With skill of late disused, each tone Of the Lesboum barbiton,

At mastery, through long finger-ache, At length arrived.

II

As I read on, what changes steal
O'er me and through, from head to heel?
A rapier thrusts coat-skirt aside,

My rough Tweeds bloom to silken pride,
Who was it laughed? Your hand, Dick
Steele !

Down vistas long of clipt charmille Watteau as Pierrot leads the reel; Tabor and pipe the dancers guide As I read on.

While in and out the verses wheel
The wind-caught robes trim feet reveal,
Lithe ankles that to music glide,
But chastely and by chance descried;
Art? Nature? Which do I most feel
As I read on?

TO C. F. BRADFORD

ON THE GIFT OF A MEERSCHAUM PIPE

THE pipe came safe, and welcome too,
As anything must be from you;
A meerschaum pure, 't would float as light
As she the girls call Amphitrite.
Mixture divine of foam and clay,
From both it stole the best away:
Its foam is such as crowns the glow
Of beakers brimmed by Veuve Clicquot;
Its clay is but congested lymph

Jove chose to make some choicer nymph;
And here combined, — why, this must be
The birth of some enchanted sea,
Shaped to immortal form, the type
And very Venus of a pipe.

While slowly o'er its candid bowl
The color deepens (as the soul
That burns in mortals leaves its trace
Of bale or beauty on the face),
I'll think, So let the essence rare
Of years consuming make me fair;
So, 'gainst the ills of life profuse,
Steep me in some narcotic juice;
And if my soul must part with all
That whiteness which we greenness call,
Smooth back, O Fortune, half thy frown,
And make me beautifully brown!

Dream-forger, I refill thy cup
With reverie's wasteful pittance up,
And while the fire burns slow away,
Hiding itself in ashes gray,

I'll think, As inward Youth retreats,
Compelled to spare his wasting heats,
When Life's Ash-Wednesday comes about,
And my head's gray with fires burnt out,
While stays one spark to light the eye,
With the last flash of memory,
'T will leap to welcome C. F. B.,
Who sent my favorite pipe to me.

BANKSIDE

(HOME OF EDMUND QUINCY)

DEDHAM, MAY 21, 1877

Edmund Quincy was eleven years the senior of Lowell, but their common labors in the early days of the anti-slavery movement, and their congeniality of temper and wit, made them very intimate friends.

I

I CHRISTENED you in happier days, before These gray forebodings on my brow were seen;

TRUE as the sun's own work, but more refined,

It tells of love behind the artist's eye, Of sweet companionships with earth and sky,

And summers stored, the sunshine of the mind.

What peace! Sure, ere you breathe, the fickle wind

Will break its truce and bend that grassplume high,

Scarcely yet quiet from the gilded fly
That flits a more luxurious perch to find.
Thanks for a pleasure that can never pall,
A serene moment, deftly caught and kept
To make immortal summer on my wall.
Had he who drew such gladness ever
wept ?

Ask rather could he else have seen at all,
Or grown in Nature's mysteries an adept?

WITH AN ARMCHAIR

I.

ABOUT the oak that framed this chair, of old

The seasons danced their round; delighted wings

Brought music to its boughs; shy wood land things

Shared its broad roof, 'neath whose green glooms grown bold,

Lovers, more shy than they, their secret told;

The resurrection of a thousand springs Swelled in its veins, and dim imaginings Teased them, perchance, of life more manifold.

Such shall it know when its proud arms enclose

My Lady Goshawk, musing here at rest,
Careless of him who into exile goes,
Yet, while his gift by those fair limbs is
prest,

Through some fine sympathy of nature knows

That, seas between us, she is still his guest.

2.

Yet sometimes, let me dream, the conscious wood

A momentary vision may renew

Of him who counts it treasure that he

knew,

Though but in passing, such a priceless

good,

And, like an elder brother, felt his mood Uplifted by the spell that kept her true, Amid her lightsome compeers, to the few That wear the crown of serious womanhood:

Were he so happy, think of him as one Who in the Louvre or Pitti feels his soul Rapt by some dead face which, till then

unseen,

Moves like a memory, and, till life outrun, Is vexed with vague misgiving past control,

Of nameless loss and thwarted might-havebeen.

E. G. DE R.

WHY should I seek her spell to decompose Or to its source each rill of influence trace That feeds the brimming river of her grace?

The petals numbered but degrade to prose Summer's triumphant poem of the rose: Enough for me to watch the wavering chase,

Like wind o'er grass, of moods across her face,

Fairest in motion, fairer in repose.