And then the stalk, fitted life's frosts to bear,
To brave the wildest tempest's wildest art,
The immovable resolution of the heart
Ready and armed a world of ills to dare;
And then the flower, fairest of things most fair,
The flower divine of love imperishable,
That seeth in thee the sum of things that are,
That hath no eye for aught mean or unstable,

But ever trustful, ever prayerful, feeleth
The mysteries the Holy Ghost revealeth.

MANHOOD.

Αδακρυν νεμόνται αἰῶνα.

Dear, noble soul, wisely thy lot thou bearest,
For like a god toiling in earthly slavery,
Fronting thy sad fate with a joyous bravery,
Each darker day a sunnier smile thou wearest.
No grief can touch thy sweet and spiritual smile,
No pain is keen enough that it has power
Over thy childlike love, that all the while

Upon the cold earth builds its heavenly bower;
And thus with thee bright angels make their dwelling,
Bringing thee stores of strength when no man knoweth
The ocean-stream from God's heart ever swelling,
That forth through each least thing in Nature goeth.

In thee, O truest hero, deeper floweth ;
With joy I bathe, and many souls beside
Feel a new life in the celestial tide.

[DEDICATED TO MY SISTER, OCTOBER, 1867.]

I.

Minstrel and Genius, to whose songs or sighs
The round earth modulates her changeful sphere,
That bend'st in shadow from yon western skies,
And lean'st, cloud-hid, along the woodlands sere,
Too deep thy notes--too pure-for mortal ear!
Yet Nature hears them-without aid of thine
How sad were her decline!

From thee she learns with just and soft gradation
Her dying hues in death to harmonize;

Through thee her obsequies

A glory wear that conquers desolation.

Through thee she singeth, "Faithless were the sighing Breathed o'er a beauty only born to fleet;

A holy thing and precious is the dying

Of that whose life was innocent and sweet."

From many a dim retreat

Lodged on high-bosomed, echoing mountain lawn, Or chiming convent 'mid dark vale withdrawn, From cloudy shrine or rapt oracular seat Voices of loftier worlds that saintly strain repeat.

II.

It is the Autumnal Epode of the year:

The nymphs that urge the seasons on their round, They to whose green lap flies the startled deer

When bays the far-off hound,

They that drag April by the rain-bright hair,

(Though sun-showers daze her and the rude winds scare) O'er March's frosty bound,

They by whose warm and furtive hand unwound
The cestus falls from May's new-wedded breast—
Silent they stand beside dead Summer's bier,

With folded palms, and faces to the west,
And their loose tresses sweep the dewy ground.

III.

A sacred stillness hangs upon the air,

A sacred clearness. Distant shapes draw nigh: Glistens yon Elm-grove, to its heart laid bare,

And all articulate in its symmetry,

With here and there a branch that from on high
Far flashes washed in that cold watery gleam:

Beyond, the glossy lake lies calm—a beam
Upheaved, as if in sleep, from its slow central stream.

IV.

This quiet is it Truth, or some fair mask?

Is pain no more? Shall Sleep be lord, not Death? Shall sickness cease to afflict and overtask

The spent and laboring breath?

Is there 'mid all yon farms and fields, this day,

No gray old head that droops? No darkening eye? Spirits of Pity, lift your hands and pray—

Each hour, alas, men die!

'v.

The love-songs of the Blackbird now are done:
Upon the o'ergrown, loose, red-berried cover

The latest of late warblers sing as one

That trolls at random when the feast is over: From bush to bush the dusk-bright cobwebs hover, Silvering the dried-up rill's exhaustless urn; No breeze is fluting o'er the green morass: Nor falls the thistle-down: in deep-drenched grass, Now blue, now red, the shifting dew-gems burn.

VI.

Mine ear thus torpid held, methinks mine eye

Is armed the more with visionary power;
As with a magnet's force each reddening bower
Compels me through the woodland pageantry:
Slowly I track the forest skirt: emerging,

Slowly I climb from pastoral steep to steep:
I see far mists from reedy valleys surging:
I follow the procession of white sheep

That fringe with wool old stock and ruined rath, How staid to-day, how eager when the lambs

Went leaping round their dams!

I cross the leaf-choked stream from stone to stone, Pass the hoar ash-tree, trace the upland path, The furze-brake that in March all golden shone Reflected in the shy king-fisher's bath.

VII.

No more from full-leaved woods that music swells

Which in the summer filled the satiate ear:

A fostering sweetness still from bosky dells
Murmurs; but I can hear

A harsher sound when down, at intervals,

The dry leaf rattling falls.

Dark as those spots which herald strange disease
The death-blot marks for death the leaf yet firm :
Beside the leaf down-trodden trails the worm:

In bowery depths the haggard, whitening grass
Repines at youth departed. Half-stripped trees

Reveal, as one who says, "Thou too must pass,"
Plainlier each day their quaint anatomies.
Yon Poplar grove is troubled! Bright and bold
Babbled his cold leaves in the July breeze
As though above our heads a runnel rolled:

His mirth is o'er; subdued by stern October
He counts his lessening wealth, and sadly sober,
Tinkles his minute tablets of wan gold.

VIII.

Be still, ye sighs of the expiring year!

A sword there is :-ye play but with the sheath! Whispers there are more piercing, yet more dear Than yours, that come to me those boughs beneath; And well-remembered footsteps known of old Tread soft the mildewed mould.

O magic memory of the things that were—

Of those whose hands our childish locks carest,

Of one so angel-like in tender care,

Of one in majesty so God-like drest

O phantom faces painted on the air

Of friend or sudden guest;—

I plead in vain!

The woods revere, but cannot heal my pain.

Ye sheddings from the Yew tree and the Pine,
If on your rich and aromatic dust

I laid my forehead, and my hands put forth