- thou

Thy torch of life in darkness, rather Rejoicing that the sun, the moon, the stars Send no such light upon the ways of men As one great deed.

Thither, my son, and there Thou, that hast never known the embrace of love, Offer thy maiden life.

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This useless hand!
I felt one warm tear fall upon it. Gone!
He will achieve his greatness.
But for me,

I would that I were gather'd to my rest,
And mingled with the famous kings of old,
On whom about their ocean-islets flash
The faces of the Gods- the wise man's
word,

Here trampled by the populace underfoot, There crown'd with worship-and these eyes will find

The men I knew, and watch the chariot whirl

About the goal again, and hunters race 169
The shadowy lion, and the warrior-kings,
In height and prowess more than human,
strive

Again for glory, while the golden lyre
Is ever sounding in heroic ears
Heroic hymns, and every way the vales
Wind, clouded with the grateful incense-
fume

Of those who mix all odor to the Gods
On one far height in one far-shining fire.

HIDE me, mother! my fathers belong'd to the church of old,

I am driven by storm and sin and death to the ancient fold,

I cling to the Catholic Cross once more, to the Faith that saves.

My brain is full of the crash of wrecks, and the roar of waves,

My life itself is a wreck, I have sullied a noble name,

I am flung from the rushing tide of the world as a waif of shame,

I am roused by the wail of a child, and awake to a livid light,

And a ghastlier face than ever has haunted a grave by night.

I would hide from the storm without, I would flee from the storm within,

I would make my life one prayer for a soul that died in his sin,

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I was the tempter, mother, and mine was the deeper fall;

I will sit at your feet, I will hide my face, I will tell you all.

II

He that they gave me to, mother, a heedless and innocent bride

Spain in his blood and the Jew-dark-visaged, stately and tall — A princelier-looking man never stept thro' a prince's hall.

And who, when his anger was kindled, would venture to give him the nay? And a man men fear is a man to be loved by the women, they say.

And I could have loved him too, if the blossom can dote on the blight,

Or the young green leaf rejoice in the frost that sears it at night;

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He would open the books that I prized, and toss them away with a yawn, Repell'd by the magnet of Art to the which my nature was drawn,

The word of the Poet by whom the deeps of the world are stirr'd,

The music that robes it in language beneath and beyond the word! My Shelley would fall from my hands when he cast a contemptuous glance From where he was poring over his Tables of Trade and Finance;

My hands, when I heard him coming, would drop from the chords or the keys, But ever I fail'd to please him, however I strove to please —

All day long far-off in the cloud of the city, and there

Lost, head and heart, in the chances of dividend, consol, and share

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And at home if I sought for a kindly caress, being woman and weak,

His formal kiss fell chill as a flake of snow on the cheek.

When he clothed a naked mind with the wisdom and wealth of his own,

And I bow'd myself down as a slave to his intellectual throne,

When he coin'd into English gold some treasure of classical song,

When he flouted a statesman's error, or flamed at a public wrong,

When he rose as it were on the wings of an eagle beyond me, and past

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Over the range and the change of the world from the first to the last, When he spoke of his tropical home in the canes by the purple tide,

And the high star-crowns of his palms on the deep-wooded mountain-side, And cliffs all robed in lianas that dropt to the brink of his bay,

And trees like the towers of a minster, the sons of a winterless day.

Paradise there!' so he said, but I seem'd in Paradise then

With the first great love I had felt for the first and greatest of men;

Ten long days of summer and sinif it must be so

But days of a larger light than I ever again shall know

Days that will glimmer, I fear, thro' life to my latest breath;

'No frost there,' so he said, 'as in truest love no death.'

VI

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Mother, one morning a bird with a warble plaintively sweet

Perch'd on the shrouds, and then fell fluttering down at my feet;

I took it, he made it a cage, we fondled it, Stephen and I,

But it died, and I thought of the child for a moment, I scarce know why.

VII

But if sin be sin, not inherited fate, as many will say,

My sin to my desolate little one found me at sea on a day,

When her orphan wail came borne in the shriek of a growing wind, And a voice rang out in the thunders of ocean and heaven, 'Thou hast sinn'd.' And down in the cabin were we, for the towering crest of the tides

'The wages of sin is death,' and there I began to weep,

'I am the Jonah, the crew should cast me into the deep,

For, ah, God! what a heart was mine to forsake her even for you !' 'Never the heart among women,' he said, 'more tender and true.'

'The heart! not a mother's heart, when I left my darling alone.'

'Comfort yourself, for the heart of the father will care for his own.'

he was waving a flag — the one man left on the wreck 'Woman,' he graspt at my arm, - 'stay there!' I crouch'd upon deck — 'We are sinking, and yet there's hope: look yonder,' he cried, a sail !' 121 In a tone so rough that I broke into passionate tears, and the wail

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