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THE

III. In the Doorway

HE swallow has set her six young on the rail,
And looks sea-ward:

The water's in stripes like a snake, olive-pale

To the leeward,

On the weather-side, black, spotted white with the wind.
"Good fortune departs, and disaster 's behind,"—
Hark, the wind with its wants and its infinite wail!
Our fig-tree, that leaned for the saltness, has furled
Her five fingers,

Each leaf like a hand opened wide to the world
Where there lingers

No glint of the gold, Summer sent for her sake: How the vines writhe in rows, each impaled on its stake!

My heart shrivels up and my spirit shrinks curled. Yet here are we two; we have love, house enough, With the field there,

This house of four rooms, that field red and rough,
Though it yield there,

For the rabbit that robs, scarce a blade or a bent;
If a magpie alight now, it seems an event;

And they both will be gone at November's rebuff.
But why must cold spread? but wherefore bring change
To the spirit,

God meant should mate his with an infinite range,
And inherit

His power to put life in the darkness and cold?
Oh, live and love worthily, bear and be bold!
Whom Summer made friends of, let Winter estrange!
IV. Along the Beach

I

WILL be quiet and talk with you,

And reason why you are wrong.

You wanted my love-is that much true?

And so I did love, so I do:

What has come of it all along?

I took you-how could I otherwise?
For a world to me, and more;
For all, love greatens and glorifies
Till God's a-glow, to the loving eyes,
In what was mere earth before.
Yes, earth-yes, mere ignoble earth!
Now do I mis-state, mistake?

Do I wrong your weakness and call it worth,
Expect all harvest, dread no dearth,

Seal my sense up for your sake?

Oh, Love, Love, no, Love! not so, indeed!
You were just weak earth, I knew:
With much in you waste, with many a weed,
And plenty of passions run to seed,
But a little good grain too.
And such as you were, I took you

for mine:

Did not you find me yours,
To watch the olive and wait the vine,
And wonder when rivers of oil and wine
Would flow, as the Book assures?

Well, and if none of these good things came,
What did the failure prove?

The man was my whole world, all the same, With his flowers to praise or his weeds to blame,

And, either or both, to love.

Yet this turns now to a fault-there! there!
That I do love, watch too long,

And wait too well, and weary and wear;
And 't is all an old story, and my despair
Fit subject for some new song:

"How the light, light love, he has wings to fly "At suspicion of a bond:

"My wisdom has bidden your pleasure good-bye, "Which will turn up next in a laughing eye, "And why should you look beyond?

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For the turf, to call it grass were to mock:
Dead to the roots, so deep was done
The work of the summer sun.

And the rock lay flat

As an anvil's face:

No iron like that!

Baked dry; of a weed, of a shell, no trace: Sunshine outside, but ice at the core,

Death's altar by the lone shore.

On the turf, sprang gay

With his films of blue,

No cricket, I'll say,

But a warhorse, barded and chanfroned too, The gift of a quixote-mage to his knight, Real fairy, with wings all right.

On the rock, they scorch

Like a drop of fire

From a brandished torch,

Fall two red fans of a butterfly:

No turf, no rock: in their ugly stead,
See, wonderful blue and red!

Is it not so

With the minds of men?

The level and low,

The burnt and bare, in themselves; but then With such a blue and red grace, not theirs,Love settling unawares!

VI. Reading a Book under the Cliff

"STILL ailing, Wind? Wilt be appeased or no?

"Which needs the other's office, thou or I? "Dost want to be disburthened of a woe,

"And can, in truth, my voice untie

"Its links, and let it go?

"Art thou a dumb wronged thing that would be righted, "Entrusting thus thy cause to me? Forbear! "No tongue can mend such pleadings; faith, requited "With falsehood,-love, at last aware

"Of scorn, hopes, early blighted,—

"We have them; but I know not any tone

"So fit as thine to falter forth a sorrow:

"Dost think men would go mad without a moan, "If they knew any way to borrow

"A pathos like thy own?

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Which sigh wouldst mock, of all the sighs? The one "So long escaping from lips starved and blue,

"That lasts while on her pallet-bed the nun

"Stretches her length; her foot comes through "The straw she shivers on;

"You had not thought she was so tall: and spent,
"Her shrunk lids open, her lean fingers shut
"Close, close, their sharp and livid nails indent
"The clammy palm; then all is mute:

"That way, the spirit went.

"Or wouldst thou rather that I understand
"Thy will to help me?-like the dog I found

"Once, pacing sad this solitary strand,

"

'Who would not take my food, poor hound,

"But whined and licked my hand.'

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All this, and more, comes from some young man's pride
Of power to see,-in failure and mistake,
Relinquishment, disgrace, on every side,-
Merely examples for his sake,

Helps to his path untried:

Instances he must-simply recognize?

Oh, more than so!-must, with a learner's zeal, Make doubly prominent, twice emphasize, By added touches that reveal

The god in babe's disguise.

Oh, he knows what defeat means, and the rest!
Himself the undefeated that shall be:

Failure, disgrace, he flings them you to test,-
His triumph, in eternity

Too plainly manifest!

Whence, judge if he learn forthwith what the wind
Means in its moaning-by the happy prompt
Instinctive way of youth, I mean; for kind
Calm years, exacting their accompt

Of pain, mature the mind:

And some midsummer morning, at the lull
Just about daybreak, as he looks across
A sparkling foreign country, wonderful
To the sea's edge for gloom and gloss,
Next minute must annul.

Then, when the wind begins among the vines,
So low, so low, what shall it say but this?
"Here is the change beginning, here the lines
"Circumscribe beauty, set to bliss

"The limit time assigns."

Nothing can be as it has been before;

Better, so call it, only not the same.

To draw one beauty into our hearts' core,
And keep it changeless! such our claim;
So answered,-Never more!

Simple? Why this is the old woe o' the world;
Tune, to whose rise and fall we live and die.
Rise with it, then! Rejoice that man is hurled
From change to change unceasingly,

His soul's wings never furled!

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