"O music of all moods and climes,

Vengeful, forgiving, sensuous, saintly, Where still, between the Christian chimes,

The moorish cymbal tinkles faintly!

"O life borne lightly in the hand,

For friend or foe with grace Castilian! O valley safe in Fancy's land,

Not tramped to mud yet by the million !

"Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale To his, my singer of all weathers, My Calderon, my nightingale,

My Arab soul in Spanish feathers.

"Ah, friend, these singers dead so long,
And still, God knows, in purgatory,
Give its best sweetness to all song,
To Nature's self her better glory."

IN THE TWILIGHT.

MEN say the sullen instrument,
That, from the Master's bow,
With pangs of joy or woe,

Feels music's soul through every fibre

sent,

Whispers the ravished strings
More than he knew or meant ;

Old summers in its memory glow;
The secrets of the wind it sings;
It hears the April-loosened springs;
And mixes with its mood

All it dreamed when it stood
In the murmurous pine-wood
Long ago!

The magical moonlight then
Steeped every bough and cone ;
The roar of the brook in the glen

Came dim from the dis ance blown ; The wind through its glooms sang low, And it swayed to and fro

With delight as it stood,
In the wonderful wood,
Long ago!

O my life, have we not had seasons
That only said, Live and rejoice?
That asked not for causes and reasons,

But made us all feeling and voice? When we went with the winds in their blowing,

When Nature and we were peers, And we seemed to share in the flowing Of the inexhaustible years?

Have we not from the earth drawn

juices

Too fine for earth's sordid uses?
Have I heard, have I seen

All I feel and I know?
Doth my heart overween?
Or could it have been
Long ago?

Sometimes a breath floats by me,

An odor from Dreamland sent, That makes the ghost seem nigh me Of a splendor that came and went, Of a life lived somewhere, I know

not

In what diviner sphere,

Of memories that stay not and go not,
Like music heard once by an ear

That cannot forget or reclaim it,
A something so shy, it would shame
it

To make it a show,

A something too vague, could I name it,

For others to know,

As if I had lived it or dreamed it,
As if I had acted or schemed it,
Long ago!

And yet, could I live it over,
This life that stirs in my brain,
Could I be both maiden and lover,
Moon and tide, bee and clover,

As I seem to have been, once again, Could I but speak and show it,

This pleasure more sharp than pain, That baffles and lures me so, The world should not lack a poet, Such as it had

And Fancy climbs with foot-fall still Its narrowing curves that end in air.

By day, a warmer-hearted blue

Stoops softly to that topmost swell; Its thread-like windings seem a clew

To gracious climes where all is well.

By night, far yonder, I surmise

An ampler world than clips my ken, Where the great stars of happier skies Commingle nobler fates of men.

I look and long, then haste me home,
Still master of my secret rare;
Once tried, the path would end in
Rome,

But now it leads me everywhere.

Forever to the new it guides,

From former good, old overmuch; What Nature for her poets hides,

'T is wiser to divine than clutch.

The bird I list hath never come

Within the scope of mortal ear; My prying step would make him dumb, And the fair tree, his shelter, sear.

Behind the hill, behind the sky, Behind my inmost thought, he sings; No feet avail; to hear it nigh,

The song itself must lend the wings.

Sing on, sweet bird close hid, and raise Those angel stairways in my brain, That climb from these low-vaulted days To spacious sunshines far from pain. Sing when thou wilt, enchantment fleet, I leave thy covert haunt untrod,

And envy Science not her feat

To make a twice-told tale of God. They said the fairies tript no more,

And long ago that Pan was dead; 'T was but that fools preferred to bore Earth's rind inch-deep for truth instead.

Pan leaps and pipes all summer long, The fairies dance each full-mooned

night,

Would we but doff our lenses strong, And trust our wiser eyes' delight. City of Elf-land, just without

Our seeing, marvel ever new, Glimpsed in fair weather, a sweet doubt Sketched-in, mirage-like, on the blue. I build thee in yon sunset cloud, Whose edge allures to climb the height:

I hear thy drowned bells, inly-loud, From still pools dusk with dreams of night.

Thy gates are shut to hardiest will,
Thy countersign of long-lost speech,-
Those fountained courts, those cham-
bers still,

Fronting Time's far East, who shall
reach ?

I know not and will never pry,

But trust our human heart for all ; Wonders that from the seeker fly Into an open sense may fall.

Hide in thine own soul, and surprise

The password of the unwary elves; Seek it, thou canst not bribe their spies :

Unsought, they whisper it themselves.

THE WASHERS OF THE SHROUD.

OCTOBER, 1861.

Still crooning, as they weave their endless brede,

One song: "Time was, Time is, and Time shall be."

No wrinkled crones were they, as I had deemed,

But fair as yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, To mourner, lover, poet, ever seemed; Something too high for joy, too deep for sorrow,

Thrilled in their tones, and from their faces gleamed.

"Still men and nations reap as they have strawn,"

So sang they, working at their task the while;

"The fatal raiment must be cleansed ere dawn:

For Austria? Italy? the Sea-Queen's isle?

O'er what quenched grandeur must our shroud be drawn?

"Or is it for a younger, fairer corse, That gathered States for children round his knees,

That tamed the wave to be his postinghorse,

Feller of forests, linker of the seas, Bridge-builder, hammerer, youngest son of Thor's?

"What make we, murmur'st thou ? and what are we?

When empires must be wound, we
bring the shroud,
The time-old web of the implacable
Three:

Is it too coarse for him, the young and

proud?

Earth's mightiest deigned to wear it, why not he?"

--

"Is there no hope?" I moaned, SO strong, so fair!

Our Fowler whose proud bird would brook erewhile

No rival's swoop in all our western air! Gather the ravens, then, in funeral file For him, life's morn yet golden in his hair?

"Leave me not hopeless, ye unpitying dames !

I see, half seeing. Tell me, ye who scanned

The stars, Earth's elders, still must noblest aims

Be traced upon oblivious ocean-sands? Must Hesper join the wailing ghosts of names?"

"Hath he let vultures climb his eagle's

seat

To make Jove's bolts purveyors of their maw?

Hath he the Many's plaudits found

more sweet

Than Wisdom? held Opinion's wind for Law?

Then let him hearken for the doomster's feet!

"Rough are the steps, slow-hewn in flintiest rock,

States climb to power by; slippery those with gold

Down which they stumble to eternal mock:

No chafferer's hand shall long the scep

tre hold,

Who, given a Fate to shape, would sell the block.

"We sing old Sagas, songs of weal and

woe,

Mystic because too cheaply understood; Dark sayings are not ours; men hear and know,

See Evil weak, see strength alone in Good,

Yet hope to stem God's fire with walls of tow.

"Time Was unlocks the riddle of Time Is,

That offers choice of glory or of gloom; The solver makes Time Shall Be surely

his.

But hasten, Sisters! for even now the tomb

Grates its slow hinge and calls from the abyss."

"But not for him," I cried, "not yet

for him,

Whose large horizon, westering, star by

star

Wins from the void to where on Ocean's rim

The sunset shuts the world with golder bar,

Not yet his thews shall fail, his eye grow dim!

"His shall be larger manhood, saved for those