LAUS MARIÆ.

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 twixt 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

To forms of time and apprehensive tune,
So, as I lay, full soon

Interpretation throve: the bee's fanfare,

Through sequent films of discourse vague as air,
Passed to plain words, while, fanning faint perfume
The bee o'erhung a rich, unrifled bloom :

"O Earth, fair lordly Blossom, soft a-shine
Upon the star-pranked universal vine,
Hast nought for me?

To thee

Come I, a poet, hereward haply blown,
From out another worldflower lately flown.
Wilt ask, What profit e'er a poet brings?
He beareth starry stuff about his wings
To pollen thee and sting thee fertile: nay,
If still thou narrow thy contracted way,

-Worldflower, if thou refuse me-
-Worldflower, if thou abuse me,
And hoist thy stamen's spear-point high
To wound my wing and mar mine eye—
Nathless I'll drive me to thy deepest sweet,
Yea, richlier shall that pain the pollen beat
From me to thee, for oft these pollens be
Fine dust from wars that poets wage for thee.
But, O beloved Earthbloom soft a-shine
Upon the universal Jessamine,

Prithee, abuse me not,

Prithee, refuse me not,

Yield, yield the heartsome honey love to me

Hid in thy nectary!"

And as I sank into a dimmer dream

The pleading bee's song-burthen sole did seem: "Hast ne'er a honey-drop of love for me

In thy huge nectary?"

TAMPA, FLORIDA, 1877.