I will lie and dream of the past time,
Eons of thought away,
And through the jungle of memory
Loosen my fancy to play;
When, a smooth and velvety tiger,
Ribbed with yellow and black,
Supple and cushion-footed

I wandered, where never the track
Of a human creature had rustled
The silence of mighty woods,
And, fierce in a tyrannous freedom,
I knew but the law of my moods.
The elephant, trumpeting, started,
When he heard my footstep near,
And the spotted giraffes fled wildly
In a yellow cloud of fear.

I sucked in the noontide splendor,
Quivering along the glade,
Or yawning, panting, and dreaming,
Basked in the tamarisk shade,
Till I heard my wild mate roaring,
As the shadows of night came on
To brood in the trees' thick branches,
And the shadow of sleep was gone;
Then I roused, and roared in answer,
And unsheathed from my cushioned feet
My curving claws, and stretched me,

And wandered my mate to greet.
We toyed in the amber moonlight,
Upon the warm flat sand,

And struck at each other our massive

arms

How powerful he was and grand !
His yellow eyes flashed fiercely

As he crouched and gazed at me,
And his quivering tail, like a serpent,
Twitched curving nervously.
Then like a storm he seized me,

With a wild triumphant cry,
And we met, as two clouds in heaven
When the thunders before them fly.
We grappled and struggled together,

For his love like his rage was rude; And his teeth in the swelling folds of my neck

At times, in our play, drew blood.

Often another suitor

For I was flexile and fair

Fought for me in the moonlight,
While I lay couching there,

Till his blood was drained by the desert;
And, ruffled with triumph and power,

He licked me and lay beside me
To breathe him a vast half-hour.

Then down to the fountain we loitered, Where the antelopes came to drink; Like a bolt we sprang upon them,

Ere they had time to shrink.

We drank their blood and crushed them,
And tore them limb from limb,
And the hungriest lion doubted
Ere he disputed with him.

That was a life to live for!
Not this weak human life,
With its frivolous bloodless passions,
Its poor and petty strife!

Come to my arms, my hero!

The shadows of twilight grow,
And the tiger's ancient fierceness
In my veins begins to flow.
Come not cringing to sue me!
Take me with triumph and power,
As a warrior storms a fortress!
I will not shrink or cower.
Come, as you came in the desert,
Ere we were women and men,
When the tiger passions were in us,
And love as you loved me then!

IO VICTIS

I SING the hymn of the conquered, who fell in the Battle of Life,

The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed in the strife; Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom the resounding acclaim Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows wore the chaplet of fame, But the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, the broken in heart, Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and desperate part; Whose youth bore no flower on its branches, whose hopes burned in ashes away, From whose hands slipped the prize they had grasped at, who stood at the dying of day

With the wreck of their life all around them, unpitied, unheeded, alone, With Death swooping down o'er their failure, and all but their faith overthrown,

While the voice of the world shouts its chorus, its pæan for those who have won;

My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite,

I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of time.

HEROES

I UNDERSTAND the large hearts of heroes, The courage of present times and all times, How the skipper saw the crowded and

rudderless wreck of the steamship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm,

How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was faithful of days and faithful of nights, And chalked in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, we will not desert

you;

How he followed with them and tacked with them three days and would not give it up,

How he saved the drifting company at last, How the lank loose-gowned women looked when boated from the side of their prepared graves,

How the silent old-faced infants, and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipped unshaved men;

All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine,

I am the man, I suffered, I was there.

Agonies are one of my changes of gar

White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared of their firecaps,

The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.

Distant and dead resuscitate, They show as the dial or move as the hands of me, I am the clock myself.

I am an old artillerist, I tell of my fort's bombardment,

I am there again.

Again the long roll of the drummers, Again the attacking cannon, mortars, Again to my listening ears the cannon responsive.

I take part, I see and hear the whole, The cries, curses, roar, the plaudits for well-aimed shots,

The ambulanza slowly passing trailing its red drip,

Workmen searching after damages, making indispensable repairs,

The fall of grenades through the rent roof, the fan-shaped explosion, The whizz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the air.

Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general, he furiously waves with his hand,

He gasps through the clot Mind not me mind the entrenchments.

Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight? Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars?

List to the yarn, as my grandmother's father the sailor told it to me.