yours;

Had the World tempted, all its chariest doors

Had swung on flattered hinges to admit Such high-bred manners, such good-natured wit;

At courts, in senates, who so fit to serve?
And both invited, but you would not swerve,
All meaner prizes waiving that you might
In civic duty spend your heat and light,
Unpaid, untrammelled, with a sweet disdain
Refusing posts men grovel to attain.
Good Man all own you; what is left me,
then,

To heighten praise with but Good Citizen?

But why this praise to make you blush and stare,

And give a backache to your Easy-Chair?
Old Crestien rightly says no language can
Express the worth of a true Gentleman,
And I agree; but other thoughts deride
My first intent, and lure my pen aside.
Thinking of you, I see my firelight glow
On other faces, loved from long ago,
Dear to us both, and all these loves com-
bine

With this I send and crowd in every line;
Fortune with me was in such generous mood
That all my friends were yours, and all
were good;

Three generations come when one I call, And the fair grandame, youngest of them all,

In her own Florida who found and sips The fount that fled from Ponce's longing

lips.

How bright they rise and wreathe my hearthstone round,

Divine my thoughts, reply without a sound, And with them many a shape that memory

sees,

As dear as they, but crowned with aureoles

these!

What wonder if, with protest in my thought, Arrived, I find 't was only love I brought? I came with protest; Memory barred the road

Till I repaid you half the debt I owed.

No, 't was not to bring laurels that I came,
Nor would you wish it, daily seeing fame,
(Or our cheap substitute, unknown of yore,)
Dumped like a load of coal at every door,
Mime and hetæra getting equal weight
With him whose toils heroic saved the State.
But praise can harm not who so calmly

met

Slander's worst word, nor treasured up the debt,

Knowing, what all experience serves to show,

No mud can soil us but the mud we throw. You have heard harsher voices and more loud,

As all must, not sworn liegemen of the crowd,

And far aloof your silent mind could keep As when, in heavens with winter-midnight deep,

The perfect moon hangs thoughtful, nor can know

What hounds her lucent calm drives mad below.

But to my business, while you rub your

eyes

And wonder how you ever thought me wise. Dear friend and old, they say you shake your head

And wish some bitter words of mine unsaid:

I wish they might be, there we are agreed;

I hate to speak, still more what makes the need;

But I must utter what the voice within Dictates, for acquiescence dumb were sin; I blurt ungrateful truths, if so they be, That none may need to say them after me. 'T were my felicity could I attain The temperate zeal that balances your brain;

But nature still o'erleaps reflection's plan,

I love too well the pleasures of retreat Safe from the crowd and cloistered from the street;

The fire that whispers its domestic joy, Flickering on walls that knew me still a boy,

And knew my saintly father; the full days, Not careworn from the world's soul-squandering ways,

Calm days that loiter with snow-silent tread,

Nor break my commune with the undying dead;

Truants of Time, to-morrow like to-day, That come unbid, and claimless glide away By shelves that sun them in the indulgent Past,

Where Spanish castles, even, were built to last,

Where saint and sage their silent vigil keep, And wrong hath ceased or sung itself to sleep.

Dear were my walks, too, gathering fra

Of lake and stream, and the sky's downy brood,

Of roads sequestered rimmed with sallow sod,

But friends with hardhack, aster, goldenrod,

Or succory keeping summer long its trust Of heaven-blue fleckless from the eddying dust:

These were my earliest friends, and latest too,

Still unestranged, whatever fate may do. For years I had these treasures, knew their worth,

Estate most real man can have on earth.

I sank too deep in this soft-stuffed repose That hears but rumors of earth's wrongs and woes;

Too well these Capuas could my muscles waste,

Not void of toils, but toils of choice and taste;

These still had kept me could I but have

quelled

The Puritan drop that in my veins rebelled. But there were times when silent were my books

As jailers are, and gave me sullen looks, When verses palled, and even the woodland

path,

By innocent contrast, fed my heart with

wrath,

And I must twist my little gift of words
Into a scourge of rough and knotted cords
Unmusical, that whistle as they swing
To leave on shameless backs their purple
sting.

How slow Time comes! Gone, who so swift as he?

Add but a year, 't is half a century

Since the slave's stifled moaning broke my sleep,

Heard 'gainst my will in that seclusion deep,

Haply heard louder for the silence there, And so my fancied safeguard made my

snare.

After that moan had sharpened to a cry, And a cloud, hand-broad then, heaped all our sky

With its stored vengeance, and such thunders stirred

As heaven's and earth's remotest chambers heard.

To check the items in the bitter list
Of all I counted on and all I mist.
Only three instances I choose from all,
And each enough to stir a pigeon's gall:
Office a fund for ballot-brokers made
To pay the drudges of their gainful trade;
Our cities taught what conquered cities
feel

By ædiles chosen that they might safely steal;

And gold, however got, a title fair
To such respect as only gold can bear.
I seem to see this; how shall I gainsay
What all our journals tell me every day?
Poured our young martyrs their high-
hearted blood

That we might trample to congenial mud
The soil with such a legacy sublimed?
Methinks an angry scorn is here well-
timed:

Where find retreat? How keep reproach at bay?

Where'er I turn some scandal fouls the way.

Dear friend, if any man I wished to please, 'T were surely you whose humor's honied

Was I too bitter? Who his phrase can choose

That sees the life-blood of his dearest ooze ?

I loved my Country so as only they
Who love a mother fit to die for may;

I loved her old renown, her stainless fame,

What better proof than that I loathed her shame?

That many blamed me could not irk me long,

But, if you doubted, must I not be wrong? "T is not for me to answer: this I know, That man or race so prosperously low

Past my next milestone waits my seventieth year.

I mount no longer when the trumpets call;

My battle-harness idles on the wall, The spider's castle, camping-ground of dust,

Not without dints, and all in front, I trust. Shivering sometimes it calls me as it hears Afar the charge's tramp and clash of spears;

But 't is such murmur only as might be The sea-shell's lost tradition of the sea, That makes me muse and wonder Where? and When?

While from my cliff I watch the waves of

Instincts, if less imperious, yet more

strong,

And happy in the toil that ends with song.

Home am I come: not, as I hoped might be,

To the old haunts, too full of ghosts for me, But to the olden dreams that time endears,

And the loved books that younger grow with years;

To country rambles, timing with my tread Some happier verse that carols in my head,

Yet all with sense of something vainly mist,

Of something lost, but when I never wist. How empty seems to me the populous street,

One figure gone I daily loved to meet,
The clear, sweet singer with the crown of

Float unattained in silent empery,

II. SENTIMENT

ENDYMION

A MYSTICAL COMMENT ON TITIAN'S 66 SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE"

I

My day began not till the twilight fell, And, lo, in ether from heaven's sweetest well,

The New Moon swam divinely isolate
In maiden silence, she that makes my fate
Haply not knowing it, or only so
As I the secrets of my sheep may know;
Nor ask I more, entirely blest if she,
In letting me adore, ennoble me

To height of what the Gods meant making man,

As only she and her best beauty can.
Mine be the love that in itself can find
Seed of white thoughts, the lilies of the
mind,

Seed of that glad surrender of the will That finds in service self's true purpose still;

Love that in outward fairness sees the tent
Pitched for an inmate far more excellent;
Love with a light irradiate to the core,
Lit at her lamp, but fed from inborn