THE splendor falls on castle walls And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O hark, O hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! O sweet and far from cliff and sear The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, let us hear the purple glens reply. ing: Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river: Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow forever and forever. 199 Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. [U. S. A.] THE APOLOGY. THINK me not unkind and rude, I go to the god of the wood Tax not my sloth that I Fold my arms beside the brook; Each cloud that floated in the sky Writes a letter in my book. Chide me not, laborious band, For the idle flowers I brought; Every aster in my hand Goes home loaded with a thought. There was never mystery But 't is figured in the flowers; Was never secret history But birds tell it in the bowers. One harvest from thy field TO EVA. O fair and stately maid, whose eyes At the same torch that lighted mine; Ah, let me blameless gaze upon Nor fear those watchful sentinels, Who charm the more their glance forbids, Chaste-glowing, underneath their lids, With fire that draws while it repels. THINE EYES STILL SHONE. Was woven still by the snow-white choir. At last she came to his hermitage, THINE eyes still shone for me, though far Like the bird from the woodlands to the I lonely roved the land or sea: As I behold yon evening star, Which yet beholds not me. This morn I climbed the misty hill, And roamed the pastures through; How danced thy form before my path, Amidst the deep-eyed dew! LITTLE thinks, in the field, yon redcloaked clown Of thee from the hill-top looking down; Nor knowest thou what argument I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, He sang to my ear, they sang to my eye. cage ; The gay enchantment was undone, As I spoke, beneath my feet THE PROBLEM. I LIKE a church, I like a cowl, I love a prophet of the soul, And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles, Yet not for all his faith can see Would I that cowléd churchman be. Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure? Not from a vain or shallow thought Himself from God he could not free; Of leaves, and feathers from her breast; RALPH WALDO EMERSON. To her old leaves new myriads? O'er England's Abbeys bends the sky These temples grew as grows the grass; Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. Girds with one flame the countless host, Trances the heart through chanting choirs, And through the priest the mind in spires. The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tables yet unbroken; The word by seers or sibyls told, In groves of oak or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind. One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost. I know what say the Fathers wise, The book itself before me lies, Old Chrysostom, best Augustine, And he who blent both in his line, The younger Golden Lips or mines, Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines; His words are music in my ear, I see his cowled portrait dear, And yet, for all his faith could see, I would not the good bishop be. BOSTON HYMN. THE word of the Lord by night To the watching Pilgrims came, As they sat by the seaside, And filled their hearts with flame. God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor. 201 Think ye I made this ball My angel, his name is Freedom,— Lo! I uncover the land, Which I hid of old time in the West, As the sculptor uncovers the statue When he has wrought his best, I show Columbia, of the rocks I will divide my goods; Call in the wretch and the slave: None shall rule but the humble, And none but Toil shall have. I will have never a noble, No lineage counted great; Fishers and choppers and ploughmen Shall constitute a state. Go, cut down trees in the forest, And trim the straightest boughs; Cut down trees in the forest, And build me a wooden house. Call the people together, The young men and the sires, The digger in the harvest-field, Hireling, and him that hires; And here in a pine state-house They shall choose men to rule In every needful faculty, In church and state and school, Lo, now if these poor men And ye shall succor men ; How it swells! How it dwells ROBERT BROWNING. What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire. Leaping higher, higher, higher, By the side of the pale-faced moon. How they clang, and clash, and roar! And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows; Yet the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling, And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells Of the bells 203 At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the people, -ah, the people,- And who, tolling, tolling, tolling, On the human heart a stone, - A With the pean of the bells! To the pean of the bells, ROBERT BROWNING. EVELYN HOPE. BEAUTIFUL Evelyn Hope is dead! Sit and watch by her side an hour. That is her book-shelf, this her bed; She plucked that piece of geraniumflower, Beginning to die, too, in the glass. Little has yet been changed, I think, — H |