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.

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.

March 15, 1882.

PRELUDE.

As treasures that men seek,
Deep-buried in sea-sands,
Vanish if they but speak,
And elude their eager hands,

So ye escape and slip,

O songs, and fade away, When the word is on my lip To interpret what ye say.

Were it not better, then,

To let the treasures rest Hid from the eyes of men, Locked in their iron chest?

I have but marked the place,
But half the secret told,
That, following this slight trace,
Others may find the gold.

FROM THE FRENCH.

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 till.

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!

At La Chaudeau, live on, my friends,
Happy to be where God intends;
And sometimes, by the evening fire,
Think of him whose sole desire
Is again to sit in the old château
At La Chaudeau.

A QUIET LIFE.

FROM THE FRENCH.

LET him who will, by force or fraud innate,
Of courtly grandeurs gain the slippery height,
I, leaving not the home of my delight,
Far from the world and noise will meditate.
Then, without pomps or perils of the great,
I shall behold the day succeed the night;
Behold the alternate seasons take their flight,
And in serene repose old age await.
And so, whenever Death shall come to close

The happy moments that my days compose,
I, full of years, shall die, obscure, alone!
How wretched is the man, with honors crowned,
Who, having not the one thing needful found,
Dies, known to all, but to himself unknown.
September 11, 1879.

LOSS AND GAIN.

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." April 4, 1876.

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. April 9, 1874.

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.

September 23, 1881.

ARIOSTO.

DANTE, Par. xiii. st. 77.

I must return to Fondi.

JULIA.

VITTORIA.

The old castle

thinking

Needs not your presence. No one waits for you.
Stay one day longer with me. They who go
Feel not the pain of parting; it is they
Who stay behind that suffer. I was
But yesterday how like and how unlike
The good Vespasian, an old man, who seemed
Have been, and are, our destinies. Your husband,
Died in your arms; but mine, in all the flower
A father to you rather than a husband,
And promise of his youth, was taken from me
As by a rushing wind. The breath of battle
Breathed on him, and I saw his face no more,
As our love

Save as in dreams it haunts me.

Was for these men, so is our sorrow for them. Yours a child's sorrow, smiling through its tears; But mine the grief of an impassioned woman, Who drank her life up in one draught of love.

Of my Vespasian. This amaranth, and

JULIA.

This is the white hair This is the flower-of-love, beneath it the device

Non moritura. Thus my heart remains
True to his memory; and the ancient castle,
Where we have lived together, where he died,
Is dear to me as Ischia is to you.

VITTORIA.

I did not mean to chide you.

JULIA.

Let your heart

Find, if it can, some poor apology