strike.

Forth, through the night, on unknown shores to win

The peace of God unstirred by sense of sin!
There love without desire shall, like a mist
At evening precious to the drooping flower,
Possess thy soul in ownership, and kissed
By viewless lips, whose touch shall be a
dower

Of genius and of winged serenity,
Thou shalt abide in realms of poesy.
There soul hath touch of soul, and there
the great

Cast wide to welcome thee joy's golden gate.

Freeborn to untold thoughts that age on age Caressed sweet singers in their sacred

sleep,

Thy soul shall enter on its heritage Of God's unuttered wisdom. Thou shalt sweep

With hand assured the ringing lyre of life, Till the fierce anguish of its bitter strife, Its pain, death, discord, sorrow, and despair, Break into rhythmic music. Thou shalt share

The prophet-joy that kept forever glad God's poet-souls when all a world was sad. Enter and live! Thou hast not lived before;

We were but soul-cast shadows. Ah, no

more

The heart shall bear the burdens of the brain;

Now shall the strong heart think, nor think

in vain.

In the dear company of peace, and those Who bore for man life's utmost agony, Thy soul shall climb to cliffs of still repose, And see before thee lie Time's mystery, And that which is God's time, Eternity; Whence sweeping over thee dim myriad things,

The awful centuries yet to be, in hosts That stir the vast of heaven with formless wings,

Shall cast for thee their shrouds, and, like to ghosts,

Unriddle all the past, till, awed and still, Thy soul the secret hath of good and ill.

THE QUAKER GRAVEYARD

FOUR straight brick walls, severely plain,
A quiet city square surround;
A level space of nameless graves,
The Quakers' burial-ground.

In gown of gray, or coat of drab,

They trod the common ways of life, With passions held in sternest leash, And hearts that knew not strife.

To yon grim meeting-house they fared,
With thoughts as sober as their speech,
To voiceless prayer, to songless praise,
To hear the elders preach.

Through quiet lengths of days they came, With scarce a change to this repose;

Of all life's loveliness they took

The thorn without the rose.

GOOD Master, you and I were born
In "Teacup days" of hoop and hood,
And when the silver cue hung down,
And toasts were drunk, and wine was good;

When kin of mine (a jolly brood)
From sideboards looked, and knew full
well

What courage they had given the beau,
How generous made the blushing belle.

Ah me! what gossip could I prate
Of days when doors were locked at din-
ners!

Believe me, I have kissed the lips
Of many pretty saints or sinners.

Lip service have I done, alack!
I don't repent, but come what may,
What ready lips, sir, I have kissed,
Be sure at least I shall not say.

(By dusky fingers brought this morning here

And shown with boastful smiles),

I turn thy cloven sheath,

Through which the soft white fibres peer,
That, with their gossamer bands,
Unite, like love, the sea-divided lands,
And slowly, thread by thread,
Draw forth the folded strands,
Than which the trembling line,

By whose frail help yon startled spider fled

Down the tall spear-grass from his swinging

bed,

Is scarce more fine;

And as the tangled skein
Unravels in my hands,

Betwixt me and the noonday light

A veil seems lifted, and for miles and

miles

The landscape broadens on my sight,
As, in the little boll, there lurked a spell
Like that which, in the ocean shell,
With mystic sound

Breaks down the narrow walls that hem us

round,

And turns some city lane

Into the restless main,

With all his capes and isles!

Yonder bird,

Which floats, as if at rest,

In those blue tracts above the thunder

No

where

vapors cloud the stainless air,
And never sound is heard,
Unless at such rare time

When, from the City of the Blest,
Rings down some golden chime,
Sees not from his high place

So vast a cirque of summer space
As widens round me in one mighty field,
Which, rimmed by seas and sauds,

Doth hail its earliest daylight in the beams
Of gray Atlantic dawns;

And, broad as realms made up of many lands,

Is lost afar

Behind the crimson hills and purple lawns Of sunset, among plains which roll their

streams

Against the Evening Star!
And lo!

To the remotest point of sight,
Although I gaze upon no waste of snow,
The endless field is white;

And the whole landscape glows,
For many a shining league away,
With such accumulated light

As Polar lands would flash beneath a tropic day!

Nor lack there (for the vision grows,
And the small charm within my hands-
More potent even than the fabled one,
Which oped whatever golden mystery
Lay hid in fairy wood or magic vale,
The curious ointment of the Arabian tale-
Beyond all mortal sense

Doth stretch my sight's horizon, and I see,
Beneath its simple influence,

As if, with Uriel's crown,

I stood in some great temple of the Sun, And looked, as Uriel, down!)

Nor lack there pastures rich and fields all green

With all the common gifts of God.
For temperate airs and torrid sheen
Weave Edens of the sod;

Through lands which look one sea of billowy gold

Broad rivers wind their devious ways;
A hundred isles in their embraces fold
A hundred luminous bays;

And through yon purple haze
Vast mountains lift their plumed peaks
cloud-crowned;

And, save where up their sides the ploughman creeps,

An unhewn forest girds them grandly round,

In whose dark shades a future navy sleeps! Ye Stars, which, though unseen, yet with me gaze

Upon this loveliest fragment of the earth! Thou Sun, that kindlest all thy gentlest rays

Above it, as to light a favorite hearth!
Ye Clouds, that in your temples in the
West

See nothing brighter than its humblest flow

ers!

And you, ye Winds, that on the ocean's breast

Are kissed to coolness ere ye reach its bowers!

Bear witness with me in my song of praise, And tell the world that, since the world began,

No fairer land hath fired a poet's lays,
Or given a home to man.

But these are charms already widely blown!
His be the meed whose pencil's trace
Hath touched our very swamps with grace,
And round whose tuneful way
All Southern laurels bloom;

The Poet of "The Woodlands," unto whom
Alike are known

The flute's low breathing and the trumpet's tone,

And the soft west wind's sighs;
But who shall utter all the debt,
O Land wherein all powers are met
That bind a people's heart,

The world doth owe thee at this day,

And which it never can repay,
Yet scarcely deigns to own!
Where sleeps the poet who shall fitly sing
The source wherefrom doth spring
That mighty commerce which, confined
To the mean channels of no selfish mart,
Goes out to every shore

Of this broad earth, and throngs the sea with ships

That bear no thunders; hushes hungry lips In alien lands;

Joins with a delicate web remotest strands; And gladdening rich and poor,

Doth gild Parisian domes,

Or feed the cottage - smoke of English homes,

And only bounds its blessings by mankind!
In offices like these, thy mission lies,
My Country! and it shall not end

As long as rain shall fall and Heaven bend In blue above thee; though thy foes be hard

And cruel as their weapons, it shall guard Thy hearth-stones as a bulwark; make thee great

In white and bloodless state;
And haply, as the years increase
Still working through its humbler reach
With that large wisdom which the ages
teach

Revive the half-dead dream of universal peace!

As men who labor in that mine

Of Cornwall, hollowed out beneath the bed
Of ocean, when a storm rolls overhead,
Hear the dull booming of the world of
brine

Above them, and a mighty muffled roar
Of winds and waters, yet toil calmly on,
And split the rock, and pile the massive ore,
Or carve a niche, or shape the arched roof;
So I, as calmly, weave my woof
Of song, chanting the days to come,
Unsilenced, though the quiet summer air
Stirs with the bruit of battles, and each
dawn

Wakes from its starry silence to the hum
Of many gathering armies. Still,

In that we sometimes hear,

Upon the Northern winds, the voice of woe Not wholly drowned in triumph, though I know

The end must crown us, and a few brief years

Dry all our tears,

I may not sing too gladly. To Thy will Resigned, O Lord! we cannot all forget That there is much even Victory must regret.

And, therefore, not too long

From the great burthen of our country's

wrong

Delay our just release!
And, if it may be, save
These sacred fields of peace

From stain of patriot or of hostile blood!
Oh, help us, Lord! to roll the crimson flood
Back on its course, and, while our banners
wing

Northward, strike with us! till the Goth shall cling

To his own blasted altar-stones, and crave Mercy; and we shall grant it, and dictate The lenient future of his fate

There, where some rotting ships and crumbling quays

Shall one day mark the Port which ruled the Western seas.

QUATORZAIN

MOST men know love but as a part of life; They hide it in some corner of the breast, Even from themselves; and only when they rest

In the brief pauses of that daily strife, Wherewith the world might else be not so rife,

They draw it forth (as one draws forth a toy

To soothe some ardent, kiss-exacting boy) And hold it up to sister, child, or wife.

Ah me! why may not love and life be one? Why walk we thus alone, when by our side, Love, like a visible god, might be our guide?

How would the marts grow noble ! and the

As yet, behind their ramparts, stern and proud,

Her bolted thunders sleep, — Dark Sumter, like a battlemented cloud, Looms o'er the solemn deep.

No Calpe frowns from lofty cliff or scaur To guard the holy strand;

But Moultrie holds in leash her dogs of war Above the level sand.

And down the dunes a thousand guns lie couched,

Unseen, beside the flood,

Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouched, That wait and watch for blood.

Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade,

Walk grave and thoughtful men, Whose hands may one day wield the patriot's blade

As lightly as the pen.

And maidens, with such eyes as would grow dim

Over a bleeding hound,

Seem each one to have caught the strength of him

Whose sword she sadly bound.

Thus girt without and garrisoned at home, Day patient following day,

Old Charleston looks from roof and spire and dome,

Across her tranquil bay.

Ships, through a hundred foes, from Saxon lands

And spicy Indian ports,

Bring Saxon steel and iron to her hands, And summer to her courts.

But still, along yon dim Atlantic line,
The only hostile smoke

Creeps like a harmless mist above the brine,

From some frail floating oak.

Shall the spring dawn, and she, still clad in smiles,

And with an unscathed brow, Rest in the strong arms of her palm crowned isles,

As fair and free as now?