In the heart of night,
When farers were not near,
The left house said to the house on the right,
"I have marked your rise, O smart newcomer here."

Said the right, cold-eyed:
"Newcomer here I am,
Hence haler than you with your cracked old hide,
Loose casements, wormy beams, and doors that jam.

"Modern my wood,
My hangings fair of hue;
While my windows open as they should,
And water-pipes thread all my chambers through.

"Your gear is gray,
Your face wears furrows untold."
" Yours might," mourned the other, "if you held, brother,
The Presences from aforetime that I hold.

"You have not known
Men's lives, deaths, toils, and teens;
You are but a heap of stick and stone:
A new house has no sense of the have-beens.

"Vo...

    In the moonless, misty night, with my little pipe alight,
    I am sitting by the camp-fire's fading cheer;
    Oh, the dew is falling chill on the dim, deer-haunted hill,
    And the breakers in the bay are moaning drear.
    The toilful hours are sped, the boys are long abed,
    And I alone a weary vigil keep;
    In the sightless, sullen sky I can hear the night-hawk cry,
    And the frogs in frenzied chorus from the creek.

    And somehow the embers' glow brings me back the long ago,
    The days of merry laughter and light song;
    When I sped the hours away with the gayest of the gay
    In the giddy whirl of fashion's festal throng.
    Oh, I ran a grilling race and I little recked the pace,
    For the lust of youth ran riot in my blood;
    But at l...

In spring and summer winds may blow,
And rains fall after, hard and fast;
The tender leaves, if beaten low,
Shine but the more for shower and blast

But when their fated hour arrives,
When reapers long have left the field,
When maidens rifle turn'd-up hives,
And their last juice fresh apples yield,

A leaf perhaps may still remain
Upon some solitary tree,
Spite of the wind and of the rain . . .
A thing you heed not if you see.

At last it falls. Who cares? Not one:
And yet no power on earth can ever
Replace the fallen leaf upon
Its spray, so easy to dissever.

If such be love, I dare not say.
Friendship is such, too well I know:
I have enjoyed my summer day;
'Tis past; my leaf now lies below.

    Sad-hearted, be at peace: the snowdrop lies
    Buried in sepulchre of ghastly snow;
    But spring is floating up the southern skies,
    And darkling the pale snowdrop waits below.

    Let me persuade: in dull December's day
    We scarce believe there is a month of June;
    But up the stairs of April and of May
    The hot sun climbeth to the summer's noon.

    Yet hear me: I love God, and half I rest.
    O better! God loves thee, so all rest thou.
    He is our summer, our dim-visioned Best;--
    And in his heart thy prayer is resting now.

For all the grief I have given with words
May now a few clear flowers blow,
In the dust, and the heat, and the silence of birds,
    Where the lonely go.

For the thing unsaid that heart asked of me
Be a dark, cool water calling - calling
To the footsore, benighted, solitary,
    When the shadows are falling.

O, be beauty for all my blindness,
A moon in the air where the weary wend,
And dews burdened with loving-kindness
    In the dark of the end.

Kind solace in a dying hour!
Such, father, is not (now) my theme
I will not madly deem that power
Of Earth may shrive me of the sin
Unearthly pride hath revelled in
I have no time to dote or dream:
You call it hope that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire:
If I can hope O God! I can
Its fount is holier more divine
I would not call thee fool, old man,
But such is not a gift of thine.

Know thou the secret of a spirit
Bowed from its wild pride into shame
O yearning heart! I did inherit
Thy withering portion with the fame,
The searing glory which hath shone
Amid the Jewels of my throne,
Halo of Hell! and with a pain
Not Hell shall make me fear again
O craving heart, for the lost flowers
And sunshine of my summer hours!
The u...

'I muse to-day, in a listless way,
    In the gleam of a summer land;
I close my eyes as a lover may
    At the touch of his sweetheart's hand,
And I hear these things in the whisperings
    Of the zephyrs round me fanned': -

I am the Wind, and I rule mankind,
    And I hold a sovereign reign
Over the lands, as God designed,
    And the waters they contain:
Lo! the bound of the wide world round
    Falleth in my domain!

I was born on a stormy morn
    In a kingdom walled with snow,
Whose crystal cities laugh to scorn
    The proudest the world can show;
And the daylight's glare is frozen there
    In the breath of the blasts that blow.

Life to me was a jubilee
    From the first of my youthful days:
Clinking my icy toys wi...

Look where a three-point star shall weave his beam
Into the slumb'rous tissue of some stream,
Till his bright self o'er his bright copy seem
Fulfillment dropping on a come-true dream;
So in this night of art thy soul doth show
Her excellent double in the steadfast flow
Of wishing love that through men's hearts doth go:
At once thou shin'st above and shin'st below.
E'en when thou strivest there within Art's sky
(Each star must o'er a strenuous orbit fly),
Full calm thine image in our love doth lie,
A Motion glassed in a Tranquillity.
So triple-rayed, thou mov'st, yet stay'st, serene -
Art's artist, Love's dear woman, Fame's good queen!


Baltimore, 1875.

We read his life of poverty and bane,
From weakness, folly, error, not exempt,
And turn aside with a depressing pain -
Compassion tinged with something like contempt.
We read his work, and see his human heart,
His manly mind, his true, if thwarted, will,
And all that's noblest in us takes his part,
And shames our former verdict, will or nill.

His was a fiery spirit that unbound
Men's fetters, sometimes leading him astray;
He was a seed that fell into the ground
And brought forth fruit; he cast himself away
Like bread upon the waters, and was found
To nourish worth in many an after day.

Dormered and verandaed, cool,
Locust-girdled, on the hill;
Stained with weather-wear, and dull-
Streak'd with lichens; every sill
Thresholding the beautiful;

I can see it standing there,
Brown above the woodland deep,
Wrapped in lights of lavender,
By the warm wind rocked asleep,
Violet shadows everywhere.

I remember how the Spring,
Liberal-lapped, bewildered its
Acred orchards, murmuring,
Kissed to blossom; budded bits
Where the wood-thrush came to sing.

Barefoot Spring, at first who trod,
Like a beggermaid, adown
The wet woodland; where the god,
With the bright sun for a crown
And the firmament for rod,

Met her; clothed her; wedded her;
Her Cophetua: when, lo!
All the hill, one breathing blur,
Burst ...

Why was it that the thunder voice of Fate
Should call thee, studious, from the classic groves,
Where calm-eyed Pallas with still footstep roves,
And charge thee seek the turmoil of the state?
What bade thee hear the voice and rise elate,
Leave home and kindred and thy spicy loaves,
To lead th' unlettered and despised droves
To manhood's home and thunder at the gate?

Far better the slow blaze of Learning's light,
The cool and quiet of her dearer fane,
Than this hot terror of a hopeless fight,
This cold endurance of the final pain,--
Since thou and those who with thee died for right
Have died, the Present teaches, but in vain!

Our fathers wrung their bread from stocks and stones
And fenced their gardens with the Redmen's bones;
Embarking from the Nether Land of Holland,
Pilgrims unhouseled by Geneva's night,
They planted here the Serpent's seeds of light;
And here the pivoting searchlights probe to shock
The riotous glass houses built on rock,
And candles gutter by an empty altar,
And light is where the landless blood of Cain
Is burning, burning the unburied grain.

La sera desiar, odiar l' aurora.

CONTRARY TO THE WONT OF LOVERS, HE PREFERS MORN TO EVE.


    Tranquil and happy loves in this agree,
The evening to desire and morning hate:
On me at eve redoubled sorrows wait--
Morning is still the happier hour for me.
For then my sun and Nature's oft I see
Opening at once the orient's rosy gate,
So match'd in beauty and in lustre great,
Heaven seems enamour'd of our earth to be!
As when in verdant leaf the dear boughs burst
Whose roots have since so centred in my core,
Another than myself is cherish'd more.
Thus the two hours contrast, day's last and first:
Reason it is who calms me to desire,
And fear and hate who fiercer feed my fire.

MACGREGOR.

An Oyster, cast upon the shore,
Was heard, though never heard before,
Complaining in a speech well worded,
And worthy thus to be recorded:—
Ah, hapless wretch! condemn’d to dwell
For ever in my native shell;
Ordain’d to move when others please,
Not for my own content or ease;
But toss’d and buffeted about,
Now in the water and now out.
‘Twere better to be born a stone,
Of ruder shape, and feeling none,
Than with a tenderness like mine,
And sensibilities so fine!
I envy that unfeeling shrub,
Fast rooted against every rub.
The plant he meant grew not far off,
And felt the sneer with scorn enough:
Was hurt, disgusted, mortified,
And with asperity replied
(When, cry the botanists, and stare,
Did plants call’d sensitive grow there?
No ...

Though here fair blooms the rose and the woodbine waves on high,
And oak and elm and bracken frond enrich the rolling lea,
And winds as if from Arcady breathe joy as they go by,
Yet I yearn and I pine for my North Countrie.

I leave the drowsing south and in dreams I northward fly,
And walk the stretching moors that fringe the ever-calling sea;
And am gladdened as the gales that are so bitter-sweet go by,
While grey clouds sweetly darken o'er my North Countrie.

For there's music in the storms, and there's colour in the shades,
And there's joy e'en in the sorrow widely brooding o'er the sea;
And larger thoughts have birth among the moors and lowly glades
And reedy mounds and sands of my North Countrie.

I think we are too ready with complaint
In this fair world of God's. Had we no hope
Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope
Of yon gray blank of sky, we might grow faint
To muse upon eternity's constraint
Round our aspirant souls; but since the scope
Must widen early, is it well to droop,    
For a few days consumed in loss and taint?
O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted        
And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road
Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread
Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod
To meet the flints? At least it may be said
'Because the way is short, I thank thee, God.'

        The year has but one June, dear friend;
    The year has but one June;
        And when that perfect month doth end,
        The robin's song, though loud, though long,
    Seems never quite in tune.

        The rose, though still its blushing face
    By bee and bird is seen,
        May yet have lost that subtle grace -
        That nameless spell the winds know
    Which makes it garden's queen.

        Life's perfect June, love's red, red rose,
    Have burned and bloomed for me.
        Though still youth's summer sunlight glows;
        Though thou art kind, dear friend, I find
    I have no heart for thee.

Here's his ragged "roundabout";
Turn the pockets inside out:
See; his pen-knife, lost to use,
Rusted shut with apple-juice;
Here, with marbles, top and string,
Is his deadly "devil-sling,"
With its rubber, limp at last
As the sparrows of the past!
Beeswax - buckles - leather straps -
Bullets, and a box of caps, -
Not a thing of all, I guess,
But betrays some waywardness -
E'en these tickets, blue and red,
For the Bible-verses said -
Such as this his mem'ry kept -
                    "Jesus wept."

Here's a fishing hook-and-line,
Tangled up with wire and twine,
And dead angle-worms, and some
Slugs of lead and chewing-gum,
Blent with scents that can but come
From the oil of rhodium.
Here - a soiled, yet dainty note,
That s...