Part 2 (1/2)

Stand thou aside and stretch a hand to save, Virtue alone revives beyond the grave.”

[Footnote A: ”Every man is born dead in sin. Virtue alone brings life eternal.”]

STANCHEZZA.

EARLY LINES

Lo Zephyr floats, on pinions delicate, Past the dark belfry, where a deep-toned bell Sways back and forth, Grief tolling out the knell For thee, my friend, so young and yet so great.

Dead--thou art dead. The destiny of men Is ever thus, like waves upon the main To rise, grow great, fall with a crash and wane, While still another grows to wane again, Dead--thou art dead. Would that I too were gone And that the gra.s.s which rustles on thy grave Might also over mine forever wave Made living by the death it grew upon.

I ask not Orpheus-like, that Pluto give Thy soul to earth. I would not have thee live.

PRaeTERITA EX INSTANTIBUS.

How strange it is that, in the after age,-- When Time's clepsydra will be nearer dry-- That all the accustomed things we now pa.s.s by Unmarked, because familiar, shall engage The antique reverence of men to be; And that quaint interest which prompts the sage The silent fathoms of the past to gauge Shall keep alive our own past memory, Making all great of ours--the garb we wear-- Our voiceless cities, reft of roof and spire-- The very skull whence now the eye of fire Glances bright sign of what the soul can dare.

So shall our annals make an envied lore, And men will say, 'Thus did the men of yore.'

SUNRISE.

EARLY LINES

I saw the s.h.i.+ning-limbed Apollo stand, Exultant, on the rim of Orient, And well and mightily his bow he bent, And unseen-swift the arrow left his hand.

Far on it sped, as did those elder ones That long ago shed plague upon the Greek-- Far on--and pierced the side of Night, who weak And out of breath with fright, fled to his sons, The nether ghosts; and lo! his jewelled robe No more did shade a sleep-encircled world; And thereupon the faery legions furled The silk of silence, and the wheeling globe Spun freer on its grand, accustomed way, While all things living rose to hail the day.

REALITY.

A FANCY

Fade lesser dreams, that, built of tenderness, Young trust and tinted hopes, have led me long.

These jagged ways ye whiled will pain me less Than hath your falsity. Your spirit song Sent magic wafted up and down along The waves of wind to me. Your world was real.

There was no ruder world that I could feel.

I lived in dreams and thought you all I would, Nor knew what dread, bare truth is doomed to rise, When love and hope and all but one far Good, Like sunset lands feel the cold night of lies.

Go, sweetest visions, die amid my tears, For hence, nor cheered, nor blinded, must I seek That larger dream that cannot fade; though years Of leaden days and leagues of by-path bleak Must intervene, with austere sadness gray, Fade dimmer! lest in agony I turn, And heartsick seek ye, though the Fates shriek ”Nay!”

And the wroth heavens with judgment lightnings burn.

Go useless lesser dreams. And where they were, Rise, grave aerial Good! Thy texture's true.

There is no good can die. ”No ill,” says Time, ”can bear, However beautiful, my long, long earnest view.”

SEARCHINGS.

(EARLY LINES.)