Stars rise for them, and moons grow
large

And lessen in such tranquil wise
As joys and sorrows do that rise

Within their nature's sheltered marge; Their hours into each other flit

Like the leaf-shadows of the vine And fig-tree under which they sit,

And their still lives to heaven incline With an unconscious habitude,

Unhistoried as smokes that rise From happy hearths and sight elude In kindred blue of morning skies.

Wayward when once we feel thy lack, "T is worse than vain to woo thee back!

Yet there is one who seems to be Thine elder sister, in whose eyes A faint far northern light will rise Sometimes, and bring a dream of thee; She is not that for which youth hoped, But she hath blessings all her own, Thoughts pure as lilies newly oped,

And faith to sorrow given alone:
Almost I deem that it is thou
Come back with graver matron brow,
With deepened eyes and bated breath,
Like one that somewhere hath met
Death,

But "No," she answers, "I am she
Whom the gods love, Tranquillity:

That other whom you seek forlorn
Half earthly was; but I am born
Of the immortals, and our race
Wears still some sadness on its face :

He wins me late, but keeps me long, Who, dowered with every gift of passion, In that fierce flame can forge and fashion

Of sin and self the anchor strong; Can thence compel the driving force Of daily life's mechanic course, Nor less the nobler energies Of needful toil and culture wise; Whose soul is worth the tempter's lure Who can renounce, and yet endure, To him I come, not lightly wooed, But won by silent fortitude."

VILLA FRANCA.

1859.

WAIT a little do we not wait? Louis Napoleon is not Fate, Francis Joseph is not Time;

System for all, and rights for none,
Despots atop, a wild clan below,
Such is the Gaul from long ago;
Wash the black from the Ethiop's face,
Wash the past out of man or race!
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!

Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever!
In the shadow, year out, year in,
The silent headsman waits forever.

'Neath Gregory's throne a spider swings,
And snares the people for the kings;
"Luther is dead; old quarrels pass;
The stake's black scars are healed with
grass";

So dreamers prate; did man ere live
Saw priest or woman yet forgive?
But Luther's broom is left, and eyes
Peep o'er their creeds to where it lies.
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever!
In the shadow, year out, year in,
The silent headsman waits forever.

Smooth sails the ship of either realm,
Kaiser and Jesuit at the helm;
We look down the depths, and mark
Silent workers in the dark

Building slow the sharp-tusked reefs,
Old instincts hardening to new beliefs;
Patience a little; learn to wait;
Hours are long on the clock of Fate.
Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever!
Darkness is strong, and so is Sin,
But only God endures forever!

THE MINER.

Down mid the tangled roots of things
That coil about the central fire,
I seek for that which giveth wings
To stoop, not soar, to my desire.

Sometimes I hear, as 't were a sigh,

The sea's deep yearning far above, "Thou hast the secret not," I cry, "In deeper deeps is hid my Love."

They think I burrow from the sun,

In darkness, all alone, and weak; Such loss were gain if He were won, For 't is the sun's own Sun I seek.

"The earth," they murmur, "is the tomb

That vainly sought his life to prison; Why grovel longer in the gloom? He is not here; he hath arisen."

More life for me where he hath lain Hidden while ye believed him dead, Than in cathedrals cold and vain,

Built on loose sands of It is said.

My search is for the living gold;

Him I desire who dwells recluse, And not his image worn and old, Day-servant of our sordid use.

If him I find not, yet I find

The ancient joy of cell and church, The glimpse, the surety undefined, The unquenched ardor of the search. Happier to chase a flying goal

Than to sit counting laurelled gains, To guess the Soul within the soul

Than to be lord of what remains.

Hide still, best Good, in subtile wise, Beyond my nature's utmost scope; Be ever absent from mine eyes

To be twice present in my hope!

GOLD EGG: A DREAM-FANTASY.

HOW A STUDENT IN SEARCH OF THE BEAUTIFUL FELL ASLEEP IN DRESDEN OVER HERR PROFESSOR DOCTOR VISCHER'S WISSENSCHAFT DES SCHONEN, AND WHAT CAME THEREOF.

I SWAM with undulation soft,
Adrift on Vischer's ocean,
And, from my cockboat up aloft,
Sent down my mental plummet oft
In hope to reach a notion.

But from the metaphysic sea

No bottom was forthcoming, And all the while (how drearily !) In one eternal note of B

My German stove kept humming.

"What's Beauty?" mused I; "is it told

By synthesis analysis?

She gripped the poet to her breast,

And ever, upward soaring, Earth seemed a new moon in the west, And then one light among the rest

Where squadrons lie at mooring.

How tell to what heaven-hallowed seat
The eagle bent his courses?
The waves that on its bases beat,
The gales that round it weave and fleet,
Are life's creative forces.

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
All feeling, hearing, seeing;

It was not wind that stirred my hair
But living breath, the essence rare
Of unembodied being.

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,
Where no effects to causes

Are chained as in our work-day scheme,
And then was wakened by a scream

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
That God may still be met with,
Nor groweth old, nor doth bestow
These senses fine, this brain aglow,
To grovel and forget with.

Beauty, Herr Doctor, trust in me,
No chemistry will win you;
Charis still rises from the sea:
If you can't find her, might it be
Because you seek within you?

A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO A FRIEND.

ALIKE I hate to be your debtor,
Or write a mere perfunctory letter;
For letters, so it seems to me,
Our careless quintessence should be,
Our real nature's truant play
When Consciousness looks t' other way,
Not drop by drop, with watchful skill,
Gathered in Art's deliberate still,
But life's insensible completeness
Got as the ripe grape gets its sweetness,
As if it had a way to fuse
The golden sunlight into juice.
Hopeless my mental pump I try;
The boxes hiss, the tube is dry;
As those petroleum wells that spout
Awhile like M. C.'s, then give out,
My spring, once full as Arethusa,
Is a mere bore as dry 's Creusa;
And yet you ask me why I'm glum,
And why my graver Muse is dumb.
Ah me! I've reasons manifold
Condensed in one, I'm getting old!

When life, once past its fortieth year,
Wheels up its evening hemisphere,
The mind's own shadow, which the boy
Saw onward point to hope and joy,
Shifts round, irrevocably set
Tow'rd morning's loss and vain regret,
And, argue with it as we will,
The clock is unconverted still.

lands,

On rock-foundations of the mind;
Knowledge instead of scheming hope;
For wild adventure, settled scope;
Talents, from surface-ore profuse,
Tempered and edged to tools for use;
Judgment, for passion's headlong whirls;
Old sorrows crystalled into pearls ;
Losses by patience turned to gains,
Possessions now, that once were pains;
Joy's blossom gone, as go it must,
To ripen seeds of faith and trust;
Why heed a snow-flake on the roof
If fire within keep Age aloof
Though blundering north-winds push

and strain

With palms benumbed against the pane?"

My dear old Friend, you 're very wise;
We always are with others' eyes,
And see so clear! (our neighbor's deck
on)

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,
And, finding she nor breaks nor bends,
Give her a letter to their friends.

Draw passion's torrent whoso will
Through sluices smooth to turn a mill,
And, taking solid toll of grist,
Forget the rainbow in the mist,
The exulting leap, the aimless haste
Scattered in iridescent waste;
Prefer who likes the sure esteem
To cheated youth's midsummer dream,
When every friend was more than
Damon,

Each quicksand safe to build a fame on;
Believe that prudence snug excels
Youth's gross of verdant spectacles,
Through which earth's withered stubble

To gay Conjecture's yellow strands? What's watching her slow flocks in

crease

To ventures for the golden fleece?
What her deep ships, safe under lee,
To youth's light craft, that drinks the

sea,

For Flying Islands making sail,
And failing where 't is gain to fail?
Ah me! Expereince (so we 're told),
Time's crucible, turns lead to gold;
Yet what's experience won but dross,
Cloud-gold transmuted to our loss?
What but base coin the best event
To the untried experiment?

'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;
From Swampscot's flats his eye divine
Sees Venus rocking on the brine,
With lucent limbs, that somehow scat-
ter a

Charm that turns Doll to Cleopatra ;
Bacchus (that now is scarce induced
To give Eld's lagging blood a boost),
With cymbals' clang and pards to draw
him,

Divine as Ariadne saw him,
Storms through Youth's pulse with all
his train

And wins new Indies in his brain;
Apollo (with the old a trope,
A sort of finer Mister Pope),
Apollo- but the Muse forbids;
At his approach cast down thy lids,
And think it joy enough to hear
Far off his arrows singing clear;
He knows enough who silent knows
The quiver chiming as he goes;
He tells too much who e'er betrays
The shining Archer's secret ways.

Dear Friend, you 're right and I am wrong;

My quibbles are not worth a song,
And I sophistically tease

My fancy sad to tricks like these.
I could not cheat you if I would;
You know me and my jesting mood,
Mere surface-foam, for pride concealing
The purpose of my deeper feeling.