474 AUSPEX. THE PREGNANT COMMENT. While you thought 't was You thinking as newly As Adam still wet with God's dew, You forgot in your self-pride that truly The whole Past was thinking through you. THE LESSON. Had they been swallows only, A moment, sweet delusion, THE PREGNANT COMMENT. When next upon the page I chance, This feeling fresher than a boy's? Laughing, one day she gave the key, Then added, with a smile demure, Whose downcast lids veiled triumph And listened while with clumsy might | The Cloak that makes invisible; and The thunder wallowed to and fro. with these I glide, an airy fire, from shore to shore, Or from my Cambridge whisper to Cathay. A NEW YEAR'S GREETING. THE century numbers fourscore years; If e'er life's winter fleck with snow If to such fairies years must come, THE DISCOVERY. I WATCHED a moorland torrent run In this wild glen at last, methought, All else grows tame, the sky's one blut, WITH A SEASHELL. SHELL, whose lips, than mine more cold, Speech of poet, speech of lover. IV. HUMOR AND SATIRE. FITZ ADAM'S STORY. [The greater part of this poem was written many years ago as part of a larger one, to be called The Nooning," made up of tales in verse, some of them grave, some comic. It gives me a sad pleasure to remember that I was encouraged in this project by my friend the late Arthur Hugh Clough.] THE next whose fortune 't was a tale to tell Was one whom men, before they thought, loved well, And after thinking wondered why they did, For half he seemed to let them, half forbid, And wrapped him so in humors, sheath on sheath, "T was hard to guess the mellow soul beneath; But, once divined, you took him to your heart, While he appeared to bear with you as part Of life's impertinence, and once a year Betrayed his true self by a smile or tear, Or rather something sweetly-shy and loath, Withdrawn ere fully shown, and mixed of both. A cynic? Not precisely: one who thrust Against a heart too prone to love and trust, Who so despised false sentiment he knew Scarce in himself to part the false and true, And strove to hide, by roughening-o'er the skin, Those cobweb nerves he could not dull within. Gentle by birth, but of a stem decayed, But you have long ago raked up their fires; Where they had faith, you've ten shamGothic spires. Try your native Why more exotics? vines, And in some thousand years you may have wines; Your present grapes are harsh, all pulps and skins, And want traditions of ancestral bins That saved for evenings round the polished board Old lava-fires, the sun-steeped hillside's hoard. Without a Past, you lack that southern wall O'er which the vines of Poesy should crawl; Still they're your only hope; no midnight oil Makes up for virtue wanting in the soil; Manure them well and prune them; 't won't be France, Nor Spain, nor Italy, but there's your chance. |