Before the Curfew | Page 4

of fiction.
And Truth who soared
descends to-day
Bearing an angel's wreath away,
Its lilies at thy feet
to lay
With Heaven's own benediction.
A WELCOME TO DR. BENJAMIN APTHORP GOULD
ON HIS RETURN FROM SOUTH AMERICA
AFTER FIFTEEN YEARS DEVOTED TO CATALOGUING THE

STARS OF THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE
Read at the Dinner given at the Hotel Vendome, May 6,1885.
ONCE more Orion and the sister Seven
Look on thee from the skies
that hailed thy birth,--
How shall we welcome thee, whose home was
heaven,
From thy celestial wanderings back to earth?
Science has kept her midnight taper burning
To greet thy coming
with its vestal flame;
Friendship has murmured, "When art thou
returning?"
"Not yet! Not yet!" the answering message came.
Thine was unstinted zeal, unchilled devotion,
While the blue realm
had kingdoms to explore,--
Patience, like his who ploughed the

unfurrowed ocean,
Till o'er its margin loomed San Salvador.
Through the long nights I see thee ever waking,
Thy footstool earth,
thy roof the hemisphere,
While with thy griefs our weaker hearts are
aching,
Firm as thine equatorial's rock-based pier.
The souls that voyaged the azure depths before thee
Watch with thy
tireless vigils, all unseen,--
Tycho and Kepler bend benignant o'er
thee,
And with his toy-like tube the Florentine,--
He at whose word the orb that bore him shivered
To find her central
sovereignty disowned,
While the wan lips of priest and pontiff
quivered,
Their jargon stilled, their Baal disenthroned.
Flamsteed and Newton look with brows unclouded,
Their strife
forgotten with its faded scars,--
(Titans, who found the world of space
too crowded
To walk in peace among its myriad stars.)
All cluster round thee,--seers of earliest ages,
Persians, Ionians,
Mizraim's learned kings,
From the dim days of Shinar's hoary sages

To his who weighed the planet's fluid rings.
And we, for whom the northern heavens are lighted,
For whom the
storm has passed, the sun has smiled,
Our clouds all scattered, all our
stars united,
We claim thee, clasp thee, like a long-lost child.
Fresh from the spangled vault's o'er-arching splendor,
Thy lonely
pillar, thy revolving dome,
In heartfelt accents, proud, rejoicing,
tender,
We bid thee welcome to thine earthly home!
TO FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE
AT A DINNER GIVEN HIM ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY,

DECEMBER 12, 1885

With a bronze statuette of John of Bologna's Mercury,
presented by a
few friends.
FIT emblem for the altar's side,
And him who serves its daily need,

The stay, the solace, and the guide
Of mortal men, whate'er his creed!
Flamen or Auspex, Priest or Bonze,
He feeds the upward-climbing
fire,
Still teaching, like the deathless bronze,
Man's noblest
lesson,--to aspire.
Hermes lies prone by fallen Jove,
Crushed are the wheels of Krishna's
car,
And o'er Dodona's silent grove
Streams the white, ray from
Bethlehem's star.
Yet snatched from Time's relentless clutch,
A godlike shape, that
human hands
Have fired with Art's electric touch,
The herald of
Olympus stands.
Ask not what ore the furnace knew;
Love mingled with the flowing
mass,
And lends its own unchanging hue,
Like gold in Corinth's
molten brass.
Take then our gift; this airy form
Whose bronze our benedictions gild,

The hearts of all its givers warm
With love by freezing years
unchilled.
With eye undimmed, with strength unworn,
Still toiling in your
Master's field,
Before you wave the growths unshorn,
Their ripened
harvest yet to yield.
True servant of the Heavenly Sire,
To you our tried affection clings,

Bids you still labor, still aspire,
But clasps your feet and steals their
wings.
TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

THIS is your month, the month of "perfect days,"
Birds in full song
and blossoms all ablaze.
Nature herself your earliest welcome
breathes,
Spreads every leaflet, every bower inwreathes;
Carpets
her paths for your returning feet,
Puts forth her best your coming
steps to greet;
And Heaven must surely find the earth in tune
When
Home, sweet Home, exhales the breath of June.
These blessed days
are waning all too fast,
And June's bright visions mingling with the
past;
Lilacs have bloomed and faded, and the rose
Has dropped its petals,
but the clover blows,
And fills its slender tubes with honeyed sweets;

The fields are pearled with milk-white margarites;
The dandelion,
which you sang of old,
Has lost its pride of place, its crown of gold,

But still displays its feathery-mantled globe,
Which children's
breath, or wandering winds unrobe.
These were your humble friends;
your opened eyes
Nature had trained her common gifts to prize;
Not
Cam nor Isis taught you to despise
Charles, with his muddy margin
and the harsh,
Plebeian grasses of the reeking marsh.
New
England's home-bred scholar, well you knew
Her soil, her speech, her
people, through and through,
And loved them ever with the love that
holds
All sweet, fond memories in its fragrant folds.
Though far
and wide your winged words have flown,
Your daily presence kept
you all our own,
Till, with a sorrowing sigh, a thrill of pride,
We
heard your summons, and you left our side
For larger duties and for
tasks untried.
How pleased the Spaniards for a while to claim
This frank Hidalgo
with the liquid name,
Who stored their classics on his crowded
shelves
And loved their Calderon as they did themselves!
Before
his eyes what changing pageants pass!
The bridal feast how near the
funeral mass!
The death-stroke falls,--the Misereres wail;
The