I go with her across the seas Unto what Poe would call an Aiden, I hope no serpent's there to tease A frank and free young Yankee maiden.

ENVOY

Princes, to you the western breeze
Bears many a ship and heavy laden.
What is the best we send in these?
A free and frank young Yankee maiden.

BRANDER MATTHEWS

TO JESSIE'S DANCING FEET
How, as a spider's web is spun
With subtle grace and art,

Do thy light footsteps, every one,
Cross and recross my heart!

Now here, now there, and to and fro,
Their winding mazes turn;
Thy fairy feet so lightly go
They seem the earth to spurn.
Yet every step leaves there behind
A something, in thy dance,

That serves to tangle up my mind
And all my soul entrance.

How, as the web the spiders spin

And wanton breezes blow,

Thy soft and filmy laces in

A swirl around thee flow!

The cobweb 'neath thy chin that's crossed Remains demurely put,

While those are ever whirled and tossed That show thy saucy foot;

That show the silver grayness of

Thy stockings' silken sheen,
And mesh of snowy skirts above
The silver that is seen.

How, as the spider, from his web,
Dangles in light suspense,

Do thy sweet measures' flow and ebb
Sway my enraptured sense!
Thy fluttering lace, thy dainty airs,
Thy every charming pose

There are not more alluring snares
To bind me with than those.

Swing on! Sway on! With easy grace
Thy witching steps repeat !

The love I dare not - to thy face
I offer at thy feet.

WILLIAM DE LANCEY ELLWANGER

Over the gray leagues of ocean

The infinite yearneth alone; The forests with wandering emotion The thing they know not intone; Creation arose but to see it, A million lamps in the blue; But a lover, he shall be it, If one sweet maid is true.

O, INEXPRESSIBLE AS SWEET

O, INEXPRESSIBLE as sweet,
Love takes my voice away;

I cannot tell thee when we meet
What most I long to say.

But hadst thou hearing in thy heart

To know what beats in mine,

Then shouldst thou walk, where'er thou art, In melodies divine.

So warbling birds lift higher notes
Than to our ears belong;

The music fills their throbbing throats,
But silence steals the song.

THE ROSE OF STARS

WHEN Love, our great Immortal,
Put on mortality,
And down from Eden's portal
Brought this sweet life to be,
At the sublime archangel

He laughed with veiled eyes,
For he bore within his bosom
The seed of Paradise.

He hid it in his bosom,

And there such warmth it found, It brake in bud and blossom,

And the rose fell on the ground; As the green light on the prairie,

As the red light on the sea, Through fragrant belts of summer Came this sweet life to be.

And the grave archangel seeing

Spread his mighty wings for flight, But the glow hung round him fleeing Like the rose of an Arctic night; And sadly moving heavenward

By Venus and by Mars,
He heard the joyful planets
Hail Earth, the Rose of Stars.

DIVINE AWE

To tremble, when I touch her hands,
With awe that no man understands;
To feel soft reverence arise
When, lover-sweet, I meet her eyes;
To see her beauty grow and shine
When most I feel this awe divine, -
Whate'er befall me, this is mine;
And where about the room she moves,
My spirit follows her, and loves.

HOMEWARD BOUND

I

INTO the west of the waters on the living ocean's foam,

Into the west of the sunset where the young adventurers roam,

Into the west of the shining star, I am sailing, sailing home;

Home from the lonely cities, time's wreck, and the naked woe,

Home through the clean great waters where freemen's pennants blow,

Home to the land men dream of, where all the nations go;

"Tis home but to be on the waters, 't is home already here,

Through the weird red-billowing sunset into the west to steer,

To fall asleep in the rocking dark with home a day more near.

II

By morning light the ship holds on, alive with happy freight,

A thousand hearts with one still joy, and with one hope elate,

To reach the land that mothered them and sweetly guides their fate;

Whether the purple furrow heaps the bows with dazzling spray,

Or buried in green-based masses they dip the storm-swept day,

Or the white fog ribbons o'er them, the strong ship holds her way;

And when another day is done, by the star of love we steer

To the land of all that we love best and all that we hold dear;

We are sailing westward, homeward; our western home is near.

THE CHILD

IT was only the clinging touch
Of a child's hand in the street,
But it made the whole day sweet;
Caught, as he ran full-speed,

In my own stretched out to his need,
Caught, and saved from the fall,
As I held, for the moment's poise,
In my circling arms the whole boy's
Delicate slightness, warmed mould;
Mine, for an instant mine,

The sweetest thing the heart can divine,

More precious than fame or gold,
The crown of many joys,

Lay in my breast, all mine.

I was nothing to him;

He neither looked up nor spoke;
I never saw his eyes;

He was gone ere my mind awoke
From the action's quick surprise
With vision blurred and dim.

I WILL rise, I will go from the places that are dark with passion and pain, From the sorrow-changed woodlands and a thousand memories slain.

O light gone out in darkness on the cliff I seek no more

Where she I worshipped met me in her girlhood at the door!

O, bright though years how many! farewell, sweet guiding star The wild wind blows me seaward over the harbor-bar!

Better thy waste, gray Ocean, the homeless, heaving plain,

Than to choke the fount of life and the flower of honor stain!

I will seek thy blessed shelter, deep bosom of sun and storm,

From the fever and fret of the earth and the things that debase and deform; For I am thine; from of old thou didst lay me, a child, at rest

In thy cradle of many waters, and gav'st to my hunger thy breast; Remember the dreamful boy whom thy beauty preserved from wrong, Thou taughtest me music, O Singer of the never-silent song!

Man-grown, I will seek thy healing; though| from worse than death I fly,

Not mine the heart of the craven, not here I mean to die!

Let me taste on my lips thy salt, let me live with the sun and the rain,

Let me lean to the rolling wave and feel me man again!

O, make thee a sheaf of arrows as when thy winters rage forth, Whiten me as thy deep-sea waves with the blanching breath of the North!

O, take thee a bundle of spears from thine azure of burning drouth,

Smite into my pulses the tremors, the fervors, the blaze of the South!

So might my breath be snow-cold, and my blood be pure like fire,

The heavenly souls that have left me will come back to sustain and inspire. Take me- I come -O, save me in the paths my fathers trod !

Then fling me back to the battle where men labor the peace of God!

FROM "MY COUNTRY"

O DESTINED Land, unto thy citadel, What founding fates even now doth peace compel,

That through the world thy name is sweet to tell!

O throned Freedom, unto thee is brought Empire; nor falsehood nor blood-payment asked;

Who never through deceit thy ends hast

sought,

Nor toiling millions for ambition tasked; Unlike the fools who build the throne

On fraud, and wrong, and woe; For man at last will take his own,

Nor count the overthrow;

But far from these is set thy continent,

Nor fears the Revolution in man's rise; On laws that with the weal of all consent, And saving truths that make the people wise:

For thou art founded in the eternal fact That every man doth greaten with the

act

Of freedom; and doth strengthen with the weight

Of duty; and diviner moulds his fate, By sharp experience taught the thing he lacked,

God's pupil; thy large maxim framed, though late,

Who masters best himself best serves the State.

This wisdom is thy Corner: next the stone Of Bounty; thou hast given all; thy store, Free as the air, and broadcast as the light, Thou flingest; and the fair and gracious sight,

More rich, doth teach thy sons this happy lore:

That no man lives who takes not priceless gifts

Both of thy substance and thy laws, whereto He may not plead desert, but holds of

thee

A childhood title, shared with all who grew, His brethren of the hearth; whence no man lifts

Above the common right his claim; nor dares

To fence his pastures of the common good: For common are thy fields; common the toil;

Common the charter of prosperity,

That gives to each that all may blessed be. This is the very counsel of thy soil. Therefore, if any thrive, mean-souled he

spares

The alms he took; let him not think subdued

The State's first law, that civic rights are strong

But while the fruits of all to all belong; Although he heir the fortune of the earth, Let him not hoard, nor spend it for his mirth,

But match his private means with public worth.

That man in whom the people's riches lie Is the great citizen, in his country's eye. Justice, the third great base, that shall

secure

To each his earnings, howsoever poor, From each his duties, howsoever great. She bids the future for the past atone. Behold her symbols on the hoary stone