WEATHERCOCK.

If I change with all the winds that blow,
It is only because they made me so,
And people would think it wondrous strange,
If I, a Weathercock, should not change.

O pretty Maiden, so fine and fair,

With your dreamy eyes and your golden hair, When you and your lover meet to-day

You will thank me for looking some other way.

THE WINDMILL.

Written March 13, 1880.

BEHOLD! a giant am I !

Aloft here in my tower,

With my granite jaws I devour The maize, and the wheat, and the rye, And grind them into flour.

I look down over the farms;
In the fields of grain I see
The harvest that is to be,
And I fling to the air my arms,
For I know it is all for me.

I hear the sound of flails

Far off, from the threshing-floors In barns, with their open doors, And the wind, the wind in my sails, Louder and louder roars.

I stand here in my place,

With my foot on the rock below,
it may blow

And whichever way

I meet it face to face,

As a brave man meets his foe.

And while we wrestle and strive,
My master, the miller, stands
And feeds me with his hands;
For he knows who makes him thrive,
Who makes him lord of lands.

On Sundays I take my rest;
Church-going bells begin
Their low, melodious din ;
I cross my arms on my breast,
And all is peace within.

THE TIDE RISES, THE TIDE FALLS.

Written September 11, 1879.

THE tide rises, the tide falls,

The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Line 22. But the sea in the darkness calls and calls.

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls

Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;

The day returns, but nevermore

Returns the traveller to the shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

SONNETS

MY CATHEDRAL.

Written April 20, 1879.

LIKE two cathedral towers these stately pines
Uplift their fretted summits tipped with cones;
The arch beneath them is not built with stones,
Not Art but Nature traced these lovely lines,
And carved this graceful arabesque of vines;
No organ but the wind here sighs and moans,
No sepulchre conceals a martyr's bones,
No marble bishop on his tomb reclines.
Enter the pavement, carpeted with leaves,
Gives back a softened echo to thy tread!
Listen! the choir is singing; all the birds,
In leafy galleries beneath the eaves,

Are singing! listen, ere the sound be fled,
And learn there may be worship without words.

THE BURIAL OF THE POET.

Written February 10, 1879.

RICHARD HENRY DANA.

IN the old churchyard of his native town,
And in the ancestral tomb beside the wall,

We laid him in the sleep that comes to all,

And left him to his rest and his renown.

The snow was falling, as if Heaven dropped down
White flowers of Paradise to strew his pall;
The dead around him seemed to wake, and call
His name, as worthy of so white a crown.
And now the moon is shining on the scene,
And the broad sheet of snow is written o'er
With shadows cruciform of leafless trees,
As once the winding-sheet of Saladin

With chapters of the Koran; but, ah! more
Mysterious and triumphant signs are these.

NIGHT.

Written April 18, 1879.

INTO the darkness and the hush of night
Slowly the landscape sinks, and fades away,
And with it fade the phantoms of the day,

The ghosts of men and things, that haunt the

light.

The crowd, the clamor, the pursuit, the flight,
The unprofitable splendor and display,
The agitations, and the cares that prey
Upon our hearts, all vanish out of sight.
The better life begins; the world no more
Molests us; all its records we erase

From the dull commonplace book of our lives, That like a palimpsest is written o'er

With trivial incidents of time and place,

And lo! the ideal, hidden beneath, revives.

L'ENVOI

Written April 8, 1880.

THE POET AND HIS SONGS.

As the birds come in the Spring,

We know not from where; As the stars come at evening From depths of the air;

As the rain comes from the cloud, And the brook from the ground; As suddenly, low or loud,

Out of silence a sound;

As the grape comes to the vine,
The fruit to the tree;
As the wind comes to the pine,
And the tide to the sea;

As come the white sails of ships
O'er the ocean's verge;
As comes the smile to the lips,
The foam to the surge;

All hitherward blown

From the misty realm, that belongs

To the vast Unknown.

His, and not his, are the lays

He sings; and their fame