TO SAPPHO.

DAUGHTER of Love! Out of the flowing river,

Then while the earth made mimicry of heaven

With stillness, calmly spake the mightiest judge:

low,

Down to that gulf where love and song together

Sink and must perish: Out of that fatal and resistless current,

One little song of thine to thy great mother,

Treasured upon the heart of earth forever,

Alone is rescued.

Yet when spring comes, and weary is the spirit,

When love is here, but absent is the lover,

And life is here, and only love is dying,

Then turn we, longing, Singer, to thee! Through ages unforgotten;

Where beats the heart of one who in her loving

Sang, all for love, and gave herself in singing

To the sea's bosom.

[From The Last Contest of Eschylus.] YOUNG SOPHOCLES TAKING THE PRIZE FROM AGED ÆSCHYLUS. BUT now the games succeeded, then a pause,

And after came the judges with the scrolls;

Two scrolls, not one, as in departed years.

And this saw none but the youth, Sophocles,

Who stood with head erect and shining eyes,

As if the beacon of some promised land

Caught his strong vision and entranced it there.

Athenian master of the tragic lyre song! Thou the incomparable! Swayer of Immortal minstrel of immortal deeds! strong hearts! The autumn grows apace, and all must die;

Soon winter comes, and silence. Eschylus!

After that silence laughs the tuneful spring!

Read'st thou our meaning through

Of

this slender veil

nature's weaving? stand forth!

Sophocles,

Behold Fame calls thee to her loftiest

seat,

And bids thee wear her crown. Stand forth, I say!"

Then, like a fawn, the youthful poet

sprang

From the dark thicket of new crowding friends,

And stood, a straight, lithe form with gentle mien,

Crowned first with light of happiness and youth.

But Eschylus, the old man, bending lower

Under this new chief weight of all the years,

Turned from that scene, turned from the shouting crowd, Whose every voice wounded his dying soul

With arrows poison-dipped, and walked alone,

Forgotten, under plane-trees, by the stream.

"The last! The last! Have I no more to do

With this sweet world! Is the bright morning now

No longer fraught for me with crowd ing song?

age home?

[From Sophocles.]

brought

Late unto me, the aged oak, a crown. Hear ye once more, ere yet the river of sleep

Bear me away far on its darkening tidè,

The music breathed upon me from these fields.

If to your ears, alas! the shattered strings

No longer sing, but breathe a discord harsh,

I will return and draw this mantle close

About my head and lay me down to die.

But if ye hear the wonted spirit call, Framing the natural song that fills this world

To a diviner form, then shall ye all believe

The love I bear to those most near to

To me, it seems, the love I bear to

thee,

Athens, blooms fresh as violets in yon

wood,

ATHENIANS BEFORE READING HIS

EDIPUS COLONEUS.

BOWED half with age and half with reverence, thus,

I, Sophocles, now answer to your
call;
Questioned have I the cause and the
Leason learned.

Lo, I am here that all the world may

see

These feeble limbs that signal of decay!

But, know ye, ere the aged oak must die,

Long after the strong years have bent his form,

The spring still gently weaves a leafy

crown,

Fresh as of yore to deck his wintry head.

And now, O people mine, who have loved my song,

breast.

AT THE FORGE.

I AM Hephaistos, and forever here Stand at the forge and labor, while I dream

Of those who labor not and are not lame.

I hear the early and the late birds call,

Hear winter whisper to the coming spring,

And watch the feet of summer dancing light

For joy across the bosom of the earth. Labor endures, but all of these must pass!

And ye who love them best, nor are condemned

To the storm,

To the voices of pleasure,

Nor faint in the arms of the earth;
But she followeth ever the form
Of the Master whose promise is sure,

rain;

I love thee! I follow thy feet!

birth.

MORNING AND EVENING BY THE SEA.

AT dawn the fleet stretched miles away

On ocean-plains asleep,-
Trim vessels waiting for the day
To move across the deep.
So still the sails they seemed to be
White lilies growing in the sea.

When evening touched the cape's low rim,

And dark fell on the waves, We only saw processions dim

Of clouds, from shadowy caves; These were the ghosts of buried ships Gone down in one brief hour's eclipse!

THE PERPETUITY OF SONG.

It was a blithesome young jongleur
Who started out to sing,
Eight hundred years ago, or more,
On a leafy morn in spring;
And he carolled sweet as any bird
That ever tried its wing.

Of love his little heart was full,-
The blossoms trembled with delight,
Madonna! how he sang!
And round about him sprang,
As forth among the banks of Loire
The minstrel's music rang.

The boy had left a home of want To wander up and down,

Hence with your cold sepulchra bans,

The vassal doubts Unfaith has

given!

My childhood's heart within the man's

Still whispers to me, "Trust in Heaven!"

COURTESY.

How sweet and gracious, even in common speech,

Is that fine sense which men call Courtesy!

Wholesome as air and genial as the light,

Welcome in every clime as breath of flowers,

It transmutes aliens into trusting friends,

And gives its owner passport round the globe.

A CHARACTER.

O HAPPIEST he, whose riper years retain

The hopes of youth, unsullied by a stain!

His eve of life in calm content shall glide,

Like the still streamlet to the ocean tide:

No gloomy cloud hangs o'er his tranquil day;

No meteor lures him from his home astray;

For him there glows with glittering beam on high

Love's changeless star that leads him to the sky;

Still to the past he sometimes turns to trace

The mild expression of a mother's

face,

And dreams, perchance, as oft in earlier years,

The low, sweet music of her voice he hears.