Ride to the Lady | Page 8

door is wide:
"Laugh and sigh, live and die,--
The world swings
round; I know not, I,
If north or south mine arrows fly!"
And sometimes, while he works, he dreams,
And on his soul a vision
gleams:
Some storied field fought long ago,
Where arrows fell as
thick as snow.
His breath comes fast, his eyes grow bright,
To think
upon that ancient fight.
Oh, leaping from the strained string
Against
an armored Wrong to ring,
Brave the songs that arrows sing!
He
weighs the finished flight:
"Live and die; by and by
The sun kills
dark; I know not, I,
In what good fight mine arrows fly!"

Or at the gray hour, weary grown,
When curfew o'er the wold is
blown,
He sees, as in a magic glass,
Some lost and lonely
mountain-pass;
And lo! a sign of deathful rout
The mocking vine
has wound about,--
An earth-fixed arrow by a spring,
All greenly
mossed, a mouldered thing;
That stifled shaft no more shall sing!

He shakes his head in doubt.
"Laugh and sigh, live and die,--
The
hand is blind: I know not, I,
In what lost pass mine arrows lie!
One
to east, one to west,
Another for the eagle's breast,--
The archer and
the wind know best!"
The stars are in the sky;
He lays his arrows
by.
A NEST IN A LYRE
As sign before a playhouse serves
A giant Lyre, ornately gilded,
On
whose convenient coignes and curves
The pert brown sparrows late
have builded.
They flit, and flirt, and prune their wings,
Not awed
at all by golden glitter,
And make among the silent strings
Their
satisfied ephemeral twitter.
Ah, somewhat so we perch and flit,
And spy some crumb and dash to
win it,
And with a witty chirping twit
Our sheltering Time--there's
nothing in it!
In Life's large frame, a glorious Lyre's,
We nest,
content, our season flighty,
Nor guess we brush the powerful wires

Might witch the stars with music mighty.
THISBE
The garden within was shaded,
And guarded about from sight;
The
fragrance flowed to the south wind,
The fountain leaped to the light.
And the street without was narrow,
And dusty, and hot, and mean;

But the bush that bore white roses,
She leaned to the fence between:
And softly she sought a crevice

In that barrier blank and tall,
And
shyly she thrust out through it
Her loveliest bud of all.

And tender to touch, and gracious,
And pure as the moon's pure shine,

The full rose paled and was perfect,--
For whose eyes, for whose
lips, but mine!
THE SPRING BEAUTIES
The Puritan Spring Beauties stood freshly clad for church;
A Thrush,
white-breasted, o'er them sat singing on his perch. "Happy be! for fair
are ye!" the gentle singer told them,
But presently a buff-coat Bee
came booming up to scold them. "Vanity, oh, vanity!
Young maids,
beware of vanity!"
Grumbled out the buff-coat Bee,
Half
parson-like, half soldierly.
The sweet-faced maidens trembled, with pretty, pinky blushes,
Convinced that it was wicked to listen to the Thrushes;
And when,
that shady afternoon, I chanced that way to pass, They hung their little
bonnets down and looked into the grass, All because the buff-coat Bee

Lectured them so solemnly:--
"Vanity, oh, vanity!
Young maids,
beware of vanity!"
KINSHIP
A lily grew in the tangle,
In a flame red garment dressed,
And many
a ruby spangle
Besprinkled her tawny breast.
And the silken moth sailed by her
With a swift and a snow-white sail;

Not a gilt-girt bee came nigh her,
Nor a fly in his gay green mail.
And the bronze-brown wings and the golden,
O'er the billowing
meadows blown,
Were still as by magic holden
From the lily that
flamed alone;
Till over the fragrant tangle
A wanderer winging went,
And with
many a ruby spangle
Were his tawny vans besprent.
And he
hovered one moment stilly
O'er the thicket, her mazy bower,
Then
he sank to the heart of the lily,
And they seemed but a single flower.

COMPENSATION
The brook ran laughing from the shade,
And in the sunshine danced
all day:
The starlight and the moonlight made
Its glimmering path a
Milky Way.
The blue sky burned, with summer fired;
For parching fields, for
pining flowers,
The spirits of the air desired
The brook's bright life
to shed in showers.
It gave its all that thirst to slake;
Its dusty channel lifeless lay;
Now
softest flowers, white-foaming, make
Its winding bed a Milky Way.
WHEN WILLOWS GREEN
When goldenly the willows green,
And, mirrored in the sunset pool,

Hang wavering, wild-rose clouds between:
When robins call in
twilights cool:
What is it we await?
Who lingers and is late?
What strange unrest,
what yearning stirs us all
When willows green, when robins call?
When fields of flowering grass respire
A sweet that seems the breath
of Peace,
And liquid-voiced the thrushes choir,
Oh, whence the
sense of glad release?
What is it life uplifts?
Who entered, bearing gifts?
What floods
from heaven the being overpower
When thrushes choir, when grasses
flower?
AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
(AD COMITEM JUNIOREM)
Comrade Youth! Sit down with me
Underneath the summer tree,

Cool green dome whose shade is sweet,
Where the sunny roadways

meet,
See, the ancient finger-post,
Silver-bleached with rain and
shine,
Warns us like a noon-day ghost:
That way's yours, and this
way's mine!
I would hold you with delays
Here at parting of the
ways.
Hold you! I