X.

And alive I shall keep and long, you will see!
I knew a man, was kicked like a dog
From gutter to cesspool; what cared he

So long as he picked from the filth his prog
He saw youth, beauty and genius die,

And jollily lived to his hundredth year.
But I will live otherwise: none of such life!
At once I begin as I mean to end.
Go on with the world, get gold in its strife,
Give your spouse the slip and betray your
There are two who decline, a woman and I,
And enjoy our death in the darkness here.

XI.

I liked that way you had with your curls

Wound to a ball in a net behind:
Your cheek was chaste as a Quaker-girl's,

?

friend!

And your mouth — there was never, to my mind, Such a funny mouth, for it would not shut;

And the dented chin too—what a chin !

There were certain ways when you spoke, some words That you know you never could pronounce :

You were thin, however; like a bird's

Your hand seemed some would

Of a scaly-footed hawk all but!
The world was right when it called

XII.

say, the pounce

you thin.

But I turn my back on the world: I take
Your hand, and kneel, and lay to my lips.
Bid me live, Edith! Let me slake

Thirst at your presence! Fear no slips :
"T is your slave shall pay, while his soul endures,
Full due, love's whole debt, summum jus.
My queen shall have high observance, planned
Courtship made perfect, no least line
Crossed without warrant. There you stand,
Warm too, and white too: would this wine
Had washed all over that body of yours,

Ere I drank it, and you down with it, thus.

ABT VOGLER.

(AFTER HE HAS BEEN EXTEMPORIZING UPON THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENT OF HIS INVENTION.)

I.

WOULD that the structure brave, the manifold music I build, Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work, Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed

Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk, Man, brute, reptile, fly, — alien of end and of aim,

Adverse, each from the other heaven - high, hell-deep removed,

Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name, And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!

II.

Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine, This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise !

Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine,

Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise! And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell, Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things, Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,

Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.

III.

And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion

he was,

Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a

crest,

Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass,
Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest:
For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire,
When a great illumination surprises a festal night –
Outlining round and round Rome's dome from space to spire)
Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul
was in sight.

IV.

In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth,

Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;

And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth,

As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the

sky:

Novel splendors burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine, Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star; Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine, For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.

V.

Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow,

Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast, Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow, Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at

last;

Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body

and gone,

But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth

their new:

What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon; And what is, shall I say, matched both? for I was made perfect too.

VI.

All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my

soul,

All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly

forth,

All through music and me! For think, had I painted the

whole,

Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder

worth:

Had I written the same, made verse still, effect proceeds from

cause,

Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;

It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,

Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled :—

VII.

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can, Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are! And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man, That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.

Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is nought;

It is everywhere in the world—loud, soft, and all is said: Give it to me to use ! I mix it with two in my thought: And, there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!

VIII.

Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared;

Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow;

For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared, That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go. Never to be again! But many more of the kind

As good, nay, better perchance: is this your comfort to me? To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind To the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be.

IX.

Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name? Builder and maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands! What, have fear of change from Thee who art ever the same? Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power expands?

There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before:

The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;

What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good

more;

On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.

X.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist;
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,

Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by.

XI.

And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence

For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized? Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?

Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?/

Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,

Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe: But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;

The rest may reason and welcome: 't is we musicians know.

XII.

Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign:
I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce.
Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again,
Sliding by semitones, till I sink to the minor,

yes,

And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground, Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the deep; Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found,

The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.

RABBI BEN EZRA.

I.

GROW old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was made :

Our times are in His hand

Who saith, "A whole I planned,

Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!

Not that, amassing flowers,

II.

Youth sighed, "Which rose make ours,

Which lily leave and then as best recall?"

Not that, admiring stars,

It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars;

Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!"

Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,

III.