Never feeling of unrest

Broke the pleasant dream he dreamed; Only made to be his nest,

All the lovely valley seemed;
No desire

Of soaring higher
Stirred or fluttered in his breast.

True, his songs were not divine;
Were not songs of that high art,
Which, as winds do in the pine,
Find an answer in each heart;
But the mirth

Of this green earth
Laughed and revelled in his line.

From the alehouse and the inn,
Opening on the narrow street,
Came the loud, convivial din,
Singing and applause of feet,
The laughing lays
That in those days
Sang the poet Basselin.

In the castle, cased in steel,

Knights, who fought at Agincourt,
Watched and waited, spur on heel;
But the poet sang for sport
Songs that rang
Another clang,
Songs that lowlier hearts could feel.

In the convent, clad in gray,

Sat the monks in lonely cells, Paced the cloisters, knelt to pray, And the poet heard their bells; But his rhymes

Found other chimes, Nearer to the earth than they.

Gone are all the barons bold,

Gone are all the knights and squires, Gone the abbot stern and cold, And the brotherhood of friars;

Under the walls of Monterey
By night a bugle is heard to play,
Victor Galbraith!

Through the mist of the valley damp and gray

The sentinels hear the sound, and say, "That is the wraith

Of Victor Galbraith!"

MY LOST YOUTH. OFTEN I think of the beautiful town That is seated by the sea; Often in thought go up and down The pleasant streets of that dear old town,

And my youth comes back to me. And a verse of a Lapland song Is haunting my memory still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I can see the shadowy lines of its trees,
And catch, in sudden gleams,
The sheen of the far-surrounding seas,
And islands that were the Hesperides
Of all my boyish dreams.

And the burden of that old song, It murmurs and whispers still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the black wharves and the slips,

And the sea-tides tossing free; And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the beauty and mystery of the ships, And the magic of the sea.

And the voice of that wayward song Is singing and saying still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the bulwarks by the shore,
And the fort upon the hill;
The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar
The drum-beat repeated o'er and o'er,
And the bugle wild and shrill.

And the music of that old song Throbs in my memory still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the sea-fight far away,
How it thundered o'er the tide !
And the dead captains, as they lay
In their graves, o'erlooking the tranqui
bay,

Where they in battle died.

And the sound of that mournful song Goes through me with a thrill: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I can see the breezy dome of groves, The shadows of Deering's Woods; And the friendships old and the early loves

Come back with a sabbath sound, as of doves

In quiet neighborhoods.

And the verse of that sweet old song,

It flutters and murmurs still :

A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'

I remember the gleams and glooms that dart

Across the school-boy's brain; The song and the silence in the heart, That in part are prophecies, and in part Are longings wild and vain.

And the voice of that fitful song Sings on, and is never still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

There are things of which I may not speak;

There are dreams that cannot die ; There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak,

And bring a pallor into the cheek,
And a mist before the eye.

And the words of that fatal song Come over me like a chill: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

Strange to me now are the forms I meet
When I visit the dear old town;
But the native air is pure and sweet,
And the trees that o'ershadow each
well-known street,

As they balance up and down,

Are singing the beautiful song, Are sighing and whispering still : "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair,

And with joy that is almost pain My heart goes back to wander there, And among the dreams of the days that were,

I find my lost youth again.

And the strange and beautiful song, The groves are repeating it still : "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

THE ROPEWALK.

IN that building, long and low,
With its windows all a-row,

Like the port-holes of a hulk,
Human spiders spin and spin,
Backward down their threads so thin
Dropping, each a hempen bulk.
At the end, an open door;
Squares of sunshine on the floor
Light the long and dusky lane;
And the whirring of a wheel,
Dull and drowsy, makes me feel
All its spokes are in my brain.
As the spinners to the end
Downward go and reascend,

Gleam the long threads in the sun; While within this brain of mine Cobwebs brighter and more fine

By the busy wheel are spun.
Two fair maidens in a swing,
Like white doves upon the wing,
First before my vision pass;
Laughing, as their gentle hands
Closely clasp the twisted strands,
At their shadow on the grass.
Then a booth of mountebanks,
With its smell of tan and planks,
And a girl poised high in air
On a cord, in spangled dress,
With a faded loveliness,
And a weary look of care,

Then a homestead among farms, And a woman with bare arms

Drawing water from a well;
As the bucket mounts apace,
With it mounts her own fair face,
As at some magician's spell.
Then an old man in a tower,
Ringing loud the noontide hour,
While the rope coils round and round
Like a serpent at his feet,
And again, in swift retreat,

Nearly lifts him from the ground.
Then within a prison-yard,
Faces fixed, and stern, and hard,
Laughter and indecent mirth;
Ah! it is the gallows-tree!
Breath of Christian charity,

Blow, and sweep it from the earth! Then a school-boy, with his kite Gleaming in a sky of light,

And an eager, upward look;
Steeds pursued through lane and field;
Fowlers with their snares concealed;
And an angler by a brook.

Ships rejoicing in the breeze,
Wrecks that float o'er unknown seas,
Anchors dragged through faithless
sand;

Sea-fog drifting overhead,
And, with lessening line and lead,
Sailors feeling for the land.

All these scenes do I behold,
These, and many left untold,

In that building long and low;
While the wheel goes round and round,
With a drowsy, dreamy sound,
And the spinners backward go.

THE GOLDEN MILE-STONE. LEAFLESS are the trees; their purple branches Spread themselves abroad, like reefs of coral, Rising silent

In the Red Sea of the winter sunset.

From the hundred chimneys of the village,

Like the Afreet in the Arabian story,
Smoky columns

Tower aloft into the air of amber.

It is not a song

Of the Scuppernong,
From warm Carolinian valleys,
Nor the Isabel

And the Muscadel
That bask in our garden alleys.

Nor the red Mustang,
Whose clusters hang
O'er the waves of the Colorado,
And the fiery flood

Of whose purple blood
Has a dash of Spanish bravado.
For richest and best

Is the wine of the West,
That grows by the Beautiful River:
Whose sweet perfume

Fills all the room
With a benison on the giver.

And as hollow trees
Are the haunts of bees,
Forever going and coming;
So this crystal hive

Is all alive

With a swarming and buzzing and humming.

Very good in its way

Is the Verzenay,

Or the Sillery soft and creamy;
But Catawba wine

Has a taste more divine,
More dulcet, delicious, and dreamy.

There grows no vine
By the haunted Rhine,
By Danube or Guadalquivir,
Nor on island or cape,
That bears such a grape
As grows by the Beautiful River.
Drugged is their juice
For foreign use,

When shipped o'er the reeling Atlantic,
To rack our brains

With the fever pains,

That have driven the Old World frantic.

To the sewers and sinks
With all such drinks,

And after them tumble the mixer;
For a poison malign

Is such Borgia wine,

Or at best but a Devil's Elixir.

While pure as a spring

Is the wine I sing,

And to praise it, one needs but name it; For Catawba wine

Has need of no sign,

No tavern-bush to proclaim it.

And this Song of the Vine,
This greeting of mine,

The winds and the birds shall deliver
To the Queen of the West,
In her garlands dressed,

On the banks of the Beautiful River.

SANTA FILOMENA.

WHENE'ER a noble deed is wrought,
Whene'er is spoken a noble thought,
Our hearts, in glad surprise,
To higher levels rise.

The tidal wave of deeper souls
Into our inmost being rolls,

And lifts us unawares

Out of all meaner cares.

Honor to those whose words or deeds
Thus help us in our daily needs,
And by their overflow

Raise us from what is low!
Thus thought I, as by night I read
Of the great army of the dead,

The trenches cold and damp,
The starved and frozen camp, —

The wounded from the battle-plain, In dreary hospitals of pain,

The cheerless corridors, The cold and stony floors. Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see

Passthrough the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.

And slow, as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls

Upon the darkening walls.

As if a door in heaven should be
Opened and then closed suddenly,
The vision came and went,

The light shone and was spent.
On England's annals, through the long
Hereafter of her speech and song,
That light its rays shall cast
From portals of the past.

A Lady with a Lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,
Heroic womanhood.

Nor even shall be wanting here
The palm, the lily, and the spear,
The symbols that of yore
Saint Filomena bore.

THE DISCOVERER OF THE
NORTH CAPE.

A LEAF FROM KING ALFRED'S OROSIUS.
OTHERE, the old sea-captain,
Who dwelt in Helgoland,
To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth,
Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth,
Which he held in his brown right
hand.

His figure was tall and stately,

Like a boy's his eye appeared;
His hair was yellow as hay,
But threads of a silvery gray
Gleamed in his tawny beard.
Hearty and hale was Othere,

His cheek had the color of oak;
With a kind of laugh in his speech,
Like the sea-tide on a beach,

As unto the King he spoke.