 | The bird and the bell, with other poems |  |
[As one who in some cellar crypt has kept]
As one who in some cellar crypt has keptHis wines of many an autumn vintage, pressed
From wildwood grapes, or vineyard fields that slept
On sunny hillsides, by his own hand dressed;
And calls his neighbors in to taste and share
His store; yet overvaluing, perchance,
What seemed to keep for him a flavor rare
Which love might prize when critics frown askance:
So to my board I bid my friends, and ope
The hoarded flasks of many a varying year,—
The verse from lonely dells of dreamland won,
Or by sweet toiling on the sun-flecked slope
Of life, ere yet my summer leaves were sere
In lengthening shadows of the sinking sun.
| The bird and the bell, with other poems | |