Part 6

O may her voice have power to say How soon the wrecking discords cease, When every wandering wave is gay With golden argosies of peace!

Now when the ark of human fate, Long baffled by the wayward wind, Is drifting with its peopled freight, Safe haven on the heights to find;

Safe haven from the drowning slime Of evil deeds and Deluge wrath;— To plant again the foot of Time Upon a purer, firmer path;

’Tis now the hour to probe the ground, To watch the Heavens, to speak the word, The fathoms of the deep to sound, And send abroad the missioned bird,

On strengthened wing for evermore, Let Science, swiftly as she can, Fly seaward on from shore to shore, And bind the links of man to man;

And like that fair propitious Dove Bless future fleets about to launch; Make every freight a freight of love, And every ship an Olive Branch.

SONG

LOVE within the lover’s breast Burns like Hesper in the west, O’er the ashes of the sun, Till the day and night are done; Then when dawn drives up her car— Lo! it is the morning star.

Love! thy love pours down on mine As the sunlight on the vine, As the snow-rill on the vale, As the salt breeze in the sail; As the song unto the bird, On my lips thy name is heard.

As a dewdrop on the rose In thy heart my passion glows, As a skylark to the sky Up into thy breast I fly; As a sea-shell of the sea Ever shall I sing of thee.

THE WILD ROSE AND THE SNOWDROP

THE Snowdrop is the prophet of the flowers; It lives and dies upon its bed of snows; And like a thought of spring it comes and goes, Hanging its head beside our leafless bowers. The sun’s betrothing kiss it never knows, Nor all the glowing joy of golden showers; But ever in a placid, pure repose, More like a spirit with its look serene, Droops its pale cheek veined thro’ with infant green.

Queen of her sisters is the sweet Wild Rose, Sprung from the earnest sun and ripe young June; The year’s own darling and the Summer’s Queen! Lustrous as the new-throned crescent moon. Much of that early prophet look she shows, Mixed with her fair espoused blush which glows, As if the ethereal fairy blood were seen; Like a soft evening over sunset snows, Half twilight violet shade, half crimson sheen.

Twin-born are both in beauteousness, most fair In all that glads the eye and charms the air; In all that wakes emotions in the mind And sows sweet sympathies for human kind. Twin-born, albeit their seasons are apart, They bloom together in the thoughtful heart; Fair symbols of the marvels of our state, Mute speakers of the oracles of fate!

For each, fulfilling nature’s law, fulfils Itself and its own aspirations pure; Living and dying; letting faith ensure New life when deathless Spring shall touch the hills. Each perfect in its place; and each content With that perfection which its being meant: Divided not by months that intervene, But linked by all the flowers that bud between. Forever smiling thro’ its season brief, The one in glory and the one in grief: Forever painting to our museful sight, How lowlihead and loveliness unite.

Born from the first blind yearning of the earth To be a mother and give happy birth, Ere yet the northern sun such rapture brings, Lo, from her virgin breast the Snowdrop springs; And ere the snows have melted from the grass, And not a strip of greensward doth appear, Save the faint prophecy its cheeks declare, Alone, unkissed, unloved, behold it pass! While in the ripe enthronement of the year, Whispering the breeze, and wedding the rich air With her so sweet, delicious bridal breath,— Odorous and exquisite beyond compare, And starr’d with dews upon her forehead clear, Fresh-hearted as a Maiden Queen should be Who takes the land’s devotion as her fee,— The Wild Rose blooms, all summer for her dower, Nature’s most beautiful and perfect flower.

THE DEATH OF WINTER

WHEN April with her wild blue eye Comes dancing over the grass, And all the crimson buds so shy Peep out to see her pass; As lightly she loosens her showery locks And flutters her rainy wings; Laughingly stoops To the glass of the stream, And loosens and loops Her hair by the gleam, While all the young villagers blithe as the flocks Go frolicking round in rings;— Then Winter, he who tamed the fly, Turns on his back and prepares to die, For he cannot live longer under the sky.

Down the valleys glittering green, Down from the hills in snowy rills, He melts between the border sheen And leaps the flowery verges! He cannot choose but brighten their hues, And tho’ he would creep, he fain must leap, For the quick Spring spirit urges. Down the vale and down the dale He leaps and lights, till his moments fail, Buried in blossoms red and pale, While the sweet birds sing his dirges!

O Winter! I’d live that life of thine, With a frosty brow and an icicle tongue, And never a song my whole life long,— Were such delicious burial mine! To die and be buried, and so remain A wandering brook in April’s train, Fixing my dying eyes for aye On the dawning brows of maiden May.

SONG

THE moon is alone in the sky As thou in my soul; The sea takes her image to lie Where the white ripples roll All night in a dream, With the light of her beam, Hushedly, mournfully, mistily up to the shore. The pebbles speak low In the ebb and the flow, As I when thy voice came at intervals, tuned to adore: Nought other stirred Save my heart all unheard Beating to bliss that is past evermore.

JOHN LACKLAND

A WICKED man is bad enough on earth; But O the baleful lustre of a chief Once pledged in tyranny! O star of dearth Darkly illumining a nation’s grief! How many men have worn thee on their brows! Alas for them and us! God’s precious gift Of gracious dispensation got by theft— The damning form of false unholy vows! The thief of God and man must have his fee: And thou, John Lackland, despicable prince— Basest of England’s banes before or since! Thrice traitor, coward, thief! O thou shalt be The historic warning, trampled and abhorr’d Who dared to steal and stain the symbols of the Lord!

THE SLEEPING CITY

A PRINCESS in the eastern tale Paced thro’ a marble city pale, And saw in ghastly shapes of stone The sculptured life she breathed alone;

Saw, where’er her eye might range, Herself the only child of change; And heard her echoed footfall chime Between Oblivion and Time;

And in the squares where fountains played, And up the spiral balustrade, Along the drowsy corridors, Even to the inmost sleeping floors,