Dreams and Days | Page 5

from you, then.

This little song my whole heart carries,
And ne'er will bear it back
again.
For if its silent passion grieve you,
My heart would then too heavy
grow;--
And it can never, never leave you,
If joy of yours must with
it go!
SOUTH-WIND
Soft-throated South, breathing of summer's ease
(Sweet breath,
whereof the violet's life is made!)
Through lips moist-warm, as thou
hadst lately stayed
'Mong rosebuds, wooing to the cheeks of these

Loth blushes faint and maidenly:--rich breeze,
Still doth thy honeyed
blowing bring a shade
Of sad foreboding. In thy hand is laid
The
power to build or blight the fruit of trees,
The deep, cool grass, and
field of thick-combed grain.
Even so my Love may bring me joy or woe,
Both measureless, but
either counted gain
Since given by her. For pain and pleasure flow

Like tides upon us of the self-same sea.
Tears are the gems of joy and
misery.

THE LOVER'S YEAR
Thou art my morning, twilight, noon, and eve,
My summer and my
winter, spring and fall;
For Nature left on thee a touch of all
The
moods that come to gladden or to grieve
The heart of Time, with
purpose to relieve
From lagging sameness. So do these forestall
In
thee such o'erheaped sweetnesses as pall
Too swiftly, and the taster
tasteless leave.
Scenes that I love to me always remain
Beautiful, whether under
summer sun
Beheld, or, storm-dark, stricken across with rain.
So,
through all humors, thou 'rt the same sweet one:
Doubt not I love thee
well in each, who see
Thy constant change is changeful constancy.
NEW WORLDS
With my beloved I lingered late one night.
At last the hour when I
must leave her came:
But, as I turned, a fear I could not name

Possessed me that the long sweet evening might
Prelude some sudden
storm, whereby delight
Should perish. What if death, ere dawn,
should claim
One of us? What, though living, not the same
Each
should appear to each in morning-light?
Changed did I find her, truly, the next day:
Ne'er could I see her as of
old again.
That strange mood seemed to draw a cloud away,
And let
her beauty pour through every vein
Sunlight and life, part of me.
Thus the lover
With each new morn a new world may discover.
NIGHT IN NEW YORK
Haunted by unknown feet--
Ways of the midnight hour!
Strangely
you murmur below me,
Strange is your half-silent power.
Places of
life and of death,
Numbered and named as streets,
What, through
your channels of stone,
Is the tide that unweariedly beats?
A
whisper, a sigh-laden breath,
Is all that I hear of its flowing.


Footsteps of stranger and foe--
Footsteps of friends, could we meet--

Alike to me in my sorrow;
Alike to a life left alone.
Yet swift as
my heart they throb,
They fall thick as tears on the stone:
My spirit
perchance may borrow
New strength from their eager tone.
Still ever that slip and slide
Of the feet that shuffle or glide,
And
linger or haste through the populous waste
Of the shadowy, dim-lit
square!
And I know not, from the sound,
As I sit and ponder within,

The goal to which those steps are bound,--
On hest of mercy, or
hest of sin,
Or joy's short-measured round;
Yet a meaning deep they
bear
In their vaguely muffled din.
Roar of the multitude,
Chafe of the million-crowd,
To this you are
all subdued
In the murmurous, sad night-air!
Yet whether you
thunder aloud,
Or hush your tone to a prayer,
You chant amain
through the modern maze
The only epic of our days.
Still as death are the places of life;
The city seems crumbled and gone,

Sunk 'mid invisible deeps--
The city so lately rife
With the stir of
brain and brawn.
Haply it only sleeps;
But what if indeed it were
dead,
And another earth should arise
To greet the gray of the dawn?

Faint then our epic would wail
To those who should come in our
stead.
But what if that earth were ours?
What if, with holier eyes,

We should meet the new hope, and not fail?
Weary, the night grows pale:
With a blush as of opening flowers

Dimly the east shines red.
Can it be that the morn shall fulfil
My
dream, and refashion our clay

As the poet may fashion his rhyme?

Hark to that mingled scream
Rising from workshop and mill--

Hailing some marvelous sight;
Mighty breath of the hours,
Poured
through the trumpets of steam;
Awful tornado of time,
Blowing us
whither it will!
God has breathed in the nostrils of night,
And behold, it is day!

THE SONG-SPARROW
Glimmers gray the leafless thicket
Close beside my garden gate,

Where, so light, from post to picket
Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate;

Who, with meekly folded wing,
Comes to sun himself and sing.
It was there, perhaps, last year,
That his little house he built;
For he
seems to perk and peer,
And to twitter, too, and tilt
The bare
branches in between,
With a fond, familiar mien.
Once, I know, there was a nest,
Held there by the sideward thrust

Of those twigs that touch his breast;
Though 'tis gone now. Some
rude gust
Caught it, over-full of snow,--
Bent the bush,--and stole it
so.
Thus our highest holds are lost,
In the ruthless winter's wind,
When,
with swift-dismantling frost,
The green woods we dwelt in, thinn'd

Of their leafage, grow