III

Now is Light, sweet mother, down the west,
With little Song against her breast;
She took him up, all tired with play,
And fondly bore him far away.

While he sleeps, one wanders in his stead,
A fainter glory round her head;
She follows happy waters after,
Leaving behind low, rippling laughter.

IV

Behind the hilltop drops the sun,
The curled heat falters on the sand,
While evening's ushers, one by one,
Lead in the guests of Twilight Land.

The bird is silent overhead,
Below the beast has laid him down;
Afar, the marbles watch the dead,
The lonely steeple guards the town.

The south wind feels its amorous course
To cloistered sweet in thickets found;
The leaves obey its tender force,
And stir 'twixt silence and a sound.

THE SKILFUL LISTENER

THE skilful listener, he, methinks, may hear The grass blades clash in sunny field together,

The roses kissing, and the lily, whether
It joy or sorrow in the summer's ear,
The jewel dew-bells of the mead ring
clear

When morning lightly moves them in June weather,

The flocked hours flitting by on stealthy feather,

The last leaves' wail at waning of the year.

Haply, from these we catch a passing sound,

(The best of verities, perchance, but seem)

We overhear close Nature, on her round, When least she thinks it; bird and bough and stream

Not only, but her silences profound, Surprised by softer footfall of our dream.

THE BALLAD OF ORISKANY

SHE leaned her cheek upon her hand,
And looked across the glooming land;
She saw the wood from farm to farm
Touched by the twilight's ghostly charm;
And heard the owl's cry sound forlorn
Across the fields of waving corn,
And sighed with sad voice dreamily:
Oriskany! Oriskany !

The moonlight through the open door
Laid its broad square upon the floor;
A beetle plunging through the gloom
Hummed fitfully within the room;
Across the casement's opening
Night creatures sped on purring wing,
And still she murmured musically

The fatal name, Oriskany.

"The year went round, there came a

guest

A lovely babe lay on my breast,

Ah, we were blest! Then came the sound
Of drum and trump the valley round:
'T was just one year ago this morn
That he went armed across the corn,
In strength of heart and patriot glee,
To meet the foe on Oriskany.

"Below the hill the battle broke;
I heard the din, I saw the smoke;
Road-weary bands paused at the door,
And drank, and onward rode once more;
Poor wounded souls came crawling by
To find some quiet place to die;
My heart beat proud but fearfully
That day in wild Oriskany.

"All day within the homestead dim
I think of him, I dream of him;

My tasks of hands and feet and soul
Lead true to him as to their goal;
In woman's heart God wrote it thus:
That men should be as gods to us.
I feel the pangs, the weakness see,
Yet worship-in Oriskany.

"I cannot think of him as dead
Upon our one-year's bridal bed,
Oriskany, Oriskany!

Nor dream of him within the tomb, Amid the willowed churchyard's gloom, Oriskany, Oriskany!

Did the winged arrows of that barbed wit glance ?

The years' thick, clinging curtains backward pull,

And show him as he is, crowned with bright beams,

"Beauteous, and yet not all as beautiful

As he hath been or might be ; Sorrow seems Half of his immortality." He needs No monument whose name and song and deeds

Are graven in all foreign hearts; but she, His mother, England, slow and last to wake,

Needs raise the votive shaft for her fame's sake:

Hers is the shame if such forgotten be!

VENUS OF THE LOUVRE

Down the long hall she glistens like a star, The foam-born mother of Love, transfixed to stone,