CHIMES.

Written August 28, 1879.

SWEET chimes! that in the loneliness of night Salute the passing hour, and in the dark And silent chambers of the household mark The movements of the myriad orbs of light! Through my closed eyelids, by the inner sight, I see the constellations in the arc

Of their great circles moving on, and hark!
I almost hear them singing in their flight.
Better than sleep it is to lie awake,
O'er-canopied by the vast starry dome
Of the immeasurable sky; to feel

The slumbering world sink under us, and make
Hardly an eddy, a mere rush of foam
On the great sea beneath a sinking keel.

FOUR BY THE CLOCK.

“Nahant, September 8, 1880, four o'clock in the morning.”
FOUR by the clock! and yet not day;
But the great world rolls and wheels away,
With its cities on land, and its ships at sea,
Into the dawn that is to be!

Only the lamp in the anchored bark
Sends its glimmer across the dark,
And the heavy breathing of the sea
Is the only sound that comes to me.

AUF WIEDERSEHEN.

IN MEMORY OF J. T. F.

In April, 1881, Mr. Longfellow notes in his diary:

A sorrowful and distracted week. Fields died on Sunday, the 24th. Palfrey died on Tuesday. Two intimate friends in one week!" The poem was written April 30, 1881.

UNTIL we meet again! That is the meaning
Of the familiar words, that men repeat

At parting in the street.

Ah yes, till then! but when death intervening
Rends us asunder, with what ceaseless pain
We wait for the Again!

The friends who leave us do not feel the sorrow Of parting, as we feel it, who must stay

Lamenting day by day,

And knowing, when we wake upon the morrow,
We shall not find in its accustomed place

The one beloved face.

It were a double grief, if the departed,
Being released from earth, should still retain
A sense of earthly pain;

It were a double grief, if the true-hearted,
Who loved us here, should on the farther shore
Remember us no more.

Believing, in the midst of our afflictions,
That death is a beginning, not an end,
We cry to them, and send

Farewells, that better might be called predictions,
Being fore-shadowings of the future, thrown
Into the vast Unknown.

Faith overleaps the confines of our reason,
And if by faith, as in old times was said,
Women received their dead

Raised up to life, then only for a season
Our partings are, nor shall we wait in vain
Until we meet again!

ELEGIAC VERSE.

Written at various times, mostly between April and July, 1881. In the notes at the end of the volume will be found further examples.

I.

PERADVENTURE of old, some bard in Ionian Islands, Walking alone by the sea, hearing the wash of

the waves,

Learned the secret from them of the beautiful verse elegiac,

Breathing into his song motion and sound of the

sea.

For as the wave of the sea, upheaving in long undulations,

Plunges loud on the sands, pauses, and turns, and retreats,

So the Hexameter, rising and singing, with cadence

sonorous,

Falls; and in refluent rhythm back the Pentameter flows.

II.

Not in his youth alone, but in age, may the heart of the poet

Bloom into song, as the gorse blossoms in autumn and spring.

III.

Not in tenderness wanting, yet rough are the rhymes of our poet;

Though it be Jacob's voice, Esau's, alas! are the hands.

IV.

Let us be grateful to writers for what is left in the inkstand;

When to leave off is an art only attained by the

Hail and snow and rain, are they not three, and

yet one?

VI.

By the mirage uplifted, the land floats vague in

the ether,

Ships and the shadows of ships hang in the mo

tionless air;

So by the art of the poet our common life is up

lifted,

So, transfigured, the world floats in a luminous

haze.

VII.

Like a French poem is Life; being only perfect in

structure

When with the masculine rhymes mingled the feminine are.

VIII.

Down from the mountain descends the brooklet, rejoicing in freedom;

Little it dreams of the mill hid in the valley

below;

Glad with the joy of existence, the child goes singing and laughing,

Little dreaming what toils lie in the future concealed.

IX.

As the ink from our pen, so flow our thoughts and our feelings

When we begin to write, however sluggish before.

X.

Like the Kingdom of Heaven, the Fountain of Youth is within us;

If we seek it elsewhere, old shall we grow in the search.

XI.

If

you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it;

Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.