1.

THE GATHERING OF THE DEAD.

The day is cloudy;—it should be so:
And the clouds in flocks to the eastward go;
For the world may not see the glory there,
Where Christ and His Saints are met in the air.
There is a stir among all things round,
Like the shock of an earthquake underground,
And there is music in the motion,
As soft and deep as a summer ocean.
All things that sleep awake to-day,
 For the Cross and the crown are won;
  The winds of spring
  Sweet songs may bring

Makes Nature maps? since that in thee
She's drawn an university;
Or strives she in so small a piece
To sum the arts and sciences?
Once she writ only text-hand, when
She scribbled giants and no men:
But now in her decrepid years
She dashes dwarfs in characters,
And makes one single farthing bear
The creed, commandments, and Lord's prayer.
Would she turn Art, and imitate
Monte-regio's flying gnat?
Would she the Golden Legend shut
Within the cloister of a nut;
Or else a musket bullet rear
Into a vast and mighty sphere?

The sunset's smile had left the sky,
The moon rose calm and fair,
As low a little maiden knelt
To breathe her nightly prayer; —
And thus her brief petition rose,
In simple words and few:
— Dear Lord, please send us blessed dreams,
And let them all come true! —

O, I have stood in temples grand,
Where in the rainbowed gloom
Rose pompous prayers from priestly lips,
Through clouds of dense perfume
But never one has seemed to me
So guileless, pure, and new, —
— Dear Lord, please send us blessed dreams,

The poplar drops beside the way
Its tasselled plumes of silver-gray;
The chestnut pouts its great brown buds, impatient for the laggard May.

The honeysuckles lace the wall;
The hyacinths grow fair and tall;
And mellow sun and pleasant wind and odorous bees are over all.

Down looking in this snow-white bud,
How distant seems the war's red flood!
How far remote the streaming wounds, the sickening scent of human blood!

For Nature does not recognize
This strife that rends the earth and skies;

Thus have I carried thee all England through,
A resting-place for my world-wearied eye,
The sunset spot in this dull evening sky,
The streak of gold that bounds the twilight view!
And I have felt far off in many an hour
That absent city's soul-restraining power,
Like scents from Eden freighted with a charm
For tearful eyes and foreheads worn and pale.
As he who dwells upon some moorland farm,
Far in the windings of a mountain-vale,
Feels that he is not lonely, when at even
He journeys homeward from his toil, and sees

The brown buds thicken on the trees,
Unbound, the free streams sing,
As March leads forth across the leas
The wild and windy spring.

Where in the fields the melted snow
Leaves hollows warm and wet,
Ere many days will sweetly blow
The first blue violet.

Dear flower-germs, which so long have lain
Within your wintry tomb,
Listening for April's vital rain
To call you into bloom, —

O push the damp, dead leaves apart,
And spread your blossoms o'er
The little grave by which my heart
Sits weeping evermore!

Chose italienne o u Shakspeare a passe
Mais que Ronsard fit superbement française,
Fine basilique au large diocese,
Saint-Pierre-des-Vers, immense et condense,

Elle, ta marraine, et Lui qui t'a pense,
Dogme entier toujours debout sous l'exegese
Même edmondscheresque ou francisquesarceyse,
Sonnet, force acquise et tresor amasse,

Ceux-la sont tres bons et toujours venerables,
Ayant procure leur luxe aux miserables
Et l'or fou qui sied aux pauvres glorieux,

Aux poetes fiers comme les gueux d'Espagne,

I come with chaplet woven new
From May-day flowers, to fade away;
You come to-night, brave boys in blue,
With record bright, to last for aye.

Yet all I have I gladly bring
With heart and voice at your command;
I only wish the words I sing
Were worthier of your noble band —

A living wreath of lasting fame
To match your deeds that fill the world.
Ah, lyric vain! each hero's name
Is on your banners' folds unfurled.

Those stars are there in setting blue,
Because you answered to the call.
We bring no enlogy to you;

A churchyard with a cloister running round
And quaint old effigies in act of prayer,
And painted banners mouldering strangely there
Where mitred prelates and grave doctors sleep,
Memorials of a consecrated ground!
Such is this antique room, a haunted place
Where dead men's spirits come, and angels keep
Long hours of watch with wings in silence furled.
Early and late have I kept vigil here:
And I have seen the moonlight shadows trace
Dim glories on the missal's blue and gold,
The work of my scholastic sires, that told

Back from Southern scenes of blood
Came the joyous victors home,
In a blue-clad bannered flood
Pouring through Columbia's Rome,
While the crowd rolled and surged all around.
High the tattered banners wave
Proudly o'er the laurelled brave,
As above the hero's grave,
Sacred ground.

In the dust-cloud overhead
Troops a silent spectral host;
By the foeman's bullet sped
They have yielded up the ghost,
And the Southern pines wave o'er their tomb.
And the hollow rolling tread
Is the voices of the dead,