Cradled and rocked in Eastern seas,
The islands of the Japanese

Beneath me lie; o'er lake and plain

The stork, the heron, and the crane
Through the clear realms of azure drift,
And on the hillside I can see

The villages of Imari,

Whose thronged and flaming workshops lift Their twisted columns of smoke on high, Cloud cloisters that in ruins lie,

With sunshine streaming through each rift, And broken arches of blue sky.

All the bright flowers that fill the land,
Ripple of waves on rock or sand,
The snow on Fusiyama's cone,
The midnight heaven so thickly sown
With constellations of bright stars,

The leaves that rustle, the reeds that make
A whisper by each stream and lake,

The saffron dawn, the sunset red,
Are painted on these lovely jars ;
Again the skylark sings, again
The stork, the heron, and the crane
Float through the azure overhead,
The counterfeit and counterpart
Of Nature reproduced in Art.

Art is the child of Nature; yes,
Her darling child, in whom we trace
The features of the mother's face,
Her aspect and her attitude;
All her majestic loveliness

Chastened and softened and subdued

Into a more attractive grace,

And with a human sense imbued.
He is the greatest artist, then,
Whether of pencil or of pen,

Who follows Nature. Never man,
As artist or as artisan,

Pursuing his own fantasies,

Can touch the human heart, or please,
Or satisfy our nobler needs,

As he who sets his willing feet

In Nature's footprints, light and fleet,
And follows fearless where she leads.

Thus mused I on that morn in May,
Wrapped in my visions like the Seer,
Whose eyes behold not what is near,
But only what is far away,

When, suddenly sounding peal on peal,
The church-bell from the neighboring town
Proclaimed the welcome hour of noon.

The Potter heard, and stopped his wheel, His apron on the grass threw down,

Whistled his quiet little tune,

Not overloud nor overlong,

And ended thus his simple song:

Stop, stop, my wheel! Too soon, too soon
The noon will be the afternoon,

Too soon to-day be yesterday;
Behind us in our path we cast
The broken potsherds of the past,
And all are ground to dust at last,
And trodden into clay!

ULTIMA THULE

The collection of poems under this title was published in 1880. The volume bore on the title-page these lines from Horace (Lib. I., Carmen XXX., Ad Apollinem):·

:

Precor, integrâ

Cum mente, nec turpem senectam

Degere, nec citharâ carentem.

The dedication is to his life-long friend, George Washington Greene, who himself dedicated his Life of Nathanael Greene to Mr. Longfellow in words which give a glowing picture of the aspirations of the two in the days of their young manhood.

DEDICATION.

TO G. W. G.

WITH favoring winds, o'er sunlit seas,

We sailed for the Hesperides,

The land where golden apples grow;
But that, ah! that was long ago.

How far, since then, the ocean streams

Have swept us from that land of dreams,
That land of fiction and of truth,

The lost Atlantis of our youth!

Whither, ah, whither? Are not these
The tempest-haunted Orcades,

Where sea-gulls scream, and breakers roar,
And wreck and sea-weed line the shore?

Line 10. The tempest-haunted Hebrides,

Ultima Thule! Utmost Isle!

Here in thy harbors for a while
We lower our sails; a while we rest
From the unending, endless quest.

POEMS

BAYARD TAYLOR.

Written December 28, 1878.

DEAD he lay among his books! The peace of God was in his looks.

As the statues in the gloom
Watch o'er Maximilian's tomb,

So those volumes from their shelves Watched him, silent as themselves.

Ah! his hand will nevermore
Turn their storied pages o'er;

Nevermore his lips repeat
Songs of theirs, however sweet.

Let the lifeless body rest!
He is gone, who was its guest;

Gone, as travellers haste to leave
An inn, nor tarry until eve.

Traveller! in what realms afar,
In what planet, in what star,

In what vast, aerial space,
Shines the light upon thy face?

In what gardens of delight
Rest thy weary feet to-night?

Poet! thou, whose latest verse
Was a garland on thy hearse;

Thou hast sung, with organ tone,
In Deukalion's life, thine own;

On the ruins of the Past
Blooms the perfect flower at last.

Friend! but yesterday the bells
Rang for thee their loud farewells;

And to-day they toll for thee,
Lying dead beyond the sea;

Lying dead among thy books,
The peace of God in all thy looks!

THE CHAMBER OVER THE GATE.

Written October 30, 1878. Suggested to the poet when writing a letter of condolence to the Bishop of Mississippi, whose son, the Rev. Duncan C. Green, had died at his post at Greenville, Mississippi, September 15, during the prevalence of yellow fever.

Is it so far from thee

Thou canst no longer see,

In the Chamber over the Gate,
That old man desolate,