Songs from Vagabondia | Page 6

sobbing!
A HILL SONG.

Hills where once my love and I
Let the hours go laughing by!
All
your woods and dales are sad,--
You have lost your Oread.
Falling
leaves! Silent woodlands!
Half your loveliness is fled.
Golden-rod,
wither now!
Winter winds, come hither now!
All the summer joy is
dead.
There's a sense of something gone
In the grass I linger on.
There's
an under-voice that grieves
In the rustling of the leaves.
Pine-clad
peaks! Rushing waters!
Glens where we were once so glad!
There's
a light passed from you,
There's a joy outcast from you,--
You have
lost your Oread.
AT SEA.
As a brave man faces the foe,
Alone against hundreds, and sees Death
grin in his teeth,
But, shutting his lips, fights on to the end
Without
speech, without hope, without flinching,--
So, silently, grimly, the
steamer
Lurches ahead through the night.
A beacon-light far off,
Twinkling across the waves like a star!
But
no star in the dark overhead!
The splash of waters at the prow, and
the evil light
Of the death-fires flitting like will-o'-the-wisps beneath!
And beyond Silence and night!
I sit by the taffrail,
Alone in the dark and the blown cold mist and the
spray,
Feeling myself swept on irresistibly,
Sunk in the night and
the sea, and made one with their footfall-less onrush, Letting myself be
borne like a spar adrift
Helplessly into the night.
Without fear, without wish,
Insensate save of a dull, crushed ache in
my heart,
Careless whither the steamer is going,
Conscious only as
in a dream of the wet and the dark
And of a form that looms and
fades indistinctly
Everywhere out of the night.
O love, how came I here?
Shall I wake at thy side and smile at my

dream?
The dream that grips me so hard that I cannot wake nor stir!
O love! O my own love, found but to be lost!
My soul sends over the
waters a wild inarticulate cry,
Like a gull's scream heard in the night.
The mist creeps closer. The beacon
Vanishes astern. The sea's
monotonous noises
Lapse through the drizzle with a listless,
subsiding cadence. And thou, O love, and the sea throb on in my brain
together, While the steamer plunges along,
Butting its way through
the night.
ISABEL.
In her body's perfect sweet
Suppleness and languor meet,--
Arms
that move like lapsing billows,
Breasts that Love would make his
pillows,
Eyes where vision melts in bliss,
Lips that ripen to a kiss.
CONTEMPORARIES.
"A barbered woman's man,"--yes, so
He seemed to me a twelvemonth
since;
And so he may be--let it go--
Admit his flaws--we need not
wince
To find our noblest not all great.
What of it? He is still the
prince,
And we the pages of his state.
The world applauds his words; his fame
Is noised wherever
knowledge be;
Even the trader hears his name,
As one far inland
hears the sea;
The lady quotes him to the beau
Across a cup of
Russian tea;
They know him and they do not know.
I know him. In the nascent years
Men's eyes shall see him as one
crowned;
His voice shall gather in their ears
With each new age
prophetic sound;
And you and I and all the rest,
Whose brows
to-day are laurel-bound,
Shall be but plumes upon his crest.
A year ago this man was poor,--
This Alfred whom the nations praise;

He stood a beggar at my door
For one mere word to help him raise


From fainting limbs and shoulders bent
The burden of the weary
days;
And I withheld it--and he went.
I knew him then, as I know now,
Our largest heart, our loftiest mind;

Yet for the curls upon his brow
And for his lisp, I could not find

The helping word, the cheering touch.
Ah, to be just, as well as
kind,--
It costs so little and so much!
It seemed unmanly in my sight
That he, whose spirit was so strong

To lead the blind world to the light,
Should look so like the mincing
throng
Who advertise the tailor's art.
It angered me--I did him
wrong--
I grudged my groat and shut my heart.
I might have been the prophet's friend,
Helped him who is to help the
world!
Now, when the striving is at end,
The reek-stained
battle-banners furled,
And the age hears its muster-call,
Then I,
because his hair was curled,
I shall have lost my chance--that's all.
THE TWO BOBBIES.
Bobbie Burns and Bobbie Browning,
They're the boys I'd like to see.

Though I'm not the boy for Bobbie,
Bobbie is the boy for me!
Bobbie Browning was the good boy;
Turned the language inside out,

Wrote his plays and had his days,
Died--and held his peace, no
doubt.
Poor North Bobbie was the bad boy,--
Bad, bad, bad, bad Bobbie
Burns!
Loved and made the world his lover,
Kissed and
barleycomed by turns.
London's dweller, child of wisdom,
Kept his counsel, took his toll;

Ayrshire's vagrant paid the piper,
Lost the game--God save his soul!
Bobbie Burns and Bobbie Browning,
What's the difference, you see?


Bob the lover, Bob the lawyer;
Bobbie is the boy for me!
A TOAST.
Here's a health to thee, Roberts,
And here's a health to me;
And
here's to all the pretty girls
From Denver to the sea!
Here's to mine and here's to thine!
Now's the time