The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pike County Ballads and Other Poems, by John Hay

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at https://www.gutenberg.org/license. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Pike County Ballads and Other Poems

Author: John Hay

Release Date: July 1, 2004 [EBook #6062]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Les Bowler and David Widger

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ***

PIKE COUNTY BALLADS

AND OTHER POEMS

By John Hay

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION.

THE PIKE COUNTY BALLADS.

JIM BLUDSO, OF THE "PRAIRIE BELLE."

LITTLE BREECHES.

BANTY TIM.

THE MYSTERY OF GILGAL.

GOLYER.

THE PLEDGE AT SPUNKY POINT.

WANDERLIEDER.

THE SPHINX OF THE TUILERIES.

THE SURRENDER OF SPAIN.

THE PRAYER OF THE ROMANS.

THE CURSE OF HUNGARY.

THE MONKS OF BASLE.

THE ENCHANTED SHIRT.

A WOMAN'S LOVE.

ON PITZ LANGUARD.

BOUDOIR PROPHECIES.

A TRIUMPH OF ORDER.

ERNST OF EDELSHEIM.

MY CASTLE IN SPAIN.

SISTER SAINT LUKE.

NEW AND OLD.

MILES KEOGH'S HORSE.

THE ADVANCE-GUARD.

LOVE'S PRAYER.

CHRISTINE.

EXPECTATION.

TO FLORA.

A HAUNTED ROOM.

DREAMS.

THE LIGHT OF LOVE.

QUAND MEME.

WORDS.

THE STIRRUP-CUP.

A DREAM OF BRIC-A-BRAC.

LIBERTY.

THE WHITE FLAG.

THE LAW OF DEATH.

MOUNT TABOR.

RELIGION AND DOCTRINE.

SINAI AND CALVARY.

THE VISION OF ST. PETER.

ISRAEL.

THE CROWS AT WASHINGTON.

REMORSE.

ESSE QUAM VIDERI.

WHEN THE BOYS COME HOME.

LESE-AMOUR.

NORTHWARD.

IN THE FIRELIGHT.

IN A GRAVEYARD.

THE PRAIRIE.

CENTENNIAL.

A WINTER NIGHT.

STUDENT-SONG.

HOW IT HAPPENED.

GOD'S VENGEANCE.

TOO LATE.

LOVE'S DOUBT.

LACRIMAS.

ON THE BLUFF.

UNA.

THROUGH THE LONG DAYS.

A PHYLACTERY.

BLONDINE.

DISTICHES.

REGARDANT.

GUY OF THE TEMPLE.

TRANSLATIONS.

THE WAY TO HEAVEN.

COUNTESS JUTTA.

A BLESSING.

TO THE YOUNG.

THE GOLDEN CALF.

THE AZRA.

GOOD AND BAD LUCK.

L'AMOUR DU MENSONGE.

AMOR MYSTICUS.

INTRODUCTION.

Pike County Ballads and other poems in this volume by Colonel John Hay represent in the best manner the spirit of our strong and independent sister-land across the Atlantic. Pike County Ballads do full justice to the raw material in the United States, and show a loyal temper in the rough. The other pieces show how the love of freedom speaks through finer spirits of the land, and, dealing with realities, can turn a life of action into music.

Colonel Hay has lived always in vigorous relation with the full life of the people whose best mind his poems represent. He is descended from a Scottish soldier, a John Hay, who, at the beginning of the last century, left his country to take service under the Elector-Palatine, and whose son went afterwards with his family to settle among the Kentucky pioneers. Dr. Charles Hay was the father of John Hay the poet, who was born on the 8th of October 1838, in the heart of the United States, at Salem in Indiana. When twenty years old he graduated at the neighbouring Brown University, where his fellow-students valued his skill as a writer. Then he studied for the Bar, and he was called to the Bar three years later, at Springfield, Illinois.

At Springfield, Abraham Lincoln practised as a barrister. Shrewd, lively, earnest, honest, he grudged help to a rogue. In a criminal case, when evidence threw unexpected light upon a client's character, Abraham Lincoln said suddenly to his junior, "Swett, the man is guilty; you defend him, I can't." In another case, when a piece of rascality in his client came out, Abraham Lincoln left his junior in possession of the case and went to his hotel. To the judge, who sent for him, he replied that he had found his hands were very dirty, and had gone away to get them clean. Almost immediately after John Hay's call to the Bar at Springfield he was chosen by Abraham Lincoln, newly made President, to go with him to Washington. At Washington, Hay acted as Assistant-Secretary, and was also, in the Civil War, aide-de-camp to President Lincoln. Throughout that momentous struggle he was actively employed on the side of the North at the headquarters and on the field of battle. He served for a time under Generals Hunter and Gillmore, became a Colonel in the army of the North, and served also as Assistant Adjutant-General. John Hay had in that struggle three brothers and two brothers-in-law serving also in the field.

In 1890 there was published, in ten volumes, at New York, by the New York Century Company, "Abraham Lincoln, a History: by John G. Nicolay and John Hay." This was, with fresh material inserted, a collection of chapters that had been published in The Century Magazine from November 1886 to the beginning of 1890. The friends, who worked equally together upon this large record, said, "We knew Mr. Lincoln intimately before his election to the Presidency. We came from Illinois to Washington with him, and remained at his side and in his service—separately or together—until the day of his death."

Abroad, as at home, Colonel Hay has been active in the service of his country. In 1865 he went to Paris as Secretary of Legation, and after remaining two years in that office he went as Charge-d'Affaires for the United States to Vienna. After a year at Vienna, Colonel Hay went to Madrid as Secretary of Legation under General Daniel Sickles. In 1870 he returned to the United States, and was for the next five years an editorial writer for the New York Tribune. During seven months, when Whitelaw Reid was in Europe, Colonel Hay was editor in chief.

It was for The Tribune that Hay wrote "The Pike County Ballads," which were first reprinted separately in 1871, and are placed first in the collection of his poems. In the same year he published his "Castilian Days," inspired by residence in Spain.

In 1876 Colonel Hay removed from New York to Cleveland, Ohio. He then ceased to take part in the editing of The Tribune, but continued friendly service as a writer. From 1879 to 1881 Colonel Hay served under President Hayes as Assistant-Secretary of State in the Government of the United States. In 1881 he was President of the International Sanitary Congress at Washington. Since that time he has been active, with John G. Nicolay, in the preparation and production of the full Memoir of Abraham Lincoln, now completed, that will take high rank among the records of a war which, in its issues, touched the future of the world, perhaps, more nearly than any war since Waterloo, not even excepting the great struggle which ended at Sedan.

That is the life of a man, here is its music.

H. M.

THE PIKE COUNTY BALLADS.

JIM BLUDSO, OF THE "PRAIRIE BELLE."

Wall, no! I can't tell whar he lives,

Becase he don't live, you see;

Leastways, he's got out of the habit

Of livin' like you and me.

Whar have you been for the last three year

That you haven't heard folks tell

How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks

The night of the Prairie Belle?

He weren't no saint,—them engineers

Is all pretty much alike,—

One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill,

And another one here, in Pike;

A keerless man in his talk was Jim,

And an awkward hand in a row,

But he never flunked, and he never lied,—

I reckon he never knowed how.

And this was all the religion he had,—

To treat his engine well;

Never be passed on the river;

To mind the pilot's bell;

And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire,—

A thousand times he swore,

He'd hold her nozzle agin the bank

Till the last soul got ashore.

All boats has their day on the Mississip,

And her day come at last,—

The Movastar was a better boat,

But the Belle she WOULDN'T be passed.

And so she come tearin' along that night—

The oldest craft on the line—

With a nigger squat on her safety-valve,

And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine.

The fire bust out as she clared the bar,

And burnt a hole in the night,

And quick as a flash she turned, and made

For that willer-bank on the right.

There was runnin' and cursin', but Jim yelled out,

Over all the infernal roar,

"I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank

Till the last galoot's ashore."

Through the hot, black breath of the burnin' boat

Jim Bludso's voice was heard,

And they all had trust in his cussedness,

And knowed he would keep his word.

And, sure's you're born, they all got off

Afore the smokestacks fell,—

And Bludso's ghost went up alone

In the smoke of the Prairie Belle.

He weren't no saint,—but at jedgment

I'd run my chance with Jim,

'Longside of some pious gentlemen

That wouldn't shook hands with him.

He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing,—

And went for it thar and then;

And Christ ain't a-going to be too hard

On a man that died for men.

LITTLE BREECHES.

I don't go much on religion,

I never ain't had no show;

But I've got a middlin' tight grip, sir,

On the handful o' things I know.

I don't pan out on the prophets

And free-will, and that sort of thing,—

But I b'lieve in God and the angels,

Ever sence one night last spring.

I come into town with some turnips,

And my little Gabe come along,—

No four-year-old in the county

Could beat him for pretty and strong,

Peart and chipper and sassy,

Always ready to swear and fight,—

And I'd larnt him to chaw terbacker

Jest to keep his milk-teeth white.

The snow come down like a blanket

As I passed by Taggart's store;

I went in for a jug of molasses

And left the team at the door.

They scared at something and started,—

I heard one little squall,

And hell-to-split over the prairie

Went team, Little Breeches and all.

Hell-to-split over the prairie!

I was almost froze with skeer;

But we rousted up some torches,

And searched for 'em far and near.

At last we struck hosses and wagon,

Snowed under a soft white mound,

Upsot, dead beat,—but of little Gabe

No hide nor hair was found.

And here all hope soured on me,

Of my fellow-critters' aid,—

I jest flopped down on my marrow-bones,

Crotch-deep in the snow, and prayed.

.          .          .          .

By this, the torches was played out,

And me and Isrul Parr

Went off for some wood to a sheepfold

That he said was somewhar thar.

We found it at last, and a little shed

Where they shut up the lambs at night.

We looked in and seen them huddled thar,

So warm and sleepy and white;

And thar sot Little Breeches and chirped,

As peart as ever you see,

"I want a chaw of terbacker,

And that's what's the matter of me."

How did he git thar?  Angels.

He could never have walked in that storm;

They jest scooped down and toted him

To whar it was safe and warm.

And I think that saving a little child,

And fotching him to his own,

Is a derned sight better business

Than loafing around The Throne.

BANTY TIM.

REMARKS OF SERGEANT TILMON JOY TO THE WHITE MAN'S

COMMITTEE OF SPUNKY POINT, ILLINOIS.

I reckon I git your drift, gents,—

You 'low the boy sha'n't stay;

This is a white man's country;

You're Dimocrats, you say;

And whereas, and seein', and wherefore,

The times bein' all out o' j'int,

The nigger has got to mosey

From the limits o' Spunky P'int!

Le's reason the thing a minute:

I'm an old-fashioned Dimocrat too,

Though I laid my politics out o' the way

For to keep till the war was through.

But I come back here, allowin'

To vote as I used to do,

Though it gravels me like the devil to train

Along o' sich fools as you.

Now dog my cats ef I kin see,

In all the light of the day,

What you've got to do with the question

Ef Tim shill go or stay.

And furder than that I give notice,

Ef one of you tetches the boy,

He kin check his trunks to a warmer clime

Than he'll find in Illanoy.

Why, blame your hearts, jest hear me!

You know that ungodly day

When our left struck Vicksburg Heights, how ripped

And torn and tattered we lay.

When the rest retreated I stayed behind,

Fur reasons sufficient to me,—

With a rib caved in, and a leg on a strike,

I sprawled on that cursed glacee.

Lord! how the hot sun went for us,

And br'iled and blistered and burned!

How the Rebel bullets whizzed round us

When a cuss in his death-grip turned!

Till along toward dusk I seen a thing

I couldn't believe for a spell:

That nigger—that Tim—was a crawlin' to me

Through that fire-proof, gilt-edged hell!

The Rebels seen him as quick as me,

And the bullets buzzed like bees;

But he jumped for me, and shouldered me,

Though a shot brought him once to his knees;

But he staggered up, and packed me off,

With a dozen stumbles and falls,

Till safe in our lines he drapped us both,

His black hide riddled with balls.

So, my gentle gazelles, thar's my answer,

And here stays Banty Tim:

He trumped Death's ace for me that day,

And I'm not goin' back on him!

You may rezoloot till the cows come home,

But ef one of you tetches the boy,

He'll wrastle his hash to-night in hell,

Or my name's not Tilmon Joy!

THE MYSTERY OF GILGAL.

The darkest, strangest mystery

I ever read, or heern, or see,

Is 'long of a drink at Taggart's Hall,—

Tom Taggart's of Gilgal.

I've heern the tale a thousand ways,

But never could git through the maze

That hangs around that queer day's doin's;

But I'll tell the yarn to youans.

Tom Taggart stood behind his bar,

The time was fall, the skies was fa'r,

The neighbours round the counter drawed,

And ca'mly drinked and jawed.

At last come Colonel Blood of Pike,

And old Jedge Phinn, permiscus-like,

And each, as he meandered in,

Remarked, "A whisky-skin."

Tom mixed the beverage full and fa'r,

And slammed it, smoking, on the bar.

Some says three fingers, some says two,—

I'll leave the choice to you.

Phinn to the drink put forth his hand;

Blood drawed his knife, with accent bland,

"I ax yer parding, Mister Phinn—

Jest drap that whisky-skin."

No man high-toneder could be found

Than old Jedge Phinn the country round.

Says he, "Young man, the tribe of Phinns

Knows their own whisky-skins!"

He went for his 'leven-inch bowie-knife:—

"I tries to foller a Christian life;

But I'll drap a slice of liver or two,

My bloomin' shrub, with you."

They carved in a way that all admired,

Tell Blood drawed iron at last, and fired.

It took Seth Bludso 'twixt the eyes,

Which caused him great surprise.

Then coats went off, and all went in;

Shots and bad language swelled the din;

The short, sharp bark of Derringers,

Like bull-pups, cheered the furse.

They piled the stiffs outside the door;

They made, I reckon, a cord or more.

Girls went that winter, as a rule,

Alone to spellin'-school.

I've searched in vain, from Dan to Beer-

Sheba, to make this mystery clear;

But I end with HIT as I did begin,—

"WHO GOT THE WHISKY-SKIN?"

GOLYER.

Ef the way a man lights out of this world

Helps fix his heft for the other sp'ere,

I reckon my old friend Golyer's Ben

Will lay over lots of likelier men

For one thing he done down here.

You didn't know Ben?  He driv a stage

On the line they called the Old Sou'-west;

He wa'n't the best man that ever you seen,

And he wa'n't so ungodly pizen mean,—

No better nor worse than the rest.

He was hard on women and rough on his friends;

And he didn't have many, I'll let you know;

He hated a dog and disgusted a cat,

But he'd run off his legs for a motherless brat,

And I guess there's many jess so.

I've seed my sheer of the run of things,

I've hoofed it a many and many a miled,

But I never seed nothing that could or can

Jest git all the good from the heart of a man

Like the hands of a little child.

Well! this young one I started to tell you about,—

His folks was all dead, I was fetchin' him through,—

He was just at the age that's loudest for boys,

And he blowed such a horn with his sarchin' small voice,

We called him "the Little Boy Blue."

He ketched a sight of Ben on the box,

And you bet he bawled and kicked and howled,

For to git 'long of Ben, and ride thar too;

I tried to tell him it wouldn't do,

When suddingly Golyer growled,

"What's the use of making the young one cry?

Say, what's the use of being a fool?

Sling the little one up here whar he can see,

He won't git the snuffles a-ridin' with me,

The night ain't any too cool."

The child hushed cryin' the minute he spoke;

"Come up here, Major! don't let him slip."

And jest as nice as a woman could do,

He wropped his blanket around them two,

And was off in the crack of a whip.

We rattled along an hour or so,

Till we heerd a yell on the still night air.

Did you ever hear an Apache yell?

Well, ye needn't want to, THIS side of hell;

There's nothing more devilish there.

Caught in the shower of lead and flint,

We felt the old stage stagger and plunge;

Then we heerd the voice and the whip of Ben,

As he gethered his critters up again,

And tore away with a lunge.

The passengers laughed.  "Old Ben's all right,

He's druv five year and never was struck."

"Now if I'd been thar, as sure as you live,

They'd 'a' plugged me with holes as thick as a sieve;

It's the reg'lar Golyer luck."

Over hill and holler and ford and creek,

Jest like the hosses had wings, we tore;

We got to Looney's, and Ben come in

And laid down the baby and axed for his gin,

And dropped in a heap on the floor.

Said he, "When they fired, I kivered the kid,—

Although I ain't pretty, I'm middlin' broad;

And look! he ain't fazed by arrow nor ball,—

Thank God! my own carcase stopped them all."

Then we seen his eye glaze, and his lower jaw fall,—

And he carried his thanks to God.

THE PLEDGE AT SPUNKY POINT.

A TALE OF EARNEST EFFORT AND HUMAN PERFIDY.

It's all very well for preachin',

But preachin' and practice don't gee:

I've give the thing a fair trial,

And you can't ring it in on me.

So toddle along with your pledge, Squire,

Ef that's what you want me to sign;

Betwixt me and you, I've been thar,

And I'll not take any in mine.

A year ago last Fo'th July

A lot of the boys was here.

We all got corned and signed the pledge

For to drink no more that year.

There was Tilmon Joy and Sheriff McPhail

And me and Abner Fry,

And Shelby's boy Leviticus,

And the Golyers, Luke and Cy.

And we anteed up a hundred

In the hands of Deacon Kedge

For to be divided the follerin' Fo'th

'Mongst the boys that kep' the pledge.

And we knowed each other so well, Squire,

You may take my scalp for a fool,

Ef every man when he signed his name

Didn't feel cock-sure of the pool.

Fur a while it all went lovely;

We put up a job next day

Fur to make Joy b'lieve his wife was dead,

And he went home middlin' gay;

Then Abner Fry he killed a man

And afore he was hung McPhail

Jest bilked the widder outen her sheer

By getting him slewed in jail.

But Chris'mas scooped the Sheriff,

The egg-nogs gethered him in;

And Shelby's boy Leviticus

Was, New Year's, tight as sin;

And along in March the Golyers

Got so drunk that a fresh-biled owl

Would 'a' looked 'longside o' them two young men,

Like a sober temperance fowl.

Four months alone I walked the chalk,

I thought my heart would break;

And all them boys a-slappin my back

And axin', "What'll you take?"

I never slep' without dreamin' dreams

Of Burbin, Peach, or Rye,

But I chawed at my niggerhead and swore

I'd rake that pool or die.

At last—the Fo'th—I humped myself

Through chores and breakfast soon,

Then scooted down to Taggart's store—

For the pledge was off at noon;

And all the boys was gethered thar,

And each man hilt his glass—

Watchin' me and the clock quite solemn-like

Fur to see the last minute pass.

The clock struck twelve!  I raised the jug

And took one lovin' pull—

I was holler clar from skull to boots.

It seemed I couldn't git full.

But I was roused by a fiendish laugh

That might have raised the dead—

Them ornary sneaks had sot the clock

A half an hour ahead!

"All right!" I squawked.  "You've got me,

Jest order your drinks agin,

And we'll paddle up to the Deacon's

And scoop the ante in."

But when we got to Kedge's,

What a sight was that we saw!

The Deacon and Parson Skeeters

In the tail of a game of Draw.

They had shook 'em the heft of the mornin',

The Parson's luck was fa'r,

And he raked, the minute we got thar,

The last of our pool on a pa'r.

So toddle along with your pledge, Squire,

I 'low it's all very fine,

But ez fur myself, I thank ye,

I'll not take any in mine.

WANDERLIEDER.

SUNRISE IN THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.

(PARIS, AUGUST 1865.)

I stand at the break of day

In the Champs Elysees.

The tremulous shafts of dawning,

As they shoot o'er the Tuileries early,

Strike Luxor's cold grey spire,

And wild in the light of the morning

With their marble manes on fire,

Ramp the white Horses of Marly.

But the Place of Concord lies

Dead hushed 'neath the ashy skies.

And the Cities sit in council

With sleep in their wide stone eyes.

I see the mystic plain

Where the army of spectres slain

In the Emperor's life-long war

March on with unsounding tread

To trumpets whose voice is dead.

Their spectral chief still leads them,—

The ghostly flash of his sword

Like a comet through mist shines far,—

And the noiseless host is poured,

For the gendarme never heeds them,

Up the long dim road where thundered

The army of Italy onward

Through the great pale Arch of the Star!

The spectre army fades

Far up the glimmering hill,

But, vaguely lingering still,

A group of shuddering shades

Infects the pallid air,

Growing dimmer as day invades

The hush of the dusky square.

There is one that seems a King,

As if the ghost of a Crown

Still shadowed his jail-bleached hair;

I can hear the guillotine ring,

As its regicide note rang there,

When he laid his tired life down

And grew brave in his last despair.

And a woman frail and fair

Who weeps at leaving a world

Of love and revel and sin

In the vast Unknown to be hurled;

(For life was wicked and sweet

With kings at her small white feet!)

And one, every inch a Queen,

In life and in death a Queen,

Whose blood baptized the place,

In the days of madness and fear,—

Her shade has never a peer

In majesty and grace.

Murdered and murderers swarm;

Slayers that slew and were slain,

Till the drenched place smoked with the rain

That poured in a torrent warm,—

Till red as the Riders of Edom

Were splashed the white garments of Freedom

With the wash of the horrible storm!

And Liberty's hands were not clean

In the day of her pride unchained,

Her royal hands were stained

With the life of a King and Queen;

And darker than that with the blood

Of the nameless brave and good

Whose blood in witness clings

More damning than Queens' and Kings'.

Has she not paid it dearly?

Chained, watching her chosen nation

Grinding late and early

In the mills of usurpation?

Have not her holy tears,

Flowing through shameful years,

Washed the stains from her tortured hands?

We thought so when God's fresh breeze,

Blowing over the sleeping lands,

In 'Forty-Eight waked the world,

And the Burgher-King was hurled

From that palace behind the trees.

As Freedom with eyes aglow

Smiled glad through her childbirth pain,

How was the mother to know

That her woe and travail were vain?

A smirking servant smiled

When she gave him her child to keep;

Did she know he would strangle the child

As it lay in his arms asleep?

Liberty's cruellest shame!

She is stunned and speechless yet,

In her grief and bloody sweat

Shall we make her trust her blame?

The treasure of 'Forty-Eight

A lurking jail-bird stole,

She can but watch and wait

As the swift sure seasons roll.

And when in God's good hour

Comes the time of the brave and true,

Freedom again shall rise

With a blaze in her awful eyes

That shall wither this robber-power

As the sun now dries the dew.

This Place shall roar with the voice

Of the glad triumphant people,

And the heavens be gay with the chimes

Ringing with jubilant noise

From every clamorous steeple

The coming of better times.

And the dawn of Freedom waking

Shall fling its splendours far

Like the day which now is breaking

On the great pale Arch of the Star,

And back o'er the town shall fly,

While the joy-bells wild are ringing,

To crown the Glory springing

From the Column of July!

THE SPHINX OF THE TUILERIES.

Out of the Latin Quarter

I came to the lofty door

Where the two marble Sphinxes guard

The Pavillon de Flore.

Two Cockneys stood by the gate, and one

Observed, as they turned to go,

"No wonder He likes that sort of thing,—

He's a Sphinx himself, you know."

I thought as I walked where the garden glowed

In the sunset's level fire,

Of the Charlatan whom the Frenchmen loathe

And the Cockneys all admire.

They call him a Sphinx,—it pleases him,—

And if we narrowly read,

We will find some truth in the flunkey's praise,—

The man is a Sphinx indeed.

For the Sphinx with breast of woman

And face so debonair

Had the sleek false paws of a lion,

That could furtively seize and tear.

So far to the shoulders,—but if you took

The Beast in reverse you would find

The ignoble form of a craven cur

Was all that lay behind.

She lived by giving to simple folk

A silly riddle to read,

And when they failed she drank their blood

In cruel and ravenous greed.

But at last came one who knew her word,

And she perished in pain and shame,—

This bastard Sphinx leads the same base life

And his end will be the same.

For an OEdipus-People is coming fast

With swelled feet limping on,

If they shout his true name once aloud

His false foul power is gone.

Afraid to fight and afraid to fly,

He cowers in an abject shiver;

The people will come to their own at last,—

God is not mocked for ever.

THE SURRENDER OF SPAIN.

I.

Land of unconquered Pelayo! land of the Cid Campeador!

Sea-girdled mother of men! Spain, name of glory and power;

Cradle of world-grasping Emperors, grave of the reckless invader,

How art thou fallen, my Spain! how art thou sunk at this hour!

II.

Once thy magnanimous sons trod, victors, the portals of Asia,

Once the Pacific waves rushed, joyful thy banners to see;

For it was Trajan that carried the battle-flushed eagles to Dacia,

Cortes that planted thy flag fast by the uttermost sea.

III.

Hast thou forgotten those days illumined with glory and honour,

When the far isles of the sea thrilled to the tread of Castile?

When every land under Heaven was flecked by the shade of thy banner,—

When every beam of the sun flashed on thy conquering steel?

IV.

Then through red fields of slaughter, through death and defeat and

disaster,

Still flared thy banner aloft, tattered, but free from a stain,—

Now to the upstart Savoyard thou bendest to beg for a master!

How the red flush of her shame mars the proud beauty of Spain!

V.

Has the red blood run cold that boiled by the Xenil and Darro?

Are the high deeds of the sires sung to the children no more?

On the dun hills of the North hast thou heard of no plough-boy Pizarro?

Roams no young swine-herd Cortes hid by the Tagus' wild shore?

VI.

Once again does Hispania bend low to the yoke of the stranger!

Once again will she rise, flinging her gyves in the sea!

Princeling of Piedmont! unwitting thou weddest with doubt and with

danger,

King over men who have learned all that it costs to be free.

THE PRAYER OF THE ROMANS.

Not done, but near its ending,

Is the work that our eyes desired;

Not yet fulfilled, but near the goal,

Is the hope that our worn hearts fired.

And on the Alban Mountains,

Where the blushes of dawn increase,

We see the flash of the beautiful feet

Of Freedom and of Peace!

How long were our fond dreams baffled!—

Novara's sad mischance,

The Kaiser's sword and fetter-lock,

And the traitor stab of France;

Till at last came glorious Venice,

In storm and tempest home;

And now God maddens the greedy kings,

And gives to her people Rome.

Lame Lion of Caprera!

Red-shirts of the lost campaigns!

Not idly shed was the costly blood

You poured from generous veins.

For the shame of Aspromonte,

And the stain of Mentana's sod,

But forged the curse of kings that sprang

From your breaking hearts to God!

We lift our souls to Thee, O Lord

Of Liberty and of Light!

Let not earth's kings pollute the work

That was done in their despite;

Let not Thy light be darkened

In the shade of a sordid crown,

Nor pampered swine devour the fruit

Thou shook'st with an earthquake down!

Let the People come to their birthright,

And crosier and crown pass away

Like phantasms that flit o'er the marshes

At the glance of the clean, white day.

And then from the lava of AEtna

To the ice of the Alps let there be

One freedom, one faith without fetters,

One republic in Italy free!

THE CURSE OF HUNGARY.

King Saloman looked from his donjon bars,

Where the Danube clamours through sedge and sand,

And he cursed with a curse his revolting land,—

With a king's deep curse of treason and wars.

He said:  "May this false land know no truth!

May the good hearts die and the bad ones flourish,

And a greed of glory but live to nourish

Envy and hate in its restless youth.

"In the barren soil may the ploughshare rust,

While the sword grows bright with its fatal labour,

And blackens between each man and neighbour

The perilous cloud of a vague distrust!

"Be the noble idle, the peasant in thrall,

And each to the other as unknown things,

That with links of hatred and pride the kings

May forge firm fetters through each for all!

"May a king wrong them as they wronged their king

May he wring their hearts as they wrung mine,

Till they pour their blood for his revels like wine,

And to women and monks their birthright fling!"

The mad king died; but the rushing river

Still brawls by the spot where his donjon stands,

And its swift waves sigh to the conscious sands

That the curse of King Saloman works for ever.

For flowing by Pressbourg they heard the cheers

Ring out from the leal and cheated hearts

That were caught and chained by Theresa's arts,—

A man's cool head and a girl's hot tears!

And a star, scarce risen, they saw decline,

Where Orsova's hills looked coldly down,

As Kossuth buried the Iron Crown

And fled in the dark to the Turkish line.

And latest they saw in the summer glare

The Magyar nobles in pomp arrayed,

To shout as they saw, with his unfleshed blade,

A Hapsburg beating the harmless air.

But ever the same sad play they saw,

The same weak worship of sword and crown,

The noble crushing the humble down,

And moulding Wrong to a monstrous Law.

The donjon stands by the turbid river,

But Time is crumbling its battered towers;

And the slow light withers a despot's powers,

And a mad king's curse is not for ever!

THE MONKS OF BASLE.

I tore this weed from the rank, dark soil

Where it grew in the monkish time,

I trimmed it close and set it again

In a border of modern rhyme.

I.

Long years ago, when the Devil was loose

And faith was sorely tried,

Three monks of Basle went out to walk

In the quiet eventide.

A breeze as pure as the breath of Heaven

Blew fresh through the cloister-shades,

A sky as glad as the smile of Heaven

Blushed rose o'er the minster-glades.

But scorning the lures of summer and sense,

The monks passed on in their walk;

Their eyes were abased, their senses slept,

Their souls were in their talk.

In the tough grim talk of the monkish days

They hammered and slashed about,—

Dry husks of logic,—old scraps of creed,—

And the cold gray dreams of doubt,—

And whether Just or Justified

Was the Church's mystic Head,—

And whether the Bread was changed to God,

Or God became the Bread.

But of human hearts outside their walls

They never paused to dream,

And they never thought of the love of God

That smiled in the twilight gleam.

II.

As these three monks went bickering on

By the foot of a spreading tree,

Out from its heart of verdurous gloom

A song burst wild and free,—

A wordless carol of life and love,

Of nature free and wild;

And the three monks paused in the evening shade,

Looked up at each other and smiled.

And tender and gay the bird sang on,

And cooed and whistled and trilled,

And the wasteful wealth of life and love

From his happy heart was spilled.

The song had power on the grim old monks

In the light of the rosy skies;

And as they listened the years rolled back,

And tears came into their eyes.

The years rolled back and they were young,

With the hearts and hopes of men,

They plucked the daisies and kissed the girls

Of dear dead summers again.

III.

But the eldest monk soon broke the spell;

"'Tis sin and shame," quoth he,

"To be turned from talk of holy things

By a bird's cry from a tree.

"Perchance the Enemy of Souls

Hath come to tempt us so.

Let us try by the power of the Awful Word

If it be he, or no!"

To Heaven the three monks raised their hands;

"We charge thee, speak!" they said,

"By His dread Name who shall one day come

To judge the quick and the dead,—

"Who art thou?  Speak!"  The bird laughed loud.

"I am the Devil," he said.

The monks on their faces fell, the bird

Away through the twilight sped.

A horror fell on those holy men

(The faithful legends say),

And one by one from the face of the earth

They pined and vanished away.

IV.

So goes the tale of the monkish books,

The moral who runs may read,—

He has no ears for Nature's voice

Whose soul is the slave of creed.

Not all in vain with beauty and love

Has God the world adorned;

And he who Nature scorns and mocks,

By Nature is mocked and scorned.

THE ENCHANTED SHIRT.

Fytte the First:  wherein it shall be shown how the Truth

is too mighty a Drug for such as be of feeble temper.

The King was sick. His cheek was red

And his eye was clear and bright;

He ate and drank with a kingly zest,

And peacefully snored at night.

But he said he was sick, and a king should know,

And doctors came by the score.

They did not cure him.  He cut off their heads

And sent to the schools for more.

At last two famous doctors came,

And one was as poor as a rat,—

He had passed his life in studious toil,

And never found time to grow fat.

The other had never looked in a book;

His patients gave him no trouble—

If they recovered they paid him well,

If they died their heirs paid double.

Together they looked at the royal tongue,

As the King on his couch reclined;

In succession they thumped his august chest,

But no trace of disease could find.

The old sage said, "You're as sound as a nut."

"Hang him up!" roared the King in a gale,—

In a ten-knot gale of royal rage;

The other leech grew a shade pale;

But he pensively rubbed his sagacious nose,

And thus his prescription ran,—

The King will be well, if he sleeps one night

In the Shirt of a Happy Man.

Fytte the Second:  tells of the search for the Shirt, and how

it was nigh found, but was not, for reasons which are said or sung.

Wide o'er the realm the couriers rode,

And fast their horses ran,

And many they saw, and to many they spoke,

But they found no Happy Man.

They found poor men who would fain be rich

And rich who thought they were poor;

And men who twisted their waists in stays,

And women that shorthose wore.

They saw two men by the roadside sit,

And both bemoaned their lot;

For one had buried his wife, he said,

And the other one had not.

At last they came to a village gate,

A beggar lay whistling there;

He whistled and sang and laughed and rolled

On the grass in the soft June air.

The weary couriers paused and looked

At the scamp so blithe and gay;

And one of them said, "Heaven save you, friend!

You seem to be happy to-day."

"O yes, fair sirs!" the rascal laughed,

And his voice rang free and glad,

"An idle man has so much to do

That he never has time to be sad."

"This is our man," the courier said

"Our luck has led us aright.

I will give you a hundred ducats, friend,

For the loan of your shirt to-night."

The merry blackguard lay back on the grass,

And laughed till his face was black;

"I would do it, God wot," and he roared with the fun,

"But I haven't a shirt to my back."

Fytte the Third:  shewing how His Majesty the King came

at last to sleep in a Happy Man his Shirt.

Each day to the King the reports came in

Of his unsuccessful spies,

And the sad panorama of human woes

Passed daily under his eyes.

And he grew ashamed of his useless life,

And his maladies hatched in gloom;

He opened his windows and let the air

Of the free heaven into his room.

And out he went in the world and toiled

In his own appointed way;

And the people blessed him, the land was glad,

And the King was well and gay.

A WOMAN'S LOVE.

A sentinel angel sitting high in glory

Heard this shrill wail ring out from Purgatory:

"Have mercy, mighty angel, hear my story!

"I loved,—and, blind with passionate love, I fell.

Love brought me down to death, and death to Hell.

For God is just, and death for sin is well.

"I do not rage against His high decree,

Nor for myself do ask that grace shall be;

But for my love on earth who mourns for me.

"Great Spirit! let me see my love again

And comfort him one hour, and I were fain

To pay a thousand years of fire and pain."

Then said the pitying angel, "Nay, repent

That wild vow!  Look, the dial-finger's bent

Down to the last hour of thy punishment!"

But still she wailed, "I pray thee, let me go!

I cannot rise to peace and leave him so.

Oh, let me soothe him in his bitter woe!"

The brazen gates ground sullenly ajar,

And upward, joyous, like a rising star,

She rose and vanished in the ether far.

But soon adown the dying sunset sailing,

And like a wounded bird her pinions trailing,

She fluttered back, with broken-hearted wailing.

She sobbed, "I found him by the summer sea

Reclined, his head upon a maiden's knee,—

She curled his hair and kissed him.  Woe is me!"

She wept, "Now let my punishment begin!

I have been fond and foolish.  Let me in

To expiate my sorrow and my sin."

The angel answered, "Nay, sad soul, go higher!

To be deceived in your true heart's desire

Was bitterer than a thousand years of fire!"

ON PITZ LANGUARD.

I stood on the top of Pitz Languard,

And heard three voices whispering low,

Where the Alpine birds in their circling ward

Made swift dark shadows upon the snow.

First Voice.

I loved a girl with truth and pain,

She loved me not.  When she said good-bye

She gave me a kiss to sting and stain

My broken life to a rosy dye.

Second Voice.

I loved a woman with love well tried,—

And I swear I believe she loves me still.

But it was not I who stood by her side

When she answered the priest and said "I will."

Third Voice.

I loved two girls, one fond, one shy,

And I never divined which one loved me.

One married, and now, though I can't tell why,

Of the four in the story I count but three.

The three weird voices whispered low

Where the eagles swept in their circling ward;

But only one shadow scarred the snow

As I clambered down from Pitz Languard.

BOUDOIR PROPHECIES.

One day in the Tuileries,

When a south-west Spanish breeze

Brought scandalous news of the Queen,

The fair, proud Empress said,

"My good friend loses her head;

If matters go on this way,

I shall see her shopping, some day,

In the Boulevard des Capucines."

The saying swiftly went

To the Place of the Orient,

And the stout Queen sneered, "Ah, well!

You are proud and prude, ma belle!

But I think I will hazard a guess

I shall see you one day playing chess

With the Cure of Carabanchel."

Both ladies, though not over wise,

Were lucky in prophecies.

For the Boulevard shopmen well

Know the form of stout Isabel

As she buys her modes de Paris;

And after Sedan in despair

The Empress prude and fair

Went to visit Madame sa Mere

In her villa at Carabanchel—

But the Queen was not there to see.

A TRIUMPH OF ORDER.

A squad of regular infantry,

In the Commune's closing days,

Had captured a crowd of rebels

By the wall of Pere-la-Chaise.

There were desperate men, wild women,

And dark-eyed Amazon girls,

And one little boy, with a peach-down cheek

And yellow clustering curls.

The captain seized the little waif,

And said, "What dost thou here?"

"Sapristi, Citizen captain!

I'm a Communist, my dear!"

"Very well!  Then you die with the others!"

—"Very well!  That's my affair;

But first let me take to my mother,

Who lives by the wine-shop there,

"My father's watch.  You see it;

A gay old thing, is it not?

It would please the old lady to have it;

Then I'll come back here, and be shot."

"That is the last we shall see of him,"

The grizzled captain grinned,

As the little man skimmed down the hill

Like a swallow down the wind.

For the joy of killing had lost its zest

In the glut of those awful days,

And Death writhed, gorged like a greedy snake,

From the Arch to Pere-la-Chaise.

But before the last platoon had fired

The child's shrill voice was heard;

"Houp-la! the old girl made such a row

I feared I should break my word."

Against the bullet-pitted wall

He took his place with the rest,

A button was lost from his ragged blouse,

Which showed his soft white breast.

"Now blaze away, my children!

With your little one-two-three!"

The Chassepots tore the stout young heart,

And saved Society.

ERNST OF EDELSHEIM.

I'll tell the story, kissing

This white hand for my pains:

No sweeter heart, nor falser,

E'er filled such fine, blue veins.

I'll sing a song of true love,

My Lilith, dear! to you;

Contraria contrariis—

The rule is old and true.

The happiest of all lovers

Was Ernst of Edelsheim;

And why he was the happiest,

I'll tell you in my rhyme.

One summer night he wandered

Within a lonely glade,

And, couched in moss and moonlight,

He found a sleeping maid.

The stars of midnight sifted

Above her sands of gold;

She seemed a slumbering statue,

So fair and white and cold.

Fair and white and cold she lay

Beneath the starry skies;

Rosy was her waking

Beneath the Ritter's eyes.

He won her drowsy fancy,

He bore her to his towers,

And swift with love and laughter

Flew morning's purpled hours.

But when the thickening sunbeams

Had drunk the gleaming dew,

A misty cloud of sorrow

Swept o'er her eyes' deep blue.

She hung upon the Ritter's neck,

She wept with love and pain,

She showered her sweet, warm kisses

Like fragrant summer rain.

"I am no Christian soul," she sobbed,

As in his arms she lay;

"I'm half the day a woman,

A serpent half the day.

"And when from yonder bell-tower

Rings out the noonday chime,

Farewell! farewell for ever,

Sir Ernst of Edelsheim!"

"Ah! not farewell for ever!"

The Ritter wildly cried;

"I will be saved or lost with thee,

My lovely Wili-Bride!"

Loud from the lordly bell-tower

Rang out the noon of day,

And from the bower of roses

A serpent slid away.

But when the mid-watch moonlight

Was shimmering through the grove,

He clasped his bride thrice dowered

With beauty and with love.

The happiest of all lovers

Was Ernst of Edelsheim—

His true love was a serpent

Only half the time!

MY CASTLE IN SPAIN.

There was never a castle seen

So fair as mine in Spain:

It stands embowered in green,

Crowning the gentle slope

Of a hill by the Xenil's shore

And at eve its shade flaunts o'er

The storied Vega plain,

And its towers are hid in the mists of Hope;

And I toil through years of pain

Its glimmering gates to gain.

In visions wild and sweet

Sometimes its courts I greet:

Sometimes in joy its shining halls

I tread with favoured feet;

But never my eyes in the light of day

Were blest with its ivied walls,

Where the marble white and the granite gray

Turn gold alike when the sunbeams play,

When the soft day dimly falls.

I know in its dusky rooms

Are treasures rich and rare;

The spoil of Eastern looms,

And whatever of bright and fair

Painters divine have caught and won

From the vault of Italy's air:

White gods in Phidian stone

People the haunted glooms;

And the song of immortal singers

Like a fragrant memory lingers,

I know, in the echoing rooms.

But nothing of these, my soul!

Nor castle, nor treasures, nor skies,

Nor the waves of the river that roil

With a cadence faint and sweet

In peace by its marble feet—

Nothing of these is the goal

For which my whole heart sighs.

'Tis the pearl gives worth to the shell—

The pearl I would die to gain;

For there does my lady dwell,

My love that I love so well—

The Queen whose gracious reign

Makes glad my castle in Spain.

Her face so pure and fair

Sheds light in the shady places,

And the spell of her girlish graces

Holds charmed the happy air.

A breath of purity

For ever before her flies,

And ill things cease to be

In the glance of her honest eyes.

Around her pathway flutter,

Where her dear feet wander free

In youth's pure majesty,

The wings of the vague desires;

But the thought that love would utter

In reverence expires.

Not yet! not yet shall I see

That face which shines like a star

O'er my storm-swept life afar,

Transfigured with love for me.

Toiling, forgetting, and learning

With labour and vigils and prayers,

Pure heart and resolute will,

At last I shall climb the hill

And breathe the enchanted airs

Where the light of my life is burning

Most lovely and fair and free,

Where alone in her youth and beauty

And bound by her fate's sweet duty,

Unconscious she waits for me.

SISTER SAINT LUKE.

She lived shut in by flowers and trees

And shade of gentle bigotries.

On this side lay the trackless sea,

On that the great world's mystery;

But all unseen and all unguessed

They could not break upon her rest.

The world's far splendours gleamed and flashed,

Afar the wild seas foamed and dashed;

But in her small, dull Paradise,

Safe housed from rapture or surprise,

Nor day nor night had power to fright

The peace of God that filled her eyes.

NEW AND OLD.

MILES KEOGH'S HORSE.

On the bluff of the Little Big-Horn,

At the close of a woeful day,

Custer and his Three Hundred

In death and silence lay.

Three Hundred to Three Thousand!

They had bravely fought and bled;

For such is the will of Congress

When the White man meets the Red.

The White men are ten millions,

The thriftiest under the sun;

The Reds are fifty thousand,

And warriors every one.

So Custer and all his fighting-men

Lay under the evening skies,

Staring up at the tranquil heaven

With wide, accusing eyes.

And of all that stood at noonday

In that fiery scorpion ring,

Miles Keogh's horse at evening

Was the only living thing.

Alone from that field of slaughter,

Where lay the three hundred slain,

The horse Comanche wandered,

With Keogh's blood on his mane.

And Sturgis issued this order,

Which future times shall read,

While the love and honour of comrades

Are the soul of the soldiers creed.

He said—

Let the horse Comanche

Henceforth till he shall die,

Be kindly cherished and cared for

By the Seventh Cavalry.

He shall do no labour; he never shall know

The touch of spur or rein;

Nor shall his back be ever crossed

By living rider again.

And at regimental formation

Of the Seventh Cavalry,

Comanche draped in mourning and led

By a trooper of Company I,

Shall parade with the Regiment!

Thus it was

Commanded and thus done,

By order of General Sturgis, signed

By Adjutant Garlington.

Even as the sword of Custer,

In his disastrous fall,

Flashed out a blaze that charmed the world

And glorified his pall,

This order, issued amid the gloom

That shrouds our army's name,

When all foul beasts are free to rend

And tear its honest fame,

Shall prove to a callous people

That the sense of a soldier's worth,

That the love of comrades, the honour of arms,

Have not yet perished from earth.

THE ADVANCE-GUARD.

In the dream of the Northern poets,

The braves who in battle die

Fight on in shadowy phalanx

In the field of the upper sky;

And as we read the sounding rhyme,

The reverent fancy hears

The ghostly ring of the viewless swords

And the clash of the spectral spears.

We think with imperious questionings

Of the brothers whom we have lost,

And we strive to track in death's mystery

The flight of each valiant ghost.

The Northern myth comes back to us,

And we feel, through our sorrow's night,

That those young souls are striving still

Somewhere for the truth and light.

It was not their time for rest and sleep;

Their hearts beat high and strong;

In their fresh veins the blood of youth

Was singing its hot, sweet song.

The open heaven bent over them,

'Mid flowers their lithe feet trod,

Their lives lay vivid in light, and blest

By the smiles of women and God.

Again they come!  Again I hear

The tread of that goodly band;

I know the flash of Ellsworth's eye

And the grasp of his hard, warm hand;

And Putnam, and Shaw, of the lion-heart,

And an eye like a Boston girl's;

And I see the light of heaven which lay

On Ulric Dahlgren's curls.

There is no power in the gloom of hell

To quench those spirits' fire;

There is no power in the bliss of heaven

To bid them not aspire;

But somewhere in the eternal plan

That strength, that life survive,

And like the files on Lookout's crest,

Above death's clouds they strive.

A chosen corps, they are marching on

In a wider field than ours;

Those bright battalions still fulfil

The scheme of the heavenly powers;

And high brave thoughts float down to us,

The echoes of that far fight,

Like the flash of a distant picket's gun

Through the shades of the severing night.

No fear for them!  In our lower field

Let us keep our arms unstained,

That at last we be worthy to stand with them

On the shining heights they've gained.

We shall meet and greet in closing ranks

In Time's declining sun,

When the bugles of God shall sound recall

And the battle of life be won.

LOVE'S PRAYER.

If Heaven would hear my prayer,

My dearest wish would be,

Thy sorrows not to share,

But take them all on me;

If Heaven would hear my prayer.

I'd beg with prayers and sighs

That never a tear might flow

From out thy lovely eyes,

If Heaven might grant it so;

Mine be the tears and sighs.

No cloud thy brow should cover,

But smiles each other chase

From lips to eyes all over

Thy sweet and sunny face;

The clouds my heart should cover.

That all thy path be light

Let darkness fall on me;

If all thy days be bright,

Mine black as night could be.

My love would light my night.

For thou art more than life,

And if our fate should set

Life and my love at strife,

How could I then forget

I love thee more than life?

CHRISTINE.

The beauty of the Northern dawns,

Their pure, pale light is thine;

Yet all the dreams of tropic nights

Within thy blue eyes shine.

Not statelier in their prisoning seas

The icebergs grandly move,

But in thy smile is youth and joy,

And in thy voice is love.

Thou art like Hecla's crest that stands

So lonely, proud, and high,

No earthly thing may come between

Her summit and the sky.

The sun in vain may strive to melt

Her crown of virgin snow—

But the great heart of the mountain glows

With deathless fire below.

EXPECTATION.

Roll on, O shining sun,

To the far seas!

Bring down, ye shades of eve,

The soft, salt breeze!

Shine out, O stars, and light

My darling's pathway bright,

As through the summer night

She comes to me.

No beam of any star

Can match her eyes;

Her smile the bursting day

In light outvies.

Her voice—the sweetest thing

Heard by the raptured spring

When waking wild-woods ring—

She comes to me.

Ye stars, more swiftly wheel

O'er earth's still breast;

More wildly plunge and reel

In the dim west!

The earth is lone and lorn,

Till the glad day be born,

Till with the happy morn

She comes to me.

TO FLORA.

When April woke the drowsy flowers,

And vagrant odours thronged the breeze,

And bluebirds wrangled in the bowers,

And daisies flashed along the leas,

And faint arbutus strove among

Dead winter's leaf-strewn wreck to rise,

And nature's sweetly jubilant song

Went murmuring up the sunny skies,

Into this cheerful world you came,

And gained by right your vernal name.

I think the springs have changed of late,

For "Arctics" are my daily wear,

The skies are turned to cold grey slate,

And zephyrs are but draughts of air;

But you make up whate'er we lack,

When we, too rarely, come together,

More potent than the almanac,

You bring the ideal April weather;

When you are with us we defy

The blustering air, the lowering sky;

In spite of winter's icy darts,

We've spring and sunshine in our hearts.

In fine, upon this April day,

This deep conundrum I will bring:

Tell me the two good reasons, pray,

I have, to say you are like spring?

[You give it up?]  Because we love you—

And see so very little of you.

A HAUNTED ROOM.

In the dim chamber whence but yesterday

Passed my beloved, filled with awe I stand;

And haunting Loves fluttering on every hand

Whisper her praises who is far away.

A thousand delicate fancies glance and play

On every object which her robes have fanned,

And tenderest thoughts and hopes bloom and expand

In the sweet memory of her beauty's ray.

Ah! could that glass but hold the faintest trace

Of all the loveliness once mirrored there,

The clustering glory of the shadowy hair

That framed so well the dear young angel face!

But no, it shows my own face, full of care,

And my heart is her beauty's dwelling place.

DREAMS.

I love a woman tenderly,

But cannot know if she loves me.

I press her hand, her lips I kiss,

But still love's full assurance miss.

Our waking life for ever seems

Cleft by a veil of doubt and dreams.

But love and night and sleep combine

In dreams to make her wholly mine.

A sure love lights her eyes' deep blue,

Her hands and lips are warm and true.

Always the fact unreal seems,

And truth I find alone in dreams.

THE LIGHT OF LOVE.

Each shining light above us

Has its own peculiar grace;

But every light of heaven

Is in my darling's face.

For it is like the sunlight,

So strong and pure and warm,

That folds all good and happy things,

And guards from gloom and harm.

And it is like the moonlight,

So holy and so calm;

The rapt peace of a summer night,

When soft winds die in balm.

And it is like the starlight;

For, love her as I may,

She dwells still lofty and serene

In mystery far away.

QUAND MEME.

I strove, like Israel, with my youth,

And said, "Till thou bestow

Upon my life Love's joy and truth,

I will not let thee go."

And sudden on my night there woke

The trouble of the dawn;

Out of the east the red light broke,

To broaden on and on.

And now let death be far or nigh,

Let fortune gloom or shine,

I cannot all untimely die,

For love, for love is mine.

My days are tuned to finer chords,

And lit by higher suns;

Through all my thoughts and all my words

A purer purpose runs.

The blank page of my heart grows rife

With wealth of tender lore;

Her image, stamped upon my life,

Gives value evermore.

She is so noble, firm, and true,

I drink truth from her eyes,

As violets gain the heaven's own blue

In gazing at the skies.

No matter if my hands attain

The golden crown or cross;

Only to love is such a gain

That losing is not loss.

And thus whatever fate betide

Of rapture or of pain,

If storm or sun the future hide,

My love is not in vain.

So only thanks are on my lips;

And through my love I see

My earliest dreams, like freighted ships,

Come sailing home to me.

WORDS.

When violets were springing

And sunshine filled the day,

And happy birds were singing

The praises of the May,

A word came to me, blighting

The beauty of the scene,

And in my heart was winter,

Though all the trees were green.

Now down the blast go sailing

The dead leaves, brown and sere;

The forests are bewailing

The dying of the year;

A word comes to me, lighting

With rapture all the air,

And in my heart is summer,

Though all the trees are bare.

THE STIRRUP-CUP.

My short and happy day is done,

The long and dreary night comes on;

And at my door the Pale Horse stands,

To carry me to unknown lands.

His whinny shrill, his pawing hoof,

Sound dreadful as a gathering storm;

And I must leave this sheltering roof,

And joys of life so soft and warm.

Tender and warm the joys of life,—

Good friends, the faithful and the true;

My rosy children and my wife,

So sweet to kiss, so fair to view.

So sweet to kiss, so fair to view,—

The night comes down, the lights burn blue;

And at my door the Pale Horse stands,

To bear me forth to unknown lands.

A DREAM OF BRIC-A-BRAC.

[C. K. Loquitur.]

I dreamed I was in fair Niphon.

Amid tea-fields I journeyed on,

Reclined in my jinrikishaw;

Across the rolling plains I saw

The lordly Fusi-yama rise,

His blue cone lost in bluer skies.

At last I bade my bearers stop

Before what seemed a china-shop.

I roused myself and entered in.

A fearful joy, like some sweet sin,

Pierced through my bosom as I gazed,

Entranced, transported, and amazed.

For all the house was but one room,

And in its clear and grateful gloom,

Filled with all odours strange and strong

That to the wondrous East belong,

I saw above, around, below,

A sight to make the warm heart glow,

And leave the eager soul no lack,—

An endless wealth of bric-a-brac.

I saw bronze statues, old and rare,

Fashioned by no mere mortal skill,

With robes that fluttered in the air,

Blown out by Art's eternal will;

And delicate ivory netsukes,

Richer in tone than Cheddar cheese,

Of saints and hermits, cats and dogs,

Grim warriors and ecstatic frogs.

And here and there those wondrous masks,

More living flesh than sandal-wood,

Where the full soul in pleasure basks

And dreams of love, the only good.

The walls were all with pictures hung:

Gay villas bright in rain-washed air,

Trees to whose boughs brown monkeys clung,

Outlineless dabs of fuzzy hair.

And all about the opulent shelves

Littered with porcelain beyond price:

Imari pots arrayed themselves

Beside Ming dishes; grain-of-rice

Vied with the Royal Satsuma,

Proud of its sallow ivory beam;

And Kaga's Thousand Hermits lay

Tranced in some punch-bowl's golden gleam.

Over bronze censers, black with age,

The five-clawed dragons strife engage;

A curled and insolent Dog of Foo

Sniffs at the smoke aspiring through.

In what old days, in what far lands,

What busy brains, what cunning hands,

With what quaint speech, what alien thought,

Strange fellow-men these marvels wrought!

As thus I mused, I was aware

There grew before my eager eyes

A little maid too bright and fair,

Too strangely lovely for surprise.

It seemed the beauty of the place

Had suddenly become concrete,

So full was she of Orient grace,

From her slant eyes and burnished face

Down to her little gold-bronzed feet.

She was a girl of old Japan;

Her small hand held a gilded fan,

Which scattered fragrance through the room;

Her cheek was rich with pallid bloom,

Her eye was dark with languid fire,

Her red lips breathed a vague desire;

Her teeth, of pearl inviolate,

Sweetly proclaimed her maiden state.

Her garb was stiff with broidered gold

Twined with mysterious fold on fold,

That gave no hint where, hidden well,

Her dainty form might warmly dwell,—

A pearl within too large a shell.

So quaint, so short, so lissome, she,

It seemed as if it well might be

Some jocose god, with sportive whirl,

Had taken up a long lithe girl

And tied a graceful knot in her.

I tried to speak, and found, oh, bliss!

I needed no interpreter;

I knew the Japanese for kiss,—

I had no other thought but this;

And she, with smile and blush divine,

Kind to my stammering prayer did seem;

My thought was hers, and hers was mine,

In the swift logic of my dream.

My arms clung round her slender waist,

Through gold and silk the form I traced,

And glad as rain that follows drouth,

I kissed and kissed her bright red mouth.

What ailed the girl?  No loving sigh

Heaved the round bosom; in her eye

Trembled no tear; from her dear throat

Bubbled a sweet and silvery note

Of girlish laughter, shrill and clear,

That all the statues seemed to hear.

The bronzes tinkled laughter fine;

I heard a chuckle argentine

Ring from the silver images;

Even the ivory netsukes

Uttered in every silent pause

Dry, bony laughs from tiny jaws;

The painted monkeys on the wall

Waked up with chatter impudent;

Pottery, porcelain, bronze, and all

Broke out in ghostly merriment,—

Faint as rain pattering on dry leaves,

Or cricket's chirp on summer eves.

And suddenly upon my sight

There grew a portent:  left and right,

On every side, as if the air

Had taken substance then and there,

In every sort of form and face,

A throng of tourists filled the place.

I saw a Frenchman's sneering shrug;

A German countess, in one hand

A sky-blue string which held a pug,

With the other a fiery face she fanned;

A Yankee with a soft felt hat;

A Coptic priest from Ararat;

An English girl with cheeks of rose;

A Nihilist with Socratic nose;

Paddy from Cork with baggage light

And pockets stuffed with dynamite;

A haughty Southern Readjuster,

Wrapped in his pride and linen duster;

Two noisy New York stockbrokers,

And twenty British globe-trotters.

To my disgust and vast surprise,

They turned on me lack-lustre eyes,

And each with dropped and wagging jaw

Burst out into a wild guffaw:

They laughed with huge mouths opened wide;

They roared till each one held his side;

They screamed and writhed with brutal glee,

With fingers rudely stretched to me,—

Till lo! at once the laughter died,

The tourists faded into air;

None but my fair maid lingered there,

Who stood demurely by my side.

"Who were your friends?" I asked the maid,

Taking a tea-cup from its shelf.

"This audience is disclosed," she said,

"Whenever a man makes a fool of himself."

LIBERTY.

What man is there so bold that he should say,

"Thus, and thus only, would I have the sea"?

For whether lying calm and beautiful,

Clasping the earth in love, and throwing back

The smile of heaven from waves of amethyst;

Or whether, freshened by the busy winds,

It bears the trade and navies of the world

To ends of use or stern activity;

Or whether, lashed by tempests, it gives way

To elemental fury, howls and roars

At all its rocky barriers, in wild lust

Of ruin drinks the blood of living things,

And strews its wrecks o'er leagues of desolate shore,—

Always it is the sea, and men bow down

Before its vast and varied majesty.

So all in vain will timorous ones essay

To set the metes and bounds of Liberty.

For Freedom is its own eternal law;

It makes its own conditions, and in storm

Or calm alike fulfils the unerring Will.

Let us not then despise it when it lies

Still as a sleeping lion, while a swarm

Of gnat-like evils hover round its head;

Nor doubt it when in mad, disjointed times

It shakes the torch of terror, and its cry

Shrills o'er the quaking earth, and in the flame

Of riot and war we see its awful form

Rise by the scaffold, where the crimson axe

Rings down its grooves the knell of shuddering kings.

For ever in thine eyes, O Liberty,

Shines that high light whereby the world is saved,

And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee!

THE WHITE FLAG.

I sent my love two roses,—one

As white as driven snow,

And one a blushing royal red,

A flaming Jacqueminot.

I meant to touch and test my fate;

That night I should divine,

The moment I should see my love,

If her true heart were mine.

For if she holds me dear, I said,

She'll wear my blushing rose;

If not, she'll wear my cold Lamarque

As white as winter's snows.

My heart sank when I met her:  sure

I had been over bold,

For on her breast my pale rose lay

In virgin whiteness cold.

Yet with low words she greeted me,

With smiles divinely tender;

Upon her cheek the red rose dawned.—

The white rose meant surrender.

THE LAW OF DEATH.

The song of Kilvani:  fairest she

In all the land of Savatthi.

She had one child, as sweet and gay

And dear to her as the light of day.

She was so young, and he so fair,

The same bright eyes and the same dark hair;

To see them by the blossomy way,

They seemed two children at their play.

There came a death-dart from the sky,

Kilvani saw her darling die.

The glimmering shade his eyes invades,

Out of his cheek the red bloom fades;

His warm heart feels the icy chill,

The round limbs shudder, and are still.

And yet Kilvani held him fast

Long after life's last pulse was past,

As if her kisses could restore

The smile gone out for evermore.

But when she saw her child was dead,

She scattered ashes on her head,

And seized the small corpse, pale and sweet,

And rushing wildly through the street,

She sobbing fell at Buddha's feet.

"Master, all-helpful, help me now!

Here at thy feet I humbly bow;

Have mercy, Buddha, help me now!"

She grovelled on the marble floor,

And kissed the dead child o'er and o'er.

And suddenly upon the air

There fell the answer to her prayer:

"Bring me to-night a lotus tied

With thread from a house where none has died."

She rose, and laughed with thankful joy,

Sure that the god would save the boy.

She found a lotus by the stream;

She plucked it from its noonday dream,

And then from door to door she fared,

To ask what house by Death was spared.

Her heart grew cold to see the eyes

Of all dilate with slow surprise:

"Kilvani, thou hast lost thy head;

Nothing can help a child that's dead.

There stands not by the Ganges' side

A house where none hath ever died."

Thus, through the long and weary day,

From every door she bore away

Within her heart, and on her arm,

A heavier load, a deeper harm.

By gates of gold and ivory,

By wattled huts of poverty,

The same refrain heard poor Kilvani,

THE LIVING ARE FEW, THE DEAD ARE MANY.

The evening came—so still and fleet—

And overtook her hurrying feet.

And, heartsick, by the sacred fane

She fell, and prayed the god again.

She sobbed and beat her bursting breast:

"Ah, thou hast mocked me, Mightiest!

Lo! I have wandered far and wide;

There stands no house where none hath died."

And Buddha answered, in a tone

Soft as a flute at twilight blown,

But grand as heaven and strong as death

To him who hears with ears of faith:

"Child, thou art answered.  Murmur not!

Bow, and accept the common lot."

Kilvani heard with reverence meet,

And laid her child at Buddha's feet.

MOUNT TABOR.

On Tabor's height a glory came,

And, shrined in clouds of lambent flame,

The awestruck, hushed disciples saw

Christ and the prophets of the law.

Moses, whose grand and awful face

Of Sinai's thunder bore the trace,

And wise Elias,—in his eyes

The shade of Israel's prophecies,—

Stood in that wide, mysterious light,

Than Syrian noons more purely bright,

One on each hand, and high between

Shone forth the godlike Nazarene.

They bowed their heads in holy fright,—

No mortal eyes could bear the sight,—

And when they looked again, behold!

The fiery clouds had backward rolled,

And borne aloft in grandeur lonely,

Nothing was left "save Jesus only."

Resplendent type of things to be!

We read its mystery to-day

With clearer eyes than even they,

The fisher-saints of Galilee.

We see the Christ stand out between

The ancient law and faith serene,

Spirit and letter; but above

Spirit and letter both was Love.

Led by the hand of Jacob's God,

Through wastes of eld a path was trod

By which the savage world could move

Upward through law and faith to love.

And there in Tabor's harmless flame

The crowning revelation came.

The old world knelt in homage due,

The prophets near in reverence drew,

Law ceased its mission to fulfil,

And Love was lord on Tabor's hill.

So now, while creeds perplex the mind

And wranglings load the weary wind,

When all the air is filled with words

And texts that wring like clashing swords,

Still, as for refuge, we may turn

Where Tabor's shining glories burn,—

The soul of antique Israel gone,

And nothing left but Christ alone.

RELIGION AND DOCTRINE.

He stood before the Sanhedrim;

The scowling rabbis gazed at him.

He recked not of their praise or blame;

There was no fear, there was no shame,

For one upon whose dazzled eyes

The whole world poured its vast surprise.

The open heaven was far too near,

His first day's light too sweet and clear,

To let him waste his new-gained ken

On the hate-clouded face of men.

But still they questioned, "Who art thou?

What hast thou been? What art thou now?

Thou art not he who yesterday

Sat here and begged beside the way;

For he was blind."

—"And I am he;

For I was blind, but now I see."

He told the story o'er and o'er;

It was his full heart's only lore:

A prophet on the Sabbath-day

Had touched his sightless eyes with clay,

And made him see who had been blind.

Their words passed by him like the wind,

Which raves and howls, but cannot shock

The hundred-fathom-rooted rock.

Their threats and fury all went wide;

They could not touch his Hebrew pride.

Their sneers at Jesus and His band,

Nameless and homeless in the land,

Their boasts of Moses and his Lord,

All could not change him by one word.

"I know not what this man may be,

Sinner or saint; but as for me,

One thing I know,—that I am he

Who once was blind, and now I see."

They were all doctors of renown,

The great men of a famous town,

With deep brows, wrinkled, broad, and wise,

Beneath their wide phylacteries;

The wisdom of the East was theirs,

And honour crowned their silver hairs.

The man they jeered and laughed to scorn

Was unlearned, poor, and humbly born;

But he knew better far than they

What came to him that Sabbath-day;

And what the Christ had done for him

He knew, and not the Sanhedrim.

SINAI AND CALVARY.

There are two mountains hallowed

By majesty sublime,

Which rear their crests unconquered

Above the floods of Time.

Uncounted generations

Have gazed on them with awe,—

The mountain of the Gospel,

The mountain of the Law.

From Sinai's cloud of darkness

The vivid lightnings play;

They serve the God of vengeance,

The Lord who shall repay.

Each fault must bring its penance,

Each sin the avenging blade,

For God upholds in justice

The laws that He hath made.

But Calvary stands to ransom

The earth from utter loss,

In shade than light more glorious,

The shadow of the Cross.

To heal a sick world's trouble,

To soothe its woe and pain,

On Calvary's sacred summit

The Paschal Lamb was slain.

The boundless might of Heaven

Its law in mercy furled,

As once the bow of promise

O'erarched a drowning world.

The Law said, "As you keep me,

It shall be done to you;"

But Calvary prays, "Forgive them;

They know not what they do."

Almighty God! direct us

To keep Thy perfect Law!

O blessed Saviour, help us

Nearer to Thee to draw!

Let Sinai's thunders aid us

To guard our feet from sin;

And Calvary's light inspire us

The love of God to win.

THE VISION OF ST. PETER.

To Peter by night the faithfullest came

And said, "We appeal to thee!

The life of the Church is in thy life;

We pray thee to rise and flee.

"For the tyrant's hand is red with blood,

And his arm is heavy with power;

Thy head, the head of the Church, will fall

If thou tarry in Rome an hour."

Through the sleeping town St. Peter passed

To the wide Campagna plain;

In the starry light of the Alban night

He drew free breath again:

When across his path an awful form

In luminous glory stood;

His thorn-crowned brow, His hands and feet,

Were wet with immortal blood.

The godlike sorrow which filled His eyes

Seemed changed to a godlike wrath

As they turned on Peter, who cried aloud,

And sank to his knees in the path.

"Lord of my life, my love, my soul!

Say, what wilt Thou with me?"

A voice replied, "I go to Rome

To be crucified for thee."

The Apostle sprang, all flushed, to his feet,—

The vision had passed away;

The light still lay on the dewy plain,

But the sky in the east was gray.

To the city walls St. Peter turned,

And his heart in his breast grew fire;

In every vein the hot blood burned

With the strength of one high desire.

And sturdily back he marched to his death

Of terrible pain and shame;

And never a shade of fear again

To the stout Apostle came.

ISRAEL.

When by Jabbok the patriarch waited

To learn on the morrow his doom,

And his dubious spirit debated

In darkness and silence and gloom,

There descended a Being with whom

He wrestled in agony sore,

With striving of heart and of brawn,

And not for an instant forbore

Till the east gave a threat of the dawn;

And then, as the Awful One blessed him,

To his lips and his spirit there came,

Compelled by the doubts that oppressed him,

The cry that through questioning ages

Has been wrung from the hinds and the sages,

"Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy name!"

Most fatal, most futile, of questions!

Wherever the heart of man beats,

In the spirit's most sacred retreats,

It comes with its sombre suggestions,

Unanswered for ever and aye.

The blessing may come and may stay,

For the wrestlers heroic endeavour;

But the question, unheeded for ever,

Dies out in the broadening day.

In the ages before our traditions,

By the altars of dark superstitions,

The imperious question has come;

When the death-stricken victim lay sobbing

At the feet of his slayer and priest,

And his heart was laid smoking and throbbing

To the sound of the cymbal and drum

On the steps of the high Teocallis;

When the delicate Greek at his feast

Poured forth the red wine from his chalice

With mocking and cynical prayer;

When by Nile Egypt worshipping lay,

And afar, through the rosy, flushed air

The Memnon called out to the day;

Where the Muezzin's cry floats from his spire;

In the vaulted Cathedral's dim shades,

Where the crushed hearts of thousands aspire

Through arts highest miracles higher,

This question of questions invades

Each heart bowed in worship or shame;

In the air where the censers are swinging,

A voice, going up with the singing,

Cries, "Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy name!"

No answer came back, not a word,

To the patriarch there by the ford;

No answer has come through the ages

To the poets, the seers, and the sages

Who have sought in the secrets of science

The name and the nature of God,

Whether cursing in desperate defiance

Or kissing His absolute rod;

But the answer which was and shall be,

"My name!  Nay, what is it to thee?"

The search and the question are vain.

By use of the strength that is in you,

By wrestling of soul and of sinew

The blessing of God you may gain.

There are lights in the far-gleaming Heaven

That never will shine on our eyes;

To mortals it may not be given

To range those inviolate skies.

The mind, whether praying or scorning,

That tempts those dread secrets shall fail;

But strive through the night till the morning,

And mightily shalt thou prevail.

THE CROWS AT WASHINGTON.

Slow flapping to the setting sun

By twos and threes, in wavering rows,

As twilight shadows dimly close,

The crows fly over Washington.

Under the crimson sunset sky

Virginian woodlands leafless lie,

In wintry torpor bleak and dun.

Through the rich vault of heaven, which shines

Like a warmed opal in the sun,

With wide advance in broken lines

The crows fly over Washington.

Over the Capitol's white dome,

Across the obelisk soaring bare

To prick the clouds, they travel home,

Content and weary, winnowing

With dusky vans the golden air,

Which hints the coming of the spring,

Though winter whitens Washington.

The dim, deep air, the level ray

Of dying sunlight on their plumes,

Give them a beauty not their own;

Their hoarse notes fail and faint away;

A rustling murmur floating down

Blends sweetly with the thickening glooms;

They touch with grace the fading day,

Slow flying over Washington.

I stand and watch with clouded eyes

These dim battalions move along;

Out of the distance memory cries

Of days when life and hope were strong,

When love was prompt and wit was gay;

Even then, at evening, as to-day,

I watched, while twilight hovered dim

Over Potomac's curving rim,

This selfsame flight of homing crows

Blotting the sunset's fading rose,

Above the roofs of Washington.

REMORSE.

Sad is the thought of sunniest days

Of love and rapture perished,

And shine through memory's tearful haze

The eyes once fondliest cherished.

Reproachful is the ghost of toys

That charmed while life was wasted.

But saddest is the thought of joys

That never yet were tasted.

Sad is the vague and tender dream

Of dead love's lingering kisses,

To crushed hearts haloed by the gleam

Of unreturning blisses;

Deep mourns the soul in anguished pride

For the pitiless death that won them,—

But the saddest wail is for lips that died

With the virgin dew upon them.

ESSE QUAM VIDERI.

The knightly legend of thy shield betrays

The moral of thy life; a forecast wise,

And that large honour that deceit defies,

Inspired thy fathers in the elder days,

Who decked thy scutcheon with that sturdy phrase,

TO BE RATHER THAN SEEM.  As eve's red skies

Surpass the morning's rosy prophecies,

Thy life to that proud boast its answer pays.

Scorning thy faith and purpose to defend

The ever-mutable multitude at last

Will hail the power they did not comprehend,—

Thy fame will broaden through the centuries;

As, storm and billowy tumult overpast,

The moon rules calmly o'er the conquered seas.

WHEN THE BOYS COME HOME.

There's a happy time coming,

When the boys come home.

There's a glorious day coming,

When the boys come home.

We will end the dreadful story

Of this treason dark and gory

In a sunburst of glory,

When the boys come home.

The day will seem brighter

When the boys come home,

For our hearts will be lighter

When the boys come home.

Wives and sweethearts will press them

In their arms and caress them,

And pray God to bless them,

When the boys come home.

The thinned ranks will be proudest

When the boys come home,

And their cheer will ring the loudest

When the boys come home.

The full ranks will be shattered,

And the bright arms will be battered,

And the battle-standards tattered,

When the boys come home.

Their bayonets may be rusty,

When the boys come home,

And their uniforms dusty,

When the boys come home.

But all shall see the traces

Of battle's royal graces,

In the brown and bearded faces,

When the boys come home.

Our love shall go to meet them,

When the boys come home,

To bless them and to greet them,

When the boys come home;

And the fame of their endeavour

Time and change shall not dissever

From the nation's heart for ever,

When the boys come home.

LESE-AMOUR.

How well my heart remembers

Beside these camp-fire embers

The eyes that smiled so far away,—

The joy that was November's.

Her voice to laughter moving,

So merrily reproving,—

We wandered through the autumn woods,

And neither thought of loving.

The hills with light were glowing,

The waves in joy were flowing,—

It was not to the clouded sun

The day's delight was owing.

Though through the brown leaves straying,

Our lives seemed gone a-Maying;

We knew not Love was with us there,

No look nor tone betraying.

How unbelief still misses

The best of being's blisses!

Our parting saw the first and last

Of love's imagined kisses.

Now 'mid these scenes the drearest

I dream of her, the dearest,—

Whose eyes outshine the Southern stars,

So far, and yet the nearest.

And Love, so gaily taunted,

Who died, no welcome granted,

Comes to me now, a pallid ghost,

By whom my life is haunted.

With bonds I may not sever,

He binds my heart for ever,

And leads me where we murdered him,—

The Hill beside the River.

CAMP SHAW, FLORIDA,

February 1864.

NORTHWARD.

Under the high unclouded sun

That makes the ship and shadow one,

I sail away as from the fort

Booms sullenly the noonday gun.

The odorous airs blow thin and fine,

The sparkling waves like emeralds shine,

The lustre of the coral reefs

Gleams whitely through the tepid brine.

And glitters o'er the liquid miles

The jewelled ring of verdant isles,

Where generous Nature holds her court

Of ripened bloom and sunny smiles.

Encinctured by the faithful seas

Inviolate gardens load the breeze,

Where flaunt like giant-warders' plumes

The pennants of the cocoa-trees.

Enthroned in light and bathed in balm,

In lonely majesty the Palm

Blesses the isles with waving hands,—

High-Priest of the eternal Calm.

Yet Northward with an equal mind

I steer my course, and leave behind

The rapture of the Southern skies,—

The wooing of the Southern wind.

For here o'er Nature's wanton bloom

Falls far and near the shade of gloom,

Cast from the hovering vulture-wings

Of one dark thought of woe and doom.

I know that in the snow-white pines

The brave Norse fire of freedom shines,

And fain for this I leave the land

Where endless summer pranks the vines.

O strong, free North, so wise and brave!

O South, too lovely for a slave!

Why read ye not the changeless truth,—

The free can conquer but to save?

May God upon these shining sands

Send Love and Victory clasping hands,

And Freedom's banners wave in peace

For ever o'er the rescued lands!

And here, in that triumphant hour,

Shall yielding beauty wed with power;

And blushing earth and smiling sea

In dalliance deck the bridal bower.

KEY WEST, 1864.

IN THE FIRELIGHT.

My dear wife sits beside the fire

With folded hands and dreaming eyes,

Watching the restless flames aspire,

And rapt in thralling memories.

I mark the fitful firelight fling

Its warm caresses on her brow,

And kiss her hands' unmelting snow,

And glisten on her wedding-ring.

The proud free head that crowns so well

The neck superb, whose outlines glide

Into the bosom's perfect swell

Soft-billowed by its peaceful tide,

The cheek's faint flush, the lip's red glow,

The gracious charm her beauty wears,

Fill my fond eyes with tender tears

As in the days of long ago.

Days long ago, when in her eyes

The only heaven I cared for lay,

When from our thoughtless Paradise

All care and toil dwelt far away;

When Hope in wayward fancies throve,

And rioted in secret sweets,

Beguiled by Passion's dear deceits,—

The mysteries of maiden love.

One year had passed since first my sight

Was gladdened by her girlish charms,

When on a rapturous summer night

I clasped her in possessing arms.

And now ten years have rolled away,

And left such blessings as their dower;

I owe her tenfold at this hour

The love that lit our wedding-day.

For now, vague-hovering o'er her form,

My fancy sees, by love refined,

A warmer and a dearer charm

By wedlock's mystic hands entwined,—

A golden coil of wifely cares

That years have forged, the loving joy

That guards the curly-headed boy

Asleep an hour ago upstairs.

A fair young mother, pure as fair,

A matron heart and virgin soul!

The flickering light that crowns her hair

Seems like a saintly aureole.

A tender sense upon me falls

That joy unmerited is mine,

And in this pleasant twilight shine

My perfect bliss myself appals.

Come back! my darling, strayed so far

Into the realm of fantasy,—

Let thy dear face shine like a star

In love-light beaming over me.

My melting soul is jealous, sweet,

Of thy long silence' drear eclipse;

O kiss me back with living lips,

To life, love, lying at thy feet!

IN A GRAVEYARD.

In the dewy depths of the graveyard

I lie in the tangled grass,

And watch, in the sea of azure,

The white cloud-islands pass.

The birds in the rustling branches

Sing gaily overhead;

Grey stones like sentinel spectres

Are guarding the silent dead.

The early flowers sleep shaded

In the cool green noonday glooms;

The broken light falls shuddering

On the cold white face of the tombs.

Without, the world is smiling

In the infinite love of God,

But the sunlight fails and falters

When it falls on the churchyard sod.

On me the joyous rapture

Of a heart's first love is shed,

But it falls on my heart as coldly

As sunlight on the dead.

THE PRAIRIE.

The skies are blue above my head,

The prairie green below,

And flickering o'er the tufted grass

The shifting shadows go,

Vague-sailing, where the feathery clouds

Fleck white the tranquil skies,

Black javelins darting where aloft

The whirring pheasant flies.

A glimmering plain in drowsy trance

The dim horizon bounds,

Where all the air is resonant

With sleepy summer sounds,—

The life that sings among the flowers,

The lisping of the breeze,

The hot cicala's sultry cry,

The murmurous dream of bees.

The butterfly—a flying flower—

Wheels swift in flashing rings,

And flutters round his quiet kin,

With brave flame-mottled wings.

The wild Pinks burst in crimson fire

The Phlox' bright clusters shine,

And Prairie-Cups are swinging free

To spill their airy wine.

And lavishly beneath the sun,

In liberal splendour rolled,

The Fennel fills the dipping plain

With floods of flowery gold;

And widely weaves the Iron-Weed

A woof of purple dyes

Where Autumn's royal feet may tread

When bankrupt Summer flies.

In verdurous tumult far away

The prairie-billows gleam,

Upon their crests in blessing rests

The noontide's gracious beam.

Low quivering vapours steaming dim

The level splendours break

Where languid Lilies deck the rim

Of some land-circled lake.

Far in the east like low-hung clouds

The waving woodlands lie;

Far in the west the glowing plain

Melts warmly in the sky.

No accent wounds the reverent air,

No footprint dints the sod,

Lone in the light the prairie lies

Rapt in a dream of God.

ILLINOIS, 1858.

CENTENNIAL.

A hundred times the bells of Brown

Have rung to sleep the idle summers,

And still to-day clangs clamouring down

A greeting to the welcome comers.

And far, like waves of morning, pours

Her call, in airy ripples breaking,

And wanders to the farthest shores,

Her children's drowsy hearts awaking.

The wild vibration floats along,

O'er heart-strings tense its magic plying,

And wakes in every breast its song

Of love and gratitude undying.

My heart to meet the summons leaps

At limit of its straining tether,

Where the fresh western sunlight steeps

In golden flame the prairie heather.

And others, happier, rise and fare

To pass within the hallowed portal,

And see the glory shining there

Shrined in her steadfast eyes immortal.

What though their eyes be dim and dull,

Their heads be white in reverend blossom;

Our mothers smile is beautiful

As when she bore them on her bosom!

Her heavenly forehead bears no line

Of Time's iconolastic fingers,

But o'er her form the grace divine

Of deathless youth and wisdom lingers.

We fade and pass, grow faint and old,

Till youth and joy and hope are banished,

And still her beauty seems to fold

The sum of all the glory vanished.

As while Tithonus faltered on

The threshold of the Olympian dawnings,

Aurora's front eternal shone

With lustre of the myriad mornings.

So joys that slip like dead leaves down,

And hopes burnt out that die in ashes,

Rise restless from their graves to crown

Our mother's brow with fadeless flashes.

And lives wrapped in traditions mist

These honoured halls to-day are haunting,

And lips by lips long withered kissed

The sagas of the past are chanting.

Scornful of absence' envious bar

BROWN smiles upon the mystic meeting

Of those her sons, who, sundered far,

In brotherhood of heart are greeting;

Her wayward children wandering on

Where setting stars are lowly burning,

But still in worship toward the dawn

That gilds their souls' dear Mecca turning;

Or those who, armed for God's own fight,

Stand by His Word through fire and slaughter,

Or bear our banner's starry light

Far-flashing through the Gulf's blue water.

For where one strikes for light and truth,

The right to aid, the wrong redressing,

The mother of his spirit's youth

Sheds o'er his soul her silent blessing.

She gained her crown a gem of flame

When KNEASS fell dead in victory gory;

New splendour blazed upon her name

When IVES' young life went out in glory!

Thus bright for ever may she keep

Her fires of tolerant Freedom burning,

Till War's red eyes are charmed to sleep

And bells ring home the boys returning.

And may she shed her radiant truth

In largess on ingenuous comers,

And hold the bloom of gracious youth

Through many a hundred tranquil summers!

A WINTER NIGHT.

The winter wind is raving fierce and shrill,

And chides with angry moan the frosty skies;

The white stars gaze with sleepless Gorgon eyes

That freeze the earth in terror fixed and still.

We reck not of the wild night's gloom and chill,

Housed from its rage, dear friend; and fancy flies,

Lured by the hand of beckoning memories,

Back to those summer evenings on the hill

Where we together watched the sun go down

Beyond the gold-washed uplands, while his fires

Touched into glittering life the vanes and spires

Piercing the purpling mists that veiled the town.

The wintry night thy voice and eyes beguile,

Till wake the sleeping summers in thy smile.

STUDENT-SONG.

When Youth's warm heart beats high, my friend,

And Youth's blue sky is bright,

And shines in Youth's clear eye, my friend,

Love's early dawning light,

Let the free soul spurn care's control,

And while the glad days shine,

We'll use their beams for Youth's gay dreams

Of Love and Song and Wine.

Let not the bigot's frown, my friend,

O'ercast thy brow with gloom,

For Autumn's sober brown, my friend,

Shall follow Summer's bloom.

Let smiles and sighs and loving eyes

In changeful beauty shine,

And shed their beams on Youth's gay dreams

Of Love and Song and Wine.

For in the weary years, my friend,

That stretched before us lie,

There'll be enough of tears, my friend,

To dim the brightest eye.

So let them wait, and laugh at fate,

While Youth's sweet moments shine,—

Till memory gleams with golden dreams

Of Love and Song and Wine.

HOW IT HAPPENED.

I pray you, pardon me, Elsie,

And smile that frown away

That dims the light of your lovely face

As a thunder-cloud the day.

I really could not help it,—

Before I thought, 'twas done,—

And those great grey eyes flashed bright and cold,

Like an icicle in the sun.

I was thinking of the summers

When we were boys and girls,

And wandered in the blossoming woods,

And the gay winds romped with your curls.

And you seemed to me the same little girl

I kissed in the alder-path,

I kissed the little girl's lips, and, alas!

I have roused a woman's wrath.

There is not so much to pardon,—

For why were your lips so red?

The blond hair fell in a shower of gold

From the proud, provoking head.

And the beauty that flashed from the splendid eyes,

And played round the tender mouth,

Rushed over my soul like a warm sweet wind

That blows from the fragrant south.

And where, after all, is the harm done?

I believe we were made to be gay,

And all of youth not given to love

Is vainly squandered away.

And strewn through life's low labours,

Like gold in the desert sands,

Are love's swift kisses and sighs and vows

And the clasp of clinging hands.

And when you are old and lonely,

In Memory's magic shine

You will see on your thin and wasting hands,

Like gems, these kisses of mine.

And when you muse at evening

At the sound of some vanished name,

The ghost of my kisses shall touch your lips

And kindle your heart to flame.

GOD'S VENGEANCE.

Saith the Lord, "Vengeance is mine;

I will repay," saith the Lord;

Ours be the anger divine,

Lit by the flash of His word.

How shall His vengeance be done?

How, when His purpose is clear?

Must He come down from His throne?

Hath He no instruments here?

Sleep not in imbecile trust,

Waiting for God to begin,

While, growing strong in the dust,

Rests the bruised serpent of sin.

Right and Wrong,—both cannot live

Death-grappled.  Which shall we see?

Strike! only Justice can give

Safety to all that shall be.

Shame! to stand paltering thus,

Tricked by the balancing odds;

Strike! God is waiting for us!

Strike! for the vengeance is God's.

TOO LATE.

Had we but met in other days,

Had we but loved in other ways,

Another light and hope had shone

On your life and my own.

In sweet but hopeless reveries

I fancy how your wistful eyes

Had saved me, had I known their power

In fate's imperious hour;

How loving you, beloved of God,

And following you, the path I trod

Had led me, through your love and prayers,

To God's love unawares:

And how our beings joined as one

Had passed through checkered shade and sun,

Until the earth our lives had given,

With little change, to heaven.

God knows why this was not to be.

You bloomed from childhood far from me.

The sunshine of the favoured place

That knew your youth and grace.

And when your eyes, so fair and free,

In fearless beauty beamed on me,

I knew the fatal die was thrown,

My choice in life was gone.

And still with wild and tender art

Your child-love touched my torpid heart,

Gilding the blackness where it fell,

Like sunlight over hell.

In vain, in vain! my choice was gone!

Better to struggle on alone

Than blot your pure life's blameless shine

With cloudy stains of mine.

A vague regret, a troubled prayer,

And then the future vast and fair

Will tempt your young and eager eyes

With all its glad surprise.

And I shall watch you, safe and far,

As some late traveller eyes a star

Wheeling beyond his desert sands

To gladden happier lands.

LOVE'S DOUBT.

'Tis love that blinds my heart and eyes,—

I sometimes say in doubting dreams,—

The face that near me perfect seems

Cold Memory paints in fainter dyes.

'Twas but love's dazzled eyes—I say—

That made her seem so strangely bright;

The face I worshipped yesternight,

I dread to meet it changed to-day.

As, when dies out some song's refrain,

And leaves your eyes in happy tears,

Awake the same fond idle fears,—

It cannot sound so sweet again.

You wait and say with vague annoy,

"It will not sound so sweet again,"

Until comes back the wild refrain

That floods your soul with treble joy.

So when I see my love again

Fades the unquiet doubt away,

While shines her beauty like the day

Over my happy heart and brain.

And in that face I see no more

The fancied faults I idly dreamed,

But all the charms that fairest seemed,

I find them, fairer than before.

LACRIMAS.

God send me tears!

Loose the fierce band that binds my tired brain,

Give me the melting heart of other years,

And let me weep again!

Before me pass

The shapes of things inexorably true.

Gone is the sparkle of transforming dew

From every blade of grass.

In life's high noon

Aimless I stand, my promised task undone,

And raise my hot eyes to the angry sun

That will go down too soon.

Turned into gall

Are the sweet joys of childhood's sunny reign;

And memory is a torture, love a chain

That binds my life in thrall.

And childhood's pain

Could to me now the purest rapture yield;

I pray for tears as in his parching field

The husbandman for rain.

We pray in vain!

The sullen sky flings down its blaze of brass;

The joys of life all scorched and withering pass;

I shall not weep again.

ON THE BLUFF.

O grandly flowing River!

O silver-gliding River!

Thy springing willows shiver

In the sunset as of old;

They shiver in the silence

Of the willow-whitened islands,

While the sun-bars and the sand-bars

Fill air and wave with gold.

O gay, oblivious River!

O sunset-kindled River!

Do you remember ever

The eyes and skies so blue

On a summer day that shone here,

When we were all alone here,

And the blue eyes were too wise

To speak the love they knew?

O stern, impassive River!

O still, unanswering River!

The shivering willows quiver

As the night-winds moan and rave.

From the past a voice is calling,

From heaven a star is falling,

And dew swells in the bluebells

Above her hillside grave.

UNA.

In the whole wide world there was but one;

Others for others, but she was mine,

The one fair woman beneath the sun.

From her gold-flax curls' most marvellous shine

Down to the lithe and delicate feet

There was not a curve nor a waving line

But moved in a harmony firm and sweet

With all of passion my life could know.

By knowledge perfect and faith complete

I was bound to her,—as the planets go

Adoring around their central star,

Free, but united for weal or woe.

She was so near and Heaven so far—

She grew my heaven and law and fate,

Rounding my life with a mystic bar

No thought beyond could violate.

Our love to fulness in silence nursed

Grew calm as morning, when through the gate

Of the glimmering east the sun has burst,

With his hot life filling the waiting air.

She kissed me once,—that last and first

Of her maiden kisses was placid as prayer.

Against all comers I sat with lance

In rest, and, drunk with my joy, I sware

Defiance and scorn to the world's worst chance.

In vain! for soon unhorsed I lay

At the feet of the strong god Circumstance—

And never again shall break the day,

And never again shall fall the night,

That shall light me, or shield me, on my way

To the presence of my sad soul's delight.

Her dead love comes like a passionate ghost

To mourn the Body it held so light,

And Fate, like a hound with a purpose lost,

Goes round bewildered with shame and fright.

THROUGH THE LONG DAYS.

Through the long days and years

What will my loved one be,

Parted from me?

Through the long days and years.

Always as then she was,

Loveliest, brightest, best,

Blessing and blest,—

Always as then she was.

Never on earth again

Shall I before her stand,

Touch lip or hand,—

Never on earth again.

But while my darling lives

Peaceful I journey on,

Not quite alone,

Not while my darling lives.

A PHYLACTERY.

Wise men I hold those rakes of old

Who, as we read in antique story,

When lyres were struck and wine was poured,

Set the white Death's Head on the board—

Memento mori.

Love well! love truly! and love fast!

True love evades the dilatory.

Life's bloom flares like a meteor past;

A joy so dazzling cannot last—

Memento mori.

Stop not to pluck the leaves of bay

That greenly deck the path of glory,

The wreath will wither if you stay,

So pass along your earnest way—

Memento mori.

Hear but not heed, though wild and shrill,

The cries of faction transitory;

Cleave to YOUR good, eschew YOUR ill,

A Hundred Years and all is still—

Memento mori.

When Old Age comes with muffled drums,

That beat to sleep our tired life's story,

On thoughts of dying (Rest is good!),

Like old snakes coiled i' the sun, we brood—

Memento mori.

BLONDINE.

I wandered through a careless world

Deceived when not deceiving,

And never gave an idle heart

The rapture of believing.

The smiles, the sighs, the glancing eyes,

Of many hundred comers

Swept by me, light as rose-leaves blown

From long-forgotten summers.

But never eyes so deep and bright

And loyal in their seeming,

And never smiles so full of light

Have shone upon my dreaming.

The looks and lips so gay and wise,

The thousand charms that wreathe them,

—Almost I dare believe that truth

Is safely shrined beneath them.

Ah! do they shine, those eyes of thine,

But for our own misleading?

The fresh young smile, so pure and fine,

Does it but mock our reading?

Then faith is fled, and trust is dead,

And unbelief grows duty,

If fraud can wield the triple arm

Of youth and wit and beauty.

DISTICHES.

I.

Wisely a woman prefers to a lover a man who neglects her.

This one may love her some day, some day the lover will not.

II.

There are three species of creatures who when they seem coming are going,

When they seem going they come:  Diplomates, women, and crabs.

III.

Pleasures too hastily tasted grow sweeter in fond recollection,

As the pomegranate plucked green ripens far over the sea.

IV.

As the meek beasts in the Garden came flocking for Adam to name them,

Men for a title to-day crawl to the feet of a king.

V.

What is a first love worth, except to prepare for a second?

What does the second love bring?  Only regret for the first.

VI.

Health was wooed by the Romans in groves of the laurel and myrtle.

Happy and long are the lives brightened by glory and love.

VII.

Wine is like rain:  when it falls on the mire it but makes it the fouler,

But when it strikes the good soil wakes it to beauty and bloom.

VIII.

Break not the rose; its fragrance and beauty are surely sufficient:

Resting contented with these, never a thorn shall you feel.

IX.

When you break up housekeeping, you learn the extent of your treasures;

Till he begins to reform, no one can number his sins.

X.

Maidens! why should you worry in choosing whom you shall marry?

Choose whom you may, you will find you have got somebody else.

XI.

Unto each man comes a day when his favourite sins all forsake him,

And he complacently thinks he has forsaken his sins.

XII.

Be not too anxious to gain your next-door neighbour's approval:

Live your own life, and let him strive your approval to gain.

XIII.

Who would succeed in the world should be wise in the use of his pronouns.

Utter the You twenty times, where you once utter the I.

XIV.

The best-loved man or maid in the town would perish with anguish

Could they hear all that their friends say in the

course of a day.

XV.

True luck consists not in holding the best of the cards at the table:

Luckiest he who knows just when to rise and go home.

XVI.

Pleasant enough it is to hear the world speak of your virtues;

But in your secret heart 'tis of your faults you are proud.

XVII.

Try not to beat back the current, yet be not drowned in its waters;

Speak with the speech of the world, think with the thoughts of the few.

XVIII.

Make all good men your well-wishers, and then, in the years' steady

sifting,

Some of them turn into friends.  Friends are the sunshine of life.

REGARDANT.

As I lay at your feet that afternoon,

Little we spoke,—you sat and mused,

Humming a sweet old-fashioned tune,

And I worshipped you, with a sense confused

Of the good time gone and the bad on the way,

While my hungry eyes your face perused,

To catch and brand on my soul for aye

The subtle smile which had grown my doom.

Drinking sweet poison hushed I lay

Till the sunset shimmered athwart the room.

I rose to go.  You stood so fair

And dim in the dead day's tender gloom:

All at once, or ever I was aware,

Flashed from you on me a warm strong wave

Of passion and power; in the silence there

I fell on my knees, like a lover, or slave,

With my wild hands clasping your slender waist;

And my lips, with a sudden frenzy brave,

A madman's kiss on your girdle pressed,

And I felt your calm heart's quickening beat,

And your soft hands on me one instant rest.

And if God had loved me, how endlessly sweet

Had He let my heart in its rapture burst,

And throb its last at your firm small feet!

And when I was forth, I shuddered at first

At my imminent bliss.  As a soul in pain,

Treading his desolate path accursed,

Looks back and dreams through his tears' dim rain

That by Heaven's wide gate the angels smile,

Relenting, and beckon him back again,

And goes on, thrice damned by that devil's wile,—

So sometimes burns in my weary brain

The thought that you loved me all the while.

GUY OF THE TEMPLE.

Down the dim west slowly fails the stricken sun,

And from his hot face fades the crimson flush

Veiled in death's herald-shadows sick and grey.

Silent and dark the sombre valley lies

Forgotten; happy in the late fond beams

Glimmer the constant waves of Galilee.

Afar, below, in airy music ring

The bugles of my host; the column halts,

A wearied serpent glittering in the vale,

Where rising mist-like gleam the tented camps.

Pitch my pavilion here, where its high cross

May catch the last light lingering on the hill.

The savage shadows, struggling by the shore,

Have conquered in the valley; inch by inch

The vanquished light fights bravely to these crags

To perish glorious in the sunset fire;

Even as our hunted Cause so pressed and torn

In Syrian valleys, and the trampled marge

Of consecrated streams, displays at last

Its narrowing glories from these steadfast walls.

Here in God's name we stand, and brighter far

Shines the stern virtue of my martyr-host

Through these invidious fortunes, than of old,

When the still sunshine glinted on their helms,

And dallying breezes woke their bridle-bells

To tinkling music by the reedy shore

Of calm Tiberias, where our angry Lord,

Wroth at the deadly sin that cursed our camp,

Denied and blinded us, and gave us up

To the avenging sword of Saladin.

Yet would He not permit His truth to sink

To utter loss amid that foundering fight,

But led us, scarred and shattered from the spoil

Of Paynim rage, the desert's thirsty death,

To where beneath the sheltering crags we prayed

And rested and grew strong.  Heroes and saints

To alien peoples shall they be, my brave

And patient warriors; for in their stout hearts

God's Spirit dwells for ever, and their hands

Are swift to do His service on His foes.

The swelling music of their vesper-hymn

Is rising fragrant from the shadowed vale

Familiar to the welcoming gates of heaven.

Mother of God! as evening falls

Upon the silent sea,

And shadows veil the mountain walls,

We lift our souls to thee!

From lurking perils of the night,

The desert's hidden harms,

From plagues that waste, from blasts that smite,

Defend thy men-at-arms!

Ay! Heaven keep them! and ye angel-hosts

That wait with fluttering plumes around the great

White throne of God, guard them from scath and harm!

For in your starry records never shone

The memory of desert so great as theirs.

I hold not first, though peerless else on earth,

That knightly valour, born of gentle blood

And war's long tutelage, which hath made their name

Blaze like a baleful planet o'er these lands;

Firm seat in saddle, lance unmoved, a hand

Wedding the hilt with death's persistent grasp;

One-minded rush in fight that naught can stay.

Not these the highest, though I scorn not these,

But rather offer Heaven with humble heart

The deeds that Heaven hath given us arms to do.

For when God's smile was with us we were strong

To go like sudden lightning to our mark:

As on that summer day when Saladin—

Passing in scorn our host at Antioch,

Who spent the days in revel, and shamed the stars

With nightly scandal—came with all his host,

Its gay battalia brave with saffron silks,

Flaunting the banners of the Caliphate

Beneath the walls of fair Jerusalem:

And white and shaking came the Leper-King,

Great Baldwin's blasted scion, and Tripoli

And I, and twenty score of Temple Knights,

To meet the myriads marshalled by the bright

Untarnished flower of Eastern chivalry;

A moment paused with level-fronting spears

And moveless helms before that shining host,

Whose gay attire abashed the morning light,

And then struck spur and charged, while from the mass

Of rushing terror burst the awful cry,

GOD AND THE TEMPLE!  As the avalanche slides

Down Alpine slopes, precipitous, cold and dark,

Unpitying and unwrathful, grinds and crushes

The mountain violets and the valley weeds,

And drags behind a trail of chaos and death;

So burst we on that field, and through and through

The gay battalia brave with saffron silks,

Crushed and abolished every grace and gleam,

And dragged where'er we rode a sinuous track

Of chaos and death, till all the plain was filled

With battered armour, turbaned trunkless heads,

With silken mantles blushing angry gules

And Bagdad's banners trampled and forlorn.

And Saladin, stunned and bewildered sore,—

The greatest prince, save in the grace of God,

That now wears sword,—mounted his brother's barb,

And, followed by a half-score followers,

Sped to his castle Shaubec, over against

The cliffs by Ascalon, and there abode:

And sullenly made order that no more

The royal nouba should be played for him

Until he should erase the rusting stain

Upon his knightly honour; and no more

The nouba sounded by the Sultan's tent,

Morning nor evening by the silent tent,

Until the headlong greed of Chatillon

Spread ruin on our cause from Montreale.

But greatest are my warriors, as I deem,

In that their hearts, nearer than any else,

Keep true the pledge of perfect purity

They pledged upon their sword-hilts long ago.

For all is possible to the pure in heart.

Mother of God! thy starry smile

Still bless us from above!

Keep pure our souls from passion's guile,

Our hearts from earthly love!

Still save each soul from guilt apart

As stainless as each sword,

And guard undimmed in every heart

The image of our Lord!

O goodliest fellowship that the world has known,

True hearts and stalwart arms! above your breasts

Glitters no flash of wreathen amulet

Forged against sword-stroke by the chanted rhythm

Of charms accurst; but in each steadfast heart

Blazes the light of cloudless purity,

That like a splendid jewel glorifies

With restless fire the gold that spheres it round,

And marks you children of our God, whose lives

He guards with the awful jealousy of love.

And even me that generous love has spared,—

Me, trustless knight and miserable man,—

Sad prey of dark and mutinous thoughts that tempt

My sick soul into perjury and death—

Since His great love had pity on my pain,

Has spared to lead these blameless warriors safe

Into the desert from the blazing towns,

Out of the desert to the inviolate hills

Where God has roofed them with His hollow shield.

Through all these days of tempest and eclipse

His hand has led me and His wrath has flashed

Its lightnings in the pathway of my sword.

And so I hope, and so my crescent faith

Gains daily power, that all my prayers and tears

And toils and blood and anguish borne for Him

May blot the accusing of my deadly sin

From heavens high compt, and give me rest in death;

And lay the pallid ghost of mortal love,

That fills with banned and mournful loveliness,

Unblest, the haunted chambers of my soul.

My misery will atone,—my misery,—

Dear God, will surely atone! for not the sting

Of lacerating thongs, nor the slow horror

Of crowns of thorny iron maddening the brows,

Nor all that else pale hermits have devised

To scourge the rebel senses in their shade

Of caverned desolation, have the power

To smart and goad and lash and mortify

Like the great love that binds my ruined heart

Relentless, as the insidious ivy binds

The shattered bulk of some deserted tower,

Enlacing slow and riving with strong hands

Of pitiless verdure every seam and jut,

Till none may tear it forth and save the tower.

So binds and masters me my hopeless love.

So through the desert, in the silent hills,

I' the current of the battle's storm and stress,

One thought has driven me,—that though men may call

Me stainless Paladin, Knight leal and true

To Christ and Our Lady, still I know myself

A knight not after God's own heart, a soul

Recreant, and whelmed in the forbidden sin.

For dearer to my sad heart than the cross

I give my heart's best blood for are the eyes

That long ago, when youth and hope were mine,

I loved in thy still valleys, far Provence!

And sweeter to my spirit than the bells

Of rescued Salem are the loving tones

Of her dear voice, soft echoing o'er the years.

They haunt me in the stillness and the glare

Of desert noontide when the horizon's line

Swims faintly throbbing, and my shadow hides

Skulking beneath me from the brassy sky.

And when night comes to soothe with breath of balm

And pomp of stars the worn and weary world,

Her eyes rise in my soul and make its day.

And even into the battle comes my love,

Snatching the duty that I offer Heaven.

At closing of El-Majed's awful day,

When the last quivering sunbeams, choked with dust

And fume of blood, failed on the level plain,

In the last charge, when gathered all our knights

The precious handful who from morn had stemmed

The fury of the multitudinous hosts

Of Islam, where in youth's hot fire and pride

Ramped the young lion-whelp, Ben-Saladin;

As down the slope we rode at eventide,

The dying sunlight faintly smiled to greet

Our tattered guidons and our dinted helms

And lance-heads blooming with the battle's rose.

Into the vale, dusk with the shadow of death,

With silent lips and ringing mail we rode.

And something in the spirit of the hour,

Or fate, or memory, or sorrow, or sin,

Or love, which unto me is all of these,

Possessed and bound me; for when dashed our troop

In stormy clangour on the Paynim lines

The soul of my dead youth came into me;

Faded away my oath; the woes of Zion,

God was forgot; blazed in my leaping heart,

With instant flash, life's inextinguished fires;

Plunging along each tense limb poured the blood

Hot with its years of sleeping-smothered flame.

And in a dream I charged, and in a dream

I smote resistless; foemen in my path

Fell unregarded, like the wayside flowers

Clipped by the truant's staff in daisied lanes.

For over me burned lustrous the dear eyes

Of my beloved; I strove as at a joust

To gain at end the guerdon of her smile.

And ever, as in the dense melee I dashed,

Her name burst from my lips, as lightning breaks

Out of the plunging wrack of summer storms.

O my lost love!  Bright o'er the waste of years—

That bliss and beauty shines upon my soul;

As far beyond yon desert hangs the sun,

Gilding with tender beam the barren stretch

Of sands that intervene.  In this still light

The old sweet memories glimmer back to me,

Fair summers of my youth,—the idle days

I wandered in the bosky coverts hid

In the dim woods that girt my ancient home;

The blue young eyes I met and worshipped there;

The love that growing turned those gloomy wilds

To faery dells, and filled the vernal air

With light that bathed the hills of Paradise;

The warm, long days of rapturous summer-time,

When through the forests thick and lush we strayed,

And love made our own sunshine in the shades.

And all things fair and graceful in the woods

I loved with liberal heart; the violets

Were dear for her dear eyes, the quiring birds

That caught the musical tremble of her voice.

O happy twilights in the leafy glooms!

When in the glowing dusk the winsome arts

And maiden graces that all day had kept

Us twain and separate melted away

In blushing silence, and my love was mine

Utterly, utterly, with clinging arms

And quick, caressing fingers, warm red lips,

Where vows, half uttered, drowned in kisses, died;

Mine, with the starlight in her passionate eyes;

The wild wind of the woodland breathing low

To wake the elfin music of the leaves,

And free the prisoned odours of the flowers,

In honour of young Love come to his throne!

While we under the stars, with twining arms

And mutual lips insatiate, gave our souls—

Madly forgetting earth and heaven—to love!

In desert march or battle flame,

In fortress and in field,

Our war-cry is thy holy name,

Thy love our joy and shield!

And if we falter, let thy power

Thy stern avenger be,

And God forget us in the hour

We cease to think of thee!

Curse me not, God of Justice and of Love!

Pitiful God, let my long woe atone!

I cannot deem but God has pitied me;

Else why with painful care have I been saved,

Whenever tossed and drenched in the fierce tide

Of Saladin's victories by the walls profaned

Of Jaffa, on the sands of far Daroum,

Or in the battle thundering on the downs

Of Ramlah, or the bloody day that shed

Red horrors on high Gaza's parapets?

For never a storm of fatal fight has raged

In Islam's track of rout and ruin swept

From Egypt to Gebail, but when the ebb

Of battle came I and my host have lain,

Scarred, scorched, safe somewhere on its fiery shore.

At Marcab's lingering siege, where day by day

We told the Moslem legions toiling slow,

Planting their engines, delving in their mines

To quench in our destruction this last light

Of Christendom, our fortress in the crags,

God's beacon swung defiant from the stars;

One thunderous night I knew their miners groped

Below, and thought ere morn to die, in crush

And tumult of the falling citadel.

And pondering of my fate—the broken storm

Sobbing its life away—I was aware

There grew between me and the quieting skies

A face and form I knew,—not as in dreams,

The sad dishevelled loveliness of earth,

But lighter than the thin air where she swayed,—

Gold hair flame-fluttered, eyes and mouth aglow

With lambent light of spiritual joy.

With sweet command she beckoned me away

And led me vaguely dreaming, till I saw

Where the wild flood in sudden fury had burst

A passage through the rocks:  and thence I led

My host unharmed, following her luminous eyes,

Until the east was grey, and with a smile

Wooing me heavenward still she passed away

Into the rosy trouble of the dawn.

And I believe my love is shrived in heaven,

And I believe that I shall soon be free.

For ever, as I journey on, to me

Waking or sleeping come faint whisperings

And fancies not of earth, as if the gates

Of near eternity stood for me ajar,

And ghostly gales come blowing o'er my soul

Fraught with the amaranth odours of the skies.

I go to join the Lion-Heart at Acre,

And there, after due homage to my liege,

And after patient penance of the Church,

And after final devoir in the fight,

If that my God be gracious, I shall die.

And so I pray—Lord, pardon if I sin!—

That I may lose in death's embittered wave

The stain of sinful loving, and may find

In glory again the love I lost below,

With all of fair and bright and unattained,

Beautiful in the cherishing smile of God,

By the glad waters of the River of Life!

Night hangs above the valley; dies the day

In peace, casting his last glance on my cross,

And warns me to my prayers.  Ave Maria!

Mother of God! the evening fades

On wave and hill and lea,

And in the twilight's deepening shades

We lift our souls to thee!

In passion's stress—the battle's strife,

The desert's lurking harms,

Maid-Mother of the Lord of Life

Protect thy men-at-arms!

TRANSLATIONS.

THE WAY TO HEAVEN.

FROM THE GERMAN.

One day the Sultan, grand and grim,

Ordered the Mufti brought to him.

"Now let thy wisdom solve for me

The question I shall put to thee.

"The different tribes beneath my sway

Four several sects of priests obey;

Now tell me which of all the four

Is on the path to Heaven's door."

The Sultan spake, and then was dumb.

The Mufti looked about the room,

And straight made answer to his lord,

Fearing the bowstring at each word:

"Thou, godlike in thy lofty birth,

Who art our Allah upon earth,

Illume me with thy favouring ray,

And I will answer as I may.

"Here, where thou thronest in thy hall,

I see there are four doors in all;

And through all four thy slaves may gaze

Upon the brightness of thy face.

"That I came hither safely through

Was to thy gracious message due,

And, blinded by thy splendour's flame,

I cannot tell the way I came."

COUNTESS JUTTA.

FROM THE GERMAN OF HEINRICH HEINE.

The Countess Jutta passed over the Rhine

In a light canoe by the moon's pale shine.

The handmaid rows and the Countess speaks:

"Seest thou not there where the water breaks

Seven corpses swim

In the moonlight dim?

So sorrowful swim the dead!

"They were seven knights full of fire and youth,

They sank on my heart and swore me truth.

I trusted them; but for Truth's sweet sake,

Lest they should be tempted their oaths to break,

I had them bound,

And tenderly drowned!

So sorrowful swim the dead!"

The merry Countess laughed outright!

It rang so wild in the startled night!

Up to the waist the dead men rise

And stretch lean fingers to the skies.

They nod and stare

With a glassy glare!

So sorrowful swim the dead!

A BLESSING.

AFTER HEINE.

When I look on thee and feel how dear,

How pure, and how fair thou art,

Into my eyes there steals a tear,

And a shadow mingled of love and fear

Creeps slowly over my heart.

And my very hands feel as if they would lay

Themselves on thy fair young head,

And pray the good God to keep thee alway

As good and lovely, as pure and gay,—

When I and my wild love are dead.

TO THE YOUNG.

AFTER HEINE.

Let your feet not falter, your course not alter

By golden apples, till victory's won!

The sword's sharp clangour, the dart's shrill anger,

Swerve not the hero thundering on.

A bold beginning is half the winning,

An Alexander makes worlds his fee.

No long debating!  The Queens are waiting

In his pavilion on beaded knee.

Thus swift pursuing his wars and wooing,

He mounts old Darius' bed and throne.

O glorious ruin!  O blithe undoing!

O drunk death-triumph in Babylon!

THE GOLDEN CALF.

AFTER HEINE.

Double flutes and horns resound

As they dance the idol round;

Jacob's daughters, madly reeling,

Whirl about the golden calf.

Hear them laugh!

Kettledrums and laughter pealing.

Dresses tucked above their knees,

Maids of noblest families,

In the swift dance blindly wheeling,

Circle in their wild career

Round the steer,—

Kettledrums and laughter pealing.

Aaron's self, the guardian grey

Of the faith, at last gives way,

Madness all his senses stealing;

Prances in his high priest's coat

Like a goat,—

Kettledrums and laughter pealing.

THE AZRA.

AFTER HEINE.

Daily walked the fair and lovely

Sultan's daughter in the twilight,—

In the twilight by the fountain,

Where the sparkling waters plash.

Daily stood the young slave silent

In the twilight by the fountain,

Where the plashing waters sparkle,

Pale and paler every day.

Once by twilight came the princess

Up to him with rapid questions:

"I would know thy name, thy nation,

Whence thou comest, who thou art."

And the young slave said, "My name is

Mahomet, I come from Yemmen.

I am of the sons of Azra,

Men who perish if they love."

GOOD AND BAD LUCK.

AFTER HEINE.

Good luck is the gayest of all gay girls,

Long in one place she will not stay;

Back from your brow she strokes the curls,

Kisses you quick and flies away.

But Madame Bad Luck soberly comes

And stays,—no fancy has she for flitting,—

Snatches of true love-songs she hums,

And sits by your bed, and brings her knitting.

L'AMOUR DU MENSONGE.

AFTER CHARLES BAUDELAIRE.

When I behold thee, O my indolent love,

To the sound of ringing brazen melodies,

Through garish halls harmoniously move,

Scattering a scornful light from languid eyes;

When I see, smitten by the blazing lights,

Thy pale front, beauteous in its bloodless glow

As the faint fires that deck the Northern nights,

And eyes that draw me wheresoe'er I go;

I say, She is fair, too coldly strange for speech;

A crown of memories, her calm brow above,

Shines; and her heart is like a bruised red peach,

Ripe as her body for intelligent love.

Art thou late fruit of spicy savour and scent?

A funeral vase awaiting tearful showers?

An Eastern odour, waste and oasis blent?

A silken cushion or a bank of flowers?

I know there are eyes of melancholy sheen

To which no passionate secrets e'er were given;

Shrines where no god or saint has ever been,

As deep and empty as the vault of Heaven.

But what care I if this be all pretence?

'Twill serve a heart that seeks for truth no more.

All one thy folly or indifference,—

Hail, lovely mask, thy beauty I adore!

AMOR MYSTICUS.

FROM THE SPANISH OF SOR MARCELA DE CARPIO.

Let them say to my Lover

That here I lie!

The thing of His pleasure,

His slave am I.

Say that I seek Him

Only for love,

And welcome are tortures

My passion to prove.

Love giving gifts

Is suspicious and cold;

I have all, my Beloved,

When Thee I hold.

Hope and devotion

The good may gain;

I am but worthy

Of passion and pain.

So noble a Lord

None serves in vain,

For the pay of my love

Is my love's sweet pain.

I love Thee, to love Thee,—

No more I desire;

By faith is nourished

My love's strong fire.

I kiss Thy hands

When I feel their blows;

In the place of caresses

Thou givest me woes.

But in Thy chastising

Is joy and peace.

O Master and Love,

Let Thy blows not cease.

Thy beauty, Beloved,

With scorn is rife,

But I know that Thou lovest me,

Better than life.

And because thou lovest me,

Lover of mine,

Death can but make me

Utterly Thine.

I die with longing

Thy face to see;

Oh! sweet is the anguish

Of death to me!

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™ electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™ works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works provided that:

• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.

• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work.

• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™

Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

Table of Contents

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pike County Ballads and Other Poems, by John Hay

PIKE COUNTY BALLADSAND OTHER POEMS

THE PIKE COUNTY BALLADS.

JIM BLUDSO, OF THE "PRAIRIE BELLE."

LITTLE BREECHES.

BANTY TIM.

THE MYSTERY OF GILGAL.

GOLYER.

THE PLEDGE AT SPUNKY POINT.

WANDERLIEDER.

THE SPHINX OF THE TUILERIES.

THE SURRENDER OF SPAIN.

THE PRAYER OF THE ROMANS.

THE CURSE OF HUNGARY.

THE MONKS OF BASLE.

THE ENCHANTED SHIRT.

A WOMAN'S LOVE.

ON PITZ LANGUARD.

BOUDOIR PROPHECIES.

A TRIUMPH OF ORDER.

ERNST OF EDELSHEIM.

MY CASTLE IN SPAIN.

SISTER SAINT LUKE.

NEW AND OLD.

MILES KEOGH'S HORSE.

THE ADVANCE-GUARD.

LOVE'S PRAYER.

CHRISTINE.

EXPECTATION.

TO FLORA.

A HAUNTED ROOM.

DREAMS.

THE LIGHT OF LOVE.

QUAND MEME.

WORDS.

THE STIRRUP-CUP.

A DREAM OF BRIC-A-BRAC.

LIBERTY.

THE WHITE FLAG.

THE LAW OF DEATH.

MOUNT TABOR.

RELIGION AND DOCTRINE.

SINAI AND CALVARY.

THE VISION OF ST. PETER.

ISRAEL.

THE CROWS AT WASHINGTON.

REMORSE.

ESSE QUAM VIDERI.

WHEN THE BOYS COME HOME.

LESE-AMOUR.

NORTHWARD.

IN THE FIRELIGHT.

IN A GRAVEYARD.

THE PRAIRIE.

CENTENNIAL.

A WINTER NIGHT.

STUDENT-SONG.

HOW IT HAPPENED.

GOD'S VENGEANCE.

TOO LATE.

LOVE'S DOUBT.

LACRIMAS.

ON THE BLUFF.

UNA.

THROUGH THE LONG DAYS.

A PHYLACTERY.

BLONDINE.

DISTICHES.

REGARDANT.

GUY OF THE TEMPLE.

TRANSLATIONS.

THE WAY TO HEAVEN.

COUNTESS JUTTA.

A BLESSING.

TO THE YOUNG.

THE GOLDEN CALF.

THE AZRA.

GOOD AND BAD LUCK.

L'AMOUR DU MENSONGE.

AMOR MYSTICUS.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE