Thus girt without and garrisoned at home,

Day patient following day,

Old Charleston looks from roof and spire and dome

Across her tranquil bay.

Ships, through a hundred foes, from Saxon lands

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Creeps like a harmless mist above the brine

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From some frail, floating oak.

Shall the Spring dawn, and she, still clad in smiles

And with an unscathed brow,

Rest in the strong arms of her palm-crowned isles

Yet still on every side we trace the hand

Of Winter in the land,

Save where the maple reddens on the lawn,

Flushed by the season's dawn;

Or where, like those strange semblances we find

That age to childhood bind,

The elm puts on, as if in Nature's scorn,

The brown of Autumn corn.

As yet the turf is dark, although you know

That, not a span below,

A thousand germs are groping through the gloom,

And soon will burst their tomb.

Already, here and there, on frailest stems

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And near the snowdrop's tender white and green
The violet in its screen.

Some wondrous pageant; and you scarce would start
If from a beech's heart

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A blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say, "Behold me! I am May!"

Ah, who would couple thoughts of war and crime

'Than she shall rouse, for all her tranquil charms,

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I KNOW NOT WHY, BUT ALL THIS WEARY DAY

I know not why, but all this weary day,
Suggested by no definite grief or pain,

Sad fancies have been flitting through my brain:
Now it has been a vessel losing way,

Rounding a stormy headland; now a gray

Dull waste of clouds above a wintry main;
And then a banner drooping in the rain,
And meadows beaten into bloody clay.
Strolling at random with this shadowy woe
At heart, I chanced to wander hither: lo,
A league of desolate marsh-land, with its lush,
Hot grasses in a noisome, tide-left bed,
And faint, warm airs that rustle in the hush
Like whispers round the body of the dead.

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE

THE MOCKING-BIRDS

Oh, all day long they flood with song

The forest shades, the fields of light; Heaven's heart is stilled and strangely thrilled

By ecstasies of lyric might;

From flower-crowned nooks of splendid dyes,

Lone dells a shadowy quiet girds;

Far echoes, wakening, gently rise,

And o'er the woodland track send back

Soft answers to the mocking-birds.

The winds, in awe, no gusty flaw

Dare breathe in rhythmic Beauty's face;

Nearer the pale-gold cloudlets draw

Above a charmed, melodious place:

Entranced Nature listening knows

No music set to mortal words,

Nor nightingales that woo the rose,
Can vie with these deep harmonies

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ΙΟ

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Poured from the minstrel mocking-birds.

But, vaguely seen through gulfs of green,

We glimpse the plumed and choral throng— Sole poets born whose instincts scorn

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Their love notes fill the enchanted land;
Through leaf-wrought bars they storm the stars,
These love songs of the mocking-birds.

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