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+*******The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Sisters' Tragedy******
+by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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+The Sisters' Tragedy
+
+by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+July, 1996 [Etext #595]
+
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+
+
+
+THE SISTERS' TRAGEDY
+WITH OTHER POEMS, LYR-
+ICAL AND DRAMATIC.  BY
+THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+THE SISTERS' TRAGEDY
+THE LAST CAESAR
+IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY
+ALEC YEATON'S SON
+AT THE FUNERAL OF A MINOR POET
+BATUSCHKA
+ACT V
+TENNYSON
+THE SHIPMAN'S TALE
+"I VEX ME NOT WITH BROODING ON THE YEARS"
+MONODY ON THE DEATH OF WENDELL PHILLIPS
+INTERLUDES
+  ECHO-SONG
+  A MOOD
+  GUILIELMUS REX
+  "PILLARED ARCH AND SCULPTURED TOWER
+  THRENODY
+  SESTET
+  A TOUCH OF NATURE
+  MEMORY
+  "I'LL NOT CONFER WITH SORROW"
+  A DEDICATION
+  NO SONGS IN WINTER
+  "LIKE CRUSOE, WALKING BY THE LONELY STRAND
+  THE LETTER
+  SARGENT'S PORTRAIT OF EDWIN BOOTH AT "THE PLAYERS"
+PAULINE PAVLOVNA
+BAGATELLE.
+  CORYDON: A PASTORAL
+  AT A READING
+  THE MENU
+  AN ELECTIVE COURSE
+  L'EAU DORMANTE
+  THALIA
+  PALINODE
+  A PETITION
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SISTERS' TRAGEDY
+
+A. D. 1670
+
+AGLAE, a widow
+MURIEL, her unmarried sister.
+
+IT happened once, in that brave land that lies
+For half the twelvemonth wrapt in sombre skies,
+Two sisters loved one man.  He being dead,
+Grief loosed the lips of her he had not wed,
+And all the passion that through heavy years
+Had masked in smiles unmasked itself in tears.
+No purer love may mortals know than this,
+The hidden love that guards another's bliss.
+High in a turret's westward-facing room,
+Whose painted window held the sunset's bloom,
+The two together grieving, each to each
+Unveiled her soul with sobs and broken speech.
+
+Both still were young, in life's rich summer yet;
+And one was dark, with tints of violet
+In hair and eyes, and one was blond as she
+Who rose--a second daybreak--from the sea,
+Gold-tressed and azure-eyed.  In that lone place,
+Like dusk and dawn, they sat there face to face.
+
+She spoke the first whose strangely silvering hair
+No wreath had worn, nor widow's weed might wear,
+And told her blameless love, and knew no shame--
+Her holy love that, like a vestal flame
+Beside the sacred body of some queen
+Within a guarded crypt had burned unseen
+From weary year to year.  And she who heard
+Smiled proudly through her tears and said no word,
+But, drawing closer, on the troubled brow
+Laid one long kiss, and that was words enow!
+
+
+MURIEL.
+
+Be still, my heart!  Grown patient with thine ache,
+Thou shouldst be dumb, yet needs must speak, or break.
+The world is empty now that he is gone.
+
+
+AGLAE.
+
+Ay, sweetheart!
+
+
+MURIEL.
+
+                None was like him, no, not one.
+From other men he stood apart, alone
+In honor spotless as unfallen snow.
+Nothing all evil was it his to know;
+His charity still found some germ, some spark
+Of light in natures that seemed wholly dark.
+He read men's souls; the lowly and the high
+Moved on the self-same level in his eye.
+Gracious to all, to none subservient,
+Without offence he spake the word he meant--
+His word no trick of tact or courtly art,
+But the white flowering of the noble heart.
+Careless he was of much the world counts gain,
+Careless of self, too simple to be vain,
+Yet strung so finely that for conscience-sake
+He would have gone like Cranmer to the stake.
+I saw--how could I help but love?  And you--
+
+
+AGLAE.
+
+At this perfection did I worship too . . .
+'Twas this that stabbed me.  Heed not what I say!
+I meant it not, my wits are gone astray,
+With all that is and has been.  No, I lie--
+Had he been less perfection, happier I!
+
+
+MURIEL.
+
+Strange words and wild!  'Tis the distracted mind
+Breathes them, not you, and I no meaning find.
+
+
+AGLAE.
+
+Yet 'twere as plain as writing on a scroll
+Had you but eyes to read within my soul.--
+How a grief hidden feeds on its own mood,
+Poisons the healthful currents of the blood
+With bitterness, and turns the heart to stone!
+I think, in truth, 'twere better to make moan,
+And so be done with it.  This many a year,
+Sweetheart, have I laughed lightly and made cheer,
+Pierced through with sorrow!
+
+                              Then the widowed one
+With sorrowfullest eyes beneath the sun,
+Faltered, irresolute, and bending low
+Her head, half whispered,
+
+                          Dear, how could you know?
+What masks are faces!--yours, unread by me
+These seven long summers; mine, so placidly
+Shielding my woe!  No tremble of the lip,
+No cheek's quick pallor let our secret slip!
+Mere players we, and she that played the queen,
+Now in her homespun, looks how poor and mean!
+How shall I say it, how find words to tell
+What thing it was for me made earth a hell
+That else had been my heaven!  'Twould blanch your cheek
+Were I to speak it.  Nay, but I will speak,
+Since like two souls at compt we seem to stand,
+Where nothing may be hidden.  Hold my hand,
+But look not at me!  Noble 'twas, and meet,
+To hide your heart, nor fling it at his feet
+To lie despised there.  Thus saved you our pride
+And that white honor for which earls have died.
+You were not all unhappy, loving so!
+I with a difference wore my weight of woe.
+My lord was he.  It was my cruel lot,
+My hell, to love him--for he loved me not!
+
+Then came a silence.  Suddenly like death
+The truth flashed on them, and each held her breath--
+A flash of light whereby they both were slain,
+She that was loved and she that loved in vain!
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST CAESAR
+
+1851-1870
+
+I
+
+Now there was one who came in later days
+To play at Emperor: in the dead of night
+Stole crown and sceptre, and stood forth to light
+In sudden purple.  The dawn's straggling rays
+Showed Paris fettered, murmuring in amaze,
+With red hands at her throat--a piteous sight.
+Then the new Caesar, stricken with affright
+At his own daring, shrunk from public gaze
+
+In the Elysee, and had lost the day
+But that around him flocked his birds of prey,
+Sharp-beaked, voracious, hungry for the deed.
+'Twixt hope and fear behold great Caesar hang!
+Meanwhile, methinks, a ghostly laughter rang
+Through the rotunda of the Invalides.
+
+II
+
+What if the boulevards, at set of sun,
+Reddened, but not with sunset's kindly glow?
+What if from quai and square the murmured woe
+Swept heavenward, pleadingly?  The prize was won,
+A kingling made and Liberty undone.
+No Emperor, this, like him awhile ago,
+But his Name's shadow; that one struck the blow
+Himself, and sighted the street-sweeping gun!
+
+This was a man of tortuous heart and brain,
+So warped he knew not his own point of view--
+The master of a dark, mysterious smile.
+
+And there he plotted, by the storied Seine
+And in the fairy gardens of St. Cloud,
+The Sphinx that puzzled Europe, for awhile.
+
+
+
+III
+
+I see him as men saw him once--a face
+Of true Napoleon pallor; round the eyes
+The wrinkled care; mustache spread pinion-wise,
+Pointing his smile with odd sardonic grace
+As wearily he turns him in his place,
+And bends before the hoarse Parisian cries--
+Then vanishes, with glitter of gold-lace
+And trumpets blaring to the patient skies.
+
+Not thus he vanished later!  On his path
+The Furies waited for the hour and man,
+Foreknowing that they waited not in vain.
+
+Then fell the day, O day of dreadful wrath!
+Bow down in shame, O crimson-girt Sedan!
+Weep, fair Alsace! weep, loveliest Lorraine!
+
+So mused I, sitting underneath the trees
+In that old garden of the Tuileries,
+Watching the dust of twilight sifting down
+Through chestnut boughs just toucht with autumn's brown--
+Not twilight yet, but that illusive bloom
+Which holds before the deep-etched shadows come;
+For still the garden stood in golden mist,
+Still, like a river of molten amethyst,
+The Seine slipt through its spans of fretted stone,
+And, near the grille that once fenced in a throne,
+The fountains still unbraided to the day
+The unsubstantial silver of their spray.
+
+A spot to dream in, love in, waste one's hours!
+Temples and palaces, and gilded towers,
+And fairy terraces!--and yet, and yet
+Here in her woe came Marie Antoinette,
+Came sweet Corday, Du Barry with shrill cry,
+Not learning from her betters how to die!
+Here, while the Nations watched with bated breath,
+Was held the saturnalia of Red Death!
+For where that slim Egyptian shaft uplifts
+Its point to catch the dawn's and sunset's drifts
+Of various gold, the busy Headsman stood. . . .
+Place de la Concorde--no, the Place of Blood!
+
+And all so peaceful now!  One cannot bring
+Imagination to accept the thing.
+Lies, all of it! some dreamer's wild romance--
+High-hearted, witty, laughter-loving France!
+In whose brain was it that the legend grew
+Of Maenads shrieking in this avenue,
+Of watch-fires burning, Famine standing guard,
+Of long-speared Uhlans in that palace-yard!
+What ruder sound this soft air ever smote
+Than a bird's twitter or a bugle's note?
+What darker crimson ever splashed these walks
+Than that of rose-leaves dropping from the stalks?
+And yet--what means that charred and broken wall,
+That sculptured marble, splintered, like to fall,
+Looming among the trees there? . . .  And you say
+This happened, as it were, but yesterday?
+And here the Commune stretched a barricade,
+And there the final desperate stand was made?
+Such things have been?  How all things change and fade!
+How little lasts in this brave world below!
+Love dies; hate cools; the Caesars come and go;
+Gaunt Hunter fattens, and the weak grow strong.
+Even Republics are not here for long!
+
+Ah, who can tell what hour may bring the doom,
+The lighted torch, the tocsin's heavy boom!
+
+
+
+
+IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY
+
+"The Southern Transept,
+hardly known by any other name but Poet's Corner."
+
+  DEAN STANLEY.
+
+TREAD softly here; the sacredest of tombs
+Are those that hold your Poets.  Kings and queens
+Are facile accidents of Time and Chance.
+Chance sets them on the heights, they climb not there!
+But he who from the darkling mass of men
+Is on the wing of heavenly thought upborne
+To finer ether, and becomes a voice
+For all the voiceless, God anointed him:
+His name shall be a star, his grave a shrine.
+
+Tread softly here, in silent reverence tread.
+Beneath those marble cenotaphs and urns
+Lies richer dust than ever nature hid
+Packed in the mountain's adamantine heart,
+Or slyly wrapt in unsuspected sand--
+The dross men toil for, and oft stain the soul.
+How vain and all ignoble seems that greed
+To him who stands in this dim claustral air
+With these most sacred ashes at his feet!
+This dust was Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden this--
+The spark that once illumed it lingers still.
+O ever-hallowed spot of English earth!
+If the unleashed and happy spirit of man
+Have option to revisit our dull globe,
+What august Shades at midnight here convene
+In the miraculous sessions of the moon,
+When the great pulse of London faintly throbs,
+And one by one the stars in heaven pale!
+
+
+
+
+ALEC YEATON'S SON
+
+GLOUCESTER, AUGUST, 1720
+
+The wind it wailed, the wind it moaned,
+   And the white caps flecked the sea;
+"An' I would to God," the skipper groaned,
+   "I had not my boy with me!"
+
+Snug in the stern-sheets, little John
+   Laughed as the scud swept by;
+But the skipper's sunburnt cheek grew wan
+   As he watched the wicked sky.
+
+"Would he were at his mother's side!"
+   And the skipper's eyes were dim.
+"Good Lord in heaven, if ill betide,
+   What would become of him!
+
+"For me--my muscles are as steel,
+   For me let hap what may;
+I might make shift upon the keel
+   Until the break o' day.
+
+"But he, he is so weak and small,
+   So young, scarce learned to stand--
+O pitying Father of us all,
+   I trust him in Thy hand!
+
+"For Thou, who markest from on high
+   A sparrow's fall--each one!--
+Surely, O Lord, thou'lt have an eye
+   On Alec Yeaton's son!"
+
+Then, helm hard-port; right straight he sailed
+   Towards the headland light:
+The wind it moaned, the wind it wailed,
+   And black, black fell the night.
+
+Then burst a storm to make one quail
+   Though housed from winds and waves--
+They who could tell about that gale
+   Must rise from watery graves!
+
+Sudden it came, as sudden went;
+   Ere half the night was sped,
+The winds were hushed, the waves were spent,
+   And the stars shone overhead.
+
+Now, as the morning mist grew thin,
+   The folk on Gloucester shore
+Saw a little figure floating in
+   Secure, on a broken oar!
+
+Up rose the cry, "A wreck! a wreck!
+   Pull, mates, and waste no breath!"--
+They knew it, though 'twas but a speck
+   Upon the edge of death!
+
+Long did they marvel in the town
+   At God his strange decree,
+That let the stalwart skipper drown
+   And the little child go free!
+
+
+
+
+AT THE FUNERAL OF A MINOR POET
+
+[One of the Bearers soliloquizes:]
+
+. . . Room in your heart for him, O Mother Earth,
+Who loved each flower and leaf that made you fair,
+And sang your praise in verses manifold
+And delicate, with here and there a line
+From end to end in blossom like a bough
+The May breathes on, so rich it was.  Some thought
+The workmanship more costly than the thing
+Moulded or carved, as in those ornaments
+Found at Mycaene.  And yet Nature's self
+Works in this wise; upon a blade of grass,
+Or what small note she lends the woodland thrush,
+Lavishing endless patience.  He was born
+Artist, not artisan, which some few saw
+And many dreamed not.  As he wrote no odes
+When Croesus wedded or Maecenas died,
+And gave no breath to civic feasts and shows,
+He missed the glare that gilds more facile men--
+A twilight poet, groping quite alone,
+Belated, in a sphere where every nest
+Is emptied of its music and its wings.
+Not great his gift; yet we can poorly spare
+Even his slight perfection in an age
+Of limping triolets and tame rondeaux.
+He had at least ideals, though unreached,
+And heard, far off, immortal harmonies,
+Such as fall coldly on our ear to-day.
+The mighty Zolaistic Movement now
+Engrosses us--a miasmatic breath
+Blown from the slums.  We paint life as it is,
+The hideous side of it, with careful pains,
+Making a god of the dull Commonplace.
+For have we not the old gods overthrown
+And set up strangest idols?  We could clip
+Imagination's wing and kill delight,
+Our sole art being to leave nothing out
+That renders art offensive.  Not for us
+Madonnas leaning from their starry thrones
+Ineffable, nor any heaven-wrought dream
+Of sculptor or of poet; we prefer
+Such nightmare visions as in morbid brains
+Take shape and substance, thoughts that taint the air
+And make all life unlovely.  Will it last?
+Beauty alone endures from age to age,
+From age to age endures, handmaid of God.
+Poets who walk with her on earth go hence
+Bearing a talisman.  You bury one,
+With his hushed music, in some Potter's Field;
+The snows and rains blot out his very name,
+As he from life seems blotted: through Time's glass
+Slip the invisible and magic sands
+That mark the century, then falls a day
+The world is suddenly conscious of a flower,
+Imperishable, ever to be prized,
+Sprung from the mould of a forgotten grave.
+'Tis said the seeds wrapt up among the balms
+And hieroglyphics of Egyptian kings
+Hold strange vitality, and, planted, grow
+After the lapse of thrice a thousand years.
+Some day, perchance, some unregarded note
+Of our poor friend here--some sweet minor chord
+That failed to lure our more accustomed ear--
+May witch the fancy of an unborn age.
+Who knows, since seeds have such tenacity?
+Meanwhile he's dead, with scantiest laurel won
+And little of our Nineteenth Century gold.
+So, take him, Earth, and this his mortal part,
+With that shrewd alchemy thou hast, transmute
+To flower and leaf in thine unending Springs!
+
+
+
+
+BATUSCHKA.<1>
+
+From yonder gilded minaret
+Beside the steel-blue Neva set,
+I faintly catch, from time to time,
+The sweet, aerial midnight chime--
+     "God save the Tsar!"
+
+Above the ravelins and the moats
+Of the white citadel it floats;
+And men in dungeons far beneath
+Listen, and pray, and gnash their teeth--
+     "God save the Tsar!"
+
+The soft reiterations sweep
+Across the horror of their sleep,
+
+     <1> "Little Father," or "Dear Little Father,"
+a term of endearment applied
+to the Tsar in Russian folk-song.
+As if some daemon in his glee
+Were mocking at their misery--
+     "God save the Tsar!"
+
+In his Red Palace over there,
+Wakeful, he needs must hear the prayer.
+How can it drown the broken cries
+Wrung from his children's agonies?--
+     "God save the Tsar!"
+
+Father they called him from of old--
+Batuschka! . . .  How his heart is cold!
+Wait till a million scourged men
+Rise in their awful might, and then--
+     God save the Tsar!
+
+
+
+
+ACT V
+
+[Midnight.]
+
+First, two white arms that held him very close,
+And ever closer as he drew him back
+Reluctantly, the loose gold-colored hair
+A thousand delicate fibres reaching out
+Still to detain him; then some twenty steps
+Of iron staircase winding round and down,
+And ending in a narrow gallery hung
+With Gobelin tapestries--Andromeda
+Rescued by Perseus, and the sleek Diana
+With her nymphs bathing; at the farther end
+A door that gave upon a starlit grove
+Of citron and clipt palm-trees; then a path
+As bleached as moonlight, with the shadow of leaves
+Stamped black upon it; next a vine-clad length
+Of solid masonry; and last of all
+A Gothic archway packed with night, and then--
+A sudden gleaming dagger through his heart.
+
+
+
+
+TENNYSON
+
+I
+
+Shakespeare and Milton--what third blazoned name
+   Shall lips of after-ages link to these?
+   His who, beside the wild encircling seas,
+Was England's voice, her voice with one acclaim,
+For threescore years; whose word of praise was fame,
+   Whose scorn gave pause to man's iniquities.
+
+
+II
+
+What strain was his in that Crimean war?
+   A bugle-call in battle; a low breath,
+   Plaintive and sweet, above the fields of death!
+So year by year the music rolled afar,
+From Euxine wastes to flowery Kandahar,
+   Bearing the laurel or the cypress wreath.
+
+
+III
+
+Others shall have their little space of time,
+   Their proper niche and bust, then fade away
+   Into the darkness, poets of a day;
+But thou, O builder of enduring rhyme,
+Thou shalt not pass!  Thy fame in every clime
+   On earth shall live where Saxon speech has sway.
+
+
+IV
+
+Waft me this verse across the winter sea,
+   Through light and dark, through mist and blinding sleet,
+   O winter winds, and lay it at his feet;
+Though the poor gift betray my poverty,
+At his feet lay it: it may chance that he
+   Will find no gift, where reverence is, unmeet.
+
+
+
+
+THE SHIPMAN'S TALE
+
+Listen, my masters!  I speak naught but truth.
+From dawn to dawn they drifted on and on,
+Not knowing whither nor to what dark end.
+Now the North froze them, now the hot South scorched.
+Some called to God, and found great comfort so;
+Some gnashed their teeth with curses, and some laughed
+An empty laughter, seeing they yet lived,
+So sweet was breath between their foolish lips.
+Day after day the same relentless sun,
+Night after night the same unpitying stars.
+At intervals fierce lightnings tore the clouds,
+Showing vast hollow spaces, and the sleet
+Hissed, and the torrents of the sky were loosed.
+From time to time a hand relaxed its grip,
+And some pale wretch slid down into the dark
+With stifled moan, and transient horror seized
+The rest who waited, knowing what must be.
+At every turn strange shapes reached up and clutched
+The whirling wreck, held on awhile, and then
+Slipt back into that blackness whence they came.
+Ah, hapless folk, to be so tost and torn,
+So racked by hunger, fever, fire, and wave,
+And swept at last into the nameless void--
+Frail girls, strong men, and mothers with their babes!
+
+And was none saved?
+
+                     My masters, not a soul!
+
+O shipman, woful, woful is thy tale!
+Our hearts are heavy and our eyes are dimmed.
+What ship is this that suffered such ill fate?
+
+What ship, my masters?  Know ye not?--The World!
+
+
+
+
+"I VEX ME NOT WITH BROODING ON THE YEARS"
+
+I vex me not with brooding on the years
+   That were ere I drew breath: why should I then
+   Distrust the darkness that may fall again
+   When life is done?  Perchance in other spheres--
+Dead planets--I once tasted mortal tears,
+   And walked as now among a throng of men,
+   Pondering things that lay beyond my ken,
+   Questioning death, and solacing my fears.
+Ofttimes indeed strange sense have I of this,
+   Vague memories that hold me with a spell,
+   Touches of unseen lips upon my brow,
+Breathing some incommunicable bliss!
+   In years foregone, O Soul, was all not well?
+   Still lovelier life awaits thee.  Fear not thou!
+
+
+
+
+MONODY ON THE DEATH OF WENDELL PHILLIPS
+
+I
+
+One by one they go
+Into the unknown dark--
+Star-lit brows of the brave,
+Voices that drew men's souls.
+Rich is the land, O Death!
+Can give you dead like our dead!--
+Such as he from whose hand
+The magic web of romance
+Slipt, and the art was lost!
+Such as he who erewhile--
+The last of the Titan brood--
+With his thunder the Senate shook;
+Or he who, beside the Charles,
+Untoucht of envy or hate,
+Tranced the world with his song;
+Or that other, that gray-eyed seer
+Who in pastoral Concord ways
+With Plato and Hafiz walked.
+
+
+II
+
+Not of these was the man
+Whose wraith, through the mists of night,
+Through the shuddering wintry stars,
+Has passed to eternal morn.
+Fit were the moan of the sea
+And the clashing of cloud on cloud
+For the passing of that soul!
+
+Ever he faced the storm!
+No weaver of rare romance,
+No patient framer of laws,
+No maker of wondrous rhyme,
+No bookman wrapt in his dream.
+His was the voice that rang
+In the fight like a bugle-call,
+And yet could be tender and low
+As when, on a night in June,
+The hushed wind sobs in the pines.
+His was the eye that flashed
+With a sabre's azure gleam,
+Pointing to heights unwon!
+
+
+III
+
+Not for him were these days
+Of clerkly and sluggish calm--
+To the petrel the swooping gale!
+Austere he seemed, but the hearts
+Of all men beat in his breast;
+No fetter but galled his wrist,
+No wrong that was not his own.
+What if those eloquent lips
+Curled with the old-time scorn?
+What if in needless hours
+His quick hand closed on the hilt?
+'Twas the smoke from the well-won fields
+That clouded the veteran's eyes.
+A fighter this to the end!
+
+Ah, if in coming times
+Some giant evil arise,
+And Honor falter and pale,
+His were a name to conjure with!
+God send his like again!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+INTERLUDES
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ECHO-SONG
+
+I
+
+Who can say where Echo dwells?
+   In some mountain-cave, methinks,
+   Where the white owl sits and blinks;
+Or in deep sequestered dells,
+Where the foxglove hangs its bells,
+               Echo dwells.
+                    Echo!
+                         Echo!
+
+
+II
+
+Phantom of the crystal Air,
+   Daughter of sweet Mystery!
+   Here is one has need of thee;
+Lead him to thy secret lair,
+Myrtle brings he for thy hair--
+               Hear his prayer,
+                    Echo!
+                         Echo!
+
+
+III
+
+Echo, lift thy drowsy head,
+   And repeat each charmed word
+   Thou must needs have overheard
+Yestere'en ere, rosy-red,
+Daphne down the valley fled--
+               Words unsaid,
+                    Echo!
+                         Echo!
+
+
+IV
+
+Breathe the vows she since denies!
+   She hath broken every vow;
+   What she would she would not now--
+Thou didst hear her perjuries.
+Whisper, whilst I shut my eyes,
+               Those sweet lies,
+                    Echo!
+                         Echo!
+
+
+
+
+A MOOD
+
+A blight, a gloom, I know not what, has crept upon my gladness--
+Some vague, remote ancestral touch of sorrow, or of madness;
+A fear that is not fear, a pain that has not pain's insistence;
+A sense of longing, or of loss, in some foregone existence;
+A subtle hurt that never pen has writ nor tongue has spoken--
+Such hurt perchance as Nature feels when a blossomed bough is broken.
+
+
+
+
+GUILIELMUS REX
+
+The folk who lived in Shakespeare's day
+And saw that gentle figure pass
+By London Bridge, his frequent way--
+They little knew what man he was.
+
+The pointed beard, the courteous mien,
+The equal port to high and low,
+All this they saw or might have seen--
+But not the light behind the brow!
+
+The doublet's modest gray or brown,
+The slender sword-hilt's plain device,
+What sign had these for prince or clown?
+Few turned, or none, to scan him twice.
+
+Yet 'twas the king of England's kings!
+The rest with all their pomps and trains
+Are mouldered, half-remembered things--
+'Tis he alone that lives and reigns!
+
+
+
+
+"PILLARED ARCH AND SCULPTURED TOWER"
+
+Pillared arch and sculptured tower
+Of Ilium have had their hour;
+The dust of many a king is blown
+On the winds from zone to zone;
+Many a warrior sleeps unknown.
+Time and Death hold each in thrall,
+Yet is Love the lord of all;
+Still does Helen's beauty stir
+Because a poet sang of her!
+
+
+
+
+THRENODY
+
+I
+
+Upon your hearse this flower I lay.
+Brief be your sleep!  You shall be known
+When lesser men have had their day:
+Fame blossoms where true seed is sown,
+Or soon or late, let Time wrong what it may.
+
+
+II
+
+Unvext by any dream of fame,
+You smiled, and bade the world pass by:
+But I--I turned, and saw a name
+Shaping itself against the sky--
+White star that rose amid the battle's flame!
+
+
+III
+
+Brief be your sleep, for I would see
+Your laurels--ah, how trivial now
+To him must earthly laurel be
+Who wears the amaranth on his brow!
+How vain the voices of mortality!
+
+
+
+
+SESTET
+
+SENT TO A FRIEND WITH A VOLUME OF TENNYSON
+
+Wouldst know the clash of knightly steel on steel?
+Or list the throstle singing loud and clear?
+Or walk at twilight by some haunted mere
+In Surrey; or in throbbing London feel
+Life's pulse at highest--hark, the minster's peal! . . .
+Turn but the page, that various world is here!
+
+
+
+
+A TOUCH OF NATURE
+
+When first the crocus thrusts its point of gold
+Up through the still snow-drifted garden mould,
+And folded green things in dim woods unclose
+Their crinkled spears, a sudden tremor goes
+Into my veins and makes me kith and kin
+To every wild-born thing that thrills and blows.
+Sitting beside this crumbling sea-coal fire,
+Here in the city's ceaseless roar and din,
+Far from the brambly paths I used to know,
+Far from the rustling brooks that slip and shine
+Where the Neponset alders take their glow,
+I share the tremulous sense of bud and briar
+And inarticulate ardors of the vine.
+
+
+
+
+MEMORY
+
+My mind lets go a thousand things,
+Like dates of wars and deaths of kings,
+And yet recalls the very hour--
+'Twas noon by yonder village tower,
+And on the last blue noon in May--
+The wind came briskly up this way,
+Crisping the brook beside the road;
+Then, pausing here, set down its load
+Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly
+Two petals from that wild-rose tree.
+
+
+
+
+"I'LL NOT CONFER WITH SORROW"
+
+I'll not confer with Sorrow
+   Till to-morrow;
+But Joy shall have her way
+   This very day.
+
+Ho, eglantine and cresses
+   For her tresses!--
+Let Care, the beggar, wait
+   Outside the gate.
+
+Tears if you will--but after
+   Mirth and laughter;
+Then, folded hands on breast
+   And endless rest.
+
+
+
+
+A DEDICATION
+
+Take these rhymes into thy grace,
+   Since they are of thy begetting,
+Lady, that dost make each place
+   Where thou art a jewel's setting.
+
+Some such glamour lend this Book:
+   Let it be thy poet's wages
+That henceforth thy gracious look
+   Lies reflected on its pages.
+
+
+
+
+NO SONGS IN WINTER
+
+The sky is gray as gray may be,
+There is no bird upon the bough,
+There is no leaf on vine or tree.
+
+In the Neponset marshes now
+Willow-stems, rosy in the wind,
+Shiver with hidden sense of snow.
+
+So too 'tis winter in my mind,
+No light-winged fancy comes and stays:
+A season churlish and unkind.
+
+Slow creep the hours, slow creep the days,
+The black ink crusts upon the pen--
+Just wait till bluebirds, wrens, and jays
+And golden orioles come again!
+
+
+
+
+"LIKE CRUSOE, WALKING BY THE LONELY STRAND"
+
+Like Crusoe, walking by the lonely strand
+And seeing a human footprint on the sand,
+Have I this day been startled, finding here,
+Set in brown mould and delicately clear,
+Spring's footprint--the first crocus of the year!
+O sweet invasion!  Farewell solitude!
+Soon shall wild creatures of the field and wood
+Flock from all sides with much ado and stir,
+And make of me most willing prisoner!
+
+
+
+
+THE LETTER
+
+EDWARD ROWLAND SILL, DIED FEBRUARY 27, 1887
+
+I held his letter in my hand,
+   And even while I read
+The lightning flashed across the land
+   The word that he was dead.
+
+How strange it seemed!  His living voice
+   Was speaking from the page
+Those courteous phrases, tersely choice,
+   Light-hearted, witty, sage.
+
+I wondered what it was that died!
+   The man himself was here,
+His modesty, his scholar's pride,
+   His soul serene and clear.
+
+These neither death nor time shall dim,
+   Still this sad thing must be--
+Henceforth I may not speak to him,
+   Though he can speak to me!
+
+
+
+
+SARGENT'S PORTRAIT OF EDWIN BOOTH AT "THE PLAYERS"
+
+That face which no man ever saw
+And from his memory banished quite,
+With eyes in which are Hamlet's awe
+And Cardinal Richelieu's subtle light,
+Looks from this frame.  A master's hand
+Has set the master-player here,
+In the fair temple that he planned
+Not for himself.  To us most dear
+This image of him!  "It was thus
+He looked; such pallor touched his cheek;
+With that same grace he greeted us--
+Nay, 'tis the man, could it but speak!"
+Sad words that shall be said some day--
+Far fall the day!  O cruel Time,
+Whose breath sweeps mortal things away,
+Spare long this image of his prime,
+That others standing in the place
+Where, save as ghosts, we come no more,
+May know what sweet majestic face
+The gentle Prince of Players wore!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PAULINE PAVLOVNA
+
+SCENE: St. Petersburg.  Period: the present time.  A ballroom in the
+     winter palace of the Prince--.  The ladies in character costumes and
+     masks.  The gentlemen in official dress and unmasked, with the
+     exception of six tall figures in scarlet kaftans, who are treated with
+     marked distinction as they move here and there among the
+     promenaders.  Quadrille music throughout the dialogue.
+Count SERGIUS PAVLOVICH PANSHINE, who has just
+     arrived, is standing anxiously in the doorway of an antechamber
+     with his eyes fixed upon a lady in the costume of a maid of honor
+     in the time of Catherine II.  The lady presently disengages herself
+     from the crowd, and passes near Count PANSHINE, who
+     impulsively takes her by the hand and leads her across the threshold
+     of the inner apartment, which is unoccupied.
+
+HE.
+
+Pauline!
+
+
+SHE.
+
+     You knew me?
+
+
+HE.
+
+                    How could I have failed?
+A mask may hide your features, not your soul.
+There is an air about you like the air
+That folds a star.  A blind man knows the night,
+And feels the constellations.  No coarse sense
+Of eye or ear had made you plain to me.
+Through these I had not found you; for your eyes,
+As blue as violets of our Novgorod,
+Look black behind your mask there, and your voice--
+I had not known that either.  My heart said,
+"Pauline Pavlovna."
+
+
+SHE.
+
+                     Ah!  Your heart said that?
+You trust your heart, then!  'Tis a serious risk!--
+How is it you and others wear no mask?
+
+
+HE.
+
+The Emperor's orders.
+
+
+SHE.
+
+                      Is the Emperor here?
+I have not seen him.
+
+
+HE.
+
+                      He is one of the six
+In scarlet kaftans and all masked alike.
+Watch--you will note how every one bows down
+Before those figures, thinking each by chance
+May be the Tsar; yet none knows which is he.
+Even his counterparts are left in doubt.
+Unhappy Russia!  No serf ever wore
+Such chains as gall our Emperor these sad days.
+He dare trust no man.
+
+
+SHE.
+
+                        All men are so false.
+
+
+HE.
+
+Spare one, Pauline Pavlovna.
+
+
+SHE.
+
+                              No; all, all!
+I think there is no truth left in the world,
+In man or woman.  Once were noble souls.--
+Count Sergius, is Nastasia here to-night?
+
+
+HE.
+
+Ah! then you know!  I thought to tell you first.
+Not here, beneath these hundred curious eyes,
+In all this glare of light; but in some place
+Where I could throw me at your feet and weep.
+In what shape came the story to your ear?
+Decked in the teller's colors, I'll be sworn;
+The truth, but in the livery of a lie,
+And so must wrong me.  Only this is true:
+The Tsar, because I risked my wretched life
+To shield a life as wretched as my own,
+Bestows upon me, as supreme reward--
+O irony!--the hand of this poor girl.
+Says, HERE, I HAVE THE PEARL OF PEARLS FOR YOU,
+SUCH AS WAS NEVER PLUCKED FROM OUT THE DEEP
+BY INDIAN DIVER, FOR A SULTAN'S CROWN.
+YOUR JOY'S DECREED, and stabs me with a smile.
+
+
+SHE.
+
+And she--she loves you?
+
+
+HE.
+
+                         I know not, indeed.
+Likes me, perhaps.  What matters it?--HER love!
+The guardian, Sidor Yurievich, consents,
+And she consents.  No love in it at all,
+A mere caprice, a young girl's spring-tide dream.
+Sick of her ear-rings, weary of her mare,
+She'll have a lover--something ready-made,
+Or improvised between two cups of tea--
+A lover by imperial ukase!
+Fate said her word--I chanced to be the man!
+If that grenade the crazy student threw
+Had not spared me, as well as spared the Tsar,
+All this would not have happened.  I'd have been
+A hero, but quite safe from her romance.
+She takes me for a hero--think of that!
+Now by our holy Lady of Kazan,
+When I have finished pitying myself,
+I'll pity her.
+
+
+SHE.
+               Oh no; begin with her;
+She needs it most.
+
+
+HE.
+
+                    At her door lies the blame,
+Whatever falls.  She, with a single word,
+With half a tear, had stopt it at the first,
+This cruel juggling with poor human hearts.
+
+
+SHE.
+
+The Tsar commanded it--you said the Tsar.
+
+
+HE.
+
+The Tsar does what she wills--God fathoms why.
+Were she his mistress, now! but there's no snow
+Whiter within the bosom of a cloud,
+Nor colder either.  She is very haughty,
+For all her fragile air of gentleness;
+With something vital in her, like those flowers
+That on our desolate steppes outlast the year.
+Resembles you in some things.  It was that
+First made us friends.  I do her justice, see!
+For we were friends in that smooth surface way
+We Russians have imported out of France.
+Alas! from what a blue and tranquil heaven
+This bolt fell on me!  After these two years,
+My suit with Ossip Leminoff at end,
+The old wrong righted, the estates restored,
+And my promotion, with the ink not dry!
+Those fairies which neglected me at birth
+Seemed now to lavish all good gifts on me--
+Gold roubles, office, sudden dearest friends.
+The whole world smiled; then, as I stooped to taste
+The sweetest cup, freak dashed it from my lip.
+This very night--just think, this very night--
+I planned to come and beg of you the alms
+I dared not ask for in my poverty.
+I thought me poor then.  How stript am I now!
+There's not a ragged mendicant one meets
+Along the Nevski Prospekt but has leave
+To tell his love, and I have not that right!
+Pauline Pavlovna, why do you stand there
+Stark as a statue, with no word to say?
+
+
+SHE.
+
+Because this thing has frozen up my heart.
+I think that there is something killed in me,
+A dream that would have mocked all other bliss.
+What shall I say?  What would you have me say?
+
+
+HE.
+
+If it be possible, the word of words!
+
+
+SHE, VERY SLOWLY.
+
+Well, then--I love you.  I may tell you so
+This once, . . . and then forever hold my peace.
+We cannot stay here longer unobserved.
+No--do not touch me! but stand further off,
+And seem to laugh, as if we jested--eyes,
+Eyes everywhere!  Now turn your face away . . .
+I love you.
+
+
+HE.
+
+             With such music in my ears
+I would death found me.  It were sweet to die
+Listening!  You love me--prove it.
+
+
+SHE.
+
+                                    Prove it--how?
+I prove it saying it.  How else?
+
+
+HE.
+
+                                   Pauline,
+I have three things to choose from; you shall choose:
+This marriage, or Siberia, or France.
+The first means hell; the second, purgatory;
+The third--with you--were nothing less than heaven!
+
+
+SHE, STARTING.
+
+How dared you even dream it!
+
+
+HE.
+
+                              I was mad.
+This business has touched me in the brain.
+Have patience! the calamity's so new.
+(Pauses.)
+There is a fourth way; but that gate is shut
+To brave men who hold life a thing of God.
+
+
+SHE.
+
+Yourself spoke there; the rest was not of you.
+
+
+HE.
+
+Oh, lift me to your level!  So I'm safe.
+What's to be done?
+
+
+SHE.
+
+                    There must be some path out.
+Perhaps the Emperor--
+
+
+HE.
+
+                       Not a ray of hope!
+His mind is set on this with that insistence
+Which seems to seize on all match-making folk.
+The fancy bites them, and they straight go mad.
+
+
+SHE.
+
+Your father's friend, the Metropolitan--
+A word from him . . .
+
+
+HE.
+
+                        Alas, he too is bitten!
+Gray-haired, gray-hearted, worldly wise, he sees
+This marriage makes me the Tsar's protege,
+And opens every door to preference.
+
+
+SHE.
+
+Think while I think.  There surely is some key
+Unlocks the labyrinth, could we but find it.
+Nastasia!
+
+
+HE.
+
+           What! beg life of her?  Not I.
+
+
+SHE.
+
+Beg love.  She is a woman, young, perhaps
+Untouched as yet of this too poisonous air.
+Were she told all, would she not pity us?
+For if she love you, as I think she must,
+Would not some generous impulse stir in her,
+Some latent, unsuspected spark illume?
+How love thrills even commonest girl-clay,
+Ennobling it an instant, if no more!
+You said that she is proud; then touch her pride,
+And turn her into marble with the touch.
+But yet the gentler passion is the stronger.
+Go to her, tell her, in some tenderest phrase
+That will not hurt too much--ah, but 'twill hurt!--
+Just how your happiness lies in her hand
+To make or mar for all time; hint, not say,
+Your heart is gone from you, and you may find--
+
+
+HE.
+
+A casemate in St. Peter and St. Paul
+For, say, a month; then some Siberian town.
+Not this way lies escape.  At my first word
+That sluggish Tartar blood would turn to fire
+In every vein.
+
+
+SHE.
+
+                How blindly you read her,
+Or any woman!  Yes, I know.  I grant
+How small we often seem in our small world
+Of trivial cares and narrow precedents--
+Lacking that wide horizon stretched for men--
+Capricious, spiteful, frightened at a mouse;
+But when it comes to suffering mortal pangs,
+The weakest of us measures pulse with you.
+
+
+HE.
+
+Yes, you, not she.  If she were at your height!
+But there's no martyr wrapt in HER rose flesh.
+There should have been; for Nature gave you both
+The self-same purple for your eyes and hair,
+The self-same Southern music to your lips,
+Fashioned you both, as 'twere, in the same mould,
+Yet failed to put the soul in one of you!
+I know her wilful--her light head quite turned
+In this court atmosphere of flatteries;
+A Moscow beauty, petted and spoiled there,
+And since spoiled here; as soft as swan's down now,
+With words like honey melting from the comb,
+But being crossed, vindictive, cruel, cold.
+I fancy her, between two rosy smiles,
+Saying, "Poor fellow, in the Nertchinsk mines!"
+That is the sum of her.
+
+
+SHE.
+
+                         You know her not.
+Count Sergius Pavlovich, you said no mask
+Could hide the soul, yet how you have mistaken
+The soul these two months--and the face to-night!
+                         [Removes her mask.]
+
+
+HE.
+
+You!--it was YOU!
+
+
+SHE.
+
+                    Count Sergius Pavlovich,
+Go find Pauline Pavlovna--she is here--
+And tell her that the Tsar has set you free.
+               [She goes out hurriedly, replacing her mask.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BAGATELLE
+
+
+
+
+CORYDON
+
+A PASTORAL
+
+SCENE: A roadside in Arcady
+
+SHEPHERD.
+
+Good sir, have you seen pass this way
+A mischief straight from market-day?
+You'd know her at a glance, I think;
+Her eyes are blue, her lips are pink;
+She has a way of looking back
+Over her shoulder, and, alack!
+Who gets that look one time, good sir,
+Has naught to do but follow her.
+
+
+PILGRIM.
+
+I have not seen this maid, methinks,
+Though she that passed had lips like pinks.
+
+
+SHEPHERD.
+
+Or like two strawberries made one
+By some sly trick of dew and sun.
+
+
+PILGRIM.
+
+A poet!
+
+
+SHEPHERD.
+
+          Nay, a simple swain
+That tends his flock on yonder plain,
+Naught else, I swear by book and bell.
+But she that passed--you marked her well.
+Was she not smooth as any be
+That dwell herein in Arcady?
+
+
+PILGRIM.
+
+Her skin was as the satin bark
+Of birches.
+
+
+SHEPHERD.
+
+          Light or dark?
+
+
+PILGRIM.
+
+                         Quite dark.
+
+
+SHEPHERD.
+
+Then 'twas not she.
+
+
+PILGRIM.
+
+               The peach's side
+That's next the sun is not so dyed
+As was her cheek.  Her hair hung down
+Like summer twilight falling brown;
+And when the breeze swept by, I wist
+Her face was in a sombre mist.
+
+
+SHEPHERD.
+
+No, that is not the maid I seek.
+HER hair lies gold against the cheek;
+Her yellow tresses take the morn
+Like silken tassels of the corn.
+And yet--brown locks are far from bad.
+
+
+PILGRIM.
+
+Now I bethink me, this one had
+A figure like the willow-tree
+Which, slight and supple, wondrously
+Inclines to droop with pensive grace,
+And still retains its proper place;
+A foot so arched and very small
+The marvel was she walked at all;
+Her hand--in sooth I lack for words--
+Her hand, five slender snow-white birds.
+Her voice--though she but said "God-speed"--
+Was melody blown through a reed;
+The girl Pan changed into a pipe
+Had not a note so full and ripe.
+And then her eye--my lad, her eye!
+Discreet, inviting, candid, shy,
+An outward ice, an inward fire,
+And lashes to the heart's desire--
+Soft fringes blacker than the sloe.
+
+
+SHEPHERD, THOUGHTFULLY.
+
+Good sir, which way did THIS one go?
+.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+
+PILGRIM, SOLUS.
+
+So, he is off!  The silly youth
+Knoweth not Love in sober sooth.
+He loves--thus lads at first are blind--
+No woman, only Womankind.
+I needs must laugh, for, by the Mass,
+No maid at all did this way pass!
+
+
+
+
+AT A READING
+
+The spare Professor, grave and bald,
+Began his paper.  It was called,
+I think, "A Brief Historic Glance
+At Russia, Germany, and France."
+A glance, but to my best belief
+'Twas almost anything but brief--
+A wide survey, in which the earth
+Was seen before mankind had birth;
+Strange monsters basked them in the sun,
+Behemoth, armored glyptodon,
+And in the dawn's unpractised ray
+The transient dodo winged its way;
+Then, by degrees, through silt and slough,
+We reached Berlin--I don't know how.
+The good Professor's monotone
+Had turned me into senseless stone
+Instanter, but that near me sat
+Hypatia in her new spring hat,
+Blue-eyed, intent, with lips whose bloom
+Lighted the heavy-curtained room.
+Hypatia--ah, what lovely things
+Are fashioned out of eighteen springs!
+At first, in sums of this amount,
+The eighteen winters do not count.
+Just as my eyes were growing dim
+With heaviness, I saw that slim,
+Erect, elastic figure there,
+Like a pond-lily taking air.
+She looked so fresh, so wise, so neat,
+So altogether crisp and sweet,
+I quite forgot what Bismarck said,
+And why the Emperor shook his head,
+And how it was Von Moltke's frown
+Cost France another frontier town.
+The only facts I took away
+From the Professor's theme that day
+Were these: a forehead broad and low,
+Such as the antique sculptures show;
+A chin to Greek perfection true;
+Eyes of Astarte's tender blue;
+A high complexion without fleck
+Or flaw, and curls about her neck.
+
+
+
+
+THE MENU
+
+I beg you come to-night and dine.
+A welcome waits you, and sound wine--
+The Roederer chilly to a charm,
+As Juno's breath the claret warm,
+The sherry of an ancient brand.
+No Persian pomp, you understand--
+A soup, a fish, two meats, and then
+A salad fit for aldermen
+(When aldermen, alas, the days!
+Were really worth their mayonnaise);
+A dish of grapes whose clusters won
+Their bronze in Carolinian sun;
+Next, cheese--for you the Neufchatel,
+A bit of Cheshire likes me well;
+Cafe au lait or coffee black,
+With Kirsch or Kummel or Cognac
+(The German band in Irving Place
+By this time purple in the face);
+Cigars and pipes.  These being through,
+Friends shall drop in, a very few--
+Shakespeare and Milton, and no more.
+When these are guests I bolt the door,
+With Not at Home to any one
+Excepting Alfred Tennyson.
+
+
+
+
+AN ELECTIVE COURSE
+
+LINES FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF A HARVARD UNDERGRADUATE
+
+The bloom that lies on Fanny's cheek
+Is all my Latin, all my Greek;
+The only sciences I know
+Are frowns that gloom and smiles that glow;
+Siberia and Italy
+Lie in her sweet geography;
+No scholarship have I but such
+As teaches me to love her much.
+
+Why should I strive to read the skies,
+Who know the midnight of her eyes?
+Why should I go so very far
+To learn what heavenly bodies are!
+Not Berenice's starry hair
+With Fanny's tresses can compare;
+Not Venus on a cloudless night,
+Enslaving Science with her light,
+Ever reveals so much as when
+SHE stares and droops her lids again.
+
+If Nature's secrets are forbidden
+To mortals, she may keep them hidden.
+AEons and aeons we progressed
+And did not let that break our rest;
+Little we cared if Mars o'erhead
+Were or were not inhabited;
+Without the aid of Saturn's rings
+Fair girls were wived in those far springs;
+Warm lips met ours and conquered us
+Or ere thou wert, Copernicus!
+
+Graybeards, who seek to bridge the chasm
+'Twixt man to-day and protoplasm,
+Who theorize and probe and gape,
+And finally evolve an ape--
+Yours is a harmless sort of cult,
+If you are pleased with the result.
+Some folks admit, with cynic grace,
+That you have rather proved your case.
+These dogmatists are so severe!
+Enough for me that Fanny's here,
+Enough that, having long survived
+Pre-Eveic forms, she HAS arrived--
+An illustration the completest
+Of the survival of the sweetest.
+
+Linnaeus, avaunt!  I only care
+To know what flower she wants to wear.
+I leave it to the addle-pated
+To guess how pinks originated,
+As if it mattered!  The chief thing
+Is that we have them in the Spring,
+And Fanny likes them.  When they come,
+I straightway send and purchase some.
+The Origin of Plants--go to!
+Their proper end _I_ have in view.
+
+O loveliest book that ever man
+Looked into since the world began
+Is Woman!  As I turn those pages,
+As fresh as in the primal ages,
+As day by day I scan, perplext,
+The ever subtly changing text,
+I feel that I am slowly growing
+To think no other work worth knowing.
+And in my copy--there is none
+So perfect as the one I own--
+I find no thing set down but such
+As teaches me to love it much.
+
+
+
+
+L'EAU DORMANTE
+
+Curled up and sitting on her feet,
+   Within the window's deep embrasure,
+Is Lydia; and across the street,
+   A lad, with eyes of roguish azure,
+Watches her buried in her book.
+In vain he tries to win a look,
+And from the trellis over there
+Blows sundry kisses through the air,
+Which miss the mark, and fall unseen,
+Uncared for.  Lydia is thirteen.
+
+My lad, if you, without abuse,
+   Will take advice from one who's wiser,
+And put his wisdom to more use
+   Than ever yet did your adviser;
+
+If you will let, as none will do,
+Another's heartbreak serve for two,
+You'll have a care, some four years hence,
+How you lounge there by yonder fence
+And blow those kisses through that screen--
+For Lydia will be seventeen.
+
+
+
+
+THALIA
+
+A MIDDLE-AGED LYRICAL POET IS SUPPOSED TO BE TAKING
+     FINAL LEAVE OF THE MUSE OF COMEDY.  SHE HAS
+     BROUGHT HIM HIS HAT AND GLOVES, AND IS
+     ABSTRACTEDLY PICKING A THREAD OF GOLD HAIR
+     FROM HIS COAT SLEEVE AS HE BEGINS TO SPEAK:
+
+I say it under the rose--
+     oh, thanks!--yes, under the laurel,
+We part lovers, not foes;
+     we are not going to quarrel.
+
+We have too long been friends
+     on foot and in gilded coaches,
+Now that the whole thing ends,
+     to spoil our kiss with reproaches.
+
+I leave you; my soul is wrung;
+     I pause, look back from the portal--
+Ah, I no more am young,
+     and you, child, you are immortal!
+
+Mine is the glacier's way,
+     yours is the blossom's weather--
+When were December and May
+     known to be happy together?
+
+Before my kisses grow tame,
+     before my moodiness grieve you,
+While yet my heart is flame,
+     and I all lover, I leave you.
+
+So, in the coming time,
+     when you count the rich years over,
+Think of me in my prime,
+     and not as a white-haired lover,
+
+Fretful, pierced with regret,
+     the wraith of a dead Desire
+Thrumming a cracked spinet
+     by a slowly dying fire.
+
+When, at last, I am cold--
+     years hence, if the gods so will it--
+Say, "He was true as gold,"
+     and wear a rose in your fillet!
+
+Others, tender as I,
+     will come and sue for caresses,
+Woo you, win you, and die--
+     mind you, a rose in your tresses!
+
+Some Melpomene woo,
+     some hold Clio the nearest;
+You, sweet Comedy--you
+     were ever sweetest and dearest!
+
+Nay, it is time to go--
+     when writing your tragic sister
+Say to that child of woe
+     how sorry I was I missed her.
+
+Really, I cannot stay,
+     though "parting is such sweet sorrow" . . .
+Perhaps I will, on my way
+     down-town, look in to-morrow!
+
+
+
+
+PALINODE
+
+Who is Lydia, pray, and who
+Is Hypatia?  Softly, dear,
+Let me breathe it in your ear--
+They are you, and only you.
+And those other nameless two
+Walking in Arcadian air--
+She that was so very fair?
+She that had the twilight hair?--
+They were you, dear, only you.
+If I speak of night or day,
+Grace of fern or bloom of grape,
+Hanging cloud or fountain spray,
+Gem or star or glistening dew,
+Or of mythologic shape,
+Psyche, Pyrrha, Daphne, say--
+I mean you, dear, you, just you.
+
+
+
+
+A PETITION
+
+To spring belongs the violet, and the blown
+Spice of the roses let the summer own.
+Grant me this favor, Muse--all else withhold--
+That I may not write verse when I am old.
+
+And yet I pray you, Muse, delay the time!
+Be not too ready to deny me rhyme;
+And when the hour strikes, as it must, dear Muse,
+I beg you very gently break the news.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Sisters' Tragedy
+
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