His rod-born fount and Castaly
Let the one rock bring forth for thee,
Renewing so from either spring

The songs which both thy countries sing:
Or we shall fear lest, heavened thus long,
Thou shouldst forget thy native song,
And mar thy mortal melodies
With broken stammer of the skies.

Ah! let the sweet birds of the Lord
With earth's waters make accord;
Teach how the crucifix may be
Carven from the laurel-tree,
Fruit of the Hesperides
Burnish take on Eden-trees,
The Muses' sacred grove be wet
With the red dew of Olivet,
And Sappho lay her burning brows
In white Cecilia's lap of snows!

Thy childhood must have felt the stings
Of too divine o'ershadowings;
Its odorous heart have been a blossom
That in darkness did unbosom,
Those fire-flies of God to invite,
Burning spirits, which by night
Bear upon their laden wing
To such hearts impregnating.
For flowers that night-wings fertilize
Mock down the stars' unsteady eyes,
And with a happy, sleepless glance
Gaze the moon out of countenance.
I think thy girlhood's watchers must
Have took thy folded songs on trust,
And felt them, as one feels the stir
Of still lightnings in the hair,
When conscious hush expects the cloud
To speak the golden secret loud
Which tacit air is privy to

Flasked in the grape the wine they knew,
Ere thy poet-mouth was able
For its first young starry babble.
Keep'st thou not yet that subtle grace?
Yea, in this silent interspace,
God sets His poems in thy face!

The loom which mortal verse affords,
Out of weak and mortal words,
Wovest thou thy singing-weed in,
To a rune of thy far Eden.

Vain are all disguises! ah,
Heavenly incognita!

Thy mien bewrayeth through that wrong
The great Uranian House of Song!

Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,

Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep :

And one is of an old half-witted sheep
Which bleats articulate monotony,
And indicates that two and one are three,
That grass is green, lakes damp, and moun-
tains steep:

And, Wordsworth, both are thine at certain times,

Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes

The form and pressure of high thoughts will burst:

At other times-good Lord! I'd rather be
Quite unacquainted with the A. B. C.
Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy
worst.

LE MAUVAIS LARRON (SUGGESTED BY WILLETTE'S PICTURE)

THE moorland waste lay hushed in the dusk of the second day,

Till a shuddering wind and shrill moaned up through the twilight gray; Like a wakening wraith it rose from the grave of the buried sun,

And it whirled the sand by the tree

(there was never a tree but one —) But the tall bare bole stood fast, unswayed

with the mad wind's stress,

The dark blood sprang from his wounds, the cold sweat stood on his face, For over the darkening plain came a rider riding apace.

Her rags flapped loose in the wind; the last of the sunset glare

Flung dusky gold on her brow and her bosom broad and bare.

She was haggard with want and woe, on a jaded steed astride,

And still, as it staggered and strove, she smote on its heaving side,

Till she came to the limbless tree where the tortured man hung high

streak in the sky.

"'Tis I—I am here, Antoine — I have found thee at last," she said;

"O the hours have been long, but long! and the minutes as drops of lead.

Have they trapped thee, the full-fed flock, thou wert wont to harry and spoil?

Do they laugh in their town secure o'er their measures of wine and oil? Ah God! that these hands might reach where they loll in their rich array ;

Then the wind raise up wi' a maen,
('T was a waefu' wind, an' weet),
Like a deid saul wud wi' pain,

Like a bairnie wild wi' freit ;
But the boat rade swift an' licht,
Sae we wan the land fu' sune,
An' the shore showed wan an' white
By a glint o' the waning mune.

We steppit oot owre the sand

Where an unco' tide had been, An' Black Donald caught my hand An' coverit up his een :

For there, in the wind an' weet,

Or ever I saw nor wist,

My Jean an' her weans lay cauld at my feet,

In the mirk an' the saft sea-mist.

An' it 's O for my bonny Jean!

An' it 's O for my bairnies twa, It's O an' O for the watchet een

An' the steps that are gane awa' Awa' to the Silent Place,

Or ever I saw nor wist,

Though I wot we twa went face to face

Through the mirk an' the saft sea-mist.

HEREAFTER

SHALL we not weary in the windless days
Hereafter, for the murmur of the sea,
The cool salt air across some grassy lea?
Shall we not go bewildered through a maze
Of stately streets with glittering gems
ablaze,

Forlorn amid the pearl and ivory,
Straining our eyes beyond the bourne to see
Phantoms from out Life's dear, forsaken
ways?

Give us again the crazy clay-built nest,
Summer, and soft unseasonable spring,
Our flowers to pluck, our broken songs to
sing,

Our fairy gold of evening in the West;
Still to the land we love our longings

cling,

The sweet, vain world of turmoil and unrest.

THE FARM ON THE LINKS

GRAY o'er the pallid links, haggard and forsaken,

Still the old roof-tree hangs rotting overhead,

Still the black windows stare sullenly to seaward,

Still the blank doorway gapes, open to the dead;

What is it cries with the crying of the curlews?

What comes apace on those fearful, stealthy feet,

Back from the chill sea-deeps, gliding o'er the sand-dunes,

Home to the old home, once again to meet?

What is to say as they gather round the hearth-stone,

Flameless and dull as the feuds and fears of old?

Laughing and fleering still, menacing and

mocking,

Sadder than death itself, harsher than the cold.

Woe for the ruined hearth, black with dule

and evil,

Woe for the wrong and the hate too deep to die!