There the Afric brain, whose story fills the centuries with its glory, Moulds the Gaul and Carthaginian into one all-conquering band, With his tuskèd monsters grumbling, 'mid the alien snow-drifts stumbling, Then an avalanche of ruin thundering from that frozen land, Into vales their sons declare, are Sunny as our Riviera. Tired of these the mighty mother sought among her types another Stamp of blended saint and hero, only seen on earth before In the luminous aureole shining round a maiden's soul Through four hundred sluggish years; till she sends on Nizza's shore Now, the hero of Caprera, Born upon our Riviera. Ever, ever, in our musing, comes man's spirit interfusing Thought of poet and of hero with the landscape and the sky; And this shore no longer lonely, lives the life of romance only; With its Gauls and Moors and Sea-Kings, spectral troops proceeding by, For with Nature man is sharer, Feeble voice! no longer stammer words which shame the pan orama Seen from all the mountain-passes of this old Aurelian way, With the shore below us sleeping, and the distant steamer creeping From Marseilles to proud Genova, on to Spezzia's famous bay, But forever, mia cara, Shall we love this Riviera. VINETA. [A TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN.] Under ocean evening bells are swinging, Looking downward, mid the currents darkling, He, whose bark above that sunken city Through the evening twilight once has gone, Drawn henceforth by secret love and pity, Steers forever to that mystery lone. So within my heart the bells are swinging, Dearest hopes therein are sunk forever, Through the tide of time their memory gleams; Faith and Truth, whose glory faileth never, Glitter through the current of my dreams. And those dear illusive echoes falling From that sunken city, in my heart. Helen Gray bone. A CONSERVATIVE. "Your Spring," he said, "I hate; now blast, now breeze; A fine old russet folio-give me these! Yet none the less did break Green from the glebe; the conèd chestnuts gave Faint fragrance out; the robin's breast would make A flame a-field; the snow he could not save! And Spring on Spring, as wave in strong wave's wake, Still rolls, a bloomy billow, o'er his grave. NARCISSUS IN CAMDEN. [A CLASSICAL DIALOGUE OF THE YEAR 1882.] ("In the course of his lecture Mr. remarked that the most impressive On the room he had vet entered in America was the one in Camden town where he met-—. It contained plenty of fresh air and sunlight. table was a simple cruse of water." . . .) PAUMANOKIDES-NARCISSUS. PAUMANOKIDES. Who may this be? This young man clad unusually, with loose locks, languorous, glidingly toward me advancing, Toward the ceiling of my chamber his orbic and expressive eye-balls uprolling, As I have seen the green-necked wild-fowl the mallard in the thundering of the storm, By the weedy shore of Paumanok my fish-shaped island. Sit down, young man ! I do not know you, but I love you with burning intensity, I am he that loves the young men, whosoever and wheresoever they are or may be hereafter, or may have been any time in the past, Loves the eye-glassed literat, loves also and probably more the vender of clams, raucous-throated, monotonouschanting, Loves the Elevated Railroad employé of Mannahatta, my city; I suppress the rest of the list of the persons I love, solely because I love you, Sit down élève, I receive you! NARCISSUS. O clarion, from whose brazen throat Strange sounds across the sea are blown, Where England, girt as with a moat, A pilgrim from that white-cliffed shore, What joy, large flower of Western land! With eager hand to clasp thy hand! PAUMANOKIDES. Right you are! Take then the electric pressure of these fingers, O my comrade! I do not doubt you are the one I was waiting for, as I loaf'd here enjoying my soul, Let us two under all and any circumstances stick together from this out! NARCISSUS. Seeing that isle of which I spake but late By ignorant demagogues is held in fee, For one who in clear culture walks apart His purely passionate and perfect hate And noble scorn of all things Philistine. PAUMANOKIDES. Hold up there, Camerado! |