We touch the lower life of beast and clod,
And the long process of the ages see
From blind old Chaos, ere the breath of God
Moved it to harmony.

All outward wisdom yields to that within,
Whereof nor creed nor canon holds the key;
We only feel that we have ever been
And evermore shall be;

And thus I know, by memories unfurled
In rarer moods, and many a nameless sign,
That once in Time, and somewhere in the world,
I was a towering Pine,

Rooted upon a cape that overhung

The entrance to a mountain gorge; whereon
The wintry shadow of a peak was flung,
Long after rise of sun.

Behind, the silent snows; and wide below,
The rounded hills made level, lessening down
To where a river washed with sluggish flow
A many-templed town.

There did I clutch the granite with firm feet,
There shake my boughs above the roaring gulf,
When mountain whirlwinds through the passes
beat,

And howled the mountain wolf.

There did I louder sing than all the floods
Whirled in white foam adown the precipice,
And the sharp sleet that stung the naked woods
Answer with sullen hiss:

But when the peaceful clouds rose white and high
On blandest airs that April skies could bring,
Through all my fibres thrilled the tender sigh,
The sweet unrest of Spring.

She, with warm fingers laced in mine, did melt
In fragrant balsam my reluctant blood;
And with a smart of keen delight I felt
The sap in every bud,

And tingled through my rough old bark, and fast
Pushed out the younger green, that smoothed

my tones,

Temple and obelisk;

At every season's will.

No longer Memory whispers whence arose
The doom that tore me from my place of pride:
Whether the storms that load the peak with snows,
And start the mountain-slide,

Let fall a fiery bolt to smite my top,

Upwrenched my roots, and o'er the precipice Hurled me, a dangling wreck, erelong to drop Into the wild abyss;

Or whether hands of men, with scornful strength And force from Nature's rugged armory lent, Sawed through my heart and rolled my tumbling length

Sheer down the steep descent.

All sense departed, with the boughs I wore;
And though I moved with mighty gales at strife,
A mast upon the seas, I sang no more,
And music was my life.

Yet still that life awakens, brings again
Its airy anthems, resonant and long,
of song.
Till Earth and Sky, transfigured, fill my brain
With rhythmic sweeps
Thence am I made a poet: thence are sprung
Those motions of the soul, that sometimes reach
Beyond all grasp of Art,- for which the tongue
Is ignorant of speech.

And if some wild, full-gathered harmony
Roll its unbroken music through my line,
Believe there murmurs, faintly though it be
The Spirit of the Pine.

EL CANALO.*

Now gaddle El Canalo!—the freshening wind of

morn

Down in the flowery vega is stirring through the

corn;

The thin smoke of the ranches grows red with coming day,

And the steed's impatient stamping is cager for the way!

My glossy-limb'd Canalo, thy neck is curved in pride,

Thy slender cars prick'd forward, thy nostril straining wide,

And as thy quick neigh greets me, and I catch thee by the mane,

I'm off with the winds of morning-the chieftain of the plain!

I feel the swift air whirring, and see along our track,

From the flinty-paved sierra, the sparks go streaming back;

And I clutch my rifle closer, as we sweep the dark defile,

Where the red guerilla watches for many a lonely mile.

They reach not El Canalo; with the swiftness of a dream

We've pass'd the bleak Nevada, and Tule's icy

stream;

But where, on sweeping gallop, my bullet backward sped,

The keen-eyed mountain vultures will circle o'er the dead!

On! on, my brave Canalo! we've dash'd the sand

and snow

From peaks upholding heaven, from deserts far below-

We've thunder'd through the forest, while the crackling branches rang,

And trooping elks, affrighted, from lair and covert sprang!

We've swum the swollen torrent, we've distanced

in the race

The baying wolves of Pinos, that panted with the chase;

And still thy mane streams backward, at every thrilling bound,

And still thy measured hoof-stroke beats with its morning sound!

The seaward winds are wailing through Santa Barbara's pines,

And like a sheathless sabre, the far Pacific shines; Hold to thy speed, my arrow!-at nightfall thou

shalt lave

Thy hot and smoking haunches beneath his silver wave!

My head upon thy shoulder, along the sloping sand

We'll sleep as trusty brothers, from out the mountain land;

• El Canalo, or the cinnamon coloured, is the name of the choicest breed of the Californian horse.

The pines will sound in answer to the surges on the shore,

And in our dreams, Canalo, we'll make the jour ney o'er!

THE BISON-TRACK.

STRIKE the tent! the sun has risen; not a cloud has ribb'd the dawn,

And the frosted prairie brightens to the westward, far and wan:

Prime afresh the trusty rifle-sharpen well the hunting-spear

For the frozen sod is trembling, and a noise of hoofs I hear!

Fiercely stamp the tether'd horses, as they snuf the morning's fire,

And their flashing heads are tossing, with a neigh of keen desire;

Strike the tent-the saddles wait us! let the bridlereins be slack,

For the prairie's distant thunder has betray'd the bison's track!

See! a dusky line approaches; hark! the onwardsurging roar,

Like the din of wintry breakers on a sounding wall of shore!

Dust and sand behind them whirling, snort the foremost of the van,

And the stubborn horns are striking, through the crowded caravan.

Now the storm is down upon us-let the madden'd horses go!

We shall ride the living whirlwind, though a hundred leagues it blow!

Though the surgy manes should thicken, and the red eyes' angry glare

Lighten round us as we gallop through the sand and rushing air!

Myriad hoofs will scar the, prairie, in our wild, resistless race,

And a sound, like mighty waters, thunder down

the desert space:

Yet the rein may not be tighten'd, nor the rider's eye look back

Death to him whose speed should slacken, on the madden'd bison's track!

Now the trampling herds are threaded, and the chase is close and warm

For the giant bull that gallops in the edges of the

storm:

Hurl your lassoes swift and fearless-swing your rifles as we run!

Ha! the dust is red behind him: shout, my brothers, he is won!

Look not on him as he staggers-'t is the last shat he will need;

More shall fall, among his fellows, ere we run the bold stampede

Ere we stem the swarthy breakers-while the wolves, a hungry pack,

Howl around each grim-eyed carcass, on the bloody bison-track!

BEDOUIN SONG.

FROM the Desert I come to thee
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,

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 now
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!

THE ARAB TO THE PALM.

NEXT to thee, O fair gazelle,
O Beddowee girl, beloved so well;
Next to the fearless Nedjidee,
Whose fleetness shall bear me again to thee;
Next to ye both I love the Palm,

With his leaves of beauty, his fruit of balin;
Next to ye both I love the Tree
Whose fluttering shadow wraps us three
With love, and silence, and mystery!
Our tribe is many, our poets vie
With any under the Arab sky;
Yet none can sing of the Palm but I.

The marble minarets that begem
Cairo's citadel-diadem

Are not so light as his slender stem.

He lifts his leaves in the sunbeam's glance
As the Almehs lift their arms in dance--
A slumberous motion, a passionate sign,
That works in the cells of the blood like wine

Full of passion and sorrow is he, Dreaming where the beloved may be. And when the warm south-winds arise, He breathes his longing in fervid sighsQuickening odors, kisses of balm.

That drop in the lap of his chosen palm.
The sun may flaine and the sands may stir,
But the breath of his passion reaches her.
O Tree of Love, by that love of thine,
Teach me how I shall soften mine!
Give me the secret of the sun,
Whereby the wooed is ever won!

If I were a King, O stately Tree,
A likeness, glorious as might be,
In the court of my palace I'd build for thee!
With a shaft of silver, burnished bright,
And leaves of beryl and malachite
With spikes of golden bloom a-blaze,
And fruits of topaz and chrysoprase:
And there the poets, in thy praise,
Should night and morning frame new lays-
New measures sung to tunes divine;
But none, O Palin, should equal mine!

KUBLEH;

A STORY OF THE ASSYRIAN DESERT.

The dewy air

THE black eyed children of the Desert drove
Their flocks together at the set of sun.
The tents were pitched; the weary camels bent
Their suppliant necks, and knelt upon the sand;
The hunters quartered by the kindled fires
The wild boars of the Tigris they had slain
And all the stir and sound of evening ran
Throughout the Shammar camp.
Bore its full burden of confused delight
Across the flowery plain, and while afar,
The snows of Koordish Mountains in the ray
Flashed roseate amber, Nimroud's ancient mound
Rose broad and black against the burning West.
The shadows deepened and the stars came out,
Sparkling in violet ether; one by one
Glimmered the ruddy camp-fires on the plain,
And shapes of steed and horseman moved among
The dusky tents with shout and jostling cry,
And neigh and restless prancing. Children ran
To hold the thongs while every rider drove
His quivering spear in the earth, and by his door
Tethered the horse he loved. In midst of all
Stood Shammeriyah, whom they dared not touch,--
The foal of wondrous Kubleh, to the Sheik
A dearer wealth than all his Georgian girls.
But when their meal was o'er,-when the red fires
Blazed brighter, and the dogs no longer bayed,-
When Shammar hunters with the boys sat down
To cleanse their bloody knives, came Alimar,
The poet of the tribe, whose songs of love
Are sweeter than Bassora's nightingales,-
Whose songs of war can fire the Arab blood

Like war itself: who knows not ALIMAR?
Then ask'd the men: “O poet, sing of Kub'eh!"
And boys laid down the knives half burnish'd, say.
ing:

"Tell us of Kubleh, whom we never saw-
Of wondrous Kubieh!" C'oser flock'd the group
With eager eyes about the flickering fire,
While ALIMAR, beneath the Assyrian stars,
Sang to the listening Arabs:

"Gon is great!
O Arabs, never yet since MAHMOUD rode
The sands of Yemen, and by Mecca's gate
The winged steed bestrode, whose mane of fire
Blazed up the zenith, when, by ALLAH call'd,
He bore the prophet to the walls of heaven.
Was like to Kubleh, SOFUK's wondrous mare:
Not all the milk-white barbs, whose hoofs dash'd
flame

In Bagdad's stables, from the marble floor-
Who, swath'd in purple housings, pranced in state
The gay bazaars, by great AL-RASCHID back'd:
Not the wild charger of Mongolian breed
That went o'er half the world with TAMERLANE:
Nor yet those flying coursers, long ago
From Ormuz brought by swarthy Indian grooms
To Persia's kings-the foals of sacred mares,
Sired by the fiery stallions of the sea'

"Who ever told, in all the Desert Land. The many deeds of Kubleh? Who can tell Whence came she, whence her like shall come again?

O Arabs, like a tale of ScuEREZADE
Heard in the camp, when javelin shafts are tried
On the hot eve of battle, is her story.

Far in the Southern sands, the hunters say, Did SOFUK find her, by a lonely palm.

The well had dried; her fierce, impatient eye
Glared red and sunken, and her slight young limbs
Were lean with thirst. He check'd his camel's pace,
And while it knelt, untied the water-skin,
And when the wild mare drank, she follow'd him.
Thence none but SoFUK might the saddle gird
Upon her back, or clasp the brazen gear
About her shining head, that brook'd no curb
From even him; for she, alike, was royal.

Her form was lighter, in its shifting grace, Than some impassion'd Almée's, when the dance Unbinds her scarf, and golden anklets gleam Through floating drapery, on the buoyant air. Her light, free head was ever held aloft; Between her slender and transparent ears The silken forelock toss'd; her nostril's arch, Thin-drawn, in proud and pliant beauty spread, Snuffing the desert winds. Her glossy neck Curved to the shoulder like an eng'c's wing, And all her matchless lines of flank and limb Seem'd fashion'd from the flying shapes of air By hands of lightning. When the war-shouts rang From tent to tent, her keen and restless eye Shone like a blood-red ruby, and her neigh Rang wild and sharp above the clash of spears.

Chased from his bold irruption on the plain,
Has seen her hoofprints in his mountain snow.
Lithe as the dark-eyed Syrian gazelle,
O'er ledge and chasm and barren steep, amid
The Sindjar hills, she ran the wild ass down.
Through many a battle's thickest brunt she storm'd,
Reeking with sweat and dust, and fetlock-deep
In curdling gore. When hot and lurid baze
Stifled the crimson sun, she swept before
The whirling sand-spout, till her gust mane
Flared in its vortex, while the camels lay
Groaning and helpless on the fiery waste.

46

The tribes of Taurus and the Caspian knew her The Georgian chiefs have heard her trumpet-neigh Before the walls of Teflis. Pines that grow On ancient Caucasus, have harbour'd her, Sleeping by SoFUK in their spicy gloom, The surf of Trebizond has bathed her flanks, When from the shore she saw the white-sail'd bark That brought him home from Stamboul. Never yet, O Arabs, never yet was like to Kubleh!

And SOFUK loved her. She was more to him Than all his snowy-bosom'd odalisques. For many years, beside his tent she stood, The glory of the tribe.

"At last she died:
Died, while the fire was yet in all her limbs-
Died for the life of SorUK, whom she loved.
The base Jebours-on whom be ALLAH's curse!-
Came on his path, when far from any camp,
And would have slain him, but that Kubleh sprang
Against the javelin-points and bore them down,
And gain'd the open desert. Wounded sore,
She urged her light limbs into maddening speed
And made the wind a laggard. On and on
The red sand slid beneath her, and behind
Whirl'd in a swift and cloudy turbulence,
As when some star of Eblis, downward burl'd
By ALLAH's holt, sweeps with its burning hair
The waste of darkness. On and on, the bleak,
Bare ridges rose before her, came and pass'd;
And every flying leap with fresher blood
Her nostril stain'd, till SorUK's brow and breast
Were fleck'd with crimson foam. He would have
turn'd

To save his treasure, though himself were lost,
But Kubleh fiercely snapp'd the brazen rein.
At last, when through her spent and quivering frame
The sharp throes ran, our distant tents arose,
And with a neigh, whose shrill excess of joy
O'ercame its agony, she stopp'd and fell.
The Shammar men came round her as she lay,
And SoFUK raised her head and held it close
Against his breast. Her dull and glazing eye
Met his, and with a shuddering gasp she died
Then like a child his bursting grief made way
In passionate tears, and with him all the tribe
Wept for the faithful mare.

"They dug her grave
Amid Al-Hather's marbles, where she lies
Buried with ancient kings; and since that time
Was never seen, and will not be again,
O Arabs, though the world be doom'd to live
As many moons as count the desert sauds,
The like of wondrous Kubleh. Gon is great!"

CHARMIAN.

O DAUGHTER of the Sun!

Who gave the keys of passion unto thee? Who taught the powerful sorcery

Wherein my soul, too willing to be won, Still feebly struggles to be free,

But more than half undone?

Within the mirror of thine eyes,
Full of the sleep of warm Egyptian skies-
The sleep of lightning, bound in airy spell,
And deadlier, because invisible,-

I see the reflex of a feeling
Which was not, till I looked on thee:

A power, involved in mystery,

That shrinks, affrighted, from its own revealing.

Thou sitt'st in stately indolence,

Too calm to feel a breath of passion start
The listless fibres of thy sense,

The fiery slumber of thy heart.
Thine eyes are wells of darkness, by the val
Of languid lids half-sealed: the pale
And bloodless olive of thy face,

And the full, silent lips that wear
A ripe serenity of grace,

Are dark beneath the shadow of thy hair.
Not from the brow of templed ATHOR beams
Such tropic warmth along the path of dreains;
Not from the lips of hornéd Isis flows
Such sweetness of repose!

For thou art Passion's self, a goddess too,
And aught but worship never knew ;

And thus thy glances, calm and sure,
Look for accustomed homage, and betray
No effort to assert thy sway:
Thou deem'st my fealty secure.
O Sorceress! those looks unseal

The undisturbed mysteries that press
Too deep in nature for the heart to feel
Their terror and their loveliness.

Thine eyes are torches that illume

On secret shrines their unforeboded fires,
And fill the vaults of silence and of gloom
With the unresting life of new desires.
I follow where thei arrowy ray
Pierces the vail I would not tear away,
And with a dread delicious awe behold
Another gate or fe unfold,

Like the rapt neophyte who sces
Some march of grand Osirian mysteries.
The startled chambers I explore,

And every entrance open lies,

Forced by the magic thrill that runs before

Thy slowly-lifted eyes.

I tremble to the centre of my being

Thus to confess the spirit's poise o'erthrown, And all its guiding virtues blown

Like leaves before the whildwind's fury fleeing.

But see! one memory rises in my soul,

And, beaming steadily and clear, Scatters the lurid thunder-clouds that roll Through Passion's sultry atmosphere. An alchemy more potent borrow

From the dark eyes, enticing Sorceress,

THE poet came to the land of the East,
When Spring was in the air:
The earth was dressed for a wedding feast,
So young she seemed, and fair;
And the poet knew the land of the East-
His soul was native there.

All things to him were the visible forms
Of early and precious dreams-
Familiar visions that mocked his quest
Beside the western streams,

Or gleamed in the gold of the cloud unrolled
In the sunset's dying beams.

He looked above in the cloudless calm,
And the Sun sat on his throne;
The breath of gardens deep in balm,
Was all about him blown,

And a brother to him was the princely Palm,
For he cannot live alone.