DAME FORTUNE often loves a laugh to raise,
And, playing off her tricks and roguish ways,
Instead of giving us what we desire,
Mere quid pro quo permits us to acquire.
I've found her gambols such from first to last,
And judge the future by experience past.
Fair Cloris and myself felt mutual flame;
And, when a year had run, the sprightly dame
Prepared to grant me, if I may be plain,
Some slight concessions that would ease my pain.
This was her aim; but whatsoe'er in view,
'Tis opportunity we should pursue;
The lover, who's discreet, will moments seize;
And ev'ry effort then will tend to please.

ONE eve I went this charming fair to see;
The husband happened (luckily for me)
To be abroad; but just as it was night
The master came, not doubting all was ri...

    What shall the coming year bring forth,
        O Lord, who rulest the land?
    For the navies of the sea and air
        Are but stubble in Thy hand.
    The battalions in the field go forth;
        They arm in mighty line;
    Do they kneel to know Thy holy will?
        Have they asked from Thee a sign?

    The kings invoke Thy holy name,
        In their carnage and their strife;
    But the purple gift it was Thine to give
        Recks not of pity nor life:
    For they're drunk with the wine of lustful power,
        And seared with the sins of earth;
    And their prayers and preachments now mock Thy name,
        And make of Thy laws but mirth.

    January 1, 1916.

    For Duncan Campbell Scott.

1855

And what shall be the song to-night,
If song there needs must be?
If every year that brings us here
Must steal an hour from me?
Say, shall it ring a merry peal,
Or heave a mourning sigh
O'er shadows cast, by years long past,
On moments flitting by?

Nay, take the first unbidden line
The idle hour may send,
No studied grace can mend the face
That smiles as friend on friend;
The balsam oozes from the pine,
The sweetness from the rose,
And so, unsought, a kindly thought
Finds language as it flows.

The years rush by in sounding flight,
I hear their ceaseless wings;
Their songs I hear, some far, some near,
And thus the burden rings
"The morn has fled, the noon has past,
The sun will soon be set,
The twilight ...

We give thy natal day to hope,
O Country of our love and prayer!
Thy way is down no fatal slope,
But up to freer sun and air.
Tried as by furnace-fires, and yet
By God's grace only stronger made,
In future tasks before thee set
Thou shalt not lack the old-time aid.
The fathers sleep, but men remain
As wise, as true, and brave as they;
Why count the loss and not the gain?
The best is that we have to-day.
Whate'er of folly, shame, or crime,
Withhin thy mighty bounds transpires,
With speed defying space and time
Comes to us on the accusing wires;
While of thy wealth of noble deeds,
Thy homes of peace, thy votes unsold,
The love that pleads for human needs,
The wrong redressed, but half is told!
We read each felon's chronicle,
His acts, hi...

What phantom is this that appears
Through the purple mist of the years,
    Itself but a mist like these?
A woman of cloud and of fire;
It is she; it is Helen of Tyre,
    The town in the midst of the seas.

O Tyre! in thy crowded streets
The phantom appears and retreats,
    And the Israelites that sell
Thy lilies and lions of brass,
Look up as they see her pass,
    And murmur "Jezebel!"

Then another phantom is seen
At her side, in a gray gabardine,
    With beard that floats to his waist;
It is Simon Magus, the Seer;
He speaks, and she pauses to hear
    The words he utters in haste.

He says: "From this evil fame,
From this life of sorrow and shame,
    I will lift thee and make thee mine;
Thou hast been Queen Canda...

Spake one upon the vessel's prow, before
The sinking sun had kissed the glittering seas:
"'Twas here Columbus with his Genoese
Steered his frail barks toward the unknown store,
With hope unfaltering, though all hope seemed o'er;
Calm 'mid the mutineers the prophet mind
Saw the New World to which their eyes were blind,
Heard on its continents the breakers' roar,
Told of the golden promise of the main,
While cursed his crew, and called a madman's dream
The land his ashes only hold for Spain!
It rose on dim horizon with the gleam
Of morn, proclaiming to the kneeling throng
All treasures theirs, because one heart was strong."

Sinking now in floods of light,
The sun resigns the world to night;
When a lingering glance he turns,
The glowing west with glory burns,
And the blushing heavens awhile
Long retain his parting smile.
Ere gray evening's sullen eye,
Bids those tints of beauty die;
Ere her tears have washed away
The footsteps of departing day,
Nature from her verdant bowers
Her last long strain of rapture pours;
Shrouded in her misty vest,
She sings a drowsy world to rest,
And tells to man, in thrilling strains,
That the Lord Jehovah reigns!

    Lingering twilight dies away,
Night resumes her ancient sway,
Round her sable tresses twining
Countless hosts of stars are shining;
Weaving round the brow of night
A coronet of living light:
O'er the co...

Lo! at the couch where infant beauty sleeps,
Her silent watch the mournful mother keeps:
She, while the lovely babe unconscious lies,
Smiles on her slumb'ring child with pensive eyes,
And weaves a song of melancholy joy:
"Sleep, image of thy father! sleep, my boy!
No ling'ring hour of sorrow shall be thine,
No sigh that rends thy father's heart and mine.
Bright, as his manly sire, the son shall be,
In form and soul; but, ah! more blest than he!
Thy fame, thy worth, thy filial love, at last,
Shall soothe his aching heart for all the past;
With many a smile my solitude repay,
And chase the world's ungenerous scorn away.

"And say, when summon'd from the world and thee
I lay my head beneath the willow-tree,
And soothe may parted spirit ling'ring near?
O...

She is free of the trap and the paddle,
The portage and the trail,
But something behind her savage life
Shines like a fragile veil.

Her dreams are undiscovered,
Shadows trouble her breast,
When the time for resting cometh
Then least is she at rest.

Oft in the morns of winter,
When she visits the rabbit snares,
An appearance floats in the crystal air
Beyond the balsam firs.

Oft in the summer mornings
When she strips the nets of fish,
The smell of the dripping net-twine
Gives to her heart a wish.

But she cannot learn the meaning
Of the shadows in her soul,
The lights that break and gather,
The clouds that part and roll,

The reek of rock-built cities,
Where her fathers dwelt of yore,
The gleam of loch an...

Set where the upper streams of Simois flow
Was the Palladium, high 'mid rock and wood;
And Hector was in Ilium, far below,
And fought, and saw it not but there it stood!

It stood, and sun and moonshine rain'd their light
On the pure columns of its glen-built hall.
Backward and forward roll'd the waves of fight
Round Troy but while this stood, Troy could not fall.

So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul.
Mountains surround it, and sweet virgin air;
Cold plashing, past it, crystal waters roll;
We visit it by moments, ah, too rare!

We shall renew the battle in the plain
To-morrow; red with blood will Xanthus be;
Hector and Ajax will be there again,
Helen will come upon the wall to see.

Then we shall rust in shade, or shine in strife,

Sweet April! from out of the hidden place
Where you keep your green and gold,
We pray thee to bring us a gift of grace,
When the little leaves unfold.

Oh! make us glad with the things that are young;
Give our hearts the quickened thrills
That used to answer each robin that sung
In the days of daffodils.

For what is the worth of all that we gain,
If we lose the old delight,
That came in the time of sun and rain,
When the whole round world seemed right?

It was then we gave, as we went along,
The faith that to-day we keep;
And those April days were for mirth and song,
While the nights were made for sleep.

Yet, though we follow with steps that are slow
The feet that dance and that run;
We would still be friends with the winds that...

Wait for the morning! Ah! We wait indeed
For daylight, we who toss about through stress
Of vacant-armed desires and emptiness
Of all the warm, warm touches that we need,
And the warm kisses upon which we feed
Our famished lips in fancy! May God bless
The starved lips of us with but one caress
Warm as the yearning blood our poor hearts bleed...!
A wild prayer! Bite thy pillow, praying so -
Toss this side, and whirl that, and moan for dawn;
Let the clock's seconds dribble out their woe,
And Time be drained of sorrow! Long ago
We heard the crowing cock, with answer drawn
As hoarsely sad at throat as sobs... Pray on!

Rain and wind and candlelight
And let us pray a prayer to-night:
For every soul, since life is brief,
Little of trouble and less of grief.
And set a light at the windowpane,
To guide Love home through the night and rain.
Rain and wind and candlelight
And what shall we pray again to-night?
For every life, whose way is dim,
The grace of God and trust in Him.
A word, a song, till the tears be dried,
And Faith and Hope sit down beside.
Rain and wind and candlelight
And one last prayer to pray to-night:
For every heart in the dark and rain
To know its prayer is not in vain:
A door flung wide, and a face aglow
Love come back from the Long-Ago.
Then let the rain and the wind without
Threaten their worst and rave and shout:
For who will care, thoug...

A life more bright than the sun's face, bowed
Through stress of season and coil of cloud,
Sets: and the sorrow that casts out fear
Scarce deems him dead in his chill still shroud,
Dead on the breast of the dying year,
Poet and painter and friend, thrice dear
For love of the suns long set, for love
Of song that sets not with sunset here,
For love of the fervent heart, above
Their sense who saw not the swift light move
That filled with sense of the loud sun's lyre
The thoughts that passion was fain to prove
In fervent labour of high desire
And faith that leapt from its own quenched pyre
Alive and strong as the sun, and caught
From darkness light, and from twilight fire.
Passion, deep as the depths unsought
Whence faith's own hope may redeem us nought,
...

Grace, Beauty and Caprice
Build this golden portal;
Graceful women, chosen men,
Dazzle every mortal.
Their sweet and lofty countenance
His enchanted food;
He need not go to them, their forms
Beset his solitude.
He looketh seldom in their face,
His eyes explore the ground,--
The green grass is a looking-glass
Whereon their traits are found.
Little and less he says to them,
So dances his heart in his breast;
Their tranquil mien bereaveth him
Of wit, of words, of rest.
Too weak to win, too fond to shun
The tyrants of his doom,
The much deceived Endymion
Slips behind a tomb.

    A little grey curl from my father's head
    I find unburned on the hearth,
    And give it a place in my diary here,
    With a feeling half sadness, half mirth.
    For the long white locks are our special pride,
    Though he smiles at his daughter's praise;
    But, oh, they have grown each year more thin,
    Till they are now but a silvery haze.

    That wise old head! (though it does grow bald
    With the knocks hard fortune may give)
    Has a store of faith and hope and trust,
    Which have taught him how to live.
    Though the hat be old, there's a face below
    Which telleth to those who look
    The history of a good man's life,
    And it cheers like a blessed book.

    [A]A peddler of jewels, of clocks, and of books,
    ...

Chiare, fresche e dolci acque.

TO THE FOUNTAIN OF VAUOLUSE--CONTEMPLATIONS OF DEATH.


    Ye limpid brooks, by whose clear streams
My goddess laid her tender limbs!
Ye gentle boughs, whose friendly shade
Gave shelter to the lovely maid!
Ye herbs and flowers, so sweetly press'd
By her soft rising snowy breast!
Ye Zephyrs mild, that breathed around
The place where Love my heart did wound!
Now at my summons all appear,
And to my dying words give ear.

If then my destiny requires,
And Heaven with my fate conspires,
That Love these eyes should weeping close,
Here let me find a soft repose.
So Death will less my soul affright,
And, free from dread, my weary spright
Naked alone will dare t' essay
The still unknown, though b...

High-spirited friend,
I send nor balms nor cor'sives to your wound:
Your fate hath found
A gentler and more agile hand to tend
The cure of that which is but corporal;
And doubtful days, which were named critical,
Have made their fairest flight
And now are out of sight.
Yet doth some wholesome physic for the mind
Wrapp'd in this paper lie,
Which in the taking if you misapply,
You are unkind.

Your covetous hand,
Happy in that fair honour it hath gain'd,
Must now be rein'd.
True valour doth her own renown command
In one full action; nor have you now more
To do, than be a husband of that store.
Think but how dear you bought
This fame which you have caught:
Such thoughts will make you more in love with truth.
'Tis wisdom, and that hig...