LAST night the boy came back to me again,

  The laughing boy, all-credulous of good—

Long lost, far-wandered in the ways of men,

  He came and roused me with an olden mood.

He came the lover and enthusiast,

  Shook off my years, and with enlightened eyes

Smiled at the shadow that the world had cast,

  And looked at life with all the old surprise;

And I, the slave of patience, took him in,

  Gave him my heart and bade him welcome home,

Thrilled with his dreams of all I yet may win—

  Allured again in golden paths to roam,

And now I know life has no greater joy

Than, having lived, to be once more a boy.

HOW should I be the master of my ways

  When every nerve is vibrant to the sweep

Of dreams that fill the measure of my days—

  Too rare to lose and past all power to keep.

How should I know what it were well to do

  When every path has its alluring strain,

Each towering crest its world-revealing view

  Of realms for him that has the will to reign;

And while I waver, lo! this earthly shard,

  Wherein is breathed the swift compelling fire,

Breaks with the ardor it was shaped to guard.

  Yet, ever striving, humbly I aspire

Ere all be spent, with reverent hands to light

A guiding star on some hope-kindling height.

DEAR God, I thank Thee for this resting place,

This fleshly temple where my soul may dwell,

And, like an anchorite within his cell,

Learn all Thy love and grow to perfect grace.

Yet, while the veil still hides me from Thy face,

Give me the light to know that all is well,

With guiding truth my erring fears dispel,

Be Thou the rock on which my faith I base.

Thy guest, not captive, to my visioned goal

I soar beyond the memory of strife,

Upborn and shielded by Thy power benign:

Thou art the strength of my unfaltering soul,

And from the vantage of this mortal life

The freedom of the infinite is mine.

HURLED back, defeated, like a child I sought

The loving shelter of my native fields,

Where Fancy still her magic sceptre wields,

And still the miracles of youth are wrought.

’Twas here that first my eager spirit caught

The rapture that relentless conflict yields,

And, scorning peace and the content that shields,

Took life’s wild way, unguarded and untaught.

Dear Mother Nature, not in vain we ask

Of thee for strength! The visioned victories

Revive my heart, and golden honors gleam:

For here, once more, while in thy love I bask,

My soul puts forth her rapid argosies

To the uncharted ports of summer dream.

BECAUSE that men were deaf, and man to man

I could not speak, but inarticulate

Still felt the burden and the urge of fate,

The strong compulsion of the perfect plan,

From shrine to shrine with eager steps I ran

Hearkening to every tumult of debate

Until my weary soul was desolate.

Then turned I to the fields where life began;

And lo! the evangel of the seed has taught

That not through man to God can any rise;

Alone and trusting he must lift his eyes

Until the light of living truth be caught,

And then will deeds with love and patience fraught

Through God to man reveal life’s high emprise.

THE dumb earth yearns for the expressive seed,

The fruit fulfilled gives ear to her desire

And she but conscious of her bitter need,

In vernal beauty doth again aspire.

The fruit perfected wooes the seeing eye,

The eye demands it that the body grow;

The soul, aspiring to the Most High,

Demands the body seeking strength to know.

And He that forged the all-embracing chain

That binds us to him lest we fall, undone,

What we may bear of what we seek to gain

Accords in love and when the goal is won

    Of perfect peace and poised self-control,

    Lo, God himself has voice through such a soul!

IF “Yea” and “Nay” were words enough for Him,

  Who taught beyond the lessons of all teaching,

With works nor Time nor Envy can bedim,

  How vain the burden of our foolish preaching?

We but betray the spirit’s citadel,

  And waste on idle air the strength conferred,

When life’s high message we essay to tell

  In aught so faithless as an uttered word.

Deeds are the right and only alphabet

  Wherewith to teach what all the world should know;

But still the tongue will evermore forget,

  And strive with sounds the perfect truth to show.

    Yet ever onward we must bravely press

    Till love through life reveals its loveliness.

IF every thought shall weigh in the award,

And every dream as if fulfilled shall stand,

Who may complain or deem the justice hard

That heaven shall deal when his account is scanned?

The dreams I shattered when with mortal power

I strove to give them form and worthy act

Shall weigh against me in that searching hour

For all their promise in fulfilment lacked;

But if upon the other scale shall lie

The pure, resplendent raptures of my youth,

Of deeds pre-visioned, born of purpose high,

Undimmed by earth and lit by living truth,

    Aspiring dreams shall gloss what ill befel,

    For he whose thoughts are pure hath builded well.

LAUGHTER and Silence for a sword and shield!

O aching heart, what war is this you wage?

What part have you upon this furious field

Where mailèd pride and reckless folly rage?

Though skilled your fencing in the mimic strife,

What is its triumph but a shallow race?

What can it stead you in the lists of life

Where Envy levels at a smiling face?

Is there no answer? Then, if Hope abide,

Let still your shield be guard to Peace or Pain;

Kept virgin from the blazonry of pride—

Free from heraldic boast or earthly stain—

    And haply when this shadowed coil is done

    Its field will mirror the victorious sun.

WE may not babble unto alien ears

The truth revealed, nor show to heedless eyes

The visioned beauty, lest with shame and tears

We mourn our folly—and with futile sighs.

For words are weak, and every form of sense

Wherewith in Time we tell our hopes and needs.

To do aright is to have recompense,

And highest thought is ever told in deeds;

And He, upon whose mighty arm we lean,

Is silent, save in works of love and power—

Most Merciful, enthroned in the Unseen,

He tries yet shields us in our mortal hour.

    So faint not thou, for He who gave the will

    The strength will give, and will Himself fulfil.

IT is no bondage to be free to give

  Our all to Him who first so freely gave,

That in his living we may ever live;

  For, losing all, the all we lose we save.

It is not folly to become so wise

  That earthly wisdom shall be known a snare,

Nor are they blind who have the light to rise

  Where science stumbles in its dark despair.

The seed corrupted in the humid soil

  Sends yet its flower to the bewildering sun:

Strong without will and perfect without toil,

  Helpless yet doing all that may be done.

So we, through God, though doing naught, do all,

Nor grope in darkness nor in weakness fall.

WHEN friends forsake and fortune in despite

Of Thy rich bounty strips me to the wind,

With eye undimmed I mark their faithless flight

Because in Thee a refuge still I find.

To them Thy love I may not tell nor teach

Lest they bemock not me, but Thee through me;

What Thou dost give I may not give to speech

Because in deeds my speech must ever be.

O let me live so that my life will show

That I have treasure that they know not of,

So if through envy they would seek to know

And rob my secret they will learn Thy love:

    For thus the glory will be ever Thine

    And the reward of faithful service mine.

NOT yet are deeds fruition of my thought,

Nor is this body symbol of my soul,

For evil ever in this life is wrought

That shuns the will and its divine control.

Surely I shall not be forever weak,

Halting and stumbling on the chosen way,

Blinded by the pure and perfect light I seek

Upon the threshold of eternal day.

I do not mourn discredit to my fame

Who smile at Time and his confining shores;

’Tis this provokes the burning blush of shame:

The flesh still grovels though the spirit soars—

    But my heart’s anguish who can understand,

    Or stay my folly with a guiding hand?

THE dead are buried facing to the sun,

In foolish epitaphs their faith is told,

And yet they die without a victory won,

Leaving a world in folly growing old.

Now why should we among these futile graves

Proclaim the truth to dead or living dust,

Bow to the earth like overburdened slaves?—

Re-born the freemen of a higher trust!

Have words a substance whereon light may shine?

Can beauty glow upon a trembling sound?

Can aught but deeds foreshadow the divine?

Or save in symbols can the truth be found?

    Let no weak doubt defeat your eager hand;

    For all must heed though few may understand.

HOW blest is he that can but love and do

And has no skill of speech nor trick of art

Wherewith to tell what faith approveth true

And show for fame the treasures of his heart.

When wisely weak upon the path of duty

Divine accord hath made his footing sure

With humble deeds he builds his life to beauty,

Strong to achieve and patient to endure.

But they that in the market-place we meet,

Each with his trumpet and his noisy faction,

Are leaky vessels, pouring on the street

The truth they know ere it hath known its action.

    Yet which think ye, in His benign regard,

    Or words or deeds shall merit the reward?

UNDER a night of dim and alien stars,

  With homeless heart and angry tears I cried:

  “Is this the land of immemorial pride?

Of sainted chivalry and heroic wars?

Of happy vales and glooms of witchery?

  My farborn boyhood’s land of dream and song?

Of manhood’s faith and sternest loyalty,

  Britannia the just and strong?

O heart defrauded, what is here to cherish?

  And what to hope amid this wide disgrace

Where hunger stalks and where the faithful perish,

  While sullen sluggards crowd the market-place?

Britannia’s sons across the seas are calling,

  Joyous and strong from many a fruitful plain;

On heedless ears their love and cheer are falling,

  Their birthright bartered for a cold disdain.

    But they of British sires were born,

    And they shall answer scorn for scorn:

    Nor long shall fools their youth deride,

    Sons of the proud are born to pride.”

“O, for an hour of the ampler stainless spaces

  That breathe the health of nations, where the sun

Spreads his wide tent upon the hallowed places

  That toil’s long battle from the waste has won.

Give me my birthland, still unknown to story,

  Dearer than dream remembered from afar,

Where love and plenty yield a golden glory,

  That shames the cruel barren pomp of war.

And O ye spirits of that world unsung,

  That serve the god of solitude, once more

Send me the vision though with faltering tongue

  I voice your music on a friendless shore.

Strike your wide harp and to Æolian numbers

  Marshal the legions of the patient dead

  From noteless fields whereon their lives were sped,

Where harvest winds and birdsong lull their slumbers;

  Call them again that men may see

  Heroes of bloodless victory;

  May see and learn to love and bless

  The silent vanguard of the wilderness.”

A rousing wind among the wintry trees

  Made ancient murmuring and the huddling night

Thrilled with the fear of whispered mysteries;

  When lo, around me fell the olden light

And rank on rank I saw them marching by,

  With cloudless brow and dreadless eye,

The heroes of my eager youth,

  Druid and saint and kings of chivalry;

  Fierce plunderers of the uncharted sea,

Unknown alike to fear and ruth:

Warriors and minstrels and the lords of truth,

  All memory’s roster of idolatry.

And not from guarded graves they came,

  But from the lands where honor leads,

Where still they serve and by their fame

  Urge humble hearts to mighty deeds,

  And through that vision at their side

  My brothers marched with fearless stride

  And voiced with that heroic throng

  The choral music of prophetic song.

LIKE some bewildered monster of the deep,

  Groping to freedom through the baffling tide,

  She blunders forth, while nuzzling at her side

The bustling harbor craft about her creep.

Anon she feels her iron pulses leap,

  And, symbol of the age’s mastering pride,

  Looks out to where the ocean stretches wide,

Scorning the fears that in its mystery sleep.

All day with headlong and undoubting haste,

  And all the night upon her path she flames

    Like some weird shape from olden errantry;

And when some wafted wanderer of the waste

  A storm-worn pennant dips afar, proclaims

    With raucous voice her strong supremacy.

DEAR little boy, with wondering eyes

  That for the light of knowledge yearn,

Who have such faith that I am wise

  And know the things that you would learn.

Though oft I shake my head and smile

  To hear your childish questions flow,

I must not meet your faith with guile;

  I cannot tell, I do not know.

Dear little boy with eager heart,

  Forever on the quest of truth,

Your riddles oft are past my art

  To answer to your tender youth.

But some day you will understand

  The things that now I cannot say,

When life shall take you by the hand

  And lead you on its wondrous way.

Dear little boy with hand in mine,

  Together through the world we fare,

Where much that I would fain divine

  I have not yet the strength to bear.

Like you with riddling words I ask,

  Like you I hold another hand,

And haply when I do my task,

  I, too, shall understand.

MY little boy is eight years old,

  He goes to school each day;

He doesn’t mind the tasks they set—

  They seem to him but play.

He heads his class at raffia work,

  And also takes the lead

At making dinky paper boats—

  But I wish that he could read.

They teach him physiology,

  And, O, it chills our hearts

To hear our prattling innocent

  Mix up his inward parts.

He also learns astronomy

  And names the stars by night—

Of course he’s very up-to-date,

  But I wish that he could write.

They teach him things botanical,

  They teach him how to draw,

He babbles of mythology

  And gravitation’s law;

And the discoveries of science

  With him are quite a fad,

They tell me he’s a clever boy,

  But I wish that he could add.

WHEN snow-balls pack on the horses’ hoofs

  And the wind from the south blows warm,

When the cattle stand where the sunbeams beat

  And the noon has a dreamy charm,

When icicles crash from the dripping eaves

  And the furrows peep black through the snow,

Then I hurry away to the sugar bush,

  For the sap will run, I know.

With auger and axe and spile and trough

  To each tree a visit I pay,

And every boy in the country-side

  Is eager to help to-day.

We roll the backlogs into their place,

  And the kettles between them swing,

Then gather the wood for the roaring fire

  And the sap in pailfuls bring.

A fig for your arches and modern ways,

  A fig for your sheet-iron pan,

I like the smoky old kettles best

  And I stick to the good old plan;

We’re going to make sugar and taffy to-night

  On the swing pole under the tree,

And the girls and the boys for miles around

  Are all sworn friends to me.

The hens are cackling again in the barn,

  And the cattle beginning to bawl,

And neighbors, who long have been acting cool,

  Now make a forgiving call;

For there’s no love-feast like a taffy pull,

  With its hearty and sticky fun,

And I know the whole world is at peace with me,

  For the sap has commenced to run.

THE farm-house fire is dull and black,

  The trailing smoke rolls white and low

Along the fields till by the wood

  It banks and floats unshaken, slow;

The scattering sounds seem near and loud,

  The rising sun is clear and white,

And in the air a mystery stirs

  Of wintry hosts in coward flight.

Anon the south-wind breathes across

  The frozen earth its bonds to break,

Till at the call of life returned

  It softly stirs but half awake.

The cattle clamor in their stalls,

  The house-dog barks, he knows not why,

The cock crows by the stable door,

  The snow-birds, sombre-hued, go by.

The busy housewife on the snow

  To bleach lays out her linen store,

And scolds because with careless feet

  The children track the spotless floor.

With nightfall comes the slow warm rain,

  The purl of waters fills the air,

And save where roll the gleaming drifts

  The fields lie sullen, black and bare.

THE earth is awake and the birds have come,

  There is life in the beat of the breeze,

And the basswood tops are alive with the hum

  And the flash of the hungry bees;

The frogs in the swale in concert croak,

  And the glow of the spring is here,

For the bursting leaves on the rough old oak

  Are as big as a red squirrel’s ear.

From the ridge-pole dry the corn we pluck,

  Ears ripe and yellow and sound,

That were saved apart, with a red for luck,

  The best that the huskers found;

We will shell them now, for the Indian folk

  Say, “Plant your corn without fear

When the bursting leaves on the rough old oak

  Are as big as a red squirrel’s ear.”

No crow will pull and no frost will blight,

  Nor grub cut the tender sprout,

No rust will burn and no leaves turn white,

  But the stalks will be tall and stout;

And never a weed will have power to choke,

  Or blasting wind to sear,

The corn that we plant when the leaves of the oak

  Are as big as a red squirrel’s ear.

THE wolf of the winter wind is swift,

  And hearts are still and cheeks are pale,

When we hear his howl in the ghostly drift,

  As he rushes past on a phantom trail;

And all the night we huddle and fear,

  For we know that his path is the path of Death,

And the flames burn low, when his steps are near,

  And the dim hut reeks with his grave-cold breath.

The fawn of the wind of the spring is shy,

  Her light feet rustle the sere, white grass,

The trees are roused as she races by,

  In the pattering rain we hear her pass;

And the bow unstrung we cast aside,

  While we winnow the golden, hoarded maize,

And the earth awakes with a thrill of pride

  To deck her beauty for festal days.

The hawk of the summer wind is proud,

  She circles high at the throne of the sun;

When the storm is fierce her scream is loud,

  And the scorching glance of her eye we shun;

And oftentimes, when the sun is bright,

  A silence falls on the choirs of song,

And the partridge shrinks in a wild affright,

  Where a searching shadow swings along.

The hound of the autumn wind is slow,

  He loves to bask in the heat and sleep,

When the sun through the drowsy haze bends low,

  And frosts from the hills through the starlight creep;

But oftentimes he starts in his dreams,

  When the howl of the winter wolf draws nigh,

Then lazily rolls in the gold-warm beams,

  While the flocking birds to the south drift by.

WHEN the maples flame with crimson

  And the nights are still with frost,

Ere the summer’s luring beauty

  Is in autumn glory lost,

Through the marshes and the forests

  An imperious summons flies,

And from all the dreaming north-land

  The wild birds flock and rise.

From streams no oar hath rippled

  And lakes that waft no sail,

From reaches vast and lonely

  That know no hunter’s trail,

The clamor of their calling

  And the whistling of their flight

Fill all the day with marvel,

  And with mystery, the night.

As ebb along the ocean

  The great obedient tides,

So wave on wave they journey

  Where an ancient wisdom guides;

A-through the haze of autumn

  They vanish down the wind,

With the summer world before them

  And the crowding storms behind.

LAST night we marked the twinkling stars,

  This morn no dew revived the grass,

And oft across the parching fields

  We see the dusty eddies pass;

The eager hawk forgets to swing

  And scream across the burning sky,

And from the oak’s slow-dying crest

  Sends forth a strange and plaintive cry.

The geese on unaccustomed wings

  Flap wildly in ungainly flight,

The peacock’s fierce defiant scream

  Scatters the fowls in wild affright,

The crows are barking in the woods,

  The maple leaves their silver show,

The cattle sniff the coming storm,

  Then toss their heads and softly low.

And now along the hazy west

  The swiftly building clouds uprear;

High overhead the winds are loud,

  The thunder rolls and grumbles near;

The housewife trims the leaky eaves,

  The farmer frets of lodging grain,

Till all the world, rejoicing, drinks

  The long-denied, long-prayed-for rain.

OF all that felt thy spell I envied one,

  A youth whose sightless eyes were dimly turned

  Where Tosca’s soul with breathless passion burned,

Or thrilled with fury, agonized, undone.

He shrank, as dazzled by the gorgeous sun,

  When from melodious words her love he learned,

  And purest faith such rapture never earned

As his swift spirit from the darkness won.

But when the torture of a lover’s wrongs

  Roused all the fierceness of her fruitless rage,

    He wrung his helpless hands with many a moan.

Ah, queen of passion! not to cheering throngs

  You played that hour, but on a visioned stage,

    Past mortal art, to one blind youth alone.

I MAY not tell what hidden springs I find

Of living beauty in this deathless page,

Lest the dull world, that chooses to be blind,

Mock me to shame or lash me in its rage.

Alas for me that am a thing of dreams

Without the skill to show where others shine—

Because I hold their truth a thing that seems

While worse than seeming seems all truth of mine.

And yet let others on his music dote,

Or burnish every line with housewife care,

With glutton learning get his words by rote

And fail to find the spirit prisoned there!

    For while I read, as thrilled by fire I start

    To feel the pulsing of the poet’s heart.

And so methinks heroic deeds will show,

Graved on the tablets of Eternity—

Blurred by Oblivion, but instinct with power—

Till God’s rewarding light shall strongly glow

And the benign, all-seeing eye shall see

The unclouded beauty of their amplest hour.

IN some strange way God understands

  Her dreaming lips were fondly pressed,

The playful touch of childish hands

  Her wan cheek lingeringly caressed.

With joy she woke, but to her heart

  A grief of loss the waking gave;

She rose to live her lonely part—

  A simple woman true and brave.

And all the day she softly sung

  Low crooning airs that mothers sing,

For to her weary heart there clung

  The peace that childish kisses bring.

TO make perfect the heaven of mothers

  The little children die,

For what care they for the praise of God

  Who have sung a lullaby?

The arms that have ached with nursing

  Would ache with their emptiness

Were there no little children

  To fondle and caress.

And while the saints and angels

  Sing loud in adoring throngs,

God hears the mothers and children

  Singing their crooning songs.

COME, friend, there’s going to be a merry meeting

  After the play. Our masks we’ll throw aside,

And after chaff and chat and friendly greeting

  Our glasses fill and all, like cronies tried,

Drink draughts whose richness was so devil-cheating.

  The ancients drank until their flasks were dried,

Then lost the art of making more such wine;

And we’ll on long-forgotten viands dine.

“Who will be there?” you ask. Why, you and I

  And all good fellows who were never great;

No warrior there will roll commanding eye;

  No statesman weary with affairs of weight;

No prosy sage to proselyte will try;

  No bard will drone; no orator will prate;

To pine in pompous glory they have gone,

But we’ll be merry in Oblivion.

The watchword of that banquet hall’s “Forgotten,”

  And if forgotten, why, we will forget

Our foolish dreams, the mocking goals we sought in

  The days when hope could lure and failure fret;

The weary days when all our souls were caught in

  The snare of life that like a tangling net

Holds us in agony and durance till

The spoiler stretches forth his hand to kill.

Methinks that there, my friend, both you and I

  Can fleet away eternity content;

No curious fool into our lives can pry

  And moralize on how our days were spent;

And soon, how soon! the names that flare on high

  Will wane and with the closing night be blent;

For while we revel in Oblivion

The great themselves must join us one by one.

HOW dare you sing such cheerful notes?

  You show a woful lack of taste;

How dare you pour from happy throats

  Such merry songs with raptured haste,

While all our poets wail and weep,

And readers sob themselves to sleep?

’Tis clear to me, you’ve never read

  The turgid tomes that Ibsen writes,

Nor mourned with Tolstoi virtue dead,

  Nor over Howells pored o’ nights:

For you are glad with all your power;

For shame! Go study Schopenhauer.

You never sing save when you feel

  The ecstacy of thoughtless joy;

All silent through the boughs you steal

  When storms or fears or pains annoy;

With bards ’tis quite a different thing,

The more they ache the more they sing.

All happiness they sadly shirk,

  And from all pleasure hold aloof,

And are so tearful when they work

  They write on paper waterproof,

And on each page express a yearn

To fill a cinerary urn.

Go, little birds, it gives me pain

  To hear your happy melodies.

My plaudits you can never gain

  With old and worn-out tunes like these;

More up-to-date your songs must be

Ere you can merit praise from me.

                FOR

    DANIEL CARMAN McARTHUR,

      Baptized January 2d, 1898.

YE hardy folk who boldly stand

  Between this boy and sin,

I trust you quite appreciate

  The fix that you are in;

For when the threshold of the church

  Was crossed, he raised a roar;

Hereditary cussedness

  Just oozed from every pore.

He kicked at all the promises,

  He howled at every prayer,

And when the water touched him

  He raised the roof for fair;

But when the Mayor and the Priest,

  Your proxies, by the way,

Renounced the devil and his works

  He stopped and smiled, they say.

Now tell us, pray, for that’s your task,

  Just when we should begin

To pound his father’s failings out,

  His mother’s virtues in:

Yet in a work so good and great

  Perhaps I might suggest

That to divide the labor

  In this way would be best:

I SOMETIMES think it would be sweet

  If we were like the olden lovers—

The simple-hearted ones we meet

  In musty books with vellum covers.

For lovers in those times were blest,

  Or else our poets all are lying,

And if fate crossed them in their quest

  They had most charming ways of dying.

But you are not a shepherdess

  With woolen frock and linen wimple,

And if you were I’d love you less,

  I couldn’t kiss a swarthy dimple.

And I am not a woodsman wight,

  Nor yet a leather-jerkined yeoman,

And I am glad I’m not a knight

  With many a boiler-plated foeman.

Yet though for lovers of those days

  I have poetic predilections,

To wooing in their artless ways

  I own there are a few objections.

A crown of flowers your head might grace,

  But it would spoil your frizzled tresses,

And burrs would hardly look in place

  Upon your tailor-fashioned dresses.

And I’d not care to gather haws

  And sit in thorny shades to chew them,

And who would pipe on oaten straws

  When he might suck mint-juleps through them!

In sooth, we’re better as we are:

  Your gravest task to baffle freckles,

And mine to keep all care afar

  And work for the elusive shekels.

IS life worth loafing? Come, recline with me

And lazily this fragrant afternoon

We’ll weigh the idle theme. I often think,

If with protean versatility

I might luxuriously loaf my days,

I would no longer quarrel with the powers

That called me forth. I would not be a man,

Nor god, nor beast, nor bird, nor anything;

Yet each whene’er I listed.

                           I would rise

And, as an eagle, float in circles slow,

That swing too wide and high for mortal ken,

Or as a flesh-gorged leopard, in the sun

Bask by a rocky den, or as a god

Of some hushed sea lie sweltering on the sand,

While crawled the servile waves to kiss my feet.

Yet with environment I would not keep

Strict correspondence, but with every whim

Would loll where’er, whene’er I pleased.

Before Jove’s throne, upon Olympus stretched

With hands beneath my head, with careless eyes

Exploring the vasty, vaulted heavens, I’d munch

The rustic straw, or in the fatted form

Of some church-going citizen would yawn

While Hermes or Apollo spake.

                             Again

Like that famed, errant Babylonian king,

In horn-deep pastures I would graze and stray;

And under odorous, knoll-crowning trees

At noonday ruminate the leisurely cud.

When all aweary of each languorous change

I longed for sleep, with drooping wings I’d sink

Adown the ether till some gloom I found,

Where cool and mornless night would woo my soul

To dreamless rest. When I awaked again

Some newer charm of indolence I’d find.

Ah, friend, for living life has little worth—

But for such loafing! Let us dream of it.

HE marks his shadow in the sun,

  His form is fair, his dream is proud;

But shadow, form, and dream are one

  And vanish like an empty cloud.

The graven cliffs have crumbled down,

  The temples worn to drifting sand;

His deeds with fame he could not crown

  With all the cunning of his hand.

The idle and forgetful air

  Has heard his boast, has borne his woe;

The night has seen his cities flare

  And holds no gleam their place to show.

Within this crystal sphere of light,

  Where soaring constellations flame,

He has no skill his deeds to write

  And has no art to show his fame.

On things of Time alone can man

  For years of Time record his pride;

On nothing of eternal span

  Will aught that he has sealed abide.

MY cherished dead, when last your placid brow

  I saw through tears and ne’er on earth again,

With trembling lips I made a holy vow

  To show our love in a remembered strain,

In self-defeated discord of the streets

  Where life had called us when our hearts were strong,

Where friend a friend so true but seldom greets,

  I heard a voice of unrecorded song.

With such poor means as are by nature mine

  And faith that raised me from despairing gloom,

To-day I come as to a sacred shrine

  And lay this tribute on your lowly tomb,

And plead, if any question or admire

The living do but what the dead inspire.

Toiling through ruined temple-halls, where Time

  Had dwelt with Havoc, eager searchers found,

  With shattered idols that bestrewed the ground,

An image strange, of lineaments sublime.

No god was he of rapine or of crime;

  With ample brows his brooding face was crowned;

  But lips and eyes were curiously bound

With golden circlets hoar with ageless grime.

One who was skilled in runes the gravings read,

  And learned the wondrous image was the god

  Of endless Silence. The searchers mutely bowed,

And mourned that faith so lofty should be dead;

  And I their prone idolatry applaud

  When strife and tumult in my paths are loud.

BEYOND the search of sun or wandering star,

  In that deep cincture of eternal night

  That shrouds and stays this orbèd flare of light

Where many a god hath wheeled his griding car,

Silence is brooding, patient and afar,

  Secure and steadfast in his primal right,

  Reconquering slowly, with resistless might,

Dominions lost in immemorial war.

The throngèd suns are paling to their doom,

  The constellations waver, and a breath

  Shall blur them all into eternity;

Then Ancient Silence in oblivious gloom

  Shall reign—where holds this dream of Time and Death

  Like some brief bubble in a shoreless sea.

THERE was a light upon the sea that made

Familiar things mysterious, which to teach,

With inarticulate, alluring speech,

The living wind with lisping tongue essayed.

O’er sand and weed and spongy moss I strayed

And lifeless, orient shells, musing on each;

While casting nets with ever wider reach

A fisher plied his immemorial trade.

A sea-bird winged the aërial solitude

Searching the deep for his appointed dole,

Where his wide-wandering flocks the ocean feeds;

And with the day’s full orbèd strength indued,

At one with all, by all illumed, my soul

Pulsed to the rhythmus of immortal deeds.