I.

  I know not if it was a dream. I viewed
  A city where the restless multitude,
    Between the eastern and the western deep
  Had roared gigantic fabrics, strong and rude.

  Colossal palaces crowned every height;
  Towers from valleys climbed into the light;
    O'er dwellings at their feet, great golden domes
  Hung in the blue, barbarically bright.

  But now, new-glimmering to-east, the day
  Touched the black masses with a grace of gray,
    Dim spires of temples to the nation's God
  Studding high spaces of the wide survey.

  Well did the roofs their solemn secret keep
  Of life and death stayed by the truce of sleep,
    Yet whispered of an hour-when sleepers wake,
  The fool to hope afresh, the wise to weep.

  The gardens greened upon the builded hills
  Above the tethered thunders of the mills
    With sleeping wheels unstirred to service yet
  By the tamed torrents and the quickened rills.

  A hewn acclivity, reprieved a space,
  Looked on the builder's blocks about his base
    And bared his wounded breast in sign to say:
  "Strike! 't is my destiny to lodge your race.

  "'T was but a breath ago the mammoth browsed
  Upon my slopes, and in my caves I housed
    Your shaggy fathers in their nakedness,
  While on their foeman's offal they caroused."

  Ships from afar afforested the bay.
  Within their huge and chambered bodies lay
    The wealth of continents; and merrily sailed
  The hardy argosies to far Cathay.

  Beside the city of the living spread—
  Strange fellowship!—the city of the dead;
    And much I wondered what its humble folk,
  To see how bravely they were housed, had said.

  Noting how firm their habitations stood,
  Broad-based and free of perishable wood—
    How deep in granite and how high in brass
  The names were wrought of eminent and good,

  I said: "When gold or power is their aim,
  The smile of beauty or the wage of shame,
    Men dwell in cities; to this place they fare
  When they would conquer an abiding fame."

  From the red East the sun—a solemn rite—
  Crowned with a flame the cross upon a height
    Above the dead; and then with all his strength
  Struck the great city all aroar with light!

  I know not if it was a dream. I came
  Unto a land where something seemed the same
    That I had known as 't were but yesterday,
  But what it was I could not rightly name.

  It was a strange and melancholy land.
  Silent and desolate. On either hand
    Lay waters of a sea that seemed as dead,
  And dead above it seemed the hills to stand,

  Grayed all with age, those lonely hills—ah me,
  How worn and weary they appeared to be!
    Between their feet long dusty fissures clove
  The plain in aimless windings to the sea.

  One hill there was which, parted from the rest,
  Stood where the eastern water curved a-west.
    Silent and passionless it stood. I thought
  I saw a scar upon its giant breast.

  The sun with sullen and portentous gleam
  Hung like a menace on the sea's extreme;
    Nor the dead waters, nor the far, bleak bars
  Of cloud were conscious of his failing beam.

  It was a dismal and a dreadful sight,
  That desert in its cold, uncanny light;
    No soul but I alone to mark the fear
  And imminence of everlasting night!

  All presages and prophecies of doom
  Glimmered and babbled in the ghastly gloom,
    And in the midst of that accursèd scene
  A wolf sat howling on a broken tomb.

  Of life's elixir I had writ, when sleep
  (Pray Heaven it spared him who the writing read!)
  Sealed upon my senses with so deep
  A stupefaction that men thought me dead.
  The centuries stole by with noiseless tread,
  Like spectres in the twilight of my dream;
  I saw mankind in dim procession sweep
  Through life, oblivion at each extreme.
  Meanwhile my beard, like Barbarossa's growing,
  Loaded my lap and o'er my knees was flowing.

  The generations came with dance and song,
  And each observed me curiously there.
  Some asked: "Who was he?" Others in the throng
  Replied: "A wicked monk who slept at prayer."
  Some said I was a saint, and some a bear—
  These all were women. So the young and gay,
  Visibly wrinkling as they fared along,
  Doddered at last on failing limbs away;
  Though some, their footing in my beard entangled,
  Fell into its abysses and were strangled.

  At last a generation came that walked
  More slowly forward to the common tomb,
  Then altogether stopped. The women talked
  Excitedly; the men, with eyes agloom
  Looked darkly on them with a look of doom;
  And one cried out: "We are immortal now—
  How need we these?" And a dread figure stalked,
  Silent, with gleaming axe and shrouded brow,
  And all men cried: "Decapitate the women,
  Or soon there'll be no room to stand or swim in!"

  So (in my dream) each lovely head was chopped
  From its fair shoulders, and but men alone
  Were left in all the world. Birth being stopped,
  Enough of room remained in every zone,
  And Peace ascended Woman's vacant throne.
  Thus, life's elixir being found (the quacks
  Their bread-and-butter in it gladly sopped)
  'Twas made worth having by the headsman's axe.
  Seeing which, I gave myself a hearty shaking,
  And crumbled all to powder in the waking.

  What! "Out of danger?"   Can the slighted Dame
  Or canting Pharisee no more defame?
  Will Treachery caress my hand no more,
  Nor Hatred He alurk about my door?—
  Ingratitude, with benefits dismissed,
  Not close the loaded palm to make a fist?
  Will Envy henceforth not retaliate
  For virtues it were vain to emulate?
  Will Ignorance my knowledge fail to scout,
  Not understanding what 'tis all about,
  Yet feeling in its light so mean and small
  That all his little soul is turned to gall?

  What! "Out of danger?" Jealousy disarmed?
  Greed from exaction magically charmed?
  Ambition stayed from trampling whom it meets,
  Like horses fugitive in crowded streets?
  The Bigot, with his candle, book and bell,
  Tongue-tied, unlunged and paralyzed as well?
  The Critic righteously to justice haled,
  His own ear to the post securely nailed—
  What most he dreads unable to inflict,
  And powerless to hawk the faults he's picked?
  The liar choked upon his choicest lie,
  And impotent alike to villify
  Or flatter for the gold of thrifty men
  Who hate his person but employ his pen—
  Who love and loathe, respectively, the dirt
  Belonging to his character and shirt?

  What! "Out of danger?"—Nature's minions all,
  Like hounds returning to the huntsman's call,
  Obedient to the unwelcome note
  That stays them from the quarry's bursting throat?—
  Famine and Pestilence and Earthquake dire,
  Torrent and Tempest, Lightning, Frost and Fire,
  The soulless Tiger and the mindless Snake,
  The noxious Insect from the stagnant lake
  (Automaton malevolences wrought
  Out of the substance of Creative Thought)—
  These from their immemorial prey restrained,
  Their fury baffled and their power chained?

  I'm safe? Is that what the physician said?
  What! "Out of danger?" Then, by Heaven, I'm dead!

  'Twas a Venerable Person, whom I met one Sunday morning,
  All appareled as a prophet of a melancholy sect;
  And in a jeremaid of objurgatory warning
  He lifted up his jodel to the following effect:

  O ye sanguinary statesmen, intermit your verbal tussles
  O ye editors and orators, consent to hear my lay!
  And a little while the digital and maxillary muscles
  And attend to what a Venerable Person has to say.

  Cease your writing, cease your shouting, cease your wild unearthly lying;
  Cease to bandy such expressions as are never, never found
  In the letter of a lover; cease "exposing" and "replying"—
  Let there be abated fury and a decrement of sound.

  For to-morrow will be Monday and the fifth day of November—
  Only day of opportunity before the final rush.
  Carpe diem! go conciliate each person who's a member
    Of the other party—do it while you can without a blush.

  "Lo! the time is close upon you when the madness of the season
    Having howled itself to silence, like a Minnesota 'clone,
  Will at last be superseded by the still, small voice of reason,
    When the whelpage of your folly you would willingly disown.

  "Ah, 'tis mournful to consider what remorses will be thronging,
    With a consciousness of having been so ghastly indiscreet,
  When by accident untoward two ex-gentlemen belonging
    To the opposite political denominations meet!

  "Yes, 'tis melancholy, truly, to forecast the fierce, unruly
    Supersurging of their blushes, like the flushes upon high
  When Aurora Borealis lights her circumpolar palace
    And in customary manner sets her banner in the sky.

  "Each will think: 'This falsifier knows that I too am a liar.
  Curse him for a son of Satan, all unholily compound!
  Curse my leader for another! Curse that pelican, my mother!
  Would to God that I when little in my victual had been drowned!'"

  Then that Venerable Person went away without returning
  And, the madness of the season having also taken flight,
  All the people soon were blushing like the skies to crimson burning
  When Aurora Borealis fires her premises by night.

  In Bacon see the culminating prime
  Of Anglo-Saxon intellect and crime.
  He dies and Nature, settling his affairs,
  Parts his endowments among us, his heirs:
  To every one a pinch of brain for seed,
  And, to develop it, a pinch of greed.
  Each thrifty heir, to make the gift suffice,
  Buries the talent to manure the vice.

  As sweet as the look of a lover
   Saluting the eyes of a maid,
   That blossom to blue as the maid
  Is ablush to the glances above her,
   The sunshine is gilding the glade
   And lifting the lark out of shade.

  Sing therefore high praises, and therefore
   Sing songs that are ancient as gold,
   Of Earth in her garments of gold;
  Nor ask of their meaning, nor wherefore
   They charm as of yore, for behold!
   The Earth is as fair as of old.

  Sing songs of the pride of the mountains,
   And songs of the strength of the seas,
   And the fountains that fall to the seas
  From the hands of the hills, and the fountains
   That shine in the temples of trees,
   In valleys of roses and bees.

  Sing songs that are dreamy and tender,
    Of slender Arabian palms,
    And shadows that circle the palms,
  Where caravans, veiled from the splendor,
    Are kneeling in blossoms and balms,
    In islands of infinite calms.

  Barbaric, O Man, was thy runing
    When mountains were stained as with wine
    By the dawning of Time, and as wine
  Were the seas, yet its echoes are crooning,
    Achant in the gusty pine
    And the pulse of the poet's line.

  Hard by an excavated street one sat
  In solitary session on the sand;
  And ever and anon he spake and spat
  And spake again—a yellow skull in hand,
  To which that retrospective Pioneer
  Addressed the few remarks that follow here:

  "Who are you? Did you come 'der blains agross,'
  Or 'Horn aroundt'? In days o' '49
  Did them thar eye-holes see the Southern Cross
  From the Antarctic Sea git up an' shine?
  Or did you drive a bull team 'all the way
  From Pike,' with Mr. Joseph Bowers?—say!

  "Was you in Frisco when the water came
  Up to Montgum'ry street? and do you mind
  The time when Peters run the faro game—
  Jim Peters from old Mississip—behind
  Wells Fargo's, where he subsequent was bust
  By Sandy, as regards both bank and crust?

  "I wonder was you here when Casey shot
  James King o' William? And did you attend
  The neck-tie dance ensuin'? I did not,
  But j'ined the rush to Go Creek with my friend
  Ed'ard McGowan; for we was resolved
  In sech diversions not to be involved.

  "Maybe I knowed you; seems to me I've seed
    Your face afore. I don't forget a face,
  But names I disremember—I'm that breed
    Of owls. I'm talking some'at into space
  An' maybe my remarks is too derned free,
  Seein' yer name is unbeknown to me.

  "Ther' was a time, I reckon, when I knowed
    Nigh onto every dern galoot in town.
  That was as late as '50. Now she's growed
    Surprisin'! Yes, me an' my pardner, Brown,
  Was wide acquainted. If ther' was a cuss
  We didn't know, the cause was—he knowed us.

  "Maybe you had that claim adjoinin' mine
    Up thar in Calaveras. Was it you
  To which Long Mary took a mighty shine,
    An' throwed squar' off on Jake the Kangaroo?
  I guess if she could see ye now she'd take
  Her chance o' happiness along o' Jake.

  "You ain't so purty now as you was then:
    Yer eyes is nothin' but two prospect holes,
  An' women which are hitched to better men
    Would hardly for sech glances damn their souls,
  As Lengthie did. By G——! I hope it's you,
  For" (kicks the skull) "I'm Jake the Kangaroo."

  I stood upon a hill. The setting sun
  Was crimson with a curse and a portent,
  And scarce his angry ray lit up the land
  That lay below, whose lurid gloom appeared
  Freaked with a moving mist, which, reeking up
  From dim tarns hateful with some horrid ban,
  Took shapes forbidden and without a name.
  Gigantic night-birds, rising from the reeds
  With cries discordant, startled all the air,
  And bodiless voices babbled in the gloom—
  The ghosts of blasphemies long ages stilled,
  And shrieks of women, and men's curses. All
  These visible shapes, and sounds no mortal ear
  Had ever heard, some spiritual sense
  Interpreted, though brokenly; for I
  Was haunted by a consciousness of crime,
  Some giant guilt, but whose I knew not. All
  These things malign, by sight and sound revealed,
  Were sin-begotten; that I knew—no more—
  And that but dimly, as in dreadful dreams
  The sleepy senses babble to the brain
  Imperfect witness. As I stood a voice,
  But whence it came I knew not, cried aloud
  Some words to me in a forgotten tongue,
  Yet straight I knew me for a ghost forlorn,
  Returned from the illimited inane.
  Again, but in a language that I knew,
  As in reply to something which in me
  Had shaped itself a thought, but found no words,
  It spake from the dread mystery about:
  "Immortal shadow of a mortal soul
  That perished with eternity, attend.
  What thou beholdest is as void as thou:
  The shadow of a poet's dream—himself
  As thou, his soul as thine, long dead,
  But not like thine outlasted by its shade.
  His dreams alone survive eternity
  As pictures in the unsubstantial void.
  Excepting thee and me (and we because
  The poet wove us in his thought) remains
  Of nature and the universe no part
  Or vestige but the poet's dreams. This dread,
  Unspeakable land about thy feet, with all
  Its desolation and its terrors—lo!
  'T is but a phantom world. So long ago
  That God and all the angels since have died
  That poet lived—yourself long dead—his mind
  Filled with the light of a prophetic fire,
  And standing by the Western sea, above
  The youngest, fairest city in the world,
  Named in another tongue than his for one
  Ensainted, saw its populous domain
  Plague-smitten with a nameless shame. For there
  Red-handed murder rioted; and there
  The people gathered gold, nor cared to loose
  The assassin's fingers from the victim's throat,
  But said, each in his vile pursuit engrossed:
  'Am I my brother's keeper? Let the Law
  Look to the matter.' But the Law did not.
  And there, O pitiful! the babe was slain
  Within its mother's breast and the same grave
  Held babe and mother; and the people smiled,
  Still gathering gold, and said: 'The Law, the Law,'
  Then the great poet, touched upon the lips
  With a live coal from Truth's high altar, raised
  His arms to heaven and sang a song of doom—
  Sang of the time to be, when God should lean
  Indignant from the Throne and lift his hand,
  And that foul city be no more!—a tale,
  A dream, a desolation and a curse!
  No vestige of its glory should survive
  In fact or memory: its people dead,
  Its site forgotten, and its very name
  Disputed."

  "Was the prophecy fulfilled?"
  The sullen disc of the declining sun
  Was crimson with a curse and a portent,
  And scarce his angry ray lit up the land
  That lay below, whose lurid gloom appeared
  Freaked with a moving mist, which, reeking up
  From dim tarns hateful with a horrid ban,
  Took shapes forbidden and without a name.
  Gigantic night-birds, rising from the reeds
  With cries discordant, startled all the air,
  And bodiless voices babbled in the gloom.
  But not to me came any voice again;
  And, covering my face with thin, dead hands,
  I wept, and woke, and cried aloud to God!

  That land full surely hastens to its end
  Where public sycophants in homage bend
  The populace to flatter, and repeat
  The doubled echoes of its loud conceit.
  Lowly their attitude but high their aim,
  They creep to eminence through paths of shame,
  Till fixed securely in the seats of pow'r,
  The dupes they flattered they at last devour.

  Successive bards pursue Ambition's fire
  That shines, Oblivion, above thy mire.
  The latest mounts his predecessor's trunk,
  And sinks his brother ere himself is sunk.
  So die ingloriously Fame's élite,
  But dams of dunces keep the line complete.

  You may say, if you please, Johnny Bull, that our girls
  Are crazy to marry your dukes and your earls;
  But I've heard that the maids of your own little isle
  Greet bachelor lords with a favoring smile.

  Nay, titles, 'tis said in defense of our fair,
  Are popular here because popular there;
  And for them our ladies persistently go
  Because 'tis exceedingly English, you know.

  Whatever the motive, you'll have to confess
  The effort's attended with easy success;
  And—pardon the freedom—'tis thought, over here,
  'Tis mortification you mask with a sneer.

  It's all very well, sir, your scorn to parade
  Of the high nasal twang of the Yankee maid,
  But, ah, to my lord when he dares to propose
  No sound is so sweet as that "Yes" from the nose.

  Our ladies, we grant, walk alone in the street
  (Observe, by-the-by, on what delicate feet!)
  'Tis a habit they got here at home, where they say
  The men from politeness go seldom astray.

  Ah, well, if the dukes and the earls and that lot
  Can stand it (God succor them if they cannot!)
  Your commoners ought to assent, I am sure,
  And what they 're not called on to suffer, endure.

  "'Tis nothing but money?" "Your nobles are bought?"
  As to that, I submit, it is commonly thought
  That England's a country not specially free
  Of Croesi and (if you'll allow it) Croesae.

  You've many a widow and many a girl
  With money to purchase a duke or an earl.
  'Tis a very remarkable thing, you'll agree,
  When goods import buyers from over the sea.

  Alas for the woman of Albion's isle!
  She may simper; as well as she can she may smile;
  She may wear pantalettes and an air of repose—
  But my lord of the future will talk through his nose.

  [Read at the Celebration of Independence Day in San
  Francisco, in 1888.]

  Goddess of Liberty! O thou
    Whose tearless eyes behold the chain,
    And look unmoved upon the slain,
  Eternal peace upon thy brow,—

  Before thy shrine the races press,
    Thy perfect favor to implore—
    The proudest tyrant asks no more,
  The ironed anarchist no less.

  Thine altar-coals that touch the lips
    Of prophets kindle, too, the brand
    By Discord flung with wanton hand
  Among the houses and the ships.

  Upon thy tranquil front the star
    Burns bleak and passionless and white,
    Its cold inclemency of light
  More dreadful than the shadows are.

  Thy name we do not here invoke
    Our civic rites to sanctify:
    Enthroned in thy remoter sky,
  Thou heedest not our broken yoke.

  Thou carest not for such as we:
    Our millions die to serve the still
    And secret purpose of thy will.
  They perish—what is that to thee?

  The light that fills the patriot's tomb
    Is not of thee. The shining crown
    Compassionately offered down
  To those who falter in the gloom,

  And fall, and call upon thy name,
    And die desiring—'tis the sign
    Of a diviner love than thine,
  Rewarding with a richer fame.

  To him alone let freemen cry
    Who hears alike the victor's shout,
    The song of faith, the moan of doubt,
  And bends him from his nearer sky.

  God of my country and my race!
    So greater than the gods of old—
    So fairer than the prophets told
  Who dimly saw and feared thy face,—

  Who didst but half reveal thy will
   And gracious ends to their desire,
   Behind the dawn's advancing fire
  Thy tender day-beam veiling still,—

  To whom the unceasing suns belong,
   And cause is one with consequence,—
   To whose divine, inclusive sense
  The moan is blended with the song,—

  Whose laws, imperfect and unjust,
   Thy just and perfect purpose serve:
   The needle, howsoe'er it swerve,
  Still warranting the sailor's trust,—

  God, lift thy hand and make us free
   To crown the work thou hast designed.
   O, strike away the chains that bind
  Our souls to one idolatry!

  The liberty thy love hath given
   We thank thee for. We thank thee for
   Our great dead fathers' holy war
  Wherein our manacles were riven.

  We thank thee for the stronger stroke
   Ourselves delivered and incurred
   When—thine incitement half unheard—
  The chains we riveted we broke.

  We thank thee that beyond the sea
    The people, growing ever wise,
    Turn to the west their serious eyes
  And dumbly strive to be as we.

  As when the sun's returning flame
    Upon the Nileside statue shone,
    And struck from the enchanted stone
  The music of a mighty fame,

  Let Man salute the rising day
    Of Liberty, but not adore.
    'Tis Opportunity—no more—
  A useful, not a sacred, ray.

  It bringeth good, it bringeth ill,
    As he possessing shall elect.
    He maketh it of none effect
  Who walketh not within thy will.

  Give thou or more or less, as we
    Shall serve the right or serve the wrong.
    Confirm our freedom but so long
  As we are worthy to be free.

  But when (O, distant be the time!)
    Majorities in passion draw
    Insurgent swords to murder Law,
  And all the land is red with crime;

  Or—nearer menace!—when the band
    Of feeble spirits cringe and plead
    To the gigantic strength of Greed,
  And fawn upon his iron hand;—

  Nay, when the steps to state are worn
    In hollows by the feet of thieves,
    And Mammon sits among the sheaves
  And chuckles while the reapers mourn;

  Then stay thy miracle!—replace
    The broken throne, repair the chain,
    Restore the interrupted reign
  And veil again thy patient face.

  Lo! here upon the world's extreme
    We stand with lifted arms and dare
    By thine eternal name to swear
  Our country, which so fair we deem—

  Upon whose hills, a bannered throng,
    The spirits of the sun display
    Their flashing lances day by day
  And hear the sea's pacific song—

  Shall be so ruled in right and grace
    That men shall say: "O, drive afield
    The lawless eagle from the shield,
  And call an angel to the place!"

  Hassan Bedreddin, clad in rags, ill-shod,
  Sought the great temple of the living God.
    The worshippers arose and drove him forth,
  And one in power beat him with a rod.

  "Allah," he cried, "thou seest what I got;
  Thy servants bar me from the sacred spot."
    "Be comforted," the Holy One replied;
  "It is the only place where I am not."

  I drifted (or I seemed to) in a boat
    Upon the surface of a shoreless sea
  Whereon no ship nor anything did float,
    Save only the frail bark supporting me;
    And that—it was so shadowy—seemed to be
  Almost from out the very vapors wrought
    Of the great ocean underneath its keel;
  And all that blue profound appeared as naught
    But thicker sky, translucent to reveal,
  Miles down, whatever through its spaces glided,
  Or at the bottom traveled or abided.

  Great cities there I saw—of rich and poor,
    The palace and the hovel; mountains, vales,
  Forest and field, the desert and the moor,
    Tombs of the good and wise who'd lived in jails,
    And seas of denser fluid, white with sails
  Pushed at by currents moving here and there
    And sensible to sight above the flat
  Of that opaquer deep. Ah, strange and fair
    The nether world that I was gazing at
  With beating heart from that exalted level,
  And—lest I founder—trembling like the devil!

  The cities all were populous: men swarmed
    In public places—chattered, laughed and wept;
  And savages their shining bodies warmed
    At fires in primal woods. The wild beast leapt
    Upon its prey and slew it as it slept.
  Armies went forth to battle on the plain
    So far, far down in that unfathomed deep
  The living seemed as silent as the slain,
    Nor even the widows could be heard to weep.
  One might have thought their shaking was but laughter;
  And, truly, most were married shortly after.

  Above the wreckage of that silent fray
    Strange fishes swam in circles, round and round—
  Black, double-finned; and once a little way
    A bubble rose and burst without a sound
    And a man tumbled out upon the ground.
  Lord! 'twas an eerie thing to drift apace
    On that pellucid sea, beneath black skies
  And o'er the heads of an undrowning race;
    And when I woke I said—to her surprise
  Who came with chocolate, for me to drink it:
  "The atmosphere is deeper than you think it."

  "My eyes are better, and I shall travel slowly toward home."

  From the regions of the Night,
  Coming with recovered sight—
  From the spell of darkness free,
  What will Danenhower see?

  He will see when he arrives,
  Doctors taking human lives.
  He will see a learned judge
  Whose decision will not budge
  Till both litigants are fleeced
  And his palm is duly greased.
  Lawyers he will see who fight
  Day by day and night by night;
  Never both upon a side,
  Though their fees they still divide.
  Preachers he will see who teach
  That it is divine to preach—
  That they fan a sacred fire
  And are worthy of their hire.
  He will see a trusted wife

  (Pride of some good husband's life)
  Enter at a certain door
  And—but he will see no more.
  He will see Good Templars reel—
  See a prosecutor steal,
  And a father beat his child.
  He'll perhaps see Oscar Wilde.

  From the regions of the Night
  Coming with recovered sight—
  From the bliss of blindness free,
  That's what Danenhower'll see.

  1882.

  Swains and maidens, young and old,
  You to me this tale have told.
  Where the squalid town of Dae
  Irks the comfortable sea,
  Spreading webs to gather fish,
  As for wealth we set a wish,
  Dwelt a king by right divine,
  Sprung from Adam's royal line,
    Town of Dae by the sea,
    Divers kinds of kings there be.

  Name nor fame had Picklepip:
  Ne'er a soldier nor a ship
  Bore his banners in the sun;
    Naught knew he of kingly sport,
    And he held his royal court
  Under an inverted tun.
  Love and roses, ages through,
    Bloom where cot and trellis stand;
  Never yet these blossoms grew—
  Never yet was room for two—
    In a cask upon the strand.

  So it happened, as it ought,
  That his simple schemes he wrought
  Through the lagging summer's day
  In a solitary way.
  So it happened, as was best,
  That he took his nightly rest
    With no dreadful incubus
  This way eyed and that way tressed,
    Featured thus, and thus, and thus,
  Lying lead-like on a breast
  By cares of State enough oppressed.
  Yet in dreams his fancies rude
  Claimed a lordly latitude.
    Town of Dae by the sea,
  Dreamers mate above their state
    And waken back to their degree.

  Once to cask himself away
  He prepared at close of day.
  As he tugged with swelling throat
  At a most unkingly coat—
  Not to get it off, but on,
  For the serving sun was gone—
  Passed a silk-appareled sprite
  Toward her castle on the height,
  Seized and set the garment right.
  Turned the startled Picklepip—
  Splendid crimson cheek and lip!
  Turned again to sneak away,

  But she bade the villain stay,
  Bade him thank her, which he did
  With a speech that slipped and slid,
  Sprawled and stumbled in its gait
  As a dancer tries to skate.
    Town of Dae by the sea,
  In the face of silk and lace
    Rags too bold should never be.

  Lady Minnow cocked her head:
  "Mister Picklepip," she said,
  "Do you ever think to wed?"
    Town of Dae by the sea,
  No fair lady ever made a
    Wicked speech like that to me!

  Wretched little Picklepip
  Said he hadn't any ship,
  Any flocks at his command,
  Nor to feed them any land;
  Said he never in his life
  Owned a mine to keep a wife.
  But the guilty stammer so
  That his meaning wouldn't flow;
  So he thought his aim to reach
  By some figurative speech:
  Said his Fate had been unkind
  Had pursued him from behind
    (How the mischief could it else?)

  Came upon him unaware,
  Caught him by the collar—there
  Gushed the little lady's glee
    Like a gush of golden bells:
  "Picklepip, why, that is me!"
    Town of Dae by the sea,
  Grammar's for great scholars—she
    Loved the summer and the lea.

  Stupid little Picklepip
  Allowed the subtle hint to slip—
  Maundered on about the ship
  That he did not chance to own;
    Told this grievance o'er and o'er,
    Knowing that she knew before;
  Told her how he dwelt alone.
  Lady Minnow, for reply,
  Cut him off with "So do I!"
  But she reddened at the fib;
  Servitors had she, ad lib.    Town of Dae by the sea,
  In her youth who speaks no truth
    Ne'er shall young and honest be.

  Witless little Picklepip
  Manned again his mental ship
  And veered her with a sudden shift.
    Painted to the lady's thought
    How he wrestled and he wrought

  Stoutly with the swimming drift
    By the kindly river brought
  From the mountain to the sea,
  Fuel for the town of Dae.
  Tedious tale for lady's ear:
    From her castle on the height,
    She had watched her water-knight
  Through the seasons of a year,
  Challenge more than met his view
  And conquer better than he knew.
  Now she shook her pretty pate
  And stamped her foot—'t was growing late:
  "Mister Picklepip, when I
  Drifting seaward pass you by;
  When the waves my forehead kiss
    And my tresses float above—
    Dead and drowned for lack of love—
  You'll be sorry, sir, for this!"
  And the silly creature cried—
  Feared, perchance, the rising tide.
    Town of Dae by the sea,
  Madam Adam, when she had 'em,
    May have been as bad as she.

  Fiat lux! Love's lumination
  Fell in floods of revelation!
  Blinded brain by world aglare,
  Sense of pulses in the air,

  Sense of swooning and the beating
  Of a voice somewhere repeating
  Something indistinctly heard!
    And the soul of Picklepip
    Sprang upon his trembling lip,
  But he spake no further word
  Of the wealth he did not own;
  In that moment had outgrown
  Ship and mine and flock and land—
  Even his cask upon the strand.
  Dropped a stricken star to earth,
  Type of wealth and worldly worth.
  Clomb the moon into the sky,
  Type of love's immensity!
  Shaking silver seemed the sea,
  Throne of God the town of Dae!
    Town of Dae by the sea,
  From above there cometh love,
    Blessing all good souls that be.

  False to his art and to the high command
  God laid upon him, Markham's rebel hand
  Beats all in vain the harp he touched before:
  It yields a jingle and it yields no more.
  No more the strings beneath his finger-tips
  Sing harmonies divine. No more his lips,
  Touched with a living coal from sacred fires,
  Lead the sweet chorus of the golden wires.
  The voice is raucous and the phrases squeak;
  They labor, they complain, they sweat, they reek!
  The more the wayward, disobedient song
  Errs from the right to celebrate the wrong,
  More diligently still the singer strums,
  To drown the horrid sound, with all his thumbs.
  Gods, what a spectacle! The angels lean
  Out of high Heaven to view the sorry scene,
  And Israfel, "whose heart-strings are a lute,"
  Though now compassion makes their music mute,
  Among the weeping company appears,
  Pearls in his eyes and cotton in his ears.

  Once I "dipt into the future far as human eye could see,"
  And saw—it was not Sandow, nor John Sullivan, but she—
  The Emancipated Woman, who was weeping as she ran
  Here and there for the discovery of Expurgated Man.
  But the sun of Evolution ever rose and ever set,
  And that tardiest of mortals hadn't evoluted yet.
  Hence the tears that she cascaded, hence the sighs that tore apart
  All the tendinous connections of her indurated heart.
  Cried Emancipated Woman, as she wearied of the search:
  "In Advancing I have left myself distinctly in the lurch!
  Seeking still a worthy partner, from the land of brutes and dudes
  I have penetrated rashly into manless solitudes.
  Now without a mate of any kind where am I?—that's to say,
  Where shall I be to-morrow?—where exert my rightful sway
  And the purifying strength of my emancipated mind?
  Can solitude be lifted up, vacuity refined?
  Calling, calling from the shadows in the rear of my Advance—
  From the Region of Unprogress in the Dark Domain of Chance—
  Long I heard the Unevolvable beseeching my return
  To share the degradation he's reluctant to unlearn.
  But I fancy I detected—though I pray it wasn't that—
  A low reverberation, like an echo in a hat.
  So I've held my way regardless, evoluting year by year,
  Till I'm what you now behold me—or would if you were here—
  A condensed Emancipation and a Purifier proud
  An Independent Entity appropriately loud!
  Independent? Yes, in spirit, but (O, woful, woful state!)
  Doomed to premature extinction by privation of a mate—
  To extinction or reversion, for Unexpurgated Man
  Still awaits me in the backward if I sicken of the van.
  O the horrible dilemma!—to be odiously linked
  With an Undeveloped Species, or become a Type Extinct!"

  As Emancipated Woman wailed her sorrow to the air,
  Stalking out of desolation came a being strange and rare—
  Plato's Man!—bipedal, featherless from mandible to rump,
  Its wings two quilless flippers and its tail a plumeless stump.
  First it scratched and then it clucked, as if in hospitable terms
  It invited her to banquet on imaginary worms.
  Then it strutted up before her with a lifting of the head,
  And in accents of affection and of sympathy it said:
  "My estate is some 'at 'umble, but I'm qualified to draw
  Near the hymeneal altar and whack up my heart and claw
  To Emancipated Anything as walks upon the earth;
  And them things is at your service for whatever they are worth.
  I'm sure to be congenial, marm, nor e'er deserve a scowl—
  I'm Emancipated Rooster, I am Expurgated Fowl!"

  From the future and its wonders I withdrew my gaze, and then
  Wrote this wild unfestive prophecy about the Coming Hen.

  "Ours is a Christian Army"; so he said
  A regiment of bangomen who led.
  "And ours a Christian Navy," added he
  Who sailed a thunder-junk upon the sea.
  Better they know than men unwarlike do
  What is an army and a navy, too.
  Pray God there may be sent them by-and-by
  The knowledge what a Christian is, and why.
  For somewhat lamely the conception runs
  Of a brass-buttoned Jesus firing guns.

  When a fair bridge is builded o'er the gulf
  Between two cities, some ambitious fool,
  Hot for distinction, pleads for earliest leave
  To push his clumsy feet upon the span,
  That men in after years may single him,
  Saying: "Behold the fool who first went o'er!"
  So be it when, as now the promise is,
  Next summer sees the edifice complete
  Which some do name a crematorium,
  Within the vantage of whose greater maw's
  Quicker digestion we shall cheat the worm
  And circumvent the handed mole who loves,
  With tunnel, adit, drift and roomy stope,
  To mine our mortal parts in all their dips
  And spurs and angles. Let the fool stand forth
  To link his name with this fair enterprise,
  As first decarcassed by the flame. And if
  With rival greedings for the fiery fame
  They push in clamoring multitudes, or if
  With unaccustomed modesty they all
  Hold off, being something loth to qualify,
  Let me select the fittest for the rite.
  By heaven! I'll make so warrantable, wise
  And excellent censure of their true deserts,
  And such a searching canvass of their claims,
  That none shall bait the ballot. I'll spread my choice
  Upon the main and general of those
  Who, moved of holy impulse, pulpit-born,
  Protested 'twere a sacrilege to burn
  God's gracious images, designed to rot,
  And bellowed for the right of way for each
  Distempered carrion through the water pipes.
  With such a sturdy, boisterous exclaim
  They did discharge themselves from their own throats
  Against the splintered gates of audience
  'Twere wholesomer to take them in at mouth
  Than ear. These shall burn first: their ignible
  And seasoned substances—trunks, legs and arms,
  Blent indistinguishable in a mass,
  Like winter-woven serpents in a pit—
  None vantaged of his fellow-fools in point
  Of precedence, and all alive—shall serve
  As fueling to fervor the retort
  For after cineration of true men.