Stirs whate'er of generous might
Time hath left us in his flight,
And our yearning pulses thrill
For some grand achievement still!
Lord of ice-bound sea and land,
Let me grasp thy kingly hand,
And from thy great heart and bold,
Hecla-warm, though all is cold
Round about thee, catch the fire
Of my lost youth's brave desire;
Let me, in the war with wrong,
Like thy storms be swift and strong,
Gloomy griefs, and coward cares
Broods of 'wildering, dark despairs,
Making all life's glory dim,
Let me rend them, limb from limb,
As the forest-boughs are rent
When thou wak'st the firmament,
And with savage shriek and groan,
All the wildwood's overthrown!
A TWILIGHT FANCY.
I SIT here and the earth is wrapped in snow,
And the cold air is thick with falling night:
I think of the still, dewy summer eves,
When cows come slowly sauntering up the lane,
Waiting to nibble at the juicy grass;
When the green earth was full of changing 1
When the warm wind blew soft, and slowly
Caressing now and then some wayside flower
Stopping to stir the tender maple-leaves,
And breathing all its fragrance on the air!
I think of the broad meadows, daisy-white,
With the long shade of some stray apple-tree
Falling across them, and the rustlings fain
When evening breezes shook along the grass
I think of all the thousand summer sounds,
The cricket's chirp, repeated far and near;
The sleepy note of robins in their nest;
The whippoorwill, whose sudden cry rang out
Plaintive, yet strong, upon the startled air.
And so it was the summer twilight fell,
And deepened to the darkness of the night:
And now I lift my heart out of my dream
And see instead the pale, cold, dying lights,
The dull grey skies, the barren, snow-clad fiel
That come to us when winter evenings come.
DORA READ GO
UPON a sunbaked southern plain,
And through old jungles ever blooming, What shapes would human hands retain On even surface to explain
The thoughts that in the mind were loomi
Nor plain was marked, nor mount, nor wood;
These looked unchanged the heavens under,
But bulls that charged and huts that stood
And deer on hill and fish in flood,
They roused man's wish and wonder.
And so, their figures daubed on bark,
On hides, on mud bricks, found his data,
And through the æons we call dark
He fanned with hieroglyphs the spark
Of learning to an alphabeta.
Not so the Northman. Half his year
He mused on one of Nature's pages,
And watched, untouched his bow and spear,
Through the wide gleaming snows uprear
Their heads these letters, dumb for ages.
On yonder sloping crest of hill
Behold the bare elms, oaks and birches:
Each tree's a letter cut with skill,
Sharp-edged, a text for good or ill,
A script not hid when wisdom searches.
The tree trunks, how they leap from snow! Each several crown, what free resplendence! Some day like this a bard aglow
With nervous forethought notched them slow and awed his rude descendants. CHARLES DE KAY.
FIRST OF ALL THE SPHERED SIG.
KEEN gleams the wind, and all the grou
Is bare and chapped with bitter cold.
The ruts are iron; fish are found
Encased in ice as in a mold;
The frozen hilltops ache with pain
And shudders tremble down each shy
Deep rootlet burrowing in the plain;-
Softly she pulls a downy veil
Before her clear Medusa face;
This, falling slow, abroad doth trail
Across the wold a feathery trace,
Whereunder soon the moaning earth
Aslumber stretches dreamily,
Forgot both pain and summer's mirth,
Soothed by the sky.
FIRST OF ALL THE SPHerèd sig
FIRST of all the spherèd signs whereby Love severs light from darkness, and most In the white front of January there glows The rose-red sign of Helen like a rose.
ALGERNON CHARLES SWIN
Tristram and Iseult.
TO A THRUSH SINGING IN JANUARY. 53
TO A THRUSH SINGING IN JANUARY.
SWEET bird! up earliest in the morn,
Up earliest in the year.
For in the quiet mist are borne
Thy matins soft and clear.
As linnet soft, and clear as lark,
Well hast thou ta'en thy part,
Where many an ear thy notes may reach,
And here and there a heart.
The first snow-wreaths are scarcely gone,
(They stayed but half a day)
The berries bright hang lingering on;
Yet thou hast learned thy lay.
One gleam, one gale of western air
Has hardly brushed thy wing;
Yet thou hast given thy welcome fair,
Good-morrow to the spring!
That sunny, morning glimpse is gone,
That morning note is still;
The dun dark day comes lowering on,
The spoilers roam at will;
Yet calmly rise, and boldly strive;
The sweet bird's early song,
Ere evening fall shall oft revive,
And cheer thee all day long.
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