Snap, chord of manhood's tenser | While Roundheads prim, with point of
To-day I will be a boy again;
The mind's pursuing element,
Like a bow slackened and unbent,
In some dark corner shall be leant.
The robin sings, as of old, from the limb!
The catbird croons in the lilac-bush! Through the dim arbor, himself more dim,
Silently hops the hermit-thrush,
fox, Probe wainscot-chink and empty box; Here no hoarse-voiced iconoclast Insults thy statues, royal Past; Myself too prone the axe to wield, I touch the silver side of the shield With lance reversed, and challenge peace,
A willing convert of the trees.
How chanced it that so long I tost
The withered leaves keep dumb for him; A cable's length from this rich coast,
The irreverent buccaneering bee
Hath stormed and rifled the nunnery
Of the lily, and scattered the sacred floor
With haste-dropt gold from shrine to
door;
The rich, milk-tingeing buttercup
Its tiny polished urn holds up,
Filled with ripe summer to the edge,
The sun in his own wine to pledge;
And our tall elm, this hundredth year
Doge of our leafy Venice here,
Who, with an annual ring, doth wed
The blue Adriatic overhead,
Shadows with his palatial mass
The deep canals of flowing grass.
O unestranged birds and bees!
O face of Nature always true!
O never-unsympathizing trees!
O never-rejecting roof of blue,
Whose rash disherison never falls
On us unthinking prodigals,
Yet who convictest all our ill,
So grand and unappeasable!
Methinks my heart from each of these
Plucks part of childhood back again,
Long there imprisoned, as the breeze
Doth every hidden odor seize
Of wood and water, hill and plain;
Once more am I admitted peer
In the upper house of Nature here,
And feel through all my pulses run
The royal blood of breeze and sun.
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With foolish anchors hugging close
The beckoning weeds and lazy ooze,
Nor had the wit to wreck before
On this enchanted island's shore,
Whither the current of the sea,
With wiser drift, persuaded me?
O, might we but of such rare days
Build
up the spirit's dwelling-place!
A temple of so Parian stone
Would brook a marble god alone,
The statue of a perfect life,
Far-shrined from earth's bestaining
strife.
Alas! though such felicity
In our vext world here may not be,
Yet, as sometimes the peasant's hut
Shows stones which old religion cut
With text inspired, or mystic sign
Of the Eternal and Divine,
Torn from the consecration deep
Of some fallen nunnery's mossy sleep,
So, from the ruins of this day
Crumbling in golden dust away,
The soul one gracious block may draw,
Carved with some fragment of the law,
Which, set in life's prosaic wall,
Old benedictions may recall,
And lure some nunlike thoughts to take
Their dwelling here for memory's sake.
IN THE BRANCACCI CHAPEL.
He came to Florence long ago,
And painted here these walls, that shone
For Raphael and for Angelo,
With secrets deeper than his own,
Then shrank into the dark again,
And died, we know not how or when.
The shadows deepened, and I turned
Half sadly from the fresco grand;
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, *.OX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS
"And is this," mused I, "all ye earned, | He thinks how happy is my arm
High-vaulted brain and cunning hand,
That ye to greater men could teach
The skill yourselves could never reach?"
'Neath its white-gloved and jewelled
load;
"And who were they," I mused, "that
wrought
Through pathless wilds, with labor long,
The highways of our daily thought?
Who reared those towers of earliest song
That lift us from the crowd to peace
Remote in sunny silences?"
Out clanged the Ave Mary bells,
And to my heart this message came:
Each clamorous throat among them tells
What strong-souled martyrs died in
flame
To make it possible that thou
And wishes me some dreadful harm,
Hearing the merry corks explode.
Meanwhile I inly curse the bore
Of hunting still the same old coon,
And envy him, outside the door,
In golden quiets of the moon.
The winter wind is not so cold
As the bright smile he sees me win,
Nor the host's oldest wine so old
As our poor gabble sour and thin.
I envy him the ungyved prance
With which his freezing feet he warms,
And drag my lady's-chains and dance
The galley-slave of dreary forms.
Shouldst here with brother sinners bow. O, could he have my share of din,
Thoughts that great hearts once broke
for, we
Breathe cheaply in the common air;
The dust we trample heedlessly
Throbbed once in saints and heroes rare,
Who perished, opening for their race
New pathways to the commonplace.
And I his quiet!-past a doubt
'T would still be one man bored within,
And just another bored without.
Nay, when, once paid my mortal fee,
Some idler on my headstone grim
Traces the moss-blurred name, will he
Think me the happier, or I him?
GODMINSTER CHIMES.
Henceforth, when rings the health to WRITTEN IN AID OF A CHIME OF BELLS
Who live in story and in song,
O nameless dead, that now repose
Safe in Oblivion's chambers strong,
One cup of recognition true
Shall silently be drained to you!
WITHOUT AND WITHIN.
My coachman, in the moonlight there,
Looks through the side-light of the
door;
I hear him with his brethren swear,
As I could do, but only more.
Flattening his nose against the pane,
He envies me my brilliant lot,
Breathes on his aching fists in vain,
And dooms me to a place more hot.
He sees me in to supper go,
A silken wonder by my side,
Bare arms, bare shoulders, and a row
Of flounces, for the door too wide.
FOR CHRIST CHURCH, CAMBRIDGE.
GODMINSTER? Is it Fancy's play?
I know not, but the word
Sings in my heart, nor can I say
Whether 't was dreamed or heard;
Yet fragrant in my mind it clings
As blossoms after rain,
And builds of half-remembered things
This vision in my brain.
Through aisles of long-drawn centuries
My spirit walks in thought,
And to that symbol lifts its eyes
Which God's own pity wrought;
From Calvary shines the altar's gleam,
The Church's East is there,
The Ages one great minster seem,
That throbs with praise and prayer.
And all the way from Calvary down
The carven pavement shows
Their graves who won the martyrs
And safe in God repose;
The saints of many a warring creed
Who now in heaven have learned
The figure of a woman veiled, that said, "My name is Duty, turn and follow me";
Something there was that chilled me in her voice;
I felt Youth's hand grow slack and cold in mine,
As if to be withdrawn, and I exclaimed: "O, leave the hot wild heart within my breast!
Duty comes soon enough, too soon comes Death;
This slippery globe of life whirls of itself, Hasting our youth away into the dark; These senses, quivering with electric heats,
Too soon will show, like nests on wintry boughs
Obtrusive emptiness, too palpable wreck, Which whistling north-winds line with downy snow
Sometimes, or fringe with foliaged rime, in vain,
Thither the singing birds no more re
Then glowed to me a maiden from the left,
With bosom half disclosed, and naked
More white and undulant than necks of
And all before her steps an influence ran Warm as the whispering South that opens buds
And swells the laggard sails of Northern May.
"I am called Pleasure, come with me!" she said,
Then laughed, and shook out sunshine from her hair,
Nor only that, but, so it seemed, shook
All memory too, and all the moonlit past,
Old loves, old aspirations, and old dreams,
More beautiful for being old and gone.
So we two went together; downward sloped
The path through yellow meads, or so I dreamed,
Yellow with sunshine and young green, but I
Saw naught nor heard, shut up in ons close joy;
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