Familiar to our spirits made, and near! But suddenly a rich and resonant sound

Thrilled from the skies and waters; lo, the chimes Of Stratford rang and rang; the very ground Murmured, as with a deep-voiced poet's rhymes; Then swift melodious tone on tone was hurled: 'T was Shakespeare's music brimmed the trembling world.

IN WORDSWORTH'S ORCHARD

DOVE COTTAGE

IN Wordsworth's orchard, one sweet summer day,
Breathless we listened to his thrushes sing;
We heard the trickling of the little spring
Beneath the terrace; saw the tender play
Of breezes 'midst the leaves; scarce could we say
The well-loved verses whose rich blossoming
Was on this narrow hillside; strange they ring
For tears that choke the numbers on their way.

Then home by winding Rothay did we turn

While bird, and bloom, and mountain seemed his voice
Deep sounding to the spiritual ear-

And this its message: Let love in thee burn,
Here learn in holy beauty to rejoice,

Here learn true living, and the song sincere.

SIR WALTER SCOTT

I

RHYMERS and writers of our day,
Too much of melancholy!

Give us the old heroic lay;

A whiff of wholesome folly;
The escapade, the dance;
A touch of wild romance:
Wake from this self-conscious fit;
Give us again Sir Walter's wit;
His love of earth, of sky, of life;
His ringing page with humor rife;
His never-weary pen;

His love of men!

II

Builder of landscape, who could make
Turret and tower their stations take
Brave in the face of the sun;

Of many a mimic world creator,
Alive with fight and strenuous fun;
Of nothing human he the hater.

Nobly could he plan:

Master of nature, master of man.

III

Sometimes I think that He who made us,

And on this pretty planet laid us,

Made us to work and play

Like children in the light of day

Not like plodders in the dark,

Searching with lanterns for some mark

To find the way.

After the stroke of pain,

Up and to work again!

IV

Such was his life, without reproach or fear: A lonely fight before the last eclipse

A DAY IN TUSCANY

A broken heart, a smile upon the lips;
And, at the end,

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When Heaven bent down and whispered in his ear
The word God's saints waited and longed to hear,
I ween he was as quick as they to comprehend;
And, when he past beyond the goal,
Entered the gates of pearl no sweeter soul.

A DAY IN TUSCANY

I

I KNEW the Rucellai had choice of villas:
This day has proved it, this thrice happy day
Stolen from care, and many a saddened thought.
Have we not seen, we wanderers from afar,
Fountained Caneto, standing watch and ward
Over Bisenzio's lovely, curving vale! —
Caneto, olive-cinctured, cypress-crowned,

And wreathed in vine; Caneto, whose high hall
Bears record of a proud and noble race,
Friendly to art and letters (Cimabue
Be witness paramount; and the brave front
Of Santa Maria Novella; the Academe
That in the Garden of the Rucellai
Relit the Athenian fire!). Yes, Edith dear,
I love Caneto well, but well I love
This "Villa of the Little Fields," that hides
Embowered among its farms; in rose and lilac
Radiant and scented like an April bride;
'Mid busy sounds secluded and remote.
But most I love this tower you call my own,
This musing tower that wins the soul to song,
From whose four windows, see! the Apennines
Make a walled paradise of Tuscany.

II

Beyond the ilex-dome, against the west,

The sunset sky was crimson: "Then," you say,

"Fair is to-morrow, if the sky was red."

'Fair is to-morrow"? O, to-morrow fair

That wakes me from this dream?

tower

Here from my

One planet marks where Prato lies below,
And yonder, through the tender gray and green
Of the high-branching plane-tree, shines a light
Betwixt the earth and heaven a lure that means

Florence, and all its wonder; now, ah, now
The hour draws nigh when Italy once more
To me is of the past, a thought, a passion,
But all ungrasped of sense.

And what is that our Cosimo has said?

"To-day the nightingales have come." - Have come? And I, tho' listening long, and with my soul,

I have not heard one tone.

In the Tower at CAMPI Bisenzio.

A SACRED COMEDY IN FLORENCE

IN WHICH TAKES PART A CERTAIN STATUE ON THE FAÇADE OF THE DUOMO

LONELY Pope upon his throne,

Cold in marble, high in air,

On the Duomo's checkered front

Benediction, as is wont,

Falling from his saintly face

Down upon the clattering square:
Falls, to-day, a special grace,
For, in fact, he 's not alone
Solemn Pope upon his throne,

THE OLD MASTER

White in marble, cold in air! —
To those priestly fingers there,
Lifted o'er the peopled square,
A purple pigeon sudden flits,
Lightly 'lights and lingering sits.
By the Baptistery gates,

Where I stand, I can but smile,
Thinking that the potentate's
Lips are curving, too, the while;
And I wonder what the bird
Said that Papa, smiling, heard.

MICHAEL ANGELO'S AURORA

THE MEDICI CHAPEL, FLORENCE

O MAJESTY and loveliness in one!
Why art thou sorrowful, now night is done?
This is the dawn; why doth thy spirit quake?
O thou who wakenest! is it pain to wake?

THE OLD MASTER

Of his dear Lord he painted all the life,
But not that ancient land, nor the old days;
Not curious he to seek, through learned strife,
The look of those far times and unknown ways.
But in his solemn and long-living art

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Well did he paint that which can never die: The life and passion of the human heart, Unchanged while sorrowing age on age goes by. Beneath his brush his own loved people grew, Their rivers and their mountains, saints and lords; The dark Italian mothers whom he knew,