^ V < A ^^ \ / ^ ^ TfK » !"/. > •; ■ ^ THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES K' L BOOKS BY LLOYD MIFFLIN The Hills Pago 8x10. With eight reproductions from pen drawings by Thos. Moran, N.A. Privately Printed, 1896 At the Gates op Song Illustrated with ten reproductions in half-tone after draw- ings by Thos. Moran, N.A. First and second editions. B^tes & Laurial, Boston, 1897 Third edition revised and printed from new plates, with portrait. Henry Prowde, London, 1901 The Slopes of Helicon and other Poems With eight illustrations by Thos. Moran. N.A., and with two by the author. Estes & Lauriat, Boston, 1898 Echoes op Greek Idyls Houghton, Mifflin & Co.. 1899 The Fields op Dawn and Later Sonnets Houghton. Mifflin ^ I^^H 1 ^^^^^L^' 1^* ^^^^^^^^^^H ^H 1 yj^ij^ j^^t^j^^^^^^^M Toward the Uplands LATER POEMS BY LLOYD MIFFLIN To slake my thirst of song — Pindar HENRY FROWDE Xon&on AND 35 West 32ND Street NEW YORK MCMVIII COrVRICHT, 1908 BY LLOYD MIFFLIN All rightt rtttrvtd Compoiition, Electrotyping and Printing by the Wiclcertbam Printing Co., Lancaster, Pennsylvania, U. S. A. 86031)0 PREFATORY J yf /^ITH the issuing of this volume — the tenth — the ^ ^ author finds that there have been published, aside from his other poems, four hundred a7id eighty-three Son- nets. In his ''Collected Sonnets,'' first published in igo^, and revised and re-issued in igoj, he included three hundred and fifty, omitting thirty -three of those already made public. Though between five and six hundred have been written, still the rising mirage lures, and makes the Dreamer hope, even against hope, yet to accomplish the writing of at least one sonnet that shall have no defect. LLOYD MIFFLIN. NORWOOD, September ijth, /go& TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE The Thrush . 3 In Dreamful Days 13 The Deist 15 Harvests 16 Alone on An English Coast 17 To a Young White Birch in Winter 18 To the Spirit of Twilight .20 Waiting 27 On the Porch Before Daybreak .28 Shakespeare 29 In Thessaly - 30 Awaiting Dawn at Delos 31 A Literal Study in November -3^ The Search • . . . 33 The Pang of Art -34 The Sovereign of the Pole 35 The Ramble 36 Beauty zi The Lessening Square 38 Evening in the Valley 39 Bitter-Sweet 40 Sunset Over Camelot - . 41 " The Shadowy Arras " .42 Phaon and Sappho 43 To the South-Wind 44 TABLE OF CONTENTS vii PAGE The Last Days of Columbus 45 The Meteorite 46 The Twilight Visitant 47 The Doom of the Four Cities 48 By Swatara Stream 49 The Cloud 50 A Poet in His Youth and Age 51 Awakening Chords 52 " What Feet Intrusive " 53 The Metropolitan Museum of Art 54 Unremembered 55 The Leafless Tide 56 "The Sweet Day Fades" 57 Men of Integrity Our Hope 58 An Aged Work-Woman of Dartmoor 59 The Voice of The Forest 60 O Recreant Dawn 61 In March 62 The Irrevealable Will 63 Statue of Lorenzo D'Urbino 64 The Quiet Hour 65 In Arcady 66 " Seas Shall Recede" 67 Beyond Achieve 68 On the Twilight Cliff 69 By the Garden Brook 70 The Dream 71 The Poet 72 "Too Late" .73 The Feet of the Muse 74 " What OF the Dayspring " 75 As Twilight Falls 76 LYRICS THE SPIRIT OF POESY A TOT the close friendship of the closest friends ; Not wealth descending on her golden -wings ; Titles nor honor, — no ephemeral things, — Can, for the lack of her, e'er make amends. She will not stoop to sublunary ends. Nor touch the baubles which the base world brings; Her song unpurchasable, still she sings. And all her soul upon the singing spends. She treads her constellated paths alone. Sandaled with starry aspirations bright. Beyond the visions of this world — how far ! Sadly she sits upon her dazzling throne In fading splendor, like a lingering star That pales at sunrise in the wastes of light! — From THE FIELDS OF DAWN THE THRUSH O RUSSET singer of the underbrush, Half-hidden by the laurel near the ground, While the soft twilight of the wood, profound, Ancient and dim. Deepens the solitude, where rarely comes a sound 'Mid all the trembling hush. Save whispers o'er the fern, or, on the woodland rim. The fitful murmur of the aspen leaves, — O thou — thou sylvan Thrush ! — Now, when the lilac-vestured Evening weaves The earlier stars within her dusky hair, And dreamy grows the air, Cease not to carol as I draw anear, But sing, O lyric poet, silver-clear ! Pour forth thy rhapsodies amid the laurel-flower, — Rosy as clouds around the Auroran hour, — That all thy fellows of the copse may hear — Wonder and hear — And I, thy votary, bathe in deeps of song ! For thou dost sing, Oh, not for laud or fame, As mortal bards who do the Muse a wrong, But still impelled by some ethereal flame Thou warblest adoration of thy love, Who, on her nest, Adores thee as thou singest, perched above. And if thy throbbing breast Harbors, as man's, some touch of vanity, Perchance that trill — sweeter than all the rest — Was meant for me, To make me feel my own unworthiness : That thou, a wild-wood bird. Canst, with no effort or distress. Humble my choicest word ! O envied singer of unequalled ease ! Born troubadour that never stooped to learn ! Thou untaught lyrist of the darkling trees. Like to some deep-secluded greenwood burn That gurgles over bronzed stones. Oft heard, but seldom seen. Thou, in the unfrequented and sequestered green. Pourest thy carol o'er the margin fern In what enthralling tones ! Ah, how delightful there, At evening, near the dusky forest floor, Merely to lift thy throat in air And let the music soar ! O winged Lover, free from care ! Spirit ! without the wound of wrong ; 'Tis thine but to inhale the golden air And breathe It forth in song ! Yet Oh, refrain, dear Bird! subdue thy spell! Sing less triumphantly ! He needs no humbling who is in the dust ; For ah, I know too well By that wild, rapture-giving swell, That affluent melody, that gust And rain of song, thy crowned supremacy O'er every bard that sings! No mortal hand that ever touched the strings. Since Jubal waked the wondrous shell To winged words of fire. Could match the dullest chord upon thy wood- land lyre ! Lessen the throbbing of thy passionate flute And quell that wild refrain ! Pause, and with intervals of silence, Oh, dilute The poignancy of music — more than pain ! Ah, cease awhile thy lay, — That liquid lilt and swing! My song is naught compared with thine, to-day, Thou rapturous thing ! Beside thy rippling and elusive strain Here, in the umbered twilight of the Spring, I am as one who doth assay to sing Yet feels the singing vain. O that ebulliency ! that fervid note ! No effort, but an over-flow, — A welHng deep and long And tremulously low ; A running-over of the wine of Song From thine impassioned throat ; 6 A gushing stream of liquid ecstasy ; Out-pourings of a fountain never dry, Whose source is in the heart, — the heart, — Ah, truer fountain than the font of Art To stir the pulses by! Thou pourest harmonies of richest sound Deliriously Thrilling the aisles of May. These opulent redundancies of thine Thou scatterest all regardlessly around Above the laurelled ground, Like jewels lightly tossed away By some strange princeling in his ruby-mine Of dusk Cathay! And should I listen long To that triumphant fluency of song, 'Twould chill the little ardor that is left Within a heart made sensitive to wrong, And of its dayspring reft. In pity for my slender store, O cease thy trembling lay. Now, at the verge of day, — No more, sweet Bird, I can endure no more! Ah me ! if I could speed along Such piercing arrows of my song Into the hearts of men. As thou, from out this dell, Sendest to stir my soul With sweetness almost unendurable, — Making the chimes of Memory toll For things that were and may not be again, — Ah then — ah then, It were worth while to sing E'en unto such a world as ours to-day That listens not to lute or lay While Mammon rules as king. Vain is the wish ! 'Tis not for me To touch thy feet in minstrelsy. The world hath need of sterner word Than I, or thou, O darling Bird, Could e'er articulate. For thou art circumscribed by fate In all thy melody; The little circle of thy lay, elate, Turns ever round thy mate and thee ! Thou hast no prescience in thy song And so thou dost not feel The agonies that come from Wrong Dealt unto human weal. What canst thou know of deep vicarious pain In bosoms such as ours ? Of aspirations daily slain ? Of javelins in the quivering soul From onset of the worldly powers ? What canst thou know of death, and famine's dole? Or of the rising, world-ensanguined flood, — The crimson trend of temporal things. While tiger-hearted kings Lap, with their thirsty swords, the Nations' blood? Thou canst not know of griefs like these, Close nestled near thy love. Whose only sorrow seems the hawk above, — A shadow floating o'er the trees. Thou canst not feel that others' woes Affect the gentle as their own, So, through the dusky boscage, goes Thy narrow lyric of the wondrous tone ! Thou canst not feel the aching pain Of early dreams for ever lost ; Such sounds as stricken lovers breathe in vain Have never crossed The mellow chords of thy melodious throat. A stranger art thou unto Sorrow's note, For lightly come all troubles unto thee, Melodious Bird ! Yet better far to be More sensitive to suffering, and to feel The multitudinous wail of human word, — The immeasurable sorrow of the World, And fling it forth in song, imperfecdy unfurled, Even as I do here, Halting, and void of charm, Than herald but a personal appeal 10 Though clarion-clear And worthy wreathed bays. O better far the loudest-voiced alarm Against the deep degeneration of these days, Against our callous and inhuman ways, — Some bugle-call To idle loungers on the outer wall, — Than merely such enraptured tones as thine, — Singer, almost divine ! Singer, so idly-sweet !— Which soothe the soul, but make no stirring plea, Which gratulate thine own felicity While the wronged world lies bleeding at our feet ! Forgive the chiding word, — Forgive the querulous mood, O thou, from earliest days, my own beloved Bird Dear comrade of the lonely wood, Ere darkness cloak the dell, O give me one more strain, One more — of sweetness most ineffable — 11 The sweetness of farewell! Companion of my solitude And soother of my hidden pain, Now, as the twilight goes, Graying the Western rose, Oh, sound again that passionate refrain ! Oh, pour thy balm upon the famished air, — Let the full volume roll ! Thine — thine ! beyond compare ! That I may hoard the music in my soul, And, through the watches of my loveless night, Remember, with delight. 12 IN DREAMFUL DAYS Ah ! on these calm autumnal hours of mine How gently to the close I wend, As with some dream-tide on whose breast divine One glideth to the destined end! Now from the empty chancel of the year, No lingering songsters lift their praise, Where choral Summer, grieving, dropped a tear In memory of melodious days ; When now the nearer of the wooded rims Is merged in mellower amethyst, And each beloved, familiar mountain swims In balm.y seas of opal mist, Here let me lie among the drowsy hills, To watch, — forgettmg loss and pain, — The dwindled ribbon of the lyric rills Meander through the endless plain .... 13 Meander on . . . and on . . . and on . . . and seem Forever seeking for the Sea, As if their flowing were a fading dream That ended in eternity! 14 THE DEIST O WHAT to him that on the upland slope Spring showers her blossoms with a roseate hand Who, past the endless aeons sees no hope Of other life or land ! Winter or May, upon this transient sphere, — What are our fleeting seasons unto him Whose eyes, long searching an eternal year, Despair, and then grow dim ! 15 HARVESTS The maples hold their wealth of gorgeous leaves, And bloomy clusters by the vines are borne; The barns are bursting with their store of sheaves, And slopes are tawny with the tented corn ; But dearth of splendor all my Autumn yields, And empty yawns the granary of my years ; Scant is the harvest of my wilding fields, O'ergrown the vineyard, and the vintage — tears. 16 ALONE ON AN ENGLISH COAST The gloaming falls ; now fades the crescent moon ; The sombre cliffs are plumed with ling and fern ; Far on the beach, o'er many a wave-like dune, Drifts the winged arrow of the wandering tern. Adown the shore the dim sea softly grieves, — Laps on the lonely sands with languid pulse ; And strewn along, mournful as Autumn leaves, Lie the torn fringes of the crimsoned dulse. Ah, throw thy shade around me, brooding Day, Wrap m.e in visions that the darkness brings ; Oh, fold me in thy hush of cloistral gray — Deep in the peace of thy protecting wings ! 17 TO A YOUNG WHITE BIRCH IN WINTER Slenderest sapling ! standing by the rill-side Where leafless woods are stark, With all thy beauty gleaming 'gainst the hill-side, Of snowy-satin bark, • Thy nakedness is chaste as hers Ionian Who 'mid the rushes ran, Turning her loveliness to the Ladonian And reedy pipes of Pan ! Thy delicate tips are hyacinthine tresses That veil thy maiden charms ; Thy smooth and gracile limbs, the sense confesses. Lovely as Lara's arms ! Scarce of the earth, thou seemest some aerian Dropped from a fabled clime. Alighting here, a later sylph Hesperian, In our unclassic time. 18 Art thou that dual spirit loved in childhood- Nymph and a tree in one ? Art thou the Hamadryad of the wild-wood, Out of the old legend spun? Ah, no ! the symbols and the sweet delusions Are into silence furled ; And the dim train of consecrate illusions Trails sadly from the world. Erratum, Page 19, line 4. Read the line without the " the," as it was written. 19 TO THE SPIRIT OF TWILIGHT O THOU, the dim sad sister of the Dawn, Who, when the glory of the sunset dies Into the afterglow. Art seen upon the hills Shod with the purple sandals of the Eve, Drawing about thy phantom-form austere Thy vague, ethereal robes Grey as the breast of doves ! — Who, as thy shadows gloom the fading vale, Dost hang aloft the larger lamp of heaven, Making the rising moon Lantern the way-side trees For lonely travelers lost ; and for the elves Lightest the glow-worm candle in the murk Of ancient forest glades And umbered dells profound : 20 O tender Twilight with the Urns of Balm ! Cup-bearer of the drowsy wine of dusk ! Dove of the Evening ! drop Thine olive on our breast : We crave the covert of thy sheltering cloud ; Wrap us in greyness of forgetfulness ; Dole us, at vesper-bell, Down-pillows of thy hush : Drop soft oblivion from thy sombre plumes On earlier aspirations, — haunting ghosts, — That mock us in disdain, Scoffing, from dales of youth : Shield the strained eyes that gazed too long at suns; And, in the mercy of thy vestments, fold Dream-wounded souls that sink Earthward, with bruised wings. 21 OTHER POEMS WAITING I KNOW her heart. Though far in other spheres, Mild 'mid the aureoled sisterhood she dwells Beauteous as dawn, yet oft her soul rebels Against the walls that Heaven around her rears. She weeps in Aidenn — weeps, and earthward peers. Listening along the bulwarks for farewells Wafted from yearning lips ; sees immortelles Love wreathes above her tomb in blindinpf tears. Could all of Heaven, when Seraph-trumps rejoice And dazzling thrones by flaming wings are fanned, Restrain her from an errant thought of me Who hunger for the love within her voice ? . . . I know her heart through all Eternity : She reaches down to lift me by the hand. 27 ON THE PORCH BEFORE DAYBREAK No glimmer of reluctant light appears And yet the dusk is going, and the blue Pales where the East will bloom. Besprent with dew, The slim young rabbit, rising, lifts her ears, Then nestles down in sleep too deep for fears ; There is no faintest wind to wander through Drowsed orchards, and the seeded grasses woo ; — No clarion of defiant chanticleers. The shuttered rooms are hushed. The sleeping hen Folds her soft flock beneath her bulging wings ; - The brooding dove is dreaming in the glen ; Silent the hives upon the slumberous lawn, And darkly clustered, where the fountain springs, The impassioned roses wait the kiss of Dawn. 28 SHAKESPEARE Thou hast no private sorrow in thy page — No home-felt agony that sears the Hne. From Hamnet's death — that cup of bitter wine — No threnode flowed that could thy sorrow guage. And though thy Verse records, in earlier age, Dark glimpses of a soul enmeshed with thine. Dumb are the Dramas. Thou dost give no sign, Cryptic, and incommunicative Mage ! Poet occult ! whose runes are hard to read, Wast thou of all thy Characters a part? Or are they Shadows, meant but to mislead? Within thy Plays each soul stands clear revealed, But when we seek to probe thy inmost heart — Silence inscrutable ! . . . The tome is sealed. 39 IN THESSALY The ilex shadow all the evening lies Athwart the blue Anaurus, lyric stream Where Jason lost the sandal ... As a dream lolchos' aeon-buried columns rise Ghostly from eld. The legend-throbbing skies Bend over Pelion — Pelion the supreme — The ancient haunt of Centaurs, while I seem Back in memorial days of famed emprise : Again the hoofs infuriate thunder by ! The frenzied Horse-Men, risen from their lairs, Surge into battle with their human cry, As whirlwind Chiron, by the carnage spurred. Crimsoned with foam, charges the rival herd, — His raging stallions fighting for the mares ! 30 AWAITING DAWN AT DELOS I WATCHED the East from cliffs above the sea : Far down the dark ^gean rose and fell ; In vaulted caves, wherein the mermen dwell, The wearied winds were folded, quietly. No sound, — save on the deep's immensity Some far-off Nereid blew a plaintive shell : Then phantom-music rose, ineffable, Apollo's prelude to the strains to be. Sudden the hoofs of sunrise beat the fire From crags of gray adown the rended sky ; Flushed, on the cloud, his coursers winged along ; Divine efflation thrilled him from on high. And as the rapt god smote the burning lyre, He flamed the world with amplitude of Song ! 31 A LITERAL STUDY IN NOVEMBER The maize is cut, — some fodder tightly pressed Close to the barn to ward the coming cold ; And through the slats the corn-crib shows its gold; The log-made cottage seems a tiny nest Hid under vines. The emptied garden, dressed For freezing days, reveals its umbered mound Where celery, bleaching, greens the wintry ground That earns, at last, the sweet recurrent rest. Hay fills the leaning shed below the eaves ; A bulging board upon the gable shows The very comb crammed full of yellow sheaves ; And underneath the bare November boughs An old man, fumbling 'mid the maple leaves, Gathers encrimsoned bedding for the cows. 32 THE SEARCH Through sunless voids and regions nebular, Long had he searched. And as his eager wings Pulsed for new fields, he urged their winnowings And dropped through splendors to a golden star. He coursed each steep, — each spirit-peopled scaur ; Then sought the Cluster that in cycles swings Its luminous World-dust in eternal rings, But saw her not on all those coasts afar. Turning, he plunged — as men plunge in the wave — Down — down the abysmal depths earthward he went, While suns swept past him up the dim profound. He stood within the churchyard by her grave. , . . Solace, at last, he knew, and sweet content : She waited there, — and Heaven on Earth they found. 33 THE PANG OF ART To those who build, with tracery of dreams, The vaulted halls of immaterial things. What comfort from the earth ? What solace brings The lyric purling of her tuneful streams To those for whose rapt ears the myrtle teems With song immortal ? Ah, what throat that sings Equals the tone of their imaginings ? — The Ideal dulls, for these, all lesser gleams. O let some god, omnipotent on high, Lend our feet plumes to reach the ethereal gate, Or still the yearning spirit's eager cry For vast peaks unattainable, and roll Fathoms of silence on us till the soul End her insatiate craving to create ! 84. THE SOVEREIGN OF THE POLE Halt on the verge — ye cannot enter here ! I, only I, am Monarch of this zone: My heart, — a magnet, that forever draws Prows from all ports, until my fleet of Bergs Batters them back ; or Horror, Fear, and Night, With cohorts of the Cold, cripple and numb. My myrmidoms are Hunger and Despair; I am the lure to Glory and Achieve. I rend the banners of the World's advance. And rear the bastions round my throne of ice Lord am I of the Vasts of Loneliness, And Dread and Desolation are my crown : My kingdom is a waste whereon are strewn The graves of Hope, — the sepulchres of Fame. 35 THE RAMBLE Through immemorial woods, whose fallen trees Moulder to umber tones, where once of yore Rose the peaked wigwams of the Sagamore: Up leafy paths, high o'er the valley leas, Where autumn, weaving, spreads her witcheries : By such sylvestrian ways I near thy shore, O evening Susquehanna, where the roar Of foaming water greets me on the breeze ! I lie upon the headland. . . . Far below Thy wedded islands sleep. On purpling bars The heron wades. Here, dreaming, let me rest Where halcyon airs their gentle balm bestow. Watching the rich florescence of the West And solemn congregation of the stars. 36 BEAUTY Foredoomed am I to serve her. Where she glows, There is my heaven. These famished hps are fain To kiss her naked feet, although in vain, — The Nymph illusive comes, elusive goes : I reach to fold her to my heart, — she flows Wave-like away, and with a sweet disdain Beckons me on to where I see remain. Rising resilient from her step, the rose : So, panting after Beauty all my days, I trace her footings o'er the wind-swayed wheat, Drawn by her blown hair fluttering in the glades, Or white arms luring down Idalian ways : I am her thrall, and she, — a splendid cheat, — Fadeth forever, though she never fades. 37 THE LESSENING SQUARE The silent plowman, when the woods are browned, Slow with his team along the edges goes Of yon green field, and with his plowshare throws One strip of sod at each recurrent round, Lessening the centre which at dawn he found ; Then, at the last, at day's pathetic close, Ceasing, he leaves a margin which still shows Green in the midst of the encroaching ground. O Time, the ruthless, the relentless ! thou Drivest thy furrows through our poor bright years: How swift our square of verdure disappears ! Oh, wait beyond to-morrow, even now Hold back the share ! this remnant-strip allow, — Oh ! leave us this — this pitiful strip of tears ! 38 EVENING IN THE VALLEY The pale Day, lingering down the darkening ways, Wraps the dusk hood around her, while she grieves For loved refulgence gone, and as she leaves, Veils her reluctance in a tender haze. The Gloaming, sombered by the glimmering greys, The fading pageant delicately weaves ; And weary reapers, gathering golden sheaves. Are dimmed with pathos of departing rays. The ashen roses of the Twilight sleep ; Home-coming voices fade along the leas, While plainting murmurs hover o'er the dell : Then vestal Evening, on her purpled steep, Swings the gold crescent as a thurible, — Her incense curling from the cottage trees. 39 BITTER-SWEET Gowned like a lily, in the orchard fair Slowly she moved as some far cloudlet might ; A dream of Maidenhood, — a vision bright : She touched the asters, and a happy air Trembled among them ; stooped, with tender care. Above a butterfly ; raised her full height. Bent the ripe bough, and with a child's delight, Pressed her sweet lips against the fruitage there. I dropped my book. The wisdom of the wise — " O what was all the learning of the past ! My youth came back. I saw, across the years, Visions of tenderness too sweet to last. And fond remembrance brought to yearning eyes The bitterness of unavailing tears. 40 SUNSET OVER CAMELOT Faint, bannered towers of strange magnificence Loom on the verge of evanescent steeps. Donjons, dismantled, crumble into moats Of liquid jasper. Dim-emblazoned gates Open on sumptuous aisles, where columned courts Lead up to golden domes. And clarions blow, Far off, to spectral hosts, where faintly seen, Dissolving Legions girt with spear and plume, File on in purple pomp. Raised Phoenix-wings Of cloud, burn into life. With scarlet scales, Pythons — whose tongues belch flame — in dragon-coils Fade in unfathomed antres of the air Whose darkest depths flash splendor ; over all, The encrimsoned Wyverns beat their vans of fire. 41 THE SHADOWY ARRAS" The hooded Sorceress, wrapped in mystic gloom, Sits in her vaulted hall. From depths untold Of cryptic mind, she spins the woof of gold — Her vaporous tapestry of immortal bloom. Rich with the fateful web, each storied room Glows with impassioned blazon. Dim unrolled Within that palace, gorgeous fold on fold. Depend the solemn splendors of her loom. She is the weird Enchantress who foredeems Futurity. The worlds to her belong, — Heaven, and Hades, and the Slopes of Song : Strange prescience fills her with consummate gleams Divine, and as Life's pageants round her throng, She weaves her shadowy arras out of dreams. 42 PHAON AND SAPPHO PHAON Star of my life ! though Time, the winged, flies, Upon thy cheek no faintest shadow shows. Lean toward me, — I would take the bosomed rose That pants with bliss— so near thy heart it lies. Age? didst thou say? . . . Ah, no! to me thine eyes Are dream-lit pools of Dawn. Love still bestows His lure upon thy lips. Thy spirit glows Warm as the light within yon sunset skies ! SAPPHO How sweet to hear our lover swear untruth ! Lo, while the sunset wears its roseate bars My twilight comes ! . . . Strown blossoms of my youth Dim the dewed paths, — but thine the auroral years : Once more thy lips ! . . . Day only hides the stars : The dark wave calls . . . Ah ! these are Love's own tears ! 43 TO THE SOUTH-WIND O WIND of June, that o'er the unripe grain Sweeps like the wave of far-off fretful seas ; That with a wilful waywardness doth tease The feathered grasses, bending them amain In undulant swirls ; and from the tangled lane Doth fill the eve with roving fragrance rare, Troubling the blossom into perfumed air, Whence comest thou — from what entranced doniam ? O marvelous odors, driftures undefined, Strange wandering wafts the senses ne'er disclose, Are ye the spirits of the dying flowers Passing away? Or dost thou, gentle Wind, Blend drowsM sweets of all the long June hours Culled from the uplands of the wilding rose ? 44 THE LAST DAYS OF COLUMBUS Yea, Lord, I come ; yet dazed, I still behold My westering caravels, full sail, and feel Strange exaltation as again the keel Grates on the fulgent sands ! O shores of gold — India at last! and all that wealth untold For Isabella and the Church's weal ! . . . Dreams — dreams ! . . . Ah, hear me, Mary, as I kneel In prayer, — forsaken, abject, poor, and old ! . . . Yet gave I not to ingrate Ferdinand Climes goldener than Indus? . . ..What was Spain's Return ? — The ignominious felon-chains, — Such were the laurels Bovadilla gave, — The infamous gyves that galled me foot and hand — But they shall shame the World from out my grave ! 45 THE METEORITE NEW YORK Whirled from the nebula, through vasts untried, Falling upon the wastes of snow, ablaze, I flushed the bertjs like dawn. In dumb amaze Strange creatures, wondering, gathered round my side In the white gloom. Then, when the North was dyed In utter splendor of the Boreal rays, Slowly I moved through long, drear, pallid days, Till a swift carrier bore me o'er the tide. Hard is my doom ! — to stand for countless years Hearing, within these mundane prison bars, Turmoil of men, or clash of mortal wars : Fallen am I upon a World of tears, — I that helped make the music of the spheres, I that once moved among the morning stars !; 46 THE TWILIGHT VISITANT When evening fell, pacing my phantomed lane, I mused how Time hath Poets overthrown ; And, standing near the gateway's pillared stone, I peered for Shades of loved ones all in vain. Lingering I looked, when, o'er the twilight plain. In sandals and in chiton, — far — alone — I felt his spirit coming, — heard a tone Of Pastoral Song, — the double-flute's refrain. Vine-leaves entwined his brow and yellow hair : He touched his pipe and sang, — so sweet, in sooth, I scorned my Lays, and listened in despair : Whose could they be — those childish eyes of truth? But when I saw the genius glowing there I knew Theocritus — the golden youth ! 47 THE DOOM OF THE FOUR CITIES Then God was wroth, — His nimbus paled its light : He bade the Legions from the nadir rise, Till hordes of winged Demons dimmed the skies, Up-surging, dense as cliff-birds whirled in flight: The clash of dragon vans gashed the wild night, While raucous throats, red with demoniac cries, And loathsome Shapes, with crimson-lidded eyes, Hung like a swarm, hovering, ere they should smite. Eager for prey, the myriad spawn took wing — T>.e thunder-hurlers of a God of wrath — With licrhtninofs thrown from each infuriate hand ; W.th sulphur-rain, and fiery scorpion-sting. Cities and men flamed in their furious path, And Desolation stalked the chastened land. 48 BY SWATARA STREAM The plashing herd in golden waters dreamed, While lapping shoreward, languid circles died In lyric gurgles where the ripples glide: The dragon-fly in burnished armor beamed A splendor on the reed-top, till he seemed Some fragment of the sunset. Far and wide The wings of Evening, folding at her side, Purpled the hills where late the river gleamed. The Twilight laid her hand upon the breeze And lulled the waving of the upland wheat ; The roseate Day was dying, softly knelled From phantom turrets over faery seas ; While in the dusky pasture at our feet We heard the tinkHng leader, mellow-belled. 49 THE CLOUD O FADING Cloud ! Child of the mountain dew ! Where art thou trailing on thy sunset wings ? So far removed above all troublous things, Seeming the peaceful Spirit of the blue. Soul of the air ! wilt thou not give some clue, Some tidings of celestial whisperings? What unseen courier, hastening to thee, brings Chart of those heavenly realms thou dost pursue? Thou sailest on, unconscious what awaits; Even as man, whom time doth dispossess. Was it for this, alas, that thou wast made — To vanish into glorious sumptuousness. Dissolving slowly near the jasper Gates, As we, at fateful evenmg, droop and fade ? 50 A POET IN HIS YOUTH AND AGE At dawn we felt the sunrise in his rhyme ; Then came a change to formal and severe: No sun-flushed dales — no homely touch or tear — No golden meadows set with lowly thyme. Older he grew ; and tenderer was the chime, — Nearer the heart ; and through his page sincere, Mellowed by life, there ran, occult though clear, The sweet reverberation of the prime : As one in cold December, from the hills Descending to the valley, footing slow Beside the frozen margin of the rills. Listens, astart, as in a waking dream, And faintly hears, beneath the crusted snow. The gurgle of the summer-hearted stream. 61 AWAKENING CHORDS As Spring, presentient of her power, flows Through all her wide and myriad-leafed green, The deep-wood melodists begin to preen, And the full brook a richer anthem knows. The woodbine blooms ; the mountain-laurel glows Scarlet among her leaves' perennial sheen ; Resurgent now, in every wild ravine, We see the reflorescence of the rose. So from the mind, an eager spirit springs, Rich in proud dreams, and flushed with ardent hopes. To mount her throne above the marveling throng ; While exiled Muses, on Castalian slopes. Attune their trembling lyres, as April brings The sweet re-blooming of the Rose of Song. 62 WHAT FEET INTRUSIVE" What feet intrusive, as the years ensue, Will linger on this porch ? When Winter glooms, Or early daffodil the lawn relumes, What eyes will look from windows which I knew? When I have vanished long from earthly view Will vapid souls profane those vestal rooms — Those pensive halls, where, wove on phantom looms, The cloth of gold of veiled poems grew? What alien then will tread this haunted floor ? Caress these books ? be filled, as I, with hope. As humbly proud, I penned the thought august ? Ah, who will see, along the evening slope, The grief-touched landscape through the opened door, And dream a poet loved it — long since dust ? 53 THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART Immurmurous Hall, with aisles of grateful shade, Hushed refuge from the tumult of the street, Be thou my Fane, with sculptured gods replete. Mine altar dim — my sanctuary glade ! With genius rare on every side displayed, Dearer thou art than dreams of waving wheat In dales of vanished Youth ! . . . O rich Retreat Throbbing with garnered shapes that never fade ! The deathless dead are round me. In these rooms Glow the achieved summits of mankind : The marbles breathe : the color flames and glooms — Immortal Beauty by the soul divined ; Inviolate here the pure Ideal blooms. The flower of Man's creative, God-like mind ! 54 UNREMEMBERED The evening sombered ; and the solemn skies Whispered of him I loved, — ah, long since gone ! His presence hovered round me, but his tone Seemed to ignore old loves, and filial ties. Grieved, — as he half-recalled me with surprise, — I felt as one whom love did now disown. When he, by absence even dearer grown, Leaned on my soul those unremembering eyes. Touched with vague, subtile disaffinities, He seemed some dim king wandering from a throne : I asked, beseeching, of his Heavely Rest, But answer came mysterious as the sea's, And all unearthly . . . Then, within the West Stars having risen, he vanished where they shone. 55 THE LEAFLESS TIDE The light has left the River, and the sun, With his enfeebled and reluctant rays, Enshrines the islands in regretful grays Plaintive and wan ; — the glooming has begun. Paled are the grasses by the willowed run ; The mellow opal of October days, Dreamful with glamour of enfoldmg haze, Has faded to a memory, and is done. Whirled funnels of sere leafage, tawn and red, Spiral the woods : the startled pheasant whirs O'er lonely swales to deeper covert-shades ; While high and far, from reaches dim o'erhead. Is heard the honk of winged mariners, — The thin wedge arrowing to the everglades. 56 THE SWEET DAY FADES" The sweet Day fades. She folds her nerveless wings, Slowly and softly, o'er her tranquil breast As if she were aweary of the quest, Seeking oblivion of terrestrial things. Yet doth she pass in purple. Sceptered kings Have no such dying couch at their behest As hers, — reposing stately in the West, — Within whose heart glory, remembered, clings. The sumptuous pageants round her sink and lie Bathed in the riches of the afterglow ; These pale, and o'er the ghostly sunset bars A phantom requiem from the yearning sky Lingers above her, where she lieth low, In splendor palled amid communing stars. 57 MEN OF INTEGRITY OUR HOPE My Country, when I muse on what thou art ; — Greed and Corruption rife on every hand, Most private rights ignored, and freedom banned ; — I sorrow in the sanctum of my heart. Then when I think of what a noble part Thou mightst have born, — thou, once so nobly planned To lift the race to honor and command, — Despair will deepen and my hope depart. But when I know that underneath this crust Of evident iniquity, there rest The primal virtues, latent, long defied ; That half our noblest men are now suppressed. Then hope returns ; to them my faith is tied : Our Land's redemption unto these I trust. 58 AN AGED WORK-WOMAN OF DARTMOOR Like blushing roses on new-fallen snow, Such were her cheeks, — for she was young and fair • Radiant as morning, and her golden hair Haloed her beauty — ah, how long ago ! . . . Those hands, once lovely, with accusing blow Now pierce us with their pathos . . . Pain and Care Sit with her, and her portion is to bear Infirmities the darkened years bestow. Those eyes that plead for aid with hopeless gleams — Lorn pennants from the masts of sunken ships ; Those graves of love, — her winter-withered lips, — Are Time's rude tallage and long-buried pelf. Filled with dim sorrows, she already seems The urn that holds the ashes of herself. 59 THE VOICE OF THE FOREST My voice cries out of grey antiquity And brands you Slayers of earth's priceless things — Exterminators of the Forest Kings That held their sceptres by this Western Sea Ere ye were born — base ingrates that ye be ! Ye brazen Spoilers ! lo, the future brings God's gathered wrath, for still the woodland rings Daily, with death-throes of the slaughtered Tree. O shameless Vandals of a mammon age, Hear ye my words: — "Where fruitful fields now bloom Deserts shall stretch, whose lords are Drought and Sand, And on those wastes Famine and Death shall rage, And starving Peoples, blighted by that doom, Shall curse you for the desolated Land ! " 60 O RECREANT DAWN In earlier days we sought, with buoyant feet, The uplands of the mind. But not alone We trod the heights ! Around us radiant shone The gleam of white ideals. Our pulses beat, Throbbing with ichor. The resplendent cheat — The glorious fallacies of Dawn — had grown Beacons to guide us, till we made our throne Upon the up-rolling clouds — ethereal seat ! We, who at dawning chanted by the streams ; Whose winged steps yet sought the Fane of Truth, — Followed the flaunting gonfalons of Youth, — Now pause, at eve, and ask with fluttering breath: — "Since Life hath razed our Citadel of Dreams, What lure hast thou to offer, — thou, O Death?" 61 IN MARCH He walks the wintry road, and winds away Deep in the dale where ice-bound brooklets gleam ; Where lonely pastures, long-deserted, seem Waving farewells from slopes of withered grey. He lists what woodland spirits, whispering, say, Where silvery beeches of the Summer dream ; Or, on the margin, stops to hear the stream Carol o'er icy stones her hope of May. Nor does his vision end with wood or field, — He treads, in re very, o'er the azure rim : Though glad of simplest things — to these resigned — Dearer the phantom world vouchsafed to him : Thankful if so the barren Winter yield The sweet illusions of the storied mind. 62 THE IRREVEALABLE WILL Whither, O God? ... In Thy profound is furled Thy fiat dark. Blind at the loom, man weaves, But Thou controll'st the pattern he achieves : Upon the headlong torrent blindly whirled He enters life, — and lo, Thy bolt is hurled. Where are they, e'en Thy last year's gleaned sheaves Of men ? . . . Unfindable as last year's leaves That fell in all the forests of the world ! E'en as the myriad spirits of the frost — Snowflakes — that falling, melt, yet show no dearth As onward pours the multitudinous host, — Forever Death, and still forever — Birth, — So the world-millions come, and so are lost, Tombed in the mighty mausoleum — Earth ! 63 STATUE OF LORENZO D' URBINO, FLORENCE Look, and pass on ! . . . Here, o'er the princely tomb, Eterned in bronze, I muse in sombre state. Beneath the helmet's shadow I await Ages to come. Round me in marble gloom The Master's sculptures quiver into bloom, — Symbols immortal and inviolate. . , . Silence and cloistral peace ; — yet, 'tis my fate, Troubled, to dream of Princes and their doom. Chang^e comes not here, though centuries ebb and flow: Question me not ; I brood, and would forget . . . Still smiles the Babe, carved by our Angelo, At Mary's side — "The Prince of Peace." Not yet His kingdom is while earth with blood is wet E'en as I left it. . . . Leave me with my woe ! «4 THE QUIET HOUR The sycamores along the margin make The brook a moving mirror of their green. Here wade the cattle in the sunset sheen, Dappled by shadowings of the leaves, that take The sense with beauty. Drowsed, and half awake, The great bull awes us by his lordly mien ; Noble he stands — the monarch of the scene, As round him, ring by ring, the ripples break. The breeze has winged to dells beyond our view, Nor moved the gilded arrow of the vane ; And, shown against the glimpse of distant blue, Rich glow the apples on the orchard boughs ; While tripping barefoot down the quiet lane, The farmer's little daughter calls the cows. 65 IN ARCADY Strolling at twilight, in a land of dream, I heard a presence quit his hushed abode. A leopard-skin on gathered grape-leaves, showed An empty lair beside the sanded stream. Faint rustling of the rushes, and a gleam Told that a figure through the boscage strode, Where clustered fruit in luscious colors glowed : Leaf-folded curds, I saw, and caprine cream ; Cymbals ; and for Ladonian wine, a cup Of cypress, carved, where young kids ever pranced ;^ Red-hearted melons jemmed with jetty seeds ; And lo ! her foot-prints, where the white Nymph danced, — And when 1, smiling, picked a syrinx up I guessed whose feet had vanished through the reeds ! 66 SEAS SHALL RECEDE" Seas shall recede and leave a waste of sand ; The unreplenished clouds shall fade away ; The forests die, and all the world of green Parch to a desert ; and above shall roll, Unharnessed, wandering through the yawn of space, Suns which officiate darkness ; — moons, long dead, Void of reflected ray of burning orb, Planet, or belted star. The stars themselves Shall to the nadir drop, and on their thrones Unscintillating blackness reign supreme, A sheer dis-splendor of the firmament; — That firmament that domed the primal Dawn When God's strong fiat flamed the pregnant dark To myriad-million worlds ineffable ! 67 BEYOND ACHIEVE He loved the Myths of Hellas, — sedgy ways Thrid by white-gleaming Naiads half descried. No less than throned gods at eve enskied Flaming on crumbling pyres. So all his days He moved amid the amaranth, while his lays Touched not the multitude, but still belied The human heart he bore. His hands were tied With golden shackles and his own dispraise ; For palhd Art did half his worth enshroud, — And earlier draughts from those Pierian streams Tempered the ardor of his poesy : He spurned his best, and all that he might be. And, high o'er peaks of knowledge, wrapped in cloud. Peered from the sheer verge of defeated Dreams, 68 ON THE TWILIGHT CLIFF THESEUS AND ARIADNE IN NAXOS The evening glooms . . . The grass — how hushed it is, Walled round them ! Worlds away the sea-line seems. A lithe, curved whiteness touched with rose, she gleams Star-bright within the dusk . . . Ah, she is his, — As twilight veils the consecrated kiss. O Love, whose flame alone dull life redeems, Fold them in poppied and delusive dreams And pity them, — stabbed with the thorn of bliss ! The gloaming fades. Their heaven-born hands creep near, — Touch, and are blent — twin petals faintly pressed. The dim lids close. He speaks not yet, for fear The spell break . . . Lo, she weeps ! — the fluttering breast With love supernal throbs — with love confessed — Love smiling through the immemorial tear ! 69 BY THE GARDEN BROOK O WIND that wanderest from the land of snows, Waft me the pungent, aromatic scent Of umbered aisles of pine with balsam blent ! Then drift from dells where mountain-laurel glows, And plainting tenderly at evening's close. Wave the long slopes of rye to emerald seas ; Then lull a moment, near the cottage trees. Tranced in the bosom of the folded rose. Diffuse the lilac's fragrance round the porch. Swaying the empty hammock to and fro. And linger where the iris lifts her torch ; Oh ! hover round me in this hallowed place. And touch the phantom chords of long ago To tender memories of her gentle face ! 70 THE DREAM I THOUGHT I flew as Icarus, far and high; That, as 1 neared the sun. soaring alone, I lost my wings, and like a meteor-stone. Plunged to mid-ocean from the zenith sky. Down — down I sank — through ages seemed to die — Suspended between depths with wreckage strown, As though some lost soul by the currents blown Floated through dimness everlastingly ! There phosphor-phantoms lit the vanquished ships ; Skulls filled with gold — the jetson of emprise ; And there were bubbled prayers from drowning lips. And one white hand that wore the bridal ring; And near me, in the ooze, with suppliant eyes, Drifted the remnant of a jeweled King. 71 THE POET Honor and riches ; converse with the great ; Signet and cordon from the hand of kings ; Nothing he knew of these resplendent things : Flame of his life — his sole desired estate — The power the Muses gave him to create — Outweighed all rank, and gave the aurelia wings ; His thirsting soul lapped at immortal springs, And stood, thereafter, regnant and elate. What was the World, when that the Voice decoyed - To air-built Fanes ? How could the spirit choose A more ethereal emprise or abode, When, at the forge of Poesy employed, Welding the glowing metal of the Muse, Time swept beneath him as a Hying road f 72 "TOO LATE" " Dear Love, all temples have I tried in vain, And now, at twilight, I return to thine. I see the fire upon the altar shine, The incense wreathing round thy marble fane. Ah, I have suffered — who can know what pain ! Here by the portal show thy face divine ; Lead me beneath the lintel to thy shrine, — Oh, wound me with thine arrow once again ! " My voice, pathetic with imprisoned tears And burning hopes of youth long vanished Pierced through the marble, but Love closed the door Barring me out: "Too late — too late!" he said, "Why seek me now in thy defloured years, Loveless and old? Thou should' st have sought before." 73 THE FEET OF THE MUSE Unsandalled are the feet of Poesy: Not always on the gold cloud do they press, But oft on earth they wander, and caress The lowly green of woodland or of lea. They touch the violet to resiliency, Thridding the dingle in their nakedness ; Or, wending by some cavern's lone recess, Rival the roseate shells along the sea. But most they love the inland, leafy streams, Where the brown brook, that long in pools hath lain. Foams into music o'er its rocky bed : Oft have I seen them in my waking dreams. And watched, from tangled coverts of the brain. The bent fern rising from their airy tread. 74 "WHAT OF THE DAYSPRING" What of the day spring — thou, who on the height Watchest expectant? Canst thou yet discern Gleams of that glory for which spirits yearn Pent on the earth ? Doth the deep-curtained night Break with the fulgence of long-promised Light ? Or, past the outposts dim, where seraphs burn In deeps made blank by splendor, doth return No voice assurant of benignant Might? Shall this end all? Or, in sublimer spheres, Will hope remain ? Life surely will not be Tombed in the yawn of some Lethean sea. Though whirling onward as a torrent of tears Down the black chasms toward Eternity Thunder the swift, irremeable years ! 75 AS TWILIGHT FALLS The pageant pales. No longer richly pours The stream of molten lustre undefiled ; Ethereal rivers that redundant piled Golden alluvion on ephemeral shores Fade into grey. Ashen the jasper floors Where troops of Shades, from Heaven long exiled, Wend through the glowing vistas, opal-isled, Endlessly inward through the sunset doors. Fainter the cohorts of the phantom hosts Whose far-off guidon, wanly fluttering, dies ; Totter the bastions, ichor-stained, that held Splendor of warring gods. Valkyrian ghosts Vanish with vaporous armies out of Eld, And dim Valhallas crumble as they rise. 76 TABLE OF FIRST LINES Ah ! on these calm autumnal hours of mine At dawn we felt the sunrise in his rhyme As Spring, presentient of her power, flows Dear Love, all temples have I tried in vain . Faint, bannered towers of strange magnificence Foredoomed am I to serve her. Where she glows Gowned like a lily, in the orchard fair Halt on the Verge— ye cannot enter here He loved the myths of Hellas,— sedgy ways He walks the wintry road and winds away Honor and riches : converse with the great I know her heart. Though far in other spheres . Immurmurous Hall, with aisles of grateful shade I thought I flew as Icarus, far and high . In earlier days we sought with buoyant feet I watched the East from cliits above the sea . Like blushing roses on new-fallen snow Look, and pass on ! Here, o'er the princely tomb My Country, when I muse on what thou art My voice cries out of grey antiquity No glimmer of reluctant light appears O fading Cloud ! Child of the mountain dew O russet singer of the underbrush O Thou, the dim sad sister of the Dawn O what to him that on the upland slope O wind of June, that o'er the unripe grain PAGE SI • 52 73 • 41 Zl . 40 35 . 68 62 • 54 71 . 61 31 • 59 64 . 58 60 . 28 50 . 3 20 . 15 44 TABLE OF FIRST LINES O wind that wanderest from the land of snows . Seas shall recede and leave a waste of sand Slenderest sapling ! standing by the rill-side Star of my life ! though Time, the winged, flies Strolling at twilight, in a land of dream The evening glooms . . . The grass — how hushed it The evening sombered ; and the solemn skies . The maples hold their wealth of gorgeous leaves The ilex shadow all the evening lies . The maize is cut, — some fodder tightly pressed The pale Day, lingering down the darkening ways The gloaming falls ; now fades the crescent moon The hooded Sorceress, wrapped in mystic gloom The sweet day fades. She folds her nerveless wings The plashing herd in golden waters dreamed The silent plowman, when the woods are browned The light has left the River, and the sun The sycamores, along the margin, make The pageant pales. No longer richly pours Then God was wroth, — His nimbus paled its light Thou hast no private sorrow in thy page Through immemorial woods, whose fallen trees Through sunless voids and regions nebular To those who build, with tracery of dreams . What of the dayspring — thou, who on the height What feet intrusive, as the years ensue . When evening fell, pacing my phantomed lane . Whirled from the nebula, through vasts untried Whither, O God ? ... In Thy profound is furled Unsandalled are the feet of Poesy .... Yea, Lord, I come ; yet dazed, I still behold is PAGB . 70 67 . 18 43 . 66 69 • 55 16 • 30 32 • 39 17 . 42 57 . 49 38 . 56 65 • 76 48 . 29 36 . 33 34 • 75 53 • 47 46 . 63 74 • 45 NOTE In this volume I have refrained from offering any poems — save three — which have heretofore been published ; and acknowledgment is here made to Everybody s Magazine for permission to use the poem which appears on page thirty-seven, and to The Evening Mail for the privilege of reprinting those sonnets which occur on pages fifty-four and sixty. Of the rhymeless poems— pseudo-sonnets - on pages thirty-five, forty-one, and sixty-seven, it may be said that while Sunset Over Camelot exemplifies a redundancy of the adjective, The Sovereign of the Pole shows an entire absence of it, being an example of the alleged strength of the verb. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. KtL Form L9-50m-7,'54(5990)444 THE LIBRARY UNIVERr^ITY OF CALIPORNM LOS AJVGEUSa ■pB i^-ifflin ^ — 5021 Tow-ard the inR^t u plands PR 5021 M335t UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 370 655 : \\\v.\\\\\\\\\\\\\w \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\v;