We're all for love,' the violins said.1
'Of what avail the rigorous tale
Of bill for coin and box for bale?
Grant thee, O Trade! thine uttermost hope:
Level red gold with blue sky-slope,
And base it deep as devils grope:
When all 's done, what hast thou won

Of the only sweet that's under the sun? 10
Ay, canst thou buy a single sigh
Of true love's least, least ecstasy?'
Then, with a bridegroom's heart-beats
trembling,

All the mightier strings assembling
Ranged them on the violins' side

As when the bridegroom leads the bride,
And, heart in voice, together cried:
'Yea, what avail the endless tale
Of gain by cunning and plus by sale?
Look up the land, look down the land,
The poor, the poor, the poor, they stand
Wedged by the pressing of Trade's hand
Against an inward-opening door
That pressure tightens evermore:
They sigh a monstrous foul-air sigh
For the outside leagues of liberty,
Where Art, sweet lark, translates the sky
Into a heavenly melody.

20

"Each day, all day" (these poor folks say), In the same old year-long, drear-long

To relieve, O God, what manner of ills? — The beasts, they hunger, and eat, and die; And so do we, and the world's a sty; Hush, fellow-swine: why nuzzle and cry? Swinehood hath no remedy

Say many men, and hasten by,

Clamping the nose and blinking the eye. 40
But who said once, in the lordly tone,
Man shall not live by bread alone
But all that cometh from the Throne?
Hath God said so?

But Trade saith No:

ments and re-distilled them into the clear liquid of that wondrous eleventh - Love God utterly, and thy neighbor as thyself so I think the time will come when music, rightly developed to its now-little-foreseen grandeur, will be found to be a later revelation of all gospels n one. (LANIER, in a letter of March 12, 1875. The Letters of Sidney Lanier, p. 113.)

1 Music is utterly unconscious of aught but Love. (LANIER, in a letter of October, 1866. The Letters of Sidney Lanier, p. 66.)

And boatwise dropped o' the convex side 91
And floated down the glassy tide
And clarified and glorified

The solemn spaces where the shadows bide. From the warm concave of that fluted note

Somewhat, half song, half odor, forth did float,

As if a rose might somehow be a throat: 'When Nature from her far-off glen Flutes her soft messages to men,

The flute can say them o'er again; 100 Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone, Breathes through life's strident polyphone The flute-voice in the world of tone. Sweet friends,

Full powers from Nature manifold.
I speak for each no-tongued tree
That, spring by spring, doth nobler be,
And dumbly and most wistfully
His mighty prayerful arms outspreads 120
Above men's oft-unheeding heads,
And his big blessing downward sheds.
I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves,
Lichens on stones and moss on eaves,
Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves;
Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes,
And briery mazes bounding lanes,
And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains,
And milky stems and sugary veins;
For every long-armed woman-vine
That round a piteous tree doth twine;
For passionate odors, and divine
Pistils, and petals crystalline;
All purities of shady springs,
All shynesses of film-winged things
That fly from tree-trunks and bark-rings;
All modesties of mountain-fawns
That leap to covert from wild lawns,
And tremble if the day but dawns;
All sparklings of small beady eyes
Of birds, and sidelong glances wise
Wherewith the jay hints tragedies;

130

140

150

All piquancies of prickly burs,
And smoothnesses of downs and furs,
Of eiders and of minevers;
All limpid honeys that do lie
At stamen-bases, nor deny
The humming-birds' fine roguery,
Bee-thighs, nor any butterfly;
All gracious curves of slender wings,
Bark-mottlings, fibre-spiralings,
Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings;
Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell
Wherewith in every lonesome dell
Time to himself his hours doth tell;
All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones,
Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans,
And night's unearthly under-tones;
All placid lakes and waveless deeps,
All cool reposing mountain-steeps,
Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps;
Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights,
And warmths, and mysteries, and mights,
Of Nature's utmost depths and heights,
-These doth my timid tongue present,
Their mouthpiece and leal instrument
And servant, all love-eloquent.

160

I heard, when "All for love" the violins cried:

So, Nature calls through all her system

wide,

170

Give me thy love, O man, so long denied. Much time is run, and man hath changed his ways,

Since Nature, in the antique fable-days, Was hid from man's true love by proxy fays,

False fauns and rascal gods that stole her praise.

The nymphs, cold creatures of man's colder brain;

Chilled Nature's streams till man's warm heart was fain

Never to lave its love in them again.
Later, a sweet Voice Love thy neighbor said;
Then first the bounds of neighborhood out-
spread

Beyond all confines of old ethnic dread. 180
Vainly the Jew might wag his covenant

head:

Thereto a thrilling calm succeeds, Till presently the silence breeds A little breeze among the reeds That seems to blow by sea-marsh weeds: Then from the gentle stir and fret Sings out the melting clarionet, Like as a lady sings while yet Her eyes with salty tears are wet.

O Trade! O Trade!' the Lady said, I too will wish thee utterly dead If all thy heart is in thy head. For O my God! and O my God! What shameful ways have women trod At beckoning of Trade's golden rod ! Alas when sighs are traders' lies, And heart's-ease eyes and violet eyes Are merchandise!

200

210

220

O purchased lips that kiss with pain!
O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain!

trafficked hearts that break in twain! 230
And yet what wonder at my sisters'

crime? So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime,

Men love not women as in olden time.
Ah, not in these cold merchantable days
Deem men their life an opal gray, where
plays

The one red Sweet of gracious ladies'-praise. Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying eye

241

Says, Here, you Lady, if you'll sell, I'll buy:
Come, heart for heart· a trade? What!
weeping? why?
Shame on such wooers' dapper mercery!
I would my lover kneeling at my feet
In humble manliness should cry, O sweet!
I know not if thy heart my heart will greet:
I ask not if thy love my love can meet:
Whate'er thy worshipful soft tongue.
shall say,
I'll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay:
I do but know I love thee, and I pray
To be thy knight until my dying day.
Woe him that cunning trades in hearts con-
trives!

Base love good women to base loving

drives.

250

If men loved larger, larger were our lives; And wooed they nobler, won they nobler wives.'

For God shall right thy grievous wrong,
And man shall sing thee a true-love song,
Voiced in act his whole life long,
Yea, all thy sweet life long,
Fair Lady.

Where's he that craftily hath said,
The day of chivalry is dead?
I'll prove that lie upon his head,
Or I will die instead,
Fair Lady.

Is Honor gone into his grave?
Hath Faith become a caitiff knave,
And Selfhood turned into a slave
To work in Mammon's cave,
Fair Lady?

270

Will Truth's long blade ne'er gleam again?
Hath Giant Trade in dungeons slain

All great contempts of mean-got gain
And hates of inward stain,

Fair Lady?

For aye shall name and fame be sold, And place be hugged for the sake of gold,