The Complete Poems of Longfellow
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
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PANDORA.
Why didst thou return?
Eternal absence would have been to me
The greatest punishment. To be left alone
And face to face with my own crime, had been
Just retribution. Upon me, ye Gods,
Let all your vengeance fall!

EPIMETHEUS.
On thee and me.
I do not love thee less for what is done,
And cannot be undone. Thy very weakness
Hath brought thee nearer to me, and henceforth
My love will have a sense of pity in it,
Making it less a worship than before.

PANDORA.
Pity me not; pity is degradation.
Love me and kill me.

EPIMETHEUS.
Beautiful Pandora!
Thou art a Goddess still!

PANDORA.
I am a woman;
And the insurgent demon in my nature,
That made me brave the oracle, revolts
At pity and compassion. Let me die;
What else remains for me?

EPIMETHEUS.
Youth, hope, and love:
To build a new life on a ruined life,
To make the future fairer than the past,
And make the past appear a troubled dream.
Even now in passing through the garden walks
Upon the ground I saw a fallen nest
Ruined and full of rain; and over me
Beheld the uncomplaining birds already
Busy in building a new habitation.

PANDORA.
Auspicious omen!

EPIMETHEUS.
May the Eumenides
Put out their torches and behold us not,
And fling away their whips of scorpions
And touch us not.

PANDORA.
Me let them punish.
Only through punishment of our evil deeds,
Only through suffering, are we reconciled
To the immortal Gods and to ourselves.

CHORUS OF THE EUMENIDES.
   Never shall souls like these
   Escape the Eumenides,
The daughters dark of Acheron and Night!
   Unquenched our torches glare,
   Our scourges in the air
Send forth prophetic sounds before they smite.

   Never by lapse of time
   The soul defaced by crime
Into its former self returns again;
   For every guilty deed
   Holds in itself the seed
Of retribution and undying pain.

   Never shall be the loss
   Restored, till Helios
Hath purified them with his heavenly fires;
   Then what was lost is won,
   And the new life begun,
Kindled with nobler passions and desires.

THE HANGING OF THE CRANE

I

The lights are out, and gone are all the guests
That thronging came with merriment and jests
  To celebrate the Hanging of the Crane
In the new house,--into the night are gone;
But still the fire upon the hearth burns on,
    And I alone remain.

  O fortunate, O happy day,
  When a new household finds its place
  Among the myriad homes of earth,
  Like a new star just sprung to birth,
  And rolled on its harmonious way
  Into the boundless realms of space!

So said the guests in speech and song,
As in the chimney, burning bright,
We hung the iron crane to-night,
And merry was the feast and long.

II

And now I sit and muse on what may be,
And in my vision see, or seem to see,
  Through floating vapors interfused with light,
Shapes indeterminate, that gleam and fade,
As shadows passing into deeper shade
    Sink and elude the sight.

For two alone, there in the hall,
As spread the table round and small;
Upon the polished silver shine
The evening lamps, but, more divine,
The light of love shines over all;
Of love, that says not mine and thine,
But ours, for ours is thine and mine.

They want no guests, to come between
Their tender glances like a screen,
And tell them tales of land and sea,
And whatsoever may betide
The great, forgotten world outside;
They want no guests; they needs must be
Each other's own best company.

III

The picture fades; as at a village fair
A showman's views, dissolving into air,
  Again appear transfigured on the screen,
So in my fancy this; and now once more,
In part transfigured, through the open door
  Appears the selfsame scene.

Seated, I see the two again,
But not alone; they entertain
A little angel unaware,
With face as round as is the moon;
A royal guest with flaxen hair,
Who, throned upon his lofty chair,
Drums on the table with his spoon,
Then drops it careless on the floor,
To grasp at things unseen before.

Are these celestial manners? these
The ways that win, the arts that please?
Ah yes; consider well the guest,
And whatsoe'er he does seems best;
He ruleth by the right divine
Of helplessness, so lately born
In purple chambers of the morn,
As sovereign over thee and thine.
He speaketh not; and yet there lies
A conversation in his eyes;
The golden silence of the Greek,
The gravest wisdom of the wise,
Not spoken in language, but in looks
More legible than printed books,
As if he could but would not speak.
And now, O monarch absolute,
Thy power is put to proof; for, lo!
Resistless, fathomless, and slow,
The nurse comes rustling like the sea,
And pushes back thy chair and thee,
And so good night to King Canute.

IV

As one who walking in a forest sees
A lovely landscape through the parted frees,
  Then sees it not, for boughs that intervene
Or as we see the moon sometimes revealed
Through drifting clouds, and then again concealed,
    So I behold the scene.

There are two guests at table now;
The king, deposed and older grown,
No longer occupies the throne,--
The crown is on his sister's brow;
A Princess from the Fairy Isles,
The very pattern girl of girls.
All covered and embowered in curls,
Rose-tinted from the Isle of Flowers,
And sailing with soft, silken sails
From far-off Dreamland into ours.
Above their bowls with rims of blue
Four azure eyes of deeper hue
Are looking, dreamy with delight;
Limpid as planets that emerge
Above the ocean's rounded verge,
Soft-shining through the summer night.
Steadfast they gaze, yet nothing see
Beyond the horizon of their bowls;
Nor care they for the world that rolls
With all its freight of troubled souls
Into the days that are to be.

V

Again the tossing boughs shut out the scene,
Again the drifting vapors intervene,
  And the moon's pallid disk is hidden quite;
And now I see the table wider grown,
As round a pebble into water thrown
    Dilates a ring of light.

I see the table wider grown,
I see it garlanded with guests,
As if fair Ariadne's Crown
Out of the sky had fallen down;
Maidens within whose tender breasts
A thousand restless hopes and fears,
Forth reaching to the coming years,
Flutter awhile, then quiet lie
Like timid birds that fain would fly,
But do not dare to leave their nests;--
And youths, who in their strength elate
Challenge the van and front of fate,
Eager as champions to be
In the divine knight-errantry
Of youth, that travels sea and land
Seeking adventures, or pursues,
Through cities, and through solitudes
Frequented by the lyric Muse,
The phantom with the beckoning hand,
That still allures and still eludes.
O sweet illusions of the brain!
O sudden thrills of fire and frost!
The world is bright while ye remain,
And dark and dead when ye are lost!

VI

The meadow-brook, that seemeth to stand still,
Quickens its current as it nears the mill;
  And so the stream of Time that lingereth
In level places, and so dull appears,
Runs with a swifter current as it nears
    The gloomy mills of Death.

And now, like the magician's scroll,
That in the owner's keeping shrinks
With every wish he speaks or thinks,
Till the last wish consumes the whole,
The table dwindles, and again
I see the two alone remain.
The crown of stars is broken in parts;
Its jewels, brighter than the day,
Have one by one been stolen away
To shine in other homes and hearts.
One is a wanderer now afar
In Ceylon or in Zanzibar,
Or sunny regions of Cathay;
And one is in the boisterous camp
Mid clink of arms and horses' tramp,
And battle's terrible array.
I see the patient mother read,
With aching heart, of wrecks that float
Disabled on those seas remote,
Or of some great heroic deed
On battle-fie1ds where thousands bleed
To lift one hero into fame.
Anxious she bends her graceful head
Above these chronicles of pain,
And trembles with a secret dread
Lest there among the drowned or slain
She find the one beloved name.

VII

After a day of cloud and wind and rain
Sometimes the setting sun breaks out again,
  And touching all the darksome woods with light,
Smiles on the fields, until they laugh and sing,
Then like a ruby from the horizon's ring
    Drops down into the night.

What see I now? The night is fair,
The storm of grief, the clouds of care,
The wind, the rain, have passed away;
The lamps are lit, the fires burn bright,
The house is full of life and light:
It is the Golden Wedding day.
The guests come thronging in once more,
Quick footsteps sound along the floor,
The trooping children crowd the stair,
And in and out and everywhere
Flashes along the corridor
The sunshine of their golden hair.
On the round table in the hall
Another Ariadne's Crown
Out of the sky hath fallen down;
More than one Monarch of the Moon
Is drumming with his silver spoon;
The light of love shines over all.

O fortunate, O happy day!
The people sing, the people say.
The ancient bridegroom and the bride,
Smiling contented and serene
Upon the blithe, bewildering scene,
Behold, well pleased, on every side
Their forms and features multiplied,
As the reflection of a light
Between two burnished mirrors gleams,
Or lamps upon a bridge at night
Stretch on and on before the sight,
Till the long vista endless seems.

MORITURI SALUTAMUS

POEM FOR THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CLASS OF 1825
IN BOWDOIN COLLEGE

Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis,
Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies.--OVID, Fastorum, Lib. vi.

"O Caesar, we who are about to die
Salute you!" was the gladiators' cry
In the arena, standing face to face
With death and with the Roman populace.

O ye familiar scenes,--ye groves of pine,
That once were mine and are no longer mine,--
Thou river, widening through the meadows green
To the vast sea, so near and yet unseen,--
Ye halls, in whose seclusion and repose
Phantoms of fame, like exhalations, rose
And vanished,--we who are about to die
Salute you; earth and air and sea and sky,
And the Imperial Sun that scatters down
His sovereign splendors upon grove and town.

Ye do not answer us! ye do not hear!
We are forgotten; and in your austere
And calm indifference, ye little care
Whether we come or go, or whence or where.
What passing generations fill these halls,
What passing voices echo front these walls,
Ye heed not; we are only as the blast,
A moment heard, and then forever past.

Not so the teachers who in earlier days
Led our bewildered feet through learning's maze;
They answer us--alas! what have I said?
What greetings come there from the voiceless dead?
What salutation, welcome, or reply?
What pressure from the hands that lifeless lie?
They are no longer here; they all are gone
Into the land of shadows,--all save one.
Honor and reverence, and the good repute
That follows faithful service as its fruit,
Be unto him, whom living we salute.

The great Italian poet, when he made
His dreadful journey to the realms of shade,
Met there the old instructor of his youth,
And cried in tones of pity and of ruth:
"O, never from the memory of my heart
Your dear, paternal image shall depart,
Who while on earth, ere yet by death surprised,
Taught me how mortals are immortalized;
How grateful am I for that patient care
All my life long my language shall declare."

To-day we make the poet's words our own
And utter them in plaintive undertone;
Nor to the living only be they said,
But to the other living called the dead,
Whose dear, paternal images appear
Not wrapped in gloom, but robed in sunshine here;
Whose simple lives, complete and without flaw,
Were part and parcel of great Nature's law;
Who said not to their Lord, as if afraid
"Here is thy talent in a napkin laid,"
But labored in their sphere, as men who live
In the delight that work alone can give.
Peace be to them; eternal peace and rest,
And the fulfilment of the great behest:
"Ye have been faithful over a few things,
Over ten cities shall ye reign as kings."

And ye who fill the places we once filled,
And follow in the furrows that we tilled,
Young men, whose generous hearts are beating high,
We who are old, and are about to die,
Salute you; hail you; take your hands in ours,
And crown you with our welcome as with flowers!
How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams
With its illusions, aspirations, dreams!
Book of Beginnings, Story without End,
Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!
Aladdin's Lamp, and Fortunatus' Purse,
That holds the treasures of the universe!
All possibilities are in its hands,
No danger daunts it, and no foe withstands;
In its sublime audacity of faith,
"Be thou removed!" it to the mountain saith,
And with ambitious feet, secure and proud,
Ascends the ladder leaning on the cloud!

As ancient Priam at the Scaean gate
Sat on the walls of Troy in regal state
With the old men, too old and weak to fight,
Chirping like grasshoppers in their delight
To see the embattled hosts, with spear and shield,
Of Trojans and Achaians in the field;
So from the snowy summits of our years
We see you in the plain, as each appears,
And question of you; asking, "Who is he
That towers above the others? Which may be
Atreides, Menelaus, Odysseus,
Ajax the great, or bold Idomeneus?"

Let him not boast who puts his armor on
As he who puts it off, the battle done.
Study yourselves; and most of all note well
Wherein kind Nature meant you to excel.
Not every blossom ripens into fruit;
Minerva, the inventress of the flute,
Flung it aside, when she her face surveyed
Distorted in a fountain as she played;
The unlucky Marsyas found it, and his fate
Was one to make the bravest hesitate.

Write on your doors the saying wise and old,
"Be bold! be bold!" and everywhere--"Be bold;
Be not too bold!"  Yet better the excess
Than the defect; better the more than less;
Better like Hector in the field to die,
Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly,

And now, my classmates; ye remaining few
That number not the half of those we knew,
Ye, against whose familiar names not yet
The fatal asterisk of death is set,
Ye I salute! The horologe of Time
Strikes the half-century with a solemn chime,
And summons us together once again,
The joy of meeting not unmixed with pain.

Where are the others? Voices from the deep
Caverns of darkness answer me: "They sleep!"
I name no names; instinctively I feel
Each at some well-remembered grave will kneel,
And from the inscription wipe the weeds and moss,
For every heart best knoweth its own loss.
I see their scattered gravestones gleaming white
Through the pale dusk of the impending night;
O'er all alike the impartial sunset throws
Its golden lilies mingled with the rose;
We give to each a tender thought, and pass
Out of the graveyards with their tangled grass,
Unto these scenes frequented by our feet
When we were young, and life was fresh and sweet.

What shall I say to you? What can I say
Better than silence is? When I survey
This throng of faces turned to meet my own,
Friendly and fair, and yet to me unknown,
Transformed the very landscape seems to be;
It is the same, yet not the same to me.
So many memories crowd upon my brain,
So many ghosts are in the wooded plain,
I fain would steal away, with noiseless tread,
As from a house where some one lieth dead.
I cannot go;--I pause;--I hesitate;
My feet reluctant linger at the gate;
As one who struggles in a troubled dream
To speak and cannot, to myself I seem.

Vanish the dream! Vanish the idle fears!
Vanish the rolling mists of fifty years!
Whatever time or space may intervene,
I will not be a stranger in this scene.
Here every doubt, all indecision, ends;
Hail, my companions, comrades, classmates, friends!

Ah me! the fifty years since last we met
Seem to me fifty folios bound and set
By Time, the great transcriber, on his shelves,
Wherein are written the histories of ourselves.
What tragedies, what comedies, are there;
What joy and grief, what rapture and despair!
What chronicles of triumph and defeat,
Of struggle, and temptation, and retreat!
What records of regrets, and doubts, and fears
What pages blotted, blistered by our tears!
What lovely landscapes on the margin shine,
What sweet, angelic faces, what divine
And holy images of love and trust,
Undimmed by age, unsoiled by damp or dust!

Whose hand shall dare to open and explore
These volumes, closed and clasped forevermore?
Not mine. With reverential feet I pass;
I hear a voice that cries, "Alas! alas!
Whatever hath been written shall remain,
Nor be erased nor written o'er again;
The unwritten only still belongs to thee:
Take heed, and ponder well what that shall be."

As children frightened by a thundercloud
Are reassured if some one reads aloud
A tale of wonder, with enchantment fraught,
Or wild adventure, that diverts their thought,
Let me endeavor with a tale to chase
The gathering shadows of the time and place,
And banish what we all too deeply feel
Wholly to say, or wholly to conceal.

In mediaeval Rome, I know not where,
There stood an image with its arm in air,
And on its lifted finger, shining clear,
A golden ring with the device, "Strike here!"
Greatly the people wondered, though none guessed
The meaning that these words but half expressed,
Until a learned clerk, who at noonday
With downcast eyes was passing on his way,
Paused, and observed the spot, and marked it well,
Whereon the shadow of the finger fell;
And, coming back at midnight, delved, and found
A secret stairway leading under ground.
Down this he passed into a spacious hall,
Lit by a flaming jewel on the wall;
And opposite in threatening attitude
With bow and shaft a brazen statue stood.
Upon its forehead, like a coronet,
Were these mysterious words of menace set:
"That which I am, I am; my fatal aim
None can escape, not even yon luminous flame!"

Midway the hall was a fair table placed,
With cloth of gold, and golden cups enchased
With rubies, and the plates and knives were gold,
And gold the bread and viands manifold.
Around it, silent, motionless, and sad,
Were seated gallant knights in armor clad,
And ladies beautiful with plume and zone,
But they were stone, their hearts within were stone;
And the vast hall was filled in every part
With silent crowds, stony in face and heart.

Long at the scene, bewildered and amazed
The trembling clerk in speechless wonder gazed;
Then from the table, by his greed made bold,
He seized a goblet and a knife of gold,
And suddenly from their seats the guests upsprang,
The vaulted ceiling with loud clamors rang,
The archer sped his arrow, at their call,
Shattering the lambent jewel on the wall,
And all was dark around and overhead;--
Stark on the door the luckless clerk lay dead!

The writer of this legend then records
Its ghostly application in these words:
The image is the Adversary old,
Whose beckoning finger points to realms of gold;
Our lusts and passions are the downward stair
That leads the soul from a diviner air;
The archer, Death; the flaming jewel, Life;
Terrestrial goods, the goblet and the knife;
The knights and ladies, all whose flesh and bone
By avarice have been hardened into stone;
The clerk, the scholar whom the love of pelf
Tempts from his books and from his nobler self.

The scholar and the world! The endless strife,
The discord in the harmonies of life!
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books;
The market-place, the eager love of gain,
Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain!

But why, you ask me, should this tale be told
To men grown old, or who are growing old?
It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,
When each had numbered more than fourscore years,
And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten,
Had but begun his Characters of Men.
Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales,
At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales;
Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed Faust when eighty years were past.
These are indeed exceptions; but they show
How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow
Into the arctic regions of our lives.
Where little else than life itself survives.

As the barometer foretells the storm
While still the skies are clear, the weather warm,
So something in us, as old age draws near,
Betrays the pressure of the atmosphere.
The nimble mercury, ere we are aware,
Descends the elastic ladder of the air;
The telltale blood in artery and vein
Sinks from its higher levels in the brain;
Whatever poet, orator, or sage
May say of it, old age is still old age.
It is the waning, not the crescent moon;
The dusk of evening, not the blaze of noon:
It is not strength, but weakness; not desire,
But its surcease; not the fierce heat of fire,
The burning and consuming element,
But that of ashes and of embers spent,
In which some living sparks we still discern,
Enough to warm, but not enough to burn.

What then? Shall we sit idly down and say
The night hath come; it is no longer day?
The night hath not yet come; we are not quite
Cut off from labor by the failing light;
Something remains for us to do or dare;
Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear;
Not Oedipus Coloneus, or Greek Ode,
Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode
Out of the gateway of the Tabard inn,
But other something, would we but begin;
For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

A BOOK OF SONNETS

THREE FRIENDS OF MINE

I

When I remember them, those friends of mine,
  Who are no longer here, the noble three,
  Who half my life were more than friends to me,
  And whose discourse was like a generous wine,
I most of all remember the divine
  Something, that shone in them, and made us see
  The archetypal man, and what might be
  The amplitude of Nature's first design.
In vain I stretch my hands to clasp their hands;
  I cannot find them. Nothing now is left
  But a majestic memory. They meanwhile
Wander together in Elysian lands,
  Perchance remembering me, who am bereft
  Of their dear presence, and, remembering, smile.

II

In Attica thy birthplace should have been,
  Or the Ionian Isles, or where the seas
  Encircle in their arms the Cyclades,
  So wholly Greek wast thou in thy serene
And childlike joy of life, O Philhellene!
  Around thee would have swarmed the Attic bees;
  Homer had been thy friend, or Socrates,
  And Plato welcomed thee to his demesne.
For thee old legends breathed historic breath;
  Thou sawest Poseidon in the purple sea,
  And in the sunset Jason's fleece of gold!
O, what hadst thou to do with cruel Death,
  Who wast so full of life, or Death with thee,
  That thou shouldst die before thou hadst grown old!

III

I stand again on the familiar shore,
  And hear the waves of the distracted sea
  Piteously calling and lamenting thee,
  And waiting restless at thy cottage door.
The rocks, the sea-weed on the ocean floor,
  The willows in the meadow, and the free
  Wild winds of the Atlantic welcome me;
  Then why shouldst thou be dead, and come no more?
Ah, why shouldst thou be dead, when common men
  Are busy with their trivial affairs,
  Having and holding? Why, when thou hadst read
Nature's mysterious manuscript, and then
  Wast ready to reveal the truth it bears,
  Why art thou silent! Why shouldst thou be dead?

IV

River, that stealest with such silent pace
  Around the City of the Dead, where lies
  A friend who bore thy name, and whom these eyes
  Shall see no more in his accustomed place,
Linger and fold him in thy soft embrace
  And say good night, for now the western skies
  Are red with sunset, and gray mists arise
  Like damps that gather on a dead man's face.
Good night! good night! as we so oft have said
  Beneath this roof at midnight in the days
  That are no more, and shall no more return.
Thou hast but taken thy lamp and gone to bed;
  I stay a little longer, as one stays
  To cover up the embers that still burn.

V

The doors are all wide open; at the gate
  The blossomed lilacs counterfeit a blaze,
  And seem to warm the air; a dreamy haze
  Hangs o'er the Brighton meadows like a fate,
And on their margin, with sea-tides elate,
  The flooded Charles, as in the happier days,
  Writes the last letter of his name, and stays
  His restless steps, as if compelled to wait.
I also wait; but they will come no more,
  Those friends of mine, whose presence satisfied
  The thirst and hunger of my heart. Ah me!
They have forgotten the pathway to my door!
  Something is gone from nature since they died,
  And summer is not summer, nor can be.

CHAUCER

An old man in a lodge within a park;
  The chamber walls depicted all around
  With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound.
  And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark,
Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark
  Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound;
  He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound,
  Then writeth in a book like any clerk.
He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote
  The Canterbury Tales, and his old age
  Made beautiful with song; and as I read
I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note
  Of lark and linnet, and from every page
  Rise odors of ploughed field or flowery mead.

SHAKESPEARE

A vision as of crowded city streets,
  With human life in endless overflow;
  Thunder of thoroughfares; trumpets that blow
  To battle; clamor, in obscure retreats,
Of sailors landed from their anchored fleets;
  Tolling of bells in turrets, and below
  Voices of children, and bright flowers that throw
  O'er garden-walls their intermingled sweets!
This vision comes to me when I unfold
  The volume of the Poet paramount,
  Whom all the Muses loved, not one alone;--
Into his hands they put the lyre of gold,
  And, crowned with sacred laurel at their fount,
  Placed him as Musagetes on their throne.

MILTON

I pace the sounding sea-beach and behold
  How the voluminous billows roll and run,
  Upheaving and subsiding, while the sun
  Shines through their sheeted emerald far unrolled,
And the ninth wave, slow gathering fold by fold
  All its loose-flowing garments into one,
  Plunges upon the shore, and floods the dun
  Pale reach of sands, and changes them to gold.
So in majestic cadence rise and fall
  The mighty undulations of thy song,
  O sightless bard, England's Maeonides!
And ever and anon, high over all
  Uplifted, a ninth wave superb and strong,
  Floods all the soul with its melodious seas.

KEATS

The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep;
  The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told!
  The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold
  To the red rising moon, and loud and deep
The nightingale is singing from the steep;
  It is midsummer, but the air is cold;
  Can it be death? Alas, beside the fold
  A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep.
Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white,
  On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name
  Was writ in water."  And was this the meed
Of his sweet singing? Rather let me write:
  "The smoking flax before it burst to flame
  Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed."

THE GALAXY

Torrent of light and river of the air,
  Along whose bed the glimmering stars are seen
  Like gold and silver sands in some ravine
  Where mountain streams have left their channels bare!
The Spaniard sees in thee the pathway, where
  His patron saint descended in the sheen
  Of his celestial armor, on serene
  And quiet nights, when all the heavens were fair.
Not this I see, nor yet the ancient fable
  Of Phaeton's wild course, that scorched the skies
  Where'er the hoofs of his hot coursers trod;
But the white drift of worlds o'er chasms of sable,
  The star-dust that is whirled aloft and flies
  From the invisible chariot-wheels of God.

THE SOUND OF THE SEA

The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
  And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
  I heard the first wave of the rising tide
  Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
  A sound mysteriously multiplied
  As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
  Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
  And inaccessible solitudes of being,
  The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
  Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
  Of things beyond our reason or control.

A SUMMER DAY BY THE SEA

The sun is set; and in his latest beams
  Yon little cloud of ashen gray and gold,
  Slowly upon the amber air unrolled,
  The falling mantle of the Prophet seems.
From the dim headlands many a lighthouse gleams,
  The street-lamps of the ocean; and behold,
  O'erhead the banners of the night unfold;
  The day hath passed into the land of dreams.
O summer day beside the joyous sea!
  O summer day so wonderful and white,
  So full of gladness and so full of pain!
Forever and forever shalt thou be
  To some the gravestone of a dead delight,
  To some the landmark of a new domain.

THE TIDES

I saw the long line of the vacant shore,
  The sea-weed and the shells upon the sand,
  And the brown rocks left bare on every hand,
  As if the ebbing tide would flow no more.
Then heard I, more distinctly than before,
  The ocean breathe and its great breast expand,
  And hurrying came on the defenceless land
  The insurgent waters with tumultuous roar.
All thought and feeling and desire, I said,
  Love, laughter, and the exultant joy of song
  Have ebbed from me forever! Suddenly o'er me
They swept again from their deep ocean bed,
  And in a tumult of delight, and strong
  As youth, and beautiful as youth, upbore me.

A SHADOW

I said unto myself, if I were dead,
  What would befall these children? What would be
  Their fate, who now are looking up to me
  For help and furtherance? Their lives, I said,
Would be a volume wherein I have read
  But the first chapters, and no longer see
  To read the rest of their dear history,
  So full of beauty and so full of dread.
Be comforted; the world is very old,
  And generations pass, as they have passed,
  A troop of shadows moving with the sun;
Thousands of times has the old tale been told;
  The world belongs to those who come the last,
  They will find hope and strength as we have done.

A NAMELESS GRAVE

"A soldier of the Union mustered out,"
  Is the inscription on an unknown grave
  At Newport News, beside the salt-sea wave,
  Nameless and dateless; sentinel or scout
Shot down in skirmish, or disastrous rout
  Of battle, when the loud artillery drave
  Its iron wedges through the ranks of brave
  And doomed battalions, storming the redoubt.
Thou unknown hero sleeping by the sea
  In thy forgotten grave! with secret shame
  I feel my pulses beat, my forehead burn,
When I remember thou hast given for me
  All that thou hadst, thy life, thy very name,
  And I can give thee nothing in return.

SLEEP

Lull me to sleep, ye winds, whose fitful sound
  Seems from some faint Aeolian harp-string caught;
  Seal up the hundred wakeful eyes of thought
  As Hermes with his lyre in sleep profound
The hundred wakeful eyes of Argus bound;
  For I am weary, and am overwrought
  With too much toil, with too much care distraught,
  And with the iron crown of anguish crowned.
Lay thy soft hand upon my brow and cheek,
  O peaceful Sleep! until from pain released
  I breathe again uninterrupted breath!
Ah, with what subtile meaning did the Greek
  Call thee the lesser mystery at the feast
  Whereof the greater mystery is death!

THE OLD BRIDGE AT FLORENCE

Taddeo Gaddi built me. I am old,
  Five centuries old. I plant my foot of stone
  Upon the Arno, as St. Michael's own
  Was planted on the dragon. Fold by fold
Beneath me as it struggles. I behold
  Its glistening scales. Twice hath it overthrown
  My kindred and companions. Me alone
  It moveth not, but is by me controlled,
I can remember when the Medici
  Were driven from Florence; longer still ago
  The final wars of Ghibelline and Guelf.
Florence adorns me with her jewelry;
  And when I think that Michael Angelo
  Hath leaned on me, I glory in myself.

IL PONTE VECCHIO DI FIRENZE

Gaddi mi fece; il Ponte Vecchio sono;
  Cinquecent' anni gia sull' Arno pianto
  Il piede, come il suo Michele Santo
  Pianto sul draco. Mentre ch' io ragiono
Lo vedo torcere con flebil suono
  Le rilucenti scaglie. Ha questi affranto
  Due volte i miei maggior. Me solo intanto
  Neppure muove, ed io non l' abbandono.
Io mi rammento quando fur cacciati
  I Medici; pur quando Ghibellino
  E Guelfo fecer pace mi rammento.
Fiorenza i suoi giojelli m' ha prestati;
  E quando penso ch' Agnolo il divino
  Su me posava, insuperbir mi sento.

NATURE

As a fond mother, when the day is o'er,
  Leads by the hand her little child to bed,
  Half willing, half reluctant to be led,
  And leave his broken playthings on the floor,
Still gazing at them through the open door,
  Nor wholly reassured and comforted
  By promises of others in their stead,
  Which, though more splendid, may not please him more;
So Nature deals with us, and takes away
  Our playthings one by one, and by the hand
  Leads us to rest so gently, that we go
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,
  Being too full of sleep to understand
  How far the unknown transcends the what we know.

IN THE CHURCHYARD AT TARRYTOWN

Here lies the gentle humorist, who died
  In the bright Indian Summer of his fame!
  A simple stone, with but a date and name,
  Marks his secluded resting-place beside
The river that he loved and glorified.
  Here in the autumn of his days he came,
  But the dry leaves of life were all aflame
  With tints that brightened and were multiplied.
How sweet a life was his; how sweet a  death!
  Living, to wing with mirth the weary hours,
  Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer;
Dying, to leave a memory like the breath
  Of summers full of sunshine and of showers,
  A grief and gladness in the atmosphere.

ELIOT'S OAK

Thou ancient oak! whose myriad leaves are loud
  With sounds of unintelligible speech,
  Sounds as of surges on a shingly beach,
  Or multitudinous murmurs of a crowd;
With some mysterious gift of tongues endowed,
  Thou speakest a different dialect to each;
  To me a language that no man can teach,
  Of a lost race, long vanished like a cloud.
For underneath thy shade, in days remote,
  Seated like Abraham at eventide
  Beneath the oaks of Mamre, the unknown
Apostle of the Indians, Eliot, wrote
  His Bible in a language that hath died
  And is forgotten, save by thee alone.

THE DESCENT OF THE MUSES

Nine sisters, beautiful in form and face,
  Came from their convent on the shining heights
  Of Pierus, the mountain of delights,
  To dwell among the people at its base.
Then seemed the world to change. All time and space,
  Splendor of cloudless days and starry nights,
  And men and manners, and all sounds and sights,
  Had a new meaning, a diviner grace.
Proud were these sisters, but were not too proud
  To teach in schools of little country towns
  Science and song, and all the arts that please;
So that while housewives span, and farmers ploughed,
  Their comely daughters, clad in homespun gowns,
  Learned the sweet songs of the Pierides.

VENICE

White swan of cities, slumbering in thy nest
  So wonderfully built among the reeds
  Of the lagoon, that fences thee and feeds,
  As sayeth thy old historian and thy guest!
White water-lily, cradled and caressed
  By ocean streams, and from the silt and weeds
  Lifting thy golden filaments and seeds,
  Thy sun-illumined spires, thy crown and crest!
White phantom city, whose untrodden streets
  Are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting
  Shadows of palaces and strips of sky;
I wait to see thee vanish like the fleets
  Seen in mirage, or towers of cloud uplifting
  In air their unsubstantial masonry.

THE POETS

O ye dead Poets, who are living still
  Immortal in your verse, though life be fled,
  And ye, O living Poets, who are dead
  Though ye are living, if neglect can kill,
Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill,
  With drops of anguish falling fast and red
  From the sharp crown of thorns upon your head,
  Ye were not glad your errand to fulfil?
Yes; for the gift and ministry of Song
  Have something in them so divinely sweet,
  It can assuage the bitterness of wrong;
Not in the clamor of the crowded street,
  Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
  But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.

PARKER CLEAVELAND

WRITTEN ON REVISITING BRUNSWICK IN THE SUMMER OF 1875

Among the many lives that I have known,
  None I remember more serene and sweet,
  More rounded in itself and more complete,
  Than his, who lies beneath this funeral stone.
These pines, that murmur in low monotone,
  These walks frequented by scholastic feet,
  Were all his world; but in this calm retreat
  For him the Teacher's chair became a throne.
With fond affection memory loves to dwell
  On the old days, when his example made
  A pastime of the toil of tongue and pen;
And now, amid the groves he loved so well
That naught could lure him from their grateful shade,
He sleeps, but wakes elsewhere, for God hath said, Amen!

THE HARVEST MOON

It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes
  And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
  And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
  Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
  And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!
  Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,
  With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!
All things are symbols: the external shows
  Of Nature have their image in the mind,
  As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;
The song-birds leave us at the summer's close,
  Only the empty nests are left behind,
  And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.

TO THE RIVER RHONE

Thou Royal River, born of sun and shower
  In chambers purple with the Alpine glow,
  Wrapped in the spotless ermine of the snow
  And rocked by tempests!--at the appointed hour
Forth, like a steel-clad horseman from a tower,
  With clang and clink of harness dost thou go
  To meet thy vassal torrents, that below
  Rush to receive thee and obey thy power.
And now thou movest in triumphal march,
  A king among the rivers! On thy way
  A hundred towns await and welcome thee;
Bridges uplift for thee the stately arch,
  Vineyards encircle thee with garlands gay,
  And fleets attend thy progress to the sea!

THE THREE SILENCES OF MOLINOS

TO JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

Three Silences there are: the first of speech,
  The second of desire, the third of thought;
  This is the lore a Spanish monk, distraught
  With dreams and visions, was the first to teach.
These Silences, commingling each with each,
  Made up the perfect Silence, that he sought
  And prayed for, and wherein at times he caught
  Mysterious sounds from realms beyond our reach.
O thou, whose daily life anticipates
  The life to come, and in whose thought and word
  The spiritual world preponderates.
Hermit of Amesbury! thou too hast heard
  Voices and melodies from beyond the gates,
  And speakest only when thy soul is stirred!

THE TWO RIVERS

I

Slowly the hour-hand of the clock moves round;
  So slowly that no human eye hath power
  To see it move! Slowly in shine or shower
  The painted ship above it, homeward bound,
Sails, but seems motionless, as if aground;
  Yet both arrive at last; and in his tower
   The slumberous watchman wakes and strikes the hour,
   A mellow, measured, melancholy sound.
Midnight! the outpost of advancing day!
  The frontier town and citadel of night!
  The watershed of Time, from which the streams
Of Yesterday and To-morrow take their way,
  One to the land of promise and of light,
  One to the land of darkness and of dreams!

II

O River of Yesterday, with current swift
  Through chasms descending, and soon lost to sight,
  I do not care to follow in their flight
  The faded leaves, that on thy bosom drift!
O River of To-morrow, I uplift
  Mine eyes, and thee I follow, as the night
  Wanes into morning, and the dawning light
  Broadens, and all the shadows fade and shift!
I follow, follow, where thy waters run
  Through unfrequented, unfamiliar fields,
  Fragrant with flowers and musical with song;
Still follow, follow; sure to meet the sun,
  And confident, that what the future yields
  Will be the right, unless myself be wrong.

III

Yet not in vain, O River of Yesterday,
  Through chasms of darkness to the deep descending,
  I heard thee sobbing in the rain, and blending
  Thy voice with other voices far away.
I called to thee, and yet thou wouldst not stay,
  But turbulent, and with thyself contending,
  And torrent-like thy force on pebbles spending,
  Thou wouldst not listen to a poet's lay.
Thoughts, like a loud and sudden rush of wings,
  Regrets and recollections of things past,
  With hints and prophecies of things to be,
And inspirations, which, could they be things,
  And stay with us, and we could hold them fast,
  Were our good angels,--these I owe to thee.

IV

And thou, O River of To-morrow, flowing
  Between thy narrow adamantine walls,
  But beautiful, and white with waterfalls,
  And wreaths of mist, like hands the pathway showing;
I hear the trumpets of the morning blowing,
  I hear thy mighty voice, that calls and calls,
  And see, as Ossian saw in Morven's halls,
  Mysterious phantoms, coming, beckoning, going!
It is the mystery of the unknown
  That fascinates us; we are children still,
  Wayward and wistful; with one hand we cling
To the familiar things we call our own,
  And with the other, resolute of will,
  Grope in the dark for what the day will bring.

BOSTON

St. Bototlph's Town! Hither across the plains
  And fens of Lincolnshire, in garb austere,
  There came a Saxon monk, and founded here
  A Priory, pillaged by marauding Danes,
So that thereof no vestige now remains;
  Only a name, that, spoken loud and clear,
  And echoed in another hemisphere,
  Survives the sculptured walls and painted panes.
St. Botolph's Town! Far over leagues of land
  And leagues of sea looks forth its noble tower,
  And far around the chiming bells are heard;
So may that sacred name forever stand
  A landmark, and a symbol of the power,
  That lies concentred in a single word.

ST. JOHN'S, CAMBRIDGE

I stand beneath the tree, whose branches shade
  Thy western window, Chapel of St. John!
  And hear its leaves repeat their benison
  On him, whose hand if thy stones memorial laid;
Then I remember one of whom was said
  In the world's darkest hour, "Behold thy son!"
  And see him living still, and wandering on
  And waiting for the advent long delayed.
Not only tongues of the apostles teach
  Lessons of love and light, but these expanding
  And sheltering boughs with all their leaves implore,
And say in language clear as human speech,
  "The peace of God, that passeth understanding,
  Be and abide with you forevermore!"

MOODS
Ohthat a Song would sing itself to me
  Out of the heart of Nature, or the heart
  Of man, the child of Nature, not of Art,
  Fresh as the morning, salt as the salt sea,
With just enough of bitterness to be
  A medicine to this sluggish mood, and start
  The life-blood in my veins, and so impart
  Healing and help in this dull lethargy!
Alas! not always doth the breath of song
  Breathe on us. It is like the wind that bloweth
  At its own will, not ours, nor tarries long;
We hear the sound thereof, but no man knoweth
  From whence it comes, so sudden and swift and strong,
  Nor whither in its wayward course it goeth.

WOODSTOCK PARK

Here in a little rustic hermitage
  Alfred the Saxon King, Alfred the Great,
  Postponed the cares of king-craft to translate
  The Consolations of the Roman sage.
Here Geoffrey Chaucer in his ripe old age
  Wrote the unrivalled Tales, which soon or late
  The venturous hand that strives to imitate
  Vanquished must fall on the unfinished page.
Two kings were they, who ruled by right divine,
  And both supreme; one in the realm of Truth,
  One in the realm of Fiction and of Song.
What prince hereditary of their line,
  Uprising in the strength and flush of youth,
  Their glory shall inherit and prolong?

THE FOUR PRINCESSES AT WILNA

A PHOTOGRAPH

Sweet faces, that from pictured casements lean
  As from a castle window, looking down
  On some gay pageant passing through a town,
  Yourselves the fairest figures in the scene;
With what a gentle grace, with what serene
  Unconsciousness ye wear the triple crown
  Of youth and beauty and the fair renown
  Of a great name, that ne'er hath tarnished been!
From your soft eyes, so innocent and sweet,
  Four spirits, sweet and innocent as they,
  Gaze on the world below, the sky above;
Hark! there is some one singing in the street;
  "Faith, Hope, and Love! these three," he seems to say;
  "These three; and greatest of the three is Love."

HOLIDAYS

The holiest of all holidays are those
  Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
  The secret anniversaries of the heart,
  When the full river of feeling overflows;--
The happy days unclouded to their close;
  The sudden joys that out of darkness start
  As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
  Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!
White as the gleam of a receding sail,
  White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,
  White as the whitest lily on a stream,
These tender memories are;--a Fairy Tale
  Of some enchanted land we know not where,
  But lovely as a landscape in a dream.

WAPENTAKE

TO ALFRED TENNYSON

Poet! I come to touch thy lance with mine;
  Not as a knight, who on the listed field
  Of tourney touched his adversary's shield
  In token of defiance, but in sign
Of homage to the mastery, which is thine,
  In English song; nor will I keep concealed,
  And voiceless as a rivulet frost-congealed,
  My admiration for thy verse divine.
Not of the howling dervishes of song,
  Who craze the brain with their delirious dance,
  Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart!
Therefore to thee the laurel-leaves belong,
  To thee our love and our allegiance,
  For thy allegiance to the poet's art.

THE BROKEN OAR
Once upon Iceland's solitary strand
  A poet wandered with his book and pen,
  Seeking some final word, some sweet Amen,
  Wherewith to close the volume in his hand.
The billows rolled and plunged upon the sand,
  The circling sea-gulls swept beyond his ken,
  And from the parting cloud-rack now and then
  Flashed the red sunset over sea and land.
Then by the billows at his feet was tossed
  A broken oar; and carved thereon he read,
  "Oft was I weary, when I toiled at thee";
And like a man, who findeth what was lost,
  He wrote the words, then lifted up his head,
  And flung his useless pen into the sea.

THE CROSS OF SNOW

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
  A gentle face--the face of one long dead--
  Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
  The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died; and soul more white
  Never through martyrdom of fire was led
  To its repose; nor can in books be read
  The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
  That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
  Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
  These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
  And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

**************

BIRDS OF PASSAGE

FLIGHT THE FOURTH

CHARLES SUMNER

  Garlands upon his grave,
  And flowers upon his hearse,
And to the tender heart and brave
  The tribute of this verse.

  His was the troubled life,
  The conflict and the pain,
The grief, the bitterness of strife,
  The honor without stain.

  Like Winkelried, he took
  Into his manly breast
The sheaf of hostile spears, and broke
  A path for the oppressed.

  Then from the fatal field
  Upon a nation's heart
Borne like a warrior on his shield!--
  So should the brave depart.

  Death takes us by surprise,
  And stays our hurrying feet;
The great design unfinished lies,
  Our lives are incomplete.

  But in the dark unknown
  Perfect their circles seem,
Even as a bridge's arch of stone
  Is rounded in the stream.

  Alike are life and death,
  When life in death survives,
And the uninterrupted breath
  Inspires a thousand lives.

  Were a star quenched on high,
  For ages would its light,
Still travelling downward from the sky,
  Shine on our mortal sight.

  So when a great man dies,
  For years beyond our ken,
The light he leaves behind him lies
  Upon the paths of men.

TRAVELS BY THE FIRESIDE

The ceaseless rain is falling fast,
  And yonder gilded vane,
Immovable for three days past,
  Points to the misty main,

It drives me in upon myself
  And to the fireside gleams,
To pleasant books that crowd my shelf,
  And still more pleasant dreams,

I read whatever bards have sung
  Of lands beyond the sea,
And the bright days when I was young
  Come thronging back to me.

In fancy I can hear again
  The Alpine torrent's roar,
The mule-bells on the hills of Spain,
  The sea at Elsinore.

I see the convent's gleaming wall
  Rise from its groves of pine,
And towers of old cathedrals tall,
  And castles by the Rhine.

I journey on by park and spire,
  Beneath centennial trees,
Through fields with poppies all on fire,
  And gleams of distant seas.

I fear no more the dust and heat,
  No more I feel fatigue,
While journeying with another's feet
  O'er many a lengthening league.

Let others traverse sea and land,
  And toil through various climes,
I turn the world round with my hand
  Reading these poets' rhymes.

From them I learn whatever lies
  Beneath each changing zone,
And see, when looking with their eyes,
  Better than with mine own.

CADENABBIA

LAKE OF COMO

No sound of wheels or hoof-beat breaks
  The silence of the summer day,
As by the loveliest of all lakes
  I while the idle hours away.

I pace the leafy colonnade
  Where level branches of the plane
Above me weave a roof of shade
  Impervious to the sun and rain.

At times a sudden rush of air
  Flutters the lazy leaves o'erhead,
And gleams of sunshine toss and flare
  Like torches down the path I tread.

By Somariva's garden gate
  I make the marble stairs my seat,
And hear the water, as I wait,
  Lapping the steps beneath my feet.

The undulation sinks and swells
  Along the stony parapets,
And far away the floating bells
  Tinkle upon the fisher's nets.

Silent and slow, by tower and town
  The freighted barges come and go,
Their pendent shadows gliding down
  By town and tower submerged below.

The hills sweep upward from the shore,
  With villas scattered one by one
Upon their wooded spurs, and lower
  Bellaggio blazing in the sun.

And dimly seen, a tangled mass
  Of walls and woods, of light and shade,
Stands beckoning up the Stelvio Pass
  Varenna with its white cascade.

I ask myself, Is this a dream?
  Will it all vanish into air?
Is there a land of such supreme
  And perfect beauty anywhere?

Sweet vision! Do not fade away;
  Linger until my heart shall take
Into itself the summer day,
  And all the beauty of the lake.

Linger until upon my brain
  Is stamped an image of the scene,
Then fade into the air again,
  And be as if thou hadst not been.

MONTE CASSINO

TERRA DI LAVORO

Beautiful valley! through whose verdant meads
  Unheard the Garigliano glides along;--
The Liris, nurse of rushes and of reeds,
  The river taciturn of classic song.

The Land of Labor and the Land of Rest,
  Where mediaeval towns are white on all
The hillsides, and where every mountain's crest
  Is an Etrurian or a Roman wall.

There is Alagna, where Pope Boniface
   Was dragged with contumely from his throne;
Sciarra Colonna, was that day's disgrace
  The Pontiff's only, or in part thine own?

There is Ceprano, where a renegade
  Was each Apulian, as great Dante saith,
When Manfred by his men-at-arms betrayed
  Spurred on to Benevento and to death.

There is Aquinum, the old Volscian town,
  Where Juvenal was born, whose lurid light
Still hovers o'er his birthplace like the crown
  Of splendor seen o'er cities in the night.

Doubled the splendor is, that in its streets
  The Angelic Doctor as a school-boy played,
And dreamed perhaps the dreams, that he repeats
  In ponderous folios for scholastics made.

And there, uplifted, like a passing cloud
  That pauses on a mountain summit high,
Monte Cassino's convent rears its proud
  And venerable walls against the sky.

Well I remember how on foot I climbed
  The stony pathway leading to its gate;
Above, the convent bells for vespers chimed,
  Below, the darkening town grew desolate.

Well I remember the low arch and dark,
  The court-yard with its well, the terrace wide,
From which, far down, the valley like a park
  Veiled in the evening mists, was dim descried.

The day was dying, and with feeble hands
  Caressed the mountain-tops; the vales between
Darkened; the river in the meadowlands
  Sheathed itself as a sword, and was not seen.

The silence of the place was like a sleep,
  So full of rest it seemed; each passing tread
Was a reverberation from the deep
  Recesses of the ages that are dead.

For, more than thirteen centuries ago,
  Benedict fleeing from the gates of Rome,
A youth disgusted with its vice and woe,
  Sought in these mountain solitudes a home.

He founded here his Convent and his Rule
  Of prayer and work, and counted work as prayer;
The pen became a clarion, and his school
  Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air.

What though Boccaccio, in his reckless way,
  Mocking the lazy brotherhood, deplores
The illuminated manuscripts, that lay
  Torn and neglected on the dusty floors?

Boccaccio was a novelist, a child
  Of fancy and of fiction at the best!
This the urbane librarian said, and smiled
  Incredulous, as at some idle jest.

Upon such themes as these, with one young friar
  I sat conversing late into the night,
Till in its cavernous chimney the woodfire
  Had burnt its heart out like an anchorite.

And then translated, in my convent cell,
  Myself yet not myself, in dreams I lay,
And, as a monk who hears the matin bell,
  Started from sleep; already it was day.

From the high window I beheld the scene
  On which Saint Benedict so oft had gazed,--
The mountains and the valley in the sheen
  Of the bright sun,--and stood as one amazed.

Gray mists were rolling, rising, vanishing;
  The woodlands glistened with their jewelled crowns;
Far off the mellow bells began to ring
  For matins in the half-awakened towns.

The conflict of the Present and the Past,
  The ideal and the actual in our life,
As on a field of battle held me fast,
  Where this world and the next world were at strife.

For, as the valley from its sleep awoke,
  I saw the iron horses of the steam
Toss to the morning air their plumes of smoke,
  And woke, as one awaketh from a dream.

AMALFI

Sweet the memory is to me
Of a land beyond the sea,
Where the waves and mountains meet,
Where, amid her mulberry-trees
Sits Amalfi in the heat,
Bathing ever her white feet
In the tideless summer seas.

In the middle of the town,
From its fountains in the hills,
Tumbling through the narrow gorge,
The Canneto rushes down,
Turns the great wheels of the mills,
Lifts the hammers of the forge.

'T is a stairway, not a street,
That ascends the deep ravine,
Where the torrent leaps between
Rocky walls that almost meet.
Toiling up from stair to stair
Peasant girls their burdens bear;
Sunburnt daughters of the soil,
Stately figures tall and straight,
What inexorable fate
Dooms them to this life of toil?

Lord of vineyards and of lands,
Far above the convent stands.
On its terraced walk aloof
Leans a monk with folded hands,
Placid, satisfied, serene,
Looking down upon the scene
Over wall and red-tiled roof;
Wondering unto what good end
All this toil and traffic tend,
And why all men cannot be
Free from care and free from pain,
And the sordid love of gain,
And as indolent as he.

Where are now the freighted barks
From the marts of east and west?
Where the knights in iron sarks
Journeying to the Holy Land,
Glove of steel upon the hand,
Cross of crimson on the breast?
Where the pomp of camp and court?
Where the pilgrims with their prayers?
Where the merchants with their wares,
And their gallant brigantines
Sailing safely into port
Chased by corsair Algerines?

Vanished like a fleet of cloud,
Like a passing trumpet-blast,
Are those splendors of the past,
And the commerce and the crowd!
Fathoms deep beneath the seas
Lie the ancient wharves and quays,
Swallowed by the engulfing waves;
Silent streets and vacant halls,
Ruined roofs and towers and walls;
Hidden from all mortal eyes
Deep the sunken city lies:
Even cities have their graves!

This is an enchanted land!
Round the headlands far away
Sweeps the blue Salernian bay
With its sickle of white sand:
Further still and furthermost
On the dim discovered coast
Paestum with its ruins lies,
And its roses all in bloom
Seem to tinge the fatal skies
Of that lonely land of doom.

On his terrace, high in air,
Nothing doth the good monk care
For such worldly themes as these,
From the garden just below
Little puffs of perfume blow,
And a sound is in his ears
Of the murmur of the bees
In the shining chestnut-trees;
Nothing else he heeds or hears.
All the landscape seems to swoon
In the happy afternoon;
Slowly o'er his senses creep
The encroaching waves of sleep,
And he sinks as sank the town,
Unresisting, fathoms down,
Into caverns cool and deep!

Walled about with drifts of snow,
Hearing the fierce north-wind blow,
Seeing all the landscape white,
And the river cased in ice,
Comes this memory of delight,
Comes this vision unto me
Of a long-lost Paradise
In the land beyond the sea.

THE SERMON OF ST. FRANCIS

Up soared the lark into the air,
A shaft of song, a winged prayer,
As if a soul, released from pain,
Were flying back to heaven again.

St. Francis heard; it was to him
An emblem of the Seraphim;
The upward motion of the fire,
The light, the heat, the heart's desire.

Around Assisi's convent gate
The birds, God's poor who cannot wait,
From moor and mere and darksome wood
Came flocking for their dole of food.

"O brother birds," St. Francis said,
"Ye come to me and ask for bread,
But not with bread alone to-day
Shall ye be fed and sent away.

"Ye shall be fed, ye happy birds,
With manna of celestial words;
Not mine, though mine they seem to be,
Not mine, though they be spoken through me.

"O, doubly are ye bound to praise
The great Creator in your lays;
He giveth you your plumes of down,
Your crimson hoods, your cloaks of brown.

"He giveth you your wings to fly
And breathe a purer air on high,
And careth for you everywhere,
Who for yourselves so little care!"

With flutter of swift wings and songs
Together rose the feathered throngs,
And singing scattered far apart;
Deep peace was in St. Francis' heart.

He knew not if the brotherhood
His homily had understood;
He only knew that to one ear
The meaning of his words was clear.

BELISARIUS

I am poor and old and blind;
The sun burns me, and the wind
    Blows through the city gate
And covers me with dust
From the wheels of the august
    Justinian the Great.

It was for him I chased
The Persians o'er wild and waste,
    As General of the East;
Night after night I lay
In their camps of yesterday;
    Their forage was my feast.

For him, with sails of red,
And torches at mast-head,
    Piloting the great fleet,
I swept the Afric coasts
And scattered the Vandal hosts,
    Like dust in a windy street.

For him I won again
The Ausonian realm and reign,
    Rome and Parthenope;
And all the land was mine
From the summits of Apennine
    To the shores of either sea.

For him, in my feeble age,
I dared the battle's rage,
    To save Byzantium's state,
When the tents of Zabergan,
Like snow-drifts overran
    The road to the Golden Gate.

And for this, for this, behold!
Infirm and blind and old,
    With gray, uncovered head,
Beneath the very arch
Of my triumphal march,
    I stand and beg my bread!

Methinks I still can hear,
Sounding distinct and near,
    The Vandal monarch's cry,
As, captive and disgraced,
With majestic step he paced,--
    "All, all is Vanity!"

Ah! vainest of all things
Is the gratitude of kings;
    The plaudits of the crowd
Are but the clatter of feet
At midnight in the street,
    Hollow and restless and loud.

But the bitterest disgrace
Is to see forever the face
    Of the Monk of Ephesus!
The unconquerable will
This, too, can bear;--I still
    Am Belisarius!

SONGO RIVER

Nowhere such a devious stream,
Save in fancy or in dream,
Winding slow through bush and brake
Links together lake and lake.

Walled with woods or sandy shelf,
Ever doubling on itself
Flows the stream, so still and slow
That it hardly seems to flow.

Never errant knight of old,
Lost in woodland or on wold,
Such a winding path pursued
Through the sylvan solitude.

Never school-boy in his quest
After hazel-nut or nest,
Through the forest in and out
Wandered loitering thus about.

In the mirror of its tide
Tangled thickets on each side
Hang inverted, and between
Floating cloud or sky serene.

Swift or swallow on the wing
Seems the only living thing,
Or the loon, that laughs and flies
Down to those reflected skies.

Silent stream! thy Indian name
Unfamiliar is to fame;
For thou hidest here alone,
Well content to be unknown.

But thy tranquil waters teach
Wisdom deep as human speech,
Moving without haste or noise
In unbroken equipoise.

Though thou turnest no busy mill,
And art ever calm and still,
Even thy silence seems to say
To the traveller on his way:--

"Traveller, hurrying from the heat
Of the city, stay thy feet!
Rest awhile, nor longer waste
Life with inconsiderate haste!

"Be not like a stream that brawls
Loud with shallow waterfalls,
But in quiet self-control
Link together soul and soul"

************

KERAMOS

Turn, turn, my wheel? Turn round and round
Without a pause, without a sound:
  So spins the flying world away!
This clay, well mixed with marl and sand,
Follows the motion of my hand;
Far some must follow, and some command,
  Though all are made of clay!

Thus sang the Potter at his task
Beneath the blossoming hawthorn-tree,
While o'er his features, like a mask,
The quilted sunshine and leaf-shade
Moved, as the boughs above him swayed,
And clothed him, till he seemed to be
A figure woven in tapestry,
So sumptuously was he arrayed
In that magnificent attire
Of sable tissue flaked with fire.
Like a magician he appeared,
A conjurer without book or beard;
And while he plied his magic art--
For it was magical to me--
I stood in silence and apart,
And wondered more and more to see
That shapeless, lifeless mass of clay
Rise up to meet the master's hand,
And now contract and now expand,
And even his slightest touch obey;
While ever in a thoughtful mood
He sang his ditty, and at times
Whistled a tune between the rhymes,
As a melodious interlude.

Turn, turn, my wheel! All things must change
To something new, to something strange;
  Nothing that is can pause or stay;
The moon will wax, the moon will wane,
The mist and cloud will turn to rain,
The rain to mist and cloud again,
  To-morrow be to-day.

Thus still the Potter sang, and still,
By some unconscious act of will,
The melody and even the words
Were intermingled with my thought
As bits of colored thread are caught
And woven into nests of birds.
And thus to regions far remote,
Beyond the ocean's vast expanse,
This wizard in the motley coat
Transported me on wings of song,
And by the northern shores of France
Bore me with restless speed along.
What land is this that seems to be
A mingling of the land and sea?
This land of sluices, dikes, and dunes?
This water-net, that tessellates
The landscape? this unending maze
Of gardens, through whose latticed gates
The imprisoned pinks and tulips gaze;
Where in long summer afternoons
The sunshine, softened by the haze,
Comes streaming down as through a screen;
Where over fields and pastures green
The painted ships float high in air,
And over all and everywhere
The sails of windmills sink and soar
Like wings of sea-gulls on the shore?

What land is this? Yon pretty town
Is Delft, with all its wares displayed;
The pride, the market-place, the crown
And centre of the Potter's trade.
See! every house and room is bright
With glimmers of reflected light
From plates that on the dresser shine;
Flagons to foam with Flemish beer,
Or sparkle with the Rhenish wine,
And pilgrim flasks with fleurs-de-lis,
And ships upon a rolling sea,
And tankards pewter topped, and queer
With comic mask and musketeer!
Each hospitable chimney smiles
A welcome from its painted tiles;
The parlor walls, the chamber floors,
The stairways and the corridors,
The borders of the garden walks,
Are beautiful with fadeless flowers,
That never droop in winds or showers,
And never wither on their stalks.

Turn, turn, my wheel! All life is brief;
What now is bud wilt soon be leaf,
  What now is leaf will soon decay;
The wind blows east, the wind blows west;
The blue eyes in the robin's nest
Will soon have wings and beak and breast,
  And flutter and fly away.

Now southward through the air I glide,
The song my only pursuivant,
And see across the landscape wide
The blue Charente, upon whose tide
The belfries and the spires of Saintes
Ripple and rock from side to side,
As, when an earthquake rends its walls,
A crumbling city reels and falls.

Who is it in the suburbs here,
This Potter, working with such cheer,
In this mean house, this mean attire,
His manly features bronzed with fire,
Whose figulines and rustic wares
Scarce find him bread from day to day?
This madman, as the people say,
Who breaks his tables and his chairs
To feed his furnace fires, nor cares
Who goes unfed if they are fed,
Nor who may live if they are dead?
This alchemist with hollow cheeks
And sunken, searching eyes, who seeks,
By mingled earths and ores combined
With potency of fire, to find
Some new enamel, hard and bright,
His dream, his passion, his delight?

O Palissy! within thy breast
Burned the hot fever of unrest;
Thine was the prophets vision, thine
The exultation, the divine
Insanity of noble minds,
That never falters nor abates,
But labors and endures and waits,
Till all that it foresees it finds,
Or what it cannot find creates!

Turn, turn, my wheel! This earthen jar
A touch can make, a touch can mar;
  And shall it to the Potter say,
What makest thou. Thou hast no hand?
As men who think to understand
A world by their Creator planned,
  Who wiser is than they.

Still guided by the dreamy song,
As in a trance I float along
Above the Pyrenean chain,
Above the fields and farms of Spain,
Above the bright Majorcan isle,
That lends its softened name to art,--
A spot, a dot upon the chart,
Whose little towns, red-roofed with tile,
Are ruby-lustred with the light
Of blazing furnaces by night,
And crowned by day with wreaths of smoke.
Then eastward, wafted in my flight
On my enchanter's magic cloak,
I sail across the Tyrrhene Sea
Into the land of Italy,
And o'er the windy Apennines,
Mantled and musical with pines.

The palaces, the princely halls,
The doors of houses and the walls
Of churches and of belfry towers,
Cloister and castle, street and mart,
Are garlanded and gay with flowers
That blossom in the fields of art.
Here Gubbio's workshops gleam and glow
With brilliant, iridescent dyes,
The dazzling whiteness of the snow,
The cobalt blue of summer skies;
And vase and scutcheon, cup and plate,
In perfect finish emulate
Faenza, Florence, Pesaro.

Forth from Urbino's gate there came
A youth with the angelic name
Of Raphael, in form and face
Himself angelic, and divine
In arts of color and design.
From him Francesco Xanto caught
Something of his transcendent grace,
And into fictile fabrics wrought
Suggestions of the master's thought.
Nor less Maestro Giorgio shines
With madre-perl and golden lines
Of arabesques, and interweaves
His birds and fruits and flowers and leaves
About some landscape, shaded brown,
With olive tints on rock and town.
Behold this cup within whose bowl,
Upon a ground of deepest blue
With yellow-lustred stars o'erlaid,
Colors of every tint and hue
Mingle in one harmonious whole!
With large blue eyes and steadfast gaze,
Her yellow hair in net and braid,
Necklace and ear-rings all ablaze
With golden lustre o'er the glaze,
A woman's portrait; on the scroll,
Cana, the Beautiful! A name
Forgotten save for such brief fame
As this memorial can bestow,--
A gift some lover long ago
Gave with his heart to this fair dame.

A nobler title to renown
Is thine, O pleasant Tuscan town,
Seated beside the Arno's stream;
For Lucca della Robbia there
Created forms so wondrous fair,
They made thy sovereignty supreme.
These choristers with lips of stone,
Whose music is not heard, but seen,
Still chant, as from their organ-screen,
Their Maker's praise; nor these alone,
But the more fragile forms of clay,
Hardly less beautiful than they,
These saints and angels that adorn
The walls of hospitals, and tell
The story of good deeds so well
That poverty seems less forlorn,
And life more like a holiday.

Here in this old neglected church,
That long eludes the traveller's search,
Lies the dead bishop on his tomb;
Earth upon earth he slumbering lies,
Life-like and death-like in the gloom;
Garlands of fruit and flowers in bloom
And foliage deck his resting place;
A shadow in the sightless eyes,
A pallor on the patient face,
Made perfect by the furnace heat;
All earthly passions and desires
Burnt out by purgatorial fires;
Seeming to say, "Our years are fleet,
And to the weary death is sweet."

But the most wonderful of all
The ornaments on tomb or wall
That grace the fair Ausonian shores
Are those the faithful earth restores,
Near some Apulian town concealed,
In vineyard or in harvest field,--
Vases and urns and bas-reliefs,
Memorials of forgotten griefs,
Or records of heroic deeds
Of demigods and mighty chiefs:
Figures that almost move and speak,
And, buried amid mould and weeds,
Still in their attitudes attest
The presence of the graceful Greek,--
Achilles in his armor dressed,
Alcides with the Cretan bull,
And Aphrodite with her boy,
Or lovely Helena of Troy,
Still living and still beautiful.

Turn, turn, my wheel! 'T is nature's plan
The child should grow into the man,
  The man grow wrinkled, old, and gray;
In youth the heart exults and sings,
The pulses leap, the feet have wings;
In age the cricket chirps, and brings
  The harvest home of day.

And now the winds that southward blow,
And cool the hot Sicilian isle,
Bear me away. I see below
The long line of the Libyan Nile,
Flooding and feeding the parched land
With annual ebb and overflow,
A fallen palm whose branches lie
Beneath the Abyssinian sky,
Whose roots are in Egyptian sands,
On either bank huge water-wheels,
Belted with jars and dripping weeds,
Send forth their melancholy moans,
As if, in their gray mantles hid,
Dead anchorites of the Thebaid
Knelt on the shore and told their beads,
Beating their breasts with loud appeals
And penitential tears and groans.

This city, walled and thickly set
With glittering mosque and minaret,
Is Cairo, in whose gay bazaars
The dreaming traveller first inhales
The perfume of Arabian gales,
And sees the fabulous earthen jars,
Huge as were those wherein the maid
Morgiana found the Forty Thieves
Concealed in midnight ambuscade;
And seeing, more than half believes
The fascinating tales that run
Through all the Thousand Nights and One,
Told by the fair Scheherezade.

More strange and wonderful than these
Are the Egyptian deities,
Ammonn, and Emeth, and the grand
Osiris, holding in his hand
The lotus; Isis, crowned and veiled;
The sacred Ibis, and the Sphinx;
Bracelets with blue enamelled links;
The Scarabee in emerald mailed,
Or spreading wide his funeral wings;
Lamps that perchance their night-watch kept
O'er Cleopatra while she slept,--
All plundered from the tombs of kings.

Turn, turn, my wheel! The human race,
Of every tongue, of every place,
  Caucasian, Coptic, or Malay,
All that inhabit this great earth,
Whatever be their rank or worth,
Are kindred and allied by birth,
  And made of the same clay.

O'er desert sands, o'er gulf and bay,
O'er Ganges and o'er Himalay,
Bird-like I fly, and flying sing,
To flowery kingdoms of Cathay,
And bird-like poise on balanced wing
Above the town of King-te-tching,
A burning town, or seeming so,--
Three thousand furnaces that glow
Incessantly, and fill the air
With smoke uprising, gyre on gyre
And painted by the lurid glare,
Of jets and flashes of red fire.

As leaves that in the autumn fall,
Spotted and veined with various hues,
Are swept along the avenues,
And lie in heaps by hedge and wall,
So from this grove of chimneys whirled
To all the markets of the world,
These porcelain leaves are wafted on,--
Light yellow leaves with spots and stains
Of violet and of crimson dye,
Or tender azure of a sky
Just washed by gentle April rains,
And beautiful with celadon.

Nor less the coarser household wares,--
The willow pattern, that we knew
In childhood, with its bridge of blue
Leading to unknown thoroughfares;
The solitary man who stares
At the white river flowing through
Its arches, the fantastic trees
And wild perspective of the view;
And intermingled among these
The tiles that in our nurseries
Filled us with wonder and delight,
Or haunted us in dreams at night.

And yonder by Nankin, behold!
The Tower of Porcelain, strange and old,
Uplifting to the astonished skies
Its ninefold painted balconies,
With balustrades of twining leaves,
And roofs of tile, beneath whose eaves
Hang porcelain bells that all the time
Ring with a soft, melodious chime;
While the whole fabric is ablaze
With varied tints, all fused in one
Great mass of color, like a maze
Of flowers illumined by the sun.

Turn, turn, my wheel! What is begun
At daybreak must at dark be done,
  To-morrow will be another day;
To-morrow the hot furnace flame
Will search the heart and try the frame,
And stamp with honor or with shame
  These vessels made of clay.

Cradled and rocked in Eastern seas,
The islands of the Japanese
Beneath me lie; o'er lake and plain
The stork, the heron, and the crane
Through the clear realms of azure drift,
And on the hillside I can see
The villages of Imari,
Whose thronged and flaming workshops lift
Their twisted columns of smoke on high,
Cloud cloisters that in ruins lie,
With sunshine streaming through each rift,
And broken arches of blue sky.

All the bright flowers that fill the land,
Ripple of waves on rock or sand,
The snow on Fusiyama's cone,
The midnight heaven so thickly sown
With constellations of bright stars,
The leaves that rustle, the reeds that make
A whisper by each stream and lake,
The saffron dawn, the sunset red,
Are painted on these lovely jars;
Again the skylark sings, again
The stork, the heron, and the crane
Float through the azure overhead,
The counterfeit and counterpart
Of Nature reproduced in Art.

Art is the child of Nature; yes,
Her darling child, in whom we trace
The features of the mother's face,
Her aspect and her attitude,
All her majestic loveliness
Chastened and softened and subdued
Into a more attractive grace,
And with a human sense imbued.
He is the greatest artist, then,
Whether of pencil or of pen,
Who follows Nature. Never man,
As artist or as artisan,
Pursuing his own fantasies,
Can touch the human heart, or please,
Or satisfy our nobler needs,
As he who sets his willing feet
In Nature's footprints, light and fleet,
And follows fearless where she leads.

Thus mused I on that morn in May,
Wrapped in my visions like the Seer,
Whose eyes behold not what is near,
But only what is far away,
When, suddenly sounding peal on peal,
The church-bell from the neighboring town
Proclaimed the welcome hour of noon.
The Potter heard, and stopped his wheel,
His apron on the grass threw down,
Whistled his quiet little tune,
Not overloud nor overlong,
And ended thus his simple song:

Stop, stop, my wheel! Too soon, too soon
The noon will be the afternoon,
  Too soon to-day be yesterday;
Behind us in our path we cast
The broken potsherds of the past,
And all are ground to dust a last,
  And trodden into clay!

*************

BIRDS OF PASSAGE

FLIGHT THE FIFTH

THE HERONS OF ELMWOOD

Warm and still is the summer night,
  As here by the river's brink I wander;
White overhead are the stars, and white
  The glimmering lamps on the hillside yonder.

Silent are all the sounds of day;
  Nothing I hear but the chirp of crickets,
And the cry of the herons winging their way
  O'er the poet's house in the Elmwood thickets.

Call to him, herons, as slowly you pass
  To your roosts in the haunts of the exiled thrushes,
Sing him the song of the green morass;
  And the tides that water the reeds and rushes.

Sing him the mystical Song of the Hern,
  And the secret that baffles our utmost seeking;
For only a sound of lament we discern,
  And cannot interpret the words you are speaking.

Sing of the air, and the wild delight
  Of wings that uplift and winds that uphold you,
The joy of freedom, the rapture of flight
  Through the drift of the floating mists that infold you.

Of the landscape lying so far below,
  With its towns and rivers and desert places;
And the splendor of light above, and the glow
  Of the limitless, blue, ethereal spaces.

Ask him if songs of the Troubadours,
  Or of Minnesingers in old black-letter,
Sound in his ears more sweet than yours,
  And if yours are not sweeter and wilder and better.

Sing to him, say to him, here at his gate,
  Where the boughs of the stately elms are meeting,
Some one hath lingered to meditate,
  And send him unseen this friendly greeting;

That many another hath done the same,
  Though not by a sound was the silence broken;
The surest pledge of a deathless name
  Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken.

A DUTCH PICTURE

Simon Danz has come home again,
  From cruising about with his buccaneers;
He has singed the beard of the King of Spain,
And carried away the Dean of Jaen
  And sold him in Algiers.

In his house by the Maese, with its roof of tiles,
  And weathercocks flying aloft in air,
There are silver tankards of antique styles,
Plunder of convent and castle, and piles
  Of carpets rich and rare.

In his tulip-garden there by the town,
  Overlooking the sluggish stream,
With his Moorish cap and dressing-gown,
The old sea-captain, hale and brown,
  Walks in a waking dream.

A smile in his gray mustachio lurks
Whenever he thinks of the King of Spain,
And the listed tulips look like Turks,
And the silent gardener as he works
  Is changed to the Dean of Jaen.

The windmills on the outermost
  Verge of the landscape in the haze,
To him are towers on the Spanish coast,
With whiskered sentinels at their post,
  Though this is the river Maese.

But when the winter rains begin,
  He sits and smokes by the blazing brands,
And old seafaring men come in,
Goat-bearded, gray, and with double chin,
  And rings upon their hands.

They sit there in the shadow and shine
  Of the flickering fire of the winter night;
Figures in color and design
Like those by Rembrandt of the Rhine,
  Half darkness and half light.

And they talk of ventures lost or won,
  And their talk is ever and ever the same,
While they drink the red wine of Tarragon,
From the cellars of some Spanish Don,
  Or convent set on flame.

Restless at times with heavy strides
  He paces his parlor to and fro;
He is like a ship that at anchor rides,
And swings with the rising and falling tides,
  And tugs at her anchor-tow.

Voices mysterious far and near,
  Sound of the wind and sound of the sea,
Are calling and whispering in his ear,
Simon Danz! Why stayest thou here?
  Come forth and follow me!"

So he thinks he shall take to the sea again
  For one more cruise with his buccaneers,
To singe the beard of the King of Spain,
And capture another Dean of Jaen
  And sell him in Algiers.

CASTLES IN SPAIN

How much of my young heart, O Spain,
  Went out to thee in days of yore!
What dreams romantic filled my brain,
And summoned back to life again
The Paladins of Charlemagne
The Cid Campeador!

And shapes more shadowy than these,
  In the dim twilight half revealed;
Phoenician galleys on the seas,
The Roman camps like hives of bees,
The Goth uplifting from his knees
  Pelayo on his shield.

It was these memories perchance,
  From annals of remotest eld,
That lent the colors of romance
To every trivial circumstance,
And changed the form and countenance
  Of all that I beheld.

Old towns, whose history lies hid
  In monkish chronicle or rhyme,
Burgos, the birthplace of the Cid,
Zamora and Valladolid,
Toledo, built and walled amid
  The wars of Wamba's time;

The long, straight line of the high-way,
  The distant town that seems so near,
The peasants in the fields, that stay
Their toil to cross themselves and pray,
When from the belfry at midday
  The Angelus they hear;

White crosses in the mountain pass,
  Mules gay with tassels, the loud din
Of muleteers, the tethered ass
That crops the dusty wayside grass,
And cavaliers with spurs of brass
  Alighting at the inn;

White hamlets hidden in fields of wheat,
   White cities slumbering by the sea,
White sunshine flooding square and street,
Dark mountain-ranges, at whose feet
The river-beds are dry with heat,--
  All was a dream to me.

Yet something sombre and severe
  O'er the enchanted landscape reigned;
A terror in the atmosphere
As if King Philip listened near,
Or Torquemada, the austere,
  His ghostly sway maintained.

The softer Andalusian skies
  Dispelled the sadness and the gloom;
There Cadiz by the seaside lies,
And Seville's orange-orchards rise,
Making the land a paradise
  Of beauty and of bloom.

There Cordova is hidden among
  The palm, the olive, and the vine;
Gem of the South, by poets sung,
And in whose Mosque Ahmanzor hung
As lamps the bells that once had rung
  At Compostella's shrine.

But over all the rest supreme,
  The star of stars, the cynosure,
The artist's and the poet's theme,
The young man's vision, the old man's dream,--
Granada by its winding stream,
  The city of the Moor!

And there the Alhambra still recalls
  Aladdin's palace of delight;
Allah il Allah! through its halls
Whispers the fountain as it falls,
The Darro darts beneath its walls,
  The hills with snow are white.

Ah yes, the hills are white with snow,
  And cold with blasts that bite and freeze;
But in the happy vale below
The orange and pomegranate grow,
And wafts of air toss to and fro
  The blossoming almond-trees.

The Vega cleft by the Xenil,
  The fascination and allure
Of the sweet landscape chains the will;
The traveller lingers on the hill,
His parted lips are breathing still
  The last sigh of the Moor.

How like a ruin overgrown
  With flower's that hide the rents of time,
Stands now the Past that I have known,
Castles in Spain, not built of stone
But of white summer clouds, and blown
  Into this little mist of rhyme!

VITTORIA COLONNA.

VITTORIA COLONNA, on the death of her hushand, the Marchese di
Pescara, retired to her castle at Ischia (Inarime), and there
wrote the Ode upon his death, which gained her the title of
Divine.

Once more, once more, Inarime,
  I see thy purple hills!--once more
I hear the billows of the bay
  Wash the white pebbles on thy shore.

High o'er the sea-surge and the sands,
  Like a great galleon wrecked and cast
Ashore by storms, thy castle stands,
  A mouldering landmark of the Past.

Upon its terrace-walk I see
  A phantom gliding to and fro;
It is Colonna,--it is she
  Who lived and loved so long ago.

Pescara's beautiful young wife,
  The type of perfect womanhood,
Whose life was love, the life of life,
  That time and change and death withstood.

For death, that breaks the marriage band
  In others, only closer pressed
The wedding-ring upon her hand
  And closer locked and barred her breast.

She knew the life-long martyrdom,
  The weariness, the endless pain
Of waiting for some one to come
  Who nevermore would come again.

The shadows of the chestnut-trees,
  The odor of the orange blooms,
The song of birds, and, more than these,
  The silence of deserted rooms;

The respiration of the sea,
  The soft caresses of the air,
All things in nature seemed to be
  But ministers of her despair;

Till the o'erburdened heart, so long
  Imprisoned in itself, found vent
And voice in one impassioned song
  Of inconsolable lament.

Then as the sun, though hidden from sight,
  Transmutes to gold the leaden mist,
Her life was interfused with light,
  From realms that, though unseen, exist,

Inarime! Inarime!
  Thy castle on the crags above
In dust shall crumble and decay,
  But not the memory of her love.

THE REVENGE OF RAIN-IN-THE-FACE

In that desolate land and lone,
Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone
  Roar down their mountain path,
By their fires the Sioux Chiefs
Muttered their woes and griefs
  And the menace of their wrath.

"Revenge!" cried Rain-in-the-Face,
"Revenue upon all the race
  Of the White Chief with yellow hair!"
And the mountains dark and high
From their crags re-echoed the cry
  Of his anger and despair.

In the meadow, spreading wide
By woodland and riverside
  The Indian village stood;
All was silent as a dream,
Save the rushing a of the stream
  And the blue-jay in the wood.

In his war paint and his beads,
Like a bison among the reeds,
  In ambush the Sitting Bull
Lay with three thousand braves
Crouched in the clefts and caves,
Savage, unmerciful!

Into the fatal snare
The White Chief with yellow hair
  And his three hundred men
Dashed headlong, sword in hand;
But of that gallant band
  Not one returned again.

The sudden darkness of death
Overwhelmed them like the breath
  And smoke of a furnace fire:
By the river's bank, and between
The rocks of the ravine,
  They lay in their bloody attire.

But the foemen fled in the night,
And Rain-in-the-Face, in his flight
  Uplifted high in air
As a ghastly trophy, bore
The brave heart, that beat no more,
  Of the White Chief with yellow hair.

Whose was the right and the wrong?
Sing it, O funeral song,
  With a voice that is full of tears,
And say that our broken faith
Wrought all this ruin and scathe,
  In the Year of a Hundred Years.

TO THE RIVER YVETTE

O lovely river of Yvette!
  O darling river! like a bride,
Some dimpled, bashful, fair Lisette,
  Thou goest to wed the Orge's tide.

Maincourt, and lordly Dampierre,
  See and salute thee on thy way,
And, with a blessing and a prayer,
  Ring the sweet bells of St. Forget.

The valley of Chevreuse in vain
  Would hold thee in its fond embrace;
Thou glidest from its arms again
  And hurriest on with swifter pace.

Thou wilt not stay; with restless feet
  Pursuing still thine onward flight,
Thou goest as one in haste to meet
  Her sole desire, her head's delight.

O lovely river of Yvette!
  O darling stream! on balanced wings
The wood-birds sang the chansonnette
  That here a wandering poet sings.

THE EMPEROR'S GLOVE

"Combien faudrait-il de peaux d'Espagne pour faire un gant de
cette grandeur?"  A play upon the words gant, a glove, and Gand,
the French for Ghent.

On St. Baron's tower, commanding
  Half of Flanders, his domain,
Charles the Emperor once was standing,
While beneath him on the landing
  Stood Duke Alva and his train.

Like a print in books of fables,
  Or a model made for show,
With its pointed roofs and gables,
Dormer windows, scrolls and labels,
  Lay the city far below.

Through its squares and streets and alleys
  Poured the populace of Ghent;
As a routed army rallies,
Or as rivers run through valleys,
  Hurrying to their homes they went

"Nest of Lutheran misbelievers!"
  Cried Duke Alva as he gazed;
"Haunt of traitors and deceivers,
Stronghold of insurgent weavers,
  Let it to the ground be razed!"

On the Emperor's cap the feather
  Nods, as laughing he replies:
"How many skins of Spanish leather,
Think you, would, if stitched together
  Make a glove of such a size?"

A BALLAD OF THE FRENCH FLEET

OCTOBER, 1746

MR. THOMAS PRINCE loquitur.

A fleet with flags arrayed
  Sailed from the port of Brest,
And the Admiral's ship displayed
  The signal: "Steer southwest."
For this Admiral D'Anville
  Had sworn by cross and crown
To ravage with fire and steel
  Our helpless Boston Town.

There were rumors in the street,
  In the houses there was fear
Of the coming of the fleet,
  And the danger hovering near.
And while from mouth to mouth
  Spread the tidings of dismay,
I stood in the Old South,
  Saying humbly: "Let us pray!

"O Lord! we would not advise;
  But if in thy Providence
A tempest should arise
  To drive the French fleet hence,
And scatter it far and wide,
  Or sink it in the sea,
We should be satisfied,
  And thine the glory be."

This was the prayer I made,
  For my soul was all on flame,
And even as I prayed
  The answering tempest came;
It came with a mighty power,
  Shaking the windows and walls,
And tolling the bell in the tower,
  As it tolls at funerals.

The lightning suddenly
  Unsheathed its flaming sword,
And I cried: "Stand still, and see
  The salvation of the Lord!"
The heavens were black with cloud,
  The sea was white with hail,
And ever more fierce and loud
  Blew the October gale.

The fleet it overtook,
  And the broad sails in the van
Like the tents of Cushan shook,
  Or the curtains of Midian.
Down on the reeling decks
  Crashed the o'erwhelming seas;
Ah, never were there wrecks
  So pitiful as these!

Like a potter's vessel broke
  The great ships of the line;
They were carried away as a smoke,
  Or sank like lead in the brine.
O Lord! before thy path
  They vanished and ceased to be,
When thou didst walk in wrath
  With thine horses through the sea!

THE LEAP OF ROUSHAN BEG

Mounted on Kyrat strong and fleet,
His chestnut steed with four white feet,
  Roushan Beg, called Kurroglou,
Son of the road and bandit chief,
Seeking refuge and relief,
  Up the mountain pathway flew.

Such was Kyrat's wondrous speed,
Never yet could any steed
  Reach the dust-cloud in his course.
More than maiden, more than wife,
More than gold and next to life
  Roushan the Robber loved his horse.

In the land that lies beyond
Erzeroum and Trebizond,
  Garden-girt his fortress stood;
Plundered khan, or caravan
Journeying north from Koordistan,
  Gave him wealth and wine and food.

Seven hundred and fourscore
Men at arms his livery wore,
  Did his bidding night and day.
Now, through regions all unknown,
He was wandering, lost, alone,
  Seeking without guide his way.

Suddenly the pathway ends,
Sheer the precipice descends,
  Loud the torrent roars unseen;
Thirty feet from side to side
Yawns the chasm; on air must ride
  He who crosses this ravine.

Following close in his pursuit,
At the precipice's foot,
  Reyhan the Arab of Orfah
Halted with his hundred men,
Shouting upward from the glen,
  "La Illah illa Allah!"

Gently Roushan Beg caressed
Kyrat's forehead, neck, and breast;
  Kissed him upon both his eyes;
Sang to him in his wild way,
As upon the topmost spray
  Sings a bird before it flies.

"O my Kyrat, O my steed,
Round and slender as a reed,
  Carry me this peril through!
Satin housings shall be thine,
Shoes of gold, O Kyrat mine,
  O thou soul of Kurroglou!

"Soft thy skin as silken skein,
Soft as woman's hair thy mane,
  Tender are thine eyes and true;
All thy hoofs like ivory shine,
Polished bright; O, life of mine,
  Leap, and rescue Kurroglou!"

Kyrat, then, the strong and fleet,
Drew together his four white feet,
  Paused a moment on the verge,
Measured with his eye the space,
And into the air's embrace
  Leaped as leaps the ocean surge.

As the ocean surge o'er sand
Bears a swimmer safe to land,
  Kyrat safe his rider bore;
Rattling down the deep abyss
Fragments of the precipice
  Rolled like pebbles on a shore.

Roushan's tasselled cap of red
Trembled not upon his head,
  Careless sat he and upright;
Neither hand nor bridle shook,
Nor his head he turned to look,
  As he galloped out of sight.

Flash of harness in the air,
Seen a moment like the glare
  Of a sword drawn from its sheath;
Thus the phantom horseman passed,
And the shadow that he cast
  Leaped the cataract underneath.

Reyhan the Arab held his breath
While this vision of life and death
  Passed above him. "Allahu!"
Cried he. "In all Koordistan
Lives there not so brave a man
  As this Robber Kurroglou!"

HAROUN AL RASCHID

One day, Haroun Al Raschid read
A book wherein the poet said:--

"Where are the kings, and where the rest
Of those who once the world possessed?

"They're gone with all their pomp and show,
They're gone the way that thou shalt go.

"O thou who choosest for thy share
The world, and what the world calls fair,

"Take all that it can give or lend,
But know that death is at the end!"

Haroun Al Raschid bowed his head:
Tears fell upon the page he read.

KING TRISANKU

Viswamitra the Magician,
  By his spells and incantations,
Up to Indra's realms elysian
  Raised Trisanku, king of nations.

Indra and the gods offended
  Hurled him downward, and descending
In the air he hung suspended,
  With these equal powers contending.

Thus by aspirations lifted,
  By misgivings downward driven,
Human hearts are tossed and drifted
  Midway between earth and heaven.

A WRAITH IN THE MIST

"Sir, I should build me a fortification, if I
came to live here." --BOSWELL'S Johnson.

On the green little isle of Inchkenneth,
  Who is it that walks by the shore,
So gay with his Highland blue bonnet,
  So brave with his targe and claymore?

His form is the form of a giant,
  But his face wears an aspect of pain;
Can this be the Laird of Inchkenneth?
  Can this be Sir Allan McLean?

Ah, no! It is only the Rambler,
  The Idler, who lives in Bolt Court,
And who says, were he Laird of Inchkenneth,
  He would wall himself round with a fort.

THE THREE KINGS

Three Kings came riding from far away,
  Melchior and Gaspar and Baltasar;
Three Wise Men out of the East were they,
And they travelled by night and they slept by day,
  For their guide was a beautiful, wonderful star.

The star was so beautiful, large, and clear,
  That all the other stars of the sky
Became a white mist in the atmosphere,
And by this they knew that the coming was near
  Of the Prince foretold in the prophecy.

Three caskets they bore on their saddle-bows,
  Three caskets of gold with golden keys;
Their robes were of crimson silk with rows
Of bells and pomegranates and furbelows,
  Their turbans like blossoming almond-trees.

And so the Three Kings rode into the West,
  Through the dusk of night, over hill and dell,
And sometimes they nodded with beard on breast
And sometimes talked, as they paused to rest,
  With the people they met at some wayside well.

"Of the child that is born," said Baltasar,
  "Good people, I pray you, tell us the news;
For we in the East have seen his star,
And have ridden fast, and have ridden far,
  To find and worship the King of the Jews."

And the people answered, "You ask in vain;
  We know of no king but Herod the Great!"
They thought the Wise Men were men insane,
As they spurred their horses across the plain,
  Like riders in haste, and who cannot wait.

And when they came to Jerusalem,
  Herod the Great, who had heard this thing,
Sent for the Wise Men and questioned them;
And said, "Go down unto Bethlehem,
  And bring me tidings of this new king."

So they rode away; and the star stood still,
  The only one in the gray of morn
Yes, it stopped, it stood still of its own free will,
Right over Bethlehem on the hill,
  The city of David where Christ was born.

And the Three Kings rode through the gate and the guard,
  Through the silent street, till their horses turned
And neighed as they entered the great inn-yard;
But the windows were closed, and the doors were barred,
  And only a light in the stable burned.

And cradled there in the scented hay,
  In the air made sweet by the breath of kine,
The little child in the manger lay,
The child, that would be king one day
  Of a kingdom not human but divine.

His mother Mary of Nazareth
  Sat watching beside his place of rest,
Watching the even flow of his breath,
For the joy of life and the terror of death
  Were mingled together in her breast.

They laid their offerings at his feet:
  The gold was their tribute to a King,
The frankincense, with its odor sweet,
Was for the Priest, the Paraclete,
  The myrrh for the body's burying.

And the mother wondered and bowed her head,
  And sat as still as a statue of stone;
Her heart was troubled yet comforted,
Remembering what the Angel had said
  Of an endless reign and of David's throne.

Then the Kings rode out of the city gate,
  With a clatter of hoofs in proud array;
But they went not back to Herod the Great,
For they knew his malice and feared his hate,
  And returned to their homes by another way.

SONG

Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest;
Home-keeping hearts are happiest,
For those that wander they know not where
Are full of trouble and full of care;
    To stay at home is best.

Weary and homesick and distressed,
They wander east, they wander west,
And are baffled and beaten and blown about
By the winds of the wilderness of doubt;
    To stay at home is best.

Then stay at home, my heart, and rest;
The bird is safest in its nest;
O'er all that flutter their wings and fly
A hawk is hovering in the sky;
    To stay at home is best.

THE WHITE CZAR

The White Czar is Peter the Great. Batyushka, Father dear, and
Gosudar, Sovereign, are titles the Russian people are fond of
giving to the Czar in their popular songs.

Dost thou see on the rampart's height
That wreath of mist, in the light
Of the midnight moon? O, hist!
It is not a wreath of mist;
It is the Czar, the White Czar,
    Batyushka! Gosudar!

He has heard, among the dead,
The artillery roll o'erhead;
The drums and the tramp of feet
Of his soldiery in the street;
He is awake! the White Czar,
    Batyushka! Gosudar!

He has heard in the grave the cries
Of his people: "Awake! arise!"
He has rent the gold brocade
Whereof his shroud was made;
He is risen! the White Czar,
    Batyushka! Gosudar!

From the Volga and the Don
He has led his armies on,
Over river and morass,
Over desert and mountain pass;
The Czar, the Orthodox Czar,
    Batyushka! Gosudar!

He looks from the mountain-chain
Toward the seas, that cleave in twain
The continents; his hand
Points southward o'er the land
Of Roumili! O Czar,
   Batyushka! Gosudar!

And the words break from his lips:
"I am the builder of ships,
And my ships shall sail these seas
To the Pillars of Hercules!
I say it; the White Czar,
    Batyushka! Gosudar!

"The Bosphorus shall be free;
It shall make room for me;
And the gates of its water-streets
Be unbarred before my fleets.
I say it; the White Czar,
    Batyushka! Gosudar!

"And the Christian shall no more
Be crushed, as heretofore,
Beneath thine iron rule,
O Sultan of Istamboul!
I swear it; I the Czar,
    Batyushka! Gosudar!

DELIA

Sweet as the tender fragrance that survives,
When martyred flowers breathe out their little lives,
Sweet as a song that once consoled our pain,
But never will be sung to us again,
Is thy remembrance. Now the hour of rest
Hath come to thee. Sleep, darling; it is best.

ULTIMA THULE

DEDICATION

TO G.W.G.

With favoring winds, o'er sunlit seas,
We sailed for the Hesperides,
The land where golden apples grow;
But that, ah! that was long ago.

How far, since then, the ocean streams
Have swept us from that land of dreams,
That land of fiction and of truth,
The lost Atlantis of our youth!

Whither, oh, whither? Are not these
The tempest-haunted Hebrides,
Where sea gulls scream, and breakers roar,
And wreck and sea-weed line the shore?

Ultima Thule! Utmost Isle!
Here in thy harbors for a while
We lower our sails; a while we rest
From the unending, endless quest.

POEMS

BAYARD TAYLOR

Dead he lay among his books!
The peace of God was in his looks.

As the statues in the gloom
Watch o'er Maximilian's tomb,

So those volumes from their shelves
Watched him, silent as themselves.

Ah! his hand will nevermore
Turn their storied pages o'er;

Nevermore his lips repeat
Songs of theirs, however sweet.

Let the lifeless body rest!
He is gone, who was its guest;

Gone, as travellers haste to leave
An inn, nor tarry until eve.

Traveller! in what realms afar,
In what planet, in what star,

In what vast, aerial space,
Shines the light upon thy face?

In what gardens of delight
Rest thy weary feet to-night?

Poet! thou, whose latest verse
Was a garland on thy hearse;

Thou hast sung, with organ tone,
In Deukalion's life, thine own;

On the ruins of the Past
Blooms the perfect flower at last.

Friend! but yesterday the bells
Rang for thee their loud farewells;

And to-day they toll for thee,
Lying dead beyond the sea;

Lying dead among thy books,
The peace of God in all thy looks!

THE CHAMBER OVER THE GATE

Is it so far from thee
Thou canst no longer see,
In the Chamber over the Gate,
That old man desolate,
Weeping and wailing sore
For his son, who is no more?
    O Absalom, my son!

Is it so long ago
That cry of human woe
From the walled city came,
Calling on his dear name,
That it has died away
In the distance of to-day?
    O Absalom, my son!

There is no far or near,
There is neither there nor here,
There is neither soon nor late,
In that Chamber over the Gate,
Nor any long ago
To that cry of human woe,
    O Absalom, my son!

From the ages that are past
The voice sounds like a blast,
Over seas that wreck and drown,
Over tumult of traffic and town;
And from ages yet to be
Come the echoes back to me,
    O Absalom, my son!

Somewhere at every hour
The watchman on the tower
Looks forth, and sees the fleet
Approach of the hurrying feet
Of messengers, that bear
The tidings of despair.
    O Absalom, my son!

He goes forth from the door
Who shall return no more.
With him our joy departs;
The light goes out in our hearts;
In the Chamber over the Gate
We sit disconsolate.
    O Absalom, my son!

That 't is a common grief
Bringeth but slight relief;
Ours is the bitterest loss,
Ours is the heaviest cross;
And forever the cry will be
"Would God I had died for thee,
    O Absalom, my son!"

FROM MY ARM-CHAIR

TO THE CHILDREN OF CAMBRIDGE

Who presented to me on my Seventy-second Birth-day, February 27,
1879, this Chair, made from the Wood of the Village Blacksmith's
Chestnut Tree.

Am I a king, that I should call my own
     This splendid ebon throne?
Or by what reason, or what right divine,
     Can I proclaim it mine?

Only, perhaps, by right divine of song
     It may to me belong;
Only because the spreading chestnut tree
     Of old was sung by me.

Well I remember it in all its prime,
     When in the summer-time
The affluent foliage of its branches made
     A cavern of cool shade.

There, by the blacksmith's forge, beside the street,
     Its blossoms white and sweet
Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive,
     And murmured like a hive.

And when the winds of autumn, with a shout,
     Tossed its great arms about,
The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath,
     Dropped to the ground beneath.

And now some fragments of its branches bare,
     Shaped as a stately chair,
Have by my hearthstone found a home at last,
     And whisper of the past.

The Danish king could not in all his pride
     Repel the ocean tide,
But, seated in this chair, I can in rhyme
     Roll back the tide of Time.

I see again, as one in vision sees,
     The blossoms and the bees,
And hear the children's voices shout and call,
     And the brown chestnuts fall.

I see the smithy with its fires aglow,
     I hear the bellows blow,
And the shrill hammers on the anvil beat
     The iron white with heat!

And thus, dear children, have ye made for me
     This day a jubilee,
And to my more than three-score years and ten
     Brought back my youth again.

The heart hath its own memory, like the mind,
     And in it are enshrined
The precious keepsakes, into which is wrought
     The giver's loving thought.

Only your love and your remembrance could
     Give life to this dead wood,
And make these branches, leafless now so long,
     Blossom again in song.

JUGURTHA

How cold are thy baths, Apollo!
  Cried the African monarch, the splendid,
As down to his death in the hollow
  Dark dungeons of Rome he descended,
  Uncrowned, unthroned, unattended;
How cold are thy baths, Apollo!

How cold are thy baths, Apollo!
  Cried the Poet, unknown, unbefriended,
As the vision, that lured him to follow,
  With the mist and the darkness blended,
  And the dream of his life was ended;
How cold are thy baths, Apollo!

THE IRON PEN

Made from a fetter of Bonnivard, the Prisoner of Chillon; the
handle of wood from the Frigate Constitution, and bound with a
circlet of gold, inset with three precious stones from Siberia,
Ceylon, and Maine.

I thought this Pen would arise
From the casket where it lies--
  Of itself would arise and write
My thanks and my surprise.

When you gave it me under the pines,
I dreamed these gems from the mines
  Of Siberia, Ceylon, and Maine
Would glimmer as thoughts in the lines;

That this iron link from the chain
Of Bonnivard might retain
  Some verse of the Poet who sang
Of the prisoner and his pain;

That this wood from the frigate's mast
Might write me a rhyme at last,
  As it used to write on the sky
The song of the sea and the blast.

But motionless as I wait,
Like a Bishop lying in state
  Lies the Pen, with its mitre of gold,
And its jewels inviolate.

Then must I speak, and say
That the light of that summer day
  In the garden under the pines
Shall not fade and pass away.

I shall see you standing there,
Caressed by the fragrant air,
  With the shadow on your face,
And the sunshine on your hair.

I shall hear the sweet low tone
Of a voice before unknown,
  Saying, "This is from me to you--
From me, and to you alone."

And in words not idle and vain
I shall answer and thank you again
  For the gift, and the grace of the gift,
O beautiful Helen of Maine!

And forever this gift will be
As a blessing from you to me,
  As a drop of the dew of your youth
On the leaves of an aged tree.

ROBERT BURNS

I see amid the fields of Ayr
A ploughman, who, in foul and fair,
      Sings at his task
So clear, we know not if it is
The laverock's song we hear, or his,
      Nor care to ask.

For him the ploughing of those fields
A more ethereal harvest yields
      Than sheaves of grain;
Songs flush with Purple bloom the rye,
The plover's call, the curlew's cry,
      Sing in his brain.

Touched by his hand, the wayside weed
Becomes a flower; the lowliest reed
      Beside the stream
Is clothed with beauty; gorse and grass
And heather, where his footsteps pass,
      The brighter seem.

He sings of love, whose flame illumes
The darkness of lone cottage rooms;
      He feels the force,
The treacherous undertow and stress
Of wayward passions, and no less
      The keen remorse.

At moments, wrestling with his fate,
His voice is harsh, but not with hate;
      The brushwood, hung
Above the tavern door, lets fall
Its bitter leaf, its drop of gall
      Upon his tongue.

But still the music of his song
Rises o'er all elate and strong;
      Its master-chords
Are Manhood, Freedom, Brotherhood,
Its discords but an interlude
      Between the words.

And then to die so young and leave
Unfinished what he might achieve!
      Yet better sure
Is this, than wandering up and down
An old man in a country town,
      Infirm and poor.

For now he haunts his native land
As an immortal youth; his hand
      Guides every plough;
He sits beside each ingle-nook,
His voice is in each rushing brook,
      Each rustling bough.

His presence haunts this room to-night,
A form of mingled mist and light
      From that far coast.
Welcome beneath this roof of mine!
Welcome! this vacant chair is thine,
      Dear guest and ghost!

HELEN OF TYRE

What phantom is this that appears
Through the purple mist of the years,
   Itself but a mist like these?
A woman of cloud and of fire;
It is she; it is Helen of Tyre,
   The town in the midst of the seas.

O Tyre! in thy crowded streets
The phantom appears and retreats,
   And the Israelites that sell
Thy lilies and lions of brass,
Look up as they see her pass,
   And murmur "Jezebel!"

Then another phantom is seen
At her side, in a gray gabardine,
   With beard that floats to his waist;
It is Simon Magus, the Seer;
He speaks, and she pauses to hear
   The words he utters in haste.

He says: "From this evil fame,
From this life of sorrow and shame,
   I will lift thee and make thee mine;
Thou hast been Queen Candace,
And Helen of Troy, and shalt be
   The Intelligence Divine!"

Oh, sweet as the breath of morn,
To the fallen and forlorn
   Are whispered words of praise;
For the famished heart believes
The falsehood that tempts and deceives,
   And the promise that betrays.

So she follows from land to land
The wizard's beckoning hand,
   As a leaf is blown by the gust,
Till she vanishes into night.
O reader, stoop down and write
   With thy finger in the dust.

O town in the midst of the seas,
With thy rafts of cedar trees,
   Thy merchandise and thy ships,
Thou, too, art become as naught,
A phantom, a shadow, a thought,
   A name upon men's lips.

ELEGIAC

Dark is the morning with mist; in the narrow mouth of the harbor
  Motionless lies the sea, under its curtain of cloud;
Dreamily glimmer the sails of ships on the distant horizon,
  Like to the towers of a town, built on the verge of the sea.

Slowly and stately and still, they sail forth into the ocean;
  With them sail my thoughts over the limitless deep,
Farther and farther away, borne on by unsatisfied longings,
  Unto Hesperian isles, unto Ausonian shores.

Now they have vanished away, have disappeared in the ocean;
  Sunk are the towers of the town into the depths of the sea!
AU have vanished but those that, moored in the neighboring
roadstead,
  Sailless at anchor ride, looming so large in the mist.

Vanished, too, are the thoughts, the dim, unsatisfied longings;
  Sunk are the turrets of cloud into the ocean of dreams;
While in a haven of rest my heart is riding at anchor,
  Held by the chains of love, held by the anchors of trust!

OLD ST. DAVID'S AT RADNOR

What an image of peace and rest
  Is this little church among its graves!
All is so quiet; the troubled breast,
The wounded spirit, the heart oppressed,
  Here may find the repose it craves.

See, how the ivy climbs and expands
  Over this humble hermitage,
And seems to caress with its little hands
The rough, gray stones, as a child that stands
  Caressing the wrinkled cheeks of age!

You cross the threshold; and dim and small
  Is the space that serves for the Shepherd's Fold;
The narrow aisle, the bare, white wall,
The pews, and the pulpit quaint and tall,
  Whisper and say: "Alas! we are old."

Herbert's chapel at Bemerton
  Hardly more spacious is than this;
But Poet and Pastor, blent in one,
Clothed with a splendor, as of the sun,
  That lowly and holy edifice.

It is not the wall of stone without
  That makes the building small or great
But the soul's light shining round about,
And the faith that overcometh doubt,
  And the love that stronger is than hate.

Were I a pilgrim in search of peace,
  Were I a pastor of Holy Church,
More than a Bishop's diocese
Should I prize this place of rest, and release
  From farther longing and farther search.

Here would I stay, and let the world
  With its distant thunder roar and roll;
Storms do not rend the sail that is furled;
Nor like a dead leaf, tossed and whirled
  In an eddy of wind, is the anchored soul.

FOLK SONGS

THE SIFTING OF PETER

In St. Luke's Gospel we are told
How Peter in the days of old
      Was sifted;
And now, though ages intervene,
Sin is the same, while time and scene
      Are shifted.

Satan desires us, great and small,
As wheat to sift us, and we all
      Are tempted;
Not one, however rich or great,
Is by his station or estate
      Exempted.

No house so safely guarded is
But he, by some device of his,
      Can enter;
No heart hath armor so complete
But he can pierce with arrows fleet
      Its centre.

For all at last the cock will crow,
Who hear the warning voice, but go
      Unheeding,
Till thrice and more they have denied
The Man of Sorrows, crucified
      And bleeding.

One look of that pale suffering face
Will make us feel the deep disgrace
      Of weakness;
We shall be sifted till the strength
Of self-conceit be changed at length
      To meekness.

Wounds of the soul, though healed will ache;
The reddening scars remain, and make
      Confession;
Lost innocence returns no more;
We are not what we were before
      Transgression.

But noble souls, through dust and heat,
Rise from disaster and defeat
      The stronger,
And conscious still of the divine
Within them, lie on earth supine
      No longer.

MAIDEN AND WEATHERCOCK

MAIDEN
O weathercock on the village spire,
With your golden feathers all on fire,
Tell me, what can you see from your perch
Above there over the tower of the church?

WEATHERCOCK.
I can see the roofs and the streets below,
And the people moving to and fro,
And beyond, without either roof or street,
The great salt sea, and the fisherman's fleet.

I can see a ship come sailing in
Beyond the headlands and harbor of Lynn,
And a young man standing on the deck,
With a silken kerchief round his neck.

Now he is pressing it to his lips,
And now he is kissing his finger-tips,
And now he is lifting and waving his hand
And blowing the kisses toward the land.

MAIDEN.
Ah, that is the ship from over the sea,
That is bringing my lover back to me,
Bringing my lover so fond and true,
Who does not change with the wind like you.

WEATHERCOCK.
If I change with all the winds that blow,
It is only because they made me so,
And people would think it wondrous strange,
If I, a Weathercock, should not change.

O pretty Maiden, so fine and fair,
With your dreamy eyes and your golden hair,
When you and your lover meet to-day
You will thank me for looking some other way.

THE WINDMILL

Behold! a giant am I!
  Aloft here in my tower,
  With my granite jaws I devour
The maize, and the wheat, and the rye,
  And grind them into flour.

I look down over the farms;
  In the fields of grain I see
  The harvest that is to be,
And I fling to the air my arms,
  For I know it is all for me.

I hear the sound of flails
  Far off, from the threshing-floors
  In barns, with their open doors,
And the wind, the wind in my sails,
  Louder and louder roars.

I stand here in my place,
  With my foot on the rock below,
  And whichever way it may blow
I meet it face to face,
  As a brave man meets his foe.

And while we wrestle and strive
  My master, the miller, stands
  And feeds me with his hands;
For he knows who makes him thrive,
  Who makes him lord of lands.

On Sundays I take my rest;
  Church-going bells begin
  Their low, melodious din;
I cross my arms on my breast,
  And all is peace within.

THE TIDE RISES, THE TIDE FALLS

The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
   And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea in the darkness calls and calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
  And the tide rises, the tide falls.

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
   And the tide rises, the tide falls.

SONNETS

MY CATHEDRAL

Like two cathedral towers these stately pines
  Uplift their fretted summits tipped with cones;
  The arch beneath them is not built with stones,
  Not Art but Nature traced these lovely lines,
And carved this graceful arabesque of vines;
  No organ but the wind here sighs and moans,
  No sepulchre conceals a martyr's bones.
  No marble bishop on his tomb reclines.
Enter! the pavement, carpeted with leaves,
  Gives back a softened echo to thy tread!
  Listen! the choir is singing; all the birds,
In leafy galleries beneath the eaves,
  Are singing! listen, ere the sound be fled,
  And learn there may be worship with out words.

THE BURIAL OF THE POET

RICHARD HENRY DANA

In the old churchyard of his native town,
  And in the ancestral tomb beside the wall,
  We laid him in the sleep that comes to all,
  And left him to his rest and his renown.
The snow was falling, as if Heaven dropped down
  White flowers of Paradise to strew his pall;--
  The dead around him seemed to wake, and call
  His name, as worthy of so white a crown.
And now the moon is shining on the scene,
  And the broad sheet of snow is written o'er
  With shadows cruciform of leafless trees,
As once the winding-sheet of Saladin
  With chapters of the Koran; but, ah! more
  Mysterious and triumphant signs are these.

NIGHT

Into the darkness and the hush of night
  Slowly the landscape sinks, and fades away,
  And with it fade the phantoms of the day,
  The ghosts of men and things, that haunt the light,
The crowd, the clamor, the pursuit, the flight,
  The unprofitable splendor and display,
  The agitations, and the cares that prey
  Upon our hearts, all vanish out of sight.
The better life begins; the world no more
  Molests us; all its records we erase
  From the dull common-place book of our lives,
That like a palimpsest is written o'er
  With trivial incidents of time and place,
  And lo! the ideal, hidden beneath, revives.

L'ENVOI

THE POET AND HIS SONGS

As the birds come in the Spring,
  We know not from where;
As the stars come at evening
  From depths of the air;

As the rain comes from the cloud,
  And the brook from the ground;
As suddenly, low or loud,
  Out of silence a sound;

As the grape comes to the vine,
  The fruit to the tree;
As the wind comes to the pine,
  And the tide to the sea;

As come the white sails of ships
  O'er the ocean's verge;
As comes the smile to the lips,
  The foam to the surge;

So come to the Poet his songs,
  All hitherward blown
From the misty realm, that belongs
  To the vast unknown.

His, and not his, are the lays
  He sings; and their fame
Is his, and not his; and the praise
  And the pride of a name.

For voices pursue him by day,
  And haunt him by night,
And he listens, and needs must obey,
  When the Angel says: "Write!"

***********

IN THE HARBOR

BECALMED

Becalmed upon the sea of Thought,
Still unattained the land it sought,
My mind, with loosely-hanging sails,
Lies waiting the auspicious gales.

On either side, behind, before,
The ocean stretches like a floor,--
A level floor of amethyst,
Crowned by a golden dome of mist.

Blow, breath of inspiration, blow!
Shake and uplift this golden glow!
And fill the canvas of the mind
With wafts of thy celestial wind.

Blow, breath of song! until I feel
The straining sail, the lifting keel,
The life of the awakening sea,
Its motion and its mystery!

THE POET'S CALENDAR

JANUARY

Janus am I; oldest of potentates;
  Forward I look, and backward, and below
I count, as god of avenues and gates,
  The years that through my portals come and go.
I block the roads, and drift the fields with snow;
I chase the wild-fowl from the frozen fen;
My frosts congeal the rivers in their flow,
My fires light up the hearths and hearts of men.

FEBRUARY

I am lustration, and the sea is mine.
  I wash the sands and headlands with my tide;
My brow is crowned with branches of the pine;
  Before my chariot-wheels the fishes glide.
By me all things unclean are purified,
  By me the souls of men washed white again;
E'en the unlovely tombs of those who died
  Without a dirge, I cleanse from every stain.

MARCH

I Martius am! Once first, and now the third!
  To lead the Year was my appointed place;
A mortal dispossessed me by a word,
  And set there Janus with the double face.
Hence I make war on all the human race;
  I shake the cities with my hurricanes;
I flood the rivers and their banks efface,
  And drown the farms and hamlets with my rains.

APRIL

I open wide the portals of the Spring
  To welcome the procession of the flowers,
With their gay banners, and the birds that sing
  Their song of songs from their aerial towers.
I soften with my sunshine and my showers
  The heart of earth; with thoughts of love I glide
Into the hearts of men; and with the Hours
  Upon the Bull with wreathed horns I ride.

MAY

Hark! The sea-faring wild-fowl loud proclaim
  My coming, and the swarming of the bees.
These are my heralds, and behold! my name
  Is written in blossoms on the hawthorn-trees.
I tell the mariner when to sail the seas;
  I waft o'er all the land from far away
The breath and bloom of the Hesperides,
  My birthplace. I am Maia. I am May.

JUNE

Mine is the Month of Roses; yes, and mine
  The Month of Marriages! All pleasant sights
And scents, the fragrance of the blossoming vine,
  The foliage of the valleys and the heights.
Mine are the longest days, the loveliest nights;
  The mower's scythe makes music to my ear;
I am the mother of all dear delights;
  I am the fairest daughter of the year.

JULY

My emblem is the Lion, and I breathe
  The breath of Libyan deserts o'er the land;
My sickle as a sabre I unsheathe,
  And bent before me the pale harvests stand.
The lakes and rivers shrink at my command,
  And there is thirst and fever in the air;
The sky is changed to brass, the earth to sand;
  I am the Emperor whose name I bear.

AUGUST

The Emperor Octavian, called the August,
  I being his favorite, bestowed his name
Upon me, and I hold it still in trust,
  In memory of him and of his fame.
I am the Virgin, and my vestal flame
  Burns less intensely than the Lion's rage;
Sheaves are my only garlands, and I claim
  The golden Harvests as my heritage.

SEPTEMBER

I bear the Scales, where hang in equipoise
  The night and day; and when unto my lips
I put my trumpet, with its stress and noise
  Fly the white clouds like tattered sails of ships;
The tree-tops lash the air with sounding whips;
  Southward the clamorous sea-fowl wing their flight;
The hedges are all red with haws and hips,
  The Hunter's Moon reigns empress of the night.

OCTOBER

My ornaments are fruits; my garments leaves,
  Woven like cloth of gold, and crimson dyed;
I do not boast the harvesting of sheaves,
  O'er orchards and o'er vineyards I preside.
Though on the frigid Scorpion I ride,
  The dreamy air is full, and overflows
With tender memories of the summer-tide,
  And mingled voices of the doves and crows.

NOVEMBER

The Centaur, Sagittarius, am I,
  Born of Ixion's and the cloud's embrace;
With sounding hoofs across the earth I fly,
  A steed Thessalian with a human face.
Sharp winds the arrows are with which I chase
  The leaves, half dead already with affright;
I shroud myself in gloom; and to the race
  Of mortals bring nor comfort nor delight.

DECEMBER

Riding upon the Goat, with snow-white hair,
  I come, the last of all. This crown of mine
Is of the holly; in my hand I bear
  The thyrsus, tipped with fragrant cones of pine.
I celebrate the birth of the Divine,
  And the return of the Saturnian reign;--
My songs are carols sung at every shrine,
  Proclaiming "Peace on earth, good will to men."

AUTUMN WITHIN

It is autumn; not without,
  But within me is the cold.
Youth and spring are all about;
  It is I that have grown old.

Birds are darting through the air,
  Singing, building without rest;
Life is stirring everywhere,
  Save within my lonely breast.

There is silence: the dead leaves
  Fall and rustle and are still;
Beats no flail upon the sheaves
  Comes no murmur from the mill.

THE FOUR LAKES OF MADISON

Four limpid lakes,--four Naiades
Or sylvan deities are these,
  In flowing robes of azure dressed;
Four lovely handmaids, that uphold
Their shining mirrors, rimmed with gold,
  To the fair city in the West.

By day the coursers of the sun
Drink of these waters as they run
  Their swift diurnal round on high;
By night the constellations glow
Far down the hollow deeps below,
  And glimmer in another sky.

Fair lakes, serene and full of light,
Fair town, arrayed in robes of white,
  How visionary ye appear!
All like a floating landscape seems
In cloud-land or the land of dreams,
  Bathed in a golden atmosphere!

VICTOR AND VANQUISHED

As one who long hath fled with panting breath
  Before his foe, bleeding and near to fall,
  I turn and set my back against the wall,
  And look thee in the face, triumphant Death,
I call for aid, and no one answereth;
  I am alone with thee, who conquerest all;
  Yet me thy threatening form doth not appall,
  For thou art but a phantom and a wraith.
Wounded and weak, sword broken at the hilt,
  With armor shattered, and without a shield,
  I stand unmoved; do with me what thou wilt;
I can resist no more, but will not yield.
  This is no tournament where cowards tilt;
  The vanquished here is victor of the field.

MOONLIGHT

As a pale phantom with a lamp
  Ascends some ruin's haunted stair,
So glides the moon along the damp
  Mysterious chambers of the air.

Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed,
  As if this phantom, full of pain,
Were by the crumbling walls concealed,
  And at the windows seen again.

Until at last, serene and proud
  In all the splendor of her light,
She walks the terraces of cloud,
  Supreme as Empress of the Night.

I look, but recognize no more
  Objects familiar to my view;
The very pathway to my door
  Is an enchanted avenue.

All things are changed. One mass of shade,
  The elm-trees drop their curtains down;
By palace, park, and colonnade
  I walk as in a foreign town.

The very ground beneath my feet
  Is clothed with a diviner air;
White marble paves the silent street
  And glimmers in the empty square.

Illusion! Underneath there lies
  The common life of every day;
Only the spirit glorifies
  With its own tints the sober gray.

In vain we look, in vain uplift
  Our eyes to heaven, if we are blind,
We see but what we have the gift
  Of seeing; what we bring we find.

THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE

[A FRAGMENT.]

I

What is this I read in history,
Full of marvel, full of mystery,
Difficult to understand?
Is it fiction, is it truth?
Children in the flower of youth,
Heart in heart, and hand in hand,
Ignorant of what helps or harms,
Without armor, without arms,
Journeying to the Holy Land!

Who shall answer or divine?
Never since the world was made
Such a wonderful crusade
Started forth for Palestine.
Never while the world shall last
Will it reproduce the past;
Never will it see again
Such an army, such a band,
Over mountain, over main,
Journeying to the Holy Land.

Like a shower of blossoms blown
From the parent trees were they;
Like a flock of birds that fly
Through the unfrequented sky,
Holding nothing as their own,
Passed they into lands unknown,
Passed to suffer and to die.

O the simple, child-like trust!
O the faith that could believe
What the harnessed, iron-mailed
Knights of Christendom had failed,
By their prowess, to achieve,
They the children, could and must?

Little thought the Hermit, preaching
Holy Wars to knight and baron,
That the words dropped in his teaching,
His entreaty, his beseeching,
Would by children's hands be gleaned,
And the staff on which he leaned
Blossom like the rod of Aaron.

As a summer wind upheaves
The innumerable leaves
In the bosom of a wood,--
Not as separate leaves, but massed
All together by the blast,--
So for evil or for good
His resistless breath upheaved
All at once the many-leaved,
Many-thoughted multitude.

In the tumult of the air
Rock the boughs with all the nests
Cradled on their tossing crests;
By the fervor of his prayer
Troubled hearts were everywhere
Rocked and tossed in human breasts.

For a century, at least,
His prophetic voice had ceased;
But the air was heated still
By his lurid words and will,
As from fires in far-off woods,
In the autumn of the year,
An unwonted fever broods
In the sultry atmosphere.

II

In Cologne the bells were ringing,
In Cologne the nuns were singing
Hymns and canticles divine;
Loud the monks sang in their stalls,
And the thronging streets were loud
With the voices of the crowd;--
Underneath the city walls
Silent flowed the river Rhine.

From the gates, that summer day,
Clad in robes of hodden gray,
With the red cross on the breast,
Azure-eyed and golden-haired,
Forth the young crusaders fared;
While above the band devoted
Consecrated banners floated,
Fluttered many a flag and streamer,
And the cross o'er all the rest!
Singing lowly, meekly, slowly,
"Give us, give us back the holy
Sepulchre of the Redeemer!"
On the vast procession pressed,
Youths and maidens. . . .

III

Ah! what master hand shall paint
How they journeyed on their way,
How the days grew long and dreary,
How their little feet grew weary,
How their little hearts grew faint!

Ever swifter day by day
Flowed the homeward river; ever
More and more its whitening current
Broke and scattered into spray,
Till the calmly-flowing river
Changed into a mountain torrent,
Rushing from its glacier green
Down through chasm and black ravine.
Like a phoenix in its nest,
Burned the red sun in the West,
Sinking in an ashen cloud;
In the East, above the crest
Of the sea-like mountain chain,
Like a phoenix from its shroud,
Came the red sun back again.

Now around them, white with snow,
Closed the mountain peaks. Below,
Headlong from the precipice
Down into the dark abyss,
Plunged the cataract, white with foam;
And it said, or seemed to say:
"Oh return, while yet you may,
Foolish children, to your home,
There the Holy City is!"

But the dauntless leader said:
"Faint not, though your bleeding feet
O'er these slippery paths of sleet
Move but painfully and slowly;
Other feet than yours have bled;
Other tears than yours been shed
Courage! lose not heart or hope;
On the mountains' southern slope
Lies Jerusalem the Holy!"

As a white rose in its pride,
By the wind in summer-tide
Tossed and loosened from the branch,
Showers its petals o'er the ground,
From the distant mountain's side,
Scattering all its snows around,
With mysterious, muffled sound,
Loosened, fell the avalanche.
Voices, echoes far and near,
Roar of winds and waters blending,
Mists uprising, clouds impending,
Filled them with a sense of fear,
Formless, nameless, never ending.

. . . . . . . . . .

SUNDOWN

The summer sun is sinking low;
Only the tree-tops redden and glow:
Only the weathercock on the spire
Of the neighboring church is a flame of fire;
     All is in shadow below.

O beautiful, awful summer day,
What hast thou given, what taken away?
Life and death, and love and hate,
Homes made happy or desolate,
     Hearts made sad or gay!

On the road of life one mile-stone more!
In the book of life one leaf turned o'er!
Like a red seal is the setting sun
On the good and the evil men have done,--
     Naught can to-day restore!

CHIMES

Sweet chimes! that in the loneliness of night
  Salute the passing hour, and in the dark
  And silent chambers of the household mark
  The movements of the myriad orbs of light!
Through my closed eyelids, by the inner sight,
  I see the constellations in the arc
  Of their great circles moving on, and hark!
  I almost hear them singing in their flight.
Better than sleep it is to lie awake
  O'er-canopied by the vast starry dome
  Of the immeasurable sky; to feel
The slumbering world sink under us, and make
  Hardly an eddy,--a mere rush of foam
  On the great sea beneath a sinking keel.

FOUR BY THE CLOCK.

"NAHANT, September 8, 1880,
Four o'clock in the morning."

Four by the clock! and yet not day;
But the great world rolls and wheels away,
With its cities on land, and its ships at sea,
Into the dawn that is to be!

Only the lamp in the anchored bark
Sends its glimmer across the dark,
And the heavy breathing of the sea
Is the only sound that comes to me.

AUF WIEDERSEHEN.

IN MEMORY OF J.T.F.

Until we meet again! That is the meaning
Of the familiar words, that men repeat
    At parting in the street.
Ah yes, till then! but when death intervening
Rends us asunder, with what ceaseless pain
    We wait for the Again!

The friends who leave us do not feel the sorrow
Of parting, as we feel it, who must stay
    Lamenting day by day,
And knowing, when we wake upon the morrow,
We shall not find in its accustomed place
    The one beloved face.

It were a double grief, if the departed,
Being released from earth, should still retain
    A sense of earthly pain;
It were a double grief, if the true-hearted,
Who loved us here, should on the farther shore
    Remember us no more.

Believing, in the midst of our afflictions,
That death is a beginning, not an end,
    We cry to them, and send
Farewells, that better might be called predictions,
Being fore-shadowings of the future, thrown
    Into the vast Unknown.

Faith overleaps the confines of our reason,
And if by faith, as in old times was said,
    Women received their dead
Raised up to life, then only for a season
Our partings are, nor shall we wait in vain
    Until we meet again!

ELEGIAC VERSE

I

Peradventure of old, some bard in Ionian Islands,
  Walking alone by the sea, hearing the wash of the waves,
Learned the secret from them of the beautiful verse elegiac,
  Breathing into his song motion and sound of the sea.

For as the wave of the sea, upheaving in long undulations,
  Plunges loud on the sands, pauses, and turns, and retreats,
So the Hexameter, rising and singing, with cadence sonorous,
  Falls; and in refluent rhythm back the Pentameter flows?

II

Not in his youth alone, but in age, may the heart of the poet
  Bloom into song, as the gorse blossoms in autumn and spring.

III

Not in tenderness wanting, yet rough are the rhymes of our poet;
  Though it be Jacob's voice, Esau's, alas! are the hands.

IV

Let us be grateful to writers for what is left in the inkstand;
  When to leave off is an art only attained by the few.

V

How can the Three be One? you ask me; I answer by asking,
  Hail and snow and rain, are they not three, and yet one?

VI

By the mirage uplifted the land floats vague in the ether,
  Ships and the shadows of ships hang in the motionless air;
So by the art of the poet our common life is uplifted,
  So, transfigured, the world floats in a luminous haze.

VII

Like a French poem is Life; being only perfect in structure
  When with the masculine rhymes mingled the feminine are.

VIII

Down from the mountain descends the brooklet, rejoicing in
freedom;
   Little it dreams of the mill hid in the valley below;
Glad with the joy of existence, the child goes singing and
laughing,
  Little dreaming what toils lie in the future concealed.

IX

As the ink from our pen, so flow our thoughts and our feelings
  When we begin to write, however sluggish before.

X

Like the Kingdom of Heaven, the Fountain of Youth is within us;
  If we seek it elsewhere, old shall we grow in the search.

XI

If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it;
  Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.

XII

Wisely the Hebrews admit no Present tense in their language;
  While we are speaking the word, it is is already the Past.

XIII

In the twilight of age all things seem strange and phantasmal,
  As between daylight and dark ghost-like the landscape appears.

XIV

Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending;
  Many a poem is marred by a superfluous verse.

THE CITY AND THE SEA

The panting City cried to the Sea,
"I am faint with heat,--O breathe on me!"

And the Sea said, "Lo, I breathe! but my breath
To some will be life, to others death!"

As to Prometheus, bringing ease
In pain, come the Oceanides,

So to the City, hot with the flame
Of the pitiless sun, the east wind came.

It came from the heaving breast of the deep,
Silent as dreams are, and sudden as sleep.

Life-giving, death-giving, which will it be;
O breath of the merciful, merciless Sea?

MEMORIES

Oft I remember those whom I have known
  In other days, to whom my heart was led
  As by a magnet, and who are not dead,
  But absent, and their memories overgrown
With other thoughts and troubles of my own,
  As graves with grasses are, and at their head
  The stone with moss and lichens so o'erspread,
  Nothing is legible but the name alone.
And is it so with them? After long years,
  Do they remember me in the same way,
  And is the memory pleasant as to me?
I fear to ask; yet wherefore are my fears?
  Pleasures, like flowers, may wither and decay,
  And yet the root perennial may be.

HERMES TRISMEGISTUS

As Seleucus narrates, Hermes describes the principles that rank
as wholes in two myriads of books; or, as we are informed by
Manetho, he perfectly unfolded these principles in three myriads
six thousand five hundred and twenty-five volumes. . . .
. . . Our ancestors dedicated the inventions of  their wisdom to
this deity, inscribing all their own writings with the name of
Hermes.--IAMBLICUS.

Still through Egypt's desert places
    Flows the lordly Nile,
From its banks the great stone faces
    Gaze with patient smile.
Still the pyramids imperious
    Pierce the cloudless skies,
And the Sphinx stares with mysterious,
    Solemn, stony eyes.

But where are the old Egyptian
    Demi-gods and kings?
Nothing left but an inscription
    Graven on stones and rings.
Where are Helios and Hephaestus,
    Gods of eldest eld?
Where is Hermes Trismegistus,
    Who their secrets held?

Where are now the many hundred
    Thousand books he wrote?
By the Thaumaturgists plundered,
    Lost in lands remote;
In oblivion sunk forever,
    As when o'er the land
Blows a storm-wind, in the river
   Sinks the scattered sand.

Something unsubstantial, ghostly,
    Seems this Theurgist,
In deep meditation mostly
    Wrapped, as in a mist.
Vague, phantasmal, and unreal
    To our thought he seems,
Walking in a world ideal,
    In a land of dreams.

Was he one, or many, merging
    Name and fame in one,
Like a stream, to which, converging
    Many streamlets run?
Till, with gathered power proceeding,
    Ampler sweep it takes,
Downward the sweet waters leading
    From unnumbered lakes.

By the Nile I see him wandering,
    Pausing now and then,
On the mystic union pondering
    Between gods and men;
Half believing, wholly feeling,
    With supreme delight,
How the gods, themselves concealing,
    Lift men to their height.

Or in Thebes, the hundred-gated,
    In the thoroughfare
Breathing, as if consecrated,
    A diviner air;
And amid discordant noises,
    In the jostling throng,
Hearing far, celestial voices
    Of Olympian song.

Who shall call his dreams fallacious?
    Who has searched or sought
All the unexplored and spacious
    Universe of thought?
Who, in his own skill confiding,
   Shall with rule and line
Mark the border-land dividing
    Human and divine?

Trismegistus! three times greatest!
    How thy name sublime
Has descended to this latest
    Progeny of time!
Happy they whose written pages
    Perish with their lives,
If amid the crumbling ages
    Still their name survives!

Thine, O priest of Egypt, lately
    Found I in the vast,
Weed-encumbered sombre, stately,
    Grave-yard of the Past;
And a presence moved before me
    On that gloomy shore,
As a waft of wind, that o'er me
    Breathed, and was no more.

TO THE AVON

Flow on, sweet river! like his verse
Who lies beneath this sculptured hearse
Nor wait beside the churchyard wall
For him who cannot hear thy call.

Thy playmate once; I see him now
A boy with sunshine on his brow,
And hear in Stratford's quiet street
The patter of his little feet.

I see him by thy shallow edge
Wading knee-deep amid the sedge;
And lost in thought, as if thy stream
Were the swift river of a dream.

He wonders whitherward it flows;
And fain would follow where it goes,
To the wide world, that shall erelong
Be filled with his melodious song.

Flow on, fair stream! That dream is o'er;
He stands upon another shore;
A vaster river near him flows,
And still he follows where it goes.

PRESIDENT GARFIELD

"E venni dal martirio a questa pace."

These words the poet heard in Paradise,
  Uttered by one who, bravely dying here,
  In the true faith was living in that sphere
  Where the celestial cross of sacrifice
Spread its protecting arms athwart the skies;
  And set thereon, like jewels crystal clear,
  The souls magnanimous, that knew not fear,
  Flashed their effulgence on his dazzled eyes.
Ah me! how dark the discipline of pain,
  Were not the suffering followed by the sense
  Of infinite rest and infinite release!
This is our consolation; and again
  A great soul cries to us in our suspense,
  "I came from martyrdom unto this peace!"

MY BOOKS

Sadly as some old mediaeval knight
  Gazed at the arms he could no longer wield,
  The sword two-handed and the shining shield
  Suspended in the hall, and full in sight,
While secret longings for the lost delight
  Of tourney or adventure in the field
  Came over him, and tears but half concealed
  Trembled and fell upon his beard of white,
So I behold these books upon their shelf,
  My ornaments and arms of other days;
  Not wholly useless, though no longer used,
For they remind me of my other self,
  Younger and stronger, and the pleasant ways
  In which I walked, now clouded and confused.

MAD RIVER

IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS

TRAVELLER
Why dost thou wildly rush and roar,
     Mad River, O Mad River?
Wilt thou not pause and cease to pour
Thy hurrying, headlong waters o'er
     This rocky shelf forever?

What secret trouble stirs thy breast?
     Why all this fret and flurry?
Dost thou not know that what is best
In this too restless world is rest
     From over-work and worry?

THE RIVER
What wouldst thou in these mountains seek,
     O stranger from the city?
Is it perhaps some foolish freak
Of thine, to put the words I speak
     Into a plaintive ditty?

TRAVELLER
Yes; I would learn of thee thy song,
     With all its flowing number;
And in a voice as fresh and strong
As thine is, sing it all day long,
     And hear it in my slumbers.

THE RIVER
A brooklet nameless and unknown
     Was I at first, resembling
A little child, that all alone
Comes venturing down the stairs of stone,
     Irresolute and trembling.

Later, by wayward fancies led,
     For the wide world I panted;
Out of the forest dark and dread
Across the open fields I fled,
     Like one pursued and haunted.

I tossed my arms, I sang aloud,
     My voice exultant blending
With thunder from the passing cloud,
The wind, the forest bent and bowed,
     The rush of rain descending.

I heard the distant ocean call,
     Imploring and entreating;
Drawn onward, o'er this rocky wall
I plunged, and the loud waterfall
     Made answer to the greeting.

And now, beset with many ills,
     A toilsome life I follow;
Compelled to carry from the hills
These logs to the impatient mills
     Below there in the hollow.

Yet something ever cheers and charms
     The rudeness of my labors;
Daily I water with these arms
The cattle of a hundred farms,
     And have the birds for neighbors.

Men call me Mad, and well they may,
     When, full of rage and trouble,
I burst my banks of sand and clay,
And sweep their wooden bridge away,
     Like withered reeds or stubble.

Now go and write thy little rhyme,
     As of thine own creating.
Thou seest the day is past its prime;
I can no longer waste my time;
     The mills are tired of waiting.

POSSIBILITIES

Where are the Poets, unto whom belong
  The Olympian heights; whose singing shafts were sent
  Straight to the mark, and not from bows half bent,
  But with the utmost tension of the thong?
Where are the stately argosies of song,
  Whose rushing keels made music as they went
  Sailing in search of some new continent,
  With all sail set, and steady winds and strong?
Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught
  In schools, some graduate of the field or street,
  Who shall become a master of the art,
An admiral sailing the high seas of thought,
  Fearless and first and steering with his fleet
  For lands not yet laid down in any chart.

DECORATION DAY

Sleep, comrades, sleep and rest
  On this Field of the Grounded Arms,
Where foes no more molest,
  Nor sentry's shot alarms!

Ye have slept on the ground before,
  And started to your feet
At the cannon's sudden roar,
  Or the drum's redoubling beat.

But in this camp of Death
  No sound your slumber breaks;
Here is no fevered breath,
  No wound that bleeds and aches.

All is repose and peace,
  Untrampled lies the sod;
The shouts of battle cease,
  It is the Truce of God!

Rest, comrades, rest and sleep!
  The thoughts of men shall be
As sentinels to keep
  Your rest from danger free.

Your silent tents of green
  We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
  The memory shall be ours.

A FRAGMENT

Awake! arise! the hour is late!
  Angels are knocking at thy door!
They are in haste and cannot wait,
  And once departed come no more.

Awake! arise! the athlete's arm
  Loses its strength by too much rest;
The fallow land, the untilled farm
  Produces only weeds at best.

LOSS AND GAIN
     When I compare
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
  Little room do I find for pride.

     I am aware
How many days have been idly spent;
How like an arrow the good intent
  Has fallen short or been turned aside.

     But who shall dare
To measure loss and gain in this wise?
Defeat may be victory in disguise;
  The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.

INSCRIPTION ON THE SHANKLIN FOUNTAIN

O traveller, stay thy weary feet;
Drink of this fountain, pure and sweet;
  It flows for rich and poor the same.
Then go thy way, remembering still
The wayside well beneath the hill,
  The cup of water in His name.

THE BELLS OF SAN BLAS

What say the Bells of San Blas
To the ships that southward pass
  From the harbor of Mazatlan?
To them it is nothing more
Than the sound of surf on the shore,--
  Nothing more to master or man.

But to me, a dreamer of dreams,
To whom what is and what seems
  Are often one and the same,--
The Bells of San Blas to me
Have a strange, wild melody,
  And are something more than a name.

For bells are the voice of the church;
They have tones that touch and search
  The hearts of young and old;
One sound to all, yet each
Lends a meaning to their speech,
  And the meaning is manifold.

They are a voice of the Past,
Of an age that is fading fast,
  Of a power austere and grand,
When the flag of Spain unfurled
Its folds o'er this western world,
  And the Priest was lord of the land.

The chapel that once looked down
On the little seaport town
  Has crumbled into the dust;
And on oaken beams below
The bells swing to and fro,
  And are green with mould and rust.

"Is, then, the old faith dead,"
They say, "and in its stead
  Is some new faith proclaimed,
That we are forced to remain
Naked to sun and rain,
  Unsheltered and ashamed?

"Once, in our tower aloof,
We rang over wall and roof
  Our warnings and our complaints;
And round about us there
The white doves filled the air,
  Like the white souls of the saints.

"The saints! Ah, have they grown
Forgetful of their own?
  Are they asleep, or dead,
That open to the sky
Their ruined Missions lie,
  No longer tenanted?

"Oh, bring us back once more
The vanished days of yore,
  When the world with faith was filled;
Bring back the fervid zeal,
The hearts of fire and steel,
  The hands that believe and build.

"Then from our tower again
We will send over land and main
  Our voices of command,
Like exiled kings who return
To their thrones, and the people learn
  That the Priest is lord of the land!"

O Bells of San Blas in vain
Ye call back the Past again;
  The Past is deaf to your prayer!
Out of the shadows of night
The world rolls into light;
  It is daybreak everywhere.

*************

FRAGMENTS

October 22, 1838.

Neglected record of a mind neglected,
Unto what "lets and stops" art thou subjected!
The day with all its toils and occupations,
The night with its reflections and sensations,
The future, and the present, and the past,--
All I remember, feel, and hope at last,
All shapes of joy and sorrow, as they pass,--
Find but a dusty image in this glass.

August 18, 1847.

O faithful, indefatigable tides,
That evermore upon God's errands go,--
Now seaward bearing tidings of the land,--
Now landward bearing tidings of the sea,--
And filling every frith and estuary,
Each arm of the great sea, each little creek,
Each thread and filament of water-courses,
Full with your ministration of delight!
Under the rafters of this wooden bridge
I see you come and go; sometimes in haste
To reach your journey's end, which being done
With feet unrested ye return again
And recommence the never-ending task;
Patient, whatever burdens ye may bear,
And fretted only by the impeding rocks.

December 18, 1847.

Soft through the silent air descend the feathery snow-flakes;
White are the distant hills, white are the neighboring fields;
Only the marshes are brown, and the river rolling among them
Weareth the leaden hue seen in the eyes of the blind.

August 4, 1856.

A lovely morning, without the glare of the sun, the sea in great
commotion, chafing and foaming.

So from the bosom of darkness our days come roaring and gleaming,
  Chafe and break into foam, sink into darkness again.
But on the shores of Time each leaves some trace of its passage,
  Though the succeeding wave washes it out from the sand.

********

CHRISTUS: A MYSTERY

INTROITUS

The ANGEL bearing the PROPHET HABAKKUK through the air.

PROPHET.
Why dost thou bear me aloft,
O Angel of God, on thy pinions
O'er realms and dominions?
Softly I float as a cloud
In air, for thy right hand upholds me,
Thy garment enfolds me!

ANGEL.
Lo! as I passed on my way
In the harvest-field I beheld thee,
When no man compelled thee,
Bearing with thine own hands
This food to the famishing reapers,
A flock without keepers!

The fragrant sheaves of the wheat
Made the air above them sweet;
Sweeter and more divine
Was the scent of the scattered grain,
That the reaper's hand let fall
To be gathered again
By the hand of the gleaner!
Sweetest, divinest of all,
Was the humble deed of thine,
And the meekness of thy demeanor!

PROPHET.
Angel of Light,
I cannot gainsay thee,
I can but obey thee!

ANGEL.
Beautiful was it in the lord's sight,
To behold his Prophet
Feeding those that toil,
The tillers of the soil.
But why should the reapers eat of it
And not the Prophet of Zion
In the den of the lion?
The Prophet should feed the Prophet!
Therefore I thee have uplifted,
And bear thee aloft by the hair
Of thy head, like a cloud that is drifted
Through the vast unknown of the air!
Five days hath the Prophet been lying
In Babylon, in the den
Of the lions, death-defying,
Defying hunger and thirst;
But the worst
Is the mockery of men!
Alas! how full of fear
Is the fate of Prophet and Seer!
Forevermore, forevermore,
It shall be as it hath been heretofore;
The age in which they live
Will not forgive
The splendor of the everlasting light,
That makes their foreheads bright,
Nor the sublime
Fore-running of their time!

PROPHET.
Oh tell me, for thou knowest,
Wherefore and by what grace,
Have I, who am least and lowest,
Been chosen to this place,
To this exalted part?

ANGEL.
Because thou art
The Struggler; and from thy youth
Thy humble and patient life
Hath been a strife
And battle for the Truth;
Nor hast thou paused nor halted,
Nor ever in thy pride
Turned from the poor aside,
But with deed and word and pen
Hast served thy fellow-men;
Therefore art thou exalted!

PROPHET.
By thine arrow's light
Thou goest onward through the night,
And by the clear
Sheen of thy glittering spear!
When will our journey end?

ANGEL.
Lo, it is ended!
Yon silver gleam
Is the Euphrates' stream.
Let us descend
Into the city splendid,
Into the City of Gold!

PROPHET.
Behold!
As if the stars had fallen from their places
Into the firmament below,
The streets, the gardens, and the vacant spaces
With light are all aglow;
And hark!
As we draw near,
What sound is it I hear
Ascending through the dark?

ANGEL.
The tumultuous noise of the nations,
Their rejoicings and lamentations,
The pleadings of their prayer,
The groans of their despair,
The cry of their imprecations,
Their wrath, their love, their hate!

PROPHET.
Surely the world doth wait
The coming of its Redeemer!

ANGEL.
Awake from thy sleep, O dreamer?
The hour is near, though late;
Awake! write the vision sublime,
The vision, that is for a time,
Though it tarry, wait; it is nigh;
In the end it will speak and not lie.

PART ONE

THE DIVINE TRAGEDY

THE FIRST PASSOVER

I

VOX CLAMANTIS

JOHN THE BAPTIST.
Repent! repent! repent!
For the kingdom of God is at hand,
And all the land
Full of the knowledge of the Lord shall be
As the waters cover the sea,
And encircle the continent!

Repent! repent! repent!
For lo, the hour appointed,
The hour so long foretold
By the Prophets of old,
Of the coming of the Anointed,
The Messiah, the Paraclete,
The Desire of the Nations, is nigh!
He shall not strive nor cry,
Nor his voice be heard in the street;
Nor the bruised reed shall He break,
Nor quench the smoking flax;
And many of them that sleep
In the dust of earth shall awake,
On that great and terrible day,
And the wicked shall wail and weep,
And be blown like a smoke away,
And be melted away like wax.
Repent! repent! repent!

O Priest, and Pharisee,
Who hath warned you to flee
From the wrath that is to be?
From the coming anguish and ire?
The axe is laid at the root
Of the trees, and every tree
That bringeth not forth good fruit
Is hewn down and cast into the fire!

Ye Scribes, why come ye hither?
In the hour that is uncertain,
In the day of anguish and trouble,
He that stretcheth the heavens as a curtain
And spreadeth them out as a tent,
Shall blow upon you, and ye shall wither,
And the whirlwind shall take you away as stubble!
Repent! repent! repent!

PRIEST.
Who art thou, O man of prayer!
In raiment of camel's hair,
Begirt with leathern thong,
That here in the wilderness,
With a cry as of one in distress,
Preachest unto this throng?
Art thou the Christ?

JOHN.
Priest of Jerusalem,
In meekness and humbleness,
I deny not, I confess
I am not the Christ!

PRIEST.
What shall we say unto them
That sent us here? Reveal
Thy name, and naught conceal!
Art thou Elias?

JOHN.
                No!

PRIEST.
Art thou that Prophet, then,
Of lamentation and woe,
Who, as a symbol and sign
Of impending wrath divine
Upon unbelieving men,
Shattered the vessel of clay
In the Valley of Slaughter?

JOHN.
                            Nay.
I am not he thou namest!

PRIEST.
Who art thou, and what is the word
That here thou proclaimest?

JOHN.
I am the voice of one
Crying in the wilderness alone:
Prepare ye the way of the Lord;
Make his paths straight
In the land that is desolate!

PRIEST.
If thou be not the Christ,
Nor yet Elias, nor he
That, in sign of the things to be,
Shattered the vessel of clay
In the Valley of Slaughter,
Then declare unto us, and say
By what authority now
Baptizest thou?

JOHN.
I indeed baptize you with water
Unto repentance; but He,
That cometh after me,
Is mightier than I and higher;
The latchet of whose shoes
I an not worthy to unloose;
He shall baptize you with fire,
And with the Holy Ghost!
Whose fan is in his hand;
He will purge to the uttermost
His floor, and garner his wheat,
But will burn the chaff in the brand
And fire of unquenchable heat!
Repent! repent! repent!

II

MOUNT QUARANTANIA

I

LUCIFER.
Not in the lightning's flash, nor in the thunder,
Not in the tempest, nor the cloudy storm,
    Will I array my form;
But part invisible these boughs asunder,
And move and murmur as the wind upheaves
    And whispers in the leaves.

Not as a terror and a desolation,
Not in my natural shape, inspiring fear
    And dread, will I appear;
But in soft tones of sweetness and persuasion,
A sound as of the fall of mountain streams,
    Or voices heard in dreams.

He sitteth there in silence, worn and wasted
With famine, and uplifts his hollow eyes
    To the unpitying skies;
For forty days and nights he hath not tasted
Of food or drink, his parted lips are pale,
    Surely his strength must fail.

Wherefore dost thou in penitential fasting
Waste and consume the beauty of thy youth.
    Ah, if thou be in truth
The Son of the Unnamed, the Everlasting,
Command these stones beneath thy feet to be
    Changed into bread for thee!

CHRISTUS.
'T is written! Man shall not live by bread alone,
But by each word that from God's mouth proceedeth!

II

LUCIFER.
Too weak, alas! too weak is the temptation
For one whose soul to nobler things aspires
    Than sensual desires!
Ah, could I, by some sudden aberration,
Lend and delude to suicidal death
    This Christ of Nazareth!

Unto the holy Temple on Moriah,
With its resplendent domes, and manifold
    Bright pinnacles of gold,
Where they await thy coming, O Messiah!
Lo, I have brought thee! Let thy glory here
    Be manifest and clear.

Reveal thyself by royal act and gesture
Descending with the bright triumphant host
    Of all the hithermost
Archangels, and about thee as a vesture
The shining clouds, and all thy splendors show
    Unto the world below!

Cast thyself down, it is the hour appointed;
And God hath given his angels charge and care
    To keep thee and upbear
Upon their hands his only Son, the Anointed,
Lest he should dash his foot against a stone
    And die, and be unknown.

CHRISTUS.
'T is written: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God!

III

LUCIFER.
I cannot thus delude him to perdition!
But one temptation still remains untried,
    The trial of his pride,
The thirst of power, the fever of ambition!
Surely by these a humble peasant's son
    At last may be undone!

Above the yawning chasms and deep abysses,
Across the headlong torrents, I have brought
    Thy footsteps, swift as thought;
And from the highest of these precipices,
The Kingdoms of the world thine eyes behold.
    Like a great map unrolled.

From far-off Lebanon, with cedars crested,
To where the waters of the Asphalt Lake
    On its white pebbles break,
And the vast desert, silent, sand-invested,
These kingdoms all are mine, and thine shall be,
    If thou wilt worship me!

CHRISTUS.
Get thee behind me, Satan! thou shalt worship
The Lord thy God; Him only shalt thou serve!

ANGELS MINISTRANT.
The sun goes down; the evening shadows lengthen,
The fever and the struggle of the day
    Abate and pass away;
Thine Angels Miniatrant, we come to strengthen
And comfort thee, and crown thee with the palm,
    The silence and the calm.

III

THE MARRIAGE IN CANA

THE MUSICIANS.
Rise up, my love, my fair one,
Rise up, and come away,
For lo! the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone,
The flowers appear on the earth,
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.

THE BRIDEGROOM.
Sweetly the minstrels sing the Song of Songs!
My heart runs forward with it, and I say:
Oh set me as a seal upon thine heart,
And set me as a seal upon thine arm;
For love is strong as life, and strong as death,
And cruel as the grave is jealousy!

THE MUSICIANS.
I sleep, but my heart awaketh;
'T is the voice of my beloved
Who knocketh, saying: Open to me,
My sister, my love, my dove,
For my head is filled with dew,
My locks with the drops of the night!

THE BRIDE.
Ah yes, I sleep, and yet my heart awaketh.
It is the voice of my beloved who knocks.

THE BRIDEGROOM.
O beautiful as Rebecca at the fountain,
O beautiful as Ruth among the sheaves!
O fairest among women! O undefiled!
Thou art all fair, my love, there's no spot in thee!

THE MUSICIANS.
My beloved is white and ruddy,
The chiefest among ten thousand
His locks are black as a raven,
His eyes are the eyes of doves,
Of doves by the rivers of water,
His lips are like unto lilies,
Dropping sweet-smelling myrrh.

ARCHITRICLINUS.
Who is that youth with the dark azure eyes,
And hair, in color like unto the wine,
Parted upon his forehead, and behind
Falling in flowing locks?

PARANYMPHUS.
                       The Nazarene
Who preacheth to the poor in field and village
The coming of God's Kingdom.

ARCHITRICLINUS.
                         How serene
His aspect is! manly yet womanly.

PARANYMPHUS.
Most beautiful among the sons of men!
Oft known to weep, but never known to laugh.

ARCHITRICLINUS.
And tell me, she with eyes of olive tint,
And skin as fair as wheat, and pale brown hair,
The woman at his side?

PARANYMPHUS.
                  His mother, Mary.

ARCHITRICLINUS.
And the tall figure standing close behind them,
Clad all in white, with lace and beard like ashes,
As if he were Elias, the White Witness,
Come from his cave on Carmel to foretell
The end of all things?

PARANYMPHUS.
                    That is Manahem
The Essenian, he who dwells among the palms
Near the Dead Sea.

ARCHITRICLINUS.
            He who foretold to Herod
He should one day be King?

PARANYMPHUS.
                     The same.

ARCHITRICLINUS.
                           Then why
Doth he come here to sadden with his presence
Our marriage feast, belonging to a sect
Haters of women, and that taste not wine?

THE MUSICIANS.
My undefiled is but one,
The only one of her mother,
The choice of her that bare her;
The daughters saw her and blessed her;
The queens and the concubines praised her;
Saying, Lo! who is this
That looketh forth as the morning?

MANAHEM aside.
The Ruler of the Feast is gazing at me,
As if he asked, why is that old man here
Among the revellers? And thou, the Anointed!
Why art thou here? I see as in a vision
A figure clothed in purple, crowned with thorns;
I see a cross uplifted in the darkness,
And hear a cry of agony, that shall echo
Forever and forever through the world!

ARCHITRICLINUS.
Give us more wine. These goblets are all empty.

MARY to CHRISTUS.
They have no wine!

CHRISTUS.
               O woman, what have I
To do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.

MARY to the servants.
Whatever he shall say to you, that do.

CHRISTUS.
Fill up these pots with water.

THE MUSICIANS.
Come, my beloved,
Let us go forth into the field,
Let us lodge in the villages;
Let us get up early to the vineyards,
Let us see if the vine flourish,
Whether the tender grape appear,
And the pomegranates bud forth.

CHRISTUS.
                     Draw out now
And bear unto the Ruler of the Feast.

MANAHEM aside.
O thou, brought up among the Essenians,
Nurtured in abstinence, taste not the wine!
It is the poison of dragons from the vineyards
Of Sodom, and the taste of death is in it!

ARCHITRICLINUS to the BRIDEGROOM.
All men set forth good wine at the beginning,
And when men have well drunk, that which is worse;
But thou hast kept the good wine until now.

MANAHEM aside.

The things that have been and shall be no more,
The things that are, and that hereafter shall he,
The things that might have been, and yet were not,
The fading twilight of great joys departed,
The daybreak of great truths as yet unrisen,
The intuition and the expectation
Of something, which, when come, is not the same,
But only like its forecast in men's dreams,
The longing, the delay, and the delight,
Sweeter for the delay; youth, hope, love, death,
And disappointment which is also death,
All these make up the sum of human life;
A dream within a dream, a wind at night
Howling across the desert in despair,
Seeking for something lost it cannot find.
Fate or foreseeing, or whatever name
Men call it, matters not; what is to be
Hath been fore-written in the thought divine
From the beginning. None can hide from it,
But it will find him out; nor run from it,
But it o'ertaketh him! The Lord hath said it.

THE BRIDEGROOM to the BRIDE, on the balcony.
When Abraham went with Sarah into Egypt,
The land was all illumined with her beauty;
But thou dost make the very night itself
Brighter than day! Behold, in glad procession,
Crowding the threshold of the sky above us,
The stars come forth to meet thee with their lamps;
And the soft winds, the ambassadors of flowers,
From neighboring gardens and from fields unseen,
Come laden with odors unto thee, my Queen!

THE MUSICIANS.
Awake, O north-wind,
And come, thou wind of the South.
Blow, blow upon my garden,
That the spices thereof may flow out.

IV

IN THE CORNFIELDS

PHILIP.
Onward through leagues of sun-illumined corn,
As if through parted seas, the pathway runs,
And crowned with sunshine as the Prince of Peace
Walks the beloved Master, leading us,
As Moses led our fathers in old times
Out of the land of bondage! We have found
Him of whom Moses and the Prophets wrote,
Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Joseph.

NATHANAEL.
Can any good come out of Nazareth?
Can this be the Messiah?

PHILIP.
                        Come and see.

NATHANAEL.
The summer sun grows hot: I am anhungered.
How cheerily the Sabbath-breaking quail
Pipes in the corn, and bids us to his Feast
Of Wheat Sheaves! How the bearded, ripening ears
Toss in the roofless temple of the air;
As if the unseen hand of some High-Priest
Waved them before Mount Tabor as an altar!
It were no harm, if we should pluck and eat.

PHILIP.
How wonderful it is to walk abroad
With the Good Master! Since the miracle
He wrought at Cana, at the marriage feast,
His fame hath gone abroad through all the land,
And when we come to Nazareth, thou shalt see
How his own people will receive their Prophet,
And hail him as Messiah! See, he turns
And looks at thee.

CHRISTUS.
                  Behold an Israelite
In whom there is no guile.

NATHANAEL.
          Whence knowest thou me?

CHRISTUS.
Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast
Under the fig-tree, I beheld thee.

NATHANAEL.
                                   Rabbi!
Thou art the Son of God, thou art the King
Of Israel!

CHRISTUS.
           Because I said I saw thee
Under the fig-tree, before Philip called thee,
Believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things.
Hereafter thou shalt see the heavens unclosed,
The angels of God ascending and descending
Upon the Son of Man!

PHAIRISEES, passing.
                    Hail, Rabbi!

CHRISTUS.
                             Hail!

PHARISEES.
Behold how thy disciples do a thing
Which is not lawful on the Sabbath-day,
And thou forbiddest them not!

CHRISTUS.
                     Have ye not read
What David did when he anhungered was,
And all they that were with him? How he entered
Into the house of God, and ate the shew-bread,
Which was not lawful, saving for the priests?
Have ye not read, how on the Sabbath-days
The priests profane the Sabbath in the Temple,
And yet are blameless? But I say to you,
One in this place is greater than the Temple!
And had ye known the meaning of the words,
I will have mercy and not sacrifice,
The guiltless ye would not condemn. The Sabbath
Was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.

Passes on with the disciples.

PHARISEES.
This is, alas! some poor demoniac
Wandering about the fields, and uttering
His unintelligible blasphemies
Among the common people, who receive
As prophecies the words they comprehend not!
Deluded folk! The incomprehensible
Alone excites their wonder. There is none
So visionary, or so void of sense,
But he will find a crowd to follow him!

V

NAZARETH

CHRISTUS, reading in the Synagogue.
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me.
He hath anointed me to preach good tidings
Unto the poor; to heal the broken-hearted;
To comfort those that mourn, and to throw open
The prison doors of captives, and proclaim
The Year Acceptable of the Lord, our God!

He closes the book and sits down.

A PHARISEE.
Who is this youth? He hath taken the Teacher's seat!
Will he instruct the Elders?

A PRIEST.
                            Fifty years
Have I been Priest here in the Synagogue,
And never have I seen so young a man
Sit in the Teacher's seat!

CHRISTUS.
                         Behold, to-day
This scripture is fulfilled. One is appointed
And hath been sent to them that mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes, and the oil
Of joy for mourning! They shall build again
The old waste-places; and again raise up
The former desolations, and repair
The cities that are wasted! As a bridegroom
Decketh himself with ornaments; as a bride
Adorneth herself with jewels, so the Lord
Hath clothed me with the robe of righteousness!

A PRIEST.
He speaks the Prophet's words; but with an air
As if himself had been foreshadowed in them!

CHRISTUS.
For Zion's sake I will not hold my peace,
And for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest
Until its righteousness be as a brightness,
And its salvation as a lamp that burneth!
Thou shalt be called no longer the Forsaken,
Nor any more thy land the Desolate.
The Lord hath sworn, by his right hand hath sworn,
And by his arm of strength: I will no more
Give to thine enemies thy corn as meat;
The sons of strangers shall not drink thy wine.
Go through, go through the gates! Prepare a way
Unto the people! Gather out the stones!
Lift up a standard for the people!

A PRIEST.
                                   Ah!
These are seditious words!

CHRISTUS.
             And they shall call them
The holy people; the redeemed of God!
And thou, Jerusalem, shalt be called Sought out,
A city not forsaken!

A PHARISEE.
                     Is not this
The carpenter Joseph's son? Is not his mother
Called Mary? and his brethren and his sisters
Are they not with us? Doth he make himself
To be a Prophet?

CHRISTUS.
                 No man is a Prophet
In his own country, and among his kin.
In his own house no Prophet is accepted.
I say to you, in the land of Israel
Were many widows in Elijah's day,
When for three years and more the heavens were shut,
And a great famine was throughout the land;
But unto no one was Elijah sent
Save to Sarepta, to a city of Sidon,
And to a woman there that was a widow.
And many lepers were then in the land
Of Israel, in the time of Eliseus
The Prophet, and yet none of them was cleansed,
Save Naaman the Syrian!

A PRIEST.
                      Say no more!
Thou comest here into our Synagogue
And speakest to the Elders and the Priests,
As if the very mantle of Elijah
Had fallen upon thee! Are thou not ashamed?

A PHARISEE.
We want no Prophets here! Let him be driven
From Synagogue and city! Let him go
And prophesy to the Samaritans!

AN ELDER.
The world is changed. We Elders are as nothing!
We are but yesterdays, that have no part
Or portion in to-day! Dry leaves that rustle,
That make a little sound, and then are dust!

A PHARISEE.
A carpenter's apprentice! a mechanic,
Whom we have seen at work here in the town
Day after day; a stripling without learning,
Shall he pretend to unfold the Word of God
To men grown old in study of the Law?

CHRISTUS is thrust out.

VI

THE SEA OF GALILEE.

PETER and ANDREW mending their nets.

PETER.
Never was such a marvellous draught of fishes
Heard of in Galilee! The market-places
Both of Bethsaida and Capernaum
Are full of them! Yet we had toiled all night
And taken nothing, when the Master said:
Launch out into the deep, and cast your nets;
And doing this, we caught such multitudes,
Our nets like spiders' webs were snapped asunder,
And with the draught we filled two ships so full
That they began to sink. Then I knelt down
Amazed, and said: O Lord, depart from me,
I am a sinful man. And he made answer:
Simon, fear not; henceforth thou shalt catch men!
What was the meaning of those words?

ANDREW.
                          I know not.
But here is Philip, come from Nazareth.
He hath been with the Master. Tell us, Philip,
What tidings dost thou bring?

PHILIP.
                     Most wonderful!
As we drew near to Nain, out of the gate
Upon a bier was carried the dead body
Of a young man, his mother's only son,
And she a widow, who with lamentation
Bewailed her loss, and the much people with her;
And when the Master saw her he was filled
With pity; and he said to her: Weep not
And came and touched the bier, and they that bare it
Stood still; and then he said: Young man, arise!
And he that had been dead sat up, and soon
Began to speak; and he delivered him
Unto his mother. And there came a fear
On all the people, and they glorified
The Lord, and said, rejoicing: A great Prophet
Is risen up among us! and the Lord
Hath visited his people!

PETER.
                       A great Prophet?
Ay, greater than a Prophet: greater even
Than John the Baptist!

PHILIP.
                   Yet the Nazarenes
Rejected him.

PETER.
              The Nazarenes are dogs!
As natural brute beasts, they growl at things
They do not understand; and they shall perish,
Utterly perish in their own corruption.
The Nazarenes are dogs!

PHILIP.
                They drave him forth
Out of their Synagogue, out of their city,
And would have cast him down a precipice,
But, passing through the midst of them, he vanished
Out of their hands.

PETER.
          Wells are they without water,
Clouds carried with a tempest, unto whom
The mist of darkness is reserved forever.

PHILIP.
Behold, he cometh. There is one man with him
I am amazed to see!

ANDREW.
                  What man is that?

PHILIP.
Judas Iscariot; he that cometh last,
Girt with a leathern apron. No one knoweth
His history; but the rumor of him is
He had an unclean spirit in his youth.
It hath not left him yet.

CHRISTUS, passing.
                        Come unto me,
All ye that labor and are heavy laden,
And I will give you rest! Come unto me,
And take my yoke upon you and learn of me,
For I am meek, and I am lowly in heart,
And ye shall all find rest unto your souls!

PHILIP.
Oh, there is something in that voice that reaches
The innermost recesses of my spirit!
I feel that it might say unto the blind:
Receive your sight! and straightway they would see!
I feel that it might say unto the dead,
Arise! and they would hear it and obey!
Behold, he beckons to us!

CHRISTUS to PETER and ANDREW.
                          Follow me!

PETER.
Master, I will leave all and follow thee.

VII

THE DEMONIAC OF GADARA

A GADARENE.
He hath escaped, hath plucked his chains asunder,
And broken his fetters; always night and day
Is in the mountains here, and in the tombs,
Crying aloud, and cutting himself with stones,
Exceeding fierce, so that no man can tame him!

THE DEMONIAC from above, unseen.
O Aschmedai! O Aschmedai, have pity!

A GADARENE.
Listen! It is his voice! Go warn the people
Just landing from the lake!

THE DEMONIAC.
                          O Aschmedai!
Thou angel of the bottomless pit, have pity!
It was enough to hurl King Solomon,
On whom be peace! two hundred leagues away
Into the country, and to make him scullion
In the kitchen of the King of Maschkemen!
Why dost thou hurl me here among these rocks,
And cut me with these stones?

A GADARENE.
                He raves and mutters
He knows not what.

THE DEMONIAC, appearing from a tomb among the rocks.
               The wild cock Tarnegal
Singeth to me, and bids me to the banquet,
Where all the Jews shall come; for they have slain
Behemoth the great ox, who daily cropped
A thousand hills for food, and at a draught
Drank up the river Jordan, and have slain
The huge Leviathan, and stretched his skin
Upon the high walls of Jerusalem,
And made them shine from one end of the world
Unto the other; and the fowl Barjuchne,
Whose outspread wings eclipse the sun, and make
Midnight at noon o'er all the continents!
And we shall drink the wine of Paradise
From Adam's cellars.

A GADARENE.
             O thou unclean spirit!

THE DEMONIAC, hurling down a stone.
This is the wonderful Barjuchne's egg,
That fell out of her nest, and broke to pieces
And swept away three hundred cedar-trees,
And threescore villages!--Rabbi Eliezer,
How thou didst sin there in that seaport town
When thou hadst carried safe thy chest of silver
Over the seven rivers for her sake!
I too have sinned beyond the reach of pardon.
Ye hills and mountains, pray for mercy on me!
Ye stars and planets, pray for mercy on me!
Ye sun and moon, oh pray for mercy on me!

CHRISTUS and his disciples pass.

A GADARENE.
There is a man here of Decapolis,
Who hath an unclean spirit; so that none
Can pass this way. He lives among the tombs
Up there upon the cliffs, and hurls down stones
On those who pass beneath.

CHRISTUS.
                     Come out of him,
Thou unclean spirit!

THE DEMONIAC.
                    What have I to do
With thee, thou Son of God? Do not torment us.

CHRISTUS.
What is thy name?

THE DEMONIAC.
             Legion; for we are many.
Cain, the first murderer; and the King Belshazzar,
And Evil Merodach of Babylon,
And Admatha, the death-cloud, prince of Persia
And Aschmedai the angel of the pit,
And many other devils. We are Legion.
Send us not forth beyond Decapolis;
Command us not to go into the deep!
There is a herd of swine here in the pastures,
Let us go into them.

CHRISTUS.
                     Come out of him,
Thou unclean spirit!

A GADARENE.
                     See how stupefied,
How motionless he stands! He cries no more;
He seems bewildered and in silence stares
As one who, walking in his sleep, awakes
And knows not where he is, and looks about him,
And at his nakedness, and is ashamed.

THE DEMONIAC.
Why am I here alone among the tombs?
What have they done to me, that I am naked?
Ah, woe is me!

CHRISTUS.
            Go home unto thy friends
And tell them how great things the Lord hath done
For thee, and how He had compassion on thee!

A SWINEHERD, running.
The herds! the herd! O most unlucky day!
They were all feeding quiet in the sun,
When suddenly they started, and grew savage
As the wild boars of Tabor, and together
Rushed down a precipice into the sea!
They are all drowned!

PETER.
        Thus righteously are punished
The apostate Jews, that eat the flesh of swine,
And broth of such abominable things!

GREEKS OF GADARA.
We sacrifice a sow unto Demeter
At the beginning of harvest and another
To Dionysus at the vintage-time.
Therefore we prize our herds of swine, and count them
Not as unclean, but as things consecrate
To the immortal gods. O great magician,
Depart out of our coasts; let us alone,
We are afraid of thee.

PETER.
                      Let us depart;
For they that sanctify and purify
Themselves in gardens, eating flesh of swine.
And the abomination, and the mouse,
Shall be consumed together, saith the Lord!

VIII

TALITHA CUMI

JAIRUS at the feet of CHRISTUS.
O Master! I entreat thee! I implore thee!
My daughter lieth at the point of death;
I pray thee come and lay thy hands upon her,
And she shall live!

CHRISTUS.
    Who was it touched my garments?

SIMON PETER.
Thou seest the multitude that throng and press thee,
And sayest thou: Who touched me? 'T was not I.

CHRISTUS.
Some one hath touched my garments; I perceive
That virtue is gone out of me.

A WOMAN.
                             O Master!
Forgive me! For I said within myself,
If I so much as touch his garment's hem,
I shall be whole.

CHRISTUS.
         Be of good comfort, daughter!
Thy faith hath made thee whole. Depart in peace.

A MESSENGER from the house.
Why troublest thou the Master? Hearest thou not
The flute players, and the voices of the women
Singing their lamentation? She is dead!

THE MINSTRELS AND MOURNERS.
We have girded ourselves with sackcloth!
We have covered our heads with ashes!
For our young men die, and our maidens
Swoon in the streets of the city;
And into their mother's bosom
They pour out their souls like water!

CHRISTUS, going in.
Give place. Why make ye this ado, and weep?
She is not dead, but sleepeth.

THE MOTHER, from within.
                          Cruel Death!
To take away front me this tender blossom!
To take away my dove, my lamb, my darling!

THE MINSTRELS AND MOURNERS.
He hath led me and brought into darkness,
Like the dead of old in dark places!
He hath bent his bow, and hath set me
Apart as a mark for his arrow!
He hath covered himself with a cloud,
That our prayer should not pass through and reach him!

THE CROWD.
He stands beside her bed! He takes her hand!
Listen, he speaks to her!

CHRISTUS, within.
                         Maiden, arise!

THE CROWD.
See, she obeys his voice! She stirs! She lives!
Her mother holds her folded in her arms!
O miracle of miracles! O marvel!

IX

THE TOWER OF MAGDALA

MARY MAGDALENE.
Companionless, unsatisfied, forlorn,
I sit here in this lonely tower, and look
Upon the lake below me, and the hills
That swoon with heat, and see as in a vision
All my past life unroll itself before me.
The princes and the merchants come to me,
Merchants of Tyre and Princes of Damascus.
And pass, and disappear, and are no more;
But leave behind their merchandise and jewels,
Their perfumes, and their gold, and their disgust.
I loathe them, and the very memory of them
Is unto me as thought of food to one
Cloyed with the luscious figs of Dalmanutha!
What if hereafter, in the long hereafter
Of endless joy or pain, or joy in pain,
It were my punishment to be with them
Grown hideous and decrepit in their sins,
And hear them say: Thou that hast brought us here,
Be unto us as thou hast been of old!
I look upon this raiment that I wear,
These silks, and these embroideries, and they seem
Only as cerements wrapped about my limbs!
I look upon these rings thick set with pearls,
And emerald and amethyst and jasper,
And they are burning coals upon my flesh!
This serpent on my wrist becomes alive!
Away, thou viper! and away, ye garlands,
Whose odors bring the swift remembrance back
Of the unhallowed revels in these chambers!
But yesterday,--and yet it seems to me
Something remote, like a pathetic song
Sung long ago by minstrels in the street,--
But yesterday, as from this tower I gazed,
Over the olive and the walnut trees
Upon the lake and the white ships, and wondered
Whither and whence they steered, and who was in them,
A fisher's boat drew near the landing-place
Under the oleanders, and the people
Came up from it, and passed beneath the tower,
Close under me. In front of them, as leader,
Walked one of royal aspect, clothed in white,
Who lifted up his eyes, and looked at me,
And all at once the air seemed filled and living
With a mysterious power, that streamed from him,
And overflowed me with an atmosphere
Of light and love. As one entranced I stood,
And when I woke again, lo! he was gone;
So that I said: Perhaps it is a dream.
But from that very hour the seven demons
That had their habitation in this body
Which men call beautiful, departed from me!

This morning, when the first gleam of the dawn
Made Lebanon a glory in the air,
And all below was darkness, I beheld
An angel, or a spirit glorified,
With wind-tossed garments walking on the lake.
The face I could not see, but I distinguished
The attitude and gesture, and I knew
'T was he that healed me. And the gusty wind
Brought to mine ears a voice, which seemed to say:
Be of good cheer! 'T is I! Be not afraid!
And from the darkness, scarcely heard, the answer:
If it be thou, bid me come unto thee
Upon the water! And the voice said: Come!
And then I heard a cry of fear: Lord, save me!
As of a drowning man. And then the voice:
Why didst thou doubt, O thou of little faith!
At this all vanished, and the wind was hushed,
And the great sun came up above the hills,
And the swift-flying vapors hid themselves
In caverns among the rocks! Oh, I must find him
And follow him, and be with him forever!

Thou box of alabaster, in whose walls
The souls of flowers lie pent, the precious balm
And spikenard of Arabian farms, the spirits
Of aromatic herbs, ethereal natures
Nursed by the sun and dew, not all unworthy
To bathe his consecrated feet, whose step
Makes every threshold holy that he crosses;
Let us go forth upon our pilgrimage,
Thou and I only! Let us search for him
Until we find him, and pour out our souls
Before his feet, till all that's left of us
Shall be the broken caskets that once held us!

X

THE HOUSE OF SIMON THE PHARISEE

A GUEST at table.
Are ye deceived? Have any of the Rulers
Believed on him? or do they know indeed
This man to be the very Christ? Howbeit
We know whence this man is, but when the Christ
Shall come, none knoweth whence he is.

CHRISTUS.
Whereunto shall I liken, then, the men
Of this generation? and what are they like?
They are like children sitting in the markets,
And calling unto one another, saying:
We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced
We have mourned unto you, and ye have not wept!
This say I unto you, for John the Baptist
Came neither eating bread nor drinking wine
Ye say he hath a devil. The Son of Man
Eating and drinking cometh, and ye say:
Behold a gluttonous man, and a wine-bibber;
Behold a friend of publicans and sinners!

A GUEST aside to SIMON.
Who is that woman yonder, gliding in
So silently behind him?

SIMON.
                       It is Mary,
Who dwelleth in the Tower of Magdala.

THE GUEST.
See, how she kneels there weeping, and her tears
Fall on his feet; and her long, golden hair
Waves to and fro and wipes them dry again.
And now she kisses them, and from a box
Of alabaster is anointing them
With precious ointment, filling all the house
With its sweet odor!

SIMON, aside,
                 Oh, this man, forsooth,
Were he indeed a Prophet, would have known
Who and what manner of woman this may be
That toucheth him! would know she is a sinner!

CHRISTUS.
Simon, somewhat have I to say to thee.

SIMON.
Master, say on.

CHRISTUS.
               A certain creditor
Had once two debtors; and the one of them
Owed him five hundred pence; the other, fifty.
They having naught to pay withal, he frankly
Forgave them both. Now tell me which of them
Will love him most?

SIMON.
               He, I suppose to whom
He most forgave.

CHRISTUS.
        Yea, thou hast rightly judged.
Seest thou this woman? When thine house I entered,
Thou gavest me no water for my feet,
But she hath washed them with her tears, and wiped them
With her own hair. Thou gavest me no kiss;
This woman hath not ceased, since I came in,
To kiss my feet. My head with oil didst thou
Anoint not; but this woman hath anointed
My feet with ointment. Hence I say to thee,
Her sins, which have been many, are forgiven,
For she loved much.

THE GUESTS.
             Oh, who, then, is this man
That pardoneth also sins without atonement?

CHRISTUS.
Woman, thy faith hath saved thee! Go in peace!

THE SECOND PASSOVER.

I

BEFORE THE GATES OF MACHAERUS

MANAHEM.
Welcome, O wilderness, and welcome, night
And solitude, and ye swift-flying stars
That drift with golden sands the barren heavens,
Welcome once more! The Angels of the Wind
Hasten across the desert to receive me;
And sweeter than men's voices are to me
The voices of these solitudes; the sound
Of unseen rivulets, and the far-off cry
Of bitterns in the reeds of water-pools.
And lo! above me, like the Prophet's arrow
Shot from the eastern window, high in air
The clamorous cranes go singing through the night.
O ye mysterious pilgrims of the air,
Would I had wings that I might follow you!

I look forth from these mountains, and behold
The omnipotent and omnipresent night,
Mysterious as the future and the fate
That hangs o'er all men's lives! I see beneath me
The desert stretching to the Dead Sea shore,
And westward, faint and far away, the glimmer
Of torches on Mount Olivet, announcing
The rising of the Moon of Passover.
Like a great cross it seems, on which suspended,
With head bowed down in agony, I see
A human figure! Hide, O merciful heaven,
The awful apparition from my sight!

And thou, Machaerus, lifting high and black
Thy dreadful walls against the rising moon,
Haunted by demons and by apparitions,
Lilith, and Jezerhara, and Bedargon,
How grim thou showest in the uncertain light,
A palace and a prison, where King Herod
Feasts with Herodias, while the Baptist John
Fasts, and consumes his unavailing life!
And in thy court-yard grows the untithed rue,
Huge as the olives of Gethsemane,
And ancient as the terebinth of Hebron,
Coeval with the world. Would that its leaves
Medicinal could purge thee of the demons
That now possess thee, and the cunning fox
That burrows in thy walls, contriving mischief!

Music is heard from within.

Angels of God! Sandalphon, thou that weavest
The prayers of men into immortal garlands,
And thou, Metatron, who dost gather up
Their songs, and bear them to the gates of heaven,
Now gather up together in your hands
The prayers that fill this prison, and the songs
That echo from the ceiling of this palace,
And lay them side by side before God's feet!

He enters the castle.

II

HEROD'S BANQUET-HALL

MANAHEM.
Thou hast sent for me, O King, and I am here.

HEROD.
Who art thou?

MANAHEM.
             Manahem, the Essenian.

HEROD.
I recognize thy features, but what mean
These torn and faded garments? On thy road
Have demons crowded thee, and rubbed against thee,
And given thee weary knees? A cup of wine!

MANAHEM.
The Essenians drink no wine.

HEROD.
                What wilt thou, then?

MANAHEM.
Nothing.

HEROD.
       Not even a cup of water?

MANAHEM.
                          Nothing.
Why hast thou sent for me?

HEROD.
                 Dost thou remember
One day when I, a schoolboy in the streets
Of the great city, met thee on my way
To school, and thou didst say to me: Hereafter
Thou shalt be king?

MANAHEM.
                  Yea, I remember it.

HEROD.
Thinking thou didst not know me, I replied:
I am of humble birth; whereat thou, smiling,
Didst smite me with thy hand, and saidst again:
Thou shalt be king; and let the friendly blows
That Manahem hath given thee on this day
Remind thee of the fickleness of fortune.

MANAHEM.
What more?

HEROD.
          No more.

MANAHEM.
             Yea, for I said to thee:
It shall be well with thee if thou love justice
And clemency towards thy fellow-men.
Hast thou done this, O King?

HEROD.
                    Go, ask my people.

MANAHEM.
And then, foreseeing all thy life, I added:
But these thou wilt forget; and at the end
Of life the Lord will punish thee.

HEROD.
                              The end!
When will that come? For this I sent to thee.
How long shall I still reign? Thou dost not answer!
Speak! shall I reign ten years?

MANAHEM.
              Thou shalt reign twenty,
Nay, thirty years. I cannot name the end.

HEROD.
Thirty? I thank thee, good Essenian!
This is my birthday, and a happier one
Was never mine. We hold a banquet here.
See, yonder are Herodias and her daughter.

MANAHEM, aside.
'T is said that devils sometimes take the shape
Of ministering angels, clothed with air.
That they may be inhabitants of earth,
And lead man to destruction. Such are these.

HEROD.
Knowest thou John the Baptist?

MANAHEM.
                   Yea, I know him;
Who knows him not?

HEROD.
     Know, then, this John the Baptist
Said that it was not lawful I should marry
My brother Philip's wife, and John the Baptist
Is here in prison. In my father's time
Matthias Margaloth was put to death
For tearing the golden eagle from its station
Above the Temple Gate,--a slighter crime
Than John is guilty of. These things are warnings
To intermeddlers not to play with eagles,
Living or dead. I think the Essenians
Are wiser, or more wary, are they not?

MANAHEM.
The Essenians do not marry.

HEROD.
                      Thou hast given
My words a meaning foreign to my thought.

MANAHEM.
Let me go hence, O King!

HEROD.
                     Stay yet awhile,
And see the daughter of Herodias dance.
Cleopatra of Jerusalem, my mother,
In her best days, was not more beautiful.

Music. THE DAUGHTER OP HERODIAS dances.

HEROD.
Oh, what was Miriam dancing with her timbrel,
Compared to this one?

MANAHEM, aside.
              O thou Angel of Death,
Dancing at funerals among the women,
When men bear out the dead! The air is hot
And stifles me! Oh for a breath of air!
Bid me depart, O King!

HEROD.
              Not yet. Come hither,
Salome, thou enchantress! Ask of me
Whate'er thou wilt; and even unto the half
Of all my kingdom, I will give it thee,
As the Lord liveth!

DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS, kneeling.
                  Give me here the head
Of John the Baptist on this silver charger!

HEROD.
Not that, dear child! I dare not; for the people
Regard John as a prophet.

DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS.
                  Thou hast sworn it.

HEROD.
For mine oath's sake, then. Send unto the prison;
Let him die quickly. Oh, accursed oath!

MANAHEM.
Bid me depart, O King!

HEROD.
                      Good Manahem,
Give me thy hand. I love the Essenians.
He's gone and hears me not! The guests are dumb,
Awaiting the pale face, the silent witness.
The lamps flare; and the curtains of the doorways
Wave to and fro as if a ghost were passing!
Strengthen my heart, red wine of Ascalon!

III

UNDER THE WALLS OF MACHAERUS

MANAHEM, rushing out.
Away from this Palace of sin!
The demons, the terrible powers
Of the air, that haunt its towers
And hide in its water-spouts,
Deafen me with the din
Of their laughter and their shouts
For the crimes that are done within!
Sink back into the earth,
Or vanish into the air,
Thou castle of despair!
Let it all be but a dream
Of the things of monstrous birth,
Of the things that only seem!
White Angel of the Moon,
Onafiel! be my guide
Out of this hateful place
Of sin and death, nor hide
In you black cloud too soon
Thy pale and tranquil face!

A trumpet is blown from the walls.

Hark! hark! It is the breath
Of the trump of doom and death,
From the battlements overhead
Like a burden of sorrow cast
On the midnight and the blast,
A wailing for the dead,
That the gusts drop and uplift!
O Herod, thy vengeance is swift!
O Herodias, thou hast been
The demon, the evil thing,
That in place of Esther the Queen,
In place of the lawful bride,
Hast lain at night by the side
Of Ahasuerus the king!

The trumpet again.

The Prophet of God is dead!
At a drunken monarch's call,
At a dancing-woman's beck,
They have severed that stubborn neck
And into the banquet-hall
Are bearing the ghastly head!

A body is thrown from the tower.

A torch of red
Lights the window with its glow;
And a white mass as of snow
Is hurled into the abyss
Of the black precipice,
That yawns for it below!
O hand of the Most High,
O hand of Adonai!
Bury it, hide it away
From the birds and beasts of prey,
And the eyes of the homicide,
More pitiless than they,
As thou didst bury of yore
The body of him that died
On the mountain of Peor!
Even now I behold a sign,
A threatening of wrath divine,
A watery, wandering star,
Through whose streaming hair, and the white
Unfolding garments of light,
That trail behind it afar,
The constellations shine!
And the whiteness and brightness appear
Like the Angel bearing the Seer
By the hair of his head, in the might
And rush of his vehement flight.
And I listen until I hear
From fathomless depths of the sky
The voice of his prophecy
Sounding louder and more near!

Malediction! malediction!
May the lightnings of heaven fall
On palace and prison wall,
And their desolation be
As the day of fear and affliction,
As the day of anguish and ire,
With the burning and fuel of fire,
In the Valley of the Sea!

IV

NICODEMUS AT NIGHT

NICODEMUS.
The streets are silent. The dark houses seem
Like sepulchres, in which the sleepers lie
Wrapped in their shrouds, and for the moment dead.
The lamps are all extinguished; only one
Burns steadily, and from the door its light
Lies like a shining gate across the street.
He waits for me. Ah, should this be at last
The long-expected Christ! I see him there
Sitting alone, deep-buried in his thought,
As if the weight of all the world were resting
Upon him, and thus bowed him down. O Rabbi,
We know thou art a Teacher come from God,
For no man can perform the miracles
Thou dost perform, except the Lord be with him.
Thou art a Prophet, sent here to proclaim
The Kingdom of the Lord. Behold in me
A Ruler of the Jews, who long have waited
The coming of that kingdom. Tell me of it.

CHRISTUS.
Verily, verily I say unto thee,
Except a man be born again, he cannot
Behold the Kingdom of God!

NICODEMUS.
                      Be born again?
How can a man be born when he is old?
Say, can he enter for a second time
Into his mother's womb, and so be born?

CHRISTUS.
Verily I say unto thee, except
A man be born of water and the spirit,
He cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.
For that which of the flesh is born, is flesh;
And that which of the spirit is born, is spirit.

NICODEMUS.
We Israelites from the Primeval Man
Adam Ahelion derive our bodies;
Our souls are breathings of the Holy Ghost.
No more than this we know, or need to know.

CHRISTUS.
Then marvel not, that I said unto thee
Ye must be born again.

NICODEMUS.
                       The mystery
Of birth and death we cannot comprehend.

CHRISTUS.
The wind bloweth where it listeth, and we hear
The sound thereof, but know not whence it cometh,
Nor whither it goeth. So is every one
Born of the spirit!

NICODEMUS, aside.
              How can these things be?
He seems to speak of some vague realm of shadows,
Some unsubstantial kingdom of the air!
It is not this the Jews are waiting for,
Nor can this be the Christ, the Son of David,
Who shall deliver us!

CHRISTUS.
                     Art thou a master
Of Israel, and knowest not these things?
We speak that we do know, and testify
That we have seen, and ye will not receive
Our witness. If I tell you earthly things,
And ye believe not, how shall ye believe,
If I should tell you of things heavenly?
And no man hath ascended up to heaven,
But he alone that first came down from heaven,
Even the Son of Man which is in heaven!

NICODEMUS, aside.
This is a dreamer of dreams; a visionary,
Whose brain is overtasked, until he deems
The unseen world to be a thing substantial,
And this we live in, an unreal vision!
And yet his presence fascinates and fills me
With wonder, and I feel myself exalted
Into a higher region, and become
Myself in part a dreamer of his dreams,
A seer of his visions!

CHRISTUS.
                      And as Moses
Uplifted the serpent in the wilderness,
So must the Son of Man be lifted up;
That whosoever shall believe in Him
Shall perish not, but have eternal life.
He that believes in Him is not condemned;
He that believes not, is condemned already.

NICODEMUS, aside.
He speaketh like a Prophet of the Lord!

CHRISTUS.
This is the condemnation; that the light
Is come into the world, and men loved darkness
Rather than light, because their deeds are evil!

NICODEMUS, aside.
Of me he speaketh! He reproveth me,
Because I come by night to question him!

CHRISTUS.
For every one that doeth evil deeds
Hateth the light, nor cometh to the light
Lest he should be reproved.

NICODEMUS, aside.
                      Alas, how truly
He readeth what is passing in my heart!

CHRISTUS.
But he that doeth truth comes to the light,
So that his deeds may be made manifest,
That they are wrought in God.

NICODEMUS.
                          Alas! alas!

V

BLIND BARTIMEUS

BARTIMEUS.
Be not impatient, Chilion; it is pleasant
To sit here in the shadow of the walls
Under the palms, and hear the hum of bees,
And rumor of voices passing to and fro,
And drowsy bells of caravans on their way
To Sidon or Damascus. This is still
The City of Palms, and yet the walls thou seest
Are not the old walls, not the walls where Rahab
Hid the two spies, and let them down by cords
Out of the window, when the gates were shut,
And it was dark. Those walls were overthrown
When Joshua's army shouted, and the priests
Blew with their seven trumpets.

CHILION.
                      When was that?

BARTIMEUS.
O my sweet rose of Jericho, I know not
Hundreds of years ago. And over there
Beyond the river, the great prophet Elijah
Was taken by a whirlwind up to heaven
In chariot of fire, with fiery horses.
That is the plain of Moab; and beyond it
Rise the blue summits of Mount Abarim,
Nebo and Pisgah and Peor, where Moses
Died, whom the Lord knew face to face? and whom
He buried in a valley, and no man
Knows of his sepulchre unto this day.

CHILION.
Would thou couldst see these places, as I see them.

BARTIMEUS.
I have not seen a glimmer of the light
Since thou wast born. I never saw thy face,
And yet I seem to see it; and one day
Perhaps shall see it; for there is a Prophet
In Galilee, the Messiah, the Son of David,
Who heals the blind, if I could only find him.
I hear the sound of many feet approaching,
And voices, like the murmur of a crowd!
What seest thou?

CHILION.
           A young man clad in white
Is coming through the gateway, and a crowd
Of people follow.

BARTIMEUS.
                 Can it be the Prophet!
O neighbors, tell me who it is that passes?

ONE OF THE CROWD.
Jesus of Nazareth.

BARTIMEUS, crying.
                    O Son of David!
Have mercy on me!

MANY OP THE CROWD.
            Peace. Blind Bartimeus!
Do not disturb the Master.

BARTIMEUS, crying more vehemently.
                        Son of David,
Have mercy on me!

ONE OF THE CROWD.
              See, the Master stops.
Be of good comfort; rise, He calleth thee!

BARTIMEUS, casting away his cloak.
Chilion! good neighbors! lead me on.

CHRISTUS.
                       What wilt thou
That I should do to thee?

BARTIMEUS.
              Good Lord! my sight--
That I receive my sight!

CHRISTUS.
                   Receive thy sight!
Thy faith hath made thee whole!

THE CROWD.
                      He sees again!

CHRISTUS passes on, The crowd gathers round BARTIMEUS.

BARTIMEUS.
I see again; but sight bewilders me!
Like a remembered dream, familiar things
Come back to me. I see the tender sky
Above me, see the trees, the city walls,
And the old gateway, through whose echoing arch
I groped so many years; and you, my neighbors;
But know you by your friendly voices only.
How beautiful the world is! and how wide!
Oh, I am miles away, if I but look!
Where art thou, Chilion?

CHILION.
                     Father, I am here.

BARTIMEUS.
Oh let me gaze upon thy face, dear child!
For I have only seen thee with my hands!
How beautiful thou art! I should have known thee;
Thou hast her eyes whom we shall see hereafter!
O God of Abraham! Elion! Adonai!
Who art thyself a Father, pardon me
If for a moment I have thee postponed
To the affections and the thoughts of earth,
Thee, and the adoration that I owe thee,
When by thy power alone these darkened eyes
Have been unsealed again to see thy light!

VI

JACOB'S WELL

A SAMARITAN WOMAN.
The sun is hot; and the dry east-wind blowing
Fills all the air with dust. The birds are silent;
Even the little fieldfares in the corn
No longer twitter; only the grasshoppers
Sing their incessant song of sun and summer.
I wonder who those strangers were I met
Going into the city? Galileans
They seemed to me in speaking, when they asked
The short way to the market-place. Perhaps
They are fishermen from the lake; or travellers,
Looking to find the inn. And here is some one
Sitting beside the well; another stranger;
A Galilean also by his looks.
What can so many Jews be doing here
Together in Samaria? Are they going
Up to Jerusalem to the Passover?
Our Passover is better here at Sychem,
For here is Ebal; here is Gerizim,
The mountain where our father Abraham
Went up to offer Isaac; here the tomb
Of Joseph,--for they brought his bones Egypt
And buried them in this land, and it is holy.

CHRISTUS.
Give me to drink.

SAMARITAN WOMAN.
             How can it be that thou,
Being a Jew, askest to drink of me
Which am a woman of Samaria?
You Jews despise us; have no dealings with us;
Make us a byword; call us in derision
The silly folk of Sychar. Sir, how is it
Thou askest drink of me?

CHRISTUS.
                  If thou hadst known
The gift of God, and who it is that sayeth
Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of Him;
He would have given thee the living water.

SAMARITAN WOMAN.
Sir, thou hast naught to draw with, and the well
Is deep ! Whence hast thou living water?
Say, art thou greater than our father Jacob,
Which gave this well to us, and drank thereof
Himself, and all his children and his cattle?

CHRISTUS.
Ah, whosoever drinketh of this water
Shall thirst again; but whosoever drinketh
The water I shall give him shall not thirst
Forevermore, for it shall be within him
A well of living water, springing up
Into life everlasting.

SAMARITAN WOMAN.
                       Every day
I must go to and fro, in heat and cold,
And I am weary. Give me of this water,
That I may thirst not, nor come here to draw.

CHRISTUS.
Go call thy husband, woman, and come hither.

SAMARITAN WOMAN.
I have no husband, Sir.

CHRISTUS.
                   Thou hast well said
I have no husband. Thou hast had five husbands;
And he whom now thou hast is not thy husband.

SAMARITAN WOMAN.
Surely thou art a Prophet, for thou readest
The hidden things of life! Our fathers worshipped
Upon this mountain Gerizim; and ye say
The only place in which men ought to worship
Is at Jerusalem.

CHRISTUS.
                  Believe me, woman,
The hour is coming, when ye neither shall
Upon this mount, nor at Jerusalem,
Worship the Father; for the hour is coming,
And is now come, when the true worshippers
Shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth!
The Father seeketh such to worship Him.
God is a spirit; and they that worship Him
Must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

SAMARITAN WOMAN.
Master, I know that the Messiah cometh,
Which is called Christ; and he will tell us all things.

CHRISTUS.
I that speak unto thee am He!

THE DISCIPLES, returning.
                              Behold,
The Master sitting by the well, and talking
With a Samaritan woman! With a woman
Of Sychar, the silly people, always boasting
Of their Mount Ebal, and Mount Gerizim,
Their Everlasting Mountain, which they think
Higher and holier than our Mount Moriah!
Why, once upon the Feast of the New Moon,
When our great Sanhedrim of Jerusalem
Had all its watch-fires kindled on the hills
To warn the distant villages, these people
Lighted up others to mislead the Jews,
And make a mockery of their festival!
See, she has left the Master; and is running
Back to the city!

SAMARITAN WOMAN.
                  Oh, come see a man
Who hath told me all things that I ever did!
Say, is not this the Christ?

THE DISCIPLES.
                        Lo, Master, here
Is food, that we have brought thee from the city.
We pray thee eat it.

CHRISTUS.
                    I have food to eat
Ye know not of.

THE DISCIPLES, to each other.
              Hath any man been here,
And brought Him aught to eat, while we were gone?

CHRISTUS.
The food I speak of is to do the will
Of Him that sent me, and to finish his work.
Do ye not say, Lo! there are yet four months
And cometh, harvest? I say unto you,
Lift up your eyes, and look upon the fields,
For they are white already unto harvest!

VII

THE COASTS OF CAESAREA PHILIPPI

CHRISTUS, going up the mountain.
Who do the people say I am?

JOHN.
                           Some say
That thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias;
And others Jeremiah.

JAMES.
                    Or that one
Of the old Prophets is risen again.

CHRISTUS.
But who say ye I am?

PETER.
                 Thou art the Christ?
Thou art the Son of God!

CHRISTUS.
                     Blessed art thou,
Simon Barjona! Flesh and blood hath not
Revealed it unto thee, but even my Father,
Which is in Heaven. And I say unto thee
That thou art Peter; and upon this rock
I build my Church, and all the gates of Hell
Shall not prevail against it. But take heed
Ye tell no man that I am the Christ.
For I must go up to Jerusalem,
And suffer many things, and be rejected
Of the Chief Priests, and of the Scribes and Elders,
And must be crucified, and the third day
Shall rise again!

PETER.
             Be it far from thee, Lord!
This shall not be!

CHRISTUS.
            Get thee behind me, Satan!
Thou savorest not the things that be of God,
But those that be of men! If any will
Come after me, let him deny himself,
And daily take his cross, and follow me.
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it,
And whosoever will lose his life shall find it.
For wherein shall a man be profited
If he shall gain the whole world, and shall lose
Himself or be a castaway?

JAMES, after a long pause.
                          Why doth
The Master lead us up into this mountain?

PETER.
He goeth up to pray.

JOHN.
                 See where He standeth
Above us on the summit of the hill!
His face shines as the sun! and all his raiment
Exceeding white as snow, so as no fuller
On earth can white them! He is not alone;
There are two with him there; two men of eld,
Their white beards blowing on the mountain air,
Are talking with him.

JAMES.
                    I am sore afraid!

PETER.
Who and whence are they?

JOHN.
                    Moses and Elias!

PETER.
O Master! it is good for us to be here!
If thou wilt, let us make three tabernacles;
For thee one, and for Moses and Elias!

JOHN.
Behold a bright cloud sailing in the sun!
It overshadows us. A golden mist
Now hides them from us, and envelops us
And all the mountains in a luminous shadow!
I see no more. The nearest rocks are hidden.

VOICE from the cloud.
Lo! this is my beloved Son! Hear Him!

PETER.
It is the voice of God. He speaketh to us,
As from the burning bush He spake to Moses!

JOHN.
The cloud-wreaths roll away. The veil is lifted;
We see again. Behold! He is alone.
It was a vision that our eyes beheld,
And it hath vanished into the unseen.

CHRISTUS, coming down from the mountain.
I charge ye, tell the vision unto no one,
Till the Son of Man is risen from the dead!

PETER, aside.
Again He speaks of it! What can it mean,
This rising from the dead?

JAMES.
                   Why say the Scribe!
Elias must first come?

CHRISTUS.
                      He cometh first,
Restoring all things. But I say to you,
That this Elias is already come.
They knew him not, but have done unto him
Whate'er they listed, as is written of him.

PETER, aside.
It is of John the Baptist He is speaking.

JAMES.
As we descend, see, at the mountain's foot,
A crowd of people; coming, going, thronging
Round the disciples, that we left behind us,
Seeming impatient, that we stay so long.

PETER.
It is some blind man, or some paralytic
That waits the Master's coming to be healed.

JAMES.
I see a boy, who struggles and demeans him
As if an unclean spirit tormented him!

A CERTAIN MAN, running forward.
Lord! I beseech thee, look upon my son.
He is mine only child; a lunatic,
And sorely vexed; for oftentimes he falleth
Into the fire and oft into the water.
Wherever the dumb spirit taketh him
He teareth him. He gnasheth with his teeth,
And pines away. I spake to thy disciples
That they should cast him out, and they could not.

CHRISTUS.
O faithless generation and perverse!
How long shall I be with you, and suffer you?
Bring thy son hither.

BYSTANDERS.
                How the unclean spirit
Seizes the boy, and tortures him with pain!
He falleth to the ground and wallows, foaming!
He cannot live.

CHRISTUS.
                How long is it ago
Since this came unto him?

THE FATHER.
                       Even of a child.
Oh, have compassion on us, Lord, and help us,
If thou canst help us.

CHRISTUS.
                  If thou canst believe.
For unto him that verily believeth,
All things are possible.

THE FATHER.
                        Lord, I believe!
Help thou mine unbelief!

CHRISTUS.
               Dumb and deaf spirit,
Come out of him, I charge thee, and no more
Enter thou into him!

The boy utters a loud cry of pain, and then lies still.

BYSTANDERS.
                     How motionless
He lieth there. No life is left in him.
His eyes are like a blind man's, that see not.
The boy is dead!

OTHERS.
           Behold! the Master stoops,
And takes him by the hand, and lifts him up.
He is not dead.

DISCIPLES.
         But one word from those lips,
But one touch of that hand, and he is healed!
Ah, why could we not do it?

THE FATHER.
                     My poor child!
Now thou art mine again. The unclean spirit
Shall never more torment thee! Look at me!
Speak unto me! Say that thou knowest me!

DISCIPLES to CHRISTUS departing.
Good Master, tell us, for what reason was it
We could not cast him out?

CHRISTUS.
            Because of your unbelief!

VIII

THE YOUNG RULER

CHRISTUS.
Two men went up into the temple to pray.
The one was a self-righteous Pharisee,
The other a Publican. And the Pharisee
Stood and prayed thus within himself: O God,
I thank thee I am not as other men,
Extortioners, unjust, adulterers,
Or even as this Publican. I fast
Twice in the week, and also I give tithes
Of all that I possess! The Publican,
Standing afar off, would not lift so much
Even as his eyes to heaven, but smote his breast,
Saying: God be merciful to me a sinner!
I tell you that this man went to his house
More justified than the other. Every one
That doth exalt himself shall be abased,
And he that humbleth himself shall be exalted!

CHILDREN, among themselves.
Let us go nearer! He is telling stories!
Let us go listen to them.

AN OLD JEW.
                   Children, children!
What are ye doing here? Why do ye crowd us?
It was such little vagabonds as you
That followed Elisha, mucking him and crying:
Go up, thou bald-head! But the bears--the bears
Came out of the wood, and tare them!

A MOTHER.
                      Speak not thus!
We brought them here, that He might lay his hands
On them, and bless them.

CHRISTUS.
                   Suffer little children
To come unto me, and forbid them not;
Of such is the kingdom of heaven; and their angels
Look always on my Father's face.

Takes them in his arms and blesses them.

A YOUNG RULER, running.
                       Good Master!
What good thing shall I do, that I may have
Eternal life?

CHRISTUS.
            Why callest thou me good?
There is none good but one, and that is God.
If thou wilt enter into life eternal,
Keep the commandments.

YOUNG RULER.
                   Which of them?

CHRISTUS.
                     Thou shalt not
Commit adultery; thou shalt not kill;
Thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness;
Honor thy father and thy mother; and love
Thy neighbor as thyself.

YOUNG RULER.
                   From my youth up
All these things have I kept. What lack I yet?

JOHN.
With what divine compassion in his eyes
The Master looks upon this eager youth,
As if he loved him!

CHRISTUS.
               Wouldst thou perfect be,
Sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor,
And come, take up thy cross, and follow me,
And thou shalt have thy treasure in the heavens.

JOHN.
Behold, how sorrowful he turns away!

CHRISTUS.
Children! how hard it is for them that trust
In riches to enter into the kingdom of God!
'T is easier for a camel to go through
A needle's eye, than for the rich to enter
The kingdom of God!

JOHN.
         Ah, who then can be saved?

CHRISTUS.
With men this is indeed impossible,
But unto God all things are possible!

PETER.
Behold, we have left all, and followed thee.
What shall we have therefor?

CHRISTUS.
                        Eternal life.

IX

AT BETHANY

MARTHA busy about household affairs. MARY sitting at the feet of
CHRISTUS.

MARTHA.
She sitteth idly at the Master's feet.
And troubles not herself with household cares.
'T is the old story. When a guest arrives
She gives up all to be with him; while I
Must be the drudge, make ready the guest-chamber,
Prepare the food, set everything in order,
And see that naught is wanting in the house.
She shows her love by words, and I by works.

MARY.
O Master! when thou comest, it is always
A Sabbath in the house. I cannot work;
I must sit at thy feet; must see thee, hear thee!
I have a feeble, wayward, doubting heart,
Incapable of endurance or great thoughts,
Striving for something that it cannot reach,
Baffled and disappointed, wounded, hungry;
And only when I hear thee am I happy,
And only when I see thee am at peace!
Stronger than I, and wiser, and far better
In every manner, is my sister Martha.
Thou seest how well she orders everything
To make thee welcome; how she comes and goes,
Careful and cumbered ever with much serving,
While I but welcome thee with foolish words!
Whene'er thou speakest to me, I am happy;
When thou art silent, I am satisfied.
Thy presence is enough. I ask no more.
Only to be with thee, only to see thee,
Sufficeth me. My heart is then at rest.
I wonder I am worthy of so much.

MARTHA.
Lord, dost thou care not that my sister Mary
Hath left me thus to wait on thee alone?
I pray thee, bid her help me.

CHRISTUS.
                       Martha, Martha,
Careful and troubled about many things
Art thou, and yet one thing alone is needful!
Thy sister Mary hath chosen that good part,
Which never shall be taken away from her!

X

BORN BLIND

A JEW.
Who is this beggar blinking in the sun?
Is it not he who used to sit and beg
By the Gate Beautiful?

ANOTHER.
                       It is the same.

A THIRD.
It is not he, but like him, for that beggar
Was blind from birth. It cannot be the same.

THE BEGGAR.
Yea, I am he.

A JEW.
   How have thine eyes been opened?

THE BEGGAR.
A man that is called Jesus made a clay
And put it on mine eyes, and said to me:
Go to Siloam's Pool and wash thyself.
I went and washed, and I received my sight.

A JEW.
Where is he?

THE BEGGAR.
            I know not.

PHARISEES.
                 What is this crowd
Gathered about a beggar? What has happened?

A JEW.
Here is a man who hath been blind from birth,
And now he sees. He says a man called Jesus
Hath healed him.

PHARISEES.
           As God liveth, the Nazarene!
How was this done?

THE BEGGAR.
                 Rabboni, he put clay
Upon mine eyes; I washed, and now I see.

PHARISEES.
When did he this?

THE BEGGAR.
               Rabboni, yesterday.

PHARISEES.
The Sabbath day. This man is not of God,
Because he keepeth not the Sabbath day!

A JEW.
How can a man that is a sinner do
Such miracles?

PHARISEES.
            What dost thou say of him
That hath restored thy sight?

THE BEGGAR.
                      He is a Prophet.

A JEW.
This is a wonderful story, but not true,
A beggar's fiction. He was not born blind,
And never has been blind!

OTHERS.
                Here are his parents.
Ask them.

PHARISEES.
          Is this your son?

THE PARENTS.
                        Rabboni, yea;
We know this is our son.

PHARISEES.
                  Was he born blind?

THE PARENTS.
He was born blind.

PHARISEES.
          Then how doth he now see?

THE PARENTS, aside.
What answer shall we make? If we confess
It was the Christ, we shall be driven forth
Out of the Synagogue!
                  We know, Rabboni,
This is our son, and that he was born blind;
But by what means he seeth, we know not,
Or who his eyes hath opened, we know not.
He is of age; ask him; we cannot say;
He shall speak for himself.

PHARISEES.
                   Give God the praise!
We know the man that healed thee is a sinner!

THE BEGGAR.
Whether He be a sinner, I know not;
One thing I know; that whereas I was blind,
I now do see.

PHARISEES.
            How opened he thine eyes?
What did he do?

THE BEGGAR.
               I have already told you.
Ye did not hear: why would ye hear again?
Will ye be his disciples?

PHARISEES.
                         God of Moses!
Are we demoniacs, are we halt or blind,
Or palsy-stricken, or lepers, or the like,
That we should join the Synagogue of Satan,
And follow jugglers? Thou art his disciple,
But we are disciples of Moses; and we know
That God spake unto Moses; but this fellow,
We know not whence he is!

THE BEGGAR.
                       Why, herein is
A marvellous thing! Ye know not whence he is,
Yet he hath opened mine eyes! We know that God
Heareth not sinners; but if any man
Doeth God's will, and is his worshipper,
Him doth he hear. Oh, since the world began
It was not heard that any man hath opened
The eyes of one that was born blind. If He
Were not of God, surely he could do nothing!

PHARISEES.
Thou, who wast altogether born in sins
And in iniquities, dost thou teach us?
Away with thee out of the holy places,
Thou reprobate, thou beggar, thou blasphemer!

THE BEGGAR is cast out.

XI

SIMON MAGUS AND HELEN OF TYRE

On the house-top at Endor. Night. A lighted lantern on a table.

SIMON.
Swift are the blessed Immortals to the mortal
That perseveres! So doth it stand recorded
In the divine Chaldaean Oracles
Of Zoroaster, once Ezekiel's slave,
Who in his native East betook himself
To lonely meditation, and the writing
On the dried skins of oxen the Twelve Books
Of the Avesta and the Oracles!
Therefore I persevere; and I have brought thee
From the great city of Tyre, where men deride
The things they comprehend not, to this plain
Of Esdraelon, in the Hebrew tongue
Called Armageddon, and this town of Endor,
Where men believe; where all the air is full
Of marvellous traditions, and the Enchantress
That summoned up the ghost of Samuel
Is still remembered. Thou hast seen the land;
Is it not fair to look on?

HELEN.
                        It is fair,
Yet not so fair as Tyre.

SIMON.
                    Is not Mount Tabor
As beautiful as Carmel by the Sea?

HELEN.
It is too silent and too solitary;
I miss the tumult of the street; the sounds
Of traffic, and the going to and fro
Of people in gay attire, with cloaks of purple,
And gold and silver jewelry!

SIMON.
                            Inventions
Of Abriman, the spirit of the dark,
The Evil Spirit!

HELEN.
                 I regret the gossip
Of friends and neighbors at the open door
On summer nights.

SIMON.
              An idle waste of time.

HELEN.
The singing and the dancing, the delight
Of music and of motion. Woe is me,
To give up all these pleasures, and to lead
The life we lead!

SIMON.
            Thou canst not raise thyself
Up to the level of my higher thought,
And though possessing thee, I still remain
Apart from thee, and with thee, am alone
In my high dreams.

HELEN.
              Happier was I in Tyre.
Oh, I remember how the gallant ships
Came sailing in, with ivory, gold, and silver,
And apes and peacocks; and the singing sailors,
And the gay captains with their silken dresses,
Smelling of aloes, myrrh, and cinnamon!

SIMON.
But the dishonor, Helen! Let the ships
Of Tarshish howl for that!

HELEN.
                  And what dishonor?
Remember Rahab, and how she became
The ancestress of the great Psalmist David;
And wherefore should not I, Helen of Tyre,
Attain like honor?

SIMON.
                Thou art Helen of Tyre,
And hast been Helen of Troy, and hast been Rahab,
The Queen of Sheha, and Semiramis,
And Sara of seven husbands, and Jezebel,
And other women of the like allurements;
And now thou art Minerva, the first Aeon,
The Mother of Angels!

HELEN.
                  And the concubine
Of Simon the Magician! Is it honor
For one who has been all these noble dames,
To tramp about the dirty villages
And cities of Samaria with a juggler?
A charmer of serpents?

SIMON.
                He who knows himself
Knows all things in himself. I have charmed thee,
Thou beautiful asp: yet am I no magician,
I am the Power of God, and the Beauty of God!
I am the Paraclete, the Comforter!

HELEN.
Illusions! Thou deceiver, self-deceived!
Thou dost usurp the titles of another;
Thou art not what thou sayest.

SIMON.
                           Am I not?
Then feel my power.

HELEN.
Would I had ne'er left Tyre!

He looks at her, and she sinks into a deep sleep.

SIMON.
Go, see it in thy dreams, fair unbeliever!
And leave me unto mine, if they be dreams,
That take such shapes before me, that I see them;
These effable and ineffable impressions
Of the mysterious world, that come to me
From the elements of Fire and Earth and Water,
And the all-nourishing Ether! It is written,
Look not on Nature, for her name is fatal!
Yet there are Principles, that make apparent
The images of unapparent things,
And the impression of vague characters
And visions most divine appear in ether.
So speak the Oracles; then wherefore fatal?
I take this orange-bough, with its five leaves,
Each equidistant on the upright stem;
And I project them on a plane below,
In the circumference of a circle drawn
About a centre where the stem is planted,
And each still equidistant from the other,
As if a thread of gossamer were drawn
Down from each leaf, and fastened with a pin.
Now if from these five points a line be traced
To each alternate point, we shall obtain
The Pentagram, or Solomon's Pentangle,
A charm against all witchcraft, and a sign,
Which on the banner of Antiochus
Drove back the fierce barbarians of the North,
Demons esteemed, and gave the Syrian King
The sacred name of Soter, or of Savior.
Thus Nature works mysteriously with man;
And from the Eternal One, as from a centre,
All things proceed, in fire, air, earth, and water,
And all are subject to one law, which, broken
Even in a single point, is broken in all;
Demons rush in, and chaos comes again.
By this will I compel the stubborn spirits,
That guard the treasures, hid in caverns deep
On Gerizim, by Uzzi the High-Priest,
The ark and holy vessels, to reveal
Their secret unto me, and to restore
These precious things to the Samaritans.
A mist is rising from the plain below me,
And as I look, the vapors shape themselves
Into strange figures, as if unawares
My lips had breathed the Tetragrammaton,
And from their graves, o'er all the battlefields
Of Armageddon, the long-buried captains
Had started, with their thousands, and ten thousands,
And rushed together to renew their wars,
Powerless, and weaponless, and without a sound!
Wake, Helen, from thy sleep! The air grows cold;
Let us go down.

HELEN, awaking.
           Oh, would I were at home!

SIMON.
Thou sayest that I usurp another's titles.
In youth I saw the Wise Men of the East,
Magalath and Pangalath and Saracen,
Who followed the bright star, but home returned
For fear of Herod by another way.
O shining worlds above me! in what deep
Recesses of your realms of mystery
Lies hidden now that star? and where are they
That brought the gifts of frankincense and myrrh?

HELEN.
The Nazarene still liveth.

SIMON.
                        We have heard
His name in many towns, but have not seen Him.
He flits before us; tarries not; is gone
When we approach, like something unsubstantial,
Made of the air, and fading into air.
He is at Nazareth, He is at Nain,
Or at the Lovely Village on the Lake,
Or sailing on its waters.

HELEN.
                        So say those
Who do not wish to find Him.

SIMON.
                         Can this be
The King of Israel, whom the Wise Men worshipped?
Or does He fear to meet me? It would seem so.
We should soon learn which of us twain usurps
The titles of the other, as thou sayest.

They go down.

THE THIRD PASSOVER

I

THE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM

THE SYRO-PHOENICIAN WOMAN and her DAUGHTER on the house-top at
Jerusalem.

THE DAUGHTER, singing.
Blind Bartimeus at the gates
Of Jericho in darkness waits;
He hears the crowd;--he hears a breath
Say, It is Christ of Nazareth!
And calls, in tones of agony,
[Greek text]!

The thronging multitudes increase:
Blind Bartimeus, hold thy peace!
But still, above the noisy crowd,
The beggar's cry is shrill and loud;
Until they say, he calleth thee!
[Greek text]!

Then saith the Christ, as silent stands
The crowd, What wilt thou at my hands?
And he replies, Oh, give me light!
Rabbi, restore the blind man's sight!
And Jesus answers, [Greek text]!

Ye that have eyes, yet cannot see,
In darkness and in misery,
Recall those mighty voices three,
[Greek text]!
[Greek text]!
[Greek text]!

THE MOTHER.
Thy faith hath saved thee! Ah, how true that is!
For I had faith; and when the Master came
Into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, fleeing
From those who sought to slay him, I went forth
And cried unto Him, saying: Have mercy on me,
O Lord, thou Son of David! for my daughter
Is grievously tormented with a devil.
But he passed on, and answered not a word.
And his disciples said, beseeching Him:
Send her away! She crieth after us!
And then the Master answered them and said:
I am not sent but unto the lost sheep
Of the House of Israel! Then I worshipped Him,
Saying: Lord help me! And He answered me,
It is not meet to take the children's bread
And cast it unto dogs! Truth, Lord, I said;
And yet the dogs may eat the crumbs which fall
From off their master's table; and he turned,
And answered me; and said to me: O woman,
Great is thy faith; then be it unto thee
Even as thou wilt. And from that very hour
Thou wast made whole, my darling! my delight!

THE DAUGHTER.
There came upon my dark and troubled mind
A calm, as when the tumult of the City
Suddenly ceases, and I lie and hear
The silver trumpets of the Temple blowing
Their welcome to the Sabbath. Still I wonder,
That one who was so far away from me
And could not see me, by his thought alone
Had power to heal me. Oh that I could see Him!

THE MOTHER.
Perhaps thou wilt; for I have brought thee here
To keep the holy Passover, and lay
Thine offering of thanksgiving on the altar.
Thou mayst both see and hear Him. Hark!

VOICES afar off.
                 Hosanna!

THE DAUGHTER.
A crowd comes pouring through the city gate!
O mother, look!

VOICES in the street.
                      Hosanna to the Son
Of David!

THE DAUGHTER.
          A great multitude of people
Fills all the street; and riding on an ass
Comes one of noble aspect, like a king!
The people spread their garments in the way,
And scatter branches of the palm-trees!

VOICES.
                               Blessed
Is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest!

OTHER VOICES.
                        Who is this?

VOICES.
Jesus of Nazareth!

THE DAUGHTER.
                  Mother, it is he!

VOICES.
He hath called Lazarus of Bethany
Out of his grave, and raised him from the dead!
Hosanna in the highest!

PHARISEES.
                       Ye perceive
That nothing we prevail. Behold, the world
Is all gone after him!

THE DAUGHTER.
                     What majesty,
What power is in that care-worn countenance!
What sweetness, what compassion! I no longer
Wonder that he hath healed me!

VOICES.
                     Peace in heaven,
And glory in the highest!

PHARISEES.
                      Rabbi! Rabbi!
Rebuke thy followers!

CHRISTUS.
         Should they hold their peace
The very stones beneath us would cry out!

THE DAUGHTER.
All hath passed by me like a dream of wonder!
But I have seen Him, and have heard his voice,
And I am satisfied! I ask no more!

II

SOLOMON'S PORCH

GAMALIEL THE SCRIBE.
When Rabban Simeon--upon whom be peace!--
Taught in these Schools, he boasted that his pen
Had written no word that he could call his own,
But wholly and always had been consecrated
To the transcribing of the Law and Prophets.
He used to say, and never tired of saying,
The world itself was built upon the Law.
And ancient Hillel said, that whosoever
Gains a good name gains something for himself,
But he who gains a knowledge of the Law
Gains everlasting life. And they spake truly.
Great is the Written Law; but greater still
The Unwritten, the Traditions of the Elders,
The lovely words of Levites, spoken first
To Moses on the Mount, and handed down
From mouth to mouth, in one unbroken sound
And sequence of divine authority,
The voice of God resounding through the ages.

The Written Law is water; the Unwritten
Is precious wine; the Written Law is salt,
The Unwritten costly spice; the Written Law
Is but the body; the Unwritten, the soul
That quickens it and makes it breathe and live.
I can remember, many years ago,
A little bright-eyed school-boy, a mere stripling,
Son of a Galilean carpenter,
From Nazareth, I think, who came one day
And sat here in the Temple with the Scribes,
Hearing us speak, and asking many questions,
And we were all astonished at his quickness.
And when his mother came, and said: Behold
Thy father and I have sought thee, sorrowing;
He looked as one astonished, and made answer,
How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not
That I must be about my Father's business?
Often since then I see him here among us,
Or dream I see him, with his upraised face
Intent and eager, and I often wonder
Unto what manner of manhood he hath grown!
Perhaps a poor mechanic like his father,
Lost in his little Galilean village
And toiling at his craft, to die unknown
And he no more remembered among men.

CHRISTUS, in the outer court.
The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat;
All, therefore, whatsoever they command you,
Observe and do; but follow not their works
They say and do not. They bind heavy burdens
And very grievous to be borne, and lay them
Upon men's shoulders, but they move them not
With so much as a finger!

GAMALIEL, looking forth.
                         Who is this
Exhorting in the outer courts so loudly?

CHRISTUS.
Their works they do for to he seen of men.
They make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge
The borders of their garments, and they love
The uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats
In Synagogues, and greetings in the markets,
And to be called of all men Rabbi, Rabbi!

GAMALIEL.
It is that loud and turbulent Galilean,
That came here at the Feast of Dedication,
And stirred the people up to break the Law!

CHRISTUS.
Woe unto you, ye Scribes and Pharisees,
Ye hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom
Of heaven, and neither go ye in yourselves
Nor suffer them that are entering to go in!

GAMALIEL.
How eagerly the people throng and listen,
As if his ribald words were words of wisdom!

CHRISTUS.
Woe unto you, ye Scribes and Pharisees,
Ye hypocrites! for ye devour the houses
Of widows, and for pretence ye make long prayers;
Therefore shall ye receive the more damnation.

GAMALIEL.
This brawler is no Jew,--he is a vile
Samaritan, and hath an unclean spirit!

CHRISTUS.
Woe unto you, ye Scribes and Pharisees,
Ye hypocrites! ye compass sea and land
To make one proselyte, and when he is made
Ye make him twofold more the child of hell
Than you yourselves are!

GAMALIEL.
               O my father's father!
Hillel of blessed memory, hear and judge!

CHRISTUS.
Woe unto you, ye Scribes and Pharisees,
Ye hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint,
Of anise, and of cumin, and omit
The weightier matters of the law of God,
Judgment and faith and mercy; and all these
Ye ought to have done, nor leave undone the others!

GAMALIEL.
O Rabban Simeon! how must thy bones
Stir in their grave to hear such blasphemies!

CHRISTUS.
Woe unto you, ye Scribes, and Pharisees,
Ye hypocrites! for ye make clean and sweet
The outside of the cup and of the platter,
But they within are full of all excess!

GAMALIEL.
Patience of God! canst thou endure so long?
Or art thou deaf, or gone upon a journey?

CHRISTUS.
Woe unto you, ye Scribes and Pharisees,
Ye hypocrites! for ye are very like
To whited sepulchres, which indeed appear
Beautiful outwardly, but are within
Filled full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness!