Let Envy crave, and Avarice save;
Let Folly ride her circuit;

I hold that on this side the grave-
To find one's vein and work it,
To keeps one's wants both fit and few,
To cringe to no condition,

To count a truthful friend or two

May bound a man's ambition.

Swell, South-wind, swell my Neighbour's sails;

Fill, Fortune, fill his coffers;
If Fate has made his rôle the whale's,
And me the minnow's offers,

I am not sad that he is great;
He need not ask my pardon;

Beside his wall I cultivate
My modest patch of garden.

1887.

THE HOLOCAUST

“Heart-free, with the least little touch of spleen.”—MAUD.

AB

BOVE my mantelshelf there stands
A little bronze sarcophagus,

Carved by its unknown artist's hands,
With this one word-AMORIBUS !

Along the lid a Love lies dead-
Across his breast his broken bow;
Elsewhere they dig his tiny bed,

And round it women wailing go:

A trick, a toy-mere " Paris ware," Some Quartier-Latin sculptor's whim, Wrought in a fit of mock despair,

With sight, it may be something dim,

Because the love of yesterday,

Had left the grenier, light MUSETTE, And she who made the morrow gay, LUTINE or MIMI, was not yet—

A toy. But ah! what hopes deferred,
(O friend, with sympathetic eye!)
What vows (now decently interred)
Within that "narrow compass" lie!

For there, last night, not sadly, too,
With one live ember I cremated

A nest of cooing billets-doux,

That just two decades back were dated.

1889.

THE SONG OF THE SEA WIND

HOW it sings, sings, sings,

Blowing sharply from the sea-line, With an edge of salt that stings; How it laughs aloud, and passes, As it cuts the close cliff-grasses; How it sings again, and whistles As it shakes the stout sea-thistlesHow it sings!

How it shrieks, shrieks, shrieks,

In the crannies of the headland,

In the gashes of the creeks;

How it shrieks once more, and catches
Up the yellow foam in patches;

How it whirls it out and over

To the corn-field and the clover—
How it shrieks!

How it roars, roars, roars,

In the iron under-caverns,

In the hollows of the shores;

How it roars anew, and thunders,
As the strong hull splits and sunders:
And the spent ship, tempest driven,
On the reef lies rent and riven-
How it roars!

How it wails, wails, wails,

In the tangle of the wreckage,
In the flapping of the sails;
How it sobs away, subsiding,
Like a tired child after chiding;

And across the ground-swell rolling,
You can hear the bell-buoy tolling-
How it wails!