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Something like this, then, my guide had to tell,

Perched on a saint cracked across when he fell;

But since I might chance give his meaning a wrench,

He talking his patois and I English-French, I'll put what he told me, preserving the tone,

In a rhymed prose that makes it half his, half my own.

An abbey-church stood here, once on a time,

Built as a death-bed atonement for crime: 'T was for somebody's sins, I know not whose;

But sinners are plenty, and you can choose. Though a cloister now of the dusk-winged bat,

'T was rich enough once, and the brothers

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But one day came Northmen, and lithe tongues of fire

Lapped up the chapter-house, licked off the spire,

And left all a rubbish-heap, black and dreary,

Where only the wind sings miserere.

No priest has kneeled since at the altar's foot,

Whose crannies are searched by the nightshade's root,

Nor sound of service is ever heard,
Except from throat of the unclean bird,
Hooting to unassoiled shapes as they pass
In midnights unholy his witches' mass,
Or shouting "Ho! ho!" from the belfry
high

As the Devil's sabbath-train whirls by.

But once a year, on the eve of All-Souls, Through these arches dishallowed the organ rolls,

Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work, The chimes peal muffled with sea-mists mirk,

The skeleton windows are traced anew
On the baleful flicker of corpse-lights blue,
And the ghosts must come, so the legend
saith,

To a preaching of Reverend Doctor Death.

Abbots, monks, barons, and ladies fair
Hear the dull summons and gather there:
No rustle of silk now, no clink of mail,
Nor ever a one greets his church-mate
pale;

No knight whispers love in the châtelaine's

ear,

His next-door neighbor this five-hundred year;

No monk has a sleek benedicite

For the great lord shadowy now as he;
Nor needeth any to hold his breath,
Lest he lose the least word of Doctor
Death.

He chooses his text in the Book Divine, Tenth verse of the Preacher in chapter nine:

"Whatsoever thy hand shall find thee to

do,

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WHEN Oaken woods with buds are pink, And new-come birds each morning sing, When fickle May on Summer's brink

Pauses, and knows not which to fling, Whether fresh bud and bloom again, Or hoar-frost silvering hill and plain, Then from the honeysuckle gray

The oriole with experienced quest
Twitches the fibrous bark away,

The cordage of his hammock-nest,
Cheering his labor with a note
Rich as the orange of his throat.

High o'er the loud and dusty road

The soft gray cup in safety swings, To brim ere August with its load

Of downy breasts and throbbing wings, O'er which the friendly elm-tree heaves An emerald roof with sculptured eaves.

Below, the noisy World drags by

In the old way, because it must,
The bride with heartbreak in her eye,
The mourner following hated dust:
Thy duty, winged flame of Spring,
Is but to love, and fly, and sing.

Oh, happy life, to soar and sway
Above the life by mortals led,
Singing the merry months away,

Master, not slave of daily bread,
And, when the Autumn comes, to flee
Wherever sunshine beckons thee!

PALINODE - DECEMBER

Like some lorn abbey now, the wood Stands roofless in the bitter air;

In ruins on its floor is strewed

The carven foliage quaint and rare, And homeless winds complain along The columned choir once thrilled with song.

And thou, dear nest, whence joy and praise

The thankful oriole used to pour, Swing'st empty while the north winds chase Their snowy swarms from Labrador: But, loyal to the happy past,

I love thee still for what thou wast.

Ah, when the Summer graces flee

From other nests more dear than thou, And, where June crowded once, I see

Only bare trunk and disleaved bough; When springs of life that gleamed and gushed

Run chilled, and slower, and are hushed;

When our own branches, naked long,

The vacant nests of Spring betray, Nurseries of passion, love, and song

That vanished as our year grew gray; When Life drones o'er a tale twice told O'er embers pleading with the cold,

I'll trust, that, like the birds of Spring,
Our good goes not without repair,
But only flies to soar and sing

Far off in some diviner air,
Where we shall find it in the calms
Of that fair garden 'neath the palms.

A YOUTHFUL EXPERIMENT IN ENGLISH HEXAMETERS

IMPRESSIONS OF HOMER

SOMETIMES come pauses of calm, when the rapt bard, holding his heart back, Over his deep mind muses, as when o'er awe-stricken ocean

Poises a heapt cloud luridly, ripening the gale and the thunder;

Slow rolls onward the verse with a long swell heaving and swinging, Seeming to wait till, gradually wid'ning from far-off horizons,

Piling the deeps up, heaping the gladhearted surges before it, Gathers the thought as a strong wind darkening and cresting the tumult. Then every pause, every heave, each trough in the waves, has its meaning;

Full-sailed, forth like a tall ship steadies the theme, and around it, Leaping beside it in glad strength, running in wild glee beyond it,

Harmonies billow exulting and floating the soul where it lists them,

Swaying the listener's fantasy hither and thither like driftweed.

BIRTHDAY VERSES

WRITTEN IN A CHILD'S ALBUM

'T WAS sung of old in hut and hall
How once a king in evil hour
Hung musing o'er his castle wall,
And, lost in idle dreams, let fall
Into the sea his ring of power.

Then, let him sorrow as he might,
And pledge his daughter and his throne
To who restored the jewel bright,
The broken spell would ne'er unite;
The grim old ocean held its own.

Those awful powers on man that wait,
On man, the beggar or the king,
To hovel bare or hall of state
A magic ring that masters fate
With each succeeding birthday bring.

Therein are set four jewels rare:
Pearl winter, summer's ruby blaze,
Spring's emerald, and, than all more fair,
Fall's pensive opal, doomed to bear
A heart of fire bedreamed with haze.

To him the simple spell who knows
The spirits of the ring to sway,
Fresh power with every sunrise flows,
And royal pursuivants are those
That fly his mandates to obey.

But he that with a slackened will
Dreams of things past or things to be,
From him the charm is slipping still,
And drops, ere he suspect the ill,
Into the inexorable sea.

ESTRANGEMENT

THE path from me to you that led,

Untrodden long, with grass is grown, Mute carpet that his lieges spread

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