TO SAPPHO. ANNIE FIELDS. DAUGHTER of Love! Out of the flowing river, Then while the earth made mimicry of heaven With stillness, calmly spake the mightiest judge: Bearing the tide of life upon its bil-O Eschylus! The father of our 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 this slender veil 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? Will evening bring no unsought fruitage home? Must the days pass and these poor lips be dumb, While strewing leaves sing falling through the air, And autumn gathers in her richest fruit? Where is my spring departed? Where, O gods! Within my spirit still the building birds I hear, with voice more tender than when leaves Are budding and the happy earth is gay. Am I, indeed, grown dumb for evermore! Take me, O bark! Take me, thou flowing stream! Who knowest nought of death save when thy waves Rush to new life upon the ocean's breast. Bear thou me singing to the under world! [From Sophocles.] AGED SOPHOCLES ADDRESSING THE 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 reason 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, Ye shall be judges if the spring have 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 tide, 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 the storm, To the voices of pleasure, Nor faint in the arms of the earth; Of thy grape was no frost and no Who knows both our death and our rain; I love thee! I follow thy feet! birth. 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. FIRST APPEARANCE AT THE ODEON. "I AM Nicholas Tacchinardi,- hunchbacked, look you, and a fright; Caliban himself might never interpose so foul a sight. Granted; but I come not, masters, to exhibit form or size. Gaze not on my limbs, good people; lend your ears, and not your eyes. Let me try my voice to-night here,- keep your jests till I begin. If I fail to please you, curse me,-not before my voice you hear, Thrust me not from the Odéon. Hearken, and I've naught to fear." Then the crowd in pit and boxes jeered the dwarf, and mocked his shape; Bowing low, pale Tacchinardi, long accustomed to such threats, FRANCIS MILES FINCH. THE BLUE AND THE GRAY. By the flow of the inland river; Asleep are the ranks of the dead: Under the other, the Gray. These in the robings of glory, Under the willow, the Gray. From the silence of sorrowful hours Lovingly laden with flowers, Alike for the friend and the foe; Waiting the Judgment-Day; So, when the summer calleth |