And noon is hot, and barn-roofs gleam
White in the pale blue distance,
I hear the saucy minstrels still
In chattering persistence.

When Eve her domes of opal fire
Piles round the blue horizon,
Or thunder rolls from hill to hill
A Kyrie Eleison,

Still merriest of the merry birds,
Your sparkle is unfading,
Pied harlequins of June, — no end
Of song and masquerading.

What cadences of bubbling mirth,
Too quick for bar and rhythm!
What ecstasies, too full to keep
Coherent measure with them!

O could I share, without champagne
Or muscadel, your frolic,
The glad delirium of your joy,
Your fun unapostolic,

Your drunken jargon through the fields,
Your bobolinkish gabble,

Your fine Anacreontic glee,
Your tipsy reveller's babble!

Nay, let me not profane such joy
With similes of folly;

No wine of earth could waken songs
So delicately jolly!

O boundless self-contentment, voiced
In flying air-born bubbles!
O joy that mocks our sad unrest,

And drowns our earth-born troubles!

Hope springs with you: I dread no more Despondency and dulness;

For Good Supreme can never fail

That gives such perfect fulness.

The life that floods the happy fields With song and light and color Will shape our lives to richer states, And heap our measures fuller.

STANZA FROM AN EARLY POEM

THOUGHT is deeper than all speech, Feeling deeper than all thought; Souls to souls can never teach

What unto themselves was taught.

THE PINES AND THE SEA

BEYOND the low marsh-meadows and the beach,

Seen through the hoary trunks of windy

pines,

The long blue level of the ocean shines. The distant surf, with hoarse, complaining speech,

Out from its sandy barrier seems to reach; And while the sun behind the woods de

clines,

The moaning sea with sighing boughs combines,

And waves and pines make answer, each to each.

O melancholy soul, whom far and near,
In life, faith, hope, the same sad undertone
Pursues from thought to thought! thou
needs must hear

An old refrain, too much, too long thine

own:

'Tis thy mortality infects thine ear; The mournful strain was in thyself alone.

THE IDLER

I IDLE stand that I may find employ, Such as my Master when He comes will give;

I cannot find in mine own work my joy, But wait, although in waiting I must live;

My body shall not turn which way it will,
But stand till I the appointed road can find,
And journeying so his messages fulfil,
And do at every step the work designed.
Enough for me, still day by day to wait
Till Thou who formest me findest me too
a task,

Behold the bier,

the ebony bier,

On sinewy shoulders borne, Of many a dim, forgotten Year From Primal Times forlorn.

All weary and all worn,

With their ancient garments torn
And their beards as white as Lear's,
Lo! how they tremble as they
tread,

Mourning above the marble dead,
In agonies of tears!

How very wan the old man looks!
As wasted and as pale

As some dim ghost of shadowy days
In legendary tale.

God give the sleeper hail!

And the world hath much to wail
That his ears no more may hear;
For, with his palms across his
breast,

He lieth in eternal rest
Along his stately bier.