Not hardest Fortune's most unbounded stress

Can blind my soul nor hurl it from on high, Possessing thee, the self of loftiness,

And very light that Light discovers by.

Howe'er thou turn'st, wrong Earth! still Love's in sight:
For we are taller than the breadth of night.

BALTIMORE, 1874-5.

LAUS MARIE.

ACROSS the brook of Time man leaping goes
On stepping-stones of epochs, that uprise
Fixed, memorable, midst broad shallow flows

Of neutrals, kill-times, sleeps, indifferencies.
So mixt each morn and night rise salient heaps :
Some cross with but a zigzag, jaded pace
From meal to meal some with convulsive leaps
Shake the green tussocks of malign disgrace :
And some advance by system and deep art

O'er vantages of wealth, place, learning, tact. But thou within thyself, dear manifold heart, Dost bind all epochs in one dainty Fact.

Oh, sweet, my pretty sum of history,

I leapt the breadth of Time in loving thee!

BALTIMORE, 1874-5. ·

SPECIAL PLEADING.

TIME, hurry my Love to me :

Haste, haste! Lov'st not good company?
Here's but a heart-break sandy waste
'Twixt Now and Then. Why, killing haste
Were best, dear Time, for thee, for thee!

Oh, would that I might divine

Thy name beyond the zodiac sign

Wherefrom our times-to-come descend.

He called thee Sometime.

Change it, friend :

Now-time sounds so much more fine!

Sweet Sometime, fly fast to me :

Poor Now time sits in the Lonesome-tree
And broods as gray as any dove,

And calls, When wilt thou come, O Love?
And pleads across the waste to thee.

Good Moment, that giv'st him me,
Wast ever in love? Maybe, maybe

Thou 'It be this heavenly velvet time
When Day and Night as rhyme and rhyme

Set lip to lip dusk-modestly;

Or haply some noon afar,

-O life's top bud, mixt rose and star,

How ever can thine utmost sweet

Be star-consummate, rose-complete,

Till thy rich reds full opened are?

Well, be it dusk-time or noon-time,

I ask but one small boon, Time :

Come thou in night, come thou in day,

I care not, I care not: have thine own way, But only, but only, come soon, Time.

BALTIMORE, 1875.

THE BEE.

WHAT time I paced, at pleasant morn,
A deep and dewy wood,

I heard a mellow hunting-horn

Make dim report of Dian's lustihood

Far down a heavenly hollow.

Mine ear, though fain, had pain to follow :
Tara! it twanged, tara-tara ! it blew,
Yet wavered oft, and flew

Most ficklewise about, or here, or there,
A music now from earth and now from air.
But on a sudden, lo!

I marked a blossom shiver to and fro
With dainty inward storm; and there within
A down-drawn trump of yellow jessamine
A bee

Thrust up its sad-gold body lustily,
All in a honey madness hotly bound
On blissful burglary.

A cunning sound

In that wing-music held me: down I lay
In amber shades of many a golden spray,
Where looping low with languid arms the Vine
In wreaths of ravishment did overtwine
Her kneeling Live-Oak, thousand-fold to plight
Herself unto her own true stalwart knight.

As some dim blur of distant music nears
The long-desiring sense, and slowly clears