II

Beauty!O, well for the hearts that bow down and adore her:

Heart of mine, hold thou in all the world nothing before her.

All the fair universe now to her feet that is clinging Out of the womb of her leapt with the dawn, and the singing

Of stars. O thou Beautiful! — thee do I worship and

praise

In the dark where thy lamps are; again in thy glory of

days,

Whose end and beginning thou blessest with piercing

delight

Of splendors outspread on the edge of the robe of the

night.

Ah, that sweetness is sent not to him whose dull spirit would rest

In the bliss of it; no, not the goal, but the passion and

quest;

Not the vale, but the desert. O, never soft airs shall

awake

Thy Soul to the soul of all Beauty, all heaven, and all wonder;

The summons that comes to thee, mortal, thy spirit to

shake,

Shall be the loud clarion's call and the voices of thunder.

A WINTER TWILIGHT IN PROVENCE

A STRANGER in a far and ancient land,
At evening-light I wander. Shade on shade
The mountain valleys darken, and the plain

A WINTER TWILIGHT IN PROVENCE 251

Grows dim beneath a chill and iron sky.

The trees of peace take the last gray of day
Day that shone soft on olives, misty-green,

And aisles of wind-forbidding cypresses,

And long, white roads, whitely with plane-trees lined,
And farms content, and happy villages -
A land that lies close in the very heart
Of history, and brave, and free, and gay;
In all its song lingering one tone of pain.
But now the wintry twilight silent falls,
And ghosts of other days stalk the lone fields;
While through yon sunk and immemorial road,
Rock-furrowed, rough, and like a torrent's bed,
Far-stretching into night 'twixt twilight farms,
I see in dream the unhistoried armies pass,
With barbarous banners trailing 'gainst the gloom;
Then, in a thought's flash (centuries consumed),
In this deep path a fierce and refluent wave
Brims the confined and onward-pressing march
With standards slantwise borne; so, to the mind,
The all-conquering eagle northward takes its flight,
And one stern empire widens o'er the world.

There looms the arch of war where once, long gone,
In these still fields, against those thymy slopes,
An alien city reared imperial towers:

See sculptured conqueror, and slave in chains
Mournful a myriad years; and near the arch
The heaven-climbing, templed monument
Embossed with horse and furious warrior!
Millenniums have sped since those grim wars
Here grimly carved, the wonder of the churl,-
The very language dead those warriors cried.
Deepens the dusk, and on the neighboring hight
A rock-hewn palace cuts the edge of day

In giant ruin stark against the sky:

Ah, misery! I know its piteous tale

Of armed injustice; monstrous, treacherous force.
Deepens the dusk, and the enormous towers,
Still lording o'er a living city near,

Are lost to sight; but not to thought are lost
A hundred stories of the old-time curse
War and its ravagings. Deepens the dusk

On westward mountains black with olden crime
And steeped in blood spilled in the blessèd name
Of him the Roman soldiers crucified

The Prince of Peace. Deepens the dusk, and all
The nearer landscape glimmers into dark,
And naught shows clear save yonder wayside cross
Against the lurid west whose dying gleam
Of ghastly sunlight frights the brooding soul.

Dear country mine! far in that viewless west, And ocean-warded, strife thou too hast known; But may thy sun hereafter bloodless shine, And may thy way be onward without wrath, And upward on no carcass of the slain; And if thou smitest, let it be for peace And justice not in hate, or pride, or lust Of empire. May'st thou ever be, O land! Noble and pure as thou art free and strong: So shalt thou lift a light for all the world And for all time, and bring the Age of Peace. ST.-REMY DE PROVENCE, January, 1896.

HOW TO THE SINGER COMES THE SONG 253

PART II

"THE POET'S DAY"

THE poet's day is different from another,

Tho' he doth count each man his own heart's brother. So crystal-clear the air that he looks through,

It gives each color an intenser hue;

Each bush doth burn, and every flower flame;

The stars are sighing; silence breathes a name.
The world wherein he wanders, dreams, and sings
Thrills with the beating of invisible wings;
And all day long he hears from hidden birds
The low, melodious pour of musicked words.

"HOW TO THE SINGER COMES THE

SONG?"

I

How to the singer comes the song?

At times a joy, alone;

A wordless tone

Caught from the crystal gleam of ice-bound trees;

Or from the violet-perfumed breeze;

Or the sharp smell of seas

In sunlight glittering many an emerald mile;
Or the keen memory of a love-lit smile.

II

Thus to the singer comes the song:

Gazing at crimson skies

Where burns and dies

On day's wide hearth the calm celestial fire,

The poet with a wild desire

Strikes the impassioned lyre,

Takes into tunèd sound the flaming sight

And ushers with new song the ancient night.

III

How to the singer comes the song?

Bowed down by ill and sorrow

On every morrow

The unworded pain breaks forth in heavenly singing; Not all too late dear solace bringing

To broken spirits winging

Through mortal anguish to the unknown rest —

A lyric balm for every wounded breast.

IV

How to the singer comes the song?

How to the summer fields

Come flowers? How yields

Darkness to happy dawn? How doth the night
Bring stars? O, how do love and light

Leap at the sound and sight

Of her who makes this dark world seem less wrong Life of his life, and soul of all his song!

"LIKE THE BRIGHT PICTURE"

LIKE the bright picture ere the lamp is lit,
Or silent page whereon keen notes are writ;

So was my love, all vacant, all unsaid,

Ere she the lamp did light, ere she the music read.

REMEMBRANCE OF BEAUTY

LOVE's look finds loveliness in all the world:
Ah, who shall say - This, this is loveliest!