The snake's wit evadeth not,
The charmed lip persuadeth not;
So thoroughly it despiseth
The thing thy band prizeth,
Though the sun were thy clothing,

It should count thee for nothing.

Thine own eye divineth thee, Thine own soul arraigneth thee; God himself cannot shrive thee Till that judge forgive thee.

THE FLUTE

PUFFED up with luring to her knees
The rabbits from the blackberries,
Quaint little satyrs, and shy and mute,
That limped reluctant to the flute,
She needs must seek the forest's womb
And pipe up tigers from green gloom.

Grouped round the dreaming oaten quill
Those sumptuous savages were still,
Rich spectral beasts that feared to stir,
And haughty and wistful gazed on her,
And swayed their sleepy masks in time
And growled a drowsy under-rhyme.

Tune done, that agile fancy stopped,
The lingering notes in mid-air dropped;
The flute stole from her parted kiss,
Her cheeks for sorcery burned with bliss.
Then grew a deadly muttering there;
And sudden yellow eyes aglaro
Blazed furious over wrinkled lips
And teeth on her. Her finger-tips
Trembled a little as they woke
The second tune beneath the oak,

A lilt that charmed and lulled to mute
The uneasy soul within the brute.

And all that warbling ecstasy
Was winged with terror, and daintily
Ceased on the wild and tragic face
And desperate huddle of her grace:
For with the hush began to gride
Their sullen, soulless, evil-eyed,
Intolerable rage, blown hot

Upon her. The third tune was caught

A SONG WITH A DISCORD THOUGH Winter come with dripping

skies, And laden winds and strong,.

Yet I'll read summer in her eyes
Whose voice is summer's song.

Who grieves because the world is old,
Or cares how long it last,

LIGHTER than dandelion down,

Or feathers from the white moth's wing, Out of the gates of bramble-town The silkweed goes a-gypsying.

Too fair to fly in autumn's rout,

All winter in the sheath it lay;
But now, when spring is pushing out,
The zephyr calls, "Away! away!"

Through mullein, bramble, brake, and fern,

Up from their cradle-spring they fly,
Beyond the boundary wall to turn
And voyage through the friendly sky.

Softly, as if instinct with thought,

They float and drift, delay and turn; And one avoids and one is caught Between an oak-leaf and a fern.

And one holds by an airy line

The spider drew from tree to tree; And if the web is light and fine, 'Tis not so light and fine as he !

And one goes questing up the wall As if to find a door; and then, As if he did not care at all,

Goes over, and adown the glen.

And all in airiest fashion fare
Adventuring, as if, indeed,
'T were not so grave a thing to bear
The burden of a seed!

But give God time; and life is but a span,
Nine inches, while before it and behind
Stretches the garden of the cosmic gods;
For after London, England shall be wild,
And none can thaw the iceberg at the pole.
In Solitude one sees the winding trace
Of what has been a road, a block of stone
Footworn, that lies along the dim pathway
Before one old foundation; and the rest
Is freaks of grass among the rising growth
Of birch and maple that another year
Shall see almost a forest.

INFINITY

I DARE not think that thou art by, to stand

And face omnipotence so near at hand!

RICHARD SOMERS

His body lies upon the shore,
Afar from his beloved land,

And over him shine tropic suns;
No more he thrills at sound of guns,
No longer, cutlass in his hand,
Cries,

"Follow me!" and goes before.

Above him droop the languid trees,
Athirst and fainting with the noon;
Around him drowsy lizards crawl.
No more he hears the boatswain's
call,

Nor sees the waters rock the moon,
Nor smells the keen and salty breeze.

Vain
roars old Ocean in his ear,
Calling to him from mighty deeps,
Yearning for him who loved the main.
Never shall he make sail again;
Under the restless sands he sleeps,
He is at rest, he cannot hear.

But when the Trumpet sounds alarms
On that great day when all shall rise,
And earth and sea give up their
dead,

Then out from his unquiet bed
Where now heroic SOMERS lies
His soul will leap to Ocean's arms !

JOY ENOUGH

INTO the caverns of the sea
Shall all at last descend,
Who now press forward gallantly
Unrecking of the end."

And no man knoweth what is there,
Nor when his time shall come
To yield his soul and take his share
With all those gone and dumb.

It may be we shall find our kin
Waiting to grasp our hands,
And lead us glorified within,
Over the shining sands;

It may be we with them shall lie,
While heaven and earth abide,
Swaying silent with sightless eye
There in the sluggish tide.

It matters nothing if to-day,
Beneath the splendid sun,
We hold to the appointed way,
Doing what must be done.

Reward? What would you? Have not we
The waves beneath us bent ?
The winds about us blowing free?
Above the firmament?

FROM "AN ODE IN TIME OF HESITATION"

1900

ROBERT GOULD SHAW

THE wars we wage

Are noble, and our battles still are won
By justice for us, ere we lift the gage.
We have not sold our loftiest heritage.
The proud republic hath not stooped to
cheat

And scramble in the market place of war;
Her forehead weareth yet its solemn star.
Here is her witness: this, her perfect son,
This delicate and proud New England soul
Who leads despised men, with just-un-
shackled feet,

Up the large ways where death and glory meet,

To show all peoples that our shame is done, That once more we are clean and spiritwhole.

Crouched in the sea fog on the moaning

sand

All night he lay, speaking some simple word From hour to hour to the slow minds that heard,

Holding each poor life gently in his hand
And breathing on the base rejected clay
Till each dark face shone mystical and grand
Against the breaking day;

And lo, the shard the potter cast away
Was grown a fiery chalice crystal-fine,
Fulfilled of the divine

Great wine of battle wrath by God's ringfinger stirred.

Then upward, where the shadowy bastion

loomed

Huge on the mountain in the wet sen light, Whence now, and now, inferual flowerage bloomed,

Bloomed, burst, and scattered down its deadly seed,

They swept, and died like freemen on the height,

Like freemen, and like men of noble breed;
And when the battle fell away at night
By hasty and contemptuous hands were

thrust

Obscurely in a common grave with him

We are our fathers' sous: let those who lead us know!

T was only yesterday sick Cuba's cry
Came up the tropic wind, "Now help us,
for we die!"
Then Alabama heard,

And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho
Shouted a burning word;

Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred,

And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth, East, west, and south, and north, Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young

Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan, By the unforgotten names of eager boys Who might have tasted girls' love and been stung

With the old mystic joys

And starry griefs, now the spring nights