If we go anywhere we'll go together to meet what happens, May-be we'll be better off and blither, and learn something, May-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs, (who knows?)

May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning—so now finally,

Good-bye-and hail! my Fancy.

Darest Thou Now, O Soul

Darest thou now, O soul,

Walk out with me toward the unknown region,

Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow? No map there, nor guide,

Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,

Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.

I know it not, O soul!

Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us,

All waits undreamed of in that region, that inaccessible land.

Till when the tie is loosened,

All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,

Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.

Then we burst forth, we float,

In Time and Space, O soul! prepared for them,

Equal, equipped at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil, O soul!

THOMAS DUNN ENGLISH (1819-1902)

Ben Bolt

Don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,-
Sweet Alice whose hair was so brown,
Who wept with delight when you gave her a smile,
And trembled with fear at your frown?

In the old church-yard in the valley, Ben Bolt,
In a corner obscure and alone,

They have fitted a slab of the granite so gray,
And Alice lies under the stone.

Under the hickory tree, Ben Bolt,

Which stood at the foot of the hill,
Together we've lain in the noonday shade,
And listened to Appleton's mill.

The mill-wheel has fallen to pieces, Ben Bolt,
The rafters have tumbled in,

And a quiet which crawls round the walls as you gaze
Has followed the olden din.

Do you mind of the cabin of logs, Ben Bolt,
At the edge of the pathless wood,

And the button-ball tree with its motley limbs,
Which nigh by the doorstep stood?

The cabin to ruin has gone, Ben Bolt,

The tree you would seek for in vain; And where once the lords of the forest waved Are grass and the golden grain.

And don't you remember the school, Ben Bolt,
With the master so cruel and grim,

And the shaded nook in the running brook
Where the children went to swim?

Grass grows on the master's grave, Ben Bolt,
The spring of the brook is dry,

And of all the boys who were schoolmates then
There are only you and I.

There is change in the things I loved, Ben Bolt,
They have changed from the old to the new;
But I feel in the deeps of my spirit the truth,
There never was change in you.
Twelvemonths twenty have past, Ben Bolt,
Since first we were friends-yet I hail
Your presence a blessing, your friendship a truth,
Ben Bolt of the salt-sea gale.

JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND (1819-1881)
Daniel Gray

If I shall ever win the home in heaven
For whose sweet rest I humbly hope and pray,
In the great company of the forgiven

I shall be sure to find old Daniel Gray.

I knew him well; in truth, few knew him better;
For my young eyes oft read for him the Word,
And saw how meekly from the crystal letter
He drank the life of his beloved Lord.

Old Daniel Gray was not a man who lifted
On ready words his freight of gratitude,
Nor was he called as one among the gifted,
In the prayer-meetings of his neighborhood.

He had a few old-fashioned words and phrases,
Linked in with sacred texts and Sunday rhymes;
And I suppose that in his prayers and graces
I've heard them all at least a thousand times.

I see him now-his form, his face, his motions,
His homespun habit, and his silver hair,-
And hear the language of his trite devotions,
Rising behind the straight-backed kitchen chair.

I can remember how the sentence sounded-
"Help us, O Lord, to pray and not to faint!"
And how the "conquering and to conquer," rounded
The loftier aspirations of the saint.

He had some notions that did not improve him:
He never kissed his children-so they say;

And finest scenes and fairest flowers would move him
Less than a horse-shoe picked up in the way.

He had a hearty hatred of oppression,
And righteous words for sin of every kind;
Alas, that the transgressor and transgression
Were linked so closely in his honest mind!

He could see naught but vanity in beauty,
And naught but weakness in a fond caress,
And pitied men whose views of Christian duty
Allowed indulgence in such foolishness.

Yet there were love and tenderness within him;
And I am told that when his Charley died,

Nor nature's need nor gentle words could win him
From his fond vigils at the sleeper's side.

And when they came to bury little Charley
They found fresh dew-drops sprinkled in his hair,
And on his breast a rose-bud gathered early,
And guessed, but did not know, who placed it there.

Honest and faithful, constant in his calling,
Strictly attendant on the means of grace,
Instant in prayer, and fearful most of falling,
Old Daniel Gray was always in his place.

A practical old man, and yet a dreamer,

He thought that in some strange, unlooked-for way,
His mighty Friend in Heaven, the great Redeemer,
Would honor him with wealth some golden day.

This dream he carried in a hopeful spirit
Until in death his patient eye grew dim,
And his Redeemer called him to inherit
The heaven of wealth long garnered up for him.

So, if I ever win the home in heaven
For whose sweet rest I humbly hope and pray,
In the great company of the forgiven
I shall be sure to find old Daniel Gray.

HERMAN MELVILLE (1819-1891)

The Enviable Isles

Through storms you reach them and from storms are free
Afar descried, the foremost drear in hue,
But, nearer, green; and, on the marge, the sea
Makes thunder low and mist of rainbowed dew.

But, inland,-where the sleep that folds the hills
A dreamier sleep, the trance of God, instils,-

On uplands hazed, in wandering airs aswoon,
Slow-swaying palms salute love's cypress tree
Adown in vale where pebbly runlets croon
A song to lull all sorrow and all glee.

Sweet-fern and moss in many a glade are here,

Where, strown in flocks, what cheek-flushed myriads lie Dimpling in dream, unconscious slumberers mere, While billows endless round the beaches die.

THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS (1819-1892)
On a Bust of Dante

See, from this counterfeit of him
Whom Arno shall remember long,
How stern of lineament, how grim,
The father was of Tuscan's song:
There but the burning sense of wrong,

Perpetual care and scorn, abide; Small friendship for the lordly throng; Distrust of all the world beside.

Faithful if this wan image be,
No dream his life was, but a fight!
Could any Beatrice see

A lover in that anchorite?

To that cold Ghibelline's gloomy sight
Who could have guessed the visions came
Of Beauty, veiled with heavenly light,
In circles of eternal flame?

The lips as Cuma's cavern close, The cheeks with fast and sorrow thin, The rigid front, almost morose, But for the patient hope within, Declare a life whose course hath been Unsullied still, though still severe, Which, through the wavering days of sin, Kept itself icy-chaste and clear.

Not wholly such his haggard look
When wandering once, forlorn, he strayed,
With no companion save his book,
To Corvo's hushed monastic shade;
Where, as the Benedictine laid

His palm upon the convent's guest,
The single boon for which he prayed
Was peace, that pilgrim's one request.

Peace dwells not here,-this rugged face Betrays no spirit of repose;

The sullen warrior sole we trace, The marble man of many woes. Such was his mien when first arose

The thought of that strange tale divine, When hell he peopled with his foes, Dread scourge of many a guilty line.

War to the last he waged with all The tyrant canker-worms of earth; Baron and duke, in hold and hall, Cursed the dark hour that gave him birth; He used Rome's harlot for his mirth; Plucked bare hypocrisy and crime; But valiant souls of knightly worth Transmitted to the rolls of Time.