That music thou alone couldst rightly hear (O rare impressionist!)

And mimic. Therefore still we list To its ethereal fall in this thy cyclic year.

Be then the poet's poet still! for none

Of them whose minstrelsy the stars have blessed Has from expression's wonderland so won

The unexpressed,—

So wrought the charm of its elusive note
On us, who yearn in vain

To mock the pæan and the plain

Of tides that rise and fall with sweet mysterious rote.

Was it not well that the prophetic few,

So long inheritors of that high verse,
Dwelt in the mount alone, and haply knew
What stars rehearse?

But now with foolish cry the multitude
Awards at last the throne,

And claims thy cloudland for its own
With voices all untuned to thy melodious mood.

What joy it was to haunt some antique shade
Lone as thine echo, and to wreak my youth
Upon thy song,- to feel the throbs which made
Thy bliss, thy ruth,—

And thrill I knew not why, and dare to feel
Myself an heir unknown

To lands the poet treads alone

Ere to his soul the gods their presence quite reveal!

Even then, like thee, I vowed to dedicate

My powers to beauty; ay, but thou didst keep
The vow, whilst I knew not the afterweight
That poets weep,

The burthen under which one needs must bow,
The rude years envying

My voice the notes it fain would sing

For men belike to hear, as still they hear thee now.

Oh, the swift wind, the unrelenting sea!

They loved thee, yet they lured thee unaware To be their spoil, lest alien skies to thee

Should seem more fair;

They had their will of thee, yet aye forlorn
Mourned the lithe soul's escape,

And gave the strand thy mortal shape

To be resolved in flame whereof its life was born.

Afloat on tropic waves, I yield once more

In age that heart of youth unto thy spell.
The century wanes,-thy voice thrills as of yore
When first it fell.

Would that I too, so had I sung a lay
The least upborne of thine,

Had shared thy pain! Not so divine

Our light, as faith to chant the far auroral day.

1

G

MORS BENEFICA

IVE me to die unwitting of the day,

And stricken in Life's brave heat, with senses clear:
Not swathed and couched until the lines appear
Of Death's wan mask upon this withering clay,
But as that Old Man Eloquent made way

From Earth, a nation's conclave hushed anear;
Or as the chief whose fates, that he may hear
The victory, one glorious moment stay.
Or, if not thus, then with no cry in vain,

No ministrant beside to ward and weep,
Hand upon helm I would my quittance gain
In some wild turmoil of the waters deep,
And sink content into a dreamless sleep
(Spared grave and shroud) below the ancient main.

"Oh!" the rosy lips reply,
"I can't tell you if I try.
'Tis so long I can't remember:
Ask some younger lass than I!"

Tell, oh tell me, Grizzled-Face,
Do your heart and head keep pace?
When does hoary love expire,
When do frosts put out the fire?
Can its embers burn below
All that chill December snow?
Care you still soft hands to press,
Bonny heads to smooth and bless?
When does love give up the chase?
Tell, oh tell me, Grizzled-Face!

"Ah!" the wise old lips reply,
"Youth may pass and strength may die;
But of love I can't foretoken:

Ask some older sage than I!”

J

PAN IN WALL STREET

UST where the Treasury's marble front

Looks over Wall Street's mingled nations; Where Jews and Gentiles most are wont

To throng for trade and last quotations; Where, hour by hour, the rates of gold Outrival, in the ears of people, The quarter-chimes, serenely tolled

From Trinity's undaunted steeple,-

Even there I heard a strange, wild strain
Sound high above the modern clamor,

Above the cries of greed and gain,

The curbstone war, the auction's hammer;

And swift, on Music's misty ways,

It led, from all this strife for millions,

To ancient, sweet-do-nothing days.

Among the kirtle-robed Sicilians.

And as it stilled the multitude,

And yet more joyous rose, and shriller,

I saw the minstrel, where he stood

At ease against a Doric pillar:

One hand a droning organ played,

The other held a Pan's-pipe (fashioned Like those of old) to lips that made

The reeds give out that strain impassioned.

'Twas Pan himself had wandered here

A-strolling through this sordid city,

And piping to the civic ear

The prelude of some pastoral ditty!

The demigod had crossed the seas,

From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr,

And Syracusan times,-to these

Far shores and twenty centuries later.

A ragged cap was on his head;

But-hidden thus - there was no doubting That, all with crispy locks o'erspread,

His gnarled horns were somewhere sprouting; His club-feet, cased in rusty shoes,

Were crossed, as on some frieze you see them, And trousers, patched of divers hues,

Concealed his crooked shanks beneath them.

He filled the quivering reeds with sound,
And o'er his mouth their changes shifted,
And with his goat's-eyes looked around

Where'er the passing current drifted;
And soon, as on Trinacrian hills

The nymphs and herdsmen ran to hear him, Even now the tradesmen from their tills,

With clerks and porters, crowded near him.

The bulls and bears together drew

From Jauncey Court and New Street Alley, As erst, if pastorals be true,

Came beasts from every wooded valley; The random passers stayed to list,

A boxer Egon, rough and merry, A Broadway Daphnis, on his tryst With Naïs at the Brooklyn Ferry.

A one-eyed Cyclops halted long

In tattered cloak of army pattern; And Galatea joined the throng,—

A blowsy, apple-vending slattern; While old Silenus staggered out

From some new-fangled lunch-house handy,

And bade the piper, with a shout,
To strike up Yankee Doodle Dandy!

A newsboy and a peanut girl

Like little fauns began to caper: His hair was all in tangled curl,

Her tawny legs were bare and taper; And still the gathering larger grew,

And gave its pence and crowded nigher, While aye the shepherd-minstrel blew

His pipe, and struck the gamut higher.

O heart of Nature, beating still

With throbs her vernal passion taught her,— Even here, as on the vine-clad hill,

Or by the Arethusan water!

New forms may fold the speech, new lands
Arise within these ocean-portals,

But Music waves eternal wands,

Enchantress of the souls of mortals!

So thought I,- but among us trod

A man in blue, with legal baton, And scoffed the vagrant demigod,

And pushed him from the step I sat on. Doubting I mused upon the cry,

"Great Pan is dead!"—and all the people Went on their ways;- and clear and high The quarter sounded from the steeple.

I

THE DISCOVERER

HAVE a little kinsman

Whose earthly summers are but three,
And yet a voyager is he

Greater than Drake or Frobisher,

Than all their peers together!

He is a brave discoverer,

And, far beyond the tether

Of them who seek the frozen pole,
Has sailed where the noiseless surges roll.
Ay, he has traveled whither
A winged pilot steered his bark
Through the portals of the dark,