{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_73629/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_73629","id":"gutenberg_73629","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73629","summary":null,"tags":["American poetry -- 19th century","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Poetry"],"text":"OBERON AND PUCK.\n\n\n\n\n OBERON AND PUCK\n\n VERSES GRAVE AND GAY\n\n BY\n HELEN GRAY CONE\n\n NEW YORK\n CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED\n 739 & 741 BROADWAY\n\n COPYRIGHT, 1885,\n BY O. M. DUNHAM.\n\n PRESS OF HUNTER & BEACH,\n NEW YORK.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\n PAGE\n\n _OBERON._\n\n OBERON 11\n\n THE ACCOLADE 14\n\n THE OLIVE BOUGH 21\n\n FLOWER FANCIES:\n I.\u2014A YELLOW PANSY 25\n II.\u2014A HOUSE DIVIDED 27\n III.\u2014A SONG OF FAILURE 28\n IV.\u2014THE DANDELIONS 29\n V.\u2014A FAIRY TALE 30\n\n LEPAGE\u2019S JOAN OF ARC 32\n\n THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 34\n\n A NOCTURNE OF RUBINSTEIN 37\n\n AN EPITAPH ON A BUTTERFLY DROWNED IN THE SEA 41\n\n EMELIE 43\n\n ELSINORE 46\n\n FIAMMETTA 50\n\n HAROUN AL RASCHID 53\n\n A RONDEL OF PARTING 55\n\n A CHRISTMAS GREETING 56\n\n AT EASTER-TIDE 57\n\n TO-DAY 58\n\n A CONSERVATIVE 59\n\n A RADICAL 60\n\n A RETROGRADE 61\n\n THE RESOLVE 62\n\n THE NOONING 63\n\n THE INHERITANCE 64\n\n LONG SUMMER DAYS 66\n\n THE GOLDENROD 67\n\n HEY ROBIN, JOLLY ROBIN! 69\n\n THE UNDERSONG 71\n\n THE PASSING OF THE YEAR 72\n\n A CHARMED CUP 73\n\n IN HUSH OF NIGHT 74\n\n THE WAYFARERS 76\n\n AN INVOCATION IN A LIBRARY 78\n\n HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 80\n\n RALPH WALDO EMERSON 82\n\n ON LANDOR\u2019S HELLENICS 83\n\n BACH\u2019S ST. MATTHEW PASSION MUSIC 84\n\n SALVINI\u2019S OTHELLO 85\n\n ELLEN TERRY\u2019S BEATRICE 86\n\n \u201cSONGS OF A SEMITE\u201d 87\n\n ON READING THE POEMS OF EDITH THOMAS 89\n\n POSIES:\n I.\u2014FRIENDSHIP 90\n II.\u2014A ROSE 90\n III.\u2014WISTARIA 91\n IV.\u2014ON A FLY-LEAF 91\n\n AN IVORY MINIATURE 92\n\n TO MY GOLDFISH 95\n\n \u201cAS THE CROW FLIES\u201d 97\n\n SPRIGS O\u2019 HEATHER:\n I.\u2014TO COMIN\u2019 YEARS 98\n II.\u2014WONDERFU\u2019 SLEE 99\n III.\u2014MY AIN, AIN LASS 100\n\n EVENING PRIMROSES 102\n\n A HUMMING-BIRD 103\n\n CHILD SONGS:\n I.\u2014WOOL GATHERING 104\n II.\u2014THE LAND WITHOUT A NAME 105\n III.\u2014A LULLABY 106\n\n _PUCK._\n\n PUCK 109\n\n NARCISSUS IN CAMDEN 110\n\n THE SONG OF SIR PALAMEDE 118\n\n A MERRY JEST OF A MODERN MAID 123\n\n THE RHYME OF THE HERCULES CLUB 125\n\n THE BALLAD OF CASSANDRA BROWN 129\n\n THE SWEET O\u2019 THE YEAR 132\n\n THE TENDER HEART 138\n\n\n\n\nOBERON.\n\n\n\n\nOBERON.\n\n\n Oberon, Elferon,\n Pleasant Prince of Faery!\n\n He should scarce be sung of me,\u2014\n Me, his humblest follower\n Wheresoe\u2019er a branch may stir\n Signing, \u201cThis way hath he gone,\n Oberon, Elferon,\n Pleasant Prince of Faery!\u201d\n\n He should scarce be sung of me;\n Yet, because, of his high grace,\n I had glimpse once of his face,\u2014\n Moment sweet to think upon!\u2014\n I his celebrant will be.\n\n Blood of Pan is in his veins,\n And oft he goes in great Pan\u2019s guise;\n But not of Pan is all his mood,\n Godlike-careless, dreamy-wise:\n Conscious he of mortal pains!\n He hath shadows in his eyes\n Such as under hemlocks brood;\n In his voice he hath a tone\n Like unto the dark pine\u2019s moan;\n Northland bore him, not the South!\n Yet rare laughters hath his mouth,\n Birch-leaf laughters, rippling light.\n\n Clear the sense of every sign\n Is unto his perfect sight,\n Sight as May-day morning young:\n Sounds unto his hearing fine\n Are as words of some known tongue.\n Cuckoo-flower by Avon\u2019s brim,\n Muskrose rich, or eglantine,\n Saith nor more nor less to him\n Than arbutus softly saith\n With its blush and with its breath.\n Nightingale in Attic wood\n Is no deeper understood\n Than our bent-browed mocker gray,\n With his bright eye cool and clear,\n Sad and tender, wild and gay,\n Dashing skeptic cavalier!\n\n He hath not the virtue missed\n In our violet\u2019s amethyst,\n All unscented as it grows:\n Healings hid in jewel-tints\n Of wing and petal well he knows!\n Gems the shining black-bird shows\n On his purple as he goes,\n And the blue jay\u2019s sapphire-glints,\n And the burning, cordial gold\n Of the oriole blithe and bold.\n He can read the cipher-prints\n On the vans of butterflies,\n On the eggs of tiniest wren;\n He can read the scarred rock\u2019s hints\n And the legends of the skies;\n And he can read the hearts of men.\n\n Ah, since thou hast smiled on me,\n Though thy face no more I see,\n Never win thy benison,\n I must follow, follow thee,\u2014\n Oberon, Elferon,\n Pleasant Prince of Poesy!\n\n\n\n\nTHE ACCOLADE.\n\nA SONG FOR THE BEGINNING.\n\nA Commencement Poem, read to the Graduating Class at Smith College, June\n18th, 1884.\n\n\nI.\n\n Now filled was all the sum\n Of serving years, and past, forever past,\n All duties, all delights, of young esquires:\n And to the altar and the hour at last,\u2014\n The hour, the altar, of his dear desires,\u2014\n Clear-shriven and whitely clad the youth was come.\n\nII.\n\n Full many a squire was in that household bred\n To arms and honor and sweet courtesy,\n Who wore that sojourn\u2019s fragrant memory\n As amulet in after-battles dread;\n And meeting in kings\u2019 houses joyously,\n Or, wounded, in the sedge beside a lake,\n Such men were bounden brothers, for the sake\n Of the blade that knighted and the board that fed.\n\nIII.\n\n To eastward builded was the oratory:\n There all the warm spring night,\u2014while in the wood\n The buds were swelling in the brooding dark,\n And dreaming of a lordlier dawn the lark,\u2014\n Paced to and fro the youth, and dreamed on glory,\n And watched his arms. Great knights in mail\u00e9d hood\n On steeds of stone sat ranged along the aisle,\n And frowned upon the aspirant: \u201cWho is he\n Would claim the name and join the company\n Of slayers of Soldans swart and Dragons grim,\n Not ignorant of wanded wizards\u2019 guile,\n And deserts parched, and waters wide to swim?\u201d\n He halted at the challenge of the dead.\n Anon, in twilight, fancy feigned a smile\n To curve the carven lips, as though they said,\n \u201cOh welcome, brother, of whom the world hath need!\n Ere the recorded deed\n We trembled, hoped, and doubted, even as thou.\u201d\n\n And therewithal he lifted up his brow,\n Uplift from hesitance and humble fear,\n And saw how with the splendor of the sun\n The glimmering oriel blossomed rosy-clear;\n And lo, the Vigil of the Arms was done!\n\nIV.\n\n Now, mass being said, before the priest he brought\n That glittering prophecy, his untried sword.\n In some mysterious forge the blade was wrought,\n By shadowy arms of force that baffle thought\n Wrought curiously in the dim under-world;\n And all along the sheath processions poured,\n Thronged shapes of earth\u2019s weird morn\n Ere yet the hammer of Thor was downward hurled:\n Not less it had for hilt the Cross of Christ the Lord,\n And must thereby in battle aye be borne.\n\nV.\n\n Cool-sprinkled with the consecrated wave,\n That blade was blessed, that it should strike to save;\n And next, pure hands of youth in hands of age\n Were held upon the page\n Of the illuminate missal, full of prayers,\u2014\n Rich fields, wherethrough the river of souls has rushed\n Long, long, to have its passion held and hushed\n In the breast of that calm sea whereto it fares:\n And steadfastly the aspirant vow did plight\n To bear the sword, or break it, for the Right;\n And living well his life, yet hold it light,\u2014\n Yea, for that sovereign sake a worthless thing.\n\nVI.\n\n Thereon a troop of maids began to bring,\n With flutter as of many-colored doves,\n The hauberk that right martially did ring,\n And weight of link\u00e9d gloves,\n And helmet plumed, and spurs ablaze with gold.\n Each gave in gracious wise her guiding word,\n As bade or fresh caprice, or usance old:\n As, _Ride thou swift by golden Honor spurred_\n Or, _Be thou faithful, fortunate, and bold_.\n But scarce for his own heart the aspirant heard.\n\nVII.\n\n And armed, all save the head,\n He kneeled before his master gray and good.\n Like some tall, noble, ancient ship he stood,\n That once swept o\u2019er the tide\n With banners, and freight of heroes helmeted\n For worthy war, and music breathing pride.\n Now, the walled cities won,\n And storms withstood, and all her story spun,\n She towers in sand beside some sunny bay,\n Whence in the silvery morn new barks go sailing gay.\n So stately stood the Knight:\n And with a mighty arm, and with a blade\n Reconsecrate at fiery fonts of fight,\n He on the bowed neck gave the accolade.\n\n Yet kneeled the youth bewildered, for the stroke\n Seemed severance sharp of kind companionships;\n And the strange pain of parting in him woke;\n And as at midnight when a branch down dips\n By sudden-swaying tempest roughly stirred,\n Some full-fledged nested bird,\n Being shaken forth, though fain of late to fly,\n Now flickers with weak wing and wistful cry,\u2014\n So flickered his desires\n \u2019Twixt knighthood, and delights and duties of esquires.\n But even as with the morrow will uprise,\n Assured by azure skies,\n The bird, and dart, and swim in buoyant air,\u2014\n Uprose his soul, and found the future free and fair!\n\nVIII.\n\n And girded with Farewell and with Godspeed\n He sprang upon his steed.\n And forth he fared along the broad bright way;\n And mild was the young sun, and wild the breeze,\n That seemed to blow to lands no eye had seen;\n And Pentecost had kindled all the trees\n To tremulous thin whispering flames of green,\n And given to each a sacred word to say;\n And wind-fine voices of the wind-borne birds\n Were ever woven in among their words.\n Soft-brooding o\u2019er the hamlet where it lay,\n The circling hills stood stoled with holy white,\n For orchards brake to blossom in the night;\n And all the morning was one blown blue flower,\n And all the world was at its perfect hour.\n So fared he gladly, and his spirit yearned\n To do some deed fit for the deep new day.\n\n And on the broad bright way his armor burned,\n And showed him still, a shifting, waning star,\n To sight that followed far.\n Till, last, the fluctuant wood the flash did whelm,\n That flood-like rolled in light and shadow o\u2019er his helm.\n\nIX.\n\n I know not more: nor if that helm did rust\n In weed of some drear wilderness down-thrust,\n Where in the watches lone\n Heaven\u2019s host beheld him lying overthrown,\n While God yet judged him victor, God whose laws\n Note not the event of battle, but the cause.\n I know not more: nor if the nodding prize\n Of lustrous laurels ere that helm did crown,\n While God yet judged him vanquished, God whose eyes\n Saw how his Demon smote his Angel down\n In some forgotten field and left him low.\n Only the perfect hour is mine to know.\n\nX.\n\n O you who forth along the highway ride,\n Whose quest the whispering wood shall close around,\n Be all adventure high that may betide,\n And gentle all enchantments therein found!\n I would my song were as a trumpet-sound\n To nerve you and speed, and weld its notes with power\n To the remembrance of your perfect hour;\n To ring again and again, and to recall\n With the might of music, all:\n The prescience proud, the morning aspiration,\n But most the unuttered vow, the inward consecration!\n\n\n\n\nTHE OLIVE BOUGH.\n\nA SONG FOR THE END.\n\nA Memorial Poem, read to the Associate Alumnae of the New York Normal\nCollege, June 30th, 1883.\n\n\nI.\n\n As when, pursued by some swift Wind and bold\n Freed from the hollow dark \u00c6olian hold,\n A cloud across the face of heaven is blown,\n And sunshine ceases from the fields, as mown\n By that long shadow sweeping o\u2019er the wold,\n And the kind world turns cold\u2014\n So o\u2019er our chosen day\n Sails now a shadowing cloud that sweeps the sun away.\n\n Our chosen day, to Memory dedicate:\n To Memory, goddess great,\n A Proserpine that mid the dip and swell\n Of her wide meadows dim with asphodel\n Keeps aye one circle blest\n Lit with purpureal light unlike the rest:\n The field of our first youth, as luminous\n Through soberer recollections, as the place\n Where looked the Dardan on his father\u2019s face\n In the land nebulous.\n The verdure of that valley is Spring\u2019s own\n Ampler the air\u2014then, limits were not known\n To us that breathed it; all that since has been\n Has its free freshness to our spirits proved.\n Oh circle blest indeed!\n Dear, dear the faces that therein have moved,\u2014\n Sad, sad to know it changelessly decreed\n We may no more behold them, save therein!\n\nII.\n\n It was men\u2019s wont of old,\n Ere spoken was the Vale, deep, three-fold,\n From the full heart above the unanswering lip\n Of the bronze urn, in water clear to dip\n A branch, and sprinkle all with pure light spray:\n Or broken bough of bay\n Or olive called the happy, since it yields\n Fruit in unnumbered fields:\n For thus they deemed the influence done away\n Of barren Death, that else a spell might lay\n On the warm living, subtly to annul\n Their powers, and strike their fortunes cold and dull.\n And we, who seek the soul in each old sign,\n Pleased if we may divine\n Likeness in difference, Proteus in disguise,\n And gazing backward with anointed eyes\n Across deep ages and the gulfs of race\n Know yet a brother\u2019s face,\u2014\n We hail, in this the antique olive gray,\n A meaning of to-day.\n\nIII.\n\n For surely this pale bough, with hoary leaf,\n Is symbol of one still thought that is ours\n After the fire of grief:\n Thought not unhappy, fruitful thought, that showers\n A lustral rain of gentle tears and pure,\n Breaking the spell of Death, that else were sure\n To chain our living powers,\n To lock Joy fettered in the frozen breast:\n The one calm thought, the peaceful thought, _They rest_.\n\n They rest: brief rest was theirs\n Ere set of sun, and long and full of cares\n The laboring day. \u2019Tis now as night, soft night,\n Descending and enfolding, whereon bright\n Old hours of toil are shining, sanctified\n To stars that light and guide!\n\nIV.\n\n Ah, not with numbing of one noble hope\n Turn we from facing Death inexorable,\n But with strong souls and stable!\n Deep heaven hath surely scope\n To hold each earnest hour, a jewel new,\n A star to light and guide:\n And Toil, that shears all knotted puzzles through,\n A stellar sword against the dark descried\n Shall burn, like Perseus\u2019 blade whereby the Gorgon died\n Far, far the Colchian shores,\n Weary the mid-sea laboring at the oars,\n And hard to pass the rough Symplegades:\n But, sail and storm-beat spars\n And wave-worn rudder pictured all in stars,\n Shines the ship Argo still above the Southern seas!\n\n\n\n\nFLOWER FANCIES.\n\n\nI.\n\nA YELLOW PANSY.\n\n To the wall of the old green garden\n A butterfly quivering came;\n His wings on the sombre lichens\n Played like a yellow flame.\n\n He looked at the gray geraniums,\n And the sleepy four-o\u2019-clocks;\n He looked at the low lanes bordered\n With the glossy-growing box.\n\n He longed for the peace and the silence,\n And the shadows that lengthened there,\n And his wee wild heart was weary\n Of skimming the endless air.\n\n And now in the old green garden,\u2014\n I know not how it came,\u2014\n A single pansy is blooming,\n Bright as a yellow flame.\n\n And whenever a gay gust passes,\n It quivers as if with pain,\n For the butterfly-soul that is in it\n Longs for the winds again!\n\n\nII.\n\nA HOUSE DIVIDED.\n\n In some past sunny season\n A shoot and stock were wed,\u2014\n Made one by gardener\u2019s cunning,\u2014\n A white rose and a red.\n\n And now the rosy brothers,\n All wonder, wonder why\n Their sister flowers are fragile,\n And strangely pale, and shy.\n\n Those flush and shake with laughter,\n These blanch and thrill with fears,\n And through the leaves come stealing,\n Slow-shed, their dewy tears.\n\n\nIII.\n\nA SONG OF FAILURE.\n\n With green swords pointing to heaven,\n When the dawn flushed, glad to see,\n Like three gay knights in the garden\n Were flaunting the Fleurs-de-lis.\n\n And the plumes of two were purple,\n The color of hope and pride,\n And the last was snowy-crested,\n As a maiden soul should ride.\n\n But a wind from the west brought warning,\n And at noontide, a sound of power,\n We heard on the roofs loud-marching\n The steady feet of the shower.\n\n And the sharp green swords were broken,\n When the dusk fell, sad to see,\n And low, ah low, were lying\n The plumes of the Fleurs-de-lis!\n\n\nIV.\n\nTHE DANDELIONS.\n\n Upon a showery night and still,\n Without a sound of warning,\n A trooper band surprised the hill,\n And held it in the morning.\n We were not waked by bugle-notes,\n No cheer our dreams invaded,\n And yet, at dawn, their yellow coats\n On the green slopes paraded.\n\n We careless folk the deed forgot;\n Till one day, idly walking,\n We marked upon the self-same spot\n A crowd of veterans talking.\n They shook their trembling heads and gray\n With pride and noiseless laughter;\n When, well-a-day! they blew away,\n And ne\u2019er were heard of after!\n\n\nV.\n\nA FAIRY TALE.\n\n There stands by the wood-path shaded\n A meek little beggar maid;\n Close under her mantle faded\n She is hidden like one afraid.\n\n Yet if you but lifted lightly\n That mantle of russet brown,\n She would spring up slender and sightly,\n In a smoke-blue silken gown.\n\n For she is a princess, fated\n Disguised in the wood to dwell,\n And all her life long has awaited\n The touch that should break the spell;\n\n And the Oak, that has cast around her\n His root like a wrinkled arm,\n Is the wild old wizard that bound her.\n Fast with his cruel charm.\n\n Is the princess worth your knowing?\n Then haste, for the spring is brief,\n And find the Hepatica growing,\n Hid under a last year\u2019s leaf!\n\n\n\n\nLEPAGE\u2019S JOAN OF ARC.\n\n\n Once, it may be, the soft gray skies were dear,\n The clouds above in crowds, like sheep below,\n The bending of each kindly wrinkled tree;\n Or blossoms at the birth-time of the year,\n Or lambs unweaned, or water in still flow,\n In whose brown glass a girl her face might see.\n\n Such days are gone, and strange things come instead;\n For she has looked on other faces white,\n Pale bloom of fear, before war\u2019s whirlwind blown;\n Has stooped, ah Heaven! in some low sheltering shed\n To tend dark wounds, the leaping arrow\u2019s bite,\n While the cold death that hovered seemed her own.\n\n And in her hurt heart, o\u2019er some grizzled head,\n The mother that shall never be has yearned;\n And love\u2019s fine voice, she else shall never hear,\n Came to her as the call of saints long dead;\n And straightway all the passion in her burned,\n One altar-flame that hourly waxes clear.\n\n Hence goes she ever in a glimmering dream,\n And very oft will sudden stand at gaze,\n With blue, dim eyes that still not seem to see:\n For now the well-known ways with visions teem;\n Unfelt is toil, and summer one green daze,\n Till that the king be crowned, and France be free!\n\n\n\n\nTHE MERCHANT OF VENICE.\n\n\nI.\n\n The dusky star-set blue of Southern night;\n Music and song approaching and receding;\n Sweet sudden laughter-showers of masquers leading\n Across the moon-white square a merry flight,\n With breeze-blown torch and tossing cresset bright;\n Gay Love and glad impetuous Youth unheeding,\n That float away to the lute\u2019s lovely pleading\n Down flowing hours smooth-silvered with delight.\n\n And last, a figure of a race despised\n Shadow in light, groan echoing to the laugh;\n Bent haggard Age, with uplift shaken staff,\n At night\u2019s noon knocking, knocking at the door\n Of a gray, silent house, of that he prized\n Empty forever and forever more.\n\nII.\n\n Lo, how the lips that Portia pressed but late\n Against the opened casket, blessing lead\n With the gold beauty of her bended head,\n In proud abandonment to that dear fate\n It gave her forth, the casket fortunate,\u2014\n Lo, how these lips forego their wreath\u00e9d red\n Above the scroll that speaks his danger dread\n Who holds her lover in sad heart and great!\n\n Now in her spacious soul doth Sorrow meet\n Warm Joy, that, generous, gives the pale one place,\n And in the tremulous lines of her fair face\n An exquisite and soft remorse appears\n That Love, of right, must take the sovereign seat,\n And Friendship lower pass, for all his years.\n\nIII.\n\n \u201cI stand for law.\u201d It is the hour: behold\n The stem storm-buffeted, a spear grown strong\n For sternest deed in wanton winds of wrong.\n See Shylock from his sombre garment\u2019s fold\n The scales of Justice draw. No lavish gold\n Shall weigh with vengeance now; he hears loud song\n And triumphing of timbrels from the long\n Dim ranks of Israel\u2019s branded dead untold.\n\n Oh, not alone this crooked blade unsheathes,\n Empowered at last, one wan and patient Jew:\n Just Judah stands for law. A spirit new\n Gives answer gracious as from heaven it rained.\n A powerful angel through a woman breathes:\n \u201cThe quality of mercy is not strained.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nA NOCTURNE OF RUBINSTEIN.\n\n\nI.\n\n What now remains, what now remains but night?\n Night hopeless, since the moon is in her grave!\n\n Late came a glorious light\n In one wide flood on spire and field and wave.\n It found a flowing way\n To secret places where the dead leaves lay;\n It won the half-hid stream\n To shy remembrance of her morning gleam;\n Then on the sky\u2019s sharp shore\n Rolled back, a fading tide, and was no more.\n No more on spire and ivied window bright!\n No more on field and wave!\n\n _What now remains, what now remains but night?_\n _Night hopeless, since the moon is in her grave!_\n\nII.\n\n Dumb waits the dim, broad land,\n Like one who hears, yet cannot understand,\n Tidings of grief to come.\n The woods and waters, with the winds, are dumb.\n But now a breeze has found\n Sorrowful voice, and sobs along the ground:\n \u201cOh the lost light, the last, the best lost light!\n No more on field and wave!\u201d\n\n _What now remains, what now remains but night?_\n _Night hopeless, since the moon is in her grave!_\n\nIII.\n\n Hark, how the wind outswells!\n Tempting the wood\u2019s dark heart till he rebels,\n And, shaking his black hair,\n Lifts up a cry of passion and despair!\n The groaning branches chafe\n Till scarce the small, hushed singing-birds are safe,\n Tossed rocking in the nest,\n Like gentle memories in a stormy breast.\n A shudder, as good angels passed in flight,\n Thrills over field and wave!\n\n _What now remains, what now remains but night?_\n _Night lawless, while the moon is in her grave!_\n\nIV.\n\n There falls a mighty hush:\n And forth from far recesses fern-scents rush,\n Faint as a waft from years\n Long past; they touch in heaven the springs of tears.\n In great drops, slow and warm,\n Breaks all at once the spirit of the storm.\n\n _What now remains, what now remains but night?_\n _Night grieving, while the moon is in her grave!_\n\nV.\n\n Behold! the rain is over: on the wave\n A new, a flashing light!\n Lo, she arises calm,\n The pale, the patient moon, and pours like balm\n Through the wet wood\u2019s wrecked aisle\n Her own unutterably tender smile!\n There is no calm like that when storm is done;\n There is no pleasure keen as pain\u2019s release;\n There is no joy that lies so deep as peace,\n No peace so deep as that by struggle won.\n\n _Naught now remains, naught now remains but night\u2014_\n _Night peaceful, with the moon on field and wave!_\n\n\n\n\nAN EPITAPH WRITTEN IN THE SAND, ON A BUTTERFLY DROWNED IN THE SEA.\n\n\n Poor Psyche, to a Power supernal wed,\n How strong a fate on this thy frailness fell!\n What strange ironic word shall here be read?\n Dead sign of immortality, farewell!\n\n I sigh not that the summer fields have lost\n One flying flower: who counts the butterflies?\n I sigh not that thy sunny hour was crossed\n The self-same Shadow surely waits mine eyes.\n\n Thy piteous terror of the appointed end,\n For this I sigh! The billow, poised above,\n Fell on thee like the beast that leaps to rend;\n Thou couldst not know thy bridegroom Death was Love!\n\n How otherwise thy sister, yea the Soul\n Bent brooding o\u2019er these broken wings of thine!\u2014\n Through all her house of mystery once she stole\n To the inmost room, and found a Face benign.\n\n Now whirl her where ye must, ye waves of Law\u2014\n Aye, tear her vans, her painted hopes, apart!\n She cannot fear, remembering what she saw:\n Dark bridegroom Death, she knows thee Who thou art!\n\n\n\n\nEMELIE.\n\n _O chaste goddesse of the wodes grene,_\n _I am (thou wost) yet of thy compagnie,_\n _A mayde, and love hunting and venerie,_\n _And for to walke in the wodes wilde._\n\n \u2014CHAUCER\u2019S \u201cKNIGHTES TALE.\u201d\n\n\n She greets the lily on the stalk;\n She shakes the soft hair from her brows;\n She wavers down the garden walk\n Beneath the bloomy boughs.\n She is the slenderest of maids;\n Her fair face strikes you like a star;\n The great stone tower her pathway shades\u2014\n The prison where the Princes are.\n _Across the dewy pleasance falls,_\n _All in the clear May morning light,_\n _The shadow of those evil walls_\n _That look so black by night._\n\n She is so glad, so wild a thing,\n Her heart sings like the lark all day;\n The unhooded falcon on the wing\n Is not more freely gay.\n In sun and wind doth she rejoice,\n And blithely drinks the airy blue,\n Yet loves the solemn pines that voice\n The grief she never knew.\n\n In silence of the woods apart\n Her sure swift step the Dryads know;\n Full oft she speeds the bounding hart,\n And draws the bending bow.\n Fine gleams across her spirit dart,\n And never living soul, saith she,\n Could make her choose for aye to lose\n Her own sweet company.\n\n But sometimes, when the moon is bright,\n So bright it almost drowns the stars,\n She thinks how some have lost delight\n Behind the prison bars.\n It makes her sad a little space,\n And casts a shadow on her look,\n As branches in a woody place\n Do flicker on a brook.\n\n Last night she had a dream of men,\n Dark faces strange with keen desire;\n She heard the blaring trumpet then,\n She saw the shields strike fire.\n The pomp of plumes, the crack of spears,\n Beyond her happy circle lie:\n Thank Heaven! she has but eighteen years,\n And loves the daisies and the sky.\n _And yet across her garden falls,_\n _All in the clear May morning light,_\n _The shadow of the prison walls_\n _That look so black by night._\n\n\n\n\nELSINORE.\n\n\n It is strange in Elsinore\n Since the day King Hamlet died.\n\n All the hearty sports of yore,\n Sledge and skate, are laid aside;\n Stilled the ancient mirth that rang,\n Boisterous, down the fire-lit halls;\n They forgot, at Yule, to hang\n Berried holly on the walls.\n Claudius lets the mead still flow\n For the blue-eyed thanes that love it;\n But they bend their brows above it,\n And forever, to and fro,\n \u2019Round the board dull murmurs go:\n \u201cIt is strange in Elsinore\n Since the day King Hamlet died.\u201d\n\n And a swarm of courtiers flit,\n New in slashed and satined trim,\n With their freshly-fashioned wit\n And their littleness of limb,\u2014\n Flit about the stairways wide,\n Till the pale Prince Hamlet smiles,\n As he walks, at twilight tide,\n Through the galleries and the aisles.\n\n For to him the castle seems\u2014\n This old castle, Elsinore\u2014\n Like a thing built up of dreams;\n And the king\u2019s a mask, no more;\n And the courtiers seem but flights\n Of the painted butterflies;\n And the arras, wrought with fights,\n Grows alive before his eyes.\n Lo, its giant shapes of Danes,\n As without a wind it waves,\n Live more nobly than his thanes,\n Sullen carpers, ale-fed slaves!\n\n In the flickering of the fires,\n Through his sleep at night there pass\n Gay conceits and young desires\u2014\n Faces out of memory\u2019s glass,\n Fragments of the actor\u2019s art,\n Student\u2019s pleasures, college broils,\n Poesies that caught his heart,\n Chances with the fencing foils;\n Then he listens oftentimes\n With his boyhood\u2019s simple glee,\n To dead Yorick\u2019s quips and rhymes,\n Leaning on his father\u2019s knee.\n To that mighty hand he clings,\n Tender love that stern face charms;\n All at once the casement rings\n As with strength of angry arms.\n From the couch he lifts his head,\n With a shudder and a start;\n All the fires are embers red,\n And a weight is on his heart.\n\n It is strange in Elsinore:\n Sure some marvel cometh soon!\n Underneath the icy moon\n Footsteps pat the icy floor;\n Voices haunt the midnights bleak,\n When the wind goes singing keen;\n And the hound, once kept so sleek,\n Slinks and whimpers and grows lean\n And the shivering sentinels,\n Timorous, on their lonesome round,\n Starting count the swinging bells,\n Starting at the hollow sound;\n And the pine-trees chafe and roar,\n Though the snow would keep them still.\n In the state there\u2019s somewhat ill;\n It is strange in Elsinore.\n\n\n\n\nFIAMMETTA.\n\n\n In dream I passed the Gate that bears in black,\n \u201cHere lies dead Hope.\u201d The ineffable gold sky\n I saw between the pillars, looking back,\n And one young cloud, that slowly wandered by\n As though it wondered. Downward, all was dark,\n And through the dark I heard the sad souls cry.\n\n Anon, although alone, I whispered, \u201cHark!\n What lifeless laughter, crackling thorny-thin?\u201d\n Then grew to sight what first I failed to mark\n When from the accustomed light I entered in,\u2014\n A group that pleasured by that barren wall\n As Hell some delicate-blossomed close had been:\n One, gesturing, spake; the rest attended all.\n \u201cDeclare, ye circled shades, your home on earth!\n Declare the names your kindred used to call!\u201d\n I cried, much marveling at their mirthless mirth.\n A woman wavered to the space half lit\n By that lost sky: \u201cIn Florence had we birth;\n That company thou seest, who chose to sit\n Ten sunny days, a fountain\u2019s flight beside,\n Scattering the rose, and weaving tales of wit,\n What time by Arno many cursing died.\n Yes, Fiammetta am I. _Thou little flame_\n (Thus the grave Angel, to this Gate my guide),\n _With what vain flickering hast thou proved thy name!_\n _Hast given to no chilled spirit aught of cheer;_\n _Shalt now be fed and kept alight with shame,_\n _And flicker evermore._\u201d\n\n Then did appear\n Her set smile\u2019s irony, and I discerned\n Through those her long dark languid eyes, right clear\n How far below her soul forever burned.\n Her sleeves of scarlet hung in many a shred;\n Her silver chains were all to tarnish turned,\n And crisped were the laurels on her head.\n \u201cAlas! why camest thou to this place of pain,\u2014\n Why, Pampinea, Lauretta, why?\u201d I said,\n \u201cSince many souls that bore the self-same stain\n Tread the last ledge of Purgatory mount,\n And trust, made pure, sweet Paradise to gain,\n Where sings the grove, where flows the twofold fount.\n Those, angels aid on fair green rustling wings;\n Why then are these thus held to hard account?\u201d\n\n \u201cNot such, O questioner, was the sin that brings\n Us hither; but on earth so weak a part\n We chose, that now no part in heavenly things\n Is granted us, nor yet will Hell\u2019s deep heart\n Receive us, but in this dim borderland\n We dwell, and follow here our hollow art\n Of weaving tales, and are in semblance gay,\n Moved by a might we never may withstand.\n To our own dear delights we turned away;\n Forgot the city full of tears, forgot\n The tolling bells, abandoned even to pray;\n But couched in some delectable safe spot\n Saw breezy olives whiten like the sea,\n And babbled, fools, of Love, and knew him not,\n Who else had set us from the grim Gate free,\n Being giant-strong to save the souls of men.\n But Hate came to us, richly masked, and we\n Esteemed him Love; and now among us ten\n Sits very Hate. The life we prized is ours\n For aye! Yet not so far, I deem, this den\n From sound of suffering as our fields of flowers.\u201d\n With that weird smile, she turned as if to go.\n Loud groaned the lurid City, the sullen fen\n Of Styx, and all that grief that lies below.\n \u201cFarewell,\u201d I sighed, \u201cFiammetta!\u201d But she, \u201cNot so!\n What life is thine? Perchance we meet again!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nHAROUN AL RASCHID.\n\n\n Golden pride and fragrant light\n Are mine, and thereto was I born;\n Thron\u00e9d pomp is mine of right,\n Robes bestarred, or like the morn;\n All words of pearl to me belong\n Singers can string in shining song;\n Jewels, as perfect song-notes rare,\n Are mine own to waste or wear.\n\n Not less hath this right hand power\n Whereof such shows are but the flower,\u2014\n Power deep-rooted in the earth\n That shakes to royal wrath or mirth.\n\n Yet, on many a deep-blue night,\n Clad and shod in coarsest wise,\n All my splendors must I slight\n For the smile of the common skies:\n My feet, that inlaid courts forego,\n Lanes of the dusty city know;\n I jest among the bronz\u00e9d slaves,\n And am well met with merry knaves,\n And quaft poor drink, and feel it glow;\n Steep me in simple weal and woe;\n Yea, learn to swim in those dim waves\n That, my palace flight before,\n Fawning fall with plausive roar.\n\n Hence rumors dear shall rise and rise\n Of my descending and disguise;\n Whereat the slave\u2019s freed soul shall sing:\n A Caliph looked into his eyes:\n How is he, then, so mean a thing?\n By torchlight of such memories\n The Caliph in himself he sees.\n Thus, being loved, shall live my name,\n Glowing in the general flame\n Of the people\u2019s hearth and heart;\n While men lie entombed apart\n That were as glorious and as great,\n Forgot, because they kept their state;\n Crumbling with the crumbling Past\n Into a dust unnamed at last,\n Whence their gems procured shall be\n By some wiser soul like me.\n\n\n\n\nA RONDEL OF PARTING.\n\n\n You leave it when spring blossoms fall,\n The old house where the roses grew.\n You gave them from the garden wall,\n Your roses, faint of breath and hue,\n Whose lovely like I never knew.\n Can I my flock of memories call\n To leave it when spring blossoms fall,\n The old house where the roses grew?\n\n No, no, they flit about the hall,\n And beat their wings, and cry for you.\n Be still: no more, no more at all,\n She enters now: apart we two\n Shall see in dreams, when late leaves fall,\n The House of Youth, where roses grew!\n\n\n\n\nA CHRISTMAS GREETING.\n\n\n Speed, my Thought, oh speed, my Thought,\n Over the miles of snow!\n Never before, to bear to her door\n Love, with his looks aglow,\n Hadst thou so far to go!\n Take for a chime bells of my rhyme\n Over the miles of snow!\n\n Stand, my Thought, oh stand, my Thought!\n Fled are the miles of snow.\n Call, O Love! to her window above,\n In the voice her heart must know.\n \u2019Tis the time of mistletoe:\n Sing in the night to her window alight,\n In the night of stars and snow!\n\n\n\n\nAT EASTER-TIDE.\n\n\n At Easter-tide, when lilies blow\n For font and altar, virgin things,\n When spikes of maple scarlet show,\n And thin clouds white as angels\u2019 wings,\n While some fresh voice the message flings\n \u201cThe Lord is risen!\u201d\u2014from long ago\n Rise purified the tomb\u00e9d Springs,\n At Easter-tide, when lilies blow.\n\n Oh, when the hallowed hour not brings\n Those gloried ghosts, whose brows we know,\n Nor I o\u2019er change and distance throw,\n In midmost prayer, an arm that clings,\n Ah then, the deep-toned bell that rings\n I shall not hear, nor hear whatso\n The clear young voice triumphant sings,\n At Easter-tide, when lilies blow!\n\n\n\n\nTO-DAY.\n\n\n Voice, with what emulous fire thou singest free hearts of old fashion,\n English scorners of Spain, sweeping the blue sea-way,\n Sing me the daring of life for life, the magnanimous passion\n Of man for man in the mean populous streets of To-day!\n\n Hand, with what color and power thou couldst show, in the ring\n hot-sanded,\n Brown Bestiarius holding the lean tawn tiger at bay,\n Paint me the wrestle of Toil with the wild-beast Want, bare-handed;\n Shadow me forth a soul steadily facing To-day!\n\n\n\n\nA CONSERVATIVE.\n\n\n \u201cYour Spring,\u201d he said, \u201cI hate: now blast, now breeze;\n All weathers mixt; sharp change, confusion dire.\n An easy-chair, a vast December fire,\n A fine old russet folio\u2014give me these!\n Birds\u2019 twitterings at the dawn my ear displease,\n My dreams disturb. What eye could ever tire\n Of orderly white ways? could e\u2019er desire\n The foolish haze of May? Such wishes tease\n No sober mind!\u201d\n\n But none the less did break\n Green from the glebe; the con\u00e9d chestnuts gave\n Faint fragrance out; the robin\u2019s breast would make\n A flame a-field; the snow he could not save.\n And Spring on Spring, as wave in strong wave\u2019s wake,\n Still rolls a bloomy billow o\u2019er his grave.\n\n\n\n\nA RADICAL.\n\n\n He never feared to pry the stable stone\n That loving lichens clad with silvery gray;\n Torn ivies trembled as they slipped away,\n Their empty arms now loose and listless blown.\n Then turning, with that ardor all his own,\n \u201cBehold, my better building!\u201d he would say.\n \u201cI rear as well as raze: nor by decay\n Nor foe nor fire can this be overthrown!\u201d\n\n What was it? Had he keener sight than we?\n We saw the ruin, more we could not see;\n His blocks were jasper air, a dream his plan.\n We called him, Stormer; ever he replied,\n \u201cUnbroken calm within my breast I hide.\u201d\n Now God be judge betwixt us and this man!\n\n\n\n\nA RETROGRADE.\n\n\n \u201cWhat, you!\u201d his comrades cried, \u201cwho led us long\n Against the dense arrays of dullards\u2019 thought,\n You quit us on the march, so quickly caught\n By such a strain, a simple peasant-song?\n That breath of old brown earth is strangely strong,\n To lure you to the fields where hinds untaught\n Toil slavish, or by common coinage bought,\n Or meanly fearful of the Master\u2019s thong!\u201d\n\n \u201cYea, dear the song,\u2014although I may not sing;\n Yea, dear the soil,\u2014although I delve it not!\n I fall not back, but peaceful pass beyond.\n For freedom\u2019s sake your hearts are fiery-hot,\n Yet through the tramp I hear your fetters ring!\n Denial is the straitest kind of bond.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nTHE RESOLVE.\n\n\n Thou intimate, malign, benumbing power\n I cannot name, since names that men have made\n For shapes of evil shine beside thy shade,\n Who from the seat of mine own soul dost lower,\u2014\n Darkness itself, that doth the light devour,\u2014\n I feel thine urgency upon me laid\n To voice despair! Thou shalt not be obeyed;\n Thou art my master only for thine hour!\n\n As some sad-eyed, wan woman that is slave\n To the swart Moor, being bid her lute to bring,\n Since song of her strange land her lord doth crave,\n With lip a-tremble dares the scourge\u2019s sting,\n Refusing,\u2014thy brute might so far I brave:\n I will not sing what thou wouldst have me sing!\n\n\n\n\nTHE NOONING.\n\n\n Oh soft, soft, soft, thou slender-footed maid,\n Cool-clad and fair, along the sultry street\n At broad blue blinding noon! Light fall thy feet\n As e\u2019er the wood-nymphs\u2019 fell while Pan was laid\n At mid-day in some choice Arcadian shade\n Where not an oak-leaf laughed, and if there beat\n Loud the wild heart of any Dryad fleet,\n Hearing, she girded her warm side afraid!\n For where, against yon hourly-growing wall,\n Dull-red, the ailantus-blossoms brighter show,\n A little while his weariness forgot,\n Outstretching in a chosen shadow small,\n With hot wet forehead on his lax arm low,\n Swart Labor sleeps, without whom thou wert not!\n\n\n\n\nTHE INHERITANCE.\n\n\nI.\n\n Conceive that Perfect Man, to whom we tend,\n The great Inheritor, on some sheer cape\n Between the morn and morn-bright main: a shape\n Wherein dead racer and dead wrestler blend\n In living speed and power. Dead sages send\n Their wisdom\u2019s wine, matured like juice of grape,\n His heart to strengthen. Songs his lips escape\n That silenced lips of long-dead singers lend.\n\n Enough for such, such immortality!\n Well-paid, the press of trampling cares! the pains\n That bore the embodied joy! the home-stretch sobs!\n The doers passed: their best of deed remains,\n And still through many a mightier artery\n To feed a larger life their life-blood throbs.\n\nII.\n\n But those, whose useless breath was mixed with groans?\n Weak flesh, sick spirits, poor dumb dog-like eyes\n That could not read the star-signs in the skies,\n Now closed forever, sealed beneath their stones!\n In this fair-colored scheme what line atones,\u2014\n Old hopes being calmly cancelled by the wise,\u2014\n To those that died as any dull brute dies,\n And propped the Future but with bleaching bones?\n\n O Man to be, if perfect thou indeed,\n A horror thine inheritance appears,\n A Titan torture-fire thy rising day!\n For ancient ocean\u2019s chant to thee must need\n Be all one wail of creatures cast away,\n And heaven\u2019s own rainbow-smile a thing of tears!\n\n\n\n\nLONG SUMMER DAYS.\n\n\n Long summer days are my desire:\n Red suns, that drop as globes of fire\n Behind the sloped fields white with weed:\n Warm winds, that waft the wandering seed\n With silvery plume, now low, now higher:\n Pale clematis that o\u2019er the brier\n Runs with frail feet that never tire\n Beside rough roads: your gifts I need,\n Long summer days!\n\n Yet come not, O profane ones! nigher,\n If in your stars be severance dire\n Of dear companionship decreed:\n For then, alas! ye were indeed,\n Too far outstripping my desire,\n Long summer days!\n\n\n\n\nTHE GOLDENROD.\n\n\n When daisy-snow abides no more\n In fields that long for freshening rains,\n The goldenrod, the flower you wore,\n Leans out beside the lanes:\n\n Leans softly, with the look of one\n Who has a tender word to say;\n Then, feeling breezes warm with sun,\n Turns unconfessed away.\n\n O\u2019er lichened wall, o\u2019er languid brook,\n By her my spirit is caressed,\n This golden girl, whom oft you took,\n Companion, to your breast:\n\n Who strives, with deftest maiden art,\n Your moods and manners to repeat,\n As stirred her still the gentle heart\n She felt so often beat.\n\n Forgive her, dear, for friendship\u2019s sake,\n Though all too close she feign your ways!\n Since now the sight of her can make,\n In sad and sunless days,\n\n On all the world a sudden shine,\n A flood of sunlight glad and mild,\n Till song, in these still thoughts of mine,\n Breaks forth as though you smiled!\n\n\n\n\nHEY ROBIN, JOLLY ROBIN!\n\n_Twelfth Night._\n\n\n Robin of the valiant air\n And the ebon head,\n Proud, perhaps, that thou dost bear\n Breast so brave a red:\n\n Robin of the rounded throat,\n Straight of back and slim,\n Robin sending fearless note\n Through the dawn-haze dim:\n\n Through this haze of spring-time dawn,\n Tell me, hast thou seen,\u2014\n From thy cool untrodden lawn,\n Shimmering silver-green,\n\n Where the broken blossoms lie,\n Colored like a shell,\u2014\n Seen the maid I\u2019d meet pass by?\n Dearest Robin, tell!\n\n _How shouldst thou my true-love know_\n _From another one?_\n By her pure cheek\u2019s welcoming glow,\n Thee to look upon!\n\n By her eyes, that at thy call\n Straightway would declare\n Sister is her soul to all\n Fearless things and fair!\n\n Gone, with such a dashing dart,\n Such a whistle clear?\n What canst mean?\u2014Ah, gallant heart,\n Bless thee! She is here.\n\n\n\n\nTHE UNDERSONG.\n\n\n When restful at the farmhouse we abode,\n One August mild whose memory lingers long,\n Not always did we note the happy song\n Of that brown brook that through the pastures flowed,\n Whose haunt the field-flowers tall would hide, yet showed;\n For farmstead sounds full oft would do it wrong,\n Or speech, or laughter light, or wheels along\n The shaded windings of the elmy road.\n\n Yet ever it flowed and sang to the warm day,\n As to a drowsy child old running rhymes,\n And ever at a pause was in the ear,\n Low-whispering where the goldenrod was gay,\n The assuring utterance of all still times.\n So is it with the voice the heart holds dear.\n\n\n\n\nTHE PASSING OF THE YEAR.\n\n\n O Gentle Year, I\u2019ll not entreat thee stay,\n Since now thy face is set to some far land\n Not named of men, untrod, a shadow-strand!\n And those most powerful prayers that lips could pray\n Would not obtain thy tarrying for a day.\n Yet, gliding from us with the sliding sand,\n Thou shalt not pass till I have kissed the hand\n That gave me joys, and took but time away.\n\n Can Love, that of the soul\u2019s delight is born,\n Being matched in stature to the soul, increase?\n Not so: but Memory, leaning at his side,\n Waxes with every rosy draught of morn,\n And gathers to her every moon\u2019s full peace,\n And dreaming on dark seas of summer, grows deep-eyed.\n\n\n\n\nA CHARMED CUP.\n\n\n As drinking-cups whereof old rhymers tell,\n In twilight ages all with wonders rife,\n Were given, by mystic herb and midnight spell,\n The gift to summon Love\u2014to summon Life!\u2014\n\n So this for thee, lest aught should come between,\n This little clasp\u00e9d cup, and charm of wine\n Love singing trod with feet of heavenly sheen,\n I set away: it shall be always thine.\n\n Thine to restore, with magic strong and strange,\n The might of meeting eyes and near, warm breath;\n That there shall be no Time nor any Change,\n Nor any room for such a thing as Death!\n\n\n\n\nIN HUSH OF NIGHT.\n\n\n When nightfall on the Dardan plain\n Brings truce, and stilled are sounds of Mars,\n And mournful, mournful moans the main,\n And Simois\u2019 ripples take the stars,\u2014\n\n When thoughts of home float o\u2019er the sea\n From fields afar, and heroes\u2019 breasts,\n At last from brazen corselet free,\n Soft-heaving take those gentle guests,\u2014\n\n Ah then, who sinks to sleep away,\n In tent, or galley scarlet-prowed,\n Nor doubts some deed he did to-day?\n That taunt was harsh, that boast was loud.\n\n How failed his eyes to recognize\n The god behind the foeman bold?\n Why gave he, under friendship\u2019s guise,\n That mail of brass for mail of gold?\n\n Oh, is there one, of either host,\n Who never, sighing, weighs his cause\n At this grave hour, nor feels a ghost,\n Cool-handed, bid his courage pause?\n\n Two: dog-like droops the dreaming head\n Of mean Thersites evil-eyed;\n And Paris on his broidered bed\n Sleeps well at swan-white Helen\u2019s side.\n\n No scruple sharp the selfist finds;\n The wrangler no remorses fret:\n The loved of gods in lofty minds\n Have room to house a high regret.\n\n\n\n\nTHE WAYFARERS.\n\n\nI.\n\n Young man with the keen blue eyes,\n Clear and bold!\n Why, as thou dost fare,\n With so searching air,\n Scannest thou each face thou dost behold,\n Each small flower, faint-colored like the skies,\n Growing by the way? Why gazest thou\n O\u2019er the round hill\u2019s brow?\n\n \u201cAh, in every bearded face,\n Looking deep,\n My heart\u2019s friend seek I!\n In each maiden shy\n My heart\u2019s dearest, dreamed upon in sleep;\n And in each fair flower a hope I trace;\n And the hill may hide the flashing sea\n That doth call to me!\u201d\n\nII.\n\n Old man with the pale blue eyes,\n Mild and clear!\n Why, as thou dost fare,\n With that pondering air\n Into passing faces dost thou peer?\n Why dost pause, where dim like autumn skies\n Starry asters grow? Why gazest thou\n O\u2019er the round hill\u2019s brow?\n\n \u201cAh, from each gray-bearded face\n Would I know\n What that heart hath found;\n And in youths that bound\n See a youth who vanished long ago!\n In each flower a memory can I trace;\n O\u2019er the hill the green, still place may be\n That doth wait for me!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nAN INVOCATION IN A LIBRARY.\n\n\n O brotherhood, with bay-crowned brows undaunted,\n Who passed serene along our crowded ways,\n Speak with us still! For we like Saul are haunted:\n Harp sullen spirits from these later days!\n\n Whate\u2019er high hope ye had for man your brother,\n Breathe it, nor leave him like a prisoned slave\n To stare through bars upon a sight no other\n Than clouded skies that lighten on a grave.\n\n In these still alcoves give us gentle meeting,\n From dusky shelves kind arms about us fold,\n Till the New Age shall feel her chilled heart beating\n Restfully on the warm heart of the Old.\n\n Till we shall hear your voices mild and winning\n Steal through our doubt and discord, as outswells\n At fiercest noon, above a city\u2019s dinning,\n The chiming music of cathedral bells:\n\n Music that lifts the thought from trodden places\n And coarse confusions that around us lie,\n Up to the calm of high cloud-silvered spaces,\n Where the tall spire points through the soundless sky.\n\n\n\n\nHENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.\n\n\nI.\n\n \u201cHigh as my heart!\u201d Orlando answered thus,\n In careless Arden, Arden green to-day,\n Parrying with gallant wit the question gay\n Touching his lady\u2019s stature. When of us\n Lips yet to be, in years lying yet before,\n Make question of the stature of thy fame,\n The words that we shall answer are the same:\n _High as our hearts he stood_.\n What man would more?\n\n Wide-sunned with love thy last late winter days,\n Whose blue mild morns were memories of the spring.\n To thee spring voices had not ceased to sing,\n Nor ever closed to thee fresh woodland ways\n Where underneath old leaves the violets are,\n And, shy as boyhood\u2019s dream, spring beauties like a star.\n\nII.\n\n Thou wast not robbed of wonder when youth fled,\n But still the bud had promise to thine eyes,\n And beauty was not sundered from surprise,\n And reverent, as reverend, was thy head.\n Thy life was music, and thou mad\u2019st it ours.\n Not thine, crude scorn of gentle household things;\n And yet thy spirit had the sea-bird\u2019s wings,\n Nor rested long among the chestnut-flowers.\n Spain\u2019s coast of charm, and all the North Sea\u2019s cold\n Thou knewest, and thou knewest the soul of eld,\n And dusty scroll and volume we beheld\n To gold transmuted\u2014not to hard-wrought gold,\n But that clear shining of the eastern air,\n When Helios rising shakes the splendor of his hair.\n\n\n\n\nRALPH WALDO EMERSON.\n\n \u2014_With that Sir Gawain departed, joyful and sorrowful: joyful\n because of what Merlin had assured him should happen to him;\n and sorrowful, that Merlin had thus been lost._\n\n MORTE D\u2019ARTHUR.\n\n\n Thou Merlin, shut in the still wood of Death,\n Yet living! who through forest-calm dost roll\n A voice of guidance to the venturous soul\n As when thou hadst the common blood and breath:\n Far for thy praise my Fancy wandereth\n Through all wide lands, and fain would spoil the whole\n To heap crown-jewels at thine oak-tree\u2019s bole.\n \u201cSeek no bright words!\u201d a wiser spirit saith.\n \u201cNot such the sage can please: no seeker he!\n The world came to him in his tower, and told\n Secrets of might, unforced and loving-free;\n Nor held he Fancy\u2019s choice true gems and gold.\n Kneel but and say:\n _One grateful here behold!_\n _Of mine own treasure thou didst give the key!_\u201d\n\n\n\n\nON FIRST READING LANDOR\u2019S HELLENICS.\n\n\n Two sauntering, hand in hand, one happy day,\n Along a pleasant path that neither knew,\n Came, glad and startled, on the sudden blue,\n With sails unclouded, of a sunny bay,\n And hollowing toward the wave a meadow, gray\n With honey-giving growths thick-spread as dew.\n There goatskin-girt, with limbs like bronze in hue,\n Free-bathed in sun and wind, a shepherd lay.\n\n Asleep, his reed pipe fallen by his knee;\n And late, it seemed, a song had left his lips.\n We heard but lapping ripple, prattling bee\n Above the thyme\u2019s dim-purple, downy tips;\n Beyond, once beat by oars of beak\u00e9d ships,\n Far outward swept the calm, the storied sea.\n\n\n\n\nBACH\u2019S ST. MATTHEW PASSION MUSIC.\n\n\n Hark! on this wind eternal Voices ride.\n Oh, hark! out of the deep mysterious East\n The Voices of Disciple and High-Priest,\n Betrayer, and Denier, and Denied:\n Strong prayers at midnight by a streamlet-side,\n And broken sayings at a solemn feast;\n A sea-like sound: \u201cBarabbas be released!\u201d\n A fiercer wave: \u201cLet Him be crucified!\u201d\n\n And now arise new voices blent with these,\n In sober chorals, link\u00e9d like the beads\n Of some brown chaplet; breathing pieties\n Of faithful souls that sifted not the creeds.\n The names of those that sang the loiterer reads\n In God\u2019s green acre, spired with poplar-trees.\n\n\n\n\nSALVINI\u2019S OTHELLO.\n\n\n Not most the crouching spring, the forest-roar,\n The lion-pace, the lion-power express;\n By such strong signs as these he conquers less\n Than in that pulse-beat\u2019s time, when, wounded sore,\n He gathers all himself, and stands once more\n Unshaken in his sombre kingliness,\n Too great the deadly keenness to confess\n Of traitor steel sent clean to the heart\u2019s core:\n Sighs Iago, bent in soothing half-embrace,\n \u201cA little this hath dashed your mood, I wot!\u201d\n Then, majesty at full in eyes and face,\n Large soul to the lower\u2019s level stooping not,\n Dark head thrown back, with that grand Southern grace\n He waves his eloquent hands\u2014\u201cNay, not a jot!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nELLEN TERRY\u2019S BEATRICE.\n\n\n A wind of spring that whirls the feign\u00e9d snows\n Of blossom-petals in the face, and flees:\n Elusive, made of mirthful mockeries,\n Yet tender with the prescience of the rose;\n A strain desired, that through the memory goes,\n Too subtle-slender for the voice to seize;\n A flame dissembled, only lit to tease,\n Whose touch were half a kiss, if one but knows.\n\n She shows by Leonato\u2019s dove-like daughter\n A falcon, by a prince to be possessed,\n Gay-graced with bells that ever chiming are;\n In azure of the bright Sicilian water,\n A billow that has rapt into its breast\n The swayed reflection of a dancing star!\n\n\n\n\n\u201cSONGS OF A SEMITE.\u201d\n\n\nI.\n\n Armed soul that ridest through a land of peace,\n Her borders filled with finest of the wheat,\n Her children reaping, where with weary feet\n Sad sowers trod who taste not the increase:\n We hear thy trump, whose echo shall not cease,\n In hush of night resounding, while we meet\n Around unthreatened fires, but pressing fleet\n Thou passest, proud, to claim thy kin\u2019s release;\n Thy trump, that doth arraign the entomb\u00e8d Past,\n Till shapes that march as if with martyr-psalm\n In glow and gloom of kindly hearths we see:\n And now to present war a keener blast\n Calls loud, and spirits late content and calm\n Spring up enforced, and spur to follow thee!\n\nII.\n\n To war? What words are mine, that do thee wrong!\n Whose suit is powerful Peace, resplendent-shod,\n Fair on the mountains; who wouldst set the rod\n Borne as a staff o\u2019er stony ways and long\n Yet withered not, to strike new root and strong\n Deep in its nursing earth. Oh, there the clod\n Were virtue, and the sun the smile of God,\n And buds should break to bloom, as maids to song!\n\n Aye, would for thee that,\u2014even as the dove\n Whose silver wings have o\u2019er waste places passed,\n When in the lonely west the evening burns,\n Her unforgetful breast a-throb with love,\n To her own pillared porch of flight returns,\u2014\n On the old hills might Israel rest at last!\n\n\n\n\nON READING THE POEMS OF EDITH THOMAS.\n\n _Then will I, tasting, say\u2014_\n _This is arbutus\u2019 gift,_\n _Reached from the leafy drift_\n _On a glistening April day._\n\n WILD HONEY.\n\n\n Arbutus\u2019 gift, in very truth, I deem\n These gathered, golden songs that keep the gleam\n Of early sunlight through the awakened wood;\n The vernal spirits of the sisterhood\n There cloistered, rosy-cool and vestal-shy,\n Are in these lucent cells enforced to lie;\n Here bides the baffling fragrance, here the charm.\n Henceforth I fear not frosty Hiems\u2019 harm,\n Though all his bluff besiegers he should bring;\n Behold, my bookshelf lodges Ver, the Spring!\n\n\n\n\nPOSIES.\n\n \u2014_Is this ... the posy of a ring?_\n\n HAMLET.\n\n\nI.\n\nFRIENDSHIP.\n\n I were not worth you, could I long for you;\n But should you come, you would find me ready.\n The lamp is lighted, the flame is steady:\n Over the strait I toss this song for you!\n\n\nII.\n\nA ROSE.\n\n Too-perfect Rose, thy heavy breath has power\n To wake a dim, an unexplained regret:\n Art body to the soul of some deep hour\n That all my seasons have not yielded yet?\n\n But if it be so\u2014Hour, too-perfect Hour,\n Ah, blow not full, though all the yearning days\n Should tremble bud-like, since the wind must shower\n Thine unreturning grace along the ways!\n\n\nIII.\n\nWISTARIA.\n\n \u2014_lumenque juvent\u00e6_\n _Purpureum_\u2014\n\n O smile of spring, that o\u2019er the worn gray brow\n Of some old many-memoried house dost run,\n The very light of purple Youth art thou\n The laughing goddess shed upon her son!\n\n\nIV.\n\nON A FLY-LEAF.\n\n \u201cIt is the nightingale, and not the lark!\u201d\n O poet-heart, enamored of the Past,\n That Romeo with the ruby in his ear!\n No longer sicken to detain the dark:\n Thine eyes along the clear horizon cast:\n Behold, a fresh imperious dawn is here!\n\n\n\n\nAN IVORY MINIATURE.\n\n\n When State Street homes were stately still;\n When out of town was Murray Hill;\n In late-deceased \u201cold times\u201d\n Of vast, embowering bonnet-shapes,\n And creamy-crinkled Canton crapes,\n And florid annual-rhymes,\n\n He owned a small suburban seat\n Where now you see a modern street,\n A monochrome of brown;\n The sad \u201cbrown-brown\u201d of Dante\u2019s dreams,\n A twilight turned to stone, that seems\n To weight our city down.\n\n Through leafy chestnuts whitely showed\n The pillared front of his abode:\n A garden girt it \u2019round,\n Where pungent box did trim enclose\n The marigold and cabbage-rose,\n And \u201cpi\u2019ny\u201d heavy-crowned.\n\n Yea, whatso sweets, the changing year\u2019s,\n He most affected. Gone: but here\u2019s\n His face who loved them so.\n Old eyes like sherry, warm and mild;\n A cheek clear-hued as cheek of child;\n Sleek head, a sphere of snow.\n\n His mouth was pious, and his nose\n Patrician; with which mould there goes\n A disaffected view.\n In those sublime, be-oratored,\n Spread-eagle days, his soul deplored\n So _much_ red-white-and-blue!\n\n In umber ink, with S\u2019s long,\n He left behind him censure strong\n In stiffest phrases clothed;\n But Time\u2014a pleasant jest enough!\u2014\n Has turned the tory leaves to buff,\n The liberal hue he loathed.\n\n Of many a gentle deed he made\n Brief simple record. Never fade\n Those everlasting-flowers\n That spring up wild by good men\u2019s walks;\n Opinions wither on their stalks,\n And sere grow Fashion\u2019s bowers.\n\n Erect, be-frilled, in neckcloth tall,\n His semblance sits, removed from all\n Our needs and noises new;\n Released from all the rent we pay\n As tenants of the large To-day,\n Cool, in a background blue.\n\n And he, beneath a cherub chipped,\n Plump, squamous-pinioned, pouting-lipped,\n Sleeps calm where Trinity\n Points finger dark to clouds that fleet;\n A warning, seen from surging street,\n A welcome, seen from sea.\n\n There fall, ghosts glorified of tears\n Shed for the dead in buried years,\n The silver notes of chimes;\n And there, with not unreverent hand\n Though light, I lay this \u201cgreene garl\u00e0nd,\u201d\n This woven wreath of rhymes.\n\n\n\n\nTO MY GOLDFISH.\n\n\n O my gorgeous-mail\u00e9d knight,\n Whom a finger-tip can fright!\n At my touch upstarting shy,\n With a silvery-rolling eye,\n Leaping, winding, sudden splashing,\n This way dashing, that way flashing!\n I\u2019ll not harm thee; lie thou still;\n Heave not fin nor glittering gill;\n Globe-kept captive, thou shalt find\n Fellow-feeling makes me kind.\n\n I, too, own a hermit\u2019s heart,\n Swift at aught unknown to start:\n And I, too, am walled about,\n Though the sunbeams find me out.\n Scarce I see the stirring world\n More than thou the brook breeze-curled,\n But must make, like thee, delight\n From a few small pebbles white;\n Trifles, that may fancy bear\n To some rippled pleasance rare.\n\n Let thy thought, free-swimming, make\n This, thy globe, a spring-fed lake,\n And with water crystal-bright\n I\u2019ll refresh it morn and night,\n That such dreams the easier be:\n Deal, sweet Fates! as well by me.\n\n\n\n\n\u201cAS THE CROW FLIES.\u201d\n\n\n Buccaneer with blackest sails,\n Steering home by compass true,\n Now that all the rich West pales\n From its ingot-hue!\n\n Would that compass in thy breast\n Thou couldst lend, for guiding me\n here my Hope hath made her nest\u2014\n In how far a tree!\n\n Swerving not, nor stooping low,\n To that dear, that distant mark\n Could I undiverted go,\n What were coming dark?\n\n \u2014Careless of the twilight ground,\n O\u2019er the wood and o\u2019er the stream\n Still he sails, with hollow sound\n Strange, as in a dream!\n\n\n\n\nSPRIGS O\u2019 HEATHER.\n\n\nI.\n\nTO COMIN\u2019 YEARS.\n\n Here\u2019s awa\u2019 wi\u2019 bairnies\u2019 fears!\n Here\u2019s a health to comin\u2019 years!\n They maun bring me smiles wi\u2019 tears;\n Smiles are wisdom\u2019s wealth.\n Sae I\u2019ll sing it in their ears:\n \u201cI\u2019m na scared o\u2019 ye, my dears!\n To ye canty comin\u2019 years\n Here\u2019s a hearty health!\n\n \u201cJust a line o\u2019 lasses ye,\n Steppin\u2019 shy, but blinkin\u2019 slee;\n There\u2019s a spark in ilk sweet e\u2019e\n To my soul declares\n Frowns o\u2019 yours are light to dree;\n Ilka lip so bright o\u2019 blee\n Keeps in guard a kiss to gie\n To the lad that dares!\u201d\n\n\nII.\n\nWONDERFU\u2019 SLEE.\n\n O Jamie MacPherson! Ye\u2019re sic a slee person!\n I kenned ye for keen ever sin\u2019 we were wee;\n Ye hae stown my ain mither, hae stown my ain brither,\n Hae stown my ain sister awa\u2019 frae me!\n\n At kirk door they see\u2019d ye\u2014sic follies, I rede ye,\n Are na for the likes o\u2019 that Sabbath-day place;\n Ye leukit at me wi\u2019 the tear in your e\u2019e,\n And ye staw them awa\u2019 wi\u2019 your lang droopit face.\n\n Sic knittin\u2019 o\u2019 brows, mon, sic shakin\u2019 o\u2019 pows, mon,\n Sic praisin\u2019 of ye, mon, for douce and genteel!\n Mither canna get sleep for the thocht o\u2019 your sheep,\n Nor Meg for the thocht o\u2019 the dool ye maun feel.\n\n E\u2019en dumb dozin\u2019 Collie has heard o\u2019 my folly,\n And leuks at me sidelang whenever I pass,\n His e\u2019e sadly blinkin\u2019, and sighs while down-sinkin\u2019,\n As though he were thinkin\u2019, \u201cPuir daft feckless lass!\u201d\n\n Naught for it but roamin\u2019 late into the gloamin\u2019\n (Sin\u2019 now it\u2019s na canty beside the hearthstane),\n When the pale primsie moon she is walkin\u2019 aboon,\n But nae lass below her gaes roamin\u2019 alane!\n\n A lad I hae seen, he has witchin\u2019 black e\u2019en\u2014\n O Jamie MacPherson, ye\u2019re wonderfu\u2019 slee!\n Ye hae stown my ain mither, hae stown my ain brither,\n But Robin has stown my ain heart frae me!\n\n\nIII.\n\nMY AIN, AIN LASS.\n\n I\u2019m fain for toys o\u2019 Fortune whyles;\n I hae no hate for ranks and styles;\n But lairdship o\u2019 the braw blue isles\n I\u2019d e\u2019en let pass\n For are o\u2019 her fine tremblin\u2019 smiles\u2014\n My ain, ain lass!\n\n I aiblins dream on days to be,\n An\u2019 feel my heart leap out a wee;\n But friendly Fate can grant nae fee\n Could e\u2019er surpass\n Her e\u2019en, sae dark wi\u2019 luve to me\u2014\n My ain, ain lass!\n\n Whyles, gray and ghaistly, by me stand\n Auld memories in an eerie band;\n But swift as prints on slidin\u2019 sand\n Sic phantoms pass,\n If sae I baud her warm, warm hand,\n My ain, ain lass!\n\n The past she sweetens through and through,\n An\u2019, far as heaven, the future too;\n For, surely, as her dear soul\u2019s due,\n They\u2019ll let me pass!\n Wi\u2019out me there what wad she do,\n My ain, ain lass?\n\n\n\n\nEVENING PRIMROSES.\n\n\n While gray was the summer evening,\n Hast never a small sprite seen\n Lighting the fragrant torches\n For the feast of the Fairy Queen?\n\n The buds on the primrose-bushes\n Upspring into yellow light\n But ever the wee deft spirit\n Escapes my bewildered sight.\n\n Yet oft, through the dusky garden,\n A dainty white moth will fly,\n Or, pink as a pink rose-petal,\n One lightly will waver by.\n\n Perhaps \u2019tis the shape he comes in,\n Perhaps it is he indeed,\n Sir Moth, or the merry Cobweb,\n Or the whimsical Mustard-seed!\n\n\n\n\nA HUMMING-BIRD.\n\n\n Twelve daughters of the Trumpet-vine\n Spread wide their scarlet silks to-day.\n Sir Summer Breeze, my gossip fine,\n Can you the reason say?\n\n \u201cOh listen while I whisper low!\n The Honeysuckle told the Bee,\n (_Her_ girls wore out their gowns, you know!)\n And Master Buzz told me.\n\n \u201c\u2019Twas done for Some One\u2019s sake, I ween,\n Who by and by will hither float,\n All gay in gold and emerald green,\n With rubies round his throat!\n\n \u201cYou doubt me? Hearken! There he went,\n The flashing Prince of Idle Hours,\n Whose silvery sing-song compliment\n Delights the flattered flowers!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHILD SONGS.\n\n\nI.\n\nWOOL-GATHERING.\n\n \u201cWhere are my Five Wits gone,\n And will they come back soon?\u201d\n They\u2019re gone a-gathering wool\n In the Valleys of the Moon.\n\n There the little Dream-Sheep,\n That look like mounds of snow,\n Through the green, green meadows\n Go grazing to and fro.\n\n Thither have I sent them,\n Those Five Wits of mine,\n Two with bags, and two with crooks,\n And one with shears that shine.\n\n They catch the little Dream-Sheep\n And cut their fleece away,\n All to weave a story from\n Upon another day!\n\n\nII.\n\nTHE LAND WITHOUT A NAME.\n\n Where the Sun sails bold on the Sea of Gold\n Past the Violet Islands fair,\n And the ragged shapes of the Rosy Capes\n And the Castles of the Air,\n Can you call aright all that country bright\n That is washed by waves like flame?\n \u2019Tis the coast admired, \u2019tis the clime desired\u2014\n \u2019Tis the Land Without a Name!\n\n And the way to go, since you fain would know,\n Is to charter the Crescent Ship,\n All of silver pale, with a cobweb sail,\n And merrily does she dip!\n There\u2019s a crew of Hopes at her filmy ropes,\n And on board that ship of fame\n Many a longing Dream seeks the shores agleam\n Of the Land Without a Name!\n\n\nIII.\n\nA LULLABY.\n\n Now while rest the happy herds,\n And in folds the fleecy sheep,\n All the boughs are full of birds,\n Crowding, sound asleep.\n _Sleep, sleep, sleep,_\n _Under the fair, fair flocks of stars_\n _That roam all night and know no bars,_\n _Sleep, sweet, sleep!_\n\n Now if we an Owl could ride,\u2014\n Yes, an Owl with yellow eyes,\n Globy lanterns, clear and wide,\n Flaming while he flies,\u2014\n\n We should see the pretty things,\n Pretty little sleepy souls!\n All their heads beneath their wings,\n Blind with sleep as moles!\n _Sleep, sleep, sleep,_\n _Under the wild, winged winds that fly_\n _All night long across the sky,_\n _Sleep, sweet, sleep!_\n\n\n\n\nPUCK.\n\n\n\n\nPUCK.\n\n\n Ask not my master, Oberon, why still\n He keeps among his train this freakish sprite:\n For sooth to say, the elf intends no ill;\n He never changed a word with Goblin Spite,\n Else Oberon had banished him outright.\n Not his to flee at cock-crow; he was born\n Of blameless Mirth, and looks upon the morn.\n \u201cGood-fellow, and sweet Puck,\u201d some folk do name him;\n I pray you of your kindness not to blame him!\n\n \u2014Lo, while I would bespeak you, here he rides!\n A columbine he bears upon his head\n For jester\u2019s cap, and for a steed he guides\n A mocking catbird with a spider\u2019s thread.\n\n\n\n\nNARCISSUS IN CAMDEN.\n\nA CLASSICAL DIALOGUE OF THE YEAR 1882.\n\n (\u201c_In the course of his lecture Mr. \u2e3a remarked that the most\n impressive room he had yet entered in America was the one in\n Camden town where he met \u2e3a \u2e3a. It contained plenty of fresh\n air and sunlight.... On the table was a simple cruse of water._\u201d ...)\n\nPAUMANOKIDES. NARCISSUS.\n\n\nPAUMANOKIDES.\n\n Who may this be?\n This young man clad unusually, with loose locks, languorous, glidingly\n toward me advancing,\n Toward the ceiling of my chamber his orbic and expressive eye-balls\n uprolling,\n As I have seen the green-necked wild-fowl the mallard in the thundering\n of the storm,\n By the weedy shore of Paumanok my fish-shaped island.\n Sit down, young man!\n I do not know you, but I love you with burning intensity,\n I am he that loves the young men, whosoever and wheresoever they are or\n may be hereafter, or may have been any time in the past,\n Loves the eye-glassed literat, loves also and probably more the vender\n of clams, raucous-throated, monotonous-chanting,\n Loves the Elevated Railroad employee of Mannahatta, my city;\n I suppress the rest of the list of the persons I love, solely because\n I love you,\n Sit down _\u00e9l\u00e8ve_, I receive you!\n\nNARCISSUS.\n\n O clarion, from whose brazen throat\n Strange sounds across the seas are blown,\n Where England, girt as with a moat,\n A strong sea-lion, sits alone!\n\n A pilgrim from that white-cliffed shore,\n What joy, large flower of Western land,\n To seek thy democratic door,\n With eager hand to clasp thy hand!\n\nPAUMANOKIDES.\n\n Right you are!\n Take then the electric pressure of these fingers, O my Comrade!\n I do not doubt you are the one I was waiting for, as I loaf\u2019d here\n enjoying my soul,\n Let us two under all and any circumstances stick together from this out!\n\nNARCISSUS.\n\n Seeing that isle of which I spake but late\n By ignorant demagogues is held in fee,\n The grand Greek limbs of young Democracy\n Beckoned me thence to this ideal State,\n Where maiden fields of life Hellenic wait\n For one who in clear culture walks apart\n (Avoiding all rude clamors of the mart\n That mar his calm) to sow the seeds of great\n Growths yet to be\u2014the love of sacred Art,\n And Beauty, of this breast queen consecrate,\n Whose throne mean Science seeks to violate;\n The flawless artist\u2019s lunacy serene,\n His purely passionate and perfect hate\n And noble scorn of all things Philistine.\n\nPAUMANOKIDES.\n\n Hold up there, Camerado!\n Beauty is all very good as far as it goes, and Art the perpetuator of\n Beauty is all very good as far as it goes, but you can tell your\n folks,\n Your folks in London, or in Dublin, or in Rome, or where the Arno\n flows, or where Seine flows,\n Your folks in the picture-galleries, admiring the Raphaels, the\n Tintorettos, the Rubenses, Vandykes, Correggios, Murillos,\n Angelicos of the world,\n (I know them all, they have effused to me, I have wrung them out,\n I have abandoned them, I have got beyond them,)\u2014\n\nNARCISSUS (_aside, with tenderness_).\n\n Ah, Burne-Jones!\n\nPAUMANOKIDES.\n\n Tell them that I am considerably more than Beauty!\n I, representing the bone and muscle and cartilage and adipose tissue\n and pluck of the Sierras, of California, of the double Carolinas,\n of the Granite State, and the Narragansett Bay State, and the\n Wooden Nutmeg State!\n I, screaming with the scream of the bald-headed bird the eagle in the\n primitive woods of America my country, in the hundred and sixth\n year of these States!\n\n Dear son, I have learned the secret of the Universe,\n I learned it from my original _bonne_, the white-capped ocean,\n I learned it from the Ninth-month Equinoctial, from the redwood tree,\n and the Civil War, and the hermit-thrush, and the telephone, and\n the Corliss engine,\n The secret of the Universe is not Beauty, dear son, nor is it Art the\n perpetuator of Beauty,\n The secret of the Universe is to admire one\u2019s self.\n Camerado, you hear me!\n\nNARCISSUS.\n\n Ah, I too loitering on an eve of June\n Where one wan Narciss leaned above a pool,\n While overhead Queen Dian rose too soon,\n And through the Tyrian clematis the cool\n Night airs came wandering wearily, I too,\n Beholding that pale flower, beheld Life\u2019s key at last, and knew\n\n That love of one\u2019s fair self were but indeed\n Just worship of pure Beauty; and I gave\n One sweet, sad sigh, then bade my fond eyes feed\n Upon the mirrored treasure of the wave,\n Like that lithe beauteous boy in Tempe\u2019s vale,\n Whom hapless Echo loved\u2014thou know\u2019st the Heliconian tale!\n\n And while heaven\u2019s harmony in lake and gold\n Changed to a faint nocturne of silvern-gray,\n Like rising sea-mists from my spirit rolled\n The grievous vapors of this Age of Clay,\n Beholding Beauty\u2019s re-arisen shrine,\n And the white glory of this precious loveliness of mine!\n\nPAUMANOKIDES.\n\n I catch on, my Comrade!\n \u2014You allow that your aim is similar to mine, after all is said and done.\n Well, there is not much similarity of style, and I recommend my style\n to you.\n Go gaze upon the native rock-piles of Mannahatta, my city,\n Formless, reckless,\n Marked with the emerald miracle of moss, tufted with the unutterable\n wonder of the exquisite green grass,\n Giving pasture to the spry and fearless-footed quadruped the goat,\n Also patched by the heaven-ambitious citizens with the yellow handbill,\n the advertisement of patent soaps, the glaring and vari-colored\n circus poster:\n Mine, too, for reasons, such arrays;\n Such my unfettered verse, scorning the delicatesse of dilettantes.\n Try it, I\u2019ll stake you my ultimate dollar you\u2019ll like it.\n\nNARCISSUS (_gracefully waiving the point_).\n\n Haply in the far, the orient future, in the dawn we herald like the\n birds,\n Men shall read the legend of our meeting, linger o\u2019er the music of\n our words;\n\n Haply coming poets shall compare me then to Milton in his lovely youth,\n Sitting in the cell of Galileo, learning at his elder\u2019s lips the truth.\n\n Haply they shall liken these dear moments, safely held in History\u2019s\n amber clear,\n Unto Dante\u2019s converse bland with Virgil, on the margin of that gloomy\n mere!\n\nPAUMANOKIDES.\n\n Do not be deceived, dear son;\n Amid the choruses of the morn of progress, roaring, hilarious, those\n names will be heard no longer.\n Galileo was admirable once, Milton was admirable,\n Dante the _I_-talian was a cute man in his way,\n But he was not the maker of poems, the Answerer!\n I Paumanokides am the maker of poems, the Answerer,\n And I calculate to chant as long as the earth revolves,\n To an interminable audience of haughty, effusive, copious, gritty, and\n chipper Americanos!\n\nNARCISSUS.\n\n What more is left to say or do?\n Our minds have met; our hands must part.\n I go to plant in pastures new\n The love of Beauty and of Art.\n I\u2019ll shortly start.\n One town is rather small for two\n Like me and you!\n\nPAUMANOKIDES.\n\n So long!\n\n\n\n\nTHE SONG OF SIR PALAMEDE.\n\n \u201c_Came Palamede, upon a secret quest,_\n _To high Tintagel, and abode as guest_\n _In likeness of a minstrel with the king._\n _Nor was there man could sound so sweet a string._\n ...\n _To that strange minstrel strongly swore King Mark,_\n _By all that makes a knight\u2019s faith firm and strong,_\n _That he, as guerdon of his harp and song,_\n _Might crave and have his liking._\n ...\u2019_O King, I crave_\n _No gift of man that king may give to slave,_\n _But this thy crowned queen only, this thy wife._\u2019\u201d\n\n SWINBURNE. _Tristram of Lyonesse._\n\n\n With flow exhaustless of alliterate words,\n And rhymes that mate in music glad as birds\n That feel the spring\u2019s sweet life among light leaves\n That ardent breath of amorous May upheaves\n And kindles fluctuant to an emerald fire\n Bright as the imperious seas that all men\u2019s souls desire:\n With long strong swell of alexandrine lines,\n And with passion of anap\u00e6sts, like winds in pines\n That moan and mutter in great gusts suddenly,\n With whirl of wild wet wings of storms set free:\n In mirth of might and very joy to sing,\n Uplifting voice untired, I sound one sole sweet string.\n\n Love, that is ever bitter as salt blown spray,\n Yet sweet, yea sweet as wrath or wine alway,\n As red warm mouths of M\u00e6nads subtly sweet;\n Love, that is fleeter than the wind\u2019s fleet feet\n Soft-shod with snowflakes; love, that hath the name\n And fury and force of swift bright shuddering flame:\n Fate, that is foe to love and lovely life,\n Yea foe implacable, and hath death to wife;\n Fate, that is bitterer than the salt spray blown\n And colder than soft snow yet hard as stone;\n Fate, that makes daily fare of heart\u2019s desire,\n Being found thereunto a devouring fire:\n Death, that is friend to fate and fair love\u2019s foe;\n Death, that makes waste the wolds of life with snow;\n Death, harsh as spray of seas that wild winds blow:\n Life, that is strangely one of all these three,\n Being bitter as is the sharp salt spray of sea,\n And thereto colder than the blown white rose\n And soft brief blossom of unmothered snows,\n And fiercer than the forceful feathered fire,\n Fed as a flame with hope of heart and high desire:\n All these I sing, and sound the same sweet string.\n\n And as fresh-gathered leaves of bay I bring\n Green praises to all dear dead lute-players,\n Whom Pluto\u2019s passionate queen holds fast as hers,\n Yea all sad souls that have smiled and sinned and sung,\n With whose gold-colored hairs and hoar this harp is strung.\n And blame of the high great gods that do amiss,\n Being cruel and crowned and bathed complete in bliss,\n And careless if this world be out of tune,\n And deaf to dithyrambs of bards that bay the moon:\n And all perfections of all those I love,\n Each bettering still the best and still above\n The last this violent voice proclaimed the best,\n And blown by stormy breath still starward o\u2019er the rest;\n And all large loathsomeness of all I hate,\n Whose poisonous presence doth Ca\u00efna wait,\n And better it were that they had ne\u2019er been born,\n I being dowered with hate of hate and scorn of scorn,\n And shrinking not to name them newts and snakes,\n Lepers and toads and frogs and hooting owls and crakes:\n All these with ease of measureless might I sing,\n And sound, though sheer stark mad, the same sweet string.\n And many a theme I choose in wayfaring,\n As one who passing plucks the sunflower\n And ponders on her looks for love of her.\n Yea, her flower-named whose fate was like a flower,\n Being bright and brief and broken in an hour\n And whirled of winds: and her whose lawless hand\n Held flickering flame to fawn against the brand,\n Till Meleager splendid as the sun\n Shrank to a star and set, and all her day was done:\n And her who lent her slight white virgin light\n For death to dim, that Athens\u2019 mastering might\n Above all seas should shine, supernal sphere of night:\n And her who kept the high knight amorous\n Pent in her hollow hill-house marvelous,\n And flame of flowers brake beauteous where she trod,\n Her who hath wine and honey and a rod,\n And crowneth man a king, and maketh man a slave\n Her who rose rose-red from the rose-white wave:\n And her who ruled with sword-blue blade-bright eyes\n The helpless hearts of men in queenly wise,\n And all were bowed and broken as on a wheel,\n Yet no soft love-cloud long could sheath that stainless steel,\n Her tiger-hearted and false and glorious,\n With flower-sweet throat and float of warm hair odorous;\n These sing I, and whatso else that burns and glows,\n And is as fire and foam-flowers and the rose\n And sun and stars and wan warm moon and snows.\n Who hath said that I have not made my song to shine\n With such bright words as seal a song to be divine?\n Who hath said that I have not sweetness thereon spread\n As gold of peerless honey is poured on bread?\n Who hath said that I make not all men\u2019s brains to ring,\n And swim with imminent madness while I sing,\n And fall as feeble dykes before strong tides of spring?\n And now as guerdon of my great song I claim\n The swan-white pearl of singers, yea Queen Fame,\n Who shall be wed no more to languid lips and tame,\n But clasp me and kiss and call me by my name,\n And be all my days about me as a flame,\n Though sane vain lame tame cranes sans shame make game and blame!\n\n\n\n\nA MERRY JEST OF A MODERN MAID.\n\n\n Miss Pallas Eudora Van Blurky,\n She didn\u2019t know chicken from turkey;\n High-Spanish and Greek she could fluently speak,\n But her knowledge of poultry was murky!\n\n She could tell the great-uncle of Moses,\n And the dates of the Wars of the Roses,\n And the reasons of things\u2014why the Indians wore rings\n In their red aboriginal noses;\n\n Why Shakspere was wrong in his grammar,\n And the meaning of Emerson\u2019s BRAHMA,\n And she went chipping rocks with a little black box\n And a small geological hammer.\n\n She had views upon co-education,\n And the principal needs of the nation,\n And her glasses were blue, and the number she knew\n Of the stars in each bright constellation.\n\n And she wrote with a handwriting clerky,\n And she talked with an emphasis jerky,\n And she painted on tiles in the sweetest of styles,\n But she didn\u2019t know chicken from turkey!\n\n\n\n\nTHE RHYME OF THE HERCULES CLUB.\n\nBEING A BALLAD OF TO-DAY, DESIGNED TO ILLUSTRATE THE PRINCIPLE OF\nREACTION, AND TO SET FORTH HOW THERE MAY BE TOO MUCH OF AN EXCELLENT\nTHING.\n\n\n There was once a young man of the medium size,\n Who, by keeping a ledger, himself kept likewise.\n In the matter of lunch he\u2019d a leaning to pies,\n And his chronic dyspepsia will hence not surprise;\n And his friends often told him, with tears in their eyes,\n Which they did not disguise, that a person who tries\n To live without exercise generally dies,\n And declared, for the sake of his family ties,\n He should enter the Hercules Club.\n\n Tom Box and Dick Dumbell would suasively say,\n If they met him by chance in the roar of Broadway,\n \u201cIt\u2019s bad for a fellow, all work and no play;\n Come, let us propose you! You\u2019ll find it will pay\n To belong to the Hercules Club!\u201d\n\n And he yielded at last, and they put up his name,\n Which was found without blame; and they put down the same\n In a roll-book tremendous; and straight he became\n A Samson, regarding his tame past with shame;\n Called for \u201cBeef, lean and rare!\u201d and cut off all his hair,\n Had his shoulders constructed abnormally square,\n And walked out with an air that made people declare,\n \u201c_He_ belongs to the Hercules Club!\u201d\n\n And he often remarked, in original way:\n \u201cIt\u2019s bad for a fellow, all work and no play;\n Without recreation, sir, life doesn\u2019t pay!\n And I for my part am most happy to say\n I belong to the Hercules Club.\u201d\n\n And frequently during a very hot \u201cspell,\u201d\n In thick woolen garments clad closely and well,\n \u201cReducing,\u201d\u2014for he was resolved to excel,\u2014\n rowed in the sun at full speed, in a shell\n That belonged to the Hercules Club.\n\n And for weeks, while the dew on the racing-track lay,\n He ran before breakfast a half mile a day,\n Improving his style and increasing his \u201cstay\u201d;\n And was first at the finish, and fainted away,\n At the games of the Hercules Club.\n\n Six nights in succession he sat up to pore\n \u201cThe Laws of Athletics\u201d devotedly o\u2019er\n (Which number ten thousand and seventy-four),\n With a view to proposing a very few more\n In a speech to the Hercules Club.\n\n And his coat upon festal occasions was gay\n With medals on medals, marked \u201cH. A. A. A.,\u201d[1]\n With a motto in Greek (which, my lore to display,\n Means \u201cPleasure is business\u201d), a splendid array\n Of the spoils of the Hercules Club.\n\n But acquaintances not of the muscular kind\n Began to observe that his brow was deep-lined,\n Too brilliant his eye, and to wander inclined;\n He appeared, in a word (early English), \u201cfore-pined\u201d;\n And one morning his ledger and desk he resigned,\n Explaining, \u201cI can\u2019t have my health undermined\n By this \u2018demnition grind\u2019; and I\u2019m getting behind\n In my duties as Captain\u201d (an office defined,\n Page hundred and two, in the by-laws that bind\n With red tape the great Hercules Club).\n\n And he further remarked, in most serious way:\n \u201cGive it up, did you say? \u2019Twill be frigid, that day![2]\n Why, without relaxation, sir, life wouldn\u2019t pay!\n And I, for my part, will remain till I\u2019m gray\n On the roll of the Hercules Club!\u201d\n\n You perceive, gentle reader, the rub.\n Is it nobler to suffer those arrows and slings\n Lack of exercise brings\u2014or take clubs, and let things\n Unconnected with matters athletic take wings;\n Till all interests beside, like the Arabs, shall glide\n From the landscape of life, once a plain free and wide,\n But now fenced for the \u201cGames\u201d which we lightly began,\n Grown our serious aims and the chief end of Man?\n There\u2019s an aureate mean these two courses between,\n But I humbly submit that it seldom is seen,\n With all proper respect for that organization,\n Of benevolent purpose and high reputation,\n The excellent Hercules Club!\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n[1] \u201cH. A. A. A.\u201d: Hercules Amateur Athletic Association.\n\n[2] Frigid day, or day of low temperature: A singular idiom of the\nAmerican language, expressing grave improbability.\n\n\n\n\nTHE BALLAD OF CASSANDRA BROWN.\n\n\n Though I met her in the summer, when one\u2019s heart lies round at ease,\n As it were in tennis costume, and a man\u2019s not hard to please,\n Yet I think at any season to have met her was to love,\n While her tones, unspoiled, unstudied, had the softness of the dove.\n\n At request she read us poems in a nook among the pines,\n And her artless voice lent music to the least melodious lines;\n Though she lowered her shadowing lashes, in an earnest reader\u2019s wise,\n Yet we caught blue gracious glimpses of the heavens that were her eyes.\n\n As in paradise I listened. Ah, I did not understand\n That a little cloud, no larger than the average human hand,\n Might, as stated oft in fiction, spread into a sable pall,\n When she said that she should study Elocution in the fall!\n\n I admit her earliest efforts were not in the Ercles vein;\n She began with, \u201cLit-tle Maaybel, with her faayce against the paayne,\n And the beacon-light a-trrremble,\u201d\u2014which although it made me wince,\n Is a thing of cheerful nature to the things she\u2019s rendered since.\n\n Having learned the Soulful Quiver, she acquired the Melting Mo-o-an,\n And the way she gave \u201cYoung Grayhead,\u201d would have liquefied a stone.\n Then the Sanguinary Tragic did her energies employ,\n And she tore my taste to tatters when she slew \u201cThe Polish Boy.\u201d\n\n It\u2019s not pleasant for a fellow when the jewel of his soul\n Wades through slaughter on the carpet, while her orbs in frenzy roll;\n What was I that I should murmur? Yet it gave me grievous pain\n That she rose in social gatherings and Searched among the Slain.\n\n I was forced to look upon her, in my desperation dumb,\n Knowing well that when her awful opportunity was come\n She would give us battle, murder, sudden death at very least,\n As a skeleton of warning, and a blight upon the feast.\n\n Once, ah! once I fell a-dreaming; some one played a polonaise\n I associated strongly with those happier August days;\n And I mused, \u201cI\u2019ll speak this evening,\u201d recent pangs forgotten quite.\n Sudden shrilled a scream of anguish: \u201cCurfew SHALL not ring to-night!\u201d\n\n Ah, that sound was as a curfew, quenching rosy warm romance:\n Were it safe to wed a woman one so oft would wish in France?\n Oh, as she \u201ccull-imbed\u201d that ladder, swift my mounting hope came down.\n I am still a single cynic; she is still Cassandra Brown!\n\n \u2014_Coroebus Green._\n\n\n\n\nTHE SWEET O\u2019 THE YEAR.\n\nThis trifle may derive interest from the music, by MR. E. C. PHELPS, in\n_Scribner\u2019s Monthly_ for August, 1880.\n\n\nACT I.\n\nSCENE.\u2014A LOWLY COT.\n\n TENANT (_Tenor_).\n TENANT\u2019S WIFE (_Soprano_).\n TENANT\u2019S MOTHER-IN-LAW (_Contralto_).\n LANDLORD (_Basso_).\n\n\n TENOR SOLO.\n\n How happy is our lot,\n Beneath our vines and fig-trees,\n In this suburban spot,\n Among so many big trees!\n Our landlord\u2019s very kind,\n His speech is mild and gentle,\n He never was inclined\n To go and raise the rental.\n\n TRIO.\n\n How happy is our lot\n Beneath our vines and fig-trees,\n In this suburban spot,\n Among so many big trees;\n How happy is our lot!\n How happy is our lot!\n\n _Enter Landlord._ BASSO.\n\n How do you do?\n _Aside._ I\u2019ll try a few devices;\n I\u2019ve paid a five-cent fare,\n To see if my premises\n Were wanting much repair.\n\n TENOR.\n\n Sir, the whole house neat and nice is,\n And requires no extra care.\n\n BASSO.\n\n _Aside._ Got him there!\n _Direct._ This is indeed a lovely spot.\n\n TENOR.\n\n Beyond compare.\n\n BASSO.\n\n _Aside._ Got him there!\n _Direct._ I think you never find it hot?\n\n TENOR.\n\n Fine cool air.\n\n BASSO.\n\n _Aside._ Got him there!\n _Direct._ Handy to the cars and boats?\n\n TENOR.\n\n Pretty fair.\n\n BASSO.\n\n _Aside._ Got him there!\n _Direct._ Far removed from geese and goats?\n\n TENOR.\n\n So we air.\n\n BASSO.\n\n _Aside._ Got him there!\n Think I\u2019ve got him everywhere.\n _Direct._ Bless you! after so much praise\n I shall really have to raise.\n\n _Mother-in-law._ CONTRALTO.\n\n _To Tenor._ Oh, oh, oh!\n No, no, no!\n Have you the feelings of a man\n To stand such wicked imposition?\n An old house built on such a plan,\n And in the very worst condition.\n\n SOPRANO.\n\n The paper\u2019s hanging on the wall.\n\n CONTRALTO.\n\n The plaster\u2019s tumbling from the ceiling.\n\n SOPRANO.\n\n The front piazza is liable to fall.\n\n CONTRALTO.\n\n Oh, are you a man of any feeling?\n\n TENOR.\n\n I won\u2019t pay!\n\n BASSO.\n\n First of May.\n\nINTERMISSION\u2014_Agent heard without tacking up bill._\n\n\nACT II.\n\nENTER LEFT\u2014_Chorus of Feminine House-Seekers and Chorus of Masculine\nHouse-Seekers, waving permits._\n\n FULL CHORUS.\n\n I want to see\u2e3a\n\n TENOR.\n\n Oh, certainly!\n Be kind enough to follow me.\n\n FEMALE CHORUS.\n\n This parlor\u2019s rather nice;\n This parlor\u2019s rather small;\n Are you troubled with rats and mice?\n Will the landlord paint the wall?\n\n MALE CHORUS.\n\n Does the roof leak when it\u2019s clear?\n\n FEMALE CHORUS.\n\n Are the bedrooms tinted blue?\n How long have you lived here?\n Will the range cook oyster stew?\n\n _Exeunt, R._\n\n FULL CHORUS (_re-entering, R._)\n\n It wouldn\u2019t do!\n\n FEMALE CHORUS.\n\n It\u2019s warm!\n\n MALE CHORUS.\n\n It\u2019s cold!\n\n FEMALE CHORUS.\n\n It\u2019s quite too new!\n\n MALE CHORUS.\n\n It\u2019s quite too old!\n\n FULL CHORUS.\n\n I wanted gas!\n I wanted grass!\n We all expected fine plate-glass!\n And shelves for cheese!\n And orange trees!\n And beds for raising strawberries!\n\n I dwell in a marble hall,\n And I couldn\u2019t make it do;\n And I don\u2019t see how you live at all;\n And I\u2019m much obliged to you.\n\n\n\n\nTHE TENDER HEART.\n\n\n She gazed upon the burnished brace\n Of plump ruffed grouse he showed with pride\n Angelic grief was in her face:\n \u201cHow _could_ you do it, dear?\u201d she sighed.\n \u201cThe poor, pathetic, moveless wings!\n The songs all hushed\u2014oh, cruel shame!\u201d\n Said he, \u201cThe partridge never sings.\u201d\n Said she, \u201cThe sin is quite the same.\n\n \u201cYou men are savage through and through.\n A boy is always bringing in\n Some string of bird\u2019s eggs, white and blue,\n Or butterfly upon a pin.\n The angle-worm in anguish dies,\n Impaled, the pretty trout to tease\u2e3a\u201d\n \u201cMy own, I fish for trout with flies\u2e3a\u201d\n \u201cDon\u2019t wander from the question, please!\u201d\n\n She quoted Burns\u2019s \u201cWounded Hare,\u201d\n And certain burning lines of Blake\u2019s,\n And Ruskin on the fowls of air,\n And Coleridge on the water-snakes.\n At Emerson\u2019s \u201cForbearance\u201d he\n Began to feel his will benumbed;\n At Browning\u2019s \u201cDonald\u201d utterly\n His soul surrendered and succumbed.\n\n \u201cOh, gentlest of all gentle girls,\u201d\n He thought, \u201cbeneath the blessed sun!\u201d\n He saw her lashes hung with pearls,\n And swore to give away his gun.\n She smiled to find her point was gained,\n And went, with happy parting words\n (He subsequently ascertained),\n To trim her hat with humming-birds.\n\n\n\n\n \u2014So good night unto you all.\n Give me your hands, if we be friends,\n And Robin shall restore amends.\n\n _A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream._","title":"Oberon and Puck : $b Verses grave and gay","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":14972}