HOW

FANCY'S CASUISTRY.

OW struggles with the tempest's swells
That warning of tumultuous bells!

The fire is loose! and frantic knells

Throb fast and faster,

As tower to tower confusedly tells

News of disaster.

But on my far-off solitude

No harsh alarums can intrude;

The terror comes to me subdued

And charmed by distance,

To deepen the habitual mood
Of my existence.

Are those, I muse, the Easter chimes?
And listen, weaving careless rhymes
While the loud city's griefs and crimes

Pay gentle allegiance

To the fine quiet that sublimes

These dreamy regions.

And when the storm o'erwhelms the shore, I watch entranced as, o'er and o'er,

The light revolves amid the roar

So still and saintly,

Now large and near, now more and more

Withdrawing faintly.

This, too, despairing sailors see

Flash out the breakers 'neath their lee

In sudden snow, then lingeringly

Wane tow'rd eclipse,

While through the dark the shuddering sea

Gropes for the ships.

And is it right, this mood of mind

That thus, in revery enshrined,

Can in the world mere topics find

For musing stricture,

Seeing the life of humankind

Only as picture?

The events in line of battle go;

In vain for me their trumpets blow

As unto him that lieth low

In death's dark arches,

And through the sod hears throbbing slow The muffled marches.

O Duty, am I dead to thee
In this my cloistered ecstasy,

In this lone shallop on the sea
That drifts tow'rd Silence?

And are those visioned shores I see
But sirens' islands?

My Dante frowns with lip-locked mien,
As who would say, ""T is those, I ween,
Whom lifelong armor-chafe makes lean

That win the laurel";

But where is Truth? What does it mean, The world-old quarrel?

Such questionings are idle air:

Leave what to do and what to spare

To the inspiring moment's care,

Nor ask for payment

Of fame or gold, but just to wear

Unspotted raiment.

TO MR. JOHN BARTLETT,

WHO HAD SENT ME A SEVEN-POUND TROUT.

IT for an Abbot of Theleme,

FIT

For the whole Cardinals' College, or

The Pope himself to see in dream
Before his lenten vision gleam,

He lies there, the sogdologer!

His precious flanks with stars besprent, Worthy to swim in Castaly!

The friend by whom such gifts are sent, For him shall bumpers full be spent,

His health! be Luck his fast ally!

I see him trace the wayward brook
Amid the forest mysteries,

Where at their shades shy aspens look,
Or where, with many a gurgling crook,
It croons its woodland histories.