way,

Paused, and observed the spot, and marked it well,

Whereon the shadow of the finger fell; And, coming back at midnight, delved, and found

A secret stairway leading under ground. Down this he passed into a spacious hall,

Lit by a flaming jewel on the wall;
And opposite in threatening attitude
With bow and shaft a brazen statue
stood.

Upon its forehead, like a coronet,
Were these mysterious words of menace
set:

"That which I am, I am; my fatal aim None can escape, not even yon luminous flame!

clerk, the scholar whom the love of pelf Tempts from his books and from his

nobler self.

chased

With rubies, and the plates and knives were gold,

And gold the bread and viands manifold.

Around it, silent, motionless, and sad, Were seated gallant knights in armor clad,

less strife,

The discord in the harmonies of life! The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,

And all the sweet serenity of books; The market-place, the eager love of gain, Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain !

zone,

told

old!

It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late Till the tired heart shall cease to palpi

tate.

Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles Wrote his grand Edipus, and Simonides Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,

When each had numbered more than fourscore years,

And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten, Had but begun his Characters of Men Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales,

At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales; Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, Completed Faust when eighty years were past.

These are indeed exceptions; but they show

How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow

Into the arctic regions of our lives, Where little else than life itself survives.

As the barometer foretells the storm While still the skies are clear, the weather warm,

So something in us, as old age draws

near,

Betrays the pressure of the atmosphere. The nimble mercury, ere we are aware, Descends the elastic ladder of the air; The telltale blood in artery and vein

Whatever poet, orator, or sage
May say of it, old age is still old age.
It is the waning, not the crescent moon;
The dusk of evening, not the blaze of

noon :

It is not strength, but weakness; not desire,

But its surcease; not the fierce heat of fire,

The burning and consuming element, But that of ashes and of embers spent, In which some living sparks we still discern,

Enough to warm, but not enough to burn.

What then? Shall we sit idly down and say

The night hath come; it is no longer day? The night hath not yet come; we are not quite

Cut off from labor by the failing light;
Something remains for us to do or dare;
Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear;
Not Edipus Coloneus, or Greek Öde,
Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode
Out of the gateway of the Tabard Inn,
But other something, would we but be-
gin;

For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another
dress,

And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

I fear no more the dust and heat,
No more I feel fatigue,
While journeying with another's feet
O'er many a lengthening league.

Let others traverse sea and land,'
And toil through various climes,
I turn the world round with my hand
Reading these poets' rhymes.

From them learn whatever lies
Beneath each changing zone,
And see, when looking with their eyes,
Better than with mine own.

CADENABBIA.

LAKE OF COMO.

No sound of wheels or hoof-beat breaks
The silence of the summer day,

As by the loveliest of all lakes
I while the idle hours away.

I pace the leafy colonnade

Where level branches of the plane
Above me weave a roof of shade
Impervious to the sun and rain.

At times a sudden rush of air
Flutters the lazy leaves o'erhead,
And gleams of sunshine toss and flare
Like torches down the path I tread.

By Somariva's garden gate

I make the marble stairs my seat, And hear the water, as I wait, Lapping the steps beneath my feet.

The undulation sinks and swells

Along the stony parapets, And far away the floating bells Tinkle upon the fisher's nets.

Silent and slow, by tower and town

The freighted barges come and go, Their pendent shadows gliding down

By town and tower submerged below.

The hills sweep upward from the shore, With villas scattered one by one Upon their wooded spurs, and lower Bellaggio blazing in the sun.

And dimly seen, a tangled mass

Of walls and woods, of light and shade,

Gray mists were rolling, rising, vanishing;

The woodlands glistened with their jewelled crowns;

Far off the mellow bells began to ring For matins in the half-awakened towns.

The conflict of the Present and the Past, The ideal and the actual in our life, As on a field of battle held me fast, Where this world and the next world were at strife.

For, as the valley from its sleep awoke,

I saw the iron horses of the steam Toss to the morning air their plumes smoke,

of

Sits Amalfi in the heat, Bathing ever her white feet In the tideless summer seas.

In the middle of the town,
From its fountains in the hills,
Tumbling through the narrow gorge,
The Canneto rushes down,
Turns the great wheels of the mills,
Lifts the hammers of the forge.

'T is a stairway, not a street,
That ascends the deep ravine,
Where the torrent leaps between
Rocky walls that almost meet.
Toiling up from stair to stair
Peasant girls their burdens bear;
Sunburnt daughters of the soil,
What inexorable fate
Stately figures tall and straight,

Dooms them to this life of toil?

Lord of vineyards and of lands,
Far above the convent stands.
On its terraced walk aloof
Leans a monk with folded hands,
Placid, satisfied, serene,

Looking down upon the scene
Over wall and red-tiled roof;
Wondering unto what good end
All this toil and traffic tend,
And why all men cannot be
Free from care and free from pain,
And the sordid love of gain,
And as indolent as he.

Where are now the freighted barks
From the marts of east and west?
Where the knights in iron sarks
Journeying to the Holy Land,
Glove of steel upon the hand,
Cross of crimson on the breast?
Where the pomp of camp and court?
Where the merchants with their wares,
Where the pilgrims with their prayers?
And their gallant brigantines
Sailing safely into port
Chased by corsair Älgerines?

Vanished like a fleet of cloud,
Like a passing trumpet-blast,
Are those splendors of the past,
And the commerce and the crowd!
Fathoms deep beneath the seas
Lie the ancient wharves and quays,
Swallowed by the engulfing waves;