And childlike joy of life, O Philhellene!

Around thee would have swarmed the Attic

bees;

Homer had been thy friend, or Socrates,

And Plato welcomed thee to his demesne. For thee old legends breathed historic breath; Thou sawest Poseidon in the purple sea, And in the sunset Jason's fleece of gold! Oh, what hadst thou to do with cruel Death, Who wast so full of life, or Death with thee, That thou shouldst die before thou hadst grown old!

III.

I stand again on the familiar shore,

And hear the waves of the distracted sea Piteously calling and lamenting thee, And waiting restless at thy cottage door. The rocks, the sea-weed on the ocean floor, The willows in the meadow, and the free Wild winds of the Atlantic welcome me;

Then why shouldst thou be dead, and come no more?

Ah, why shouldst thou be dead, when common men Are busy with their trivial affairs,

Having and holding? Why, when thou hadst read

Nature's mysterious manuscript, and then

Wast ready to reveal the truth it bears,

Why art thou silent? Why shouldst thou be dead?

IV.

Written June 15, 1874.

River, that stealest with such silent pace
Around the City of the Dead, where lies

A friend who bore thy name, and whom these eyes

Shall see no more in his accustomed place, Linger and fold him in thy soft embrace, And say good night, for now the western skies Are red with sunset, and gray mists arise Like damps that gather on a dead man's face. Good night! good night! as we so oft have said Beneath this roof at midnight, in the days

That are no more, and shall no more return. Thou hast but taken thy lamp and gone to bed; I stay a little longer, as one stays To cover up the embers that still burn.

V.

Written June 5, 1874.

The doors are all wide open; at the gate
The blossomed lilacs counterfeit a blaze,
And seem to warm the air; a dreamy haze
Hangs o'er the Brighton meadows like a fate,
And on their margin, with sea-tides elate,

The flooded Charles, as in the happier days,
Writes the last letter of his name, and stays
His restless steps, as if compelled to wait.
I also wait; but they will come no more,
Those friends of mine, whose presence satisfied

The thirst and hunger of my heart. Ah me! They have forgotten the pathway to my door! Something is gone from nature since they died, And summer is not summer, nor can be.

CHAUCER.

AN old man in a lodge within a park;

The chamber walls depicted all around

With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound,

And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark, Whose song comes with the sunshine through the

dark

Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound; He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound, Then writeth in a book like any clerk. He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote The Canterbury Tales, and his old age Made beautiful with song; and as I read I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note Of lark and linnet, and from every page Rise odors of ploughed field or flowery mead.

SHAKESPEARE.

A VISION as of crowded city streets,
With human life in endless overflow;
Thunder of thoroughfares; trumpets that blow
To battle; clamor, in obscure retreats,
Of sailors landed from their anchored fleets;
Tolling of bells in turrets, and below

Voices of children, and bright flowers that throw

O'er garden-walls their intermingled sweets! This vision comes to me when I unfold

The volume of the Poet paramount,

Whom all the Muses loved, not one alone; Into his hands they put the lyre of gold,

And, crowned with sacred laurel at their fount, Placed him as Musagetes on their throne.

MILTON.

I PACE the sounding sea-beach and behold
How the voluminous billows roll and run,
Upheaving and subsiding, while the sun

Shines through their sheeted emerald far unrolled,

And the ninth wave, slow gathering fold by fold All its loose-flowing garments into one,

Plunges upon the shore, and floods the dun Pale reach of sands, and changes them to gold. So in majestic cadence rise and fall

The mighty undulations of thy song,

O sightless bard, England's Mæonides!
And ever and anon, high over all

Uplifted, a ninth wave superb and strong,
Floods all the soul with its melodious seas.

KEATS.

Written December 4, 1873.

THE young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep;
The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told!
The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold
To the red rising moon, and loud and deep

The nightingale is singing from the steep;
It is midsummer, but the air is cold;

Can it be death? Alas, beside the fold

A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep. Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white, On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name Was writ in water." And was this the meed Of his sweet singing? Rather let me write : "The smoking flax before it burst to flame Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed."

THE GALAXY.

Written August 4, 1874.

TORRENT of light and river of the air,

Along whose bed the glimmering stars are seen
Like gold and silver sands in some ravine
Where mountain streams have left their chan-
nels bare!

The Spaniard sees in thee the pathway, where
His patron saint descended in the sheen

Of his celestial armor, on serene

And quiet nights, when all the heavens were fair.

Not this I see, nor yet the ancient fable

Of Phaeton's wild course, that scorched the skies

Where'er the hoofs of his hot coursers trod; But the white drift of worlds o'er chasms of sable, The star-dust, that is whirled aloft and flies From the invisible chariot-wheels of God.