Of lake and stream, and the sky's downy brood,

Of roads sequestered rimmed with sallow sod,

But friends with hardhack, aster, goldenrod,

Or succory keeping summer long its trust Of heaven-blue fleckless from the eddying dust:

These were my earliest friends, and latest too,

Still unestranged, whatever fate may do. For years I had these treasures, knew their worth,

Estate most real man can have on earth.
I sank too deep in this soft-stuffed repose
That hears but rumors of earth's wrongs
and woes;

Too well these Capuas could my muscles waste,

Not void of toils, but toils of choice and taste;

These still had kept me could I but have

To check the items in the bitter list
Of all I counted on and all I mist.
Only three instances I choose from all,
And each enough to stir a pigeon's gall:
Office a fund for ballot-brokers made
To pay the drudges of their gainful trade;
Our cities taught what conquered cities
feel

By ædiles chosen that they might safely steal;

And gold, however got, a title fair
To such respect as only gold can bear.
I seem to see this; how shall I gainsay
What all our journals tell me every day?
Poured our young martyrs their high-
hearted blood

That we might trample to congenial mud
The soil with such a legacy sublimed?
Methinks an angry scorn is here well-
timed:

Where find retreat? How keep reproach at bay?

Where'er I turn some scandal fouls the way.

Dear friend, if any man I wished to please, 'T were surely you whose humor's honied

fear;

Past my next milestone waits my seventieth year.

I mount no longer when the trumpets call;

My battle-harness idles on the wall, The spider's castle, camping-ground of dust,

Not without dints, and all in front, I trust. Shivering sometimes it calls me as it hears Afar the charge's tramp and clash of spears;

But 't is such murmur only as might be The sea-shell's lost tradition of the sea, That makes me muse and wonder Where? and When?

While from my cliff I watch the waves of

Instincts, if less imperious, yet more

strong,

And happy in the toil that ends with song.

Home am I come: not, as I hoped might be,

To the old haunts, too full of ghosts for me, But to the olden dreams that time endears,

And the loved books that younger grow with years;

To country rambles, timing with my tread Some happier verse that carols in my head,

Yet all with sense of something vainly mist,

Of something lost, but when I never wist. How empty seems to me the populous street,

One figure gone I daily loved to meet, The clear, sweet singer with the crown of

Such natures double-darken gloomy skies.
I muse upon the margin of the sea,
Our common pathway to the new To Be,
Watching the sails, that lessen more and

more,

Of good and beautiful embarked before; With bits of wreck I patch the boat shall bear

Me to that unexhausted Otherwhere, Whose friendly-peopled shore I sometimes

see,

By soft mirage uplifted, beckon me,
Nor sadly hear, as lower sinks the sun,
My moorings to the past snap one by one.

Less than divine that she might mate with me?

If mortal merely, could my nature cope With such o'ermastery of maddening hope ?

If Goddess, could she feel the blissful woe That women in their self-surrender know?

III

Long she abode aloof there in her heaven, Far as the grape-bunch of the Pleiad seven Beyond my madness' utmost leap; but

here

Mine eyes have feigned of late her rapture

near,

Moulded of mind-mist that broad day dispels,

Here in these shadowy woods and brooklulled dells.

Have no heaven-habitants e'er felt a void In hearts sublimed with ichor unalloyed? E'er longed to mingle with a mortal fate Intense with pathos of its briefer date? Could she partake, and live, our human stains?

Even with the thought there tingles through my veins

Sense of unwarned renewal; I, the dead, Receive and house again the ardor fled, As once Alcestis; to the ruddy brim

Feel masculine virtue flooding every limb, And life, like Spring returning, brings the key

That sets my senses from their winter free, Dancing like naked fauns too glad for shame.

Her passion, purified to palest flame,
Can it thus kindle? Is her purpose this?
I will not argue, lest I lose a bliss
That makes me dream Tithonus' fortune
mine,

(Or what of it was palpably divine
Ere came the fruitlessly immortal gift;)
I cannot curb my hope's imperious drift
That wings with fire my dull mortality;
Though fancy-forged, 't is all I feel or see.

IV

My Goddess sinks; round Latmos' darkening brow

Trembles the parting of her presence now, Faint as the perfume left upon the grass By her limbs' pressure or her feet that pass

By me conjectured, but conjectured so As things I touch far fainter substance show.

Was it mine eyes' imposture I have seen Flit with the moonbeams on from shade to sheen

Through the wood-openings ? Nay, I see her now

Out of her heaven new-lighted, from her brow

The hair breeze-scattered, like loose mists that blow

Across her crescent, goldening as they go High-kirtled for the chase, and what was shown,

Of maiden rondure, like the rose halfblown.

If dream, turn real! If a vision, stay!
Take mortal shape, my philtre's spell obey!
If hags compel thee from thy secret sky
With gruesome incantations, why not I,
Whose only magic is that I distil
A potion, blent of passion, thought, and
will,

Deeper in reach, in force of fate more rich, Than e'er was juice wrung by Thessalian witch