Other tears than yours been shed Courage! lose not heart or hope;On the mountains' southern slope Lies Jerusalem the Holy!"As a white rose in its pride, By the wind in summer-tide Tossed and loosened from the branch, Showers its petals o'er the ground, From the distant mountain's side, Scattering all its snows around, With mysterious, muffled sound, Loosened, fell the avalanche.
Voices, echoes far and near, Roar of winds and waters blending, Mists uprising, clouds impending, Filled them with a sense of fear, Formless, nameless, never ending.
..........
SUNDOWN
The summer sun is sinking low;
Only the tree-tops redden and glow:
Only the weathercock on the spire Of the neighboring church is a flame of fire;All is in shadow below.
O beautiful, awful summer day, What hast thou given, what taken away?
Life and death, and love and hate, Homes made happy or desolate, Hearts made sad or gay!
On the road of life one mile-stone more!
In the book of life one leaf turned o'er!
Like a red seal is the setting sun On the good and the evil men have done,--Naught can to-day restore!
CHIMES
Sweet chimes! that in the loneliness of night Salute the passing hour, and in the dark And silent chambers of the household mark The movements of the myriad orbs of light!
Through my closed eyelids, by the inner sight, I see the constellations in the arc Of their great circles moving on, and hark!
I almost hear them singing in their flight.
Better than sleep it is to lie awake O'er-canopied by the vast starry dome Of the immeasurable sky; to feel The slumbering world sink under us, and make Hardly an eddy,--a mere rush of foam On the great sea beneath a sinking keel.
FOUR BY THE CLOCK.
"NAHANT, September 8, 1880, Four o'clock in the morning."Four by the clock! and yet not day;
But the great world rolls and wheels away, With its cities on land, and its ships at sea, Into the dawn that is to be!
Only the lamp in the anchored bark Sends its glimmer across the dark, And the heavy breathing of the sea Is the only sound that comes to me.
AUF WIEDERSEHEN.
IN MEMORY OF J.T.F.
Until we meet again! That is the meaning Of the familiar words, that men repeat At parting in the street.
Ah yes, till then! but when death intervening Rends us asunder, with what ceaseless pain We wait for the Again!
The friends who leave us do not feel the sorrow Of parting, as we feel it, who must stay Lamenting day by day, And knowing, when we wake upon the morrow, We shall not find in its accustomed place The one beloved face.
It were a double grief, if the departed, Being released from earth, should still retain A sense of earthly pain;It were a double grief, if the true-hearted, Who loved us here, should on the farther shore Remember us no more.
Believing, in the midst of our afflictions, That death is a beginning, not an end, We cry to them, and send Farewells, that better might be called predictions, Being fore-shadowings of the future, thrown Into the vast Unknown.
Faith overleaps the confines of our reason, And if by faith, as in old times was said, Women received their dead Raised up to life, then only for a season Our partings are, nor shall we wait in vain Until we meet again!
ELEGIAC VERSE
I
Peradventure of old, some bard in Ionian Islands, Walking alone by the sea, hearing the wash of the waves, Learned the secret from them of the beautiful verse elegiac, Breathing into his song motion and sound of the sea.
For as the wave of the sea, upheaving in long undulations, Plunges loud on the sands, pauses, and turns, and retreats, So the Hexameter, rising and singing, with cadence sonorous, Falls; and in refluent rhythm back the Pentameter flows?
II
Not in his youth alone, but in age, may the heart of the poet Bloom into song, as the gorse blossoms in autumn and spring.
III
Not in tenderness wanting, yet rough are the rhymes of our poet;Though it be Jacob's voice, Esau's, alas! are the hands.
IV
Let us be grateful to writers for what is left in the inkstand;When to leave off is an art only attained by the few.
V
How can the Three be One? you ask me; I answer by asking, Hail and snow and rain, are they not three, and yet one?
VI
By the mirage uplifted the land floats vague in the ether, Ships and the shadows of ships hang in the motionless air;So by the art of the poet our common life is uplifted, So, transfigured, the world floats in a luminous haze.
VII
Like a French poem is Life; being only perfect in structure When with the masculine rhymes mingled the feminine are.
VIII
Down from the mountain descends the brooklet, rejoicing in freedom;Little it dreams of the mill hid in the valley below;Glad with the joy of existence, the child goes singing and laughing, Little dreaming what toils lie in the future concealed.
IX
As the ink from our pen, so flow our thoughts and our feelings When we begin to write, however sluggish before.
X
Like the Kingdom of Heaven, the Fountain of Youth is within us;If we seek it elsewhere, old shall we grow in the search.
XI
If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it;Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.
XII
Wisely the Hebrews admit no Present tense in their language;While we are speaking the word, it is is already the Past.
XIII
In the twilight of age all things seem strange and phantasmal, As between daylight and dark ghost-like the landscape appears.
XIV
Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending;Many a poem is marred by a superfluous verse.
THE CITY AND THE SEA
The panting City cried to the Sea, "I am faint with heat,--O breathe on me!"And the Sea said, "Lo, I breathe! but my breath To some will be life, to others death!"As to Prometheus, bringing ease In pain, come the Oceanides,So to the City, hot with the flame Of the pitiless sun, the east wind came.
It came from the heaving breast of the deep, Silent as dreams are, and sudden as sleep.
Life-giving, death-giving, which will it be;O breath of the merciful, merciless Sea?
MEMORIES
