Rose and Roof-Tree | Page 8

love's homeward tide.
And the moon hangs low in the elm.
But, bitterly repenting of his sin,
Oh, bitterly he learned to look
within
Sweet Jessamine's clear depth--when the past, dead,
Mocked
him, and wild, waste years forever fled!
And the moon hangs low in the elm.
Late, late, oh, late beneath the tree stood two!
In awe and anguish
wondering: "Is it true?"
Two that were each most like to some wan
wraith:
Yet each on each looked with a living faith.
And the moon hangs low in the elm.

Even to the tree-top sang the wedding-bell;
Even to the tree-top tolled
the passing knell.
Beneath it Walt and Jessamine were wed;

Beneath it many a year she lieth dead!
And the moon hangs low in the elm.
Here stands the great tree still. But age has crept
Through every coil,
while Walt each night has kept
The tryst alone. Hark! with what
windy might
The boughs chant o'er her grave their burial-rite!
And the moon hangs low in the elm.
GRIEF'S HERO.
A youth unto herself Grief took,
Whom everything of joy forsook,

And men passed with denying head,
Saying: "'T were better he were
dead."
Grief took him, and with master-touch
Molded his being. I marveled
much
To see her magic with the clay,
So much she gave--and took
away.
Daily she wrought, and her design
Grew daily clearer and
more fine,
To make the beauty of his shape
Serve for the spirit's
free escape.
With liquid fire she filled his eyes.
She graced his lips
with swift surmise
Of sympathy for others' woe,
And made his
every fibre flow
In fairer curves. On brow and chin
And tinted
cheek, drawn clean and thin,
She sculptured records rich, great Grief!

She made him loving, made him lief.
I marveled; for, where others saw
A failing frame with many a flaw,

Meseemed a figure I beheld
Fairer than anything of eld

Fashioned from sunny marble. Here
Nature was artist with no peer.

No chisel's purpose could have caught
These lines, nor brush their
secret wrought.
Not so the world weighed, busily
Pursuing drossy
industry;
But, saturated with success,
Well-guarded by a soft excess

Of bodily ease, gave little heed
To him that held not by their creed,


Save o'er the beauteous youth to moan:
"A pity that he is not
grown
To our good stature and heavier weight,
To bear his share of
our full freight."
Meanwhile, thus to himself he spoke:
"Oh, noble
is the knotted oak,
And sweet the gush of sylvan streams,
And good
the great sun's gladding beams,
The blush of life upon the field,
The
silent might that mountains wield.
Still more I love to mix with men,

Meeting the kindly human ken;
To feel the force of faithful
friends--
The thirst for smiles that never ends.
"Yet precious more than all of these
I hold great Sorrow's mysteries,

Whereby Gehenna's sultry gale
Is made to lift the golden veil

'Twixt heaven's starry-spherèd light
Of truth and our dim, sun-blent
sight.
Joy comes to ripen; but 'tis Grief
That garners in the grainy
sheaf.
Time was I feared to know or feel
The spur of aught but
gilded weal;
To bear aloft the victor, Fame,
Would ev'n have
champed a stately shame
Of bit and bridle. But my fears
Fell off in
the pure bath of tears.
And now with sinews fresh and strong
I
stride, to summon with a song
The deep, invigorating truth
That
makes me younger than my youth.
"O Sorrow, deathless thy delight!

Deathless it were but for our slight
Endurance! Truth like thine, too
rare,
We dare but take in scantiest share."
He died: the creatures of his kind
Fared on. Not one had known his
mind.
But the unnamed yearnings of the air,
The eternal sky's
wide-searching stare,
The undertone of brawling floods,
And the
old moaning of the woods
Grew full of memory.
The sun

Many a brave heart has shone upon
Since then, of men
who walked abroad
For joy and gladness praising God.
But
widowed Grief lives on alone:
She hath not chosen, of them, one.
A FACE IN THE STREET.

Poor, withered face, that yet was once so fair,
Grown ashen-old in the
wild fires of lust--
Thy star-like beauty, dimm'd with earthly dust,

Yet breathing of a purer native air;--
They who whilom, cursed
vultures, sought a share
Of thy dead womanhood, their greed unjust

Have satisfied, have stripped and left thee bare.
Still, like a leaf
warped by the autumn gust,
And driving to the end, thou wrapp'st in
flame
And perfume all thy hollow-eyed decay,
Feigning on those
gray cheeks the blush that Shame
Took with her when she fled long
since away.
Ah God! rain fire upon this foul-souled city
That gives
such death, and spares its men,--for pity!
THE BATHER.
Standing here alone,
Let me pause awhile,
Drinking in the light

Ere, with plunge of white limbs prone,
I raise the sparkling flight

Of foam-flakes volatile.
Now, in natural guise,
I woo the deathless breeze,
Through me
rushing fleet
The joy of life, in swift surprise:
I grow with growing
wheat,
And burgeon with the trees.
Lo! I fetter Time,
So he cannot run;
And in Eden again--
Flash of
memory sublime!--
Dwell naked, without stain,
Beneath the dazed
sun.
All yields brotherhood;
Each least thing that lives,
Wrought of
primal spores,
Deepens this wild sense of good
That, on these
shaggy shores,
Return to nature gives.
Oh, that some solitude
Were