Shall man say whence your virtue is, or how
Ye make medicinal the wayside weed?

I know that sunshine, through whatever rift,
How shaped it matters not, upon my walls
Paints discs as perfect-rounded as its source,
And, like its antitype, the ray divine,
However finding entrance, perfect still,
Repeats the image unimpaired of God.

We, who by shipwreck only find the shores
Of divine wisdom, can but kneel at first;
Can but exult to feel beneath our feet,

That long stretched vainly down the yielding deeps,
The shock and sustenance of solid earth;
Inland afar we see what temples gleam
Through immemorial stems of sacred groves,
And we conjecture shining shapes therein;
Yet for a space we love to wonder here
Among the shells and sea-weed of the beach.

So mused I once within my willow-tent

One brave June morning, when the bluff northwest,

Thrusting aside a dank and snuffling day

That made us bitter at our neighbors' sins,

Brimmed the great cup of heaven with sparkling

cheer

And roared a lusty stave; the sliding Charles,
Blue toward the west, and bluer and more blue,
Living and lustrous as a woman's cycs

Look once and look no more, with southward curvo
Ran crinkling sunniness, like Helen's hair
Glimpsed in Elysium, insubstantial gold;
From blossom-clouded orchards, far away
The bobolink tinkled; the deep meadows flowed
With multitudinous pulse of light and shade
Against the bases of the southern hills,
While here and there a drowsy island rick
Slept and its shadow slept; the wooden bridge
Thundered, and then was silent; on the roofs
The sun-warped shingles rippled with the heat;
Summer on field and hill, in heart and brain,
All life washed clean in this high tide of June.

DARA.

W

'HEN Persia's sceptre trembled in a hand Wilted with harem-heats, and all the land Was hovered over by those vulture ills That snuff decaying empire from afar, Then, with a nature balanced as a star, Dara arose a shepherd of the hills.

He who had governed fleecy subjects well
Made his own village by the selfsame spell
Secure and quiet as a guarded fold;

Then, gathering strength by slow and wise degrees.

Under his sway, to neighbor villages

Order returned, and faith, and justice old.

Now when it fortuned that a king more wise Endued the realm with brain and hands and eyes,

He sought on every side men brave and just; And having heard our mountain shepherd's praise,

How he refilled the mould of elder days,

To Dara gave a satrapy in trust.

So Dara shepherded a province wide,
Nor in his viceroy's sceptre took more pride
Than in his crook before; but envy finds
More food in cities than on mountains bare ;
And the frank sun of natures clear and rare
Breeds poisonous fogs in low and marish minds.

Soon it was hissed into the royal ear,

That, though wise Dara's province, year by year, Like a great sponge, sucked wealth and plenty

up,

Yet, when he squeezed it at the king's behest, Some yellow drops, more rich than all the rest, Went to the filling of his private cup.

For proof, they said, that, wheresoe'er he went, A chest, beneath whose weight the camel bent,

Went with him; and no mortal eye had seen
What was therein, save only Dara's own;
But, when 't was opened, all his tent was known
To glow and lighten with heaped jewels' sheen.

The King set forth for Dara's province straight;
There, as was fit, outside the city's gate,
The viceroy met him with a stately train,
And there, with archers circled, close at hand,
A camel with the chest was seen to stand:
The King's brow reddened, for the guilt was plain.

"Open me here," he cried, "this treasure-chest!" 'T was done; and only a worn shepherd's vest Was found therein. Some blushed and hung the head;

Not Dara; open as the sky's blue roof

He stood, and "O my lord, behold the proof
That I was faithful to my trust," he said.

"To govern men, lo all the spell I had! My soul in these rude vestments ever clad