To make us what our kind have been.
A lure more strong, a wish more faint,
Makes one a monster, one a saint;
And even love, by difference nice,
Becomes a virtue or a vice.
The briar, that o'er the garden wall
Trails its sweet blossoms till they fall
Across the dusty road, and then
Are trodden under foot of men,
Is sister to the decorous rose
Within the garden's well-kept close,
Whose pinioned branches may not roam
Out and beyond their latticed home.
There's many a life of sweet content
Whose virtue is environment.
They erred, they fell; and yet, 'tis true,
They hold the mirror up to you.

POSTHUMOUS

PUT them in print?

Make one more dint

In the ages' furrowed rock? No, no!
Let his name and his verses go.
These idle scraps, they would but wrong
His memory, whom we honored long,
And men would ask: "Is this the best
Is this the whole his life expressed ?"
Haply he had no care to tell

To all the thoughts which flung their spell
Around us when the night grew deep,
Making it seem a loss to sleep,
Exalting the low, dingy room

To some high auditorium.

And when we parted homeward, still
They followed us beyond the hill.

The heaven had brought new stars to sight,
Opening the map of later night;
And the wide silence of the snow,
And the dark whispers of the pines,
And those keen fires that glittered slow
Along the zodiac's wintry signs,

Seemed witnesses and near of kin To the high dreams we held within.

Yet what is left
To us bereft,

Save these remains,
Which now the moth

Will fret, or swifter fire consume?
These inky stains

On his table-cloth;

These prints that decked his room;
His throne, this ragged easy-chair;
This battered pipe, his councillor.
This is the sum and inventory.
No son he left to tell his story,
No gold, no lands, no fame, no book.
Yet one of us, his heirs, who took
The impress of his brain and heart,
May gain from Heaven the lucky art
His untold meanings to impart
In words that will not soon decay.
Then gratefully will such one say:
"This phrase, dear friend, perhaps, is mine:
The breath that gave it life was thine."

"If one's allowed to ask it,”

Quoth I, "Ma belle cousine, What have you in your basket?" (Those baskets white and green The brave Passamaquoddies

Weave out of scented grass, And sell to tourist bodies

Who through Mt. Desert pass.)

You answered, slightly frowning, "Put down your stupid book— That everlasting Browning!

And come and help me look. Mushroom you spik him English, I call him champignon: I'll teach you to distinguish The right kind from the wrong."

There was no fog on Fundy

That blue September day;
The west wind, for that one day,
Had swept it all away.
The lighthouse glasses twinkled,

The white gulls screamed and flew,
The merry sheep-bells tinkled,
The merry breezes blew.