Since Cleopatra died. Ah! Love and Pain
Make their own measure of all things that be.

No clock's slow ticking marks their deathless strain;
The life they own is not the life we see;

Love's single moment is eternity:

Eternity, a thought in Shakespeare's brain.

I22.

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

Ebb and Flow

1824-1892

I

WALKED beside the evening sea,

And dreamed a dream that could not be;
The waves that plunged along the shore
Said only-
Dreamer, dream no more!"

But still the legions charged the beach;
Loud rang their battle-cry, like speech;
But changed was the imperial strain:

It murmured "Dreamer, dream again!"

I homeward turned from out the gloom,-
That sound I heard not in my room;
But suddenly a sound, that stirred
Within my very breast, I heard.

It was my heart, that like a sea
Within my breast beat ceaselessly:
But like the waves along the shore,

It said "Dream on!" and "Dream no more!"

123.

BAYARD TAYLOR

Bedouin Song

'ROM the Desert I come to thee

FROM

On a stallion shod with fire;

And the winds are left behind

In the speed of my desire.
Under thy window I stand,
And the midnight hears my cry:
I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,

And the stars are old,

1825-1875

And the leaves of the Judgment
Book unfold!

Look from thy window and see
My passion and my pain;

I lie on the sands below,

And I faint in thy disdain.
Let the night-winds touch thy brow
With the heat of my burning sigh,

And melt thee to hear the vow

Of a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,

And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment
Book unfold!

My steps are nightly driven,
By the fever in my breast,
To hear from thy lattice breathed
The word that shall give me rest.
Open the door of thy heart,

And open thy chamber door,
And my kisses shall teach thy lips
The love that shall fade no more
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment
Book unfold!

124.

The Song of the Camp

GIVE

IVE us a song!" the soldiers cried,
The outer trenches guarding,

When the heated guns of the camps allied
Grew weary of bombarding.

The dark Redan, in silent scoff,

Lay, grim and threatening, under;
And the tawny mound of the Malakoff
No longer belched its thunder.

There was a pause. A guardsman said,
"We storm the forts to-morrow;

Sing while we may, another day
Will bring enough of sorrow."

There lay along the battery's side,

Below the smoking cannon:

Brave hearts, from Severn and from Clyde, And from the banks of Shannon.

They sang of love, and not of fame;
Forgot was Britain's glory:

Each heart recalled a different name,
"Annie Laurie."

But all sang

Voice after voice caught up the song,
Until its tender passion

Rose like an anthem, rich and strong,
Their battle-eve confession.

Dear girl, her name he dared not speak,
But, as the song grew louder,
Something upon the soldier's cheek
Washed off the stains of powder.

Beyond the darkening ocean burned
The bloody sunset's embers,
While the Crimean valleys learned
How English love remembers.

And once again a fire of hell

Rained on the Russian quarters,

With scream of shot, and burst of shell,
And bellowing of the mortars!

And Irish Nora's eyes are dim

For a singer, dumb and gory; And English Mary mourns for him Who sang of "Annie Laurie.”

125.

126.

Sleep, soldiers! still in honored rest
Your truth and valor wearing:
The bravest are the tenderest,
The loving are the daring.

RICHARD HENRY STODDARD

Songs

HOW are songs begot and bred?
How do golden measures flow?
From the heart, or from the head?
Happy Poet, let me know.

Tell me first how folded flowers
Bud and bloom in vernal bowers;
How the south wind shapes its tune,
The harper, he, of June.

None may answer, none may know,
Winds and flowers come and go,
And the selfsame canons bind
Nature and the Poet's mind.

The Sky

THE sky is a drinking-cup,

That was overturned of old,
of men

And it pours in the eyes
Its wine of airy gold.

1825-1903