Part 10 (1/2)

Let them rest where they have laboured! but, my country, mourn and moan; We must build with human sorrow grander monuments than stone.

Let them rest, for oh! remember, that in long hereafter time Sons of Science oft shall wander o'er that solitary clime!

Cities bright shall rise about it, Age and Beauty there shall stray, And the fathers of the people, pointing to the graves, shall say: ”Here they fell, the glorious martyrs! when these plains were woodlands deep; Here a friend, a brother, laid them; here the wild men came to weep.”

Lurline

(Inscribed to Madame Lucy Escott.)

As you glided and glided before us that time, A mystical, magical maiden, We fancied we looked on a face from the clime Where the poets have builded their Aidenn!

And oh, the sweet shadows! And oh, the warm gleams Which lay on the land of our beautiful dreams, While we walked by the margins of musical streams And heard your wild warbling around us!

We forgot what we were when we stood with the trees Near the banks of those silvery waters; As ever in fragments they came on the breeze, The songs of old Rhine and his daughters!

And then you would pa.s.s with those radiant eyes Which flashed like a light in the tropical skies-- And ah! the bright thoughts that would sparkle and rise While we heard your wild warbling around us.

Will you ever fly back to this city of ours With your harp and your voice and your beauty?

G.o.d knows we rejoice when we meet with such flowers On the hard road of Life and of Duty!

Oh! come as you did, with that face and that tone, For we wistfully look to the hours which have flown, And long for a glimpse of the gladness that shone When we heard your wild warbling around us.

Under the Figtree

Like drifts of balm from cedared glens, those darling memories come, With soft low songs, and dear old tales, familiar to our home.

Then breathe again that faint refrain, so tender, sad, and true, My soul turns round with listening eyes unto the harp and you!

The fragments of a broken Past are floating down the tide, And she comes gleaming through the dark, my love, my life, my bride!

Oh! sit and sing--I know her well, that phantom deadly fair With large surprise, and sudden sighs, and streaming midnight hair!

I know her well, for face to face we stood amongst the sheaves, Our voices mingling with a mist of music in the leaves!

I know her well, for hand in hand we walked beside the sea, And heard the huddling waters boom beneath this old Figtree.

G.o.d help the man that goes abroad amongst the windy pines, And wanders, like a gloomy bat, where never morning s.h.i.+nes!

That steals about amidst the rout of broken stones and graves, When round the cliffs the merry skiffs go scudding through the waves; When, down the bay, the children play, and scamper on the sand, And Life and Mirth illume the Earth, and Beauty fills the Land!

G.o.d help the man! He only hears and fears the sleepless cries Of smitten Love--of homeless Love and moaning Memories.

Oh! when a rhyme of olden time is sung by one so dear, I feel again the sweetest pain I've known for many a year; And from a deep, dull sea of sleep faint fancies come to me, And I forget how lone we sit beneath this old Figtree.

Drowned at Sea

Gloomy cliffs, so worn and wasted with the was.h.i.+ng of the waves, Are ye not like giant tombstones round those lonely ocean graves?

Are ye not the sad memorials, telling of a mighty grief-- Dark with records ground and lettered into caverned rock and reef?

Oh! ye show them, and I know them, and my thoughts in mourning go Down amongst your sunless chasms, deep into the surf below!