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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11091 ***
+
+POEMS
+
+BY
+
+JOHN L. STODDARD
+
+1913
+
+
+
+
+CONJUGI CARISSIMAE
+
+
+PROEM
+
+They called him mad,--the poor, old man,
+Whose white hair, worn and thin,
+Fell o'er his shoulders, as he played
+His cherished violin,
+Forever drawing to and fro
+O'er silent strings a loosened bow.
+
+At times on his pathetic face
+A look of perfect rapture shone,
+Intent on some celestial chords,
+Discerned by him alone;
+And sometimes he would smile and pause,
+As if receiving loud applause.
+
+So, many a humble poet dreams
+His songs will touch the human heart,
+And full of hope his offering lays
+Before the shrine of Art;
+Poor dreamer, may he never know
+That he too draws a silent bow!
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  PROEM
+  MY PROMENADE SOLITAIRE
+  REINCARNATION
+  TO THE "RING NEBULA"
+  THE WAIF
+  THE SILVER HERONS
+  TO THE SPHINX
+  YOUTH AND AGE
+  SUNSET AT INTERLAKEN
+  UNDER THE STARS
+  CORSICA
+  TO THE VENUS OF MELOS
+  MORS LEONIS
+  A STORY OF THE SEA
+  OLD HYMN TUNES
+  BEFORE A STATUE OF BUDDHA
+  THE PILLARS OF HERCULES
+  FRIENDSHIP
+  TO MY DEAD DOG
+  TO-DAY
+  TO THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI
+  THE DEATH OF ANTONINUS PIUS
+  THE BUTTERFLY
+  AFTER THE STORM
+  FALLEN
+  "AEQUANIMITAS"
+  DREAMLAND
+  ROME REVISITED
+  ON THE PALATINE
+  THE FAREWELL AT FONTAINEBLEAU
+  JAPAN--OLD AND NEW
+  THE UNFORGOTTEN HEROES
+  A WINTER'S DAY
+  ON THE PROMENADE
+  SOLITUDE
+  OUT OF THE RANKS
+  AUTONOMY
+  ORIENT TO OCCIDENT
+  THE CAPTIVE
+  WEARINESS
+  A MAY MONODY
+  MY LOST FRIENDS
+  TO SLEEP AND TO FORGET
+  IN SILENCE
+  AT THE VILLA OF FREDERICK III
+  IN A COLUMBARIUM
+  DISCOURAGEMENT
+  MÉSALLIANCE
+  IN A MODERN CITY
+  MY BORES
+  GRATITUDE
+  IN TENEBRIS
+  TWO MOTHERS
+  AT HOCHFINSTERMÜNZ
+  THE GIFT OF JUNO
+  THE AWAKENING
+  THE WINE OF LIFE
+  LIFE'S TRILOGY
+  MYSTERIES
+  STAR DRIFT
+
+
+TYROLEAN
+
+  OBERMAIS
+  CONTENTMENT
+  TO MERAN'S NORTHERN MOUNTAINS
+  AT SUNSET
+  POST NUBES LUX
+  THE HOME-COMING FROM ROME
+  MY GARDEN
+  THE MOUNTAINS OF MERAN
+  OSWALD, THE MINNESINGER
+  AFTER THE VINTAGE
+  THE PASSING MOON
+  AUTUMN IN MERAN
+  THE STATUE OF THE EMPRESS ELIZABETH
+  THE OUTCASTS
+  HEIMWEIL
+  MY LIBRARY
+  TOUT PASSE
+
+
+BESIDE LAKE COMO
+
+  THE FAUN
+  ISOLA COMACINA
+  THE OLD CARRIER
+  EVENING ON LAKE COMO
+  DELIO PATRI
+  ACQUA FREDDA
+  THE POSTERN GATE
+  UNDINE
+  JANUARY IN THE TREMEZZINA
+  THE WANDERER
+  SECLUSION
+  ONE MORE
+  UNDER THE PLANE TREE
+  "CONJUGI CARISSIMAE"
+  THE PAGAN PAST
+  RETIREMENT
+  IN NOVEMBER
+  THE CALL OF THE BLOOD
+  THE CASCADE
+  BIRD SLAUGHTER
+  THE IRON CROWN
+  CONTRASTS
+  IN MY PERGOLA
+  EVANESCENCE
+  LAKE COMO IN AUTUMN
+  TO THE PORTRAIT OF NAPOLEON
+  DAY AND NIGHT
+  PASSING AND PERMANENT
+  TRIPOLI
+  INFLUENCE
+  LEO
+  FAREWELL TO THE FAUN
+  WAKEFULNESS
+  VILLA PLINIANA
+  POINT BALBIANELLO
+  AT LENNO
+
+
+PERSONALLY ADDRESSED
+
+  LINES WRITTEN FOR A GOLDEN WEDDING
+  TO THE WALKING-STICK OF MY DEAD FRIEND
+  TO C.
+  TO MR. AND MRS. A.H.S.
+  To M.C. OF ATHENS
+  TO J.B.
+  TO M.P.
+  TO MISS MARY C. LOW
+  IN MEMORIAM. G.M.M.
+  TO HON. CHARLES M. DICKINSON
+  TO J.C.Y.
+  TO HON. JESSE HOLDOM
+
+
+TRANSLATIONS
+
+  THE KISS TO THE FLAG
+  EMILY'S GRAVE
+  SERENADE TO NINON
+  THE RED TYROLEAN EAGLE
+  ANDREAS HOFER
+  STREAM AND SEA
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  RACHEL
+
+
+
+
+MY "PROMENADE SOLITAIRE"
+
+Up and down in my garden fair,
+Under the trellis where grapes will bloom,
+With the breath of violets in the air,
+As pallid Winter for Spring makes room,
+I walk and ponder, free from care,
+In my beautiful Promenade Solitaire.
+
+Back and forth in the checkered shade
+Traced by the lattice that holds the vine,
+With the glory of snow-capped crests displayed
+On the sapphire sky in a billowy line,
+I stroll, and ask what can compare
+With the charm of my Promenade Solitaire.
+
+To and fro 'neath the nascent green
+Which clambers over its slender frame,
+With white peaks lighting up the scene,
+As snowfields glow with the sunset flame,
+I saunter, halting here and there
+For the view from my Promenade Solitaire.
+
+In and out through the silence sweet,
+Plash of fountain and song of bird
+Are the only sounds in my lov'd retreat
+By which the air is ever stirred;
+It is like a long-drawn aisle of prayer,
+So hushed is my Promenade Solitaire.
+
+Onward rushes the world without,
+But the breeze which over my garden steals
+Brings from it merely a distant shout
+Or the echo light of passing wheels;
+In its din and drive I have now no share,
+As I muse in my Promenade Solitaire.
+
+Am I dead to the world, that I thus disdain
+Its moil and toil in the prime of life,
+When perhaps a score of years remain
+To win more gold in its selfish strife?
+Am I foolish to choose the purer air
+Of my glorious Promenade Solitaire?
+
+Ah no! From my mountain-girdled height
+I watch the game of the world go on,
+And note the course of the bitter fight,
+And what is lost and what is won;
+And I judge of it better here than there,
+As I gaze from my Promenade Solitaire.
+
+It is ever the same old tale of greed,
+Of robbing and killing the weaker race,
+Of the word proved false by the cruel deed,
+Of the slanderous tongue with the friendly face;
+'Tis enough to make one's heart despair
+Even here in my Promenade Solitaire.
+
+They cheer, and struggle, and beat the air
+With many a stroke and thrust intense,
+And urge each other to do and dare,
+To gain some good they deem immense;
+But they look like ants contending there
+From the height of my Promenade Solitaire.
+
+Backward and forward they run and crawl,
+Houses and treasures they heap up high,
+Hither and thither their booty haul, ...
+Then suddenly drop in their tracks and die!
+For few are wise enough to repair
+In time to a Promenade Solitaire.
+
+Meantime the Earth speeds on through space,
+As the sun for a million years hath steered,
+And, an eon hence, the entire race
+Will have played its part and disappeared;
+But what will the lifeless planet care,
+As it follows its Promenade Solitaire?
+
+
+
+
+REINCARNATION
+
+I know not how, I know not where,
+But from my own heart's mystic lore
+I feel that I have breathed this air,
+And walked this earth before;
+
+And that in this, its latest form
+My old-time spirit once more strives,
+As it has fought through many a storm
+In past, forgotten lives.
+
+Not inexperienced did my soul
+This incarnation's threshold tread;
+Not recordless has proved the scroll
+It brought back from the dead.
+
+To certain, special lines of thought
+My mind intuitively tends,
+And old affinities have brought
+Not new, but ancient friends.
+
+What thrilled me in a previous state
+Rekindles here its ancient flame;
+What I by instinct love and hate
+I knew before I came;
+
+And lands, of which in youth I dreamed
+And read, heart-moved, and longed to see,
+When really visited, have seemed
+Not strange but known to me.
+
+When Mozart, still a child, untaught,
+Ran joyous to the silent keys,
+And with inspired fingers wrought
+Majestic harmonies,
+
+There fell upon his psychic ear
+Faint echoes of a music known
+Before his natal advent here,
+In former lives outgrown.
+
+In many a dumb brute's wistful eyes
+A dawning human soul aspires,
+For thus from lower forms we rise,--
+Ourselves our spirits' sires.
+
+Full many a thought that thrills my breast
+Is fruit resulting from a seed
+Sown elsewhere,--on my soul impressed
+By many an arduous deed;
+
+Full many a fetter which hath lamed
+My struggling spirit's upward flight
+Was once by that same spirit framed,
+When further from the Light;
+
+With justice, therefore, comes the pain
+That o'er the tortured world extends;
+And hopeful is the lessening stain,
+As each life-cycle ends.
+
+No changeless, endless states await
+The good and evil souls set free;
+Each grave is a successive gate
+In immortality.
+
+Too long this mighty truth hath slept
+Among the darkened souls of men,--
+"Ye cannot see God's face, except
+Ye shall be born again."
+
+The God-like Christs and Buddhas yearn,
+However high their spirits' stage,
+For man's salvation to return,
+As Saviour or as Sage.
+
+On our benighted, groping minds
+Their noble precepts, star-like, shine;
+Each soul, that wisely seeks them, finds
+The truths that are divine.
+
+Misunderstood and vilified,
+Their aims and motives scarcely known,
+How many of these Saints have died,
+Rejected by their own!
+
+Yet, though their followers miss the way,
+In spite of precept and of prayer,
+And lead unnumbered souls astray,
+Committed to their care,
+
+Upon the lofty spirit-plane,
+Where all lies open to their sight,
+The Masters know that not in vain
+They left the Hills of Light.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE "RING NEBULA"
+
+O pallid spectre of the midnight skies,
+Whose phantom features in the dome of Night
+Elude the keenest gaze of wistful eyes,
+Till amplest lenses aid the failing sight;
+On heaven's blue sea the farthest isle of fire,
+From thee, whose glories it would fain admire,
+Must vision, baffled, in despair retire!
+
+What art thou, ghostly visitant of flame?
+Wouldst thou 'neath closer scrutiny resolve
+In myriad suns that constellations frame,
+Around which life-blest satellites revolve,
+Like those unnumbered orbs which nightly creep
+In dim procession o'er the azure steep,
+As white-winged caravans the desert sweep?
+
+Or art thou still an incandescent mass,
+Acquiring form as hostile forces urge,
+Through whose vast length continuous lightnings pass,
+As to and fro its fiery billows surge?
+Whose glowing atoms, whirled in ceaseless strife,
+Where now chaotic anarchy is rife,
+Shall yet become the fair abodes of life?
+
+We know not; for the faint, exhausted rays
+Which hither on Light's winged coursers come
+From fires which ages since first lit their blaze,
+One instant gleam, then perish, spent and dumb;
+How sad the thought that, howsoe'er we yearn
+Of life on yonder glittering orbs to learn,
+We read no message, and could none return!
+
+Yet this we know:--yon ring of spectral light,
+Whose distance thrills the soul with solemn awe,
+Can ne'er escape in its majestic might
+The firm control of omnipresent law;
+This mote descending to its bounden place,
+Those suns whose radiance we can scarcely trace,
+Alike obey the Power pervading space.
+
+
+
+
+THE WAIF
+
+I sit in my luxurious chair;
+Soft rugs caress my slippered feet;
+Within, a balmy, summer air;
+Without, a wintry storm of sleet.
+
+A favorite book is in my hands,
+A thousand others line the walls;
+Some souvenir of distant lands
+In every nook the Past recalls.
+
+Upon a Turkish tabouret
+In Dresden cups of peerless blue
+Gleams on a pretty Cashmere tray
+The fragrant Mocha's ebon hue.
+
+Two dainty hands prepare the draught,
+While loving glances meet my own;
+Two lips repeat (the coffee quaffed),
+"To-night 'tis sweet to be alone."
+
+Hark! in the court my faithful hound
+Breaks rudely on our tête-à-tête;
+Too well I understand that sound!
+A mendicant is at my gate.
+
+Admit him? Yes; for none shall say
+That he who seeks in want my door
+Is ever harshly turned away;
+His plea is heard, if nothing more.
+
+I leave my comforts with a sigh,
+And, passing to the outer hall,
+Behold a wanderer doomed to die,--
+So ill, I look to see him fall.
+
+I know his story ere he speaks;
+And listening to his labored breath,
+I trace, with tears upon my cheeks,
+His long and hopeless fight with death.
+
+A poor, storm-beaten, lonely waif,
+Lured southward from a colder clime
+By hope and that unfailing faith
+That health will come again in time!
+
+Alas! too late; the dread disease
+Hath fixed its roots too firmly there;
+And now sick, friendless, at my knees,
+He pours forth his heart-breaking prayer.
+
+What are his needs? Before all, food!
+Hot soup, bread, wine, until at last
+A sense of human brotherhood
+Obliterates his cruel past;
+
+Yet not for long; for though well-fed,
+With warmer garments than before,
+He hath no place to lay his head,
+On turning from my friendly door.
+
+I slip some silver in his hand,
+('Twill purchase shelter for the night,)
+Then, silent and remorseful, stand
+To watch his bent form out of sight.
+
+On, on he goes through snow and sleet,
+With nothing more of warmth and cheer!
+From such a home to such a street!
+Ah, should I not have kept him here?
+
+My room is no less bright and warm,
+But all its charm and joy have fled;
+That lonely figure in the storm
+Leaves both our hearts uncomforted.
+
+For this is but one tiny wave
+In life's vast, shoreless sea of woe,--
+One note in man's hoarse cry to save,
+Resounding o'er its ebb and flow;
+
+I ask myself in blank dismay,--
+Ought I my little wealth to own?
+Yet, should I give it all away,
+'Twere but a drop to ocean thrown!
+
+Great God! if what I dimly see,
+In this small section of mankind,
+Of pain and want and misery,
+Can thus bring anguish to my mind,
+
+How canst _Thou_ view the awful _whole_,
+As our ensanguined planet rolls
+From unknown source to unknown goal
+Its freight of suffering human souls?
+
+Permitted pain!--the first and last
+Of riddles that we strive to solve,
+More poignant ever, and more vast,
+As man's mentalities evolve,
+
+I hear thy victims' ceaseless wails,
+I view the path my race hath trod,
+And at the sight my spirit quails,
+And cries in agony to God!
+
+
+
+
+THE SILVER HERONS
+
+Within a home for captive beasts
+Whose world had dwindled to a cage,
+I noted in their mournful eyes
+Such resignation, fear, and rage,
+I longed at once to set them free,
+And send them over land and sea
+To live again in liberty.
+
+For them no more the mountain range,
+The desert vast, the jungle's lair!
+Their meaner fate through grated bars
+To feel the public's hateful stare;
+Poor prisoners! doomed henceforth to pace
+With stinted strides a narrow space,
+And, daily, gaping crowds to face.
+
+At length I stood before a cage,
+Where, guarded by a loftier screen,
+Were artificial rocks, and pools,
+And strips of vegetation green;
+There, perched upon some rocky mound,
+Or crouching on the miry ground,
+A flock of waterfowl I found.
+
+Storks, poised upon a single leg,
+Stood dreaming of the eternal Nile,--
+The Mecca of their winter flight,
+When lured by Egypt's sunny smile;
+While ducks and geese, in gabbling mood,
+Explored the muddy pond for food,
+Attended by their noisy brood.
+
+Their keeper brought their evening meal;
+And instantly on broad-webbed feet,
+And stilt-like legs, and flapping wings,
+The feathered bipeds rushed to greet,
+With snaps and cluckings of delight,
+The joyful, ever-welcome sight
+Of supper at the approach of night.
+
+Yet all came not! Two stood apart,
+With plumage like fresh-fallen snow,--
+Two "Silver Herons," of a race
+As pure and fine as earth can show;
+Amid the tumult that was rife,
+These loathed the others' greedy strife,
+And looked disgusted with their life.
+
+With closed eyes, shrinking from the mass,
+They seemed, in thought, removed as far
+From all their coarse environment
+As sun is separate from star!
+The very picture of disdain,
+From all such gorging, it was plain,
+They had determined to refrain.
+
+The keeper murmured with reproach,--
+"Those Silver Herons are too proud!
+Why should they not partake of food
+Together with the common crowd?
+They eat a little from my hand,
+But would prefer to starve, than stand
+Besmeared by that uncleanly band.
+
+"A month hence, neither will be here;
+For both will grieve themselves to death;
+And when one falls, its mate expires
+With scarcely an additional breath;
+And, should there come another pair,
+In their turn they the fate will share
+Of those two herons standing there."
+
+Poor hapless birds! I see them yet,
+Alone and starving in their pride,--
+Their glittering plumage still intact,
+While standing bravely side by side;
+And, although put to hunger's test,
+Continuing mutely to protest
+Against defilement with the rest.
+
+O Silver Herons, teach mankind
+To cherish thus a stainless name!
+To shun the vile, ignoble crowd,
+Preferring death to smirch and shame!
+A foul, unfriendly mob to brave,
+And go, unspotted, to the grave,
+Is not to _lose_ one's life, but _save_.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE SPHINX
+
+    O sleepless Sphinx!
+    Thy sadly patient eyes,
+Forever gazing o'er the shifting sands,
+Have watched Earth's countless dynasties arise,
+Stalk forth like spectres waving gory hands,
+Then fade away with scarce a lasting trace
+To mark the secret of their dwelling place:
+    O sleepless Sphinx!
+
+    O changeless Sphinx!
+    The very dawn of Time
+Beheld thee sculptured from the living rock!
+Still wears thy face its primal look sublime,
+Surviving all the hoary ages' shock:
+Still royal art thou in thy proud repose,
+As when the sun on tuneful Memnon rose,
+    O changeless Sphinx!
+
+    O voiceless Sphinx!
+    Thy solemn lips are dumb;
+Time's awful secrets lie within thy breast;
+Age follows age; revering pilgrims come
+From every clime to urge the same request,--
+That thou wilt speak! Poor creatures of a day,
+In calm disdain thou seest them die away:
+    O voiceless Sphinx!
+
+    Majestic Sphinx!
+    Thou crouchest by a sea
+Whose fawn-hued wavelets clasp thy buried feet:
+Whose desert-surface, petrified like thee,
+Gleams white with sails of many an Arab fleet:
+Whose tawny billows, surging with the storm,
+Break on thy flanks, and overleap thy form;
+    Majestic Sphinx!
+
+    Eternal Sphinx!
+    The Pyramids are thine;
+Their giant summits guard thee night and day,
+On thee they look when stars in splendor shine,
+Or while around their crests the sunbeams play:
+Thine own coevals, who with thee remain
+Colossal Genii of the boundless plain!
+    Eternal Sphinx!
+
+
+
+
+YOUTH AND AGE
+
+"I will gain a fortune," the young man cried;
+"For Gold by the world is deified;
+Hence, whether the means be foul or fair,
+I will make myself a millionaire,
+My single talent shall grow to ten!"
+But an old man smiled, and asked "And then?"
+
+"A peerless beauty," the young man said,
+"Shall be the woman I choose to wed.
+And men shall envy me my prize,
+And women scan her with jealous eyes;"
+And he looked annoyed, when once again
+The old man smiled, and asked "And then?"
+
+"I will build," he answered, "a home so fine,
+That kings in their castles shall covet mine;
+The rarest pictures shall clothe its walls,
+And statues stand in its stately halls;
+It shall lack no luxury known to men;"
+But still the old man asked "And then?"
+
+"I will play a role in Church or State
+That all mankind shall acknowledge great;
+I will win at last such brilliant fame,
+That distant lands shall know my name,
+For I can wield both sword and pen;"
+But again the old man asked "And then?"
+
+"Is your heart a stone," the young man cried,
+"Hath all ambition within you died,
+That nothing seems to you worth while?
+What mean you by that sphinx-like smile?
+Of what are you secretly thinking, when
+You utter those mournful words,--'And then?'"
+
+Gently the old man said "O youth,
+The words I have spoken veil a truth
+Learned only through the lapse of years,
+And first discerned through a mist of tears;
+For youth is full of illusions fair
+Which manhood sees dissolve in air.
+
+"Your millions will not make you blest,
+They will rob you, instead, of peace and rest:
+Your beautiful wife may be the prey
+Of a treacherous friend or a skilled roué;
+And the splendid palace that you crave
+Will make you Society's gilded slave.
+
+"'Tis a weary road to political fame;
+Its price you must often pay in shame;
+And the world-known name for which you yearn
+On a bulletin board or a funeral urn,
+Is scarcely worth the toil and strife
+Which poison the peaceful joys of life.
+
+"For be you ever so wise and good,
+By some you will be misunderstood,
+And fame will bring you envious foes
+To spoil for you many a night's repose;
+And alas! as your pathway upward tends,
+You will find self-interest in your friends!
+
+"The loudest shout of the mob's applause
+Will die out after a moment's pause;
+And what is the greatest public praise
+To one whose form in the earth decays?
+The cruel world will always laugh
+At the fulsome lie of an epitaph.
+
+"But Spring recks not of Winter's snow,
+And you will not believe, I know,
+That all those boons that tempt your powers,
+If gained, will be like fragile flowers,
+Whose freshness wilts in the fevered hand,
+Like roses dropped on the desert sand.
+
+"And much of the work you deem sublime
+Is like the grain of pink-hued lime
+Which once was a coral insect's shell,
+But now is a microscopic cell,
+Entombed with countless billions more
+In a lonely reef on an unknown shore!"
+
+"Alas!" said the youth,--and his eyes were wet,--
+"Is old age merely a vain regret,
+The retrospect of wasted years,
+Of false ideals and lost careers?
+Advise me! What must I reject,
+And what for my permanent good select?"
+
+"Belovd youth," the old man said,
+"All is not vain, be comforted!
+Seek not thine own, but others' joy;
+Ring true, like gold without alloy;
+Waste not thy time in asking Why,
+Or Whence, or Whither when we die;
+
+"The actual world, the present hours
+Will give enough to tax thy powers;
+At no clear duty hesitate;
+Serve well thy neighbor and the State;
+So shalt thou add thy tiny form
+To bind the reef that breasts the storm!"
+
+
+
+
+SUNSET AT INTERLAKEN
+
+    The sun is low;
+    Yon peak of snow
+Is reddening 'neath the sunset glow;
+    The rosy light
+    Makes richly bright
+The Jungfrau's veil of snowy white.
+
+    From vales that sleep
+    Night's shadows creep
+To take possession of the steep;
+    While, as they rise,
+    The western skies
+Seem loath to leave so fair a prize.
+
+    The light of day
+    Still loves to stay
+And round that pearly summit play;
+    How fair a sight
+    That realm of light,
+Contended for by Day and Night!
+
+    Now fainter shines,
+    As Day declines,
+The lustrous height which he resigns;
+    The shadows gain
+    Th' illumined plane;
+The Jungfrau pales, as if in pain.
+
+    When daylight dies,
+    The azure skies
+Seem sparkling with a thousand eyes,
+    Which watch with grace
+    From depths of space
+The sleeping Jungfrau's lovely face.
+
+    And when the Light
+    Hath put to flight
+Night's shadows from each Alpine height,
+    Along the skies
+    It quickly flies,
+To kiss the Maiden's opening eyes.
+
+    The timid flush
+    And rosy blush
+Which then from brow to bosom rush,
+    Are pure and fair
+    Beyond compare,
+Resplendent in the crystal air.
+
+    And thus alway
+    By night and day
+Her varying suitors homage pay;
+    And tinged with rose,
+    Or white with snows,
+The same fair, radiant form she shows.
+
+
+
+
+UNDER THE STARS
+
+The breath of summer stirs the trees,
+A thousand roses round me bloom,
+Whose saffron petals give the breeze
+A wealth of exquisite perfume,
+As, climbing high, with tendrils bold,
+They clothe the walls with cups of gold.
+
+No sound disturbs the silence sweet,
+The weary birds have sunk to rest;
+For where the snow and sunset meet
+The light is fading in the west,
+And now the carking cares of day
+Slip lightly from my heart away.
+
+The emptiness of social strife,
+The pettiness of human souls,
+The cheap frivolities of life,
+The keen pursuit of paltry goals,--
+How small they seem beneath the dome
+That shelters my Tyrolean home!
+
+A shining mote, our tiny earth
+No furrow leaves in shoreless space!
+What is one brief existence worth,
+Which disappears, and leaves no trace?
+That silent, star-strewn vault survives
+The dawns and dusks of countless lives.
+
+Why grieve, dear heart? Oblivion deep
+Will soon enshroud both friend and foe,
+And those who laugh and those who weep
+Must join the hosts of long ago,
+Whose transient hours of smiles and tears
+Make up earth's wilderness of years.
+
+The sunset's glowing embers die,
+The snow-peaks lose their crimson hue,
+Through deepening shades the ruddy sky
+Burns slowly down to darkest blue,
+Wherein a million worlds of light
+Announce the coming of the night.
+
+I gaze, and slowly my despair
+At human wretchedness and crime
+Gives place to hopes and visions fair,--
+So much may be evolved by time!
+So much may yet men's souls surprise
+Beneath the splendor of God's skies!
+
+Some day, somewhere, in realms afar
+His light may make all problems plain,
+And justice on some happier star
+May recompense this planet's pain,
+And earth's bleak Golgothas of woe
+Grow lovely in life's afterglow.
+
+
+
+
+CORSICA
+
+In Bordighera's groves of palm
+I linger at the close of day,
+And watch, beyond the ocean's calm,
+A range of mountains far away.
+
+Their snowy summits, white and cold,
+Flush crimson like a tinted shell,
+As sinks the sun in clouds of gold
+Behind the peaks of Esterel.
+
+No unsubstantial shapes are they,--
+The offspring of the mist and sea;
+No splendid vision of Cathay,
+Recalled in dreamful revery;
+
+Their solid bastions,--towering high
+Though rooted in earth's primal plan,--
+Proclaim to every passer by
+The cradle of the Corsican.
+
+What martial soul there found rebirth,
+When on those cliffs, then scarcely known,
+There once more visited the earth
+The spirit called Napoleon?
+
+Three islands, like the sister Fates,
+His life-thread wove upon their loom
+From fair Ajaccio's silvered gates
+To Saint Helena's mournful tomb;--
+
+The first, his birthplace; whence appeared
+His baleful star with lurid glow;
+Next, Elba, where the world still feared
+The fugitive from Fontainebleau;
+
+Last, England's lonely prison-block,
+Grim fragment 'neath a tropic sky,
+Where, like Prometheus on his rock,
+The captive Caesar came to die,
+
+O Corsica, sublimely wild
+And riven by the winds and waves,
+Thy fame is deathless from thy child,
+Whose glory filled a million graves.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE VENUS OF MELOS
+
+O goddess of that Grecian isle
+  Whose shores the blue Aegean laves,
+Whose cliffs repeat with answering smile
+  Their features in its sun-kissed waves!
+
+An exile from thy native place,
+  We view thee in a northern clime;
+Yet mark on thy majestic face
+  A glory still undimmed by Time.
+
+Through those calm lips, proud goddess, speak!
+  Portray to us thy gorgeous fane,
+Where Melian lovers thronged to seek
+  Thine aid, Love's paradise to gain;
+
+And where, as in the saffron east,
+  Day's jewelled gates were open flung,
+With stately pomp the attendant priest
+  Drew back the veil before thee hung;
+
+And when the daring kiss of morn,
+  Empurpling, made thy charms more fair,
+Sweet strains from unseen minstrels borne
+  Awoke from dreams the perfumed air.
+
+Vouchsafe at last our minds to free
+  From doubts pertaining to thy charms,--
+The meaning of thy bended knee,
+  The secret of thy vanished arms.
+
+Wast thou in truth conjoined with Mars?
+  Did thy fair hands his shield embrace,
+The surface of whose golden bars
+  Grew lovely from thy mirrored face?
+
+Or was it some bright scroll of fame
+  Thus poised on thine extended knee,
+Upon which thou didst trace the name
+  Of that fierce god so dear to thee?
+
+Whate'er thou hadst, no mere delight
+  Was thine the glittering prize to hold;
+Not thine the form that met thy sight,
+  Replying from the burnished gold;
+
+Unmindful what thy hands retained,
+  Thy gaze is fixed beyond, above;
+Some dearer object held enchained
+  The goddess of immortal love.
+
+We mark the motion of thine eyes,
+  And smile; for, heldst thou shield or scroll,
+A tender love-glance we surprise,
+  That tells the secret of thy soul.
+
+
+
+
+MORS LEONIS
+
+When o'er the agèd lion steals
+The instinct of approaching death,
+Whose numbing grasp he vaguely feels
+In trembling limbs and labored breath,
+He shuns the garish light of day,
+And leaving mate and whelps at play,
+In mournful silence creeps away.
+
+From bush to bush, by devious trails,
+He drags himself from hill to hill,
+And, as his old strength slowly fails,
+Drinks long at many a mountain rill,
+Until he gains, with stifled moan,
+A height, to hated man unknown,
+Where he may die, at least alone.
+
+Relaxing now his mighty claws,
+He lies, half shrouded by his mane,
+His grand head resting on his paws,
+And heeding little save his pain,
+As o'er his eyes, so sad and deep,
+The film of death begins to creep,--
+The prelude to eternal sleep.
+
+As Caesar, reeling 'neath the stroke
+And dagger-thrust of many a friend,
+Drew o'er his face his Roman cloak,
+To meet, unseen, his tragic end,
+So hath this desert-monarch tried
+With noble dignity to hide
+From others how and where he died.
+
+And now his spirit is serene;
+For here no stranger can intrude
+To view this last, pathetic scene,
+Or mar its sombre solitude;
+Prone on the lonely mountain crest,
+Confronting the resplendent west,
+The dying lion sinks to rest.
+
+Proud king of beasts! thy death should teach
+Mankind the cheapness of display;
+More eloquent than human speech,
+Thy grand example shows the way
+To pass from life, unheard, unseen,
+And with composed, majestic mien
+Death's awful sacredness to screen.
+
+Nay, more! thou didst select a place
+Where, unobserved, thy form could rest,
+Till Mother Earth with fond embrace
+Should hide it in her ample breast;
+Like Moses in lone Nebo's land,
+Thou hast been sepulchred in sand,
+Unseen by eye, untouched by hand.
+
+No pompous tomb shall ever rise
+Above thy lonely, sun-bleached frame;
+No epitaph of well-turned lies
+Shall be inscribed beneath thy name;
+No bells for thee a dirge shall ring,
+No choir beside thy grave shall sing,
+Yet hast thou perished like a king!
+
+
+
+
+A STORY OF THE SEA
+
+Were you ever told the legend old
+Of the birth of storms at sea?
+You should hear the tale in a Channel gale,
+As happened once to me,
+On a fearful night off Fastnet Light,
+With Ireland on our lee.
+
+In the good old days, which poets praise
+As the best that man hath seen,
+The storm-king's hand might smite the land,
+But the sea remained serene;
+Blow east, blow west, its sun-kissed breast
+Kept ever its tranquil sheen.
+
+Not a single trace came o'er its face
+Of the storms that raged elsewhere;
+No misty screen e'er crept between
+The sun and its image there;
+And its depths at night were gemmed with light
+By stars in the crystal air.
+
+The fisherman laughed in his little craft,
+If a landsman felt alarm,
+For never did gale a ship assail,
+Or a sailor suffer harm;
+There was nothing to fear, for the skies were clear,
+And the ocean always calm.
+
+But on the shore, where more and more
+The human race increased,
+There were cold and heat, and snow and sleet,
+And troubles never ceased;
+For wind and rain beat down the grain,
+And the plague slew man and beast.
+
+And even worse was the moral curse,
+That came like a deadly blight
+Through men who seized whate'er they pleased,
+On the plea that might makes right,
+Till the fatal seed of selfish greed
+Made life a bitter fight.
+
+Hence many sighed, as they watched the tide
+Glide out to the sunset sea,
+And longed to go with its gentle flow
+To where they hoped might be
+A realm of peace, where sorrows cease,
+And souls from pain are free.
+
+At last they said,--"We were better dead,
+Than endure this anguish more;
+Let us seek relief from care and grief
+Far out from the storm-swept shore;
+The sea can bring no sadder thing
+Than the life we lived before."
+
+So a ship was framed, which they fondly named
+"The Peace of the Human Mind,"
+And the weary band soon left the land
+And its ceaseless strife behind;
+But unattained the goal remained
+They had so longed to find.
+
+For the souls that came were quite the same
+As they were before they sailed;
+And, as pride and hate did not abate,
+The hope of the voyagers failed;
+And, facing alone the great Unknown,
+The bravest spirits quailed.
+
+Meanwhile the ship began to dip,
+And labored to and fro,
+For the sea, though fair, could no more bear
+This load of human woe;
+And at last the boat, with all afloat,
+Sank helplessly below.
+
+Down, down it swirled to the nether world;
+While up from the riven main
+Came the gurgling sound of those who drowned,
+As the vortex closed again;
+The sea surged back to its wonted track;
+Once more 'twas a sun-lit plain!
+
+But soon men saw, with deepening awe,
+That sea grow white with spray;
+Its brilliant hue was changed from blue
+To a deathlike, leaden gray;
+And a sullen roar approached the shore
+Whence the ship had sailed away.
+
+Huge waves rolled in with frightful din,
+And spat out hissing foam,
+And smote the sand along the strand,
+And swept off many a home;
+And lightnings flashed and thunder crashed
+From heaven's ink-black dome.
+
+"Alas!" they cried, "that our brothers died
+In the depths of the sea of peace;
+They have brought unrest to its quiet breast,
+Which nevermore shall cease;
+For the peace it lost we must pay the cost;
+And behold! our woes increase!"
+
+In truth, since then how many men
+Have learned that the mighty deep
+Can heave and swell to a seething hell,
+When storms its surface sweep!
+For its calm hath fled, and countless dead
+Are the spoils it loves to heap.
+
+But at its best, when it lies at rest
+On a cloudless summer day,
+And, tiger-like, forbears to strike,
+But, sated, basks at play,
+One seems to hear, with the psychic ear,
+Its murmuring wavelets say,--
+
+"No real relief from care and grief
+Is found o'er distant waves;
+The men who sail to find it, fail,
+And sink to lonely graves;
+In the firm control of man's own soul
+Is alone the peace he craves."
+
+
+
+
+OLD HYMN-TUNES
+
+Dear, old-time tunes of prayer and praise,
+Heard first beside my mother's knee,
+Your music on my spirit lays
+A spell from which I should be free,
+If lapse of time gave liberty.
+
+I listen, and the crowded years
+Fade, dream-like, from my life, and lo!
+I find my eyelids wet with tears,--
+So much I loved, so well I know
+Those plaintive airs of long ago!
+
+They tell me of my vanished youth,
+Of faith in what so flawless seemed,
+Before the painful quest of truth
+Had proved how much I then esteemed
+Was other than I fondly dreamed!
+
+They make my childhood live again;
+And life's fair dawn grows once more bright,
+While listening to the sweet refrain,
+Sung in the Sabbath's waning light,--
+"Glory to Thee, my God, this night!"
+
+My mother's voice, so pure and strong,
+My father's flute of silvery tone,
+The little household's strength of song,
+The childish treble of my own,--
+I hear them once more, but ... alone!
+
+Sweet obligato to some hymn
+Whose words those vanished tones recall,
+Float o'er me, when earth's scenes grow dim,
+And life's last, lingering echoes fall,
+Till silence settles over all!
+
+
+
+
+BEFORE A STATUE OF BUDDHA
+
+O Buddha, of the mystic smile
+And downcast, dreamful eyes,
+To whom unnumbered sacred shrines
+And gilded statues rise,
+
+Whose fanes are filled with worshippers,
+Whose hallowed name is sung
+By myriads of the human race
+In every Eastern tongue,
+
+What means thy sweet serenity?
+Our planet, as it rolls,
+Sweeps through the starry universe
+A mass of burdened souls,
+
+Still agonized and pitiful,
+Despite the countless years
+That man has spent in wandering
+Through paths of blood and tears!
+
+O Lord of love and sympathy
+For all created life,
+How canst thou view thus placidly
+The world's incessant strife,
+
+The misery and massacre
+Of war's destructive train,
+The martyrdom of animals,
+The tragedy of pain,
+
+The infamous brutalities
+To helpless children shown,
+The pathos of whose joyless lives
+Might melt a heart of stone?
+
+Preeminently merciful,
+Does not thy spirit long
+To guard from inhumanity
+The weak against the strong?
+
+Thou biddest us deal tenderly
+With every breathing-thing,--
+The horse that drags the heavy load,
+The bird upon the wing,
+
+The flocks along the riverside,
+The cattle on the lea,
+And every living denizen
+Of earth and air and sea;
+
+Yet daily in the shambles
+A sea of blood is spilled,
+And man is nourished chiefly
+From beasts that he has killed!
+
+And hunters still find happiness
+In seeing, red with wounds,
+A sobbing deer, with liquid eyes,
+Dragged down by yelping hounds!
+
+What is the real significance
+Of thine unchanging smile?
+Hast thou the secret consciousness
+That grief is not worth while?
+
+That sorrow is the consequence
+Of former lives of sin,--
+The spur that goads us on and up
+A nobler life to win?
+
+That pain is as impermanent
+As shadows on the hills,
+And that Nirvana's blessedness
+Will cure all mortal ills?
+
+But agony is agony,
+And small is the relief
+If, measured with eternity,
+Life's anguish be but brief.
+
+To hearts that break with misery,
+To every tortured frame
+The present pain is paramount,
+Nirvana but a name.
+
+Moreover, why should former lives
+Bequeath their weight of woe,
+If with it comes no memory
+To guide us, as we go?
+
+If o'er the dark, prenatal void
+No mental bridge be cast,
+No thread, however frail, to link
+The present to the past?
+
+Still silent and dispassionate!
+Ah, would that I might find
+The key to the serenity
+That fills thy lofty mind!
+
+Thou hast a joy we do not feel,
+A light we cannot see;
+Injustice, sin, and wretchedness
+No longer sadden thee;
+
+No doubt to thy sublimer gaze
+Life's mystery grows plain,
+As finally full recompense
+Atones for earthly pain.
+
+
+
+
+THE PILLARS OF HERCULES
+
+Here ends at last the Inland Sea!
+Still seems its outlet, as of yore,
+The anteroom of Mystery,
+As, through its westward-facing door,
+I see the vast Atlantic lie
+In splendor 'neath a sunset sky.
+
+Above its distant, glittering rim
+Streams o'er the waves a flood of gold,
+To gild the mountains, bare and grim,
+Which guard this exit, as of old,--
+The sombre sentries of two seas,
+The Pillars reared by Hercules;--
+
+Gibraltar,--on the northern shore,
+By conquering Moors once proudly trod,--
+And, to the south a league or more,
+Huge Abyla, the "Mount of God",
+Whence burdened Atlas watched with ease
+The Gardens of Hesperides.
+
+How many slow-paced centuries passed,
+Before brave sailors dared to creep
+Beyond the gloom these monsters cast,
+And venture on the unknown deep,
+At last resolving to defy
+The "God-established" termini!
+
+Yet no fierce gods opposed their path;
+No lurid bolt or arrow sped
+To crush them with celestial wrath,
+And number them among the dead;
+The dreadful Pillars proved as tame
+As other rocks of lesser fame.
+
+Hence, when before them stretched the sea,
+Majestic, limitless and clear,
+A rapturous sense of being free
+Dispelled all vestiges of fear
+The longed-for ocean to explore
+From pole to pole, from shore to shore.
+
+Thus all men learn the God they dread
+Is kinder than they had supposed,
+And that, not God, but Man hath said,--
+"The door to freedom must be closed!"
+Once past that door, with broadened view,
+They find Him better than they knew.
+
+Meanwhile, along the sunlit strait
+My ship glides toward the saffron west,
+Beyond the old Phenician gate
+To ocean's gently heaving breast,
+Whence, on the ever-freshening breeze,
+There greet my spirit words like these;--
+
+Sail bravely on! the morning light
+Shall find thee far beyond the land;
+Gibraltar's battlemented height
+And Afric's tawny hills of sand
+Shall soon completely sink from view
+Beneath the ocean's belt of blue.
+
+Sail on! nor heed the shadows vast
+Of fabled Powers, whose fear enslaves!
+Their spectral shapes shall sink at last
+Below the night's abandoned waves;
+Rest not confined by shoals and bars;
+Steer oceanward by God's fixed stars!
+
+
+
+
+FRIENDSHIP
+
+'Tis not in the bitterest woes of life
+That the love of friends, as a rule, grows cold;
+Still less does it melt in the heat of strife,
+Or die from the canker of borrowed gold;
+
+For pity comes when they see us grieved,
+Or forced to lie on a couch of pain,
+And a hasty word is soon retrieved,
+And the loan of money may leave no stain.
+
+'Tis oftenest lost through the deadly blight
+Of Society's pestilential air,
+Which blackens the robe of purest white,
+And fouls what once was sweet and fair.
+
+An envious woman's whispered word,
+A slander born of a cruel smile,
+The repetition of something heard,
+The imputation of something vile,
+
+Or possibly even a fancied slight
+For a feast declined, or a call delayed,
+Or jealousy caused by petty spite,
+Or the wish for a higher social grade,--
+
+'Tis one, or all of these combined,
+That saps the love of our dearest friends,
+And slowly poisons heart and mind,
+Till the joy of generous friendship ends.
+
+Last night they were in a cordial mood,
+To-day they suddenly seem estranged!
+Shall we, then, grieve and sadly brood
+O'er the unknown cause that has made them changed?
+
+Ask once, that they make the matter clear,
+But ask no more, if the lesson fail;
+Let changelings go, however dear,
+And shed no tears for a love so frail.
+
+Be not the slave of a friend's migraine,
+Nor let him play, now hot, now cold;
+The master of thyself remain,
+And the key of thine inmost heart withhold!
+
+For they who weep and sue and plead,
+Are used and dropped, like a worn-out glove,
+And the friends with "moods" are the friends who need
+To learn that they are not worth our love.
+
+
+
+
+TO MY DEAD DOG
+
+    All is noiseless;
+    Cold and voiceless
+Lies the form I've oft caressed;
+Heedless now of blame or praises,
+'Neath the sunshine and the daisies
+Dear, old Leo lies at rest.
+
+    Eager greeting,
+    Joy at meeting,
+Watching for my step to come,
+Grief at briefest separation,
+Sorrow without affectation,--
+These are over,--he is dumb!
+
+    Loyal ever,
+    Treacherous never,
+Lifelong love he well expressed;
+Ah! may we deserve like praises
+When beneath the sun-kissed daisies
+We, like Leo, lie at rest!
+
+
+
+
+TO-DAY
+
+"The sun will set at day's decline";
+    Qu'importe?
+Quaff off meanwhile life's sparkling wine!
+Of what avail are mournful fears,
+Foreboding sighs and idle tears,
+They hinder not the hurrying years;
+      Buvons!
+
+"This fleeting hour will soon be past";
+    Qu'importe?
+Enrich its moments while they last!
+To-day is ours; be ours its joy!
+Let not to-morrow's cares annoy!
+Enough the present to employ;
+      Vivons!
+
+"These pleasures will not come again";
+    Qu'importe?
+Enjoy their keenest transport then!
+If but of these we are secure,
+Be of their sweetness doubly sure,
+That long their memory may endure!
+      Rions!
+
+"With time love's ardor always cools";
+    Qu'importe?
+Leave that lugubrious chant to fools!
+Must doubt destroy our present bliss?
+Shall we through fear love's rapture miss,
+Or lose the honey of its kiss?
+      Aimons!
+
+"The sun will set at day's decline";
+    Qu'importe?
+Will not the eternal stars still shine?
+So even in life's darkest night
+A thousand quenchless suns are bright,--
+Blest souvenirs of past delight;
+      Allons!
+
+
+
+
+TO THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI, AFTER READING HER "RECOLLECTIONS OF LORD BYRON"
+
+Like one who, homeward bound from distant lands,
+Describes strange climes and visions passing fair,
+Yet deftly hides from others' eyes and hands
+A private casket filled with treasures rare,
+So, favored Countess, all that thou dost say
+Is nothing to thy secrets left unsaid;
+Thy printed souvenirs are but the spray
+Above the depths of ocean's briny bed.
+For, oh! how often must thy mind retrace
+Soft phrases whispered in the Tuscan tongue,
+Love's changes sweeping o'er his mobile face,
+And kisses sweeter far than he had sung;
+The gleam of passion in his glorious eyes,
+The hours of inspiration when he wrote,
+Recalled to Earth in sudden, sweet surprise
+At feeling thy white arms about his throat;
+To have been loved by Byron! Not in youth
+When ardent senses tempt to reckless choice,
+But in maturer years, when keen-eyed Truth
+Reveals the folly of the siren's voice.
+Last love is best, and this thou didst enjoy;
+Thy happy fate to see no rival claim
+A share in what was thine without alloy;
+How must the remnant of thy life seem tame!
+Yet this thy recompense,--that thou dost keep
+Thy friend and lover safe from every change;
+For, loyal to thy love, he fell asleep,
+And life it is, not death, that can estrange.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEATH OF ANTONINUS PIUS
+
+Through the marble gates of Ostia,
+Where the Tiber meets the sea,
+And a hundred Roman galleys
+Strain their leashes to be free,
+Streams a flood of sunset glory
+From the classic sea of old,
+Till Rome's seven hills stand gleaming,
+And the Tiber turns to gold.
+
+Why, indifferent to this splendor,
+Do the people throng the streets?
+What is everyone demanding
+Of the stranger whom he meets?
+They have heard alas! the rumor
+That, ere dawn regilds the sky,
+All the world may be in mourning,
+For the Emperor must die.
+
+Search, O Romans, through the annals
+Of the rulers of your race,
+From the zenith of their glory
+To their ultimate disgrace,--
+And as earth's most perfect master,
+And the noblest of your line,
+You will yield your greatest homage
+To this dying Antonine.
+
+For he holds a Caesar's sceptre
+In a loving father's hand,
+And his heart and soul are given
+To the welfare of his land;
+Through his justice every nation
+Hath beheld its warfare cease,
+And he leaves to his successor
+Rome's gigantic world at peace.
+
+Hence these nations now are waiting
+In an anguish of suspense,
+For their future is as doubtful,
+As their love for him intense;
+By the Nile and on the Danube,
+From the Tagus to the Rhine,
+There is mourning among millions
+For the man they deem divine.
+
+Now the sunset glow is fading,
+And the evening shadows creep
+O'er the ashen face of Caesar,
+As he lies in seeming sleep;
+But he slumbers not; for, faithful
+To his duties, small and great,
+He is not alone the sovereign,
+But the servant of the State.
+
+Unrebuked, then, his Centurion,
+As the sun-god sinks from sight,
+Makes his wonted way to Caesar
+For the password of the night;
+And great Antonine, though conscious
+That ere dawn his soul must pass,
+As his last, imperial watchword,
+Utters "Aequanimitas!"
+
+O thou noblest of the Caesars,
+Whose transcendent virtues shine,
+Like a glorious constellation,
+O'er the blood-stained Palatine,
+When the latest sands are running
+From my life's exhausted glass,
+May I have thy calm and courage,
+And thine Aequanimitas!
+
+
+
+
+THE BUTTERFLY
+
+I watched to-day a butterfly,
+With gorgeous wings of golden sheen,
+Flit lightly 'neath a sapphire sky
+Amid the springtime's tender green;--
+
+A creature so divinely fair,
+So frail, so wraithlike to the sight,
+I feared to see it melt in air,
+As clouds dissolve in morning light.
+
+With sudden swoop, a brutal boy
+Caught in his cap its fans of gold,
+And forced them down with savage joy
+Upon the path's defiling mould;
+
+Then cautiously, the ground well scanned,
+He clutched his darkened, helpless prey,
+And, pinched within his grimy hand,
+Withdrew it to the light of day.
+
+Alas! its fragile bloom was gone,
+Its gracile frame was sorely hurt,
+Its silken pinions drooped forlorn,
+Disfigured by the dust and dirt;
+
+Its life, a moment since so gay,
+So joyous in its dainty flight,
+Was slowly ebbing now away,--
+Its too-brief day eclipsed by night.
+
+Meantime, the vandal, face aflame,
+Surveyed it dying in his grasp,
+Yet knew no grief nor sense of shame
+In watching for its final gasp.
+
+At last its sails of gold and brown,
+Of texture fine and colors rare,
+Came, death-struck, slowly fluttering down,
+No more to cleave the sunlit air;
+
+One happy, harmless being less,
+To bid us dream the world is sweet!
+Gone like a gleam of happiness,
+A glimpse of rapture ... incomplete!
+
+Yet who shall say this creature fair
+In God's sight had a smaller worth
+Than that dull lout who watched it there,
+And in its death found cause for mirth?
+
+For what, in truth, are we who claim
+An endless life beyond the grave,
+But insects of a larger frame,
+Whose souls may be too small to save?
+
+Since far-off times, when Cave Men fought
+Like famished brutes for bloody food,
+And through unnumbered centuries sought
+To rear their naked, whelp-like brood,
+
+How many million men have died,
+From pole to pole through every clime,--
+An awful, never-ending tide
+Swept deathward on the shores of Time!
+
+Like insects swarming in the sun,
+They flutter, struggle, mate, and die,
+And, with their life-work scarce begun,
+Are struck down like the butterfly;
+
+A million more, a million less,
+What matters it? The Earth rolls on,
+Unmindful of mankind's distress,
+Or if the race be here, or gone.
+
+Thus rolled our globe ere man appeared,
+And thus will roll, with wrinkled crust,
+Deserted, lifeless, old, and seared,
+When man shall have returned to dust.
+
+And IT at last shall also die!
+Hence, measured by the eternal scale,
+It ranks but as the butterfly,--
+A world, ephemeral, fair and frail.
+
+Man, insect, earth, or distant star,--
+They differ only in degree;
+Their transient lives, or near or far,
+Are moments in eternity!
+
+Yet somehow to my spirit clings
+The faith that man survives the sod,
+For this poor insect's broken wings
+Have raised my thoughts from earth to God.
+
+
+
+
+AFTER THE STORM
+
+The duel of the warring clouds
+Hath ended with the day;
+Their scintillant, electric blades
+Have ceased their fearful play;
+The pent up fury of their hate
+Hath found at last release,
+And o'er the tempest-stricken earth
+Broods now the hush of peace.
+
+The passing of the hurricane
+Hath swept the sultry skies;
+The clearness of the atmosphere
+Brings jubilant surprise;
+The mountain peaks are glorified
+With freshly-fallen snow,
+And, stealing o'er their coronets,
+Appears the sunset glow.
+
+An hour since, a torrid heat
+Oppressed the languid frame;
+The wind was as the khamseen's breath,
+The solar touch seemed flame;
+But now the air rejuvenates,
+The breeze refreshment brings,
+The lustrous leaves drop diamonds,
+The lark with rapture sings.
+
+Fear not, dear heart! life's darkest storms
+Shall likewise end in light;
+Behind the blackest thundercloud
+The sun shines clear and bright;
+Once more celestial heights shall wear
+Their sheen of spotless snow,
+And on the bravely steadfast soul
+The smile of God shall glow.
+
+
+
+
+FALLEN
+
+My country! by our fathers reared
+As champion of the world's opprest;
+Whose moral force the tyrant feared;
+Whose flag all struggling freemen cheered;
+In clutching at an empire's crest
+Thou too art fallen like the rest.
+
+Not in thy numbers, wealth or might,
+Proud mistress of a continent!
+For rival nations, at the sight
+Of thy resources, view with fright
+Thy progress without precedent;
+Not there is seen thy swift descent.
+
+Reread the story of thy birth!
+Recall the years in conflict spent
+To prove to a despairing earth
+That every Government of worth
+Is really based on free consent;
+Then view with shame thy present bent!
+
+Thou hadst a place unique, sublime;
+In many a land beyond the sea
+The victims of despotic crime
+In thee, the latest born of Time,
+Beheld a land from tyrants free,
+The sacred Ark of Liberty.
+
+But now the Old World's lust for lands
+Infects thee too; the dread disease
+Hath left its plague-spots on thy hands;
+Thy monster area still expands;
+For, blind to history's Nemesis,
+Thou too wouldst alien races seize.
+
+Condemning with profound disdain
+All other nations' heartless greed,
+How couldst thou buy from humbled Spain
+A people struggling to attain
+A freedom suited to their need?
+Why stultify thy boasted creed?
+
+Thine aid to them thou mightst have given,
+As France her aid once gave to thee;
+With them thy sons might well have striven,
+And their blood-rusted fetters riven;
+But why, in Heaven's name, should we
+Shoot men aspiring to be free?
+
+I tread the fields where thousands sleep,--
+The blood-soaked fields that freed the slave;
+What precious memories still they keep
+For hearts that mourn and eyes that weep!
+Yet for the lives those heroes gave
+What have we that they died to save?
+
+A Union? Yes; outstretched in might
+From snow to palm, from sea to sea;
+But pledged to use its strength aright,
+And evermore to keep alight
+The torch of human liberty:
+Is this the Union that we see?
+
+Where history's Martyr dared to break
+The power that held a race in chains,
+I see the ghastly lynching-stake,
+Where brutal mobs their vengeance take,
+And, since no law their course restrains,
+Gloat o'er their writhing victim's pains.
+
+Race hatred,--born of groundless fears
+And narrow prejudice of caste--,
+Now greets the cultured black with sneers
+And, barring him from high careers,
+Breaks, like a mad iconoclast,
+The nation's idols of the past.
+
+No more can we with steadfast eyes
+Protest, when tortured races moan
+With hands uplifted toward the skies;
+Their tyrants answer with surprise
+And new-born insolence of tone,--
+"These are our lynchings; cure your own!"
+
+Yet hope remains! A path retraced
+Is nobler than persistent wrong;
+A fault confessed is half effaced;
+That land alone can be disgraced
+Which is not just, however strong,
+Toward those to whom its "spoils" belong.
+
+My country! Would to God that praise
+Might leave my lips, instead of blame!
+So near the parting of the ways,
+Subjected to the eager gaze
+Of millions, jealous of thy fame,
+Retrace the path that ends in shame!
+
+
+
+
+"AEQUANIMITAS"
+
+Watchword sublime of Rome's imperial sage,
+Tersest of synonyms for self-control,
+Paramount precept of the Stoic's age,
+Noblest of mottoes for the lofty soul,--
+Would thou wert writ in characters of light,
+At every turn to greet my reverent gaze,
+And bid me face life's evils, calm, upright,
+Unspoiled alike by calumny or praise!
+With all our science we are slaves of Fate;
+What is to come we know not, cannot know;
+Grief, suffering, death,--all touch us soon or late,
+The master question, how to meet the blow.
+Grant me, ye Gods, through life a steadfast eye,
+And then, with equanimity, to die!
+
+
+
+
+DREAMLAND
+
+I woke from dreams of rare delight
+And visions of a joyous land,
+Where loved ones, long since lost to sight,
+Walked blithely with me, hand in hand:
+
+Where every brow was free from care,
+And Youth's sublime ideals shone
+Like planets in an Alpine air,
+And death's sad mystery was known.
+
+I woke,--and like a bird that waits,
+Uncertain where to wend its flight,
+My spirit lingered at the gates,
+Which close upon that realm of light;
+
+Till, slowly, all around grew clear,
+And once again the light of day
+Convinced me that I still was here,
+Though all my dreams had passed away.
+
+Once more I faced a world of Pain!
+Of quivering nerves and sure decay,
+Of helpless brutes, by millions, slain
+To feed mankind a single day!
+
+Of shivering children, scarred with blows,
+Of hunted bird and tortured beast,
+Of War, whose hideous programme shows
+Its means of homicide increased.
+
+The same old world of greed and hate,
+Of selfish act and paltry aim,
+Of private fraud and venal State,
+Of deeds and doers steeped in shame!
+
+What marvel if the spirit shrinks
+From plunging in that turbid stream?
+Or if, on waking thus, one thinks
+That life was better in his dream?
+
+Sweet, peaceful dreamland! I await
+The favored hour, to pass again
+Within thine asphodelian gate,
+Beyond the miseries of men;
+
+To find old pleasures, long since gone,
+Perchance as vivid as of yore,
+Or else to sleep,--life's curtains drawn,--
+And reawaken ... nevermore.
+
+
+
+
+ROME REVISITED
+
+O sovereign Rome, still mistress of the heart,
+As of the world in thy majestic prime,
+Grand in thy ruins, peerless in thine art,
+Rich in the memories of a past sublime,
+
+Is thine the fault or mine that thou art changed,
+And that I tread the new Tiberian shore
+Convinced, alas! that we are now estranged,
+And that for me thy charm exists no more?
+
+I have grown older, but am not blasé,
+My hair has whitened, but my heart is young,
+Still thrills my pulse the tomb-girt Appian Way,
+Still stirs my soul the ancient Latin tongue.
+
+Whence then this transformation, that pervades
+Rome's very air, and leaves its blighting trace
+Alike upon the Pincio's colonnades
+And on the Mausoleum's rugged face?
+
+The fault, dear Rome, is neither thine nor mine,
+But that of vandals nurtured on thy breast,
+Who, mad as "modern citizens" to shine,
+Have fashioned thee like cities of the west.
+
+Thy time-worn face, and figure deeply bowed
+By countless sufferings for two thousand years,
+Whose proper garment seemed to be a shroud,
+Commanding reverence, sympathy and tears,
+
+Are now bedecked with tawdry gems of paste;
+Parisian robes thy withered limbs conceal;
+Thy wrinkled cheeks are rouged; in vulgar taste
+A modern watch-fob holds the Caesar's seal!
+
+Where once imperial Triumphs proudly passed,
+Electric cars roll thundering through thy streets;
+In Raphael's groves the automobile's blast
+Expels the Muses from their calm retreats.
+
+Through sinuous miles of shops with worldly wares
+Bewildered pilgrims reach St. Peter's shrine;
+Some modern stamp each old piazza, bears;
+And freed from weeds, thy burnished ruins shine!
+
+Near Hadrian's massive bridge of sculptured stone,
+The Tiber surges 'neath an iron frame,
+Across whose ugly beams the tramcars groan,
+And brand the river with a bar of shame.
+
+Gods of Olympus, can ye not restore
+To outraged Rome her dignity of old?
+'Twere better Jove and Juno to adore
+Than in their stead to worship only Gold!
+
+Thy glorious statues, cruelly defaced,
+Thy crumbling shrines, thy marbles burnt to lime,
+The lone Campagna's fever-stricken waste,
+Where lizards bask on columns once sublime,--
+
+The Flavian Amphitheatre's gaping wounds,
+The Baths of Caracalla's roofless walls,
+The Forum's multitude of ruined mounds,
+The royal Palatine's abandoned halls,--
+
+All these indeed create a hopeless pain,
+When fancy strives to reconstruct the whole,
+Yet pathos, wakened by a wreck-strewn plain,
+Inspires at least nobility of soul.
+
+But where a Syndic's greed hath left its trail
+The picturesque and beautiful take flight;
+The Past's inspiring influences fail,
+As stars are hidden by electric light.
+
+Yet protests meet derision and disdain;
+The fatal madness spreads from land to land;
+Peace, Art, and Beauty everywhere are slain
+By greedy Traffic's hard, rapacious hand.
+
+We laugh at lessons taught by others' fate,
+We see no ending to our prosperous day;
+Forgetting that, in turn, each ancient State
+Hath passed through bud and flower to decay.
+
+Behold the retrogression of those lands
+Whence painting, sculpture and the drama sprung;
+See starved Trinacria's outstretched, empty hands,
+And all the classic shores by Homer sung!
+
+In what have we surpassed them? We are taught
+Their art, their ethics, and their rythmic speech;
+Both Greece and Asia still control our thought,
+Their grandest works still far beyond our reach.
+
+The breathless transfer of men, thoughts, and things,
+Improved designs for vaster fratricide,--
+Are these the leading gifts this century brings,
+The twentieth, too, since Christ was crucified?
+
+Yet thoughts that most have influenced mankind
+Were not sent broadcast with the lightning's speed;
+Nor do the works of Plato lag behind
+The myriad books and papers that we read!
+
+And thou, Italia, that for ages played
+A role whose majesty can ne'er be told,
+Hast thou, like all the rest, thy trust betrayed,
+Adored the New, and sacrificed the Old?
+
+Wilt thou for fashion make thy Past forlorn?
+Waste precious substance upon useless ships?
+Transport to Africa thine eldest born,
+And let gaunt hunger blanch thy peasants' lips?
+
+Make poorly paid officials banded knaves?
+Drive starving sons by thousands from thy shore,
+Or let them rot in Abyssinian graves,
+And hide the cancer festering at thy core?
+
+If so, 'tis certain thou must dearly pay
+For playing thus the war-lord's pompous part,
+And thou shalt feel at no far-distant day
+The people's dagger driven through thy heart.
+
+Fain would I find some peaceful Pagan shrine
+Unspoiled as yet by vandals of to-day,
+Around whose shafts the sweet, wild roses twine,
+And on whose marble walls the sunbeams play;
+
+There would I dream of days when life was sweet
+With poetry, art, and myths devoid of dread,
+When all the Gods in harmony could meet,
+And no eternal torment vexed the dead.
+
+Our vaunted age is one of feverish haste,
+Of racial hatred and of loathsome cant,
+Of gross corruption and of tawdry taste,
+Of monster fortunes, with a world in want.
+
+I am not of it, and I will not be!
+Its social strife and slavery I despise;
+Gone is its shore; I sail the open sea
+O'er tranquil waters and 'neath cloudless skies!
+
+
+
+
+ON THE PALATINE
+
+I tread the vast deserted stage
+Whereon the Caesars lived and died;
+The relics of Rome's golden age
+Lie strewn about me far and wide,
+Mementoes of an empire's pride,
+The homes of men once deified.
+
+What are they now? Stupendous piles
+Of mouldering corridors and walls,
+On which alike the sunshine smiles
+And cold the rain of winter falls;
+A wilderness of roofless halls
+Whose tragic history appalls!
+
+Below me, like an opened grave,
+The Forum's excavations lie,
+Where column, arch and architrave
+In solemn grandeur greet the eye,
+Still guarding 'neath Italia's sky
+The glory that can never die.
+
+And here, above me and around,
+In part still shrouded by the soil,
+A stony chaos strews the ground,
+Where patient students delve and toil
+To bring to light Time's buried spoil,
+And History's tangled threads uncoil.
+
+Halt! where thou standest Rome was born!
+These stones by Romulus were placed,
+When, on that far-off April morn,
+Two snow-white bulls the furrow traced
+For Rome's first wall, which, firmly based,
+Two thousand years have not effaced.
+
+From these rude blocks how vast the bound
+To that huge, labyrinthine mass
+Through which the secret pathways wound,
+Where emperors, if alarmed, could pass;
+Yet even there could find, alas!
+The poignard or the poisoned glass.
+
+What ghastly crimes these rooms recall!
+Here Nero watched his brother drain
+The fatal draught, then lifeless fall;
+Here, too, Caligula was slain,
+When, shrieking, with disordered brain,
+He pleaded for his life in vain.
+
+At every turn some pallid ghost
+With haggard features seems to rise
+To join the long-drawn, murdered host
+That moves with sad, averted eyes,
+Like victims to a sacrifice,
+To where the Via Sacra lies.
+
+Behold the mighty Judgment Hall,
+Where Nero with indifferent air
+Remarked the pleading of St. Paul,
+Nor dreamed the man before him there
+Would soon be read and reverenced where
+The Roman empire had no share!
+
+Where are they all,--those men of pride
+Whose palace was the Palatine,
+From Romulus the fratricide
+To Hadrian, and Constantine,
+The last of all the western line
+Of Caesars who were deemed divine?
+
+And all the millions who were swayed
+By those who dwelt upon this hill,
+And who in humble awe obeyed
+The dictates of their sovereign will,--
+Are they self-conscious beings still,
+Or are their minds and bodies ... Nil?
+
+I watch our planet's god decline
+Behind the tomb-girt Appian Way;
+The old, imperial Palatine
+Grows purple 'neath the sun's last ray;
+Shades of the Caesars, if ye may,
+The mystery of death portray!
+
+Are there in truth Elysian Fields?
+And is there life beyond the grave?
+Or are the years that Nature yields
+Confined this side the Stygian wave?
+For those who more existence crave
+Is there a Power to help and save?
+
+Alas! no answer; on their hill
+The murdered Caesars make no sign;
+Their myriad subjects, too, are still,--
+Mute as the voiceless Palatine;
+Yet overhead the fixed stars shine,
+And bid us trust in the Divine!
+
+
+
+
+THE FAREWELL OF THE OLD GUARD AT FONTAINEBLEAU, 1814
+
+Stately court of Fontainebleau,
+Nine and ninety years ago
+On thy spacious esplanade,
+Ranged in formal dress parade,
+Stood the Emperor's grenadiers
+With their bronzed cheeks wet with tears,
+Waiting once again to show
+Love for him at Fontainebleau.
+
+Noon had struck above the square,
+When adown the Horse Shoe stair
+In his well-known coat of gray,
+Worn on many a hard-fought day,
+Came the man adored by all
+As their "Little Corporal,"
+Forced by Europe now to go
+Far from royal Fontainebleau.
+
+In the ranks a sudden stir
+Swelled to shouts of Vive l'Empereur;
+Then deep silence reigned, save where
+On the peaceful summer air
+Choking sobs, but half suppressed,
+Came from many a faithful breast
+At the overwhelming blow
+Dealt them here at Fontainebleau.
+
+Could the rumor, then, be true?
+Would he say to them adieu?
+Would their idol and their pride,
+He whom they had deified,
+Leave his royal grenadiers,
+Veteran troops of twenty years?
+Hark! he speaks in accents low
+To his Guard at Fontainebleau:--
+
+"Comrades, brothers, we must part";
+(How his lov'd tones thrilled each heart!)
+"It were wrong to you and France,
+Did I once more say 'Advance';
+On the ruins of my State
+I at last must abdicate,
+And with you no more can know
+Happy days at Fontainebleau.
+
+"Valiant soldiers of my Guard,
+Thus to part is doubly hard;
+Did you silence Prussian guns,
+March beneath Italian suns,
+Enter Moscow and Madrid,
+Fight beside the Pyramid,
+And survive grim Russia's snow,--
+Thus to yield at Fontainebleau?
+
+"Heroes of great wars, farewell!
+You have heard my empire's knell,
+Yet no hostile world's decree
+Can estrange your hearts from me;
+Exiled to a tiny isle,
+Through your tears you well may smile
+At the realm my foes bestow,--
+Elba ... after Fontainebleau!
+
+"Now of all who once were true
+I can count alone on you;
+Would that each might take the place
+Of the eagle I embrace!
+Let the tears which on it fall
+Move the souls of one and all!
+Never have I loved you so
+As to-day at Fontainebleau."
+
+Hushed his voice; a moment more,
+At the passing carriage door
+Gleamed Napoleon's mournful eyes,--
+Smouldering flames of sacrifice;
+Then his pallid, classic face
+Vanished ghostlike into space,
+And a dreary sense of woe
+Settled over Fontainebleau.
+
+Dead are now those grenadiers;
+Quelled are Europe's anxious fears;
+By the Seine the Emperor sleeps;
+France her watch beside him keeps;
+But the lonely Horse Shoe stair
+Still preserves its sombre air,
+For the light of long ago
+Falls no more on Fontainebleau.
+
+
+
+
+JAPAN,--OLD AND NEW
+
+The son of a Japanese lord am I,--
+A Prince of the olden time;
+My hair is white, though black as night
+In my youth and early prime;
+And again and again I ask myself,
+As the past I sadly scan,
+Are we better or worse? Was it blessing or curse
+That foreigners brought Japan?
+
+It is barely two score years and ten
+Since the epoch-making day
+When a foreign fleet, through the summer heat,
+Came sailing up our bay;
+Still ring in my ears my father's words,
+As we watched it breast the waves,--
+"If strangers land on Nippon's strand,
+We may one day be their slaves."
+
+But the strangers landed, and asked for trade
+And a permanent "Open Door,"
+And we deemed it best to grant the West
+A foothold on our shore;
+Their slaves in truth we have not become,
+Yet who can fail to find
+That Japan obeys in a thousand ways
+The will of the western mind?
+
+We sent our sons across the seas
+To learn from the Western Powers
+Their modes of life and their modes of strife,
+And have made them largely ours;
+But before all else have we learned from them
+That our first great aim, must be
+To possess a fleet that can defeat
+All rivals on the sea.
+
+Hence, all that the West hath yet devised
+For the slaughter of men en masse
+We have copied or bought, and have stopped at naught
+To make our fleet "first class";
+And lest this might not quite suffice,
+Should an enemy come in sight,
+We have made each man throughout Japan
+A soldier trained to fight!
+
+But alas for the change that hath been wrought
+In the millions in our fields!
+For the costly ships take from their lips
+The food that the harvest yields;
+They were always poor, but their load was light,
+Compared with their load to-day,
+For thousands of hands that worked the lands
+Are drafted now away.
+
+And sad are the scenes in the sphere of Art
+In which we had won such fame;
+The fingers left are not so deft
+As they were when the strangers came;
+For then we toiled for Beauty's sake,
+And by time were we never paid;
+But now we have sold our art for gold
+And the western market's trade.
+
+I never look at the goods now sent,--
+So worthless do they seem,--
+Without a sigh for the standard high
+Which prevailed in the old regime;
+When even the hilt of a Daimio's sword
+Was a work of months or years,
+And the highest reward for a triumph scored
+Was praise from the artist's peers.
+
+No, the soul of my people is not the same;
+It was formerly sweet and kind,
+And happiness reigned in hearts restrained
+By an unspoiled, gentle mind;
+But now the lusts of the outer world
+For power, and lands, and gold,
+Our sons deprave, till they madly crave
+What others have and hold.
+
+We have borrowed many things from the West,
+But one have we left alone;
+Of its Christian creed we had no need,
+And have thus far kept our own;
+For each of its numerous sects affirms
+That it has the only way,
+And that all the rest should be suppressed,
+For they lead mankind astray.
+
+But worse than the claims of rival sects
+And the war of clashing creeds,
+Is the gulf,--heaven-wide! which we descried
+Between their words and deeds;
+For He whose sacred name they bear
+Was known as the Prince of Peace,
+And what He taught, in practice wrought,
+Would cause all wars to cease.
+
+They say with truth that we used to fight
+For our Lords on sea and coast,
+But our soldiers then were as one to ten,
+Not a permanent armored host!
+Nor do we claim to obey the God
+They worship in the West;
+But, since they do, is it not true
+That they mock at His first behest?
+
+His words were "Love your enemies!"
+And never a hostile act
+To friend or foe should Christians show,
+By whomsoever attacked;
+But they are really the best prepared
+To attack and to resist;
+And the Kaiser who prays is the Kaiser who says,--
+"Go! Strike with the mailed fist!"
+
+We look abroad, and everywhere
+The spirit of Christ is dead;
+Men call Him Lord, but they draw the sword
+In defiance of what He said;
+And the haughty, white-skinned Christian race
+Hates men of a different hue,
+And robs and slays in a thousand ways,
+With excuses ever new.
+
+In the North and South, in the East and West
+In vain do the natives plead;
+By the Congo's waves are countless graves,
+Where the Paleface gluts his greed;
+And China's fate looms dark and grim,
+As its people note the means
+That Christians take, when gold's at stake,
+From the Rand to the Philippines.
+
+We have had to choose between the rule
+Of the Sermon on the Mount
+And the brutal fact that nations act
+With an eye to their bank-account!
+And we see that the only way to shun
+The clutch of the Western Powers
+Is to learn to kill with Christian skill,
+And to make their weapons ours.
+
+For we will not, like the others, bend
+Our necks to the white man's yoke;
+And poor Japan, to her latest man,
+Will answer stroke with stroke;
+So I watch to-night a solemn sight
+On the breast of the moonlit bay,
+As our gallant host for a hostile coast
+Prepares to sail away.
+
+It is life or death for my native land,
+And I fear I may never see
+Those ships again, with their noble men,
+Return from victory;
+And well I know in my heart of hearts,
+As the past I sadly scan,
+That we are worse, and it was a curse
+That foreigners brought Japan.
+
+1904.
+
+
+
+
+THE UNFORGOTTEN HEROES
+
+[The great temple at Miyagi in Japan was recently the scene
+of grand funeral observances for the horses slain in the late war
+with Russia, the Buddhist priests reading prayers and conducting
+services of a most solemn character.]
+
+
+Hark! how the Orient's bells are proclaiming
+  Obsequies strange to the shrines of the west--
+Services Christendom's cruelties shaming--
+  Taught by the merciful, Buddha the blest.
+
+Peace on Manchuria's plains has descended;
+  Tall waves the grass where the chivalrous bled;
+Murder and massacre finally ended,
+  Sadly the living remember their dead.
+
+Requiem masses and prayers without number
+  Plead for the souls of the Muscovite brave,
+While of the Japanese, wrapt in death's slumber,
+  Tender memorials honor each grave.
+
+But in Gautama's compassionate teaching
+  Love is not limited merely to man;
+Kindness to animals formed in his preaching
+  No less a part of his merciful plan.
+
+Hence by the Buddhists, in counting the corses
+  Heaping with horror the death-trampled plain,
+Not unremembered are thousands of horses,
+  Left unattended to die with the slain.
+
+What did war seem to these poor, driven cattle?
+  What was their part in the horrible fray
+Save to be shot in the fury of battle,
+  Or from exhaustion to fall by the way?
+
+Dragging huge guns over rocks and through mire,
+  Trembling with weakness, yet straining each nerve,
+Fated at last in despair to expire,
+  Uncomprehending, yet willing to serve!
+
+Nothing to them were the hopes of a nation;
+  "Czar" and "Mikado" were meaningless sounds;
+None of the patriot's deep inspiration
+  Softened the agony caused by their wounds.
+
+Not for these martyrs the skill of physician,
+  Ether for anguish or lint for a wound;
+Theirs but to lie in their crippled condition,
+  Thirsting and starving on shelterless ground.
+
+Hail to these quadrupeds, dead without glory!
+  Honor to him who their valor reveres!
+Spare to these heroes, unmentioned in story,
+  Something of sympathy, something of tears.
+
+
+
+
+A WINTER'S DAY
+
+Into my garden sweet and fair
+Brightly the sun at noonday shines,
+Melting the frost from the wintry air,
+Warming the trellis of leafless vines.
+
+Basking there in the genial heat,
+South of my sheltering vineyard wall,
+Strolling, I dream in my lov'd retreat,--
+The smile of the sun-god over all.
+
+Far too early a shadow dark,
+Cast by the neighboring mountain's crest,
+Stealthily creeps across the park,
+Bringing a chill from the sombre west.
+
+Little by little my sunlit space
+Shrinks to a narrowing path of light;
+Further and further with dread I trace
+The sure advance of approaching night.
+
+Soon will arrive its twilight pall;
+Then, as the potent change is felt,
+The fountain's drops will cease to fall
+And feathery films refuse to melt.
+
+But still in the solar warmth I wait,
+The hand of my lov'd one clasped in mine;
+Is that a tear? It is growing late,
+And she asks how long the sun will shine.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE PROMENADE
+
+O joyous idler in the sun,
+In pity slacken here thy pace!
+A lad, whose course is nearly run,
+Is watching thee with wistful face.
+
+The glow of health upon thy cheek,
+The youthful ardor in thy gait,
+Appear to him, so frail and weak,
+The bitter irony of Fate.
+
+Thou art to him the vision fair
+Of all he once had hoped to be;
+What wonder, then, that in despair
+His longing glances follow thee?
+
+Let not the gulf too deep appear
+Between thy fortune and his own!
+Thou didst not see that falling tear,
+Nor hear his low, half-stifled moan.
+
+The pang of age compared with youth,
+Or hunger with the spendthrift's wealth,
+Gnaws not with such a cruel tooth
+As that of pain confronting health.
+
+Yet must the strong ship breast the wave,
+The wreck lie rotting on the shore;
+O hopes that perish in the grave!
+O youthful dreams that come no more!
+
+
+
+
+SOLITUDE
+
+Had I but lived when music-loving Pan
+Still played his flute amid the whispering reeds,
+When through Arcadian groves the dryads ran,
+And--symbolizing well man's earlier creeds--
+A host of sculptured forms, divinely fair,
+Portrayed the gods, and led men's thoughts to prayer,
+
+I would have sought some beautiful retreat,
+Remote from cities and the din of men,--
+Some tranquil shore where lake and forest meet
+By limpid stream or flower-lit, sylvan glen,
+And would have reared, where none could e'er intrude,
+A shrine to thee, O precious Solitude!
+
+How hath a heedless world neglected thee,
+Thou coy divinity, too shy and proud
+To sue for followers from those who see
+Attraction merely in the strenuous crowd!
+For only those can know thee, as thou art,
+Who wisely seek and study thee ... apart.
+
+No rapt enthusiast, or mystic sage,
+No Asian founder of a faith divine,
+No bard, or writer of inspired page
+Hath ever failed to worship at thy shrine,
+O Nourisher of steadfast self-control,
+Of noble thoughts, of loftiness of soul!
+
+Yet no continuous homage dost thou crave,
+No anchorite's seclusion wouldst thou ask,
+Thou lov'st no misanthrope or sullen slave,
+But only those who, faithful to life's task,
+Must yet at times look upward from the clod,
+And seek through thee acquaintanceship with God.
+
+
+
+
+OUT OF THE RANKS
+
+From the bitter fight I have made my way
+To the peaceful crest of a lonely hill,
+But the noise and heat of the deadly fray
+And the smart of wounds are with me still.
+
+No recreant I to a noble cause,
+Nor traitor base to a leader bold;
+'Twas a fight where he won most applause
+Who captured most of his neighbor's gold;
+
+Where the wounded crawled away to die,
+Or, hopeless, ate their bread with tears,
+And the only cries that rent the sky
+Were the shouts of frenzied financiers.
+
+Alas for the prematurely gray,
+Who struggle there through joyless lives
+To win the means of more display
+For thankless children, thoughtless wives!
+
+Alas for those whose spirits yearn
+For leisure, books, and sunlit fields,
+Who yet can never pause to learn
+The joy that a life of culture yields!
+
+Still sway the mad crowds to and fro!
+I hear their groans and panting breath,
+The hideous impacts, blow on blow,
+The moans of those who are crushed to death!
+
+None stoop to lift up those who fall;
+A thousand leap for a vacant place,
+Thrust weaker thousands to the wall,
+And trample many an upturned face!
+
+But I, however the fight may go,
+Have turned my back on the sordid fray,
+To face the tranquil sunset-glow,
+And hope for the dawn of a better day.
+
+
+
+
+AUTONOMY
+
+Stand forth, my soul, and take thine own!
+Though all should blame thee, have no fear!
+Self-poised and steadfast, dare alone
+Thy self-elected course to steer.
+
+Before thee lies the open sea;
+Beyond it is the wished-for shore;
+The route that seemeth best to thee
+Select, and hesitate no more!
+
+For he who lives the timorous slave
+Of social plaudits or disdain,
+Drags feebly to a nameless grave
+A craven's ever-lengthening chain.
+
+Are thy plans noble, just, and fair?
+Pursue them bravely to the end,
+Nor pause to question or to care
+What says thy foe, or what thy friend.
+
+Succeed, and thou shalt surely find
+That those who longed to see thee fail,
+And, lingering hopelessly behind,
+Spat venom on thine upward trail,
+
+Shall run to reach thee on thy path,
+To grasp thy hand and say "'Twas well";
+Or, distant, gnaw their lips in wrath,
+Their envious hearts a living hell.
+
+Forever, flint-like, set thy face
+Against the loss of self-control;
+Compel the world to keep its place;
+Be thou the captain of thy soul!
+
+
+
+
+ORIENT TO OCCIDENT, 1906
+
+You thought me sunk in lethargy, too deeply drugged with sleep
+To notice how your armored fleets kept creeping o'er the deep,
+Too indolent to organize, too feeble to resist,
+Too timid to return the blow of Europe's mailèd fist;
+And Asia's conquest seemed to you a matter of such ease
+That all your kings knew perfectly the part which each would seize.
+Of such a "sluggish, inert mass" why should you be afraid?
+You wanted ports and provinces for purposes of trade,
+And monster "spheres of influence", whose wealth could be controlled
+And plundered by your Governments to fill their vaults with gold;
+Hence, since it seemed so probable that none of us would fight,
+Why should you even hesitate to prove that Might makes Right?
+
+And yet perhaps it had been well, before you formed your plan,
+To study Asia's history from Persia to Japan;
+For though the sleeping Orient, like grain before the blast,
+May bow its head, it rights itself when once the storm is past.
+How often has the Occident invaded our domains
+And boasted of its victories! Yet of them what remains?
+Seems India exceptional? Fools, judge not by a day!
+The horologe of centuries moves slowly in Cathay.
+The brilliant son of Macedon saw, crushed and pale with fear,
+The vanquished East from Babylon to Egypt and Cashmere;
+But though the conquered Orient lay helpless, as his slave,
+Of Alexander's influence how much survived his grave?
+Of Rome's prodigious armaments, to Asian conquests led,
+Where is there now a souvenir save relics of the dead?
+And of the vast Crusading hosts, which in their madness rose
+And hurled themselves repeatedly upon their Moslem foes,--
+What is to-day the net result? A thousand years have passed,
+But none of all their vaunted gains proved great enough to last;
+The Saviour's tomb, Jerusalem, and all the sacred lands
+Connected with the Christian faith are still in Asian hands!
+
+We needed rude awakening to rouse us from our sloth;
+It came among our northern isles, whose heroes, nothing loth,
+Unbarred their ports to modern fleets, their ancient life forswore,
+And learned from greedy foreigners the Christians' art of war.
+Behold! the world in fifty years is breathless with surprise,
+And Europe's greatest Government has sought us for allies!
+That little section of our mass aroused itself, and lo!
+Your largest Occidental Power has reeled beneath the blow;
+And while our living troops receive men's rapturous acclaim,
+Our fallen heroes have attained the Pantheon of fame.
+Yet think not we deceive ourselves; you praise, but really dread
+The valour of the Orient, if this awakening spread;
+Behind this movement of the East you think you hear the low,
+Long murmur of the Asians,--"The foreigner must go"!
+What wonder that we hate you all? You look on us to-day
+As lions look on antelopes,--their heaven-appointed prey;
+You know you have no lawful right to lands that you possess;
+You gained them all through violence, or lying and finesse;
+Your cursed opium alone, despite our prayers and tears,
+Has ruined millions of our race for more than two score years,
+And when we rose indignantly to right that bitter wrong,
+Your heavy guns bombarded us, and you annexed ... Hong Kong!
+You force yourselves on us, and ask concessions, favors, mines,
+Protection for your mission schools, and grants of railway lines,
+But when we cross the seas to you, an entry you refuse,
+And curse, illtreat, and harry us with loathing and abuse.
+Japan has shown the only way of keeping for our own
+The fertile fields which rightfully belong to us alone;
+We do not wish to arm ourselves, and fighting we abhor,
+But self-protection forces us to learn and practise war.
+
+Hence, if assailed, we shall not shun a struggle with the West;
+Not bent on conquest, like yourselves, but, rising to the test
+Of "Asia for the Asians", defend our threatened farms
+By sending to encounter you a million men in arms.
+You think yourselves invincible? Learn something from Japan,
+The fever of whose chivalry now spreads from man to man,
+Encouraging the Orient to hasten on the day
+When all enlightened Asians shall cry "Enough! Away!
+Go exploit helpless Africa, where you have shamed the beast,
+But understand, your cruel day is over in the East!"
+You still have many things to learn, base worshippers of gold;
+When you were wild barbarians, our Governments were old!
+Your self-conceit and arrogance we therefore laugh to scorn;
+We had our laws millenniums before your courts were born.
+You talk by electricity, you ride on wings of steam,
+You thunder with machinery,--and these you proudly deem
+The grandest triumphs of the race, forgetting that mere speed
+In transference of men and things is less than one great deed.
+
+You treat us condescendingly, as if our gifts were small,
+But do you think Almighty God has dowered you with all?
+Earth's greatest continent is ours; her highest mountains rise
+In unapproached sublimity beneath our starry skies;
+Ours, too, the cradle of the race; and at our Buddha's shrine
+Unequalled numbers of mankind adore him as divine.
+How dare you speak of Asian thought with pity or a sneer,
+When practically all you know originated here?
+What had you been, if our ideals, in art and faith expressed,
+Had not come down through Greece and Rome to civilize your West?
+The great religions of the world are all of Asian birth,
+And thence went forth resistlessly to dominate the earth.
+Of six we granted one to you; and you profess its creeds,
+But what a sorry travesty you make of it in deeds!
+The Christ taught love to enemies; His followers to-day
+Have trained the whole male Christian world their fellow men to slay!
+The very Bible that you prize was writ by Asian hands;
+Your prophets, saints, and patriarchs were all of Eastern lands;
+The Son of God, as you believe, was born a humble Jew;
+The Virgin Mother equally no other parents knew;
+Yet you have robbed and tortured Jews, and murdered them at will
+Through eighteen Christian centuries,--are killing thousands still!
+
+The "Star of Empire," as you claim, has "westward" made its way;
+But what if now in Eastern skies it heralds a new day?
+You fondly dreamed its brilliant course had ended there with you,
+But on it moves, old lands to greet, and belt the globe anew!
+Its kindling rays revivify our nations, which have slept
+While round the world our influence through you has slowly crept.
+The coming century's great deeds lie not at Europe's doors;
+A grander stage awaits mankind,--the vast Pacific's shores;
+And we not only skirt that sea from Tokyo to Saigon,
+Our coastline fronts the western world from Syria to Ceylon!
+Again shall we supply to you the part of life you need;
+Again your slaves of strenuous toil shall live at slower speed;
+Once more, as pilgrims to a shrine, your chiefs shall come to me,
+And learn of my philosophy, as children at my knee.
+You cannot cut me from your past, nor cancel what you owe
+For all my sages gave to you two thousand years ago;
+For after twenty centuries you think, and speak, and pray
+Still much as I instructed you in Syria and Cathay.
+Keep you, then, the material, I hold the mental, realm;
+For you the ship's machinery, for me the guiding helm!
+
+
+
+
+THE CAPTIVE
+
+I opened the cage of my pet canary;
+Timid, it faltered a moment there,
+Then, at my call, became less wary,
+And blithely sprang to the buoyant air.
+
+Brief was its dream of freedom's rapture;
+A window barred its sunward flight;
+It beat its wings in fear of capture,
+But found no way to the world of light.
+
+Out in the park two birds were mating,
+Building together their tiny nest;
+Keenly the captive watched them, waiting,
+Pressing the glass with its throbbing breast.
+
+Leaving at length the window-casing,
+Lighting by chance on a neighboring shelf,
+It stood before a mirror, facing
+The pretty form of its own sweet self.
+
+Falling in love with its own reflection,
+Thinking it always another bird,
+Bravely it tried to win affection,
+Warbling tones I had never heard.
+
+Hopeless alas! its tender wooing,
+Vainly it trilled its sweetest note,
+Coldly received was its ardent sueing,
+Silent the mirrored songster's throat.
+
+Wearied at last, it flew off sadly,
+Back to the cage's open door,
+Back to the home it left so gladly
+Only a little hour before.
+
+Dead are the lovers so fondly mated!
+Gone is their nest; it was blown away!
+But safe in the narrow cage it hated
+The captive sings on its perch to-day.
+
+
+
+
+WEARINESS
+
+Snowy sails, silvery sails,
+Gleaming in the sun,
+Leaving scores of jewelled trails
+In the course you run,
+
+On your white wings bear away
+All my care and pain;
+I would for at least to-day
+Be a child again.
+
+Just to thrill with youthful fire,
+Kindling heart and brain,
+Just to know the old desire
+Lofty heights to gain;
+
+Just to hold the simple faith
+Into which I grew,
+When my God was not a wraith,
+And all men were true!
+
+Shadowed sails, clouded sails,
+Life hath made me know
+That you leave no jewelled trails,
+Proudly though you go;
+
+Drops that floods of diamonds seem
+Are but dazzling spray,
+Fleeting as a happy dream,
+Swift to fade away.
+
+Distant sails, waning sails,
+Waft me to some shore
+Where corroding care prevails
+Never, nevermore!
+
+Where the flotsam of the deep
+Finds its wanderings cease,
+And the shipwrecked sink to sleep
+On the strand of peace.
+
+
+
+
+A MAY MONODY
+
+Beside my opened window pane,
+Each morning in this month of May
+A blackbird sings in dulcet strain
+Two liquid notes, which seem to say
+  "Come again! Come again!"
+
+Alike in sunshine and in rain,
+Now loud and clear, now soft and low,
+He warbles forth the same refrain,
+Which haunts me with its hint of woe,--
+  "Come again! Come again!"
+
+What bird, whose absence gives him pain,
+Doth he thus tenderly recall?
+What longed-for joy would he regain
+By those two words which rise and fall,--
+  "Come again! Come again!"
+
+Sometimes, when I too long have lain
+And listened to his plaintive air,
+An impulse I cannot restrain
+Hath moved me too to breathe that prayer,--
+  "Come again! Come again!"
+
+O vanished youth, when faith was plain,
+When hopes were high, and manhood's years
+Showed dazzling summits to attain;
+O days, ere eyes grew dim with tears,--
+  "Come again! Come again!"
+
+O friends, whose memory leaves no stain,
+O dearly loved and early lost!
+Do you your love for me retain
+Beyond the silent sea you crossed?
+  "Come again! Come again!"
+
+Alas! sweet bird, all life moves on;
+The seed becomes the ripened grain,
+And what is past is gone, is gone!
+Cease calling, therefore,--'tis in vain--,
+  "Come again! Come again!"
+
+
+
+
+MY LOST FRIENDS
+
+One by one they have slipped from Earth,
+And vanished into the depths of space,
+And I, beside my lonely hearth,
+Find none to take their place.
+
+Never a word of fond farewell
+Fell from their lips ere they were gone;
+Never a hint since then to tell
+If after night came dawn!
+
+Latest of all to thus depart,
+Still is thy hand-clasp warm in mine;
+Wilt thou not tell me where thou art?
+Canst thou impart no sign?
+
+Wild are the winds above thy grave;
+Cold is the form I loved so well;
+But what to thee are storms that rave,
+Or the snow that last night fell?
+
+Out in the awful void of night,
+Numberless suns and planets roll;
+Has one of all those isles of light
+Received thy homeless soul?
+
+Mute is the sky as an empty tomb;
+Trackless the path, and all unknown;
+What means this journey through its gloom,
+Which each must make alone?
+
+Vain is the task; I strive no more
+To learn the secret of their fate;
+Till sounds for me the muffled oar,
+I can but hope and wait.
+
+But well I know they have gone from me
+Into the silent depths of space,
+Across a vast, uncharted sea,
+Whose shores I cannot trace.
+
+
+
+
+TO SLEEP AND TO FORGET
+
+To sleep and to forget,--O blessèd guerdon!
+The day is waning, and the night draws near;
+My failing heart grows weary of its burden;
+Why should I therefore hesitate or fear
+           To sleep and to forget?
+
+Though bright my skies with transient gleams of gladness,
+And sweet the breath of many a summer sea,
+Yet, under all, a haunting note of sadness
+Forever lures me in its minor key
+           To sleep and to forget.
+
+Of petty souls whose joy is defamation,
+Of malice, envy, cruelty, and greed
+Each day supplies its sickening revelation,
+And makes imperative my spirit's need
+           To sleep and to forget.
+
+Let others bravely plan for death's to-morrow,
+And crave fresh progress toward a higher goal!
+Appalled by Earth's long tragedy of sorrow,
+I humbly ask one favor for my soul,
+           When this life's sun is set,--
+           To sleep and to forget.
+
+
+
+
+IN SILENCE
+
+She sees our faces bright and gay,
+Our moving lips, our laughing eyes,
+But scarce a word of what we say
+Can pass the zone that round her lies;--
+
+A zone of stillness,--strange, profound,
+Invisible to mortal eye,
+Upon whose verge the waves of sound
+In muffled murmurs break and die.
+
+Across that silent void she strains
+To catch at least some wingèd word,
+And, though she fails, still smiles and feigns
+The poor pretence of having heard.
+
+That smile! Its pathos wrings the heart
+Of many a friend, who yet conceals
+The tears that from his eyelids start,
+The grief and pity that he feels.
+
+And she, aware of our distress,
+And sadly conscious of her own,
+Still bravely speaks, nor dares confess
+That our real meaning is unknown.
+
+What rapture, when the closing door
+Shuts out the world and gives release,
+And on her quivering nerves once more
+Descends the benison of peace!
+
+No longer forced to dimly read
+Men's meanings from their lips and looks,
+Her greatest joy, her only need
+The sweet companionship of books!
+
+Do we thus ever fully know
+The boon of leaving far behind
+The world's dull tales of crime and woe,
+The gossip of its vacant mind?
+
+What if her loss be really gain,
+That zone of silence a defence,
+A compensation for her pain,
+A quickening of her psychic sense?
+
+Perhaps when fall at last away
+The chains which bind her spirit here,
+A voice divine will gently say
+In tones which reach alone her ear,--
+
+"While others in that world of sin
+Heard evil things, to thee unknown,
+Apart from that defiling din
+Thy spirit grew, in strength, alone.
+
+"They must through other lives return
+To slowly earn thy strength of soul;
+Through suffering only couldst thou learn
+The virtue that hath made thee whole."
+
+
+
+
+AT THE VILLA OF THE EMPEROR FREDERICK III AT SAN REMO
+
+San Remo's palms in beauty stand
+  Beside the storied sea,
+Where azure band and golden sand
+  Are wedded ceaselessly;
+For from the deep, which seems to sleep,
+  The slow waves, long and low,
+Their journeys done, break one by one
+  In rhythmic ebb and flow.
+
+Before me lies a fair retreat,
+  Whose every breath brings balm
+From plants replete with odors sweet
+  And many a fronded palm;
+Hence at its gate I, spellbound, wait
+  To feast my gladdened eyes
+On buds that wake and flowers that make
+  A perfumed paradise.
+
+Alas, that love could not avail
+  To guard this sweet repose!
+That strength should fail, and life prove frail
+  And fleeting as the rose!
+So fair! and yet, who can forget
+  The heir to Prussia's throne,
+Who here fought death with labored breath,
+  And faced the great Unknown?
+
+O Spirit of the Fatherland,
+  O love that changeth not,
+Thy filial hand hath made this strand
+  A consecrated spot;
+For on the wall, where roses fall,
+  Bronze words recall his fate,--
+A sceptre won ... when life was done,
+  An empire gained ... too late!
+
+"Halt, wanderer from a German shore!"
+  (Thus runs the sad refrain,)
+"Here dwelt thine Emperor, here he bore
+  With fortitude his pain;
+Hear'st thou the lone, low monotone
+  Of billows tempest-tossed?
+In that long roll the German soul
+  Still mourns for him she lost."
+
+San Remo's stately palms still rise
+  Beside the storied shore;
+But he now lies 'neath northern skies,
+  At peace forevermore,
+In that calm, deep, untroubled sleep,
+  Whose secret none may know,
+While, one by one,--their courses run,--
+  The long waves ebb and flow.
+
+
+
+
+IN A COLUMBARIUM
+
+The autumn sun still bravely streams
+Along the tomb-girt Appian Way,
+And warms the heart of one who dreams
+Of all its splendor on the day
+When Scipio triumphed, bringing home
+The spoils of Africa to Rome.
+
+On this same road the conqueror came,
+Called "Africanus, the Divine"
+By thousands who adored his fame,
+And proudly watched the endless line
+Of Punic captives in his train,
+And trophies, won on Zama's plain.
+
+To-day the vast Campagna rolls
+In stately grandeur to the sea,
+But where are now the countless souls
+Whose dwelling-place this used to be,
+When all its space to Ostia's gate
+Lay peopled and inviolate?
+
+Ask of the Claudian arches gray
+Which stride toward Rome in broken lines;
+Ask of the lizards at their play
+On relics of the Antonines;
+Ask of the fever-blighted shore,
+Where Roman galleys ride no more!
+
+Yet some poor traces still remain
+Of those who here have lived and died;
+For underneath this solemn plain
+The Christian catacombs still hide,--
+A city of sepulchral gloom,
+The martyrs' labyrinthine tomb.
+
+Moreover, in this classic soil,
+Where sleeps so much of ancient Rome,
+A simple peasant at his toil
+Discovered 'neath the upturned loam
+The spot to which I now have come,--
+A Roman Columbarium.
+
+Down through its modern, open door
+A flood of mellow sunshine falls
+In golden waves from roof to floor,
+Revealing in its moss-grown walls
+The "dove-cotes", where one still discerns
+The fragments of old funeral urns.
+
+One vacant niche, whose ampler space
+Betokens special love and care,
+Contained no doubt a sculptured face
+Above the hallowed ashes there;
+While, just beneath, faint letters spell
+A faithful woman's fond farewell.
+
+How often on love's wingèd feet
+She doubtless sought this dear recess,
+To deck with floral offerings sweet
+Her sepulchre of happiness,
+Whose script, despite two thousand years,
+Preserves the memory of her tears!
+
+Rome's annals hint not of the name
+Of him whose dust lay treasured here,
+But could the fleeting breath of fame
+Have made him to her heart more dear?
+A word of tenderness outweighs
+In woman's soul a world of praise.
+
+What though, remote from pomp and state,
+At Caesar's court he could not shine?
+Less blest had surely been his fate
+Upon the lustful Palatine!
+And mutual love, wherever viewed,
+Is life's supreme beatitude.
+
+Alas! the urn no longer stands
+Within the little alcove dim;
+Gone also are the faithful hands
+That hung sweet roses on its rim;
+And vanished even is the bust
+Which watched above the sacred dust.
+
+Yet still its words of love survive
+The shocks and tragedies of time,
+And bid our drooping hearts revive,
+Inculcating the faith sublime
+That, while the urn in ruin lies,
+Love soars immortal to the skies.
+
+
+
+
+DISCOURAGEMENT
+
+"Forward, comrades, ever forward"!
+Shout the leaders in the fight;
+"Scale the ramparts! Plant the standard
+On the citadel of light!
+
+"Break the chains of superstition!
+Crush corruption! Free the slave!
+Plant the flowers of love and mercy
+On the past's ensanguined grave!
+
+"Toward the strongholds of oppression
+Lead again the hope forlorn!
+See! the night is disappearing;
+Lo! the coming of the morn"!
+
+Bravely said; yet men have spoken
+Just as bravely long ago,
+When the hair had raven blackness
+Which is now as white as snow;
+
+And alas! how many thousands
+Have responded to that call,
+Whose forgotten corpses moulder
+By the still beleaguered wall!
+
+Forms have changed and words have altered,
+But the things remain the same;
+Still doth man enslave his brother,--
+Always master, save in name.
+
+Still are God's dumb creatures tortured,
+Racial hatreds never cease,
+And man's greatest self-delusion
+Is the shibboleth of "Peace."
+
+Hence, while youth, with hope and courage,
+Loudly vents its noble rage;
+Age, profoundly disillusioned,
+Sad and silent leaves the stage.
+
+Round the classic Inland Ocean,
+Where the Roman world held sway,
+Storied shores are iridescent
+With the splendor of decay;
+
+Persia, Syria, Egypt, Athens,
+Proud Byzantium, Carthage, Spain,--
+In their mournful desolation
+Hear the old sea's sad refrain:--
+
+"Rising, falling, waxing, waning,
+Men and nations come and go;
+Reaching glory, then declining,
+As the ebb succeeds the flow.
+
+"All florescence is but fleeting:
+Each in turn enjoys its day,
+Hath its seed-time, bud and flower,
+And as surely fades away.
+
+"Growth, maturity, decadence,--
+Form mankind's unchanging role,
+And the dead past's sombre ruins
+Are prophetic of the whole."
+
+"Nay," you cry in bitter protest,
+"Shall man have no perfect end,
+No millennial culmination,
+Toward which all the ages tend?
+
+"Must all races prove decadent?
+Shall not one produce in time
+Perfect types of men and women
+In a world devoid of crime?"
+
+Scan the lurid past, and tell us
+On what ground you base your hopes!
+Does an endless line of failures
+Warrant brighter horoscopes?
+
+Hath not every race and nation
+Sunk from grandeur to decay?
+What shall save us, then, from ruin?
+Are we better men than they?
+
+"Great inventors", say you? Granted;
+Such material gifts are ours;
+Every age hath some distinction,
+Every race its special powers.
+
+But the progress is not lasting,
+And the special powers decline;
+Man's advance is never constant
+In one grand, unbroken line.
+
+Nor is ground, once lost, recovered;
+Greece and Rome are not replaced!
+All the sites of pagan learning
+Still lie desolate and waste.
+
+What know we,--except in physics--,
+That the ancients did not know?
+Are we wiser than the sages
+Of two thousand years ago?
+
+More devout than Hebrew prophets?
+More upright than Antonine?
+More accomplished than the Grecians,
+Or than Buddha more divine?
+
+And if such men could not hinder
+Fate's resistless rise and fall,
+How can we expect exemption
+From the common lot of all?
+
+Let us frankly face the prospect
+That man's progress here may fail;
+That the race may never triumph,
+But again descend the scale,
+
+Till the last surviving savage
+To his glacial cave retires,
+And earth's tragic drama closes,
+As humanity expires!
+
+And why not? All weaker species
+To the stronger yield their place;
+May the same law not be needed
+Through the boundless realms of space?
+
+By whatever beings peopled,
+Worlds that fail to meet the test
+May like fruitless blossoms perish;
+God will winnow out the best.
+
+Would you know our planet's value?
+View the star-strewn dome of night!
+In that shoreless sea of splendor
+What is one faint wave of light?
+
+Worlds by millions are revolving
+Through that vast, unfathomed main;
+Should our tiny orb make shipwreck,
+Worlds by millions would remain;
+
+Where perchance a real advancement
+May prevail from pole to pole,
+Without losses, without lapses,
+Toward a final, perfect goal.
+
+This at least can not be doubted,--
+That our globe will one day roll
+Cold and lifeless thro' its orbit,
+Like a corpse without its soul.
+
+Will mankind have reached perfection
+Ere that epoch has begun,
+Or grown bestial, as the heat-waves
+Issue feebly from the sun?
+
+None may know. Through blood-stained cycles
+We have thus far made our way:
+Of the unknown depths beneath us
+We are nothing but the spray.
+
+
+
+
+MÉSALLIANCE
+
+With gentle manners, winsome face,
+And forehead fit to wear a crown,
+How brilliant might have been her place,
+Had she not mated with a clown,--
+
+A Caliban of modern date,
+Ill-dressed, ill-shapen, ill at ease,
+With halting speech and awkward gait,
+And manners certain to displease!
+
+What secret motive could have led
+This charming girl her life to stain
+By condescending thus to wed
+A husband whom she must disdain?
+
+Far worthier men had vainly sought
+To win her for herself alone;
+What potent spell could Love have wrought
+To draw her to a tactless drone?
+
+A palace she might well have graced.
+And led its functions like a queen;
+Instead, her life has run to waste,
+The wraith of what it might have been.
+
+For boorishness hath brought its blight;
+Her rare accomplishments are marred,
+And every path, with promise bright,
+By stupid tyranny is barred.
+
+Yet still she bravely moves through life,
+Ignoring her pathetic fall;--
+A loveless, broken-hearted wife;
+Alas, the pity of it all!
+
+
+
+
+IN A MODERN CITY
+
+Dreary fog and drizzling sleet,
+And a lamp-lit track of slime;
+Phantoms dim in the misty street,
+Vanishing, streaked with grime;
+Overhead in a spurious night,
+Formed by the vapors dun,
+Wraith-like globes of haloed light,
+Mocking the hidden sun;--
+
+Children, shod in sodden shoes,
+(That is a sight that hurts;)
+Women, furrowing filthy ooze
+In thin, bedraggled skirts;
+Horses, lashed with cruel zest,
+Ploughing the fumid fog;
+Hark! ... a car, with no arrest,
+Killing a howling dog;--
+
+Clanging trams, with haggard men
+Forcing their way within,--
+Some compressed in a steaming-pen,
+Others soaked to the skin;
+Smoke and soot in the murky sky,
+Death in the tainted air,
+Each aware, were he to die,
+None in the crowd would care;--
+
+Here and there a carriage fine,
+Cleaving the reeking mass;
+Scowling faces, ranged in line,
+Watching the rich man pass;
+Envy's gleam in many an eye,
+Hate in many a threat;
+Why should he be warm and dry,
+And they be cold and wet?
+
+Pictures these of the "Passing Show,"
+Scenes in a world gone wrong,
+Wretched weaklings, born to woe,
+Crushed by the brutal strong!
+Breaking hearts that crave release,
+Slaves to a ceaseless strife! ...
+I will go back to sylvan peace
+And a sight of the Source of Life.
+
+
+
+
+MY BORES
+
+I take their hands with placid smile
+And words which social rules enforce,
+Though sadly conscious all the while
+Of something very like remorse,
+Because beneath the mask I wear
+I really wish they were not there.
+
+Their visits I at heart resent;
+The half-read volume haunts my thought;
+The urgent note remains unsent;
+The verse, unfinished, comes to naught;
+And all because, on some pretence,
+They waste their time at my expense.
+
+Yet no grim misanthrope am I,
+Who fears, distrusts, and hates his race;
+I merely wish them to pass by,
+And seek some other lounging-place;
+For, frankly, I should love them more
+A little further from my door.
+
+In vain I make no answering calls;
+They blandly smile and come again!
+Nay, even bring within my walls
+More curious strangers in their train,
+"Who wished so much your home to see!"
+Why do they never think of me?
+
+The few I want I can invite;
+Hence why should others thus intrude?
+How dare they give themselves the right,
+Unasked, to spoil my solitude?
+And why presume I care to know
+More triflers in their world of show?
+
+Their idle life, on pleasure bent,
+Their mania for some silly game,
+Their hours in stupid gossip spent,--
+Would give me self-contempt and shame;
+Between us is no common ground
+On which a comradeship to found.
+
+A word or two upon the street
+Suffice me with the most of men;
+Beyond a greeting, when we meet.
+I care not if we speak again;
+My books and Nature's charming face
+Such human consorts well replace.
+
+Not all, indeed; for who but yearns
+To call some kindred heart his own?
+Some friend to whom he fondly turns,
+And with whom he is still alone,
+Since each, while absolutely free,
+Respects the other's privacy.
+
+To such his pent-up love o'erflows;
+With such his soul's seclusion ends;
+For each the other's nature knows,
+And every motive comprehends;
+So perfectly do both agree,
+So close their bond of sympathy!
+
+But those who come to wear away
+With me the time they deem a bore,
+And blithely rob me of a day
+Which God Himself cannot restore--
+From such, at risk of being rude,
+I will preserve my solitude.
+
+Their vapid visits I refuse;
+Their forced attachment I decline;
+I surely have the right to choose
+The friends, whose lives shall blend with mine;
+My bark shall gain the open sea
+With but the few I love and me.
+
+
+
+
+GRATITUDE
+
+The sun is on the mountain crest,
+The sky without a cloud,
+The moon is slipping down the west,
+The robin's song is loud;
+White blossoms crown the apple trees,
+The dew is on the thorn,
+The scent of roses fills the breeze,--
+Thank God, another morn!
+
+The sunset embers smoulder low,
+The moon climbs o'er the hill,
+The peaks have caught the alpenglow,
+The robin's song is still;
+The hush of peace is on the earth,
+With stars the sky grows bright,
+The fire is kindled on my hearth,--
+Thank God, another night!
+
+
+
+
+IN TENEBRIS
+
+All the lights have been extinguished
+In my closely-curtained room,
+Nothing now can be distinguished
+In the all-pervading gloom;
+And through darkness, so alluring,
+I would float away to sleep,
+Like a boat that slips its mooring,
+And moves gently toward the deep.
+
+How delightful this seclusion
+From the garish light of day,--
+All its turmoil and confusion
+Pushed, a little while, away!
+Neither men nor things shall try me
+Till to-morrow brings its light;
+Let my cares go drifting by me!
+I'll not think of them to-night.
+
+Social cant and empty phrases,
+Base returns for kindness shown,
+Envy's serpent-smile, and praises
+Which convey, for bread, a stone,--
+What a joy to have rejected
+All such griefs, of evil born!
+What a boon to feel protected
+From their advent until morn!
+
+Moon and stars, without, are gleaming
+Over snow-capped peaks sublime,
+But to-night I'll give to dreaming,
+Nor esteem it wasted time;
+Nay, through darkness, so alluring,
+I will float away to sleep,
+Like a boat that slips its mooring,
+And moves gently toward the deep.
+
+
+
+
+TWO MOTHERS
+
+One night two lonely women met
+Beside a storm-swept bay;
+With tears their mournful eyes were wet,
+Their pale lips salt with spray;
+They passed; then turned, as though each yearned
+Some friendly word to say.
+
+"Poor soul", cried one, "hast thou no fear
+To walk this haunted strand?
+What hopeless sorrow brings thee here,
+Where dead men drift to land?
+I too have grief beyond relief;
+Speak! I can understand."
+
+"I mourn a son", the other said;
+"That ocean is his grave;
+My heart will not be comforted,
+It breaks with every wave;
+Would I might sleep in yonder deep
+With him I could not save!
+
+"The wind was raging, as to-night;
+Straight on these rocks it blew;
+I watched until the dawning light
+Disclosed the wreck to view;
+From where we stand I saw his hand
+Wave me a last adieu!
+
+"He deemed the boat too frail to bear
+Another living freight;
+'Push off'! he said with tranquil air,
+'Go first, and I will wait;'
+But all the while, despite his smile,
+He knew 'twould be too late.
+
+"That heartless crew shall nevermore
+God's absolution find!
+They watched, like cravens, from the shore
+The man they left behind
+Go down before the breakers' roar,
+The surges and the wind!
+
+"Hence, when such maddened tempests rave,
+I cannot rest at home,
+For then the billows deck his grave
+With flowers of snow-white foam;
+And here I pray till break of day
+Beneath night's starless dome."
+
+A silence fell; then, faint and low,
+The other, weeping, said;
+"My heavier woe thou needst not know;
+Within his ocean bed
+On thy son's name there rests no shame;
+Would God that mine were dead!"
+
+
+
+
+AT HOCHFINSTERMÜNZ
+
+Once more between its walls of pines
+I see the long ravine expand
+To where the ice-world's crystal lines
+Define the realm of Switzerland.
+
+Once more, a thousand feet below,
+I watch the river's silver sheen,
+As, foaming in its fettered flow,
+It rushes from the Engadine.
+
+Forever young, forever old,
+This gorge, where stream with forest blends,
+These glittering peaks, these glaciers cold,--
+Are all to me familiar friends.
+
+I know, alas, their towering forms
+Of unresponsive rocks and snow
+Are heartless as their wintry storms,
+And heed not if I come or go;
+
+Yet none the less I love to trace
+Their stainless crests along the sky,
+And, as I greet each well-known face,
+Each seems in turn to make reply.
+
+So potent is the subtle spell
+That clothes such masses with a mind;
+So strong the instincts which impel
+Their lover answering love to find!
+
+What if in truth there really be
+A soul within them to adore;
+Some half-revealed Divinity,
+Whose presence haunts us evermore?
+
+Some Power, to read our hearts, and know
+How this wild beauty moves our tears;
+Some God that, as our spirits grow,
+Shall be discerned in after years?
+
+Instinctively did earlier man
+See fauns and dryads in the trees,
+And find in universal Pan
+The soul of Nature's mysteries.
+
+All is divine,--the bird that sings,
+The flowers that bloom, the waves that roll;
+One Spirit quickens men and things,
+And stirs alike the sun and soul.
+
+Great Nature's God! however styled,
+I love thee, and upon thy breast
+Would gladly lie,--a grateful child,
+And, dying, trust thee for the rest.
+
+
+
+
+THE GIFT OF JUNO
+
+Already 'neath the morning star
+The shrine, by Juno's favor blest,
+Had flashed its whiteness from afar,
+Resplendent on a mountain's crest,
+Along whose base the ocean rolled
+A flood of sapphire, flecked with gold.
+
+In twilight still the shore remained;
+But, toiling upward through the night,
+A wistful mother had just gained
+The summit of the sacred height,
+Where Juno's far-famed statue stood,--
+Palladium of motherhood.
+
+At her approach the bolts were drawn,
+And inward swung the temple gate,
+Revealing in the light of dawn
+The marble form immaculate,
+The effigy of heaven's queen,
+Sublime, beneficent, serene.
+
+Slow-moving and with fluttering heart,
+The youthful matron onward passed
+To where that masterpiece of art
+Repaid her arduous toil at last;
+As, gazing through a mist of tears,
+She realized here the dream of years.
+
+Beside her, one on either hand,
+Two little children stood in fear,
+Unable yet to understand
+The reason of their coming here;
+Both beautiful in form and face,
+True types of the Hellenic race.
+
+No fairer pilgrims ever came
+Within the temple's stately door;
+No sweeter picture could it frame
+Than that upon its marble floor,
+When, in the hush of dawning day,
+The lovely trio knelt to pray.
+
+"Immortal goddess, not in vain
+Do mothers lift their souls to thee;
+Their love, their hopes, their fears, their pain
+Thy heart can feel, thine eyes can see;
+Deign, therefore, my sweet babes to bless,
+O Juno, fount of tenderness!
+
+"To thy divine, all-seeing eyes
+The course of every life is clear;
+I pray thee, note what future lies
+Before these helpless children here;
+Then, of the gifts by thee possessed,
+Give them but one; choose thou the best!"
+
+She paused, and waited for reply,
+While solemn stillness filled the shrine;
+Heard something like a gentle sigh,
+Or passing of a breath divine;
+Then saw their eyes, like petals, close
+In death's sweet, statue-like repose.
+
+Repose, unbroken evermore!
+The world of suffering still unknown!
+Escaping through that peaceful door
+From every ill life might have shown.
+Heart-broken mother, cease to weep!
+The best was given them,--dreamless sleep.
+
+
+
+
+THE AWAKENING
+
+Let me sleep on! I would not waken yet,
+Or leave too soon the peaceful realm of dreams!
+There, lulled by placid Lethe, I forget
+The tumult raging on Earth's roaring streams;
+Doubt not that, later, I shall surely meet
+With steadfast soul Day's ceaseless, sordid strife,
+But now I crave again that strangely sweet
+    Oblivion of life;--
+
+That tranquil sleep, whose cooling shadow stills
+The throbbing forehead and the fevered brain,
+Which soothes to rest all sense of present ills,
+Of poignant sorrow and persistent pain;
+O gift divine, O boon beyond compare,
+God's benediction at the evening's close,
+The antidote of grief, the cure of care,
+    The kingdom of repose!
+
+Too late ... the spell is broken ... I awake;
+How swift the rush of memory's turning tide,
+Whose ruthless waves the will's frail barriers break,
+And flood the cells where consciousness would hide!
+Alas, how mad and fierce the world appears!
+How dark and ominous the future seems!
+I rise to face them ... yet recall through tears
+    The quiet land of dreams.
+
+
+
+
+THE WINE OF LIFE
+
+Earthen jar of quaint design,
+Fragile clay and slender mould,
+I shall soon have drained the wine
+Which you still contrive to hold,--
+Wine that sixty years ago
+Seemed about to overflow.
+
+Few the draughts that now remain,
+And I husband them with care,
+For naught ever comes again
+That is once exhausted there,
+And the emptied jar is cast
+To the scrap-heap of the past.
+
+Oh, the wine we rashly waste
+When held brimming to the lip!
+What a difference in its taste
+When we drink it sip by sip,
+As a miser counts his gold
+On a hearth that leaves him cold!
+
+But why should we feel distress
+If the jar be far from filled?
+Though its contents may be less,
+Yet its essence is distilled,
+And the best wine always clears
+With the passing of the years.
+
+Fermentation is for youth,
+But serenity for age;
+For a knowledge of the truth
+Men have always sought the Sage,
+And though youth may live with zest,
+'Tis in age that one lives best.
+
+
+
+
+LIFE'S TRILOGY
+
+_Youth_ dreams of all the years shall hold,--
+Of poems writ, of battles won,
+Of statues made, of love, of gold,
+And honors, added one by one;
+How sweet the song of Hope, if sung,
+    When life is young!
+
+_Man's_ dreams are stern and few indeed;
+His youthful aims he finds despised,
+For in a world of strife and greed
+Ideals must be sacrificed;
+Alas, there is so little time
+    In manhood's prime!
+
+_Age_ dreams of what the years have brought,--
+The blots upon life's tear-dimmed scroll,
+The brave attempts that came to naught,
+The unsolved problems of the soul;
+How sadly is the tale retold,
+    When life is old!
+
+_Youth, Manhood, Age,_--the fatal Three!
+Illusion, Struggle, and Regret!
+So hath it been, so shall it be,
+And to what end? We know not yet;
+Still sweeps the mighty life-flood on,
+    Now here, now gone!
+
+Seed, bud, florescence, and decay
+In nature, races, nations, men;--
+Nay, Earth itself shall fail one day
+To feed its freezing brood! What then?
+Successive cycles, vast and small,--
+    Can these be all?
+
+Do all these swirls of suns and souls,
+Of spirit keen and senseless stone,
+Speed on to no appointed goals,
+Like sand along the desert blown,--
+Forever born from out the void,
+    To be destroyed?--
+
+Nay, Reason, shocked at anarchy,
+Demands an author and an aim,
+Seeks ever for the master-key
+To solve the mystery,--Whence came
+This starlit sea of Evermore,
+    Without a shore?
+
+And whence comes Life,--that occult Force,
+So rich in its prolific range,
+So frail and swift to run its course,
+Yet deathless in protean change?
+Must we not hope that Death will clear
+    The darkness here?
+
+Such hopes appear of little worth
+When, peering through our planet's bars,
+We picture this, our tiny Earth,
+Amid that wilderness of stars!
+Yet in those sun-strewn depths of space
+    It hath its place.
+
+Its rhythmic motion, tuned to time,
+Its awful rush, yet sure return,
+Make even our dim orb sublime,
+And we at last the truth discern,--
+With God is neither small nor great,
+    Nor soon, nor late.
+
+Unconscious actors,--it may be
+That here we painfully rehearse,
+In parts, whose plots we do not see,
+Some drama of the universe,--
+Advanced, as nobler grow our souls,
+    To loftier roles.
+
+
+
+
+MYSTERIES
+
+Bound to the earth in its headlong flight,
+Whence and whither we do not know,
+Cleaving the awful void of night
+With frost above and fire below,
+What is the goal toward which we fly?
+What does it mean to live and die?
+
+Under our feet a trembling shell,
+Pierced by a hundred lurid rents!
+Lower still a molten hell,
+Seen through its lava-belching vents!
+And men, within its blighting breath,
+Are charred, like leaves, to a shrivelled death.
+
+Thin is the rind on which we tread;
+It shakes, and a thousand lives are lost;
+The sea engulfs unnumbered dead;
+Each second scores of souls are tossed
+Into the stream that sweeps them on ...
+Whither? Who knows where they are gone?
+
+Over the earth-crust millions crawl,
+Fight for a little gold and grain,
+Then in a few years leave it all,
+Nevermore to be seen again!
+When will the tragic tale be told?
+And what of Man when the earth grows cold?
+
+Poised on the planet's rim we stand,
+Peering aghast into boundless space;
+Infinite depths on every hand,
+Never again in the self-same place;
+Dragged by the sun itself away
+On toward a point in the Milky Way.
+
+Not without companions we;
+Here and there gleam other fires,--
+Burning ships on a shoreless sea;
+Now and again a flame expires,
+One last, quivering shaft of light,
+Shot through a billion leagues of night.
+
+There in its last volcanic throes
+A dying world perhaps dissolves;
+Further still, where the sun-mist glows,
+A mighty, new-born sun evolves;
+Ceaseless change in an endless sky!
+What does it mean to live and die?
+
+
+
+
+STAR DRIFT
+
+The glaring sun hath ceased to shine;
+The solemn stars invade the sky;
+Again the welcome night is mine,
+Wherein to view the worlds on high;
+The night! when heaven bares its face,
+And man with reverent soul can trace
+The awful mysteries of space.
+
+Too long the shadeless solar blaze
+Hath forced my vision toward the sod;
+'Tis night alone that helps us raise
+Our thoughts from littleness to God,
+And by its darkness sets us free
+To gaze across what seems to be
+The portal of Eternity.
+
+I watch the stellar hosts ascend
+Their devious paths in slow array,
+And note the place where millions blend
+To form the fabled Milky Way,---
+That zone of radiant suns, whose light
+Hath needed centuries of flight
+To reach our little earth to-night,
+
+Through lenses scanned, its golden haze
+Resolves itself to points that glow
+In one stupendous, brilliant maze
+Of countless orbs, that come and go
+On pathways we may never learn,
+However long their light may burn,
+However ardently we yearn.
+
+Apparently so densely strewn,
+But oh! what gulfs those suns divide!
+As each pursues its course alone
+Beyond an interval as wide
+As that which yawns between our own
+And any of those star-seeds sown
+In astral gardens, still unknown.
+
+Sometimes from that resplendent sheen
+A new light gleams across the void,
+And, awe-struck, we conceive the scene
+Of two vast solar orbs destroyed;
+By fearful impact changed again,
+Unnumbered miles beyond our ken,
+To leagues of blazing hydrogen.
+
+Before such marvels, what are we
+To plume ourselves in foolish pride?
+Within that dim immensity
+How many suns and earths have died!
+The tiny mote on which we stand,
+However fair and finely planned,
+Is nothing but a grain of sand.
+
+To-day, as through the ages gone,
+By law impelled, by law restrained,
+Suns, planets, systems,--all sweep on
+Toward bourns still dark and unexplained;
+Some bright with youth, some dull with age,
+Their varied colors well presage
+Their distance from the final stage.
+
+For all are doomed at last to die!
+On heaven's blue sea each isle of fire,
+Of all that now enchant the eye,
+Must finally in gloom expire;
+Though all may still roll on, unseen,
+As blackened cinders, while between
+Dark, lifeless planets intervene.
+
+And then? The mind sinks back in dread!
+Such burnt-out worlds may well appal,
+If they must still continue dead,
+And universal night end all;
+But, one by one, as speed shall fail,
+Each may some rival mass assail,
+Till nebulas again prevail.
+
+But not for long! A refluent spurge
+Shall that destructive course reverse,
+And cause those sun-mists to converge
+To mould another universe;
+Again shall constellations rise,
+And suns and planets light the skies,
+And man regain his paradise.
+
+For thus with rhythmic sweep sublime
+Swings Chaos on to Cosmos; then
+In ages, measureless by time,
+Rolls Cosmos back to mist again,
+In one stupendous ebb and flow,
+As aeons come and aeons go,
+With all their freight of weal and woe.
+
+Hard, cruel, hopeless? It may be.
+We know too little to decide;
+Yet hope that o'er that starlit sea
+Some steadfast, God-directed tide
+Will one day bear us to a shore,
+Where we shall find our lost once more,
+And what was here unknown, adore.
+
+
+
+
+TYROLEAN
+
+
+OBERMAIS
+
+    Obermais! Obermais!
+    Charming bit of Paradise,
+Where the palm and snow are blended,
+Where life's joys seem never ended,
+Where the purl of limpid streams
+Haunts the traveller's deepest dreams;
+Girt by miles of terraced vines,
+Birthplace of the purest wines,
+Sheltered by imposing mountains,
+Musical from countless fountains,
+Bathed in sunshine, bright with flowers,
+Studded with old Roman towers,
+Castles, convents, shrines and walls,
+Whose strange history enthralls,--
+Jewel of fair South Tyrol,
+Thou hast won my heart and soul!
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTMENT
+
+Urge me no more! The mid-day toil is ended,
+And shadows lengthen from the radiant west;
+The glowing sun, with sumptuous clouds attended,
+    Sinks to its rest.
+
+I too would rest; an Indian-Summer beauty
+Gilds my life's autumn in a charming vale;
+No further quest of gold or fame seems duty;
+    Their splendors pale
+
+Tempt me no more! In vain are spread before me
+New plans of battle and rare hopes of gain;
+The sweeter airs of love and peace blow o'er me;
+    I will remain.
+
+Gone is the glamour of the heartless city;
+Hateful its traffic and its ceaseless roar;
+Slaves of its tyranny, you have my pity;
+    Urge me no more!
+
+Girdled by mountains, in a land of story,
+Nestles the high-walled garden of my home;
+Here, book in hand, I feast myself on glory,
+    Nor wish to roam.
+
+Each dawn brings rose-hued snow-peaks to my vision;
+Each eve's enchanting pageant thrills my soul;
+Day after day I find yet more elysian
+    Fair South Tyrol.
+
+Urge me no more! The riches of Golconda
+Could not allure me to the old-time task;
+Here, till the curtain falls, to live and ponder
+    Is all I ask.
+
+
+
+
+TO MERAN'S NORTHERN MOUNTAINS
+
+Breathe on my soul your everlasting calm,
+Majestic mountains, passionless and cold!
+Give to my spirit, drooping 'neath the palm,
+The rugged strength your changeless summits hold!
+
+So thin the azure veil that floats between
+My tropic flowers and your arctic snows,
+That one swift glance reveals to me the sheen
+Of your white bastions and my blossoming rose.
+
+Yet, though so near, my feet have never pressed
+Your silvered ramparts, etched along the sky:
+Untrodden crystal crowns each spotless crest;
+On virgin snows the sunset colors die.
+
+So near, yet unattainable! Ye seem
+Like awful deities, at whose command
+Man's evanescent life,--a fretful stream,
+One instant murmurs and is lost in sand.
+
+Splendid in sunshine, steadfast under storms,
+Facing the fiercest tempests with disdain,
+The blackest clouds that shroud your giant forms,
+Leave on your glittering panoply no stain.
+
+The setting sun will turn your gray to gold,
+The dawn will find your icy foreheads bare,
+And all your glacial armor, as of old,
+Will shine resplendent in the upper air.
+
+So from my life may all dark clouds depart!
+So may I come unscathed from Fate's worst blows!
+Yet with your strength, O Mountains, let my heart
+Retain, as well, the sweetness of the rose.
+
+
+
+
+AT SUNSET
+
+Belov'd Meran, supremely fair!
+With joy I greet thy peaks anew,
+And quaff again the crystal air
+That fills thy snow-rimmed bowl of blue.
+
+Once more through miles of trellised vines
+The purple bloom of vintage glows;
+Once more amid my palms and pines
+I breathe the perfume of the rose.
+
+Once more, as snow-crests far and wide
+Flush crimson in the Alpine glow,
+I sit and muse at eventide
+On Roman days of long ago.
+
+Across the valley, steeped in light,
+Uplifted toward the western skies,
+And flanked by many a snow-crowned height,
+The stately "Roman Terrace" lies;
+
+Whose fair expanse hath been a stage
+Where actors for two thousand years
+Have played, by turns, in every age
+Their varying roles of smiles and tears.
+
+Still through its mighty Vintschgau door
+The sunset streams in floods of gold;
+Still winding o'er its emerald floor,
+The river sparkles as of old.
+
+I watch the distant torrent leap
+From ledge to ledge, yet hear no sound;
+A ghostly path it seems, whose deep,
+Swift channel cleaves enchanted ground.
+
+Beside its waves, whose glittering spray
+Begems the gorge its flood hath worn,
+Rome's conquering legions made their way
+A score of years ere Christ was born.
+
+On yonder mound where frowns the wood,
+And curves the road with steep incline,
+A temple to Diana stood
+Before the age of Antonine.
+
+Near Schloss Tyrol's dismantled frame
+I see the ancient watchtower stand,
+Whence Caesar's guards with smoke or flame
+Flashed signals into Switzerland.
+
+And, nearer yet, Forst's stately walls
+Loom grandly from the darkening moor,
+Where still a dungeon-keep recalls
+The last Tyrolean Troubadour.
+
+Belov'd Meran! the splendid dower
+That Nature gave to South Tyrol
+Cannot alone explain thy power
+To captivate both mind and soul;
+
+I love thy sunshine, fruits and flowers,
+I love thy mountain-peaks sublime,
+But, best of all, thine agèd towers,--
+The ivied protégés of Time.
+
+Thus favored, while my sun of life
+Moves calmly toward a cloudless west,
+I crave no more the New World's strife
+And ceaseless turmoil of unrest;
+
+Content, within my garden walls,
+To let the Present's uproar cease,
+While on my tranquil spirit falls
+The Past's sweet benison of peace.
+
+
+
+
+POST NUBES LUX
+
+Sink, sullen rear-guard of the storm,
+Behind the Laugen's snowy crest!
+Already Rotheck's lordly form
+Stands spotless in the radiant west;
+Blow, winter wind, and clarify
+Our crystal air, our sapphire sky!
+
+Shine, Sun God! Give us life once more!
+Too long have clouds concealed thy face;
+Give to Meran the look she wore,
+When to her beauty, light, and grace
+I gladly yielded heart and soul,
+And made my home in fair Tyrol!
+
+Stupendous source of life and light!
+As in thy warmth my pulses thrill,
+Before thy glory and thy might
+I feel myself a Pagan still,
+And in my spirit's inmost shrine
+I half adore thee as divine.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOME-COMING FROM ROME
+
+Make haste! There is but one more turning!
+The horses cannot go too fast,
+So eagerly our hearts are yearning
+To see the longed-for home at last!
+
+Here is the shrine, the lamp still burning,
+Beside the vineyard's massive wall;
+And see, to welcome our returning,
+The banners on the flagstaffs tall!
+
+Before the gate, our servants, wearing
+Their brightest smiles, together stand,
+In quaint, Tyrolean style preparing
+To kiss respectfully the hand.
+
+Now, too, the dogs perceive their master,
+And rush to meet our carriage wheels;
+The loyal Leo first and faster,
+The dackels close upon his heels!
+
+How wild the joy, how loud the chorus
+Our old, familiar tones excite!
+Dear, faithful creatures that adore us,
+How genuine their keen delight!
+
+The door is passed, the hall is entered!
+How true it is, where'er we roam,
+That here alone our hearts are centered,
+That no place hath the charm of Home!
+
+Here smile the pictures ranged above us;
+Here stand our books, the best of friends;
+Here those we love and those who love us
+Are happy that our absence ends.
+
+We prize the intellectual treasures
+On History's famous sites amassed;
+And precious are the varied pleasures
+From Art's great glories of the past;
+
+But well we know, when once more seated
+Within these rooms with volumes lined,
+That,--now the journey is completed--,
+The best of Rome is in the mind.
+
+
+
+
+MY GARDEN
+
+Sweet garden, wreathed in fruits and flowers,
+And domed by blue Tyrolean skies,
+Within thy rose-encircled bowers,
+Secluded from all curious eyes,
+I find a peaceful paradise.
+
+Without, the world's fierce strife and yearning
+In floods of passion ebb and flow;
+Within, as in a shrine, is burning,--
+Reflecting fires of long ago,--
+A stormy life's calm afterglow.
+
+How sumptuous is the golden splendor
+Thy yellow roses give my walls!
+Like yonder glow, so sweet and tender,
+That o'er the snow at sunset falls,
+And by its spell the soul enthralls.
+
+How swiftly pass the happy hours
+Beside thy palms, beneath thy pines,
+As through the fountain's crystal showers
+I watch the sunlight gild thy vines
+Against the snow-peaks' silvered lines!
+
+I lean upon my loggia's railing
+And view the vineyard's saffron sheen,--
+Its amber leaves in glory veiling
+The purpling grapes, that hang between
+Its long arcades of gold and green.
+
+And at the sight my heart is beating
+With rapture hitherto unknown,
+As with delight I keep repeating
+In love's triumphant undertone,--
+"All this is mine, my very own"!
+
+Then with a chill, like that which steals
+Across the vale at set of sun,
+A solemn thought the truth reveals,--
+How transient is the prize thus won!
+How short a time my lease can run!
+
+Before I thought this garden fair
+And from its beauty rapture drew,
+How many others breathed its air,
+And, glorying in its matchless view,
+Had plucked its roses wet with dew!
+
+Where now my vines and violets grow,
+And fill the breeze with odors sweet,
+Two thousand years and more ago
+Some Roman had his loved retreat,
+And watched the sun and snow-peak meet.
+
+Rome fell; but, Maia still remaining,
+Both Goth and Frank the slope desired,
+Through two millenniums still retaining
+The longing for what all admired,
+The love which ownership inspired.
+
+I sometimes fancy that I see
+Those masters of an earlier age,--
+A ghostly line preceding me
+Across this corner of life's stage,--
+The Pagan, Christian, bard and sage.
+
+Each one in turn called thee his own,
+And deemed thee his submissive slave;
+But, when a few short years had flown,
+Of all thy wealth what could he save?
+At most thou gavest him a grave!
+
+Ephemeral creatures of a day,
+We move like insects on thy soil,
+And wear our little lives away
+In fleeting pleasures or in toil;
+But naught our destiny can foil.
+
+A few more Springs thy buds shall quicken,
+A few more Summers bring thy bloom,
+A few more Autumn suns shall thicken
+The clusters ripening in thy gloom,--
+When I for strangers must make room!
+
+When other eyes shall see the vision
+Of Rotheck's pyramid of snow,
+And watch the roseate hues elysian
+Creep over it at evening's glow,
+As o'er its crest the sun sinks low.
+
+Another then will pluck the flowers
+Whose seeds my loving hand hath sown;
+Another, through the mid-day hours,
+Will hear the honey bee's dull drone
+Where other roses shall have blown.
+
+These mountains then will still be lifting
+Their ice-crowned summits to the sky;
+The fleecy clouds will still be drifting
+Above their peaks and pastures high;
+But they will heed not where I lie.
+
+Even thou wilt never miss thy master!
+Thy vines and flowers will bloom the same,
+The season's round will move no faster,
+No bud will quench its torch of flame,
+And naught will change here but a name.
+
+Yet all who shall with joy succeed me
+In their turn must thy charms resign,
+When, as to all who now precede me,
+Death shall have made the fatal sign
+To join the ever-lengthening line.
+
+We "owners," then, are but thy tenants
+Despite our purchase and our pride;
+To thee what is our transient presence?
+Thou carest not if we abide
+Among thy roses, or have died.
+
+Hence, let me drain in fullest measure
+Thy cup of pure Tyrolean wine!
+To-day at least I hold thy treasure;
+To-day with truth I call thee mine;
+To-morrow's sun may never shine.
+
+
+
+
+THE MOUNTAINS OF MERAN AT SUNRISE
+
+Like snow-white tents, their tapering forms
+  Indent the western sky:
+The jewelled gifts of countless storms
+  Upon their summits lie.
+
+The sinking moon, with fading scars,
+  Hath touched their frosty spires;
+Around them pale the wearied stars,
+  Like waning bivouac fires.
+
+Stray cloudlets, reddening one by one,
+  Like rose leaves half unfurled,
+Announce the coming of the sun
+  To an awakening world.
+
+The chief peak now hath caught the glow,
+  And, soft, o'er sloping walls
+And buttresses of dazzling snow,
+  The flood of splendor falls;
+
+While miles of tender pink and gold
+  Incrust the blue of space,
+And bands of amethyst enfold
+ Each mountain's massive base.
+
+Gone are the tents that pierced the skies;
+  But in their place, more fair,
+Transfigured flowers of Paradise
+  Bloom in the crystal air.
+
+
+
+
+OSWALD, THE MINNESINGER
+
+A Legend of Schloss Forst, near Meran
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+Oswald von Wolkenstein, the Last of the Minnesingers, loved a beautiful
+woman, named Sabina, who proved faithless to him, thereby causing the
+poet great mental suffering. He avenged his wrongs by writing poems on
+her coquetry and cruelty. Years later, Sabina, who had never forgiven
+him his satirical verses, became the favorite of the Tyrolese prince,
+"Frederick, of the Empty Purse", who also hated Oswald for opposing his
+political plans. Accordingly, Sabina plotted with her lover to induce
+the poet to come to her under a pretence of renewing their former love.
+To effect this, she wrote him a letter expressing her undying affection
+for him, and begging him to meet her near Meran. The plot was
+successful, and Oswald fell completely into their power. By Frederick's
+orders he was at once imprisoned in the dungeon of Schloss Forst, and
+subjected to tortures which crippled him for the rest of his life.
+
+"Oswald von Wolkenstein!
+    Last of a gifted line,
+Years have gone by since we parted in hate;
+    What have they taught to me?
+    This, that all's naught to me
+    Save what you brought to me,--
+    Love and love's fate.
+    Can you that love forget?
+    Know that I love you yet!
+    If you my passion share,
+    Linger no longer there;
+    Fearless to do and dare,
+    Come, ere too late!
+
+    "Near the old Roman Road
+    Up which the legions strode,
+Where the first vine-covered terraces rise,
+    Stands a grim fortress tall,
+    Which, like a mountain wall,
+    Though scarred by many a ball,
+    Capture defies!
+    'Forst' is the name it bears;
+    Brilliant the fame it wears;
+    Thither,--our trysting place--,
+    Ride at your swiftest pace;
+    Come to my fond embrace!
+    My love your prize!"
+
+    Who could such words suspect?
+    Who could that call reject?
+Surely not Wolkenstein, ardent of soul!
+    Gone is the pain of years;
+    Vanished his jealous fears;
+    Smiles have replaced his tears;
+    Lost self-control;
+    Slave to his passion's past,
+    Vows to the winds are cast;
+    Faithless, she holds him still;
+    Absent, she sways his will;
+    Traitress, with subtle skill
+    Plays she her role.
+
+    Where Etsch and Eisack meet,
+    Mingling their waters fleet,
+Opens the valley that leads to Meran;
+    As its red cliffs divide,
+    Castles on either side
+    (Each a strong chieftain's pride)
+    Threaten his plan;
+    Yet, where the shadows sleep
+    Under each dungeon keep,
+    Up through the land of wine,
+    Blest with both palm and pine,
+    Oswald von Wolkenstein
+    Rides to Terlan.
+
+    Here falls his gallant horse,
+    Killed by his headlong course;
+Is it a warning to halt and retreat?
+    Yet who, when passion pleads,
+    Ever such warning heeds?
+    What though a dozen steeds
+    Drop at his feet?
+    Hence, while the peasants stare,
+    Buys he their swiftest mare;
+    And, as the pavement rings
+    With the bright gold he flings,
+    He to the saddle springs,
+    Never so fleet!
+
+    Now, lover, pause for breath!
+    Folly may here mean death!
+Yon gleam the lights of the capital's towers;
+    Here let thy pace be slow;
+    Frederick, thy crafty foe,
+    Plots there to lay thee low,
+    Fearing thy powers;
+    He of the "empty purse",
+    Stung by thy biting verse,
+    Using a woman's hate,
+    Offers a tempting bait;
+    Both thy approach await,
+    Counting the hours!
+
+    Dark is the starless night;
+    Only one feeble light
+Burns at the grating surmounting the door;
+    Has his advance been heard?
+    Was that a whispered word?
+    What in that shadow stirred?
+    Shall he explore?
+    Fie! when a prize so fair
+    Doubtless awaits him there,
+    Shall he now hesitate
+    Here, at Forst's very gate,
+    Fearing to test his fate?
+    No, nevermore!
+
+    Hark! 'tis a gruff command,
+    Loosing an ambushed band;
+Seizing, they drag him, disarmed, to the court;
+    Brightly the torches flare,
+    Flinging a ruddy glare
+    On a proud, mocking pair,
+    Watching the sport;
+    God, can this thing be true?
+    _She_ with this hostile crew!
+    "Faithless and shameless one,
+    Thou hast my life undone"!
+    "Poet, thy race is run",
+    Is her retort.
+
+    Barred is the iron door!
+    On the damp dungeon floor
+Oswald the Troubadour, gifted and strong,
+    Lies in a loathsome cave,
+    Dark as a living grave,
+    No one to care or save,
+    Silenced his song;
+    And while they leave him there,
+    Crushed by profound despair,
+    Princelet and paramour,
+    Knowing their prey secure,
+    Feeling their vengeance sure,
+    Laugh loud and long.
+
+    Who can in words relate
+    Oswald's unhappy fate,
+Left to these monsters, whose hate was ablaze?
+    Both on revenge were bent;
+    He for a menace sent,
+    She for the merriment
+    Caused by his lays.
+    "Dungeon and torture-rack,
+    These shall now pay thee back!
+    Minstrel and poet rare,
+    Rave in thy mad despair,
+    And in that fetid lair
+    Finish thy days!"
+
+    Vainly he pleads with her;
+    No prayer succeeds with her;
+Useless the joys of their past to rehearse;
+    For to increase his woe,
+    Frederick, his jealous foe,
+    Shares in this cruel show,--
+    Fit for God's curse;
+    Shameless and treacherous,
+    Heartless and lecherous,
+    Sabine with fiendish glee,
+    Deaf to his every plea,
+    Watches his agony,
+    Quoting his verse!
+
+    Broken at last his chain!
+    Ended the poet's pain!
+Freed by a ransom (his relatives' dole),
+    Humbled by grief and shame,
+    Injured in name and fame,
+    Drags he his crippled frame
+    Back through Tyrol.
+    Then, in a plaintive song
+    Chanting his grievous wrong,
+    Oswald von Wolkenstein,
+    Last of his gifted line,
+    Dies in Schloss Hauenstein;
+    God rest his soul!
+
+
+
+
+AFTER THE VINTAGE
+
+How can my vineyard's charm be told,
+As it basks in the autumn haze?
+The Frost King's touch, so light and cold,
+Like that of the Persian king of old,
+Hath turned its roof from green to gold,
+Till the hillside seems ablaze.
+
+Threading its maze of arbors fair
+Under its saffron bowers,
+I watch, in the crisp, November air,
+Through vine-framed openings here and there
+The ivied walls of castles rare
+And ruined Roman towers.
+
+Sapphire blue is the cloudless sky,
+White are the mountain walls,
+Rainbow-hued are the tints that lie
+Lavishly spread on the forests high,
+Where leaves by millions flame and die,
+As the chill of Autumn falls.
+
+Over the slopes in sun and shade
+The terraced vines descend,
+Like stately steps of a broad cascade,
+Or an amphitheatre's seats, arrayed
+In folds of sumptuous, gold brocade,
+Where red and amber blend.
+
+I love to see, from the rising sun
+Each terrace gain its crown,
+When the splendid dawn hath just begun,
+From the crest of the mountain it hath won,
+To gild the vine-rows one by one,
+As the mellow glow creeps down.
+
+And when the day's receding light
+Deserts the vale below,
+I trace its noiseless, upward flight
+Through darkening zones of foliage bright,
+Till all the world is lost in night
+Save pyramids of snow.
+
+
+
+
+THE PASSING MOON
+
+In my loggia bright I watch to-night
+The full moon sailing by;
+From a crystal creek in a glaciered peak
+It slipped to the open sky,
+And now rides free in a clear, blue sea,
+With not an island nigh.
+
+Through pearly haze its light displays
+Each buttressed mountain side,
+And softly shines through stately pines
+Where feudal castles hide,
+And every height grows dazzling white
+In the foam of a silver tide.
+
+From the eastern side of the valley wide
+To its snow-capped western rim
+It will hold its way, till the dawning day
+Shall have made its disk grow dim;
+Then, leaving the blue, will drop from view
+Behind the mountain's brim.
+
+Whence did it climb on its path sublime,
+Ere it left that icy height?
+And where will it go, when yonder snow
+Is reached in the morning light?
+Will its face elsewhere be just as fair,
+When here it is lost to sight?
+
+Why should I ask? 'Tis a fruitless task;
+Enough that its splendor falls
+On me to-night in my loggia bright,
+Till the scene my soul enthralls;
+'Tis a long time yet, ere the moon will set
+Behind those glittering walls.
+
+And even when it sinks again
+Below that stainless crest,
+It will seem at last to have safely passed
+To a haven of peace and rest,
+Like a happy soul that hath reached its goal
+In the kingdom of the blest.
+
+I also know not where I go,
+Nor whence I came, or why,
+Nor can I guess what happiness
+Or strange, new world may lie
+Beyond the vale through which I sail,
+Beneath another sky;
+
+But as the moon, which all too soon
+Sinks down the west for me,
+To other eyes appears to rise
+And glide on fair and free,
+So the frail boat in which I float,
+Though tempest-worn it be,
+May cross life's brink, and seem to sink,
+Yet sail another sea.
+
+
+
+
+AUTUMN IN MERAN
+
+The vintage time is gone, but not its glory;
+The grapes are garnered from their leafy gloom;
+Yet miles of vineyards, story crowning story,
+Cover the hillsides with a golden bloom.
+
+The vine-clad terraces descend the mountains
+Like cascades rippling with resplendent gold;
+Steeped in the sun, and fed by sweet-voiced fountains,
+Tyrolean slopes a paradise unfold.
+
+Above the vines the mountain sides are blending
+The oaks' and maples' multicolored glow,
+In variegated zones their hues ascending
+From radiant roses to eternal snow.
+
+Now here, now there, through brilliant foliage peeping,
+A ruined castle seeks its walls to hide,--
+High on some lonely crag in silence sleeping,
+Left centuries since by history's ebbing tide.
+
+In sparkling foam the beryl-colored river
+Laughs in the sunshine between tinted walls;
+While on the cliffs the scarlet creepers shiver,
+Chilled by the breeze, as sunset's shadow falls.
+
+Still in the valley Summer reigns victorious,
+Though Winter's silvery sheen creeps slowly down;
+Land of the vine and snow, at all times glorious,
+In Autumn wearest thou thy fairest crown.
+
+
+
+
+THE STATUE OF THE EMPRESS ELIZABETH. MERAN
+
+She is seated by the river
+In a robe of spotless white,
+With her lovely face illumined
+By the evening's tender light;
+But her eyes are full of sadness,
+As if weary of the day,
+And her gaze is toward the ocean,
+While the river glides away.
+
+At her feet are beds of flowers,
+Overhead are stately trees
+Whose protecting branches murmur
+With the passing of the breeze;
+Though her hand retains a volume,
+From its page her glances stray,
+For her thoughts are with the ocean,
+As the river flows away.
+
+As I view her chastened features,
+I can feel the rising tears
+At the thought of all her anguish
+Through a martyrdom of years;
+For her joys were writ in water,--
+Too impermanent to stay,
+And were swept toward sorrow's ocean,
+Ere her youth had passed away.
+
+She was captured in the morning
+Of her childhood's careless age,
+And imprisoned in a palace
+Like a linnet in a cage;
+And its gilded bars confined her
+To a Court's prescribed display,
+Which her simple nature hated,
+As the slow years crept away.
+
+Thus her heart grew always sadder,
+Till her sorrows, one by one,
+Reached at last their tragic climax
+In the murder of her son;
+And this broken-hearted woman,
+As a madman's victim, lay
+By Geneva's placid waters,
+While her life-blood ebbed away!
+
+Hence her marble face seems troubled,
+As she gazes down the stream,
+Like an angel who hath wakened
+From a fearful, earth-born dream;
+She is waiting for the sunset
+Of her tempest-darkened day,
+But her soul is with the ocean,
+Where all rivers wend their way.
+
+
+
+
+THE OUTCASTS
+
+The smile of God was in the air;
+Enwreathed in veils of silvery hue,
+The valley lay, divinely fair,
+Beneath a cloudless vault of blue;
+And singing, like a bird set free,
+The river hurried to the sea.
+
+Through Alpine ether, crystal clear,
+The genial sun of South Tyrol
+Diffused its blessèd warmth and cheer,
+Enriching body, mind and soul,
+While music floated o'er the stream,
+And made such beauty seem a dream.
+
+Enraptured with the sun's caress
+And windless warmth 'mid peaks of snow,
+In careless quest of happiness
+The gay world sauntered to and fro,
+Or, seated on the well-kept strand,
+Enjoyed the music of the band.
+
+Upon a bench, remote from those
+Whose dress betokened rank or wealth,
+Sat two poor waifs, whose weary pose
+Betrayed a fruitless search for health,--
+An agèd couple, near their end,
+United, yet without a friend.
+
+But still they bravely tried to smile,
+--So warm the sun, so fair the scene!--
+They could be happy yet a while,
+Ere death's cold shadow crept between;
+And music's softly rhythmic flow
+Recalled their youth of long ago.
+
+"Begone!" a watchman's voice exclaimed;
+"Your rustic garb is much too poor;
+How comes it, you are not ashamed
+In such a place to play the boor?
+From company like this withdraw!
+Obey the mandate of the law!"
+
+The startled strangers meekly rose
+And moved away with downcast eyes,
+Too wonted to such cruel blows
+To manifest the least surprise;
+Too humbled to inquire why;
+Too timid to attempt reply.
+
+Poor outcasts from that joyous stage
+Where well-dressed hundreds strolled at ease,
+With faltering steps, and bowed with age,
+They vanished slowly 'neath the trees;
+But neither scanned the other's face,
+For fear a falling tear to trace.
+
+Farewell, sweet, music-laden air,
+And sunshine on the sheltered strand!
+I follow where that outcast pair
+Are walking sadly, hand in hand;
+For me your vaunted charm hath fled,
+While they remain uncomforted.
+
+
+
+
+HEIMWEH
+
+I dwell in a region of valleys fair,
+Of stately forests and mountains bold,
+Of churches filled with treasures rare,
+And storied castles centuries old;
+But now and then, when the sun sinks low,
+And the vesper bell is softly rung,
+I think of the days of long ago,
+And yearn for the land where I was young.
+
+I live where the sun shines bright and warm
+On feathery palms and terraced vines,
+Yet oft I sigh for a boreal storm
+And the sough of the wind through northern pines;
+And though my ear hath wonted grown
+To the accents strange of an alien tongue,
+No speech hath half so sweet a tone
+As the language learned when I was young.
+
+I live in a land where men are kind,
+And friends increase, as the years roll on,
+Yet of them all not one I find
+So dear as those of the days now gone;
+And so I think, as the sun sinks low,
+And the curfew bell of my life is rung,
+I shall turn to my home of long ago,
+And die in the land where I was young.
+
+
+
+
+MY LIBRARY
+
+Shrine of my mind, my Library!
+Each morn I greet thee with delight,
+When, soul-refreshed, I bring to thee
+The benediction of the night;
+Encompassed by thy sheltering walls,
+'Mid books whose interest enthralls,
+Life's shadow from my spirit falls.
+
+Behold! above the wooded height
+The sun-god's glittering disk appears,
+And at a bound its flood of light
+The intervening valley clears;
+Enveloped in its noiseless tide,
+Each castle on the mountain side
+Stands forth in splendor, glorified.
+
+How welcome are the yellow waves
+That through the eastern windows pour
+And, with a warmth my nature craves,
+Transmute to gold the polished floor!
+Then mount to gild my desk, my chair,
+And e'en the spotless paper there,
+Which soon my written thought must bear.
+
+In serried ranks around me rise
+Two thousand tried and trusty friends;
+Instructive, famous, witty, wise,
+Each gladly his assistance lends
+To suit, at will, my varying mood;
+But none that aid will e'er intrude,
+Or break, unsought, my solitude.
+
+Some speak of problems of the soul,--
+Profound, insoluble, sublime;
+Some tell of Law's supreme control;
+And some retrace through distant time
+The evolution of mankind,
+And in its ever-broadening mind
+A hope for future triumphs find.
+
+A few the noble deeds rehearse
+Of heroes famed in peace or war;
+While many in inspiring verse
+Show heights to which the soul may soar;
+But all with serious thoughts are filled,
+And some hold truths, from life distilled,
+Whose power my heart hath often thrilled.
+
+By such companions cheered and blest,
+How vapid seems the listless throng
+Of those who, tortured by unrest,
+Find life too dull and days too long,
+And idly frittering time away,
+As scandal-mongers, rend and slay
+The friends they dined with yesterday!
+
+My Library! to thee I turn,
+As turns the needle toward the pole,
+And feel my heart within me yearn
+For all thou offerest to the soul;
+Why should I join in feverish haste
+The crowd for which I have no taste,
+The precious boon of life to waste?
+
+Yet not as an austere recluse,--
+Still less as one who hates mankind--,
+Do I thy peaceful precincts choose;
+But as a student, who can find
+No joys in Vanity's gay Fair
+That for an instant can compare
+With those thou askest me to share.
+
+Moreover, welcome as the sun
+Are friends whose love I prize and hold;
+Their visits I would never shun;
+To them my heart grows never cold;
+And whether they have wealth, or fame,
+Or bear a plain or titled name,
+To me will always be the same.
+
+Nor am I ever quite alone
+When thus ensconced among my books;
+A kindred mind there meets my own,
+And with me toward the sunset looks;
+With blazing logs the hearth is bright,
+A treasured volume is in sight;
+Hence to the outer world good night!
+
+
+
+
+TOUT PASSE
+
+Once more I watch the crystal stream
+  I watched in days gone by;
+Once more its waves reflect the gleam
+  Of Autumn's sunset sky;
+Again its banks of gold and green
+  Seem bursting into flame,--
+And yet for me the lovely scene
+  Can never be the same.
+
+The waves that gleamed here long ago
+  Have reached a distant sea;
+The leaves of that first autumn glow
+  Have fallen from the tree;
+The birds which charmed me with their song
+  Have long since elsewhere flown,
+And I amid a careless throng
+  Am standing here alone.
+
+This sparkling flood can never quite
+  Replace the stream of old;
+These radiant leaves, however bright,
+  Wear not the old-time gold;
+For evening's light can ne'er retain
+  The splendor of the dawn,
+And naught, alas, can bring again
+  The faces that are gone.
+
+
+
+
+BESIDE LAKE COMO
+
+
+THE FAUN
+
+Within my garden's silence and seclusion,
+In pensive beauty gazing toward the dawn,
+There stands, mid vines and flowers in profusion,
+  A sculptured Faun.
+
+The boughs of stately trees are bending o'er him,
+The scent of calycanthus fills the air,
+And on the ivied parapet before him
+  Bloom roses fair.
+
+Beside him laughs the lightly-flowing fountain,
+Beneath him spreads the lake's enchanting hue,
+And, opposite, a sun-illumined mountain
+  Meets heaven's blue.
+
+Across Lake Como's silvered undulation
+The flush of dawn creeps shyly to his face,
+And crowns his look of dreamful contemplation
+  With tender grace.
+
+And he, like Memnon, thrilled to exultation,
+As if unable longer to be mute,
+Has lifted to his lips in adoration
+  His simple flute.
+
+Ah! would that I might hear the music stealing
+From yonder artless reed upon the air,--
+The subtle revelation of his feeling,
+  While standing there!
+
+Perhaps 'tis for the Past that he is sighing,
+When Como's shore held many a hallowed shrine,
+Where such as he were worshipped,--none denying
+  Their rights divine.
+
+That Past is gone; its sylvan shrines have crumbled;
+From lake and grove the gentle fauns have fled;
+Its myths are scorned, Olympus has been humbled,
+  And Pan is dead.
+
+Yet still he plays,--the coming day adoring,
+With brow serene, and gladness in his gaze,
+All past and future happiness ignoring
+  Just for to-day's!
+
+Sweet Faun, whence comes thy power of retaining
+Through storm and sunshine thine unchanging smile?
+Forsaken thus, what comfort, still remaining,
+  Makes life worth while?
+
+Impart to me the secret of discerning
+The gold of life, with none of its alloy,
+That I may also satisfy my yearning
+  For perfect joy!
+
+I too would shun those questions, born of sorrow,--
+Life's Wherefore, Whence and Whither; I would fill
+My cup with present bliss, and let to-morrow
+  Bring what it will.
+
+O Spirit of the vanished world elysian,
+Cast over me the spell of thy control,
+And give me, for to-day's supernal vision,
+  Thy Pagan soul!
+
+
+
+
+ISOLA COMACINA
+
+(The only Island on Lake Como, the Lake Larius of the Romans)
+
+There sleeps beneath Italian skies
+A lovely island rich in fame,
+In days of old a longed-for prize,
+And bearing still an honored name,--
+A spot renowned from age to age,
+An ancient Roman heritage;
+
+A valued stronghold, for whose sake
+Unnumbered men have fought and died,--
+The Malta of the Larian lake,
+Forever armed and fortified,
+To Como's shores the master-key,
+The guardian of its liberty.
+
+Half hidden in a sheltered bay,
+Where tiny skiffs at anchor ride,
+How different is the scene to-day
+Reflected in its waveless tide,
+From that which this historic foss
+Showed mailèd soldiers of the Cross!
+
+Yet still, across the narrow strait,
+Some remnants of the hospice stand,
+Whose ever hospitable gate
+Met pilgrims from the Holy Land,
+Its finely carved, millennial tower
+Enduring to the present hour.
+
+One gem alone doth Como wear,
+None other need adorn her breast;
+'Tis this, her emerald solitaire,
+Her unique island of the blest,--
+The star beside her crescent shore,
+A thing of beauty evermore.
+
+On Comacina's peaceful strand
+The coldest heart is moved to pray,
+As softly steals o'er lake and land
+The splendor of departing day,
+And scores of snowy peaks aspire
+To sparkle with supernal fire.
+
+Then Lario paints for liquid miles
+The white-robed monarchs' glittering crowns,
+Transmutes at once to dimpled smiles
+The sternest of their glacial frowns,
+And often holds, with subtlest art,
+Some Titan's likeness to her heart.
+
+Fair Comacina, through whose trees
+Earth's feathered songsters flit unharmed,
+Where soft-eyed cattle graze at ease,
+And every whispering breeze seems charmed,
+Can it be true that human blood
+Hath ever stained thy limpid flood?
+
+Alas! too often, drenched with gore,
+Thy cliffs have witnessed deadly strife,
+When hostile feet profaned thy shore,
+And each advancing step cost life,
+As prince and peasant, side by side,
+Beat back the Goths' invading tide.
+
+But why disturb the silent past?
+Why rouse the island's sleeping ghosts?
+Or see in forms by ruins cast
+The phantoms of those warlike hosts?
+For centuries the gentle waves
+Have rolled oblivion o'er their graves.
+
+And what will now thy future be,
+Thou pristine refuge of the brave,
+Which Rome's last heroes fought to free,
+And vainly gave their lives to save?
+Forget not, thou wast once a gem
+That graced a Caesar's diadem!
+
+Wilt thou fulfil my fondest hopes?
+I sometimes long to check the stream
+Of tourists hurrying by thy slopes,
+And tell them of my cherished dream,--
+To see upon thy storied height
+A palace worthy of the site;
+
+Not meaningless, not merely vast,
+Nor crudely modern in design,
+But something suited to thy past,--
+For highest art a hallowed shrine,
+A classic home of long ago,
+The Tusculum of Cicero.
+
+Then roses, rich in sweet perfume,
+Shall wreathe with bloom each terraced wall,
+And, scattered through the leafy gloom
+Of olive-groves and laurels tall,
+Shall many a marble nymph and faun
+Grow lovelier from the flush of dawn.
+
+So let me dream! I may not see
+That stately palace crown thy brow,
+Those roses may not bloom for me,
+But, as thou art, I love thee now,
+Content thy future to resign
+To abler portraiture than mine.
+
+Sweet Comacina, fare thee well!
+Across the water's placid breast
+The music of the vesper-bell
+Invites me to my port of rest;
+Fair jewel of this inland sea,
+May all the gods be good to thee!
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD CARRIER
+
+("Old Lucia", who for many years walked back and forth, every day and in
+all weathers, between Azzano and Menaggio, a distance of six miles,
+bearing merchandise of all sorts in a basket on her back, fell to the
+ground exhausted, as she was nearing her poor home on Christmas Eve,
+1907. She died next morning at the age of seventy-three. At the time she
+fell, she was carrying a load of nearly one hundred pounds!)
+
+Patient toiler on the road,
+Bending 'neath your heavy load,
+Worn and furrowed is your face,
+Slow and tremulous your pace,
+Yet you still pursue your way,
+Bearing burdens day by day,
+With the same pathetic smile,
+Over many a weary mile,
+As you bravely come and go
+To and from Menaggio.
+
+Snowy white, your scanty hair
+Crowns a forehead seamed with care,
+And a look of suffering lies
+In your clear-blue, wistful eyes;
+While your thin and ashen cheek
+Tells the tale you will not speak,
+Of a lodging dark and old,
+And a hearth so bare and cold
+That you often hungry go
+To and from Menaggio.
+
+Never know you days of rest;
+Ceaseless is your humble quest
+Of the pittance that you ask
+For your arduous daily task.
+Every morning sees your form
+Pass through sunshine or through storm;
+Every evening hears your feet
+Trudging up the darkened street;
+For your gait is always slow,
+Coming from Menaggio.
+
+Once your dull eyes gleamed with light;
+Once those arms were round and white;
+And the feet, now roughly shod,
+Lightly danced upon the sod,
+As to womanhood you grew
+And a lover's rapture knew;
+For you once were fair, 'tis said,
+Early wooed and early wed,
+And your husband long ago
+Died in old Menaggio.
+
+Children? Aye, but not one cares
+How the poor old mother fares!
+You must struggle on alone;
+They have children of their own,
+And for them, devoid of shame,
+All your scanty earnings claim!
+Can you walk? Then go you must,
+Plodding on through rain and dust,
+Summer heat and winter's snow
+To and from Menaggio!
+
+Christmas Eve! Through glistening green
+Gleams a merry, festive scene;
+Trees, with candles burning bright,
+Wake in children's hearts delight.
+Where such peace and comfort reign,
+None observes the window-pane,
+Where your wan face sadly peers
+Through a mist of falling tears
+At a joy you never know,
+Carrier from Menaggio!
+
+Much that makes those children gay
+You have brought them day by day,
+Thankful that you thus could earn
+Wood to make your hearthstone burn.
+Not for you such food and light,
+Clothing warm and candles bright!
+You are grateful, if you gain
+Bread to stifle hunger's pain.
+Ah! it was not always so
+In old-time Menaggio!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She has turned to climb the hill.
+Stay! why lies she there so still?
+Have her old limbs failed at last
+In the chilling wintry blast?
+Since for threescore years and ten
+She has done the work of men,
+'Tis not strange that she should fall
+Weak and helpless by the wall,
+Nevermore to come and go
+To and from Menaggio.
+
+Gently lift her old gray head!
+Bear her homeward! She is dead.
+Fallen, like a faithful horse
+At the limit of its course;
+Fallen on the stony road,
+Uncomplaining, 'neath her load;
+And the heart within her breast
+For the first time finds its rest,--
+Rest that it could never know
+Coming from Menaggio!
+
+Sound again, O Christmas bells!
+"Peace on Earth" your song foretells.
+It has come, in truth, to one
+Whose long pilgrimage is done.
+Merciful her quick release,
+Blessèd her eternal peace!
+Yet I know that, day by day,
+As she no more comes my way,
+I shall miss her, as I go
+To and from Menaggio.
+
+
+
+
+EVENING ON LAKE COMO
+
+Beside my garden's ivied wall,
+Enwreathed in vines of gold and green,
+I stand, as evening shadows fall,
+And marvel at the matchless scene,
+While wavelets make, with rhythmic beat,
+Perpetual music at my feet.
+
+The year grows old,--yet on the breeze
+Still floats the perfume of the rose;
+Still gleams the gold of orange trees,
+Regardless of the Alpine snows;
+For while, above, Frost reigns as king,
+Below prevails the warmth of Spring.
+
+In Tremezzina's sheltered bay
+The wintry storms forget to rave;
+Without,--the white caps and the spray,
+Within,--a shore with scarce a wave,--
+A favored spot where tempests cease,
+And Heaven whispers, "Here is Peace."
+
+Across the water's purple bloom
+Bellagio, bathed in sunset light,
+Surmounts the twilight's gathering gloom
+With glistening walls of pink and white,--
+The wraith of some celestial strand,
+The fringe of an enchanted land.
+
+My sweet-voiced fountain softly sings
+Its good-night lyric to the lake;
+A skiff glides by on slender wings
+With scarce a ripple in its wake;
+And pleasure-boats, their canvas furled,
+Float idly in an ideal world.
+
+The swan-like steamers come and go;
+The ruffled water finds its rest;
+The snow-peaks catch a ruddy glow
+From crimsoned cloudlets in the west;
+And, trembling on the tranquil air,
+Steals forth the vesper-call to prayer.
+
+Oh, peerless strand! I yearn no more
+To mingle with the maddened throng;
+Enough for me this wave-kissed shore,
+The vesper-bell, the fountain's song,
+The sunlit sail, the Alpine glow,
+And storied towers of long ago.
+
+Between me and the world's unrest
+The lake's broad leagues of water lie;
+Above my wave-protected nest
+Serenely bends a cloudless sky;
+And homeward from life's stormy sea
+The dreams of youth come back to me.
+
+
+
+
+DELIO PATRI
+
+(Inscription on an altar-fragment, found on the Island of Lake Como,
+1910, and belonging formerly to a temple of Delian Apollo,--the "Delian
+Father,"--which no doubt existed there.)
+
+Once more Lake Como's storied isle
+  Reveals the Roman past!
+Again a stone of classic style
+  The spade hath upward cast;
+How can such relics thus endure
+Two thousand years of sepulture?
+
+More eagerly than those who toil
+  For nuggets of mere gold,
+We seize and rescue from the soil
+  This monument of old,--
+An altar-fragment, much defaced,
+Yet on whose surface words are traced.
+
+With reverent hands we cleanse from grime
+  The legend chiselled there,
+Which now, triumphant over time,
+  Still proves the sculptor's care,
+Engraved when on this wave-girt hill
+The Pagan gods were potent still.
+
+'As on their own peculiar page
+  The fingers of the blind
+Decipher truths of every age,
+  As mind communes with mind,
+So, one by one, these letters spell
+A name the ancient world knew well.
+
+For "Delio Patri" heads the lines
+  Inscribed upon this stone,
+And instantly the mind divines
+  What, else, had been unknown,
+Since that familiar name makes clear
+Apollo once was worshipped here;
+
+Perhaps because the spot suggests
+  That other tiny isle,
+Upon whose shore forever rests
+  The Sun-God's tender smile,--
+Fair Delos, where, one fabled morn,
+Both he and Artemis were born.
+
+Beneath, the donor's name is placed,
+  And lower still we read
+In characters, now half effaced,
+  The motive for his deed;--
+"Onesimus this altar reared
+To One he gratefully revered."
+
+Faith, grateful reverence,--these are traits
+  Worth more than rank or fame,
+And what this brief inscription states
+  Does honor to his name,
+And makes us wish still more to know
+Of him who built here long ago.
+
+"And is this all?" the cynic sneers,
+  "The remnant of a shrine?"
+Alas for him who never hears
+  Or heeds the world divine
+And in this fragment fails to see
+A stepping-stone to Deity!
+
+The Sun-God's shrines in ruins lie,
+  But not the glorious sun!
+A thousand transient faiths may die.
+  All prototypes of One,
+Since under every form and name
+Their essence still remains the same.
+
+
+
+
+ACQUA FREDDA
+
+By Acqua Fredda's cloister-wall
+I pause to feel the mountain breeze,
+And watch the shadows eastward fall
+From immemorial cypress trees.
+
+Like arms outstretched to bless and pray,
+Those dusky phantoms downward creep
+To where, by Lenno's curving bay,
+The peaceful village seems to sleep;
+
+While mirrored peaks of stainless snow
+Turn crimson 'neath the farther shore,
+And here and there the sunset glow
+Threads diamonds on a dripping oar.
+
+But now a tremor breaks the spell,
+And stirs to life the languid air,--
+It is the convent's vesper-bell,--
+The plaintive call to evening prayer;
+
+That prayer which rises like a sigh
+From every sorrow-laden breast,
+When twilight dims the garish sky,
+And day is dying in the west.
+
+Ave Maria! we who miss
+A mother's love, a mother's care,
+Implore thee, bring us to that bliss
+We fondly hope with thee to share!
+
+How sweet and clear, how soft and low
+Those vesper orisons are sung,
+In Rome's grand speech of long ago,
+Forever old, forever young!
+
+And those who chant,--that exiled band,
+Expelled from France with scorn and hate,
+How fare they in this foreign land?
+Is life for them disconsolate?
+
+Have they escaped the sight of pain,
+Of social strife, of hopeless tears?
+Does life's dark problem grow more plain,
+As pass in prayer the tranquil years?
+
+I know not; dare not ask of them;
+Their souls are read by God alone;
+But he who would their lives condemn,
+Should pause before he cast a stone.
+
+So full is life of hate and greed,
+So vain the world's poor tinselled show,
+What wonder that some souls have need
+To flee from all its sin and woe?
+
+I would not join them; yet, in truth,
+I feel, in leaving them at prayer,
+That something precious of my youth,
+Long lost to me, is treasured there.
+
+
+
+
+THE POSTERN GATE
+
+I chose me a lovely garden,
+Beneath whose ivied wall
+A lake's blue wavelets murmur
+As evening shadows fall,--
+
+A garden, whose leafy windows
+Frame visions of Alpine snow
+On peaks that burn to crimson
+In sunset's afterglow.
+
+And there, in its sweet seclusion,
+I built me a mansion fair,
+With many a classic statue
+And Eastern relic rare,
+
+And volumes, whose precious pages
+Hold all that the wise have said,--
+The latest among the living,
+The greatest among the dead.
+
+And I sat in those fragrant arbors
+Of laurel and palm and pine,
+And held in the tranquil twilight
+My darling's hand in mine;
+
+And said "We will here be happy,
+And let the mad world go;
+Its gold no longer tempts us,
+Still less do its pomp and show;
+
+"No more shall its cares annoy us,
+And under these stately trees
+With Nature and Art and Letters
+Our souls shall take their ease."
+
+But a brood of griefs pursued us,
+Like evil birds of prey;
+They lodged in the trees' tall branches,
+They shadowed the cloudless day;
+
+They flew to the darkened casement,
+And beat on the wind-swept shade,
+And oft in the sleepless midnight
+We listened and were afraid;
+
+And daily came the tidings
+Of folly and crime and woe,
+And one by one kept dying
+The friends of long ago.
+
+For the Past is ever one's master,
+And Memory mocks at space,
+And Trouble travels with us,
+However swift our pace;
+
+And envy is always envy,
+Though called by a foreign name,
+And perfidy, greed, and malice
+Are everywhere the same.
+
+I thought I had left behind me
+That gloomy realm of care,
+But really one never leaves it,
+Its shadow is everywhere.
+
+So I learned at last the lesson
+That walls, and gates, and keys
+Can never exclude life's sorrows;
+They enter as they please.
+
+And if we ever acquire
+The perfect life we crave,
+A subtle warning tells us
+Its background is the grave.
+
+Perhaps I have almost reached it,
+For when I am walking late,
+I see a shrouded stranger
+Beside my postern gate;
+
+And a sudden chill creeps o'er me
+At sight of that figure grim,
+For I fancy that he is waiting
+For me in the twilight dim;
+
+And I know he will one day beckon
+With gesture of command,
+And I shall follow him mutely.
+Away to the Silent Land,
+
+And all that I here have treasured
+In fountain, and tree, and stone
+Will pass to the hands of others,
+Whom I have never known.
+
+Hence over his sombre features
+There flickers a ghostly smile,
+As if he would say, "What matter?
+Your cares are not worth while;
+
+"The trouble which gives you anguish,
+The woes o'er which you weep,
+Will all be soon forgotten
+In my long, dreamless sleep.
+
+"Enjoy the fleeting moment;
+I cannot always wait,
+And the glow of the coming sunset
+Is gilding the postern gate."
+
+
+
+
+UNDINE
+
+Spirit of Como, whose rhythmical call
+Murmurs caressingly under my wall,
+Why are thy feet, though the hour be late,
+Mounting the moon-silvered steps of my gate?
+What is the cause of this passionate strain,
+Voiced by thy wavelets again and again?
+
+Near to the lake, and surmounting the lawn,
+Sculptured Undine sits facing the dawn;
+White, on the rocks of the fountain below,
+Glistens her form, like a statue of snow;
+Smiling, she listens, entranced, to the call,
+Sung so alluringly under my wall.
+
+Leaf-woven ladders of ivy-wreathed vines
+Fall from the rampart in undulant lines;
+Silken and slender, they swing in the breeze,
+Tempting the lover to clamber with ease
+Up to the garden, to woo and to take
+Lovely Undine away to the lake.
+
+Boldly Love's wavelets now leap to the land,
+Swiftly they scale every tremulous strand,
+Lightly they sway with the wavering screen,
+White gleam their feet on its background of green;
+Yet the old parapet, mossy and gray,
+Never is reached by their glittering spray.
+
+Hear you that music, half song and half sigh?
+Sylph-like Undine is making reply:--
+"Though I so motionless sit here above,
+I am not deaf to thy pleadings of love;
+Others regard me as passionless stone,
+Only to thee shall my nature be known.
+
+"Men who behold me, praise merely my art,
+Never suspecting I too have a heart;
+Under the marble the world cannot see
+All I am keeping there only for thee;
+Secrets of love are of all the most sweet;
+Mine I will whisper to thee when we meet.
+
+"Under the wall thou hast bravely assailed,
+Under the vines, where thy wavelets have failed,
+Passes this fountain; though cradled in snows,
+Straight to thy waters it secretly flows;
+Leaving my cold, marble counterpart here,
+On that swift current I come to thee, dear!"
+
+Hushed is the lover's importunate call;
+Silence and mystery brood over all;
+Still my Undine sits facing the dawn;
+'Tis but a mask, for her spirit is gone,--
+Gone on that crystalline path to the deep,
+Lured there to ecstasy, lulled there to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+JANUARY IN THE TREMEZZINA
+
+  Day by day,
+  As if in May,
+We sail Azzano's beautiful bay;
+  High and low
+  The mountains show
+Luminous fields of stainless snow,
+But the air is soft, and the sun is warm,
+And the lake is free from wind and storm.
+
+  Far and nigh,
+  Deep and high,
+The Alps invade both lake and sky;
+  Base to base
+  Their forms we trace,
+These in water, those in space,--
+Duplicate peaks on single shores,
+As shadow sinks, and substance soars.
+
+  To and fro
+  We idly go,
+Bidding our oarsmen lightly row;
+  Here and there
+  Halting where
+The vision seems supremely fair;
+Happy to let our little boat
+In a flood of opaline splendor float.
+
+  Far away
+  Seems to-day
+The clamorous world of work and play;
+  Ours indeed
+  A different creed
+From that of the modern god of Speed,
+Whose converts suffer such grievous waste
+In strenuous labor and feverish haste!
+
+  East or west,
+  A tranquil nest,
+When curfew rings, is always best,
+  A landscape fair,
+  A volume rare,
+And a kindred heart, one's peace to share,--
+What is there better from life to take
+In a sweet retreat on the Larian lake?
+
+
+
+
+THE WANDERER
+
+Wandering minstrel at my gate,
+Shivering in the winter gloaming,
+How appalling seems your fate,--
+Destined to be always roaming,
+Singing for a bit of bread
+And a shelter for your head!
+
+Your sweet voice is all you own,
+Save the poor, thin clothes you're wearing,
+And you are not quite alone,
+For a dog your crust is sharing;
+Yet o'er many a weary mile
+You have brought ... a song and smile!
+
+I, who have abundant land,
+Home with comforts beyond measure,
+Gardens, loggias, and a strand
+Where a boat awaits my pleasure,
+Wonder what would be your story,
+Were I tramp, and you signore!
+
+Would you weary of control?
+Long to slip your gilded tether,
+And with Leo once more stroll,
+Heedless of the wind and weather?
+You could hardly do that all,
+Once ensconced behind my wall.
+
+Every one must make a choice,
+Life is based on compensation;
+You have nothing but your voice,
+I have more, ... but more vexation!
+Minstrel, you at least are free;
+Give your smile to slaves like me!
+
+
+
+
+SECLUSION
+
+Shut out the World, shut in the Home!
+The sea is deeper than its foam;
+Retain the gem, reject the paste;
+Withdraw from Mammon's feverish haste,
+Its tumult and its senseless waste.
+
+Within are love, and books, and flowers,--
+Creators of life's happiest hours;
+Without are those whose baneful call,
+If once they pass within thy wall,
+May blight the beauty of it all.
+
+Think not they come for love of thee!
+They seek from ennui to be free,
+To ask some boon, or tell some tale
+Which, true or false, will rarely fail
+To leave behind a poisoned trail.
+
+What else indeed can such as they
+Invent to pass their time away?
+Their thoughts revolve round sport and dress,
+Their reading is the daily press,
+Their mental life a wilderness.
+
+What though their dwellings rise near thine?
+Propinquity is not a sign
+Of loyal hearts or kindred views;
+Thou surely hast a right to choose
+Whom thou wilt welcome, whom refuse.
+
+Decline to let those mar thy joy,
+Whose manners wound, and words annoy;
+The vapid, heartless throng eschew;
+Admit alone,--alas, how few!--
+The really kind, the really true.
+
+Yet when did ever a recluse
+Escape the baffled crowd's abuse?
+The social world will ne'er condone
+Thy preference to live alone
+Amid resources of thine own.
+
+Well, let it scoff, malign, or ... worse!
+Thou hast an independent purse;
+Alike to thee its smile or sneer,
+It hath no power to cause thee fear,
+Nor is its censure worth a tear.
+
+Hence, 'mid thy flowers, books, and trees
+Strive not the multitude to please;
+Regard its humors as the spray
+Which winds blow lightly o'er the bay;
+Live thine own life, and win the day!
+
+
+
+
+ONE MORE
+
+With a smile and a kiss he went away;
+At the gate he turned and waved his hand,
+Then plunged once more in the sordid fray,
+Whose strain she could not understand.
+
+She really thought that she loved him well,
+But she loved herself and children more,
+And realized only when he fell
+What all his friends had known before.
+
+He had always hid his own distress,
+And answered us with a brave "Not yet,"
+For boys must play and girls must dress,
+As do their mates in the social set.
+
+At least she claimed that this was so,
+And he too dearly loved them all
+To spoil their place in the passing show,
+And so rode on for a fatal fall.
+
+He had earned enough for a simple life,
+If only they a word had said,
+So weary was he of the strife;
+But they were dumb, and he ... is dead!
+
+Yes, he is gone, and they are here;
+And now the purse he died to fill
+Will keep them well for many a year,--
+Of course submissive to "God's will"!
+
+One victim more in the cruel race
+With rivals he himself despised,
+For children who can ne'er replace
+The father whom they sacrificed.
+
+
+
+
+UNDER THE PLANE TREE
+
+    Under my wall
+    And plane-tree tall
+The lake's blue wavelets rise and fall;
+    In they creep,
+    Out they sweep,
+And ever their rhythmic measure keep,
+As the light breeze over the water steals,
+And fills the sails of a score of keels.
+
+    Soft and low,
+    In the evening glow,
+Murmurs the fountain's ceaseless flow;
+    Clear and sweet,
+    Fair and fleet,
+It came from the mountain, the lake to meet,
+And here, where ivy and roses twine,
+Streamlet and lake their lives combine.
+
+    One by one,
+    In shade or sun,
+Each river of life its course must run;
+    Slow or fast,
+    Small or vast,
+All come to the waiting sea at last,--
+The source from which they first arose,
+The home in which they find repose.
+
+
+
+
+"CONJUGI CARISSIMAE"
+
+Marble fragment, freed at last
+From thy prison of the past,
+By a spade-thrust brought to light
+After centuries of night,--
+Let me take thee in my hand,
+And thy legend understand.
+
+On thy mutilated face
+It is difficult to trace
+All that once was graven here;
+But at least two words are clear,--
+Reading still, as all agree,
+"Conjugi Carissimae."
+
+"To my well-belovèd wife";--
+Only this; but of her life,
+Rank or title, age or name,
+Or the place from which she came,
+Nothing further can be known
+Than is taught us by this stone.
+
+Touching words they are, which tell
+Of a husband's last farewell;
+Cry of a despairing heart
+That has seen a wife depart
+On death's dark, uncharted sea;--
+"Conjugi Carissimae!"
+
+Was this lady still a bride,
+Or a matron, when she died?
+Had she children? Was she fair?
+Bright with joy, or bowed with care?
+Ah, pathetic mystery!
+"Conjugi Carissimae."
+
+Yet, in truth, what matters all,
+Save the fact these words recall?
+She was loved,--a consort mourned
+In the home she had adorned;
+And her husband long ago
+Left the words which tell us so.
+
+Strange, that these alone remain,--
+Words of mingled love and pain!
+Time, which broke or blurred the rest,
+Tenderly has spared the best;
+For what better could there be?
+"Conjugi Carissimae."
+
+Ancient relic, white and pure,
+May thine epitaph endure,
+While the lake with dimpled smile
+Mirrors this historic isle!
+Precious are thy words of old,
+Worthy of a script of gold!
+
+Soon upon this island's shrine
+Shalt thou like a jewel shine,--
+Dearest of its treasure-trove,
+Emblem of a deathless love
+From its sepulchre set free,--
+"Conjugi Carissimae."
+
+
+
+
+THE PAGAN PAST
+
+What sylvan god was worshipped here?
+What nymph once made this grove her home,
+And bathed within its fountain clear,
+When Caesar ruled the world at Rome?
+
+Did Pan frequent this charming site,
+So hidden from the haunts of men?
+Did nymphs and satyrs dance at night
+Within this moon-illumined glen?
+
+Ah, who can doubt it, when these vines
+Form trellised screens for distant snow,
+And trace in arabesque designs
+Their profiles on the Alpine glow?
+
+So sure were Dryads to select
+A region thus supremely fair!
+So apt were mortals to erect
+In such a place a shrine for prayer!
+
+The two millenniums have not brought
+Diminished splendor to this bay;
+The strand which Pliny loved and sought
+Is no less beautiful to-day.
+
+Hence, while the fragrant rose-leaves fall,
+And white magnolia-blossoms gleam
+Above my wave-lapped garden wall,
+I seem to see, as in a dream,
+
+The kneeling forms of those who laid
+Their floral offerings on that shrine,
+And here their grateful tribute paid
+To beauty, rightly deemed divine.
+
+Doth some Divinity each morn
+Cast over me its ancient spell,
+That this sweet landscape seems forlorn
+Without the gods who loved it well?
+
+Men tell me they are dead and gone,
+But when my soul is moved to pray,
+I feel, beside my sculptured Faun,
+They are not very far away.
+
+For I, who love this classic lake,
+And cruise along its storied shores,
+See Roman galleys in my wake,
+And hear the stroke of phantom oars.
+
+It matters not which way I steer,
+Or if my course be slow or fast,
+The Pagan world seems always near;
+I sail, companioned by the Past.
+
+
+
+
+RETIREMENT
+
+Spirit of solitude, silence, and rest,
+Take me once more, like a child, to your breast!
+Weary of worldliness, turmoil, and hate,
+Welcome me back, if it be not too late,
+Back to the realm of ideals and dreams,
+Hush of the forest and cadence of streams!
+
+What have I found in life's whirlpool of haste?
+Pitiful poverty, limitless waste,
+Sad disillusionments, losses of friends,
+Treacherous methods for fraudulent ends,
+Idle frivolity, senseless display,
+Youth without reverence, faith in decay.
+
+Gladly I turn from the roar of the crowd,
+Hand of the beggar, and purse of the proud,
+Gladly go back to the humming of bees,
+Carols of birds, and the whisper of trees,
+Gladly dispense with the voices of men,
+Thankful to hear only Nature again.
+
+Out from the mob with its furious pace
+Into the cool, quiet reaches of space;
+Rid of Society's glittering chains,
+Fleeing a prison and finding the plains;
+Far from the clangor of murderous cars,
+Losing the limelight, but gaining ... the stars!
+
+Others may live in the turbulent throng,
+Others may struggle to rectify wrong,
+Strive with the strenuous, laugh with the gay,
+I too have striven and laughed in my day;
+But of life's blessings I crave now the best,--
+Freedom for solitude, silence, and rest.
+
+
+
+
+IN NOVEMBER
+
+Under my trees of green and gold
+I stroll in the soft, autumnal days,
+With never a hint of winter's cold,
+Though the mountain sides are a brilliant maze
+Which spreads from the gleaming lake below
+To gild the edge of the distant snow.
+
+Closed are the stately inns once more;
+Flown, like the birds, is the latest guest;
+Many have gone to a southern shore,
+Some to the east and some to the west;
+But the smiling landlords count their gains,
+And we know well that the best remains.
+
+For the walls are lined with precious books,
+And the hearth and home are always here,
+And the garden hath a score of nooks,
+Where flowers bloom throughout the year;
+And now that the restless crowd is gone
+I hear the flute of my rustic Faun.
+
+Why should I grieve, if from my trees
+The gorgeous leaves fall, one by one?
+Through the clearer space with greater ease
+I feel the warmth of the genial sun;
+And though the plane-trees stand bereft,
+The pines and cypresses are left.
+
+Does the gay world leave us? Well, good-bye!
+It will come again--perhaps too soon!
+We have the mountains, lake, and sky,
+And solitude is a precious boon.
+Yet the falling leaves, so fair and fleet,--
+Their memory, after all, is sweet.
+
+
+
+
+THE CALL OF THE BLOOD
+
+Over the water the shadows are creeping,
+Lost are the lights on Bellagio's shore,
+Goddess and Faun in the garden are sleeping,
+Only the fountain sings on as before.
+
+Low as its murmur, when daintily falling,
+Sweet as its plaintive, mellifluous song,
+Voices of absent ones seem to be calling:--
+"Come to us! Come! thou hast waited too long."
+
+Vainly I call it a childish delusion,
+Vainly attempt to regard it with mirth,
+Still do I hear in my spirit's seclusion
+Voices I loved in the land of my birth.
+
+Ever recurrent, like tides of the ocean,
+Sad are these cadences, reaching my ear,
+Waking within me a mingled emotion,--
+Partly of ecstasy, partly of fear;
+
+For of the friends who once gathered to greet me
+Many, alas! will await me no more;
+Few are the comrades remaining to meet me,
+Cold are the arms that embraced me before!
+
+Over Life's river the shadows are creeping,
+Dim and unknown is the opposite shore,
+But in the fatherland some are still keeping
+Lights in the window and watch at the door.
+
+
+
+
+THE CASCADE
+
+  From the mountain gray
+  It has made its way
+To my garden green and cool,
+  And there, from the edge
+  Of a rocky ledge
+Leaps down to a crystal pool.
+
+  With a plunging flash
+  It falls, to dash
+That crystal into foam;
+  And then at a bound
+  Slips under ground
+To the lake,--its final home.
+
+  In the morning light,
+  In the silent night,
+When the moonlight gems the scene,
+  It laughs and sings,
+  And a light spray flings
+O'er stately walls of green.
+
+  For in and out,
+  And round about,
+Grow flowers, plants, and trees,
+  From the lowly moss
+  To the boughs that toss
+Their leaves in the passing breeze.
+
+  On its outer zone
+  Of massive stone
+Two marble statues stand,--
+  The silver sheen
+  Of the pool between,--
+One form on either hand.
+
+  One of the pair
+  Is a woman fair,
+With parted, smiling lips;
+  For her each hour
+  A honied flower,
+And she the bee that sips.
+
+  The other, a faun,
+  From whom is gone
+The power to frankly smile;
+  For whom each day,
+  As it drags away,
+Makes life still less worth while.
+
+  The face of the one
+  Is like the sun,
+With its warmth, and light, and cheer;
+  But the faun looks down
+  With ugly frown,
+And his lips retain a sneer.
+
+  Youth and age,
+  Child and sage!
+The former with life unknown;
+  The latter burnt
+  By lessons learnt,
+With a heart now turned to stone.
+
+  Yet the torrent speeds,
+  And never heeds
+The statues' smiles or sneers;
+  They come and go,
+  But the water's flow
+Has lasted a thousand years.
+
+
+
+
+BIRD SLAUGHTER
+
+Poor, little bird! the chase is ended;
+No longer hast thou cause for fear;
+Within these walls thou art befriended;
+No sportsmen can molest thee here.
+
+Without, they doubtless still await thee,
+And scan with eager eyes the sky;
+Sweet, winsome thing! how can they hate thee?
+Why should they wish to see thee die?
+
+So limp and helpless! wilt thou never
+Recover from thy fear and flight?
+How breathless was thy last endeavor
+To reach this shelter, when in sight!
+
+Thou tremblest still, as I approach thee;
+Do I, too, seem like all the rest?
+Thy timid, liquid eyes reproach me ...
+Alas! there's blood upon thy breast.
+
+Nay, fear not, birdling! let me gently
+Uplift and hold thee in my hand;
+Thou gazest on me so intently,
+Thou must my motive understand.
+
+Thy downy breast is pierced and bleeding;
+This wing will never rise again;
+In vain thy look, so wild and pleading!
+I cannot cure or ease thy pain.
+
+Too well the hunters have succeeded;
+Thy little life is ebbing fast;
+My presence now is all unheeded;
+'Tis over; ... thou art dead at last.
+
+Yet thus, within my garden dying,
+Thy fate hath caused me less regret
+Than that of all thy comrades, lying
+Half dead and mangled in the net!
+
+Where are they all, who crossed so gladly
+The lofty Alps to seek the sun?
+Still lives thy mate, to mourn thee sadly,
+Or is her life-course also run?
+
+Within the voiceless empyrean
+No birds are passing on the breeze;
+No songster lifts its joyous paean,
+And silent stand my empty trees;
+
+For at the base of every mountain,
+Where southward-moving birds repose,
+In every grove, at every fountain,
+Lurk merciless, insatiate foes.
+
+With cruel craft those foes surround them,
+Ensnaring hundreds in a day,
+Indifferent if they tear and wound them,
+Proud only of the heaps they slay.
+
+What care these brutes if songs of rapture
+From thrush and lark are no more heard?
+What matter if their modes of capture
+Denude the land of every bird?
+
+Whole regions, where they once abounded,
+Are now as silent as the tomb;
+The birds have vanished,--slain or wounded,
+Pursued, by thousands, to their doom.
+
+Meanwhile, since Earth itself is blighted,
+The Nemesis of Nature wakes;
+Her flawless balance must be righted;
+If Ceres gives, ... she also takes!
+
+Still worse, a moral degradation
+Thus cradled, vitiates the race;
+Among the rising generation
+A lust for slaughter grows apace.
+
+Even children kill the birds thus captured,--
+And, since none censures or withstands,
+They seize the tiny skulls, enraptured
+To crush them in their blood-smeared hands!
+
+See yonder lad with tethered linnet,
+Its frail legs raw from rasping strings!
+A carriage comes,--he flings within it
+The tortured bird ... to sell its wings!
+
+And oft as it may be rejected,
+The little victim, mad with thirst,
+Is jerked back, well-nigh vivisected,
+Till pain and hunger do their worst.
+
+Beware, harsh man and heartless woman!
+Beneath you swells a threatening flood;
+If you and yours remain inhuman,
+It yet may drown you in your blood.
+
+You smile, and call this sentimental;
+You will not smile in later times!
+For cruelty, so fundamental,
+Already breeds the worst of crimes.
+
+
+
+
+THE IRON CROWN
+
+On the classic shore of Como,
+'Neath a headland steep and bold,
+Which, though leaden at the dawning,
+In the sunset turns to gold,
+Nestles beautiful Varenna,
+Still invested with renown
+By the legend that connects it
+With the Lombards' Iron Crown.
+
+Far above it on the mountain
+Stands the castle, old and gray,
+With its battlements in ruin
+And its towers in decay;
+But a subtle charm still lingers
+Round that residence sublime,
+And the beauty of its story
+Is triumphant over time.
+
+As we trace its ancient pavement,
+As we tread its roofless halls,
+How alluring is the figure
+Which this castle still recalls!
+For 'tis Queen Theodelinda
+Whom its ruined arches frame,
+And the passing breeze seems laden
+With the music of her name.
+
+As we gaze from ivied ramparts
+On the storied lake below,
+We forget the world about us
+For the world of long ago,
+When the Lombards had descended
+From the mountains to the plain,
+And all Italy lay mourning
+For the thousands of her slain;
+
+When their brave, ambitious leader,
+Not content to make his home
+By these northern lakes of beauty,
+Had resolved to capture Rome!
+For no longer could her legions
+His resistless course withstand,
+And the road lay open, southward,
+To the conquest of the land.
+
+When his valiant host stood ready
+And impatient for the start,
+What reversed their king's decision?
+What so changed the warlord's heart?
+'Twas the passionate entreaty
+Of his wife,--a Christian queen;
+'Twas the conquest of the pagan
+By the lowly Nazarene.
+
+Through her prayers Rome's agèd Pontiff
+From the threatened doom was freed;
+By her aid the Church was strengthened
+As the king professed its creed;
+And Saint Peter's great successor,
+Thus preserved from grievous loss,
+Gave to her, his faithful daughter,
+A true relic of the Cross.
+
+What to pious Theodelinda
+Could be recompense more sweet
+Than the nail, forever sacred,
+That once pierced her Saviour's feet?
+Which, when rounded to a circlet,
+(To fine wire beaten down,)
+Then became the precious basis
+Of the Lombards' Iron Crown.
+
+Through the ages that have followed
+What a line of the Renowned
+Have been proud to wear this emblem,
+As they, each in turn, were crowned!
+Charlemagne, Charles Fifth, Napoleon,
+German Kaisers by the score,
+And at last poor King Umberto,
+Basely slain at Monza's door!
+
+Since that coronet was fashioned
+Fifteen centuries have passed
+O'er the castle by Lake Como,
+Where the good queen breathed her last;
+But the Crown is still at Monza,
+And its iron basic line
+Tells the world of human glory
+And the death of the Divine.
+
+
+
+
+CONTRASTS
+
+The wind is roaring down the lake,
+The clear, cold moon rides high,
+The mountains, crystal to their crests,
+Indent the starlit sky;
+The wild sea beats my garden-wall,
+And all its peace transforms;
+Dear Heart, how different is the lake
+When swept by Alpine storms!
+
+My soul to-night is dark and sad
+From proofs of hate displayed,
+From envy and rapacity,
+And kindness ill-repaid;
+The baseness of humanity
+Hath spoiled a cherished dream;
+Dear Heart, how different is the lake
+When Evil reigns supreme!
+
+The gale hath blown itself to rest,
+The sun turns all to gold,
+Once more the crystal mountain-sides
+A waveless plain enfold;
+And some will laugh, and lightly say
+The storm hath left no stain,
+But in my park one perfect rose
+Will never bloom again!
+
+
+
+
+IN MY PERGOLA
+
+Beyond the blue-robed, sleeping lake,
+I watch the flush of morning rise,
+While birds and flowers once more wake,
+To share with me my paradise.
+
+Within this waveless bay of rest
+The Alpine winds contend no more,
+But skim, like gulls, its dimpled breast,
+And sink to silence on its shore.
+
+The breath of dawn descends the hills,
+And round me, as I greet the day,
+I hear the lilt of laughing rills
+And songs of fountains at their play.
+
+Tall, whispering trees their shadows fling
+Athwart the trellised path I tread,
+And incense-breathing roses swing
+Their pendent censers o'er my head.
+
+What Moorish ceiling e'er excelled
+This arbor, roofed with cups of gold?
+What Eastern casket ever held
+The perfume which their leaves unfold?
+
+Fair chalices of bloom, swing low,
+And touch my lips with odors sweet!
+Enfold me in your ardent glow,
+While petals flutter to my feet!
+
+Let, for to-day, the dream remain
+That life is rose-hued, like this aisle,--
+A fragrant pathway, free from pain,
+With every sun-kissed flower a smile!
+
+
+
+
+EVANESCENCE
+
+Passing ships! Passing ships!
+The white foam sparkling at your lips
+And countless jewels in your wake
+Proclaim your progress o'er the lake,
+While on your decks a smiling throng
+Surveys this realm of sun and song.
+
+Slipping by! Slipping by!
+O'er waves that duplicate the sky
+I watch you daily come and go,
+But rarely is there one I know
+Of all who at your railings stand,
+To view with joy this storied land.
+
+On ye pass! On ye pass!
+At times I follow through my glass
+Your silent course from sunset light
+To meet the dusky veil of night,
+As swiftly round the curving shore
+Glide faces I shall see no more.
+
+Sailing on! Sailing on!
+The transient voyagers now are gone;
+Yet though the hills their features hide,
+One memory of them will abide,--
+The thought of their enraptured gaze
+In this the gem of Larian bays.
+
+Gliding by! Gliding by!
+Why is it that I look, ... and sigh?
+What makes my heart thus vaguely yearn
+For strangers who will ne'er return?
+I would not really have them stay,
+Yet grieve to see them fade away.
+
+Hail-farewell! Hail-farewell!
+Those passing steamers seem to tell
+That all ships, whether slow or fast,
+Will cross life's little bay at last,
+While we who linger on the strand
+Must daily mourn some vanished hand.
+
+
+
+
+LAKE COMO IN AUTUMN
+
+From Como's curving base of blue,
+To where the snow lies cold and clear,
+Ascends in steps of varied hue
+The pageant of the passing year,
+As scores of mountain-sides unfold
+Their gorgeous robes of red and gold.
+
+Meanwhile, where shore and lake unite,
+I see, projected far below,
+A counterpart in colors bright,
+Of snows that gleam and woods that glow,--
+Two pictures of an ideal land,
+Divided by a single strand.
+
+O matchless view, thus doubly fair,
+Impress thy beauty on my heart,
+That, when no longer really there,
+I still may see thee as thou art!
+Alas, that they should ever go,--
+Those steps of light, those thrones of snow!
+
+The day declines, the colors pale,
+The peaks will soon be ashen gray;
+Yet, though the shades of night prevail,
+The darkness hath not come to stay;
+And if no leaves of gold remain,
+The sun will bring the Spring again.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE PORTRAIT OF NAPOLEON, AS FIRST CONSUL
+
+Painted by Andrea Appiani, in 1803, and at present in the Villa Melzi,
+Bellagio.
+
+Brilliant as Lucifer, Son of the Morning,
+Rises this reincarnation of Mars!
+Youth at its apogee, precedent scorning,
+Genius ascending its path toward the stars!
+
+Never was Bonaparte's Consular glory
+Treated by Art so superbly as here;
+Never a phase of his marvellous story
+Handled more deftly, or rendered more clear.
+
+Italy's effigy lies 'neath his fingers,
+Lombardy rests in the fold of his hand,
+While on his lips an expression still lingers,
+Stamped by a character born to command.
+
+Hero of history, what art thou scheming,
+Spanning thus easily so much of Earth,
+Holding tenaciously, too, in thy dreaming
+Wave-beaten Corsica, isle of thy birth?
+
+All that thou dreamest of paramount power
+Fate shall concede to thee, chieftain sublime!
+Yet shall it prove but the joy of an hour;
+Fortune avenges her favors ... with time!
+
+Aye, even now, although millions adore thee,
+Hailing as godlike thy dominant name,
+Nemesis stands in the shadow before thee,
+Waiting with Waterloo, exile, and shame.
+
+Waiting is also that island of anguish,
+Destined to crush thy proud spirit at last,
+Doomed amid pigmy tormentors to languish,
+Facing forever its measureless past!
+
+Yet when at length on that rock in mid-ocean
+Merciful Death shall have broken thy chain,
+Millions will hail thee again with devotion,
+Building thy tomb by the banks of the Seine!
+
+Face of Napoleon, nobly recalling
+Days of the mythical heroes of yore,
+Oft wilt thou haunt me when shadows are falling,--
+Beautiful gem of the Larian shore.
+
+
+
+
+DAY AND NIGHT
+
+Twilight is falling on lake and on land,
+Softly the wavelets steal in to the strand,
+Fisher-boats, floating like sea-gulls at rest,
+Glow in the lingering light of the west,
+Far-away vesper-bells hallow the air,
+Ave Maria! the world seems at prayer.
+
+One more immaculate sunset exposed,
+One chapter more of life's history closed,
+One more bead told on the chaplet of time,
+One further stride in Earth's orbit sublime;--
+Linked to the measureless chain of the past,
+One added day, ... to so many their last!
+
+Slowly the colors diminish and die,
+Slowly the stellar hosts people the sky,
+Lost is the light on the fishermen's sails,
+Sweet is the exquisite peace that prevails,
+Silence and solitude brood o'er the deep,
+Ave Maria! the world seems to sleep.
+
+One more magnificent pageant to face,--
+Numberless systems in infinite space;
+Once more our planet in majesty rolls
+On through the darkness its burden of souls;--
+Linked to the limitless chain of the past,
+One added night, ... to so many their last!
+
+
+
+
+PASSING AND PERMANENT
+
+Stately boats, with happy crowds,
+  Passing up the lake,
+Leaving, under sunset clouds,
+  Jewels in your wake,
+From my garden's sheltered strand
+  I can watch you glide,
+As through some enchanted land
+  On a silver tide.
+
+To your eyes, O joyous throng,
+  All this scene is new;
+Like a burst of seraphs' song,
+  Comes its matchless view;
+You have traversed land and sea
+  For this wondrous sight,
+Which the gods vouchsafe to me
+  Every day and night!
+
+One long, serial pageant this
+  Of supreme content!
+Every face suffused with bliss,
+  Every eye intent;
+Griefs and troubles slip away
+  On this charming shore,
+And throughout a transient stay
+  Will return no more.
+
+Yet beware! Gardens fair,
+  Lake, and snow-capped crest
+For a while may banish care
+  From the saddest breast;
+But it quickly, even here,
+  Finds the heart again,
+With the old-time sigh and tear,
+  And the well-known pain.
+
+Careless crew, I envy you!
+  You will grieve to go,
+But, believe me, if you knew,
+  You would choose it so;
+Leave the lake while still you laugh;
+  Be content to pass;
+Though its wine be sweet to quaff,
+  Do not drain your glass!
+
+
+
+
+TRIPOLI
+
+Hear the singing on the boats,
+As they halt beside the pier!
+Ah, those fresh Italian throats,
+    How they cheer!
+Yet the words they sing so loud
+Bring depression to my heart,
+As I watch the youthful crowd
+    Thus depart.
+
+  "We are going o'er the sea!
+  Loyal sons of Italy,
+  We are bound for Tripoli,
+      Tripoli!"
+
+See that lad of twenty years,--
+Who is stretching out his hand
+Toward his mother there in tears
+    On the strand!
+Should he perish in the strife
+Under Afric's burning sky,
+There were nothing left in life--
+    She must die.
+
+  Yet he's going o'er the sea!
+  At the call of Italy,
+  He is bound for Tripoli,
+    Tripoli!
+
+Now the plank is pulled to land,
+And the last farewell is o'er,
+As the steamer, at command,
+    Leaves the shore;
+There are shouts and ringing cheers,
+For the boys are brave and strong,
+Yet one feels that there are tears
+    In their song:
+
+  "We are going o'er the sea!
+  Loyal sons of Italy,
+  We are bound for Tripoli,
+    Tripoli!"
+
+Ah, that mother who is left!
+She is weeping now alone,
+Like a Niobe bereft
+    Of her own;
+And at length I dare to speak
+To the woman seated there,
+With the tears upon her cheek,
+    In despair.
+
+  He has gone across the sea!
+  Who so dutiful as he?
+  He is bound for Tripoli,
+    Tripoli!
+
+"Nay, good mother, do not weep!
+Since the summons comes from Rome,
+Can we really wish to keep
+    Sons at home?"
+"And why not?" she made reply;
+"We have no invading foe;
+I would send my son to die,
+    Were it so."
+
+  But he's gone across the sea!
+  Gone with thousands such as he!
+  He is bound for Tripoli,
+    Tripoli!
+
+"What is Africa to me,
+If it swallow up my child?
+What care I for Tripoli,
+    Spot defiled!
+Did not Abyssinian sand
+Drink sufficiently our gore?
+Must we stain that fatal strand,
+    As before?"
+
+  Yet he's gone across the sea,
+  Who more valorous than he?
+  He is bound for Tripoli,
+      Tripoli!
+
+"Have we no great uses _here_
+For the millions we outpour?
+Are our consciences quite clear
+    In this war?
+Are there no more roads to build,
+Schools to found, and farms to work.
+That we let our boys be killed
+    By the Turk?"
+
+  Yet we send them o'er the sea!
+  Youthful sons of Italy,
+  They are bound for Tripoli,
+        Tripoli!
+
+"We are hungry, yet behold,
+How the price of food goes higher!
+And the nights will soon be cold
+    Without fire!
+Who will earn for me my bread?
+Who my little home will save,
+When he lies there cold and dead
+    In his grave?"
+
+  But he's gone across the sea!
+  Who so good and kind to me?
+  He is bound for Tripoli,
+    Tripoli!
+
+To the churchyard, near the bay,
+Went the mother in her grief,
+For her soul was moved to pray
+    For relief;
+And deep sobs convulsed her breast,
+As she knelt upon the sod,
+Where her husband lay at rest,
+    Safe in God.
+
+  For the boy was o'er the sea,
+  Whom she rocked upon her knee;
+  He had gone to Tripoli,
+    Tripoli!
+
+She was buried yesterday
+With her husband, side by side;
+Ere two months had passed away
+    She had died!
+For one morning she had read
+Of her son among the slain,
+And they saw her old gray head
+    Sink in pain.
+
+  Nevermore across the sea
+  Will he come to Italy!
+  He was killed in Tripoli,
+    Tripoli!
+
+There was nothing more to tell
+Of a lad so little known;
+He was reckoned "one who fell,"
+    That alone.
+Was he wounded? Did he lie
+Long ill-treated by the foe?
+    And not know!
+
+  Yes, he lies beyond the sea!
+  (Can it be that _that_ is he?)
+  In the sands of Tripoli,
+    Tripoli!
+
+She had asked for nothing more,
+But in silence slowly failed,
+Dreaming ever of the shore,
+    Whence he sailed.
+Till her face, so wan and white,
+Flushed at last with sweet surprise,
+And a strangely tender light
+    Filled her eyes.
+
+  Then for her was "no more sea"!
+  She had found the soul set free
+  From the sands of Tripoli,
+    Tripoli!
+
+
+
+
+INFLUENCE
+
+We know not what mysterious power
+Lies latent in our words and deeds,--
+Sweet as the perfume of a flower,
+Strong as the life that sleeps in seeds;
+But something certainly survives
+The passing of our fleeting lives.
+
+A look, a pressure of the hand,
+A sign of hope, a song of cheer,
+May journey over sea and land,
+Outliving many a sterile year,
+To find at last the destined hour
+When they shall leap to bud and flower.
+
+We write, we print, then--nevermore
+To be recalled--our thoughts take flight,
+Like white-winged birds that leave the shore,
+And scattering, lose themselves in light;
+For good or ill those words may be
+The arbiters of destiny.
+
+Perchance some fervid plea may find
+A heart to rise to its appeal;
+Some statement rouse a dormant mind,
+Or stir a spirit, quick to feel;
+Nay, through some note of gentler tone
+Even love may recognize its own.
+
+Fain would I deem not wholly dead
+The spoken words of former years,
+And every printed page, when read,
+A source of smiles, instead of tears;
+That friends, whom I shall never see,
+May, for a time, remember me.
+
+
+
+
+LEO
+
+I made a journey o'er the sea,
+I bade my faithful dog good-bye,
+I knew that he would grieve for me,
+But did not dream that he would die!
+  And how could I explain
+  That I would come again?
+
+At first he mourned, as dogs will mourn
+A life-long master they adore,
+Till in his mind the fear was born
+That he should never see me more.
+
+Ah! then, on every boat intent,
+He watched the crowd upon the pier,
+While every look and motion meant
+"Will _he_ not come? Is _he_ not here?"
+
+At last he merely raised his head,
+To see the steamers passing by,
+Then sank again upon his bed,
+And heaved a long-drawn, plaintive sigh;
+  For how could one explain
+  That I would come again?
+
+I hastened back by sea and land,
+Forced homeward by remorse and fear;
+But no glad barking swept the strand,
+Nor did he meet me on the pier!
+
+I climbed the steps with footsteps fleet,
+And then beheld him near the wall,
+Though tottering, still upon his feet,
+And creeping toward me down the hall.
+
+No wish had he to sulk or blame,
+Nor did he need to understand,
+But simply loved me just the same,--
+In silence licking face and hand.
+
+In silence? What could this portend?
+Such muteness he had never shown;
+Was he so very near the end?
+Ah, Leo, had I only known!
+
+For his grand eyes, so large and bright,
+Though turned, through sound, my form to find,
+Were totally devoid of sight;
+He faced me in the darkness ... blind!
+
+What could such gloom have been to him,
+As weeks and months had crept away,
+While all the outer world grew dim,
+Till endless night eclipsed the day!
+
+What had it meant to him to wake
+And mid familiar things to grope?
+To hear old sounds on shore and lake,
+Yet wander darkly without hope!
+
+But now, his head upon my knee,
+He tried in various ways to show
+That, though my face he could not see,
+He knew the voice of long ago.
+  Yes, now it was quite plain
+  That I had come again.
+
+Within my arms he breathed his last,
+In my embrace his noble head
+Drooped back, and left to me ... the Past,
+With tender memories of the dead.
+
+He lies beneath the stately trees,
+Whose ample shade he loved the best,
+Mid flowers, whose perfume every breeze
+Wafts lightly o'er his place of rest.
+
+Yet somehow still I watch and wait
+For him, as he once watched for me;
+At every footstep near my gate
+I look, his bounding form to see.
+
+Good-night? ... Good-bye! for I must leave thee,
+My boat is waiting on the shore;
+May I not hope that it will grieve thee,
+When thou shalt see me here no more?
+
+Such thoughts, I know, to-day are flouted;
+"Have statues souls?" the cynic sneers;
+But I am happier to have doubted,
+And loved thee thus these many years.
+
+Behind the form is the ideal,
+Forever high, forever true;
+Behind the false exists the real,
+Known only to the favored few.
+
+Not all can hear the music stealing
+From out that lightly-lifted flute;
+To those devoid of kindred feeling
+Its melody is always mute.
+
+But thou to me hast been a token
+Of classic legend, wrought in stone;
+In thee the thread of Art, unbroken,
+Made all the storied past mine own.
+
+And I have felt, still brooding o'er thee,
+The old-time Genius of the Place,
+Aware of those who still adore thee,
+Unchanged by time, or creed, or race.
+
+Through thee came also inspiration
+For many a rare, poetic thought;
+And oh, how much of resignation
+Thy sweet, unchanging smile hath taught!
+
+Though thine own past hath had its sorrow,
+Though all thy sylvan friends have fled,
+Thou still canst smile at every morrow,
+For Nature lives, though Pan is dead.
+
+Thou didst not grieve with futile wailing
+When altars crumbled far and near,
+When gods were scoffed, and faith was failing,
+And worship lessened year by year.
+
+Above thee still rose lofty mountains,
+Before thee lay the lake divine,
+Around thee sang the crystal fountains,--
+With all these treasures, why repine?
+
+Religions changed, and shrines were banished,
+Years slipped away, men came and went,
+But thou, whatever pleasures vanished,
+With what thou hadst wast still content.
+
+Not thine our fatal strain of sadness,
+As cherished fancies fade away;
+For thee the simple soul of gladness,--
+The careless rapture of to-day!
+
+Farewell! within my heart abiding
+I hear thy music, gentle Faun,--
+The wounds of disillusion hiding,
+The prelude to a happier dawn.
+
+
+
+
+WAKEFULNESS
+
+Drifting, idly drifting, where thought's varied streams
+Meet at last and mingle in the realm of dreams,
+Gladly would I join them in oblivion's deep!
+      Sleep, so dear to me,
+      Sleep, come near to me,
+      Sleep, sweet sleep!
+
+Toward the night's Nirvana groping for the way,
+Striving, ever striving to forget the day,
+Waves of dreamless slumber, o'er my spirit creep!
+      Sleep, so dear to me,
+      Sleep, come near to me,
+      Sleep, sweet sleep!
+
+By the stream of Lethe, fettered to the brink,
+Longing for the breaking of the last, frail link,
+Eager for its billows o'er my mind to sweep,
+      Sleep, so dear to me,
+      Sleep, come near to me,
+      Sleep, sweet sleep!
+
+Waiting, ever waiting for thy soothing call,
+And the welcome darkness that envelops all,
+If no more to waken, then no more to weep,
+      Sleep, so dear to me,
+      Sleep, come near to me,
+      Sleep, sweet sleep!
+
+
+
+
+VILLA PLINIANA
+
+It stands where darkly wooded cliffs
+Slope swiftly to the deep,
+And silvery streams from ledge to ledge
+In foaming splendor leap,--
+A broad expanse of saffron walls,
+A wilderness of mouldering halls.
+
+The torrent's breath hath spread its blight
+On every darkened room,
+And oozing mosses drip decay
+Through corridors of gloom,
+While Ruin lays a subtle snare
+On many a yielding rail and stair.
+
+There seats, which beauty once enthroned,
+In tattered damask stand;
+In gray neglect a faun extends
+A mutilated hand;
+And silence makes the festal board
+Mute as the stringless harpsichord.
+
+The boldest hesitate to tread
+Those gruesome courts at night;
+'Tis whispered that a spectral form
+Then haunts the lonely height;
+For he who built this home apart
+Had stabbed his rival to the heart.
+
+Oblivion's boon is vainly sought
+Amid those scenes sublime;
+Forever lurked within his breast
+The nemesis of crime;
+Not all that flood of limpid spray
+Could wash the fatal stain away.
+
+Yet certain fearless souls have dwelt
+Within that haunted pile;
+Among them she, whose portrait still,
+With enigmatic smile,
+Lights up the mansion, like a gem
+Set in a tarnished diadem;--
+
+The princess, at whose thrilling call
+Unnumbered patriots rose
+To drive from fettered Lombardy
+Her immemorial foes,--
+A woman, loved from sea to sea,
+As Liberty's divinity.
+
+But now the old, historic site
+Lives only in the past;
+Neglected and untenanted,
+Its life is ebbing fast;
+Each crumbling step, each mossy stone
+Is marked by Ruin for her own.
+
+Yet one mysterious charm abides,--
+The spring, whose ebb and flow
+Were praised in Pliny's classic prose
+Two thousand years ago,--
+A fountain, whose perennial grace
+Millenniums could not efface.
+
+Thrice daily in their polished cup
+Its crystal waters sink;
+Thrice daily do they rise again
+And overflow the brink,--
+Since Pliny's day no more, no less,
+Unchanged in rhythmic loveliness.
+
+Sweet Larian lake, and sylvan cliffs,
+Cascade, and storied spring,
+Ye are the same as when he loved
+Your varied charms to sing;
+'Tis man alone who sadly goes!
+The lake remains, the fountain flows.
+
+Like drops in its exhaustless flood,
+Our little lives emerge,
+Swirl for an instant, and are gone,
+Sunk by another surge!
+Whence come they? Whither do they go?
+O Roman poet, dost thou know?
+
+
+
+
+POINT BALBIANELLO
+
+From Lake Como's depths ascending,
+With embankments steep
+Stands a wooded headland, bending
+With majestic sweep
+Till its rugged shores, expanding,
+Join two charming bays,
+Now, as formerly, commanding
+Universal praise.
+
+Years ago a papal Primate
+Built a hospice here,
+Which, from its delightful climate,
+Mild throughout the year,
+Soon became for convalescence
+A renowned retreat,
+Where pure air and strict quiescence
+Made all cures complete.
+
+"Villa Balbi",--appellation
+Of the Primate's seat--,
+Gave its name to this location
+In a form more sweet,--
+Soft, sonorous "Balbianello",
+Spoken, as if sung
+In the speech, so smooth and mellow,
+Of the Latin tongue.
+
+Balbianello, Balbianello!
+Point of liquid name,
+With thy walls of golden yellow
+And thy flowers of flame,
+When thy varied charms enthrall me
+Under summer skies,
+Tenderly I love to call thee
+Como's Paradise.
+
+From thy base, where in profusion
+Countless roses bloom,
+To thy crest, where sweet seclusion
+Reigns in leafy gloom,
+All is beauty, uncontested
+By a rival claim,
+All is symmetry invested
+With a storied fame.
+
+Cool the paths, by plane-trees shaded,
+Which thy slopes ascend;
+Grand the loggia, old and faded,
+Where those pathways end;--
+Noble arches, well recalling
+Mighty works of old,
+Columns which, when night is falling,
+Turn to shafts of gold.
+
+In that loggia, fringed with roses,
+All my soul expands;
+Every arch a view discloses
+Of historic lands;
+Southward lies fair Comacina,
+Famed in classic lore,
+Northward Pliny's Tremezzina
+And Bellagio's shore.
+
+Miles of liquid opalescence
+Stretch on either hand,
+Curving into lovely crescents,
+Each with sylvan strand;
+While on Alpine peaks lie sleeping
+Realms of stainless snow,
+Whence the milk-white streams come leaping
+To the lake below.
+
+Many a far-off promontory
+Melts in silvery haze,
+Many a scene of song and story
+Tells of Roman days;
+Real and unreal, past and present,
+Make the vision seem
+Like the rapture evanescent
+Of a happy dream.
+
+Yet this point, so well selected,--
+Peerless in its day--,
+Now, abandoned and neglected,
+Sinks to slow decay;
+Sculptured saints, with broken fingers,
+Line the ancient walls,
+Like a loyal guard that lingers
+Till the rampart falls;
+
+Vases, o'er the portal standing,
+Crumble into lime;
+Steps, ascending from the landing,
+Show the touch of time;
+And its one lone gardener, weeping
+As he tells his fears,
+Faithful watch has here been keeping
+Many, many years!
+
+Even he must leave it lonely,
+When the night grows late;
+Then the mouldering statues only
+Guard its rusty gate;
+Then no eye its charm discovers,
+And its moonlit bowers
+Wait in vain for happy lovers
+Through the silent hours.
+
+Will no champion protect thee,
+Fairest spot on earth?
+Doth a busy world neglect thee,
+Careless of thy worth?
+Even so, thy site elysian
+Still remains supreme,--
+Acme of the painter's vision
+And the poet's dream.
+
+
+
+
+AT LENNO
+
+    By Lake Como's sylvan shore,
+    Where the wavelets evermore
+Seem to rhythmically murmur of the classic days of yore,
+    Cease, O boatman, now to row!
+    While the Alpine summits glow,
+Let me dream that I am floating on the lake of long ago.
+
+    Where the Tremezzina ends,
+    And the bay of Lenno bends
+Till the shadow of the mountain to its placid wave descends,
+    On this strand of silver foam
+    Stood the Younger Pliny's home,
+When the world at last lay subject to the dominance of Rome.
+
+    Here he passed his sweetest hours
+    'Mid his statues, books, and flowers
+With a life and list of pleasures not dissimilar to ours,
+    For the city's rush and roar
+    Never reached this tranquil shore,
+And his writings prove completely that he yearned for them no more.
+
+    Here, as scholar, poet, sage,
+    He filled many a pliant page
+With the philosophic wisdom and refinement of his age,
+    And his letters to his peers
+    Through a life of smiles and tears
+Make me often quite forgetful of the intervening years;
+
+    For the beauty of the bay
+    And the magical display
+Of its coronet of mountains have not altered since his day,
+    And the lake of which he wrote
+    At that epoch so remote
+With the same caressing murmur laps my undulating boat.
+
+    Hence the subtle, tender spell
+    Of the place he loved so well
+Holds me captive and enchanted, as these waters gently swell,
+    And a vague and nameless pain
+    Makes me long for,--though in vain--,
+That delightful classic era, which will never come again.
+
+    Since the Goths' invading tide
+    Wrecked Rome's potency and pride,
+Something wonderful has vanished, something exquisite has died;
+    And in spite of modern fame
+    And the lustre of its name,
+Even beautiful Lake Como can be never quite the same.
+
+    So beside its sylvan shore,
+    Where the wavelets evermore
+Seem to rythmically murmur of the classic days of yore,
+    Cease, O boatman, now to row!
+    For, while Alpine summits glow,
+I would dream that I am floating on the lake of long ago.
+
+
+
+
+PERSONALLY ADDRESSED
+
+
+LINES
+
+written for a Golden Wedding, 1883
+
+Just fifty years ago to-night,
+  When earth was mantled deep with snow,
+The stars beheld with tender light
+  The fairest scene this world can show.
+
+Two graceful forms stood side by side,
+  Two trembling hands were clasped as one,
+Two hearts exchanged perpetual faith,
+  And love's sweet poem was begun.
+
+For suns may rise and suns may set,
+  And tides may ebb and tides may flow,
+Love is man's greatest blessing yet,
+  And honest wedlock makes it so.
+
+"Father" and "Mother",--sweetest words
+  That human lips can ever frame,
+We gather here as children now
+  To find your loving hearts the same.
+
+Unchanged, unchangeable by time,
+  Your love is boundless as the sea;
+The same as when our childish griefs
+  Were hushed beside our mother's knee.
+
+Years may have given us separate homes,
+  Friends, children, happiness and fame,
+But oh! to-night our greatest wealth
+  Is that we call you still by name.
+
+God bless you both! for fifty years
+  You've journeyed onward side by side;
+And still, for years to come, God grant
+  Your paths may nevermore divide;
+
+But, just as sunset's golden glow
+  Makes Alpine snows divinely fair,
+So may the setting sun of life
+  Rest lightly on your silvered hair!
+
+Yes, suns may rise and suns may set,
+  And tides may ebb and tides may flow,
+We are your loving children yet,
+  And time will ever prove us so.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE WALKING-STICK OF MY DEAD FRIEND
+
+To my hand thou com'st at last,
+Wand of ebon, tipped with gold,--
+Often carried in the past
+By a hand that now lies cold
+In his grave beyond the sea,
+Many thousand miles from me.
+
+Faithful staff! for many years
+Thou didst travel far and wide
+Through a life of smiles and tears,--
+Rarely absent from his side,
+As the light of day for him
+Grew pathetically dim.
+
+When with thee he walked abroad,
+Every crossing, every stair
+By thy touch was first explored,
+Ere his feet were planted there,
+With a sort of rhythmic beat
+On the pavement of the street.
+
+Hence, when brought to face the gloom
+Of a way, to all unknown,
+Called to leave his sunlit room
+For death's darkness, quite alone,
+He instinctively again
+Called to mind his faithful cane.
+
+To whose grasp should it descend,
+Since with him it could not go?
+Surely no one save a friend
+Would receive and prize it so!
+Thus to me wast thou bequeathed,
+To console a heart bereaved.
+
+Friendship's gift, belovd wand!
+Thou shalt likewise go with me
+To the shore of the Beyond,
+To the dark, untravelled sea;
+Only left upon the strand,
+When my bark puts forth from land.
+
+
+
+
+TO C....
+
+Behind a laughing waterfall
+There lies a little fount of tears,
+Deep, dark, and rarely seen at all
+By those the sparkling torrent cheers.
+
+Beneath a suit of armor bright,
+Shaft-proof and burnished, hard and cold,
+There beats, concealed from common sight,
+A tender woman's heart of gold!
+
+
+
+
+To Mr. and Mrs. A.H.S., Brussels
+
+BIRDS OF PASSAGE
+
+Two homeless birds, fatigued by flight,
+Have rested on the Belgian shore;
+And now, at the approach of night,
+Must spread their wings, and fly once more.
+
+Two others, when they saw them come
+From out the dark and stormy west,
+Conveyed them to their pleasant home,
+And fed and warmed them, breast to breast.
+
+Dear Birds of Brussels, do not crave
+The long, long route by which we came;
+More safe than any restless wave
+The sheltered nest of Auderghem.
+
+Henceforth, however far we roam,
+'Neath clouds that chill, or suns that burn,
+The memory of your lovely home
+Will make us certain to return.
+
+For, stronger than the subtle spell
+That homeward draws the carrier-dove,
+Are the sweet bonds that clearly tell
+Of Friendship welded into Love.
+
+
+
+
+TO M.C. OF ATHENS
+
+Son of the race that gave the world its best,
+Of ancient Greece a noble type thou art,--
+An Attic spirit transferred to the West,
+The blood of Hellas pulsing at thy heart;
+In homage to thyself and to thy land,
+Accept, I pray, these simple lines of mine;
+To one I offer both my heart and hand,
+Before the other kneel, as at a shrine.
+
+
+
+
+TO J.B.
+
+Within an Old World, classic vase
+She blossomed like a flower,
+And made Italian summer days
+Seem fleeting as an hour;
+Then left the antique vase in gloom,--
+Yet o'er its edges climb
+Some petals, with a sweet perfume
+That triumphs over time.
+
+
+
+
+TO M.P.
+
+The Critic grieves at Virtue's loss,
+And rails at Evil's stride,
+But Love still holds aloft the Cross,
+And shows the Crucified.
+
+One, safe in a secure retreat,
+Disdains the maddened throng;
+The other braves the seething street,
+And strives to right the wrong.
+
+Self shudders at the angry waves,
+And dreams of what should be,
+But Love the sinking sinner saves,
+And stills the stormy sea.
+
+
+
+
+TO MISS MARY C. LOW
+
+A thousand eyes, by thee made bright,
+Have read thy cheering lines;
+A thousand hearts have felt the light
+That through thy poetry shines;
+Thou dost not know them all, 'tis true,
+But they all wait for thee,
+As wait the rosebuds for the dew,
+Queen of the Christmas Tree!
+
+
+
+
+IN MEMORIAM. G.M.M.
+
+His letter lies before me here,
+Scarce written ere the hand grew cold
+That traced the lines so fine and clear,
+Which still of love and friendship told.
+
+This fragile film of black and white,--
+A traveller over land and sea--,
+Is all the bond I have to-night
+Between the friend I loved and me.
+
+I know not where his form may rest,
+Yet well I know Death cannot take
+His memory from the Central West
+And its proud city by the lake.
+
+But where are now his loyal soul,
+His loving heart and gifted mind;
+Do they survive--a conscious whole--
+The dwelling they have left behind?
+
+Beyond this tiny orb we tread
+Who can the spirit's pathway trace,
+Or find a haven for our dead
+In seas of interstellar space?
+
+O silent stars, that flash and burn
+Across the bridgeless vault of blue,
+Ye may receive, but ne'er return,
+The dead we sadly yield to you.
+
+In vain we urge the old request;
+In vain the darkness we explore;
+Light lie the turf above thy breast,
+O friend, whom I shall see no more!
+
+
+
+
+TO C.M.D.
+
+If it be true, as some have dreamed,
+That all have lived and loved before,
+I cannot wonder it hath seemed
+That on some other shore,
+In former ages long ago,
+Our souls had met and learned to know
+The truths that now upon the sea
+Establish our affinity.
+
+Heart leaps to heart and mind to mind:
+A look, a word, a smile, a phrase,--
+And we at once a kinship find,
+A relic of those days,
+When we both watched the sunset kiss
+The storied Bay of Salamis,
+Or paced beside the classic stream
+That borders Plato's Academe.--
+
+Perhaps our spirits met again,
+When Virgil wrote his deathless lines,
+And Horace praised, in lighter vein,
+His farm amid the Apennines;
+Or else we walked this old, old Earth
+When Grecian learning found new birth,
+And arm in arm watched Giotto's tower
+Rise heavenward, like a peerless flower.
+
+Enough that we have surely met,
+No matter in what land or age;
+For, if such trifles we forget,
+We share a common heritage:
+And though in this brief life stern Fate
+Shall bid us once more separate,
+O brother poet, it must be
+That kindred spirits such as we
+Shall sail another ocean blue,
+Still you with me and I with you.
+
+
+
+
+Sent with a Copy of "Red Letter Days Abroad"
+To J.C.Y.
+
+Book of my youth, I send thee to a friend
+Met, comprehended, loved, alas! too late,--
+Too near the sad, inevitable end
+Decreed by life's inexorable fate;
+Yet though an ocean's billows roll between,
+And two great continents our paths divide,
+The unseen subtly triumphs o'er the seen,
+We walk in spirit, ever side by side;
+He on the stately Mississippi's shore,
+I 'mid the snow and roses of Tyrol,
+But in my heart he dwells forevermore,--
+Belovèd friend, and double of my soul.
+
+
+
+
+To HON. JESSE HOLDOM OF CHICAGO,
+
+on receipt of his picture and that of his baby in his arms.
+
+Far from the great lake's pride,
+  Over the ocean vast,
+Two faces picture, side by side,
+  The future and the past.
+
+On one is the flush of dawn
+  And the light of the morning star;
+On the other a shade, from knowledge drawn
+  And the dusk of the sunset bar.
+
+One brow has the spotless sweep
+  Of a page that is white and fair;
+The other forehead is graven deep
+  With lines of thought and care.
+
+The eyes of the child look out
+  On a world all pure and sweet;
+But those of the man are sad from doubt
+  And a knowledge of men's deceit.
+
+To the baby's dainty ears
+  Only love's accents flow;
+Through the man's alas! have surged for years
+  Stories of crime and woe.
+
+Held in the infant's grasp
+  Is a tiny, lifeless toy;
+In the father's firm yet tender clasp
+  Is his last great hope,--his boy!
+
+Wisely the parent peers
+  Through the future's unknown skies,
+For knowledge of life has awakened fears
+  Of the storms that may arise
+
+When his darling boy no more
+  Can cling to his father's breast,
+But when on the strand of the silent shore
+  That father shall be at rest.
+
+Ah me! could the wisdom won
+  Through the father's fateful years
+Be but transmitted to the son,
+  There were little need for fears.
+
+But each must tread alone
+  The wine-press of his life;
+Into each cup by Fate is thrown
+  The bitter drops of strife.
+
+Forth from that fond embrace
+  Must the little stranger go;
+For the rising sun must mount through space.
+  And the waning sun sink low.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATIONS
+
+
+THE KISS TO THE FLAG
+
+Ta ra! Boom boom! A regiment is coming down the street;
+From every side an eager throng is hurrying to greet
+From overflowing sidewalk and densely crowded square,
+A brilliant, uniformed cortège whose music fills the air;
+For such a gorgeous spectacle is not seen every day;
+It gives the town a festival to view the fine array;
+All hearts are filled with happiness, and no one seems to lag,
+When he has thus a chance to see the soldiers ... and the flag.
+The old retired officers, their hats like helmets worn,
+Have thrust them gaily on one side at sound of drum and horn;
+The eldest, whose brave heart is stirred by that familiar strain,
+Surmounts, with stifled sigh, his chair, a better view to gain;
+Cafes, salons, mansards alike their windows open throw,
+And pretty girls wear radiant smiles to greet the passing show.
+Ah, here they are! Yes, here they come! preceded by the boys,
+Who imitate in fashion droll, yet with no actual noise,
+But merely by the gesturing of finger or of hand,
+The cymbals, flute, and (best of all) the trombones of the band.
+The babies even laugh and crow, upheld in nurses' arms,
+And have no fear of trumpets loud, or the bass-drum's alarms.
+The pavement of the boulevard is struck in perfect time;
+Six hundred echoes blend in one, and make the scene sublime;
+Six hundred hearts are throbbing there, imbued with martial pride;
+Twelve hundred feet with rhythmic beat make but a single stride.
+United, too, are all the hearts of those whose eyes pursue
+With admiration every line now passing in review.
+But when a gallant regiment appears thus on parade,
+A little vain of its fine looks, and conscious of its grade,
+Each soldier, (since a time of peace allows him to be gay),
+Aspires to be attentive to the ladies on the way,
+And stares at every pretty face, with no wish to be rude,
+But, then, you know, a regiment is never quite ... a prude!
+And this explains why Captain Short has said to Captain Tall,
+Despite the order which enjoins strict silence upon all,
+
+"A lovely girl!" "Is that so? Where?" "Beside the window there."
+"By Jove! I'd like to know her. She is divinely fair!"
+Then both a little thoughtfully move on with some regret,
+And now the entire regiment the lovely girl has met;
+
+Across the broad, resplendent ranks she looks now left, now right,
+Now straight before her, but as yet no smiles her features light;
+More than one mounted officer, with flashing sabre, wheels
+His well-groomed horse, and calls to him the sergeant at his heels;
+And makes excuse of some detail, endeavoring the while,
+Perhaps half consciously, to win the favor of a smile.
+In vain; the glance he hopes to gain, as hero of her heart,
+Comes not; but rank forbids delay, he must at once depart.
+The Colonel even has remarked this charming thoughtful girl,
+And gives to his fine gray moustache the customary twirl;
+A handsome man, with uniform whose gilded lustre shines
+From clanking spur to epaulette with stars and golden lines;
+He knows how potent is the spell such ornaments impart
+To make of soldiers demi-gods in woman's gentle heart.
+"The Flag! The Flag!" The crowd is thrilled to see it now advance!
+Hail, Colors of the Fatherland! Hail, Banner of Fair France!
+Hail, wounded emblem of the brave; blood-red, and heaven's blue,
+And purest white,--the noble Flag, now waving in our view!
+
+Standard sublime, that moves all hearts, as now thy form unrolls,
+Our dead seem shrouded in thy folds, stirred by the breath of souls!
+The color-bearer, young as Hope, and still a charming boy,
+In rhythm to the beating hearts and symphony of joy,
+Sways gently, as he bears it on, the emblem of a land
+Whose sons will in united ranks all enemies withstand.
+The young lieutenant, on whose face the standard's shadow falls,
+Knows well it makes him pass admired between those human walls,
+And that its presence lifts him high above the rank and file,
+And gains for him a sentiment worth many a pretty smile.
+"That girl has smiled", the Colonel thinks, "but on whom'? Who can tell?"
+"It is the bearer of the flag, on whom her favor fell",
+Exclaims the Captain, who then adds, "Great Heavens! worse than this,
+She has not only smiled, but now she really throws a kiss!"
+
+The Colonel, somewhat bent with years, sits up and swells his chest;
+"A charming girl" a sergeant cries, and tries to look his best;
+Each soldier, if a comrade laughs, a rival seems to fear;
+The chief of a battalion looks, and makes his charger rear.
+While several soldiers thus assume an air of martial pride,
+The color-bearer, whom the band has quite electrified,
+Caresses with a trembling hand the down upon his lip,
+In doing which he rashly lets the tattered banner dip.
+But she has seen within its folds, thus torn with shell and shot,
+The soul of one she dearly loved, who, dead at Gravelotte,
+Returned no more, but sleeps to-day within an unknown grave ...
+The maiden's kiss was for the Flag, the death-shroud of the brave.
+
+(Translated from the poem by Jean Aicard, entitled "Le Baiser au Drapeau".)
+
+
+
+
+EMILY'S GRAVE
+
+Idly one day in a foreign town
+In a churchyard's shade I sat me down
+By the side of a little cross of stone
+On which was a woman's name alone.
+A cypress whispered in my ear
+That all was now neglected here;
+"Emily's Grave" was all I read;
+Nothing more on the cross was said;
+Neither a name, nor Bible verse,
+Nor date relieved the inscription terse,--
+  "Emily's Grave".
+So strange this seemed, my blood turned cold
+At thought of a tragedy never told.
+The flowers, the grass, and the humming bees
+Were blithe and gay in the sun and breeze,
+Yet no kind hand had ever strewn
+Sweet flowers, where only weeds had grown,
+And nothing brightened the lonely mound
+Whose edge was lost in the trodden ground.
+At length to the churchyard gate I went,
+And asked of a woman old and bent,
+"Who was the girl, whose cross of stone
+Bears nothing save these words alone,--
+  'Emily's Grave'?"
+"Alas!" she answered, "many a year
+Hath passed since I beheld her bier;
+She was young, and came from a humble nest,
+And credulous too, like all the rest;
+So a stranger met her here one day
+And caught her in his net straightway.
+He said he was rich, and she should shine
+Like a queen in his castle by the Rhine,
+And, winning her love, he took her hence
+To where she found it was all pretence.
+He had basely lied to the simple maid,
+And, wearying soon of a girl betrayed,
+Abandoned her; then home once more
+She came, to sink at her mother's door.
+Of shame and grief she was quickly dead,
+For here she could no more lift her head;
+And her mother, wishing to efface
+All memory of her child's disgrace,
+Reared that small cross, to which she gave
+The title only,--'Emily's Grave'".
+
+(From the German.)
+
+
+
+
+SERENADE TO NINON
+
+Ninon, Ninon, what life canst thou be leading?
+Swift glide its hours, and day succeeds to day;
+How dost thou live, still deaf to Love's sweet pleading?
+To-night's fair rose to-morrow fades away.
+To-day the bloom of Spring, Ninon, to-morrow frost!
+What! Thou canst starless sail, and fear not to be lost?
+Canst travel without book? In silence march to strife?
+What! thou hast not known love, and yet canst talk of life?
+I for a little love would give my latest breath;
+And, if deprived of love, would gladly welcome death!
+What matter if the day be at its dusk or dawn,
+If from another's life our own heart's life be drawn?
+O youthful flowers, unfold! If blown o'er Death's cold stream,
+This life is but a sleep, of which love is the dream;
+And when the winds of Fate have wafted you above,
+You will at least have lived, if you have tasted love!
+
+(From the French of Alfred de Musset.)
+
+
+
+
+THE RED TYROLEAN EAGLE
+
+Eagle, Tyrolean eagle,
+Why are thy plumes so red?
+"In part because I rest
+On Ortler's lordly crest;
+There share I with the snow
+The sunset's crimson glow."
+
+Eagle, Tyrolean eagle,
+Why are thy plumes so red?
+"From drinking of the wine
+Of Etschland's peerless vine;
+Its juice so redly shines,
+That it incarnadines."
+
+Eagle, Tyrolean eagle,
+Why are thy plumes so red?
+"My plumage hath been dyed
+In blood my foes supplied;
+Oft on my breast hath lain
+That deeply purple stain."
+
+Eagle, Tyrolean eagle,
+Why are thy plumes so red?
+"From suns that fiercely shine,
+From draughts of ruddy wine,
+From blood my foes have shed,--
+From these am I so red."
+
+(From the German of Senn.)
+
+
+
+
+ANDREAS HOFER
+
+In Mantua in fetters
+The faithful Hofer lay,
+Condemned by hostile soldiers
+To die at break of day;
+Now bled his comrades' hearts in vain;
+All Germany felt shame and pain,
+  As did his land, Tyrol.
+
+When through his dungeon grating
+In Mantua's fortress grim
+He saw his loyal comrades
+Stretch out their hands to him,
+He cried: "God give to you his aid,
+And to the German realm betrayed,
+  And to the land Tyrol!"
+
+With step serene and steadfast,
+His hands behind him chained,
+Went forth the valiant Hofer
+To death which he disdained,--
+That death, which by his valor foiled
+Had oft from Iselberg recoiled,
+  In his loved land, Tyrol.
+
+The noisy drum-beat slackened,
+And silenced was its roar
+When Andreas the dauntless,
+Stepped through the prison door;
+The "Sandwirt", fettered still, yet free,
+Stood on the wall with unbent knee,--
+  The hero of Tyrol.
+
+When told to kneel, he answered:
+"That will I never do;
+I'll die, as I am standing,
+Die, as I fought with you;
+Here I resist your last advance,
+Long live my well-loved Kaiser Franz,
+  And with him his Tyrol!"
+
+The soldier takes the kerchief
+Which Hofer will not wear;
+Once more the hero murmurs
+To God a farewell prayer;
+Then cries: "Take aim! Hit well this spot!
+Now fire! ... How badly you have shot!
+  Adieu, my land Tyrol"!
+
+(From the German.)
+
+
+
+
+STREAM AND SEA
+
+A river flowed through a desert land
+On its way to find the sea,
+And saw naught else than glaring sand
+And scarcely a shady tree.
+
+The distant stars looked down by night,
+And the burning sun by day,
+On the crystal stream, so pure and bright;
+But the sea was far away.
+
+Sometimes at night the little stream
+Would sigh for the sea's embrace,
+And oft would see, as in a dream,
+The longed-for ocean's face.
+
+At last one day it felt a thrill
+It had never known before,
+As it reached the brow of a lofty hill,
+And saw the wave-lapped shore.
+
+And it flung itself with a mighty leap
+From the crest of the hill above,
+Till its waters mingled with the deep;--
+And the name of the sea was Love.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+RACHEL
+
+'Twas sunset in Jerusalem; the light
+Still lingered on the city's walls, and crowned
+Mount Olivet with splendor, while below,
+Among the trees of dark Gethsemane
+And on the Kedron gloomy shadows lay,
+As if but waiting for the death of day
+To rise and mantle Zion in a shroud.
+To one who watched it in that golden light,
+Across the gulf between the sunlit hills,
+The city seemed transfigured, lifted high
+Above the gloom and misery of earth,--
+A fit abode for Israel's ancient kings.
+The broad plateau, where Abram once had knelt,
+And where the hallowed Temple of the Jews
+Had glittered gorgeous with its gems and gold,
+Now bore, 'tis true, the stately Moslem mosque,
+But bore it as a captive bears his chains,
+Whose spirit is not crushed, but borne aloft
+By thrilling memories of a noble past.
+The rays of dying day yet half illumed
+A dreary spot outside the city walls
+Where sat, apart, an old man and his child.
+
+Beside them rose the cherished blocks of stone
+Which once had graced the Temple's sacred court;
+It was the "Day of Wailing", and the Jews,--
+A poor scant remnant of their outcast race--,
+Had gathered there, as is their weekly wont,
+To read of all the glories they have lost,
+And count their endless list of shattered hopes.
+Some moaned at thought of their contrasted lot,
+Some plucked their beards in anguish and despair,
+Some turned their tear-stained faces to the wall,
+And mutely kissed the precious blocks, as if
+The historic stones held sentient sympathy.
+Their lamentations ended, all had gone
+To their poor dwellings, sadly, one by one,
+Save these two lingering mourners, who still sat
+With downcast eyes and slowly-dropping tears.
+At length the old man raised his head, and spoke;--
+
+"Our Fathers' God! whose all-protecting hand
+Led us, Thy people, to this chosen land,
+Through the cleft waters of a distant sea,
+That we might rear a temple here to Thee;
+Thou, who on Zion hadst Thy favorite shrine,
+And in Thy majesty and power divine
+Wast daily by our suppliant race adored
+As sovereign Jehovah, peerless Lord;
+Why hast Thou cast us off to toil and die
+In foreign countries' harsh captivity?
+Our race is scattered now the wide world o'er;
+Our wailings rise to Thee from every shore;
+Baited or banished by the Christian Powers,
+Cursed by the Moslem mid our ruined towers,
+Like pariah dogs, an execrated race,
+We crouch to-day within our 'Wailing Place',
+Begging, and paying dearly for, the right
+To bathe with tears this consecrated site.
+How long, O Israel's God, shall this endure?
+Are not Thy promises to Jacob sure?
+Oh, speed the day when once again Thy name
+Shall here be worshipped, and the sacred flame
+Of pure, atoning offerings shall rise,
+And smoke ascend from daily sacrifice!"
+
+Tears choked his utterance, and the old man wept,
+His meagre frame convulsed with mighty sobs,--
+Pathetic tokens of a broken heart.
+His daughter crept beside him, drew his head,--
+Adorned with thin, white hair,--upon her breast,
+And soothed him as a mother might her child;
+Then, when his grief abated, took his hands,--
+So worn and white,--within her own soft palms,
+And chafed them gently with a loving care;
+Then pressed them to her lips, and lightly lay
+Her warm cheek next his own, while murmuring words
+Of tender, filial love in that old tongue
+Which once had rung in triumph on this spot,
+When poets of her race in glowing words
+Had sung their glorious, prophetic strains.
+
+"Father," she whispered, "shall we now despair,
+When we at last inhale the sacred air
+Of our ancestral glory, and have come,
+Despite long years of waiting, to our home?
+Didst thou not say, when far beyond the sea,
+In our dark days of want and misery,
+That thou hadst but one prayer,--to go to die
+Upon the hill where Zion's ruins lie?
+Now this is granted, and thou hast attained
+Thy dearest wish, with ample wealth retained
+To keep us here from want, till on the breast
+Of Olivet's gray slope in death we rest."
+
+She paused, and faintly smiled, while at her voice
+Her father turned his tear-dimmed eyes to hers,
+As one who hears soft music with delight.
+The sunset glow fell full upon her face,--
+A rich, dark oval, crowned with raven hair;
+Her lustrous eyes were shrines of tenderness,
+Large, dark, profound, and tremulously bright,
+And fringed by lashes of the deepest hue,
+Which swept the downy smoothness of her cheek;
+While her full lips, inimitably arched
+And exquisitely mobile, told her thoughts,
+Ere their soft motion framed them into speech;
+Divinely there had Beauty set her seal;
+As who should say,--"Behold a perfect type
+Of southern loveliness, in whose warm veins
+The blood of good, ancestral stock runs pure,
+Maintained through centuries of Spanish suns."
+The old man fondly took her hands in his,
+And, bending forward, kissed her broad, fair brow;
+Then in a faint and weary voice replied;--
+
+"Rachel, my well-belov'd, I have in thee
+The only blessing left on earth to me,
+The one sweet solace in my dreary life
+Of fourscore years of racial hate and strife;
+Dear Comforter, 'tis true, our feet now stand
+Within the limits of our people's land;
+Behind us are the obloquy and pain
+Endured in cruel, persecuting Spain,
+Yet feel I still more keenly here than there
+The degradation which our people share;
+Each object here speaks sadly to the Jew
+Of all the grandeur which his race once knew.
+But let that pass; there is another pain
+Which hurts me sorely, Rachel, and in vain
+I seek a remedy; it is that thou
+Hast now new lines of sorrow on thy brow.
+'Tis true, thou art a Jewess, and must know
+The shame which constitutes thy people's woe;
+But I detect the signs of some new grief
+For which the lapse of time brings no relief;
+Thy cheek hath paled since our arrival here,
+And often on its pallor gleams a tear."
+
+At first she spoke not; but at length her lips
+Moved, quivering as in pain, while o'er her face
+An ashen paleness came, which whiter seemed
+From startling contrast with her ebon hair;
+"Father", she murmured, "speak of that no more!
+I shared thy coming to this Syrian shore,
+And here shall die, for nothing more I crave
+Than on these lonely hills to find a grave.
+My life, though like a flower deprived of light,
+Hath yet known moments so divinely bright,
+So full of rapture, that I then forgave
+The insults we endured, and still could brave
+Existence in Seville, if thou wouldst stay;
+But in thy absence how could I betray
+My dying mother's trust and farewell prayer
+That I henceforth thy lonely life should share?"
+
+She paused, and from her lips a stifled moan
+Revealed the torture that her soul had known.
+Her father noted it, and with a sigh
+Of self-reproach attempted a reply;--
+"Dear child, thy love for me hath cost thee much;
+For young Emanuel,--shrink not from my touch!--
+Was dear to thee; I knew it, and confess
+That I, to consummate thy happiness,
+Had given thee to him with full consent,
+(Who with Emanuel would not be content?)
+Had not my vow and purpose of long years
+Compelled me to depart despite thy tears.
+I knew the struggle, Rachel, in thy heart,
+I felt the anguish of thy soul to part
+From one for whom thy love was so intense;
+In truth, for weeks I suffered in suspense,
+Lest thy impetuous temperament might lead
+Even thee to leave me, in my hour of need,
+Infirm with years, to sail alone from Spain,
+Go unattended on the stormy main,
+And lay my poor, worn body in a grave
+Unknown, uncared for, by a foreign wave.
+God bless thee, Rachel, that thy noble soul
+Could make this filial choice, and thus control
+A love which, though supreme, could not efface
+Thy duty, as a daughter of thy race;
+Thy ancestors were princes on this hill!
+Within thy veins their blood runs nobly still!"
+
+Rachel sat motionless, with outstretched hands,
+And fingers interlocked; her steadfast eyes
+Had hopeless sorrow in their stony gaze,
+As though they read Fate's sentence of despair.
+At length she turned her face; the light had fled
+From her young features, just as in the west
+The glow had faded from the sky, and left
+A wintry coldness in the unlit clouds.
+She seemed about to speak, when, sweet and clear,
+From out the shadow of the ancient wall
+Soft vocal music stirred the evening air,
+With plaintive passion thrilled,--a proof that love
+Inspired the words that floated into song,--
+
+Light of the glorious, setting sun,
+    Gilding the Syrian shore,
+Ere the bright, lingering day be done,
+Guide me to her whose heart, well won,
+    Holds me forevermore.
+
+Moon, that hath spanned the silvered plain,
+    Olivet's brow to kiss,
+Lead her by memory's golden chain
+Back to the olive groves of Spain;
+    Back to our days of bliss!
+
+Star of the evening's darkening sky,
+    Gemming the lonely hill,
+Whisper to her that I am nigh,
+Waiting in hope for her reply;
+    Tell her I love her still!
+
+The song had ended; Rachel stood erect,
+Her pale lips parted breathlessly, her head
+Bent forward to receive the words, which came
+Like grateful raindrops to a drooping flower;
+Her slender form was quivering with delight
+And sudden rush of feeling; she scarce knew
+If this were all a dream, or if in truth
+She heard Emanuel's welcome accents there;
+Her heart for that brief moment wanted naught
+To supplement its rapture; 'twas enough
+To stand thus in expectancy, and know
+The idol of her soul was drawing near.
+At length her father touched her hand, and spoke;--
+
+"'Tis he, my Rachel; thy sweet power hath drawn
+Thy lover o'er the sea! Again the dawn
+Of love and hope is kindled in thy face;
+The concentrated beauty of thy race
+Illumes thy features; now alas! I know
+That thy self-sacrifice hath cost thee woe
+Intenser than I thought; I too rejoice
+To hear the music of Emanuel's voice,
+Although I tremble lest his purpose be
+To lure thee, Rachel, far away from me."
+
+His daughter, even in the thrill of bliss
+Which filled her throbbing heart, yet saw the pain
+That marked his closing words; and, turning, twined
+Her arms about the old man's drooping neck;
+"Dear Father, fear not that," she gently said;
+"Though it be true that ardent love hath led
+Emanuel to this distant Syrian shore,
+Thy lot shall still be mine forevermore;
+Doubt not thy faithful child, for none the less
+'Twill be thy Rachel's greatest happiness
+At thy dear side to minister to thee;
+For only death can come 'twixt thee and me!"
+
+She paused, and hid her face upon his breast;
+Her father clasped her fondly in his arms,
+And bent his cheek to hers, his whitened locks
+On her dark tresses glistening like the snow.
+'Twas thus Emanuel found them; silently
+He stood before them in a dread suspense;
+His very soul seemed poised upon the word
+Which left at last his trembling lips,--"Rachel!"
+She raised her head, and their bright, ardent eyes
+Exchanged the voiceless language of the soul;
+A joy ineffable diffused its flush
+O'er both their faces; yet she did not speak,
+But only clung the closer to her sire,
+As if in fear to lose her self-control.
+At length Emanuel spoke in tones so charged
+With deep emotion that the very air
+Seemed tremulous with thoughts transcending speech;--
+
+"Rachel, my more than life! Canst thou forgive
+The momentary thought that I could live
+Without thee? See, our separation ends!
+Henceforth I know no country, home or friends
+Save thine, my love! I gladly leave them all,
+Obedient to a higher, nobler call,--
+The cry of my whole being to be near
+Thee, thee, my Rachel, now so wholly dear,
+That life without thee is but lingering death!
+Already with thee a diviner breath
+Of inspiration lifts my soul to gain
+The purest, loftiest heights I can attain!
+Not to entice thee from thy father's care,
+Have I come hither, but to seek a share
+In that dear filial duty, and to give
+Love, loyalty and homage, while I live,
+To him, the honored hero of our race,
+Beside whom here I also crave a place.
+Not only do I plead my love anew,
+But also thus lay open to thy view
+The dearest wishes of my soul, and wait
+To learn thy answer. Do I come too late?"
+
+In doubt, 'twixt hope and fear, she raised her eyes
+To read her fate in her lov'd father's face;
+Who, taking her fair hands within his own,
+Advanced with her to where Emanuel stood,
+And laid them in her lover's eager grasp.
+With softened radiance, from their lonely paths,
+The far-off stars beheld their kneeling forms,
+While, with his hands in benediction raised,
+The old man stood absorbed in silent prayer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  The old, old story, ever new
+  Alike in Gentile and in Jew;
+  For Love remains man's sovereign yet
+  In Eden and on Olivet.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by John L. Stoddard
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11091 ***