And then one light among the rest How tell to what heaven-hallowed seat Here was the bird's primeval nest, High on a promontory Star-pharosed, where she takes her rest To brood new æons 'neath her breast, The future's unfledged glory. I know not how, but I was there And in the nest an egg of gold Lay soft in self-made lustre ; Gazing whereon, what depths untold Within, what marvels manifold, Seemed silently to muster! Daily such splendors to confront It glowed as when Saint Peter's front, And seems to throb translucent. One saw therein the life of man, I knew this as one knows in dream, Are chained as in our work-day scheme, That seemed to come from Baucis. "Bless Zeus!" she cried, "I'm safe below!" First pale, then red as coral; And I, still drowsy, pondered slow, And seemed to find, but hardly know, Something like this for moral. Each day the world is born anew For him who takes it rightly; Not fresher that which Adam knew, Not sweeter that whose moonlit dew Entranced Arcadia nightly. Rightly? That's simply: 't is to see Some substance casts these shadows Simply? That's nobly: 't is to know Beauty, Herr Doctor, trust in me, As if it had a way to fuse When life, once past its fortieth year, The mind's own shadow, which the boy Saw onward point to hope and joy, And, argue with it as we will, "But count the gains," I hear you say, "Which far the seeming loss outweigh; Friendships built firm 'gainst flood and wind On rock-foundations of the mind; Old sorrows crystalled into pearls ; and strain With palms benumbed against the pane?" Each quicksand safe to build a fame on; Believe that prudence snug excels Youth's gross of verdant spectacles, Through which earth's withered stubble seen Looks autumn-proofas painted green, - And, for your talents shaped with practice, Convince me first that such the fact is; What's Knowledge, with her stocks. and lands, To gay Conjecture's yellow strands? What's watching her slow flocks in crease To ventures for the golden fleece? What her deep ships, safe under lee, To youth's light craft, that drinks the sea, For Flying Islands making sail, 'T was an old couple, says the poet, That lodged the gods and did not know it; Youth sees and knows them as they were Before Olympus' top was bare; From Swampscot's flats his eye divine Charm that turns Doll to Cleopatra ; Divine as Ariadne saw him, Storms through Youth's pulse with all his train And wins new Indies in his brain; Apollo (with the old a trope, Dear Friend, you're right and I am wrong; My quibbles are not worth a song, My fancy sad to tricks like these. Be patient, and perhaps (who knows?) These may be winged one day like those; If thrushes, close-embowered to sing, Pierced through with June's delicious sting; If swallows, their half-hour to run (And there's where I shall beat them hollow, If he is not a courtly St. John, But, as West said, a Mohawk Injun.) But, the dead plunder once secured Yes, this is life! And so the bard What follows is but weary trying. Now I've a notion, if a poet up for themes, his verse will show it ; I wait for subjects that hunt me, AN EMBER PICTURE. How strange are the freaks of memory Fate tried his bastions, she but forced a door Leading to sweeter manhood and more sound. Even as a wind-waved fountain's sway. ing shade Seems of mixed race, a gray wraith shot with sun, So through his trial faith translucent rayed Till darkness, half disnatured so, betrayed A heart of sunshine that would fain o'errun. Surely if skill in song the shears may stay And of its purpose cheat the charmed abyss, If our poor life be lengthened by a lay, He shall not go, although his presence THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY. "COME forth!" my catbird calls to me, "And hear me sing a cavatina That, in this old familiar tree, Shall hang a garden of Alcina. "These buttercups shall brim with wine Beyond all Lesbian juice or Massic; May not New England be divine? My ode to ripening summer classic? "Or, if to me you will not hark, By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing Till all the alder-coverts dark Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing. "Come out beneath the unmastered sky, With its emancipating spaces, And learn to sing as well as I, Without premeditated graces. "What boot your many-volumed gains, Those withered leaves forever turning, To win, at best, for all your pains, A nature mummy-wrapt in learning? "The leaves wherein true wisdom lies On living trees the sun are drinking; Those white clouds, drowsing through the skies, Grew not so beautiful by thinking. "Come out! with me the oriole cries, Escape the demon that pursues you! And, hark, the cuckoo weatherwise, Still hiding, farther onward wooes you." "Alas, dear friend, that, all my days, Has poured from that syringa thicket The quaintly discontinuous lays To which I hold a season-ticket, "A season-ticket cheaply bought With a dessert of pilfered berries, And who so oft my soul hast caught With morn and evening voluntaries, "Deem me not faithless, if all day Among my dusty books I linger, No pipe, like thee, for June to play With fancy-led, half-conscious finger. "A bird is singing in my brain And bubbling o'er with mingled fancies, Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain Fed with the sap of old romances. "I ask no ampler skies than those His magic music rears above me, No falser friends, no truer foes, And does not Doña Clara love me? "Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars, A rush of feet, and rapiers clashing, Then silence deep with breathless stars, And overhead a white hand flashing. |