The bells :: :: University of Virginia Library

These imps of Want! these sprites of Poverty!
That flock the crossways of the muddy town
With brooms at ev'ry rain, whence come they, pray?
Spring they from earth, or do they tumble down,
Like animalculæ, in drops of rain?
How phantom-like they move about the street!
Are they dwarf Gnomes fresh from some cavern's brain,
Like those in Arab legends? Can hearts beat
In such odd creatures? Are they more than breath?

Look at those skinny out-stretched hands! Why they
Are spectral as the Witches in Macbeth!
Drop them a coin, pedestrian, thus may
You win their good will, which were best to own,
Since heaven can tell what elfs these are alone.

II.
PHŒBUS.

Dew-dappled Phœbus, with half-shaded eye,
Stalks through the portals of the eastern skies;
The stars that drop above the world on high,
Beneath his gaze close their cloud-lidded eyes;
He taps the dreaming city till it wakes
And hums and murmurs like an o'er turned hive;
With twit'ring birds the forest is alive,
And bends to see its shadow in the lakes!
In toying wavelets the soft zephyr breaks,
Bearing the perfume from the gummy pines;
Flowers, the drinking-cups of the god-sun,
Are brimmed with dew. His touch incarnadines
The dank hill tops, and all it falls upon—
The reeling grain-fields and the streams that run.

III.
THE NIGHT RAIN.

Piteous Rain! O how it sobs without!
Driven from Heaven like a sinning child,
Thrust from the Gates by scolding winds and wild,
It wanders weary, drearily about.
At me it peereth through the window panes,
And almost asks if I would let it in—
I'm not proclivous, weeping child of sin.
Then off it speeds and curses and complains;
Its footfalls sound with quick and nervous beat
On dismal miles of dimly-lighted street.
It pauses oft, as if its tim'rous ear
Had caught a sound—'twas only sighing leaves—
Then rushes onward with a trembling fear,
And seeks to hide beneath protruding eaves.

IV.
“THANATOPSIS.”

When one can die with the proud consciousness
That he will 'bide forever with the world,
And that when monarchs and their broods are hurled
Contemptuous down Oblivion's abyss,
He will span time like heaven's bow; God! this
Must set his blood to boiling, and with bliss
Fill his king-heart up to the very brim!
Yet I do know of a sublimer joy
Possessing which I would not envy him—
O faith! the alchemist that turns th' alloy
Of death to golden calm. 'Tis when the soul,
Uncaged, goes singing lark-like thro' the spheres
Confidingly to God, devoid of fears,
Having on earth paid Paradise its toll!

V.
NOON.

He's chosen the broad zenith for his seat;
His brow is sweaty, and his sultry breath
Fills the sick town, and in the crowded street
Men and o'er-ladened horses sink in death;
In rocky, dewless pastures, close beneath
The arms of trees the drowsy cattle meet;
The grain grows dry within its heated sheath;
Wild lilacs droop upon the sunny steep,
And winds in knolls have stol'n away to sleep.
A sense of something heavy spheres the air—
As if the earth lay in a horrid trance,
While through the still blue heaven with a stare
The Noon-king looketh, scorching with his glance,
Proud as a lion glaring from his lair.

VI.
TO ---

ON HIS BEING UNJUSTLY CRITICISED.

'Tis ever so, my friend, when one would climb
The rounds of his ambition up to fame,
And write, in blotless characters, his name
Upon the unrolled manuscript of Time,
There are some men who, as he 'tempts to rise,
Will envy him the wreath their fate denies,
And seek to wound him with their shafts of scorn.
There 're many such that mark thee on thy way.
Teach them this lesson, friend: He that is born
For greatness will be great! and enmity
Cannot unmake a Poet.—Did the thorn
That cut the brow of Jesus make him less?
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