Ere the placid lips be cold? What hope or fear or joy is thine? Hast thou heard the butterflies With what voice the violet woos Hast thou looked upon the breath Some honey-converse feeds thy mind, His curtains, wasting odorous sighs Lovest thou the doleful wind When thou gazest at the skies? Doth the low-tongued Orient On thy pillow, lowly bent With melodious airs lovelorn, Breathing light against thy face, A CHARACTER. I. WITH a half-glance upon the sky II. He spake of beauty: that the dull Life in dead stones, or spirit in air; He smoothed his chin and sleeked his hair, III. He spake of virtue: not the gods More purely, when they wish to charm Pallas and Juno sitting by: And with a sweeping of the arm, Devolved his rounded periods. IV. Most delicately hour by hour V. With lips depressed as he were meek, Upon himself himself did feed: Quiet, dispassionate, and cold, And other than his form of creed, THE POET THE poet in a golden clime was born, Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, He saw through life and death, through good and ill He saw through his own soul. The marvel of the everlasting will, An open scroll, Before him lay with echoing feet he threaded The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed Like Indian reeds blown from his silver tongue, From Calpe unto Caucasus they sung, And vagrant melodies the winds which bore Then, like the arrow-seeds of the field-flower, Cleaving, took root, and springing forth anew Like to the mother plant in semblance, grew And bravely furnished all abroad to fling To throng with stately blooms the breathing spring So many minds did gird their orbs with beams, Heaven flowed upon the soul in many dreams Thus truth was multiplied on truth, the world And through the wreaths of floating dark upcurled And Freedom reared in that august sunrise When rites and forms before his burning eyes There was no blood upon her maiden robes But round about the circles of the globes And in her raiment's hem was traced in flame All evil dreams of power,-a sacred name. Her words did gather thunder as they ran, So was their meaning to her words. No sword But one poor poet's scroll, and with his word THE POET'S MIND. I. VEX not thou the poet's mind II. Dark-browed sophist, come not anear; Holy water will I pour Into every spicy flower Of the laurel-shrubs that hedge it around. There is frost in your breath Which would blight the plants. The wild-bird's din. In the heart of the garden the merry bird chants |