We lay us down to sleep;

Our weary eyes we close: Whether to wake and weep,

Or wake no more, He knows.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

IN MEMORIAM

As the wind at play with a spark
Of fire that glows through the night,
As the speed of the soaring lark

That wings to the sky his flight,
So swiftly thy soul has sped

On its upward, wonderful way, Like the lark, when the dawn is red, In search of the shining day.

Thou art not with the frozen dead Whom earth in the earth we lay, While the bearers softly tread,

And the mourners kneel and pray;

ΤΟ

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

ON THE DEATH OF LOWELL

DEAR singer of our fathers' day,

Who lingerest in the sunset glow,
Our grateful hearts all bid thee stay;
Bend hitherward and do not go.
Gracious thine age, thy youth was strong,
For Freedom touched thy tongue with
fire:

To sing the right and fight the wrong
Thine equal hand held bow or lyre.
O linger, linger long,
Singer of song.

We beg thee stay; thy comrade star
Which later rose is earlier set;
What music and what battle-scar

When side by side the fray ye met!
Thy trumpet and his drum and fife

Gave saucy challenge to the foe
In Liberty's heroic strife;

We mourn for him, thou must not go !
Yet linger, linger long,
Singer of song.

We cannot yield thee; only thou
Art left to us, and one beside
Whose silvered wisdom still can show
How smiles and tears together bide.
And we would bring our boys to thee,
And bid them hold in memory crowned
That they our saintliest bard did see,
The Galahad of our table round.
Then linger, linger long,
Singer of song.

The night is dark; three radiant beams
Are gone that crossed the zenith sky;
For one the water-fowl, meseems,

For two the Elmwood herons cry. Ye twain that early rose and still

Skirt low the level west along, Sink when ye must, to rise and fill The morrow's east with light and song. But linger, linger long, Singers of song.

THE NEW CASTALIA

OUT of a cavern on Parnassus' side,
Flows Castaly; and with the flood outblown

From its deep heart of ice, the mountain's

breath

Tempers the ardor of the Delphian vale. Beside the stream from the black mould upsprings

Narcissus, robed in snow, crowned.

with ruby

Long ranks of crocus, humble servitors,
But clad in purple, mark his downcast face.
The sward, moist from the flood, is pied
with flowers,

Lily and vetch, lupine and melilot,
The hyacinth, cowslip, and gay marigold,
While, on the border of the copse, sweet
herbs,

Anise and thyme, breathe incense to the bay
And myrtle. Here thy home, fair Muse!
How soft

Thy step falls on the grass whose morning drops

Bedew thy feet! The blossoms bend but break

Not, and thy fingers pluck the eglantine,
The privet and the bilberry; or frame
A rustic whistle from a fresh-cut reed.
Here is thy home, dear Muse, fed on these
airs;

The hills, the founts, the woods, the sky are thine!

MY NEW WORLD

But who are these? A company of youth

Upon a tesseled pavement in a court,
Under a marble statue of a muse,

Strew hot-house flowers before a mimic fount

Drawn from a faucet in a rockery.
With mutual admiration they repeat
Their bric-a-brackery of rococo verse,
Their versicles and icicles of song!
What know ye, verse-wrights, of the Poet's
art?

What noble passion or what holy heat
Is stirred to frenzy when your eyes ad-

mire

The peacock feathers on a frescoed wall, Or painted posies on a lady's fan?

Are these thine only bards, young age, whose eyes

Are blind to Heaven and heart of man; whose blood

Is water, and not wine; unskilled in notes Of liberty, and holy love of land,

And man, and all things beautiful; deep skilled

To burnish wit in measured feet, to wind A weary labyrinth of labored rhymes, And cipher verses on an abacus ?

I have expresst your history in a cyfer,

I've done your sum for all ensuing time, I don't know what you longer wish to lie for Beneath these stones or in your doggerel rhyme.

Get up and flit, or plunge into the river, Or walk the chancel with a ghostly squeak,

You were an ignorant and evil liver,

Who could not spell, nor write, nor read much Greek.

Tho' you enslaved the ages by your spell, And Fame has blown no reputation louder,

Your cake is dough, for I by sifting well Have quite reduced your dust to Baconpowder.

MAN'S PILLOW

A BABY lying on his mother's breast
Draws life from that sweet fount;
He takes his rest

And heaves deep sighs;
With brooding eyes
Of soft content

POETRY

SOMETHING more than the lilt of the strain, Something more than the touch of the lute;

For the voice of the minstrel is vain,
If the heart of the minstrel is mute.

ON THE HEIGHTS

HE crawls along the mountain walls,
From whence the severed river falls;
Its seething waters writhe and twist,
Then leap, and crumble into mist.
Midway between two boundless seas,
Prone on a ragged reef he lies;
Above him bend the shoreless skies,
While helpless, on his bended knees,
Into that awful gulf profound,
Appalled, he peers with bated breath,
Clutches with fear the yielding ground,
And crouches face to face with death.

The fearful splendor of the sight
Begets in his bewildered brain
A downwright torture of delight,
The very ecstasy of pain.

A sudden frenzy fills his mind,

If he could break the bonds that bind,
And launch upon the waves of wind;
Only to loose his hold and leap,
Then, cradled like a cloud, to sleep
Wind-rocked upon the soundless deep.
With eyes upturned, he breaks the spell,
And creeps from out the jaws of hell.
Pohono's siren wiles beguile,

He drinks her kisses in the wind,
He leaves the nether world behind.
Up, and still upward, mile on mile,
With muffled tramp, the pilgrim creeps
Across the frozen winding-sheet,

Where white-faced death in silence sleeps.
Up, and still upward, to the light,
Until at last his leaden feet

Have mocked the eagle in its flight.

Grim-browed and bald, Tis-sa-ack broods
Above these white-robed solitudes.
A mute, awe-stricken mortal stands
Upon the fragment of a world,

And, when the rifted clouds are curled,
Sees far below the steadfast lands.

DON JUAN

DON JUAN has ever the grand old air,
As he greets me with courtly grace;
Like a crown of glory the snow-white hair
That halos his swarthy face;

And he says, with a courtesy rare and fine,
As he ushers me in at the door,
"Panchita mia will bring us the wine,
And the casa is yours, señor."

His fourscore years have a tranquil cast,
For Time has tempered his heart and hand;
Though the seething tide of his blood ran
fast

When he ruled like a lord in the land.
In the wild rodeo and mad stampede
He rode, I am told,

UNMOORED, unmanned, unheeded on the deep

Tossed by the restless billow and the breeze, It drifts o'er sultry leagues of tropic seas, Where long Pacific surges swell and sweep. When pale-faced stars their silent watches keep,

From their far rhythmic spheres, the
Pleiades,

In calm beatitude and tranquil ease,
Smile sweetly down upon its cradled sleep.
Erewhile, with anchor housed and sails un-
furled,

We saw the stout ship breast the open main,

To round the Stormy Cape, and span the world,

In search of ventures which betoken gain. To-day, somewhere, on some far sea, we

know

Her battered hulk is heaving to and fro.

GOD SAVE THE NATION

By the great sign foretold of Thy appearing,