CHANGED.

"November 25, 1847. [In Portland.] After church, walked with Fessenden to the 'gallows' that used to be, a fine hillside, looking down and over the cove." This was the scene of Changed, but the poem was not written till 1858, when the poet was on a visit to Portland.

FROM the outskirts of the town,

Where of old the mile-stone stood,
Now a stranger, looking down
I behold the shadowy crown

Of the dark and haunted wood.

Is it changed, or am I changed?
Ah! the oaks are fresh and green,
But the friends with whom I ranged
Through their thickets are estranged
By the years that intervene.

Bright as ever flows the sea,
Bright as ever shines the sun,
But alas! they seem to me
Not the sun that used to be,
Not the tides that used to run.

THE CHALLENGE.

I HAVE a vague remembrance
Of a story, that is told

In some ancient Spanish legend
Or chronicle of old.

It was when brave King Sanchez

Was before Zamora slain,

THE CHALLENGE

And his great besieging army
Lay encamped upon the plain.

Don Diego de Ordoñez

Sallied forth in front of all, And shouted loud his challenge To the warders on the wall.

All the people of Zamora,

Both the born and the unborn, As traitors did he challenge With taunting words of scorn.

The living, in their houses,

And in their graves, the dead! And the waters of their rivers,

And their wine, and oil, and bread!

There is a greater army,

That besets us round with strife,

A starving, numberless army,

At all the gates of life.

The poverty-stricken millions

Who challenge our wine and bread, And impeach us all as traitors,

Both the living and the dead.

And whenever I sit at the banquet,
Where the feast and song are high,
Amid the mirth and the music

I can hear that fearful cry.

79

And hollow and haggard faces
Look into the lighted hall,
And wasted hands are extended

To catch the crumbs that fall.

For within there is light and plenty,
And odors fill the air;

But without there is cold and darkness,
And hunger and despair.

And there in the camp of famine,
In wind and cold and rain,
Christ, the great Lord of the army,
Lies dead upon the plain !

THE BROOK AND THE WAVE.

Written October 18, 1849.

THE brooklet came from the mountain,

As sang the bard of old, Running with feet of silver Over the sands of gold!

Far away in the briny ocean

There rolled a turbulent wave,

Now singing along the sea-beach,
Now howling along the cave.

And the brooklet has found the billow,
Though they flowed so far apart,

And has filled with its freshness and sweetness
That turbulent, bitter heart!

AFTERMATH

81

AFTERMATH.

This poem, placed last in the book, gave title to the volume published in 1873, which contained the third part of Tales of a Wayside Inn and the third flight of Birds of Passage. The completion of the Tales on his sixty-sixth birthday may have given rise to this poem.

WHEN the summer fields are mown,

When the birds are fledged and flown,
And the dry leaves strew the path;

With the falling of the snow,
With the cawing of the crow,

Once again the fields we mow

And gather in the aftermath.

Not the sweet, new grass with flowers
Is this harvesting of ours;

Not the upland clover bloom;
But the rowen mixed with weeds,
Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,
Where the poppy drops its seeds
In the silence and the gloom.

FLIGHT THE FOURTH

Collected in the volume entitled The Masque of Pandora and other Poems, 1876. The first draft of the first poem was made March 30, 1874. It did not satisfy the poet, for he wrote, April 2: "I have been trying to write something about Sumner, but to little purpose. I cannot collect my faculties."

CHARLES SUMNER.

GARLANDS upon his grave
And flowers upon his hearse,
And to the tender heart and brave
The tribute of this verse.

His was the troubled life,
The conflict and the pain,
The grief, the bitterness of strife,
The honor without stain.

Like Winkelried, he took

Into his manly breast

The sheaf of hostile spears, and broke

A path for the oppressed.

Then from the fatal field

Upon a nation's heart

Borne like a warrior on his shield!

So should the brave depart.

Death takes us by surprise,
And stays our hurrying feet :