So Adam left the lambs. And all the herd

Follow'd him sorrowing, and not a word Was spoken. Never until then had they Their own forsaken. That was the worst day.

Eve said to Adam, as they went along, "Adam, last night the cold was bitter strong.

Warm fleeces to keep out the freezing wind Have those six lambkins thou hast left behind;

But they will never need them any more. Go, fetch them here! and I will make, before

This day be done, stout garments for us both,

Lest we, too, wake no more." Said Adam, loth

To do her bidding, "Why dost thou suppose

Our lambs will nevermore have need of those

Warm fleeces? They are sleeping." But Eve said,

"They are not sleeping, Adam. They are

dead."

wrought

Three centuries and three score years ago, With fantasies of his peculiar thought : The instruments of carpentry and science Scatter'd about her feet, in strange alliance With the keen wolf-hound sleeping undistraught;

Scales, hour-glass, bell, and magic-square above;

The grave and solid infant perch'd beside,

With open winglets that might bear a dove,

Intent upon its tablets, heavy-eyed; Her folded wings as of a mighty eagle But all too impotent to lift the regal

Robustness of her earth-born strength and pride;

And with those wings, and that light wreath which seems

To mock her grand head and the knotted frown

Of forehead charged with baleful thouglits and dreams,

The household bunch of keys, the housewife's gown

Voluminous, indented, and yet rigid
As if a shell of burnish'd metal frigid,
The feet thick-shod to tread all weak-
ness down ;

The comet hanging o'er the waste dark seas, The massy rainbow curv'd in front of it Beyond the village with the masts and trees;

The snaky imp, dog-headed, from the Pit,

Bearing upon its batlike leathern pinions Her name unfolded in the sun's dominions, The "MELENCOLIA" that transcends all wit.

Thus has the artist copied her, and thus Surrounded to expound her form sublime, Her fate heroic and calamitous;

Fronting the dreadful mysteries of Time, Unvanquish'd in defeat and desolation, Undaunted in the hopeless conflagration

Of the day setting on her baffled prime.

Baffled and beaten back she works on still, Weary and sick of soul she works the

more,

Sustain'd by her indomitable will:

The hands shall fashion and the brain shall pore,

And all her sorrow shall be turn'd to labor,

Till Death the friend-foe piercing with his sabre

That mighty heart of hearts ends bitter

war.

But as if blacker night could dawn on night,

With tenfold gloom on moonless night unstarr'd,

A sense more tragic than defeat and blight, More desperate than strife with hope

debarr'd,

More fatal than the adamantine Never Encompassing her passionate endeavor, Dawns glooming in her tenebrous regard:

What he drank then was in hue
Of a heavy sombre blue :
First he reel'd and then he crept,
Then lay faint but never slept.

And the next who took the cup
With the white milk fill'd it up;
What he drank at first seem'd blood,
Then turn'd thick and brown as mud:
And he mov'd away as slow
As a weary ox may go.

But the next who took the cup
With sweet honey fill'd it up;
Nathless that which he did drink
Was thin fluid black as ink:
As he went he stumbled soon,
And lay still in deathlike swoon.

She the while without a word
Unto all the cup preferr'd;
Blandly smil'd and sweetly laugh'd
As each mingled his own draught.

And the next who took the cup
To the sunshine held it up,
Gave it back and did not taste;
It was empty when replaced :
First he bow'd a reverent bow,
Then he kiss'd her on the brow.

But the next who took the cup
Without mixture drank it up;
When she took it back from him
It was full unto the brim :
He with a right bold embrace
Kiss'd her sweet lips face to face.

Then she sang with blithest cheer :

Who has thirst, come here, come here!
Nectar that is golden light

In the cup of crystal bright,
Nectar that is sunny fire

Warm as warmest heart's desire:
Pitcher never lacketh more,
Arm is never tir'd to pour :
Honey, water, milk, or wine
Mingle with the draught divine,
Drink it pure, or drink it not;
Each is free to choose his lot;
Am I old? or am I cold?
Only two have kiss'd me bold!

She was young and fair and gay As that young and glorious day.

FROM "HE HEARD HER SING"

AND thus all-expectant abiding I waited not long, for soon

A boat came gliding and gliding out in the light of the moon,

Gliding with muffled oars, slowly, a thin dark line,

Round from the shadowing shores into the silver shine

Of the clear moon westering now, and still drew on and on,

While the water before its prow breaking and glistering shone,

Slowly in silence strange; and the rower row'd till it lay

Afloat within easy range deep in the curve of the bay;

And besides the rower were two: a Woman, who sat in the stern,

And Her by her fame I knew, one of those fames that burn,

Startling and kindling the world, one whose likeness we every where see; And a man reclining half-curl'd with an in

dolent grace at her knee, The Signor, lord of her choice; and he lightly touch'd a guitar;

A guitar for that glorious voice! Illumine the sun with a star!

She sat superb and erect, stately, all-happy,

serene,

Her right hand toying uncheck'd with the hair of that page of a Queen; With her head and her throat and her bust like the bust and the throat and the head

Of Her who has long been dust, of her who shall never be dead,

Preserv'd by the potent art made trebly potent by love,

While the transient ages depart from under the heavens above,

Preserv'd in the color and line on the canvas fulgently flung

By Him the Artist divine who triumph'd and vanish'd so young:

Surely there rarely hath been a lot more to be envied in life

Than thy lot, O Fornarina, whom Raphael's heart took to wife.

There was silence yet for a time save the tinkling capricious and quaint, Then She lifted her voice sublime, no longer tender and faint,

Pathetic and tremulous, no! but firm as a column it rose,

Rising solemn and slow with a full rich swell to the close,

Firm as a marble column soaring with noble pride

In a triumph of rapture solemn to some Hero deified;

In a rapture of exultation made calm by its stress intense,

In a triumph of consecration and a jubilation immense.

And the Voice flow'd on and on, and ever it swell'd as it pour'd,

Till the stars that throbb'd as they shone seem'd throbbing with it in accord;

Till the moon herself in my dream, still Empress of all the night,

Was only that voice supreme translated into pure light :

And I lost all sense of the earth though I still had sense of the sea; And I saw the stupendous girth of a tree like the Norse World-Tree; And its branches fill'd all the sky, and the deep sea water'd its root,

And the clouds were its leaves on high and the stars were its silver fruit;

Yet the stars were the notes of the singing and the moon was the voice of the

song,

Through the vault of the firmament ring

ing and swelling resistlessly strong; And the whole vast night was a shell for that music of manifold might,

And was strain'd by the stress of the swell of the music yet vaster than night. And I saw as a crystal fountain whose shaft was a column of light

More high than the loftiest mountain ascend the abyss of the night;

And its spray fill'd all the sky, and the

clouds were the clouds of its spray, Which glitter'd in star-points on high and fill'd with pure silver the bay; And ever in rising and falling it sang as it rose and it fell,

And the heavens with their pure azure walling all puls'd with the pulse of its swell,

For the stars were the notes of the singing and the moon was the voice of the song Through the vault of the firmament ringing and swelling ineffably strong;

And the waves of its blood seem'd to dash on the shore of the sky to the cope With the stress of the fire of a passion and yearning of limitless scope, Vast fire of a passion and yearning, keen torture of rapture intense,

A most unendurable burning consuming the soul with the sense :

"Love, love only, forever love with its torture of bliss ;

All the world's glories can never equal two souls in one kiss :

Love, and ever love wholly; love in all time and all space ;

Life is consummate then solely in the death of a burning embrace."

Had look'd upon the glory of that day
In Sicily beneath the summer sun,
Would not have dream'd that Death was
reigning there

In shape so terrible; - for all the road
Was like an avenue of Paradise,

Life, and full flame of loveliness of life. The red geraniums blaz'd in banks breasthigh,

And from the open doors in the white walls
Scents of magnolia and of heliotrope
Came to the street; filmy aurora-flowers
Open'd and died in the hour, and fell away
In many-color'd showers upon the ground;
Nebulous masses of the pale blue stars
Made light upon the darkness of the green,
Through openings in the thickets over-
arch'd;

Where roses, white and yellow and full

From the green sheath, till all the green was hid

By the white spread of giant-blowing wings.
In the cool shadow heaps of tuberose
Lay by the fountains in the market-place,
Among the purple fruit. The jalousies
Of the tall houses shut against the sun
Were wreath'd with trails of velvet-glossy
bells:

And here and there one had not been unclos'd

Yesterday, and the vivid shoots had run
Over it in a night, and seal'd it fast
With tendril, and bright leaf, and drops of
flower.

And in and out the balconies thin stems Went twisting, and the chains of passionflowers,

Bud, blossom, and phantasmal orb of fruit Alternate, swung, and lengthen'd every hour.

And fine-leav'd greenery crept from bower to bower

With thick white star-flakes scatter'd ; and the bloom

Of orient lilies, and the rainbow-blue
Of iris shot up stately from the grass;
And through the wavering shadows crim-
son sparks

Pois'd upon brittle stalks, glanced up and

down;

And shining darkness of the cypress clos'd The deep withdrawing glades of evergreen, Lit up far off with oleander pyres.