Sharp hold on Keats, and dragged him slow away, Ay, him, the world's best wood-bird, wise with song- III. Nay, Bird; my grief gainsays the Lord's best right. Perched in a palm-grove, wild with pantomime, Till broad Beethoven, deaf no more, and Keats, And halfway pause on some large, courteous word, BALTIMORE, 1878. THE DOVE. IF haply thou, O Desdemona Morn, Shouldst call along the curving sphere, "Remain, Dear Night, sweet Moor; nay, leave me not in scorn!" With soft halloos of heavenly love and pain ; Shouldst thou, O Spring! a-cower in coverts dark, Or (grievous if that may be yea o'er-soon!), If thou, my Heart, long holden from thy Sweet, Shouldst knock Death's door with mellow shocks of tune, Sad inquiry to make— When may we meet? Nay, if ye three, O Morn! O Spring! O Heart! Ye could not mourn with more melodious art CHADD'S FORD, PENNSYLVANIA, 1877. 5* TO, WITH A ROSE. I ASKED my heart to say Some word whose worth my love's devoir might pay Upon my Lady's natal day. Then said my heart to me : Learn from the rhyme that now shall come to thee What fits thy Love most lovingly. This gift that learning shows; For, as a rhyme unto its rhyme-twin goes, I send a rose unto a Rose. PHILADELPHIA, 1876. ON HUNTINGDON'S MIRANDA.” THE storm hath blown thee a lover, sweet, And laid him kneeling at thy feet. The wind hath all thy holy hair To kiss and to sing through and to flare Eyes in a blaze, eyes in a daze, And if I were yon stolid stone, Thy touch would turn me to a heart, BALTIMORE, 1874. Forever, O Miranda. ODE TO THE JOHNS HOPKINS READ ON THE FOURTH COMMEMORATION DAY, FEBRUARY, 1880. How tall among her sisters, and how fair,- Unnoised as any stealing summer morn. Led by the soaring-genius'd Sylvester To lay at Wisdom's feet, These liberal masters largely brought— Dear diamonds of their long-compressèd thought, Rich stones from out the labyrinthine cave Of research, pearls from Time's profoundest wave |