THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY.·

THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY. | Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain

"COME forth!" my catbird calls to me,

And bubbling o'er with mingled fan- The magical moonlight then

The roar of the brook in the glen

Came dim from the distance blown;
The wind through its glooms sang low,
And it swayed to and fro
With delight as it stood,
In the wonderful wood,
Long ago!

O my life, have we not had seasons
That only said, Live and rejoice?
That asked not for causes and reasons,

But made us all feeling and voice? When we went with the winds in their blowing,

When Nature and we were peers, And we seemed to share in the flowing Of the inexhaustible years?

Have we not from the earth drawn
juices

Too fine for earth's sordid uses?
Have I heard, have I seen

All I feel and I know?
Doth my heart overween?
Or could it have been
Long ago?

Sometimes a breath floats by me,

An odor from Dreamland sent,
That makes the ghost seem nigh me
Of a splendor that came and went,
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not
In what diviner sphere,

Of memories that stay not and go not,
Like music heard once by an ear

That cannot forget or reclaim it,
A something so shy, it would shame
it

To make it a show,

THE FOOT-PATH.

IT mounts athwart the windy hill

Through sallow slopes of upland bare, And Fancy climbs with foot-fall still

Its narrowing curves that end in air.

By day, a warmer-hearted blue

Stoops softly to that topmost swell; Its thread-like windings seem a clew To gracious climes where all is well. By night, far yonder, I surmise

An ampler world than clips my ken,
Where the great stars of happier skies
Commingle nobler fates of men.

I look and long, then haste me home,
Still master of my secret rare;
Once tried, the path would end in Rome,
But now it leads me everywhere.

Forever to the new it guides,

From former good, old overmuch; What Nature for her poets hides, 'T is wiser to divine than clutch.

The bird I list hath never come

Within the scope of mortal ear;
My prying step would make him dumb,
And the fair tree, his shelter, sear.

Behind the hill, behind the sky,
Behind my inmost thought, he sings;
No feet avail; to hear it nigh,

The song itself must lend the wings.

Sing on, sweet bird close hid, and raise
Those angel stairways in my brain,

A something too vague, could I That climb from these low-vaulted days

name it,

For others to know,

As if I had lived it or dreamed it,
As if I had acted or schemed it,
Long ago!

And yet, could I live it over,

This life that stirs in my brain, Could I be both maiden and lover, Moon and tide, bee and clover,

As I seem to have been, once again,
Could I but speak and show it,

This pleasure more sharp than pain,
That baffles and lures me so,
The world should not lack a poet,
Such as it had

In the ages glad,
Long ago!

To spacious sunshines far from pain.