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diff --git a/old/55303-0.txt b/old/55303-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 2785d04..0000000 --- a/old/55303-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4849 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Winona, A Dakota Legend, by Eli L. Huggins - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Winona, A Dakota Legend - And Other Poems - -Author: Eli L. Huggins - -Release Date: August 9, 2017 [EBook #55303] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WINONA, A DAKOTA LEGEND *** - - - - -Produced by Emmy, MFR, K Nordquist and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - - - - - - _WINONA_ - - _A DAKOTA LEGEND_ - - _AND OTHER POEMS_ - - _BY - CAPTAIN E. L. HUGGINS - 2d Cavalry U. S. Army_ - - G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS - - NEW YORK LONDON - 27 West Twenty-third St. 27 King William St., Strand - - Knickerbocker Press - 1890 - - COPYRIGHT, 1890 - BY - ELI L. HUGGINS. - - The Knickerbocker Press, New York - Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound by - G. P. Putnam’s Sons - - - - -CONTENTS. - - -Transcriber’s Note: Incorrect page numbering in the original has been -amended here. - - PAGE - - WINONA, A DAKOTA LEGEND. - - PROEM. 3 - - PART I. 9 - - PART II. 20 - - PART III. 33 - - MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. - - TO A YOUNG MAN 43 - - TELL ME, DEAR BIRD 45 - - PERDITA 47 - - STANZAS TO ⸺ 52 - - LOVE’S TRIBUTE 55 - - THE LITTLE SHEPHERDESS.—PASTORELLE 57 - - A FAREWELL 58 - - TO A FICKLE FAIR ONE 59 - - TO THE SAME 59 - - THE PALACE OF REPOSE 60 - - MOODS 63 - - TO ⸺ 74 - - TO ⸺ 76 - - TO THE SAME 76 - - TO THE SAME 76 - - TRANSLATIONS AND IMITATIONS. - - IF MY VERSES HAD WINGS LIKE A BIRD.—HUGO 79 - - ’TWIXT SLEEP AND WAKING.—PROSPER BLANCHEMAIN 80 - - WHITE SWAN SAILING.—FROM THE RUSSIAN, 81 - - THE ROSES OF SAADI.—DESBORDES-VALMORE, 84 - - ROSE-BUDS.—BÉRANGER 85 - - THE BIRD I WAIT FOR.—MOREAU 87 - - VISIONS.—DE MUSSET 89 - - THE FISHERMAN’S BRIDAL.—DELAVIGNE 92 - - YOU HAD MY WHOLE HEART.—DESBORDES-VALMORE 95 - - ART.—THÉOPHILE GAUTIER 97 - - BARCAROLLE.—THÉOPHILE GAUTIER 100 - - SHADOWS.—THÉOPHILE GAUTIER 103 - - SONNET: OU VONT ILS?—SULLY PRUDHOMME, 113 - - THE GAY CASHIER.—ADAPTED FROM THE FRENCH 114 - - THE RAVAGES OF TIME.—SCARRON 115 - - HALLUCINATION.—FROM THE FRENCH. - - I. 116 - - II. 117 - - III. 117 - - IV. IN THE GROVE 118 - - TO MY CRITICS.—DE MUSSET 119 - - THE YOUTH AND THE OLD MAN.—FLORIAN 121 - - THE CATHEDRAL BELL AND ITS RIVAL.—IRIARTE 123 - - BLUE EYES AND BLACK EYES.—IMITATED FROM ANDALUSIAN COPLAS. - - I. 125 - - II. 126 - - COMPLAINT TO THE VIRGIN.—FROM A CUBAN POETESS 128 - - THE CRUCIFIXION. OLD FRENCH SONNET 132 - - FROM THE SPANISH 133 - - THE BOOK OF LIFE.—LAMARTINE 134 - - MEMORIAL DAY AND OTHER POEMS. DEDICATED TO THE G. A. R. - - TWENTY YEARS AGO. WRITTEN FOR MEMORIAL DAY, 1885 137 - - ABRAHAM LINCOLN 141 - - THE PRISONER’S DREAM 142 - - HOW OFT A SENTRY SAD AND LONE 143 - - FROM COPLAS OF AN ANDALUSIAN SOLDIER 144 - - FROM THE SAME 145 - - THE GLORY OF A SPANISH DRAGOON.—FROM THE SAME 146 - - WRITTEN FOR A REUNION OF VETERANS IN THE YEAR 1915 148 - - TWENTY-FIVE SONNETS. - - TO ⸺ 153 - - POESY 154 - - THE ROSE 155 - - TO A FAIR SANTA BARBARAN 156 - - LA DIVA 157 - - TO A HAPPY LOVER 158 - - METEMPSYCHOSIS. - - I. 159 - - II. 159 - - THREE SONNETS IN MEMORIAM. - - I. DESPAIR—THE ABYSS 161 - - II. QUESTIONING 161 - - III. CONSOLATION 162 - - IN MEMORY OF D. G. R. 163 - - IN MEMORY OF JOHN BROWN OF OSSAWATTOMIE. INSCRIBED - TO JOHN J. INGALLS. - - I. 164 - - II. 165 - - III. 165 - - OUR LOST ONES 167 - - THE OCEAN OF THE PAST 168 - - EVIL DAYS 169 - - ENVY AND SLANDER. TO N. N. M. 170 - - TRUE FREEDOM. TO J. F. F. 171 - - “SOCIETY” 172 - - THE STAGNANT POOL 173 - - THE MAN WITH THE MUCK RAKE 174 - - IMMORTALITY 175 - - TO A YOUNG ARTIST 176 - - - - -WINONA: A DAKOTA LEGEND - - - - -WINONA: A DAKOTA LEGEND. - - - - -PROEM. - - - How changed, fair Minnetonka, is thy face - Since first I saw thee in thy pristine grace. - Electric lights fantastically glow, - Swarming like fire-flies on the shores where long, - Through countless summer nights a vanished throng, - Only the Indian camp-fire flickered low. - The odor of the baleful cigarette - Assails us now, where the mild calumet - Around the circle like a censer swung. - The notes of Strauss intoxicate the air, - And dainty feet in cadence twinkle there, - Where in rude strains the warriors’ deeds were sung, - And where the Indian lover’s plaintive flute - Lured to the trysting-place the dusky maid. - Discreetly hidden in the sylvan shade, - The Anglomaniac comes to press his suit, - And Patrick, too, out for a holiday, - Strolls with his Bridget here _en dimanché_, - And softly whispers in his charmer’s ear - The same old tale, to lovers ever dear. - The rustling leaves, the waves, the mating bird, - Sing the same songs the Indian maiden heard. - - Save a few stately names, the vanished race - Whose dust we daily trample leave no trace - Or monument. None who that race have known - Ere poisoned by the vices of our own, - Deem it ignoble; but the white man’s breath, - To him a besom of consuming death, - Sweeps him like ashes from his natal hearth, - E’en as one day some race of stronger birth - Will sweep our children’s children from the earth. - More noxious than the fabled upas tree, - We blight his virtues first, and then with scorn - Repel the hands extended once to save - Our exiled fathers, fleeing o’er the wave. - Yet in his deepest fall, the warrior, born - Of warrior lineage fetterless and free, - Retains unquenched in his unyielding soul - A secret flame in spite of all control. - He brooks no slavish, ignominious toil, - By scourger driven to till the white man’s soil. - Chained in Plutonian caverns far from day, - His spirit swiftly chafes its bars away; - Or by his own impatient hand released, - With rapture bounds as to a marriage feast. - Wealth, pomp, and power ne’er his soul affect; - Still unabashed he stands, unmoved, erect, - His blanket draped, albeit not too clean, - About him with a Roman consul’s mien, - And in the white light of a throne his eye - Would meet, nor quail, the eye of majesty. - His own war-eagle to the sun that soared, - Gave back with eye undimmed its fiery glare, - And sported with the speaking lightnings where - The Thunder-Birds[1] along the tempest roared; - Or swept the plain, but saw no Indian slave - From the Pacific to Atlantic wave. - - Fair Minnetonka, thou art changed, and yet - I know not if ’twere matter for regret. - Thou wast a maid untried, with yielding heart, - With flowing hair, and ample sheltering arms, - And unabashed contours, whose rosy charms - Were all untrammelled by the hand of art, - And eyes of dreamy mystery, wherein - E’en then thy triumphs dimly were foreseen; - A worldly-wise and queenly woman now, - Adorned with spoil of many victories, - And flush of further conquest on thy brow; - Jewels cannot thy native charms enhance, - Nor can thy robes, too tightly laced perchance, - The matchless beauty of thy form disguise. - Through every change, by every tongue confessed, - Peerless amid thy sisters East or West; - Like her of whom the master-singer wrote, - “Age cannot wither her nor custom stale - Her infinite variety.” - Thus float - My wandering thoughts, as on the balcony - I sit alone bathed in the moonlight pale, - And musing thus the scene changed suddenly: - Hotel and cottage vanished; to the shore - The prairie sloped a green unbroken floor. - Eight lustrums back, through rosy summers fled, - Adown a dwindling vista far I sped, - A careless youth; again my hoary head - Bloomed with the sunny wealth of twenty years. - A day came back, a day without compeers, - When with a bright companion long since dead, - In my canoe I flitted o’er the lake, - And our swift paddles scattered pearly tears - Upon the smiling ripples in our wake. - - She, my companion, was a little maid - Of somewhat rustic garb, of English speech, - Yet something in her accents quaint and rich, - And the warm tinge upon her cheek, betrayed - The mingling crimson of a darker shade,— - Her kinship to the remnant lingering still, - Whose cone-shaped lodges picturesquely stood, - Dotting the hither base of yonder hill, - Like late leaves clinging, spite of growing chill, - Upon the boughs of a November wood. - Changing our mood, we idly drifted there, - Two happy children in a cradling shell - Poised ’twixt two azure vaults; the mystic spell - Of Indian summer brooded in the air, - Filling with human love and sympathy - E’en things inanimate; the earth and sky - Leaned to each other, and the rocks and trees, - Like brothers, seemed sharing our reveries. - - “Tell me some legend of the lake,” I cried, - “For in a spot that breathes on every side - Such air of poesy, whose influence - Subdues with such a charm our every sense, - How many loving hearts have loved and died! - How many souls as lofty and intense - As those whose names throughout the whole world ring, - In the high songs the olden minstrels sing! - Who hears those voices e’en but for a day, - The sound remains a part of him alway: - Penelope the constant; Hero sweet; - Briseis weeping at Achilles’ feet; - Andromeda by wingèd Perseus found— - Bright blossom to the sea-girt rock fast bound; - The Lesbian queen of song, but passion’s slave, - Who quenched her burning torch beneath the wave; - Helen, whose beauty, like a fatal brand, - Lit up the towers of Troy o’er sea and land; - And Juliet, swaying at her window’s height, - What slender lily in the wan moonlight.” - - “I do not know,” the little maid replied, - “The names of which you speak, but ere she died - My mother told me many stories old, - Some joyous and some sad, of warriors bold, - And spirits, haunting forest, plain, and stream. - Each had its god, and creatures of strange form, - Half beast, half human; all these figures seem - Mingling away in a fantastic swarm, - Dim as the faces of a last year’s dream, - Or motes that mingle in a slant sunbeam. - The legends vanish too; among them all - This one alone, distinctly I recall.” - - The tale she told me then I now rehearse, - Set in a frame of rude, unpolished verse. - - - - -PART I. - - - Winona,[2] first-born daughter, was the name - Of a Dakota girl who, long ago, - Dwelt with her people here unknown to fame. - Sweet word, Winona, how my heart and lips - Cling to that name (my mother’s was the same - Ere her form faded into death’s eclipse), - Cling lovingly, and loth to let it go. - All arts that unto savage life belong - She knew, made moccasins, and dressed the game. - From crippling fashions free, her well-knit frame - At fifteen summers was mature and strong. - She pitched the tipi,[3] dug the tipsin[4] roots, - Gathered wild rice and store of savage fruits. - Fearless and self-reliant, she could go - Across the prairie on a starless night; - She speared the fish while in his wildest flight, - And almost like a warrior drew the bow. - Yet she was not all hardness: the keen glance, - Lighting the darkness of her eyes, perchance - Betrayed no softness, but her voice, that rose - O’er the weird circle of the midnight dance, - Through all the gamut ran of human woes, - Passion, and joy. A woman’s love she had - For ornament; on gala days was clad - In garments of the softest doeskin fine, - With shells about her neck; moccasins neat - Were drawn, like gloves, upon her little feet, - Adorned with scarlet quills of porcupine. - Innocent of the niceties refined - That to the toilet her pale sisters bind, - Yet much the same beneath the outer rind, - She was, though all unskilled in bookish lore, - A sound, sweet woman to the very core. - - Winona’s uncle, and step-father too, - Was all the father that she ever knew; - By the Absarakas[5] her own was slain - Before her memory could his face retain. - Two bitter years his widow mourned him dead, - And then his elder brother she had wed. - None loved Winona’s uncle; he was stern - And harsh in manner, cold and taciturn, - And none might see, without a secret fear, - Those thin lips ever curling to a sneer. - And yet he was of note and influence - Among the chieftains; true he rarely lent - More than his presence in the council tent, - And when he rose to speak disdained pretence - Of arts rhetoric, but his few words went - Straight and incisive to the question’s core, - And rarely was his counsel overborne. - The Raven was the fitting name he bore, - And though his winters wellnigh reached threescore, - Few of his tribe excelled him in the chase. - A warrior of renown, but never wore - The dancing eagle plumes, and seemed to scorn - The vanities and follies of his race. - - I said the Raven was beloved by none; - But no, among the elders there was one - Who often sought him, and the two would walk - Apart for hours, and converse alone. - The gossips, marvelling much what this might mean, - Whispered that they at midnight had been seen - Far from the village wrapped in secret talk. - They seemed in truth an ill-assorted brace, - But Nature oft in Siamese bond unites, - By some strange tie, the farthest opposites. - Gray Cloud was oily, plausible, and vain, - A conjurer with subtle scheming brain; - Too corpulent and clumsy for the chase, - His lodge was still provided with the best, - And though sometimes but a half welcome guest, - He took his dish and spoon to every feast.[6] - Priestcraft and leechcraft were combined in him, - Two trades occult upon which knaves have thriven, - Almost since man from Paradise was driven; - Padding with pompous phrases worn and old - Their scanty esoteric science dim, - And gravely selling, at their weight in gold, - Placebos colored to their patients’ whim. - Man’s noblest mission here too oft is made, - In heathen as in Christian lands, a trade. - Holy the task to comfort and console - The tortured body and the sin-sick soul, - But pain and sorrow, even prayer and creed, - Are turned too oft to instruments of greed. - The conjurer claimed to bear a mission high: - Mysterious omens of the earth and sky - He knew to read; his medicine could find - In time of need the buffalo, and bind - In sleep the senses of the enemy. - Perhaps not wholly a deliberate cheat, - And yet dissimulation and deceit - Oozed from his form obese at every pore. - Skilled by long practice in the priestly art, - To chill with superstitious fear the heart, - And versed in all the legendary lore, - He knew each herb and root that healing bore; - But lest his flock might grow as wise as he, - Disguised their use with solemn mummery. - When all the village wrapped in slumber lay, - His midnight incantations often fell, - His chant now weirdly rose, now sank away, - As o’er some dying child he cast his spell. - And sometimes through his frame strange tremors ran— - Magnetic waves, swept from the unknown pole - Linking the body to the wavering soul; - And swifter came his breath, as if to fan - The feeble life spark, and his finger tips - Were to the brow of pain like angel lips. - No wonder if in moments such as these - He half believed in his own deities, - And thought his sacred rattle could compel - The swarming powers unseen to serve him well. - - The Raven lay one evening in his tent - With his accustomed crony at his side; - Around their heads a graceful aureole - Of smoke curled upward from the scarlet bowl - Of Gray Cloud’s pipe with willow bark supplied. - Winona’s thrifty mother came and went, - Her form with household cares and burdens bent, - Fresh fuel adds, and stirs the boiling pot. - Meanwhile the young Winona, half reclined, - Plies her swift needle, that resource refined - For woman’s leisure, whatsoe’er her lot, - The kingly palace or the savage cot. - - The cronies smoked without a sign or word, - Passing the pipe sedately to and fro; - Only a distant wail of hopeless woe, - A mother mourning for her child, was heard, - And Gray Cloud moved, as though the sound had stirred - Some dusty memory; still that bitter wail, - Rachel’s despairing cry without avail, - That beats the brazen firmament in vain, - Since the first mother wept o’er Abel slain. - At length the conjurer’s lips the silence broke, - Softly at first as to himself he spoke, - Till warmed by his own swarming fancies’ brood - He poured the strain almost in numbers rude. - - -THE COMBAT BETWEEN THE THUNDER-BIRDS AND THE WATER-DEMONS. - - Gray Cloud shall not be as other men, - Dull clods that move and breathe a day or two, - Ere other clods shall bury them from view. - Tempest and sky have been my home, and when - I pass from earth I shall find welcome there. - Sons of the Thunder-Bird my playmates were, - Ages ago[7] (the tallest oak to-day - In all the land was but a grass blade then). - Reared with such brethren, breathing such an air, - My spirit grew as tall and bold as they; - We tossed the ball and flushed the noble prey - O’er happy plains from human footsteps far; - And when our high chief’s voice to arm for war - Rang out in tones that rent the morning sky, - None of the band exulted more than I. - - A god might gaze and tremble at the sight - Of our array that turned the day to night; - With bow and shield and flame-tipped arrows all, - Rushing together at our leader’s call, - Like storm clouds sweeping round a mountain height. - The lofty cliffs our warlike muster saw, - Hard by the village of great Wabashaw,[8] - Where through a lake the Mississippi flows; - Far o’er the dwelling of our ancient foes, - The hated Water-Demon[9] and his sons, - Cold, dark and deep the sluggish current runs. - - Up from their caverns swarming, when they heard - The rolling signal of the Thunder-Bird, - The Water-Demon and his sons arose, - And answered back the challenge of their foes. - With horns tumultuous clashing like a herd - Of warring elks that struggle for the does, - They lashed the wave to clouds of spray and foam, - Through which their forms uncouth, like buffaloes - Seen dimly through a morning mist, did loom, - Or isles at twilight rising from the shore. - - Though we were thirty, they at least fourscore, - We rushed upon them, and a midnight pall - Over the seething lake our pinions spread, - ’Neath which our gleaming arrows thickly sped, - As shooting stars that in the rice-moon fall. - Rent by our beating wings the cloud-waves swung - In eddies round us, and our leader’s roar - Smote peal on peal, and from their bases flung - The rocks that towered along the trembling shore. - - A Thunder-Bird—alas, my chosen friend, - But even so a warrior’s life should end,— - A Thunder-Bird was stricken; his bright beak, - Cleaving the tumult like a lightning streak, - Smote with a fiery hiss the watery plain; - His upturned breast, where gleamed one fleck of red, - His sable wings, one moment wide outspread, - Blackened the whirlpool o’er his sinking head. - - The Water-Demon’s sons by scores were slain - By our swift arrows falling like the rain; - With yells of rage they sank beneath the wave - That ran all redly now, but could not save. - We asked not mercy, mercy never gave; - Our flaming darts lit up the farthest caves, - Fathoms below the reach of deepest line; - Our cruel spears, taller than mountain pine, - Mingled their life blood with the ruddy wave. - - The combat ceased, the Thunder-Birds had won. - The Water-Demon with one favorite son - Fled from the carnage and escaped our wrath. - The vapors, thinly curling from the shore, - Faint musky odors to our nostrils bore. - The air was stilled, the silence of the dead; - The sun, just starting on his downward path, - A rosy mantle o’er the prairie shed, - Save where, like vultures, ominous and still, - We clustered close, on sullen wings outspread; - And sometimes, with a momentary chill, - A giant shadow swept o’er plain and hill,— - A Thunder-Bird careering overhead, - Seeking the track by which the foe had fled. - - While thus we hovered motionless, the sun - Adown the west his punctual course had run, - When lo, two shining points far up the stream - That split the prairie with a silver seam,— - The fleeing Water-Demon and his son; - Like icicles they glittered in the beam - Still struggling up from the horizon’s rim. - His sleeping anger kindled at the sight, - Our leader’s eyes glowed like a flaming brand. - Thrilled by one impulse, all our sable band - Dove through the gathering shadows of the night - On wings outshaken for a headlong flight. - Anger, revenge, but more than all the thirst, - The glorious emulation to be first, - Stung me like fire, and filled each quivering plume. - With tenfold speed our sharp beaks cleft the gloom, - A swarm of arrows singing to the mark, - We hissed to pierce the foe ere yet ’twas dark. - - Still up the stream the Water-Demons fled, - Their bodies glowed like fox-fire far ahead; - But every moment saw the distance close - Between our thirsting spear-heads and our foes. - Louder the blast our buzzing pinions made - Than mighty forest in a whirlwind swayed; - The giant cliffs of Redwing speeding back, - Like spectres melting from a cloudy wrack, - Melted from view in our dissolving track. - Kaposia’s village, clustered on the shore, - With sound of snapping poles and tipis riven, - Vanished like swan’s-down by a tempest driven. - Stung by our flight, the keen air smote us sore - As ragged hailstones; on, still on, we strained, - And fast and faster on the chase we gained, - But neck and neck the fierce pursuit remained, - Till close ahead we saw the rocky walls - O’er which the mighty river plunging falls,[10] - And at their base the Water-Demons lay: - The panting chase at last had turned to bay. - - Then thrilled my nerves with more than mortal strength; - A breath of Deity was in the burst - That bore me out a goodly lance’s length - To meet the Water-Demon’s son accurst. - His evil horn clanged hollow on my shield - Just as my spear transfixed him through and through; - A moment towering o’er the foam he reeled, - Then sank beneath the roaring falls from view. - A dying yell that haunts me yet he gave, - And as he fell the crippled water coiled - About him like a wounded snake, and boiled, - leashing itself to madness o’er his grave. - - We knew not where the parent Demon fled; - None of our spears might pierce his ancient mail, - Welded with skill demoniac scale on scale. - Some watery realm he wanders, and ’tis said - That he is changed and bears a brighter form, - And goodly sons again about him swarm; - And peace, ’tis but a hollow truce I know, - Now reigns between him and his ancient foe. - He hates me still, and fain would do me harm, - But neither man nor demon dares offend, - Who hath the cruel Thunder-Bird for friend. - - - - -PART II. - - - Nature hath her _élite_ in every land, - Sealed by her signet, felt although unseen. - Winona ’mid her fellows moved a queen, - And scarce a youthful beau in all the band - But sighed in secret longing for her hand. - One only she distinguished o’er the rest, - The latest aspirant for martial fame, - Redstar, a youth whose coup-stick like his name - (Till recently he had been plain Chaské)[11] - Was new, fresh plucked the feathers on his crest. - Just what the feats on which he based his claim - To warlike glory it were hard to say; - He ne’er had seen more than one trivial fray, - But bold assurance sometimes wins the day. - Winona gave him generous credit, too, - For all the gallant deeds he meant to do. - His gay, barbaric dress, his lofty air - Enmeshed her in a sweet bewildering snare. - Transfigured by the light of her own passion, - She saw Chaské in much the usual fashion - Of fairer maids, who love, or think they do. - ’Tis not the man they love, but what he seems; - A bright Hyperion, moving stately through - The rosy ether of exalted dreams. - - Alas! that love, the purest and most real, - Clusters forever round some form ideal; - And martial things have some strange necromancy - To captivate romantic maiden fancy. - The very word “Lieutenant” hath a charm, - E’en coupled with a vulgar face and form, - A shrivelled heart and microscopic wit, - Scarce for a coachman or a barber fit; - His untried sword, his title, are to her - Better than genius, wealth, or high renown; - His uniform is sweeter than the gown - Of an Episcopalian minister; - And “dash,” for swagger but a synonym, - Is knightly grace and chivalry with him. - - Unnoted young Winona’s passion grew, - Chaské alone the tender secret knew; - And he, too selfish love like hers to know, - Warmed by her presence to a transient glow, - Her silent homage drank as ’twere his due. - Winona asked no more though madly fond, - Nor hardly dreamed as yet of closer bond; - But Chance, or Providence, or iron Fate - (Call it what name you will), or soon or late, - Bends to its purpose every human will, - And brings to each its destined good or ill. - - -THE GROVE. - - O’erlooking Minnetonka’s shore, - A grove enchanted lured of yore, - Inured to their deepest woe and joy, - A happy maiden and careless boy; - Lured their feet to its inmost core, - Where like snowy maidens the aspen trees - Swayed and beckoned in the breeze, - While the prairie grass, like rippling seas, - Faintly murmuring lulling hymns, - Rippled about their gleaming limbs. - - There is no such charm in a garden-close, - However fair its bower and rose, - As a place where the wild and free rejoice. - Nor doth the storied and ivied arch - Woo the heart with half so sweet a voice - As the bowering arms of the wild-wood larch, - Where the clematis and wild woodbine - Festoon the flowering eglantine; - Where in every flower, shrub, and tree - Is heard the hum of the honey-bee, - And the linden blossoms are softly stirred, - As the fanning wings of the humming-bird - Scatter a perfume of pollen dust, - That mounts to the kindling soul like must; - Where the turtles each spring their loves renew— - The old, old story, “coo-roo, coo-roo,” - Mingles with the wooing note - That bubbles from the song-bird’s throat; - Where on waves of rosy light at play, - Mingle a thousand airy minions, - And drifting as on a golden bay, - The butterfly with his petal pinions, - From isle to isle of his fair dominions - Floats with the languid tides away; - Where the squirrel and rabbit shyly mate, - And none so timid but finds her fate; - The meek hen-robin upon the nest - Thrills to her lover’s flaming breast. - Youth, Love, and Life, ’mid scenes like this, - Go to the same sweet tune of bliss; - E’en the flaming flowers of passion seem - Pure as the lily buds that dream - On the bosom of a mountain stream. - - Such was the grove that lured of yore, - O’erlooking Minnetonka’s shore, - Lured to their deepest woe and joy - A happy maiden and careless boy,— - Lured their feet to its inmost core; - Where still mysterious shadows slept, - While the plenilune from her path above - With liquid amber bathed the grove, - That through the tree-tops trickling crept, - And every tender alley swept. - The happy maiden and careless boy, - Caught for a moment their deepest joy, - And the iris hues of Youth and Love, - A tender glamour about them wove; - But the trembling shadows the aspens cast - From the maiden’s spirit never passed; - And the nectar was poisoned that thrilled and filled, - From every treacherous leaf distilled, - Her veins that night with a strange alloy. - - Swift came the hour that maid and boy must part; - A glow unwonted, tinged with dusky red - Winona’s conscious face as home she sped; - And to the song exultant in her heart, - Beat her light moccasins with rhythmic tread. - But at the summit of a little hill, - Along whose base the village lay outspread, - A sudden sense of some impending ill - Smote the sweet fever in her veins with chill. - The lake she skirted, on whose mailèd breast - Rode like a shield the moon from out the west. - She neared her lodge, but there her quick eye caught - The voice of Gray Cloud, and her steps were stayed, - For over her of late an icy fear - Brooded with vulture wings when he was near. - - She knew not why, her eye he never sought, - Nor deigned to speak, and yet she felt dismayed - At thought of him, as the mimosa’s leaf - Before the fingers touch it shrinks with dread. - She paused a moment, then with furtive tread - Close to the tipi glided like a thief; - With lips apart, and eager bended head, - She listened there to what the conjurer said. - - His voice, low, musical, recounted o’er - Strange tales of days when other forms he wore: - How, far above the highest airy plain - Where soars and sings the weird, fantastic crane, - Wafted like thistle-down he strayed at will, - With power almost supreme for good or ill, - Over all lands and nations near and far, - Beyond the seas, or ’neath the northern star, - And long had pondered where were best to dwell - When he should deign a human shape to wear. - “Whether to be of them that buy and sell, - With fish-scale eyes, and yellow corn-silk hair, - Or with the stone-men chase the giant game. - But wander where you may, no land can claim - A sky so fair as ours; the sun each day - Circles the earth with glaring eye, but sees - No lakes or plains so beautiful as these; - Nor e’er hath trod or shall upon the earth - A race like ours of true Dakota birth. - Our chiefs and sages, who so wise as they - To counsel or to lead in peace or war, - And heal the sick by deep mysterious law. - Our beauteous warriors lithe of limb and strong, - Fierce to avenge their own and others’ wrong, - What gasping terror smites their battle song - When, night-birds gathering near the dawn of day, - Or wolves in chorus ravening for the prey, - They burst upon the sleeping Chippeway;[12] - Their women wail whose hated fingers dare - To reap the harvest of our midnight hair; - Swifter than eagles, as a panther fleet, - A hungry panther seeking for his meat, - So swift and noiseless their avenging feet. - - * * * * * - - Dakota matrons truest are and best, - Dakota maidens too are loveliest.” - - He ceased, and soon, departing through the night, - She watched his burly form till out of sight. - And then the Raven spoke in whispers low: - “Gray Cloud demands our daughter’s hand, and she - Unto his tipi very soon must go.” - Winona’s mother sought to make reply, - But something checked her in his tone or eye. - Again the Raven spoke, imperiously: - “Winona is of proper age to wed; - Her suitor suits me, let no more be said.” - - Winona heard no more; a rising wave - Of mingled indignation, fear, and shame - Like a resistless tempest shook her frame, - The earth swam round her, and her senses reeled; - Better for her a thousand times the grave - Than life in Gray Cloud’s tent, but what could she - Against the stern, implacable decree - Of one whose will was never known to yield? - - Winona fled, scarce knowing where or how; - Fled like a phantom through the moonlight cool - Until she stood upon the rocky brow - That overlooked a deep sequestered pool, - Where slumbering in a grove-encircled bay - Lake Minnetonka’s purest waters lay. - Unto the brink she rushed, but faltered there— - Life to the young is sweet; in vain her eye - Swept for a moment grove and wave and sky - With mute appeal. But see, two white swans fair - Gleamed from the shadows that o’erhung the shore, - Like moons emerging from a sable screen; - Swimming abreast, what haughty king and queen, - With arching necks their regal course they bore. - Winona marvelled at the unwonted sight - Of white swans swimming there at dead of night, - Her frenzy half beguiling with the scene. - Unearthly heralds sure, for in their wake - What ruddy furrows seamed the placid lake. - Almost beneath her feet they came, so near - She might have tossed a pebble on their backs, - When lo, their long necks pierced the waters clear, - As down they dove, two shafts of purest light, - And chasing fast on their descending tracks, - A swarm of spirals luminous and white, - Swirled to the gloom of nether depths from sight. - - Then all was still for some few moments’ space, - So smooth the pool, so vanished every trace, - It seemed that surely the fantastic pair - Had been but snowy phantoms passing there. - Winona hardly hoped to see them rise, - But while she gazed with half expectant eyes, - The waters strangely quivered in a place - About the bigness of a tipi’s space, - Where weirdly lighting up the hollow wave - Beat a deep-glowing heart, whose pulsing ray - Now faded to a rosy flush away, - Now filled with fiery glare the farthest cave. - A shapeless bulk arose, then, taking form, - Bloomed forth upon the bosom of the lake - A crystal rose, or hillock mammiform, - And round its base the curling foam did break - As round a sunny islet in a storm; - And on it poised a swiftly changing form, - With filmy mantle falling musical, - And colors of the floating bubble’s ball, - Fair and elusive as the sprites that play, - Bright children of the sun-illumined spray, - ’Mid rainbows of a mountain waterfall. - Then mingling with the falling waters came - In whispers sibilant Winona’s name; - So indistinct and low that voice intense, - That she, half frightened, cowering in the grass - In much bewilderment at what did pass, - Till thrice repeated noted not its sense. - - She rose, and on the very brink defined, - Against the sky in silhouette outlined, - Erect before the Water-Demon stood. - Again those accents weird her wonder stirred, - And this is what the listening maiden heard: - “Thy fate, Winona, hangs on thine own choice - To scorn or heed the Water-Demon’s voice. - Gone are thy pleasant days of maidenhood, - And evil hours draw nigh, but knowest thou not, - That what thou fleest is the common lot - Of all thy sisters? Thou must be the bride - Of one thou lovest not, must toil for him, - Watch for his coming, and endure his whim; - Must share his tent, and lying at his side - Weep for another till thine eyes grow dim. - And he, so fondly loved, will pass thee by - Indifferent with cold averted eye; - E’en he, whose wanton hands and hated arms - Have crushed the fair flower of thy maidenhood, - Will weary of thy swiftly fading charms, - And seek another when thy beauty wanes. - Aha, thou shudderest; in thy tense veins, - Fierce and rebellious, leaps the mingling blood - Of countless warriors, high of soul and brave; - And would’st thou quench their spirit ’neath the wave? - Is Gray Cloud’s life more dear to thee than thine? - The village sleeps, unguarded is his tent, - Thy knife is keen, and unto thee is lent - A spell to-night of potency malign. - Cradled in blissful dreams alone he lies, - And he shall stray so deep in sleep’s dominions, - He would not waken though the rushing pinions - Of his own Thunder-Bird should shake the sky. - All freedom-loving spirits are with thee, - Strike hard and fear not as thou would’st be free; - Lest thine own hatred prove too weak a charm, - The Water-Demon’s hate shall nerve thine arm.” - - The Water-Demon sank and disappeared, - And faint and fainter fell those accents weird, - Until the air was silent as the grave, - Still as December’s crystal seal the wave. - Homeward again Winona took her way. - How changed in one short hour! no longer now - The song-birds singing at her heart, but there - A thousand gnashing furies made their lair, - And urged her on; her nearest pathway lay - Over a little hill, and on its brow - A group of trees, whereof each blackened bough - Bore up to heaven as if in protest mute - Its clustering load of ghostly charnel fruit,[13] - The swaddled forms of all the village dead— - Maid, lusty warrior, and toothless hag, - The infant and the conjurer with his bag, - Peacefully rotting in their airy bed. - As on a battle plain she saw them lie, - Fouling the fairness of the moonlit sky; - And heavily there flapped above her head, - Some floating drapery or tress of hair, - Loading with pestilential breath the air - That fanned her temples, or the reeking wing - Of unclean bird obscenely hovering; - And something crossed her path that halting nigh, - At the intruder glared with evil eye,— - She hardly heeded passing swiftly by. - - Leaving behind that hideous umbrage fast, - What wraith escaping from its tenement, - Winona through the sleeping village passed, - And pausing not, to Gray Cloud’s tipi went, - Laid back the door, and with a stealthy tread, - Entered and softly crouched beside his head. - Her gaze that seemed to pierce his inmost thought, - Keen as the ready knife her hand had sought, - And through the open door the slant moonbeams - Smiting the sleeper’s face awaked him not. - He vaguely muttered in his wandering dreams - Of “medicine,” and of the Thunder-Bird. - As if to go, her knife she half returned; - Whether her woman’s heart with pity stirred, - Or superstitious awe, she slightly turned, - But gazing still, over his features came - The semblance of a smile, and his arms moved, - Clasping in rosy dreams some form beloved, - And his lips moved, and though no sound she heard, - She thought they shaped her name, and a red flame - Leaped to her brain, and through her vision passed; - A raging demon seized and filled her frame, - And like a lightning flash leaped forth her knife: - That cold keen heart-pang is his last of life; - The Water-Demon is avenged at last. - - - - -PART III. - - - She struck but once, no need hath lightning stroke - For second blow to rend the heart of oak, - Nor waited there to see how Gray Cloud died; - Her fury all in that fierce outburst spent, - As from a charnel cave she fled the tent; - The wolfish dog suspiciously outside - Sniffed at her moccasins but let her pass. - Her tipi soon she reached, distant no more - Than arrow from a warrior’s bowstring sent, - Paused but to wipe her knife upon the grass, - And found her usual couch upon the floor. - But not to sleep; she closed her eyes in vain, - Shutting away the moonlight from her view; - Darkness and moonlight wore the same dread hue, - Flooding the universe with crimson stain. - She clasped her bosom with her hands to still - The throbbing of her heart that seemed to fill - With tell-tale echoes all the air; an owl - The secret with unearthly shrieks confessed, - And Gray Cloud’s dog sent forth a doleful howl - At intervals; but worse than all the rest, - That dreadful drum still beating in her breast, - As furious war-drums in the scalp-dance beat - To the mad circling of delirious feet. - - Early next morning, as the first faint rays - Of sunlight through the rustling lindens played, - Two children sent to seek the conjurer’s aid, - Gazed on the sight, with horror and amaze, - Of Gray Cloud’s lifeless body rolled in blood. - Fast through the village spread the news, and stirred - With mingled fear and wonder all who heard. - The oracles were baffled and dismayed, - And spoke with muffled tones and looks of dread: - “Some envious foeman lurking in the wood, - With medicine more strong than his,” they said, - “Stole in last night and gave the fatal wound.” - The warriors scoured the country miles around, - Seeking for sign or trail, but naught they found: - The murderer left behind no clue or trace - More than a vampire’s flight through darkling space. - - The Raven with a stoic calmness heard - Of Gray Cloud’s death, nor showed by look or word - The wrath that to its depth his being stirred. - Winona heard the news with false surprise, - As if just roused from sleep she rubbed her eyes; - When she arose her knees like aspens shook, - But this she quelled and forced a tranquil look - To feign the calmness that her soul forsook. - And when the mourning wail rose on the air, - Winona’s voice was heard commingling there. - She gathered with the other maidens where, - On a rude bier, the conjurer’s body lay - Adorned and decked in funeral array. - She flung a handful of her sable hair, - And wept such tears above the painted clay[14] - As weeps a youthful widow, only heir, - Over the coffin of a millionaire. - - Moons waxed to fulness and to sickles waned. - The gossips still conversed with bated breath. - The appalling mystery of Gray Cloud’s death, - Wrapped in impenetrable gloom, remained - A blighting shadow o’er the village spread. - But youthful spirits are invincible, - Nor fear nor superstition long can quell - The bubbling flow of that perennial well; - And so the youths and maidens soon regained - The wonted gayety that late had fled. - All save Winona, in whose face and mien, - Unto the careless eye, no change was seen; - But one that noted might sometimes espy - A furtive fear that shot across her eye, - As in a forest, ’thwart some bit of blue, - Darts a rare bird that shuns the hunter’s view. - Her laugh, though gay, a subtle change confessed, - And in her attitude a vague unrest - Betrayed a world of feelings unexprest. - A shade less light her footsteps in the dance, - And sometimes now the Raven’s curious glance - Her soul with terrors new and strange oppressed. - - Grief shared is lighter, none had she to share - Burdens that grew almost too great to bear, - For Redstar sometimes seemed to look askance, - And sought, they said, to win another breast. - Winona feigned to laugh, but in her heart - The rumor rankled like a poisoned dart. - Sometimes she almost thought the Raven guessed - The guilty secrets that her thoughts oppressed, - And sought, whene’er she could, to shun his sight. - Apart from human kind, still more and more, - The Raven dwelt, and human speech forbore. - And once upon a wild tempestuous night, - When all the demons of the earth and air - Like raging furies were embattled there, - She, peering fearfully, amid the swarm - Flitting athwart the flashes of the storm, - By fitful gleams beheld the Raven’s form. - To her he spoke not since the fateful night - His chosen comrade passed from human sight, - Save only once, forgetting he was by - And half forgetting too her cares and woes, - Unto her lips some idle jest arose. - “Winona,” said the Raven, in a tone - Of stern reproof that on the instant froze - All thought of mirth, and when she met his eye, - As by a serpent’s charm it fixed her own; - The hate and anger of a soul intense - Were all compressed in that remorseless glance, - The coldly cruel meaning of whose sense - Smote down the shield of her false innocence. - She strove to wrest her eye from his in vain, - Held by that gaze ophidian like a bird, - As in a trance she neither breathed nor stirred. - And gazing thus an icy little lance, - Smaller than quill from wing of humming-bird, - Shot from his eyes, and a keen stinging pain - Sped through the open windows of her brain. - Her senses failed, she sank upon the ground, - And darkness veiled her eyes; she never knew - How long this was, but when she slowly grew - Back from death’s counterfeit, and looked around, - So little change was there, that it might seem - The scene had been but a disordered dream. - The Raven sat in his accustomed place, - Smoking his solitary pipe; his face, - A gloomy mask that none might penetrate, - Betrayed no sign of anger, grief, or hate; - Absorbed so deep in thoughts that none might share, - He noted not Winona’s presence there; - From his disdainful lips the thin blue smoke - From time to time in little spirals broke, - Floating like languid sneers upon the air, - And settling round him in a veil of blue - So sinister to her disordered view, - That she arose and quickly stole away. - She shunned him more than ever from that day, - And never more unmoved could she behold - That countenance inscrutable and cold. - - But Hope and Love, like Indian summer’s glow, - Gilding the prairies ere December’s snow, - Lit with a transient beam Winona’s eye. - The season for the Maidens’ Dance drew nigh, - And Redstar vowed, whatever might betide, - To claim her on the morrow as his bride. - What now to her was all the world beside? - The evil omens darkening all her sky, - Malicious sneers, her rival’s envious eye, - While her false lover lingered at her side, - All passed like thistle-down unheeded by. - - The evening for the dance arrived at last; - An ancient crier through the village passed, - And summoned all the maidens to repair - To the appointed place, a greensward where, - Since last year unprofaned by human feet, - Rustled the prairie grass and flowers sweet. - None but the true and pure might enter there— - Maidens whose souls unspotted had been kept. - At set of sun the circle there was formed, - And thitherward the happy maidens swarmed. - The people gathered round to view the scene: - Old men in broidered robes that trailing swept, - And youths in all their finery arrayed, - Dotting like tropic birds the prairie green, - Their rival graces to the throng displayed. - Winona came the last, but as she stept - Into the mystic ring one word, “Beware!” - Rang out in such a tone of high command - That all was still, and every look was turned - To where the Raven stood; his stern eye burned, - And like a flower beneath that withering glare - She faded fast. No need that heavy hand - To lead Winona from the joyous band; - No need those shameful words that stained the air: - “Let not the sacred circle be defiled - By one who, all too easily beguiled, - Beneath her bosom bears a warrior’s child.” - - Winona swiftly fleeing, as she passed, - One look upon her shrinking lover cast - That scared his coward heart for many a day, - Into the deepest woods she took her way. - The dance was soon resumed, and as she fled, - Like hollow laughter chasing overhead, - Pursued the music and the maidens’ song. - Just as she passed from sight an angry eye - Glared for a moment from the western sky, - And flung one quivering shaft of dazzling white, - With tenfold thunder-peal, adown the night. - Her mother followed her, and sought her long, - Calling and listening through the falling dew, - While fast and furious still the cadence grew - Of the gay dance, whose distant music fell, - Smiting the mother like a funeral knell. - High rode the sun in heaven next day before - The stricken mother found along the shore - The object of her unremitting quest. - The cooling wave whereon she lay at rest - Had stilled the tumult of Winona’s breast. - Along that shapely ruin’s plastic grace, - And in the parting of her braided hair, - The hopeless mother’s glances searching there - The Thunder-Bird’s mysterious mark might trace. - - So died Winona, and let all beware, - For vengeance follows fast and will not spare, - Nor maid, nor warrior that dares offend - Who hath the cruel Thunder-Bird for friend. - - -FOOTNOTES - -[1] Thunder-Bird, a supernatural winged creature which causes thunder and -lightning by the flapping of its wings and the winking of its eyes. - -[2] The name given by the Dakotas to the first-born, if a female. - -[3] Tipi, skin tent. - -[4] An edible root found on the prairies. - -[5] The Crow Indians, hereditary foes of the Dakotas, call themselves -Absaraka, which means crow in their language. - -[6] Each Indian guest at a banquet carries with him his own wooden bowl -and horn spoon. - -[7] Many Indians believe in the transmigration of souls, and some of them -profess to remember previous states of existence. - -[8] A renowned chief formerly living on Lake Pepin. - -[9] A supernatural monster inhabiting the larger rivers and lakes, and -hereditary foe of the Thunder-Bird. - -[10] The falls of St. Anthony. - -[11] The name given to the first-born, if a male. Upon becoming a warrior -or performing some notable feat, the youth is permitted to select another -name. - -[12] Hereditary foe of the Dakotas. - -[13] The Dakotas formerly disposed of their dead by fastening them to the -branches of trees, or to rude platforms. This is still practised to some -extent. - -[14] The Indians paint and adorn a body before sepulture. - - - - -MISCELLANEOUS POEMS - - - - -TO A YOUNG MAN. - - - Caress thy pleasures with a reverent touch, - Too soon at best their early fragrance flees. - Seek not to know, to see, or taste too much: - The sweetest, deepest cup hath still its lees; - The blushing grape is not too rudely pressed, - When gushes forth its richest and its best. - - Bird, bubble, butterfly on light wing straying, - With changing tints of crimson, blue, and gold, - Upon warm waves of summer sunlight swaying, - When thy frail, flaming wing the boy shall hold, - Alas, how soon its fragile charms expire! - E’en so when strong men seize their soul’s desire. - - Rend not with ruthless hand the lily’s bell, - To gather all its sweetness at a breath; - Spill not the pearl deep in its bosom’s cell, - The crystal gift Aurora’s tears bequeath. - So shall a delicate perfume be thine, - Through all the weary hours of day’s decline. - - The gentlest spirits of the earth and air— - Sweet mysteries to ruder men unknown— - Will yield delights as delicate as rare, - The secret bowers of Love shall be thy own, - The one great bliss, so long thy hope’s despair, - Will press with eager feet to find thee there. - - - - -TELL ME, DEAR BIRD. - - - In the warm twilight where I mused, there came - A bird of unknown race with breast of flame. - - Tell me, dear bird, O bird with breast of flame, - I conjure thee, e’en by his sacred name, - How may I lure and win Love to my side? - There is no lure for Love, in patience bide, - And if he cometh not await him still, - Love cometh only when and where he will. - - But when he cometh, bird with breast of flame, - Teach me his roving feet to bind and tame. - Many have sought to bind him, but in vain; - He will not brook nor gold nor silken chain. - If he is caught, Love languishes and dies, - And ’tis not Love, if free to stay, he flies. - - Tell me, dear bird, O bird with breast of flame, - When true Love comes, how may I know his name? - What are the golden words upon his tongue: - What message sweeter than a seraph’s song? - Love hath no shibboleth, and where are words - For the enraptured songs of summer birds? - - Tell me, dear Love, O bird with breast of flame, - The deepest sense and meaning of thy name? - Two all-sufficing souls for woe or bliss, - But what they do, or what their converse is, - Love only knows; they walk where none may see, - Wrapped in the shades of a sweet mystery. - - - - -PERDITA. - - - Far away under Hesper, - In seas never crossed, - Like a faint-uttered whisper, - Forgotten and lost; - Where no sail ever flies - O’er the face of the deep, - A lost island lies - Forgotten, asleep. - An island reposes, - Distant and dim, - Where a cloud-veil of roses - Never uncloses, - Dreams and reposes - On the horizon’s rim. - An island arrayed - In such magical grace, - It would seem to be made - For some happier race. - Each valley and bower - Has a charm of its own; - A perfume each flower, - Elsewhere unknown; - A charm of such power - That once known to the heart, - If but for an hour, - It can never depart. - E’en the surges of ocean, - Ceasing their roar, - Their rage and commotion, - Sigh in on the shore - With a melody saintly, - As vespers that seem - Chanted so quaintly, - By sisters so saintly, - Mingling so faintly - With the voice of a dream. - - One summer time olden, - That standeth alone - With its memories golden, - That isle was my own. - O island enchanted! - Where now does she rove— - The bright nymph that haunted - Thy fountain and grove, - While still at her side, - Whereever she strayed, - By the mountain or tide, - My footsteps were stayed? - Do her pulses still beat - To the pulses of yore? - Say, now, do her feet - Tread some pitiless shore, - Still hoping to meet - One who cometh no more? - - O that summer! its ray - In my heart lingers yet, - Long after the day- - Star it came from has set. - My star of the night - And of morning was she, - My song-bird, my white- - Wingèd bark on the sea; - My rainbow, illuming - With beauty and light; - My rose-garden, blooming, - Sweetly perfuming - The hours of the night. - - But at last, in its fleetness, - It seemed that each day - From the charm and the sweetness - Took something away, - Till the flowers all faded - From summer’s bright crown, - The skies were o’ershadowed, - The forests were brown. - In the voices of morning - There crept a new tone, - A faint whispered warning - From regions unknown, - And over each heart - Stole a mystical fear - That our joy would depart - With the flight of the year. - A pale, cold, new-comer - Had entered our isle, - From a land beyond summer - And sunshine and smile, - Subduing us quite, - Though we saw not his face, - As winter gives blight - When it cometh apace. - Her glances and mine - Sought each other no more, - Each fearing some sign - Not seen there before. - Yet no word was revealing - Misgiving or chill; - Each sought for concealing - The deathly, congealing - Foreboding of ill. - - But at last came a night - When our last song was sung, - And like children in fright - Together we clung. - No farewell was spoken, - Our voices were dumb, - But we knew without token - That parting was come. - In the darkness that bound us - A night-bird did sing, - And the black air around us - Was moved by his wing, - As in vulture waves sweeping - He sped from the shore, - And away from my keeping - My Day-star he tore. - - - - -STANZAS TO ⸺. - - - Bitter bewailing - Sweet Life’s sad failing - Is unavailing - Your prayers or mine. - Years onward sweeping - Bring blight for reaping, - For laughter weeping, - Wormwood for wine. - - The old sweet vision - Comes to derision - The dream Elysian - That once was ours. - The rushing river - Mocks our endeavor, - And soon will sever - My bark from yours. - - One joy shall bide me - Whate’er betide me, - This still shall guide me - Till life shall fleet; - Though friends forsake me, - Fate rudely shake me, - And Time shall break me - Beneath his feet, - - No power above me - From this can move me— - My Queen did love me! - One golden day - Her proud heart found me, - Her arms were around me, - Her red lips crowned me - A King for aye. - - O rapturous meeting! - Thy passionate greeting - Was the high beating - Of a young soul, - For one full yearning, - Hour spurning, - The fetters burning - Of Fate’s control. - - The chilling power - Of rank and dower - That sacred hour - Soon overcast, - And from our faces - Swept the faint traces - Of those embraces, - The first and last. - - She may recover, - When days are over, - Some happier lover, - Forsaking me. - I, e’en though hated, - Am consecrated; - More meanly mated - Can never be. - - Let new flames redden - Where light loves deaden, - Let pulses leaden - Leap forth anew; - But on this altar - Till breath shall falter, - Though all else alter, - Nought shall renew. - - - - -LOVE’S TRIBUTES. - - - O that I might inspire my song with power - To crown thy brows with more than queenly dower; - To pour on thee a more than golden shower, - And fill thy soul with sunshine every hour. - - Time breaks at last the lyre’s sweetest strings, - And palls the sweetest note the minstrel sings, - And riches fly away on falcon wings: - Love only to his trust unchanging clings. - - Then be my song of whatsoe’er degree, - And gifts however bright and fair to see, - Rare trophies peril won by land and sea, - Yet Love his own chief offering must be. - - All that the flower of Love may yield is thine, - From blushing bud to clusters on the vine, - With colors rich as rubies from the mine, - And odors mounting to the soul like wine. - - But all, I know, is paltry in thine eyes, - So far above them all thy worth doth rise. - In vain my muse with feeble pinions tries - To reach the regions where thy merit lies. - - Still o’er Love’s treasures hold thy sovereign sway; - Taste them or spill them, keep or cast away; - By night or daytime, hasten or delay, - Trample them, cull them, go thine own sweet way. - - - - -THE LITTLE SHEPHERDESS. - -PASTORELLE. - - - Little lamb, I pray O come to me, - None to caress and love have I but thee. - Why art thou not some tender shepherd swain, - Then loving thee would ease my weary pain. - My sister Susan, she is fair and tall, - And she may choose among the shepherds all, - And she is called sweet names—my dear, my pet; - Ah me! I’m brown, and I’m too little yet. - - Then stepping forth from a concealing shade, - A youth beyond compare approached the maid, - And, whisp’ring softly in her startled ear, - She heard the tender words, “My pet, my dear.” - She blushing stood, confused with downcast eyes, - But heart and face were filled with glad surprise; - And happier far than Susan tall and fair, - The little nut-brown maiden trembling there. - - - - -A FAREWELL. - - - ’Tis true that once I sighed for - That tender heart of thine; - I thought I could have died for - The bliss I now decline. - Too many swains enchanted, - Since then within that heart, - Have had sweet shelter granted - For me to claim a part. - - Farewell, dear one, thy sorrow, - Thy tears are all in vain; - That tender heart to-morrow - Will find some newer swain. - Thou hast no necromancy - To restore the passing sway, - Of what was but the fancy - Of an idle summer day. - - - - -TO A FICKLE FAIR ONE. - - - Some birds mate three times in a year, - And I have called thee oft my bird. - I knew not even shame and fear - Could bind thee long; take my last word, - Good-bye, sweet bird. - - - - -TO THE SAME. - - - Constancy and the Phœnix, birds that dwell - In the bright realms of song, happy his fate - Who elsewhere meets with one, for, mark it well, - Sooner or later he will find its mate. - - - - -THE PALACE OF REPOSE. - - - Helpless we start before the break of day, - And grope along an unknown path our way, - Or follow leaders blind, and many fall; - But on we press, heedless and joyous all, - As happy fledglings fluttering in the brake, - That nothing reck of prowling fox or snake. - When over us at last the daylight dawns, - We bear the marks of many cruel thorns; - But brightly on the far horizon gleams - (Of more than earthly grace the vision seems) - The Palace of Repose, that rears on high - Its golden domes against the western sky, - While warm and tender as a poet’s dreams, - The restful radiance from each tower that streams. - - Now through the early morning air we fly, - As the young shepherd sped with beaming eye - Fast fixed upon the rose-born butterfly. - Toward flowery vales and hills our pathway leads, - But when we reach them all their beauty fades. - Hills that were fairer, ere their paths were won, - Than the long slopes of fountained Helicon, - Are marred by poisonous weeds and flinty stone; - And forms that seemed, against the distant skies, - Winging their snowy way to Paradise, - Are birds unclean, whose wings are like a breath - From some great charnel-house in lands of death. - And shifting sands beneath our feet are spread, - And pitfalls numberless beset our way, - Where noisome reptiles fill us with dismay; - On either side lie, fathomless and dim, - Wide plains where wander phantoms stark and grim. - - Noon comes; the goal no nearer, on we haste, - Nor note the lengthening shadows of the past. - Luring us on we hear the far, faint moan - Of music, weird and sweet as Memnon’s tone, - Heard in the desert by the traveller lone; - Bewildering as the sounds the shepherds erst - Heard in the vales of Thessaly, when first - Apollo’s wondrous music on them burst. - Of all that started with us, hand in hand, - Only a few are left, a dwindling band. - With haggard faces fixed upon the goal, - E’en as the needle to the steadfast pole, - Swifter and swifter, till the evening air - Sings like a serpent through our back-blown hair. - But lo, the night has come, - The sun goes down, - His trailing robes with crimson glories crown - The palace we had almost deemed was ours. - Dearer than ever seem those fading towers, - Whose oriel windows gleam like soul-lit eyes - For one bright moment ere thick darkness lies - On earth and sky, then trembling, faint, and sore, - Closing our pathway, lo, we find a door, - The entrance to a narrow house that still - Blocks up the way of every human will. - Wander where’er we may, this self-same goal - Is reached at last by every weary soul. - Our burdens fall unheeded, and our gains,— - This is the end of all our toil and pains. - - Over the threshold hangs a shrunken lute, - Upon a tree where grows nor flower nor fruit; - Bewildering odors fill the heavy air, - The nightshade and the wolf’s-bane mingle there; - The faint perfume of rose and lily, too, - Is swallowed up by asphodel and rue. - We enter in, behold, a lowly bed, - How sweet the poppied perfume o’er it shed, - Where the red poppy swings its censer head. - - There sleep shall seize and bind us, sleep supreme, - That knows no waking morn, no troubled dream. - The years shall swiftly cover us from sight, - In silence and insuperable night. - - - - -MOODS. - - - My wayward youth had drained the cup of Life, - Wasting its treasures in the fitful strife, - The mad revolt of a rebellious soul, - That beats the stubborn bars of Fate’s control. - My foolish heart whispered, there is no God, - And if there is, let cravens fear his rod: - Be thy own god, slake thy imperious thirst - Where’er thou wilt, no fountain is accurst. - Many strange paths my restless feet had sought, - Not all ignoble, but to each I brought - The turbulence of will that grasps at all, - And, failing, breaks itself against the wall. - Too late I knew my impotence at last, - When the bright glow of youth was overpast. - - Worn out, exhausted by the weary route - That leads from knowledge to disgust and doubt, - Defeat, deceit, and baffled purpose stole - Like a corroding canker to my soul. - I hated Life, scorned and despised my kind, - So far astray may err the unbridled mind. - I had been nigh to death; the sullen wave - Already my consenting feet did lave, - When one who thought to be my friend, and fain - Had done me kindness, plucked me back again. - They said my reason wandered, and had found - A peaceful nook remote from sight or sound - Of busy men; there by the moonlit sea - On a soft couch I lay, where over me - Through the low lattice the sea odors crept, - And from the landward side about me swept - Soft languid waves of amorous perfume, - Of pollen-dust, of bursting bud and bloom. - - Wrecked by the storm of life, and cast aside - Like drift rejected by the loathing tide, - Vacant of heart and thought I lay; the air - That wooed my cheek and gently stirred my hair, - Laden with yearning voices of the spring, - Awoke in me no answering tone or string. - - From the deep shadows of the sleeping wood - A baleful night-bird swept the solitude; - The shuddering moonlight like a living thing - Shrank from the touch of his defiling wing; - And fiercely following like an eager pack - Of wingèd hounds upon his lurid track, - Lewd mocking spirits filled the thickening air, - Swarming as to a charnel banquet there. - Close at my ear burst forth a piercing yell, - As if each ghoul and fiend from nether hell - Had burst its bonds, and joined that chorus fell; - My quivering veins and nerves to frenzy stung, - In discord jangled like a harp unstrung. - Suddenly at my heart a quick sharp pluck, - As ’twere some foot of small fierce bird had struck - And griped me sore; then after some short space - The keen pain seized me in another place; - I felt myself clasped in a rude embrace, - And o’er my body spread swift fleeting pangs, - Sickening and deadly as a serpent’s fangs. - Quivering in every limb then I was ’ware - Of a strange woman bending o’er me there, - With ashen hair, that in the moonlight pale - Rippled about her shoulders like a veil; - In her cold eyes that pierced me through and through, - There dimly lurked a look that once I knew. - Her face was bloodless, as of one that’s dead, - But oh! her little mouth, how rosy red, - Beset with glittering little fangs that bled, - Fresh from the cruel feast whereon they fed. - Cold was her bosom, and her clammy arms— - No ruddy current warmed those shapely charms. - The air grew stifling, and upon my ear - Fell strident whispers chilling me with fear. - - “Dost thou not know my face? in my close kiss - Lingers no essence of the olden bliss? - Doth not my breath revive the ancient fire, - And fill the shrunken veins of dead desire? - I am the child of all thy joys; ere Death - Swallowed them up each left with me some breath, - Some drop of blood, some accent, or some look, - A token from each fleeting hour I took; - In me thy vanished raptures all unite - The perfect fruit of all thy past delight. - Long have I sought thee, now that thou art found, - Now that my limbs about thee have been wound, - And that my lips have fed upon thy face, - Nothing shall tear thee more from my embrace; - Dearer thou art to me than all that dwell - In the wide triple realms, Earth, Heaven and Hell. - Thou art my fruitful vineyard, and my well, - My gilded mountain top, and flowery dell - Whereon my lips shall pasture all the night, - Vanishing only with the morning light. - For in thy arms the olden joys I taste, - And round us swarm the spectres of the past; - The ruddy light still in their hollow eyes - Lingers that shone upon our revelries - In gay Lisboa’s palaces of pride, - When every mask and cheek was flung aside, - Virtue was mocked, and God and man defied. - - “And youthful joys far from Lisboa’s town - Through some green byway of the years float down; - Over fair Lusitania’s hills and plains - Again we wander free from sinful stains; - Though viewed through mist of tears, the earliest scenes - Are brightest still whatever intervenes. - The leafy songs that thrill the listening wood, - And answering birds that make sweet interlude, - The sylvan lakes illuminated by - The rainbows arching all our summer sky, - And swans that drift along the shore at rest— - A string of pearls upon a swelling breast.” - - Ranging amid the garden groves of youth, - The luring voice grew softer, till in sooth - Like pulsing of a moonlight lute it fell, - Lulling my senses with a rhythmic spell. - I know not if I slumbered, but anon - Those odious limbs about my own were thrown; - I started up with thick and laboring breath, - And sickening loathing almost unto death; - “O Christ!” I cried, lo, at that sacred name - The foul shape vanished, and instead one came - Clad in soft light as from an inner flame, - And held an ebon cross whereon there bled - A great white Christ, with loving arms outspread. - Singing afar a tender voice I heard, - Faintly the accents fell, “Flee as a bird.” - Then, as the spring-tides yearning to the moon, - Flood the dry hollows where we walked at noon, - E’en so the tidal-wave of feeling rose, - And memories wakened from their long repose, - And rushing back through many a dusty year - Left me again a reverent child at prayer. - - Again the simple worshippers I saw - Kneeling in fervent prayer; I heard with awe - Once more the shameful tale recounted o’er: - The buffets and revilings that He bore, - The crown of thorns, the wormwood, and the gall, - And our foul sins more bitter than them all, - Filling the cup that our vile hands have pressed - To the pure lips of our expiring Christ. - Gazing upon the Saviour’s agony, - Through my dark soul a cleansing current swept, - And tears of humble penitence I wept. - Softly I wept at first, then gathering force, - Burst forth a storm of passionate remorse, - Till my frail couch shook like an autumn leaf - In the tempestuous torrent of my grief. - Stretching my trembling hands, “O Christ!” I cried, - “Would that with thee I might be crucified, - So I might share thy love. O let me find - Some sure retreat remote from all my kind, - Far from the voice of priest or minister, - Where reigns the silence of the sepulchre; - To some far rocky island let me flee, - Piercing the bosom of an unknown sea, - There let me live in sweet converse with thee. - Or in some Theban desert, too remote - E’en for the sound of Memnon’s warning note, - Or ’mid the rocks on Sinai’s shaking brow, - Where the fierce fires of God’s anger glow; - Or buried in some clammy convent cell, - No matter where, dear Lord, so I may dwell - Apart from all the universe but thee; - So that my name may perish utterly - From memory of man; so that no sound - Of human voice or footstep may resound - Through the deep portals of my solitude. - There let me purge my sins with penance rude, - The scourge, the midnight vigil, and the fast, - Until I know thee, face to face at last.” - How weak are all this life’s most tempting joys, - Love, wealth, ambition, transitory toys, - To those that flood the lonely anchorite - In the rapt moments of his soul’s delight. - The sweetest words of Jesus are not found - In Holy Writ; who in his grace abound, - Forsaking all the world to bear his cross, - Counting all human love and honor dross; - Who wears the thorny crown upon his head, - And loveth better than his daily bread - The scourge, the iron chain, the stony bed, - Worn out with vigils, spent with sighs and tears, - Jesus perchance may whisper in his ears, - Sweeter than music of the choral spheres, - The unwritten words that soothed the Magdalene. - Perchance on Jesus’ bosom he may lean, - A deeper sense than language can impart - Lies in the throbbing of that wondrous heart. - - The moon went down, the night grew dark and dense, - The aspiration of my soul intense - Took real form and garb, or so it seemed, - And bore me on to all that I had dreamed. - Into the narrow dungeon where I lay - The Saviour came, and gently put away - My scourging hand; his smile ineffable - With more than earthly radiance lit my cell— - Sweeter than wanton couch had ever known, - The rapture Jesus bringeth to his own. - Naked and prone upon the dungeon stone, - His love suffused me with a rosy glow. - His words of grace and pardon, murmured low, - Thrilled me and filled my spirit’s pulsing vein, - Till like a ship impatient for the main - Her snowy wings tugged at the anchor chain. - - I slept profoundly; when I woke, the sun - Already more than half his course had run. - Light willing feet were moving round my couch, - And gentle hands with ministering touch. - They brought me dainties, and their cheerful words, - The hum of honey-bees, the voice of birds, - The grand old forest’s potent influence - Subdued and mingled with my every sense, - And moved my being to accord and tune - With all the leafy harmonies of June, - As if some conscious hand beneficent - A hideous nightmare pall had from me rent. - - I wandered out alone beneath the trees - And in a tempting spot reclined at ease, - My head in the cool shade, and at my feet - Streaming the amber sunlight’s genial heat. - My spirits rose, and quickening pulses beat, - Surprised to find that living still was sweet. - The tree-tops o’er me seemed to melt away— - Green islets floating on an azure bay; - And I in fancy floated with them, too, - Drifting forever down the ether blue. - Half dreaming thus, so quietly I lay - The forest denizens resumed their play; - But furtively, as though they feared to break - The spell that brooded in the air, or wake - Some discord slumbering in the solitude. - A bird sang nigh me, but with voice subdued; - The mossy oaks like kingly graybeards stood, - And stretched inviting arms; the aspens wooed - With myriad beckoning leaves, and each slant beam, - Flung from the flying sun-god’s hand, did seem - A rosy finger-tip that coyly pointed - To some deep trysting-place by wood-nymphs haunted. - Long vistas led away mysteriously, - So tempting that I almost thought to see - Arch faces from the nearer branches peeping, - And clumsy satyrs in the distance leaping. - - The nymph, the satyr, and the bounding fawn - That filled the groves of Thessaly are gone. - The merry train that circled Oberon - Trip it no more upon the moonlit lawn. - But let them pass nor mourn the solitude: - Far sweeter than the whole fantastic brood - Is one weak, loving woman’s human form. - A woman’s voice, low, tremulous, and warm, - Hath a more potent spell to lull the charm - Than Orphean lute, or siren’s song, where passed - The wave-worn mariner lashed to his mast. - - Two doves thrust out their small heads timidly - From the low branches of a neighboring tree, - Looking askance, and peering through the green, - Like foolish lovers fearing to be seen, - Then, reassured, resumed their blissful play. - I smiled to see them, thinking of a day, - Just such another day as this, last year, - When with a damsel I had wandered here, - Amid these very vistas, and I thought - Of a deep vine-clad arbor we had sought. - Our words, our looks, our tender dalliance, all, - Like birds of passage at the swallow’s call, - Came trooping back, on light wings fluttering, - And through me swept the quickening breath of spring. - Seen through the shimmering aspen leaves afar - A fair face twinkled on me like a star, - And rustle of bright garments drawing nigh - Fluttered my heart with strange expectancy. - - * * * * * - - And soon two happy lovers wandered far, - And tarried till the rising of the evening star. - - - - -TO ⸺. - - - Her heart is a flower that long hath slept - Where clammy night-dews o’er it wept, - But now to love and rapture wakes - As the flushing glory of morning breaks, - And the heavy tears that chilled it so - Pure diamonds all in the sunshine glow. - - Her hair is a sea of golden waves - Love’s beauteous temple wall that laves, - Rippling o’er two rosy shells - Wherein the soul of music dwells, - To break in hyacinthine curl - Caressing the base of purest pearl. - - Her eyes, twin mountain pools that lie - Reflecting back the summer sky, - A fringe of graceful poplars there - Sway softly in the amorous air. - Oh! he who fathoms those wondrous eyes - Will see the joys of Paradise. - - A crimson little rose her mouth - Exhales the memories of the South; - And when its petals gently move, - Breathing some tender word of love, - No angel’s voice at gates of bliss - Hath promise to compare with this. - Her brow a page of vellum fair, - ’Twere vain to seek for tracery there; - Pure as Mount Athos, yet I know - Beneath that alabaster brow - One tender secret, guarded well, - Stirs sweetly in its guarded cell. - - * * * * * - - How many hundred hearts have beat - To the faint music of her feet; - What yearning eyes devour the grass - That ripples where her footsteps pass, - Beneath her kirtle’s airy sweep, - Like moonbeams glancing o’er the deep. - - A snowy miracle of grace - Her circling arms, for whose embrace - Hyperion’s self might vainly sigh. - Oh! if within those arms to lie - To happy mortal e’er were given, - How tame were all the joys of heaven. - Sheltered by those endearing charms - From my own spirit’s dark alarms, - Endymion were not half so blest - Fainting upon his Phœbe’s breast. - - - - -TO ⸺. - - - Revolving years another May-day bring; - Earth at this bridal season’s glad return - Blooms forth again in bridal robes of spring, - Expectant, waiting, trembling, all things yearn. - Cries then aloud the voice I thought was slain, - Calls as of yore my stormy deep to thine; - Answer is mute, I hear no voice but mine. - - - - -TO THE SAME. - - - Rarer and dearer seen through smiles or tears, - Each day thy well-remembered face appears, - Beaming through all the clouds and mists of years. - Enfolding thee in dreams, my yearning kisses - Cling to that face till all our perished blisses - Come back like phantoms dear that re-awaken, - And haste to greet their loved ones long forsaken. - - - - -TO THE SAME. - - - Right gladly would I twine a wreath of flowers, - Each morn for thee from dewy garden bowers; - But when I cull them, lo! they turn at view, - E’en in my hands, to nightshade and to rue; - Circling, beloved one, thy temples rare, - Catching the halo of thy golden hair, - Again they glow, roses and lilies there. - - - - -TRANSLATIONS AND IMITATIONS - - - - -IF MY VERSES HAD WINGS LIKE A BIRD. - -AFTER VICTOR HUGO. - - - If my verses had wings like a bird, - To thy garden of perfume and light - They would flutter with timid delight, - If my verses had wings like a bird. - - If my verses, like fairies, had wings, - To thy fireside at eve they would fly, - To sparkle and gleam in thine eye, - If my verses, like fairies, had wings. - - Pure pinions around and above, - All day would rustle and gleam, - They would whisper at night to thy dream, - If my verses were wingèd like Love. - - - - -’TWIXT SLEEP AND WAKING. - -AFTER THE FRENCH OF PROSPER BLANCHEMAIN. - - - Lying alone last night, ’twixt sleep and waking, - My cruel mistress passed, with queenly tread, - With smile of cold disdain, and haughty head, - And scornful eyes, whereat my heart was breaking; - The vision was so true in all its seeming, - I scarcely could believe that I was dreaming. - - But when she came, and o’er me lowly bending, - Upon me rained the kisses of her mouth, - Laden with all the perfume of the South, - Murmuring the while of blisses never ending, - And in her eyes I saw the love-light gleaming,— - Ah! then I knew that I was only dreaming. - - - - -WHITE SWAN SAILING. - -FROM THE RUSSIAN. - - - White swan, sailing all the day, - Peering in the wave below - As thou sailest proud and slow, - Round and round, and to and fro, - Seekest thou another, say? - Seest thou, in vaults below, - Through the wave inscrutable, - Joy of heaven or woe of hell? - - Cruel swan, why mock me so? - Scornful sailing to and fro, - Answering not my questionings, - While above thy snowy breast - Rises haughty neck and crest. - Sure, beneath thy folded wings, - Knowledge lies of many things— - Secrets that I long to know. - Voices of the hollow wave, - Whispering as from a grave, - Murmur to thy listening ear - Secrets that I fain would hear. - - Lo, I see another crest - Mirrored in the wave below, - And a bosom white as snow - Sails majestical and slow, - Unto thine ’tis closely pressed; - Face to face and breast to breast, - Two white swans majestic go - Round and round and to and fro. - - Peering through the hollow wave - As into an open grave, - Lo, I see another there; - Find the face and form of one, - Thought of whom I fain would shun - More than all beneath the sun; - Find a face already where - Time’s inexorable touch - Leaveth traces overmuch, - And steely fingers soon will tear, - Rending cruel furrows there. - - Peering through the hollow wave, - Wistfully as in a grave, - Could I see another breast - As it was in Long Ago - (Or perhaps I dreamed it so), - Where my own might hope to rest; - Not of mine the counterpart, - But a bosom white as snow, - Proud, but tender, pressed to mine, - As thy double unto thine; - Would the rapture slay me, say? - Swelling, welling from my heart, - Soul and body rend apart? - Would the rapture slay me? nay, - Such a death were sweeter bliss - Than I find in life like this. - - - - -THE ROSES OF SAADI. - -AFTER THE FRENCH OF DESBORDES-VALMORE. - - - As I passed through the Valley of Roses to-day - I gathered the fairest and sweetest for thee, - But my robes were so full that the knots burst away, - And all my sweet roses fell into the sea. - - A wave slowly bore them away from my sight, - Flaming forth like a cloud-billow rosy and red; - But on me you may breathe all their fragrance to-night, - For my bosom is sweet with the odors they shed. - - - - -ROSE-BUDS. - -AFTER THE FRENCH OF BÉRANGER. - - - O timid rose-buds, why delay your bloom, - The frost of Time is chill upon my hair; - Unclose your petals, shed your sweet perfume, - Like vesper incense on the evening air. - - Gladden my withered heart while yet you may, - A rock is hid beneath each glowing wave; - The ardent sun, wooing your lips to-day, - To-morrow’s noon may mock your poet’s grave. - - And rose-buds, ere their time may pass away; - The worm is there, an envious wind may blight; - How many rose-buds have I seen decay, - While thistles flaunt their colors in the light. - - I pluck nor buds, nor full-blown roses now, - Your tender charms from me have naught to fear; - No rosy wreath awaits this wrinkled brow, - Let regal youth the crown and sceptre bear. - - Weary of strife, of cold, vain theorems, - Of counting spots upon the sun’s fair face, - Would that a bed beneath your friendly stems - Were hollowed for my final resting-place. - - When the Great Reaper comes, let me be found - Among the roses, fresh and pure as truth; - Their perfume shed above me and around, - Whispering my failing heart of Love and Youth. - - O timid rose-buds, why delay your bloom, - The frost of Time is chill upon my hair; - Unclose your petals, shed your sweet perfume - Like vesper incense on the evening air. - - - - -THE BIRD I WAIT FOR. - -AFTER THE FRENCH OF MOREAU. - - - Dead, buried suns of former years arise, - And flowers bloom I thought had died last spring; - The birds that fled last fall our wintry skies - People again the woods on joyous wing; - At dawn soft rustling pinions waken me, - And swallows darken window-pane and door; - Breathless I listen, gazing wistfully, - Alas, the bird I wait for comes no more. - - A high ambition swept my pulses through; - Gazing one day upon the eagle’s flight, - I pierced with him the heaven’s o’erarching blue, - And beat my pinions at the gates of light. - To-day the bird of Jove alone defies - The sun-god’s burning glance, the tempest’s roar; - I watch his flight unmoved, with listless eyes, - The bird I fondly wait for comes no more. - - The lark pours forth his liquid flood of song, - Seeking the secret covert where love lies, - Wherein to weave a palace for his young; - He sings his song, he loves his love and dies, - His sweet small soul with his own music thrilled. - O mocking warbler, cease the song to pour, - Of Love victorious, fierce desire fulfilled, - The bird I fondly wait for comes no more. - - The martin hovers o’er the slumbering bay, - Deep mirrored in the blue abyss he lies, - Now swiftly whirls and darts in idle play, - Now rocked as in a poet’s reveries. - O happy friend, follow thy fantasy, - Dream on the wave, wanton along the shore, - The bird I fondly wait for comes no more. - - Arrive at last, O messenger from heaven, - Black envoy, bearing in thy beak of yore - The bread to famishing Elijah given. - Has God for me no portion I implore? - It soon will be too late, the shadows press, - And night-birds gather round my darkening door. - Dead with the prophet in the wilderness, - Alas, the bird I wait for comes no more. - - - - -VISIONS. - -FROM THE FRENCH OF ALFRED DE MUSSET. - - - One midnight when I was a wayward child, - I read by stealth a romance weird and wild; - My veins were tingling and my cheeks aflame, - When suddenly before my vision came - Two sad dark eyes appealing wistfully, - A child in sable garb who looked like me. - - A child so like to me in form and face, - It seemed a mirror standing in the place. - He cast on me one long and earnest look, - Then bent with me o’er the forbidden book. - A smile mysterious he wore, but never spoke, - And vanished from me as the daylight broke. - - The years sped by; one dreamy autumn day - The eager chase had led me far astray; - Fantastic shadows thronged the solitude - Of the deep mountain forest where I stood, - And there appeared beneath a spreading tree, - A wanderer dressed in black, who looked like me. - - He held a quaint old lute and a fresh spray - Of eglantine; I gently asked my way. - He answered me no word, but took with pride - A path straight up the towering mountain side. - His parting glance fell on me with a thrill - Of meaning so intense it haunts me still. - - Another year sped by; one night outside - The room wherein my sainted mother died - I stood alone, and friendless with my grief— - Youth’s crushing grief that hopes not for relief,— - I oped the door, lo, there on bended knee - An orphan dressed in black who looked like me. - - Kneeling before the sacred ashes there - He seemed a radiant angel in despair. - His face was bathed in tears, his head was crowned - With thorns, his lute was flung upon the ground, - And o’er his sable garments flowed a tide - Of crimson from the sword that pierced his side. - - Since then in every crisis I have known, - Whether in busy town or desert lone, - Angel or demon, whichsoe’er it be, - That sable apparition comes to me. - I never hear his voice, he stands apart, - Yet like a brother twines about my heart. - - Now, all my idols burned in civil strife, - Willing to love or re-create my life, - My feet, self-exiled from their natal strand, - Gather the dust of many a foreign land; - A labyrinthine maze I vainly grope, - Seeking the faint, vague vestige of a hope. - - Still in those moments when life’s pulses go - Surging almost to fatal overflow, - When the blind, fettered spirit seems at last - Ready its fetters and its scales to cast, - Before my vision comes, on land or sea, - A wanderer, dressed in black, who looks like me. - - - - -THE FISHERMAN’S BRIDAL. - -AFTER DELAVIGNE. - - - The sea is high, the night is dark, - Sweet son, O why unmoor thy bark - Before the morning? - On such a night as this last year, - I fain had kept thy brother here; - O heed the warning. - But the fisherman smiling - Bounded from shore, - His labor beguiling, - Bending the oar, - Singing, she loveth me, - No fear I know, - No wave appalleth me, - Loving her so. - - With white wing cleft the inky sky, - A sea-bird with a plaintive cry, - Saddening the air: - The nest I built with so much toil, - This night became the tempest’s spoil; - Beware, beware! - Still the fisherman smiling, - Bending the oar, - The darkness beguiling, - Sang as before: - My Nanna calleth me, - No fear I know, - No wave appalleth me, - Loving her so. - - Faintly arose a sad appeal, - Blent with the storm by which his keel - Was rudely driven. - O brother, ere thy knell shall toll, - Pray for thy elder brother’s soul, - Who died unshriven. - But the message unheeded - Its warning bore, - As onward he speeded, - Bending the oar, - Murmuring, she calleth me, - No fear I know, - No wave appalleth me, - Loving her so. - - Weary at dawn he reached the strand, - But lo, there passed a mourning band; - For whom? he cried. - For whom, O fishermen, that bell - That strikes upon my heart its knell? - ’Tis for thy bride. - Then as if on the shore, - Stricken down by a dart, - Deep darkness came o’er - Him, chilling his heart, - Whispering, she calleth me, - No fear I know, - No wave appalleth me, - Loving her so. - - - - -YOU HAD MY WHOLE HEART. - -FROM THE FRENCH OF DESBORDES VALMORE. - - - You had my whole heart, - I thought I had thine, - No beguiling or art, - A heart for a heart. - - Your heart is returned, - But alas! where is mine? - Your heart is returned, - But mine you have spurned. - - The leaf and the bloom - And the fruit of the same, - Leaf, color, and bloom, - Sweet flower and perfume. - - Oh, what hast thou done? - My sovereign supreme, - Oh, what hast thou done? - Beneath the fair sun. - - An orphan bereft - Of mother and home, - An orphan bereft, - With my grief I am left. - - Deserted, alone, - Through the cold world to roam, - Deserted, alone, - But heaven hears my moan. - - One day you will muse, - Broken-hearted and old, - One day you will muse - On the love you refuse. - - You will seek me one day - But you shall not behold; - You will call me one day, - I shall not obey. - - You will come to my door - With penitent head, - A friend, as of yore, - You will knock at my door. - - It will coldly be said, - She is gone, she is dead; - Her spirit has fled, - Will coldly be said. - - - - -ART. - -FROM THE FRENCH OF THÉOPHILE GAUTIER. - - - Yes, art with grievous pangs is born - From Nature’s most endearing molds; - The child is torn, - Not wooed, from fierce rebellious folds. - - Slay not thy art by false constraint, - Yet know her rules are stern as Fate; - Without complaint - The muse should wear a buskin strait. - - Would’st have thy verse endure, thy muse - The common facile forms must shun, - The slipshod shoes - In which so many feet have run. - - Sculptor, beware the plastic clay, - Changing at every whim’s command - From day to day, - And marred by every careless hand. - - Strive with the marbles pure of Greece, - Wrested from Paros’ snowy mines, - Smite, and release - The deep-imprisoned god-like lines. - - The chisel of Praxiteles - Such peerless beauty had not known, - If art in Greece - Had deigned to use a meaner stone. - - Let the fierce molten metal fuse - Heroic forms and high contours - Of Syracuse; - Nought but the matchless bronze endures. - - Upon the agate’s flinty face - Apollo’s features high and pure - In profile trace, - With touches delicate and sure. - - Beware of water and pastel, - Deep on fantastic vase and urn - Thy colors frail - In seven-fold heated furnace burn. - - Fashion the writhing, maddening limb - Of nymph and goddess; bring once more - The monsters grim, - Dear to the blazonry of yore. - - The virgin mother saintly mild, - Crowned with her nimbus; on her breast - The wondrous child, - The globe beneath the cross of Christ. - - Crowns fall and sceptres pass, robust - And radiant art outlives them all. - Torso and bust - Survive the city’s triple wall. - - The medal by the ploughman found - Reveals the countenance austere, - The temples crowned, - That filled the antique world with fear. - - Even the gods wax old and pass - From high Olympus; verse alone, - Stronger than brass, - Preserves to fallen Zeus his throne. - - The graver guide with care supreme, - The chisel smite, fix like a rock - Thy floating dream - Deep in the stem resisting block. - - Tongues and religions die, while art, - Poised in the lofty realms of thought, - Serene, apart, - Exults in sempiternal youth. - - - - -BARCAROLLE. - -FROM THE SAME. - - - O sun-bright maiden, choose and say, - Whither shall we two sail to-day? - The rose’s breath is on the gale - That softly moves our silken sail; - Our masts of gleaming ivory - Are strung like harps with yellow hair, - That make Æolian music there; - A seraph shall our pilot be. - - O sun-bright maiden, choose and say, - Whither shall we two sail to-day? - Our pinnace lifts her snowy wing - And flutters like a living thing; - And from the shore the morning wind - Toys with our awning’s purple fold; - Our rudder is of beaten gold - And leaves a rosy track behind. - - O sun-bright maiden, choose and say, - Whither shall we two sail to-day? - Our hold with love-apples is stored, - And all strange fruits, a goodly hoard; - A wingèd boy sits at the prow, - Pointing our path with beaming eye - And smile of deepest mystery; - A wreath of myrtle crowns his brow. - - O sun-bright maiden, choose and say, - Whither in Love’s realm shall we stray? - Say, shall we seek some storied isle, - Where warm Ægean waters smile? - Or shall I see the Arctic sun - A flood of crimson glories shed - At midnight on that golden head, - Or sail to seas where pearls are won? - - O sun-bright maiden, choose and say - Whither shall we two sail to-day? - Follow the track of Heracles— - Seeking the far Hesperides; - Or where the South Sea flower expands, - Float idly in the moonlight wan; - Or sail beneath the rainbow’s span— - Bright gateway to Love’s golden lands? - - O sun-bright maiden, choose and say, - There is no one to say thee nay. - O seek, she saith, that faithful shore - Where loving hearts will change no more. - Alas, my sails for many a year - Have sped through all Love’s wide domain, - Seeking that blessed shore in vain: - That land is still unknown, my dear. - - - - -SHADOWS. - -FROM THE SAME. - - - Be still, my heart, keep silence, O my soul, - Thy fierce rebellious transports are in vain, - Oblivion’s turbid wave must o’er thee roll. - - Cease the faint pulsing of the weary brain, - Fold up the remnant of thy wings at last, - And rot, beneath the inexorable chain. - - Soon shalt thou be with refuse vile outcast, - Flung down the bottomless abyss that still - Yawns to the future from the darkling past. - - Thy hopes are dead, broken thy lofty will, - Thy name and memory will be blotted out - Before the rattling clods thy grave refill. - - No marble shaft for thee the heavens will flout, - Nor tear-drenched willow shed her graceful spray, - No lying epitaph the truth will scout, - - No choir will chant, no man of God will pray, - No tears will silver the funereal pall— - Dark cloud that hides thy shame from light of day. - - The felled tree strangely moves his comrades tall, - Waking the echoes of the mountain side, - But not a leaf will quiver at thy fall. - - Like the mute convoy of the suicide, - Thou shalt wind down through night to find thy doom: - Thy ashes shall be scattered far and wide. - - No circling rings shall break the sullen gloom - Of the dark pool that closes o’er thy head, - No widowed soul shall hover o’er thy tomb. - - For the chaste secrets which thy soul hath wed, - With thee the pit shall bury them from view, - Fathoms below the deepest deep-sea lead. - - Our Mother, Nature, hath her favorites too, - Like any other dame, spoiled children they; - Unwelcome waif, why should they share with you? - - Upon them fall the myrtle and the bay, - E’en in the desert they would find at need - Enchanted palaces along their way. - - Though for the morrow’s morn they take no heed, - Yet through their fingers filter golden sands, - And at a generous breast they freely feed. - - Kneading a withered breast with famished hands - Their outcast brethren pine, or seek in vain - Some kinder bosom in relentless lands. - - And if for them upon the desert plain - Illusive gardens rise, and fountains play, - They vanish like the rainbow after rain. - - Or if by chance a sunbeam gone astray - Glints through the gloom that shrouds them evermore, - A chilling cloud obscures th’ unwonted ray. - - The wisest plans but mock their hopes the more, - Bringing them to derision and dismay: - The sea engulfs them though they hug the shore. - - The tree shall crush them, hollow with decay, - Whose grateful shade invites them to draw nigh: - The heart they lean on wins them to betray. - - A turtle drops upon them from the sky; - The tower that has braved a thousand years - Falls without warning just as they pass by. - - The friend who shared their youthful smiles and tears - Accuses them of treason to the crown, - Sending them to the rack with blows and jeers. - - Born on the Danube, in the Seine they drown; - Poor fools, why fly so far to find the fate - That like a slimy monster sucks them down? - - Why strive with Fate? no jot will he abate; - Even the brawny knees of Hercules - Must bend or break before him soon or late. - - They drain a bitter cup with poisonous lees, - A life ignoble and a death of shame, - And in some potter’s field they find surcease; - - Or, dying nobly, leave behind no name, - While, mounting on their bones, some brazen cheat - Reaches the very pinnacle of Fame. - - Destiny mocks them from her lofty seat, - Dipping their sponge in vinegar and gall: - Want grinds them in the dust with iron feet. - - Hard by the accursed sea whose waves appal, - A scape-goat lone, beneath the wingless skies, - They wander where the ashen apples fall. - - Night takes for them a thousand baleful eyes, - Piercing at once their deepest hiding-place: - Straight to their heart each poisoned arrow flies. - - Thrust out of camp, the scape-goat of their race, - Abhorred they live, and dead, the loathing earth - Vomits their phantom from the burial-place. - - Such is thy history, O my soul, from birth; - Dark pages with decaying odors rife, - A maze of treachery, and pain, and dearth. - - Yet ’tis the story of a vulgar life; - No title casts a glamour o’er its woes, - No footlights gild its unromantic strife. - - Across the web the flying shuttle goes, - Weaving with common threads a homely plot, - Yet dark and sinister the pattern shows. - - Why woo so long a world that loves thee not? - O soul, whence long have perished hope and faith, - Why cling to life, when death is all thy lot? - - Sweeter than bridal bed the couch of death, - More restful far than sleep; the asphodel - Is sweeter than the crimson poppy’s breath. - - King, queen, and harlot, priest and infidel, - Heaped up at random peacefully they rest, - Commingling in one mighty urn pell-mell. - - Despairing brother, whose fast chilling breast - Nor love, nor wine may warm, descend with me, - And burst the shadowy gates an eager guest. - - Abase thy head, and bend thy stubborn knee; - And like a Scythian chief in triumph led, - Welcome the agony that sets thee free. - - One short, fierce agony, and all is said; - Beneath the coffin lid, sealed once for all, - Compose thy limbs as in a royal bed. - - Swift as the fleeting shadow on the wall - Thy feeble footprints fall along the sand, - Nor voice, nor echo will thy song recall. - - In the Corinthian brass thy feeble hand - Can write no name; thy chisel cannot bite - The marbles of Carrara pure and grand. - - He who would climb Fame’s towering mountain height - Must have a double gift, a genius rare: - Unto a happy star he must unite. - - Poet, alas! and lover, brethren are; - Twins of the soul, each hath his cherished dream, - Some saint ideal, worshipped from afar; - - Some fount of youth, some pure Pactolian stream, - Some orb that beams with strange unearthly ray, - Some flaming vision potent to redeem. - - The fount is dry, the vision fades away; - The mystic light that led them through the night - Dies in a marsh, and leaves them far astray. - - O God, to tread but once by morning light - The alabaster palace of our dreams, - Counting its colonnades with waking sight; - - To greet the lovely images that gleam - Athwart the gardens of our revery, - And drink the waters of its mystic stream; - - To make the plunge, piercing triumphantly - The crystal vault, bring back the golden vase - Long buried with the treasures of the sea. - - ’Twere fine to feel the thrill of flight through space, - Adown the far empyrean to float, - Or track the eagle in his headlong chase. - - To find the deed outstrip the noble thought, - To find fit words to mate our passion’s cry, - And pour the tide with its full burden fraught. - - Sailing through unknown seas, to catch the sigh - Of mighty rivers, and through night’s eclipse - See new worlds heaving upward to the sky; - - To feel upon the flower of our lips - The regal kiss that sometimes hovers there; - To find the glen wherein the rainbow dips; - - To stop the wheel of fortune in the air; - To see before us on the glowing page - The wavering thoughts our midnight musings bear. - - Such lots, alas, in this decrepit age - Are rare; Polycrates might wear his ring, - Nor fear to rouse the avenging goddess’ rage. - - Seeking the upper chambers where we cling, - The cruel wave mounts upward step by step, - Mingling its murmur with our revelling, - - Till slimy phocas, shapes that banish sleep, - Gnash foully at our very bedsides there, - Belched from the bowels of the nether deep. - - The church is dark, the altar cold and bare, - And rending from their brows the aureole, - The saints blaspheming die in their despair. - - The sun senescent, near his final goal, - Casts from his bloodshot eye one baleful glare, - Ere yet the heavens vanish like a scroll. - - Each living thing shall perish foul or fair, - The flood will top the tallest mountain chain, - For vengeance cometh on and will not spare. - - For twenty days and nights through wind and rain, - The raven’s midnight wing, cleaving the waste, - Seeks for a haven where to rest in vain. - - Headlong she falls, famished and spent at last, - And as the widening circles mark the flood, - All Earth is but a tomb whence life has passed. - - A common sepulchre for bad and good, - Upon this wave no ark of safety rides, - Bitter with tears and red with human blood. - - No second patriarch his vessel guides, - A hive of life; a swelling fountain head, - To burst upon Ararat’s rugged sides. - - Atlas has fallen! hark, O hark! o’erhead - The crack of doom, the supports of the world - Are snapped like reeds beneath Behemoth’s tread. - - Our Mother Earth, by storms of chaos whirled, - Reels like a drunken harlot down through space, - By wanton buffets from her orbit hurled. - - Unto the lips of an expiring race - The Son holds up the cup of human woes; - The Father sees with coldly sneering face. - - When will our crucifixion cease? still flows - The ruddy current from our open side, - And red drops cluster on our pallid brows. - - Enough of tears and blood; O turn aside - The poisoned chalice; doth not this suffice? - That Thy dear Son upon the cross has died? - - He died for naught; man still must pay the price - Unless a newer Christ rise from the dead: - The Pontiff asks a fresher sacrifice. - - For nigh two thousand years the Lamb hath bled; - His empty veins leave not the faintest stain - Upon the priestly knife that gleams o’erhead. - - Messiah cometh not, we watch in vain; - The veil is rent, broken the altar stone, - The worshippers are slain, the church o’erthrown. - - - - -SONNET: _OU VONT ILS?_ - -FROM THE FRENCH OF SULLY PRUDHOMME. - - - To what strange land gather the slain of Love? - Heaven were no world for them, it hath no bliss - To match the raptures that they knew in this; - No summer night, no dark secluded grove, - Or deep ravine with sheltering boughs above; - Nor can the foul fiends of the dread abyss - So rend a soul as the fierce agonies - Of Love’s disdain, the doubts and fears thereof. - - Tame were the joys of the bright sphere above - To which the saints so ardently aspire, - And vain the anguish of eternal fire - To him who knows the martyrdom of Love. - For souls consumed and dead there is no room - In heaven or hell: oblivion is their doom. - - - - -THE GAY CASHIER. - -ADAPTED FROM THE FRENCH. - - - Two gallant burglars, who for many a day - Had laid their plans, at last had made their way - Into a bank upon a stormy night; - Then with what fond, what rapturous delight - Unto the vault they flew to seize the swag! - O cruel joke, there was no swag at all: - That night the gay cashier, a heartless wag, - With all the funds had skipped for Montreal. - - - - -THE RAVAGES OF TIME. - -SCARRON. - - - The monuments of human pride and power, - Engulfed by ocean wave or desert sand, - And crushed by time’s inexorable hand, - Built for eternity, last but an hour. - Where are the hanging gardens and the towers - Of Babylon? the marbles tall and grand - That stood like gods on the Ægean strand? - Fallen and crumbled. So shall crumble ours. - - Time slays or withers all on which we dote; - His swift, remorseless touches ne’er relent, - Destroying marble, mortar, and cement. - Then why should I repine because my coat - Is threadbare on the seams with three years’ wear, - Out at the elbows, and beyond repair? - - - - -HALLUCINATION. - -FROM THE FRENCH. - - -I. - - Last night, or did I dream? my lady led - Me to a wall I oft had passed before, - And opened there a curious secret door - Made by some cunning workmen ages dead. - We entered furtively, and as our tread - Resounded on the long untrodden floor, - Back swung the portal with a clanging roar. - Fleeing like startled children on we sped, - And found an inner chamber, where was spread - A board with gold and crystal, and a store - Of fruits and flowers from every unknown shore, - And curious flasks, whose contents gleaming red - A ruddy radiance o’er my lady shed, - And flung fantastic flames upon the floor. - - -II. - - Bathed in the amber of an unseen flame, - A royal couch with silken curtains fair - Gleamed like a jewel in the alcove there; - A dreamy languor stole through all my frame, - Sweet beyond power of language to declare; - A breath of perfume moved the swooning air, - Stirring the golden ringlets of my dame; - And while we faltered, lo, a small voice came: - “O happy pair, with rosy forms aglow, - Here lie within the temple’s deep alcove - Sweet mysteries that I pant to have you know; - Wine that hath stained the trampling feet of Love, - And fruit that ripened in the sacred grove: - Break every seal, and let the purple flow.” - - -III. - - I turned to seek my lady’s eyes, when lo! - The vision vanished, and I stood alone - Without the temple walls, whose cold gray stone - Mocked my endeavor, rising row on row. - I called my lady’s name, fearful and low. - No answer, save the hoot-owl’s jeering tone, - And the pale mocking moon that coldly shone. - Now, sadly round the temple walls I go, - Whose deepest mysteries I thought to know. - I thought its inmost chamber mine; fond fool, - I only stood within some vestibule, - Where all men’s feet may wander to and fro, - And saw, reflected from some mirror there, - My own imaginings too warm and fair. - - -IV. - -IN THE GROVE. - - Once more the huntress clad in silvery mail - Seeks her Endymion, over hill and glade; - Once more the hour so dear to youth and maid— - The hour that all Love’s guardian spirits hail. - Wrapped in the moonlight like a lucent veil, - Is it for me, young priestess, that, arrayed - Still in thy vestal robes, thy feet have strayed - So far from where the sacred fires pale? - - Last night within the temple’s dim alcove - I durst not lift my conscious eyes to thine. - Lo, now thy lips and eyes have sought for mine, - And round my neck thy sheltering arms entwine, - While our commingling footsteps freely rove - Through all the mysteries of the silent grove. - - - - -TO MY CRITICS. - -IMITATED FROM DE MUSSET. - - - My verse contains some images, ’tis true, - On Byron’s pages found, what then, he too - On other pages found them long before, - (Byron, I think, would hardly grudge them me, - Seeing I need them so much worse than he). - Read carefully the old Italian lore, - If you, to draw it very mild, would see - How freely Byron borrowed; he or she - As stupid as a school teacher must be - Who thinks in eighteen hundred eighty-four - To find a thought or rhyme not used before. - And yet I must not speak of “waters blue,” - Of “sunny skies,” and “eyes of heavenly hue,” - Nor use some old stock metaphor at need - Because, forsooth, pedantic fools may read, - The same in every language,—Sanscrit, Greek, - Hebrew and Latin, Dutch and Arabic. - Great bards of yore, and they of yesterday, - Before whose sun my rushlight pales away, - To whose deep flood, my song is but a rill,— - All, great and small, hear the same chorus still. - Read the old rotting magazines and see - The very venom that they void on me; - The arsenal where roving malice meets - The rusty darts that stung the heart of Keats. - Vile innuendo, and malignant sneer, - Blanche, Tray, and Sweetheart, hardly changed are here. - - The lowest place amid the minstrel throng - Is all I claim; in the full tide of song - My voice is lost; upon my page appears - No burning message from supernal spheres. - But Teian glow and Lesbian passion still - A thousand lyres in every land they thrill. - A chord once found belongs, the whole world through, - To every minstrel that can strike it true. - My verses rhyme (at least some of them do), - And sweet as ever in our ear there chimes - The melody of old recurrent rhymes. - Dove ever mates with love, and bliss with kiss, - In every song from Sappho’s day to this. - - - - -THE YOUTH AND THE OLD MAN. - -FLORIAN. - - - “Old man,” said an ambitious youth one day - “Show me the path to wealth and fame, I pray.” - Answering not, the old man mused awhile, - His thin lips wreathing with a cynic smile, - Then spoke: “Is fame thy wish? With earnest zeal - Devote thyself to serve the commonweal; - To her give all thy talents and thy time, - The flush of youth, and vigorous manhood’s prime; - And should the foeman come with deadly strife, - In her defence be swift to lose thy life, - Perchance with ‘failure’ branded on thy heart. - The road to wealth is surer; seek the mart, - Where cunning money-changers lie in wait, - Casting their nets with watered stocks for bait. - Or join the nobler throng, whose argosies - Bear on white wings across the distant seas - The honest——” “Hold, old man, I’ll none of these; - With intrigue and deceit I would not soil - My soul, and yet I shrink from sordid toil.” - - Again the old man mused in silence while - Around his mouth hovered a cynic smile, - Then answered thus: “Why, simply be a fool, - And win both fame and wealth, in spite of rule.” - - - - -THE CATHEDRAL BELL AND ITS RIVAL. - -IRIARTE. - - - In a renowned cathedral hung a bell, - The pride of all the country far and near; - A bell whose deep vibrations never fell - Save on the greatest church-days of the year. - Then for some moments brief the air was thrilled - By some deep strokes with solemn pause between; - The heart devout with pious awe was filled, - And sinners felt repentance swift and keen. - - Within a neighboring hamlet poor and small, - With crumbling belfry tottering to its fall, - There stood a paltry chapel low and mean; - A cracked and rusty cow-bell hung therein, - - Harsh and discordant, but the sexton sly, - Only upon the solemn days and high, - Six times a year at most, its voice awoke, - Like the cathedral bell with solemn stroke. - This strange reserve, in parish bells unknown, - Gave to the wretched bell a high renown. - Its jangling equalled to the rustic’s ear - The tones majestic of its grand compeer. - - Pretentious, owl-like silence oft supplies - The lack of wit in those accounted wise. - “Be swift to listen and be slow to speak,” - If a high name for wisdom you would seek. - - - - -BLUE EYES AND BLACK EYES. - -IMITATED FROM ANDALUSIAN COPLAS. - - -I. - - Two miracles are thy blue eyes, - Haughty or tender; - Robbing our Andalusian skies - Of half their splendor. - - Celestial eyes of heaven’s own hue, - Twin thrones of glory, - Whose glances every day subdue - New territory. - - Blue were the waters and the skies - Of happy Eden; - And blue should be a Christian’s eyes, - Matron or maiden. - - By heaven those peerless orbs of blue - To thee were given, - And all the mischief that they do - Is known in heaven. - - I thought thy blue eyes beacons fair,— - O treacherous seeming; - O treacherous waves of golden hair, - That wrecked my dreaming! - - Two saints the blue eyes seemed to me - That wrought my ruin: - Who would have thought that saints could be - A soul’s undoing? - - -II. - - Black eyes are truer still, I ween, - Than any other: - Dark were the eyes of Eden’s Queen, - And Mary Mother. - - The holy ones of sacred lore - All dark are painted, - Inspired prophetess of yore - And maiden sainted. - - Blue eyes are cold as polished steel, - For all their splendor; - While thine a lambent flame reveal, - So warm and tender. - - Dearer thine olive hue, and eyes - Of raven blackness, - Than all the azure of the skies, - And lily’s whiteness. - - Thine eyebrows are a Moorish grove, - Whence issuing fleetly - Two wingèd archers lightly rove, - Wounding so sweetly. - - But when their victims bleeding lie - Faintly appealing, - Two tender blackamoors draw nigh - With balm of healing. - - - - -COMPLAINT TO THE VIRGIN. - -FROM A CUBAN POETESS. - - - Mother ineffable, whose radiant brow - The stars have crowned, - O’er all earth’s daughters chosen, thou - The sinless found; - - Of Adam’s fallen race, the first and last - Untouched by strife, - Whose beauteous feet unstained and pure have passed - The snares of life. - - The angelic heralds at those spotless feet - Once bent the knee, - And now adore at the effulgent seat - Eternally. - - A gift too pure and bright for earthly bloom, - Flower of the sky; - The odors of whose matchless grace perfume - The courts on high. - - Look down in pity from thy lofty throne, - Through realms of light, - To where thy sorrowing sister walks alone - In deepest night. - - Oh, see the endless waves of anguish fierce - That o’er me roll! - Hast thou not bled? did not the sword once pierce - Thy tender soul? - - Beating the breakers on the outer bar - My vessel lies; - For me there beams no friendly guiding-star, - No beacons rise. - - Blest beacon seen in my despairing dreams, - Burst forth on me, - And light my stormy pathway with thy beams, - Star of the sea. - - O baleful night, when some malignant blast, - Mocking and wild, - Into an orphan’s cradle rudely cast - A sleeping child! - - Of careless childhood’s flowers and smiles and tears, - The tears were mine. - Alas! I gather in maturer years - No fruit or wine. - - All night I bruise my failing wings in vain, - Seeking for rest— - A bird unmated on an arid plain - Without a nest. - - I roam a timid stranger on the earth— - A foreign land— - Bewildered by the light, the joy and mirth - On every hand. - - A vine-clad mountain to the beaming skies - That lifts its crest, - While an abyss of untold horror lies - Beneath its breast. - - Some loving souls at birth are consecrated - To pain and grief; - Through gloomy vales they stray, unknown, unmated, - Without relief. - - I seek no longer these sad mysteries - To penetrate; - I must not murmur at the high decrees - That fix my fate. - - They say that God regards with pitying eye - The poor and weak, - Smiting the haughty head, and passing by - The low and meek. - - No daring oak, whose branches, heaven defying, - Pierce the blue sky; - A blighted leaf before the tempest flying, - A reed am I. - - A poor blind pilgrim through the wilderness - Groping my way, - Striving with agonizing tears to press - From night to day. - - A heart whence all illusions long have perished - Seeks not for bliss. - I ask not human love, O Mother cherished, - I ask but this: - - A lowly shelter far from tongues maligning - And bitter sneers; - There let me pray and quench all fierce repining - With grateful tears. - - And some glad morning through my cloister swelling, - A golden portal - May burst, and flood with rosy light my dwelling, - And joys immortal. - - - - -THE CRUCIFIXION. - -OLD FRENCH SONNET. - - - While Jesus suffered for the human race - Upon the tree, death came and found him there. - Transfixed with shame, at first he did not dare - To look upon his sovereign’s awful face. - - But Jesus, full of majesty and grace, - Meekly bowed down his head, august and fair, - Veiling the glory that it used to wear, - And waves of darkness fell upon the place. - - Then shuddering Death his shameful task fulfilled; - Earth to her centre rocked as though the day - Of doom were come; the veil was rent away— - All Nature moaned and quivered, horror-filled. - - The very stones were softened, thou alone, - Vile scoffing sinner, took a heart of stone. - - - - -FROM THE SPANISH. - - - Unhappy he who buys - The toys that Cupid offers; - For each delight he proffers - Some dear illusion dies. - Sell not thy dearest treasures - For his too fleeting pleasures. - - - - -THE BOOK OF LIFE. - -LAMARTINE. - - - Each soul the Book of Life must read and prove— - Fate turns the leaves whether we will or no. - We cannot linger o’er the lines we love, - Or hasten o’er the dreary lines of woe. - We have not read the page of Love aright - When, lo! the page of Death appalls our sight. - - - - -MEMORIAL DAY, AND OTHER POEMS. - -DEDICATED TO THE G. A. R. - - - - -TWENTY YEARS AGO. - -WRITTEN FOR MEMORIAL DAY IN 1885. - - - For twenty years the snowy wings of Peace - Over the land have brooded; flocks increase - Upon the fields, now blessed by smiling stars, - Where drave the reeking chariot-wheels of Mars. - How like a falcon’s flight the years have flown, - Since Appomattox rang the curtain down; - And listening to my voice are tall young men, - And women fair who were but children then. - Our young Republic, freed from all his chains, - For peaceful conquest girds his lusty reins. - The smiling Mississippi to the sea - Rolls as in days of old, unvexed and free, - And East and West in one grand commonweal - Are bound by triple bands of shining steel. - The apple tree historic rots away; - Our gunboats all have crumbled to decay; - The rifle-pits that scarred the Southern plains - Are washed away by twenty winters’ rains; - The impetuous onset of the bayonet line - Tramples no more the growing corn and vine, - And nesting birds pour forth their raptures where - The thunder-bolts of battle rent the air. - But still remain in many hearts we know - The ghastly scars of twenty years ago. - How many a comrade’s widow treads alone - A narrow path by cruel thorns o’ergrown! - ’Tis long since song of mating bird has thrilled - That lonely heart, with tender memories filled,— - Memories still speeding backward to the time - When, brave and beautiful in manhood’s prime, - Her bridegroom more than twenty years ago - Sprang at the bugle call to meet the foe. - Strong men for other women dig the gold, - Tread out the wine, and weave the silken fold; - Her wine of Life in forests dark and dank - The thirsty soil of Mississippi drank; - Her daily lot for more than twenty years - Has been the widow’s toil, and widow’s tears. - - Comrades, we’re growing old; upon our hairs - Gather the frosts of more than twenty years, - Since in the trench at Petersburg we lay, - Or, gayly holding our triumphal way, - Unto the sea we swept with Sherman’s pennon, - Or heard the roar of Stonewall Jackson’s cannon, - Waking the echoes of the Rapidan, - Or through the valley whirled with Sheridan. - Still surges up as though of yesterday - The memory of those that passed away; - Still floating down the vista of the years, - We hear their voices, see their smiles and tears. - In each successive strife how fast they fell— - The tried companions that we knew so well. - Some, fleeing from the ghastly prison pen, - By bloodhounds tracked were slain in swamp and fen; - Some ashes mingle with the sounding tide, - And some enrich the rugged mountain side, - Where the tall pines of frowning Kenesaw - Quivered like reeds before the blast of war; - Now looming up in shadowy ranks they stand - Like guardian phantoms brooding o’er the land. - No higher impulse thrilled the knights of old - Who to the crusades like a torrent rolled, - To pour for the dear cross their blood like wine - Upon the plains of Holy Palestine, - And feed on desert sands in the far East - The jackals ravening for their glorious feast. - - They reck not where their scattered ashes rest - Who speed to the reunion of the blest; - As eaglets soaring to the gates of light - Spurn the dull shells that long confined their flight. - For you the amaranthine wreath we twine, - Raise the high song, and pour the ruddy wine; - For you the rhythmic beat of martial feet, - As the long lines go swaying down the street; - For you the plaintive reed’s subduing moan - Commingles with the hautboy’s rapturous tone, - The rolling drum, the thrilling trumpet blare, - And silken banners float upon the air - Like bright ethereal drapery trailing there. - The noblest sons of Earth, of every clime, - Welcome you to their galaxy sublime; - And flowers, by maidens fairer still than they, - Are offered to your sacred shades to-day; - Roses and dittany—and lilies fair, - Mingle their breath upon the vernal air; - But sweeter than the fleeting gifts we bring - Your memory perennial shall spring, - And loving tears each spring-time shall bedew - The flowers that loving hands shall here renew; - And younger bards, with truer touch than mine, - Will pour for you the flood of song divine, - While millions yet unborn, with quickening breath, - Will hear the tale heroic of your death. - - O host of gallant comrades sweeping by, - Up the red track of glory to the sky— - Reynolds, McPherson, Dahlgren, Garesché, - And all the unknown names as brave as they,— - Great hearts and souls as those of song and story, - Whose only guerdon was a deathbed gory; - As youthful as of yore we see you now, - The flush of victory on each radiant brow, - And youthful in our withering hearts shall glow - Your generous valor in the Long Ago. - - - - -ABRAHAM LINCOLN. - - - Song, legend, history, I scan in vain; - Outside of Holy Writ, no shape appears - So godlike as thy homely form; the spheres - Darken and die, thy glory shall not wane. - Monarchs have sat self-crowned upon the Seine - And on the Tiber; nations sick with fears - Have builded altars to them, drenched with tears - And smoking with a hecatomb of slain. - - O Christ of Freedom, no high altars fume - For thee, but freely flow the tears and blood, - The pure sweet blood of thy own martyrdom, - And tears of mingled grief and gratitude - From the dark millions by thy pen set free, - Led from their long Gethsemane by thee. - - - - -THE PRISONER’S DREAM. - - - On the last sad day of the dying year, - As I lay in my prison racked with pain, - I heard the voices of children clear - Swelling out on the night in a peaceful strain. - They sang a farewell to the dying year, - And the far faint tones of an organ fell - With a soothing cadence upon my ear, - And I slept at last in my loathsome cell. - My body slept with its clanking chain, - But the prison walls fled far away, - And my spirit, glad and free again, - Went forth as upon its bridal day. - I never had thought again to sing, - But a song welled forth from my joyous heart, - As waters gush from a long-sealed spring - When the chains of winter are rent apart. - “I’m coming, I’m coming, my dove, my dear; - In the heaven of thy arms, my own sweet wife, - I’ll usher the birth of the glad new year; - I’m coming, I’m coming, my love, my life!” - - * * * * * - - Hark! the clang of the changing sentry’s steel; - Awaken, O fool, from thy blissful bed; - On the stony floor of thy dungeon kneel, - And hug thy chain, for the dream is fled. - - - - -HOW OFT A SENTRY SAD AND LONE. - - - How oft, a sentry sad and lone, - The starry midnight host I’ve counted, - As up the eastern horizon - Into the sky they slowly mounted. - - Two still seemed missing from their place, - The brightest of the heavenly number; - But now I find them in thy face, - Nightly they beam upon my slumber. - - - - -FROM COPLAS OF AN ANDALUSIAN SOLDIER. - - - If daring deeds might win thy vows, - At nothing would I falter; - I’d dare thy father’s beetling brows, - Or those of grim Gibraltar. - - I’ll seek the thickest of the strife, - And lofty deeds of glory; - My girl shall be a General’s wife, - Or mourn a lover gory. - - Light batteries on the fatal field, - Their countless victims strewing, - Are the bright eyes to which I yield - For quarter meekly suing. - - Thy lips are silken banners, and - Beneath their crimson lustre, - In gleaming lines the soldiers stand, - Two ranks prepared for muster. - - The girl that jilts a veteran bold - To marry a clodhopper, - Would throw away the finest gold - To pick up worthless copper. - - - - -FROM THE SAME. - - - The conscripts march, O cruel theft, - While those that are rejected, - The crooked and the lame, are left - To comfort maids dejected. - - If swift promotion you would gain, - Yet shrink from war and slaughter, - The path is old and very plain— - Marry the General’s daughter. - - - - -THE GLORY OF A SPANISH DRAGOON. - -FROM THE SAME. - - - My little Pepita - Will be jealous I know, - For I promised to meet her, - But how can I go? - I come off of guard, - And go on police; - My sergeant’s a hard - One, and gives me no peace. - There’s the devil to pay - At fatigue duty too; - Every hour of the day - There is something to do. - A soldier at work, - What a pitiful sight! - I’d desert to the Turk - In the very next fight, - But his way of baptizing - You all will agree, - Is quite too surprising, - It would never suit me. - But my sergeant is worse - Than a Turk or a Jew, - He finds something to curse - At, whatever I do. - At every roll-call, - If I’m not upon time, - Drill, stables, and all, - He counts it a crime; - He laughs at my story, - In the guard-house I’m thrown,— - And this is the glory - Of a Spanish dragoon. - - - - -WRITTEN FOR A REUNION OF VETERANS IN THE YEAR 1915. - - - Comrades, once more to-night we gather here, - A dwindling band of graybeards; autumn sere - Pales into winter, Indian summer’s glow - Fades from the hills, reluctant still to go; - And Earth itself fades from our sight away, - Like rosy clouds that flit at close of day; - In our hearts too the flame burns low at last,— - An arctic winter closes round us fast. - - While the remaining grains, how few, alas! - Of golden sand, pour through the hour-glass, - Fill up, dear friends, your goblets once again, - And warm the pulses in each shrunken vein - With sunshine garnered on some Gallic plain, - Or stolen from the vine-clad hills of Spain. - Here’s to the living absent, comrades they - So gay in camp, so dauntless in the fray, - The lingering remnant of the mighty host - That swept from far Atlanta to the coast. - Since then their prows through every sea have foamed, - And o’er five continents their feet have roamed, - And plucked the brightest bays in fields afar, - Who glittered brightest in the van of war. - But fast and faster from our sight they fail, - A few belated stragglers feebly hail - Along the banks of Styx the boatman pale. - Where’er they are, once more we pledge them all, - Ere from the thinning ranks we too shall fall. - - Lift high the cup, a generous current pour, - Libations to the chosen friends of yore, - Who wander on the dim Plutonian shore. - A mist arises from the wine-stained ground, - And lo, what phantom faces gather round! - Like storm-blown wreaths they flit—e’en so must we - Soon pass like vapors blown across the sea. - - Now draw together, fling apart the doors - Of wit and fancy, open up the stores - Of feeling that have been repressed so long; - Waken the voice of melody and song, - These fleeting moments sweetly to prolong, - And kindling up once more the altar fire, - Let the last embers all in flame expire. - - - - -TWENTY-FIVE SONNETS - - - - -TO ⸺. - - - Dear lady, doth the singer’s voice in thee - Awake an answering chord? if not so, be - Barren the song and all devoid of worth, - Save to awaken idle scorn and mirth; - Thy soul, self-poised in cold tranquillity, - Will smile to think how foolish some may be. - But if thy bosom swell with tender sighs, - If the deep fountains of thy soul are stirred, - Meeting some dear but unexpected word; - If, answering mine, responsive pulses rise, - And thy lips tremble to the happy eyes - Suffused with pleasure at the glad surprise - Of verses all too cold for thy completeness, - Know thy own heart hath lent them all their sweetness. - - - - -POESY. - - - Before the human hand a stylus held, - Ere papyrus’ or parchment’s mute appeal, - Sweet songs were sung whose echoes charm us still; - From dying lips undying music welled. - Wedded to strains from chosen souls that swelled, - Were rescued from oblivion’s clammy seal, - Fantastic legend, laws of commonweal, - Heroic deeds in days of hoary eld. - - Muse of the lyre and harp, till latest day - Thy voice shall bear along the shores of Time, - While kingdoms crumble, and while tongues decay, - The numbers of the ancient bards sublime. - Still thy anointed favorites hold their sway, - ’Mid falling stars, and gods that pass away. - - - - -THE ROSE. - - - The flushing wave bloomed into wondrous flower, - And rosy light burst forth unknown till then, - When Aphrodite dawned on gods and men. - Thy birth, O Rose, was in that mystic hour. - Transcendent Rose, pride of the Paphian bower, - And sweet consoler of the thorny glen, - What virgin charms thy blush illumines when - Upon the virgin heart Love seals his power. - - Fair as the lily was the Rose’s breast; - But when the generous vine upon it bled, - Swift blushes o’er its swelling beauties spread - Till every leaf the tender flame confessed, - While from thy wakened heart, O queenly Rose, - Ambrosial incense on the air arose. - - - - -TO A FAIR SANTA BARBARAN. - - - Why blooms the fairest flower ’neath rosy skies, - Where all is bloom and fragrance? why unfold - There, where the nectar that its petals hold - Among the orange groves neglected lies, - And all its perfume all unheeded dies! - And thou, dear maid, with wealth of love untold, - More precious far than mines of gems and gold, - Why linger ’mid these cloyed and listless eyes? - - O with thy voice, and smile ineffable, - And eyes so meet for sympathetic tears, - Seek some sad land oppressed by grief and fears, - A bright consoling angel there to dwell; - Fly, ere thy robes are wet with honey dew, - And thy own sweetness cloys thee through and through. - - - - -LA DIVA. - - - A sea of faces ripple round her where, - As on a sunny isle, the Diva glows - Behind the footlights like a full-blown rose; - A hush expectant fills the brooding air. - - But hist, O hist! what dying cygnet there? - How bubbling from her alabaster throat - Pours forth the wave of every passion’s note— - Hope, fear, love’s ecstasy, and blank despair? - - A moment’s silence ere the plaudits rise, - Till like a storm they beat the trembling walls, - And white hands plash like wave-crests to the skies. - Alas! ’tis o’er, the jealous curtain falls; - And as the tumult of our rapture dies, - A misty curtain veils our happy eyes. - - - - -TO A HAPPY LOVER. - - - Flaunt not before the world thy happy love, - Like the poor fatuous one whose pleasure lies - Not in Love’s glance, but in the envious eyes - Of other fools; deep in the myrtle grove - Seek some untrodden way, shadowed above; - There, if Love will, his unknown harmonies, - His inmost heart and core, his tears and sighs, - And unimagined mysteries thou mayest prove. - - But if thou find his choicest fruits and flowers, - Guard them from eyes profane with jealous care; - Love, proud but tender, brooks no sign-board there, - Pointing the pathway to his sacred bowers; - Himself the entrance, hidden and o’ergrown, - Unto his chosen favorites will make known. - - - - -METEMPSYCHOSIS. - - -I. - - I was a huntsman in my youth, and knew - Each bird and beast that haunts the forest tall, - Or wings the air, hard by the water-fall. - Over the plain and up the mountain blue - My twanging bow was heard, my arrows flew. - My bowstring now is rent, my arrows all - Like spears that from the withered pine-cones fall, - Have from my shrunken quiver vanished too. - Yet sometimes o’er me steals the olden mood, - And wandering in the forest deep and dark, - I greet each old familiar tree and mark, - Each spot whereon the lovely quarry stood, - While faintly through my withered veins once more - Leaps the triumphant thrill I knew of yore. - - -II. - - I shot an arrow through the wood one day - In idle sport, and following where it led, - I found a doe that I had raised and fed, - Stricken, and bleeding fast her life away, - Her tender fawn transfixed beside her lay; - One random shaft two happy lives had sped. - The dry leaves rustled to my startled tread, - And filled my fluttering heart with strange dismay; - For gazing in those failing eyes my soul - Found there another soul, its very twin; - Unseen for years, but bowered deep within - The heart’s alcove,—oh, lost beyond control! - Those murdered eyes still gaze as from a glass - Framed in with bloody leaves and trampled grass. - - - - -THREE SONNETS IN MEMORIAM. - - -I. - -DESPAIR—THE ABYSS. - - O dread abyss, narrow, but dark and deep, - Still baffling all that men may do or dare - To read the secrets of thy jealous care, - The mystery that thy shuddering caverns keep, - Over thy cruel mouth the earth I heap, - Hiding my treasure like a miser there. - My hollow doubting voice I lift in prayer; - With ghastly lips I say: “’Tis but a sleep, - And I shall find my loved one freed from sorrow, - Glowing with love, and youth ineffable.” - O fool, the only sure thing thou canst borrow - From coming years is death, thou knowest well. - Yet even this is gain; then hail each morrow - That brings thee nearer to the self-same cell. - - -II. - -QUESTIONING. - - Beneath the leafless trees alone I stand, - Where we two stood in June. O loved one, where - Are now the radiant hopes that filled the air, - Circling around us swiftly like a band - Of smiling sisters, clasping hand in hand? - Dearer to me than all their visions fair - This chill December night, so thou wert there. - And hast thou sought with them some better land? - - Would heaven be darkened for one form the less - From the bright throng who in His love rejoice? - From the celestial choir could not one voice, - Sweeter than all the rest, be spared to bless - My solitude? Say, dost thou sleep alone, - Voiceless, beneath the unrelenting stone? - - -III. - -CONSOLATION. - - Alone? Ah, no: beneath the earth’s fair crust - Assemble all the beautiful and good - Whose memory transfigures womanhood; - And kingly men are there, the brave, the just; - How sweet to mingle with that sacred dust! - Standing to-night where we so oft have stood, - Their fragrance fills the silent solitude— - Sweet flowers of human love and hope and trust. - - Where’er thou art, O sister of my soul, - Treading with gleaming feet the streets of gold, - Or softly mingling with the forest mold, - Swift years shall bear me to the self-same goal, - Our radiant heads in the same aureole, - Or the same flower-roots thrill our ashes cold. - - - - -IN MEMORY OF D. G. R. - - - Bathed in the morning sunlight thou didst stand, - The sisters nine in homage gathered round, - Son of Apollo, with his laurels crowned, - His lyre of lyres trembling in thy hand. - The brush and chisel at thy high command - Enchantment wrought, but sweeter far resounds - The music of thy verse, the soulful sounds - Flung from thy pen as from a magic wand. - - Had all thy wondrous powers to song been given, - What floods of melody had filled the air— - Eros’ and Psyche’s voices mingling there. - Alas! the wine is spilled, the lyre is riven, - Stern Albion’s son, thy soft Italian name - Lives only in the Pantheon of Fame. - - - - -IN MEMORY OF JOHN BROWN OF OSSAWATTOMIE. - -INSCRIBED TO JOHN J. INGALLS. - - -I. - - A cloud for years o’erhung the border-land, - Black, ominous, wherein were dimly seen - Soul-terrifying shapes of beasts unclean, - And men uncleaner still, a hideous band, - Loathsome as reptiles from the slimy strand - Of vanished seas, in ages pliocene. - Prophets the portent read with vision keen, - But lying seers cried “Peace,” throughout the land, - ’Tis but a cloud-bank changing with the wind, - And craven hearts draw their own pictures there, - And traitors sneered, and from the pulpit whined - Sleek hypocrites, blind leaders of the blind, - Buyers of souls, who gathered gold with care, - With gnashing and blaspheming filled the air. - - -II. - - A soul flamed forth like a titanic brand, - Or fiery meteor through the murky sky, - Thrilled by electric arrows from on high; - And by swift wings of unseen seraphs fanned - The baleful clouds dispersed, as though a hand - Omnipotent had swept the firmament - And from its face the darkening veil had rent. - Vague shapes of fear, as by enchanter’s wand, - Were changed to forms substantial, and arose - The Nation’s foes, implacable and fierce. - The canting knave, who chapter gave and verse - To justify the trade in human woes, - Slunk with his broad phylacteries away, - And strong men armed them for the deadly fray. - - -III. - - True greatness is the greatest in defeat. - A laurel wreath entwined about that head - Had but obscured the glory that it shed. - Unshaken in his high prophetic seat, - Beyond all crowns of vict’ry grand and great - In happier days, as when, illusions fled, - His fierce foes found him lying ’mid his dead, - Alike his spirit soared secure from Fate. - So, when the charging battle standards meet, - Gold fringe and silken fold are plucked away - As by the myriad beaks of birds of prey, - Still on the staff, high in his ancient seat, - The brazen eagle sits, serene, the same, - Pride of the legions o’er the battle’s flame. - - - - -OUR LOST ONES. - - “Hélas! dans le cercueil ils tombent en poussière - Moins vite qu’en nos cœurs.”—HUGO. - - - Brethren and sisters all, what do we here, - With song and laughter, while around us stand, - With dumb reproachful gaze, a shadowy band, - The mournful shades of all our lost ones dear? - O conquering power of the eternal years! - How swiftly fade away on every hand - Their memories throughout the joyous land, - For whom we thought to shed eternal tears. - - Smiling above them wave the flowers and grass, - Where cold and still those cherished forms are strown, - Thickly as grain in the deep furrows sown, - Or sheaves in fields where merry reapers pass. - To dust they wither in our hearts, alas! - More swiftly than beneath the cruel stone. - - - - -THE OCEAN OF THE PAST. - - - My wistful eyes still sweep thy sullen breast, - Dead sea, whose waves, once, following stroke on stroke, - Have swallowed mast and sail and hull of oak. - Now all thy cruel billows are at rest; - Hushed is thy roar, and stilled each raging crest; - No phantom from thy mists may I evoke, - No more my prow or sail the waves provoke, - Where sleeps my happy island of the blest. - - Lo, while I gaze, like the responsive swell - Of some great yearning heart, the billows rise, - Till, in wild tumult leaping to the skies, - They toss the beauteous wrecks I loved so well, - Resistless through the rending barriers roll - And sob through all the caverns of my soul. - - - - -EVIL DAYS. - - - O Youth, O Hope, O Love, all phantoms vain! - Ye lured me long with promise false as sweet, - But now your flight outstrips my faltering feet. - Dear traitors, will ye ne’er return again? - Love lingered last, but all have been too fleet. - Now sinks the light of day in tears and pain, - The glories of the night unheeded wane: - Summer is winter, truth is but deceit. - - Shall I not find upon some vernal day, - Fruition for the buds that blighted here? - The golden hours of youth I cast away, - How I would hold those wasted treasures dear! - Still through the lonely chambers of my brain - No more, no more, echoes the sad refrain. - - - - -ENVY AND SLANDER. - -TO N. A. M. - - - Envy is deathless, though the envious die, - And shafts of slander, hissing through the dark, - Have ever loved, like death, a shining mark. - Then do not think those shafts could pass thee by. - - Thy conscious worth, and purpose pure and high - Cannot defend from little curs that bark; - No wall, high as the flight of morning lark, - Can top the poisoned arrows as they fly. - - Rise o’er the herd in feeling, thought, or deed, - And feel the bitter sting of Envy’s tongue; - Rise higher yet, and thus confound the throng,— - Only a respite brief thy soul may read. - Success, e’en more than merit, is a crime - To tongues as tireless as the feet of Time. - - - - -TRUE FREEDOM. - -TO J. F. F. - - - He is not truly free who fears to speak - The burning words that flame from heart to tongue, - When in the presence of a hoary wrong, - E’en though upheld by gown and surplice sleek, - And hears unheeded the oppressed and weak. - Nor friendship from the great, the rich, the strong, - Nor grateful plaudits from the servile throng, - The free-born spirit must expect or seek. - - Think not that power and place will come to thee— - Sooner some sordid soul the race will win; - E’en in the days of Cid and Paladin, - And glorious days of Arthur’s chivalry, - The golden spurs by cravens oft were won, - While hearts as brave as Arthur’s died unknown. - - - - -“SOCIETY.” - - - Dear, simple friend, and did you think to find - Aught but hypocrisy and fair smooth lies - In this charmed circle, that would ostracize - All for a pair of gloves the most refined, - The noblest type of man or womankind? - A set whose aspirations never rise - Above the triumphs wealth and fashion buys; - Who ape the opinions with devotion blind, - The coats and gowns, of royal debauchees - And their bold paramours from over seas. - How hope a noble womanhood to gain - Nourished upon such stifling airs as these. - Fashion forbids to rise above a plane - That dudes and lah-de-dahs can just attain. - - - - -THE STAGNANT POOL. - - - Stooping beside a stagnant pool to drink - I saw a woman, weary and forlorn, - With hair unkempt, and garments stained and torn; - All grace of womanhood was fled, no link - Remained of happier days; along the brink - Swept by a stately dame with words of scorn; - “Though I had thirsted since the early morn, - Before my feet in that foul wave should sink - My willing lips should press the cup of death.” - O scornful dame! before the night was black, - Lo! I beheld thy swift feet speeding back, - With robes dishevelled and with gasping breath, - In this same wave thy parching lips to cool, - As eagerly as ’twere a mountain pool. - - - - -THE MAN WITH THE MUCK-RAKE. - - - An old and well-known allegory reading, - I found a quaint and curious picture there, - Of one who gathered straws and dirt with care, - The golden crown above his head unheeding. - Science to-day, than avarice more misleading, - Hath slain our father’s faith and hope and prayer; - We rake the seas, and sweep the earth and air - To find new theories for our own impeding. - - And some for tinsel toys of social glory, - And Church and State, toil through the grovelling years. - How can we hear the music of the spheres, - Clutching the muck-rakes of the allegory? - Our blunted senses only can discern - The paltry baubles over which we yearn. - - - - -IMMORTALITY. - - - My vision floats far down the milky-way, - A shining track across a shoreless sea - As deep and boundless as eternity. - Suns sail in myriads there, and comets stray, - Youthful, while hoary ages roll away. - O fleeting life, the stars that shine on me - Smiled just the same when star-lit Galilee - Beneath the Saviour’s feet in slumber lay. - - What countless swarms of man’s ephemeral race - Live, love, and die, while ye sail coldly on! - Yet they shall rise, the teeming millions gone, - And gaze unmoved, while from their ancient place - The morning stars like baleful meteors fleet, - And while the heavens melt with fervent heat. - - - - -TO A YOUNG ARTIST. - - - The matchless artists of the olden time - Knew naught of critic’s jargon; to their toil - Bending as one that digs a stony soil, - Sparing nor bloom of youth nor manhood’s prime, - They caught and fixed their floating dreams sublime. - So must we shun all vain polemic broil, - Nor vex our souls with theories’ turmoil - If to ideal heights we fain would climb. - - Our vintage time is speeding fast away, - The morning faileth; then with double will, - In spite of noonday glare or evening chill, - Gather the glowing clusters while we may. - So may our failing eyes see some faint beams - Shed o’er our work from our supernal dreams. - - -THE END. - - * * * * * - -Transcriber’s Note: - -In poem “Shadows”, final stanza, “vail” changed to “veil”. - -In poem “Twenty Years Ago”, penultimate stanza, “plantive” changed to -“plaintive”. - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Winona, A Dakota Legend, by Eli L. 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