MAIDEN SPEECH OF THE ÆOLIAN HARP

SOFT and softlier hold me, friends!

Thanks if your genial care

Unbind and give me to the air.
Keep your lips or finger-tips

For flute or spinet's dancing chips;
I await a tenderer touch,

I ask more or not so much :
Give me to the atmosphere,-
Where is the wind, my brother,—where?
Lift the sash, lay me within,

Lend me your ears, and I begin.
For gentle harp to gentle hearts
The secret of the world imparts;
And not to-day and not to-morrow
Can drain its wealth of hope and sorrow;
But day by day, to loving ear

Unlocks new sense and loftier cheer.

I've come to live with you, sweet friends,
This home my minstrel-journeyings ends.
Many and subtle are my lays,

The latest better than the first,

For I can mend the happiest days
And charm the anguish of the worst.'

CUPIDO

THE solid, solid universe

Is pervious to Love;

With bandaged eyes he never errs,
Around, below, above.

His blinding light

He flingeth white

On God's and Satan's brood,

And reconciles

By mystic wiles

The evil and the good.

THE PAST

THE debt is paid,

The verdict said,

The Furies laid,
The plague is stayed.

All fortunes made ;

Turn the key and bolt the door,

Sweet is death forevermore.

Nor haughty hope, nor swart chagrin, Nor murdering hate, can enter in.

All is now secure and fast;
Not the gods can shake the Past;

Flies-to the adamantine door

Bolted down forevermore.

None can reënter there, –

No thief so politic,

No Satan with a royal trick

Steal in by window, chink, or hole,

To bind or unbind, add what lacked,
Insert a leaf, or forge a name,
New-face or finish what is packed,
Alter or mend eternal Fact.'

THE LAST FAREWELL

LINES WRITTEN BY THE AUTHOR'S BROTHER,

EDWARD BLISS EMERSON, WHILST SAILING OUT OF BOSTON HARBOR, BOUND FOR THE ISLAND OF PORTO RICO, IN 18322

FAREWELL, ye lofty spires
That cheered the holy light!
Farewell, domestic fires

That broke the gloom of night!
Too soon those spires are lost,
Too fast we leave the bay,

Too soon by ocean tost

From hearth and home away,

Far away, far away.