"But where is the silent guest?

In what chamber shall she rest?
In this! Should she not go higher?
'Tis damp, and the fire is gone."
"You need not kindle the fire,
You need not call her at dawn."

Next morn he sallied forth
On his journey to the North.

Oh, bright the sunlight shone
Through boughs that the breezes stir;
But for her was lifted a stone
Under the churchyard fir.

Reform

I

Oh, how shall I help to right the world that is going wrong!

And what can I do to hurry the promised time of peace! The day of work is short and the night of sleep is long; And whether to pray or preach, or whether to sing a song, To plow in my neighbor's field, or to seek the golden

fleece,

Or to sit with my hands in my lap, and wish that ill would cease!

II

I think, sometimes, it were best just to let the Lord alone;

I am sure some people forget He was here before they

came;

Tho' they say it is all for His glory, 't is a good deal more for their own,

That they peddle their petty schemes, and blate and babble and groan.

I sometimes think it were best, and a man were little to

blame,

Should he pass on his silent way nor mix with the noisy shame.

Noël

Star-dust and vaporous light,-
The mist of worlds unborn,—
A shuddering in the awful night
Of winds that bring the morn.

Now comes the dawn: the circling earth;
Creatures that fly and crawl;

And Man, that last, imperial birth;

And Christ, the flower of all.

Songs

I'

Not from the whole wide world I chose theeSweetheart, light of the land and the sea! The wide, wide world could not inclose thee, For thou art the whole wide world to me.

II

Years have flown since I knew thee first,

And I know thee as water is known of thirst; Yet I knew thee of old at the first sweet sight, And thou art strange to me, Love, to-night.

Ah, Be Not False

Ah, be not false, sweet Splendor!

Be true, be good;

Be wise as thou art tender;

Be all that Beauty should.

Not lightly be thy citadel subdued;
Not ignobly, not untimely.

Take praise in solemn mood;

Take love sublimely.

The Heroic Age

He speaks not well who doth his time deplore,
Naming it new and little and obscure,

Ignoble and unfit for lofty deeds.

All times were modern in the time of them,
And this no more than others. Do thy part
Here in the living day, as did the great
Who made old days immortal! So shall men,
Gazing long back to this far-looming hour,
Say: "Then the time when men were truly men;
Tho' wars grew less, their spirits met the test
Of new conditions; conquering civic wrong;
Saving the state anew by virtuous lives;
Guarding the country's honor as their own,
And their own as their country's and their sons';
Proclaiming service the one test of worth;
Defying leagued fraud with single truth;
Knights of the spirit; warriors in the cause
Of justice absolute 'twixt man and man;
Not fearing loss; and daring to be pure.
When error through the land raged like a pest,
They calmed the madness caught from mind to mind

By wisdom drawn from eld, and counsel sane;

And as the martyrs of the ancient world

Gave Death for man, so nobly gave they Life:
Those the great days, and that the heroic age."

Athens, 1896.

Dear Old London

When I was broke in London in the fall of '89,

I chanced to spy in Oxford Street this tantalizing sign,— "A Splendid Horace cheap for Cash!" Of course I had

to look

Upon the vaunted bargain, and it was a noble book!

A finer one I've never seen, nor can I hope to see,The first edition, richly bound, and clean as clean can be; And, just to think, for three-pounds-ten I might have had that Pine,

When I was broke in London in the fall of '89!

Down at Noseda's, in the Strand, I found, one fateful day,

A portrait that I pined for as only maniac may,-
A print of Madame Vestris (she flourished years ago,
Was Bartolozzi's daughter, and a thoroughbred, you

know).

A clean and handsome print it was, and cheap at thirty bob,

That's what I told the salesman, as I choked a rising sob; But I hung around Noseda's as it were a holy shrine, When I was broke in London in the fall of '89.

At Davey's, in Great Russell Street, were autographs

galore,

And Mr. Davey used to let me con that precious store. Sometimes I read what warriors wrote, sometimes a king's

command,

But oftener still a poet's verse, writ in a meagre hand.