POET OF EARTH

OH, be not ether-borne, poet of earth; Stretch not thy wings to such a cloudless height

As ne'er to know the darkness of the night, As ne'er to feel the touch of grief or mirth That lives in human sympathy, whose birth Is longed for in this world of love and blight;

Thou, too, must drink of sorrow and delight, Must taste the joy of hope, and feel its dearth;

God's service lies not out of reach, and heaven
Is found alone through lowly ministry;
Some souls there are whose dumb chords
wait the breath

Of other souls, divinely gifted, given
To voice the deeper tones, and lead the way
To immortality, through life and death!

THE WAITING CHORDS
HEEDLESS she strayed from note to note,
A maid, scarce knowing that she sang;
The dainty accents from her throat
In undulations lightly rang.

She sang in laughing rhythms sweet;
A bird of spring was in her voice;
Till, on through measures deft and fleet,
She caught the ditty of her choice.

A song of love, in words of fire,

Now made her breast with passion stir; It breathed across her living lyre,

And thrilled the waiting chords in her. Uplifted like a quivering dart,

One moment poised the tones on high, To tell the language of her heart,

And swell the pæan ere it die.

She smote the keys with will and force, Like storm-winds swept the sounds along Her flying fingers in their course

Vied with the tumult of her song.

Her eyes flashed with the burning theme; A glow of triumph flushed her cheek; No need of words to tell the dream

Of love her lips would never speak.

When the wild cadence died in air,

And all the chords to silence fell, I knew the spirit lurking thereThe secret that had wrought the spell

So seems it to my musing mood,
So runs it in my surer thought,
That much of beauty, more of good,

For thee the rounded years have wrought;

That life will live, however blown Like vapor on the summer air; That power perpetuates its own; That silence here is music there.

THE RIDE TO CHEROKEE

It's only we, Grimalkin, both fond and fancy free,

So do your best, my beauty, for a home for you and me;

For you the oats and leisure, for me the pipe and book,

With sometimes, just at sunset, the long gray eastward look.

For once there was another: ah, Kathrine ! who shall say

What wilful fancy seized you that sunny summer day;

You turned and nodded, smiling as you went gayly by,

And the man who strolled beside you had a braver front than I;

It meant a day's undoing, a night's black watch for me,

And this mad ride, Grimalkin, to-day for Cherokee.