Let us do our work as well, Both the unseen and the seen; Else our lives are incomplete, Shall to-morrow find its place. Thus alone can we attain To those turrets, where the eye SAND OF THE DESERT IN AN HOUR-GLASS. Within this glass becomes the spy of Time, How many weary centuries has it been About those deserts blown! Perhaps the camels of the Ishmaelite When into Egypt from the patriarch's sight Perhaps the feet of Moses, burnt and bare, Or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air Or Mary, with the Christ of Nazareth Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and faith Or anchorites beneath Engaddi's palms And singing slow their old Armenian psalms Or caravans, that from Bassora's gate Or Mecca's pilgrims, confident of Fate, These have passed over it, or may have passed! Imprisoned by some curious hand at last, And as I gaze, these narrow walls expand;— Stretches the desert with its shifting sand, And borne aloft by the sustaining blast, Dilates into a column high and vast, And onward, and across the setting sun, The column and its broader shadow run, The vision vanishes! These walls again Shut out the hot, immeasurable plain; BIRDS OF PASSAGE. BLACK shadows fall From the lindens tall, That lift aloft their massive wall And from the realms Of the shadowy elms A tide-like darkness overwhelms The fields that round us lie. But the night is fair, And everywhere A warm, soft, vapour fills the air, And distant sounds seem near; And above, in the light Of the star-lit night, Swift birds of passage wing their flight Through the dewy atmosphere. I hear the beat Of their pinions fleet, As from the land of snow and sleet I hear the cry Of their voices high Falling dreamily through the sky, Oh, say not so! Those sounds that flow In murmurs of delight and woe They are the throngs Of the poet's songs, Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs, The sound of winged words. This is the cry Of souls, that high On toiling, beating pinions, fly, From their distant flight It falls into our world of night, With the murmuring sound of rhyme. THE OPEN WINDOW. THE old house by the lindens I saw the nursery windows The large Newfoundland house-dog Who would return no more. They walked not under the lindens, But shadow, and silence, and sadness, Q The birds sang in the branches Will be heard in dreams alone! And the boy that walked beside me, Why closer in mine, ah! closer, KING WITLAF'S DRINKING-HORN. WITLAF, a king of the Saxons, So sat they once at Christmas, In their beards the red wine glistened They drank to the soul of Witlaf, They drank to the Saints and Martyrs Till the great bells of the convent, Proclaimed the midnight hour. And the Yule-log cracked in the chimney, Yet still in his pallid fingers Had sunk and dissolved his soul. But not for this their revels For they cried, "Fill high the goblet! GASPAR BECERRA. By his evening fire the artist Pondered o'er his secret shame; Baffled, weary, and disheartened, Still he mused, and dreamed of fame. 'Twas an image of the Virgin That had tasked his utmost skill; But, alas! his fair ideal Vanished and escaped him still. From a distant eastern island Had the precious wood been brought; Till, discouraged and desponding, Then a voice cried, "Rise, O master! Shape the thought that stirs within thee!" Woke, and from the smoking embers Seized and quenched the glowing wood; And therefrom he carved an image, O thou sculptor, painter, poet! |