Sometimes the battling clouds would break,

And from the rifted azure, fair, We saw an eagle slant, and take,

Broad-winged, the stormy slopes of air. And once, when winter's stubborn heart Half broke in sunshine o'er the place, We held our bridles to depart,

Eager and gleeful; but your face
It did not mirror our delights,
O Maiden of the Maronites!

Bright face! how Arab-wild would glow,
Through shifting mood of storm or calm,
Its beauty, born of sun and snow,

Between the cedar and the palm.
Nor, as I watched its changing thought,
Could alien speech be long disguise;
For ere one English phrase she caught
I learned the Arabic of her eyes
The love-lore of their dusks and lights,
My Maiden of the Maronites!

We parted soon, and upward fared,
Snow-fettered, till the pass was ours,
And all beneath us, golden-aired,

Lay Syria, in a dream of flowers.
Then spurred we, for before us burned
White Baalbec's signal in the noon,
And, ere to wayside camp we turned,
"Twixt us and you and far Bhâmdun,
All Lebanon raised his icy heights,
My Maiden of the Maronites!

Sweetened with syrop, tinctured with spice,
Creams, and cordials, and sugared dates,
Syrian apples, Othmanee quinces,
Limes, and citrons, and apricots,

And wines that are known to Eastern princes;

And Nubian slaves, with smoking pots
Of spiced meats and costliest fish

And all that the curious palate could wish,
Pass in and out of the cedarn doors;
Scattered over mosaic floors
Are anemones, myrtles, and violets,
And a musical fountain throws its jets
Of a hundred colors into the air.
The dusk Sultana loosens her hair,
And stains with the henna-plant the tips
Of her pointed nails, and bites her lips
Till they bloom again; but, alas, that rose
Not for the Sultan buds and blows,
Not for the Sultan Shah-Zaman
When he goes to the city Ispahan.

Then at a wave of her sunny hand
The dancing-girls of Samarcand
Making a sudden mist in air
Glide in like shapes from fairy-land,

Of fleecy veils and floating hair

And white arms lifted. Orient blood
Runs in their veins, shines in their eyes.
And there, in this Eastern Paradise,
Filled with the breath of sandal-wood,
And Khoten musk, and aloes and myrrh,
Sits Rose-in-Bloom on a silk divan,
Sipping the wines of Astrakhan;
And her Arab lover sits with her.
That's when the Sultan Shah-Zaman
Goes to the city Ispahan.

Now, when I see an extra light,
Flaming, flickering on the night
From my neighbor's casement opposite,
I know as well as I know to pray,
I know as well as a tongue can say,
That the innocent Sultan Shah-Zaman
Has gone to the city Ispahan.

PALABRAS CARIÑOSAS

GOOD-NIGHT! I have to say good-night
To such a host of peerless things!
Good-night unto the slender hand
All queenly with its weight of rings;
Good-night to fond, uplifted eyes,
Good-night to chestnut braids of hair,
Good-night unto the perfect mouth,
And all the sweetness nestled there
The snowy hand detains me, then
I'll have to say Good-night again!

But there will come a time, my love,
When, if I read our stars aright,
I shall not linger by this porch
With my farewells. Till then, good-night!
You wish the time were now? And I.
You do not blush to wish it so ?

You would have blushed yourself to death
To own so much a year ago

What, both these snowy hands! ah, then
I'll have to say Good-night again!

HEREDITY

A SOLDIER of the Cromwell stamp, With sword and psalm-book by his side, At home alike in church and camp: Austere he lived, and smileless died.

But she, a creature soft and fine

From Spain, some say, some say from
France;

Within her veins leapt blood like wine -
She led her Roundhead lord a dance!

In Grantham church they lie asleep;
Just where, the verger may not know.
Strange that two hundred years should keep
The old ancestral fires aglow !

In me these two have met again;
To each my nature owes a part:
To one, the cool and reasoning brain;
To one, the quick, unreasoning heart.

SOMEWHERE

space

IDENTITY

"And who are you?" cried one a-gape, Shuddering in the gloaming light. "I know not," said the second Shape, "I only died last night!"

UNGUARDED GATES

WIDE open and unguarded stand our gates,
Named of the four winds, North, South,
East, and West;

Portals that lead to an enchanted land
Of cities, forests, fields of living gold,
Vast prairies, lordly summits touched with

snow,

Majestic rivers sweeping proudly past The Arab's date-palm and the Norseman's pine

A realm wherein are fruits of every zone, Airs of all climes, for, lo! throughout the year

The red rose blossoms somewhere — a rich land,

A later Eden planted in the wilds,
With not an inch of earth within its bound
But if a slave's foot press it sets him free.
Here, it is written, Toil shall have its wage,
And Honor honor, and the humblest man
Stand level with the highest in the law.
Of such a land have men in dungeons
dreamed,

And with the vision brightening in their

Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws.

In street and alley what strange tongues are loud,

Accents of menace alien to our air,

In Twilight-land

in No-man's-land

Two hurrying Shapes met face to face, And bade each other stand.

What strain was his in that Crimean war? A bugle-call in battle; a low breath, Plaintive and sweet, above the fields of death!

So year by year the music rolled afar, From Euxine wastes to flowery Kandahar,

Bearing the laurel or the cypress wreath. Others shall have their little space of time, Their proper niche and bust, then fade away

Into the darkness, poets of a day; But thou, O builder of enduring rhyme, Thou shalt not pass! Thy fame in every clime

On earth shall live where Saxon speech has sway.

Waft me this verse across the winter sea, Through light and dark, through mist and blinding sleet,

O winter winds, and lay it at his feet; Though the poor gift betray my poverty, At his feet lay it: it may chance that he

Will find no gift, where reverence is, un

meet.

A SHADOW OF THE NIGHT CLOSE on the edge of a midsummer dawn In troubled dreams I went from land to

land,

Each seven-colored like the rainbow's arc,