She gripped the poet to her breast, And ever, upward soaring, How tell to what heaven-hallowed seat Here was the bird's primeval nest, High on a promontory Star-pharosed, where she takes her rest To brood new æons 'neath her breast, The future's unfledged glory. I know not how, but I was there It was not wind that stirred my hair And in the nest an egg of gold Lay soft in self-made lustre, Gazing whereon, what depths untold Within, what marvels manifold, Seemed silently to muster ! Daily such splendors to confront Is still to me and you sent? It glowed as when Saint Peter's front, Illumed, forgets its stony wont, And seems to throb translucent. One saw therein the life of man, (Or so the poet found it,) The yolk and white, conceive who can, Were the glad earth, that, floating, span In the glad heaven around it. I knew this as one knows in dream, That seemed to come from Baucis. Bless Zeus!" she cried, "I'm safe below!" First pale, then red as coral; And I, still drowsy, pondered slow, And seemed to find, but hardly know, Something like this for moral. Each day the world is born anew For him who takes it rightly; Not fresher that which Adam knew, Not sweeter that whose moonlit dew Entranced Arcadia nightly. Rightly? That 's simply: 't is to see Some substance casts these shadows Which we call Life and History, That aimless seem to chase and flee Like wind-gleams over meadows. Simply? That's nobly: 't is to know Beauty, Herr Doctor, trust in me, A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO A FRIEND. ALIKE I hate to be your debtor, When life, once past its fortieth year, Tow'rd morning's loss and vain regret, lands, "But count the gains," I hear you say, | What's Knowledge, with her stocks and "Which far the seeming loss outweigh; Friendships built firm 'gainst flood and wind On rock-foundations of the mind; and strain With palms benumbed against the pane?" My dear old Friend, you 're very wise; What reef the idiot 's sure to wreck on; Folks when they learn how life has quizzed 'em Are fain to make a shift with Wisdom, Each quicksand safe to build a fame on; To gay Conjecture's yellow strands? What's watching her slow flocks in crease To ventures for the golden fleece? sea, For Flying Islands making sail, 'T was an old couple, says the poet, That lodged the gods and did not know it; Youth sees and knows them as they were Before Olympus' top was bare; ter a Charm that turns Doll to Cleopatra ; Divine as Ariadne saw him, And wins new Indies in his brain; Dear Friend, you 're right and I am wrong; My quibbles are not worth a song, My fancy sad to tricks like these. I have not spilt one drop of joy So, when God's shadow, which is light, But let me end with a comparison (And there's where I shall beat them hollow, If he indeed 's no courtly St. John, But, the dead plunder once secured Yes, this is life! And so the bard Now I've a notion, if a poet I wait for subjects that hunt me, AN EMBER PICTURE. How strange are the freaks of memory! Set by some mordant of fancy, And, spite of the wear and tear Of time or distance or trouble, Insists on its right to be there. A chance had brought us together; Our talk was of matters-of-course; We were nothing, one to the other, But a short half-hour's resource. We spoke of French acting and actors, As we drove home from the play. We bore ourselves so to discuss; The thunderous rumors of battle Were silent the while for us. Arrived at her door, we left her Of the oak-darkened avenue. As we drove away through the shadow, The candle she held in the door From rain-varnished tree-trunk to tree- | A sweeter secret hides behind his fame, And Love steals shyly through the loud trunk Flashed fainter, and flashed more; Flashed fainter, then wholly faded Before we had passed the wood; But the light of the face behind it Went with me and stayed for good. The vision of scarce a moment, And hardly marked at the time, It comes unbidden to haunt me, Like a scrap of ballad-rhyme. no acclaim THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY. - IN THE TWILIGHT. 389 THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY. | Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain "COME forth!" my catbird calls to me, "And hear me sing a cavatina That, in this old familiar tree, Shall hang a garden of Alcina. "These buttercups shall brim with wine Beyond all Lesbian juice or Massic ; May not New England be divine? My ode to ripening summer classic? "Or, if to me you will not hark, By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing Till all the alder-coverts dark Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing. "Come out beneath the unmastered sky, With its emancipating spaces, And learn to sing as well as I, Without premeditated graces. "What boot your many-volumed gains, Those withered leaves forever turning, To win, at best, for all your pains, A nature mummy-wrapt in learning? "The leaves wherein true wisdom lies On living trees the sun are drinking; Those white clouds, drowsing through the skies, Grew not so beautiful by thinking. "Come out!' with me the oriole cries, Escape the demon that pursues you! And, hark, the cuckoo weatherwise, Still hiding farther onward, wooes you." "Alas, dear friend, that, all my days, Has poured from that syringa thicket The quaintly discontinuous lays To which I hold a season-ticket, "A season-ticket cheaply bought With a dessert of piltered berries, And who so oft my soul hast caught With morn and evening voluntaries, "Deem me not faithless, if all day "A bird is singing in ray brain Fed with the sap of old romances. "I ask no ampler skies than those His magic music rears above me, No falser friends, no truer foes, And does not Doña Clara love me? "Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars, A rush of feet, and rapiers clashing, Then silence deep with breathless stars, And overhead a white hand flashing. "O music of all moods and climes, Vengeful, forgiving, sensuous, saintly, Where still, between the Christian chimes, The moorish cymbal tinkles faintly! "O life borne lightly in the hand, For friend or foe with grace Castilian ! O valley safe in Fancy's land, Not tramped to mud yet by the million! "Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale To his, my singer of all weathers, My Calderon, my nightingale, My Arab soul in Spanish feathers. "Ah, friend, these singers dead so long, IN THE TWILIGHT. MEN say the sullen instrument, Whispers the ravished strings Old summers in its memory glow; And bubbling o'er with mingled fan- The magical moonlight then cies, Steeped every bough and cone; |