V.

How looks Appledore in a storm? I have seen it when its crags seemed frantic,

Butting against the mad Atlantic, When surge on surge would heap enorme, Cliffs of emerald topped with snow, That lifted and lifted, and then let go A great white avalanche of thunder,

A grinding, blinding, deafening ire Monadnock might have trembled under; And the island, whose rock-roots pierce below

To where they are warmed with the central fire,

You could feel its granite fibres racked, As it seemed to plunge with a shudder and thrill

Right at the breast of the swooping hill,

And to rise again snorting a cataract Of rage-froth from every cranny and ledge,

While the sea drew its breath in hoarse and deep,

And the next vast breaker curled its edge,

Gathering itself for a mightier leap.

North, east, and south there are reefs and breakers

You would never dream of in smooth weather,

That toss and gore the sea for acres, Bellowing and gnashing and snarling together;

Look northward, where Duck Island lies,
And over its crown you will see arise,
Against a background of slaty skies,
A row of pillars still and white,
That glimmer, and then are out of
sight,

As if the moon should suddenly kiss, While you crossed the gusty desert by night,

The long colonnades of Persepolis; Look southward for White Island light, The lantern stands ninety feet o'er the tide; There is first a half-mile of tumult and fight,

Of dash and roar and tumble and fright, And surging bewilderment wild and wide,

Where the breakers struggle left and right,

Then a mile or more of rushing sea, And then the lighthouse slim and lone; And whenever the weight of ocean is thrown

Full and fair on White Island head,
A great mist-jotun you will see
Lifting himself up silently
High and huge o'er the lighthouse top,
With hands of wavering spray outspread,
Groping after the little tower,

That seems to shrink and shorten and
cower,

Till the monster's arms of a sudden drop,
And silently and fruitlessly
He sinks again into the sea.

You, meanwhile, where drenched you stand,

Awaken once more to the rush and roar,

And on the rock-point tighten your hand,

As you turn and see a valley deep,

That was not there a moment before, Suck rattling down between you and a heap

Of toppling billow, whose instant fall Must sink the whole island once for all,

Or watch the silenter, stealthier seas Feeling their way to you more and

Or surely the miracle vanisheth,

| Of that long cloud-bar in the West,
Whose nether edge, erelong, you see
The silvery chrism in turn anoint,
And then the tiniest rosy point
Touched doubtfully and timidly
Into the dark blue's chilly strip,
As some mute, wondering thing below,
Awakened by the thrilling glow,
Might, looking up, see Dian dip
One lucent foot's delaying tip
In Latmian fountains long ago.

Here is no startle of dreaming bird
Knew you what silence was before?
That sings in his sleep, or strives to
sing;

Nor noise of any living thing,
Here is no sough of branches stirred,
Such as one hears by night on shore;
Only, now and then, a sigh,
With fickle intervals between,
Such as Andromeda might have heard,
Sometimes far, and sometimes nigh,
And fancied the huge sea-beast unseen
Turning in sleep; it is the sea
That welters and wavers uneasily
Round the lonely reefs of Appledore.

THE WIND-HARP.

blue!

hair

Feeling their way to my sense, sang,
"Say whether

They sit all day by the greenwood tree,
The lover and loved, as it wont to
be,
When we

But grief conquered,

and all together

They swelled such weird murmur as haunts a shore

Of some planet dispeopled, more !"

"Never

AFTER THE BURIAL.

YES, faith is a goodly anchor;
When skies are sweet as a psalm,
At the bows it lolls so stalwart,
In bluff, broad-shouldered calm.

And when over breakers to leeward
The tattered surges are hurled,
It may keep our head to the tempest,
With its grip on the base of the world.

But, after the shipwreck, tell me
What help in its iron thews,
Still true to the broken hawser,
Deep down among sea-weed and ooze?

In the breaking gulfs of sorrow,
When the helpless feet stretch out
And find in the deeps of darkness
No footing so solid as doubt,

Then better one spar of Memory,
One broken plank of the Past,
That our human heart may cling to,
Though hopeless of shore at last!

To the spirit its splendid conjectures,
To the flesh its sweet despair,
Its tears o'er the thin-worn locket
With its anguish of deathless hair!

Immortal? I feel it and know it,
Who doubts it of such as she?
But that is the pang's very secret,
Immortal away from me.

There's a narrow ridge in the graveyard

Would scarce stay a child in his race,
But to me and my thought it is wider
Than the star-sown vague of Space.

Your logic, my friend, is perfect,
Your morals most drearily true;
But, since the earth clashed on her
coffin,

I keep hearing that, and not you.

Console if you will, I can bear it;
"T is a well-meant alms of breath;
But not all the preaching since Adam
Has made Death other than Death.

It is pagan; but wait till you feel it,
That jar of our earth, that dull shock
When the ploughshare of deeper pas-

sion

Tears down to our primitive rock.

Communion in spirit! Forgive me,
But I, who am earthy and weak,
Would give all my incomes from dream-
land

For a touch of her hand on my cheek.
That little shoe in the corner;
So worn and wrinkled and brown,
With its emptiness confutes you,
And argues your wisdom down.

THE DEAD HOUSE.

HERE once my step was quickened,
Here beckoned the opening door,
And welcome thrilled from the thresh-
old

To the foot it had known before.

A glow came forth to meet me From the flame that laughed in the grate,

And shadows adance on the ceiling,

Danced blither with mine for a mate.

"I claim you, old friend," yawned the arm-chair,

"This corner, you know, is your seat";

"Rest your slippers on me," beamed the fender,

"I brighten at touch of your feet."

"We know the practised finger,"

Said the books, "that seems like
brain";

And the shy page rustled the secret
It had kept till I came again.

Sang the pillow, "My down once quivered

On nightingales' throats that flew Through moonlit gardens of Hafiz

To gather quaint dreams for you."

Ah me, where the Past sowed heart'sease,

The Present plucks rue for us men! I come back that scar unhealing

Was not in the churchyard then.

But, I think, the house is unaltered,
I will go and beg to look
At the rooms that were once familiar
To my life as its bed to a brook.

Unaltered! Alas for the sameness That makes the change but more! "T is a dead man I see in the mirrors, "T is his tread that chills the floor!

To learn such a simple lesson,

Need I go to Paris and Rome, That the many make the household, But only one the home?

"T was just a womanly presence, An influence unexprest,

But a rose she had worn, on my gravesod

Were more than long life with the rest!

"T was a smile, 't was a garment's rustle, 'T was nothing that I can phrase, But the whole dumb dwelling grew conscious,

And put on her looks and ways.

Were it mine I would close the shutters,
Like lids when the life is fled,
And the funeral fire should wind it,
This corpse of a home that is dead.

For it died that autumn morning
When she, its soul, was borne
To lie all dark on the hillside

That looks over woodland and corn.

Thou only aspirest the more,
Unregretful the old leaves shedding
That fringed thee with music before,
And deeper thy roots embedding
In the grace and the beauty of yore;
Thou sigh'st not, "Alas, I am older,
The green of last summer is sear!"
But loftier, hopefuller, bolder,
Winnest broader horizons each year.

To me 't is not cheer thou art singing:
There's a sound of the sea,
O mournful tree,

In thy boughs forever clinging,
And the far-off roar

Of waves on the shore
A shattered vessel flinging.

As thou musest still of the ocean
On which thou must float at last,
And seem'st to foreknow
The shipwreck's woe

And the sailor wrenched from the broken mast,

Do I, in this vague emotion,
This sadness that will not pass,
Though the air throbs with wings,
And the field laughs and sings,
Do I forebode, alas!

The ship-building longer and wearier,
The voyage's struggle and strife,
And then the darker and drearier
Wreck of a broken life?

A MOOD.

I Go to the ridge in the forest
I haunted in days gone by,
But thou, O Memory, pourest
No magical drop in mine eye,
Nor the gleam of the secret restorest
That hath faded from earth and sky:
A Presence autumnal and sober
Invests every rock and tree,
And the aureole of October
Lights the maples, but darkens me.

Pine in the distance,
Patient through sun or rain,
Meeting with graceful persistence,
With yielding but rooted resistance,
The northwind's wrench and strain,
No memory of past existence
Brings thee pain;

Right for the zenith heading,
Friendly with heat or cold,

Thine arms to the influence spreading
Of the heavens, just from of old,