____ Baltimore, 1878.
To Nannette Falk-Auerbach.
Oft as I hear thee, wrapt in heavenly art,
The massive message of Beethoven tell
With thy ten fingers to the people's heart
As if ten tongues told news of heaven and hell, —
Gazing on thee, I mark that not alone,
Ah, not alone, thou sittest: there, by thee,
Beethoven's self, dear living lord of tone,
Doth stand and smile upon thy mastery.
Full fain and fatherly his great eyes glow:
He says, "From Heaven, my child, I heard thee call
(For, where an artist plays, the sky is low):
Yea, since my lonesome life did lack love's all,
In death, God gives me thee: thus, quit of pain,
Daughter, Nannette! in thee I live again."
____ Baltimore, 1878.
To Our Mocking-Bird.
Died of a cat, May, 1878.
I.
Trillets of humor, — shrewdest whistle-wit, —
Contralto cadences of grave desire
Such as from off the passionate Indian pyre
Drift down through sandal-odored flames that split
About the slim young widow who doth sit
And sing above, — midnights of tone entire, —
Tissues of moonlight shot with songs of fire; —
Bright drops of tune, from oceans infinite
Of melody, sipped off the thin-edged wave
And trickling down the beak, — discourses brave
Of serious matter that no man may guess, —
Good-fellow greetings, cries of light distress —
All these but now within the house we heard:
O Death, wast thou too deaf to hear the bird?
II.
Ah me, though never an ear for song, thou hast
A tireless tooth for songsters: thus of late
Thou camest, Death, thou Cat! and leap'st my gate,
And, long ere Love could follow, thou hadst passed
Within and snatched away, how fast, how fast,
My bird — wit, songs, and all — thy richest freight
Since that fell time when in some wink of fate
Thy yellow claws unsheathed and stretched, and cast
Sharp hold on Keats, and dragged him slow away,
And harried him with hope and horrid play —
Ay, him, the world's best wood-bird, wise with song —
Till thou hadst wrought thine own last mortal wrong.
'Twas wrong! 'twas wrong! I care not, WRONG's the word —
To munch our Keats and crunch our mocking-bird.