MOONLIGHT IN ITALY

THERE's not a breath the dewy leaves to stir;

There's not a cloud to spot the sapphire sky; All Nature seems a silent worshipper: While saintly Dian, with great, argent eye, Looks down as lucid from the depths on high

As she to Earth were Heaven's interpreter; Each twinkling little star shrinks back, too shy

Its lesser glory to obtrude by her

Who fills the concave and the world with light;

And ah! the human spirit must unite
In such a harmony of silent lays,

Or be the only discord in this night,
Which seems to pause for vocal lips to raise
The sense of worship into uttered praise.

THE SETTLER

His echoing axe the settler swung Amid the sea-like solitude, And rushing, thundering, down

flung

The Titans of the wood;

were

And still the settler labored there, His shout and whistle woke the air, As cheerily he plied

His garden spade, or drove his share Along the hillock's side.

He marked the fire-storm's blazing flood
Roaring and crackling on its path,
And scorching earth, and melting wood,
Beneath its greedy wrath;

He marked the rapid whirlwind shoot
Trampling the pine-tree with its foot,

And darkening thick the day
With streaming bough and severed root,
Hurled whizzing on its way.

His gaunt hound yelled, his rifle flashed, The grim bear hushed its savage growl,

In blood and foam the panther gnashed
Its fangs, with dying howl;
The fleet deer ceased its flying bound,
Its snarling wolf-foe bit the ground,
And with its moaning cry
The beaver sank beneath the wound,
Its pond-built Venice by.

Humble the lot, yet his the race,

When Liberty sent forth her cry, Who thronged in Conflict's deadliest place,

To fight to bleed-to die!
Who cumbered Bunker's height of red,
By hope through weary years were led,
And witnessed Yorktown's sun
Blaze on a Nation's banner spread,
A Nation's freedom won.

And noon is hot, and barn-roofs gleam
White in the pale blue distance,
I hear the saucy minstrels still
In chattering persistence.

When Eve her domes of opal fire
Piles round the blue horizon,
Or thunder rolls from hill to hill
A Kyrie Eleison,

Still merriest of the merry birds,

Your sparkle is unfading, -
Pied harlequins of June, - no end
Of song and masquerading.

What cadences of bubbling mirth,
Too quick for bar and rhythm!
What ecstasies, too full to keep

Coherent measure with them!

O could I share, without champagne
Or muscadel, your frolic,
The glad delirium of your joy,
Your fun unapostolic,

Your drunken jargon through the fields,
Your bobolinkish gabble,

Your fine Anacreontic glee,
Your tipsy reveller's babble!

Nay, let me not profane such joy
With similes of folly;

No wine of earth could waken songs
So delicately jolly!

O boundless self-contentment, voiced
In flying air-born bubbles!
O joy that mocks our sad unrest,

And drowns our earth-born troubles!

Hope springs with you: I dread no more Despondency and dulness;

For Good Supreme can never fail That gives such perfect fulness. The life that floods the happy fields With song and light and color Will shape our lives to richer states, And heap our measures fuller.

STANZA FROM AN EARLY POEM

THOUGHT is deeper than all speech, Feeling deeper than all thought; Souls to souls can never teach

What unto themselves was taught.

THE PINES AND THE SEA

BEYOND the low marsh-meadows and the beach,

Seen through the hoary trunks of windy

pines,

The long blue level of the ocean shines. The distant surf, with hoarse, complaining speech,

Out from its sandy barrier seems to reach; And while the sun behind the woods de

clines,

The moaning sea with sighing boughs combines,

And waves and pines make answer, each to each.

O melancholy soul, whom far and near,
In life, faith, hope, the same sad undertone
Pursues from thought to thought! thou
needs must hear

An old refrain, too much, too long thine

own:

'Tis thy mortality infects thine ear; The mournful strain was in thyself alone.

THE IDLER

I IDLE stand that I may find employ, Such as my Master when He comes will give;

I cannot find in mine own work my joy, But wait, although in waiting I must live;

My body shall not turn which way it will,
But stand till I the appointed road can find,
And journeying so his messages fulfil,
And do at every step the work designed.
Enough for me, still day by day to wait
Till Thou who formest me findest me too

a task,