Want gave tongue, and, at her howl,
Sin awakened with a growl.
Ah, poor girl! she had a right
To a blessing from the light,
Title-deeds to sky and earth
God gave to her at her birth,
But, before they were enjoyed,
Poverty had made them void,
And had drunk the sunshine up
From all nature's ample cup,
Leaving her a first-born's share
In the dregs of darkness there.
Often, on the sidewalk bleak,
Hungry, all alone, and weak,
She has seen, in night and storm,
Rooms o'erflow with firelight warm,
Which, outside the window-glass,
Doubled all the cold, alas !
Till each ray that on her fell
Stabbed her like an icicle,
And she almost loved the wail
Of the bloodhounds on her trail.
Till the floor becomes her bier,
She shall feel their pantings near,
Close upon her very heels,
Spite of all the din of wheels;
Shivering on her pallet poor,
She shall hear them at the door
Whine and scratch to be let in,
Sister bloodhounds, Want and Sin!

Who, perhaps, a statue won
By the ill deeds he had done,
By the innocent blood he shed,
By the desolation spread
Over happy villages,
Blotting out the smile of peace.

There walks Judas, he who sold
Yesterday his Lord for gold,
Sold God's presence in his heart
For a proud step in the mart;
He hath dealt in flesh and blood, -
At the bank his name is good,
At the bank, and only there,
'T is a marketable ware.
In his eyes that stealthy gleam
Was not learned of sky or stream,
But it has the cold, hard glint
Of new dollars from the mint.
Open now your spirit's eyes,
Look through that poor clay disguise
Which has thickened, day by day,
Till it keeps all light at bay,
And his soul in pitchy gloom
Gropes about its narrow tomb,
From whose dank and slimy walls
Drop by drop the horror falls.
Look! a serpent lank and cold
Hugs his spirit fold on fold;
From his heart, all day and night,
It doth suck God's blessed light.
Drink it will, and drink it must,
Till the cup holds naught but dust;
All day long he hears it hiss,
Writhing in its fiendish bliss;
All night long he sees its eyes
Flicker with foul ecstasies,
As the spirit ebbs away
Into the absorbing clay.

Who is he that skulks, afraid
Of the trust he has betrayed,
Shuddering if perchance a gleam
Of old nobleness should stream
Through the pent, unwholesome room,
Where his shrunk soul cowers

gloom,

Spirit sad beyond the rest
By more instinct for the best?
'Tis a poet who was sent
For a bad world's punishment,
By compelling it to see
Golden glimpses of To Be,
By compelling it to hear

Songs that prove the angels near ;
Who was sent to be the tongue
Of the weak and spirit-wrung,
Whence the fiery-winged Despair
In men's shrinking eyes might flare.
'T is our hope doth fashion us
To base use or glorious:
He who might have been a lark
Of Truth's morning, from the dark
Raining down melodious hope
Of a freer, broader scope,
Aspirations, prophecies,
Of the spirit's full sunrise,
Chose to be a bird of night,
Which, with eyes refusing light,
Hooted from some hollow tree
Of the world's idolatry.
"T is his punishment to hear
Flutterings of pinions near,
And his own vain wings to feel
Drooping downward to his heel,
All their grace and import lost,
Burdening his weary ghost:
Ever walking by his side
He must see his angel guide,
Who at intervals doth turn
Looks on him so sadly stern,
With such ever-new surprise
Of hushed anguish in her eyes,
That it seems the light of day
From around him shrinks away,
Or drops blunted from the wall
Built around him by his fall.
Then the mountains, whose white peaks
Catch the morning's earliest streaks,
He must see, where prophets sit,
Turning east their faces lit,
Whence, with footsteps beautiful,
To the earth, yet dim and dull,
They the gladsome tidings bring
Of the sunlight's hastening:
Never can these hills of bliss
Be o'erclimbed by feet like his !

But enough! O, do not dare
From the next the veil to tear,
Woven of station, trade, or dress,
More obscene than nakedness,
Wherewith plausible culture drapes
Fallen Nature's myriad shapes!
Let us rather love to mark
How the unextinguished spark
Will shine through the thin disguise
Of our customs, pomps, and lies,

And, not seldom blown to flame, Vindicate its ancient claim.

1844.

85

STUDIES FOR TWO HEADS.

I.

SOME sort of heart I know is hers,
I chanced to feel her pulse one night;
A brain she has that never errs,
And yet is never nobly right;
It does not leap to great results,
But, in some corner out of sight,
Suspects a spot of latent blight,
And, o'er the impatient infinite,
She bargains, haggles, and consults.
Her eye,
- it seems a chemic test
And drops upon you like an acid;
It bites you with unconscious zest,
So clear and bright, so coldly placid;
It holds you quietly aloof,

It holds, and yet it does not win

you;

It merely puts you to the proof

And sorts what qualities are in you; It smiles, but never brings you nearer,

It lights, her nature draws not nigh; 'Tis but that yours is growing clearer To her assays;- yes, try and try,

You'll get no deeper than her eye. There, you are classified: she's gone Far, far away into herself; Each with its Latin label on, Your poor components, one by one,

Are laid upon their proper shelf In her compact and ordered mind, And what of you is left behind Is no more to her than the wind; In that clear brain, which, day and night, No movement of the heart e'er jos

Sensation glimmers through its rest, It speaks unmanacled by words,

As full of motion as a nest That palpitates with unfledged birds; 'Tis likest to Bethesda's stream, Forewarned through all its thrilling springs,

White with the angel's coming gleam, And rippled with his fanning wings.

Hear him unfold his plots and plans,
And larger destinies seem man's;
You conjure from his glowing face
The omen of a fairer race;
With one grand trope he boldly spans
The gulf wherein so many fall,
'Twixt possible and actual;
His first swift word, talaria-shod,
Exuberant with conscious God,
Out of the choir of planets blots
The present earth with all its spots.
Himself unshaken as the sky,
His words, like whirlwinds, spin on high
Systems and creeds pellmell together;
'Tis strange as to a deaf man's eye,
While trees uprooted splinter by,

The dumb turmoil of stormy weather;
Less of iconoclast than shaper,

His spirit, safe behind the reach
Of the tornado of his speech,

Burns calmly as a glowworm's tap

So great in speech, but, ah! in act

So overrun with vermin troubles,
The coarse, sharp-cornered, ugly fact
Of life collapses all his bubbles:
Had he but lived in Plato's day,
He might, unless my fancy errs,
Have shared that golden voice's sway
O'er barefooted philosophers.

Our nipping climate hardly suits
The ripening of ideal fruits:

His theories vanquish us all summer, But winter makes him dumb and dumber;

To see him 'mid life's needful things

Is something painfully bewildering; He seems an angel with clipt wings

Tied to a mortal wife and children, And by a brother seraph taken In the act of eating eggs and bacon. Like a clear fountain, his desire

Exults and leaps toward the light,
In every drop it says Aspire !
Striving for more ideal height;
And as the fountain, falling thence,
Crawls baffled through the common
gutter,

So, from his speech's eminence,
He shrinks into the present tense,

Unkinged by foolish bread and butter.

Yet smile not, worldling, for in deeds

Not all of life that's brave and wise is; He strews an ampler future's seeds,

'Tis your fault if no harvest rises; Smooth back the sneer; for is it naught That all he is and has is Beauty's? By soul the soul's gains must be wrought,

The Actual claims our coarser thought, The Ideal hath its higher duties.

ON A PORTRAIT OF DANTE
BY GIOTTO.

CAN this be thou who, lean and pale,
With such immitigable eye
Didst look upon those writhing souls in
bale,

And note each vengeance, and pass by

Cast backward one forbidden glance, And saw Francesca, with child's glee, Subdue and mount thy wild-horse knee

And with proud hands control its fiery prance?

With half-drooped lids, and smooth, round brow,

And eye remote, that inly sees Fair Beatrice's spirit wandering now

In some sea lulled Hesperides,
Thou movest through the jarring street,
Secluded from the noise of feet

By her gift-blossom in thy hand,
Thy branch of palm from Holy
Land;-

No trace is here of ruin's fiery sleet.
Yet there is something round thy lips
That prophesies the coming doom,
The soft, gray herald-shadow ere the
eclipse

Notches the perfect disk with gloom; A something that would banish thee, And thine untamed pursuer be,

From men and their unworthy fates, Though Florence had not shut her

And slumber sound beneath a flowery turf,

Of faults forgotten, and an inner place Kept sacred for us in the heart of friends;

But these were idle fancies, satisfied With the mere husk of this great mys

tery,

And dwelling in the outward shows of things.

Heaven is not mounted to on wings of dreams,

Nor doth the unthankful happiness of youth

Aim thitherward, but floats from bloom to bloom,

With earth's warm patch of sunshine well content:

'Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up, Whose golden rounds are our calami

ties,

Whereon our firm feet planting, nearer God

The spirit climbs, and hath its eyes unsealed.

farm to farm,

His cheery brothers, telling of the sun, Answer, till far away the joyance dies: We never knew before how God had filled

The summer air with happy living sounds;

All round us seems an overplus of life, And yet the one dear heart lies cold and still.

It is most strange, when the great miracle

Hath for our sakes been done, when we have had

Our inwardest experience of God, When with his presence still the room expands,

And is awed after him, that naught is changed,

That Nature's face looks unacknowledging,

And the mad world still dances heed

For good, not gravitating earthward yet,

But circling in diviner periods,
Are sent into the world,-no little thing,
When this unbounded possibility
Into the outer silence is withdrawn.
Ah, in this world, where every guiding
thread

Ends suddenly in the one sure centre, death,

The visionary hand of Might-have-been Alone can fill Desire's cup to the brim !

How changed, dear friend, are thy part and thy child's!

He bends above thy cradle now, or holds

His warning finger out to be thy guide; Thou art the nursling now; he watches

thee

Slow learning, one by one, the secret things

Which are to him used sights of every day;

He smiles to see thy wondering glances

To me, at least, his going hence hath given

Serener thoughts and nearer to the

skies,

And opened a new fountain in my heart For thee, my friend, and all: and O, if Death

More near approaches meditates, and clasps

Even now some dearer, more reluctan

hand,

God, strengthen thou my faith, that I may see

That 't is thine angel, who, with loving

haste,

Unto the service of the inner shrine, Doth waken thy beloved with a kiss

1844.