Part 4

Enshrined among roses The Homestead reposes With vines mantled o’er; Ground-ivy and clover Are running all over The stone at the door.

Pinks, lilies, are blowing, Blue violets showing Gold hearts to the June; Bees going and coming Keep evermore humming Their Hyblean tune.

’Twas here that I wasted Youth’s flower and tasted Love’s first honey-dew; A boy here I slumbered, By care unencumbered, Long, balmy nights through.

The wood-birds each morning Gave musical warning For shadows to fly; Their rhapsody choral Foretold the auroral First flush of the sky.

With rising emotion Akin to devotion The scene I behold;-- With fond recollections Of tender affections Too sweet to be told.

JENNIE MOORE.

The morning air is richly rife With southern soft perfumes; Yon orchard glows with sudden blush Of mingled buds and blooms; The madrigals of wooing birds Awaken amorous Spring, And “Jennie Moore, sweet Jennie Moore” Is all the song they sing.

Glad Yalobusha’s rippling waves Repeat the darling name; The zephyr lost among the pines Dies murmuring the same; And when the hush of twilight steals Along the dreamy shore, The blissful silence to my heart Keeps singing “Jennie Moore.”

ASHES.

The fire of love is dead. No spark of living red The cold, gray ashes show. Be still! thy sighing breath-- Can it requicken death? Nay, hope not, dream not so. Ah, no, no, no!

POSY.

Laura is the first to seek Rime of March in wildwood bleak; First to mourn the aster’s death, Withered by November’s breath; Every glade and glen she knows Where the coy spring-beauty grows, Searches sunny slope and dell For the pearl or golden bell Of the quivering addertongue By the wandering zephyr swung; She and April, comrades boon, Hail the early-crowned puccoon; In the dingle lone she sees Tremulous anemones; From the breast of June she takes Columbines and plumy brakes; Not a daisy she’ll forget, Nor the humblest violet. Lilies proud, on stately stalks, Bow to greet her where she walks; Roses to her pathway lean, Queens saluting lovelier queen, Emulous to win her eyes, Rivals for self-sacrifice; Blesséd they whom she shall choose Though their fragrant lives they lose! Joyful the elected flower Which may triumph one brief hour, Mingled with the clustered few, Musical in form and hue! Thus sweet notes that singly please Join in chordant melodies! So do gathered fancies twine Graceful in the rhythmic line;-- Like a perfect lyric lay Laura’s exquisite bouquet.

A SNOW BIRD.

Beside the curbstone, in gusty whirl Of dust and snow-drift, stood a little girl; The piteous tears ran down her baby face; In dumb despair she stood, nor moved a pace, Her flying curls and fluttering short dress Pathetic signals of forlorn distress; Her fondling hands, all purple with the cold, Unto her breast a china doll did hold. “What is the matter, dear, why do you cry?” Her chill-cramped lips made dolefullest reply: “I am so cold, and I don’t know the way.” That was the most her helplessness could say.

Ere long, before a laughing, ruddy flame, She smiled through tears and shyly told her name; I led the strayling to her mother’s door, And in she flew,--I never saw her more. Yet oftentimes, when Winter scoffs the sun, She is my bosom’s guest, that timid one; She steals into my heart and sobbing stands, A naked doll in her caressing hands; I see her shiver and I hear her say, “I am so cold, and I don’t know the way.”

THE UPSET.

Enforced pursuit of silver eagles fleet Gave early haste to my reluctant feet, And so it chanced I hurried--I and Care-- At sunrise down a city thoroughfare; But by the grace of some directing fay I met a sight that gladdened me all day.

I saw a beer-plump Saxon--Bacchus’ son-- His red, round face the symbol of slow fun; Unconscious he of all ’twixt sky and earth Except one soul-engrossing cause of mirth: He dragged a painted sled, and, perched thereon, Sat snug a three-years’ maiden, bright as dawn, And happy as the sparrows chirping round, Crumb-hunting near her on the snowy ground. A sudden turn! a laughing cry, and lo! The sled upsets, and Mädchen prints the snow. She laughs; I laugh; loud ha-ha’s Bacchus’ son;-- Then gravely he,--“By yolly! dot vas fun.”

THE SCHOOL GIRL.

From some sweet home the morning train Brings to the city, Five days a week, in sun or rain, Returning like a song’s refrain, A school girl pretty.

A violet’s unaffected grace Is dainty miss’s, Yet, in her shy, expressive face, The touch of urban arts I trace, And artifices.

No one but she and Heaven knows Of what she’s thinking; It may be either books or beaux, Fine scholarship or stylish clothes, Per cents or prinking.

How happy must the household be This morn who kissed her; Not every one can make so free; Who sees her, inly wishes she Were his own sister.

How favored is the book she cons, The slate she uses, The hat she lightly doffs and dons, The orient sunshade that she owns, The desk she chooses.

Is she familiar with the wars Of Julius Caesar? Do crucibles, and Leyden jars, And Browning, and the moons of Mars, And Euclid, please her?

She studies music, I opine; O day of knowledge! And other mysteries divine Of imitation or design, Taught in the college.

A charm attends her everywhere, A sense of beauty; Care smiles to see her free of care; The hard heart loves her unaware; Age pays her duty.

Her innocence is panoply, Her weakness, power; The earth her guardian, and the sky; God’s every star is her ally, And every flower.

THE READERS.

Come hither, my ten years’ maiden; O’er what do you ponder so much? “I am reading in Tanglewood Stories, The tale of the Golden Touch.”

Ah! Hattie, my flax-haired darling, How buried in study you seem. “I am reading in Tales from Shakespeare, Of Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

And there on the sofa is Mayo; My laddie, what pleases you so? “This picture and fable in Æsop,-- See here,--of the Pitcher and Crow.”

Come hither, my dream-eyed baby, You’re falling asleep on the floor! “I’m reading in Sing Song, papa,-- I wish you would read me some more.”

WAG.

Obiit, February 7, 1878.

He was only a dog, and a mongrel at that, And worthless and troublesome, lazy and fat,-- Was Wag, who died yesterday night; Yet now that his barking forever is o’er, And his caudal appendage can waggle no more, His elegy I will indite.

’Twas seldom authority mastered his will; He always was noisy when bid to be still; He slumbered while danger was near; He ran after chickens against all command; When ordered to “sick” he would heedlessly stand; His principal passion was fear.

From morning till night he would dig in the ground To get at a rabbit, but, when it was found, In terror he took to his heels; But there was one duty he never did shun, From that naught could drive him, to that he would run: Wag never neglected his meals.

The tax that I paid the police on his poll, A dollar a year, I begrudged in my soul, For Wag I thought dear at a cent; And once, in my hardness, I gloomily said, “I wish that the no-account puppy were dead!” But now he _is_ dead, I repent.

Wag came from Kentucky, a waif, bundled up And packed in a basket, a charity pup,-- In pity we warmed him and fed; The only return that his nature could give For preserving his life, was serenely to live, Content with his board and his bed.

He was kind to the dogs upon Tusculum Hill; He followed them all with fraternal good will, From coach dog to commonest cur; He was grateful to _people_ who treated him right, And for his young mistress he even would fight, But not lose his dinner for her.

I miss his black body curled up and asleep, I miss his contortions, his bark, and his leap, And the sound of his gnawing at bones; The very same night that the Pope died at Rome, Poor Wag, all alone, in the wash-house at home, Yielded up his last shivering moans.

And when to the children, next morning, I said, As they sat at the table, “Yes, Wag--he is dead,” There was not a dry eye in the room; And Auntie began, with remorse, to recall How lately she’d driven deceased from the hall, With scoldings and blows of a broom.

Now Wag is asleep near an apple-tree old, And a dog-rose shall blossom above his dear mold, And there shall a tablet be set; For though but a dog, and a mongrel at that, And worthless, and idle, and lazy, and fat,-- Poor Wag was _our_ dog, and a pet.

DONATELLO.

Who will capture Donatello? Roving cat! Fierce, ungovernable fellow; Musical as Leporello,-- Sharp and flat! Terrible in a duello.

Ragamuffin, have you met a Felis fat? Ancestored in gay Valetta, Where brown dames in black faldetta, Walk and chat-- Hot his blood as flame of Ætna.

Beautiful, romantic, splendid Autocrat! To the forest, unattended, Daring Donatello wended: Owl and bat, Weasel, mole, and mink, he rended.

Savage wildwood his unbounded Habitat; By no man or mastiff hounded, By the midnight mirk surrounded-- Think of that! Oft his caterwaul he sounded.

Freedom to the gallant fellow. Exeat! Victor in each fierce duello, Midnight, madcap Leporello! Roving cat! Graceless, graceful Donatello!

GABRIEL OF SCHWARTZENWALD.

Rhyme, and ring the changes well, Sing the song of Gabriel, Gabriel of Schwartzenwald.

Lo, a voice delusive called From the Ohio’s crooked vale, Saying, “Sail and sail and sail Over the sea and hither away, Westering to the Land of Play; Happy region of Do-as-you-please, Where the guilders grow on trees, Where the peasants all are kings And there be no underlings.”

Gabriel, the idle dreamer, Heard the Utopian voice alluring; Sought a sail-ship,--not a steamer; Soon the vessel leaves her mooring, Veers and tacks to Occident, Bears him o’er the crinkled sea; Never soul so indolent Lounged upon a deck as he. With the vagrant breeze he glides Over sun-lit, moon-lit tides, Skims to port and shore; Spins along the shining rail, Sleeps into Ohio’s vale,-- Wakes--the journey o’er. Not an idler Gabriel sees, Not a kreutzer on the trees; Every bretzel must be bought; Naught is proffered him for naught. ’Tis the Region of Unrest, Busy, toiling, moiling West!

All the peasant kings he found Building houses, tilling ground. Gabriel of Schwartzenwald From his dream is disenthralled; Transatlantic, far away, Eastward looms the Land of Play.

Like the lily, like the daisy, Lolling Gabriel was lazy; Clownish were his clumsy paces, Ludicrous his slow grimaces; Ill-defined the thoughts he spoke, Like the wreathed tobacco smoke From his meerschaum upward shed Curling round his shaggy head. Little could he understand:-- “Vish I vas in Faderland, Nicht is goot for notings here Only shust das lager-bier.”

Easily he wept or smiled, Easily was he beguiled; Rill-like, shallow, o’er his mind, Ran affections swift and kind; Secretly he shared his meat With a lame cur on the street; “Vonce I had a hund,” said he, “Vat vas very freund to me; Ya, mein Herr, dat hund vas mine; Vish I heard him barkin’ here; Vish I had a glass goot bier, Oder flash von German wein.”

Hard by Mineami Bayou, Where the gadding breezes cool Loiter up from the Ohio, Gabriel, at sink of sun, Throned upon a wooden stool, Fondled his accordion. Then the ragged urchins round, And their brown-legged sisters, maybe, Lugging each a flax-haired baby,-- Sometimes, too, the weary mothers, Yea, and I, and lingering others, By sad, dulcet quaverings won, Gathered near to catch the sound; O’er the hill the risen moon Paused to hear the mellow tune; All too sadly, all too soon, Gabriel would cease to play, Light his pipe and puff away. “Vas a Fräulein,”--mumbled he; “Vish I vas to-night not hier; Not America for me,-- Only shust das lager-bier.” “Play a waltz now, Gabriel!” “Nein, Rhine wein ist der beste wein.”

Gabriel did sigh and sadden For the linden shades of Baden, For the glooms of Schwartzenwald; So a homesick brief he scrawled To his mother, her to tell That he was not strong or well. (Of the Fräulein wrote he not,-- Haply Gabriel forgot.) Soon the doting mother old,-- Four-score were her years and three,-- Sent the lout a purse of gold, With the summons--“Come to me! Komm zu mir, mein Sohn, geschwind, Komm zu mir, mein liebes Kind.”

From the Ohio’s crooked vale, Flying fast by rail and sail, Home to Schwartzenwald away, Eastward to the Land of Play, Gabriel of Schwartzenwald Followed the mother-tongue that called From the fatherland in tearful tone, “Komm, Gabriel, mein lieber Sohn!” Followed the mother-voice and the call Of the nameless Fräulein, short or tall, And the coaxing lisp of the linden leaves, And the bark of a dog forlorn that grieves For an absent master; the gurgle, too, Of bottled grape-juice and foamy brew, And the tweedle-dee of the fiddle gay That leads to the dance on a holiday;-- Followed his dreams and his memories, Whirled with the sleeping speed of wheels, Flew on the eager wings of the breeze, Doubting of naught that his foolish heart feels, Sure that the country of Do-as-you-please, If any such ever is found upon earth, Is the home of our mother, the land of our birth.

COFFEA ARABICA.

More entrancing than aroma From the Hindu sacred soma, Comes a fragrant Essence vagrant Floating up From my quaint Zumpango cup, Incense rare, Evanescent steam ascending, Curling, wavering, fading, blending, Vanishing in viewless air. Let me sip and dream and sing Musing many an idle thing, Let me sing and dream and sip Making many an fancied trip Far away and far away Over ocean, gulf and bay To islands whence the spicy wind Breathes languor on the tropic sea, To sultry strands of teeming Ind, To coasts of torrid Araby, To realms no Boreal breath may chill, Like rich Brazil, Or Jabal’s clouded hill on hill, Or warm Bulgosa’s valley low, To zones where Summer splendors glow, Where seasons never come or go, Where coffee trees perpetual blow.

While I drowse and dream and sip, Sailing, sailing slides a ship Over the glittering sea, Measuring leagues of night and day, Bearing and bringing to me, Bringing from far away, away, The pale green magical berry, The seed of the virtuous cherry, The bean of the blossom divine! Bringing from over the brine, Bringing from Demarara, From balsamy San Pará, Bringing from Trans-Sahara, From hoard of the Grand Bashaw, Or redolent chests of Menelek, An Abyssinian cargo Richer than freight of Argo, Treasured in garners under the deck, Bringing and bearing for me The gift of the coffee tree! Better than blood of the Spanish vine, Or ruddy or amber wine of the Rhine; Bearing the bean of the blessed tree! Better than bousa or sake fine, Or sampan loads of oolong tea, Souchong, twankay, or bohea,-- Bringing the virtuous bean divine, The coffee-tree cherry, The magical berry, More entrancing than aroma From the Hindu sacred soma.

AN INDIA SHAWL.

This dainty shawl an Eastern shuttle wove, Where Ravee stream winds sunward from Cashmere; By nimble gold ’twas borne around the sphere For one who gave it me in friendly love. To rival nature’s hues the weaver strove, For beauty’s sake and not barbaric show; Behold, commingled here, elusive glow The brilliant, innocent dyes of field and grove. This silk soft web was never merchandise; A charm of peerless art proclaims it rare,-- A sumptuous robe that Majesty would prize, And India’s British Empress well might wear; ’Tis mine for thee within whose beaming eyes I see love’s India, O my queenly Fair!

APOLOGY.

Full well my loyal heart remembers The vow of rapture’s lavish tongue, For thee to smother grief’s Decembers In joy’s June roses and make over The world;--how easily, fond lover, Could I when life and hope were young.

When troth-plight had begemmed thy finger Unhappiness should cease to be; No shape of care near thee should linger; Exultant, I, thy love to guerdon, Would weep thy tears and bear thy burden, Yea, purchase thy Gethsemane.

For thee should hemlock turn to honey, Thy hand, unhurt, the thorn might hold, Darkness should light thee, and the sunny Celestial days, triumphal, singing Around the globe, should bless thee, bringing Anew to earth the Age of Gold.

Thy beauty and thy grace to glory, Would I inweave thy golden name In shining weft of song and story; Would I, on love’s heroic mission, Ascend the sunned peak of ambition To pluck the Alpine flower, fame.

O season of delirious passion! What knew or recked my spirit then Of deeds in less transcendent fashion Than youth’s high drama realizes In visions, dreams, and enterprises, That lift to godhood mortal men!

Naught is impossible to Heaven, Nor to the puissance of youth! Imagination’s quickening leaven Works in the pulsing brain and being Till every sense hath second-seeing And all that should be true is truth.

O glorious falsehood and illusion! Call not the lover’s transports lies: The white light of his heart in fusion Makes visible the far ideal, Only the low earth is unreal, Secure the lover walks the skies.

I trod with thee the starry spaces, I told the only tale I knew; We dwelt in spirit, not in places, And, if the promises then spoken,-- Be witness, O my God!--were broken, The promising was heavenly true.

UNRECONCILED.

When winter’s loom of cloud Weaves robes of snow To wrap the hills in shroud, My meditations go Where shuddering tempests blow Above a little grave.

When spring’s pale wild-flowers wake Where sunbeams play, Must not my full heart break? Birds, blossoms, come with May,-- Would that, some happy day, My child could come again.

When air-built cloud-fleets sail Blue summer’s sky, And violets exhale Their fragrant souls and die, My soul lifts Rachel’s cry, For, oh! the child is not.

Most mournful time of all Is when the leaf Fades, withering to its fall, Ending its term so brief, Like him, my joy, my grief, Lost in the senseless grave.

The new moons come and go, Stars rise and set, Time’s healing waters flow Across my wound, and yet Grief cannot pay love’s debt;-- Love’s solace is to mourn.

ANNIVERSARY.

This is your birthday, dearest? Dearest wife, Fond sweetheart of my youth and of my prime, Lover and friend and comrade, in whose life I live unconscious of the flight of time!

Three-score? and must we grant it so? Why, then Thank Heaven we have tasted life thus long, For life is rich, and shall grow sweeter when Like mellowing wine age renders it less strong.

We shall grow old together, count the years, Welcome each sunrise and each setting sun; Together laugh our laugh or weep our tears, Wait, act and suffer, till the sands be run.

I owned Golconda and the Coast of Pearl, Being a boy--it was but yesterday; One shared my fortune, giving hers--one girl-- Whither, my darling, fled youth’s dream away?

Where are the morning and the wealth of spring? Gone with the air-built castle--vanished, gone! The dew of youth went sunward, and the wing Is broken now that soared at golden dawn.

It is too late for riches, land and gold; Too late to pluck the flaming rose of power; My hands have bled to gather what they hold-- Buds of dead hope--ambition’s phantom flower.

Yet all I am I dedicate to you, As on our spousal morning, Love, and bring This heart-born offering to pledge anew, In Autumn song, the promises of Spring.

AMAUROTE.

Safe in towery Amaurote Now I dwell; From the tumbling sea my boat, Like a bell of foam afloat, Up Anyder’s refluent stream Voyaged well; And I woke unto a dream Realized in realm remote Of Utopia.

Whiles my eudæmonian guide Thrummed her lyre, Charmful o’er the billows wide, In the distance I espied Gleam of opalescent dome, Golden spire; Then my soul foreknew its home Far beyond the roaring tide, In Utopia!

All was sooth as poets old Gave renown; All that seers and sages told, Fabling of an Age of Gold;-- Towery Amaurote was there, Blissful town! Far away from everywhere, Flushed with rosy light, behold! In Utopia.

Visioned splendor reared from naught Rose sublime; Art and Beauty thither brought All Imagination taught Of the mystery of Man And of Time; Wisdom, smiling on the plan, Bade the wonderwork be wrought, In Utopia!

Have I eaten of the lote So its spell Laps and lulls me to devote Hours Lethean, far remote From the dreadful things that be? Nay, I dwell Where o’er dream-deeps Poesie Sang me, in a foam-bell boat, To Utopia.

THE END