What? calm Acquiescence ?
"Daisied turf gives room to
Trefoil, plucked once in her presence-
Growing by her tomb too!"

She. All's your fancy-spinning!

Here's the fact: a neighbor
Never-ending, still beginning,
Recreates his labor:
Deep o'er desk he drudges,
Adds, divides, subtracts and
Multiplies, until he judges
Noonday-hour's exact sand
Shows the hour-glass emptied :
Then comes lawful leisure,
Minutes rare from toil exempted,
Fit to spend in pleasure.

Out then with

what treatise ?

Youth's Complete Instructor

How to play the Flute. Quid petis ?
Follow Youth's conductor

On and on, through Easy,
Up to Harder, Hardest

Flute-piece, till thou, flautist wheezy,
Possibly discardest

Tootlings hoarse and husky,

Mayst expend with courage

Breath-on tunes once bright, now dusky Meant to cool thy porridge.

That's an air of Tulou's

He maltreats persistent,

Till as lief I'd hear some Zulu's
Bone-piped bag, breath-distent,
Madden native dances.

I'm the man's familiar:
Unexpectedness enhances
What your ear's auxiliar
-Fancy finds suggestive.
Listen! That 's legato
Rightly played, his fingers restive
Touch as if staccato.

Bit of passionate imploringMe for Juliet: who knows?

No! as you explain things,
All's mere repetition,
Practise-pother of all vain things
Why waste pooh or pish on
Toilsome effort -never
Ending, still beginning

After what should pay endeavor
Right-performance? winning
Weariness from you who,
Ready to admire some

Owl's fresh hooting- Tu-whit, tu-who-
Find stale thrush-songs tiresome.

She. Songs, Spring thought perfection,
Summer criticises:

What in May escaped detection,
August, past surprises,

Notes, and names each blunder.

You, the just-initiate,

Praise to heart's content (what wonder?)
Tootings I hear vitiate

Romeo's serenading

I who, times full twenty,

Turned to ice-no ash-tops aiding -
At his caldamente.

His Panegyric on the Emperor.

66

Nobody like him," little Flaccus laughed,
"At leading forth an Epos with due pomp!
Only, when godlike Cæsar swells the theme,
How should mere mortals hope to praise aright?
Tell me, thou offshoot of Etruscan kings!
Whereat Mæcenas smiling sighed assent.

I paid my quadrans, left the Therma's roar
Of rapture as the poet asked, "What place
Among the godships Jove, for Cæsar's sake,
Would bid its actual occupant vacate
In favor of the new divinity?
And got the expected answer, "Yield thine
own!"

Jove thus dethroned, I somehow wanted air,
And found myself a-pacing street and street,
Letting the sunset, rosy over Rome,
Clear my head dizzy with the hubbub- say,
As if thought's dance therein had kicked up
dust

By trampling on all else: the world lay prone,
As-poet-propped, in brave hexameters
Their subject triumphed up from man to God.
Caius Octavius Cæsar the August

Where was escape from his prepotency?

Not to say, Italy -he planted there

Some thirty colonies-but Rome itself

All new-built, "marble now, brick once," he boasts:

This Portico, that Circus. Would you sail?
He has drained Tiber for you: would you walk ?
He straightened out the long Flaminian Way.
Poor? Profit by his score of donatives!
Rich

that is, mirthful? Half-a-hundred games

Challenge your choice! There's Rome - for you and me

Only? The centre of the world besides !
For, look the wide world over, where ends
Rome ?

To sunrise? There 's Euphrates - all between!
To sunset? Ocean and immensity:
North, stare till Danube stops you: South, see
Nile,

The Desert and the earth-upholding Mount.
Well may the poet-people each with each
Vie in his praise, our company of swans,
Virgil and Horace, singers - in their way-
Nearly as good as Varius, though less famed:
Well may they cry, "No mortal, plainly God!”

Thus to myself myself said, while I walked :
Or would have said, could thought attain to

Who stands secure? Are even Gods so safe?
Jupiter that just now is dominant
Are not there ancient dismal tales how once
A predecessor reigned ere Saturn came,
And who can say if Jupiter be last ?
Was it for nothing the gray Sibyl wrote
"Cæsar Augustus regnant, shall be born
In blind Judæa" -one to master him,
Him and the universe? An old-wife's tale?

Bath-drudge! Here, slave! No cheating!
Our turn next.

No loitering, or be sure you taste the lash! Two strigils, two oil-drippers, each a sponge !

66

DEVELOPMENT

My Father was a scholar and knew Greek.
When I was five years old, I asked him once
What do you read about?"
The siege of Troy."
"What is a siege, and what is Troy?"
Whereat

He piled up chairs and tables for a town,
Set me a-top for Priam, called our cat

- Helen, enticed away from home (he said) By wicked Paris, who couched somewhere close

Under the footstool, being cowardly,

But whom since she was worth the pains,

poor puss

Towzer and Tray,

sought

- our dogs, the Atreidai,

By taking Troy to get possession of

Always when great Achilles ceased to sulk, (My pony in the stable) - forth would prance And put to flight Hector - our page-boy's self. This taught me who was who and what was

what:

So far I rightly understood the case

At five years old; a huge delight it proved

66

laugh!

what a

Why, Homer, all the world knows of his life

Doubtless some facts exist: it's everywhere: We have not settled, though, his place of birth: He begged, for certain, and was blind beside: Seven cities claimed him-Scio, with best right,

Thinks Byron. What he wrote ? Those Hymns we have.

Then there's the 'Battle of the Frogs and Mice,'

That's all unless they dig 'Margites' up (I'd like that) nothing more remains to know."

Thus did youth spend a comfortable time;

Until What's this the Germans say in fact That Wolf found out first? It's unpleasant work

Browning says:

And here's the reason why I tell thus much.
I, now mature man, you anticipate,
May blame my Father justifiably

For letting me dream out my nonage thus,
And only by such slow and sure degrees
Permitting me to sift the grain from chaff,
Get truth and falsehood known and named as
such.

Why did he ever let me dream at all,

Not bid me taste the story in its strength?
Suppose my childhood was scarce qualified
To rightly understand mythology,
Silence at least was in his power to keep:
I might have somehow-correspondingly
Well, who knows by what method, gained my

gains,

Been taught, by forthrights not meanderings,
My aim should be to loathe, like Peleus' son,
A lie as Hell's Gate, love my wedded wife,
Like Hector, and so on with all the rest.
Could not I have excogitated this
Without believing such man really were?
That is- he might have put into my hand
The "Ethics"? In translation, if you please,
Exact, no pretty lying that improves,
To suit the modern taste: no more, no less
The "Ethics: " 't is a treatise I find hard
To read aright now that my hair is gray,
And I can manage the original.

-

At five years old - how ill had fared its leaves!
Now, growing double o'er the Stagirite,
At least I soil no page with bread and milk,
Nor crumple, dogs-ear and deface- boys' way.

REPHAN

Suggested by a very early recollection of a prose story by the noble woman and imagina

Nothing begins

so needs to end : Where fell it short at first? Extend Only the same, no change can mend !

I use your language: mine-no word
Of its wealth would help who spoke, who heard,
To a gleam of intelligence. None preferred,

None felt distaste when better and worse
Were uncontrastable: bless or curse
What in that uniform universe?

Can your world's phrase, your sense of things
Forth-figure the Star of my God? No springs,
No winters throughout its space.
Time brings

No hope, no fear: as to-day, shall be
To-morrow: advance or retreat need we
At our stand-still through eternity?

How did it come to pass there lurked Somehow a seed of change that worked Obscure in my heart till perfection irked ? –

Till out of its peace at length grew strife -
Hopes, fears, loves, hates, obscurely rife, –
My life grown a-tremble to turn your life?"

Was it Thou, above all lights that are,
Prime Potency, did Thy hand unbar
The prison-gate of Rephan my Star?

In me did such potency wake a pulse
Could trouble tranquillity that fulls
Not lashes inertion till throes convulse

Pushed simple to compound, sprang and spread
Till, fresh-formed, faceted, floreted,
The flower that slept woke a star instead?

No mimic of Star Rephan! How long
I stagnated there where weak and strong,
The wise and the foolish, right and wrong,

Are merged alike in a neutral Best,
Can I tell? No more than at whose behest
The passion arose in my passive breast,

And I yearned for no sameness but difference
In thing and thing, that should shock my sense
With a want of worth in them all, and thence

Startle me up, by an Infinite

Discovered above and below me - height
And depth alike to attract my flight,

Repel my descent: by hate taught love.
Oh, gain were indeed to see above
Supremacy ever- to move, remove,
Not reach aspire yet never attain
To the object aimed at! Scarce in vain,-
As each stage I left nor touched again.

Enough for you doubt, you hope, O men,
You fear, you agonize, die: what then?
Is an end to your life's work out of ken?