Of choosing danger and disdaining shame, Of being set on flame

By the pure fire that flies all contact base
But wraps its chosen with angelic might,
These are imperishable gains,

Sure as the sun, medicinal as light,
These hold great futures in their lusty reins
And certify to earth a new imperial race.

X

Who now shall sneer?

Who dare again to say we trace
Our lines to a plebeian race?

Roundhead and Cavalier!

Dumb are those names erewhile in battle

loud;

Dream-footed as the shadow of a cloud,

They flit across the ear:

That is best blood that hath most iron in 't
To edge resolve with, pouring without stint
For what makes manhood dear.
Tell us not of Plantagenets,
Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods

crawl

Down from some victor in a border-brawl! How poor their outworn coronets, Matched with one leaf of that plain civic wreath

Our brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath, Through whose desert a rescued Nation sets Her heel on treason, and the trumpet hears Shout victory, tingling Europe's sullen ears With vain resentments and more vain regrets!

XI

Not in anger, not in pride,
Pure from passion's mixture rude
Ever to base earth allied,
But with far-heard gratitude,
Still with heart and voice renewed,
To heroes living and dear martyrs dead,
The strain should close that consecrates
our brave.

Lift the heart and lift the head!
Lofty be its mood and grave,
Not without a martial ring,
Not without a prouder tread
And a peal of exultation:
Little right has he to sing
Through whose heart in such an hour
Beats no march of conscious power,
Sweeps no tumult of elation !

T'is no Man we celebrate,

By his country's victories great,
A hero half, and half the whim of Fate,
But the pith and marrow of a Nation
Drawing force from all her men,
Highest, humblest, weakest, all,
For her time of need, and then
Pulsing it again through them,
Till the basest can no longer cower,
Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall,
Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem.
Come back, then, noble pride, for 'tis her
dower !

How could poet ever tower,
If his passions, hopes, and fears,
If his triumphs and his tears,

Kept not measure with his people? Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and

waves !

Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple !

Banners, a-dance with triumph, bend your staves!

And from every mountain-peak Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak, Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he, And so leap on in light from sea to sea, Till the glad news be sent Across a kindling continent, Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver:

"Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her!

She that lifts up the manhood of the poor,
She of the open soul and open door,
With room about her hearth for all man-

XII

Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!

Thy God, in these distempered days, Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His

ways,

And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace!

Bow down in prayer and praise! No poorest in thy borders but may now Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow.

O Beautiful! my Country! ours once

more !

Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair

O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, And letting thy set lips,

Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, What words divine of lover or of poet Could tell our love and make thee know it,

Among the Nations bright beyond compare?

What were our lives without thee? What all our lives to save thee? We reck not what we gave thee; We will not dare to doubt thee, But ask whatever else, and we will dare!

THE FIRST SNOW-FALL

THE snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night
Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white.

Every pine and fir and hemlock

Wore ermine too dear for an earl, And the poorest twig on the elm-tree Was ridged inch deep with pearl.

From sheds new-roofed with Carrara Came Chanticleer's muffled crow, The stiff rails softened to swan's-down, And still fluttered down the snow.

I stood and watched by the window
The noiseless work of the sky,
And the sudden flurries of snow-birds,
Like brown leaves whirling by.

YES, faith is a goodly anchor;
When skies are sweet as a psalm,
At the bows it lolls so stalwart,

In its bluff, broad-shouldered calm.
And when over breakers to leeward
The tattered surges are hurled,
It may keep our head to the tempest,
With its grip on the base of the world.
But, after the shipwreck, tell me
What help in its iron thews,
Still true to the broken hawser,
Deep down among sea-weed and ooze?

In the breaking gulfs of sorrow,
When the helpless feet stretch out
And find in the deeps of darkness
No footing so solid as doubt,

Then better one spar of Memory,

One broken plank of the Past,
That our human heart may cling to,
Though hopeless of shore at last!

To the spirit its splendid conjectures,
To the flesh its sweet despair,

Its tears o'er the thin-worn locket With its anguish of deathless hair!

Immortal? I feel it and know it,
Who doubts it of such as she?
But that is the pang's very secret,
Immortal away from me.

There's a narrow ridge in the graveyard
Would scarce stay a child in his race,
But to me and my thought it is wider
Than the star-sown vague of Space.
Your logic, my friend, is perfect,
Your moral most drearily true;

But, since the earth clashed on her coffin,
I keep hearing that, and not you.

Console if you will, I can bear it;

'Tis a well-meant alms of breath; But not all the preaching since Adam Has made Death other than Death.

It is pagan; but wait till you feel it,

That jar of our earth, that dull shock When the ploughshare of deeper passion Tears down to our primitive rock.

Communion in spirit! Forgive me,
But I, who am earthly and weak,
Would give all my incomes from dream-
land

For a touch of her hand on my cheek.

That little shoe in the corner,

So worn and wrinkled and brown, With its emptiness confutes you, And argues your wisdom down.

IN THE TWILIGHT

MEN say the sullen instrument,
That, from the Master's bow,
With pangs of joy or woe,

Feels music's soul through every fibre

sent,

Whispers the ravished strings
More than he knew or meant;

Old summers in its memory glow;
The secrets of the wind it sings;
It hears the April-loosened springs;
And mixes with its mood
All it dreamed when it stood
In the murmurous pine-wood
Long ago!

The magical moonlight then

Steeped every bough and cone; The roar of the brook in the glen

Came dim from the distance blown; The wind through its glooms sang low, And it swayed to and fro

With delight as it stood
In the wonderful wood,
Long ago!

O my life, have we not had seasons
That only said, Live and rejoice?
That asked not for causes and reasons,

But made us all feeling and voice? When we went with the winds in their

blowing,

When Nature and we were peers,
And we seemed to share in the flowing
Of the inexhaustible years?

Have we not from the earth drawn juices
Too fine for earth's sordid uses?
Have I heard, have I seen

All I feel, all I know?
Doth my heart overween?
Or could it have been
Long ago ?

Sometimes a breath floats by me,

An odor from Dreamland sent, That makes the ghost seem nigh me

Of a splendor that came and went,
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not
In what diviner sphere,

Of memories that stay not and go not,
Like music heard once by an ear

That cannot forget or reclaim it,
A something so shy, it would shame it
To make it a show,

A something too vague, could I name it,
For others to know,

As if I had lived it or dreamed it,
As if I had acted or schemed it,
Long ago!

AN AUTOGRAPH

O'ER the wet sands an insect crept Ages ere man on earth was known And patient Time, while Nature slept, The slender tracing turned to stone.

'T was the first autograph: and ours? Prithee, how much of prose or song, In league with the creative powers, Shall 'scape Oblivion's broom so long. 24th June, 1886.

CLEOPATRA

HERE, Charmian, take my bracelets:
They bar with a purple stain
My arms; turn over my pillows
They are hot where I have lain:
Open the lattice wider,

A gauze o'er my bosom throw,
And let me inhale the odors

That over the garden blow.

I dreamed I was with my Antony,
And in his arms I lay;

Ah, me! the vision has vanished
The music has died away.
The flame and the perfume have perished
As this spiced aromatic pastille

That wound the blue smoke of its odor
Is now but an ashy hill.

Scatter upon me rose leaves,

They cool me after my sleep, And with sandal odors fan me Till into my veins they creep; Reach down the lute, and play me

A melancholy tune,

To rhyme with the dream that has vanished And the slumbering afternoon.

There, drowsing in golden sunlight,
Loiters the slow smooth Nile,

Through slender papyri, that cover
The wary crocodile.
The lotus lolls on the water,

And opens its heart of gold,
And over its broad leaf pavement
Never a ripple is rolled.
The twilight breeze is too lazy

Those feathery palms to wave, And yon little cloud is as motionless As a stone above a grave.

Ah, me! this lifeless nature Oppresses my heart and brain!

Oh! for a storm and thunder

For lightning and wild fierce rain!
Fling down that lute - I hate it!
Take rather his buckler and sword,
And crash them and clash them together
Till this sleeping world is stirred.

Hark! to my Indian beauty-
My cockatoo, creamy white,
With roses under his feathers -
That flashes across the light.
Look! listen! as backward and forward
To his hoop of gold he clings,
How he trembles, with crest uplifted,

And shrieks as he madly swings!
Oh, cockatoo, shriek for Antony !
Cry, "Come, my love, come home!
Shriek, "Antony! Antony! Antony!"
Till he hears you even in Rome.

There leave me, and take from my chamber

That stupid little gazelle,

With its bright black eyes so meaning

less,

And its silly tinkling bell! Take him,

my nerves he vexesThe thing without blood or brain, Or, by the body of Isis,

I'll snap his thin neck in twain !

Leave me to gaze at the landscape
Mistily stretching away,
Where the afternoon's opaline tremors
O'er the mountains quivering play;
Till the fiercer splendor of sunset
Pours from the west its fire,
And melted, as in a crucible,

Their earthy forms expire;
And the bald blear skull of the desert
With glowing mountains is crowned,
That burning like molten jewels
Circle its temples round.