One saith: 'Do me a friendly grace-
('Grace!' quoth Love)

85 "Read me two Dreams that linger long, Dim as returns of old-time song

That flicker about the mind.

I dreamed (how deep in mortal sleep!)
I struck thee dead, then stood above,
With tears that none but dreamers weep;'
'Dreams,' quoth Love;

"In dreams, again, I plucked a flower
That clung with pain and stung with power,
Yea, nettled me, body and mind.'

"Twas the nettle of sin, 'twas medicine;
No need nor seed of it here Above;

In dreams of hate true loves begin.'
"True,' quoth Love.

"Now strange,' quoth Sense, and 'Strange,' quoth Mind,

'We saw it, and yet 'tis hard to find,

-But we saw it,' quoth Sense and Mind.
Stretched on the ground, beautiful-crowned
Of the piteous willow that wreathed above,
'But I cannot find where ye have found
Hell,' quoth Love."

BALTIMORE, 1878-9.

MARSH SONG-AT SUNSET

OVER the monstrous shambling sea,

Over the Caliban sea,

Bright Ariel-cloud, thou lingerest:

Oh wait, oh wait, in the warm red West,—
Thy Prospero I'll be.

Over the humped and fishy sea,

Over the Caliban sea

O cloud in the West, like a thought in the heart
Of pardon, loose thy wing, and start,

And do a grace for me.

Over the huge and huddling sea,

Over the Caliban sea,

Bring hither my brother Antonio,-Man,

My injurer: night breaks the ban:

Brother, I pardon thee.

BALTIMORE, 1879-80.

OWL AGAINST ROBIN

FROWNING, the owl in the oak complained him
Sore, that the song of the robin restrained him
Wrongly of slumber, rudely of rest.

"From the north, from the east, from the south and

the west,

Woodland, wheat-field, corn-field, clover,

Over and over and over and over,

Five o'clock, ten o'clock, twelve, or seven,

5

10

15

5

Nothing but robin-songs heard under heaven:
How can we sleep?

10 Peep! you whistle, and cheep! cheep! cheep!
Oh, peep, if you will, and buy, if 'tis cheap,
And have done; for an owl must sleep.

Are ye singing for fame, and who shall be first?
Each day's the same, yet the last is worst,

15 And the summer is cursed with the silly outburst Of idiot red-breasts peeping and cheeping

By day, when all honest birds ought to be sleeping. Lord, what a din! And so out of all reason. Have ye not heard that each thing hath its season? 20 Night is to work in, night is for play-time; Good heavens, not day-time'

A vulgar flaunt is the flaring day,
The impudent, hot, unsparing day,

That leaves not a stain nor a secret untold,25 Day the reporter,-the gossip of old,Deformity's tease,-man's common scoldPoh! Shut the eyes, let the sense go numb When day down the eastern way has come. "Tis clear as the moon (by the argument drawn 30 From Design) that the world should retire at dawn. Day kills. The leaf and the laborer breathe Death in the sun, the cities seethe,

The mortal black marshes bubble with heat And puff up pestilence; nothing is sweet 35 Has to do with the sun: even virtue will taint (Philosophers say) and manhood grow faint In the lands where the villainous sun has sway

Through the livelong drag of the dreadful day.
What Eden but noon-light stares it tame,
Shadowless, brazen, forsaken of shame?
For the sun tells lies on the landscape,-now
Reports me the what, unrelieved with the how,—
As messengers lie, with the facts alone,
Delivering the word and withholding the tone.

But oh, the sweetness, and oh, the light
Of the high-fastidious night!

Oh, to awake with the wise old stars—

The cultured, the careful, the Chesterfield stars,
That wink at the work-a-day fact of crime
And shine so rich through the ruins of time
That Baalbec is finer than London; oh,
To sit on the bough that zigzags low
By the woodland pool,

And loudly laugh at man, the fool
That vows to the vulgar sun; oh, rare,

To wheel from the wood to the window where
A day-worn sleeper is dreaming of care,
And perch on the sill and straightly stare
Through his visions; rare, to sail

Aslant with the hill and a-curve with the vale,-
To flit down the shadow-shot-with-gleam,

Betwixt hanging leaves and starlit stream,
Hither, thither, to and fro,

Silent, aimless, dayless, slow

(Aimless? Field-mice? True, they're slain,
But the night-philosophy hoots at pain,
Grips, eats quick, and drops the bones
In the water beneath the bough, nor moans

70

75

5

5

At the death life feeds on). Robin, pray
Come away, come away

To the cultus of night. Abandon the day.
Have more to think and have less to say.
And cannot you walk now? Bah! don't hop!

Stop!

Look at the owl, scarce seen, scarce heard,
O irritant, iterant, maddening bird!"

BALTIMORE, 1880.

A SONG OF LOVE

"HEY, rose, just born

Twin to a thorn;

Was't so with you, O Love and Scorn?

"Sweet eyes that smiled,
Now wet and wild;

O Eye and Tear-mother and child.

"Well: Love and Pain

Be kinsfolk twain:

Yet would, Oh would I could love again.”

A BALLAD OF TREES AND THE MASTER

INTO the woods my Master went,

Clean forspent, forspent.

Into the woods my Master came,

Forspent with love and shame.

But the olives they were not blind to Him,
The little gray leaves were kind to Him: