Beeny did not quiver,
    Juliot grew not gray,
Thin Valency's river
    Held its wonted way.
Bos seemed not to utter
    Dimmest note of dirge,
Targan mouth a mutter
    To its creamy surge.

Yet though these, unheeding,
    Listless, passed the hour
Of her spirit's speeding,
    She had, in her flower,
Sought and loved the places -
    Much and often pined
For their lonely faces
    When in towns confined.

Why did not Valency
    In his purl deplore
One whose haunts were whence he
    Drew his limpid store?
Why did Bos not thunder,
    Targan apprehend
Body and breath were sunder
    Of their former friend?

Go, then--'tis vain to hover
    Thus round a hope that's dead;
At length my dream is over;
    'Twas sweet--'twas false--'tis fled!
Farewell! since naught it moves thee,
    Such truth as mine to see--
Some one, who far less loves thee,
    Perhaps more blest will be.

Farewell, sweet eyes, whose brightness
    New life around me shed;
Farewell, false heart, whose lightness
    Now leaves me death instead.
Go, now, those charms surrender
    To some new lover's sigh--
One who, tho' far less tender,
    May be more blest than I.

O storied vale of Merrimac
Rejoice through all thy shade and shine,
And from his century's sleep call back
A brave and honored son of thine.

Unveil his effigy between
The living and the dead to-day;
The fathers of the Old Thirteen
Shall witness bear as spirits may.

Unseen, unheard, his gray compeers
The shades of Lee and Jefferson,
Wise Franklin reverend with his years
And Carroll, lord of Carrollton!

Be thine henceforth a pride of place
Beyond thy namesake's over-sea,
Where scarce a stone is left to trace
The Holy House of Amesbury.

A prouder memory lingers round
The birthplace of thy true man here
Than that which haunts the refuge found
By Arthur's mythic Guinevere.

The plain deal table where he sat
And ...

Myself and mine gymnastic ever,
To stand the cold or heat - to take good aim with a gun - to sail a boat - to manage horses - to beget superb children,
To speak readily and clearly - to feel at home among common people,
And to hold our own in terrible positions, on land and sea.

Not for an embroiderer;
(There will always be plenty of embroiderers - I welcome them also;)
But for the fibre of things, and for inherent men and women.

Not to chisel ornaments,
But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous
Supreme Gods, that The States may realize them, walking and talking.

Let me have my own way;
Let others promulge the laws - I will make no account of the laws;
Let others praise eminent men and hold up peace - I hold up agitation and conflict;
...

Through foulest fogs of my own sluggish soul,
Through midnight glooms of all the wide world's guilt,
Through sulphurous cannon-clouds that surge and roll
Above the steam of blood in anger spilt;
Through all the sombre earth-oppressing piles
Of old cathedral temples which expand
Sepulchral vaults and monumental aisles,
Hopeless and freezing in the lifeful land;
I gaze and seek with ever-longing eyes
For God, the Love-Supreme, all-wise, all-good:
Alas! in vain; for over all the skies
A dark and awful shadow seems to brood,
A numbing, infinite, eternal gloom:
I tremble in the consciousness of Doom.

Hush'd on the hill

Is the breeze;

Scarce by the zephyr

The trees

Softly are press'd;
The woodbird's asleep on the bough.
Wait, then, and thou

Soon wilt find rest.

The years are but half a score,
And the war-whoop sounds no more
With the blast of bugles, where
Straight into a slaughter pen,
With his doomed three hundred men,
Rode the chief with the yellow hair.
O Hampton, down by the sea!
What voice is beseeching thee
For the scholar's lowliest place?
Can. this be the voice of him
Who fought on the Big Horn's rim?
Can this be Rain-in-the-Face?
His war-paint is washed away,
Hls hands have forgotten to slay;
He seeks for himself and his race
The arts of peace and the lore
That give to the skilled hand more
Than the spoils of war and chase.
O chief of the Christ-like school!
Can the zeal of thy heart grow cool
When the victor scarred with fight
Like a child for thy guidance craves,
And the face...

After this life, the wages shall
Not shared alike be unto all.

    Very well, you liberals,
    And navigators into realms intellectual,
    You sailors through heights imaginative,
    Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets,
    You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits,
    And Tennessee Claflin Shopes -
    You found with all your boasted wisdom
    How hard at the last it is
    To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms.
    While we, seekers of earth's treasures
    Getters and hoarders of gold,
    Are self-contained, compact, harmonized,
    Even to the end.

THE DREAMER

I

He was a Dreamer of the Days:
    Indolent as a lazy breeze
Of midsummer, in idlest ways
    Lolling about in the shade of trees.
The farmer turned - as he passed him by
    Under the hillside where he kneeled
Plucking a flower - with scornful eye
    And rode ahead in the harvest field
Muttering - "Lawz! ef that-air shirk
    Of a boy was mine fer a week er so,
He'd quit dreamin' and git to work
    And airn his livin' - er - Well! I know!"
And even kindlier rumor said,
Tapping with finger a shaking head, -
"Got such a curious kind o' way -
Wouldn't surprise me much, I say!"

Lying limp, with upturned gaze
Idly dreaming away his days.
No companions? Yes, a book
Sometimes under his ar...

I envy seas whereon he rides,
I envy spokes of wheels
Of chariots that him convey,
I envy speechless hills

That gaze upon his journey;
How easy all can see
What is forbidden utterly
As heaven, unto me!

I envy nests of sparrows
That dot his distant eaves,
The wealthy fly upon his pane,
The happy, happy leaves

That just abroad his window
Have summer's leave to be,
The earrings of Pizarro
Could not obtain for me.

I envy light that wakes him,
And bells that boldly ring
To tell him it is noon abroad, --
Myself his noon could bring,

Yet interdict my blossom
And abrogate my bee,
Lest noon in everlasting night
Drop Gabriel and me.

In the dark and the gloom when winds were fretting
    Like restless children worn out with play,
I said to my heart, 'This task, forgetting -
    Is harder now than it is by day.
For a hungry love that hides from the light,
Like a tiger steals forth, and is bold at night.'

The wind wailed low like a woman weeping;
    Deeper and darker the dense gloom grew.
And, oh! for the old, sweet nights of sleeping,
    When dreams were happy, and love was true.
Before the stars from heaven went out
In a sudden blackness of dread and doubt.

The wind wailed loud, like a madman shrieking,
    And I said to my heart, 'Oh! vain, vain strife;
We cannot forget, and the peace we are seeking
    Can only be won at the end of life.
For see! like a lurid and living spa...

By Lawson's Hill, near Mudgee,
On old Eurunderee,
The place they called "New Pipeclay",
Where the diggers used to be,
On a dreary old selection,
Where times were dry and thin,
In a slab and shingle kitchen
There stood a flour bin.

'Twas "ploorer" with the cattle,
'Twas rust and smut in wheat,
'Twas blight in eyes and orchards,
And coarse salt-beef to eat.
Oh, how our mothers struggled
Till eyes and brain were dull,
Oh, how our fathers slaved and toiled
To keep those flour bins full!

We've been in many countries,
We've sailed on many seas;
We've travelled in the steerage
And lived on land at ease.
We've seen the world together
Through laughter and through tears,
And not been far from baker's bread
These five and th...

FOR BRIAN WHEN HE IS GROWN UP THIS HANDFUL OF THE NUTS OF KNOWLEDGE I HAVE GATHERED ON THE SECRET STREAMS.




I thought, beloved, to have brought to you
A gift of quietness and ease and peace,
Cooling your brow as with the mystic dew
Dropping from twilight trees.

Homeward I go not yet; the darkness grows;
Not mine the voice to still with peace divine:
From the first fount the stream of quiet flows
Through other hearts than mine.

Yet of my night I give to you the stars,
And of my sorrow here the sweetest gains,
And out of hell, beyond its iron bars,
My scorn of all its pains.

Broideries and ancient stuffs that some queen
Wore; nor gems that warriors' hilts encrusted;
Nor fresh from heroes' brows the laurels green;
Nor bright sheaves by bards of eld entrusted
To earth's great granaries--I bring not these.
Only thin, scattered blades from harvests gleaned
Erewhile I plucked, may happen thee to please.
So poor indeed, those others had demeaned
Themselves to cull; or from their strong, firm hands
Down dropped about their feet with careless laugh,
Too broken for home gathering, these strands,
Or else more useless than the idle chaff.
But I have garnered them.    Yet, lest they seem
Unworthy, and so shame Love's offering,
Amid the loose-bound sheaf stray flowers gleam.
And fairer seeming make the gift I bring,
Lilies blood-red, that lit ...

So spake the voice: and as with a single life
Instinct, the whole mass, fierce, irretainable,
Down on that unsuspecting host swept;
Down, with the fury of winds, that all night
Upbrimming, sapping slowly the dyke, at dawn
Fall through the breach o’er holmstead and harvest; and
Heard roll a deluge: while the milkmaid
Trips i’ the dew, and remissly guiding
Morn’s first uneven furrow, the farmer’s boy
Dreams out his dream; so, over the multitude
Safe-tented, uncontrolled and uncon-
trollably sped the Avenger’s fury.

My sun has set, I dwell
In darkness as a dead man out of sight;
And none remains, not one, that I should tell
To him mine evil plight
This bitter night.
I will make fast my door
That hollow friends may trouble me no more.

'Friend, open to Me.' - Who is this that calls?
Nay, I am deaf as are my walls:
Cease crying, for I will not hear
Thy cry of hope or fear.
Others were dear,
Others forsook me: what art thou indeed
That I should heed
Thy lamentable need?
Hungry should feed,
Or stranger lodge thee here?

'Friend, My Feet bleed.
Open thy door to Me and comfort Me.'
I will not open, trouble me no more.
Go on thy way footsore,
I will not rise and open unto thee.

'Then is it nothing to thee? Open, see
Who stands t...

I thought that silence would be best,
But I a call have heard,
And, Victor, after all the rest,
I well might say a word:
The day and work is nearly done,
And ours the victory,
And we are resting, one by one,
In graveyards by the sea.

But then you talked of other nights,
When, gay from dusk to dawn,
You wasted hours with other lights
That went where you have gone.
You spoke not of the fair and “fast”,
But of the pure and true,
“Sweet ugly women of the past”
Who stood so well by you.

You made a jest on that last night,
I met it with a laugh:
You wondered which of us should write
The other’s epitaph.
We filled the glasses to the brim,
“The land’s own wine” you know,
And solemnly we drank to him
Who should be first to...