1809-1890 1881 FOR him the Architect of all Unroofed our planet's starlit hall; Through voids unknown to worlds unseen His clearer vision rose serene.
With us on earth he walked by day, His midnight path how far away! We knew him not so well who knew The patient eyes his soul looked through; For who his untrod realm could share Of us that breathe this mortal air, Or camp in that celestial tent Whose fringes gild our firmament?
How vast the workroom where he brought The viewless implements of thought! The wit how subtle, how profound, That Nature's tangled webs unwound; That through the clouded matrix saw The crystal planes of shaping law, Through these the sovereign skill that planned,-- The Father's care, the Master's hand! To him the wandering stars revealed The secrets in their cradle sealed The far-off, frozen sphere that swings Through ether, zoned with lucid rings; The orb that rolls in dim eclipse Wide wheeling round its long ellipse,-- His name Urania writes with these And stamps it on her Pleiades.
We knew him not?
Ah, well we knew The manly soul, so brave, so true, The cheerful heart that conquered age, The childlike silver-bearded sage.
No more his tireless thought explores The azure sea with golden shores; Rest, wearied frame I the stars shall keep A loving watch where thou shalt sleep.
Farewell! the spirit needs must rise, So long a tenant of the skies,-- Rise to that home all worlds above Whose sun is God, whose light is love.
IN THE TWILIGHT 1882 NOT bed-time yet! The night-winds blow, The stars are out,--full well we know The nurse is on the stair, With hand of ice and cheek of snow, And frozen lips that whisper low, "Come, children, it is time to go My peaceful couch to share." No years a wakeful heart can tire; Not bed-time yet! Come, stir the fire And warm your dear old hands; Kind Mother Earth we love so well Has pleasant stories yet to tell Before we hear the curfew bell; Still glow the burning brands.
Not bed-time yet! We long to know What wonders time has yet to show, What unborn years shall bring; What ship the Arctic pole shall reach, What lessons Science waits to teach, What sermons there are left to preach.
What poems yet to sing.
What next?
we ask; and is it true The sunshine falls on nothing new, As Israel's king declared?
Was ocean ploughed with harnessed fire?
Were nations coupled with a wire?
Did Tarshish telegraph to Tyre?
How Hiram would have stared! And what if Sheba's curious queen, Who came to see,--and to be seen,-- Or something new to seek, And swooned, as ladies sometimes do, At sights that thrilled her through and through, Had heard, as she was "coming to," A locomotive's shriek, And seen a rushing railway train As she looked out along the plain From David's lofty tower,-- A mile of smoke that blots the sky And blinds the eagles as they fly Behind the cars that thunder by A score of leagues an hour! See to my _fiat lux_ respond This little slumbering fire-tipped wand,-- One touch,--it bursts in flame! Steal me a portrait from the sun,-- One look,--and to! the picture done! Are these old tricks, King Solomon, We lying moderns claim?
Could you have spectroscoped a star?
If both those mothers at your bar, The cruel and the mild, The young and tender, old and tough, Had said, "Divide,--you're right, though rough,"-- Did old Judea know enough To etherize the child?
These births of time our eyes have seen, With but a few brief years between; What wonder if the text, For other ages doubtless true, For coming years will never do,-- Whereof we all should like a few, If but to see what next.
If such things have been, such may be; Who would not like to live and see-- If Heaven may so ordain-- What waifs undreamed of, yet in store, The waves that roll forevermore On life's long beach may east ashore From out the mist-clad main?
Will Earth to pagan dreams return To find from misery's painted urn That all save hope has flown,-- Of Book and Church and Priest bereft, The Rock of Ages vainly cleft, Life's compass gone, its anchor left, Left,--lost,--in depths unknown?
Shall Faith the trodden path pursue The _crux ansata_ wearers knew Who sleep with folded hands, Where, like a naked, lidless eye, The staring Nile rolls wandering by Those mountain slopes that climb the sky Above the drifting sands?
Or shall a nobler Faith return, Its fanes a purer gospel learn, With holier anthems ring, And teach us that our transient creeds Were but the perishable seeds Of harvests sown for larger needs, That ripening years shall bring?
Well, let the present do its best, We trust our Maker for the rest, As on our way we plod; Our souls, full dressed in fleshly suits, Love air and sunshine, flowers and fruits, The daisies better than their roots Beneath the grassy sod.
Not bed-time yet! The full-blown flower Of all the year--this evening hour-- With friendship's flame is bright; Life still is sweet, the heavens are fair, Though fields are brown and woods are bare, And many a joy is left to share Before we say Good-night! And when, our cheerful evening past, The nurse, long waiting, comes at last, Ere on her lap we lie In wearied nature's sweet repose, At peace with all her waking foes, Our lips shall murmur, ere they close, Good-night! and not Good-by! A LOVING-CUP SONG 1883 COME, heap the fagots! Ere we go Again the cheerful hearth shall glow; We 'll have another blaze, my boys! When clouds are black and snows are white, Then Christmas logs lend ruddy light They stole from summer days, my boys, They stole from summer days.
And let the Loving-Cup go round, The Cup with blessed memories crowned, That flows whene'er we meet, my boys; No draught will hold a drop of sin If love is only well stirred in To keep it sound and sweet, my boys, To keep it sound and sweet.
Give me, to pin upon my breast, The blossoms twain I love the best, A rosebud and a pink, my boys; Their leaves shall nestle next my heart, Their perfumed breath shall own its part In every health we drink, my boys, In every health we drink.
The breathing blossoms stir my blood, Methinks I see the lilacs bud And hear the bluebirds sing, my boys; Why not?
Yon lusty oak has seen Full tenscore years, yet leaflets green Peep out with every spring, my boys, Peep out with every spring.
Old Time his rusty scythe may whet, The unmowed grass is glowing yet Beneath the sheltering snow, my boys; And if the crazy dotard ask, Is love worn out?
Is life a task?
We'll bravely answer No! my boys, We 'll bravely answer No! For life's bright taper is the same Love tipped of old with rosy flame That heaven's own altar lent, my boys, To glow in every cup we fill Till lips are mute and hearts are still, Till life and love are spent, my boys, Till life and love are spent.
THE GIRDLE OF FRIENDSHIP 1884 SHE gathered at her slender waist The beauteous robe she wore; Its folds a golden belt embraced, One rose-hued gem it bore.
The girdle shrank; its lessening round Still kept the shining gem, But now her flowing locks it bound, A lustrous diadem.
And narrower still the circlet grew; Behold! a glittering band, Its roseate diamond set anew, Her neck's white column spanned.
Suns rise and set; the straining clasp The shortened links resist, Yet flashes in a bracelet's grasp The diamond, on her wrist.
At length, the round of changes past The thieving years could bring, The jewel, glittering to the last, Still sparkles in a ring.
So, link by link, our friendships part, So loosen, break, and fall, A narrowing zone; the loving heart Lives changeless through them all.
THE LYRE OF ANACREON 1885 THE minstrel of the classic lay Of love and wine who sings Still found the fingers run astray That touched the rebel strings.
Of Cadmus he would fain have sung, Of Atreus and his line; But all the jocund echoes rung With songs of love and wine.
Ah, brothers! I would fain have caught Some fresher fancy's gleam; My truant accents find, unsought, The old familiar theme.
Love, Love! but not the sportive child With shaft and twanging bow, Whose random arrows drove us wild Some threescore years ago; Not Eros, with his joyous laugh, The urchin blind and bare, But Love, with spectacles and staff, And scanty, silvered hair.
Our heads with frosted locks are white, Our roofs are thatched with snow, But red, in chilling winter's spite, Our hearts and hearthstones glow.
Our old acquaintance, Time, drops in, And while the running sands Their golden thread unheeded spin, He warms his frozen hands.
Stay, winged hours, too swift, too sweet, And waft this message o'er To all we miss, from all we meet On life's fast-crumbling shore: Say that, to old affection true, We hug the narrowing chain That binds our hearts,--alas, how few The links that yet remain! The fatal touch awaits them all That turns the rocks to dust; From year to year they break and fall,-- They break, but never rust.
Say if one note of happier strain This worn-out harp afford,-- One throb that trembles, not in vain,-- Their memory lent its chord.
Say that when Fancy closed her wings And Passion quenched his fire, Love, Love, still echoed from the strings As from Anacreon's lyre! THE OLD TUNE THIRTY-SIXTH VARIATION 1886 THIS shred of song you bid me bring Is snatched from fancy's embers; Ah, when the lips forget to sing, The faithful heart remembers! Too swift the wings of envious Time To wait for dallying phrases, Or woven strands of labored rhyme To thread their cunning mazes.
A word, a sigh, and lo, how plain Its magic breath discloses Our life's long vista through a lane Of threescore summers' roses! One language years alone can teach Its roots are young affections That feel their way to simplest speech Through silent recollections.
That tongue is ours.

How few the words We need to know a brother! As simple are the notes of birds, Yet well they know each other.
This freezing month of ice and snow That brings our lives together Lends to our year a living glow That warms its wintry weather.
So let us meet as eve draws nigh, And life matures and mellows, Till Nature whispers with a sigh, "Good-night, my dear old fellows!" THE BROKEN CIRCLE 1887 I STOOD On Sarum's treeless plain, The waste that careless Nature owns; Lone tenants of her bleak domain, Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones.
Upheaved in many a billowy mound The sea-like, naked turf arose, Where wandering flocks went nibbling round The mingled graves of friends and foes.
The Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane, This windy desert roamed in turn; Unmoved these mighty blocks remain Whose story none that lives may learn.
Erect, half buried, slant or prone, These awful listeners, blind and dumb, Hear the strange tongues of tribes unknown, As wave on wave they go and come.
"Who are you, giants, whence and why ?" I stand and ask in blank amaze; My soul accepts their mute reply "A mystery, as are you that gaze.
"A silent Orpheus wrought the charm From riven rocks their spoils to bring; A nameless Titan lent his arm To range us in our magic ring.
"But Time with still and stealthy stride, That climbs and treads and levels all, That bids the loosening keystone slide, And topples down the crumbling wall,-- "Time, that unbuilds the quarried past, Leans on these wrecks that press the sod; They slant, they stoop, they fall at last, And strew the turf their priests have trod.
"No more our altar's wreath of smoke Floats up with morning's fragrant dew; The fires are dead, the ring is broke, Where stood the many stand the few." My thoughts had wandered far away, Borne off on Memory's outspread wing, To where in deepening twilight lay The wrecks of friendship's broken ring.
Ah me! of all our goodly train How few will find our banquet hall! Yet why with coward lips complain That this must lean, and that must fall?
Cold is the Druid's altar-stone, Its vanished flame no more returns; But ours no chilling damp has known,-- Unchanged, unchanging, still it burns.
So let our broken circle stand A wreck, a remnant, yet the same, While one last, loving, faithful hand Still lives to feed its altar-flame! THE ANGEL-THIEF 1888 TIME is a thief who leaves his tools behind him; He comes by night, he vanishes at dawn; We track his footsteps, but we never find him Strong locks are broken, massive bolts are drawn, And all around are left the bars and borers, The splitting wedges and the prying keys, Such aids as serve the soft-shod vault-explorers To crack, wrench open, rifle as they please.
Ah, these are tools which Heaven in mercy lends us When gathering rust has clenched our shackles fast, Time is the angel-thief that Nature sends us To break the cramping fetters of our past.
Mourn as we may for treasures he has taken, Poor as we feel of hoarded wealth bereft, More precious are those implements forsaken, Found in the wreck his ruthless hands have left.
Some lever that a casket's hinge has broken Pries off a bolt, and lo! our souls are free; Each year some Open Sesame is spoken, And every decade drops its master-key.
So as from year to year we count our treasure, Our loss seems less, and larger look our gains; Time's wrongs repaid in more than even measure,-- We lose our jewels, but we break our chains.
AFTER THE CURFEW 1889 THE Play is over.

While the light Yet lingers in the darkening hall, I come to say a last Good-night Before the final _Exeunt all_.
We gathered once, a joyous throng: The jovial toasts went gayly round; With jest, and laugh, and shout, and song, We made the floors and walls resound.
We come with feeble steps and slow, A little band of four or five, Left from the wrecks of long ago, Still pleased to find ourselves alive.
Alive! How living, too, are they Whose memories it is ours to share! Spread the long table's full array,-- There sits a ghost in every chair! One breathing form no more, alas! Amid our slender group we see; With him we still remained "The Class,"-- Without his presence what are we?
The hand we ever loved to clasp,-- That tireless hand which knew no rest,-- Loosed from affection's clinging grasp, Lies nerveless on the peaceful breast.
The beaming eye, the cheering voice, That lent to life a generous glow, Whose every meaning said "Rejoice," We see, we hear, no more below.
The air seems darkened by his loss, Earth's shadowed features look less fair, And heavier weighs the daily cross His willing shoulders helped us bear.
Why mourn that we, the favored few Whom grasping Time so long has spared Life's sweet illusions to pursue, The common lot of age have shared?
In every pulse of Friendship's heart There breeds unfelt a throb of pain,-- One hour must rend its links apart, Though years on years have forged the chain.
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