THE DAY IS DONE.

The day is done, and the darkness

Falls from the wings of Night, As a feather is wasted downward

From an eagle in his flight. I see the lights of the village

Gleam through the rain and the mist, And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me,

That my soul cannot resist:
A feeling of sadness and longing,

That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain,

Come, read to me some poem,

Some simple and heartfelt lay, That shall soothe this restless feeling,

And banish the thoughts of Day. Not from the grand old masters,

Not from the bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo

Through the corridors of Time. For, like strains of martial music,

Their mighty thoughts suggest Life's endless toil and endeavour;

And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,

Whose songs gushed from his heart, As showers from the clouds of summer,

Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labour,

And nights devoid of ease, Still heard in his soul the music

Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet

The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction

That follows after prayer.
Then read from the treasured volume

The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet

The beauty of thy voice.
And the night shall be filled with music,

And the cares that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,

And as silently steal away.

THE ARROW AND THE SONG.

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

SEAWEED.

WHEN descends on the Atlantic

The gigantic
Storm-wind of the equinox,
Landward in his wrath he scourges

The toiling surges,
Laden with seaweed from the rocks:

From Bermuda's reefs; from edges

Of sunken ledges,
In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama, and the dashing,

Silver-flashing
Surges of San Salvador;
From the tumbling surf, that buries

The Orkneyan skerries,
Answering the hoarse Hebrides;
And from wrecks of ships, and drifting

Spars, uplifting
On the desolate, rainy seas ;-
Ever drifting, drifting, drifting

On the shifting
Currents of the restless main;
Till in sheltered coves, and reaches

Of sandy beaches,
All have found repose again.
So, when storms of wild emotion

Strike the ocean
Of the poet's soul, ere long
From each cave and rocky fastness,

In its vastness,
Floats some fragment of a song:

From the far-off isles enchanted,

Heaven has planted
With the golden fruit of Truth:
From the flashing surf, whose vision

Gleams Elysian
In the tropic clime of Youth;

From the strong Will and the Endeavour

That for ever Wrestle with the tides of Fate; From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered,

Tempest-shattered, Floating waste and desolate;

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting

On the shifting
Currents of the restless heart;
Till at length in books recorded,

They, like hoarded
Household words, no more depart.

DRINKING SONG.

INSCRIPTION FOR AN ANTIQUE PITCHER,

COME, old friend! sit down and listen!

From the pitcher placed between us, How the waters laugh and glisten

In the head of old Silenus !

Old Silenus, bloated, drunken,

Led by his inebriate Satyrs;
On his breast his head is sunken,

Vacantly he leers and chatters.

Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow;

Ivy crowns that brow supernal As the forehead of Apollo,

And possessing youth eternal. Round about him, fair Bacchantes,

Bearing cymbals, flutes, and thyrses, Wild from Naxian groves, or Zante's

Vineyards, sing delirious verses. Thus he won, through all the nations,

Bloodless victories, and the farmer Bore, as trophies and oblations,

Vines for banners, ploughs for armour. Judged by no o'er zealous rigour,

Much this mystic throng expresses: Bacchus was the type of vigour,

And Silenus of excesses. These are ancient ethnic revels,

Of a faith long since forsaken; Now the Satyrs, changed to devils,

Frighten mortals wine-o'ertaken. Now to rivulets from the mountains

Point the rods of fortune-tellers; Youth perpetual dwells in fountains,

Not in flasks, and casks and cellars. Claudius, though he sang of flagons,

And huge flagons filled with Rhenish, From that fiery blood of dragons

Never would his own replenish, Even Redi, though he chaunted

Bacchus in the Tuscan valleys, Never drank the wine he vaunted

In his dithyrambic sallies,