Greece, Rome, nay, your namesake, old Roger,

With Truth's nameless delvers who wrought

In the dark mines of Truth, helped to prod your

Fine brain with the goad of their thought.

As mummy was prized for a rich hue The painter no elsewhere could find, So 't was buried men's thinking with which you

Gave the ripe mellow tone to your mind.

I heard the proud strawberry saying, "Only look what a ruby I've made!" It forgot how the bees in their maying

Had brought it the stuff for its trade.

And yet there's the half of a truth in it,

And my Lord might his copyright sue; For a thought 's his who kindles new youth in it,

Or so puts it as makes it more true.

The birds but repeat without ending
The same old traditional notes,
Which some, by more happily blending,
Seem to make over new in their
throats;

And we men through our old bit of song

run,

Until one just improves on the rest, And we call a thing his, in the long

run,

Who utters it clearest and best.

AUSPEX.

My heart, I cannot still it,
Nest that had song-birds in it;
And when the last shall go,
The dreary days, to fill it,
Instead of lark or linnet,

Shall whirl dead leaves and snow.

THE LESSON.

Had they been swallows only,
Without the passion stronger
That skyward longs and sings, -
Woe's me, I shall be lonely
When I can feel no longer
The impatience of their wings!

A moment, sweet delusion,
Like birds the brown leaves hover;
But it will not be long
Before their wild confusion
Fall wavering down to cover
The poet and his song.

THE PREGNANT COMMENT.
OPENING one day a book of mine,
I absent, Hester found a line
Praised with a pencil-mark, and this
She left transfigured with a kiss.

When next upon the page I chance,
Like Poussin's nymphs my pulses dance,
And whirl my fancy where it sees
Pan piping 'neath Arcadian trees,
Whose leaves no winter-scenes rehearse,
Still young and glad as Homer's verse.
"What mean," I ask, "these sudden
joys?

This feeling fresher than a boy's?
What makes this line, familiar long,
New as the first bird's April song?
I could, with sense illumined thus,
Clear doubtful texts in Eschylus!"

Laughing, one day she gave the key,
My riddle's open-sesame;

Then added, with a smile demure, Whose downcast lids veiled triumph

Speech of poet, speech of lover.
If she deign to lift you there,
Murmur what I may not dare;
In that archway, pearly-pink
As the Dawn's untrodden brink,
Murmur, Excellent and good,
Beauty's best in every mood,
Never common, never tame,
Changeful fair as windwaved flame ".
Nay, I maunder; this she hears
Every day with mocking ears,
With a brow not sudden-stained
With the flush of bliss restrained,
With no tremor of the pulse
More than feels the dreaming dulse
In the midmost ocean's caves,
When a tempest heaps the waves.
Thou must woo her in a phrase
Mystic as the opal's blaze,
Which pure maids alone can see
When their lovers constant be.
I with thee a secret share,
Half a hope, and half a prayer,
Though no reach of mortal skill
Ever told it all, or will;

FITZ ADAM'S STORY.

[The greater part of this poem was written many years ago as part of a larger one, to be called "The Nooning," made up of tales in verse, some of them grave, some comic. It gives me a sad pleasure to remember that I was encouraged in this project by my friend the late Arthur Hugh Clough.]

THE next whose fortune 't was a tale to tell

Was one whom men, before they thought, loved well,

And after thinking wondered why they did,

For half he seemed to let them, half forbid,

And wrapped him so in humors, sheath on sheath,

"T was hard to guess the mellow soul beneath;

But, once divined, you took him to your heart,

While he appeared to bear with you as

part

Of life's impertinence, and once a year Betrayed his true self by a smile or tear, Or rather something sweetly-shy and loath,

Withdrawn ere fully shown, and mixed of both.

A cynic? Not precisely: one who thrust Against a heart too prone to love and trust,

Who so despised false sentiment he knew

Scarce in himself to part the false and true,

And strove to hide, by roughening-o'er the skin,

Those cobweb nerves he could not dull within.

Gentle by birth, but of a stem decayed,

Keen as an acid for an alkali, Yet you could feel, through his sardonic tone,

He loved them all, unless they were his

own.

You might have called him, with his humorous twist,

A kind of human entomologist: As these bring home, from every walk they take,

Their hat-crowns stuck with bugs of curious make,

So he filled all the lining of his head
With characters impaled and ticketed,
And had a cabinet behind his eyes
For all they caught of mortal oddities.
He might have been a poet - many

worse

But that he had, or feigned, contempt of verse;

Called it tattooing language, and held rhymes

The young world's lullaby of ruder times.

Bitter in words, too indolent for gall,
He satirized himself the first of all,
In men and their affairs could find no law,
And was the ill logic that he thought he

saw.

Scratching a match to light his pipe

anew,

With eyes half shut some musing whiffs he drew,

And thus began: "I give you all my word,

I think this mock-Decameron absurd; Boccaccio's garden! how bring that to pass

In our bleak clime save under double glass?

The moral east-wind of New England life

Would snip its gay luxuriance like a knife;

Mile-deep the glaciers brooded here, they say,

Through ons numb; we feel their chill to-day.

These foreign plants are but half-hardy still,

Die on a south, and on a north wall chill.

Had we stayed Puritans! They had some heat

(Though whence derived I have my own conceit),

But you have long ago raked up their fires;

Where they had faith, you 've ten shamGothic spires.

Why more exotics? Try your native vines,

And in some thousand years you may have wines;

Your present grapes are harsh, all pulps and skins,

And want traditions of ancestral bins That saved for evenings round the polished board

Old lava-fires, the sun-steeped hillside's hoard.

Without a Past, you lack that southern wall

O'er which the vines of Poesy should crawl;

Still they're your only hope; no midnight oil

Makes up for virtue wanting in the soil;

Manure them well and prune them; 't won't be France, Nor Spain, nor Italy, but there's your chance.

You have one story-teller worth a score Of dead Boccaccios, - nay, add twenty

more,

A hawthorn asking spring's most dainty breath,

And him you 're freezing pretty well to death.

However, since you say so, I will tease My memory to a story by degrees, Though you will cry, Enough!' I'm wellnigh sure,

Ere I have dreamed through half my

overture.

Stories were good for men who had no books,

(Fortunate race!) and built their nests like rooks

In lonely towers, to which the Jongleur brought

His pedler's box of cheap and tawdry thought,

With here and there a fancy fit to see Wrought to quaint grace in golden filigree,

Some ring that with the Muse's finger yet

Is warm, like Aucassin and Nicolete; The morning newspaper has spoilt his trade,

(For better or for worse, I leave unsaid,)