At the holy well :: :: University of Virginia Library

Across yon hill-top, half a league away,
Weird with its immemorial vine, on high
The Round Tower lifts its walls of dateless day—
A solitary finger in the sky.

Near by, vague clumps of ruin ivy-grown,
With grave-mounds on the slope about them—look!
Patrick was preaching when they laid the stone,
Gray priests who late their Druid rites forsook.

Here in this upland space of pasture-ground,
Our Lady's Well pours forth its waters pure
While groups of pious pilgrims kneel around,
With ills of flesh or spirit, who seek their cure.

Beneath an ash tree's boughs it flows to-day,
With flood perennial and crystal-clear:
The Virgin close beside, in sculpture gray;
The Man of Sorrows, on His Cross, is here.

Among the restless leaves, breeze-lifted, lo!—
Mute witnesses of many an August sun—
The abandoned staff, the votive garment show
Their grateful signs of blessing sought and won.

Through the green fields, by many a dusty way,
The rich, the poor, the sick, the blind, the dumb—
Ragged or bare, in silks or frieze (as they
For fifteen hundred years have come)—they come.

Ay, year by year as now, on Lady's Day,
Singly, in household groups—where'er they dwell—
To bathe in, drink its healing lymph, and pray,
These Irish pilgrims seek the Holy Well.

The blind one sees? The lame his crutch foregoes?
The bedridden walks? The pang of sense finds rest?
To the wan cheek climbs back the unblighted rose?
The new heart throbs and warms the hollow breast?

O simple souls! whom Science has not taught
Her earth-lore vain for Truth Ineffable:
For your belief such wonder-works are wrought,
And common day grows quick with miracle!

Lady's Well, Aghada, County Cork.

THE LOST HUNTING GROUND.

In Illinois.

To these Atlantic fields the bee
(An earlier emigrant was he)
Came in far years, and found
(O careless gardens! fenceless soil!
Unscarred by plough, untouched by toil!)
The red man's Hunting Ground.

From some old world of song and strife,
From hives o'erfull with restless life,
The glowing flight began,
And, journeying with the journeying sun,
He came, his busy empire won,
Before the white-faced man.

Lord of the flower-land, jealously
The Indian watched the moving bee
Steer his long Westward way;
Or, deep in fragrant-wooded dells,
Building ambrosial waxen cells,
Toil through the sultry day.

He saw (what flying omen gleams
O'er tribal mounds, o'er haunted streams,
O'er fields a boundless flower!)
His Hunting Ground—it is the Past!—
Roofed with far-murmuring cities vast,
Splendent with spire and tower!

What workers these? He heard, he saw
Those other swarms (by partial law
Denied their right of birth),
Who claim, where they new States may build,
Division of his lands untilled—
Earth's children's share of earth!

They come!—They came! ... In dream I hear,
O phantom chaser of the deer,
Thy cry, a ghost of sound—
When noisy hives of men are still,
And the night-mist hides vale and hill—
In thy lost Hunting Ground!

The honey-bee, I have seen it stated, preceded the white settler in Western North America.

AT THE GRAVES OF TWO BROTHERS.

DECORATION DAY, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 1886.

What mother having sons twin-born, both dear,
Equally dear, both strong and masterful,
Both having tender nurture at her breast,
Who, after childhood, diverse-minded, then
By some hot feud are swayed and fall apart:
One leal to that strong bond of Home and Hearth,
One stung by some wild fire to strike at her
And wound her bosom; till lo, their strife grown fierce,
Both fall and both are slain by mutual blows:—
What mother, like to this one, shall not take

Both back into her heart with quenchless love,
Remembering only that they were her sons,
Both being dead, and both were good and brave,
And grieve for both and praise them in her grief?
O thou, our Mother, is not this one Thou?
Were not such twin-born these thy sons, thine own?
And over their two graves dost Thou not stand,
This fair last May morn, with memorial flowers
Full-handed, faithful to thy mother love,
Remembering only that they were thy sons,
Both being dead, and both were good and brave,
Grieving for both and praising in thy grief!

PACIFIC PIONEERS.

Emanuel Leutze's Mural Painting of “Westward Ho,” in the Capitol at Washington.

Below, behind them, lies a weary track;
Their fallen camp-fires scar the Eastward plain.
Ah, perils, longings!—but they turned not back.
They climb the last fierce path, the fierce heights gain.

Up to the mountain's earthquake-shattered crown
They struggle, one by one,—then dazzled stand.
Below, before them, eager looking down,
They see the horizon of the Western Land.

Through orange hazes of the sunset glow,
Far-glimmering streams and dusky vales unfold.
Lithe men, babe-suckling women, onward go,—
Yonder it shines, your promised Land of Gold!

IN ST. MARY'S CHURCH AT YOUGHAL.

Not that my Lord and Lady Desmond here,
Frail sculptured bodies! crumble year by year;
Not that, in gaudy braveries of the tomb,
The Great Earl Cork and his large family bloom,
While they, three hundred years in painted stone,
Poor dust! their dead-live vanity have shown;
Not for Sir Edward Villiers —he whose name
Munster might bless, remembering when he came,
(So reads the broken slab above his grave ...
See overhead his faded banneret wave!)
Not for the heraldic toys of piteous pride,
Bull-heads and couchant lions close-allied;

Not for your Norman arch with dateless stones,—
(Ah me! “arms, angels, epitaphs, and bones!”)
Not for the old bishop's throne with mitre crowned,
And the soft sainted light that sleeps around,
From your high window shed:—no, not for those,
Grey church, I am loath to leave your sacred close.
—But, look! through yonder door, what living pair,
With ruff and sworded thigh, have entered there?
Ah, Spenser, Raleigh! side by side are they,
And from your Past they shall not pass away!

Lord President of Munster, 1624.

LETTER FROM AN OHIO VALLEY VETERAN.

ADDRESSED TO THE EDITOR OF THE “SCIOTO GAZETTE.”

I can't come, Bond; I wish I could, but then—I cannot come;
Maria ('twill be our seventh boy)—yes, I must stay at home.

But—well, I'll rub my glasses, just, and write a line or two,
Though little I can say, I guess, that you'll think strange or new.

My glasses I must rub a bit—queer things have taken place
Since first, a raw apprentice here, I took my stand and case.

I'd read the “Life of Franklin,” then, a ten-year country boy,
And got my father's leave, so loth, to learn great Ben's employ.

That's sixty years come April next—not very long, I think;
But, Lord! what light has shone abroad since then through printer's ink!

My old hand-press, though twenty years disused, I keep it yet—
'Twould take a week to-day on it to print this week's Gazette.

Yes, the old hand-press twenty years a good-for-nothing's been,
Yet in my hand I sometimes feel the lever-spring thump again;

And sometimes too, asleep, I seem once more a slender lad
Behind it, with the inky task so long ago I had.

Puff, puff!—buzz, buzz!—whiz, whiz!—all's busy now: steam, wheels and fire!
Click, click! there is another sound—that Hebrew of the wire!

—Think of it! th' Alleghanies, then, it took a week to cross;
The news from Washington grew old;—well, now 'twere no great loss!

Ohio then was the Far West—long since 't has farther gone:
Now, Lord! to get out West, it's queer, you run into the dawn!

The grand old woods they howled with wolves, the roads were sloughs forlorn,
And Cincinnati—Deacon Smith and Halstead weren't born!

The mails on horseback took their time to cross the wilderness:
Paper was hauled a hundred miles before it got to press.

Hows'ever, those were good old times—we'd giants in those days,
And such a plant as honesty 'twas not so hard to raise.

Things were a long sight better, Bond—we'd patriots fit to quote;
In courts opinions weren't bought; the Lobby didn't vote.

We're fallen on evil days, I think there's something ails the sun:
(We want some money, that's a fact, and something must be done!)

The press was manlier then; it had a soul to call its own,
For corporations not tongue-tied—those bodies that have none.

Free passes then were things unknown; they let us now-a-days
On any shaky railroad line—well, they go “a—long—ways.”

Bond, say a word or two for me—say I'm with Halstead there;
Had I to Chillicothe come, by George! I'd paid my fare.

(That is, if this here annual hadn't yet a while to run—
Yet, hang it, if I think next year I'll ask another one!)

But, pshaw! what use in talking more? I stopped my press to write;
The form is waiting in its bed. Respects to Put. Good-night.

N. B.—Sub rosa, Bond, my boy—can't you make Congress see
Why papers through the county mail should travel postage-free?

Read by appointment, at the Annual Convention of the Ohio Valley Editorial Association, at Chillicothe, Ohio, June 12th, 1874.

Mr. Putnam, another Editor at Chillicothe.

A BOY ON GAMBIER HILL.

THE RHYME OF AN OLD FRESHMAN: ADDRESSED TO A MIDDLE-AGED ALUMNUS.

The elm is green and glad in leaf—
'Tis June; the season's come again
(Ah, homesick Memory's idle grief!)
When first I took the flying train,
Fledged from the fond home nest. Renewed
Mix my dull pang, my eager thrill.
'Twas morn; when evening fell I stood
A boy on Gambier Hill.

What dreams of young ambition bold
Stirred my light blood with wings of pride!
Webster yet spake. Clay was not cold,
And—there were orators untried!
Old Kenyon's Genius pointed, far,
Her sons elect to cross and crown:—
“This wears the soldier's shoulder-star,
And this the Judge's gown.”

The Freshman, my old friend, you knew
(His case, I think, was somewhat hard),
Remained an Under-Graduate; you
Passed an alumnus, happier-starred.
Ah, half a life-time lies between
(The rocket sparkled: here's the stick);
I know, yes, yes, what might have been—
A thought that cuts the quick!

—Arma virumque cano: Lo,
“Small Latin”—mine's not far to seek;
Menin aeïdé, Théa, (so
Homer begins—and ends?)—“less Greek!”
Well, let me rest content: if you
Sucked her full milk, impute no crime;
She was my Alma Mater too—
Mine, weaned before my time!

... Where are the boys, the boys we knew?
Let's call some names. Ah me, grave men,
No doubt, shall answer. “Old boys?” True.
(Some showed, d'you mind, “the Old Boy” then!)
Where'er ye wander, wide apart
On life's rough road, or flowery track,
O fresh of face, O blithe of heart,
Come back, come back, come back!

Good flesh and blood, I know, some still
Draw vital air, with flower and fruit,
As when we fought on Gambier Hill
The war of Troy, and Ilium suit.
Ho, Holland! (English church-doors, “Here!”
Echo—warm friend, and Irish bard!)
Ho, Chapman, Homans, Sterling! (clear
Each answers)—ho, Tunnárd!

—“We younger brood are getting gr—”Eh?
(Speak for yourself, John!) Nonsense!—well,
We are not growing younger. Nay,
Fear not the wholesome truth to tell.
In fresher hearts our pulses beat,
Our spent dreams grow and quicken still—
Ay, boys of ours may each repeat
The old boy on Gambier Hill.

Our joys in them may spring again,
Our boyish griefs have ebb and flood;
They, too, shall take the flying train
With quick wings fluttering in their blood;
Old Kenyon's Genius point them, far,
Her sons elect to cross and crown:—
“This wore the soldier's shoulder-star,
And this the Judge's gown.”

Read in response to a toast at a banquet given to Hon. Stanley Matthews, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, by his brother alumni of Kenyon College, at Cincinnati, June 21, 1881.

General R. B. Hayes, President of the United States, an invited guest, not present.

Rev. Richard George Holland, a native of Cork, having graduated from Kenyon College, in 1856, studied for the English Church at St. Adian's, Liverpool, was a curate at Faversham, in London, at Canterbury, &c., and, unknown to me, died, ten years before the date of these verses, at Limerick. He was an eloquent preacher and a good writer in both prose and verse.

CONFIDENCES.

IN A BOOK OF LIKES AND DISLIKES.

[_]

Written after the following printed indications: 1. Write your favourite virtue. 2. Favourite character in history. 3. The character in history you despise most. 4. Favourite prose author. 5. Favourite poet. 6. Favourite occupation. 7. Favourite colour. 8. Favourite flower. 9. Favourite food. 10. Favourite name. 11. Favourite motto. 12. What you dislike most. 13. What you consider the greatest happiness on earth. 14. Your pet name. 15. Full signature.

1.

My favourite virtue, what is that? Ah me!—
I'll “make a virtue of Necessity.”

2.

That ancient apple-eater I like, madam—
The frontispiece of all history—the Old Adam.

3.

Tyrants and traitors—bloody-handed men—
I think of these with hesitating pen,

And lo! from graves abhorred and flowerless rise
(But Nero's once had flowers) their ghosts and cries!—
They claim appeal, with pale imploring look:
“The Supreme Court—the true Historian's Book!”

4.

My favourite author, must I name—in prose?
I'm sure I know not. The dear Lord only knows!
—He'll write the last new novel, I suppose.

5.

The Children of the Muse, nor great nor small.
I can but see the Mother's face in all
Reflected. Some have names, as—thus and thus.
Before and after walks Anonymous.

6.

With “good intentions” wavering to and fro
(Stone-breaking might be worthier work, you know),
To pave those burning sidewalks Down Below!

7.

The ebon Black that makes the star more bright,
Or White, wherein all colours end in light.

8.

Rose, Lily, or Violet—the lovely Three
That represent their race in poetry.

9.

“Sour Grapes.”

10.

I think that name, of all the host,
I like the best is—hers I love the most!

11.

Sic transit gloria Mundi.” (Let it pass!)

12.

To see my death's-head's vanity in a glass.

13.

The earliest Dream of Happiness, at most
To dream—nor wake to see its latest ghost.

14.

'Tis closed on Memory's lips, how dear!

15.

—Now, that
I've answered, I remain,

J. J. P*att.

A RHYME OF THE WEATHER.

“Unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.”
—Milton.

Sing the Weather, good Muse—be the theme of my rhymes
That theme of all tempers, that theme of all times!
'Tis our first thought awaking, our last snug abed
(With a twinge in one's toe, or a cold in one's head);
'Tis the speech of the dumb, and the windy scape-grace
All the winds of all weathers he'll blow in your face;

'Tis the password of friendship, wherever we meet:
'Tis the grasp of the right hand, whenever we greet:—
“December!” “Tis June!” “How sultry!” “A breeze!”
“How wet!” or “How dry!” “We shall melt!” “We shall freeze!”
The excuse of the young, the retreat of the old—
For the Weather's so hot, or the Weather's so cold!

All deeds of all days, good and bad ones together,
Believe me—no doubt—they were born of the Weather.
What wars, wasteful, woeful, earth-burdening things,
Have been freaks of the Weather on peoples and kings.

(Those ten years at Troy to a sun-myth are gone,
And Helen herself proved a frail mist of dawn! )
Mere wars of the Weather, the Weather deciding;
And their history's record the Weather's still guiding:—
Though the blood of the truth, and the diamond we think,
'Tis the Weather's the pen, and the Weather's the ink!

Ah, the Beautiful Weather!—within it is done
Whatever shall open a door for the sun:
The deeds of the heroes whose heraldry lies
In the hearts whose warm prayers write them—up in the skies.

What good gifts are given, what kind words are spoken,
When the blue, through the mist, of Fair Weather gives token!
... Lo, a black host arises, a gloom closes round,
Like the Pit's darkness visible breathed above ground;—
Fierce homicides, wehr-wolves, babe-smotherers, (hark,
What sighs, shrieks, and groans eddy by in the dark!)
With all doers of deeds without name, all together,
Pell-mell, worthy hell, troop the fiends of Foul Weather!

From Homer to Whitman—a fall, or a slide,
Of three thousand years (yes, if nothing beside!)—

What poet, who rose like a lark singing loud,
But soared on the sunbeam that conquered the cloud?
If the feet seem a dancer's in flowers and in dew,
All the earth laughed with May-day, whose heavens were blue;
If the verses drip honey and murmur of ease,
In the sunshine the poet went home with the bees;
If the song's a funereal procession of woe,
It came from his heart when the weather was—Oh!

... That Vennor! you damn him, because, like a fate,
The gods can't control him—he's sure, soon or late:

Personified, presto! Bad Weather is he,
With your blood down at zero, snow up to your knee!
And “Old Probs,” his mild shadow, you'd flout with disdain,
Dry-parched—just beyond his areas of rain!
(Like a fly safe in amber I fix him this place in—
For Fair or Foul Weather he's left us a Hazein! )
Hold!—
“How hot?” or “How cold?” “It will freeze us?” “'Twill bake us?”
Still the Weather's, for ever, whatever we make us;—

Barometers, weathercocks, each of us keeps
In his bosom, wherever he wakes or he sleeps:
Rain, hail, sleet, or snow, whatever is blown,
The weather-guides differ—true Prophet's our own!
To the cheerful, whose heart goes aloft like a feather,
He could rainbow the Deluge with Beautiful Weather;
(He can butt at the wind with his hat as he goes,
And follow it, flying, wherever it blows!)
To the doleful forever Bad Weather is won,
Though he stand till he die in the gates of the sun:—
Wherever he turns, and whatever the place,
Throws Providence snow-balls or dust in his face:
If he shiver, the Weather's at zero the while;
If he sweat, how the mercury boils—in his bile!

Ah, the Weather, the Weather!—the theme of my rhymes,
Fresh theme of all tempers, fresh theme of all times!
'Tis the atmosphere clasping our living, our moving,
Our dreaming, our doing, our loathing, our loving;
To bed with us going—awaking, arisen,
The Weather is with us, our open air-prison:
We cannot escape it. (I question if whether
When out of the world we'll be out of the weather.)
—But, look up! o'er the tempest the heavens are blue;
Through the cloud round your head let the sunlight stream through,
And if, grumbler, an east-wind your spleen has impaled,
Beware—lest your weathercock's rusty or nailed!

See “Myths and Myth-Makers,’ by Professor John Fiske, of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Mr. Vennor, the late Canadian Weather-prophet, was often popularly held responsible for the bad weather he predicted, and identified with it.

The late General Myers, for a long time Chief Officer of the Signal Service of the United States, was known familiarly as “Old Probs” (Probabilities—from one feature of his weather bulletins). His successor is General Hazen.

Dr. Parr, who had a mental abhorrency of an east wind, is said, (see Samuel Rogers' “Table Talk”) to have been imprisoned at home for several days because of a neighbouring weathercock, on whose indications he relied. Some of his pupils, who were troubled by his company on their rambles, held the doctor in-doors and the weathercock out-of-doors by a judicious nail.

ARMY OF THE POTOMAC.

[PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, MAY, 1865.]

Soldiers, returned from many a fight, to-day
I call another year, another May:
Then from your homes at first ye marched away.

Your country summoned; what quick answer came
Shall never be forgot by human fame:
The North was red with one electric flame!

The dragon's teeth were sown that started men—
(So may the land be never sown again!)
Ye were the crop that sprang in armour then.

Lo, every highway made its end in one,
With stern advancing dust against the sun!—
A line of bayonets thrust to Washington!

I heard, I saw!—the street ye tread to-day
Took echoes that shall never pass away,
Visions that shall be visible for aye!

—Ye come from many a long-remembered fight:
Your flags are glittering, in the windy light,
With names that make their tremulous stars more bright!

Banners whose rags are famous, veterans too,
Pathetic with the storms they fluttered through,
Ye bear in pride and tenderness with you!

Ye come—ye are not all that went away:
Another myriad, great as yours, to-day
Keep their encampment with the flowers of May.

—Ye came from homes that haply echo still
With your last footsteps on the quiet sill:
Go back, go back, the empty air to fill!

Ye came from new-plowed fields and wheated lands,
Where the old harvests called for willing hands:
Go back to join the gentle reaper bands!

Ye came—the work is done ye came to do:
Go back, go back, O servants tried and true—
Go back to find your Land created new!

Washington, D. C.

SONGS, SONNETS, EPIGRAMS, ETC.

QUICK AND DEAD.

Once the wings of every bird
Lifted me; the songs I heard,
In my breast, full-hearted then,
Wakened answering songs again.

Now their wings, that skyward go,
Mock my want; their songs, below,
In my empty bosom, make
Only the dumb silence ache!

FLOWERS IN A BOOK.

Here, in my poet's book, I see
The flowers your sweet hand plucked for me.
I turn the leaves: each page is fraught
With gentle flowers of fragrant thought;

All loveliest things are there, I deem,
That haunt the poet's waking dream.
I turn the leaves: your flowers' dear faces
Gleam, book-marks of the sweetest places
(Yet ne'er a sweeter thought I read
Than those the mute flowers know, indeed);
And evermore they seem to look,
Whene'er I ope their prisoning book,
And, cheated, take—a moment's space—
Their jailer's for their angel's face;
Then, sere and withering, only miss
That resurrection of your kiss!

DOUBLE WINGS.

Aspiration and Power.

I am an Eagle—in the sky;
I am an Eagle—on the ground!
With these frail wings to earth I am bound,
With these strong wings in heaven I fly.

When high in blissful sunshine play,
In my quick soul, these golden wings,
Woe's me! these flapping, useless things
The Eagle from the sun delay!

SLEEP AND LIFE.

For Sculpture.

Lo, Sleep bends over the weary Angel, Life,
Whose globe, his care, turns idly from his hand,
With all its continents of toil and strife,
With all its tossing seas and shifting sand.

IN OCTOBER.

October morning!—how the sun
Glitters on glowing shock and sheaf,
On apple crisp with mellow gold,
On wonder-painted leaf!

October evening!—look, the moon,
Like one in faëry lands benighted!
Frost out-of-doors bites sharp; within,
Good, our first fire is lighted!

GLOW-WORM AND STAR.

A golden twinkle in the wayside grass,
See the lone glow-worm, buried deep in dew,
Brightening and lightening the low darkness through,
Close to my feet that by its covert pass;
And, in the little pool of recent rain,
O'erhung with tremulous grasses, look how bright,
Filling the drops along each blade with light,
Yon great white star, some system's quickening brain,

Whose voyage through that still deep is never done,
Makes its small mirror by this gleam of earth!
O soul, with wonders where thy steps have trod,
Which is most wondrous, worm or mirrored sun?
... The Mighty One shows in everything one birth:
The worm's a star as high from thee in God.

GRACE OVER A GLASS OF CIDER.

Associated with a Barrel, his Gift, in my cellar.

To General A. S. Piatt.

Not only unto you, whose press and vat
Produced your gift directly, friend Piatt,
Are due the thanks which, warm-at-heart, are mine;—
The great Fruit-Giver owns your thanks and mine:

Thanks for the blossoms, April-fragrant, first;
Thanks for the sunshine which those blossoms nursed
And turned the lances of the lingering frost;
Thanks for the rain, so priceless without cost—
The holy water, from Heaven's blessing hands,
Without which all our fields were desert lands;
Thanks for the Summer's long increase of heat,
Bringing the apples, mellow, juiced, and sweet,
In a long shower of gold at Autumn's feet!
After these thanks are given, (put yours with mine,)
I thank you much and drink your apple wine.

Thanksgiving Day, 1867.

VALENTINE.

To her whose heart has made her lovely face
A heaven for its sweet roses: her whose grace

Of thought and word and deed forever seems
The light of some sweet angel in her soul,
Stealing from Heaven in still, half-conscious dreams:
Go, little doves, and bear this gentle scroll
(Bearing my heart) to her—ah, if she smiles,
You need not tell: I'd know it a thousand miles!
Go, little doves, to her for whom I pine,
And softly whisper: “Here's your Valentine.”

SUCCESS.

The noblest goal is never reached, because
Ever withdrawn by the high god who draws,
And he who says, content, “Success is mine,”
Gaining the world has lost the soul divine.

THE CHRYSALIS.

Look! a chrysalis dry and old,
Coffin of a worm, I hold:
'Tis no lovely thing you see—
All of beauty yet must be;
You must wait awhile, till Spring,
For the blossom, for the wing.
Call it by whatever name,
Coffin, cradle—'tis the same.
Deeper down than Science sees
In old wells of mysteries
(With her mirrored face below,
Like a wondering child's aglow),
Farther far than sagest seeks—
Far as stars that shine in creeks—
Lo, in this unlovely shell
Maskéd Miracle doth dwell,

Old as Heaven and young as Earth!
God breathes and all death is birth;
At his breath and touch, in Spring,
Flutter, flower! blossom, wing!

THE ANGEL OF MEMORY.

When first from that Love-tended Garden driven
(Grateful, though sad, for their sweet bond unriven)
Came Eve and Adam, and, to homesick eyes
Turned backward, shone the walls of Paradise:
When their first sighs went fluttering to the Past,
And their first tears in the alien earth were cast:
The gates stood open—a wing'd angel, lo!
Flew thence to them, and, smiling, charmed their woe;—

So, evermore, through our world-wandering years,
The gates of Paradise unclose to tears;
From those high doors, in our lost morning shown,
An angel comes and walks with us alone:—
Blest Memory! with thy smile from day to day,
The Eden blossoms all our desert way!

BIRTHDAY WISHES.

To H. C. G. Completing Her Eighty-Fourth Year.

Take this poor song for one I fain would bring
To grace your birthday, worthier offering.
What shall I wish? New years like those you see,
Whose sunken suns shine soft, in memory?
Yes, these, if Heaven vouchsafe. But with them may
New flowers rise, sweetening, as of old, their way,

Peace be your constant guest, with steadfast Health,
Whose breath is life's best perfume, fortune, wealth;
Hope, too, who brightens all dark paths before—
An angel looking through an open door
Of cloud; and Faith, who in your gentle hand
Puts the sure key-flower of the Lovelier Land.

March 30, 1882.

THE STAGE-CROSSING.

Look, here's the Crossing (not a trace
Of the old toll-gate next the mill)—
The meeting and the parting place
Dear, dear to home-sick Memory still!

Here hands were clasped; here sometimes came
Tears when, the wheels revolving fast,
One flying window was the frame
Of faces fond that looked their last!

THE FLOWER UNDER FOOT.

The flower may hide its tender face
Among the tangled meadow grasses;
It cannot hide its fragrance there
From any heart that passes.

Ah, gentle deeds—whose blessed wings
Alight in darkened doors, unbidden—
Your lovely flower is known in Heaven,
That low on Earth is hidden.

THE BUBBLE BLOWERS.

Joyous faces in the sunshine,
Happy laughter, tossing hair!
See the children blowing bubbles—
Worlds in bright enchanted air!

Worlds, their merry new creations—
Fairy globes for lifted eyes!
In the sunshine rise the bubbles,
From their hearts the fairies rise.

THROUGH A WINDOW PANE.

[A Winter Memory.]

That bright December morning,
Playfully, by the pane,
She lingered;—for ever blossom,
Sweet morning, in heart and brain!

With arch farewell she lingered,
Her face through the frost-bloom bright,
Smiling;—like frost-bloom vanished
That vision into the light.

For ever and ever, smiling,
To me it comes again:
Within my soul the picture
Looks through my heart—the pane!

AT MORNING.

The fragrant hush of morning hour
Clings to the earth. This tender flower
Clings to my window, drowned in dew;—
Last night I parted, Dear, from you!

I go into the world again:
Time's wings are slow; the cruel train
Has wings too fleet—ah, if it knew,
Last night I parted, Dear, from you!

Quick dust arises in the street:
Familiar faces passing greet;—
The moonlight's shadow-blossoms knew,
Last night, I parted, Dear, from you.

USE AND BEAUTY.

Who would have a treadmill measure every golden-sanded hour?
Who would find a purpose busy deep in every fragrant flower?
Yet we sometimes (ay, and often) gladly find the two agree;
Clasped together, Use and Beauty—in the rose the honey bee.
Factory-bells in yonder city, wind-blown music, far away
Waken soft enchanted sleepers in the charméd breast to-day;
See the river's quiet water, lovely mirror, slowly steal,
Dance with sunshine to its task-work;—Beauty overflows the wheel!

THE OUTLOOK.

An engraving, frontispiece in a volume of Western Biographies.

From his wild covert (in the visioned Past?)
The jealous Red-man sees
The settler's cabin, near; on yonder stream,
The boat fire-driven; far-off, over these,
The spire-lit city:—if to him they seem
Shadows of pitiless Doom that travels fast,
They realise our fathers' eager dream!

THE GUERDON.

To the quick brow Fame grudges her best wreath
While the quick heart to enjoy it throbs beneath.
On the dead forehead's sculptured marble shown
Lo, her choice crown—its flowers are also stone.

TO PEARL,

The Daughter of a Ship-master, Born at Sea.

By dangerous adventure braving death,
The precious drops are sought within the sea.
Who would not dare, with his extremest breath,
All perilous deeps to find a Pearl like thee?
Would he, however great the sacrifice,
Not be rewarded with the Pearl of price

BELL-TONES.

The chimes that fall from merriest wedding-bells
Toll oftentimes the saddest funeral knells.

TO A LADY.

On her Art of Growing Old Gracefully.

You ask a verse, to sing (ah, laughing face!)
Your happy art of growing old with grace?
O Muse, begin, and let the truth—but hold!
First let me see that you are growing old.

LOVE LETTERS.

101

NIGHT THOUGHTS.

They come, in long procession rise before
My wakeful sight, sweet thoughts, Beloved, of thee
And of thy love, the dearest dream to me
That ever grew dear truth for evermore;
For, as to a child, in his hushed bed—the door
Half open where his mother's light may be
A comfort to his lonely sense when he,
Though waking, feels warm slumber reach the core
Of his fresh spirit—who drops his lids at last,
Visiting Fairyland, while numberless
Lithe shadows pass and shapes created fast,
Charming him till he sleeps and are his dream,
So, while I breathe in tender wakefulness,
Sleep-bordering thoughts with blissful visions teem.

102

WITH SEA-SHELLS AND POEMS.

Take up these little sea-shells, Dear,
And press them closely to your ear:
Their vague and desolate monotone
Saddens you with its ceaseless moan.
As if the moon-swayed ocean there
Moved with a vast but dumb despair.

Deep in those cells of subtle sound
Some boundless spirit seems prison-bound,
Murmuring of shores where wrecks are strown
And ghosts of tempests walk alone;
Yet, over all—from all apart—
You hear the beatings of your heart.

Take now these poems, vague with woe,
Found with the sea-shells long ago:
Within you hear the sounds that swell
From restless seas and haunt the shell;—
But listen, and your heart shall let
New music silence old regret.

111

IRELAND

A SEASIDE PORTRAIT.

A great, still Shape, alone,
She sits (her harp has fallen) on the sand,
And sees her children, one by one, depart:—
Her cloak (that hides what sins beside her own!)
Wrapped fold on fold about her. Lo,
She comforts her fierce heart,
As wailing some, and some gay-singing go,
With the far vision of that Greater Land
Deep in the Atlantic skies,
St. Brandan's Paradise!
Another Woman there,
Mighty and wondrous fair,
Stands on her shore-rock:—one uplifted hand

112

Holds a quick-piercing light
That keeps long sea-ways bright;
She beckons with the other, saying “Come,
O landless, shelterless,
Sharp-faced with hunger, worn with long distress:—
Come hither, finding home!
Lo, my new fields of harvest, open, free,
By winds of blessing blown,
Whose golden corn-blades shake from sea to sea—
Fields without walls that all the people own!”

THE END.