AUF WIEDERSEHEN.

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.

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.

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!

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,

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.

Below,

Now around them, white with snow,
Closed the mountain peaks.
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.

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?

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 sacritice
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!"

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!

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.

We see but what we have the gift
Of seeing; what we bring we find.
December 20, 1878.

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.

WILL ever the dear days come back again,
Those days of June, when lilacs were in bloom,
And bluebirds sang their sonnets in the gloom
Of leaves that roofed them in from sun or rain?
I know not; but a presence will remain

Forever and forever in this room,
Formless, diffused in air, like a perfume,
A phantom of the heart, and not the brain.
Delicious days! when every spoken word
Was like a foot-fall nearer and more near,
And a mysterious knocking at the gate

Of the heart's secret places, and we heard
In the sweet tumult of delight and fear
A voice that whispered, "Open, I cannot wait!"

THE WINE OF JURANÇON.

FROM THE FRENCH OF CHARLES CORAN.

LITTLE Sweet wine of Jurançon,

You are dear to my memory still! With mine host and his merry song, Under the rose-tree I drank my fill.

Twenty years after, passing that way, Under the trellis I found again Mine host, still sitting there au frais, And singing still the same refrain.

The Jurançon, so fresh and bold, Treats me as one it used to know; Souvenirs of the days of old

Already from the bottle flow.

With glass in hand our glances met;
We pledge, we drink. How sour it is!
Never Argenteuil piquette

Was to my palate sour as this!

And yet the vintage was good, in sooth;
The self-same juice, the self-same cask!
It was you, O gayety of my youth,
That failed in the autumnal flask!