Poems

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∗ Poems ∗ · Harriet · Prescott · Spofford ·

POEMS.

BY

An April Madrigal

.

The bloom from off the sea I strip, The freshness from the budding mould, All fragrances, all balms that be, My Sovereign, I hoard for thee!

A Four-o'Clock

And only spread thy wide warm wings While summer her enchantment flings!

Ah, happy day, refuse to go! Hang in the heavens forever so! Forever let thy tender mist Lie like dissolving amethyst Deep in the distant dales, and shed Thy mellow glory overhead! Yet wilt thou wander,—call the thrush, And have the wilds and waters hush To hear his passion-broken tune, Ah, happy day of happy June!

The Pine Tree

Beneath my shade the red man slipping, Himself a shadow, stole away; A paler shadow follows him! Races may go, or races stay, The cones upon my loftiest limb The winds will many a year be stripping;

And there the hidden day be throwing His fires, though dark the dead prime be Before the bird shake off the dew. Ah! what songs have been sung to me; What songs will yet be sung, when you Are dust upon the four winds blowing!

Clouds

One long sad cloud that girts the quiet even, With half a rosy reflex broods, In doubt if this be earth or that be heaven, And with wild moods stolen from strange solitudes Still drifts on slumberous tides, and in a hushed heart hides Low tunes and melancholy interludes.

O changing clouds, that drop the great sun's glory, Dimly through gloom to draw your wings, Till over you stars make the spaces hoary, And ancient springs to flood your passing brings— Our lives are vapors, too, we gather like the dew, And fade and float wherever fortune flings.

Inside Plum Island

While, in their friendly multitude Encamped along our quarter, The host of hay-cocks seemed to float With doubles in the water.

Around the sunny distance rose A blue and hazy highland, And winding down our winding way The sand hills of Plum Island—

The windy dunes that hid the sea For many a dreary acre, And muffled all its thundering fall Along the wild South Breaker.

We crept by Oldtown's marshy mouth, By reedy Rowley drifted, But far away the Ipswich bar Its white caps tossed and shifted.

Sometimes we heard a bittern boom, Sometimes a piping: plover, Sometimes there came the lonesome cry Of white gulls flying over.

Sometimes, a sudden fount of light, A sturgeon splashed, and fleeting Behind the sheltering thatch we heard Oars in the rowlocks beating.

But all the rest was silence, save The rippling in the rushes, The gentle gale that struck the sail In fitful swells and gushes.

Silence and summer and the sun, Waking a wizard legion, Wove as we went their ancient spells In this enchanted region.

No spectral care could part the veil Of mist and sunbeams shredded, That everywhere behind us closed The labyrinth we threaded.

Beneath our keel the great sky arched Its liquid light and azure; We swung between two heavens, ensphered Within their charmed embrasure.

Deep in that watery firmament, With flickering lustres splendid, Poised in his perfect flight, we saw The painted hawk suspended.

And there, the while the boat-side leaned, With youth and laughter laden, We saw the red fin of the perch, We saw the swift menhaden.

Outside, the hollow sea might cry, The wailing wind give warning, No whisper saddened us, shut in With sunshine and the morning.

Oh, far, far off the weary world With all its tumult waited, Forever here with drooping sails Would we have hung belated!

Yet when the flaw came ruffling down, And round us curled .and sallied, We skimmed, with bubbles on our track, As glad as when we dallied.

Broadly the bare brown Hundreds rose, The herds their hollows keeping, And clouds of wings about our mast From Swallowbanks were sweeping.

While evermore the Bluff before Grew greenly on our vision, Lifting beneath its waving boughs Its grassy slopes Elysian.

There, all day long, the summer sea Creams murmuring up the shingle; There, all day long, the airs of earth With airs of heaven mingle.

Singing we went our happy way, Singing old songs, nor noted Another voice that with us sang, As wing and wing we floated.

Till hushed, we listened, while the air With music still was beating, Voice answering tuneful voice, again The words we sang repeating.

A flight of fluting echoes, sent With elfin carol o'er us— More blithe than bird-song in the prime Rang out the sea-blown chorus.

Behind those dunes the storms had heaped In all fantastic fashion, Who syllabled our songs in strains Remote from human passion?

What tones were those that caught our own, Filtered through light and distance, And tossed them gayly to and fro- With such a sweet insistence?

What shoal of sea-sprites, to the sun Along the margin flocking, Dripping with salt dews from the deeps, Made this melodious mocking?

We laughed—a hundred voices rose In airiest fairiest laughter; We sang—a hundred voices quired And sang the whole song after.

One standing eager in the prow Blew out his bugle cheerly, And far and wide their horns replied More silverly and clearly.

And falling down the falling tide, Slow and more slowly going, Flown far, flown far, flown faint and fine, We heard their horns still blowing.

Then, with the last delicious note To other skies alluring, Down ran the sails; beneath the Bluff The boat lay at her mooring.

Came they, these subtile powers, to tell The poet, at their revels, How blest to live delightful days Among these meadow levels?

Blest as to lead his lonely thought Above horizons vaster, Close to the stars, transfigured on The awful heights of Shasta!

Dreaming, he loitered still, we thought, Within his dream's bright portals; We trifled with the hour, but he Had been with the immortals!

In vain, at night, we sought that sound— Stars over us and under Through all that watery wilderness Building a word of wonder;

Or groping, when the light-house spark Its witch-dance kept before us, Or when the unseen moon distilled Her deathly glamour o'er us;

Or when, the twin lamps of their towers Emerald and ruby gleaming, Across the shadowy Merrimack The channel lights came streaming,—

In vain our lingering halloo, Our roundelay untiring, No silver cry chimed far or nigh Of all that silver quiring.

Oh, never since that magic morn Those strains the boatman follows, Or piping from the sandy hills, Or bubbling from the hollows!

Yet long as summer breezes blow, Waves murmur, rushes quiver, Those warbling echoes everywhere Will haunt Plum Island River!

Witchwork

Ride down the long gust of the gale! Hark! do you catch the Banshee's cry? That is the hammering trolls you hear! Turn not too swiftly, lest you start The Lurley singing in your ear! Powers of earth and powers of air Are all abroad; the night is quick With strange and subtile sorceries, Bred of the storm, and swarming thick As bees about a blooming branch, Honey dripping, dew besprent, Steeped in sunshine underneath The blue of some great morning's tent. Each enchantment of the sphere, Blown from the sea and blown from shore, Works its wild will and wizardry While darkness wraps the gay uproar, Till rosy dawn shall set the spell; When, lo! the bare boughs of yestreen Confess the magic of the March, And wave such veils of callow green As clad, in the old mystic tale, The rods that Jannes and Jambres throw, To break in blossom as they fall

Before the feet of Pharaoh! For the fierce tempest, with its shock Of wind and sleet that midnight cloaks, Like some old thaumaturge who makes A mighty marvel, now evokes,— The violet on her dewy locks, The sunlight on her lifted wing, The clouds of incense floating by,— The Apparition of the Spring!

O Soft Spring Airs

For here in reed and rush and grass, And tiptoe in the dusk and dew, Each sod of the brown earth aspires To meet the sun, the sun and you.

Then come, O fresh spring airs, once more Create the old delightful things, And woo the frozen world again With hints of heaven upon your wings!

Flower Songs

ppoem| start=follow| And in the covert of their odorous depths The robins shake their wild wet wings and flood The shallow shores of dawn with music, till The world is rosy,—so another voice Stole toward me, and I saw the hyacinth With its white helmet part the sun-soaked sod. And heard, as if from out the bells that wreathe Its spire of piercing perfume dropped the tones Like rain-drops tinkling in a way-side pool.

{asc}<>THE HYACINTH.

On topmost twigs when morning burns

And lights his trembling fires,

When from his wing the glad bird spurns The gray, and with his carol yearns

And to heaven's gate aspires,—

The Maker looks upon his world

That puts her beauty bare,

All freshly, fragrantly impearled

Beneath the tender air,—

Looks on his soft and gleaming world

And smiles to find her fair.

tpp|

{noschere}Then waken, waken,

The earth has taken

Into the sunshine her wondrous way;

Then waken, waken,

The showers are shaken

Loose from the leaves and melt away, Lost in the beautiful light of day! >><< Here the clear singing of the joyous sprite Startled the echoes of that underworld Where buds lie sleeping: straight the silent bush Beside me quivered in the happy light; The red sap mounted along stem and spray, In countless hurried convolutions whirled To break at once into the perfect flower— The perfect flower—proud was the song she sung. >><< {asc}<>THE ROSE.

I am the one rich thing that morn

Leaves for the ardent noon to win;

Grasp me not, I have a thorn,

But bend and take my being in.

|end=stanza

ppoem| start=follow| Then gently was I ware Of a pure breath from that delicious hour When day sweeps all her glory after her To fresh horizons,—rapt and holy tone Where lingered yet the note that haply fell From seraphs leaning o'er the battlements Of shining tower and rampart far above, And ever in their idlesse singing praise.

{asc}<>THE LILY.

Lift thine eyes, against the deepening skies

All the sacred hills like altars glow,

Waiting for the hastening sacrifice

Ere the evening winds begin to blow.

Lift thy heart, and let the prayer depart

To meet the heavenly flame upon the height,

Till all thy shadows to effulgence start,

And the calm brain grow clear with still delight!

Fancies

ppoem| start=stanza| {asc}<>II. A SNOW-DROP.

Only a tender little thing,

So velvet soft and white it is;

But March himself is not so strong,

With all the great gales that are his.

In vain his whistling storms he calls,

In vain the cohorts of his power

Ride down the sky on mighty blasts—

He cannot crush the little flower.

Its white spear parts the sod, the snows

Than that white spear less snowy are,

The rains roll off its crest like spray,

It lifts again its spotless star.:

Blow, blow, dark March! To meet you here,

Thrust upward from the central gloom,

The stellar force of the old earth

Pulses to life in this slight bloom.

|end=stanza

ppoem| start=stanza| {asc}<>III. AT DAWN.

A gush of bird-song, a patter of dew,

A cloud, and a rainbow's warning,

Suddenly sunshine and perfect blue,—

An April day in the morning!

Magical, autumn hazes are,

And rare is your summer weather,

With its purple midnight throbbing far

Over lovers clasped together;

But dearer to me these daring flowers

The passionate noontide scorning,

This gladsome slipping of shining showers,

This April day in the morning!

{asc}<>IV. MAYTIME

A mist of stars, a glimmering veil

Before the ancient throne of night;

A planet like a sentinel

Upon the outer height.

|end=stanza

ppoem| start=stanza| Far dusky deeps, and wide still air,

Where fainting fragrance rolls along;

A bird that warbles in his dream

Some thrill of broken song.

Thick fruit-flowers languishing for light

Around us in the perfect gloom;

And, as we wait, far off and low,

The distant breakers' boom.

Ah! among all delicious nights,

Give me this hour's transcendent swoon;

Enchanted song, enchanted hush,

And May without a moon!

{asc}<>V. SEPTEMBER.

Why does the wind at the casement sigh

In the gloom of the gray wet dawn?

The light is lost from the sea and sky,

And the rose is gone!

Gone—and the sunshine after her,

Color and fire and perfumed dew:

|end=follow

Only the lonely wind may stir In the place she knew.

Then follow, O wind, the happy ways Whither thy blushing love has fled: Round her are lustres of perfect days And all sweetness shed.

Follow—for desert sky and sea Are dim with the rush of the rain: Summer is dead, and the day would be Alone with its pain!

A Flower Piece

With deepening vapors, slowly gliding on To denser shadow, slow and ever slower, Fainting and fading, till a phantom craft Was hid in sad recesses of the cloud, A vanished apparition—and above, Upon the pallor of a peaceful sky, Fair Hesper, like a flower, bloomed out heaven.

Mother Mine

That mouth was just the mouth that kissed Sir Cradocke under the green wildwood; Fair Rosamond was tall as she was, In those fixed fancies of my childhood.

And when she sang—ah, when she sang! Birds are less sweet, and flutes not clearer— In ancient halls I saw the minstrel, And shapes long dead arose to hear her!

Darlings of song I've heard since then, But no such voice as hers was, swelling Like bell-notes on the winds of morning, All angelhood about it dwelling.

No more within those regions dim Of rich romance my thoughts would place her, Her life itself is such a poem She does not need old names to grace her.

Long years have fled, but left her charm Smiling to see that years are fleeter, Those ballads are as sweet as ever, But she is infinitely sweeter.

For love, that shines through all her ways, Hinders the stealthy hours from duty, A soul divinely self-forgetful Has come to blossom in her beauty.

While the low brow, the silver curl, The twilight glance, the perfect features, The rose upon a creamy pallor, Make her the loveliest of creatures.

Now with the glow that, on the face Like moonlight on a flower, has found her, With the tone's thrill, a faint remoteness, Half like a halo hangs around her.

Half like a halo? Nay, indeed, I never saw a picture painted— Such holy work the years have rendered— So like a woman that is sainted!

On the Bust of Charlotte Cushman

And sealed in stone eternally! For never does the shell forget The tide with which its lips were wet, And far withdrawn it murmurs yet The hoary burden of the sea.

And yet the hidden meaning here Interprets neither sky nor sea, Save as they round the earthly sphere With kinship of infinity. This nature holds the common sod's, Holds heaven and sunshine like a god's, Touched clay, and only soared the higher! Soared like a flame that springs alone Into the vast and azure zone; And whoso holds the carven stone Carries an urn of sacred fire!

Sarah Hildreth Butler

tpp|SARAH HILDRETH BUTLER.| {asc}<>I.

Do you remember, O you wondrous woman, In those dim regions where you wander now,— You, who were always something more than human, With the large light upon your lofty brow,— Do you remember all the hours we spent, All the gay mornings when the tremulous hazes Swathed the two silver rivers, and the heights Of pillared Arlington shone through their mazes? Do you remember the delightful nights On the proud hill-top, while the city lay Sparkling below us with her swarming lights, We like the spirits of some other day,— Do you remember, you so far away? |end=stanza

ppoem| start=stanza| {asc}<>II.

What woods were those where, in the April weather, Dell under dell of darkness and of dew, Along the Rock Creek paths we rode together! Over us swept the eagles, swept the blue; Under us, in green gloom of ferns and foam, The brook glanced. Here the red-bud broke in blushes, And like a press of moonbeams far abroad The dogwood lit the forest glades. The thrushes Answered our songs unseen. The horses trod In measure to our music, that glad noon, On beds of the wild heart's-ease velvet shod. Singing, we sped, and recked not in our tune. Of storm, eclipse, and the dark interlune!

{asc}<>III.

Whether the ford splash round me now, or slowly I loiter up the great hill-side, to rest Where some old earthwork hides its melancholy |end=follow

ppoem| start=follow| In dew-meshed cobwebs quivering on its breast, As the rank grass shakes with the wings that skim From coverts in the blossoming embrasure, Your conscious presence follows. I am stirred To see your shape upon the sunlit azure, To hear the ringing of the voice once heard In stories of those battailous days when you Stood with that Lion Heart, whose flaming word The shackle from the slave forever threw, While your pulse beat the strain his trumpets blew!

{asc}<>IV.

Again, I mark the mad scream of the breakers Off Hatteras, and on the slant wet deck, Amid the wild waste of the whitening acres Of awful waters leaping for the wreck, Calm as upon your summer gallery I see you stitching on the silken pennon; Firing the faint and waiting hearts of men That in transfiguring flash and smoke of cannon |end=follow

ppoem| start=follow| Had sprung to fate's embraces. And again, In the far South, where rolls the turbid tide Through the morass that plague has made its den, In veiling vapors creeping far and wide, I see the yellow death before you hide.

{asc}<>V.

Oh, fair these streets of palaces, with glory Of columns in long flying lines of light, With their high fields of sunshine, and the hoary Vast wastes of the illimitable night, Mirrored beneath in all the marshy meres, Whose fusing emerald and sapphire render Again, where beautiful Potomac slides, The phantom of the city's marbled splendor, Or in a dusky wash of starry tides! Oh, fair these gardens we have haunted, too, Blown full of roses, where the air that rides Past cedars and magnolias drenched with dew Enchants the dark it dreams and dallies through! |end=stanza

ppoem| start=stanza| {asc}<>VI.

And fair, o'er all, that shrine where, once, adoring, We saw the moonlight sheet the shining walls, We saw the inner lamplight softly pouring, Till the whole pile seemed lucent, and its halls Twin temples of our liberty; the while, You gazed,—where high the airier lustre shimmered, A cloud upon the clouds light lay the dome, A star among the stars the tholus glimmered,— Like some patrician lady of old Rome. Alas! how many women died with you! For, later, when you turned the page at home, Your face, your grace, your tears, Queen Constance drew, The serpent of old Nile your likeness grew!

{asc}<>VII.

To-night, within that home, while all are sleeping, I sit alone, and watch the midnight wear. |end=follow

ppoem| start=follow| Is it the wind that round the house comes creeping? Is it your footfall on the polished stair? Strange visions in the mirrors gleam and go: Your smiles, your grief, your youth-renewing rapture In her whose beauty dazzled half a world, Here, where so late you lived and loved, I capture, Despite the dart that destiny has hurled. Oh, answer me: where are you, if not here? Break the appalling silence round you furled; Say if your great flame fell, or burns it clear To-night in some sublimer atmosphere!

{asc}<>VIII.

Alas! With you the whole earth somewhat faded, Turned from its path of sunshine, where the way With shadow of great mysteries was shaded; Some bloom forsook the skies, some charm the day; Some secret lost the song I paused to hear. |end=follow

I seem to tread on graves since your swift going The trembling gates of loss wide open threw; All things were shaken in your overthrowing, And age its frosty breath upon me blew. And still, though life is dear, and dear shall be Love, and the fresh delights that are not few, My heart cries to you, wandering far and free, O great, sweet ghost, do you remember me?

Peace

Spirit of God that moved upon the face Of the waters, and bade ancient chaos cease, Shine, shine again o'er this tumultuous space Thou that art Prince of Peace!

The Lonely Grave

A lonely grave,—none care for it, none know His name who all these seasons sleeps below. Only the heedless hunter pauses there To sight some wing that quivers in the air, Nor feels the presence of an ancient pain That yearns about the unknown spot in vain. Only the noonday sunshine comes, the rain; The golden moons above it wax and wane; The wild deer couch beside it, and the snake Glitters and slips along beneath the brake; While from the dagger-tree the bubbling song Of mocking-birds makes music all night long.

But far on Northern hills a woman grows The sadder with each gust the south wind blows; A mother listens, and with eager ears The step long hushed in every footfall hears; And friends, flower-laden, in a martial rout Among the fortunate graves go in and out. Ah, if to-day one violet fell here, One bluebell dropped its heaven-holding tear, One homely door-stone blossom shed its breath,

Less desolate with the despair of death, For all the song, the splendid glow and gleam, This lush-leaved covert of the dead would seem!

Yet, on this sole day of the waiting year, Since love with its dear tribute comes not near, Its shadow steals through the green undergloom To scatter armfuls of pale myrtle bloom,— A dark shape crooning o'er the lonely grave, The wildly tuned thank-offering of the slave. For here, where strange boughs move and strange wings whir, He rests upon his arms who died for her. Brighter the tide that wet the soil returns, And in the blaze of the pomegranate burns; Loftier the heavens climb from that low grave, Tenderer the air to which his breath he gave. Because he died, her children are her own; Her soul, she cries, to a white soul has grown;

Because he sleeps beneath the alien sod, Her race in fuller sunlight answers God. Oh, sweet the bosky dell in sun and shower; Sweet the low wind that creeps from flower to flower! Oh, sweet, sweet, sweet these roses of the South, The breath of the rain-lilies' honeyed mouth; Sweet the bird's song across the lonely grave, But sweeter still the blessings of the slave!

Between the Graves

A common flag, breeze, showers, and flowers, Are weaving all these sunny hours, Where broken hearts and hopes are hid, And the great mother on each bed Lays it, a fragrant coverlid.

You, who with garlands go about, As the tree-tilting bird pours out O'er either mound his singing bliss, Oh, kind as birds and breezes, leave A flower on that grave, and on this!

For, lo, the eternal truce of death Was called upon the passing breath, And all the phantom hates, that shed Their shadows round us as they stalked, Have no remembrance with the dead!

The Granadan Girl's Song

As one by one the shadows creep Back to their lairs in hilly hollows, A broader radiance issues forth, And on their track in silence follows. A fuller air swims everywhere, A freer murmur shakes the bough, A thousand fires surprise the spires, And all the city wakes below!

What morn shall rise, what cursèd morn, To find this bright pomp all surrendered, These palaces an empty shell, This vigor listless ruin rendered; While every sprite of its delight Mocks fickle echoes through the court, And in our place a sculptured trace Saddens some stranger's careless sport?

Oh, gay with all the stately stir, And bending to your silken flowing, One day, my banner-poles, ye creak Naked beneath the high winds blowing! One day ye fall across the wall And moulder in the moat's green bosom,

While in the cleft the wild tree left Bursts into spikes of cruel blossom!

Ah, never dawn that day for me! O Fate, its fierce foreboding banish! When all our hosts, like pallid ghosts Blown on by morning, melt and vanish! Oh, in the fires of their desires Consume the toil of those invaders! And let the brand divide the hand That grasps the hilt of the Crusaders!

Yet idle words in such a scene! Yon pearly mists on high careering; The Moorish cavaliers who fleet With hawk and hound and distant cheering; The dipping sail puffed to the gale, The prow that spurns the billow's fawning,— How can they fade to dimmer shade, And how this day desert its dawning?

Forget to float, thou pearly rack! Ye riders, bronze your airy motion!

Still skim the seas, so snowy craft, Forever sail to meet the ocean! There bid the tide refuse to slide, Glassing, below, thy drooping pinion, Forever cease its wild caprice, Fallen at the feet of our dominion!

The Blue

Ye spirits, in your shining crowds, That on this sphere God's bidding do, Call the four winds, and call the clouds, And out of heaven wash the blue! The Spaniard will not brook the blue!

Our Neighbor

Your legends hang on every hill, Your songs have made it dearer still.

Yours is the river-road; and yours Are all the mighty meadow floors Where the long Hampton levels lie Alone between the sea and sky. Fresher in Follymill shall blow The Mayflowers, that you loved them so; Prouder Deer Island's ancient pines Toss to their measure in your lines; And purpler gleam old Appledore, Because your foot has trod her shore.

Still shall the great Cape wade to meet The storms that fawn about her feet, The summer evening linger late In many-rivered Stackyard Gate, When we, when all your people here, Have fled. But like the atmosphere, You still the region shall surround, The spirit of the sacred ground, Though you have risen, as mounts the star, Into horizons vaster far!

Days of Rest

The quiet hour so brightly wreathes Its solemn peace about our hearts. And Nature, whether sun or shower Caprices with her soaring days, Rests conscious, in some happy sense, Of the wide smile that lights her ways.

Magdalen

How round that woman would we throng! How willingly would clasp her hands, Fresh from that touch divine, and long To gather up the twice-blest strands!

How eagerly with her would change Our trivial innocence, nor heed Her shameful memories and strange, Could we but also claim that deed!

In the Caravan

Think of dusky winds that whisper up its height Like winged spirits fanning against their prison-bars;

And, when thus we sigh and languish, a cry resounds, and soon, Across the sea of sand some foreland rears its head, Where tamarisk thickets drop their dew in the mid-noon,— Then life rebubbles in our veins as it might stir the dead!

Oh, surely so, when hard the way before and long behind, One everlasting refuge always rises close at hand, Where the living fountains flow, and in whose rest we find The Shadow of a Great Rock in a weary land!

Witnesses

The stars steal, slow and silent, Each in the ancient place,— Each in armor shining, The hosts of heaven arrayed, And wheeling through the midnight As they did when the world was made.

And I lean out among the shadows Cast by that far white gleam, And I tremble at the murmur Of one mote in the mighty beam, As the everlasting squadrons Their fated influence shed, While the vast meridians sparkle With the glory of their tread. That constellated glory The primal morning saw, And I know God moves to his purpose, And still there is life in his law!

Alive

When in open field the white-weed shines, And the birds and bees in the apple-trees Dart through skies of blue and bloom;

When the whole bright orb is flashing along, With her cloudy gossamers round her curled, A thing of blossom and leaf and song,— Still, I cry, is He far as the farthest star, Or living and pulsing across his world?

Blind

And first he satisfies his sight At the great fountain of the light, And sees in glory and alone The emerald rainbow round the throne!

Lullaby

tpp|LULLABY.| {asc}<>I.

Rest, little one, without a fear,

Without a fear; for far away

The great sea breaks upon the shore

From day to dark, from dark to day;

And all the thunders of its roar, Through silence filtered o'er and o'er, In murmurous music hush thine ear! In murmurous music hush thine ear!

{asc}<>II.

Droop, like the petals of a rose,

A drooping rose, dear eyelids, droop

Above the honeydew of dreams,

While happy slumbers round thee stoop

And weave their wings across the gleams Where life's too vivid tumult streams. Close, softly close, sweet eyelids, close! Close, softly close, sweet eyelids, close!

Second Sight

Oh, do I really look upon Those lost delights of vanished years, Or do I only dream them there, Because I see her through my tears?

Loss and Gain

tpp|LOSS AND GAIN.| When a soul that shines both strong and sweet From fearless eyes, and makes the world complete, Vanishes, like foam upon the shore, Is the earth more desert than before?

Nay! that soul on death its beauty lays, Casts a splendor down the sunless ways; Nay! the sky burns bluer, and the night Soars to follow it a hallowed height!

{asc}>>vol. 3, p. iii

An Old Song

Sailors far off on lonely seas have given it to the gale; Mothers have hushed its measure on the quiet edge of even, While soft as falling rose-leaves dear eyelids dropped their veil.

Long since the sailor made his grave between two rolling waves, The lovers and their love are naught, mother and child are dust; But to-night some maiden lilts it, to-night its sounding staves Are blowing from the stroller's lips on this balmy blossom-gust.

A part of life, its music flows as the blood flows in the vein; Laughter ripples through it, tears make its charm complete; For the heart of all the ages beats still through this old strain,— An old song, an old song, but the new are not so sweet!