NIGHT.

The whimp'ring creek breaks on the stone;
The new moon came, but now is gone;
White, tingling stars wink out alone.
Lank specter of wet, windy lands,
The melancholy heron stands;
Then, clamoring, dives into the stars.

A DIRGE.

Life has fled; she is dead,
Sleeping in the flow'ry vale
Where the fleeting shades are shed
Ghost-like o'er her features pale.
Lay her 'neath the violets wild,
Lay her like a dreaming child
'Neath the waving grass
Where the shadows pass.

II.

Gone she has to happy rest
With white flowers for her pillow;
Moons look sadly on her breast
Thro' an ever-weeping willow.
Fold her hands, frail flakes of snow,
Waxen as white roses blow
Like herself so fair,
Free from world and care.

III.

Twine this wreath of lilies wan
'Round her sculptured brow so white;
Let her rest here, white as dawn,
Like a lily quenched in night.
Wreath this rosebud wild and pale,
Wreath it 'mid her fingers frail;
On her dreamless breast
Let it dreaming rest.

IV.

Gently, gently lay her down,
Gently lay her form to sleep;
Gently let her soul be blown
Far away, while low we weep.
Hush! the earth no more can harm her
Now that choirs of angels charm her!
Dreams of life are brief;
Naught amendeth grief.

Speed away! speed away!
Angels called her here to sleep;
Let us leave her here to stay:
Speed away! and, speeding, weep.
Where the roses blow and die,
'Neath them she a rose doth lie
Wilted in the grass
Where the shadows pass.

THE HAUNTED HOUSE.

The shadows sit and stand within its door
Like uninvited guests and poor,
And all the long, hot summer day
A dry green locust whirs its roundelay,
And the shadows halt at the door.
The sheeted iron upon the roof
Stretches its weary hide and cracks;
The spider weaves his windy woof
In dingy closet cracks,
And all a something lacks.
The freckled snake crawls o'er the floor,
Tongues at the shadows in the door,
And where the musty mosses run
Basks in the sun.

II.

The children of the fathers sleep
Beneath the melancholy pines;
Earth-worms within grim skulls forever creep
And the glow-worm shines;
The orchards in the meadow deep
Lift up their stained, gnarled arms,
Mossed, lichened where limp lizards peep.
No youth swells up to make them leap
And cry against the storms;
No blossom lulls their age asleep,
Each wind brings sad alarms.
Big-bellied apples gold or bell-round pears
No maiden gathers now;
The moistures drip great reeking tears
From each old, crippled bough.

III.

The orchards are yellow and solitary,
The winds beat down their hands;
The sunlight is sad and the moonlight is dreary,
The hum of the country is lonesome and weary,
And the bees go by in bands
To other happier lands.
The grasses are rotting in walk and in bower;
The orchards smell dank and rank
As a chamber where lay for a lonely hour
A corpse unclad in the taper's glower,
Chill, white, and lank.
So the bees go by in murmurous bands,
Drowsily wand'ring to happier lands
Where the lilies draggle the bank.

IV.

In the desolate halls are lying,
Gold, blood-red, and browned,
Shriveled leaves of Autumn dying,
And the shadows o'er them flying
Turn them 'round and 'round,
Make a dreary sound
Thro' the echoing chambers crying
In the haunted house.

Gazing down in her white shroud
From the edging cloud
Comes at night the dimpled moon,
Comes, and like a ghost is gone
'Neath the flying cloud
O'er the haunted house.

PERLE DES JARDINS.

What am I, and what is he
Who can cull and tear a heart,
As one might a rose for sport
In its royalty?

What am I, that he has made
All this love a bitter foam,
Blown about a life of loam
That must break and fade?

He who of my heart could make
Hollow crystal where his face
Like a passion had its place
Holy and then break!

Shatter with insensate jeers!—
But these weary eyes are dry,
Tearless clear, and if I die
They shall know no tears.

Yet my heart weeps;—let it weep!
Let it weep in sullen pain,
And this anguish in my brain
Cry itself to sleep.

Ah! the afternoon is warm,
And yon fields are glad and fair;
Many happy creatures there
Thro' the woodland swarm.

All the summer land is still,
And the woodland stream is dark
Where the lily rocks its barque
Just below the mill.

If they found me icy there
'Mid the lilies and pale whorls
Of the cresses in my curls
Wet of raven hair—

Fool and coward! are you such?
Would you have him thus to know
That you died for utter woe
And despair o'ermuch?

No! my face a marble bust!
As the Sphynx, impassioned, stern!—
Passions hid, as in an urn,
Burnt to bitter dust!

And I'll write him as he wrote,
Making, with his worded scorn,
Tyrant,—crowned with stinging thorn,—
His cold, cruel note.

"You'll forget," he says, "and I
Feel 'tis better for us twain:
It may give you some small pain,
But, 'twill soon be by.

"You are dark, and Maud is light;
I am dark; and it is said
Opposites are better wed;—
So I think I'm right."

"You are dark and Maud is fair!"
I could laugh at this excuse
If this aching, mad abuse
Were not more than hair!

But I'll write him as a-glad
Some few happy words and light,
Touching on some past delight,
That last year we had.

Not one line of broken vows,
Sighs or hurtful tears unshed,
Faithless lips far better dead,
Nor a withered rose.

But a rose, this Perle to wear,—
Perle des Jardins delicate
With faint fragrant life elate,—
When he weds her there.

So; 'tis finished! It is well!
Go, thou rose! I have no tear,
Kiss, or word for thee to bear,
And no woe to tell.

Only be thus full of life,
Cold and calm, impassionate,
Filled with neither love nor hate,
When he calls her wife!

OSSIAN'S POEMS.

Here I have heard on hills the battle clash
Roar to the windy sea that roared again:
When, drunk with wrath, upon the clanking plain
Barbaric kings did meet in war and dash
Their mailéd thousands down, heard onset crash
Like crags contending 'gainst the battering main.
Torrents of helms, beaming like streams of rain,
Blue-billowing 'neath the pale moon's fitful flash;
Saw the scared moon hang over the black wood
Like a pale wreath of foam; shields, spears, and swords
Shoot green as meteors thro' the steely flood,
Or shine like ripples 'round their heathen lords
Standing like stubborn rocks, whence the wild wave
Of war circled in steel and foamed out brave on brave.

II.—IN MYTHIC SEAS.

IN MYTHIC SEAS.

'Neath saffron stars and satin skies, dark-blue,
Between dim sylvan isles, a happy two.
We sailed, and from the siren-haunted shore,
All mystic in its mist, the soft gale bore
The Siren's song, while on the ghostly steeps
Strange foliage grew, deeps folding upon deeps,
That hung and beamed with blossom and with bud,
Thick-powdered, pallid, or like urns of blood
Dripping, and blowing from wide mouths of blooms
On our bare brows cool gales of sweet perfumes.
While from the yellow stars that splashed the skies
O'er our light shallop dropped soft mysteries
Of calm and sleep, until the yellower moon
Rose full of fire above a dark lagoon;
And as she rose the nightingales on sprays
Of heavy, shadowy roses burst in praise
Of her wild loveliness, with boisterous pain
Wailing far off around a ruined fane.
And 'round our lazy keel that dipped to swing
The spirits of the foam came whispering;
And from dank Neptune's coral-columned caves
Heard the Oceanids rise thro' the waves;
Saw their smooth limbs cold-glimmering in the spray,
Tumultuous bosoms panting with their play;
Their oozy tresses, tossed unto the breeze,
Flash sea-green brightness o'er the tumbled seas.
'Mid columned isles, glance vaguely thro' the trees,
We watched the Satyrs chase the Dryades;
Heard Pan's fierce trebles and the Triton's horn
Sound from the rock-lashed foam when rose the Morn
With chilly fingers dewing all the skies,
That blushed for love and closed their starry eyes.
The Naiad saw sweet smiling, in white mist,
Half hidden in a bay of amethyst
Her polished limbs, and at her hollow ear
A shell's pink labyrinth held up to hear
Dim echoes of the Siren's haunting strains
Emprisoned in its chords of crimson veins.
And stealing wily from a grove of pines
The Oread in cincture of green vines,
One twinkling foot half buried in the red
Of a deep dimpled, crumpled poppy bed—
Like to the star of eve, when, lapsing low,
Faint clouds that with the sunset colors glow
Slip down in scarlet o'er its crystal white,
It shining, tear-like, partly veils its light.
Her wine-red lips half-parted in surprise,
And expectation in her bright blue eyes,
While slyly from a young oak coppice peers
The wanton Faun with furry, pointed ears.
He leaps, she flies as flies the startled nymph
When Pan pursues her from her wonted lymph,
Diana sees, and on her wooded hills
Stays her fair band, the stag hounds' clamor stills.
Already nearer glow the Oread's charms;
To seize them Faunus strains his hairy arms—
A senseless statue of white, weeping stone
Fills his embrace; the Oread is gone.
The stag-hounds bay, Dian resumes the chase,
While the astonished Faun's bewildered face
Paints all his wonderment, and, wondering,
He bends above the sculpture of the spring.

We sailed; and many a morn of breathing balm,
Purpureal, graced us in that season calm;
And it was life to thee and me and love
With the fair myths below, our God above,
To sail in golden sunsets and emerge
In golden morns upon a fretless surge.
But ah, alas! the stars that dot the blue
Shine not alway; the clouds must gather too.
I knew not how it came, but in a while
Myself I found cast on an arid isle
Alone and barkless, soaked and wan with dread,
The seas in wrath and thunder overhead,
Deep down in coral caverns my pale love,
No myths below, no God, it seemed, above.

THE DEAD OREAD.

Her heart is still and leaps no more
With holy passion when the breeze,
Her whilom playmate, as before,
Comes with the language of the bees,
Sad songs her mountain ashes sing
And hidden fountains' whispering.

Her calm, white feet, erst fleet and fast
As Daphne's when a Faun pursued,
No more will dance like sunlight past
The dim-green vistas of the wood,
Where ev'ry quailing floweret
Smiled into life where they were set.

Hers were the limbs of living light
Most beautiful and virginal,
God-graceful and as godly white,
And wild as beautiful withal,
And hyacinthine curls that broke
In color when a wind awoke.

The wild aromas weird that haunt
Moist bloomy dells and solitudes
About her presence seemed to pant,
The happy life of all her moods;
Ambrosial smiles and amorous eyes
Whose luster would a god surprise.

Her grave be by a dripping rock,
A mossy dingle of the hill,
Remote from Bacchanals that mock,
Wine-wild, the long, mad nights and still,
Where no unhallowed Pan with lust
May mar her melancholy dust.

APHRODITE.

Apollo never smote a lovelier strain,
When swan-necked Hebe paused her thirsty bowl
A-sparkle with its wealth of nectar-draughts
To lend a list'ners ear and smile on him,
As that the Tritons blew on wreathed horns
When Aphrodite, the cold ocean-foam
Bursting its bubbles, from the hissing snow
Whirled her nude form on Hyperion's gaze,
Naked and fresh as Indian Ocean shell
Dashed landward from its bed of sucking sponge
And branching corals by the changed monsoon.
Wind-rocked she swung her white feet on the sea,
And music raved down the slant western winds;
With swollen jowls the Tritons puffed the conch,
Where, breasting with cold bosoms the green waves,
That laughed in ripples at Love's misty feet,
Oceanids with dimple-dented palms
Smote sidewise the pale bubbles of the foam,
Which wove a silver iris 'round her form.
Where dolphins tumbling stained the garish arch
Nerëides sang, braiding their wet locks,
Or flung them streaming on the broken foam,
Till evetide showed her loveliest of stars—
Lost passion-flower of the sinking sun—
In the cool sheen of shadowy waters deep,
That moaned wild sea-songs at the Sirens' caves;
Then in a hollow pearl, o'er moon-white waves,
The creatures of the ocean danced their queen,
Till Cytherea like a rosy mist
Beneath the star rose blushing from the deep.
On the pearled sands of a moon-glassing sea
Beneath the moon, narcissus-like, they met,
She naked as a star and crowned with stars,
Child of the airy foam and queen of love.

PERSEPHONE.

O Hades! O false gods! false to yourselves!
O Hades, 'twas thy brother gave her thee
Without a mother's sanction or her knowledge!
He bare her to the horrid gulfs below,
And made her queen, a shadowy queen of shades,
Queen of the fiery flood and mournful realms
Of grating iron and the clank of chains.

On blossomed plains in far Trinacria
A maiden, the dark cascade of whose hair
Seemed gleaming rays of midnight 'mid the stars,
Rays slowly bright'ning 'neath a mellow moon,
She 'mid the flowers with the Oceanids
Sought Echo's passion, loved Narcissus pale,
'Ghast staring in the mirror of a lake,
Whose smoothness brake his image, flickering seen,
E'en with the fast tears of his dewy eyes.
A shape there rose with iron wain and steeds
'Mid sallow fume of sulphur and pale fires;
Its countenance meager, and its eyes e'en such
As the wild, ghastly sulphur. In its arms,
Its sooty arms, where like to supple steel
The muscles rigid lay, unto its breast,
Such as its arms, it rushed her fragile form
As bosomed bulks of tempest in their joy
With arms of winds drag to their black embrace
A fairy mist of white that flecks the summer
With shadeless wings of gauze, and 'tis no more
Heaved on the rapture of its thundering heart.

The snowy flowers shuddered and grew still
With withered faces bowed, and on the stream—
Where all the day it was their wont to stand
In silent sisterhood down-gazing at their charms—
Withered and limp and dead laid their fair brows.
Flames hissed aloft like fiery whips of snakes
Blasting and killing all the fragrant sprites
That make the dewy zephyrs their dim haunts.

O foam-fair daughters of Oceanus!
In vain you seek your mate and chide the flowers
For hiding her 'neath their broad, snowy palms;
Nor is she hidden in that pearly shell,
Which, like a pinky babe cast from the sea,
Moans at your pallid feet washed with white spray.
But, sitting by the tumbling blue of waves,
Mourn to your billows on the foamy sands
The falseness of the god who grasps the storm!

DEMETER.

Demeter sad! the wells of sorrow lay
Eternal gushing in thy lonely path.

Methinks I see her now—an awful shape
Tall o'er a dragon team in frenzied search
From Argive plains unto the jeweled shores
Of the remotest Ind, where Usha's hand
Tinged her grief-cloven brow with kindly touch,
And Savitar wheeled genial thro' the skies
O'er palmy regions of the faneless Brahm.

In melancholy search I see her roam
O'er the steep peaks of Himalayas keen
With the unmellowed frosts of Boreal storms,
Then back again with that wild mother woe
Writ in the anguished fire of her eyes,—
Back where old Atlas groans 'neath weight of worlds,
And the Cimmerian twilight glooms the soul.
Deep was her sleep in Persia's haunted vales,
Where many a languid Philomela moaned
The bursting sorrow of a bursting soul.
I see her nigh Ionia's swelling seas
Cull from the sands a labyrinthine shell,
And hark the mystery of its eery voice
Float from the hollow windings of its curl,
Then cast it far into the weedy sea
To view the salt-spray flash, like one soft plume
Dropped from the wings of Eros, 'gainst the flame
Of Helios' car down-sloping toward his bath.
I see her beg a coral flute of red
From a tailed Triton; and on Ithakan rocks
High seated at the starry death of day,
When Selene rose from off her salty couch
To smile a glory on her face of sorrow,
Pipe forth sad airs that made the Sirens weep
In their green caves beneath the sodden sands,
And hoar Poseidon clear his wrinkled front
And still his surgy clamors to a sigh.

This do I see, and more; ah! yes, far more:
I see her, 'mid the lonely groves of Crete,
The wild hinds fright from the o'ervaulted green
Of thickest boscage, tangling their close covert,
With horror of her torches and her wail,
"Persephone! Persephone!" till the pines
Of rugged Dicte shuddered thro' their cones,
And Echo shrieked down in her deepest chasms
A wild reply unto her wild complaint;
As wild as when she voiced those maidens' woe,
Athenian tribute to stern Minos, king,
When coiling grim the Minotaur they saw
Far in his endless labyrinth of stone.

DIONYSOS.

"O Dionysos! Dionysos! the ivy-crowned!
O let me sing thy triumph ere I die!"

Within my sleep a Maenad came to me:
A harp of crimson agate strung with gold
Wailed 'neath her waxen fingers, and her heart
'Neath the white gauze, thro' which a moonlight shone,
Kept time with its wild throbbings to her song.

"Aegeus sleeps, O Dionysos! sleeps
Pale 'neath the tumbling waves that sing his name
Eternally at my dew-glist'ning feet.
And so he died, O Dionysos! died!
O let me sing thy triumph ere I die!

"With the shrill syrinx and the kissing clang
Of silver cymbals clashed by Ethiopes swart,
O, pard-drawn youth, thou didst awake the world
To joy and pleasure with thy sunny wine!
Mad'st India bow and the dun, flooding Nile
Grow purple in the radiance of the wine
Cast from the richness of Silenus' cup,
Whiles yet the heavens of heat saw dances wild
Whirl mid the redness of the Libic sands,
Which greedy drank the Bacchanalian draught
Spun from the giddy bowl, a rose-tinged mist,
O'er the slant edge, red twinkling in the eye
Of brazen Ra, fierce turning overhead.
What made gold Horus smile with golden lips?
Anubis dire forget his ghosts to lead
To Hell's profoundness, and then stay to sip
One winking bubble from the wine-god's cup?
What made Osiris, 'mid the palms of Nile,
Leave Isis dreaming, and the frolic Pan's
Harsh trebles follow as a roaring bull,
Far as the gleaming temples of Indra,
And mourned in Memphis by his tawny priests?
It was thy joys, sun-nourished fire of wine!
The brimming purple of the hollow gold
They tasted and they worshiped—gods themselves!

"Wan Echo sat once in a spiral shell;
She, from its sea-dyed maziness of pearl,
Saw the mixed pageant dancing on the strand,
Where Nereus slept upon an isle of crags,
And o'er the slope of his far-foaming head
The strangeness of the orgies wildly cried,
Till the frore god shook many a billow curl,
Serened his face and stretched a welcome hand
With civil utt'rance for the Bacchus horn.
But now there tarries in her eye-balls' disks
That nomad troop, and naught her tongue may say
Save jostling words that haunt her muffled ears
Like feeble wave-beats in a deep sea-cave.

"Ah! the white stars, O Dionysos! now
Have dropped their glittering blossoms slowly down
Behind the snowy mountains in the West.
Aegeus sleeps, hushed by my murmuring harp,
And I have sung thy triumph; let me die!"

HACKELNBERG.

When down the Hartz the echoes swarm
He rides beneath the sounding storm
With mad "halloo!" and wild alarm
Of hound and horn—a wonder,
With his hunter black as night,
Ban-dogs fleet and fast as light,
And a stag as silver white
Drives before, like mist, in flight,
Glimmering 'neath the bursten thunder.

The were-wolf shuns his ruinous track,
Long-howling hid in braken black;
Around the forests reel and crack
And mountain torrents tumble;
And the spirits of the air
Whistling whirl with scattered hair,
Teeth that flash and eyes that glare,
'Round him as he chases there
With a noise of rains that rumble.

From thick Thuringian thickets growl
Fierce, fearful monsters black and foul;
And close before him a stritch-owl
Wails like a ghost unquiet:
Then the clouds aside are driven
And the moonlight, stormy striven.
Falls around the castle riven
Of the Dumburg, and the heaven
Maddens then with blacker riot.

THE LIMNAD.

The lake she haunts lies dreamily
'Neath sleepy boughs of melody,
And far away an olden sea,
An olden sea booms mellow;
And the sunset's glamours smite
Its clean water with strong light
Wov'n to wondrous flowers, where fight
Breezy blue and winking white,
Ruby red and tarnished yellow.

II.

'Mid green rushes there that swing,
Flowering flags where voices sing
When low winds are murmuring,
Murmuring to stars that glitter;
Blossom-white with purple locks,
'Neath unfolded starry flocks,
In the dusky waves she rocks,
Rocks and all the landscape mocks
With a song most sweet and bitter.

III.

Low it comes like sighs in dreams;
Tears that fall in burning streams;
Then a sudden burst of beams,
Beams of song that soar and wrangle,
Till the woods are taken quite,
And red stars are waxen white,
Lilies tall, bowed left and right,
Gasp and die with very might
Of the serpent notes that strangle.

IV.

Dark, dim, and sad on mournful lands
White-throated stars heaped in her hands,
Like wild-wood buds, the Twilight stands,
The Twilight standing lingers,
Till the Limnad coming sings
Witcheries whose beauty brings
A great moon from hidden springs,
Mad with amorous quiverings,
Feet of fire and silver fingers.

In the vales Auloniads,
On the mountains Oreads,
On the meads Leimoniads,
That in naked beauty glisten;
Pan and Satyrs, Dryades,
Fountain-lisping Naiades,
Foam-lipped Oceanides,
Breathless 'mid their seas or trees,
Stay mad sports to look and listen.

VI.

Large-limbed, Egypt-eyed she stands—
Night on dim and ghostly lands,
And in rapture from her hands
Some wild molten stars are shaken.
Let her stand and rushes swing;
Let lank flags dip murmuring,
Low, lost winds come like a wing;
They will waken though she sing,
But one mortal ne'er will waken.

THE MERMAID.

The moon in the East is glowing;
I sit by the moaning sea;
The mists down the sea are blowing,
Down the sea all dewily.

The sands at my feet are shaking,
The stars in the sky are wan;
The mists for the shore are making,
With a glimmer drifting on.

From the mist comes a song, sweet wailing
In the voice of a love-lorn maid,
And I hear her gown soft trailing
As she doth lightly wade.

The night hangs pale above me
Upon her starry throne,
And I know the maid doth love me
Who maketh such sweet moan.

From out the mist comes tripping
A Mermaiden full fair,
Across the white sea skipping
With locks of tawny hair.

Her locks with sea-ooze dripping
She wrings with a snowy hand;
Her dress is thinly clipping
Two breasts which perfect stand.

Oh, she was fair as the heaven
On an autumnal eve,
And my love to her was given
When I saw how she did grieve.

Amort o'er the sea came speeding
This sea sprite samite-clad,
And my heart for love was bleeding,
But its beating I forbade.

On the strand where the sand was rocking
She stood and sang an air,
And the winds in her hair kept locking
Their fingers cool and bare.

Soft in her arms did she fold me,
While sweet and low she moaned;
Her love and her grief she told me,
And the ocean sighed and groaned.

But I stilled my heart's wild beating,
For I knew her love was dim;
Full coldly received her greeting,
Tho' my life burnt in each limb.

In my ear right sweet she was sighing
With the voice of the pink-veined shells;
Her arms 'round my neck kept tying,
And gazed in mine eyes' deep wells.

With her kisses cold did she woo me,
But I dimmed my heart's wild beat;
With the stars of her eyes did she sue me,
But their passion did mine defeat.

With the cloud of her sea-dipped tresses
She veiled her beautiful face;—
And oh! how I longed for her kisses
And sighed for her soft embrace!

But out in the mist she went wailing
When the dawn besilvered the night,
With her robes of samite trailing
In the foam-flowers sad and white.

Like a spirit grieved went moaning
In a twilight over the sea,
And it seemed the night was groaning,
And my heart beat wild in me.

But I hushed my heart's fierce beating,
For a Mermaid false was she;
Yet I sighed at her faintly fleeting
Across the dim, dark sea.

The moon all withered is glowing,
The mist and she are gone;
My heart to ice is growing,
And I sob at the coming dawn.

THE PUNISHMENT OF LOKE.

The gods of Asaheim, incensed with Loke,
A whirlwind yoked with thunder-footed steeds,
And, carried thus, boomed o'er the booming seas,
Far as the teeming wastes of Jotunheim,
To punish Loke for all his wily crimes.

They found him sitting nigh a mountain-force,
Which flashing roared from crags of ribbed snow,
Lamenting strange and weird in rushing notes
Of the old Strömkarl, who therein smote a harp
And sang in mystic syllables of runes.
For 'tis the wild man's harp and voice you hear:
He sits behind the crackling cataract
Within a grotto dim of mist and foam,
His long, thin beard, white as the flying spray
Flung to the midnight in a sounding cave
By the blind fish that leap against the winds;
Gemmed with the large dews of the cataract,
Swings in the sucking breeze, and swinging beats
Time to his harp's strains quav'ring soft and sad
Beneath the talons of his pale, lean hand.
And all the waters, leaping, tingling shake
Like shivering stars within the frozen skies,
When as the Giants of Frost rule o'er the deep,
And nip their buds with fingers hoar of ice.

Here banished found they mischief-making Loke
Beneath the faint arch of young Bifrost sate,
His foxy face between large, naked knees;
Deep, wily eyes fixed on the darting fish
In seeming thought, but aye one corner wan
Flashed at the Asas where they clustered fair,
Soft on a mountain's aged locks of snow,
Their tawny tresses ruddy in the wind.

Then great-limbed Thor sprang wind-like forth:—
Red was his beard forked with the livid light,
That clings among the tempest's locks of bale,
Or fillets her tumultuous temples black.
And drops with wild confusion on the hills;
And thro' his beard, like to the storm's strong voice,
His sullen words were strained, and when he spake
The oldest forests bowed their crowns of leaves,
And barmy skulls of mead half-raised were stayed
Within Valhalla, and heroes great were dumb.

As when, the horror of the spear-shock o'er,
And all the plains and skies of Thule are gorged
With gore and screams of those that fight or die,
The Valkyries in their far-glimmering helms
Flash from the windy sunset's mists of red
Unto the chalk-faced dead,—whose beaten casques
And sea-swol'n shields, with sapless, red-hewn limbs,
Wave 'mid the dead-green billows, stormy-browed,
That roar along the Baltic's wintry coast,
And wail amid the iron-circled coves,—
To cull dead heroes for the hall of shields,—
Where yells the toast and rings the tournament,—
A dumbness falls upon the shattered field;
The clinging billows 'mid the restless dead
Moan o'er their wide-stretched eyes and glassy sleep;
And all the blood-blurred banners, gustless, dark
Hard ashen faces waiting for the choice.

The thunderer did Loke shrewd ensnare,
Incensed for pristine evil wrought on him.
When erst dark Loke deflowered his spouse, fair Sif
The blue eyed, of her golden, baby locks.
Him the Asas dragged beneath a burning mount
Into a cavern black, by earthquakes rent
When Earth was young to heave her spawn of Trolls,
The vermin which engendered in the corpse
Of Ymer huge, whose flesh did make the world.
Here where the stars ne'er shone, nor nature's strains
Of legendary woodlands, peaks, and streams
Ere came, they pinned him supine to the rocks,
Whose frigid touch filed at his brittle bones,
And tore a groan from lips of quiv'ring froth,
That made the warty reptiles cold and huge
Hiss from their midnight lairs and blaze great eyes.

Lone in the night he heard the white bear roar
From some green-glancing berge that stemmed dark seas
With all its moan of torrents foaming down
The ice-crags of its crystal mountain crests.
And 'neath the firry steep a wild swine shrieked,
And fought the snarling wolf; his midriff ripped
With spume-flaked ivories where the moss was brok'n
Far down within the horror of a gorge;
And once he saw souls of dead mortals whirl
With red-strown hair within the Arctic skies,
And all his stolid face was eddied o'er
By one faint smile, which grimly flash'd and pass'd,
And he knew not its stonyness had changed.
And all was rock above him, rock beneath:
And all the clammy crawling things that spat
Black venom at him from deep dens of rock,
And that swart boundless flood of flowing death,
Which with its sooty spray clung to a cliff
And slid beside his marble gaze, to him
Were as the rock that curled above and hung;
Were as the rock that spread beneath and pierced;
For as to the blind to him were lidless eyes.

And pity 'twas not darker than it was,
And crammed with terrors populous as Hel's
Or that cursed dome of corpses, Naastrand dire,
Whose roofs and walls of yawning serpents slick
Hang writhing down, flat heads—reed-beds of snakes—
From whose red, hissing fangs flow slimy streams
Of blist'ring venom, gath'ring to a flood,
Wherein the basest shades eternal wade
And feel the anguish crawling down the neck,
Or glue the hair, or glut the dull, dead ear,
Or choke the blasted eye until it swims
In lurid pain and blazes 'gainst the source.
The roar of waters and the wail of pines
When whirlwinds roll the granite bowlders down
From flinty crags of storm to bellowing seas—
On noisome winds the howls of torture roll,
And rising die, cause the live dome to writhe,
And swift pour down a tempest steep of woe.

Huge Skade, of Winter daughter, giantess,
One twisting serpent hung above Loke's head,
So that the blistering slaver might splash down
Upon his chalky face, and torture him,—
For so the Asas willed for his vast crimes.

But Loke's wife, Sigin, endured not this,
And brooked not to behold her husband's pain.
She sate herself beside his writhen limbs,
And held a cup to cull the venomed dew
Which flamed the scowling blackness as it fell.
To him she spake, who swelled his breast and groaned
E'en as some mighty sea, when 'neath its waves
The huge leviathan by whalers chased,—
Cleaving thick waters in his spinning flight,
The barbèd harpoon feasting on his life,—
Rolls up pale mounded billows o'er black fins
Far in the North Atlantic's sounding seas:—

"O Loke! lock those wide-drawn eyes of thine,
And let white silver-lidded slumber fall
In the soft utterance of my low speech!
And I will flutter all my amber curls
To cast wind currents o'er thy pallid brow!—
Drink deepest sleep, for, see, I catch thy doom!—
So pale thy face which glimmers thro' the night!
So pale! and knew I death as mortals know
I'd say that he mysterious had on thee
Laid hands of talons and so slain thy soul!
So still! and all the night bears down my heart!
So pale!—and sleep is lost to thee and me!—
Sleep, that were welcome in this heavy gloom!—
It clings to me like pestilential fogs!
I seem but clodded filth and float in filth!
It chokes my words and claws them from my tongue
To sound as dull confusèd as the boom
Heard thro' the stagnant earth when armies meet
With ring of war-ax on the brazen helms,
And all the mountains clash unto the sound
Of shocking spears that splinter on gray ore!
For by dead banks of stone my words are yelled
While yet they touch the tongue to grasp the thought;
And all the creatures huddled in their holes
Creep forth to glare and hiss them back again!
Yet, for thy love, O Loke, could I brave
All trebled horrors that wise Odin may
Heap on, and, suff'ring, love thee all the more!

"For thou dost love me, and this life is naught
Without thy majesty of form and mind,
For, dark to all, alone art fair to me!
And to thy level and thy passions all
I raise the puny hillock of my soul,
Tho' oft it droops below thy lofty height,
Far 'mid the crimson clouds of windless dawns
Reaching the ruby of a glorious crest.
And then aspire I not, but cower in awe
Down 'mid low, printless winds that take no morn.—

"At least my countenance may win from thee
A reflex of that alabaster cold
That stones thy brow, and pale in kindred woe!
And when this stony brow of thine is cleft
By myriad furrows, tortures of slow Time,
And all the beauties of thy locks are past,
Now glossy as the brown seal's velvet fur,
Their drifts of winter strown around this cave
To gray the glutton gloom that hangs like lead,—
For Idunn's fruit is now debarred thy lips,
And thou shalt age e'en as I age with thee!—
Then will the thought of that dread twilight cheer
The burthen of thy anguish; for wilt thou
Not in the great annihilation aid
Of gods and worlds, that roll thro' misty grooves
Of cycled ages to wild Ragnaroke?
Then shalt thou joy! for all those stars which glue
Their blinking scales unto old Ymer's skull
In clots shall fall! and as this brooding night
Sticks to and gluts us till we strangling clutch
With purple lips for air—and feel but frost
Drag laboring down the throat to swell the freight
That cuddles to the heart and clogs its life,
So shall those falling flakes spread sea-like far
In lakes of flame and foggy pestilence
O'er the hot earth, and drown all men and gods.

"But, oh, thy face! pale, pale its marble gleams
Thro' the thick night! and low the serpent wreathes
And twists his scaly coils that livid hang
Above thee alabaster as a shrine!—
Oh, could I kiss the lips toward which he writhes
And yield them the last spark of living flame
That burns in my wan blood, and, yielding—die!
Oh, could I gaze once more into large eyes
Whose liquid depths glassed domes of molten stars,
And see them as they glowed when Morning danced
O'er scattered flowers from the rosy hills
That lined the orient skies beneath one star!
When first we met and loved among the pines,
The melancholy pines that plumed the cliffs
And rocked and sang unto the smooth fiords
Like old wild women to their sleeping babes!
Then could I die e'en as the mortals die,
And smile in dying!—But the reptile baulks
All effort to behold, or on white lips
To feast the ardor of my vain desire!
Thy face alone shines on my straining sight
Like some dim moon beneath a night of mist,—
And now the creatures come to feel at me—
The serpent swings above and darts his fang,
And I can naught but hold the cup and breathe."

Then thro' the blackness of the dripping cave
Tumultuous spake he, rage his utterance;
Large as the thunder when it lunging rolls,
Heavy with earthquake and portending ruin,
Tempestuous words o'er everlasting seas
Dumb with the silence of eternal ice;
His eyes in horrid spasms, and his throat,
Corded and gnarled with veins of boisterous blood,
Swollen with fury, and stern, wintery lips
Flaked with rebellious foam and agony
For thwarted rage and baulkment of designs.
Rash vaunter of loud wrath, one brawny fist,
Convulsed with clenchment in its gyve of ore,
Clutched mad defiance and bold blasphemy,
Headlong for battle-launching at all gods
That bow meek necks before high Odin's throne;
Yet all unhurled and vain as mists of morn,
Or foam wind-wasted on the sterile sands
Of rainy seas where Ran, from whistling caves
Watching the tempest ravened dragon wreck,
Feels 'twixt lean miser fingers slippery
Already oily gold of Vikings' drowned.
Reverberated, the loud-scoffing rock
All his unburdened blasphemies again
Flung back a million fold from riotous throats
In which demoniac laughter howled and roared,
Bellowing tremendous tumult, till his ears,
Flooded and gorged with maniac curses, grew
Stunned, deaf and senseless, and the rebel words,
Erst rolled and thundered in his godly speech,
Recoiled in oaths that, shrunk in serpent loops,
Coiled mad anathemas of violence,
Voluminous-ringed, about his heart of ice,
That now in wasted wrath of bitter foam,—
Which burst and bare big ineffectual groans,
Wretched and huge with infinite weariness,—
Spent all its storm of ponderous misery.

Her sorrow found some vent in rain of tears,
And all the cave was dumb and dead with night,
Unbroken save of Sigin's heaving sobs,
Or the baulked god's deep groans where chain'd he lay
To see the spotted serpent crisp above
And aye gape poison at his lidless eyes.

And when her bowl was brimmed till one more drop
Had cast the fifth white o'er the scorching edge,
Into the black, deep flood beside she poured
Its stagnant torture; one second's tithe the time—
The reptile's bale blurs all his milky cheek,
Burns to his bones; he starting fell, stiff twists
The sinewy steel that hugs his massive limbs
And shrieks so loud within those solitudes,
The caverns yawn unto the stormy skies,
The orey mountains rock and groan for fear,
High spew their fiery thunders, smoke, and stones.

And this all in a mist-land dim and numb,
Where giants reign, rude kings in holds of ice
Based crag-like on high vivid frozen cliffs,
The bandit castles of the Northern wastes.
Beneath the shimmering dance of Arctic lights,
Which lamp them on, they storm to fight the gods;
Swathed in their stubborn mail of sleet and snow,
Embattled 'mid the clouds with fiends of ruin,
In militant throng-legions scorn the gods;
From yawning trumpets wrought of whirling clouds
Snarl war to Thor, who, in his goat-dragged wain,
Hurls thundering forth to fight their lowering troops,
That lift black 'scutcheons of tempests orbed,
Great brands of wind, and slings of whistling storm,
From which are flung their hurricanes of hail.
With such they oft withstand the strength of Thor's
Dwarf-stithied mace, Mjolner, when he rings
To find admittance to their brains of mist,
And, cleaving, drives them to their barren realms,
Where echoes of lost wars and wars to be
Rumble 'mid ruined icebergs to the caves,
Or clang with northern shock of icy spears;
While Balder, from the abyss of deathful fogs
Restored, smiles kindlier on the whit'ning lands.

Here Loke is doomed to lie in tortures chained
Until that last dread twilight of the gods,
Wild Ragnaroke, when Odin's self shall pass:
The moon and sun consumed, the fiery host
From Muspelheim shall flaming split the heavens,
Blot out the stars with lustre of their arms;
And down the squarèd legions led by Surt
Swift whirl in fogs of flame to war with gods;
Nor Thor avail, but suffocated fall
In contest with the Midgard serpent vast.
All men and gods abolished with the world,
Which into an abyss of fume and flame
Sinks like a meteor of the Summer night,
That slides into the gold of burning eve
And with eve's gold is burning, blent and lost.
But, like an exhalation, from the wreck
A new and lovelier world with juster gods
And better men shall rise, and soar away
On wings of Love thro' skies where Truth displays
The glory of her form, Wisdom her eyes.—
Behold! the Golden Age again returns!

SEA DREAMS.

Oh, to see in the night in a May moon's light
A nymph from siren caves,
With a crown of pearl, sea-gems in each curl
Dance down white, star-stained waves!
Oh, to list in the gloam by the pearly foam
Of a sad, far-sounding shore
The strain of the shell of an ocean belle
From caves where the waters roar!
With a hollow shell drift up in the moon
To sigh in my ears this ocean tune:—

II.

"Wilt follow, wilt follow to caverns hollow,
That echo the tumbling spry?
Wilt follow thy queen to islands green,
Vague islands of witchery?
O follow, follow to grottoes hollow,
And isles in a purple sea,
Where rich roses twine and the lush woodbine
Weaves a musky canopy!"

III.

Oh, to float in the gloam on the bubbly foam
With her lily face above!
Oh, to lie in a barque and a wild song hark,
And a billow-nymph to love!
I'd lie at her feet and my heart should beat
To the music of her sighs;
But the stars in her face my passion should trace,
Unseen all the stars of the skies.

IV.

Away, away with the witch of spray
To her Aidenn islands far;
And the blue above, drunk-mad with love,
Dance down each singing star.
Leave, leave to the heaven its morning star
In a cloud of bolted snow,
To laugh at the world and herald far
Our wedlock and joy below.

III.—IN THE GARDENS OF FALERINA.

FALERINA.

The night is hung above us, love,
With heavy stars that love us, love,
With clouds that curl in purple and pearl,
And winds that whisper of us, love:
On burly hills and valleys, that lie dimmer,
The amber foot-falls of the moon-sylphs glimmer.

The moon is still a crescent, love;
And here with thee 'tis pleasant, love,
To sit and dream in its thin gleam,
And list thy sighs liquescent, love:
To see thy eyes and fondle thy dark tresses,
Set on warm lips imperishable kisses.

The sudden-glaring fire-flies
Swim o'er the hollow gyre-wise,
And spurt and shine like jostled wine
At lips on which desire lies:
Or like the out-flashed hair of elf or fairy
In rapid morrice whirling feat and airy.

Up,—all the blue West sundering,—
A creamy cloud comes blundering
O'er star and steep, and opening deep
Grows gold with silent thundering:
Gold flooding crystal crags immeasurable,
Lost Avalons of old Romance and Fable.

The bee dreams in the cherry bloom
That sways above the berry bloom;
The katydid grates where she's hid
In leafy deeps of dreary gloom:
The forming dew is globing on the grasses,
Like rich spilled gems of some dark queen that passes.

The mere brief gusts are wrinkling;
A thousand ripples twinkling
Have caught the stars on polished spars
Their rustling ridges sprinkling:
And all the shadow lurking in its bosom
Is touched and bursten into golden blossom.

Stoop! and my being flatter, love;
With sudden starlight scatter, love,
From the starry grace of thy rare face,
Whose might can make or shatter, love!
Come, raiment love in love's own radiant garments.
And kindle all my soul to rapturous torments!

Bow all thy beauty to me, love,
Lips, eyes, and hair to woo me, love,
As bows and blows some satin rose
Snow-soft and tame, that knew thee, love.
Unto the common grass, that worshiping cowers,
Dowering its love with all her musk of flowers.

THE DREAM.

My dream was such:
It seemed the afternoon
Of some deep tropic day, and yet a moon
Stood round and full with largeness of white gleams
High in a Heaven that knew not a sun's beams;
A vast, still Heaven of unremembered dreams.
Long, lawny lengths of perishable cloud
Hung in a West o'er rolling forests bowed;
Clouds raining colors, gold and violet
That, opening, seemed from hidden worlds to let
Down hints of mystic beauty and old charms
Wrought of frail creatures fair with silvery forms.
And all about me fruited orchards grew
Of quince and peach and dusty plums of blue;
Wan apricots and apples red with fire,
Kissed into ripeness by some sun's desire,
And big with juice; and on far, fading hills,
Down which it seemed a hundred torrent rills
Flashed leaping silver, vines and vines and vines
Of purple vintage swollen with cool wines;
Pale pleasant wines and fragrant as the June,
Their delicate life robbed from the foam-fair moon.
And from the clouds o'er this sweet world there dripp'd
An odorous music strange and feverish lipped,
That swung and swooned and panted in mad sighs,
Invoking at each wave sad rapturous eyes
Of limpid, willowy beings fair as night,
Decked spangly with crisp flower-like stars of white;
Dim honeyed booming of the boisterous bee
In purple myriads of faint fleurs-de-lis;
Of surf far-foaming on forgotten strands
Of immemorial seas in fairy lands
Of melting passion, who, with crimson lips
Of many shells laid to each swell that dips,
Sigh secret hope of unrequited love
In murmurous language to wan winds above.

HAWKING.

I see them still, when poring o'er
Old volumes of romantic lore,
Ride forth to hawk in days of yore,
By woods and promontories;
Knights in gold lace, plumes and gems,
Maidens crowned with anadems,—
Whose falcons on round wrists of milk
Sit in jesses green of silk,—
From bannered Miraflores.

II.

The laughing earth is young with dew;
The deeps above are violet blue;
And in the East a cloud or two
Empearled with airy glories:
And with laughter, jest and singing,
Silver bells of falcons ringing,
Hawkers, rosy with the dawn,
Gayly ride o'er hill and lawn
From courtly Miraflores.

III.

The torrents silver down the crags;
Down dim-green vistas browse the stags;
And from wet beds of reeds and flags
The frightened lapwing hurries;
And the brawny wild-boar peereth
At the cavalcade that neareth;
Oft his shaggy-throated grunt
Brings the king and court to hunt
At royal Miraflores.

IV.

The May itself in soft sea-green
Is Oriana, Spring's high queen,
And Amadis beside her seen
Some prince of Fairy stones:
Where her castle's ivied towers
Drowse above her budded bowers,
Flaps the heron thro' the sky,
And the wild swan gives a cry
By woody Miraflores.

LA BEALE ISOUD.

With bloodshot eyes the morning rose
Upon a world of gloom and tears;
A kindred glance queen Isoud shows—
Come night, come morn, cease not her fears.
The fog-clouds whiten all the vale,
The sunlight draws them to its love;
The diamond dews wash ev'ry dale,
Where bays the hunt within the grove.
Her lute—the one her touch he taught
To wake beneath the stars a song
Of swan-caught music—is as naught
And on yon damask lounge is flung.
Down o'er her cheeks her hair she draws
In golden rays 'twixt lily tips,
And gazes sad on gloomy shaws
'Neath which had often touched their lips.

II.

With irised eyes, from morn to noon.
And noon to middle night she stoops
From her high lattice 'neath the moon,
Hoping to see him 'mid the groups
Of mail-swathed braves come jingling by.
And once there came a dame in weft
All pearl besprent, as when the sky
A springtide day hath wept and left
A stormy eve one flash of gems.
"'Mid neatherds he's a naked waif
Unwitted," said she, lipping scorn:
And shook deep curls with a weak laugh
Tib clinked the gold thick in them worn.

III.

"How long to wait!" and far she bent
From her tall casement toward the lawn;
A prospect of a wide extent
Glassed in her eyes and hateful shown.
Along the white lake windy crags
Blue with coarse brakes and ragged pines;
A bandit keep with trembling flags;
And barren scars, and waste marsh lines,
And now a palfried dame and knight.
Deep deer-behaunted forests old,
Whose sinewy boughs dark blocked the cave
Of Heav'n o'er Earth; a blasted hold
'Mid livid fields; a torrent's wave.
And o'er the bridge whose marble arched
The torrent's foam, dim in the dew
Of morning, one all glimmering marched
In glittering steel from helm to shoe,
With lance whose fang smote back the dawn.

IV.

Selled on a barb whose trappings shone
Red brass,—a morning star of jousts
Upon the dawning beaming lone
Burst from the hills' empurpled crusts.
A lying star, whose double tongue
Was slave to gold: "I saw him die!—
'Tis ruth, for he was brave and young,—
I saw him in the close clay lie."
Then passed he rattling from the court....
So grief in furrows ploughed her front's
Smooth surface wan, and toward the eve,—
The bloodshot eve upon the mounts,
Who o'er day's flow'ry bier did grieve
And bow her melancholy star,—
O'er teenful eyes she bent the light
Of her crown-crescent's gem, and far
She lingered till the full-mooned night
Showered ripple-stars the gray mere o'er.

"And I'm like her who trims a flame
Of sickly color, bowing low
To balk the wind; in wanton game
One stoops in secret toward her brow
With wind-bulged cheeks, a quick breath sends—
And then the world is blind with gloom,
And filled with phantoms and with fiends,
That strain huge eyes and jibe her doom."
Thus thought Isoud in her despair,
Of Launcelot then thoughts grew on,
And Arthur's lovely queen away
In castled courts of Caerleon,
And all their joy and dalliance gay.
Until she could have thawed the spars
Of her clear-fountained eyes to tears,
And gush wild grief long-seared by wars
Of passionate anguish and great fears:
"Oh Tristram gone! oh death in life!"
Soft down below in the thick dark
A fountain throbbed monotonous foam,
Unseen within the starlit park,
Deep in the tower's shadowed dome.
"And thus my heart drums frigid life
In hateful gloom of fear and woe!
One flood of sorrow, cataract-rife,
My full-flush heart streams come and go
Since Tristram's gone and I'm alone!"

VI.

Then sunk the moon, and far away,
Beside the bickering lake, the towers
Of bandit braves shone tall and gray,
Like specters in her lonely hours.
And 'twixt the nodding grove and lake
A glimmering fawn stalked thro' the night;
And with full brow the musks did take,
Then bowed to drink—she veiled her sight
And moaning said, "Death is but life!
The fawn 'mid lilies from the mere
Sucks genial draughts to dull its thirsts;
O fondest spirit, art thou near?
Draw to thy soul this soul that bursts!
The vivid lilies to the stars
Clasp their white eyes and sink to sleep:
O anguish, to thy burning wars
Lock my sad heart and drag it deep!"—
Albeit she slept, she dreamed in grief.

BELTENEBROS AT MIRAFLORES.

The quickening East climbs to yon star,
That, cradled, rocks herself in morn;
The liquid silver broad'ning far
Dawn drencheth cliff, holt, down and tarn.
The trembling splendors gild the sky,
Breath'd from her tawny champion's lips;
The clear green dews above me lie,
Their lustre the dark eyelash tips
Of Oriana sitting by.

The crested cock 'mid his stout dames
Crows from the purple-clover hill;
His glossy coat the morn enflames,
And all his leaping heart doth thrill.
His curving tail sickles the plume
That rosy nods against his eye.
Laughs from deep beds of twinkling bloom
The lilied East when wand'reth nigh
My Oriana in the gloom.

The rooks swarm clatt'ring 'round the tow'rs;
The falcon jingles in the air;
The bursting dawn around him show'rs
A clinging glory of wan glare.
From the green knoll the shouting hunt
With swollen cheeks clangs his alarms;
Mayhap I hear the bristler's grunt:
But where my Oriana charms
The wood, hushed is its ev'ry haunt.

The willowed lake is cool with cloud
Breaking and dimming into shreds,
Which gauze the azure, thinly crowd
The mist-pink West with hazy threads.
A wild swan ruffles o'er the mere
Soft as the drifting of a soul;
A double swan she doth appear
In mirage fixed 'twixt pole and pole
When Oriana singeth near.

II.

Spring high into the shuddering stars,
O florid sunset, burning gold!
Flash on our eyeballs lurid bars
To beam them with air-fires cold!
The blowing dingles soak with light,
The purple coppice hang with blaze;
But where we stand a meeker white
Bloom on us thro' the hill's soft haze,
For Oriana stars the night!

Float from the East, O silver world,
Unto the ocean of the West;
And the foam-sparkles upward hurled,
That fringe the twilight's surging crest,
Snatch up and gather 'round thy brow
In lustrous twine of rosy heat,
And rain on us its starry glow,—
O fragment of the evetide's sheet,—
And Oriana's eyes o'erflow.

O courting cricket, with thy pipe
Now shrill true love thro' the warm grain
O feathered buds, that nodding stripe
The blue glen's night, sigh love again!
Thou glimmering bird, that aye doth wail
From some wind-wavered branch of snow,
Sweep down the moonlit, hay-sweet dale
Thy bubbled anguish, swooning low,
For Oriana walks the vale!

The moon comes sowing all the eve
With myriad star-grains of her light;
The torrent on the crag doth grieve;
The glittering lake is smooth with night.
O mellow lights that o'er us slide,
O wrinkled woods that ridge the steep,
O bearded stems that billowing glide,
With laughing night-dews happy weep,
For Oriana'll be my bride!

THE IDEAL.

Thee have I seen in some waste Arden old,
A white-browed maiden by a foaming stream,
With eyes profound and looks like threaded gold,
And features like a dream.

Upon thy wrist the jessied falcon fleet,
A silver poniard chased with imageries
Hung at a buckled belt, while at thy feet
The gasping heron dies.

Have fancied thee in some quaint ruined keep
A maiden in chaste samite, and her mien
Like that of loved ones visiting our sleep,
Or of a fairy queen.

She, where the cushioned ivy dangling hoar
Disturbs the quiet of her sable hair,
Pores o'er a volume of romantic lore,
Or hums an olden air.

Or a fair Bradamant both brave and just,
Intense with steel, her proud face lit with scorn,
At heathen castles, demons' dens of lust,
Winding her bugle horn.

Just as stern Artegal; in chastity
A second Britomart; in hardihood
Like him who 'mid King Charles' chivalry
A pillared sunbeam stood.

Or one in Avalon's deep-dingled bowers,
On which old yellow stars and waneless moons
Look softly, while white downy-lippèd flowers
Lisp faint and fragrant tunes.

Where haze-like creatures with smooth houri forms
Stoop thro' the curling clouds and float and smile,
While calm as hope in all her dreamy charms
Sleeps the enchanted isle.

And where cool, heavy bow'rs unstirred entwine,
Upon a headland breasting purple seas,
A crystal castle like a thought divine
Rises in mysteries.

And there a sorceress full beautiful
Looks down the surgeless reaches of the deep,
And, bubbling from her lily throat, songs lull
The languid air to sleep.

About her brow a diadem of spars,
At her fair casement seated fleecy white
Heark'ning wild sirens choiring to the stars
Thro' all the raven night.

And when she bends above the glow-lit waves
She sees the sea-king's templed city old
Wrought from huge shells and labyrinthine caves
Ribbed red with rusty gold.

But nor the sirens' nor the ocean king's
Love will she heed, but still sits yearning there
To have the secret bird that vaguely sings
Her aching heart to share.

TREACHERY.

Came a spicy smell of showers
On the purple wings of night,
And a pearl-encrusted crescent
On the lake looked still and white,
While a sound of distant singing
From the vales rose sad and light.

II.

Dripped the musk of sodden roses
From their million heavy sprays,
And the nightingales were sobbing
Of the roses amorous praise
Where the raven down of even
Caught the moonlight's bleaching rays.

III.

And the turrets of the palace,
From its belt of ancient trees,
On the mountain rose romantic
White as foam from troubled seas;
And the murmur of an ocean
Smote the chords of ev'ry breeze.

IV.

Where the moon shone on the terrace
And its fountain's lisping foam;
Where the bronzen urns of flowers
Breathed faint perfume thro' the gloam,
By the alabaster Venus
'Neath the quiet stars we'd roam.

And we stopped beside the statue
Of the marble Venus there
Deeply pedestaled 'mid roses,
Who their crimson hearts laid bare,
Breathing out their lives in fragrance
At her naked feet and fair.

VI.

And we marked the purple dingles
Where the lazy vapors lolled,
Like thin, fleecy ribs of moonlight
Touched with amethyst and gold;
And we marked the wild deer glimmer
Like dim specters where they strolled....

VII.

But from out those treach'rous roses
Crept a serpent and it stung,
Poisoned him who'd tuned my heart-strings
Till for him alone they sung,
Froze the nerves of hands that only
From its chords a note had wrung.

VIII.

Now the nightingales in anguish
To cold, ashen roses moan;
Now a sound of desolate wailing
In the darkened palace lone
From a harp Æolian quavers
Broken on an empty throne.

ORLANDO MAD.

In mail of black my limbs I girt,
Angelica!
And when the bugles clanged the charge,
The rolling battle's bristling marge
Beheld me a black storm of war
Dash on the foe;
While Durindana glitt'ring far
Made many a foeman mouth the dirt
In bleeding woe:—
For thou didst fire me to the war
'Mid many a Paynim scimetar,
Angelica!

II.

No more the battle fires my blood,
Angelica!
No more gay lists flaunt all their guiles,
And chivalry's charge, and beauty's smiles!
I wander lone the thistly wold
When night-snows fall,
And crispy frosts the wild grass hold.
Great knights go glimmering thro' the wood,
The clarion's call
Wakes War upon his desert wold—
I see the dawning breaking cold,
Angelica!

III.

When Southern winds sowed all the skies,
Angelica!
With bloom-storms of the flowering May;
When all the battle-field was gay
With scented garb of sainted flowers,
I found a stream
Cold as thy heart to paramours!
Deep as the depth of thy blue eyes!
And like a dream
I found a grotto 'mid the flowers,
Cool 'mid the sunlight-sprinkled bowers,
Angelica!

IV.

My casque I dofft to scoop the fount,
Angelica!
With beaded pureness bubbling cool—
It clashed into the purling pool;—
Thy name lay chiseled in the rock,
And underneath—
And then meseemed deep night did block
My steel-chained heart in one huge mount
Foreshadowing death!—
Medoro deep in every rock!
The Moorish name my soul did mock,
Angelica!

No more wild war my veins ensteeps,
Angelica!
No more gay lists flaunt all their guiles!—
White wastes before me miles on miles
With one low, ruby sunset bound—
Thou fleest before,
I follow on: a far off sound
Of oceans gnawing at dark steeps
Swells to a roar.—
'Mid foam thou smil'st: I spurn the ground—
I sink, I swim, waves hiss around—
Oh, could I sink 'neath the profound,
And think of thee no more!

THE HAUNTED ROOM.

Its casements' diamond disks of glass
Stare myriad on a terrace old,
Where urns, unkempt with ragged grass,
Foam o'er with frothy cold.
The snow rounds o'er each stair of stone;
The frozen fount is hooped with pearl;
Down desolate walks, like phantoms lone,
Thin, powd'ry snow-wreaths whirl.

And to each rose-tree's stem that bends
With silver snow-combs, glued with frost,
It seems each summer rosebud sends
Its airy, scentless ghost.
The stiff Elizabethan pile
Chatters with cold thro' all its panes,
And rumbling down each chimney file
The mad wind shakes his reins.

* * * * * * *

Lone in the Northern angle, dim
With immemorial dust, it lay,
Where each gaunt casement's stony rim
Stared lidless to the day.
Drear in the Northern angle, hung
With olden arras dusky, where
Tall, shadowy Tristrams fought and sung
For shadowy Isolds fair.

Lies by a dingy cabinet
A tarnished lute upon the floor;
A talon-footed chair is set
Grotesquely by the door.
A carven, testered bedstead stands
With rusty silks draped all about;
And like a moon in murky lands
A mirror glitters out.

Dark in the Northern angle, where
In musty arras eats and clings
The drowsy moth; and frightened there
The wild wind sighs and sings
Adown the roomy flue and takes
And swings the ghostly mirror till
It shrieks and creaks, then pulls and shakes
The curtains with a will.

A starving mouse forever gnaws
Behind a polished panel dark,
And 'long the floor its shadow draws
A poplar in the park.
I have been there when blades of light
Stabbed each dull, stained, and dusty pane;
I have been there at dead of night,
But never will again....

She grew upon my vision as
Heat sucked from the dry summer sod;
In taffetas as green as grass
Silent and faint she trod;
And angry jewels winked and frowned
In serpent coils on neck and wrist,
And 'round her dainty waist was wound
A zone of silver mist.

And icy fair as some bleak land
Her pale, still face stormed o'er with night
Of raven tresses, and her hand
Was beautiful and white.
Before the ebon mirror old
Full tearfully she made her moan,
And then a cock crew far and cold;
I looked and she was gone.

As if had come a sullying breath
And from the limpid mirror passed,
Her presence past, like some near death
Leaving my blood aghast.
Tho' I've been there when blades of light
Stabbed each dull, stained, and dusty pane;
Tho' I've been there at dead of night,
I never will again.

SERENADE.

By the burnished laurel line
Glimmering flows the singing stream;
Oily eddies crease and shine
O'er white pebbles, white as cream.

Richest roses bud or die
All about the splendid park;
Fountains glass a wily eye
Where the fawns browse in the dark.

Amber-belted through the night
Floats the alabaster moon,
Stooping o'er th' acacia white
Where my mandolin I tune.

By the twinkling mere I sing
Where lake lilies stretch pale eyes,
And a bulbul there doth fling
Music at the moon who flies.

With a broken syrinx there,
From enameled beds of buds,
Rises Pan in hoof and hair—
Moonlight his dim sculpture floods.

The pale jessamines have felt
The large passion of her gaze;
See! they part—their glories melt
Round her in a starry haze.

THE MIRROR.

An antique mirror this,
I like it not at all,
In this lonely room where the goblin gloom
Scowls from the arrased wall.

A mystic mirror framed
In ebon, wildly carved;
And the prisoned air in the crevice there
Moans like a man that's starved.

A truthful mirror where,
In the broad, chaste light of day,
From the window's arches, like fairy torches,
Red roses swing and sway.

They blush and bow and gaze,
Proud beauties desolate,
In their tresses cold the sunlight's gold,
In their hearts a jealous hate.

A small green worm that gnaws,
For the nightingale that low
Each eve doth rave, the passionate slave
Of the wild white rose below.

The night-bird wails below;
The stars creep out above;
And the roses soon in the sultry moon
Shall palpitate with love.

The night-bird sobs below;
The roses blow and bloom;
Thro' the diamond panes the moonlight rains
In the dim unholy room.

Ancestors grim that stare
Stiff, starched, and haughty down
From the oaken wall of the noble hall
Put on a sterner frown.

The old, bleak castle clock
Booms midnight overhead,
And the rose is wan and the bird is gone
When walk the shrouded dead.

And grim ancestors gaunt
In smiles and tears faint flit;
By the mirror there they stand and stare,
And weep and sigh to it.

In rare, rich ermine earls
With rapiers jeweled rare,
With a powdered throng of courtiers long
Pass with stiff and stately air.

With diamonds and perfumes
In ruff and golden lace,
Tall ladies pass by the looking-glass,
Each sighing at her face.

An awful mirror this,
I like it not at all,
In this lonely room where the goblin gloom
Scowls from the arrased wall.

THE RIDE.

She rode o'er hill, she rode o'er plain,
She rode by fields of barley,
By morning-glories filled with rain,
And beechen branches gnarly.

She rode o'er plain, she rode o'er hill,
By orchard land and berry;
Her face was buoyant as the rill,
Her eyes and heart were merry,

A bird sang here, a bird sang there,
Then blithely sang together,
Sang sudden greetings every where,
"Good-morrow!" and "good weather!"

The sunlight's laughing radiance
Laughed in her radiant tresses;
The bold breeze set her curls a-dance,
Made red her lips with kisses.

"Why ride ye here, why ride ye there,
Why ride ye here so merry?
The sunlight living in your hair,
And in your cheek the cherry?

"Why ride ye with your sea-green plumes,
Your sea-green silken habit,
By balmy bosks of faint perfumes
Where squats the cunning rabbit?"

"The morning's feet are wrought of gold,
The hunter's horn is jolly;
Sir Richard bold was rich and old,
Was old and melancholy.

"A wife they'd have me to his bed,
And to the kirk they hurried;
But now, gramercy! he is dead,
Perdie! is dead and buried.

"I ride by tree, I ride by rill,
I ride by rye and clover,
For by the kirk beyond the hill
Awaits a better lover."

THE SLEEPER.

She sleeps and dreams; one milk-white, lawny arm
Pillowing her heavy hair, as might cold Night
Meeting her sister Day, with glory warm,
Subside in languor on her bosom's white.

The naked other on the damask cloth,—
White, smooth, and light as the light thistle-down,
Or the pink, fairy, fluffy evening moth
On June-drunk beds of roses red,—lies thrown.

And one sweet cheek, kissed with the enamored moon,
Grown pale with anger at the liberty.
While, dusk in darkness, at the favor shown
The pouting other frowns still envity.

Hangs fall'n in folds the rich, dark covering,
With fretfulness thrust partly from her breast;
As through storm-broken clouds the moon might spring,
From this the orb of one pure bosom prest.

She sleeps; and where the silent moonbeams sink
Thro' diamond panes,—soft as a ghost of snow,—
In wide, white jets, the lion-fur seems to drink
With tawny jaws its wasted, winey glow.

Light-lidded sleep and holy dreams to her,
Unborn of feverish sorrow or of care,
Soft as the gust that makes the arras stir,
Tangling gold moonbeams in her fragrant hair.

A MELODY.

There be Fairies bright of eye,
Who the wild-flowers warders are;
There be Fairies subtlely
Nourished in a blossom's star;
Fairies tripping merrily
Singing in faint echoes far,
Singing fairy melodies
Murmured by the burly bees,
By the wild brown bees.

II.

Well I wot that Fairies be there,—
Fairies, Fairies that at eve
Lurking in a blossom-lair,
In some rose-bud's scented hair
From white beams of starlight weave
Glinting gown and shining shoe.
I have proven sure and true
Fairies be there, fays of dew,
Lying laughing in its spark
Floating in a rose's sark;
Singing fairy melodies,
When asleep the dusty bees
Can not steal their melodies,
Fairy melodies.

THE ELF'S SONG.

Where thronged poppies with globed shields
Of fierce red
Warrior all the harvest fields
Is my bed.
Here I tumble with the bee,
Robber bee of low degree
Gay with dust:
Wit ye of a bracelet bold
Broadly belting him with gold?
It was I who bound it on
When a-gambol on the lawn—
It can never rust.

II.

Where the glow-worm lights his lamp
There am I;
Where within the grasses damp
Crickets cry.
Cheer'ly, cheer'ly in the burne
Where the lins the torrents churn
Into foam,
Leap I on a whisp of broom,—
Cheer'ly, cheer'ly through the gloom,—
All aneath a round-cheeked moon,
Treading on her silver shoon
Lightly o'er the gloam,

III.

Or the cowslip on the bent
Lift her head,
Or the glow-worm's lamp be spent,
Whitely dead:
'Neath lank ferns I laughing lie,
'Neath the ferns full warily
Hid away,
Where the drowsy musk-rose blows
And a fussy runnel flows,
Sleeping with the Faëry
Under leafy canopy
All the holyday.

THE NIXES' SONG.

Vague, vague 'neath darkling waves,
With emerald-curving caves
For the arched skies,
Red-walled with dark dull gold
The Nixes' city old
Deep-glimmering lies.
And thro' the long green nights the spangling spars
Twinkle like milky stars.

Where the wind-ripple plays
On tufts of dipping sprays
Sparkling we rock;
With blooming fingers bare
Comb down our golden hair
In many a lock;
While, poured o'er naked ease of cool, moist limbs,
An amber glamour swims.

Or in the middle night
When cold damp fire-flies light
Pale flitting brands
Down all the woodland aisles,
With swift mysterious smiles
Link we white hands,
And where the moonlight haunts the drowsy lake
Bask in its silver wake.

Come join, come join our dance
While the warm starbeams glance,
And the kind moon
Spills all her flowers of light
At the dark feet of Night,
And soon, full soon,
Thou'lt sleep in shadowy halls where dim and cold
Our city's walled with gold.

"THE FAIRY RADE."

Ai me! why stood I on the bent
When Summer wept o'er dying June!
I saw the Fairy Folk ride faint
Aneath the moon.

II.

The haw-trees hedged the russet lea
Where cuckoo-buds waxed rich with gold;
The wealthy corn rose yellowly
Endlong the wold.

III.

Betwixt the haw-trees and the mead
"The Fairy Rade" came glimmering on;
A creamy cavalcade did speed
O'er the green lawn.

IV.

The night was ringing with their reins;
Loud laughed they till the cricket hushed;
The whistles on their coursers' manes
Shrill music gushed.

The whistles tagged their horses' manes
All crystal clear; on these a wind
Forever played, and waked the plains
Before, behind.

VI.

These flute-notes and the Fairy song
Took the dim holts with many a qualm,
And eke their silver bridles rung
A far-off psalm.

VII.

All rid upon pale ouphen steeds
With flying tails, uncouthly seen;
Each wore a scarf athwart his weeds
Of freshest green.

VIII.

And aye a beam of silver light
Fairer than moonshine danced aboon,
And shook their locks—a glimmering white
Not of the moon.

IX.

Small were they that the hare-bell's blue
Had helmeted each tiny head;
Save one damsel, who, tall as two,
The Faeries led.

Long tresses floated from a tire
Of diamond sparks, which cast a light,
And o'er her white sark shook, in fire
Rippling the night.

XI.

I would have thrown me 'neath her feet,
And told her all my dole and pain,
There while her rein was jingling sweet
O'er all the plain.

XII.

Alas! a black and thwarting cock
Crew from the thatch with long-necked cry—
The Elfin queen and her wee flock
In the night did die.

IN AN OLD GARDEN.

The Autumn pines and fades
Upon the withered trees;
And over there, a choked despair,
You hear the moaning breeze.

The violets are dead;
Dead the tall hollyhocks,
That hang like rags on the wind-crushed flags,
And the lilies' livid stocks.

The wild gourd clambers free
Where the clematis was wont;
Where nenuphars waxed thick as stars
Rank weeds stagnate the font.

Yet in my dreams I hear
A tinkling mandolin;
In the dark blue light of a fragrant night
Float in and out and in.

And the dewy vine that climbs
To my lady's lattice sways,
And behind the vine there come to shine
Two pleasant eyes and gaze.

And now a perfume comes,
A swift Favonian gust;
And the shrinking grass where it doth pass
Bows slave-like to the dust.

In dreams I see her drift
A mist of drapery;
In her jeweled shawl divinely tall,
A Dian deity.

The moon broods high and full
O'er the broken Psyche cold,
And there she stands her dainty hands
And thin wrists warm with gold.

But lovers now are dead,
The air is stung with frosts;
And naught may you find save the homeless wind,
Dead violets' ghosts and ghosts.