Their twisted columns of smoke on high, All the bright flowers that fill the land, The leaves that rustle, the reeds that make Art is the child of Nature; yes, He is the greatest artist, then, Can touch the human heart, or please, Thus mused I on that morn in May, Wrapped in my visions like the Seer, Whose eyes behold not what is near, But only what is far away, When, suddenly sounding peal on peal, The church bell from the neighboring town Proclaimed the welcome hour of noon. Stop, stop, my wheel! Too soon, too soon Too soon to-day be yesterday; BIRDS OF PASSAGE FLIGHT THE FIFTH Collected in the volume entitled Kéramos and other Poems, 1878. Elmwood, in the first poem, was the home of James Russell Lowell. Sing of the air, and the wild delight Of wings that uplift and winds that uphold you, The joy of freedom, the rapture of flight Through the drift of the floating mists that infold you; Of the landscape lying so far below, With its towns and rivers and desert places; And the splendor of light above, and the glow Of the limitless, blue, ethereal spaces. Ask him if songs of the Troubadours, Or of Minnesingers in old black-letter, Sound in his ears more sweet than yours, And if yours are not sweeter and wilder and better. Sing to him, say to him, here at his gate, Where the boughs of the stately elms are meeting, Some one hath lingered to meditate, And send him unseen this friendly greeting; That many another hath done the same, Though not by a sound was the silence broken; The surest pledge of a deathless name Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken. A DUTCH PICTURE SIMON DANZ has come home again, From cruising about with his buccaneers; He has singed the beard of the King of Spain, And carried away the Dean of Jaen In his house by the Maese, with its roof of tiles, And weathercocks flying aloft in air, There are silver tankards of antique styles, Plunder of convent and castle, and piles Of carpets rich and rare. In his tulip-garden there by the town, Overlooking the sluggish stream, With his Moorish cap and dressing-gown, The old sea-captain, hale and brown, Walks in a waking dream. A smile in his gray mustachio lurks The windmills on the outermost Verge of the landscape in the haze, But when the winter rains begin, He sits and smokes by the blazing brands, And old seafaring men come in, Goat-bearded, gray, and with double chin, And rings upon their hands. They sit there in the shadow and shine Of the flickering fire of the winter night; Figures in color and design Like those by Rembrandt of the Rhine, Half darkness and half light. And they talk of ventures lost or won, And their talk is ever and ever the same, While they drink the red wine of Tarragon, From the cellars of some Spanish Don, Or convent set on flame. Restless at times with heavy strides He paces his parlor to and fro; He is like a ship that at anchor rides, And swings with the rising and falling tides, And tugs at her anchor-tow. Voices mysterious far and near, Sound of the wind and sound of the sea, Are calling and whispering in his ear, "Simon Danz! Why stayest thou here? Come forth and follow me!" So he thinks he shall take to the sea again For one more cruise with his buccaneers, To singe the beard of the King of Spain, And capture another Dean of Jaen And sell him in Algiers. CASTLES IN SPAIN How much of my young heart, O Spain, And shapes more shadowy than these, In the dim twilight half revealed; Phoenician galleys on the seas, The Roman camps like hives of bees, The Goth uplifting from his knees Pelayo on his shield. It was these memories perchance, Old towns, whose history lies hid In monkish chronicle or rhyme, Burgos, the birthplace of the Cid, Zamora and Valladolid, Toledo, built and walled amid The wars of Wamba's time; The long, straight line of the highway, White crosses in the mountain pass, White hamlets hidden in fields of wheat, Yet something sombre and severe O'er the enchanted landscape reigned; A terror in the atmosphere |