Hang inverted, and between
Floating cloud or sky serene.

Swift or swallow on the wing
Seems the only living thing,
Or the loon, that laughs and flies
Down to those reflected skies.

Silent stream! thy Indian name
Unfamiliar is to fame ;

For thou hidest here alone,
Well content to be unknown.

But thy tranquil waters teach
Wisdom deep as human speech,
Moving without haste or noise
In unbroken equipoise.

Though thou turnest no busy mill, And art ever calm and still,

Even thy silence seems to say

To the traveller on his

way:

"Traveller, hurrying from the heat
Of the city, stay thy feet!
Rest awhile, nor longer waste
Life with inconsiderate haste !

"Be not like a stream that brawls Loud with shallow waterfalls,

But in quiet self-control

Link together soul and soul."

FLIGHT THE FIFTH

Collected in the volume entitled Kéramos and other Poems, 1878. Elmwood, in the first poem, is the home of James Russell Lowell.

THE HERONS OF ELMWOOD.

WARM and still is the summer night,

As here by the river's brink I wander; White overhead are the stars, and white The glimmering lamps on the hillside yonder.

Silent are all the sounds of day;

Nothing I hear but the chirp of crickets, And the cry of the herons winging their way O'er the poet's house in the Elmwood thickets.

Call to him, herons, as slowly you pass

To your roosts in the haunts of the exiled thrushes,

Sing him the song of the green morass,

And the tides that water the reeds and rushes.

Sing him the mystical Song of the Hern,

And the secret that baffles our utmost seeking; For only a sound of lament we discern,

And cannot interpret the words you are speak

ing.

33550B

Sing of the air, and the wild delight

Of wings that uplift and winds that uphold

you,

The joy of freedom, the rapture of flight

Through the drift of the floating mists that infold you;

Of the landscape lying so far below,

With its towns and rivers and desert places; And the splendor of light above, and the glow Of the limitless, blue, ethereal spaces.

Ask him if songs of the Troubadours,
Or of Minnesingers in old black-letter,
Sound in his ears more sweet than yours,

And if yours are not sweeter and wilder and better.

Sing to him, say to him, here at his gate,

Where the boughs of the stately elms are meeting,

Some one hath lingered to meditate,

And send him unseen this friendly greeting;

That many another hath done the same,

Though not by a sound was the silence broken;

The surest pledge of a deathless name

Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken.

A DUTCH PICTURE

101

A DUTCH PICTURE.

SIMON DANZ has come home again,

From cruising about with his buccaneers; He has singed the beard of the King of Spain, And carried away the Dean of Jaen

And sold him in Algiers.

In his house by the Maese, with its roof of tiles,
And weathercocks flying aloft in air,

There are silver tankards of antique styles,
Plunder of convent and castle, and piles
Of carpets rich and rare.

In his tulip-garden there by the town,
Overlooking the sluggish stream,
With his Moorish cap and dressing-gown,
The old sea-captain, hale and brown,
Walks in a waking dream.

A smile in his gray mustachio lurks
Whenever he thinks of the King of Spain,
And the listed tulips look like Turks,
And the silent gardener as he works
Is changed to the Dean of Jaen.

The windmills on the outermost
Verge of the landscape in the haze,
To him are towers on the Spanish coast,
With whiskered sentinels at their post,
Though this is the river Maese.

But when the winter rains begin,

He sits and smokes by the blazing brands, And old seafaring men come in,

Goat-bearded, gray, and with double chin,
And rings upon their hands.

They sit there in the shadow and shine
Of the flickering fire of the winter night;
Figures in color and design

Like those by Rembrandt of the Rhine,
Half darkness and half light.

And they talk of ventures lost or won,

And their talk is ever and ever the same, While they drink the red wine of Tarragon, From the cellars of some Spanish Don, Or convent set on flame.

Restless at times with heavy strides
He paces his parlor to and fro;
He is like a ship that at anchor rides,
And swings with the rising and falling tides,
And tugs at her anchor-tow.

Voices mysterious far and near,

Sound of the wind and sound of the sea, Are calling and whispering in his ear, "Simon Danz! Why stayest thou here? Come forth and follow me!"

So he thinks he shall take to the sea again For one more cruise with his buccaneers, To singe the beard of the King of Spain,