PART III. 33

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

TO A YOUNG MAN 43

TELL ME, DEAR BIRD 45

PERDITA 47

STANZAS TO ⸺ 52

LOVE’S TRIBUTE 55

THE LITTLE SHEPHERDESS.—PASTORELLE 57

A FAREWELL 58

TO A FICKLE FAIR ONE 59

TO THE SAME 59

THE PALACE OF REPOSE 60

MOODS 63

TO ⸺ 74

TO ⸺ 76

TO THE SAME 76

TO THE SAME 76

TRANSLATIONS AND IMITATIONS.

IF MY VERSES HAD WINGS LIKE A BIRD.—HUGO 79

’TWIXT SLEEP AND WAKING.—PROSPER BLANCHEMAIN 80

WHITE SWAN SAILING.—FROM THE RUSSIAN, 81

THE ROSES OF SAADI.—DESBORDES-VALMORE, 84

ROSE-BUDS.—BÉRANGER 85

THE BIRD I WAIT FOR.—MOREAU 87

VISIONS.—DE MUSSET 89

THE FISHERMAN’S BRIDAL.—DELAVIGNE 92

YOU HAD MY WHOLE HEART.—DESBORDES-VALMORE 95

ART.—THÉOPHILE GAUTIER 97

BARCAROLLE.—THÉOPHILE GAUTIER 100

SHADOWS.—THÉOPHILE GAUTIER 103

SONNET: OU VONT ILS?—SULLY PRUDHOMME, 113

THE GAY CASHIER.—ADAPTED FROM THE FRENCH 114

THE RAVAGES OF TIME.—SCARRON 115

HALLUCINATION.—FROM THE FRENCH.

I. 116

II. 117

III. 117

IV. IN THE GROVE 118

TO MY CRITICS.—DE MUSSET 119

THE YOUTH AND THE OLD MAN.—FLORIAN 121

THE CATHEDRAL BELL AND ITS RIVAL.—IRIARTE 123

BLUE EYES AND BLACK EYES.—IMITATED FROM ANDALUSIAN COPLAS.

I. 125

II. 126

COMPLAINT TO THE VIRGIN.—FROM A CUBAN POETESS 128

THE CRUCIFIXION. OLD FRENCH SONNET 132

FROM THE SPANISH 133

THE BOOK OF LIFE.—LAMARTINE 134

MEMORIAL DAY AND OTHER POEMS. DEDICATED TO THE G. A. R.

TWENTY YEARS AGO. WRITTEN FOR MEMORIAL DAY, 1885 137

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 141

THE PRISONER’S DREAM 142

HOW OFT A SENTRY SAD AND LONE 143

FROM COPLAS OF AN ANDALUSIAN SOLDIER 144

FROM THE SAME 145

THE GLORY OF A SPANISH DRAGOON.—FROM THE SAME 146

WRITTEN FOR A REUNION OF VETERANS IN THE YEAR 1915 148

TWENTY-FIVE SONNETS.

TO ⸺ 153

POESY 154

THE ROSE 155

TO A FAIR SANTA BARBARAN 156

LA DIVA 157

TO A HAPPY LOVER 158

METEMPSYCHOSIS.

I. 159

II. 159

THREE SONNETS IN MEMORIAM.

I. DESPAIR—THE ABYSS 161

II. QUESTIONING 161

III. CONSOLATION 162

IN MEMORY OF D. G. R. 163

IN MEMORY OF JOHN BROWN OF OSSAWATTOMIE. INSCRIBED TO JOHN J. INGALLS.

I. 164

II. 165

III. 165

OUR LOST ONES 167

THE OCEAN OF THE PAST 168

EVIL DAYS 169

ENVY AND SLANDER. TO N. N. M. 170

TRUE FREEDOM. TO J. F. F. 171

“SOCIETY” 172

THE STAGNANT POOL 173

THE MAN WITH THE MUCK RAKE 174

IMMORTALITY 175

TO A YOUNG ARTIST 176

WINONA: A DAKOTA LEGEND

WINONA: A DAKOTA LEGEND.

PROEM.

How changed, fair Minnetonka, is thy face Since first I saw thee in thy pristine grace. Electric lights fantastically glow, Swarming like fire-flies on the shores where long, Through countless summer nights a vanished throng, Only the Indian camp-fire flickered low. The odor of the baleful cigarette Assails us now, where the mild calumet Around the circle like a censer swung. The notes of Strauss intoxicate the air, And dainty feet in cadence twinkle there, Where in rude strains the warriors’ deeds were sung, And where the Indian lover’s plaintive flute Lured to the trysting-place the dusky maid. Discreetly hidden in the sylvan shade, The Anglomaniac comes to press his suit, And Patrick, too, out for a holiday, Strolls with his Bridget here _en dimanché_, And softly whispers in his charmer’s ear The same old tale, to lovers ever dear. The rustling leaves, the waves, the mating bird, Sing the same songs the Indian maiden heard.

Save a few stately names, the vanished race Whose dust we daily trample leave no trace Or monument. None who that race have known Ere poisoned by the vices of our own, Deem it ignoble; but the white man’s breath, To him a besom of consuming death, Sweeps him like ashes from his natal hearth, E’en as one day some race of stronger birth Will sweep our children’s children from the earth. More noxious than the fabled upas tree, We blight his virtues first, and then with scorn Repel the hands extended once to save Our exiled fathers, fleeing o’er the wave. Yet in his deepest fall, the warrior, born Of warrior lineage fetterless and free, Retains unquenched in his unyielding soul A secret flame in spite of all control. He brooks no slavish, ignominious toil, By scourger driven to till the white man’s soil. Chained in Plutonian caverns far from day, His spirit swiftly chafes its bars away; Or by his own impatient hand released, With rapture bounds as to a marriage feast. Wealth, pomp, and power ne’er his soul affect; Still unabashed he stands, unmoved, erect, His blanket draped, albeit not too clean, About him with a Roman consul’s mien, And in the white light of a throne his eye Would meet, nor quail, the eye of majesty. His own war-eagle to the sun that soared, Gave back with eye undimmed its fiery glare, And sported with the speaking lightnings where The Thunder-Birds[1] along the tempest roared; Or swept the plain, but saw no Indian slave From the Pacific to Atlantic wave.

Fair Minnetonka, thou art changed, and yet I know not if ’twere matter for regret. Thou wast a maid untried, with yielding heart, With flowing hair, and ample sheltering arms, And unabashed contours, whose rosy charms Were all untrammelled by the hand of art, And eyes of dreamy mystery, wherein E’en then thy triumphs dimly were foreseen; A worldly-wise and queenly woman now, Adorned with spoil of many victories, And flush of further conquest on thy brow; Jewels cannot thy native charms enhance, Nor can thy robes, too tightly laced perchance, The matchless beauty of thy form disguise. Through every change, by every tongue confessed, Peerless amid thy sisters East or West; Like her of whom the master-singer wrote, “Age cannot wither her nor custom stale Her infinite variety.” Thus float My wandering thoughts, as on the balcony I sit alone bathed in the moonlight pale, And musing thus the scene changed suddenly: Hotel and cottage vanished; to the shore The prairie sloped a green unbroken floor. Eight lustrums back, through rosy summers fled, Adown a dwindling vista far I sped, A careless youth; again my hoary head Bloomed with the sunny wealth of twenty years. A day came back, a day without compeers, When with a bright companion long since dead, In my canoe I flitted o’er the lake, And our swift paddles scattered pearly tears Upon the smiling ripples in our wake.

She, my companion, was a little maid Of somewhat rustic garb, of English speech, Yet something in her accents quaint and rich, And the warm tinge upon her cheek, betrayed The mingling crimson of a darker shade,— Her kinship to the remnant lingering still, Whose cone-shaped lodges picturesquely stood, Dotting the hither base of yonder hill, Like late leaves clinging, spite of growing chill, Upon the boughs of a November wood. Changing our mood, we idly drifted there, Two happy children in a cradling shell Poised ’twixt two azure vaults; the mystic spell Of Indian summer brooded in the air, Filling with human love and sympathy E’en things inanimate; the earth and sky Leaned to each other, and the rocks and trees, Like brothers, seemed sharing our reveries.

“Tell me some legend of the lake,” I cried, “For in a spot that breathes on every side Such air of poesy, whose influence Subdues with such a charm our every sense, How many loving hearts have loved and died! How many souls as lofty and intense As those whose names throughout the whole world ring, In the high songs the olden minstrels sing! Who hears those voices e’en but for a day, The sound remains a part of him alway: Penelope the constant; Hero sweet; Briseis weeping at Achilles’ feet; Andromeda by wingèd Perseus found— Bright blossom to the sea-girt rock fast bound; The Lesbian queen of song, but passion’s slave, Who quenched her burning torch beneath the wave; Helen, whose beauty, like a fatal brand, Lit up the towers of Troy o’er sea and land; And Juliet, swaying at her window’s height, What slender lily in the wan moonlight.”

“I do not know,” the little maid replied, “The names of which you speak, but ere she died My mother told me many stories old, Some joyous and some sad, of warriors bold, And spirits, haunting forest, plain, and stream. Each had its god, and creatures of strange form, Half beast, half human; all these figures seem Mingling away in a fantastic swarm, Dim as the faces of a last year’s dream, Or motes that mingle in a slant sunbeam. The legends vanish too; among them all This one alone, distinctly I recall.”

The tale she told me then I now rehearse, Set in a frame of rude, unpolished verse.