University of Virginia Library

THE NEW DAY

A POEM IN SONGS AND SONNETS

PRELUDE

1. PART I

INTERLUDE

2. PART II

I

There was a field green and fragrant with grass and flowers, and flooded with sunlight, and the air above it throbbed with the songs of birds. It was yet morning when a great darkness spread over the earth, and out of the darkness lightning, and after the lightning fire that consumed every green thing; and the singing birds fell dying upon the blackened grass. The thunder and the flame past, but it was still dark—till a ray of light touched the field's edge and grew, little by little. Then one who listened heard—not the songs of birds again, but the flutter of broken wings.

II—THE TRAVELER

III—“COME TO ME YE WHO SUFFER”

Come to me ye who suffer, for to all
I am a brother now! 'T was not in vain
I saw the face of Sorrow; she who slain
Yet lives; whose voice when she doth weep and call
Is silent. When she weeps? Nay, nay! the pall
Is on her tears too—they are dead. The rain
Is molten-hot, dust-dry from her dull pain,
Like ashes from the burning heavens that fall.
I know the world-wide, lovely, living lie;
I know the truth that better were unknown;
I know the joyful laugh that is a cry
Torn from a heart whence hope and faith have flown,
And yet beats on, and will not, dare not die.
I know the anguish without word or moan.

IV—WRITTEN ON A FLY-LEAF OF “SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS”

When shall true love be love without alloy—
Shine free at last from sinful circumstance!
When shall the canker of unheavenly chance
Eat not the bud of that most heavenly joy!
When shall true love meet love not as a coy
Retreating light that leads a deathful dance,
But as a firm fixt fire that doth enhance
The beauty of all beauty! Will the employ
Of poets ever be too well to show
That mightiest love with sharpest pain doth writhe;
That underneath the fair, caressing glove
Hides evermore the iron hand; and tho'
Love's flower alone is good, if we would prove
Its perfect bloom, our breath slays like a scythe!

V—“AND WERE THAT BEST!”

And were that best, Love, dreamless, endless sleep!
Gone all the fury of the mortal day—
The daylight gone, and gone the starry ray!
And were that best, Love, rest serene and deep!
Gone labor and desire; no arduous steep
To climb, no songs to sing, no prayers to pray,
No help for those who perish by the way,
No laughter 'mid our tears, no tears to weep!
And were that best, Love, sleep with no dear dream,
Nor memory of anything in life—
Stark death that neither help nor hurt can know!
O, rather, far, the sorrow-bringing gleam,
The living day's long agony and strife!
Rather strong love in pain; the waking woe!

VI—“THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN”

VII—LOVE'S CRUELTY

And this, then, is thy love,” I hear thee say,
“And dost thou love, and canst thou torture so?
Ah, spare me, if thou lov'st me, this last woe!”
But I am not my own; I must obey
My master; I am slave to Love; his sway
Is cruel as the grave. When he says Go!
I go; when he says Come! I come. I know
No law but his. When he says Slay! I slay.
As cruel as the grave? Yes—crueler:
Cruel as light that pours its stinging flood
Across the dark, and makes an anguished stir
Of life; cruel as life that sends through blood
Of mortal the immortal pang and spur;
Cruel as thy remorseless maidenhood.

INTERLUDE

The cloud was thick that hid the sun from sight
And over all a shadowy roof outspread,
Making the day dim with another night—
Not dark like that which past, but O, more dread
For the clear sunlight that had gone before
And prophecy of that which yet should be.
Like snow at night the wind-blown hills of sand
Shone with an inward gleam far down the land:
Beneath the lowering sky black was the sea
Across whose waves a bird came flying low,—
Borne swift on the wind with wing-beat halt and slow,—
From out the dull east toward the foamy shore.
There was an awful waiting in the earth
As if a mystery greatened to its birth.
Tho' late it seemed, the day was just begun
When lo! at last, the many-colored bow
Stood in the heavens over against the sun.

3. PART III

I—“THE PALLID WATCHER OF THE EASTERN SKIES”

The pallid watcher of the eastern skies
Who, through the suffering night, did wait forlorn,
When comes the first faint purple of the morn
Waiteth no longer. To his happy eyes
The promised near the promise following flies,
Nor is his soul with sullen anguish torn,
Nor curseth he the day when he was born.
From the damp ground he doth in wonder rise,
Firm set his face against the gathering glory—
So to be sure that this, at last, is this,
And not the ancient, bitter-lying story.
And now he prays for strength to bear the bliss,
While, bending o'er the mountain, red and hoary,
The morning crowns him with a golden kiss.

II—“MY LOVE FOR THEE DOTH MARCH LIKE ARMÈD MEN”

My love for thee doth march like armèd men,
Against a queenly city they would take.
Along the army's front its banners shake;
Across the mountain and the sun-smit plain
It stedfast sweeps as sweeps the stedfast rain;
And now the trumpet makes the still air quake,
And now the thundering cannon doth awake
Echo on echo, echoing loud again.
But, lo! the conquest higher than bard e'er sung:
Instead of answering cannon, proud surrender!
Joyful the iron gates are open flung
And, for the conqueror, welcome gay and tender!
O, bright the invader's path with tribute flowers,
While comrade flags flame forth on wall and towers!

III—“WHAT WOULD I SAVE THEE FROM?”

What would I save thee from, dear heart, dear heart?
Not from what Heaven may send thee of its pain;
Not from fierce sunshine or the scathing rain:
The pang of pleasure; passion's wound and smart;
Not from the long, glad anguish of thine art;
Nor loss of faithful friends, nor any gain
Of growth by grief; I would not thee restrain
From needful death. But O, thou other part
Of me!—through whom the whole world I behold,
As through the blue I see the stars above!
In whom the world I find, hid fold on fold!
Thee would I save from this—nay, do not move;
Fear not, it may not flash, the air is cold;
Save thee from this—the lightning of my love.

IV—“WHAT WOULD I WIN THEE TO?”

What would I win thee to? dear heart and true!
A thought of bliss, a thornless life? Ah no!
Through weeping pain, Love, I would let thee go;
Through weary days and widowed nights; yea, through
The Valley of the Shadow, without rue,
If thou couldst gain the goal, Love, even so.
I would not win thee to a fruitful woe;
To best of earth or best beyond the blue.
And most of all would thy true lover scorn
To win thee to himself; thou shalt be free
To have or hate! But O, my golden morn!
Behold thy lover's passionate bravery—
Mighty, unresting, stedfast, heaven-born—
To win thee to the light, which is—to thee!

V—“I WILL BE BRAVE FOR THEE”

I will be brave for thee, dear heart; for thee
My boasted bravery forego. I will
For thee be wise, or lose my little skill;
Coward or brave; wise, foolish; bond or free.
No grievous cost in anything I see
That brings thee bliss, or only keeps thee, still,
In painless peace. So Heaven thy cup but fill,
Be empty mine unto eternity!
Come to me, Love, and let me touch thy face!
Lean to me, Love; breathe on me thy dear breath!
Fly from me, Love, to some far hiding-place,
If thy one thought of me or hindereth
Or hurteth thy sweet soul—then grant me grace
To be forgotten, tho' that grace be death!

VI—“LOVE ME NOT, LOVE, FOR THAT I FIRST LOVED THEE”

Love me not, Love, for that I first loved thee;
Nor love me, Love, for thy sweet pity's sake,
In knowledge of the mortal pain and ache
Which is the fruit of love's blood-veinèd tree.
Let others for my love give love to me;
From other souls, O, gladly will I take,
This burning, heart-dry thirst of love to slake,
What seas of human pity there may be!
Nay, nay, I care no more how love may grow,
So that I hear thee answer to my call;
Love me because my piteous tears do flow,
Or that my love for thee did first befall.
Love me or late or early, fast or slow—
But love me, Love, for love is all in all!

VII—BODY AND SOUL

VIII—“THY LOVER, LOVE, WOULD HAVE SOME NOBLER WAY”

Thy lover, Love, would have some nobler way
To tell his love, his noble love to tell,
Than rhymes set ringing like a silver bell.
O, he would lead an army, great and gay,
From conquering to conquer, day by day!
And when the walls of a proud citadel
At summons of his guns far-echoing fell—
That thunder to his Love should murmuring say:
Thee only do I love, dear Love of mine!
And while men cried: Behold how brave a fight!
She should read well, O, well! each new emprize:
This to her lips, this to my lady's eyes!
And tho' the world were conquered, line on line,
Still would his love be speechless, day and night.

IX—LOVE'S JEALOUSY

Of other men I know no jealousy,
Nor of the maid who holds thee close, O, close!
But of the June-red, summer-scented rose,
And of the barred and golden sunset sky
That wins the soul of thee through thy deep eye;
And of the breeze by thee beloved, that goes
O'er thy dear hair and brow; the song that flows
Into thy heart of hearts, where it may die.
I would I were one moment that sweet show
Of flower; or breeze beloved that toucheth all;
Or sky that through the summer eve doth burn.
I would I were the song thou lovest so,
At sound of me to have thine eyelids fall;—
But I would then to something human turn.

X—LOVE'S MONOTONE

Thou art so used, Love, to thine own bird's song,—
Sung to thine ear in love's low monotone,
Sung to thee only, Love, to thee alone
Of all the listening world,—that I among
My doubts find this the leader of the throng:
Haply the music hath accustomed grown
And no more music is to thee; my own
Too faithful argument works its own wrong.
Love, Love, and must I learn for thy sweet sake
The art of silence?—Ah, then hide the light
Of thy dear countenance, lest the music wake!
Yet should thy bird at last fall silent quite,
Would not thy heart an unused sorrow take?
Think not of me but of thyself to-night.

XI—“ONCE ONLY”

XII—DENIAL

When some new thought of love in me is born,
Then swift I seek a token fair and meet
That may unblamed thy blessèd vision greet;
Whether it be a rose, not bloodless torn
From that June tree which hideth many a thorn,
Or but a simple, loving message, sweet
With summer's heart and mine,—these at thy feet
I straightway fling; but all with maiden scorn
Thou spurnest. What to thee is token or sign,
Who dost deny the thing wherefor it stands!
Then I seem foolish in my sight and thine,
Like one who eager proffers empty hands.
Thou only callest these my gifts unfine,
While men are praising them in distant lands.

XIII—“ONCE WHEN WE WALKED WITHIN A SUMMER FIELD”

Once when we walked within a summer field
I pluckt the flower of immortality,
And said, “Dear Love of mine, I give to thee
This flower of flowers of all the round year's yield!”
'T was then thou stood'st, and with one hand didst shield
Thy sun-dazed eyes, and, flinging the other free,
Spurned from thee that white blossom utterly.
But, Love, the immortal cannot so be killed.
The generations shall behold thee stand
Against that western glow in grass dew-wet—
Lord of my life, and lady of the land.
Nor maid nor lover shall the world forget,
Nor that disdainful wafture of thy hand.
Thou scornful! sun and flower shall find thee yet.

XIV—SONG

XV—LISTENING TO MUSIC

When on that joyful sea
Where billow on billow breaks; where swift waves follow
Waves, and hollow calls to hollow;
Where sea-birds swirl and swing,
And winds through the rigging shrill and sing;
Where night is one vast starless shade;
Where thy soul not afraid,
Tho' all alone unlonely,
Wanders and wavers, wavers wandering;
On that accursèd sea
One moment only,
Forget one moment, Love, thy fierce content;
Back let thy soul be bent—
Think back, dear Love, O Love, think back to me!

XVI—“A SONG OF THE MAIDEN MORN”

XVII—WORDS IN ABSENCE

I would that my words were as my fingers,
So that my Love might feel them move
Slowly over her brow, as lingers
The sunset wind o'er the world of its love.
I would that my words were as the beating
Of her own heart, that keeps repeating
My name through the livelong day and the night;
And when my Love her lover misses,—
Longs for and loves in the dark and the light,—
I would that my words were as my kisses.
I would that my words her life might fill—
Be to her earth, and air, and skies.
I would that my words were husht and still—
Lost in the light of her eyes.

XVIII—SONG

The birds were singing, the skies were gay;
I looked from the window on meadow and wood,
On green, green grass that the sun made white;
Beyond the river the mountain stood—
Blue was the mountain, the river was bright;
I looked on the land and it was not good,
For my own dear Love she had flown away.

XIX—THISTLE-DOWN

XX—“O SWEET WILD ROSES THAT BUD AND BLOW”

XXI—THE RIVER

I know thou art not that brown mountain-side,
Nor the pale mist that lies along the hills
And with white joy the deepening valley fills;
Nor yet the solemn river moving wide
Into that valley, where the hills abide
But whence those morning clouds on noiseless wheels
Shall lingering lift and, as the moonlight steals
From out the heavens, so into the heavens shall glide.
I know thou art not this gray rock that looms
Above the water, fringed with scarlet vine;
Nor flame of burning meadow; nor the sedge
That sways and trembles at the river's edge.
But through all these, dear heart! to me there comes
Some melancholy, absent look of thine.

XXII—THE LOVER'S LORD AND MASTER

I pray thee, dear, think not alone of me,
But sometimes think of my great master, Love;
His faithful slave he is so far above
That for his sake I would forgotten be—
Tho' well I know that hidden thus from thee
Not far away my image then might rove,
And his sweet, heavenly countenance would move
Ever thy soul to gentler charity.
So when thy lover's self leaps from his song
Thou him may love not less for his fair Lord.
But that thy love for me grow never small
(As bow long bent twangs not the arrowed cord,
And he doth lose his star who looks too long),
Sometimes, dear heart, think not of me at all.

XXIII—SONG

My love grew with the growing night,
And dawned with the new daylight.

XXIV—“A NIGHT OF STARS AND DREAMS”

A night of stars and dreams, of dreams and sleep;
A waking into another empty day—
But not unlovely all, for then I say:
“To-morrow!” Through the hours this light doth creep
Higher in the heavens, as down the heavenly steep
Sinks the slow sun. Another evening gray,
Made glorious by the morn that comes that way;
Another night, and then To-day doth leap
Upon the world! O, quick the hours do fly,
Of that new day which brings the moment when
We meet at last! Swift up the shaking sky
Rushes the sun from out its dismal den;
And then the wisht for time doth yearn more nigh;
A white robe glimmering in the dark—and then!

XXV—A BIRTHDAY SONG

XXVI—“WHAT CAN LOVE DO FOR THEE, LOVE?”

What can love do for thee, Love?
Can it make the green fields greener;
Bluer the skies, and bluer
The eyes of the blue-eyed flowers?
Can it make the May-day showers
More warm and sweet; serener
The heavens after the rain?
The sunset's radiant splendor
More exquisite and tender?
The Northern Star more sure?
Can it take the pang from pain?
(O Love, remember the curtain
Of cloud that lifted last night
And showed the silver light
Of a star!) Can it make more certain
The heart of the heart of all,
The good that works at the root—
The singing soul of love
That throbs in flower and fruit,
In man and earth and brute,
In hell, and heaven above?
Can its low voice musical
Make dear the day and the night?

XXVII—“THE SMILE OF HER I LOVE”

The smile of her I love is like the dawn
Whose touch makes Memnon sing.
O, see where wide the golden sunlight flows—
The barren desert blossoms as the rose!
The smile of her I love—when that is gone,
O'er all the world Night spreads her shadowy wing.

XXVIII—FRANCESCA AND PAOLO

Within the second dolorous circle where
The lost are whirled, lamenting—thou and I
Stood, Love, to-day with Dante. Silently
We looked upon the black and trembling air;
When lo! from out that darkness of despair
Two shadows, light upon the wind, drew nigh,
Whose very motion seemed to breathe a sigh—
And there Francesca, and her lover there.
These when we saw, the wounds whereat they bled,
Their love which was not with their bodies slain—
These when we saw, great were the tears we shed;
As, Love, for thee and me love's tears shall rain—
The mortal agony; the nameless dread;
The longing, and the passion, and the pain.

XXIX—THE UNKNOWN WAY

XXX—THE SOWER

XXXI—“WHEN THE LAST DOUBT IS DOUBTED”

INTERLUDE

As melting snow leaves bare the mountain-side
In spaces that grow wider and more wide,
So melted from the sky the cloudy veil
That hid the face of sunrise. Land and ledge
And waste of glittering waters sent a glare
Back to the smiting sun. The trembling air
Lay, sea on sea, along the horizon's edge;
And on that upper ocean, clear as glass,
The tall ships followed with deep-mirrored sail
Like clouds wind-moved that follow and that pass;
And on that upper ocean, far and fair,
Floated low islands all unseen before.
Green grew the ocean shaken through with light,
And blue the heavens faint-fleckt with plumy white.
Like pennants on the wind, from o'er the rocks
The birds whirled seaward in shrill-piping flocks—
And through the dawn, as through the shadowy night,
The sound of waves that break upon the shore!

4. PART IV

I—SONG

Love, Love, my love,
The best things are the truest!
When the earth lies shadowy dark below,
O then the heavens are bluest!
Deep the blue of the sky,
And sharp the gleam of the stars,
And O, more bright against the night
The Aurora's crimson bars!

II—THE MIRROR

That I should love thee seemeth meet and wise,
So beautiful thou art that he were mad
Who in thy countenance no pleasure had;
Who felt not the still music of thine eyes
Fall on his forehead, as the evening skies
The music of the stars feel and are glad.
But o'er my mind one doubt still cast a shade
Till in my thought this answer did arise:
That thou shouldst love me is not wise or meet,
For like thee, Love, I am not beautiful;
And yet I think that haply in my face
Thou findest a true beauty;—this poor, dull,
Disfigured mirror dimly may repeat
A little part of thy most heavenly grace.

III—LIKENESS IN UNLIKENESS

We are alike, and yet,—O strange and sweet!—
Each in the other difference discerns;
So the torn strands the maiden's finger turns
Opposing ways, when they again do meet
Clasp each in each, as flame clasps into heat;
So when this hand on this cool bosom burns,
Each sense is lost in the other. So two urns
Do, side by side, the selfsame lines repeat,
But various color gives a lovelier grace,
And each by contrast still more fine has grown.
Thus, Love, it was, I did forget thy face
As more and more to me thy soul was known;
Vague in my mind it grew till, in its place,
Another came I knew not from my own.

IV—SONG

Not from the whole wide world I chose thee—
Sweetheart, light of the land and the sea!
The wide, wide world could not inclose thee,
For thou art the whole wide world to me.

V—ALL IN ONE

Once when a maiden maidenly went by,
Or when I found some wonder in the grass,
Or when a purple sunset slow did pass,
Or a great star rushed silent through the sky;
Once when I heard a singing ecstasy,
Or saw the moon's face in the river's glass—
Then I remembered that for me, alas!
This beauty must for ever and ever die.
But now I may thus sorrow never more;
From fleeting beauty thou hast torn the pall;
Of beauty, Love, thou art the soul and core;
And tho' the empty shadow fading fall,—
Tho' lesser birds lift up their wings and soar,—
In having thee alone, Love, I have all.

VI—“I COUNT MY TIME BY TIMES THAT I MEET THEE”

I count my time by times that I meet thee;
These are my yesterdays, my morrows, noons,
And nights; these my old moons and my new moons
Slow fly the hours, or fast the hours do flee,
If thou art far from or art near to me;
If thou art far, the bird tunes are no tunes;
If thou art near, the wintry days are Junes—
Darkness is light, and sorrow cannot be.
Thou art my dream come true, and thou my dream;
The air I breathe, the world wherein I dwell;
My journey's end thou art, and thou the way;
Thou art what I would be, yet only seem;
Thou art my heaven and thou art my hell;
Thou art my ever-living judgment-day.

VII—SONG

Years have flown since I knew thee first,
And I know thee as water is known of thirst;
Yet I knew thee of old at the first sweet sight,
And thou art strange to me, Love, to-night.

VIII—THE SEASONS

IX—“SUMMER'S RAIN AND WINTER'S SNOW”

Summer's rain and winter's snow
With the seasons come and go;
Shine and shower;
Tender bud and perfect flower;
Silver blossom, golden fruit;
Song and lute,
With their inward sound of pain;
Winter's snow and summer's rain;
Frost and fire;
Joy beyond the heart's desire—
And our June comes round again.

X—THE VIOLIN

Before the listening world behold him stand;
The warm air trembles with his passionate play;
Their cheers shower round him like the ocean spray
Round one who waits upon the stormy strand.
Their smiles, sighs, tears all are at his command;
And now they hear the trump of judgment-day,
And now one silver note to heaven doth stray
And fluttering fall upon the golden sand.
But like the murmur of the distant sea
Their loud applause, and far off, faint, and weak
Sounds his own music to him, wild and free—
Far from the soul of music that doth speak
In wordless wail and lyric ecstasy
From that good viol prest against his cheek.

XI—“O MIGHTY RIVER, TRIUMPHING TO THE SEA”

XII—“MY SONGS ARE ALL OF THEE”

My songs are all of thee, what tho' I sing
Of morning when the stars are yet in sight,
Of evening, or the melancholy night,
Of birds that o'er the reddening waters wing;
Of song, of fire, of winds, or mists that cling
To mountain-tops, of winter all in white,
Of rivers that toward ocean take their flight,
Of summer when the rose is blossoming.
I think no thought that is not thine, no breath
Of life I breathe beyond thy sanctity;
Thou art the voice that silence uttereth,
And of all sound thou art the sense. From thee
The music of my song, and what it saith
Is but the beat of thy heart, throbbed through me.

XIII—AFTER MANY DAYS

Dear heart, I would that after many days,
When we are gone, true lovers in a book
Might find these faithful songs of ours. “O look!”
I hear him murmur while he straightway lays
His finger on the page, and she doth raise
Her eyes to his. Then, like the winter brook
From whose young limbs a sudden summer shook
The fetters, love flows on in sunny ways.
I would that when we are no more, dear heart,
The world might hold thy unforgotten name
Inviolate in these eternal rhymes.
I would have poets say: “Let not the art
Wherewith they loved be lost! To us the blame
Should love grow less in these our modern times.”

XIV—WEAL AND WOE

O highest, strongest, sweetest woman-soul!
Thou holdest in the compass of thy grace
All the strange fate and passion of thy race;
Of the old, primal curse thou knowest the whole.
Thine eyes, too wise, are heavy with the dole,
The doubt, the dread of all this human maze;
Thou in the virgin morning of thy days
Hast felt the bitter waters o'er thee roll.
Yet thou knowest, too, the terrible delight,
The still content, and solemn ecstasy;
Whatever sharp, sweet bliss thy kind may know.
Thy spirit is deep for pleasure as for woe—
Deep as the rich, dark-caverned, awful sea
That the keen-winded, glimmering dawn makes white.

XV—“O, LOVE IS NOT A SUMMER MOOD”

XVI—“LOVE IS NOT BOND TO ANY MAN”

XVII—“HE KNOWS NOT THE PATH OF DUTY”

AFTER-SONG

Through love to light! O, wonderful the way
That leads from darkness to the perfect day!
From darkness and from sorrow of the night
To morning that comes singing o'er the sea.
Through love to light! Through light, O God, to Thee,
Who art the love of love, the eternal light of light!

THE CELESTIAL PASSION

PRELUDE

O white and midnight sky! O starry bath!
Wash me in thy pure, heavenly, crystal flood;
Cleanse me, ye stars, from earthly soil and scath;
Let not one taint remain in spirit or blood!
Receive my soul, ye burning, awful deeps;
Touch and baptize me with the mighty power
That in ye thrills, while the dark planet sleeps;
Make me all yours for one blest, secret hour!
O glittering host! O high angelic choir!
Silence each tone that with thy music jars;
Fill me even as an urn with thy white fire
Till all I am is kindred to the stars!
Make me thy child, thou infinite, holy night—
So shall my days be steeped in heavenly light!

1. PART I

ART AND LIFE

THE POET AND HIS MASTER

MORS TRIUMPHALIS

THE MASTER-POETS

He the great World-Musician at whose stroke
The stars of morning into music broke;
He from whose Being Infinite are caught
All harmonies of light, and sound, and thought—
Once in each age, to keep the world in tune,
He strikes a note sublime. Nor late, nor soon,
A godlike soul,—music and passion's birth,—
Vibrates across the discord of the earth
And sets the world aright.
O, these are they
Who on men's hearts with mightiest power can play—
The master-poets of humanity,
From heaven sent down to lift men to the sky.

2. PART II

3. PART III

RECOGNITION

HYMN

SUNG AT THE PRESENTATION OF THE OBELISK TO THE CITY OF NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 22, 1881

A THOUGHT

Once, looking from a window on a land
That lay in silence underneath the sun,—
A land of broad, green meadows, through which poured
Two rivers, slowly widening to the sea,—
Thus as I looked, I know not how nor whence,
Was born into my unexpectant soul
That thought, late learned by anxious-witted man,
The infinite patience of the Eternal Mind.

THE VOICE OF THE PINE

MORNING, NOON, AND NIGHT

“DAY UNTO DAY UTTERETH SPEECH”

The speech that day doth utter, and the night,
Full oft to mortal ears it hath no sound;
Dull are our eyes to read upon the ground
What's written there; and stars are hid by light.
So when the dark doth fall, awhile our sight
Kens the unwonted orbs that circle round,
Then quick in sleep our human sense is bound—
Speechless for us the starry heavens and bright.
But when the day doth close there is one word
That's writ amid the sunset's golden embers;
And one at morn; by them our hearts are stirred:
Splendor of Dawn, and Evening that remembers;
These are the rhymes of God; thus, line on line,
Our souls are moved to thoughts that are divine.

4. PART IV

THE SOUL

Three messengers to me from heaven came
And said: “There is a deathless human soul;
It is not lost, as is the fiery flame
That dies into the undistinguished whole.
Ah, no; it separate is, distinct as God—
Nor any more than He can it be killed;
Then fearless give thy body to the clod,
For naught can quench the light that once it filled!”
Three messengers—the first was human Love;
The second voice came crying in the night
With strange and awful music from above;
None who have heard that voice forget it quite;
Birth is it named; the third, O, turn not pale!
'T was Death to the undying soul cried, Hail!

“WHEN LOVE DAWNED”

When love dawned on that world which is my mind,
Then did the outer world wherein I went
Suffer a sudden, strange transfigurement;
It was as if new sight were given the blind.
Then where the shore to the wide sea inclined
I watched with new eyes the new sun's ascent;
My heart was stirred within me as I leant
And listened to a voice in every wind.
O purple sea! O joy beyond control!
O land of love and youth! O happy throng!
Were ye then real, or did ye only seem?
Dear is that morning twilight of the soul,—
The mystery, the waking voice of song,—
For now I know it was not all a dream.

LOVE AND DEATH

FATHER AND CHILD

Beneath the deep and solemn midnight sky,
At this last verge and boundary of time
I stand, and listen to the starry chime
That sounds to the inward ear, and will not die.
Now do the thoughts that daily hidden lie
Arise, and live in a celestial clime,—
Unutterable thoughts, most high, sublime,—
Crossed by one dread that frights mortality.
Thus, as I muse, I hear my little child
Sob in its sleep within the cottage near—
My own dear child! Gone is that mortal doubt!
The Power that drew our lives forth from the wild
Our Father is; we shall to Him be dear,
Nor from His universe be blotted out!

“BEYOND THE BRANCHES OF THE PINE”

AN AUTUMN MEDITATION

“CALL ME NOT DEAD”

Call me not dead when I, indeed, have gone
Into the company of the everliving
High and most glorious poets! Let thanksgiving
Rather be made. Say: “He at last hath won
Rest and release, converse supreme and wise,
Music and song and light of immortal faces;
To-day, perhaps, wandering in starry places,
He hath met Keats, and known him by his eyes.
To-morrow (who can say?) Shakespeare may pass,
And our lost friend just catch one syllable
Of that three-centuried wit that kept so well;
Or Milton; or Dante, looking on the grass
Thinking of Beatrice, and listening still
To chanted hymns that sound from the heavenly hill.”

“EACH MOMENT HOLY IS”

Each moment holy is, for out from God
Each moment flashes forth a human soul.
Holy each moment is, for back to Him
Some wandering soul each moment home returns.

“WHEN TO SLEEP I MUST”

When to sleep I must
Where my fathers sleep;
When fulfilled the trust,
And the mourners weep;
When, tho' free from rust,
Sword hath lost its worth—
Let me bring to earth
No dishonored dust.

TO A DEPARTED FRIEND

Dear friend, who lovedst well this pleasant life!
One year ago it is this very day
Since thou didst take thy uncompanioned way
Into the silent land, from out the strife
And joyful tumult of the world. The knife
Wherewith that sorrow cut us still doth stay,
And we, to whom thou daily didst betray
Thy gentle soul, with faith and worship rife,
Love thee not less but more—as time doth go
And we too hasten toward that land unknown
Where those most dear are gathering one by one.
The power divine that here did touch thy heart—
Hath this withdrawn from thee, where now thou art?
Would thou indeed couldst tell what thou dost know!

“THE EVENING STAR”

The evening star trembles and hides from him
Who fain would hold it with imperious stare;
Yet, to the averted eye, lo! unaware
It shines serene, no longer shy and dim.
O, slow and sweet, its chalice to the brim
Fills the leaf-shadowed grape with rich and rare
Cool sunshine, caught from the white circling air!
Home from his journey to the round world's rim,—
Through lonely lands, through cloudy seas and vext,—
At last the Holy Grail met Launfal's sight.
So when my friend lost him who was her next
Of soul,—life of her life,—all day the fight
Raged with a dumb and pitiless God. Perplext
She slept. Heaven sent its comfort in the night.

LIFE

THE FREED SPIRIT

Brother of sorrow and mortality!
Not always shall we chide the failing flesh
That lets the netted soul to silence fly,
Like a wild bird that breaks the treacherous mesh;
Not always shall men curse in stormy sky
The laughter and the fury of a Power
That sees its chance-born children sink and die—
Hurling or death or life for dole or dower.
Who deep his spirit searches can deny
O nevermore, that life doth leave a trace
Of something not all heavenly; tho' we try
Daily to turn toward Heaven a stedfast face.
Even grief doth soil us with its poisonous breath—
Then free our spirits utterly, pure Death!

UNDYING LIGHT

LYRICS

1. PART I

ODE

I

II

III

I love not the night
Save when the stars are bright,
Or when the moon
Fills the white air with silence like a tune.
Yea, even the night is mine
When the Northern Lights outshine,
And all the wild heavens throb in ecstasy divine;—
Yea, mine deep midnight, tho' the black sky lowers,
When the sea burns white and breaks on the shore in starry showers.

IV

I am the laughter of the new-born child
On whose soft-breathing sleep an angel smiled.
And I all sweet first things that are:
First songs of birds, not perfect as at last,—
Broken and incomplete,—
But sweet, O, sweet!
And I the first faint glimmer of a star
To the wreckt ship that tells the storm is past;
The first keen smells and stirrings of the Spring;
First snowflakes, and first May-flowers after snow;
The silver glow
Of the new moon's ethereal ring;
The song the morning stars together made,
And the first kiss of lovers under the first June shade.

V

My sword is quick, my arm is strong to smite
In the dread joy and fury of the fight.
I am with those who win, not those who fly;
With those who live I am, not those who die.
Who die? Nay, nay, that word
Where I am is unheard;
For I am the spirit of youth that cannot change,
Nor cease, nor suffer woe;
And I am the spirit of beauty that doth range
Through natural forms and motions, and each show
Of outward loveliness. With me have birth
All gentleness and joy in all the earth.
Raphael knew me, and showed the world my face;
Me Homer knew, and all the singing race—
For I am the spirit of light, and life, and mirth.

A SONG OF EARLY SUMMER

A MIDSUMMER SONG

“ON THE WILD ROSE TREE”

On the wild rose tree
Many buds there be,
Yet each sunny hour
Hath but one perfect flower.
Thou who wouldst be wise
Open wide thine eyes;
In each sunny hour
Pluck the one perfect flower!

“BEYOND ALL BEAUTY IS THE UNKNOWN GRACE”

Beyond all beauty is the unknown grace;
Above all bliss a higher; and above
The lovingest is a more loving love
That shows not the still anguish of its face.
Than death there is a deathlier. Brief space
Behind despair the blacker shadows rove;
Beneath all life a deeper life doth move:
So, friends of mine, when empty is my place,—
For me no more grass grows, dead leaves are stirred,—
And still the songs that once you loved to hear;
True friends whom well I thank for every word
Of heart-help,—praise or blame,—as you draw near
I pray that 'mid your tears this may be heard:
“For what he never did he is most dear.”

THE VIOLET

THE YOUNG POET

A SONG OF EARLY AUTUMN

THE BUILDING OF THE CHIMNEY

I

My chimney is builded
On a hill by the sea,
At the edge of a wood
That the sunset has gilded
Since time was begun
And the earth first was done:
For mine and for me
And for you, John Burroughs,
My friend old and good,
At the edge of a wood
On a hill by the sea
My chimney is builded.

II

My chimney gives forth
All its heat to the north,
While its right arm it reaches
Toward the meadows and beaches,
And its left it extends
To its pine-tree friends.
All its heat to the north
My chimney gives forth.

III

IV

V

But you cannot split granite
Howsoe'er you may plan it,
Without bringing blood;
(There's a drop of mine there
On that block four-square).
Certain oaths, I'm aware,
Sudden, hot, and not good
(May Heaven cleanse the guilt!)
In these stone walls are built;—
With the wind through the pine-wood blowing,
The creak of tree on tree,
Child-laughter, and the lowing
Of the homeward-driven cattle,
The sound of wild birds singing,
Of steel on granite ringing,
The memory of battle,
And tales of the roaring sea.

VI

For my chimney was builded
By a Plymouth County sailor,
An old North Sea whaler.
In the warm noon spell
'T was good to hear him tell
Of the great September blow
A dozen years ago:—
How at dawn of the day
The wind began to play,
Till it cut the waves flat
Like the brim of your hat.
There was no sea about,
But it blew straight out
Till the ship lurcht over;
But 't was quick to recover,
When, all of a stroke,
The hurricane broke.
Great heavens! how it roared,
And how the rain poured;
The thirty-fathom chain
Dragged out all in vain.
“What next?” the captain cried
To the mate by his side;
Then Tip Ryder he replied:
“Fetch the ax—no delay—
Cut the mainmast away;
If you want to save the ship
Let the mainmast rip!”
But another said, “Wait!”
And they did—till too late.
On her beam-ends she blew,
In the sea half the crew—
Struggling back through the wrack,
There to cling day and night.
Not a sail heaves in sight;
And, the worst, one in thirst
(Knows no better, the poor lad!)
Drinks salt water and goes mad.
Eighty hours blown and tost,
Five good sailors drowned and lost,
And the rest brought to shore;
—Some to sail as before;
“Not Tip Ryder, if he starves
Building chimneys, building wharves.”

VII

Now this was the manner
Of the building of the chimney.
('T is a good old-timer,
As you, friend John, will own.)
Old man Vail cut the stone;
William Ryder was the builder;
Stanford White was the planner;
And the owner and rhymer
Is Richard Watson Gilder.

“A WORD SAID IN THE DARK”

A RIDDLE OF LOVERS

Of my fair lady's lovers there were two
Who loved her more than all; nor she, nor they
Guessed which of these loved better, for one way
This had of loving, that another knew.
One round her neck brave arms of empire threw
And covered her with kisses where she lay;
The other sat apart, nor did betray
Sweet sorrow at that sight; but rather drew
His pleasure of his lady through the soul
And sense of this one. So there truly ran
Two separate loves through one embrace; the whole
This lady had of both, when one began
To clasp her close, and win her dear lips' goal.
Now read my lovers' riddle if you can.

THE DARK ROOM

(A PARABLE)

BEFORE SUNRISE

“THE WOODS THAT BRING THE SUNSET NEAR”

SUNSET FROM THE TRAIN

“AFTER SORROW'S NIGHT”

A NOVEMBER CHILD

AT NIGHT

CRADLE SONG

“NINE YEARS”

“BACK FROM THE DARKNESS TO THE LIGHT AGAIN”

“Back from the darkness to the light again!”—
Not from the darkness, Love, for hadst thou lain
Within the shadowy portal of the tomb,
Thy light had warmed the darkness into bloom.

2. PART II

FATE

“WE MET UPON THE CROWDED WAY”

THE WHITE AND THE RED ROSE

A WOMAN'S THOUGHT

THE RIVER INN

THE HOMESTEAD

AT FOUR SCORE

JOHN CARMAN

I

II

III

DRINKING SONG

THE VOYAGER

A LAMENT

FOR THE DEAD OF THE JEANNETTE BROUGHT HOME ON THE FRISIA

I

O gates of ice! long have ye held our loved ones.

Ye Cruel! how could ye keep from us them for whom our hearts yearned—our dear ones, our fathers, our children, our brothers, our lovers?

Cold and Sleet, Darkness and Ice! hard have ye held them; ye would not let them go.

Their hands ye have bound fast; their feet ye have detained; and well have ye laid hold upon the hearts of our loved ones.

O silent Arctic Night! thou hast wooed them from us.

O Secret of the white and unknown world! too strong hast thou been for us; we were as nothing to thee; thou hast drawn them from us; thou wouldst not let them go.

The long day past; thou wouldst not let them go.

The long, long night came and went; thou wouldst not let them go.

O thou insatiate! What to thee are youth, and life, and hope, and love?

For thou art Death, not Life; thou art Despair, not Hope.

Naught to thee the rush of youthful blood; naught to thee the beauty and strength of our loved ones.

The breath of their bodies was not sweet to thee; they loved thee, and thou lovedst not them.

They followed thee, thou didst not look upon them; but still, O thou inviolate! still did they follow thee.

Thee did they follow through storm, through perils of the ice, and of the unknown darkness.

The sharp spears of the frost they feared not; the terrors of death they feared not. For thee, for thee, for thee, not for us; only that they might look upon thy face!

All these they endured for thee; the thought of us whom yet they loved, this also they endured for thee.

For thou art beautiful, beyond the beauty of woman. In thy hair are the stars of night. Thou wrappest about thee garments of fire that burn not, and are never quenched;

When thou movest they are moved; when thou breathest they tremble.

Yea, awful art thou in thy beauty; with white fingers beckoning in mists and shadows of the frozen sea; drawing to thee the hearts of heroes.

II

Long, long they have they tarried in thy gates, O North!

But now thou hast given them up. Lo, they come to us once more—our belovèd, our only ones!

O dearest, why have ye stayed so long?

With ye, night and day have come and gone, but with us there was night only.

But no, we will not reproach ye, hearts of our hearts, dearest and best; our fathers, our children, our brothers, our lovers!

Come back to us! Behold our arms are open for you; ye are ours; ye have returned unto us; ye shall never go hence again.

But why are ye silent, why do ye not stir, why do ye not speak to us, O belovèd ones?

White are your cheeks like snow; your eyes they do not look upon us.

So long ye have been gone, and is this your joy to see us once more?

Lo! do we not welcome ye? Are not our souls glad? Do not our tears, long kept, fall upon your faces?

Or do ye but sleep well, after those hard and weary labors? O, now awaken, for ye shall take rest and pleasure; here are your homes and kindred!

Listen, belovèd: here is your sister, here is your brother, here is your lover!

III

They will not hearken to our voices.

They are still; their eyes look not upon us.

O insatiate! O Secret of the white and unknown world, cruel indeed thou art!

Thou hast sent back to us our best belovèd; their bodies thou hast rendered up, but their spirits thou hast taken away from us forever.

In life thou didst hold them from us—and in death, in death they are thine.

ILL TIDINGS

(THE STUDIO CONCERT)

In the long studio from whose towering walls
Greek Phidias beams, and Angelo appalls,
Eager the listening, downcast faces throng
While violins their piercing tones prolong.
At times I know not if I see, or hear,
Yon statue's smile, or some not sorrowing tear
Down-falling on the surface of the steam
That music pours across my waking dream.
Ah, is it then a dream that while repeat
Those chords, like strokes of silver-shod light feet,
And the great Master's music marches on—
I hear the horses of the Parthenon?
[OMITTED]
But all to-day seems vague, unreal, far,
With fear and discord in the dearest strain,
For 'neath yon slowly-sinking western star
One that I love lies on her bed of pain.

A NEW WORLD

3. PART III

CONGRESS: 1878

'T was in the year when mutterings, loud and deep,
Were heard in all the dark, distracted land;
And grave men questioned: “Can the State withstand
The shock and strain to come? O, will she keep
Firm her four walls, should the wild creature leap
To ruin and ravish? Will her pillars planned
By the great dead, tremble to either hand?
The dead! would heaven they might awake from sleep!”
Haply (I thought) our Congress still may hold
One voice of power—when lo! upon the blast
A sound like jackals ravening to and fro.
Great God! And has it come to this at last?
Such noise, such shame, where once, not long ago,
The pure and wise their living thoughts outrolled.

THE CITY

Come, Spirit of Song! true, faithful friend of mine!
Oft hast thou served me in life's warfare rough;
No knight of old found lance more keen or tough
At tourney or in dreadful battle-line:
Come, tho' they own thee not, the Muses Nine;
Strike one more blow,—the past is not enough,—
Not now for Love's sake, nor in Fate's rebuff,
Nor for Provence and all its golden wine:
But be one iron scorn for this huge town
Where love of God has turned to lust of gold,
And civic pride in private greed grows cold;
Where speculation stains the judge's gown,
And where, in new-born broods, foul beasts of prey
Ravage the treasure-house by night and day.

REFORM

AT GARFIELD'S GRAVE

MEMORIAL DAY

THE NORTH TO THE SOUTH

Land of the South,—whose stricken heart and brow
Bring grief to eyes that erewhile only knew
For their own loss to sorrow,—spurn not thou
These tribute tears; ah, we have suffered too.

THE BURIAL OF GRANT

THE DEAD COMRADE

ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

This bronze doth keep the very form and mold
Of our great martyr's face. Yes, this is he:
That brow all wisdom, all benignity;
That human, humorous mouth; those cheeks that hold
Like some harsh landscape all the summer's gold;
That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea
For storms to beat on; the lone agony
Those silent, patient lips too well foretold.
Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men
As might some prophet of the elder day—
Brooding above the tempest and the fray
With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken.
A power was his beyond the touch of art
Or armèd strength—his pure and mighty heart.

THE PRESIDENT

(WRITTEN DURING THE FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF PRESIDENT CLEVELAND)

Not his to guide the ship while tempests blow,
War's billows burst, and glorious thunders beat;
Not his the joy to see an alien foe
Fly down the dreadful valley of defeat;
Not his the fame of that great soul and tried,
Who conquered civil peace by arms and love;
Nor his the emprize of one who lately died
Hand-claspt with foes, who weep his tomb above.
But this his task,—all passionless, unsplendid,—
To teach, in public place, a nobler creed;
To build a wall,—alone or well befriended,—
'Gainst the base partizan's ignoble greed.
Or will he fail, or triumph? History lays
A moment down her pen. A nation waits—and prays.

4. PART IV

ESSIPOFF

ADELE AUS DER OHE

(LISZT)

MODJESKA

There are four sisters known to mortals well,
Whose names are Joy and Sorrow, Death and Love;
This last it was who did my footsteps move
To where the other deep-eyed sisters dwell.
To-night, or ere yon painted curtain fell,
These, one by one, before my eyes did rove
Through the brave mimic world that Shakespeare wove.
Lady! thy art, thy passion were the spell
That held me, and still holds; for thou dost show,
With those most high each in his sovereign art,—
Shakespeare supreme, and Tuscan Angelo,—
Great art and passion are one. Thine too the part
To prove, that still for him the laurels grow
Who reaches through the mind to pluck the heart.

THE DRAMA

(SUPPOSED TO BE FROM THE POLISH)

I sat in the crowded theater. The first notes of the orchestra wandered in the air; then the full harmony burst forth; then ceased.

The conductor, secretly pleased with the loud applause, waited a moment, then played again; but as he struck upon his desk for the third time, the bell sounded, the just-beginning tones of the wind-instruments and the violins husht suddenly, and the curtain was rolled to the ceiling.

Then appeared a wonderful vision, which shall not soon be forgotten by me.

For know that I am one who loves all things beautiful. Did you find the figure of a man lying solitary upon the wind-fashioned hills of sand, watching the large sun rise from the ocean? That was I.

It was I who, lonely, walked at evening through the woods of autumn, beholding the sun's level light strike through the unfallen red and golden foliage,—

Whose heart trembled when he saw the fire that rapidly consumed the dead leaves lying upon the hillside, and spread a robe of black that throbbed with crimson jewels under the wind of the rushing flame.

Know, also, that the august forms wrought in marble by the ancient sculptors have power upon me, also the imaginative works of the incomparable painters; and that the voices of the early poets are modern and familiar to me.

What vision was it, then, that I beheld; what art was it that made my heart tremble and filled me with joy that was like pain?

Was it the art of the poet; was it of a truth poetry made visible in human attitudes and motions?

Was it the art of the painter—which Raphael knew so well when he created those most gracious shapes that yet live on the walls of the Vatican?

Or was it the severe and marvelous art of the sculptor, in which antique Phidias excelled, and which Michael Angelo indued with new and mighty power?

Or, haply, it was the enchanting myth, made real before our eyes—of the insensate marble warmed to life beneath the passionate gaze of the sculptor!

No, no; it was not this miracle, of which the bards have so often sung; nor was it the art of the poet, nor of the painter, nor of the musician (tho' often I thought of music), nor of the sculptor. It was none of these that moved my heart, and the hearts of all who beheld, and yet it was all of these,

For it was the ancient and noble art of the drama,— that art which includes all other art,—and she who was the mistress of it was the divine Modjeska.

FOR AN ALBUM

(TO BE READ ONE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER)

PORTO FINO

IMPROMPTUS

I—TO F. F. C. ON THE PANSY, HER CLASS FLOWER

This is the flower of thought;
Take it, thou empress of a land
Of true hearts, from a loyal subject's hand;
And with it naught,
O, naught beneath life's ever-brightening dome
Of sad remembrance! May it bring
Dreams of joy only, and of happy days
Backward and still to come;
Of birds that sang last eve, and still shall sing
In dawns of morrows only joyful lays.
Or yet, if thou shouldst go
Not utterly unscathed of mortal woe—
Thy blackest hour be touched by memory's gold,
As is this flower's leaf. Then shalt thou hold
Ever a young heart in thee, ever as now
A look of quenchless youth beneath thy peerless brow.

II—ART

Following the sun, westward the march of power!
The Rose of Might blooms in our new-world mart:
But see, just bursting forth from bud to flower,—
A late, slow growth,—the fairer Rose of Art.

III—TO A SOUTHERN GIRL

Sweet rose that bloomed on the red field of war,
Think not too sadly of the dreadful Past!
Are not old foes new friends—not least, tho' last,
One whose far home lies 'neath yon Northern star?

IV—FOR A FAN

Each of us answers to a call;
Master or mistress have we all.
I belong to lovely Anne;
Dost thou not wish thou wert a fan?
Thus to be treasured, thus to be prest,
Pleasuring thus, and thus carest?

V—TO T. B. A.

IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF A BOOK OF PROSE

Your pretty book doth please me,
Of carks and cares doth ease me;
But don't forget, my boy,
Verse is your true employ.
And surely, Thomas Bailey,
In all this new-world mêlée
Too seldom comes the poet,
And when he does we know it!
Yes, no one else can do
The work that's play to you.
So spend your precious time in
Your master art of rhymin',
Then shall you keep the praise
Of these and future days.

VI—A THEME

“Give me a theme,” the little poet cried,
“And I will do my part.”
“'T is not a theme you need,” the world replied,
“You need a heart.”

VII—THE CHRISTMAS TREE IN THE NURSERY

(FOR F. AND R.)

5. PART V

MUSIC AND WORDS

THE POET'S FAME

THE POET'S PROTEST

TO A YOUNG POET

“WHEN THE TRUE POET COMES”

YOUTH AND AGE

THE SONNET

What is a sonnet? 'T is the pearly shell
That murmurs of the far-off murmuring sea;
A precious jewel carved most curiously;
It is a little picture painted well.
What is a sonnet? 'T is the tear that fell
From a great poet's hidden ecstasy;
A two-edged sword, a star, a song—ah me!
Sometimes a heavy-tolling funeral bell.
This was the flame that shook with Dante's breath;
The solemn organ whereon Milton played,
And the clear glass where Shakespeare's shadow falls:
A sea this is—beware who ventureth!
For like a fiord the narrow floor is laid
Mid-ocean deep sheer to the mountain walls.

A SONNET OF DANTE

(“Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare”)

So fair, so pure my lady as she doth go
Upon her way, and others doth salute,
That every tongue becometh trembling-mute,
And every eye is troubled by that glow.
Her praise she hears as on she moveth slow,
Clothed with humility as with a suit;
She seems a thing that came (without dispute)
From heaven to earth a miracle to show.
Through eyes that gaze on her benignity
There passes to the heart a sense so sweet
That none can understand who may not prove;
And from her countenance there seems to move
A gentle spirit, with all love replete,
That to the soul comes, saying, “Sigh, O, sigh!”

THE NEW TROUBADOURS

They said that all the troubadours had flown—
No bird to flash a wing or swell a throat!
But as we journeyed down the rushing Rhone
To Avignon, what joyful note on note
Burst forth beneath thy shadow, O Ventour!
Whose eastward forehead takes the dawn divine;—
Ah, dear Provence! ah, happy troubadour,
And that sweet, mellow, antique song of thine!
First, Roumanille, the leader of the choir,
Then graceful Matthieu, tender, sighing, glowing,
Then Wyse all fancy, Aubanel all fire,
And Mistral, mighty as the north-wind's blowing;
And youthful Gras, and lo! among the rest
A mother-bird who sang above her nest.

KEATS

Touch not with dark regret his perfect fame,
Sighing, “Had he but lived he had done so”;
Or, “Were his heart not eaten out with woe
John Keats had won a prouder, mightier name!”
Take him for what he was and did—nor blame
Blind fate for all he suffered. Thou shouldst know
Souls such as his escape no mortal blow—
No agony of joy, or sorrow, or shame!
“Whose name was writ in water!” What large laughter
Among the immortals when that word was brought!
Then when his fiery spirit rose flaming after
High toward the topmost heaven of heavens up-caught!
“All hail! our younger brother!” Shakespeare said,
And Dante nodded his imperial head.

AN INSCRIPTION IN ROME

(PIAZZA DI SPAGNA)

Something there is in Death not all unkind;
He hath a gentler aspect, looking back;
For flowers may bloom in the dread thunder's track,
And even the cloud that struck with light was lined.
Thus, when the heart is silent, speaks the mind;
But there are moments when comes rushing, black
And fierce upon us, the old, awful lack,
And Death once more is cruel, senseless, blind.
So when I saw beside a Roman portal
“In this house died John Keats”—for tears that sprung
I could no further read. O bard immortal!
Not for thy fame's sake—but so young, so young;
Such beauty vanished; spilled such heavenly wine;
All quenched that power of deathless song divine!

DESECRATION

“JOCOSERIA”

TO AN ENGLISH FRIEND

WITH EMERSON'S “POEMS”

Edmund, in this book you'll find
Music from a prophet's mind.
Even when harsh the numbers be,
There's an inward melody;
And when sound is one with sense,
'T is a bird's song, sweet, intense.
Chide me not the book is small,
For in it lies our all in all.
We who in El Dorado live
Have no better gift to give.
When no more is silver mill,
Golden stream, or iron hill—
Search the New World from pole to pole,
Here you'll find its singing soul!

OUR ELDER POETS

LONGFELLOW'S “BOOK OF SONNETS”

'T was Sunday evening as I wandered down
The central highway of this swarming place,
And felt a pleasant stillness—not a trace
Of Saturday's harsh turmoil in the town;
Then as a gentle breeze just stirs a gown,
Yet almost motionless, or as the face
Of silence smiles, I heard the chimes of “Grace”
Sound murmuring through the autumn evening's brown.
To-day, again, I past along Broadway
In the fierce tumult and mid-noise of noon,
While 'neath my feet the solid pavement shook;
When lo! it seemed that bells began to play
Upon a Sabbath eve a silver tune—
For as I walked I read the poet's book.

“H. H.”

I would that in the verse she loved some word,
Not all unfit, I to her praise might frame—
Some word wherein the memory of her name
Should through long years its incense still afford.
But no, her spirit smote with its own sword;
Herself has lit the fire whose blood-red flame
Shall not be quenched—this is her living fame
Who struck so well the sonnet's subtile chord.
None who e'er knew her can believe her dead;
Tho' should she die they deem it well might be
Her spirit took its everlasting flight
In summer's glory, by the sunset sea—
That onward through the Golden Gate it fled.
Ah, where that bright soul is cannot be night.

THE MODERN RHYMER

TWO WORLDS AND OTHER POEMS

1. PART I

TWO WORLDS

2. PART II

THE STAR IN THE CITY

As down the city street
I pass at the twilight hour,
'Mid the noise of wheels and hoofs
That grind on the stones, and beat;—
Upward, by spire and tower,
Over the chimneys and roofs
Climbs my glance to the skies,
And I see, with a glad surprise,
A mist with a core of light.
Slowly, as grows the night,—
As the sky turns blue from gray,—
Slowly it beams more bright,
And keeps with me on my way.
Soul of the twilight star
That leads me from afar,
Spirit that keener glows
As the daylight darker grows;
That leaps the chasm of blue
Where the cross-street thunders through,
And follows o'er roof and spire,
In the night-time soaring higher;
I know thee, and only I,
Thou comrade of the sky—
Star of the poet's heart,
The light and soul of his art.

MOONLIGHT

“I CARE NOT IF THE SKIES ARE WHITE”

CONTRASTS

SERENADE

(FOR MUSIC)

LARGESS

INDOORS, AT NIGHT

The window's white, the candle's red,
Show evening falleth overhead;
The candle's red, the window's black,
And earth is close in midnight's sack;
The candle fades,
The midnight shades
Turn suddenly a starry blue—
And now to dreams, my soul, of you!

THE ABSENT LOVER

The purple of the summer fields, the dark
Of forests, and the upward mountain sweep—
Broken by crag, and scar of avalanche;
The trembling of the tops of million trees;
A world of sunlight thrilled with winds of dawn;
All these I feel, I breathe, all these I am
When with closed eyes I bring thy presence near,
And touch thy spirit with my spirit's love.

“TO-NIGHT THE MUSIC DOTH A BURDEN BEAR”

To-night the music doth a burden bear—
One word that moans and murmurs; doth exhale
Tremulously as perfume on the air
From out a rose blood-red, or lily pale.
The burden is thy name, dear soul of me,
Which the rapt melodist unknowing all
Still doth repeat through fugue and reverie;
Thy name, to him unknown, to me doth call,
And weeps my heart at every music-fall.

SANCTUM SANCTORUM

THE GIFT

“AH, TIME, GO NOT SO SOON”

Ah, Time, go not so soon;
I would not thus be used, I would forego that boon;
Turn back, swift Time, and let
Me many a year forget;
Let her be strange once more—an unfamiliar tune,
An unimagined flower,
Not known till that mute, wondrous hour
When first we met!

“THE YEARS ARE ANGELS”

The years are angels that bring down from Heaven
Gifts of the gods. What has the angel given
Who last night vanished up the heavenly wall?
‘He gave a friend—the gods’ best gift of all.

“IN HER YOUNG EYES”

In her young eyes the children looked and found
Their happy comrade. Summer souls false-bound
In age's frosty winter,—without ruth,—
Lived once again in her their long-lost youth.

“YESTERDAY, WHEN WE WERE FRIENDS”

A NIGHT SONG

(FOR THE GUITAR)

LEO

3. PART III

BROTHERS

Passion is a wayward child,
Art his brother firm and mild.
Lonely each
Doth fail to reach
Hight of music, song, or speech.
If hand in hand they sally forth,
East or west, or south or north,
Naught can stay them
Nor delay them.
Slaves not they of space or time
In their journeyings sublime.

LOVE, ART, AND TIME

ON A PICTURE ENTITLED “THE PORTRAIT,” BY WILL H. LOW

Sweet Grecian girl who on the sunbright wall
Tracest the outline of thy lover's shade,
While, on the dial near, Time's hand is laid
With silent motion—fearest thou, then, all?
How that one day the light shall cease to fall
On him who is thy light; how lost, dismayed,—
By Time, and Time's pale comrade Death, betrayed,—
Thou shalt breathe on beneath the all-shadowing pall!
Love, Art, and Time, these are the triple powers
That rule the world, and shall for many a morrow—
Love that beseecheth Art to conquer Time!
Bright is the picture, but, O fading flowers!
O youth that passes! love that bringeth sorrow!—
Bright is the picture; sad the poet's rhyme.

THE DANCERS

ON A PICTURE ENTITLED “SUMMER,” BY T. W. DEWING

Behold these maidens in a row
Against the birches' freshening green;
Their lines like music sway and flow;
They move before the emerald screen
Like broidered figures dimly seen
On woven cloths, in moony glow—
Gracious, and graceful, and serene.
They hear the harp; its lovely tones
Each maiden in each motion owns,
As if she were a living note
Which from that curvèd harp doth float.

THE TWENTY-THIRD OF APRIL

A little English earth and breathèd air
Made Shakespeare, the divine; so is his verse
The broidered soil of every blossom fair;
So doth his song all sweet bird-songs rehearse.
But tell me, then, what wondrous stuff did fashion
That part of him which took those wilding flights
Among imagined worlds; whence the white passion
That burned three centuries through the days and nights!
Not heaven's four winds could make, nor the round earth,
The soul wherefrom the soul of Hamlet flamed;
Nor anything of merely mortal birth
Could lighten as when Shakespeare's name is named.
How was his body bred we know full well,
But that high soul's engendering who may tell!

EMMA LAZARUS

When on thy bed of pain thou layest low,
Daily we saw thy body fade away,
Nor could the love wherewith we loved thee stay
For one dear hour the flesh borne down by woe;
But as the mortal sank. with what white glow
Flamed thy eternal spirit, night and day;
Untouched, unwasted, tho' the crumbling clay
Lay wreckt and ruined! Ah, is it not so,
Dear poet-comrade, who from sight hast gone;
Is it not so that spirit hath a life
Death may not conquer? But, O dauntless one!
Still must we sorrow. Heavy is the strife
And thou not with us; thou of the old race
That with Jehovah parleyed, face to face.

THE TWELFTH OF DECEMBER

On this day Browning died?
Say, rather: On the tide
That throbs against those glorious palace walls;
That rises—pauses—falls
With melody and myriad-tinted gleams;
On that enchanted tide,
Half real, and half poured from lovely dreams,
A soul of Beauty,—a white, rhythmic flame,—
Past singing forth into the Eternal Beauty whence it came.

4. PART IV

SHERIDAN

SHERMAN

PRO PATRIA

IN MEMORY OF A FAITHFUL CHAPLAIN

TO THE SPIRIT OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

(REUNION AT GETTYSBURG TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER THE BATTLE)

Shade of our greatest, O look down to-day!
Here the long, dread midsummer battle roared,
And brother in brother plunged the accursèd sword;—
Here foe meets foe once more in proud array,
Yet not as once to harry and to slay,
But to strike hands, and with sublime accord
Weep tears heroic for the souls that soared
Quick from earth's carnage to the starry way.
Each fought for what he deemed the people's good,
And proved his bravery by his offered life,
And sealed his honor with his outpoured blood;
But the Eternal did direct the strife,
And on this sacred field one patriot host
Now calls thee father—dear, majestic ghost!

FAILURE AND SUCCESS

(G. C., 1888)

He fails who climbs to power and place
Up the pathway of disgrace.
He fails not who makes truth his cause,
Nor bends to win the crowd's applause.
He fails not, he who stakes his all
Upon the right, and dares to fall;—
What tho' the living bless or blame,
For him the long success of fame.

J. R. L.

ON HIS BIRTHDAY

Navies nor armies can exalt the state;
Millions of men, nor coinèd wealth untold;
Down to the pit may sink a land of gold;
But one great name can make a country great.

NAPOLEON

A soul inhuman? No, but human all,
If human is each passion man has known:
Scorn, hate, and love; the lust of empire, grown
To such a hight as did the world appall;—
If the same human soul may soar and crawl
As soared his and as crawled; if to be shown
The utmost heaven and hell; if to atone
For power consummate by colossal fall;—
If human 't is to see friend, partizan,
Turn, dastardly, the imperial hand to tear
That fed them; if through gnawing years to plan
Vengeance, and space to breathe the unfettered air—
No alien from his kind but very man
Slow perished on that island of despair.

THE WHITE CZAR'S PEOPLE

CHARLESTON

Is this the price of beauty! Fairest, thou,
Of all the cities of the sunrise sea,
Yet thrice art stricken. First, war harried thee;
Then the dread circling tempest drove its plow
Right through thy palaces; and now, O now!
A sound of terror, and thy children flee
Into the night and death. O Deity!
Thou God of war and whirlwind, whose dark brow,
Frowning, makes tremble sea and solid land!
These are Thy creatures who to heaven cry
While hell roars 'neath them, and its portals ope;
To Thee they call,—O Thou who bidst them die,
Who hast forgotten to withhold Thy hand,—
For thou, Destroyer, art man's only Hope!

5. PART V

HIDE NOT THY HEART

“THE POET FROM HIS OWN SORROW”

“WHITE, PILLARED NECK”

“GREAT NATURE IS AN ARMY GAY”

Great nature is an army gay,
Resistless marching on its way;
I hear the bugles clear and sweet,
I hear the tread of million feet.
Across the plain I see it pour;
It tramples down the waving grass;
Within the echoing mountain-pass
I hear a thousand cannon roar.
It swarms within my garden gate;
My deepest well it drinketh dry.
It doth not rest; it doth not wait;
By night and day it sweepeth by;
Ceaseless it marcheth by my door;
It heeds me not, tho' I implore.
I know not whence it comes, nor where
It goes. For me it doth not care—
Whether I starve, or eat, or sleep,
Or live, or die, or sing, or weep.
And now the banners all are bright,
Now torn and blackened by the fight.
Sometimes its laughter shakes the sky,
Sometimes the groans of those who die.
Still through the night and through the livelong day
The infinite army marches on its remorseless way.

“LIFE IS THE COST”

THE PRISONER'S THOUGHT

THE CONDEMNED

Thou art not fit to die?—Why not?
The fairest body ripes to rot.
Thy soul? O, why not let it go
Free from the flesh that drags it low!
To die! Poor wretch, do not deceive
Thyself—who art not fit to live.

“SOW THOU SORROW”

Sow thou sorrow and thou shalt reap it;
Sow thou joy and thou shalt keep it.

TEMPTATION

Not alone in pain and gloom,
Does the abhorrèd tempter come;
Not in light alone and pleasure
Proffers he the poisoned measure.
When the soul doth rise
Nearest to its native skies,
There the exalted spirit finds
Borne upon the heavenly winds
Satan, in an angel's guise,
With voice divine and innocent eyes.

A MIDSUMMER MEDITATION

AS DOTH THE BIRD”

As doth the bird, on outstretched pinions, dare
The dread abysm's viewless air,
Take thou, my soul, thy fearless flight
Into the void and dark of death's eternal night.

VISIONS

WITH A CROSS OF IMMORTELLES

When Christ cried: “It is done!”
The face of a small red flower,
Looking up to the suffering One,
Turned pale with love and pain,
And never shone red again.
In memory of that hour
Which holds the secret of bliss;
And the darker secret of sorrow
That shall come to each, to-morrow;
Sweet friend, I send you this.

THE PASSING OF CHRIST

I

O Man of light and lore!
Do you mean that in our day
The Christ hath past away;
That nothing now is divine
In the fierce rays that shine
Through every cranny and thought;
That Christ as he once was taught
Shall be the Christ no more?
That the Hope and Savior of men
Shall be seen no more again;
That, miracles being done,
Gone is the Holy One?
And thus, you hold, this Christ
For the past alone sufficed;
From the throne of the hearts of the world
The Son of God shall be hurled,
And henceforth must be sought
New prophets and kings of thought;
That the tenderest, truest word
The heart of sorrow hath heard
Shall sound no more upon earth;
That he who hath made of birth
A dread and sacred rite;
Who hath brought to the eyes of death
A vision of heavenly light,
Shall fade with our failing faith;—
He who saw in children's eyes
Eternal paradise;
Who made the poor man's lowly
Labor a service holy,
And sweat of work more sweet
Than incense at God's feet;
Who turned the God of Fear
To a father, bending near;
Who looked through shame and sin
At the sanctify within;
Whose memory, since he died,
The earth hath sanctified—
Hath been the stay and the hold
Of millions of lives untold,
And the world on its upward path
Hath led from crime and wrath;—
You say that this Christ hath past
And we cannot hold him fast?

II

CREDO

NON SINE DOLORE

I

II

Then spake the Questioner: If 't were only this,
Ah, who could face the abyss
That plunges steep athwart each human breath?
If the new birth of Death
Meant only more of Life as mortals know it,
What priestly balm, what song of highest poet,
Could heal one sentient soul's immitigable pain?
All, all were vain!
If, having soared pure spirit at the last,
Free from the impertinence and warp of flesh,
We find half joy, half pain, on every blast;
Are caught again in closer-woven mesh—
Ah! who would care to die
From out these fields and hills, and this familiar sky;
These firm, sure hands that compass us, this dear humanity?

III

6. PART VI

ODE

AFTER-SONG

THE GREAT REMEMBRANCE AND OTHER POEMS

1. PART I

THE GREAT REMEMBRANCE

2. PART II

“THE WHITE CITY”

(THE COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION)

THE VANISHING CITY

THE TOWER OF FLAME

(THE COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION, JULY 10, 1893)

Here for the world to see men brought their fairest,
Whatever of beauty is in all the earth;
The priceless flower of art, the loveliest, rarest,
Here by our inland ocean came to glorious birth.
Yet on this day of doom a strange new splendor
Shed its celestial light on all men's eyes:
Flower of the hero-soul,—consummate, tender,—
That from the tower of flame sprang to the eternal skies.

LOWELL

THE SILENCE OF TENNYSON

When that great shade into the silence vast
Through thinking silence past;
When he, our century's soul and voice, was husht,
We who,—appalled, bowed, crusht,—
Within the holy moonlight of his death
Waited the parting breath;
Ah, not in song
Might we our grief prolong.
Silence alone, O golden spirit fled!
Silence alone could mourn that silence dread.

ON THE DEATH OF A GREAT MAN

PHILLIPS BROOKS

When from this mortal scene
A great soul passes to the vast unknown,
Let not in hopeless grief the spirit groan.
Death comes to all, the mighty and the mean.
If by that death the whole world suffer loss,
This be the proof (and lighter thus our cross),
That he for whom the world doth sorely grieve
Greatly hath blessed mankind in that he once did live.
Then, at the parting breath
Let men praise Life, nor idly blame dark Death.

A HERO OF PEACE

IN MEMORY OF ROBERT ROSS: SHOT MARCH 6, 1894

WASHINGTON AT TRENTON

THE BATTLE MONUMENT, OCTOBER 19, 1893

FAME

Fame is an honest thing,
It is deceivèd not;
It passes by the palace gates
Where the crowned usurper waits,
Enters the peasant-poet's cot
And cries: “Thou art the king!”

A MONUMENT BY SAINT-GAUDENS

This is not Death, nor Sorrow, nor sad Hope;
Nor Rest that follows strife. But, O, more dread!
'T is Life, for all its agony serene;
Immortal, and unmournful, and content.

A MEMORY OF RUBINSTEIN

He of the ocean is, its thunderous waves
Echo his music; while far down the shore
Mad laughter hurries—a white, blowing spume.
I hear again in memory that wild storm;
The winds of heaven go rushing round the world,
And broods above the rage one sphinx-like face.

PADEREWSKI

HANDEL'S LARGO

When the great organs, answering each to each,
Joined with the violin's celestial speech,
Then did it seem that all the heavenly host
Gave praise to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost:
We saw the archangels through the ether winging;
We heard their souls go forth in solemn singing;
“Praise, praise to God,” they sang, “through endless days,
Praise to the Eternal One, and naught but praise”;
And as they sang the spirits of the dying
Were upward borne from lips that ceased their sighing;
And dying was not death, but deeper living—
Living, and prayer, and praising and thanksgiving!

THE STAIRWAY

By this stairway narrow, steep,
Thou shalt climb from song to sleep;
From sleep to dream and song once more;—
Sleep well, sweet friend, sleep well, dream deep!

THE ACTOR

THE STRICKEN PLAYER

When at life's last the stricken player lies,
When throng before his darkened, dreaming eyes
His soul's companions, which more real then—
The human comrades, the live women and men
Of the large world he knew, or the ideal
Imagined creatures his own art made real;
Wherein he poured his spirit's very being,
His soul and body? Are those dim eyes seeing
Himself as one of Shakespeare's men? Are maids
And queens he wooed, the kings he was, or knew
Upon the tragic stage, are these the shades
That now his visionary hours pursue,
Attendant on his passing? Listen near!
What breathèd murmurs 'scape those pallid lips
To which the nations hearkened, ere the eclipse
Of all that brightness? Now lean close and hear;
Ah, see that look, sweeter than when he smiled
Upon the applauding world, while she draws near
And hears a dear voice whisper: “Child, my Child!”

AN AUTUMN DIRGE

(E. F. H.)

ELEONORA DUSE

If ever flashed upon this mortal scene
A soul unsheathèd, a pale, trembling flame,
That suffered every gust, and yet did cling
With fire unquenchable—it is thine own,
Thou artist of the real! Unto thee
No mirth of life is secret; but, sweet soul,
With what sure art thou picturest human woe!
How natural tears to those Italian eyes—
Shadowing in untold depths whatever grief
Familiar is to mortals!

KELP ROCK

(E. C. S.)

Rock's the song-soil, truly
(So sang one bard of power);
Therefore our poet duly
Built on this rock his tower;
And therefore in his singing
We breathe the salty morning;
We hear the storm-bell ringing,
The “siren's” piercing warning,
The sea-winds roaring, sighing,
The long waves rising, falling;
We hear the herons calling,
The clashing waves replying.

AT NIAGARA

THE CHILD-GARDEN

THE CHRIST-CHILD

A PICTURE BY FRANK VINCENT DU MOND

A CHILD

TWO VALLEYS

ON THE BAY

This watery vague how vast! This misty globe,
Seen from this center where the ferry plies,—
It plies, but seems to poise in middle air,—
Soft gray below gray heavens, and in the west
A rose-gray memory of the sunken sun;
And, where gray water touches grayer sky,
A band of darker gray prickt out with lights—
A diamond-twinkling circlet bounding all;
And where the statue looms, a quenchless star;
And where the lighthouse, a red, pulsing flame;
While the great bridge its starry diadem
Lifts through the gray, itself in grayness lost!

WASHINGTON SQUARE

This is the end of the town that I love the best.
O, lovely the hour of light from the burning west—
Of light that lingers and fades in the shadowy square
Where the solemn fountain lifts a shaft in the air
To catch the skyey colors, and fling them down
In a wild-wood torrent that drowns the noise of the town.
And lovely the hour of the still and dreamy night
When, lifted against the blue, stands the arch of white
With one clear planet above; and the sickle moon,
In curve reversed from the arch's marble round,
Silvers the sapphire sky. Now soon, ah, soon,
Shall the city square be turned to holy ground,
Through the light of the moon and the stars and the glowing flower,—
The Cross of Light,—that looms from the sacred tower.

THE CITY

A RHYME OF TYRINGHAM

ELSIE

“Do you love me?” Elsie asked,
And her rose-leaf dimples masked
'Neath a pleading look, the while
On her pouting lips a smile
Hovered, yet was out of sight
Like a star that's hid at night
By a filmy, flying cloud.
“Do you love me?” scarce aloud
Lovely Cousin Elsie said.
“Why no answer, Cousin Ed?
Do you hate me, then, or why
From Your Highness no reply?”
So the chiding witch ran on:
“In a moment I'll be gone;
Then too late, Sir No Gallant!
Quick! I'll tell my precious aunt
That you love me not,” she cries,
“That you hate me and despise.”
Flash the great, gray, long-lashed eyes;
Half in earnest now the girl;
Down the pretty corners curl
Of the tiny mouth, and lo!
From those eyes two tearlets flow;—
Just two kisses, and they go!
Like a sunburst after showers,
Like white light upon the flowers,
Now again the dimples show.
But she could not understand
Why so long the answer waited
For the loved and not the hated,
While he held that little hand,
And like a bird she sang and said,—
Half in earnest, half in fun,—
“Do you love me, Solemn One?
Do you love me, Cousin Ed?
Do you love me? Do you love me?
Love me, love me, Cousin Ed?”

INDIRECTION

I saw not the leaf
But its shadow trembling, trembling down.
I faced to northward, to my grief,
When from the southern sky a crimson meteor lit the star-dark town.
I saw not naked Love
Lean from his porphyry throne above
And touch her heart to flame,
Yet on her brow I saw the swift, sweet, virgin shame.

“AH, BE NOT FALSE”

THE ANSWER

HOW DEATH MAY MAKE A MAN

“CAME TO A MASTER OF SONG”

BARDS

MERIDIAN

EVENING IN TYRINGHAM VALLEY

What domes and pinnacles of mist and fire
Are builded in yon spacious realms of light
All silently, as did the walls aspire
Templing the ark of God by day and night!
Noiseless and swift, from darkening ridge to ridge,
Through purple air that deepens down the day,
Over the valley springs a shadowy bridge.
The evening star's keen, solitary ray
Makes more intense the silence, and the glad,
Unmelancholy, restful, twilight gloom—
So full of tenderness, that even the sad
Remembrances that haunt the soul take bloom
Like that on yonder mountain.
Now the bars
Of sunset all burn black; the day doth fail,
And the skies whiten with the eternal stars.
O, let thy spirit stay with me, sweet vale!

3. PART III

A WEEK'S CALENDAR

I—NEW YEAR

Each New Year is a leaf of our love's rose;
It falls, but quick another rose-leaf grows.
So is the flower from year to year the same,
But richer, for the dead leaves feed its flame.

II—A NEW SOUL

To see the rose of morning slow unfold
Each wondrous petal to that heart of gold;
To see from out the dark, unknowing night
A new soul dawn with such undreamed-of light,
And slowly all its loveliness and splendor
Pour forth as stately music pours, magnificently tender!

III—“KEEP PURE THY SOUL”

Keep pure thy soul!
Then shalt thou take the whole
Of delight;
Then, without a pang,
Thine shall be all of beauty whereof the poet sang—
The perfume, and the pageant, the melody, the mirth
Of the golden day, and the starry night;
Of heaven, and of earth.
O, keep pure thy soul!

IV—“THY MIND IS LIKE A CRYSTAL BROOK”

V—“ONE DEED MAY MAR A LIFE”

One deed may mar a life,
And one can make it;
Hold firm thy will for strife,
Lest a quick blow break it!
Even now from far on viewless wing
Hither speeds the nameless thing
Shall put thy spirit to the test.
Haply or e'er yon sinking sun
Shall drop behind the purple West
All will be lost—or won!

VI—THE UNKNOWN

How strange to look upon the life beyond
Our human cognizance with so deep awe
And haunting dread; a sense as of remorse,
A looking-for of judgment, a great weight
Of things unknown to happen! We who live
Blindly from hour to hour in very midst
Of mysteries; of shapeless, changing glooms;
Of nameless terrors; issues vast and black;
Of airy whims, slight fantasies, and flights
That lead to unimaginable woe:
The unweighed word cloying the life of love;
One clod of earth outblotting all the stars;
Some secret, dark inheritance of will,
And the scared soul plunges to conscious doom!
Thou who hast wisdom, fear not Death, but Life!

VII—IRREVOCABLE

Would the gods might give
Another field for human strife;
Man must live one life
Ere he learns to live.
—Ah, friend, in thy deep grave,
What now can change, what now can save?

4. PART IV

SONGS

“BECAUSE THE ROSE MUST FADE”

“FADES THE ROSE”

THE WINTRY HEART

HAST THOU HEARD THE NIGHTINGALE?

“IN THAT DREAD, DREAMED-OF HOUR”

“ROSE-DARK THE SOLEMN SUNSET”

“WINDS TO THE SILENT MORN”

THE UNRETURNING

TWO YEARS

O, that was the year the last of those before thee;
All my world till then but dark before the dawn.
If then I had died, O, never had I known thee,
Never had beheld thee; I who won, who own thee;
Who chose thee, who sing thee, crown thee, and adore thee;
O, death it were indeed to die before that dawn!
This was the year when first I did behold thee,
Thou who on my darkness dawned with lyric light.
This the golden hour when first thy lover found thee,
Followed and beguiled thee, and with his singing bound thee;
When all the world with music rang to drown thee and enfold thee—
Thou who turned the darkness to song, and love, and light!

IN PALESTINE AND OTHER POEMS

1. PART I

IN PALESTINE

THE ANGER OF CHRIST

THE BIRDS OF BETHLEHEM

NOËL

“THE SUPPER AT EMMAUS”

THE DOUBTER

THE PARTHENON BY MOONLIGHT

THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

KARNAK

“ANGELO, THOU ART THE MASTER”

I

II

A WINTER TWILIGHT IN PROVENCE

2. PART II

“THE POET'S DAY”

The poet's day is different from another,
Tho' he doth count each man his own heart's brother.
So crystal-clear the air that he looks through,
It gives each color an intenser hue;
Each bush doth burn, and every flower flame;
The stars are sighing; silence breathes a name.
The world wherein he wanders, dreams, and sings
Thrills with the beating of invisible wings;
And all day long he hears from hidden birds
The low, melodious pour of musicked words.

“HOW TO THE SINGER COMES THE SONG?”

“LIKE THE BRIGHT PICTURE”

Like the bright picture ere the lamp is lit,
Or silent page whereon keen notes are writ;
So was my love, all vacant, all unsaid,
Ere she the lamp did light, ere she the music read.

REMEMBRANCE OF BEAUTY

Love's look finds loveliness in all the world:
Ah, who shall say—This, this is loveliest!
Forgetting that pure beauty is impearled
A thousand perfect ways, and none is best.
Sometimes I deem that dawn upon the ocean
Thrills deeper than all else; but, sudden, there,
With serpent gleam and hue, and fixèd motion,
Niagara curves its scimitar in air.
So when I dream of sunset, oft I gaze
Again from Bellosguardo's misty hight,
Or memory ends once more one day of days—
Carrara's mountains purpling into night.
There is no loveliest, dear Love, but thee—
Through whom all loveliness I breathe and see.

MUSIC IN SOLITUDE

“A POWER THERE IS”

A power there is that trembles through the earth;
It lives in nature's mirth,
Making that fearful as the touch of pain;
It strikes the sunlit plain,
And harvests flash, or bend with rushing rain;
It is not far when tempests make their moan,
And lightnings leap, and bursts the thunder-stone.
It comes in morning's beam of living light,
And the imperial night
Knows it, and all its company of stars,
And the auroral bars.
Through nature all, the subtile current thrills;
It built in flood and fire the crystal hills;
It molds the flowers,
And all the branchèd forests that abide
Forever on the teeming mountain-side.
It lives where music times the soft, processional hours;
And where on that lone hill of art
Proud Phidias carved in stone his lyric heart;
And where wild battle is, and where
Glad lovers breathe in starry night the quivering air.

THE SONG'S ANSWER

Me mystic? Have your way!
But sing me, if ye may;—
Then shall ye know the power
Of the seed's thought of the flower,
Of the dawn's thought of the day.

THE 'CELLO

When late I heard the trembling 'cello play,
In every face I read sad memories
That from dark, secret chambers where they lay
Rose, and looked forth from melancholy eyes.
So every mournful thought found there a tone
To match despondence; sorrow knew its mate;
Ill fortune sighed, and mute despair made moan;
And one deep chord gave answer, “Late,—too late.”
Then ceased the quivering strain, and swift returned
Into its depths the secret of each heart;
Each face took on its mask, where lately burned
A spirit charmed to sight by music's art;
But unto one who caught that inner flame
No face of all can ever seem the same.

THE VALLEY ROAD

HAWTHORNE IN BERKSHIRE

Mountains and valleys! dear ye are to me:
Your streams wild-wandering, ever-tranquil lakes,
And forests that make murmur like the sea;
And this keen air that from the hurt soul takes
Its pain and languor.—Doubly dear ye are
For many a lofty memory that throws
A splendor on these hights.—'Neath yon low star,
That like a dewdrop melts in heaven's rose,
Dwelt once a starry spirit; there he smote
Life from the living hills; a little while
He rested from the raging of the world.
This Brook of Shadows, whose dark waters purled
Solace to his deep mind, it felt his smile—
Haunted, and melancholy, and remote.

LATE SUMMER

AN HOUR IN A STUDIO

Each picture was a painted memory
Of the far plains he loved, and of their life,—
Weird, mystical, dark, inarticulate,—
And cities hidden high against the blue,
Whose sky-hung steps one Indian could guard.
The enchanted Mesa there its fated wall
Lifted, and all its story lived again—
How, in the happy planting time, the strong
Went down to push the seeds into the sand,
Leaving the old and sick. Then reeled the world
And toppled to the plain the perilous path.
Death climbed another way to them who stayed.
He showed us pictured thirst, a dreadful sight;
And many tales he told that might have come,
Brought by some planet-wanderer—fresh from Mars,
Or from the silver deserts of the moon.
But I remember better than all else
One night he told of in that land of fright—
The love-songs swarthy men sang to their herds
On the high plains to keep the beasts in heart;
Piercing the silence one keen tenor voice
Singing “Ai nostri monti” clear and high:
Instead of stakes and fences round about
They circled them with music in the night.

ILLUSION

What strange, fond trick is this mine eyes are playing!
I know 't is but the visioning mind perplexes,—
The inward sight the outer sense betraying,—
Yet the sweet lie the spirit wounds and vexes:
As at still midnight pondering here, and reading,
Right on the book's white page, and 'twixt the lines,
And wreathing through the words, and quick receding,
Only to come again (as 'mid the vines
The dryads flash and hide), white arms are gleaming,
A light hand hovers, curvèd lips are red,
Locks in a warm and soundless wind are streaming
Across the image of one glorious head;
No more,—no more,—shut now the volume lies
On that swift, piercing look, those haunting eyes.

A SONG OF THE ROAD

Speed, speed, speed
Through the day, through the night!
Cities are beads on the thread of our flight;
Peaks melt in peaks and are lost in the air.
Speed, speed, speed—
But, O, the dearth of it,
Thou not there!
Every journey is good if love be the goal of it.
What's all the world if love's not the soul of it;
What were the worth of it—
Thou not there!

“NOT HERE”

“‘NO, NO,’ SHE SAID”

A SOUL LOST, AND FOUND

“THIS HOUR MY HEART WENT FORTH, AS IN OLD DAYS”

This hour my heart went forth, as in old days,
To one I loved, forgetting she was dead—
So fluttered back the message, like the dove
That found no rest in all the weltering world.
Is it then so—all blankness and black void,
No welcome, no response, no voice, no sign?
Ah, Heaven! let us be foolish—give us faith
In what is not; cheat us a little longer;
Comfort us mortals with envisioned forms;
Let us, tho' but in dreams, see spirits near,
And touch the draperies of imagined shapes
That hold the souls we love—that have gone forth
Into the land of shadows, but still live
In memory, O, most dear! Beguile our lives
With dim, half-fashioned phantoms of dead hours,
Lest the long way grow hateful; give us faith
Unreasoned, vague, unsubstanced, but still faith;
For faith is hope, and hope alone is life.

“EVEN WHEN JOY IS NEAR”

Even when joy is near
These ghosts of banished thoughts do haunt the mind:
The awful void of space wherein our earth,
An atom in the unending whirl of stars,
Circles, all helpless, to a nameless doom;
The swift, indifferent marshaling of fate
Whereby the world moves on, rewarding vice
And punishing angelic innocence
As 't were the crime of crimes; the brute, dull, slow
Persistence in the stifled mind of man
Of forces that drive all his being back
Into the slime; the silent cruelty
Of nature, that doth crush the unseen soul
Hidden within its sensitive shell of flesh;
The anguish and the sorrow of all time,—
These are forever with me,—but grow dim
When I remember my sweet mother's face.
Somewhere, at heart of all, the right must reign
If in the garden of the infinite
Such loveliness be brought to perfect bloom.

RESURRECTION

Back to my body came I in the gray of the dawning,
Back to my bed in the mold, 'neath the sod and the blossoms;
Not strange seemed my natural couch, not new, not afflicting;
But strange now, and new, and afflicting my natural body,
Alien long while my soul took the wings of the morning.
I lifted my hands to the light—then swiftly I followed,
With fingers that carefully prest, the curve of the muscles;
All was familiar; this was the frame I had nurtured,
I had loved as a man loves the body so long his companion;
Again was I 'ware of the brow where the dew of sweet kisses
Fell, ere forth went the stripling to life and the shudder
Of battle;—again from the mirror of waters the features
Not unloved of dear comrades looked forth. I beheld in amazement
The bodily presence so long laid aside and forgotten;
Overwhelmed was my soul with its shackles; I grieved, I lamented
As a prisoner dragged back to his cell, as an eagle recaptured.

“AS SOARS THE EAGLE”

3. PART III

ROBERT GOULD SHAW

(THE MONUMENT BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS)

“THE NORTH STAR DRAWS THE HERO”

(TO H. N. G.)

The North Star draws the hero; he abides
Stedfast tho' death defends the unending quest.
But, ah, more faithful still the love that hides
In woman's empty arms and aching breast!

GLAVE

This day I read in the sad scholar's page
That the old earth is withered and undone;
That faith and great emprize beneath the sun
Are vain and empty in our doting age;
'T were best to calm the spirit's noble rage,
To live in dreams, and all high passion shun,
While round and round the aimless seasons run—
Pleasured alone with dead art's heritage.
Then, as I read, outshone thy face of youth,
Hero and martyr of humanity,
Dead yesterday on Afric's shore of doom!
Ah, no; Faith, Courage fail not, while lives Truth,
While Pity lives, while man for man can die,
And deeds of glory light the dark world's gloom.

OF HENRY GEORGE

WHO DIED FIGHTING AGAINST POLITICAL TYRANNY AND CORRUPTION

Now is the city great! That deep-voiced bell
Tolls for a martyred hero. Such is he
Who loved her, strove for her, and nobly fell.
His fire be ours—the passion to be free.

SCORN

Who are the men that good men most despise?
Not they who, ill begot and spawned in shame,
Riot and rob, or rot before men's eyes,—
Who basely live, and dying leave no name.
These are the piteous refuse of mankind,
Fatal the ascendant star when they were born,
Distort in body, starved in soul and mind;
Ah, not for them the good man's bitter scorn!
He, only, is the despicable one
Who lightly sells his honor as a shield
For fawning knaves, to hide them from the sun;
Too nice for crime, yet, coward, he doth yield
For crime a shelter. Swift to Paradise
The contrite thief, not Judas with his price!

THE HEROIC AGE

He speaks not well who doth his time deplore,
Naming it new and little and obscure,
Ignoble and unfit for lofty deeds.
All times were modern in the time of them,
And this no more than others. Do thy part
Here in the living day, as did the great
Who made old days immortal! So shall men,
Gazing long back to this far-looming hour,
Say: “Then the time when men were truly men:
Tho' wars grew less, their spirits met the test
Of new conditions; conquering civic wrong;
Saving the state anew by virtuous lives;
Guarding the country's honor as their own,
And their own as their country's and their sons':
Proclaiming service the one test of worth;
Defying leaguèd fraud with single truth;
Knights of the spirit; warriors in the cause
Of justice absolute 'twixt man and man;
Not fearing loss; and daring to be pure.
When error through the land raged like a pest
They calmed the madness caught from mind to mind
By wisdom drawn from eld, and counsel sane;
And as the martyrs of the ancient world
Gave Death for man, so nobly gave they Life:
Those the great days, and that the heroic age.”

THE SWORD OF THE SPIRIT

(IN MEMORY OF JOE EVANS)

“THROUGH ALL THE CUNNING AGES”

ONE COUNTRY—ONE SACRIFICE

In one rich drop of blood, ah, what a sea
Of healing! Thou, sweet boy, wert first to fall
In our new war; and thou wert Southron all!
There is no North, no South, remembering thee.

“WHEN WITH THEIR COUNTRY'S ANGER”

A VISION

THE WORD OF THE WHITE CZAR

4. PART IV

A SONG FOR DOROTHEA, ACROSS THE SEA

A BLIND POET

Call him not blind
Whose keen, anointed sight,
Pierced every secret of the heart, the mind,
The day, the night.

ON A WOMAN SEEN UPON THE STAGE

(“TESS,” AS PLAYED BY MRS. FISKE)

Alas, poor, fated, passionate, shivering thing!
So through brief life some dagger-haunted king
Wears a bright sorrow. Thus her life rehearse:
She was a woman; this her crown, her curse.

OF ONE WHO NEITHER SEES NOR HEARS

(HELEN KELLER)

FOR THE ESPOUSALS OF JEANNE ROUMANILLE, OF AVIGNON

TO MARIE JOSEPHINE GIRARD, QUEEN OF THE FÉLIBRES

ON HER WEDDING-DAY

Queens have there been of many a fair domain
Of arts, of hearts, of lands.
Thy sovereignty a threefold realm commands
Who o'er Provence, and Poetry, and Love dost reign.

INSCRIPTION FOR A TOWER IN FLORENCE

(WRITTEN FOR THE CHATELAINE)

WITH A VOLUME OF DANTE

O thou whom Virgil and thy Beatrice
Through life and death, Hell, Purgatory, Heaven,
Led upward into unimagined light—
Lead thou this soul the way thou, too, didst go
Unto the Light that lights the eternal stars!

POEMS

AUTUMN AT FOUR-BROOKS FARM

No song-bird, singing, soaring,
But the brooks are up and roaring!
Along the lane one lonely tree
Starts a sound like a storm at sea.
The round, black clouds pursue
Across the gulfs of blue;
So fast they fly the mountain crest
Reels backward to the blowing west.
Shadow and sun rush on together
Across the hills in the gusty weather,
And leaves like flocks of golden birds
Take flight above the huddling herds.
Hark, hark that bell-like baying!—
The wily fox with the hound is playing;
All is motion, and air, and strife;
Down the valley the floods are pouring;
This is Autumn, O, this is life;
No song-bird sings, but the hawks are soaring,
And the brooks are up and roaring!

INDOORS IN EARLY SPRING

THE NIGHT PASTURE

I

In a starry night of June, before the moon had come over into our valley from the high valley beyond,

Up the winding mountain-lane I wandered, and, stopping, leaned on the bars, and listened;

And I heard the little brook sliding from stone to stone; and I heard the sound of the bells as the cows moved—heavily, slowly,

In various keys, deep, or like sleigh-bells tinkling, sounded the chiming cow-bells—

Starting and stilling, irregular; near or far away in the dusk—

And the nearer cows I heard chewing the cud, and breathing warm on the cool air of the mountain slope

In the night pasture.

II

Terrace on terrace rises the farm, from meadow and winding river to forest of chestnut and pine;

There by the high-road, among the embowering maples, nestles the ancient homestead;

From each new point of vantage lovelier seems the valley, and the hill-framed sunset ever more and more moving and glorious;

But when in the thunderous city I think of the mountain farm, nothing so sweet of remembrance,—holding me as in a dream,—

As the silver note of the unseen brook, and the clanging of the cow-bells fitfully in the dark, and the deep breathing of the cows

In the night pasture.

III

Then I think, not of myself—but an image comes to me of one who has past,

Of an old man bent with labor;

He, like his father before him, for many and many a year,

When the cows down the mountains have trudged in the summer evening, and after the evening milking,

Night after night, and year after year, back up the lane he has driven them, while the shepherd-dog leaped and barked—

Back up the lane, and past the orchard, and through the bars

Into the night pasture.

IV

There in the twilight I see him stand:
He listens to the sounds of the field and the forest,
On his brow strikes the cool mountain air;
Hard is the old man's life and full indeed of sorrow—

But now, for a moment, respite from labor, in the pause 'twixt day and night!

Perhaps to his heart comes a sense of the beauty that fills all this exquisite valley—

A sense of peace and of rest; a thought of the long and toilless night that comes to all,

As he leans on the bars and listens, and hears the deep-breathed cows, and the scattered sound of the bells

In the night pasture.

A LETTER FROM THE FARM

SUMMER BEGINS

“STROLLING TOWARD SHOTTERY”

STRATFORD BELLS

One Sabbath eve, betwixt green Avon's banks,
In a dream-world we hour by hour did float;
The ruffling swans moved by in stately ranks;
With soft, sad eyes the cattle watched our boat.
We, passionate pilgrims from a far-off land,
Beyond the vexed Bermoothes: O, how dear
That strange, sweet picture—by the Enchanter's wand
Familiar to our spirits made, and near!
But suddenly a rich and resonant sound
Thrilled from the skies and waters; lo, the chimes
Of Stratford rang and rang; the very ground
Murmured, as with a deep-voiced poet's rhymes;
Then swift melodious tone on tone was hurled:
'T was Shakespeare's music brimmed the trembling world.

IN WORDSWORTH'S ORCHARD

DOVE COTTAGE

In Wordsworth's orchard, one sweet summer day,
Breathless we listened to his thrushes sing;
We heard the trickling of the little spring
Beneath the terrace; saw the tender play
Of breezes 'midst the leaves; scarce could we say
The well-loved verses whose rich blossoming
Was on this narrow hillside; strange they ring
For tears that choke the numbers on their way.
Then home by winding Rothay did we turn
While bird, and bloom, and mountain seemed his voice
Deep sounding to the spiritual ear—
And this its message: Let love in thee burn,
Here learn in holy beauty to rejoice,
Here learn true living, and the song sincere.

SIR WALTER SCOTT

A DAY IN TUSCANY

A SACRED COMEDY IN FLORENCE

IN WHICH TAKES PART A CERTAIN STATUE ON THE FAÇADE OF THE DUOMO

Lonely Pope upon his throne,
Cold in marble, high in air,
On the Duomo's checkered front—
Benediction, as is wont,
Falling from his saintly face
Down upon the clattering square:
Falls, to-day, a special grace,
For, in fact, he 's not alone—
Solemn Pope upon his throne,
White in marble, cold in air!—
To those priestly fingers there,
Lifted o'er the peopled square,
A purple pigeon sudden flits,
Lightly 'lights and lingering sits.
By the Baptistery gates,
Where I stand, I can but smile,
Thinking that the potentate's
Lips are curving, too, the while;
And I wonder what the bird
Said that Papa, smiling, heard.

MICHAEL ANGELO'S AURORA

THE MEDICI CHAPEL, FLORENCE

O majesty and loveliness in one!
Why art thou sorrowful, now night is done?
This is the dawn; why doth thy spirit quake?
O thou who wakenest! is it pain to wake?

THE OLD MASTER

Of his dear Lord he painted all the life,
But not that ancient land, nor the old days;
Not curious he to seek, through learnèd strife,
The look of those far times and unknown ways.
But in his solemn and long-living art
Well did he paint that which can never die:
The life and passion of the human heart,
Unchanged while sorrowing age on age goes by.
Beneath his brush his own loved people grew,
Their rivers and their mountains, saints and lords;
The dark Italian mothers whom he knew,
The sad-eyed nuns, the warriors with drawn swords;
And the young Savior, throned at Mary's breast,
Was but some little child whom he loved best.

AT LUTHER'S GRAVE

WITTENBERG

Here rests the heart whose throbbing shook the earth!
High soul of courage, we do owe thee much;
Thee and thy warrior comrades, who the worth
Of freedom proved and put it to the touch!
Because, O Luther, thou the truth didst love,
And spake the truth out,—faced the sceptered lie,—
E'en we, thy unforgetting heirs, may move
Fearless, erect, unshackled, 'neath the sky.
Yet at this shrine who doth forever linger
Shall know not that true freedom Luther won;
“Onward,” his spirit points, with lifted finger,
“Onward lies truth! My work were never done
If souls by me awakened climbed not higher—
Ever to seek, and fear not, the celestial fire.”

BEETHOVEN

VIENNA

I came to a great city. Palaces
Rose glittering, mile on mile. Here dwells the King,
The Emperor and King; here lived, here ruled
How many mountainous far-looming fames;
Here is the crown of shadowy Charlemagne.
What housing of what glorious dignities!
Yet in a narrow street, unfrequented,
No palace near—one name upon a wall,
And all these majesties seem small and shrunk:
For here unto the bitter end abode
He who from pain wrought noble joy for men;
He who from silence gave the world to song;
For in his mind an awful music rose
As when, in darkness of the under-seas,
Currents tremendous over currents pour.
He heard the soundless tone, its voice he was,
And he of vast humanity the voice,
And his the empire of the human soul.

THE DESERT

Souls live for whom the illimitable sands
Not lonely are; they see white, phantom hands
Beckoning in spectral twilights, and they hear
Voices that come not to another ear.
The mystic desert calls them, as doth call
The sea to those who once have known its thrall—
The desert that (like to the eternal sea)
Creates a visible infinity;
There, where the day its quivering fire outpours,
A silent ocean breaks on silent shores.
Who would be wise—
Let him consort with Time 'neath desert skies.

EGYPT

I thought, in Egypt, Death was more than Life,
It seemed so long; its monuments so great;
The emptiness of tombs was such high state,—
No living thought, or power, or potentate
So glorious seemed, wrapt in such splendid gloom.
For I perceived that in each ancient tomb,
Long ages since, dead kings for Death made room.
Not here the Dead, but Death—alone, supreme:
In Egypt Death was real—Life a wingèd Dream.

SYRIA

I thought in Syria, Life was more than Death.
A tomb there was forsaken of its dead,
But Death filled not the place; here with bowed head
Worships the world forever at the tread
Of one who lived, who liveth, and shall live—
Whose grave is but a footstep on the sod;
Men kiss the ground where living feet have trod.
Here not to Death but Life, they worship give.
August is Death, but this one tomb is rife
With a more mighty presence; it is Life.

THE DEAD POET

A. H.

WAR

THE BLAMELESS KNIGHT

THE DEMAGOGUE

All mouth, no mind; a mindless mouth in sooth;
He does not bend his strength to seek the truth,
But, shrewdly guessing what may take the crowd,
With tragic grimace, this he shouts aloud.
No true opinion, no fixed faith has he,
But gravely simulates sincerity.
His many causes swift resolve to one:
You find him his own cause when all is done.

THE TOOL

The man of brains, of fair repute, and birth,
Who loves high place above all else of earth;
Who loves it so, he'll go without the power
If he may hold the semblance but an hour;
Willing to be some sordid creature's tool
So he but seem a little while to rule;
On him even moral pigmies would look down;
Were prizes given for shame, he'd wear the crown.

THE NEW POLITICIAN

While others hedged, or silent lay,
He to the people spoke all day;
Ay, and he said precisely what
He thought; each time he touched the spot.
“In heaven's name, what does he mean!
Was ever such blind folly seen!”
The wag-beard politicians cried:
“Can no one stop the man?” they sighed.
“This ‘talking frankly’ may be fun,
But when have such mad tactics won?
He may be happy, but the cost
Is ours! The whole election's lost!”
And still the people at his feet
Followed and cheered from street to street.
Truly this ne'er was known before:
No soldier, sailor, orator,
No hero home from battle he
Whom welcoming thousands rush to see;
But just a man who dared to take
His stand on justice, make or break;
'T was all because the people found
A man by no conventions bound;
Who sought to heal their black disgrace
By treating rich and poor the same,
Giving to crime its ugly name,
Damning the guilty to their face.
And when the votes, at last, were read
Our candidate ran clear ahead!
This be his glory and renown:
He told the truth—and took the town.

A LADY TO A KNIGHT

“IS HOPE A PHANTOM?”

Is Hope a phantom? Holds the crystal cup
Sweet madness only—an we drink it up?
A respite ere the poor, doomed soul is killed?
—Then spake one who had loved: “Hope is no lie,
But real as answered Love, or unfulfilled;
Yet were Hope phantom-false, still would I cry,
‘Hail, Thou Bright Poisoner! let me drink, and die!’”

SONG

MEMORY

Into this musing, Memory! thou hast brought
Me, thy true vassal; into this delight
That is more poignant for the haunting grief;
And as thou leadest on I follow, follow,
Down the deep, woody pathway of my dream,
Feeling the breath of flowers colorless
And airs that change their seasons as I wander,
Falling or cool or warm upon the brow.
The river shimmers 'twixt the shadowy boles;
Scarce seen the stars for the high, monstrous leaves
That make a lovers' screen; while the large moon,
Late risen, sends three beams athwart the path.
It is not night, nor day, it is the time
Of the clear spirit's life; the soul's high noon;
The hour most fit for passion's holy birth.
O mellow eve, unstartled by a bird!
O night whose light is deepening up the sky!
'T was such a night when one low-murmured word,—
A word all miracle,—made of my soul
Naught but a singing rapture.

“O, GLORIOUS SABBATH SUN”

MOTTO FOR A TREE-PLANTING

JANET

ON BEING ASKED FOR A SONG

CONCERNING THE DEDICATION OF A MOUNTAIN IN SAMOA TO THE MEMORY OF STEVENSON

A Letter to I. O. S.

But, friend of mine,—and his,—I am afraid!
How can I make a song
When the true song is made!
For this you say:
Because that Tusitala loved the birds,
They who named Tusitala (weaver of charmèd words—
Teller of Tales)
Have given his mountain to the birds forever!
There all day long
Bright-plumaged island-birds make gay the dales,
From off the sea the swift white bosun over the mountain sails,
From many a large-leaved tree
The gray dove cooes its low, insistent song.
From those green hights and vales
They shall be absent never—
To show what love can be from man to man.
Lovers of Birds and Poets—this is glory!
It is a poem,—that which these Chiefs have done,—
In memory of him, the only one.
And yet our Tusitala could have sung again the pretty story—
Alas, none other can!

TO AUSTIN DOBSON

Laureate of the Gentle Heart!
Only art like your own art,
Limpid, gracious, happy-phrased,
Could praise you as you should be praised.
Many a lyric you have writ,
Grave with pathos, gay with wit,
Or conceived in larger mood,
Shall outlast the clattering brood
That usurp our noisy day;
Shall, with all that's noble, stay
In our well-loved English tongue
Till the ending song is sung;
For no purer tone was heard
Since men sought Beauty and the Word.

TO L. R. S.

Lisa Romana! no mean city gave
Thee to the world, sired by as true a knight
As e'er the flying paynim's helmet clave,
Leading a hope forlorn in glorious fight!
And thou, dear, stately maid, no knight of old,
That eastward battles down the pleasant page
Of chivalry, ever in heart did hold
A queenlier image—face more brightly grave.
Be kind to her, ye seas, ye winds that blow,
On the long journey homeward, and one day,
Ocean and wild sea-winds! swift make return
Of her ye take from us;—ay, let her yearn
Back, back to us once more; before this gray
Whitens, and hearts that love her are laid low.

A NAME

Many the names, the souls, the faces dear
That I have longed to frame in verse sincere;
But one high name, sweet soul, and face of love
Seemed ever my poor art, O, far above.
Like Mary's, stricken with sorrow was that face;
Like hers it wore a most majestic grace.
That soul was tender as the sunset sky,
And full of lofty dream her days went by;
That name—than God's alone there is no other
Holy as thine to me, O sacred Mother!

JOHN GEORGE NICOLAY

This man loved Lincoln, him did Lincoln love;
Through the long storm, right there, by Lincoln's side,
He stood, his shield and servitor; when died
The great, sweet, sorrowful soul—still high above
All other passions, love for the spirit fled!
To this one task his pure life was assigned:
He strove to make the world know Lincoln's mind:
He served him living, and he served him dead.
So shall the light from that immortal fame
Keep bright forever this most faithful name.

THE COMFORT OF THE TREES

Gentle and generous, brave-hearted, kind,
And full of love and trust was he, our chief;
He never harmed a soul! O, dull and blind
And cruel, the hand that smote, beyond belief!
Strike him? It could not be! Soon should we find
'T was but a torturing dream—our sudden grief!
Then sobs and wailings down the northern wind
Like the wild voice of shipwreck from a reef!
By false hope lulled (his courage gave us hope!)
By day, by night we watched—until unfurled
At last the word of fate! Our memories
Cherish one tender thought in their sad scope:
He, looking from the window on this world,
Found comfort in the moving green of trees.

THE CITY OF LIGHT

THE PAN-AMERICAN EXPOSITION

“IN THE HIGHTS”

“IN THE HIGHTS”

HOME ACRES

A CALL TO THE MOUNTAINS

SPRING SURPRISE

Lo, now it comes once more; lo, my heart leaps again;
Comes swift the dear surprise, not at the spring, alone,
But, as a soul that knew, many a year agone,
All the full bloom of love, since the gray ashes—
Feels all the glad surprise when the o'er-wearied heart
Still knows the joy of life, as in the olden days;
That love can thrill again;—so the spring calls once more
With the old tenderness; till my heart trembles.

AUTUMN TREES

“THE LIGHT LIES ON THE FARTHER HILLS”

“AH, NEAR, DEAR FRIEND”

MUSIC IN DARKNESS

THE ANGER OF BEETHOVEN

This night the enchanting musicians rendered a trio of Beethoven—
Light and lovely, or solemn, as in a Tuscan tower
The walls with gracious tapestries gleam, and the deep-cut windows
Give on landscapes gigantic, framing the four-square world—
When sudden the music turned to anger, as nature's murmur
Sometimes to anger turns, speaking, in voice infuriate,
Cruel, quick, implacable; inhuman, savage, resistless—
And I thought of that sensitive spirit flinging back in scorn tempestuous
And in art supreme, immortal, the infamous arrows of fortune.

MOTHER AND CHILD

Mother and Child! There is no holier sight
In all the realms of morning and of night;
And all the meaning of that word, Divine,
Shines in the tender glory of this sign.
The world learns Worship here; it kneels in awe,
Seeing a mystery, knowing a mighty law.
Sin cannot live in presence of this grace,
No least unworthiness perplex the place.
Here Good doth dwell, but never baneful Doubt,
For Love and Loveliness would cast it out.
Were prophet voices still, the heavens brass,
Here would a new Evangel come to pass;
Out from the dark a rose-leaf hand would leap,
Close to the Eternal Throne the ancient world to keep.

ALICE FREEMAN PALMER

When fell, to-day, the word that she had gone,
Not this my thought: Here a bright journey ends,
Here rests a soul unresting; here, at last,
Here ends that earnest strength, that generous life—
For all her life was giving. Rather this
I said (after the first swift, sorrowing pang):
Radiant with love, and love's unending power,
Hence, on a new quest, starts an eager spirit—
No dread, no doubt, unhesitating forth
With asking eyes; pure as the bodiless souls
Whom poets vision near the central throne
Angelically ministrant to man;
So fares she forth with smiling, Godward face;
Nor should we grieve, but give eternal thanks—
Save that we mortal are, and needs must mourn.

“MOTHER OF HEROES”

SARAH BLAKE SHAW

Mother of heroes, she—of them who gave
Their lives to lift the lowly, free the slave.
Her, through long years, two master passions bound:
Love of our free land; and of all sweet sound.
'T was praising her to praise this land of grace;
And when I think on music—lo, her face!

THE GREAT CITIZEN

ABRAM STEVENS HEWITT

ON READING OF A POET'S DEATH

JOHN HENRY BONER

In life's hard fight this poet did his part;
He was a hero of the mind and heart.
Now rests his body 'neath his own loved skies,
And from his tomb Courage! his spirit cries.

“A WONDROUS SONG”

A wondrous song,
Rank with sea smells and the keen lust of life;
Echoing with battle trumpets, and the moan
Of dying men in reeking hospitals;
Thrilling all through with human pity and love
And crying courage in the face of doom;—
With all its love of life still praising death
Enchantingly, as death was never praised;
And with high anger and a god-like scorn
Passionately proclaiming life in death
And the unquenched, immortal soul of man—
A wondrous song,
Trembling with unshed tears and life's full joy,
Burst the tense meshes of the critic's web
And sang itself into eternal day.

A NEW POET

I

II

Friends, beware!
A sound of singing in the air!
The love-song of a man who loves his fellow-men;
Mother-love and country-love, and the love of sea and fen;
Lovely thoughts and mighty thoughts and thoughts that linger long;
There has come to the old world's singing the thrill of a brave new song.

III

They said there were no more singers,
But listen!—a master voice!
A voice of the true joy-bringers!
Now will ye heed and rejoice,
Or pass on the other side,
And wait till the singer has died,
Then weep o'er his voiceless clay?
Friends, beware!
A keen, new sound is in the air;—
Know ye a poet's coming is the old world's judgment day!

THE SINGER OF JOY

He sang the rose, he praised its fragrant breath;
(Alas, he saw the gnawing worm beneath.)
He sang of summer and the flowing grass;
(He knew that all the beauty quick would pass.)
He said the world was good and skies were fair;
(He saw far, gathering clouds, and days of care.)
Immortally he sang pure friendship's flame;
(Yet had he seen it shrivel to a name.)
And, ah, he praised true love, with golden speech;
(What tho' it was a star he could not reach.)
His songs in cowering souls the hero woke;
(He in the shadows waited the last stroke.)
He was the singer of the joyous art;
(Down to the grave he bore a broken heart.)

BREAD UPON THE WATERS

A melancholy, life o'er-wearied man
Sat in his lonely room, and, with slow breath,
Counted his losses: thrice-wreckt plan on plan,
Failure of friend, and hope, and heart, and faith—
This last the deadliest, and holding all.
Help was there none through weeping, for the years
Had stolen all his treasury of tears.
Then on a page where his eyes chanced to fall
There sprang such words of courage that they seemed
Cries on a battlefield, or as one dreamed
Of trumpets sounding charges. On he read
With fixèd gaze, and sad, down-drooping head,
And curious, half-remembering, musing mind.
The ringing of that voice had something stirred
In his deep heart, like music long since heard.
“Brave words,” he sighed; and looked where they were signed;
There, reading his own name, tears made him blind.

LOST

“WHAT MAN HATH DONE”

“HE PONDERED WELL”

“THOU THINKEST THOU HAST LIVED”

Thou thinkest thou hast lived
If fortune fair hath touched thee with its wand,
If thou hast known, but once, the top of life
In giving royally, in truly loving,
In braving some great deed in sight of men,
Or issuing victorious from strife.
Not so; nor hast of life the flower and hight
In suffering that others may go free.
For thee the sequent years still proudly hold
A keener sense of the rich depths of being,
When thou, brave novice, shalt endure the lore
Of fate's immeasurable ironies.
Thou may'st behold the scorn of thee and thine
Sit on the laureled brow of him thy hand
Helped to that heaven; yes, thou yet may'st see
Success, in them thou gavest strength to rise,
Used for thine own disfigurement and loss;
May'st know betrayal and forgetfulness,
And knowing shalt thy spirit hold in calm;
Pitying the arrogant, the meanly vain,
Unbitterly, and with no cloying hate,
Disdain, nor envy; comforted and blest
With the high thought of knowledge, worthily gained,
And the humility which makes men wise,
And the uncensured pride of purity.

THE GOOD MAN

What do you know of me, my gentlest one!
You who have watched my life from day to day
Through half a lifetime! Who have seen, indeed,
My comings and my goings; my dull years
In sunshine and in shade; in getting bread;
Gathering a little gold, a little fame,
A thousand nothings. What, I say, know you
Of my deep, inward, real, wonderful life?
My wild emprizes, foolishnesses, fears,
Failures, and shames, and all but acted crimes;
My half-mad waking dreams, O, yes, stark mad;
My spiritual comedies, my glooms—
Unutterable, intense, and without hope;
My secret, true, and unpraised heroisms;
My tragedies—played on the bare soul's stage,
With no eye witnessing but mine, alone—
Great God! not thine, I pray, not thine, not thine!

“SO FIERCE THE BUFFETS”

So fierce the buffets of untimely fate
He bowed his youthful head in mortal pain,
And cried: “Alas, my happy life is slain!”
Then came true sorrow, and he knew, too late,
His early woe was but a feather's weight.

TWO HEROES

THE WORLD'S END

Once wandering far in Asia, lo, we came
Unto a valley falling toward the east;
Naked its sides as if a spreading flame
Had swept all bare; devouring, in mad feast,
Forest and herb, all beasts and singing choirs.
With ardent colors were the vast hills strewn,
Glowing like unquenched embers of great fires;
Then sank the red sun, rose immense the moon.
So builded were those walls, so leaned the earth,—
With slow, unnatural, and awful trend,—
It seemed, at last, in this strange land of dearth,
Even just beyond, the solid world had end—
And, moving on, our vision might take flight
Into that pit whence issue day and night.

SHELLEY'S “OZYMANDIAS”

This timeless river—oldest of all time,
These desolate mountains, deserts stretching vast;
These pyramids and temples; this domain
Of tombs; and empty shadows of the dead,
And mockery of old fame;—here day and night
I wander, not alone, nor with sad heart:
One line of Shelley singing in my soul.

LA SALLE

EXPLORER OF THE MISSISSIPPI

Battling, through trackless lands, 'gainst savage foes;
Striving, enduring, knowing the bitterness
Of foul betrayal, still in front he goes;
Onward through swamp and forest see him press,
Proud, silent, suffering, misunderstood;
The weight he bore, it seemed that no man could;
Then at the last, when the infernal stroke
Fell, 't was as if the silent leader spoke:
“This river I first traced to the far sea—
If monument I need, this let it be;
Then shall I live with the chief sons of time.
This is the path of empire: onward to empire climb!”

INAUGURATION DAY

THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT

AT WASHINGTON, D. C.

Straight soars to heaven the white magnificence—
Free as man's thought, high as one lonely name;—
True image of his soul, serene, immense,
Mightiest of monuments and mightiest fame.

BUILDERS OF THE STATE

IMPROMPTUS

TO WILLIAM WATSON

ON HIS CORONATION ODE

In this high ode with its great shadow-kings,
More real than real things;
In this proud pageant of imperial verse
That nobly doth rehearse
England's true glories, for the world to read,
The King is crowned indeed!

“LIFE IS THE HAMMER”

(SIDNEY LANIER)

“THE CRITIC SCANNED THE POET'S BOOK”

The critic scanned the poet's book
And ranged it calmly in its place;—
A soul that felt its music shook
As if a bolt struck down through space;
And in that soul, like flower from seed,
The music turned to lofty deed
That sanctified a race.

“HER DELICATE FORM”

Her delicate form, her night of hair,
Took me, unaware.
They called her poet, and the word
Strangely I heard;
For that I thought: Can she
A poem write, and be?

FRANCESCA MIA

No verses I can bring her,
No song that I can sing her,
Can be so sweet, by half,
As the music of her laugh,
As the murmur of her voice,
As the sound of her violin.
These make my heart rejoice,
These me to heaven can win.
But something in her face,
Sad, wild, and full of grace—
A look in those dark eyes
That dream, and flash, and dance,
And with soft shadows fill—
These bring one long-loved glance,
Tender, and deep, and wise;
Then doth my heart stand still.

AGE, AND THE SCORNER

As I hobble, old and halt,
Daily, nightly,
By you, hectoring on the corner,
I know you for a graybeard scorner,
Tho' you raise your hat politely:
I know you hold it for a fault
That I bend with burdening years,
Dull of eye, and dull of ears;
That this poll
Whitens like a flax-wigged doll.
'T is a fault, you think; but wait!
Something marches, men call Fate;
If you, boy! succeed in keeping
Safe from sweep of Old Time's reaping,
You'll be the bent-back one that hobbles
Over the cobbles—
Wondering why, all young at heart,
With the old you're pushed apart.

TO JACOB A. RIIS

ON HIS SILVER WEDDING

Were true hearts bells, all breezes would be bringing,
Straight to your heart to-day, a silver ringing
From those you've blest, the heavy hearts and sore;—
Hark the sweet sound from here to Elsinore!

MUSIC AND FRIENDSHIP

Thrice is sweet music sweet when every word
And lovely tone by kindred hearts are heard;
So when I hear true music, Heaven send,
To share that heavenly joy, one dear, dear friend!

FRIENDSHIP

TO ---

TO E. C. S.

ON HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY

His life was generous as his life was long—
Filled to the brim with friendship and with song.

“TELL ME GOOD-BY”

FAREWELL TO CHARLESTON

Enchanted city, O farewell, farewell!
If farewell it can be
When here, 'twixt the dark pines and sunrise sea,
Our hearts remain,
While fare our bodies to the North again!
Here stay our hearts amid these mansions stately,
These oaks, forever green, that guard sedately
The living and the dead—
Thrilled through with song that hath interpreted
The beauty and the gladness of the day.
O, yes, our hearts remain; they must forever stay
'Midst happy gardens, unforgettable,
And where St. Michael's chimes
The fragrant hours exquisitely tell,
Making the world one loveliness, like a true poet's rhymes.

“THE PINES”

These are the sounds that I heard at the home in “The Pines”:
The frightened cry of the yellowthroat hid in the trees;
The chipmunk's rustling tread on the autumn leaves
That fringe with brown the green of the wave and the wood;
The purr of the quick canoe where it curves the wave
And the liquid push of the oar; the voice of the wind
Now far, now near, as it sighs through the swaying boughs—
Through the boughs that sway with a slow and wave-like motion
Like growths of the sea that swing in the moving waters;
The voice of the wind I heard, now near, now far;
Voice of the grieving world that murmurs and calls
And wakes in the spirit of man an answering cry.

“NOT WREATHS ALONE”

Not wreaths alone, for him who wins the fight
'Twixt public Wrong and Right;—
The heavy burden of the people's cares
The civic conqueror bears.
So to the chief, on this victorious night,
Pledge hands and hearts and heaven-climbing prayers.

FOR THE CITY CLUB

In Love of City here we take our stand:—
Love of the City is no narrow love;
Who loves it not he cannot love his land
With love that shall protect, exalt, endure.
Here are our homes, our hearts; great God above!
The City shall be noble, shall be pure.

TO C. H. RUSSELL

WHOSE FATHER WAS ONE OF LINCOLN'S HELPERS

I give this token to the son of him
That was a type of those brave, prescient souls
Who when dire trouble fell upon the land
From the beginning saw the fateful end,
Bending strong backs to the tremendous strain.
Higher than knighthood's honor lives your line
For that the mighty Lincoln hurriedly called
To your true sire, in a perilous hour,
And got true answer—succor swift, complete.
On such as he the patient President,
The tender elder brother of us all,
The sad, wise leader leaned, and not in vain.
Therefore the nation lives—therefore shall live,
Inheriting the spirit of great days.

“GIVE THY DAY TO DUTY”

Give thy day to Duty!
To that high thought be given
Thine every hour.
So shall the bending heaven,
As from the root the flower,
Bring to thy glad soul Beauty.

TWO OPTIMISTS

(A LETTER TO JOSEPH JEFFERSON, ACKNOWLEDGING A COPY OF HELEN KELLER'S ESSAY ON “OPTIMISM”)

To send fit thanks, I would I had the art,
For this small book that holds a mighty heart,
Enshrining, as it does, brave Helen's creed.
In thought and word; in many a lovely deed;
In facing what would crush a lesser soul,
Making of barriers helps to reach the goal;
In sympathy with all; in human kindness
To the blind of heart (dear girl! not this her blindness!),
As well as to her brethren of the dark
And silent world, who through her see and hark;
In bringing out of darkness a great light,
Which burns and beacons high in all men's sight,
That exquisite spirit is true optimist!
Yet there are other names in the bright list:
If faith in man and woman that still lasts,
Tho' chilled by seventy winters' bitter blasts;
If seeing, as you see, the good in evil,
And even something Christian in the devil;
If power to take misfortune as a friend
And to be cheerful to the darkening end;
Not to be spoiled by praise, nor deeply stung
By the detractor's sharp and envious tongue;
If living in fairy-land as really now
As when heaven's dew was fresh on childhood's brow;
If seeing, in fine, this world as through a prism
Of lovely colors be true optimism,
Then Jefferson is true optimist no less,
And Heaven sent both this troubled world to bless.

THE PASSING OF JOSEPH JEFFERSON

“SHALL WE NOT PRAISE THE LIVING?”

HYMN

WRITTEN FOR THE SERVICE IN MEMORY OF DR. J. L. M. CURRY, HELD BY THE SOUTHERN EDUCATION CONFERENCE, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, APRIL 26, 1903

JOHN WESLEY

WRITTEN FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE TWO-HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF JOHN WESLEY, AT WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY, MIDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT, JUNE, 1903

I

II

As did one soul, whom here I fain would sing,
For here in youth his gentle spirit took
New fire from Wesley's glow.
How oft have I,
A little child, harkened my father's voice
Preaching the Word in country homes remote,
Or wayside schools, where only two or three
Were gathered. Lo, again that voice I hear,
Like Wesley's, raised in those sweet, fervent hymns
Made sacred by how many saints of God
Who breathed their souls out on the well-loved tones.
Again I see those circling, eager faces;
I hear once more the solemn-urging words
That tell the things of God in simple phrase;
Again the deep-voiced, reverent prayer ascends,
Bringing to the still summer afternoon
A sense of the eternal. As he preached
He lived; unselfish, famelessly heroic.
For even in mid-career, with life still full,
His was the glorious privilege and choice
Deliberately to give that life away
For country and for comrades; for he knew
No rule but duty, no reward but Christ.

III

Increase thy prophets, Lord! give strength to smite
Shame to the heart of luxury and sloth!
Give them the yearning after human souls
That burned in Wesley's breast! Through them, great God!
Teach poverty it may be rich in Thee;
Teach riches the true wealth of Thine own spirit.
To our loved land, Celestial Purity!
Bring back the meaning of those ancient words,—
Not lost but soiled, and darkly disesteemed,—
The ever sacred names of husband, wife,
And the great name of Love, whereon is built
The temple of human happiness and hope!
Baptize with holy wrath thy prophets, Lord!
By them purge from us this corruption foul
That seizes on our civic governments,
Crowns the corrupter in the sight of men,
And makes him maker of laws, and honor's source!
Help us, in memory of the sainted dead,
Help us, O Heaven! to frame a nobler state,
In nobler lives rededicate to Thee:
Symbol and part of the large brotherhood
Of man and nations; one in one great love,
True love of God, which is the love of man,
In sacrifice and mutual service shown.
Let kindle, as before, O Heavenly Light!
New messengers of righteousness, and hope,
And courage, for our day! So shall the world
That ever, surely, climbs to Thy desire
Grow swifter toward Thy purpose and intent.

A TEMPLE OF ART

WRITTEN FOR THE OPENING OF THE ALBRIGHT ART GALLERY, BUFFALO, MAY 31, 1905

THE FIRE DIVINE

THE FIRE DIVINE

He who hath the sacred fire
Hidden in his heart of hearts,
It shall burn him clean and pure,
Make him conquer, make endure.
He to all things may aspire,
King of days, and souls, and arts.
Failure, fright, and dumb dismay
Are but wings upon his way.
Imagination and desire
Are his slaves and implements.
Faiths and foul calamities,
And the eternal ironies,
Are but voices in his choir.
Musician of decreed events—
Hungers, happinesses, hates,
Friendships lost, all adverse fates,
All passions and all elements,
Are but golden instruments
In his glorious symphonies.
Subject to his firm decrees
Are the heavens, are the seas;
But in utter humbleness
Reigns he, not to ban, but bless—
Cleansed, and conquering, and benign
Bearer of the fire divine.

THE INVISIBLE

(AT A LECTURE)

Such pictures of the heavens were never seen.
We stood at the steep edge of the abyss
And looked out on the making of the suns.
The skies were powdered with the white of stars
And the pale ghosts of systems yet to be;
While here and there a nebulous spiral told,
Against the dark, the story of the orbs—
From the impalpable condensing slow
Through ages infinite.
Each mighty shape
Seemed as the shape of speed—a whirling wheel
Stupendously revolving,
And yet no eye of man may see it stir.
(That moveless motion brings to the human brain
A hint of the large measurements of time—
Eternity made present.)
Such new sense
Of magnitudes that make our world an atom
Might crush the soul, did not this saving thought
Leap to the mind and lift it to clear hights:—
“'T is but the unseen that grows not old nor dies,
Suffers not change, nor waning, nor decay.
This that we see—this casual glimpse within
The seething pit of space; these million stars
And worlds in making, these are naught but matter;
These all are but the dust upon our feet,
And we who gaze forth fearless on the sight
Find not one equal, facing from the vast
Our sentient selves. Not one, sole, lonely star
In all the infinite glitter and deep light
Can make one conscious movement; all are slaves
To law material, immutable—
That Power immense, mysterious, intense,
Unseen as our own souls, but which must be
Like them the home of thought, with will and might
To stamp on mindless matter the soul's will.
Yea, in these souls of ours triumphant dwells
Some segment of the large creative Power—
A thing beyond the things of sight and sense;
A strength to think, a force to conquer force.
One are we with the ever-living One.”

DESTINY

(AFTER READING A WORK ON ASTRONOMY)

I see it all; my soul the dregs hath drunk
Of man's last, helpless, hopeless destiny;
Born of the primal ooze, where slow light sunk,
And climbing to the secrets of the sky;
Through countless million years the spiral mounts
Till nature, a companionable slave,
Bows to man's bidding; lo, then, the deep founts
Run gradual dry, earth turns its own chill grave:
The insatiate desert marches on the sown,
The sea exhales, the very air is gone,
And, gasping in the silent void, the race
Dies with the planet.—But not this the doom
Of man's outlooking soul; that hath no tomb,
Being quenchless as the law and lord of space.

THE OLD FAITH

THE DOUBTER'S SOLILOQUY

LAW

True love to liberty is never foe,
And he who truly loves is truly free:
Thus thought I when I heard the pulsing flow
Of mighty music rushing gloriously
Along the channels of unchanging law;
Thus thought I when I gazed upon the skies
And there the circling universe I saw
Moving obedient in glad harmonies
About a central, inescapable power:
No sun, nor planet, nor wild comet's course
But owns that sway in every separate hour
Of all its centuries; to that one force
Freely it yields,—as hearts that never rove,
But pour their being in a single love.

IDENTITY

And can it be?
The heart that in the earth's far dawn knew God;
The thought that seized the circling of the stars;
The soul of fire that on that hill of Athens
Builded immortal beauty; the brain enorm
That peopled for all men and for all time
A world Shakespearian; and can it be?—
The mind imperial named Beethoven,
Majestically chanting harmonies
That hold the motions of the rhythmic worlds,
And to far doomsday stir all living hearts;
And he the framer of earth's mightiest dome,
Painter sublime and poet marvelous,
Who carved the likeness of his soul in stone,
And in cold marble the hot heart of man
Imprisoned eternally; and can it be?—
These, these and all the potencies of time
Which throbbed in human form; and can it be
That the intensive fire which made them men,
Not trees, nor creeping beasts, nor stones, nor stars,
And gave identity to every soul
Making it individual and alone
Among the myriads; and can it be
That, when the mortal framework failed, this fire,—
Which flamed in separate and lonely life,—
These souls, slipt out of being and were lost,
Eternally extinguished and cast out:
Only to some obscure electric wave
Giving new force, to some stray flower new grace,
Unto some lover's vow more ardency;
Making some island sunset more intense,
Passing from fiery thought to chemic heat—
But all the universe empty of that one high
And exquisite accomplishment and power,
Forever and forever—can it be?

“SPARE ME MY DREAMS”

HYMN

(THANKSGIVING FOR SAINTS AND PROPHETS)

THE VALLEY OF LIFE

When I was a child joyfully I ran, hand claspt in hand, now with my mother, now with my father, or with younger, blithe companions, now in sunlight, now in shadow and dread, through the strange new Valley of Life.

Sometimes on the high-road, then over the fields and meadows, or through the solemn forests; sometimes along the happy brook-side, listening to its music or the clamor of the falls, as the pleasant waters hurried or grew still, in the winding way down the Valley of Life.

And as we moved along, hand claspt in hand, sometimes the hand-clasp was broken, and I, a happy child, ran swiftly aside from the path to gather flower or fruit or get sight of a singing bird; or to lean down and pluck a pearly stone from under the lapping waves; or climbed a tree and swayed, shouting, on its waving boughs—then returning to the clasp of loving hands, and so passing on and on down the opening Valley of Life.

In the bright morning I walked wondering; wondering I walked through the still twilight and many-colored sunset; watching the great stars gather, and lost in the mystery of worlds beyond number, and spaces beyond thought, till, side by side, we lay down to sleep under the stars in the Valley of Life and of Dreams.

Then there came a time when the hands that held me, —the loving hands that guided my steps and drew me gently on,—turned cold, and slipt from my grasp; I waited, but they came not back, and slowly and alone I plodded on down the Valley of Life and of Death.

“Where went they?” I asked my heart and the whispering waters and the sighing trees. “Where went my loving and well-belovèd guides? Did they climb the hills and tarry; did they, tired, lie down to sleep and forget me forever; leaving me to journey on without their dear care down the long Valley of Life?”

I could not know, for I heard no answer except my own heart's beating. But other comrades came,—one dearer than all,—and as time went on I felt the little hands of my own children clasping mine while, once more happy and elate, with them I traveled down the miraculous Valley of Life.

But, as on we wander, hearing their bright voices, and seeing their joy upon the way,—their happy chasings here and there, their eager run to hold again our hands, —how soon, I think, shall I feel the slipping away of the clasping fingers while I fall asleep by the wayside, or climb the cloud-enveloped hills, and leave those I love to journey on down the lonely Valley of Life?

And I say: “Surely the day and the hour hasten; grief will be theirs for a season; then will they, as did I, with brave hearts journey on the appointed way.” But where then shall my spirit rest? Will it sink unconscious into

endless night? or shall I, in some new dawn, and by some unimagined miracle not less than that which brought me here, wander, with those that led me once, and those I led, hand claspt in hand, as of old, by the murmuring waters and under the singing trees of the ever-wonderful, the never-ending Valley of Life?

TO ONE IMPATIENT OF FORM IN ART

TO THE POET

Let not thy listening spirit be abashed
By the majestic ranks of ancient bards
Or all the clarion singers of thy day:
For in thy true and individual song
Thou art a voice of nature; as the wind,
And cries of moving waters, and all shows
And speaking symbols of the universe
Are but the glorious sound and utterance
Of the mysterious power that spake the Word—
The immense first word that filled with splendid light
And vibrant potency the house of life;
Whose candles are a million, million stars,
Whose windows look on gulfs unthinkable
That bound our world. Think not on thine own self,
But on the enormous currents silently
That flood the unseen channels of still force,
Or with the sound of earthquake and the shout
Of circling storms complete an unknown doom.
Thine is the fate and function mystical,
In forms of lyric and eternal art,
Clearly to utter and re-syllable
The primal Word:—So is thy verse of kin
To the sea-shell, the lily, and the leaf.
It hath a natural right and majesty,
Being of the infinite, all-evolving power
True jet and symbol; kin to the morning star
That in the sky of dawn sings with its mates.

COMPENSATION

The Angel of Life stood forth on the threshold of Birth
And converse held with a spirit about to be born;
And the Angel announced to the Soul awaiting its world:
Choose thou! for now thou must choose, and never hereafter.
And if thou to beauty shalt bow, to Beauty and Art,
And if to thy spirit all exquisite things be revealed,
If the fate of the poet be thine, if a god thou wouldst be,
If thou in thy soul wouldst joyfully seize and encompass
The glories and grandeurs of earth, the sweetness supreme,
The vision angelic, forbidden to eyes unanointed,
The melodies silent to all save the holy of spirit,
The signs and the secrets, the splendors, the exaltations,
If these thou shalt choose, if these thou wouldst know and impart,
Even so—but forget not the price of the infinite wisdom,
For the price of the passion of joy is the passion of sorrow,
And the cost of thy heaven is the burning and anguish of hell.

THE POET'S SECRET

The secret—he has learned it
And only, only he:
Heaven in his heart hath burned it;
To him alone 't is free,
And them from him who learned it
In wise simplicity.
From thousand suns it flashes,
It leaps in flower and flame;
The spring, from winter's ashes,
Cries out its silent name—
The secret of the ages
That, to the poet came.
Unknown to all the sages,
However wise they be,
Through his quick veins it rages
And soul of ecstasy;
It lightnings from his pages,
In all his songs 't is sung:
The secret of the ages—
To be forever young.

“THE DAY BEGAN AS OTHER DAYS BEGIN”

A POET'S QUESTION

What, then, shall make these songs of mine more real;
More tuneful, piercing, bright—miraculous,
As art should be? Shall some high, fortunate chant,
Some song to come, flood backward on them all,—
Over every word in all the singing flock,—
A light, a meaning; a power to seize, to thrill;
A swift beatitude and haunting beauty;
Shall make of them a trouble to the base,
Scourge to the false, sun to the darkened soul,
Help to the fainting, succor to the bruised,
A judgment to the heeding and unheeding?
Or shall a flame leap from the singer's flight,
Making them luminous in sudden dawn—
Bright in the chrism of Death.

PRELUDE FOR “A BOOK OF MUSIC”

MUSIC AT TWILIGHT

MUSIC IN MOONLIGHT

Was ever music lovelier than to-night?
'T was Schumann's Song of Moonlight; o'er the vale
The new moon lingered near the western hills;
The hearth-fire glimmered low; but melting tones
Blotted all else from memory and thought,
And all the world was music. Wondrous hour!
Then sank anew into our trancèd hearts
One secret and deep lesson of sweet sound—
The loveliness that from unloveliness
Outsprings, flooding the soul with poignant joy,
As the harmonious chords to harsh succeed,
And the rapt spirit climbs through pain to bliss:
Eternal question, answer infinite;
As day to night replies; as light to shade;
As summer to rough winter; death to life—
Death not a closing, but an opening door;
A deepened life, a prophecy fulfilled.
Not in the very present comes reply,
But in the flow of time. Should the song cease
Too soon; ere yet the rooted answer blooms,
Lo, what a pang of loss and dissonance!
But time with the resolving and intended tone
Heals all, and makes all beautiful and right.
Even so our mortal music-makers frame
Their messages melodious to men;
Even so the Eternal His high harmonies
Fashions, supreme, of life, and fate, and time.

THE UNKNOWN SINGER

One singer in the oratorio,
Her only did I see, nor can forget;
Nor knew her name, nor have I seen her more,
Nor could I in the chorus find her voice.
Her swaying, gracious form, her face alight
As with an inner flame of melody—
These seized me; seemed the white embodiment
Of all the angelic voices richly poured
In a great rushing and harmonious flood.
That human form, all beautiful and bright,
Lived the pure, conscious, glorious instrument
Wherethrough the master made his message felt—
Conscious, but with no shallow vanity,
A breathing image of a thought in sound,
A living statue, symbol of a tone.
That which she sang she was; and, unaware,
Made music visible not less than heard.

THE VOICE

Rich is the music of sweet instruments,—
The separate harp, cornet, oboe, and flute,
The deep-souled viola, the 'cello grave,
The many-mooded, singing violin,
The infinite, triumphing, ivoried clavier;
And when, with art mysterious, some god
Thrills into one the lone and various tones,
Then is no hiding passion of the heart,
No sigh of evening winds, no breath of dawn,
No hope or hate of man that is not told.
But when a human voice leaps from that surge,
'T is as a flower that bursts from th' trembling earth;
Something more wonderful assails the soul,
As, with exultant cries, up-curving, swift,
The shrill Walküre clamor against the sky,
Or pale Brünhilde moans her bitter fate.

WAGNER

This is the eternal mystery of art:
He told the secretest secret of his heart—
How many mortals, with quick-flaming brow,
Whispered, “Lo, this am I—and that art thou!”

“THE PATHETIC SYMPHONY”

(TSCHAIKOWSKY)

When the last movement fell, I thought: Ah, me!
Death this indeed; but still the music poured
On and still on. O, deathlier it grew,
And then, at last, my beating heart stood still—
Beyond all natural grief the music passing,
Beyond all tragedy, or last farewell.
Then, on that fatal tide, dismayed I felt
This living soul, my own, without one tear,
Slowly, irrevocably, and alone,
Enter the ultimate silence and the dark.

MACDOWELL

Rejoice! Rejoice!
The New World hath a voice;
A voice of tragedy and mirth,
Sounding clear through all the earth;
A voice of music, tender and sublime,
Kin to the master-music of all time.
Hear ye, and know,—
While the chords throb with poignant pause and flow,—
Of the New World the mystic, lyric heart,
Breathed in undaunted art:
Her pomp of days, her glittering nights;
The rich surprise
And miracle of iridescent skies;
Her lovely lowlands and imperial hights;
Her glooms and gladness;
Her oceans thundering on a thousand shores;
Her wild-wood madness;
Her streams adream with memory that deplores
The red inhabitants evanished and undone
That follow, follow to far lands beyond the setting sun.
And echoes one may hear of ancient lores
From the Old World's well-loved shores—
Primal loves, and quenchless hates;
Striving lives, and conquering fates;
Elves innocently antic
Or wild-eyed, frantic;
Shadow-heroes, passionate, gigantic—
Sons and daughters of the prime
That moved the mighty bards to noble rhyme.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
The New World hath new music, and a voice.

A FANTASY OF CHOPIN

(GABRILOWITSCH)

Lightnings and tremblings and a voice of thunder;
But when the winds are down, and spent the showers—
At the vast mountain's base, the sheer cliffs under,
How sweet the summer flowers!

“HOW STRANGE THE MUSICIAN'S MEMORY”

How strange the musician's memory, never wrong
In symphony, sonata, fugue, or song!
Sees he the score with wide, unseeing eyes,
Or is it sound his heart doth memorize?
What is it like? Behold, from out the west,
The long light on the wild wave's flying crest.
See the swift gleam rush up the leaning strand
And die in foam upon the singing sand.

“IN A NIGHT OF MIDSUMMER”

In a night of midsummer, on the still eastern shore of the ocean inlet,

In our hearts a sense of the inaudible pulsings of the unseen, infinite sea,

Suddenly through the clear, cool air, arose the voice of a wonderful tenor; soaring and sobbing in the music of “Otello.”

I knew that the singer was long dead; I knew well that it was not his living voice;

And yet truly it was as the voice of a living man; tho' heard as through a veil, still was it human; still was it living; still was it tragic;

Still felt I the fire of the spirit of a man; I was moved by the passion of his art; I perceived the flower and essence of his person; the exquisite expression of his mind and soul;

His soul it was that seized my soul, through his voice, which was as the very voice of sorrow;

And then I thought: If man, by science and searching, can build a cunning instrument that takes over and keeps, beyond the term of human existence, the essence and flower of a man's art;

If he can recreate that most individual attribute, his articulate and musical voice, and thus the very art and passion which that voice conveys,

Why may not the Supreme Artificer, when the human body is utterly dissolved and dispersed, recover and keep forever, in some new and delicate structure, the living soul itself?

IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS

Mountains in whose vast shadows live great names,
On whose firm pillars rest mysterious dawns,
And sunsets that redream the apocalypse;
A world of billowing green that, veil on veil,
Turns a blue mist and melts in lucent skies;
A silent world, save for slow waves of wind,
Or sudden, hollow clamor of huge rocks
Beaten by valleyed waters manifold;—
Airs that to breathe is life and joyousness;
Days dying into music; nights whose stars
Shine near, and large, and lustrous; these, O these,
These are for memory to life's ending hour.

JOHN PAUL JONES

TO EMMA LAZARUS

Dear bard and prophet, that thy rest is deep
Thanks be to God! Not now on thy heart falls
Rumor intolerable. Sleep, O sleep!
See not the blood of Israel that crawls,
Warm yet, into the noon and night; that cries
Even as of old, till all the world stands still
At rapine that even to Israel's agonies
Seems strange and monstrous, a mad dream of ill.
Thou sleepest! Yea, but as in grief we said:
There is a spiritual life unconquerable;
So, bard of the ancient people, tho' being dead
Thou speakest, and thy voice we love full well.
Never thy holy memory forsakes us;
Thy spirit is the trumpet that awakes us!

CARL SCHURZ

GEORGE MACDONALD

JOSEPHINE SHAW LOWELL

“ONE ROSE OF SONG”

JOHN MALONE

This actor in great Shakespeare's shadow moved;
He thought his thoughts, he lived in Shakespeare's age.
His were the tenets of that mighty stage:
Therefore we mourn; therefore was he beloved.

“LOST LEADERS”

ON A CERTAIN “AGNOSTIC”

Agnostic! Ah, what idle name for him
Who knew—not the untruths of fables old,
Cherished in fear, or arrant ignorance;
Who knew—not the shrewd structures of keen minds
Intent on their own shrewdness; losing quite
The inner truth in outward scaffoldings,
Cunning appearances, and schemes involved;
But who knew well the central verity:
That honest thought followed, without dismay,
Unto the bitter and accepted end,
Is the one way to wisdom in this world;
Who knew not creeds, but could not help but follow
The feet of him who loved his fellow-men;
Who knew that human service is true life;
Who knew deep friendship, lived this knowledge out,
As few called “friends” have ever dared to live;
And who knew well the sacred truth of love.
Ah, call him not unknowing, for he knew
The truth of truth—the gods can know no more.

“A WEARY WASTE WITHOUT HER”

“A weary waste without her?” Ah, but think!
You who were blest with the most sweet, most near
Knowledge of that high nature; who could drink
At her fresh spirit's fountain, year by year—
What were the past without her? And her dear
Image and memory—did they, too, sink
Into the abyss?—Herself was yours, and here
Still lives remembrance; a bright, golden link
'Twixt this, the visible world, and the unknown
Toward which we journey—where she now doth live,
Close to the Eternal One. Make thou no moan;
What else may pass, this twofold gift endures;
Give thanks, and mourn not, then.—But, O, forgive!
How can I chide who mix my tears with yours?

THE POET'S SLEEP

Ever when slept the poet his dreams were music,
And in sweet song lived the dear dream once more.
So when from sleep and dreams again he wakes,—
Out from the world of symbols passing forth
Into that spirit-world where all is real,—
What memoried music, new and exquisite,
Shall strike on ears celestial—where he walks
Reverent among the immortal melodists!

WHERE SPRING BEGAN

The days were cold, and clouded. On a day
Before the seasonable warmth and sun
The poet died. We bore him to the tomb
And, under wreaths and flowers, we laid him down.
Then came a burst of sunshine. Bright it poured
On the banked blossoms and the leafless trees.
There, at the poet's grave, the spring began.

AVARICE

They said, “God made him,” ah, the clean, great God!
Perhaps! Even as He made the loathèd beast
Whose use is to take offal for his feast;
As He made viper and vermin or, at a nod,
Made hell, to do some necessary part
In His wide-stretched, inscrutable universe.
Yes, haply God imagined him for a curse,
A scourge, a vengeance; with slow, patient art
Him did He fashion cunningly; saying: “This
My sign and warning, to time's distant end,
That all a loveless life is may be known,
And desolate horror of pure avarice;
The world is his,—a world without a friend,—
Without one friend an honest man would own.”

PITY THE BLIND

PROOF OF SERVICE

Thou who wouldst serve thy country and thy kind,
Winning the praise of honorable men
And love of many hearts—know the true proof
Of faithfulness lies not therein. That dwells
In the lone consciousness of duty done,
And in the scorn and contumely of souls
Self-soiled with sin: the necessary hate
Of perjured and contaminated spirits
For that whose mere existence brings reproach,
Shame, and despair for something lost forever.
When thou hast won the hatred of the vile,
Then know thou hast served well thy fellow-men.

CONQUERED

In thine anger it was said:
“Would that mine enemy were dead.”
Or, if thou saidest naught,
That was thy thought.
Now thou cryest, night and day:
“Mine enemy hath conquered in our fight,
In that he fled away
Into the darkness and the night,
Ere I to justice wakened and the right.
Now this through all the anguished hours I say,
As with my soul my soul doth strive:
Would God mine enemy were alive!”

BLAME

(A MEMORY OF EISLEBEN, THE PLACE OF LUTHER'S BIRTH AND DEATH)

In a far, lonely land at last I came
Unto a town made great by one great fame.
Born here, here died the noblest of his time,
Whose memory makes his century sublime.
But, O my God! I was not happy there,
For down below, in dark and caverned air,
Outstretched and cramped, the pallid miners lay.
Their shortened lives, their absence from the day,
Burdened my spirit with a sense of blame.
Now you, and you—I see you flush with shame.

THE WHISPERERS

In the House of State at Albany,—in shadowy corridors and corners,—the whisperers whispered together.
In sumptuous palaces in the great city men talked intently, with mouth to ear.
Year in and year out they whispered, and talked, and no one heard save those who listened close.
Now in the Hall of the City the whisperers again are whispering, the talkers are talking.
They who once conversed so quietly, secretly, with shrugs and winks and finger laid beside nose—what has happened to their throats?
For speak they never so low, their voices are as the voices of trumpets; whisper they never so close, their words are like alarm bells rung in the night.
Every whisper is a shout, and the noise of their speech goes forth like thunders.
They cry as from the housetops—their voices resound up and down the streets; they echo from village to village and from city to city.
Over prairies and mountains and across the salt sea their whispers go hissing and shouting.
They say the thing they would not say, and quickly the shameful thing clamors back and forth over the round world;
And when they would fain cease their saying, they may not, for a clear-voiced Questioner is as the finger of fate and the crack of doom.
What they would hide they reveal, what they would cover they make plain;
What they feared to speak aloud to one another, unwilling they publish to all mankind;
And the people listen with bowed heads, wondering and in grief;
And wise men, and they who love their country, turn pale and ask: “What new shame will come upon us?”
And again they ask, “Are these they in whose keep are the substance and hope of the widow and the fatherless?”
And the poor man, plodding home with his scant earnings from his hard week's work, hears the voices, with bitterness in his soul.
And thieves, lurking in dark places and furtively seizing that which is not their own; and the petty and cowardly briber, and he who is bribed, nudge one another;
And the anarch and the thrower of bombs clap hands together, and cry out: “Behold these our allies!”

BEFORE THE GRAND JURY

A woman, who has been a man's desire,
Now cast aside like ashes from a fire,
With startled breath, confessing all her shame,
Here,—looking in the faces of strange men,
Who probe remorselessly their “where” and “when,”—
Falters her dreadful story, that the blame
May strike on the betrayer. In that glare
Plead piteous answers hardly might she dare
Murmur, at midnight, on a mother's breast.
Was ever secret misery confest
To such grim audience!
O hapless fate
For this sweet girl, and for her guiltier mate.
Powers of the world, and O, ye Powers Unseen,
Be stern, yet be ye kind! Let be the ends
Of justice served; but hold a shield between
Souls and the smiting sword. O, make amends
In the oncoming years, or some far age.
They are but caught in Nature's deathless rage;
The fire that in their bodies burned doth hold
The sun in heaven; part is it of the force
That keeps the stars each on its mystic course,
While the all-changing universe grows never old.

“IN THE CITIES”

A TRAGEDY OF TO-DAY

THE OLD HOUSE

“THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE THE OLD PLACE!”

GLEN GILDER

SONG

OBSCURATION

This night, when I blew out my candle flame,
The window's dark square suddenly turned white!—
I had not known the half-moon shone so bright,
And that a cool, sweet, silent moonbeam came
Through summer air, faint-touched with autumn frost,
And poured upon my floor a pool of light!
Pure, heavenly visitant—and almost thou wert lost.

“I DREAMED”

I dreamed a tender and mysterious dream
Of one who, threading paths of earthly fate,
In a rich twilight walked, with heart aglow,
And all his soul vibrant with unheard tones,
“Drawn, drawn by the soft splendor of a face.”

IMPROMPTUS

“FROM LOVE TO LOVE”

(FOR A WEDDING)

From love to love she passes on this day;
Yet all the love she leaves with her doth stay;
Deep, deep, the new love, in her heart of hearts,
And the old love follows her when she departs:
So is she richer than she was before,
For of true love she hath a mightier store.

“I ASKED YOU TO READ MY POEM”

NAZIMOVA

From every motion, every lovely line,
Breathe art and passion; music from those lips;
The tragic Orient from those lustrous eyes.

A WARRIOR OF TROY

Let other gray-beards mourn the flight of years,
Finding no gains of eld to match its fears;
I have no feud with fate, nor age, nor time,
Who knew great Helen in her golden prime.

THE OBELISK (1881)

Beneath a stone wrenched from Egyptian sands
Six rivers run through six imperial lands;
Nile, Bosphorus, Tiber, Seine, and Thames, till now
The Hudson wears the jewel on her brow.
Land that we love! O be thou, by this sign,
Tho' last, the noblest of the mighty line.

CROWNED ABSURDITIES

I asked me: what in all the world so odd
And laughable to men, and unto God—
The hight of comedy in earthly things?
That lot of little men pretending to be kings!

TO “LITTLE LADY MARGARET”—WITH A BOOK OF POEMS

They who love the poets
Will never lack a friend—
Up the road, and down the road,
And to the very end.

SACRILEGE

Wed, thou, with sweet and silent Death,
Rather than join the prurient throng
Would soil, with foul, empoisoned breath,
The sanctity of song.

TO THE HERO OF A SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE

If you wish, go be a pig,
In and out of season;
But do not bore us with a big
Philosophic reason.

THE WATCHMAN ON THE TOWER

Watchman ! What seest thou in the New Dawn?

Far off, across the seas, I behold men pursuing men and helpless women with dreadful massacre; borne on the eastern wind I hear the horrible cries of the murdered and bereft.

And what seest thou nearer, O Watchman of the Tower?

Nearer I see dark and cowering forms of crime and frightened innocence, alike given pitilessly to the green tree and the red flame.

And what else nearer dost thou see, O Seer of Evil Things?

I see smoldering fires and drift of black smoke where all manner of shames have been burned in the marketplaces, befouling the pure air of heaven.

And now, again, thou seest—?

I see scared creatures, in shape of men, fleeing from the light, and hiding in clefts of rocks, and in far places of the earth.

Look well, O Watchman, look near and wide, and tell us, who wait, what other things thou dost behold!

I see the shining faces of little children from whose backs heavy burdens have been lifted; I see rich men eagerly scattering their wealth among those who need— lifting up the stricken and restoring the power of self-help to the sturdy, and striving to make less hard the lot of them who work; I see those who labor winning an ampler share in the profits of their toil—in wage, and comfort, and safety, and time for rest; I behold Science conquering the secrets and guiding the forces of nature, and creating new and wondrous devices for human happiness

—working miracles in culture of the soil, and in the cure of sickness; I behold Art going up and down the land, making homes and cities more beautiful; I behold Service honored above possessions; I see men as brothers,—in times of calm and in days of monstrous calamity,—stretching hands to one another over lands and seas, and across the ancient barriers of race, and religion, and condition; I see the hearts of men go out, in new love and care and understanding, to the beasts of the field and to the birds of the air; I hear the voices of poets and prophets troubling the hearts and lifting up the souls of all mankind; and in all these I see the mind of the Son of Man, and the power of the Will Eternal.

O Seer of Good and Evil, what else, what else?

Near by I behold the Angel of a People, and in his hand he bears a standard whereon is writ, in letters of light, the one word Truth; higher he bears the standard than ever before, and the people, in gathering numbers, follow the Word.

And what of the evil things that late thou sawest?

Still I see them, and many more, but fainter are they growing, as by some element of light consumed. Yet doth one strange and greatly evil thing loom with menace against the dawn—the shadow of false and self-seeking men who seize the banner of righteousness and with unclean hands uplift it, to the deceiving of many; and yet even here, I know, it is the love of Right and not of Wrong which doth mislead; and as the light increases, surely the pure in heart shall know their own and shun the deceiver of souls.

And what of the good that late thou sawest?

O still I see the good, and with clearer eyes; and, lo, it

doth appear that, in the light of the New Dawn, greater and always greater grows the good, and nearer and always nearer. For now, with the rising sun, a company of angels in new flight lift their wings and come upon the day, and one is the bright Angel of Freedom, and one the strong Angel of Justice, and one is the undaunted Angel of Peace, and one the Angel of Hope Everlasting. With a great and wonderful burst of light they come, and with loud music of instruments and many voices.

O Watcher of the Dawn! thou seest what is, but canst thou see what yet shall be?

O ye who doubt! In the visible present lives the invisible future, and the hour that is brings the hour that shall be. If the Light grows, it shall not cease to grow; and the good that is brings the good that is to come. As with separate souls, so with peoples—the New Year, tho' it holds inheritance of shame and loss, holds, also, inheritance of striving, and accomplishment, and divine aspiration. Lo, the Light is climbing, not only of a New Year, but of a New Era for the awakening world.

UNDER THE STARS

A REQUIEM FOR AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

IN HELENA'S GARDEN

1. PART I

IN HELENA'S GARDEN

THE SUNSET WINDOW

“THE GRAY WALLS OF THE GARDEN”

THE MARBLE POOL

THE TABLE ROUND

THE SUN-DIAL

“SOMETHING MISSING FROM THE GARDEN”

THREE FLOWERS OF THE GARDEN

EARLY AUTUMN

THE LAST FLOWER OF THE GARDEN

2. PART II

THE LION OF TYRINGHAM

THE VOICE OF THE HIGHT

A SONG OF FRIENDSHIP

A ROSE OF DREAM

SONG

“WHEN THE GIRLS COME TO THE OLD HOUSE”

THE SONG OF A SONG

THE NET

Caught in the golden net of the poet's song,
And held there close and long,
How many a marvelous thing!
A humming-bird's invisible wing;
A rose that sent its luring fragrance through night air,
Taken all unaware;
The star of dawn that knew not human eyes
Dared its inviolate secrecies;
A tear shed by an archangel who looked down
On an unpitying town;
A maiden's dream wherefrom she woke
And into secret, silent tremors broke;
And (O, ye wandering, wan and wayward feet,
Beware that music piercing sweet—
That all too ravishing art!)
Caught in the golden net of the poet's song,
(Pray Heaven there come no wrong!)
One little, fluttering heart.

SONG

SONG

I awoke in the morning not knowing
What it was that had set my heart glowing;
Something had come to me
That was the sum to me
Of all human happiness—crown of life's bliss.
Tho' drowsyhead sleep its image might blot,
I knew it was there, tho' its shape I forgot.
My mind was blue sky with nothing but joy in it;
Not even a dream of the night had employ in it;
No cloud dimmed the blue;
Then I said: “Shall I miss
My nameless, new bliss?”
When sudden it came
Like lightning, like flame;
And, ah, it was this—
It was you!

“WHEN THE WAR FLEET PUTS TO SEA”

ART

(MISS GERALDINE FARRAR IN “MADAMA BUTTERFLY”)

IN PRAISE OF PORTRAITURE

IN TIMES OF PEACE

IMPROMPTUS

EDWARD EVERETT HALE

Patriot, and sage, and lover of his kind—
The love he gives a thousandfold returns:
His is the wealth of love a great heart earns
By giving all that heart and soul and mind.

BARDS OF BRITAIN (1908)

The poets silent and the poets fled?
Not till these two that pluck the lyre are dead!
He of the patriot heart and Milton's line,
With soaring song and melody divine;
And he who makes the old days breathe again,
Yet sings the hour that is, and hearts of living men.

CALVÉ

Sweetness and strength, high tragedy and mirth;
And but one Calvé on the singing earth!

IN A CONCERT ROOM

Two streams of music beat upon my heart—
That which now is; that which was silent long:
Sacred this temple of a deathless art,
Whose very walls thrill with remembered song.

THE LONESOME WILD

Lovelier, lovelier this place
Since here she brought her maiden grace;
Dearer far this lonesome wild
Since here she wandered, here she smiled.

NEW FRIENDS AND OLD

How wonderful and sweet
New friends, as if forever known, to greet!
The warm, new, kindred touch; the dear surprise
To find an answer in new dawning eyes.
But when old friends draw nearer—
O dearer, dearer!

SHADOW AND SUN

I looked from the window with hungry eyes
On the day long longed for, that must be bright:
(That day of days, of the long, long night!)
When, O dear Shadow! by thy divining
I knew that the morn was bright:
I knew by the shadow the sun was shining.

A NAVAL SURGEON OF THE WAR FOR THE UNION

Here was as loyal soul as ever drew
The breath of battle, and the air of home:
He duty followed, lonely and far to roam;
To country, kindred, God, forever true.

A MOTHER'S PICTURE

Sweet dignity and tenderness and grace,
Devotion, and the power to draw the heart:
This her inheritance, her dower, her art;
All these are radiant in that mother face.

ON A YOUNG HERO

Too soon? But heroes always die too soon!
This, this it is that makes them dear and great.
Grant us, O kindly Heaven, the supreme boon
To give our lives too soon—not die too late!

A HERO'S BRIDE

What tragic loss! but, O, what gain sublime,
What golden memory, life-enduring pride.
What shall it matter, brief or long the time?
Love of a noble soul—a hero's bride.

TO ONE WHO PRAISED “THE GAY LIFE”

Gay!—as the hot crater's crust all lightning-lit—
But one tread more, and horror of the pit!
Gay! Yes, for a moment, and then weeping sorrow,
With wild remorse to meet the dawning morrow.

LYRIC LIVES

There are more poets than the rhyming race;
Souls beautiful of thought, and full of grace;
The spirit of poetry in them breathes and thrives;
They write not poems, but lead lyric lives.

SONG

THE SINGING RIVER

THE SOLACE OF THE SKIES

When fell the first great sorrow of my life,—
He dying from whom my mortal frame was drawn,—
Into the night I fled, long ere the dawn,
Succor to bring for her, the stricken wife.
Then first I knew the solace of the skies,
And that mysterious mingling of the soul
With the still beauty of the infinite whole;
My heart was melted, and grew strangely wise.
I was a child then, having little lore
Taken from books, or the wide world of men,
But something suddenly through my soul did pour
Beyond all thought, all dream, all hope; since then
Nor Death, nor Life, has been the same to me:
Can grief the spirit kill, once touched by deity?

THE WINDING PATH

The winding path
Come let us follow
Along the lane
And down by the hollow;
For I would fain
The way it passes,—
Through the long grasses,
The meadows, the woods,—
Seek and learn it:
What the moods,
What true uses
Lead and turn it,
What abuses
Break it, cloak it,
Twist it, choke it.
Now 't is a span;
But onward still,
Over the hill
It wider grows,
It firmer flows.
The subtle path
Its own thought hath;
It is more wise
Than you or I;
As if with eyes
That peer and try,
It feels its way
Across the day.
What little feet
Hard have packed it!
What great hoofs
Gouged and wracked it!
Rude water-courses
Cut across it,
Rocks emboss it;
A lichened cliff
Its route enforces.
Yet on it goes,
And upward flows
Through the dark pines
In wayward lines;
Past the birches
Skyward it lurches:
One more flight—
And on the hight
At last we stand,
And catch the vision
Of sky and land.

“WHAT MAKES THE GARDEN GROW”

What makes the garden grow
In beauty and delight—
A place to linger in by day or night,
But chiefly when the long and level light
Makes shadows that still glow
With burning blossoms—the heart's home
Wherefrom our charmèd feet reluctant roam.
Not pride, nor envy, nor crude wealth
Can bring the drooping roses health,
Nor lift the sanguine poppies, row on row,
Nor from their bed of green
Make every iris spread it like a queen;
While all along the wall
The jeweled colors call.
O, not from these can come the art
That touches the deep heart,
That makes the small blades shove
Through the soft earth into a pictured balm above:
Not sordid thoughts and low
Can make the garden grow
In beauty and delight,
A place to linger in by day or night—
Not these, not these, but love.

“IF, ONE GREAT DAY”

If, one great day, the God I see
Aflame in blade and bush and tree,
In the white dawn and passing sun—
Shall I not joy in that clear sight
And tell in song my strange delight,
Tho' come a day when mist and cloud
Shall the celestial presence shroud?
O, shall I not be bold,
And cry, “Behold!”
Tho' swift the vision darkens and is done?

MUSIC BENEATH THE STARS

Music beneath the Stars! remembering him
Who music loved, and who on such a night
Had, through white paths celestial, winged his flight,
Hearing the chanting of the cherubim—
Which even our ears seem now to apprehend,
Rising and falling in waves of splendid sound
That bear our grieving spirits from the ground
And with eternal things lift them and blend.
Now Bach's great Aria charms the starlit dark;
Now soars the Largo, high angelical,
Soothing all mortal sorrow on that breath;
And now, O sweet and sovereign strain! now hark
Of mighty Beethoven the rise and fall.
Such music 'neath the stars abolished death.

THE BIRDS OF WESTLAND

THE VEIL OF STARS

O veil of stars! O dread magnificence!
Not unto man, O, not to man is given
The power to grasp with human sight and sense
Him, clothed upon by all the stars of heaven
And thou, O infinite littleness! not more
Doth infinite distance and immensity
That Presence veil, whom fain we would adore,
If mortals might the immortal dimly see.
Atoms and stars alike the Eternal hide,
Nor know we if in light or darkness dwells
The Ever Living! No voice from out the wide
Intense of starlight the great secret tells;
No word or sign in earth or skies above,
Save one—the godhead in the eyes of love.