Strange sea of prison faces, a thousand varied, crafty, brutal,
seam'd and beauteous faces,

Then, rising, passing back along the narrow aisle between them,
While her gown touch'd them, rustling in the silence,

She vanish'd with her children in the dusk;

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While upon all, convicts and armed keepers ere they stirr❜d (Convict forgetting prison, keeper his loaded pistol),

A hush and pause fell down a wondrous minute,

With deep half-stifled sobs and sound of bad men bow'd and moved to weeping,

And youth's convulsive breathings, memories of home,

The mother's voice in lullaby, the sister's care, the happy childhood,

The long-pent spirit rous'd to reminiscence;

A wondrous minute then-but after in the solitary night, to many,

many there,

Years after, even in the hour of death, the sad refrain, the tune,

the voice, the words

Resumed, the large calm lady walks the narrow aisle,
The wailing melody again the singer in the prison sings.
O sight of pity, shame and dole!

O fearful thought—a convict soul.

1869.

IN CABIN'D SHIPS AT SEA

In cabin'd ships at sea,

The boundless blue on every side expanding,

With whistling winds and music of the waves, the large imperious

waves,

Or some lone bark buoy'd on the dense marine,

Where, joyous, full of faith, spreading white sails,

She cleaves the ether mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under many a star at night,

By sailors young and old haply will I, a reminiscence of the land, be read,

In full rapport at last.

Here are our thoughts, voyagers' thoughts;

Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be

said:

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ΙΟ

The sky o'erarches here, we feel the undulating deck beneath our feet,
We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion;

The tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of the

briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables,

The perfume, the faint creeking of the cordage, the melancholy rhythm,
The boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here,
And this is ocean's poem.

Then falter not, O book, fulfil your destiny,

You not a reminiscence of the land alone,

You too as a lone bark cleaving the ether, purpos'd I know not whither, yet ever full of faith,

Consort to every ship that sails, sail you!

Bear forth to them folded my love (dear mariners, for you I fold it

here in every leaf);

Speed on, my book! spread your white sails, my little bark, athwart the imperious waves;

Chant

on, sail on, bear o'er the boundless blue from me to every

sea

This song for mariners and all their ships.

1870.

YET, YET, YE DOWNCAST HOURS

Yet, yet, ye downcast hours, I know ye also;

Weights of lead, how ye clog and cling at my ankles,

Earth to a chamber of mourning turns-I hear the o'erweening, mocking voice,

Matter is conqueror-matter, triumphant only, continues onward.

Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me,

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The call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarm'd, uncertain,
The sea I am quickly to sail, come tell me,

Come tell me where I am speeding, tell me my destination.

I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you;

I approach, hear, behold the sad mouth, the look out of the eyes, your mute inquiry,

Whither I go from the bed I recline on, come tell me.

Old age, alarm'd, uncertain-a young woman's voice, appealing to

me for comfort;

A young man's voice, Shall I not escape?

ΙΟ

TO THE MAN-OF-WAR-BIRD

Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm,
Waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions
(Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended'st,
And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee),
Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating,

As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee
(Myself a speck, a point on the world's floating vast).

Far, far at sea,

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After the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shore with wrecks,
With re-appearing day as now so happy and serene,

IO

The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun,

The limpid spread of air cerulean,

Thou also re-appearest.

Thou born to match the gale (thou art all wings),

To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane,

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Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails,

Days, even weeks, untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating,

At dusk that look'st on Senegal, at morn America,

That sport'st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud,

In them, in thy experiences, had'st thou my soul,

What joys! what joys were thine!

1876.

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SPIRIT THAT FORM'D THIS SCENE

(Written in Platte Cañon, Colorado)

Spirit that form'd this scene,

These tumbled rock-piles grim and red,

These reckless heaven-ambitious peaks,

These gorges, turbulent-clear streams, this naked freshness,
These formless wild arrays, for reasons of their own,

I know thee, savage spirit-we have communed together;
Mine too such wild arrays, for reasons of their own.

Was 't charged against my chants they had forgotten art

To fuse within themselves its rules precise and delicatesse?
The lyrist's measur'd beat, the wrought-out temple's grace-column

and polish'd arch forgot?

But thou that revelest here, spirit that form'd this scene,
They have remember'd thee.

ΤΟ

1879.

1881.

WITH HUSKY-HAUGHTY LIPS, O SEA

With husky-haughty lips, O sea!

Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore,
Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions
(I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here),
Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal,

Thy ample, smiling face, dash'd with the sparkling dimples of the sun,
Thy brooding scowl and murk, thy unloos'd hurricanes,

Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness;

Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears-a lack from all eternity in thy content

(Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make thee greatest-no less could make thee);

Thy lonely state-something thou ever seek'st and seek'st, yet never

gain'st,

Surely some right withheld-some voice, in huge monotonous rage, of

freedom-lover pent,

Some vast heart, like a planet's, chain'd and chafing in those breakers;
By lengthen'd swell, and spasm, and panting breath,
And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves,
And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter,
And undertones of distant lion roar
(Sounding, appealing to the sky's deaf ear-
A phantom in the night thy confidant for once),
The first and last confession of the globe,
Outsurging, muttering from thy soul's abysms,
The tale of cosmic elemental passion,

Thou tellest to a kindred soul.

-but now, rapport for once,

1884.

GOOD-BYE, MY FANCY

Good-bye, my Fancy!

Farewell, dear mate, dear love!

I'm going away, I know not where,

Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again,
So Good-bye, my Fancy.

Now for my last-let me look back a moment;
The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me,
Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping.

ΙΟ

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Long have we lived, joy'd, caress'd together;

Delightful!—now separation-Good-bye, my Fancy.

Yet let me not be too hasty:

Long indeed have we lived, slept, filter'd, become really blended into

one;

Then if we die we die together (yes, we 'll remain one),

If we go anywhere we 'll go together to meet what happens,
May-be we 'll be better off and blither, and learn something,

May-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs (who
knows?),

May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning-so now

finally,

Good-bye and hail! my Fancy.

1891.

RICHARD HENRY STODDARD

LEONATUS

The fair boy Leonatus,
The page of Imogen.

It was his duty evermore

To tend the Lady Imogen;

By peep of day he might be seen
Tapping against her chamber door,

To wake the sleepy waiting-maid,
Who rose, and when she had arrayed

IO

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