THE CRYSTAL. AT midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time, The great soft rumble of the course of things- Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken tree And muse in that gaunt place,--'twas then my heart, Deep in the meditative dark, cried out : "Ye companies of governor-spirits grave, Your geniuses with our mortalities. Thus unto thee, O sweetest Shakspere sole, ('Tis little, but, enchantment! 'tis for thee): Fatigues most drear, and needless overtax Father Homer, thee, Thee also I forgive thy sandy wastes Of prose and catalogue, thy drear harangues Thee, Socrates, Thou dear and very strong one, I forgive Thy year-worn cloak, thine iron stringencies So, Buddha, beautiful! I pardon thee That all the All thou hadst for needy man Worn Dante, I forgive The implacable hates that in thy horrid hells And I forgive Thee, Milton, those thy comic-dreadful wars Where, armed with gross and inconclusive steel, Immortals smite immortals mortalwise And fill all heaven with folly. Also thee, Brave Æschylus, thee I forgive, for that Thine eye, by bare bright justice basilisked, Turned not, nor ever learned to look where Love Stands shining. So, unto thee, Lucretius mine (For oh, what heart hath loved thee like to this Yea, all you hearts Of beauty, and sweet righteous lovers large : A Kempis, overmild; Epictetus, Whiles low in thought, still with old slavery tinct; Most wise, that yet, in finding Wisdom, lost Thy Self, sometimes; tense Keats, with angels' nerves Where men's were better; Tennyson, largest voice Since Milton, yet some register of wit Wanting;-all, all, I pardon, ere 'tis asked, Your more or less, your little mole that marks But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time, O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest,— Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's,— BALTIMORE, 1880, THE REVENGE OF HAMISH. IT was three slim does and a ten-tined buck in the bracken lay; And all of a sudden the sinister smell of a man, Awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran Down the hill-side and sifted along through the bracken and passed that way. Then Nan got a-tremble at nostril; she was the daintiest doe; In the print of her velvet flank on the velvet fern She reared, and rounded her ears in turn. Then the buck leapt up, and his head as a king's to a crown did go Full high in the breeze, and he stood as if Death had the form of a deer; And the two slim does long lazily stretching arose, For their day-dream slowlier came to a close, Till they woke and were still, breath-bound with waiting and wonder and fear. Then Alan the huntsman sprang over the hillock, the hounds shot by, The does and the ten-tined buck made a marvellous bound, The hounds swept after with never a sound, But Alan loud winded his horn in sign that the quarry was nigh. |