Voices moving about in the quiet house:
Thud of feet and a muffled shutting of doors:
Everyone yawning. Only the clocks are alert.

Out in the night there’s autumn-smelling gloom
Crowded with whispering trees; across the park
A hollow cry of hounds like lonely bells:
And I know that the clouds are moving across the moon;
The low, red, rising moon. Now herons call
And wrangle by their pool; and hooting owls
Sail from the wood above pale stooks of oats.

Waiting for sleep, I drift from thoughts like these;

1

1 AMAZING grace! (how sweet the sound!)
2 That sav'd a wretch like me!
3 I once was lost, but now am found;
4 Was blind, but now I see.

2

5 'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
6 And grace my fears reliev'd;
7 How precious did that grace appear,
8 The hour I first believ'd!

3

9 Thro' many dangers, toils, and snares,
10 I have already come;
11 'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
12 And grace will lead me home.

4

Between the mountain and the sea
I've made a happy landing;
And here a peace has come to me
That passeth understanding;
A shining faith and purity
Beyond demanding.
II
With palm below and pine above,
Where wings of gulls are gleaming;
By orange tree and olive grove,
From walls of airy seeming,
My roses beg me not to rove,
But linger dreaming.
III
So I'm in love with life again,
And would with joy dissever
My days from ways of worldly men,
And mingle with them never:

THE CROCUSES in the Square
Lend a winsome touch to the May;
The clouds are vanished away,
The weather is bland and fair;
Now peace seems everywhere.
Hark to the raucous, sullen cries:
“Extra! extra!”—tersely flies
The news, and a great hope mounts, or dies.

About the bulletin-boards
Dark knots of people surge;
Strained faces show, then merge
In the inconspicuous hordes
That yet are the Nation’s lords.
“Extra! extra! Big fight at sea!”
Was the luck with us? Is it victory?

The Greatest Writer of to-day
(With Maupassant I almost set him)
Said to me in a weary way,
The last occasion that I met him:
"Old chap, this world is more and more
Becoming bourgeois, blasé, blousy:
Thank God I've lived so long before
It got so definitely lousy."
II
Said I: "Old chap, I don't agree.
Why should one so dispraise the present?
For gainful guys like you and me,
It still can be extremely pleasant.
Have we not Women, Wine and Song -
A gleeful trio to my thinking;
So blithely we can get along

I don't dare speak too loudly,
some timbres could be fatal--

that string is not too strong
I think: and at times I have

to breathe. Or maybe I fear
my paraphrastic exhalations

will spoil the oiled perfection
of its sleekness, will mist

over that brightness whose
needle sharp point compasses

my every stray. I am as
edgy in my way as it--

as little-rippled, as subtle.

Prey to vapors, to sudden
icecap thaws, seismic

dicethrows, the world wires me,
I hex myself up to a pitch

When day is done I steal away
To fold my hands in rest,
And of my hours this moment grey
I love the best;
So quietly I sit alone
And wait for evenfall,
When in the dusk doves sweetly moan
And crickets call.
II
With heart of humble gratitude
How it is good to bide,
And know the joy of solitude
In eventide!
When one is slow and slips a bit,
And life begins to pall,
How sweet it is in peace to sit

At Eutaw Springs the valiant died;
Their limbs with dust are covered o'er;
Weep on, ye springs, your tearful tide;
How many heroes are no more!

If in this wreck of ruin, they
Can yet be thought to claim a tear,
O smite thy gentle breast, and say
The friends of freedom slumber here!

Thou, who shalt trace this bloody plain,
If goodness rules thy generous breast,
Sigh for the wasted rural reign;
Sigh for the shepherds sunk to rest!

Stranger, their humble groves adorn;
You too may fall, and ask a tear:

As roam'd a pilgrim o'er the mountain drear,
On whose lone verge the foaming billows roar,
The wail of hopeless sorrow pierc'd his ear,
And swell'd at distance on the sounding shore.

The mourner breath'd her deep complaint to night,
Her moan she mingled with the rapid blast,
That bar'd her bosom in its wasting flight,
And o'er the earth her scatter'd tresses cast,

"Ye winds," she cried, "still heave the lab'ring deep,
The mountain shake, the howling forest rend;
Still dash the shiv'ring fragments from the steep,

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they