WEATHERCOCK. If I change with all the winds that blow, 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; 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, And whichever way I meet it face to face, As a brave man meets his foe. And while we wrestle and strive, On Sundays I take my rest; THE TIDE RISES, THE TIDE FALLS. Written September 11, 1879. THE tide rises, the tide falls, The twilight darkens, the curlew calls; Darkness settles on roofs and walls, 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, SONNETS MY CATHEDRAL. Written April 20, 1879. LIKE two cathedral towers these stately pines Are singing! listen, ere the sound be fled, THE BURIAL OF THE POET. Written February 10, 1879. RICHARD HENRY DANA. IN the old churchyard of his native town, 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 With chapters of the Koran; but, ah! more NIGHT. Written April 18, 1879. INTO the darkness and the hush of night The ghosts of men and things, that haunt the light. The crowd, the clamor, the pursuit, the flight, 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, As come the white sails of ships 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 |