X.

How still the bells in steeples stand,

   Till, swollen with the sky,

They leap upon their silver feet

   In frantic melody!

XI.

If the foolish call them 'flowers,'

   Need the wiser tell?

If the savans 'classify' them,

   It is just as well!

Those who read the Revelations

   Must not criticise

Those who read the same edition

   With beclouded eyes!

Could we stand with that old Moses

   Canaan denied, —

Scan, like him, the stately landscape

   On the other side, —

Doubtless we should deem superfluous

   Many sciences

Not pursued by learnèd angels

   In scholastic skies!

Low amid that glad

   Grant that we may stand,

Stars, amid profound Galaxies,

   At that grand 'Right hand'!

XII.

A SYLLABLE.

Could mortal lip divine

   The undeveloped freight

Of a delivered syllable,

   'T would crumble with the weight.

XIII.

PARTING.

My life closed twice before its close;

   It yet remains to see

If Immortality unveil

   A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,

   As these that twice befell.

Parting is all we know of heaven,

   And all we need of hell.

XIV.

ASPIRATION.

We never know how high we are

   Till we are called to rise;

And then, if we are true to plan,

   Our statures touch the skies.

The heroism we recite

   Would be a daily thing,

Did not ourselves the cubits warp

   For fear to be a king.

XV.

THE INEVITABLE.

While I was fearing it, it came,

   But came with less of fear,

Because that fearing it so long

   Had almost made it dear.

There is a fitting a dismay,

   A fitting a despair.

'Tis harder knowing it is due,

   Than knowing it is here.

The trying on the utmost,

   The morning it is new,

Is terribler than wearing it

   A whole existence through.

XVI.

A BOOK.

There is no frigate like a book

   To take us lands away,

Nor any coursers like a page

   Of prancing poetry.

This traverse may the poorest take

   Without oppress of toll;

How frugal is the chariot

   That bears a human soul!

XVII.

Who has not found the heaven below

   Will fail of it above.

God's residence is next to mine,

   His furniture is love.

XVIII.

A PORTRAIT.

A face devoid of love or grace,

   A hateful, hard, successful face,

A face with which a stone

   Would feel as thoroughly at ease

As were they old acquaintances, —

   First time together thrown.

XIX.

I HAD A GUINEA GOLDEN.

I had a guinea golden;

   I lost it in the sand,

And though the sum was simple,

   And pounds were in the land,

Still had it such a value

   Unto my frugal eye,

That when I could not find it

   I sat me down to sigh.

I had a crimson robin

   Who sang full many a day,

But when the woods were painted

   He, too, did fly away.

Time brought me other robins, —

   Their ballads were the same, —

Still for my missing troubadour

   I kept the 'house at hame.'

I had a star in heaven;

   One Pleiad was its name,

And when I was not heeding

   It wandered from the same.

And though the skies are crowded,

   And all the night ashine,

I do not care about it,

   Since none of them are mine.

My story has a moral:

   I have a missing friend, —

Pleiad its name, and robin,

   And guinea in the sand, —

And when this mournful ditty,

   Accompanied with tear,

Shall meet the eye of traitor

   In country far from here,

Grant that repentance solemn

   May seize upon his mind,

And he no consolation

   Beneath the sun may find.

NOTE. — This poem may have had, like many others, a

personal origin. It is more than probable that it was

sent to some friend travelling in Europe, a dainty

reminder of letter-writing delinquencies.

XX.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON.

From all the jails the boys and girls

   Ecstatically leap, —

Beloved, only afternoon

   That prison doesn't keep.

They storm the earth and stun the air,

   A mob of solid bliss.

Alas! that frowns could lie in wait

   For such a foe as this!

XXI.

Few get enough, — enough is one;

   To that ethereal throng

Have not each one of us the right

   To stealthily belong?

XXII.

Upon the gallows hung a wretch,

   Too sullied for the hell

To which the law entitled him.

   As nature's curtain fell

The one who bore him tottered in,

   For this was woman's son.

''T was all I had,' she stricken gasped;

   Oh, what a livid boon!

XXIII.

THE LOST THOUGHT.

I felt a clearing in my mind

   As if my brain had split;

I tried to match it, seam by seam,

   But could not make them fit.

The thought behind I strove to join

   Unto the thought before,

But sequence ravelled out of reach

   Like balls upon a floor.

XXIV.

RETICENCE.

The reticent volcano keeps

   His never slumbering plan;

Confided are his projects pink

   To no precarious man.

If nature will not tell the tale

   Jehovah told to her,

Can human nature not survive

   Without a listener?

Admonished by her buckled lips

   Let every babbler be.

The only secret people keep

   Is Immortality.

XXV.

WITH FLOWERS.

If recollecting were forgetting,

   Then I remember not;

And if forgetting, recollecting,

   How near I had forgot!

And if to miss were merry,

   And if to mourn were gay,

How very blithe the fingers

   That gathered these to-day!

XXVI.

The farthest thunder that I heard

   Was nearer than the sky,

And rumbles still, though torrid noons

   Have lain their missiles by.

The lightning that preceded it

   Struck no one but myself,

But I would not exchange the bolt

   For all the rest of life.

Indebtedness to oxygen

   The chemist may repay,

But not the obligation

   To electricity.

It founds the homes and decks the days,