"Do I believe," sayest thou, "what the masters of wisdom would teach me,
And what their followers' band boldly and readily swear?
Cannot I ever attain to true peace, excepting through knowledge,
Or is the system upheld only by fortune and law?
Must I distrust the gently-warning impulse, the precept
That thou, Nature, thyself hast in my bosom impressed,
Till the schools have affixed to the writ eternal their signet,
Till a mere formula's chain binds down the fugitive soul?
Answer me, then! for thou hast down into these deeps e'en descended,
Out of the mouldering grave thou didst uninjured return.
Is't to thee known what within the tomb of obscure works is hidden,
Whether, yon mummies amid, life's consolations can dwell?
Must I travel the darksome road? The thought makes me tremble...

"O thou Almighty Father, who dost make
The heavens thy dwelling, not in bounds confin'd,
But that with love intenser there thou view'st
Thy primal effluence, hallow'd be thy name:
Join each created being to extol
Thy might, for worthy humblest thanks and praise
Is thy blest Spirit. May thy kingdom's peace
Come unto us; for we, unless it come,
With all our striving thither tend in vain.
As of their will the angels unto thee
Tender meet sacrifice, circling thy throne
With loud hosannas, so of theirs be done
By saintly men on earth. Grant us this day
Our daily manna, without which he roams
Through this rough desert retrograde, who most
Toils to advance his steps. As we to each
Pardon the evil done us, pardon thou
Benign, and of our merit take no count.
...

With moonlight beaming
    Thus o'er the deep,
Who'd linger dreaming
    In idle sleep?
Leave joyless souls to live by day,--
Our life begins with yonder ray;
And while thus brightly
    The moments flee,
Our barks skim lightly
    The shining sea.

To halls of splendor
    Let great ones hie;
Thro' light more tender
    Our pathways lie.
While round, from banks of brook or lake,
Our company blithe echoes make;
And as we lend 'em
    Sweet word or strain,
Still back they send 'em
    More sweet again.

Come guard this night the Christmas-Pie,
That the thief, though ne'er so sly,
With his flesh-hooks, don't come nigh
To catch it

From him, who all alone sits there,
Having his eyes still in his ear,
And a deal of nightly fear
To watch it.

Love, Cupid, Gallantry, whate'er
We call that elf, seen every where,
Half frolicsome, half ennuyeuse,
Had chanced a country walk to choose;
When sudden, sweet and bright as May,
Young Beauty tripp'd across his way.--

"Upon my word," exclaims the boy,
"A lucky hit! this pretty toy
To pass an hour, with vapours haunted,
Is quite the thing I wish'd and wanted;
I do not so far condescend
As serious mischief to intend,
But just to show my powers of pleasing
In flattery, badinage, and teasing;
But should she, for young girls, poor things!
Are tender as yon insect's wings--
Should she mistake me, and grow fond,
Why, I'll grow serious--and abscond."

First, not abruptly to confound her,
With glance and smile he hovers round her:...

Take our hands, James Russell Lowell,
Our hearts are all thy own;
To-day we bid thee welcome
Not for ourselves alone.

In the long years of thy absence
Some of us have grown old,
And some have passed the portals
Of the Mystery untold;

For the hands that cannot clasp thee,
For the voices that are dumb,
For each and all I bid thee
A grateful welcome home!

For Cedarcroft's sweet singer
To the nine-fold Muses dear;
For the Seer the winding Concord
Paused by his door to hear;

For him, our guide and Nestor,
Who the march of song began,
The white locks of his ninety years
Bared to thy winds, Cape Ann!

For him who, to the music
Her pines and hemlocks played,
Set the old and tender story
Of the lorn Acadia...

    The old year is dying,
    Its last hour is hieing
        Over the verge;
    The night winds are plying,
    And are mournfully sighing
        Its funeral dirge.

    And now, in its even,
    While its spirit is riven
        Through the bright zone,
    Beyond the heaven
    To whence it was given -
        To the unknown.

    Its sadness in ending
    Like a cloud is descending
        Over my soul,
    And the thoughts that are pending
    With the low winds are blending,
        Helping their dole.

    A year of existence
    Has passed to the distance
        Ne'er to return:
    To the right was resistance,
    From duty desistance,
        Nor would I learn.

    But duty neglected

By the side of a rock on the hill, beneath
the aged trees, old Oscian
sat on the moss; the last of the race of
Fingal. Sightless are his aged eyes;
his beard is waving in the wind. Dull
through the leafless trees he heard the
voice of the north. Sorrow revived in
his soul: he began and lamented the
dead.

How hast thou fallen like an oak,
with all thy branches round thee! Where
is Fingal the King? where is Oscur my
son? where are all my race? Alas! in
the earth they lie. I feel their tombs
with my hands. I hear the river below
murmuring hoarsely over the stones.
What dost thou, O river, to me? Thou
bringest back the memory of the past.

The race of Fingal stood on thy
banks, like a wood in a fertile soil.
Keen were their spears of...

(For Edward J. Wheeler)



Within the Jersey City shed
The engine coughs and shakes its head,
The smoke, a plume of red and white,
Waves madly in the face of night.
And now the grave incurious stars
Gleam on the groaning hurrying cars.
Against the kind and awful reign
Of darkness, this our angry train,
A noisy little rebel, pouts
Its brief defiance, flames and shouts --
And passes on, and leaves no trace.
For darkness holds its ancient place,
Serene and absolute, the king
Unchanged, of every living thing.
The houses lie obscure and still
In Rutherford and Carlton Hill.
Our lamps intensify the dark
Of slumbering Passaic Park.
And quiet holds the weary feet
That daily tramp through Prospect Street.
What though we clang and...

If gibbets, axes, confiscations, chains,
And racks of subtle torture, if the pains
Of shame, of fiery Hell's tempestuous wave,
Seen through the caverns of the shadowy grave,
Hurling the damned into the murky air
While the meek blest sit smiling; if Despair
And Hate, the rapid bloodhounds with which Terror
Hunts through the world the homeless steps of Error,
Are the true secrets of the commonweal
To make men wise and just;...
And not the sophisms of revenge and fear,
Bloodier than is revenge...
Then send the priests to every hearth and home
To preach the burning wrath which is to come,
In words like flakes of sulphur, such as thaw
The frozen tears...
If Satire's scourge could wake the slumbering hounds
Of Conscience, or erase the deeper wounds,
The le...

Tu sa' ch' i' so, Signor mie.


Thou knowest, love, I know that thou dost know
        That I am here more near to thee to be,
        And knowest that I know thou knowest me:
        What means it then that we are sundered so?
If they are true, these hopes that from thee flow,
        If it is real, this sweet expectancy,
        Break down the wall that stands 'twixt me and thee;
        For pain in prison pent hath double woe.
Because in thee I love, O my loved lord,
        What thou best lovest, be not therefore stern:
        Souls burn for souls, spirits to spirits cry!
I seek the splendour in thy fair face stored;
        Yet living man that beauty scarce can learn,
        And he who fain would find it, first must die.

How long, Perenna, wilt thou see
Me languish for the love of thee?
Consent, and play a friendly part
To save, when thou may'st kill a heart.

Call him not heretic whose works attest
His faith in goodness by no creed confessed.
Whatever in love's name is truly done
To free the bound and lift the fallen one
Is done to Christ. Whoso in deed and word
Is not against Him labors for our Lord.
When He, who, sad and weary, longing sore
For love's sweet service, sought the sisters' door,
One saw the heavenly, one the human guest,
But who shall say which loved the Master best

Three of us without a care
In the red September
Tramping down the roads of Maine,
Making merry with the rain,
With the fellow winds a-fare
Where the winds remember.

Three of us with shocking hats,
Tattered and unbarbered,
Happy with the splash of mud,
With the highways in our blood,
Bearing down on Deacon Platt's
Where last year we harbored.

We've come down from Kennebec,
Tramping since last Sunday,
Loping down the coast of Maine,
With the sea for a refrain,
And the maples neck and neck
All the way to Fundy.

Sometimes lodging in an inn,
Cosey as a dormouse--
Sometimes sleeping on a knoll
With no rooftree but the Pole--
Sometimes halely welcomed in
At an old-time farmhouse.

Loafing under ledge and ...

Sol perchè tue bellezze.


If only that thy beauties here may be
        Deathless through Time that rends the wreaths he twined,
        I trust that Nature will collect and bind
        All those delights the slow years steal from thee,
And keep them for a birth more happily
        Born under better auspices, refined
        Into a heavenly form of nobler mind,
        And dowered with all thine angel purity.
Ah me! and may heaven also keep my sighs,
        My scattered tears preserve and reunite,
        And give to him who loves that fair again!
More happy he perchance shall move those eyes
        To mercy by the griefs my manhood blight,
        Nor lose the kindness that from me is ta'en!

When the primeval
All-holy Father
Sows with a tranquil hand
From clouds, as they roll,
Bliss-spreading lightnings
Over the earth,
Then do I kiss the last
Hem of his garment,
While by a childlike awe
Fiil'd is my breast.

For with immortals
Ne'er may a mortal
Measure himself.
If he soar upwards
And if he touch
With his forehead the stars,
Nowhere will rest then
His insecure feet,
And with him sport
Tempest and cloud.

Though with firm sinewy
Limbs he may stand
On the enduring
Well-grounded earth,
All he is ever
Able to do,
Is to resemble
The oak or the vine.

Wherein do gods
Differ from mortals?
In that the former
See endless billows
Heaving before them;
Us doth ...

Glory no other thing is, Tully says,
Than a man's frequent fame spoke out with praise.

L' alma mia fiamma oltra le belle bella.

HE ACKNOWLEDGES THE WISDOM OF HER PAST COLDNESS TO HIM.


    My noble flame--more fair than fairest are
Whom kind Heaven here has e'er in favour shown--
Before her time, alas for me! has flown
To her celestial home and parent star.
I seem but now to wake; wherein a bar
She placed on passion 'twas for good alone,
As, with a gentle coldness all her own,
She waged with my hot wishes virtuous war.
My thanks on her for such wise care I press,
That with her lovely face and sweet disdain
She check'd my love and taught me peace to gain.
O graceful artifice! deserved success!
I with my fond verse, with her bright eyes she,
Glory in her, she virtue got in me.

MACGREGOR.