TRUE as the sun's own work, but more refined,

It tells of love behind the artist's eye, Of sweet companionships with earth and sky,

And summers stored, the sunshine of the mind.

What peace! Sure, ere you breathe, the fickle wind

Will break its truce and bend that grassplume high,

Scarcely yet quiet from the gilded fly
That flits a more luxurious perch to find.
Thanks for a pleasure that can never pall,
A serene moment, deftly caught and kept
To make immortal summer on my wall.
Had he who drew such gladness ever
wept ?

Ask rather could he else have seen at all,
Or grown in Nature's mysteries an adept?

WITH AN ARMCHAIR

I.

ABOUT the oak that framed this chair, of old

The seasons danced their round; delighted wings

Brought music to its boughs; shy woodland things

Shared its broad roof, 'neath whose green glooms grown bold,

Lovers, more shy than they, their secret told;

The resurrection of a thousand springs Swelled in its veins, and dim imaginings Teased them, perchance, of life more manifold.

Such shall it know when its proud arms enclose

My Lady Goshawk, musing here at rest,
Careless of him who into exile goes,
Yet, while his gift by those fair limbs is
prest,

Through some fine sympathy of nature knows

That, seas between us, she is still his guest.

THANKS to the artist, ever on my wall
The sunset stays: that hill in glory rolled,
Those trees and clouds in crimson and in
gold,

Burn on, nor cool when evening's shadows fall.

Not round these splendors Midnight wraps her pall;

These leaves the flush of Autumn's vintage hold

In Winter's spite, nor can the Northwind bold

Deface my chapel's western window small: On one, ah me! October struck his frost, But not repaid him with those Tyrian hues;

His naked boughs but tell him what is lost, And parting comforts of the sun refuse: His heaven is bare, ah, were its hollow

crost

Even with a cloud whose light were yet to lose !

TO MISS D. T.

ON HER GIVING ME A DRAWING OF LITTLE STREET ARABS

Miss Dorothy Tennant afterward married Henry M. Stanley, the African explorer.

As, cleansed of Tiber's and Oblivion's slime,

Glow Farnesina's vaults with shapes again That dreamed some exiled artist from his pain

Back to his Athens and the Muse's clime, So these world - orphaned waifs of Want and Crime,

Purged by Art's absolution from the stain
Of the polluting city-flood, regain
Ideal grace secure from taint of time.
An Attic frieze you give, a pictured song;
For as with words the poet paints, for

you

The happy pencil at its labor sings,
Stealing his privilege, nor does him wrong,
Beneath the false discovering the true,
And Beauty's best in unregarded things.

WITH A COPY OF AUCASSIN AND NICOLETE

LEAVES fit to have been poor Juliet's cradle-rhyme,

With gladness of a heart long quenched in

mould

The love, the honor, felt so many years. Curtis, skilled equally with voice and pen To stir the hearts or mould the minds of men,

That voice whose music, for I've heard you sing

Sweet as Casella, can with passion ring, That pen whose rapid ease ne'er trips with haste,

Nor scrapes nor sputters, pointed with good taste,

First Steele's, then Goldsmith's, next it came to you,

Whom Thackeray rated best of all our

crew,

Had letters kept you, every wreath were

yours;

Had the World tempted, all its chariest doors

Had swung on flattered hinges to admit Such high-bred manners, such good-natured wit;

At courts, in senates, who so fit to serve ? And both invited, but you would not swerve, All meaner prizes waiving that you might In civic duty spend your heat and light, Unpaid, untrammelled, with a sweet disdain Refusing posts men grovel to attain.

Good Man all own you; what is left me, then,

To heighten praise with but Good Citizen?

But why this praise to make you blush and stare,

And give a backache to your Easy-Chair?
Old Crestien rightly says no language can
Express the worth of a true Gentleman,
And I agree; but other thoughts deride
My first intent, and lure my pen aside.
Thinking of you, I see my firelight glow
On other faces, loved from long ago,
Dear to us both, and all these loves com-
bine

With this I send and crowd in every line;
Fortune with me was in such generous mood
That all my friends were yours, and all
were good;

Three generations come when one I call, And the fair grandame, youngest of them all,

In her own Florida who found and sips The fount that fled from Ponce's longing lips.

How bright they rise and wreathe my hearthstone round,

And one must do his service as he can. Think you it were not pleasanter to speak Smooth words that leave unflushed the brow and cheek?

To sit, well-dined, with cynic smile, unseen In private box, spectator of the scene Where men the comedy of life rehearse, Idly to judge which better and which

worse

Each hireling actor spoiled his worthless part?

Were it not sweeter with a careless heart, In happy commune with the untainted brooks,

To dream all day, or, walled with silent books,

To hear nor heed the World's unmeaning noise,

Safe in my fortress stored with lifelong joys?

I love too well the pleasures of retreat Safe from the crowd and cloistered from the street;

The fire that whispers its domestic joy, Flickering on walls that knew me still a boy,

And knew my saintly father; the full days, Not careworn from the world's soul-squan dering ways,

Calm days that loiter with snow-silent tread,

Nor break my commune with the undying dead;

Truants of Time, to-morrow like to-day, That come unbid, and claimless glide away By shelves that sun them in the indulgent Past,

Where Spanish castles, even, were built to last,

Where saint and sage their silent vigil keep, And wrong hath ceased or sung itself to sleep.

Dear were my walks, too, gathering fra