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Address to Madame de la Sablière.[1]

You, Iris, 'twere an easy task to praise;
But you refuse the incense of my lays.
In this you are unlike all other mortals,
Who welcome all the praise that seeks their portals;
Not one who is not soothed by sound so sweet.
For me to blame this humour were not meet,
By gods and mortals shared in common,
And, in the main, by lovely woman.
That drink, so vaunted by the rhyming trade,
That cheers the god who deals the thunder-blow,
And oft intoxicates the gods below, -
The nectar, Iris, is of praises made.
You taste it not. But, in its place,
Wit, science, even trifles grace
Your bill of fare; but, for that matter,
The world will not believe the latter.
Well, leave the world in unbelief.
Still science,...

Now sleeps the land of houses,
and dead night holds the street,
And there thou liest, my baby,
and sleepest soft and sweet;
My man is away for awhile,
but safe and alone we lie,
And none heareth thy breath but thy mother,
and the moon looking down from the sky
On the weary waste of the town,
as it looked on the grass-edged road
Still warm with yesterday's sun,
when I left my old abode;
Hand in hand with my love,
that night of all nights in the year;
When the river of love o'erflowed
and drowned all doubt and fear,
And we two were alone in the world,
and once if never again,
We knew of the secret of earth
and the tale of its labour and pain.

Lo amidst London I lift thee,
and how little and light thou art,
And thou without hop...

    Toward the last
    The truth of others was untruth to me;
    The justice of others injustice to me;
    Their reasons for death, reasons with me for life;
    Their reasons for life, reasons with me for death;
    I would have killed those they saved,
    And save those they killed.
    And I saw how a god, if brought to earth,
    Must act out what he saw and thought,
    And could not live in this world of men
    And act among them side by side
    Without continual clashes.
    The dust's for crawling, heaven's for flying -
    Wherefore, O soul, whose wings are grown,
    Soar upward to the sun!

One memory trembles on our lips;
It throbs in every breast;
In tear-dimmed eyes, in mirth's eclipse,
The shadow stands confessed.

O silent voice, that cheered so long
Our manhood's marching day,
Without thy breath of heavenly song,
How weary seems the way!

Vain every pictured phrase to tell
Our sorrowing heart's desire, -
The shattered harp, the broken shell,
The silent unstrung lyre;

For youth was round us while he sang;
It glowed in every tone;
With bridal chimes the echoes rang,
And made the past our own.

Oh blissful dream! Our nursery joys
We know must have an end,
But love and friendship's broken toys
May God's good angels mend!

The cheering smile, the voice of mirth
And laughter's gay surprise
T...

"On a l'âge de son coeur."--A. d'Houdetot.


A little more toward the light;--
Me miserable! Here's one that's white;
And one that's turning;
Adieu to song and "salad days;"
My Muse, let's go at once to Jay's,
And order mourning.

We must reform our rhymes, my Dear,--
Renounce the gay for the severe,--
Be grave, not witty;
We have, no more, the right to find
That Pyrrha's hair is neatly twined,--
That Chloe's pretty.

Young Love's for us a farce that's played;
Light canzonet and serenade
No more may tempt us;
Gray hairs but ill accord with dreams;
From aught but sour didactic themes
Our years exempt us.

Indeed! you really fancy so?
You think for one white streak we grow
At once satiric?
A fiddlestick! Eac...

Cities and men, and nations, have passed by,
Like leaves upon an autumn's dreary sky;
Like chaff upon the ocean billow proud,
Like drops of rain on summer's fleecy cloud;
Like flowers of a wilderness,
Vanished into forgetfulness.

O! Nineveh, thou city of young Ashur's pride,
With thy strong towers, and thy bulwarks wide;
Ah! while upon thee splashed the Tigris' waters,
How little thought thy wealth-stored sons and daughters,

That Cyaxerses and his troops should wait
Three long years before thy massive gate;
Then Medes and Persians, by the torches' light,
Should ride triumphantly thy streets by night;
And from creation banish thee,
O! Nineveh. O! Nineveh.

And country of the pride of Mizriam's heart,
With pyramids that speak thy wealth and...

I.

Near Wilton sweet, huge heaps of stones are found,
But so confused, that neither any eye
Can count them just, nor Reason reason try,
What force brought them to so unlikely ground.

To stranger weights my mind's waste soil is bound,
Of passion-hills, reaching to Reason's sky,
From Fancy's earth, passing all number's bound,
Passing all guess, whence into me should fly
So mazed a mass; or, if in me it grows,
A simple soul should breed so mixed woes.

II.

The Bruertons have a lake, which, when the sun
Approaching warms, not else, dead logs up sends
From hideous depth; which tribute, when it ends,
Sore sign it is the lord's last thread is spun.

My lake is Sense, whose still streams never run
But when my sun her shining twins ther...

When night and silence deep
Hold all the world in sleep,
As tho' Death claimed the Hour,
By some strange witchery
Appears her form to me,
As tho' Magic were her dow'r.

Her beauty heaven's light!
Her bosom snowy white!
But pale her cheek appears.
Her shoulders firm and fair;
A mass of gold her hair.
Her eyes--the home of tears.

She looks at me nor speaks.
Her arms are raised; she seeks
Her fettered hands to show.
On both white wrists a chain!--
She cries and pleads in pain:
"Unbind me!--Let me go!"

I burn with bitter ire,
I leap in wild desire
The cruel bonds to break;
But God! around the chain
Is coiled and coiled again
A long and loathsome snake.

I shout, I cry, I chide;
My voice goes far an...

Down slant the moonbeams to the floor
Through the garret's scented air,
And show a thin-spoked spinning-wheel,
Standing ten years and more
Far from the hearth-stone's woe and weal, -
The ghost of a lost day's care!

And over the dreaming spinning-wheel,
That has not stirred so long,
The weaving spiders spin a veil,
A silvery shroud for its human zeal
And usefulness, with their fingers pale,
The shadowy lights among.

See! in the moonlight cold and gray
A thoughtful maiden stands;
And though she blames not overmuch
With her sweet lips the great world's way,
Yet sad and slow she stoops to touch
The still wheel with her hands.

"Forsaken wheel! when you first came
To clothe young hearts and old,
Our ancestors were glad to wear

I have a fellowship with every shade
Of changing nature: with the tempest hour
My soul goes forth to claim her early dower
Of living princedom; and her wings have staid
Amidst the wildest uproar undismayed!
Yet she hath often owned a better power,
And blessed the gentle coming of the shower,
The speechless majesty of love arrayed
In lowly virtue, under which disguise
Full many a princely thing hath passed her by;
And she from homely intercourse of eyes
Hath gathered visions wider than the sky,
And seen the withered heart of man arise
Peaceful as God, and full of majesty.

BOYS SING:
Night! with all thine eyes look down!
Darkness! weep thy holiest dew!
Never smiled the inconstant moon
On a pair so true.
Haste, coy hour! and quench all light,
Lest eyes see their own delight!
Haste, swift hour! and thy loved flight
Oft renew!

GIRLS SING:
Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!
Holy stars! permit no wrong!
And return, to wake the sleeper,
Dawn, ere it be long!
O joy! O fear! there is not one
Of us can guess what may be done
In the absence of the sun: -
Come along!

BOYS:
Oh! linger long, thou envious eastern lamp
In the damp
Caves of the deep!

GIRLS:
Nay, return, Vesper! urge thy lazy car!
Swift unbar
The gates of Sleep!

CHORUS:
The golden gate of Sleep u...

Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives,
Alcestis rises from the shades;
Verse calls them forth; 'tis verse that gives
Immortal youth to mortal maids.

Soon shall Oblivion's deepening veil
Hide all the peopled hills you see,
The gay, the proud, while lovers hail
These many summers you and me.

MAY 30, 1878,

Dying for victory, cheer on cheer
Thundered on his eager ear.
            - CHARLES L. HOLSTEIN.

I

Deep, tender, firm and true, the Nation's heart
    Throbs for her gallant heroes passed away,
Who in grim Battle's drama played their part,
    And slumber here to-day. -

Warm hearts that beat their lives out at the shrine
    Of Freedom, while our country held its breath
As brave battalions wheeled themselves in line
    And marched upon their death:

When Freedom's Flag, its natal wounds scarce healed,
    Was torn from peaceful winds and flung again
To shudder in the storm of battle-field -
    The elements of men, -

When every star that glittered was a mark
    For Treason's ball, and every rippling ...

The stones in the streamlet I make my bright pillow,
And open my arms to the swift-rolling billow,

That lovingly hastens to fall on my breast.
Then fickleness soon bids it onwards be flowing;
A second draws nigh, its caresses bestowing,

And so by a twofold enjoyment I'm blest.

And yet thou art trailing in sorrow and sadness
The moments that life, as it flies, gave for gladness,

Because by thy love thou'rt remember'd no more!
Oh, call back to mind former days and their blisses!
The lips of the second will give as sweet kisses

As any the lips of the first gave before!

Now o'er the landscape crowd the deepening shades,
And the shut lily cradles not the bee;
The red deer couches in the forest glades,
And faint the echoes of the slumberous sea:
And ere I rest, one prayer I'll breathe for thee,
The sweet Egeria of my lonely dreams:
Lady, forgive, that ever upon me
Thoughts of thee linger, as the soft starbeams
Linger on Merlin's rock, or dark Sabrina's streams.

On gray Pilatus once we loved to stray,
And watch far off the glimmering roselight break
O'er the dim mountain-peaks, ere yet one ray
Pierced the deep bosom of the mist-clad lake.
Oh! who felt not new life within him wake,
And his pulse quicken, and his spirit burn -
(Save one we wot of, whom the cold DID make
Feel "shooting pains in every joint in turn,")
Whe...

Our ancient church! its lowly tower,
Beneath the loftier spire,
Is shadowed when the sunset hour
Clothes the tall shaft in fire;
It sinks beyond the distant eye
Long ere the glittering vane,
High wheeling in the western sky,
Has faded o'er the plain.

Like Sentinel and Nun, they keep
Their vigil on the green;
One seems to guard, and one to weep,
The dead that lie between;
And both roll out, so full and near,
Their music's mingling waves,
They shake the grass, whose pennoned spear
Leans on the narrow graves.

The stranger parts the flaunting weeds,
Whose seeds the winds have strown
So thick, beneath the line he reads,
They shade the sculptured stone;
The child unveils his clustered brow,
And ponders for a while
The graven...

For there were nights . . . my love to him whose brow
Has glistened with the spoils of nights like those,
Home turning as a conqueror turns home,
What time green dawn down every street uprears
Arches of triumph! He has drained as well
Joy's perfumed bowl and cried as I have cried:
Be Fame their mistress whom Love passes by.
This only matters: from some flowery bed,
Laden with sweetness like a homing bee,
If one have known what bliss it is to come,
Bearing on hands and breast and laughing lips
The fragrance of his youth's dear rose. To him
The hills have bared their treasure, the far clouds
Unveiled the vision that o'er summer seas
Drew on his thirsting arms. This last thing known,
He can court danger, laugh at perilous odds,
And, pillowed on a memory so sweet,...

The radiant ruler of the year
At length his wintry goal attains;
Soon to reverse the long career,
And northward bend his steady reins.
Now, piercing half Potosi's height,
Prone rush the fiery floods of light
Ripening the mountain's silver stores:
While, in some cavern's horrid shade,
The panting Indian hides his head,
And oft the approach of eve implores.
But lo, on this deserted coast
How pale the sun! how thick the air!
Mustering his storms, a sordid host,
Lo, winter desolates the year,
The fields resign their latest bloom;
No more the breezes waft perfume,
No more the streams in music roll:
But snows fall dark, or rains resound;
And, while great nature mourns around,
Her griefs infect the human soul.
Hence the loud city's busy throngs