The rose had been wash’d, just wash’d in a shower,
Which Mary to Anna convey’d,
The plentiful moisture encumber’d the flower,
And weigh’d down its beautiful head.


The cup was all fill’d, and the leaves were all wet,
And it seem’d, to a fanciful view,
To weep for the buds it had left, with regret,
On the flourishing bush where it grew.


I hastily seized it, unfit as it was
For a nosegay, so dripping and drown’d,
And swinging it rudely, too rudely, alas!
I snapp’d it, it fell to the ground.


And such, I exclaim’d, is the pitiless part
Some act by the delicate mind,
Regardless of wringing and breaking a heart
Already to sorrow resign’d.


This elegant rose, had I shaken it less,
Might have bloom’d with its owner a ...

So, as Thou wert the seed and not the flower,
Having no form or comeliness, in chief
Sharing thy thoughts with thine acquaintance Grief;
Thou wert despised, rejected in thine hour
Of loneliness and God-triumphant power.
Oh, not three days alone, glad slumber brief,
That from thy travail brought Thee sweet relief,
Lay'st Thou, outworn, beneath thy stony bower;
But three and thirty years, a living seed,
Thy body lay as in a grave indeed;
A heavenly germ dropt in a desert wide;
Buried in fallow soil of grief and need;
'Mid earthquake-storms of fiercest hate and pride,
By woman's tears bedewed and glorified.

When, disappearing, from our hemisphere,
The world's enlightener vanishes, and day
On all sides wasteth, suddenly the sky,
Erewhile irradiate only with his beam,
Is yet again unfolded, putting forth
Innumerable lights wherein one shines.
Of such vicissitude in heaven I thought,
As the great sign, that marshaleth the world
And the world's leaders, in the blessed beak
Was silent; for that all those living lights,
Waxing in splendour, burst forth into songs,
Such as from memory glide and fall away.

Sweet love! that dost apparel thee in smiles,
How lustrous was thy semblance in those sparkles,
Which merely are from holy thoughts inspir'd!

After the precious and bright beaming stones,
That did ingem the sixth light, ceas'd the chiming
Of their ange...

Like some sad spirit from an unknown shore
Thou comest with two children in thine arms:
Flushed, poppied Sleep, whom mortals aye adore,
Her flowing raiment sculptured to her charms.
Soft on thy bosom in pure baby rest
Clasped as a fair white rose in musky nest;
But on thy other, like a thought of woe,
Her brother, lean, cold Death doth thin recline,
To thee as dear as she, thy maid divine,
Whose frowsy hair his hectic breathings blow
In poppied ringlets billowing all her marble brow.

Oft have I taken Sleep from thy vague arms
And fondled her faint head, with poppies wreath'd,
Within my bosom's depths, until its storms
With her were hushed and I but mildly breath'd.
And then this child, O Night! with frolic art
Arose from rest, and on my panting heart

I mourn no more my vanished years
Beneath a tender rain,
An April rain of smiles and tears,
My heart is young again.

The west-winds blow, and, singing low,
I hear the glad streams run;
The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.

No longer forward nor behind
I look in hope or fear;
But, grateful, take the good I find,
The best of now and here.

I plough no more a desert land,
To harvest weed and tare;
The manna dropping from God's hand
Rebukes my painful care.

I break my pilgrim staff, I lay
Aside the toiling oar;
The angel sought so far away
I welcome at my door.

The airs of spring may never play
Among the ripening corn,
Nor freshness of the flowers of May
Blow through the autumn morn.

Let me go where'er I will,
I hear a sky-born music still:
It sounds from all things old,
It sounds from all things young,
From all that's fair, from all that's foul,
Peals out a cheerful song.

It is not only in the rose,
It is not only in the bird,
Not only where the rainbow glows,
Nor in the song of woman heard,
But in the darkest, meanest things
There alway, alway something sings.

'T is not in the high stars alone,
Nor in the cup of budding flowers,
Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone,
Nor in the bow that smiles in showers,
But in the mud and scum of things
There alway, alway something sings.

                Lost!    Lost!    Lost!
The cry went up from a sea --
The waves were wild with an awful wrath,
Not a light shone down on the lone ship's path;
                The clouds hung low:
                Lost!    Lost!    Lost!
Rose wild from the hearts of the tempest-tossed.

                Lost!    Lost!    Lost!
The cry floated over the waves --
Far over the pitiless waves;
It smote on the dark and it rended the clouds;
The billows below them were weaving white shrouds
        Out of the foam of the surge,
        And the wind-voices chanted a dirge:
                Lost!    Lost!    Lost!
Wailed wilder the lips of the tempest-tossed.

                Lost!    Lost!    Lost!
Not the sign of a hope was nigh,
In the sea, in the ai...

Ah, when this world and I have shaken hands,
And all the frowns of this sad life got through,
When from pale Care and Sorrow's dismal lands
I turn a welcome and a wish'd adieu;
How blest and happy, to eternal day,
To endless happiness without a pain,
Will my poor weary spirit sail away,
That long long look'd for "better place" to gain:
How sweet the scenes will open on her eye,
Where no more troubles, no more cares annoy;
All the sharp troubles of this life torn by,
And safely moor'd in heaven's eternal joy:
Sweet will it seem to Fate's oppressed worm,
As trembling Sunbeams creeping from the storm.

I

When the sea has devoured the ships,
And the spires and the towers
Have gone back to the hills.
And all the cities
Are one with the plains again.
And the beauty of bronze,
And the strength of steel
Are blown over silent continents,
As the desert sand is blown -
My dust with yours forever.


II

When folly and wisdom are no more,
And fire is no more,
Because man is no more;
When the dead world slowly spinning
Drifts and falls through the void -
My light with yours
In the Light of Lights forever!

Come, dear old comrade, you and I
Will steal an hour from days gone by,
The shining days when life was new,
And all was bright with morning dew,
The lusty days of long ago,
When you were Bill and I was Joe.

Your name may flaunt a titled trail
Proud as a cockerel's rainbow tail,
And mine as brief appendix wear
As Tam O'Shanter's luckless mare;
To-day, old friend, remember still
That I am Joe and you are Bill.

You've won the great world's envied prize,
And grand you look in people's eyes,
With H O N. and L L. D.
In big brave letters, fair to see, -
Your fist, old fellow! off they go! -
How are you, Bill? How are you, Joe?

You've worn the judge's ermined robe;
You 've taught your name to half the globe;
You've sung mankind a ...

[1]

To Mademoiselle De Sévigné.[2]

Sévigné, type of every grace
In female form and face,
In your regardlessness of men,
Can you show favour when
The sportive fable craves your ear,
And see, unmoved by fear,
A lion's haughty heart
Thrust through by Love's audacious dart?
Strange conqueror, Love! And happy he,
And strangely privileged and free,
Who only knows by story
Him and his feats of glory!
If on this subject you are wont
To think the simple truth too blunt,
The fabulous may less affront;
Which now, inspired with gratitude,
Yea, kindled into zeal most fervent,
Doth venture to intrude
Within your maiden solitude,
And kneel, your humble servant. -
In times when animals were speakers,
Among t...

Come not before me now, O visionary face!
Me tempest-tost, and borne along life's passionate sea;
Troublous and dark and stormy though my passage be;
Not here and now may we commingle or embrace,
Lest the loud anguish of the waters should efface
The bright illumination of thy memory,
Which dominates the night; rest, far away from me,
In the serenity of thine abiding place!

But when the storm is highest, and the thunders blare,
And sea and sky are riven, O moon of all my night!
Stoop down but once in pity of my great despair,
And let thine hand, though over late to help, alight
But once upon my pale eyes and my drowning hair,
Before the great waves conquer in the last vain fight.

Benedetto sia 'l giorno e 'l mese e l' anno.

HE BLESSES ALL THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF HIS PASSION.


    Blest be the day, and blest the month, the year,
The spring, the hour, the very moment blest,
The lovely scene, the spot, where first oppress'd
I sunk, of two bright eyes the prisoner:
And blest the first soft pang, to me most dear,
Which thrill'd my heart, when Love became its guest;
And blest the bow, the shafts which pierced my breast,
And even the wounds, which bosom'd thence I bear.
Blest too the strains which, pour'd through glade and grove,
Have made the woodlands echo with her name;
The sighs, the tears, the languishment, the love:
And blest those sonnets, sources of my fame;
And blest that thought--Oh! never to remove!
Which turns to h...

    I love thy skies, thy sunny mists,
        Thy fields, thy mountains hoar,
    Thy wind that bloweth where it lists--
        Thy will, I love it more.

    I love thy hidden truth to seek
        All round, in sea, on shore;
    The arts whereby like gods we speak--
        Thy will to me is more.

    I love thy men and women, Lord,
        The children round thy door;
    Calm thoughts that inward strength afford--
        Thy will than these is more.

    But when thy will my life doth hold
        Thine to the very core,
    The world, which that same will doth mould,
        I love, then, ten times more!

L. M. C.

We sat together, last May-day, and talked
Of the dear friends who walked
Beside us, sharers of the hopes and fears
Of five and forty years,

Since first we met in Freedom's hope forlorn,
And heard her battle-horn
Sound through the valleys of the sleeping North,
Calling her children forth,

And youth pressed forward with hope-lighted eyes,
And age, with forecast wise
Of the long strife before the triumph won,
Girded his armor on.

Sadly, ass name by name we called the roll,
We heard the dead-bells toll
For the unanswering many, and we knew
The living were the few.

And we, who waited our own call before
The inevitable door,
Listened and looked, as all have done, to win
Some token from within.

Some reckon time by stars,
And some by hours:
Some measure days by dreams,
And some by flowers:
My heart alone records
My days and hours.

Some have a dial, a clock
That strikes a bell:
Some keep a calendar
To con and spell:
But I I have my love,
Infallible.

My heart is clock enough:
It beats for her.
Both day and night it makes
A happy stir:
It keeps the time quite true
With throbs for her.

The only calendar,
That marks my seasons,
Is that sweet face of hers,
Her moods and reasons,
Wherein no record is
Of winter seasons.

Once on a time an old red hen
Went strutting 'round with pompous clucks,
For she had little babies ten,
A part of which were tiny ducks.
"'T is very rare that hens," said she,
"Have baby ducks as well as chicks--
But I possess, as you can see,
Of chickens four and ducklings six!"

A season later, this old hen
Appeared, still cackling of her luck,
For, though she boasted babies ten,
Not one among them was a duck!
"'T is well," she murmured, brooding o'er
The little chicks of fleecy down--
"My babies now will stay ashore,
And, consequently, cannot drown!"

The following spring the old red hen
Clucked just as proudly as of yore--
But lo! her babes were ducklings ten,
Instead of chickens, as before!
"'T is better," said the old red he...

Pray, have you heard the news?
Sturdy in lungs and thews,
There's a fine baby!
Ring bells of crystal lip,
Wave boughs with blossoming tip;
Think what he may be!

Love cannot love enough,
Winter is never rough
All round such sweetness;
One of a million more
Sent to the glad heart's door
In their completeness!

Such news is never old,
Though in each ear't is told,
As a first birthday.
Welcome, thou ray of light!
In golden prayers bedight,
Sail down thy mirth-way!