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The magical moonlight then

Steeped every bough and cone ;
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 blow

ing,

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,

A something too vague, could I 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!

THE FOOT-PATH.

T 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 mý 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.

Jor M

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,
That climb from these low-vaulted days
To spacious sunshines far from pain.

Sing when thou wilt, enchantment fleet,
I leave thy covert haunt untrod,
And envy Science not her feat

To make a twice-told tale of God.

They said the fairies tript no more,
And long ago that Pan was dead;

MOU

T was but that fools preferred to bore
Earth's rind inch-deep for truth instead.

Pan leaps and pipes all summer long,
The fairies dance each full-mooned night,
Would we but doff our lenses strong,
And trust our wiser eyes' delight.

City of Elf-land, just without

Our seeing, marvel ever new, Glimpsed in fair weather, a sweet doubt Sketched-in, mirage-like, on the blue.

I build thee in yon sunset cloud,
Whose edge allures to climb the height;
I hear thy drowned bells, inly-loud,
From still pools dusk with dreams of night.

Thy gates are shut to hardiest will,

Thy countersign of long-lost speech, Those fountained courts, those chambers still, Fronting Time's far East, who shall reach ?

I know not, and will never pry,

But trust our human heart for all; Wonders that from the seeker fly

Into an open sense may fall.

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