The poetical works of James Russell Lowell. Household ed

Look! look! that livid flash! And instantly follows the rattling thunder,

As if some cloud-crag, split asunder,

Fell, splintering with a ruinous crash,

On the Earth, which crouches in silence under;

And now a solid gray wall of rain Shuts off the landscape, mile by mile; For a breath's space I see the blue wood again,

And ere the next heart-beat, the windhurled pile,

That seemed but now a league aloof, Bursts crackling o'er the sun-parched roof; Against the windows the storm comes dashing,

Through tattered foliage the hail tears crashing,

The blue lightning flashes,
The rapid hail clashes,
The white waves are tumbling,
And, in one baffled roar,
Like the toothless sea mumbling
A rock-bristled shore,
The thunder is rumbling
And crashing and crumbling,
Will silence return nevermore ?

Hush! Still as death,

The tempest holds his breath As from a sudden will; The rain stops short, but from the

eaves

You see it drop, and hear it from the leaves,

All is so bodingly still;
Again, now, now, again
Plashes the rain in heavy gouts,

Gone, gone, so soon! No more my half-crazed fancy there,

Can shape a giant in the air,

No more I see his streaming hair, The writhing portent of his form ;The pale and quiet moon Makes her calm forehead bare, And the last fragments of the storm, Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea, Silent and few, are drifting over me.

Such is true Love, which steals into the

heart

With feet as silent as the lightsome dawn That kisses smooth the rough brows of the dark,

And hath its will through blissful gentleness,

Not like a rocket, which, with savage glare,

Whirs suddenly up, then bursts, and leaves the night

Painfully quivering on the dazed eyes; A love that gives and takes, that seeth faults,

Not with flaw-seeking eyes like needle points,

But loving-kindly ever looks them down With the o'ercoming faith of meek forgiveness;

A love that shall be new and fresh each
hour,

As is the golden mystery of sunset,
Or the sweet coming of the evening-star,
Alike, and yet most unlike, every day,
And seeming ever best and fairest now;
A love that doth not kneel for what it
seeks,

But faces Truth and Beauty as their
peer,

Showing its worthiness of noble thoughts
By a clear sense of inward nobleness;
A love that in its object findeth not
All grace and beauty, and enough to sate
Its thirst of blessing, but, in all of good
Found there, it sees but Heaven-granted
types

Of good and beauty in the soul of man,
And traces, in the simplest heart that
beats,

A family-likeness to its chosen one,
That claims of it the rights of brother-
hood.

For love is blind but with the fleshly
eye,

That so its inner sight may be more clear;
And outward shows of beauty only so
Are needful at the first, as is a hand
To guide and to uphold an infant's steps:
Great spirits need them not : their earnest
look

Pierces the body's mask of thin disguise,
And beauty ever is to them revealed,
Behind the unshapeliest, meanest lump
of clay,

With arms outstretched and eager face
ablaze,

Yearning to be but understood and loved.

TO PERDITA, SINGING.
THY voice is like a fountain,
Leaping up in clear moonshine;
Silver, silver, ever mounting,
Ever sinking,

Without thinking,

To that brimful heart of thine.
Every sad and happy feeling,
Thou hast had in bygone years,
Through thy lips comes stealing, steal-
ing,
Clear and low;

All thy smiles and all thy tears
In thy voice awaken,

And sweetness, wove of joy and woe,

From their teaching it hath taken :
Feeling and music move together,
Like a swan and shadow ever
Floating on a sky-blue river
In a day of cloudless weather.

It hath caught a touch of sadness,

Yet it is not sad;

It hath tones of clearest gladness,
Yet it is not glad;

A dim, sweet twilight voice it is
Where to-day's accustomed blue
Is over-grayed with memories,

With starry feelings quivered through.

Thy voice is like a fountain
Leaping up in sunshine bright,

Its clear droppings, lone and single,
And I never weary counting
Or when in one full gush they mingle,
Shooting in melodious light.

Thine is music such as yields
Feelings of old brooks and fields,
And, around this pent-up room,
Sheds a woodland, free perfume;
O, thus forever sing to me!
O, thus forever!
The green, bright grass of childhood
bring to me,

Flowing like an emerald river,
And the bright blue skies above!
O, sing them back, as fresh as ever,
Into the bosom of my love,
The sunshine and the merriment,
The unsought, evergreen content,

Of that never cold time,
The joy, that, like a clear breeze, went
Through and through the old time!

Peace sits within thine eyes,

With white hands crossed in joyful rest,

While, through thy lips and face, arise
The melodies from out thy breast;
She sits and sings,
With folded wings

And white arms crost,
"Weep not for bygone things,
They are not lost :

The beauty which the summer time
O'er thine opening spirit shed,
The forest oracles sublime
That filled thy soul with joyous dread,
The scent of every smallest flower
That made thy heart sweet for an
hour,

Yea, every holy influence,
Flowing to thee, thou knewest not
whence,

In thine eyes to-day is seen,
Fresh as it hath ever been;
Promptings of Nature, beckonings
sweet,

Whatever led thy childish feet,
Still will linger unawares
The guiders of thy silver hairs;
Every look and every word
Which thou givest forth to-day,
Tell of the singing of the bird
Whose music stilled thy boyish play."

For yet no moon had risen:
Its only voice a vast dumb moan,
Of utterless anguish speaking,
It lay unhopefully alone,

And lived but in an aimless seeking.

So was my soul; but when 't was full
Of unrest to o'erloading,
A voice of something beautiful

Whispered a dim foreboding,
And yet so soft, so sweet, so low,
It had not more of joy than woe;
And, as the sea doth oft lie still,

Making its waters meet, As if by an unconscious will,

For the moon's silver feet,
So lay my soul within mine eyes
When thou, its guardian moon, didst rise.

And now, howe'er its waves above
May toss and seem uneaseful,
One strong, eternal law of Love,

With guidance sure and peaceful,
As calm and natural as breath,
Moves its great deeps through life and
death.

REMEMBERED MUSIC.

A FRAGMENT.

THICK-RUSHING, like an ocean vast
The notes crowd heavily and fast
Of bisons the far prairie shaking,
As surfs, one plunging while the last
Draws seaward from its foamy breaking.
Or in low murmurs they began,

Rising and rising momently,
As o'er a harp Æolian

A fitful breeze, until they ran

Up to a sudden ecstasy.

And then, like minute-drops of rain
Ringing in water silverly,
They lingering dropped and dropped
again,

Till it was almost like a pain

To listen when the next would be.

SONG.

TO M. L.

A LILY thou wast when I saw thee first,
A lily-bud not opened quite,
That hourly grew more pure and
white,

By morning, and noontide, and evening | As if thy natal stars were flowers

nursed:

That shook their seeds round thee on earth.

And thou, to lull thine infant rest,
Wast cradled like an Indian child;
All pleasant winds from south and west
With lullabies thine ears beguiled,
Rocking thee in thine oriole's nest,
Till Nature looked at thee and smiled.

Thine every fancy seems to borrow
A sunlight from thy childish years,
Making a golden cloud of sorrow,

A hope-lit rainbow out of tears,
Thy heart is certain of to-morrow,
Though 'yond to-day it never peers.

I would more natures were like thine,
Whose sad thoughts, even, leap and shine,
So innocently wild and free,
Like sunny wavelets in the sea,
Making us mindless of the brine,
In gazing on the brilliancy.

THE FOUNTAIN.

INTO the sunshine,
Full of the light,
Leaping and flashing
From morn till night!

Into the moonlight, Whiter than snow, Waving so flower-like When the winds blow!

Into the starlight Rushing in spray, Happy at midnight, Happy by day!

Ever in motion,
Blithesome and cheery,
Still climbing heavenward,
Never aweary :—

Glad of all weathers,

Still seeming best, Upward or downward, Motion thy rest ;

Full of a nature Nothing can tame, Changed every moment, Ever the same; —

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