Hark! do I hear again the roar
Of the tides by the Indies sweeping down?
Or is it the surge from the viewless shore
That swells to bear me to my crown?
Life is hollow and cold and drear
With smiles that darken and hopes that flee;
And, far from its winds that faint and veer,
I am ready to sail the vaster sea!

Lord, Thou knowest I love Thee best;
And that scorning peril and toil and pain,
I held my way to the mystic West,
Glory for Thee and Thy Church to gain.
And Thou didst lead me, only Thou,
Cheering my heart in cloud and calm,

Let others wreaths of Roses twine
With scented leaves of Eglantine;
Enamell'd buds and gaudy flow'rs,
The pride of Flora's painted bow'rs;
Such common charms shall ne'er be wove
Around the brows of him I love.

—Fair are their beauties for a day,
But swiftly do they fade away;
Each Pink sends forth its choicest sweet
Aurora's warm embrace to meet;
And each inconstant breeze, that blows,
Steals essence from the musky Rose.

—Then lead me, Flora, to some vale,
Where, shelter'd from the fickle gale,
In modest garb, amidst the gloom,

Where did you get this money and estate?
'Twas by your labor honestly acquired,
Or left you when your relatives expired,
Else it is robber's booty, miser's bait.
That which you give the beggar at your gate
Is noble if your arms to get it tired;
If 'twas a legacy, 'tis nobly squired,
If 'twas a theft—good sir, your pride abate!

I once beheld a wolf that from his feast
Unto a starving cur the bones released
When he himself was gorged and sated through;
So thou, rich glutton, drop the leavings there,
And let the pauper have the mongrel's share,—

Let others seek the lying aids of art,
And bribe the passions to betray the heart;
Truth, sacred Truth, and Faith unskill'd to feign,
Fill my fond breast, and prompt my artless strain.

Say, did thy lover, in some happier hour,
Each ardent thought, in wild profusion pour?
With eager fondness on thy beauty gaze,
And talk with all the ecstasy of praise?
The heart sincere its pleasing tumult prov'd;
All, all declar'd that Theodosius lov'd.

Let raptur'd Fancy on that moment dwell,
When thy dear vows in trembling accents fell,

Have you ever seen a shining ship
Riding the broad-backed wave,
While the sailors pull the ropes and sing
The chantey's lusty stave?

Have you ever gazed from a headland's reach
Far out, into the blue,
To glimpse, at first a flashing mote
That to a tall ship grew,

A full-sailed ship on the great, broad sea
Heel-down and bearing home
All the romance from Homer's days
To now, across the foam?

For, purple-white in rippling dusks,
Or edged with sunset's fire,—
Behold, each ship is a phantom ship

A trumpet rang;—the turban'd line
Clash'd up their spears, the headsman's sign.
Then, like the iron in the forge,
Blazed thy dark visage, C ZERNI G EORGE !
He knew that trumpet's Turkish wail,
His guide through many a forest vale,
When, scattering like the hunted deer,
The Moslem felt his early spear;
He heard it when the Servian targe
Broke down the Delhi's desperate charge,
And o'er the flight his scimitar
Was like the flashing of a star:
That day, his courser to the knee
Was bathed in blood, and Servia free!

'Twas noon! a blood-red banner play'd
Above thy rampart porte, Belgrade;
From time to time the gong's deep swell
Rose thundering from the citadel;
And soon the trampling charger's din
Told of some mustering pomp within.
But all without was still and drear,
The long streets wore the hue of fear,
All desert, but where some quick eye
Peer'd from the curtain'd gallery.
Or crouching slow from roof to roof,
The Servian glanced, then shrank aloof,
Eager, yet dreading to look on
The business to be that day done.
The din grew louder, crowding feet

Out of
the stillness
of my own breast
emerges
the rising moon;
and when I turn to look at it—
the moon
in clumps of cloud.

RINGLETY-JING!
And what will we sing?
Some little crinkety-crankety thing
That rhymes and chimes,
And skips, sometimes,
As though wound up with a kink in the spring.
Grunkety-krung!
And chunkety-plung!
Sing the song that the bullfrog sung,—
A song of the soul
Of a mad tadpole
That met his fate in a leaky bowl:
And it's O for the first false wiggle he made
In a sea of pale pink lemonade!
And it's O for the thirst
Within him pent,
And the hopes that burst
As his reason went—
When his strong arm failed and his strength was spent!

An old lane, an old gate, an old house by a tree;
A wild wood, a wild brook—they will not let me be:
In boyhood I knew them, and still they call to me.

Down deep in my heart's core I hear them and my eyes
Through tear-mists behold them beneath the oldtime skies
'Mid bee-boom and rose-bloom and orchard-lands arise.

I hear them; and heartsick with longing is my soul,
To walk there, to dream there, beneath the sky's blue bowl;
Around me, within me, the weary world made whole.

To talk with the wild brook of all the long ago;