NIGHTWATCHES.

WHILE the slow clock, as they were miser's gold,

Counts and recounts the mornward steps of Time,

The darkness thrills with conscience of each crime

By Death committed, daily grown more bold.

Once more the list of all my wrongs is told,

And ghostly hands stretch to me from my prime

Helpless farewells, as from an alien clime;

For each new loss redoubles all the old. This morn 't was May; the blossoms were astir

With southern wind; but now the boughs are bent

With snow instead of birds, and all things freeze.

How much of all my past is dumb with her,

And of my future, too, for with her

Grim jest of fate! blind,

PESSIMOPTIMISM.

kind?

PRISON OF CERVANTES.

SEAT of all woes? Though Nature's firm decree

The narrowing soul with narrowing dungeon bind,

Yet was his free of motion as the wind, And held both worlds, of spirit and sense, in fee.

In charmed communion with his dual mind

He wandered Spain, himself both knight and hind,

Redressing wrongs he knew must ever be. His humor wise could see life's long deceit,

Man's baffled aims, nor therefore both despise;

His knightly nature could ill fortune greet

Like an old friend. Whose ever such kind eyes

That pierced so deep, such scope, save his whose feet

By Avon ceased 'neath the same April's skies?

THE EYE'S TREASURY.

GOLD of the reddening sunset, backward thrown

In largess on my tall paternal trees, Thou with false hope or fear didst never

tease

His heart that hoards thee; nor is childhood flown

From him whose life no fairer boon hath known

Than that what pleased him earliest still should please.

And who hath incomes safe from chance as these,

Gone in a moment, yet for life his own? All other gold is slave of earthward laws;

This to the deeps of ether takes its flight, And on the topmost leaves makes glorious pause

Of parting pathos ere it yield to night: So linger, as from me earth's light withdraws,

Dear touch of Nature, tremulously bright!

PESSIMOPTIMISM.

YE little think what toil it was to build A world of men imperfect even as this, Where we conceive of Good by what we miss,

Of Ill by that wherewith best days are filled;

A world whose every atom is self-willed, Whose corner-stone is propt on artifice, Whose joy is shorter-lived than woman's kiss.

Whose wisdom hoarded is but to be spilled.

Yet this is better than a life of caves, Whose highest art was scratching on a bone,

Or chipping toilsome arrowheads of flint; Better, though doomed to hear while Cleon raves,

To see wit's want eterned in paint or stone, wade the drain-drenched shoals of daily print.

And

THE BRAKES.

WHAT Countless years and wealth of brain were spent

To bring us hither from our caves and huts,

And trace through pathless wilds the deep-worn ruts

Of faith and habit, by whose deep indent Prudence may guide if genius be not lent,

Genius, not always happy when it shuts Its ears against the plodder's ifs and buts,

Hoping in one rash leap to snatch the

event.

The coursers of the sun, whose hoofs of flame

Consume morn's misty threshold, are

exact

As bankers' clerks, and all this starpoised frame,

One swerve allowed, were with convulsion rackt;

This world were doomed, should Dulness

A FOREBODING.

WHAT were the whole void world, if thou wert dead,

Whose briefest absence can eclipse my day,

And make the hours that danced with Time away

Drag their funereal steps with muffled head?

Through thee, meseems, the very rose is red,

From thee the violet steals its breath in May,

From thee draw life all things that grow not gray,

And by thy force the happy stars are sped.

Thou near, the hope of thee to overflow Fills all my earth and heaven, as when in Spring,

Ere April come, the birds and blossoms know,

And grasses brighten round her feet to cling;

fail, to tame

UNDER THE OCTOBER MAPLES.

WHAT mean these banners spread,
These paths with royal red
So gaily carpeted?
Comes there a prince to-day?
Such footing were too fine
For feet less argentine
Than Dian's own or thine,
Queen whom my tides obey.

Surely for thee are meant
These hues so orient
That with a sultan's tent
Each tree invites the sun;
Our Earth such homage pays,
So decks her dusty ways,
And keeps such holidays,
For one, and only one.

My brain shapes form and face,
Throbs with the rhythmic grace
And cadence of her pace
To all fine instincts true;
Her footsteps, as they pass,
Than moonbeams over grass
Fall lighter, and, alas,
More insubstantial too!

Love called, and I could not linger, But sought the forbidden tryst, As music follows the finger

Of the dreaming lutanist.

And though you had said it and said it, "We must not be happy to-day," Was I not wiser to credit

The fire in my feet than your Nay?

SCHERZO.

WHEN the down is on the chin
And the gold-gleam in the hair,
When the birds their sweethearts win
And champagne is in the air,
Love is here, and Love is there,
Love is welcome everywhere.

Summer's cheek too soon turns thin,
Days grow briefer, sunshine rare;
Autumn from his cannekin
Blows the froth to chase Despair:
Love is met with frosty stare,
Cannot house 'neath branches bare.

When new life is in the leaf
And new red is in the rose,
Though Love's Maytime be as brief
As a dragon-fly's repose,

Never moments come like those,
Be they Heaven or Hell: who knows?