As General of the East;
Night after night I lay
In their camps of yesterday;
Their forage was my feast.

For him, with sails of red,
And torches at mast-head,

Piloting the great fleet,
I swept the Afric coasts
And scattered the Vandal hosts,
Like dust in a windy street.

For him I won again
The Ausonian realm and reign,
Rome and Parthenope;
And all the land was mine
From the summits of Apennine
To the shores of either sea.

For him, in my feeble age,
I dared the battle's rage,

To save Byzantium's state,
When the tents of Zabergan,
Like snow-drifts overran

The road to the Golden Gate.

And for this, for this, behold!
Infirm and blind and old,

With gray, uncovered head,
Beneath the very arch
Of my triumphal march,

I stand and beg my bread!

Methinks I still can hear,
Sounding distinct and near,

The Vandal monarch's cry,
As, captive and disgraced,
With majestic step he paced, -
"All, all is Vanity!"

Ah! vainest of all things
Is the gratitude of kings;

The plaudits of the crowd
Are but the clatter of feet
At midnight in the street,

Hollow and restless and loud.

But the bitterest disgrace
Is to see forever the face

Of the Monk of Ephesus!
The unconquerable will
This, too, can bear; - I still
Am Belisarius!

SONGO RIVER.

NOWHERE such a devious stream,
Save in fancy or in dream,

Winding slow through bush and brake
Links together lake and lake.
Walled with woods or sandy shelf,
Ever doubling or itself
Flows the stream, so still and slow
That it hardly seems to flow.

Never errant knight of old,
Lost in woodland or on wold,
Such a winding pa pursued
Through the sylvan solitude.

Never school-boy in his quest
After hazel-nut or nest,
Through the forest in and out
Wandered loitering thus about.

In the mirror of its tide
Tangled thickets on each side
Hang inverted, and between
Floating cloud or sky screne.

Swift or swallow on the wing
Seems the only living thing,
Or the loon, that laughs and flies
Down to those reflected skies.

Silent stream! thy Indian name
Unfamiliar is to fame;

For thou hidest here alone,
Well content to be unknown.

But thy tranquil waters teach
Wisdom deep as human speech,
Moving without haste or noise
In unbroken equipoise.

Though thou turnest no busy mill,
And art ever calm and still,
Even thy silence seems to say
To the traveller on his way :-
"Traveller, hurrying from the heat
Of the city, stay thy feet!
Rest awhile, nor longer waste
Life with inconsiderate haste!

"Be not like a stream that brawls
Loud with shallow waterfalls,

But in quiet self-control
Link together soul and soul."

THREE FRIENDS OF MINE.

I.

WHEN I remember them, those friends of mine,
Who are no longer here, the noble three,
Who half my life were more than friends to me,
And whose discourse was like a generous wine,
I most of all remember the divine

Something, that shone in them, and made us see
The archetypal man, and what might be
The amplitude of Nature's first des gn.

In vain I stretch my hands to clasp their hands;
I cannot find them. Nothing now is left
They meanwhile
But a majestic memory.

Wander together in Elysian lands,
Perchance remembering me, who am bereft
Of their dear presence, and, remembering smile.

III.

men

read

SHAKESPEARE.

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A VISION as of crowded city streets,
With human life in endless overflow;
Thunder of thoroughfares; trumpets that blow
To battle; clamor, in obscure retreats,
Of sailors landed from their anchored fleets;
Tolling of bells in turrets, and below

Voices of children, and bright flowers that throw

O'er garden-walls their intermingled sweets! This vision comes to me when I unfold

The volume of the Poet paramount,
Whom all the Muses loved, not one alone;-
Into his hands they put the lyre of gold,

And, crowned with sacred laurel at their fount,

Placed him as Musagetes on their throne.

IV.

eyes

Shall see no more in his accustomed place, Linger and fold him in thy soft embrace And say good night, for now the western skies Are red with sunset, and gray mists arise Like damps that gather on a dead man's face. Good night! good night! as we so oft have said Beneath this roof at midnight, in the days That are no more, and shall no more return. Thou hast but taken thy lamp and gone to bed; I stay a little longer, as one stays To cover up the embers that still burn.

V.

THE doors are all wide open; at the gate
The blossomed lilacs counterfeit a blaze,
And seem to warm the air; a dreamy haze
Hangs o'er the Brighton meadows like a fate,
And on their margin, with sea-tides elate,

The flooded Charles, as in the happier days,
Writes the last letter of his name, and stays
His restless steps, as if compelled to wait.
I also wait! but they will come no more,
Those friends of mine, whose presence satisfied
The thirst and hunger of my heart. Ah me!
They have forgotten the pathway to my door!
Something is gone from nature since they died,
And summer is not summer, nor can be.

MILTON.

I PACE the sounding sea beach and behold
How the voluminous billows roll and run,
Upheaving and subsiding, while the sun
Shines through their sheeted emerald far un-
rolled,

And the ninth wave, slow gathering fold by fold
All its loose-flowing garments into one,

Plunges upon the shore, and floods the dun Pale reach of sands, and changes them to gold. So in majestic cadence rise and fall

The mighty undulations of thy song,
O sightless bard, England's Mæonides
And ever and anon, high over all

Uplifted, a ninth wave superb and strong,
Floods all the soul with its melodious seas.

KEATS.

THE young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep;
The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told!
The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold
To the red rising moon, and loud and deep
The nightingale is singing from the steep;
It is midsummer, but the air is cold;
Can it be death? Alas, beside the fold
A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep.
Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white,

On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name Was writ in water." And was this the meed Of his sweet singing? Rather let me write : "The smoking flax before it burst to flame Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed.”

CHAUCER.

AN old man in a lodge within a park;
The chamber walls depicted all around
With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and

Lound,

And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark, Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark

Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound; He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound, Then writeth in a book like any clerk. He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote The Canterbury Tales, and his old age Made beautiful with song; and as I read I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note Of lark and linnet, and from every page Rive odors of ploughed field or flowery mead.

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The world belongs to those who come the last, They will find hope and strength as we have done.

THE SOUND OF THE SEA.

THE sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied

As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.

A NAMELESS GRAVE.

"A SOLDIER of the Union mustered out,"
Is the inscription on an unknown grave
At Newport News, beside the salt-sea wave,
Nameless and dateless; sentinel or scout
Shot down in skirmish, or disastrous rout

Of battle, when the loud artillery drave
Its iron wedges through the ranks of brave
And doomed battalions, storming the redoubt,
Thou unknown hero sleeping by the sea

In thy forgotten grave! with secret shame feel my pulses beat, my forehead burn, When I remember thou hast given for me All that thou hadst, thy life, thy very name, And I can give thee nothing in return.

A SUMMER DAY BY THE SEA.

THE Sun is set; and in his latest beams
Yon little cloud of ashen gray and gold,
Slowly upon the amber air unrolled,
The falling mantle of the Prophet seems.
From the dim headlands many a lighthouse gleams,
The street-lamps of the ocean; and behold,
O'erhead the banners of the night unfold;
The day hath passed into the land of dreams.
O summer day beside the joyous sea!

O summer day so wonderful and white,
So full of gladness and so full of pain!
Forever and forever shalt thou be

To some the gravestone of a dead delight,
To some the landmark of a new domain.

SLEEP.

LULL me to sleep, ye winds, whose fitful sound Seems from some faint olia" harpstring caught;

Seal up the hundred wakeful eyes of thought As Hermes with his lyre in sleep profound The hundred wakeful eyes of Argus bound; For I am weary, and am overwrought

With too much toil, with too much care distraught,

And with the iron crown of anguish crowned. Lay thy soft hand upon my brow and cheek, O peaceful sleep! until from pain released I breathe again uninterrupted breath! Ah, with what subtle meaning did the Greek Call thee the lesser mystery at the feast Whereof the greater mystery is death!

THE TIDES.

I SAW the long line of the vacant shore,
The sea-weed and the shells upon the sand,
And the brown rocks left bare on every hand,
As if the ebbing tide would flow no more.
Then heard I, more distinctly than before,

The ocean breathe and its great breast expand, And hurrying came on the defenceless land The insurgent waters with tumultuous roar. All thought and feeling and desire, I said,

Love, laughter, and the exultant joy of song Have ebbed from me forever! Suddenly o'er

me

They swept again from their deep ocean bed,
And in a tumult of delight, and strong

As youth, and beautiful as youth, upbore me.

THE OLD BRIDGE AT FLORENCE.

TADDEO GADDI built me. I am old,

Five centuries old. I plant my foot of stone
Upon the Arno, as St. Michael's own
Was planted on the dragon. Fold by fold
Beneath me as it struggles, I behold

Its glistening scales. Twice hath it overthrown
My kindred and companions. Me alone
It moveth not, but is by me controlled.

I can remember when the Medici
Were driven from Florence; longer still ago
The final wars of Ghibelline and Guelf.
Florence adorns me with her jewelry;

And when I think that Michael Angelo
Hath leaned on me, I glory in myself.

Still guided by the dreamy song,
As in a trance I float along
Above the Pyrenean chain,

Above the fields and farms of Spain,
Above the bright Majorcan isle,

That lends its softened name to art,

A spot, a dot upon the chart,

Whose little towns, red-roofed with tile,
Are ruby-lustred with the light

Of blazing furnaces by night,

And crowned by day with wreaths of smoke. Then eastward, wafted in my flight

On my enchanter's magic cloak,

I sail across the Tyrrhene Sea
Into the land of Italy,

And o'er the windy Apennines,
Mantled and musical with pines.

The palaces, the princely halls,
The doors of houses and the walls
Of churches and of belfry towers,
Cloister and castle, street and mart,
Are garlanded and gay with flowers
That blossom in the fields of art.
Here Gubbio's workshops gleam and glow
With brilliant, iridescent dyes,
The dazzling whiteness of the snow,
The cobalt blue of summer skies;
And vase and scutcheon, cup and plate,
In perfect finish emulate
Faenza, Florence, Pesaro.

Forth from Urbino's gate there came
A youth with the angelic name
Of Raphael, in form and face
Himself angelic, and divine
In arts of color and design.
From him Francesco Xanto caught
Something of his transcendent grace,
And into fictile fabrics wrought
Suggestions of the master's thought.
Nor less Maestro Giorgio shines
With madre-perl and golden lines
Of arabesques, and interweaves

His birds and fruits and flowers and leaves
About some landscape, shaded brown,
With olive tints on rock and town.

A nobler title to renown

Is thine, O pleasant Tuscan town, Seated beside the Arno's stream; For Lucca della Robbia there Created forms so wondrous fair, They made thy sovereignty supreme. These choristers with lips of stone, Whose music is not heard, but seen, Still chant, as from their organ-screen, Their Maker's praise; nor these alone, But the more fragile forms of clay, Hardly less beautiful than they, These saints and angels that adorn The walls of hospitals, and tell The story of good deeds so well That poverty seems less forlorn, And life more like a holiday.

Here in this old neglected church,
That long eludes the traveller's search,
Lies the dead bishop on his tomb:
Earth upon earth he slumbering lies,
Life-like and death-like in the gloom;
Garlands of fruit and flowers in bloom
And foliage deck his resting-place;
A shadow in the sightless eyes,
A pallor on the patient face,
Made perfect by the furnace heat;
All earthly passions and desires
Burnt out by purgatorial fives;
Seeming to say, "Our years are fleet,
And to the weary death is sweet."

But the most wonderful of all
The ornaments on tomb or wall
That grace the fair Ausonian shores
Are those the faithful earth restores,
Near some Apulian town concealed,
In vineyard or in harvest field,
Vases and urns and bas-reliefs,
Memorials of forgotten griefs,
Or records of heroic deeds
Of demigods and mighty chiefs :
Figures that almost move and speak,
And, buried amid mould and weeds,
Still in their attitudes attest
The presence of the graceful Greek, -
Achilles in his armor dressed,
Alcides with the Cretan bull,
And Aphrodite with her boy,
Or lovely Helena of Troy,
Still living and still beautiful.

Turn, turn, my wheel! 'T is nature's plan The child should grow into the man,

The man grow wrinkled, old, and gray;
In youth the heart exults and sings,
The pulses leap, the feet have wings;
In age the cricket chirps, and brings
The harvest home of day.

And now the winds that southward blow,
And cool the hot Sicilian isle,
Bear me away. I see below
The long line of the Libyan Nile,
Flooding and feeding the parched lands
With annual ebb and overflow,
A fallen palm whose branches lie
Beneath the Abyssinian sky,
Whose roots are in Egyptian sands.
On either bank huge water-wheels,
Belted with jars and dripping weeds,
Send forth their melancholy moans,
As if, in their gray mantles hid,
Dead anchorites of the Thebaid
Knelt on the shore and told their beads,
Beating their breasts with loud appeals
And penitential tears and groans.

This city, walled and thickly set
With glittering mosque and minaret,
Is Cairo, in whose gay bazaars
The dreaming traveller first inhales
The perfume of Arabian gales,
And sees the fabulous earthen jars,
Huge as were those wherein the maid
Morgiana found the Forty Thieves
Concealed in midnight ambuscade;
And seeing, more than half believes
The fascinating tales that run
Through all the Thousand Nights and One,
Told by the fair Scheherezade.

More strange and wonderful than these
Are the Egyptian deities,

Ammon, and Emoth, and the grand
Osiris, holding in his hand

The lotus; Isis, crowned and veiled;
The sacred Ibis, and the Sphinx;