II

I

Vinvela

My love is a son of the hill. He pursues the flying deer. His gray dogs are panting around him; his bow-string sounds in the wind. Whether by the fount of the rock or by the stream of the mountain thou liest; when the rushes are nodding with the wind, and the mist is flying over thee, let me approach my love unperceived, and see him from the rock. Lovely I saw thee first by the aged oak of Branno; thou wert returning tall from the chace; the fairest among thy friends

Shilric

How lovely is the heaven of this night,
How deadly still is earth! The forest brute
Has crept into his cave, and laid himself
Where sleep has made him harmless like the lamb.
The horrid snake, his venom now forgot,
Is still and innocent as the honied flower
Under his head: and man, in whom are met
Leopard and snake, and all the gentleness
And beauty of the young lamb and the bud,
Has let his ghost out, put his thoughts aside
And lent his senses unto death himself.

1

He was a traveler west of the river,
with wealth and eminence rare in this world.
All day long in vermilion towers
. . . . . dancing and singing songs.

The cup filled again and again, till he's drunk as mud;
lightly, lightly trading golden goblets,
wearing out the day tasting joys, pursuing pleasures —
Some people are rich and never go home.

2

He was a traveler west of the river;
only he knew how lonely he was,

The saloon is gone up the creek
with the black sand round its
mouth, it went floating like

a backhouse on the Mississippi in
flood time but it went up
the creek into Limbo from whence

only empty bottles ever return
and that's where George is
He's gone upstream to ask 'em

to let him in at the hole
in the wall where the W.C.T.U.
sits knitting elastic stockings

for varicose veins. Poor George
he's got a job now as janitor
in Lincoln School but the saloon

is gone forever with pictures

A thousand threads, ten-thousand strands
are tied to the child's arm.
They hope the child will live a good long life,
a year for every inch of cord!

They make a fake tiger, and hope it will seem real,
then hang the ferocious beast outside the door.
If the evil spirits have any brains at all
when they see this thing, they will not be afraid.

Thrice happy, who free from ambition and pride,
In a rural retreat, has a quiet fire side;
I love my fire side, there I long to repair,
And to drink a delightful oblivion of care.
Oh! when shall I 'scape to be truly my own,
From the noise, and the smoke, and the bustle of town?
Then I live, then I triumph, whene'er I retire
From the pomp and parade that the many admire.
Hail, ye woods and ye lawns, shady vales, sunny hills,
And the warble of birds, and the murmur of rills,
Ye flow'rs of all hues that embroider the ground,

Father, thy hand
Hath reared these venerable columns, thou
Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down
Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose
All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun,
Budded, and shook their green leaves in thy breeze,
And shot toward heaven. The century-living crow
Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died
Among their branches, till, at last, they stood,
As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark,
Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold
Communion with his Maker.

The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them--ere he framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,
Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down,
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication. For his simple heart
Might not resist the sacred influence
Which, from the stilly twilight of the place,
And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven
Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound