Resolving, "Fools we wise men grow!
Yes, I could easily blurt out curt
Some question that might find reply

As prompt in her stopped lips, dropped eye, And rush of red to cheek and brow:

"Thus were a match made, sure and fast,

'Mid the blue weed-flowers round the mound Where, issuing, we shall stand and stay

For one more look at baths and bay, Sands, sea-gulls, and the old church last

"A match 'twixt me, bent, wigged and lamed,
Famous, however, for verse and worse,
Sure of the Fortieth spare Arm-chair

When gout and glory seat me there,
So, one whose love-freaks pass unblamed,

"And this young beauty, round and sound
As a mountain-apple, youth and truth
With loves and doves, at all events

--

With money in the Three per Cents; Whose choice of me would seem profound:

"She might take me as I take her.

Perfect the hour would pass, alas! Climb high, love high, what matter? Still, Feet, feelings, must descend the hill: An hour's perfection can't recur.

"Then follows Paris and full time

For both to reason: Thus with us!' She'll sigh,Thus girls give body and soul At first word, think they gain the goal, When 't is the starting-place they climb!

"For boys say, Love me or I die!

He did not say, The truth is, youth

I want, who am old and know too much;

I'd catch youth: lend me sight and touch! Drop heart's blood where life's wheels grate dry!'

"While I should make rejoinder

- (then It was no doubt, you ceased that least Light pressure of my arm in yours) **I can conceive of cheaper cures For a yawning-fit o'er books and men.

"What? All I am, was, and might be,

All, books taught, art brought, life's whole strife,

Painful results since precious, just

Were fitly exchanged, in wise disgust,
For two cheeks freshened by youth and sea?

"All for a nosegay! - what came first;
With fields on flower, untried each side;

I rally, need my books and men,

And find a nosegay:' drop it, then, No match yet made for best or worst!"

That ended me. You judged the porch
We left by, Norman; took our look
At sea and sky; wondered so few

Find out the place for air and view;
Remarked the sun began to scorch;

Descended, soon regained the baths,

And then, good-by! Years ten since then : Ten years! We meet: you tell me, now, By a window-seat for that cliff-brow, On carpet-stripes for those sand-paths.

Now I may speak : you fool, for all

Your lore! WHO made things plain in vain? What was the sea for? What, the gray Sad church, that solitary day,

Crosses and graves and swallows' call?

Was there naught better than to enjoy ?

No feat which, done, would make time break,
And let us pent-up creatures through
Into eternity, our due ?

No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?
No wise beginning, here and now,

What cannot grow complete (earth's feat)
And heaven must finish, there and then?
No tasting earth's true food for men,
Its sweet in sad, its sad in sweet?

No grasping at love, gaining a share

O' the sole spark from God's life at strife With death, so, sure of range above

The limits here? For us and love,
Failure; but, when God fails, despair.

This you call wisdom? Thus you add
Good unto good again, in vain?
You loved, with body worn and weak;
I loved, with faculties to seek:
Were both loves worthless since ill-clad ?

Let the mere star-fish in his vault

Crawl in a wash of weed, indeed, Rose-jacynth to the finger-tips:

He, whole in body and soul, outstrips
Man, found with either in default.

But what's whole can increase no more,
Is dwarfed and dies, since here 's its sphere.
The devil laughed at you in his sleeve!
You know not? That I well believe;
Or you had saved two souls: nay, four.

For Stephanie sprained last night her wrist,
Ankle or something. "Pooh," cry you?
At any rate she danced, all say,

Vilely; her vogue has had its day. Here comes my husband from his whist.

TOO LATE

HERE was I with my arm and heart
And brain, all yours for a word, a want
Put into a look just a look, your part,
While mine, to repay it. . vainest vaunt,

Did I speak once angrily, all the drear days
You lived, you woman I loved so well,
Who married the other? Blame or praise,

Where was the use then? Time would tell, And the end declare what man for you,

What woman for me, was the choice of God. But, Edith dead! no doubting more! I used to sit and look at my life As it rippled and ran till, right before, A great stone stopped it: oh, the strife Of waves at the stone some devil threw

In my life's midcurrent, thwarting God!

But either I thought, "They may churn and chide

Awhile, my waves which came for their joy And found this horrible stone full-tide:

66

Yet I see just a thread escape, deploy Through the evening-country, silent and safe, And it suffers no more till it finds the sea. Or else I would think, Perhaps some night When new things happen, a meteor-ball May slip through the sky in a line of light, And earth breathe hard, and landmarks fall, And my waves no longer champ nor chafe, Since a stone will have rolled from its place: let be!"

But, dead! All 's done with: wait who may, Watch and wear and wonder who will.

Oh, my whole life that ends to-day!

Oh, my soul's sentence, sounding still, "The woman is dead that was none of his; And the man that was none of hers may go!" There's only the past left: worry that!

Wreak, like a bull, on the empty coat, Rage, its late wearer is laughing at !

Tear the collar to rags, having missed his throat;

Strike stupidly on — "This, this and this, Where I would that a bosom received the blow!"

I ought to have done more: once my speech,
And once your answer, and there, the end,
And Edith was henceforth out of reach!
Why, men do more to deserve a friend,
Be rid of a foe, get rich, grow wise,
Nor, folding their arms, stare fate in the face.
Why, better even have burst like a thief

And borne you away to a rock for us two,
In a moment's horror, bright, bloody and brief,
Then changed to myself again - I slew
Myself in that moment; a ruffian lies
Somewhere your slave, see, born in his
place!"

What did the other do? You be judge! Look at us, Edith! Here are we both! Give him his six whole years: I grudge

None of the life with you, nay, loathe Myself that I grudged his start in advance Of me who could overtake and pass. But, as if he loved you! No, not he, Nor any one else in the world, 't is plain: Who ever heard that another, free

As I, young, prosperous, sound and sane, Poured life out, proffered it "Half a glance Of those eyes of yours and I drop the glass!" Handsome, were you? 'Tis more than they held,

More than they said; I was 'ware and watched :

I was the scapegrace, this rat belled

The cat, this fool got his whiskers scratched: The others? No head that was turned, no heart Broken, my lady, assure yourself!

Each soon made his mind up; so and so
Married a dancer, such and such
Stole his friend's wife, stagnated slow,

Or maundered, unable to do as much,
And muttered of peace where he had no part :
While, hid in the closet, laid on the shelf,

On the whole, you were let alone, I think!
So, you looked to the other, who acquiesced;
My rival, the proud man, - prize your pink

Of poets! A poet he was! I've guessed:
He rhymed you his rubbish nobody read,

Loved you and doved you— did not I laugh! There was a prize! But we both were tried. Oh, heart of mine, marked broad with her mark,

Tekel, found wanting, set aside,

Scorned! See, I bleed these tears in the dark Till comfort come and the last be bled: He? He is tagging your epitaph.

If it would only come over again!

- Time to be patient with me, and probe This heart till you punctured the proper vein, Just to learn what blood is: twitch the robe From that blank lay-figure your fancy draped, Prick the leathern heart till the verses

spirt!

And late it was easy; late, you walked
Where a friend might meet you; Edith's

name

Arose to one's lip if one laughed or talked;

If I heard good news, you heard the same; When I woke, I knew that your breath escaped; I could bide my time, keep alive, alert. And alive I shall keep and long, you will see! I knew a man, was kicked like a dog From gutter to cesspool; what cared he

So long as he picked from the filth his prog? He saw youth, beauty and genius die,

And jollily lived to his hundredth year. But I will live otherwise: none of such life! At once I begin as I mean to end. Go on with the world, get gold in its strife, Give your spouse the slip and betray your friend!

There are two who decline, a woman and I, And enjoy our death in the darkness here.

I liked that way you had with your curls
Wound to a ball in a net behind :
Your cheek was chaste as a Quaker-girl's,
And your mouth-there was never, to my
mind,

Such a funny mouth, for it would not shut;

And the dented chin too what a chin! There were certain ways when you spoke, some words

That you know you never could pronounce : You were thin, however; like a bird's

Your hand seemed - some would say, the

pounce

Of a scaly-footed hawk-all but!

The world was right when it called you thin.

But I turn my back on the world: I take

Your hand, and kneel, and lay to my lips. Bid me live, Edith! Let me slake

Thirst at your presence! Fear no slips: 'Tis your slave shall pay, while his soul endures,

Full due, love's whole debt, summum jus. My queen shall have high observance, planned Courtship made perfect, no least line Crossed without warrant. There you stand, Warm too, and white too: would this wine Had washed all over that body of yours.

Ere I drank it, and you down with it, thus!

Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,

Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,

And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!

Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,

This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise !

Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine,

Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!

And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell,

Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things,

Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,

Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.

And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was,

Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest,

Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass,

Eager to do and die, yield each his place to

the rest:

For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire,

When a great illumination surprises a festal night

Outlined round and round Rome's dome from space to spire)

Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight.

In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth,

Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;

And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth,

As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky:

Novel splendors burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,

Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star;

Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine,

For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.

Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow,

Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast,

Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow,

Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last;

Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone,

But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new:

What never had been, was now; what was, as

it shall be anon; 'i

And what is, — shall

matched both? for say, I was made perfect too.

All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,

All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth,

All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole,

Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth:

Had I written the same, made verse

still,

effect proceeds from cause, Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;

It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,

Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled:

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,

Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are!

And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,

That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.

Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught:

It is everywhere in the world - loud, soft, and all is said:

Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my

Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;

Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by.

And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence

For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?

Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?

Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?

Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,

Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:

But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;

The rest may reason and welcome: 't is we musicians know.

Let us cry," All good things

Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"

Therefore I summon age

To grant youth's heritage,

Life's struggle having so far reached its term: Thence shall I pass, approved

A man, for aye removed

From the developed brute; a God though in the germ.

And I shall thereupon

Take rest, ere I be gone

Once more on my adventure brave and new:
Fearless and unperplexed,

When I wage battle next,

What weapons to select, what armor to indue.

Youth ended, I shall try

My gain or loss thereby;

Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:
And I shall weigh the same,

Give life its praise or blame:

Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.

For note, when evening shuts,

A certain moment cuts

The deed off, calls the glory from the gray :

A whisper from the west

Shoots "Add this to the rest,

Take it and try its worth: here dies another day."