It wavers, it scatters, 'T is gone past recalling! A tear's sudden falling The magic cup shatters, Breaks the spell of the waters, And the sand cone once more, With a ceaseless renewing, Its dance is pursuing
On the silvery floor,
O'er and o'er,
With a noiseless and ceaseless renewing.
'T is a woodland enchanted! If you ask me, Where is it? I only can answer, 'Tis past my disclosing; Not to choice is it granted By sure paths to visit The still pool enclosing Its blithe little dancer; But in some day, the rarest Of many Septembers, When the pulses of air rest, And all things lie dreaming In drowsy haze steaming From the wood's glowing embers, Then, sometimes, unheeding, And asking not whither, By a sweet inward leading My feet are drawn thither,
And, looking with awe in the magical mirror,
I see through my tears, Half doubtful of seeing, The face unperverted, The warm golden being Of a child of five years;
And spite of the mists and the error, And the days overcast,
Can feel that I walk undeserted, But forever attended
By the glad heavens that bended O'er the innocent past; Toward fancy or truth
Doth the sweet vision win me? Dare I think that I cast In the fountain of youth The fleeting reflection Of some bygone perfection That still lingers in me?
A STRANGER came one night to Yus souf's tent,
Saying, "Behold one outcast and in dread,
Against whose life the bow of power is bent,
Who flies, and hath not where to lay his head;
I come to thee for shelter and for food, To Yussouf, called through all our tribes "The Good."
"This tent is mine," said Yussouf, "but no more
Than it is God's; come in, and be at peace;
Freely shalt thou partake of all my store As I of His who buildeth over these Our tents his glorious roof of night and
And at whose door none ever yet heard
WHAT RABBI JEHOSHA SAID.
RABBI JEHOSHA used to say That God made angels every day, Perfect as Michael and the rest First brooded in creation's nest, Whose only office was to cry Hosanna! once, and then to die ; Or rather, with Life's essence blent, To be led home from banishment.
Rabbi Jehosha had the skill
To know that Heaven is in God's will; And doing that, though for a space One heart-beat long, may win a grace As full of grandeur and of glow As Princes of the Chariot know.
'T were glorious, no doubt, to be One of the strong-winged Hierarchy, To burn with Seraphs, or to shine With Cherubs, deathlessly divine; Yet I, perhaps, poor earthly clod, Could I forget myself in God, Could I but find my nature's clew Simply as birds and blossoms do, And but for one rapt moment know 'Tis Heaven must come, not we must
Elfish daughter of Apollo ! Thee, from thy father stolen and bound To serve in Vulcan's clangorous smithy Prometheus (primal Yankee) found, And, when he had tampered with thee, (Too confiding little maid!) In a reed's precarious hollow To our frozen earth conveyed : For he swore I know not what; Endless ease should be thy lot, Pleasure that should never falter, Life-long play, and not a duty Save to hover o'er the altar, Vision of celestial beauty,
Fed with precious woods and spices, Then, perfidious! having got Thee in the net of his devices,
Sold thee into endless slavy, Made thee a drudge to boil the pot, Thee, Helios' daughter, who dost bear His likeness in thy golden hair; Thee, by nature wild and wavery Palpitating, evanescent
As the shade of Dian's crescent Life, motion, gladness, everyr bere !
Fathom deep men bury thee In the furnace dark and still, There, with dreariest mockery, Making thee eat, against thy will Blackest Pennsylvanian stone; But thou dost avenge thy doom, For, from out thy catacomb, Day and night thy wrath is blor In a withering simoom, And, adown that cavern drear, Thy black pitfall in the floor, Staggers the lusty antique cheer, Despairing, and is seen no more!
Elfish I may rightly name thee; We enslave, but cannot tame thee; With fierce snatches, now and then, Thou pluckest at thy right again, And thy down-trod instincts savage To stealthy insurrection creep, While thy wittol masters sleep, And burst in undiscerning ravage; Then how thou shak'st thy bacchant locks!
While brazen pulses, far and near, Throb thick and thicker wild with feat And dread conjecture, till the drear Disordered clangor every steeple rocks!
But when we make a friend of thee, And admit thee to the hall On our nights of festival,
Then, Cinderella, who could see In thee the kitchen's stunted thrall? Once more a Princess lithe and tall, Thou dancest with a whispering tread, While the bright marvel of thy head In crinkling gold floats all abroad, And gloriously dost vindicate The legend of thy lineage great, Earth-exiled daughter of the Pythiar god!
Now in the ample chimney-place, To honor thy acknowledged race, We crown thee high with laurel good, Thy shining father's sacred wood, Which, guessing thy ancestral right, Sparkles and snaps his dumb delight, And, at thy touch, poor outcast one, Feels through his gladdened fibres go The tingle and thrill and vassal glow Of instincts loyal to the sun.
O thou of home the guardian Lar, And, when our earth hath wandered far Into the cold, and deep snow covers The walks of our New England lovers, Their sweet secluded evening-star! 'T was with thy rays the English Muse Ripened her mild domestic hues; 'T was by thy flicker that she conned The fireside wisdom that enrings With light from heaven familiar things; By thee she found the homely faith In whose mild eyes thy comfort stay'th, When Death, extinguishing his torch, Gropes for the latch-string in the porch; The love that wanders not beyond His earliest nest, but sits and sings While children smooth his patient wings;
Therefore with thee I love to read Our brave old poets: at thy touch how stirs
Life in the withered words! how swift
While the gray snow-storm, held aloof, To softest outline rounds the roof, Or the rude North with baffled strain Shoulders the frost-starred window- pane!
Now the kind nymph to Bacchus borne By Morpheus' daughter, she that seems Gifted upon her natal morn
By him with fire, by her with dreams, Nicotia, dearer to the Muse Than all the grapes' bewildering juice, We worship, unforbid of thee; And, as her incense floats and curls In airy spires and wayward whirls, Or poises on its tremulous stalk A flower of frailest revery, So winds and loiters, idly free, The current of unguided talk, Now laughter-rippled, and now caught In smooth, dark pools of deeper thought. Meanwhile thou mellowest every word, A sweetly unobtrusive third;
For thou hast magic beyond wine, To unlock natures each to each; The unspoken thought thou canst di- vine;
Thou fillest the pauses of the speech With whispers that to dream-land reach And frozen fancy-springs unchain In Arctic outskirts of the brain; Sun of all inmost confidences ! To thy rays doth the heart unclose Its formal calyx of pretences, That close against rude day's offences, And open its shy midnight rose.
Thou holdest not the master key With which thy Sire sets free the mys tic gates
Of Past and Future: not for common fates
Do they wide open fling,
And, with a far-heard ring, Swing back their willing valves melo diously;
Only to ceremonial days,
And great processions of imperial song That set the world at gaze,
Doth such high privilege belong: But thou a postern-door canst ope
To humbler chambers of the selfsame
The terror comes to me subdued And charmed by distance, To deepen the habitual mood Of my existence.
Are those, I muse, the Easter chimes? And listen, weaving careless rhymes While the loud city's griefs and crimes Pay gentle allegiance
To the fine quiet that sublimes These dreamy regions.
And when the storm o'erwhelms the shore,
I watch entranced as, o'er and o'er, The light revolves amid the roar So still and saintly,
Now large and near, now more and
This, too, despairing sailors see Flash out the breakers 'neath their lee In sudden snow, then lingeringly Wane tow'rd eclipse,
While through the dark the shuddering
Gropes for the ships.
And is it right, this mood of mind That thus, in revery enshrined, Can in the world mere topics find For musing stricture, Seeing the life of humankind Only as picture?
The events in line of battle go; In vain for me their trumpets blow As unto him that lieth low
In death's dark arches,
And through the sod hears throbbing slow
The muffled marches.
O Duty, am I dead to thee In this my cloistered ecstasy, In this lone shallop on the sea
That drifts tow'rd Silence? And are those visioned shores I see But sirens' islands?
My Dante frowns with lip-locked mien, As who would say, ""T is those, I ween, Whom lifelong armor-chafe makes lean That win the laurel";
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