How would the victim to the flamen leap,

And life for life's redemption paid hold cheap!

But what resource when she herself descends

From her blue throne, and o'er her vassal bends

That shape thrice-deified by love, those eyes

Wherein the Lethe of all others lies? When my white queen of heaven's remoteness tires,

Herself against her other self conspires, Takes woman's nature, walks in mortal ways,

And finds in my remorse her beauty's praise?

Yet all would I renounce to dream again The dream in dreams fulfilled that made my pain,

My noble pain that heightened all my

years

more to see

Her from her sky there looking down at me!

VII.

Goddess, reclimb thy heaven, and be

once more

is the kind of ruin strange sights to

That

see

may have their teaching for you and me.

Perched on a saint cracked across when he fell;

But since I might chance give his meaning a wrench,

He

talking his patois and I EnglishFrench,

I'll put what he told me, preserving the tone,

In a rhymed prose that makes it half his, half my own.

An abbey-church stood here, once on a time,

Built as a death-bed atonement for crime :

'T was for somebody's sins, I know not whose ;

But sinners are plenty, and you can choose.

Though a cloister now of the duskwinged bat,

'T was rich enough once, and the brothers grew fat, Looser in girdle and purpler in jowl, Singing good rest to the founder's lost soul.

But one day came Northmen, and lithe tongues of fire

Lapped up the chapter-house, licked off the spire,

And left all a rubbish-heap, black and dreary,

Where only the wind sings miserere.

No priest has kneeled since at the altar's foot,

Whose crannies are searched by the nightshade's root,

Nor sound of service is ever heard, Except from throat of the unclean bird, Hooting to unassoiled shapes as they

pass

In midnights unholy his witches' mass, Or shouting "Ho! ho!" from the belfry high

As the Devil's sabbath-train whirls by.

But once a year, on the eve of All-Souls, Through these arches dishallowed the organ rolls,

Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work,

The chimes peal muffled with sea-mists mirk,

The skeleton windows are traced anew On the baleful flicker of corpse lights blue,

And the ghosts must come, so the legend saith,

To a preaching of Reverend Doctor Death.

For even our honeymoons must wane,
Convicted of green cheese by Reason.

And none will seem so safe from change,
Nor in such skies benignant hover,
As this, beneath whose witchery strange
You tread on rose-leaves with your
lover.

The glass unfilled all tastes can fit,

As round its brim Conjecture dances; For not Mephisto's self hath wit

To draw such vintages as Fancy's.

When our pulse beats its minor key, When play-time halves and schooltime doubles,

Age fills the cup with serious tea, Which once Dame Clicquot starred with bubbles.

"Fie, Mr. Graybeard! Is this wise?
Is this the moral of a poet,
Who, when the plant of Eden dies,
Is privileged once more to sow it?
"That herb of clay-disdaining root,
From stars secreting what it feeds on,
Is burnt-out passion's slag and soot
Fit soil to strew its dainty seeds on?

"Pray, why, if in Arcadia once,

Need one so soon forget the way there? Or why, once there, be such a dunce As not contentedly to stay there?" Dear child, 't was but a sorry jest,

And from my heart I hate the cynic Who makes the Book of Life a nest

For comments staler than rabbinic.

Then from the honeysuckle gray

The oriole with experienced quest
Twitches the fibrous bark away,

The cordage of his hammock-nest,
Cheering his labor with a note
Rich as the orange of his throat.

High o'er the loud and dusty road
The soft gray cup in safety swings,
To brim ere August with its load

Of downy breasts and throbbing
wings,

O'er which the friendly elm-tree heaves An emerald roof with sculptured eaves.

Below, the noisy World drags by

In the old way, because must,
The bride with heartbreak in her eye,
The mourner following hated dust:
Thy duty, winged flame of Spring,
Is but to love, and fly, and sing.

Oh, happy life, to soar and sway
Above the life by mortals led,
Singing the merry months away,

Master, not slave of daily bread,

Wherever sunshine beckons thee!

PALINODE. DECEMBER.

Like some lorn abbey now, the wood
Stands roofless in the bitter air;
In ruins on its floor is strewed

The carven foliage quaint and rare,
And homeless winds complain along
The columned choir once thrilled with

song.

And thou, dear nest, whence joy and praise

The thankful oriole used to pour, Swing'st empty while the north winds chase

Their snowy swarms from Labrador: But, loyal to the happy past,

I love thee still for what thou wast.

Ah, when the Summer graces flee

From other nests more dear than thou, And, where June crowded once, I see

Only bare trunk and disleaved bough; When springs of life that gleamed and gushed

Run chilled, and slower, and are hushed;

When our own branches, naked long,

The vacant nests of Spring betray, Nurseries of passion, love, and song

That vanished as our year grew gray; When Life drones o'er a tale twice told O'er embers pleading with the cold, —

I'll trust, that, like the birds of Spring,
Our good goes not without repair,
But only flies to soar and sing

Far off in some diviner air,
Where we shall find it in the calms
Of that fair garden 'neath the palms.

A YOUTHFUL EXPERIMENT IN ENGLISH HEXAMETERS.

IMPRESSIONS OF HOMER.

SOMETIMES COme pauses of calm, when the rapt bard, holding his heart back, Over his deep mind muses, as when o'er awestricken ocean Poises a heapt cloud luridly, ripening the gale and the thunder;

Slow rolls onward the verse with a long swell heaving and swinging, Seeming to wait till, gradually wid'ning from far-off horizons, Piling the deeps up, heaping the gladhearted surges before it, Gathers the thought as a strong wind darkening and cresting the tumult. Then every pause, every heave, each trough in the waves, has its meaning;

Full-sailed, forth like a tall ship steadies the theme, and around it, Leaping beside it in glad strength, running in wild glee beyond it Harmonies billow exulting and floating the soul where it lists them, Swaying the listener's fantasy hither and thither like driftweed.

BIRTHDAY VERSES. WRITTEN IN A CHILD'S ALBUM.

'T was sung of old in hut and hall How once a king in evil hour Hung musing o'er his castle wall, And, lost in idle dreams, let fall Into the sea his ring of power.

Then, let him sorrow as he might,
And pledge his daughter and his throne
To who restored the jewel bright,
The broken spell would ne'er unite;
The grim old ocean held its own.

Those awful powers on man that wait,
On man, the beggar or the king,
To hovel bare or hall of state
A magic ring that masters fate
With each succeeding birthday bring.

Therein are set four jewels rare:
Pearl winter, summer's ruby blaze,
Spring's emerald, and, than all more fair,
Fall's pensive opal, doomed to bear
A heart of fire bedreamed with haze.

To him the simple spell who knows
The spirits of the ring to sway,
Fresh power with every sunrise flows,
And royal pursuivants are those
That fly his mandates to obey.

But he that with a slackened will
Dreams of things past or things to be,

From him the charm is slipping still, And drops, ere he suspect the ill, Into the inexorable sea.

ESTRANGEMENT.

THE path from me to you that led, Untrodden long, with grass is grown, Mute carpet that his lieges spread

Before the Prince Oblivion
When he goes visiting the dead.

And who are they but who forget?
You, who my coming could surmise
Ere any hint of me as yet

Warned other ears and other eyes,
See the path blurred without regret.

But when I trace its windings sweet
With saddened steps, at every spot
That feels the memory in my feet,
Each grass-blade turns forget-me-not,
Where murmuring bees your name
repeat.

РНЕВЕ.

ERE pales in Heaven the morning star,
A bird, the loneliest of its kind,
Hears Dawn's faint footfall from afar
While all its mates are dumb and blind.

It is a wee sad-colored thing,
As shy and secret as a maid,
That, ere in choir the robins ring,
Pipes its own name like one afraid.

It seems pain-prompted to repeat
The story of some ancient ill,
But Phobe! Phoebe ! sadly sweet
Is all it says, and then is still.

It calls and listens. Earth and sky,
Hushed by the pathos of its fate,
Listen: no whisper of reply
Comes from its doom-dissevered mate.

Phœbe! it calls and calls again,
And Ovid, could he but have heard,
Had hung a legendary pain
About the memory of the bird;

A pain articulate so long

In penance of some mouldered crime Whose ghost still flies the Furies' thong Down the waste solitudes of time.