barren desert drear, 
 
 Where pyramids their shadows rear 
 
 O'er kings, through fear who ruled, in fear. 
 
 While stars, deep in the solemn night, 
 A glorious company of light, 
 Gaze silent on his evil plight. 
 
 He pierces far, with venturous prore, 
 Through boreal regions, white and frore, 
 'Mid whirling snows and wintry blore. 
 
 And longing aye his soul to steep 
 
 In soothing slumber, sweet and deep, — 
 
 A dreamless, everlasting sleep, — 
 
 Still his inexpiable crime 
 
 Shall goad him on from clime to clime. 
 
 Throughout the flight of coming time. 
 
 And evermore, from waste to waste, 
 A spectral shadow, dimly traced, 
 He flees afar, as one in haste. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 113 
 
 THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPER. 
 
 " He is young in years, but old in misery." 
 
 Theodore Parker. 
 
 Wandering heedlessly along, 
 Through the city's mighty throng, 
 Deafened by the murmur loud 
 Of the ever-changing crowd, 
 Stunned by all the tumult wild, 
 Goeth he, the outcast child. 
 By the vast and gilded dome, 
 By the lordling's palace-home, 
 By the high and gorgeous fane. 
 With its brightly-coloured pane, 
 And tall spire of pride that tell 
 And richly-fretted pinnacle, — 
 Then within the chimney dark, 
 In the winter's cold and stark, 
 Shameless and unpitying thrust. 
 Stifled by the soot and dust, — 
 By the wretched hovel then 
 Following in the haunts of men ; 
 Crying with the bitter cold 
 In his rags and want untold. 
 Want untold, because no ear 
 Would his tale of sorrow hear. 
 Of his spirit's wretched lot. 
 Bruised and darkened knowing not ; 
 Tears but for the body's pain 
 Trickling down his cheeks in vain,. 
 Naught his sufferings to assuage. 
 Always of our Pariah-age, 
 
114 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 Whether in life's wild turmoil, 
 Or sighing at his weary toil, 
 Or slumbering in his hovel rent, 
 Type extreme — embodiment. 
 
 Little sufferer, sad and lone, 
 
 To the rich thy woes unknown. 
 
 Or if known, unheeded still, 
 
 'Mid thy heavy load of ill, 
 
 By the happy pitied never. 
 
 By the heartless taunted ever, 
 
 Insulted in thy great distress, 
 
 And scorned in very desolateness, 
 
 Oh ! shall not they who turn from thee 
 
 In thy extremest misery, 
 
 On thee, poor soul, for having trod, 
 
 Give answer to offended God ! 
 
 Yes, in thy low and sad estate. 
 Reviled and deeply desolate, 
 He who in sorrow grand and deep 
 Ne'er smiled, but oft was seen to weep, 
 And bowed with bitter anguish when 
 Among the suffering sons of men, 
 In hour of trial great denied. 
 Hunted, betrayed, and crucified, 
 Amid earth's sad and injured sons, 
 Shall count thee with his little ones. 
 And thy spirit's stains forgot, 
 And thy crimes remembered not, 
 And pitying thy strange misery, 
 Shall, through death's awful mystery. 
 Unto the Father welcome thee. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 
 
 "5 
 
 THE TOILER. 
 
 Before the morning's wakening ra}-, 
 
 The aged toiler had begun 
 His task, nor trod the homeward way 
 Till day was done, 
 
 Thankful that, with the toiler's right, 
 
 He still could eat his honest bread, — 
 On his own pillow, at the night. 
 
 Could lay his head. 
 
 The vain, the heartless, and the vile 
 
 In splendour daily passed him by ; 
 He saw with neither envious smile 
 Nor bitter sigh. 
 
 Sometimes, perchance, a passing thought 
 
 He gave his hard and weary lot. 
 Yet still with steady hand he wrought, 
 And murmured not. 
 
 Still the returning evening's close 
 
 Brought, with its shadows, nightly rest — 
 For his worn frame a deep repose, — 
 Peace for his breast. 
 
 Awaiting thus the longer night. 
 
 That soon should bring the great release, 
 Thus patiently each task aright 
 
 He wrought in jDeace. 
 
Il6 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 And when, with weary heart, and head, 
 
 And hand, he could no longer moil. 
 He laid him down upon his bed 
 
 And ceased from toil. 
 
 His aged frame, quite overworn, 
 
 At last, in slumber sweet and deep. 
 Was silent through the lich-gate born 
 To endless sleep. 
 
 DANTE 
 
 Ahi quanto mi parea pien di disdegno ! 
 
 L' Inferno. 
 
 Sad Bard ! while thus I gaze in silence now, 
 And thoughts of destiny within me rise. 
 On the calm sorrow of thy mournful eyes, 
 
 And noble grief that lights thy lofty brow, 
 
 I know that of time's solemn ages thou 
 
 Art one of those great central souls likewise. 
 Round which the paler orbs, through golden skies, 
 
 Went circling in the radiance wide ; — and how 
 
 They learned thy lofty anthem, grand and deep. 
 Who listens to its swelling strain may tell ; — 
 
 Thou with the suffering couldst not choose but weep, 
 Having so deeply drank at Sorrow's well. 
 
 Yet look'st as in surprise that will not sleep 
 That unto man there is a fate so fell. 
 
 It never was for thee to bend thee down 
 
 Before the power and grandeur of the great, 
 Spurning the outcast in his low estate. 
 
 To bow before the mitre and the crown. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 117 
 
 Far in the dusky past with twilight brown, 
 
 I see thee bearing up against thy fate, 
 
 Though poor, and exiled, and quite desolate. 
 Unmoved by courtier's smile or monarch's frown. 
 Though ours is not that selfish, sinful pride 
 
 That spurns our brother ignominiously. 
 That would the struggles of the poor deride. 
 
 Nor can in lowest man the god-like see, 
 Than triumph by the mean oppressor's side 
 
 Much rather would we nobly fail with thee. 
 
 And thou hadst mastered well that truth sublime, 
 A truth which shall throughout all time endure 
 The soul through suffering is of sin made pure- 
 
 The chastener Anguish ever followeth Crime. 
 
 Well didst thou know that in the flight of time 
 The sinning soul is through repentance sure 
 Of that forgiveness which shall bring a cure, 
 
 Restoring brightness of the early prime. 
 
 Thy fame hath spread from pole to farthest pole, 
 And of the world's great history is a part. 
 
 And still shall grow, as on the ages roll. 
 For that thy tears were ever wont to start 
 
 At suffering — thus didst thou stir man's soul 
 And win the great and sorrowing human heart. 
 
 And not the soul alone from sin, through pain, 
 To peace, must ever find its weary way — 
 The nations that with Error are astray 
 
 Must by this selfsame path return again. 
 
 They writhe and wrestle with their fate in vain, 
 And Truth with high, imperial mien alway 
 Down on their paltry struggles of a day 
 
 Looks with the calmness of supreme disdain. 
 
Il8 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 The braggart boast of freedom never yet 
 
 Has for a single day availed with her, 
 Nor those grand souls that, in the ages set. 
 
 Have found it joy on her to minister. 
 Who with their tears have kept her altars wet 
 
 Among earth's nations all that ever were. 
 
 Great souls are always sorrowful, for how 
 
 Can there be man whose heart is not of stone. 
 
 Who hears from all earth's climes the mingled moan, 
 Of those that 'neath the despot lowly bow. 
 Without the stamp of sadness on his brow, 
 
 Nor feels their voiceless anguish all his own, 
 
 But leaving them to struggle on alone. 
 His hand to Freedom has no heart to vow ? 
 Proud Land ! slow nearing to thy mighty fall. 
 
 Who tramplest on thy poor remorselessly, 
 Mingling their cup of wormwood and of gall, 
 
 Full retribution is in store for thee ; — 
 Thou shalt not only, of the nation's all, 
 
 Elude inexorable Destiny ! 
 
 TO PENNSYLVANIA. 
 
 Written on my Return to the Country, after a residence in Europe. 
 
 My native land, now in the genial Spring, 
 
 While the green buds are bursting on the tree, 
 
 Back with the bird that far. on wandering wing 
 Had gone to distant climes, I come to thee, 
 
 And leave the Old World far and dim behind, 
 Like to some floating vision fading fast, 
 
MINOR POEMS. 119 
 
 Where he who seeks for worth shall little find, 
 Amid the rubbish of the ruined past. 
 
 How fair thy fields, spread out all broad and green, — 
 How pure thy skies are arched above, and blue ; 
 
 No fairer and no dearer land, I ween, 
 
 The pilgrim finds, the world's wide journey through. 
 
 Here how the fresh air fills the lungs with life ! 
 
 'Tis not the sultry air of those far lands 
 Wherein low-browed servility is rife 
 
 And tyrants o'er the nations join their hands. 
 
 Here Freedom smiles on me, and might on all 
 Whose footsteps touch the soil of this, her home, 
 
 The heavy chains fall from the weary thrall. 
 And all be safe who from oppression come. 
 
 Yes ! here were man from his oppressor free, 
 But for the treachery of those paltry knaves 
 
 Who beg the tyrant's leave on bended knee 
 
 To hunt his slaves, meanest themselves of slaves, 
 
 Who elbowing up their way to name and place, 
 And ever with the just man's honest scorn, 
 
 On wealth and power fawn with a natural grace, 
 And play the serf as to the manner born. 
 
 Who serve their country loudly with the tongue. 
 That they, in deed, may safely serve her less, 
 
 And with their praises by hired menials sung, 
 Ready to sell her for a pottage-mess, — 
 
 A hungry horde, who, having all to gain 
 
 And nought to lose, have still the art to keep, 
 
120 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 Who Struggling for the garbage, might and main, 
 Are ever in the market, and are cheap. 
 
 These are thy statesmen ! these are they who fill 
 Thy council -halls to thy most burning shame, 
 
 And these are they who long shall fill them still 
 And trample in the dust thine honored name ! 
 
 Philadelphia, 1S54. 
 
 QUIA DEFECIMUS IN IRA TUA, ET FURORE 
 TUO TUBATI SUMUS. 
 
 There is a wild and mingled wail 
 
 Of winds among the autumnal woods. 
 
 Of rains whirled by the shifting gale 
 And surging of the storm-lashed floods. 
 
 And in the midst a wail more deep 
 
 Than that of rain, and wind, and surge, — 
 
 The wail of those who inly weep. 
 
 Whose mourning spirits chaunt the dirge 
 
 Of them that from their sleep to rise 
 
 Shall not essay forevermore, 
 Whose blood is shed a sacrifice 
 
 On Slavery's altars dark with gore. 
 
 Look on this man in slumber deep 
 
 Borne to the country-churchyard's calm; 
 
 His brain is soothed to endless sleep. 
 His heart it hath an endless balm. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 
 
 He knew the storm that threatened long, 
 With lowering front, had burst at last ; 
 
 He knew the true, and brave, and strong, 
 Must bare their bosoms to the blast. 
 
 That village churchyard still and green 
 
 It is his place of resting now ; 
 Perpetual peace is in his mien, 
 
 And peace is on his lip and brow. 
 
 And in that cool and quiet bed 
 Could any slumber be more sweet, 
 
 The headstone standing at his head. 
 The footstone standing at his feet ? 
 
 Life's fearful usage, fierce and rough. 
 Shall never more disturb his breast ; 
 
 Six feet of earth are now enough 
 To yield him everlasting rest. 
 
 Another drew his painful breath 
 On feverish field, by sickly stream. 
 
 Languished, bewildered in his death, 
 iVnd died "perplexed in the extreme," 
 
 Not knowing if the land he loved 
 
 To his great Thought was leal and true, 
 
 The Thought for which he lived and moved 
 And drew the daily breath he drew. 
 
 One fell 'mid blare of bugles wild, 
 
 The booming gun and murderous shell ; 
 
 Earth rested on her breast her child 
 Where mangled in her arms he fell. 
 
122 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 Not thinking of the day supreme 
 
 For which his boyish hand had wrought, 
 
 He died before his morning-dream 
 Had brightened into perfect thought. 
 
 Upon his thick, fair hair the Night 
 Did nightly weep her heaviest dew, 
 
 And on his hds that veiled from light 
 His eyes of mildest, deepest blue. 
 
 There, bleaching in the sun and wind 
 Long on that battle-field he lay — 
 
 The carrion-vulture there could find 
 And only she, his corse, her prey. 
 
 High over that vast, warring host. 
 Through all its troublous wanderings. 
 
 Forever follows, like a ghost. 
 
 The ominous shadow of her wings. 
 
 Ah ! what a banquet grand we spread 
 On all these many fields for her. 
 
 With one continuous slaughter red. 
 As man were but her minister. 
 
 Proud nation — weep thy bitterest tears, 
 Yes, rain them on each lowly head 
 
 Of these who find their only peers 
 
 Among earth's noblest grandest dead ; 
 
 And from thy great oppression turn 
 And know the reason of this stress, 
 
 And through thy mighty heart-break learn, 
 All humbleness and tenderness. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 123 
 
 And throw the sackcloth over thee, 
 And on thy head the ashes strew, 
 
 If such great penance needs must be 
 To star thy brow with splendour new. 
 
 THE BRANDED.'" 
 
 She bears for aye the ineffaceable brand 
 To mark her off for everlasting scorn— 
 The scorn of generations yet unborn — 
 
 It is a stain of blood upon her hand. 
 
 A crimson stain of blood is on that hand. 
 The blood of myriads even in life's morn 
 From the warm day to shadowy Lethe torn — 
 
 Her evil fame has spread o'er every land. 
 
 She walks in sleep, and ever strives to lave 
 Away that stain, lest from revealing day, 
 
 No deep device, no falsehood bold could save,— 
 The murder of the night it should betray ; 
 
 But the damned spot, the purifying wave 
 And all the seas can never wash away. 
 
 HYMN AT THE GRAVE. 
 
 The angel mild who ruleth all. 
 
 Came with his cooling draught divine, 
 And bearing in his hand the pall, 
 
 Gave of release the final sign. 
 
124 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 O gentle Angel, named of Death, 
 
 He whom thy hand hath once caressed 
 
 Yields gladly in thine arms his breath — 
 Thenceforth is numbered with the blest. 
 
 To our beloved thou didst say, 
 " Behold, I come to bring release, 
 
 O sorrowing mortal of a day. 
 And lead into eternal peace." 
 
 And whether, with thy brother Sleep, 
 Thou borest then his spirit bland, 
 
 In soothing slumber, sweet and deep. 
 Into a distant native land, 
 
 We know not. But his form we now 
 Lay in its kindred earth to rest, 
 
 A changeless calm upon his brow. 
 And endless peace within his breast. 
 
 And farther than the shadowy bourne 
 No mortal of his fate may tell, — 
 
 With them that neither joy nor mourn, 
 Or in the meads of asphodel. 
 
 But yet we deem 'tis well with him, 
 Or on the fair Elysian plain, 
 
 Or, 'mid Lethean shadows dim, 
 No more, for aye, to wake again. 
 
MINOR P(3EM?. 125 
 
 THE BASTILLE. 
 
 Here, in the bygone ages, lowering stood 
 
 A dark and gloomy fortress of the Wrong ; 
 
 Its walls were thick, its iron bars were strong, 
 Its history was a tale of tears and blood. 
 Then rose the people in an angry mood 
 
 Against the outrage they had sufifered long, — 
 
 And chaunting freedom's immemorial song, 
 Swept it away as with a mighty flood. 
 There now a column soars to meet the sun, 
 
 Crowned with the form of Liberty, that goes 
 Forth to proclaim the glorious victory won 
 
 For all the nations, o'er their deadly foes. 
 The tyrant and the priest, whose day is done, 
 
 With all its outrage and its countless woes. 
 
 TO THE HERMIT-THRUSH. 
 
 Hermit-thrush ! 'tis sweet to be 
 
 Out in the summer- woods with thee — 
 
 Far in their depths, so green and still. 
 
 That with thy tender music thrill. 
 
 Where a golden light through the maple gleams 
 
 In many-tinted emerald streams. 
 
 And nought is heard but the trembling gush 
 
 Of thy greenwood-music, hermit-thrush ! 
 
 And when the sun his mellowed beams 
 Pours down on the dim. Autumnal streams, 
 
126 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 And the brown leaf, dry and sere, 
 
 Eddies down to the hazy mere, 
 
 Lying broad and deep and still. 
 
 Stiller than the lazy rill, 
 
 Whose blue waters quiet seem 
 
 Gliding on a long day-dream, 
 
 And a low murmur, far and wide, 
 
 Tells of the slowly-coming tide. 
 
 When, the Indian Summer o'er, 
 
 The storms shall sweej) with vast uproar. 
 
 O'er dripping wood and drenched plain. 
 
 Wet with the wild and whirling rain, 
 
 Still, in suit of hermit-brown. 
 
 Thou thy lay art trilling, down 
 
 Deep in the blue and (juiet dells. 
 
 Careless whether the muser tells 
 
 Of thy music, or of thee. 
 
 Or thy life in the woodland-tree. 
 
 Hermit-thrush ! amid the din. 
 
 And the mingled crowd their way that win, 
 
 Thy very name is as a ban 
 
 Of these, and a charmed talisman, 
 
 Bringing visions of the hills. 
 
 Bringing plashing of the rills. 
 
 And the sunshine's golden flash. 
 
 On the waterfall with its ceaseless dash, — 
 
 And visions fair of the quiet field, 
 
 Where the sick in spirit may be healed, 
 
 Where the thistle-finch, with plumes of gold, 
 
 Ebon-winged and ebon-polled. 
 
 Sitting on the thistle's crown, 
 
 Scatters far the silvery down. 
 
 Floating in the silent air ; — 
 
 And of sunny rambles where 
 
MINOR POEMS. 127 
 
 I have found, in crevice lone, 
 
 Turned into enduring stone. 
 
 Feathery fern or antique shell 
 
 That its tale of eld doth tell, 
 
 Or the chickweed's tiny flower, — 
 
 A snow-star beaming its little hour ; — 
 
 And I long again to be away, 
 
 Where I might list to thy tender lay, 
 
 And forget the moiling crowd. 
 
 With its tumult harsh and loud, 
 
 And the meaner demagogue still toiling 
 
 'Mid the mob with all its moiling. 
 
 Where each the paltry guerdon earns, 
 
 Leading each and led by turns. 
 
 And am soon at home with thee, 
 
 Singing deep in thy woodland-tree. 
 
 And while these sounds in the distance cease. 
 
 Encamp afar on the plains of peace. 
 
 TO THE TRAILING ARBUTUS. 
 
 The mellow sunshine floweth softly down 
 
 Golden and wide over these billowy swells, 
 And on their bare and quiet woods of brown ; 
 
 And over all, and in the distant dells. 
 The blue haze broods in silence. Wandering here 
 
 In the deep stillness of this April day. 
 Sweet flower, once more 
 
 I find the trailing all thy rosy bells 
 Among the pale-brown leaves of the last year. 
 
128 ]MINOR POEMS. 
 
 Yet once again, now, in this genial time, 
 
 I feel the warm air play 
 Over my brow as it was wont of yore ; — 
 It lingers for thy gift of fragrance near, 
 
 Then glides away. 
 Seeming a truant of some sunnier clime 
 That on us wide hath oped its golden door. 
 
 Of all thy sisters of the meadows far 
 
 Widening out under the vernal sun. 
 Or in the woods and fields that dwellers are. 
 
 There is not one, — 
 Not e'en the low and downy wind-flower blue. 
 That overjoys the heart with beauty more. 
 Or sends a sweeter thrill the spirit through. 
 Than thou. Thy name doth ever unto me 
 Bring thoughts of early beauty silently — 
 Of the sweet springtime when, the winter past,. 
 The flowers unfold at last. 
 
 TO THE FLOWERS. 
 
 When from its beaker bright, 
 
 Deeply into the hollows of the dells. 
 
 And on the hills, — a flood of golden light, — 
 The sunshine richly wells, — 
 
 O'er hill and valley wide, 
 
 Spread far and faintly in the peaceful beam. 
 Like spirits dim the dark cloud-shadows glide. 
 
 As spectres in a dream. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 
 
 129 
 
 Then in the fields that roll 
 
 Their bosoms broad up in the sunlight warm, 
 Sweet flowers, ye rise, and by the forest-knoll 
 
 And rock with rude, dark form. 
 
 The fragile wind-flower hears 
 
 The low voice of the sunshine calling her. 
 And where the rich-brown wood-mould bursts, appears 
 
 To her sweet worshipper. 
 
 The low arbutus bears 
 
 A gift of fragrance in each rosy cup, 
 And to those greenwood-truants, the soft airs, 
 
 Her incense offers up. 
 
 And from the rock-cleft rude 
 
 Upsprings, with nodding bells, the columbine, — 
 And round her ever, in the solitude, 
 
 The wild bee's winglets shine. 
 
 Around ye we may hear • 
 
 A slumberous summer-murmur faintly swell, 
 Like that which melteth in the listener's ear, 
 
 From winding ocean-shell. 
 
 And when the sunlight flows 
 
 Through the soft foliage in a gushing stream, 
 'Mid the broad leaves a golden greenness glows. 
 
 With its ethereal beam. 
 
 The moss-stars, green and bright. 
 
 And tall, rich feathers of the bending fern, 
 
 Are round ye, and amid the glowing light, 
 The silken grass-blades turn. 
 
130 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 The leaves, at noonday mild, 
 
 Arise when warm winds come with breathings sweet. 
 And waltz away, along the wood-paths wild, 
 
 With slowly-tripping feet. 
 
 Sweet playmates have ye there 
 
 In your wild greenwood-haunts to visit ye, — • 
 The low-voiced humming-bird and spirit-air. 
 
 And fairy bee. 
 
 And who is there may tell . 
 
 The fairies bright may not by moonlight play 
 Around ye, by the woodland-stream and dell. 
 
 With dreamy-chaunted lay, — 
 
 And revel in the sweet. 
 
 Rich scent of blossoms in the moonlight air. 
 Upon your wealth of dews and honeys, meet. 
 
 For fairy-bancjuet there? 
 
 For is there not, at morn. 
 
 The fairy-ring upon the silent green — 
 And at the night, faint, harp-like music borne 
 
 From tiny lyres unseen ? 
 
 Throughout your life-time ye 
 
 Know not of grief nor care — from crime apart ; — 
 And naught ye bear for sinless breeze and bee. 
 
 But sweetness at the heart. 
 
MINOR poea:s. 131 
 
 TO THE SWEET-SCENTED LIFE-EVERLASTING. 
 
 Life-everlasting, by tlie fading field 
 
 And by the sleeping stream 
 That lie 'neath veiled sun, or moon's broad shield, 
 
 Stilled in a breathless dream, 
 I find once more thy simple coronal 
 Of pale, sweet flowers and late. 
 The milder suns that wait, 
 Where the brown leaves all slow and silent fall 
 
 Down from the smoky woods 
 That spread o'er hill and dale their solitudes. 
 
 All the bright summer-flowers have passed away. 
 
 Yet. though the woods are gray. 
 And pale and paler grow the skies serene, 
 
 Thou lingerest still. 
 And 'mid the latter rains thou still art seen 
 
 By field-side sere and rill. 
 Though heavy bowed down with many tears. 
 When sad November's wail the woodland hears. 
 
 And thou, pale flower, henceforth shalt ever be 
 Of intellectual beauty type to me — 
 The beauty of the soul that fadeth not. 
 
 For, brighter blooms forgot, 
 Thy fadeless and perennial flowers 
 Their fragance lose not in the gloomy hours 
 That follow to the funeral of the year, 
 When all the woods are sere. 
 
 Thus, in a calm repose. 
 
 Which none but the profound of spirit knows. 
 
13,2 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 With high, undaunted mien, 
 The soul may smile serene 
 Above the reach of fate and coward fear. 
 
 LINES 
 
 Written for the Fly-leaf of Wilson's Ornithology. 
 
 Here, through a golden gateway, thou 
 
 Shalt enter into a land of sun, 
 Where, with their songs of the woods and fields. 
 
 The wandering minstrels ne'er have done. 
 
 And ere the blood-root's snowy buds, 
 
 Through the last year's leaves the ground that strew. 
 Have burst, amid the sunny rain, 
 
 Whose gold drops stream through the April blue. 
 
 There's a sudden flash of azure wings, 
 
 Ere long a vernal warble there — 
 The bluebird has returned again, 
 
 The swallows twitter in the air. 
 
 And soon the old, familiar notes 
 
 The bobolink of yore hath sung, 
 Linked like gems in a jewelled chain. 
 
 Are heard by the winding Manaiung. 
 
 Troubadour of sunniest climes. 
 
 Pouring wildly his vernal lay — 
 But with his rhymes and merry chimes, 
 
 He flees away with the green-robed May. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 133 
 
 Wherever she holds her Court of Love, 
 Him with his hite-throat we may find, 
 
 And his Provencal roundelay, 
 Leaving the summer far behind, 
 
 Where the dove sits deep in the moveless oak, 
 
 And with the heat is panting there, 
 And the song-sparrow trills his tune 
 
 Out in the hot and quivering air ; 
 
 While all things else are still as sleep 
 
 Around and in the silent sky, 
 And soft, deep shadows in each tree, 
 
 A greenwood-twilight, richly lie ; 
 
 Till, a fringe of foam on the emerald waves, 
 The wind the silvery leaves turns up. 
 
 Where the green and fragrant walnuts hang 
 By the side of the acorn's bossy cup. 
 
 The mountain-clouds they lie afar 
 
 But vast, in the sunshine's arrowy glint, 
 
 A lengthening range in the distance lost, 
 Stainless and white as the snowy flint ; 
 
 Like those grand piles that tower on high 
 By the far lakes and streams of Berne, 
 
 •Or over the quiet Bodensee — 
 Or by the mere of still Lucerne. 
 
 And scarce a sign in earth or sky 
 
 Marks how the gliding hours may go. 
 
 Till the dial-shades of the meadow-trees 
 Tell that the evening sun is low. 
 
134 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 And the wood-thrush chaunts his even-song 
 In the cloistered forest still and cool, 
 
 His speckled breast and the slender spray 
 Pictured clear in the limpid pool. 
 
 Like the spent waves on a silent shore, 
 The day-beats pulse in the dying year ; 
 
 But still the warm sun's fading smile 
 
 Lights up the fields and the woodlands sere. 
 
 Then overhead, in trembling lines, 
 The waterfowl his followers steers 
 
 To surf-beat southern shores, on wings 
 Wet with the dews of distant meres. 
 
 Here, through a golden gateway, thou 
 Shalt enter this land of song and sun, 
 
 Where, with their lays of the woods and fields. 
 The wanderina: minstrels have never done. 
 
 TO A ROBIN." 
 
 Sunning thyself on the naked spray, 
 Aloft in the latest evening ray, 
 
 Gentle Robin, simply clad 
 In thy homely suit of hodden gray. 
 
 My inmost heart thou makest glad 
 With thy liquid evening lay. 
 Like notes of a rural oaten reed, 
 
 Or rain-drops into a limpid pool 
 Falling from some wandering cloud. 
 
 Silver-clear in those waters cool. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 135 
 
 Or the tinkling of sweet rills 
 
 Deep in the hollows of the hills, 
 
 From ledge to ledge as they leap and run. 
 
 Forever hidden from the sun, 
 
 Thy love-ditty thou chauntest still ; 
 Warbling, warbling, the evening long, 
 Ever thy fresh and liquid song, 
 
 x\nd singing till thou hast sung thy fill. 
 
 When the silken threads of the spider's wheel 
 
 Are strung with diamonds all ablaze 
 With rose and emerald, sapphire and gold, 
 
 Out in the morning's arrowy rays, 
 And the sky is mottled with filmy pearl, 
 And in still waters the eddies whirl, 
 Whether thou pourest thy matin note 
 
 Under the dawn's pale azure coping, 
 Or tunest thy rich and reedy throat 
 
 At eve, from thy knoll to the westward sloping. 
 Where far away o'er the meadows fair 
 A golden dust in the silent air 
 Shimmers in beams that flood thy nest, 
 Ruddier showing thy ruddy breast. 
 For these fields and meadows meet 
 
 Thy clear roundelay I deem, 
 For 'tis wild and pure and sweet — 
 
 Unpaid, and free as the breeze and stream ; 
 And though few may prize thy lay, 
 None can ever say thee nay. 
 
 Thus ever at will, thy own fresh song 
 
 Thou under the dome of blue art singing. 
 
 With echoes that all the summer long, 
 
 And through the autumnal hush, are ringing. 
 
136 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 Near the sill of thy clay-built col:, 
 
 Warbling to thy brooding mate, 
 Cientle Robin, there is not 
 
 In the halls of pride and state 
 Half as happy a heart as thine, 
 That doth with care nor envy pine. 
 
 When to yon brown and billowy swells 
 
 And to those purple oaken dells, 
 
 The gauzy veil of the hazy mist 
 
 Lendeth a tinge of the amethyst. 
 
 Far away, over sea and land, 
 
 Thou wingest thy way, with a kindred band, 
 
 To some isle in a sunny sea. 
 Would, when the bud on the maple swells. 
 And the fountain, freed, from the hill-side wells, 
 
 I once more mitjht welcome thee. 
 
 TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN. 
 
 With thee, frail azure flower, come dreamily 
 The golden fading of the yellow fern, 
 
 And the sad notes of birds far through the sky 
 That to the sunshine of the line return. 
 
 For on these woody swells are shimmering wide 
 The slumberous Indian Summer's hazy beams, - 
 
 The fallen leaves all slow and silent glide 
 Adown the misty, blue autumnal streams. 
 
 Among the trembling aspen's amber leaves 
 A sobbing spirit dwells with visible sign ; 
 
 And with perpetual moan the dryad grieves 
 In the deep shadows of her mountain-pine. 
 
AflNOR POE^rs. 137 
 
 The bard dwells near to Nature's mighty soul, 
 And feels the throbbings of her gentle heart ; 
 
 And of the thrills that through her pulses roll, 
 His own deep joys and sorrows are a part. 
 
 He knows all changeful forms of outward things 
 But shadow forth the soul of things unseen, — 
 
 That from eternal spiritual beauty springs 
 The lovely, the majestic and serene. 
 
 Therefore he knows thy frail and fringed bell 
 By the warm breath of brown October bent ; 
 
 Of the unfathomed Mystery spiritual 
 Is but a beautiful embodiment. 
 
 Thus, pensive quietist, he whiles away 
 
 By hill or dell some warm and sunny hour, 
 
 "Mid genii strange that with the zephyr play, 
 Lingering around thy bell, late autumn flower. 
 
 THE KATYDIDS. 
 
 In your silken robes of the sylvan green 
 Ye awake once more in this woodland scene ; 
 And in quiet amusement I listen again 
 While ye roundly assert and deny amain. 
 
 'Mid the leaves invisible myriads hid 
 And forever proclaiming that Katy did, 
 Yet others with ceaseless clamour, of her 
 That Katy didn't, as stoutly aver. 
 
138 • MINOR POKMS. 
 
 In your shadowy haunts of the whispering pine 
 And the leafy festoons of the wandering vine, 
 With the coming of night ye forever begin 
 Your olden pother and endless din. 
 
 But ye give me no clue though ye never are mute 
 To the cause of your noisy and senseless dispute; 
 And I cannot divine why ye cannot agree 
 In your summer-haunts of the greenwood-tree. 
 
 But tell me, I pray you, and tell me true, 
 What Katy did, or was wont to do ? 
 Was the deed she wrought to your sylvan throng 
 One not to be uttered of fearful wrong ? 
 
 Tell me, I pray you, was Katy queen 
 Of all your tribes in the sylvan green — 
 To the trusting hosts of your Commonweal, 
 Was she secretly faithless, or was she leal ? 
 
 Did she seek the hosts of your forest realm 
 In frightful ruin forever to whelm ? 
 Say, was it a deed of deadly fate 
 That Katy wrought to your sylvan State ? 
 
 Or was she rather a doer of good 
 
 To her people whose haunt is the summer-wood ?" 
 
 And are there enviers also among 
 
 The countless hosts of your forest-throng ? 
 
 I ask, but always I ask in vain — 
 Ye merely assert and deny again ; 
 And greatly I fear that forever 'tis hid 
 What Katy didn't or what she did. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 139 
 
 JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT.'- 
 
 Jack loquitur in lingua valde antiqua, hie quasi interpretata. 
 
 Text : 
 
 And this our life, exempt from public haunt, 
 Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
 Sermons in stones, and good in everything. 
 
 My text I take from the Druid old 
 
 Whose words are better than silver or gold, 
 
 Whose genius peopled the ranges free, 
 
 Under the shade of the woodland-tree, 
 
 With lovely ladies and exiled men. 
 
 In the widespread forest of far Ardennes. 
 
 Under my tent of this greenwood-beech, 
 To the simple sylvan people I preach. 
 And long my sermons have said or sung 
 In the mystic tones of an antique tongue 
 The woodman, only, can rede or speak, — - 
 A language older than Hebrew or (rreek. 
 
 Mysterious voices I hear from the green 
 And moss-grown boughs of ancient treen, 
 Where for the vanished a dryad moans ; 
 And I find a theme in the runic stones, 
 And sweeter hymns in the greenwood-brooks 
 Than any found in the printed books. 
 
 In his hidden nook sits the quiet hare. 
 With all at peace, at his humble fare. 
 
I40 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 Like the innocent king so sorely shent, 
 And the crown that he wears is called Content ; 
 The simple preacher, oh do not scorn, 
 Though humble he be, in the forest born. 
 
 The squirrel spreads, on his mossy board, 
 
 A picnic feast of his plenteous hoard. 
 
 While the wood-thrush pours, through the forest mute, 
 
 A solo sweet on his greenwood-flute. 
 
 Then feeds on a banquet, simple indeed, 
 
 He finds in the thicket of lichen and seed. 
 
 Down the rock comes the walking fern, 
 
 There stands in the pool the listening hern, 
 
 And even the gaudy butterfly 
 
 Pauses awhile as she flaunteth by. 
 
 And a lesson to all unconsciously gives. 
 
 Through the useless and frivolous life she lives. 
 
 At evening, down from the darkling hill. 
 
 With spectral voice, comes the whippoorwill, 
 
 And there, in her robe of pearly white, 
 
 The ghost-flower stands at the dead of night. 
 
 While the beetle in black, with his firefly-torch 
 
 Pauses in front of my sylvan Porch, 
 
 And gazes awhile, with a stolid stare, 
 
 An empty gaze in the empty air ; 
 
 But little, I fear, he seizes aright 
 
 Of the thought I utter, the simple wight. 
 
 And the burden this of the sermon I preach. 
 
 That each should give of his gift to each, — 
 
 The dewberry offer her sweetest fruit, 
 
 The thrush a tune on his forest-flute. 
 
 The chestnut the nuts from her burs that burst, 
 
 The brook a draught for the summer thirst. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 141 
 
 The wilding her beauty and fragrance give 
 To all in these shadowy hainits that live. 
 
 From my pulpit, in bronze and green arrayed, 
 
 'Tis thus I preach in the forest-shade, 
 
 And he who comes to this temple grand. 
 
 Older than any that man hath planned, 
 
 By a magic spirit forever renewed. 
 
 For the tribes whose haunt is the solemn wood. 
 
 And lists with obedient mind and heart, 
 
 To the faitful lessons I here impart, 
 
 Returns to the feverish cities of men 
 
 With soul refreshed for his work agen. 
 
 THE WATERFALLS.'^ 
 
 Cold and clear from the mountain- wells, 
 
 Mirrouring brightly the green arcades, 
 Shattered to foam in the mossy dells. 
 
 Then gliding again through the silent shades, 
 The immemorial mountain-stream 
 
 With murmur sweet to its kindred calls. 
 And hastes to the river with distant gleam 
 
 And fills the forest with waterfalls. 
 
 Unconscious nature, with voice subdued. 
 
 Soothes the soul with its various tones — 
 The muffled roar of the wintry wood, 
 
 Or the sigh of the pines where the south wind moans, 
 Or here, where the spray of the foam-cascade 
 
 Keeps green forever the moss-robed walls 
 Whose ferns and vines are an emerald braid. 
 
 Amid the murmur of waterfalls. 
 
142 MfNOR POKMS. 
 
 The merchant, deaf with the city's roar, 
 
 And weary of counting his dollars and worn, 
 The student, wont o'er his books to pore 
 
 And the wounded in spirit that silent mourn. 
 May fill at fountains of freshness here, 
 
 A cup with a draught that never palls, 
 And the soul with beauty, for far and near, 
 
 The woods resound with the waterfalls. 
 
 Raymond's Kill, Pennsylvania, September, 1887. 
 
 SONG. 
 
 In Daleton Woods, in summer-time. 
 The fleeting hours of golden day 
 
 With warbled song, and luter's chime. 
 And antique legend passed away. 
 
 From greenwood-wells the naiad poured 
 For us the cooling, limpid draught ; 
 
 And olden wine the bard had stored, 
 We from his crystal goblet cpiaffed. 
 
 Far from the noisy, troubled mart. 
 We drank life's cup with eager zest, 
 
 AndwelcDmed still, with joyous heart, 
 The passing hour that was our guest. 
 
 Oft, 'mid life's daily duties stern. 
 
 Through sudden gleams of higher moods, 
 
 The truant memory will return 
 
 To those swift days in Daleton Woods. 
 
MINOK POEMS. 
 
 143 
 
 REGRET. 
 
 O, golden days of vanished years, 
 
 That oft in sudden glory throng, 
 And passing, fill my charmed ears 
 
 With choral and entrancing song, 
 In beauty and in grace arrayed, 
 
 Ye part as if reluctant yet. 
 And leave behind you, as ye fade 
 
 A bitter, since a vain regret. 
 
 For Envy, Malice and Intrigue, 
 
 I daily meet them, face to face ; 
 These fateful Three, in hateful league. 
 
 Have won me gold and gained me place. 
 Companions mine, from day to day. 
 
 The many, with applauding hands. 
 And clamorous tongues, and likewise they 
 
 Unstable as the treacherous sands. 
 
 And on the far and beauteous plains 
 
 Through which my journey should have been, 
 Where Peace with Quiet ever reigns. 
 
 Whose fields I ne'er shall enter in, 
 I see the face of Friendship grand. 
 
 But turned in sadness stern away — 
 A face so beautiful and bland 
 
 My heart is wrung with grief to-day. 
 
 Ambition, with his trumpet-call. 
 
 Lured to his craggy heights and cold, 
 
 Nor travail, nor the sudden fall. 
 
 Warned from the fate so often told. 
 
144 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 To gain those glittering lieights that gleamed. 
 
 In distant glory brightly then 
 I toiled, nor found them as they seemed, 
 
 But haunts of mean and dwarfish men. 
 
 And of the friends of early days, 
 
 One whom infinity scarce bars, 
 Who measures 'mid the ethereal blaze. 
 
 The heavenly paths, is crowned with stars ; 
 And one who holds the world's great heart 
 
 Entranced while inspired he sings, 
 Has deathless beauty for his part, 
 
 And sweeps a lyre with golden strings. 
 
 And one unrolls the changeful page 
 
 Of story. With a master-hand. 
 He limns the wild and pitiless rage 
 
 Of power and greed, — a spirit bland ; 
 While 'mid idyllic fruits and sheaves, 
 
 Another makes his home in peace ; 
 The swallow, 'neath his cottage-eaves 
 
 Has scarce from care more full release. 
 
 And one has passed these earthly bounds ; 
 
 The sorrow in my heart for him, 
 Is of the requiem that resounds 
 
 Through some cathedral vast and dim. 
 But I, with soul unbeautified. 
 
 Have won me only place and gold. 
 And find these heights outspreading wide, 
 
 But glittering, barren, bleak and cold. 
 
 O, golden days of vanished years 
 
 That never now return again. 
 Not even for these bitter tears 
 
 O'er your lost beauty, shed in vain, — 
 
MINOR POEMS. 145 
 
 O'er your lost beauty, shed in vain, 
 I pour these hot and bitter tears, 
 
 Though now ye ne'er return again, 
 O, golden days of vanished years ! 
 
 THE GOLDEN SHILLING.'* 
 
 Through London streets the Italian noble borne, 
 Amid the throng in silence gathered there, 
 With his sad fellow-exiles so to share 
 
 That pity — all upon one altar sworn — 
 
 A maiden of the people, lowly born 
 
 And poor, but with a noble spirit fair, 
 Trode to his side, and with a queenly air. 
 
 Offered her shilling with a hand toil-worn. 
 
 He took the humble gift with princely grace 
 The lowly maiden never could forget, — 
 
 The glow of gratitude upon his face, 
 
 That with the warm and sudden tears was wet,- 
 
 That shilling turned to gold for aye to place 
 Upon his heart, a priceless amulet. 
 
 TO SHAKSPEARE '• 
 
 How beautiful, an undisputed king. 
 
 Among unnumbered princes standest thou, 
 Immortal thought upon that perfect brow. 
 
 Whereof those lips of marble seem to sing. 
 
 Likewise, the matchless hand seems wandering 
 
146 MINOR POEMS. 
 
 Over a lyre so many-voiced, that now, 
 
 As ever, wins the willing soul to bow, 
 While golden string mingles with golden string. 
 Even this solemn Temple fades away 
 
 From the tranced senses, and the dying toll 
 Of bells that tell the flight of time, and say 
 
 How brief our life, and the great organ's roll 
 Through these dim aisles, now, at the passing day, 
 
 Before the words upon thy magic scroll ! 
 
 Westminster Abbey, June, 1880. 
 
 APRIL. 
 
 I feel the spring in every thrilling vein, 
 As if with nature's vernal mood at one ; 
 
 Sweet trembling through the drops of April rain. 
 Shimmers the golden sun. 
 
 And far o'er hill of blue and hazy plain 
 Pours its warm tide again. 
 
 The bluebird's tender warble now once more 
 I hear — his wings have April's azure hue ; 
 
 The waters crinkle on the sanded shore 
 And a forefeeling pulses nature through : 
 
 The spring is here — the sunless winter o'er — 
 The winter o'er and gone with all its pain. 
 
 How softly falls once more the wakening ray 
 
 Upon the \\'Oods of gray, 
 And heralds unto them the opening year, 
 And also to the woods and meadows sere. 
 Saying, in tones subdued, these words of cheer : 
 
 " The sullen winter has fled quite away." 
 
MINOR POEMS. 147 
 
 There is an under-meaning runs through all 
 The works of God. The mild and mellow sun 
 
 Melts into golden rain the cloudy pall, 
 And bids the frozen streams again to run ; 
 
 And from the soul the shadows dark shall fall 
 And on it shine supreme the glorious day ! 
 
 REQUIEM. 
 
 Written on the death of a young Philadelphian, mortally wounded in a great 
 battle during the Civil War. 
 
 A single cannon's thunder deep, 
 Pulsing through all the sultry air, 
 
 Awoke a nation from its dream ; — 
 
 There answered soon the bugle's blare. 
 
 That bugle-blast that summoned thee, 
 To myriads more its warning sent, 
 
 Who from the banquet-board of life 
 To fields of fate undaunted went, 
 
 And on the altar of a vile 
 
 Ambition, mangled, bleeding, fell, 
 
 With neither covering, turf nor tear, 
 Nor requiem of the passing bell. 
 
 Ambition thrice-accursed ! Now 
 The deep and everlasting brand 
 
 Henceforth it bears — forevermore 
 
 A shame before the world shall stand. 
 
MINOR POEMS. 
 
 And thus thy kindly poet's heart 
 
 Was hurried on through strife and blood- 
 That heart whose home was with the loved, 
 
 By quiet field, and stream and wood. 
 
 The sudden bugle's startling blast 
 Shall ne'er disturb thy rest again ; 
 
 And the reveille of the morn 
 
 Henceforth shall summon thee in vain. 
 
 'Tis sweet to know that gentle hands 
 For thee the dying pillow smoothed, 
 
 And tender words, from kindly hearts 
 Thy parting spirit sweetly soothed. 
 
 But yet I cannot choose but mourn 
 
 I was not with thee at the end, 
 To hear thy last farewell to me, 
 
 Thine early-chosen, trusted friend ; 
 
 And grieve I was not by thy side 
 
 With tender hand thine eyes to close, 
 
 And with the final kiss of peace, 
 To lay thee down in sweet repose. 
 
 THE END. 
 
NOTES TO THE IDYLLS. 
 
 Note 1. 
 
 An impartial observer would doubtless expect that in a country 
 boasting of its democratical institutions, aristocratical pretensions would 
 be regarded with indifference or contempt. Precisely the opposite of 
 this is the fact. The Southern slaveholders ostentatiously boasted of 
 their cavalier ancestry, and as openly and insolently taunted the masses 
 of the North with their plebeian origin. But the celebrated Captain 
 John Smith, who was a contemporary of the first settlers of Virginia, has 
 recorded the fact that they were principally gentlemen's footmen and 
 transported convicts, with a few cast-off sons of aristocratic English 
 families, who had shifted them off to the Colonies to get rid of them 
 The descendants of these settlers ruled the North with a rod of iron 
 and failed but little of strangling the liberty they had so boldly throttled. 
 
 Note 2. 
 It has been said that the Romish Church is comparatively indifferent 
 to the form of government of a country she has invaded, and with Pro- 
 tean facility accommodates herself alike to despotism and democracy. 
 This is strictly true, but it is true of those despotisms only where she 
 can make a tool of the despot, and of those democracies only where the 
 masses are too ignorant or debauched to withstand her intrigues. Here 
 she played a double game with consummate skill. She allied herself 
 closely with the slaveholders, with whom, through her despotic constitu- 
 tion, she naturally sympathized, (so far as her demand of undivided 
 Submission allowed,) but at the same time kept a firm hold of the brutal 
 Northern hordes. She was the strong connecting link that held the 
 extremes together, and through these apparently antagonistic classes she 
 intended to subjugate the intellect and conscience of the nation. 
 
 Note 3. 
 Never in the history of the world has the necessity of a real educa- 
 tion — of character — among the masses, been more evident than in the 
 deadly contest with the slaveholders and their allies, the Northern dem- 
 ocrats. Until the outbreak of our civil war, the Northern democratical 
 demagogues held the ignorant mob constantly on the side of the slave- 
 drivers ; and by exciting envy of the liberal men of the country, and 
 jealousy of the negroes, secured their support of the very men who os- 
 
 149 
 
150 NOTES. 
 
 tentatiously taunted them with their ignoble birth. Both the democrat- 
 ical leaders and the herd they led, bowed as low as anything human 
 could bow. To the democratical party, more than to any other cause, 
 is owing whatever of brutality and violence exists in the national char- 
 acter, of which assertion an examination of democratical newspapers 
 and public speeches printed during the anti- slavery struggle would 
 furnish convincing proof. That party appealed, uniformly, to the basest 
 passions, envy, jealousy and the rest of the baleful tribe ; to a noble or 
 generous motive they were never known to appeal. The very forms of 
 constitutional government have been overthrown in the South, through 
 violence and fraud ; and it has been shown that the nation is unable to 
 protect its loyal citizens in the exercise of the ballot, which is the very 
 essence of republicanism. This disgraceful fact was proven anew in the 
 presidential contest just concluded. The two candidates pronounced 
 successful have no more been elected than were the candidates of the 
 Southern rebels in 1876, who impudently persist in declaring that they 
 were honestly chosen, cipher dispatches, fraudulent election returns and 
 assassinations to the contrary notwithstanding. 
 
 Note 4. 
 
 The following is the passage from Bede, of which a paraphrase is 
 given in the idyll : 
 
 " Thisum vordum other thas cyninges vita and ealdormann gethafunge 
 sealde and to thsere sprtece feng and thus cvath : ' Thyslic me is geseven, 
 cyning leofosta, this andvearde lif manna on eorthan t6 vithmetenisse 
 thaere tide, the us uncuth is, sva gelic sva thu at svccsendum sitte mid 
 thinum ealdormannum and theguum on vintertide, and si fyr onaled, 
 and thin heall gevyrmed, and hit rine and snive and hagele and stymie 
 ute ; cume thonne an spearva and hrathlice that hiis thurhfleo, thurh 
 othre duru in, thurh othre ut gevite : hvat he on tha tid, tha he inne 
 byth, ne byth rined mid thy storme thas vintres ! ac that byth an eagan 
 bryhtm and that laste fac, and he s6na of vintra in vinter eft cymeth. 
 Sva thonne this monna lif to medmyclum face atyveth ; hvat thsr fore- 
 genge, oththe hvat thjer afterfylige, ve ne cunnon.' " 
 
NOTES. 151 
 
 NOTES TO THE MINOR POEMS. 
 
 Note 1. 
 The principal facts, on which this ballad is founded, are drawn from 
 Penn's " Travels in Holland and Germany." Pennsylvania was the first 
 of the Colonies in every early movement for the overthrow of slavery. 
 The Germans uttered the first religious testimony against it in 1688. 
 Ralph Sandiford set the first example of voluntary emancipation, in 
 1733, and Pennsylvania preceded even Massachusetts in the legal aboli- 
 tion of the institution, by half a year, though she had a much greater 
 interest at stake. 
 
 Note 2. 
 
 The reader who is familiar with the disgraceful histoiy recorded in 
 this ballad, will perceive that I have taken a few liberties with it as to 
 time and place; but, in the main, I have adhered to what is written. 
 
 Note 3. 
 
 This is the Indian name of Lake George, and is said to signify" Clear 
 Water." 
 
 Note 4. 
 
 On a lofty knoll, just below Bornhofen, on the right shore of the 
 Rhine, stand the ruins of two mediceval castles, called " The Brothers," 
 which form the scene of the legend embodied in this ballad. 
 
 Note S. 
 
 Lissau was a village on the Elbe. The events narrated in the poem 
 occurred among the frightful persecutions instigated and conducted by 
 the Jesuits, during the Thirty Years' War. 
 
 Note 7. 
 In the Chapel of Michael Angelo, in the ancient Cathedral of San 
 Lorenzo, at Florence, there are two marble groups by the great sculptor, 
 the one representing Day and Night, the other Dawn and the Evening 
 Twilight. On brackets above are two sitting figures, representing princcg 
 of the Medici family, one of which, Lorenzo d'Urbino, is helmeted, and 
 in an attitude as of gloomy contemplation of the deeds he had done ; 
 
152 NOTES. 
 
 while a third bracket sujiports a group representing Mary and the infant 
 Tesus, tlie whole by the same great mastei\ 
 
 A Florentine prince, Alfonso Strozzi, laid the following ([uatrain at 
 the base of the statue of the Night : 
 
 La notte die tu vedi in si dolci atti 
 Dormire, fu da un Angelo scolpita 
 In questo sasso, e perche dorme ha vita ; 
 
 Destala, se nol credi, e parleratti. 
 
 The great sculptor, in reply, placed these mysterious lines on its lips, 
 having, according to Niccolini, accomplished " in quel marmo, la sua 
 vendetta immortale :" 
 
 Giovami il sonno, e piii I'esser di sasso, 
 Mentre che il danno, e la vergogna dura ; 
 Non udir, non veder mi e gran ventura : 
 
 Pero non mi svegliar, deh I parla basso. 
 
 An ancient Egyptian statue of Isis, or Neith, bore the following sub- 
 lime inscription : " I am that which is. I am all that was, all that is, 
 and all that shall be. No mortal man hath my veil uplifted." 
 
 Note 9. 
 
 These sonnets were written under a copy of the famous Lost Portrait 
 of Dante, painted in fresco by Giotto, on a wall of the Chapel of the 
 Podesta, in Florence, and which, having been ignorantly covered with a 
 coat of whitewash, was, many years ago, discovered and restored through 
 the efforts of an Englishman resident in that city. 
 
 Note 10. 
 
 Without satisfactory assurances from the leaders of the Democratical 
 party in the North that all the aid in their power would be given to the 
 South in her rebellion in behalf of slavery, openly where they durst, se- 
 cretly where they durst not, the Southern conspirators would never have 
 undertaken the revolt. They knew perfectly well that with a united 
 North and with half their own population thoroughly disaffected, they 
 must fail ignominiously. A persistent effort has been made to conceal 
 these facts, and to exonerate the Northern Democrats from this charge, 
 to whitewash the characters of certain conspicuous Democrats, both 
 civil and military ; but every one knows that when whitewa.sh begins to 
 peel off, (which it will invariably do in the end,) the whitewashed object 
 
NOTES. 153 
 
 looks even more shabby than before. And even now, after the rebeUion 
 had seemed a failure, there have arisen again, all over the North, apolo- 
 getic accomplices quite ready to forgive the continued Southern outrages 
 against others, and who have gained some reputation for amiability, and 
 even for broad statesmanship, by the denial and suppression of the facts 
 of the case — the falsification of histoiy. Suppression has attained quite 
 to the rank of a fine art. 
 
 Note 11. 
 This is the Turdus mig}-atorius of the ornithologists. It does not 
 belong to the sams genus as the English robin, the bird of that familiar 
 mu-sery fable, the " Babes in the Woods," but is, as the Latin name in- 
 dicates, a genuine thrush. 
 
 Note 12. 
 This is the common name, in Pennsylvania, of the Arises ma triphyl- 
 lum. The plant to which I have given the name of " ghost-flower," is 
 the Afoiiotropa uniflora. 
 
 Note 18. 
 Over a mountain-range in Northeastern Pennsylvania, bordering on 
 the Delaware for many miles, the streams, with short distances between 
 them, pour down through the rocky forest-glens, forming innumerable 
 cascades, any one of which would make the fortune of a county in the 
 less picturesque parts of the State. 
 
 Note 14. 
 The "Italian noble" was Baron Poerio, who, together with his com- 
 panions, was received, on his passage through London, with a sponta- 
 neous ovation by all classes, in testimony of their indignation at the out- 
 rages and cruelties which had been inflicted upon them in the state 
 prisons by the infamous King " Bomba " of Naples. The name of the 
 " maiden of the people " was never discovered. 
 
 Note IS. 
 A beautiful statue of Shakspeare by Kent, stands in the Poet's Cor- 
 ner of Westminster Abbey, bearing a scroll with the famous words from 
 The Tempest, alluded to in the sonnet. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Preface, 3 
 
 Preface to Second Edition, 5 
 
 Prelude, 7 
 
 Aldoniere, 9 
 
 Mai-y Craven, 35 
 
 Wyndham, 57 
 
 How the Rhinegrave Evil-Entreated the Stranger, etc., 77 
 
 The Ballad of Margaret Garner, 8i 
 
 To a Windharp, 85 
 
 Niagara, 86 
 
 Horicon, • . • . 87 
 
 To a Skylark, 89 
 
 The Lady of Liebenstein, 90 
 
 Lissau, 94 
 
 To a Daisy, 96 
 
 La Notte di Michelangiolo, 98 
 
 Isis, 99 
 
 Abdallah, Son of Amrou, . . • 102 
 
 To England, 103 
 
 To Charles C. Burleigh, 105 
 
 To Parker Pillsbury, 107 
 
 To the Memory of Charles F. Hovey, 109 
 
 To a Demogogue, 1 10 
 
 The Wandering Jew, 1 10 
 
 The Chimney Sweeper, 113 
 
 The Toiler, 115 
 
 Dante, 116 
 
 To Pennsylvania, 118 
 
 Quia defecimus in ira tua, etc., 120 
 
 The Branded, 123 
 
 Hymn at the Grave, 123 
 
 The Bastille, 125 
 
 To the Hermit-Thrush, 125 
 
 To the Trailing Arbutus, 127 
 
156 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 To the Flowers, 128 
 
 To the Sweet-Scented Life-Everlasting, 131 
 
 Lines, for the Fly-Leaf of Wilson's Ornithology, 132 
 
 To a Robin, 134 
 
 To the Fringed Gentian, 136 
 
 The Katydids, 137 
 
 Jack-in-the-Pulpit, 139 
 
 The Waterfalls, 141 
 
 Song — " In Daleton Woods," 142 
 
 Regret, 143 
 
 The Golden Shilling, 145 
 
 To Shakspeare, 145 
 
 April, 146 
 
 Requiem, 147 
 
 Notes to the Idylls, 149 
 
 Notes to the Minor Poems, 151