The Silver Ship, my King—that was her name

In the bright islands whence your fathers came1—

The Silver Ship, at rest from winds and tides,

Below your palace in your harbour rides:

And the seafarers, sitting safe on shore,

Like eager merchants count their treasures o’er.

One gift they find, one strange and lovely thing,

Now doubly precious since it pleased a king.

The right, my liege, is ancient as the lyre

For bards to give to kings what kings admire.

’Tis mine to offer for Apollo’s sake;

And since the gift is fitting, yours to take.

To golden hands the golden pearl I bring:

The ocean jewel to the island king.

Honolulu, Feb. 3, 1889.

Forth from her land to mine she goes,

The island maid, the island rose,

Light of heart and bright of face:

The daughter of a double race.

Her islands here, in Southern sun,

Shall mourn their Kaiulani gone,

And I, in her dear banyan shade,

Look vainly for my little maid.

But our Scots islands far away

Shall glitter with unwonted day,

And cast for once their tempests by

To smile in Kaiulani’s eye.

Honolulu.

To see the infinite pity of this place,

The mangled limb, the devastated face,

The innocent sufferer smiling at the rod—

A fool were tempted to deny his God.

He sees, he shrinks. But if he gaze again,

Lo, beauty springing from the breast of pain;

He marks the sisters on the mournful shores;

And even a fool is silent and adores.

Guest House, Kalawao, Molokai.

I knew a silver head was bright beyond compare,

I knew a queen of toil with a crown of silver hair.

Garland of valour and sorrow, of beauty and renown,

Life, that honours the brave, crowned her himself with the crown.

The beauties of youth are frail, but this was a jewel of age.

Life, that delights in the brave, gave it himself for a gage.

Fair was the crown to behold, and beauty its poorest part—

At once the scar of the wound and the order pinned on the heart.

The beauties of man are frail, and the silver lies in the dust,

And the queen that we call to mind sleeps with the brave and the just;

Sleeps with the weary at length; but, honoured and ever fair,

Shines in the eye of the mind the crown of the silver hair.

Honolulu.

Long must elapse ere you behold again

Green forest frame the entry of the lane—

The wild lane with the bramble and the briar,

The year-old cart-tracks perfect in the mire,

The wayside smoke, perchance, the dwarfish huts,

And ramblers’ donkey drinking from the ruts:—

Long ere you trace how deviously it leads,

Back from man’s chimneys and the bleating meads

To the woodland shadow, to the silvan hush,

When but the brooklet chuckles in the brush—

Back from the sun and bustle of the vale

To where the great voice of the nightingale

Fills all the forest like a single room,

And all the banks smell of the golden broom;

So wander on until the eve descends,

And back returning to your firelit friends,

You see the rosy sun, despoiled of light,

Hung, caught in thickets, like a schoolboy’s kite.

Here from the sea the unfruitful sun shall rise,

Bathe the bare deck and blind the unshielded eyes;

The allotted hours aloft shall wheel in vain

And in the unpregnant ocean plunge again.

Assault of squalls that mock the watchful guard,

And pluck the bursting canvas from the yard,

And senseless clamour of the calm, at night

Must mar your slumbers. By the plunging light,

In beetle-haunted, most unwomanly bower

Of the wild-swerving cabin, hour by hour....

Schooner Equator.

Do you remember—can we e’er forget?—

How, in the coiled perplexities of youth,

In our wild climate, in our scowling town,

We gloomed and shivered, sorrowed, sobbed and feared?

The belching winter wind, the missile rain,

The rare and welcome silence of the snows,

The laggard morn, the haggard day, the night,

The grimy spell of the nocturnal town,

Do you remember?—Ah, could one forget!

As when the fevered sick that all night long

Listed the wind intone, and hear at last

The ever-welcome voice of chanticleer

Sing in the bitter hour before the dawn,—

With sudden ardour, these desire the day:

So sang in the gloom of youth the bird of hope;

So we, exulting, hearkened and desired.

For lo! as in the palace porch of life

We huddled with chimeras, from within—

How sweet to hear!—the music swelled and fell,

And through the breach of the revolving doors

What dreams of splendour blinded us and fled!

I have since then contended and rejoiced;

Amid the glories of the house of life

Profoundly entered, and the shrine beheld:

Yet when the lamp from my expiring eyes

Shall dwindle and recede, the voice of love

Fall insignificant on my closing ears,

What sound shall come but the old cry of the wind

In our inclement city? what return

But the image of the emptiness of youth,

Filled with the sound of footsteps and that voice

Of discontent and rapture and despair?

So, as in darkness, from the magic lamp,

The momentary pictures gleam and fade

And perish, and the night resurges—these

Shall I remember, and then all forget.

Apemama.

The tropics vanish, and meseems that I,

From Halkerside, from topmost Allermuir,

Or steep Caerketton, dreaming gaze again.

Far set in fields and woods, the town I see

Spring gallant from the shallows of her smoke,

Cragged, spired, and turreted, her virgin fort

Beflagged. About, on seaward-drooping hills,

New folds of city glitter. Last, the Forth

Wheels ample waters set with sacred isles,

And populous Fife smokes with a score of towns.

There, on the sunny frontage of a hill,

Hard by the house of kings, repose the dead,

My dead, the ready and the strong of word.

Their works, the salt-encrusted, still survive;

The sea bombards their founded towers; the night

Thrills pierced with their strong lamps. The artificers,

One after one, here in this grated cell,

Where the rain erases and the rust consumes,

Fell upon lasting silence. Continents

And continental oceans intervene;

A sea uncharted, on a lampless isle,

Environs and confines their wandering child

In vain. The voice of generations dead

Summons me, sitting distant, to arise,

My numerous footsteps nimbly to retrace,

And, all mutation over, stretch me down

In that denoted city of the dead.

Apemama.

I heard the pulse of the besieging sea

Throb far away all night. I heard the wind

Fly crying and convulse tumultuous palms.

I rose and strolled. The isle was all bright sand,

And flailing fans and shadows of the palm;

The heaven all moon and wind and the blind vault;

The keenest planet slain, for Venus slept.

The king, my neighbour, with his host of wives,

Slept in the precinct of the palisade;

Where single, in the wind, under the moon,

Among the slumbering cabins, blazed a fire,

Sole street-lamp and the only sentinel.

To other lands and nights my fancy turned—

To London first, and chiefly to your house,

The many-pillared and the well-beloved.

There yearning fancy lighted; there again

In the upper room I lay, and heard far off

The unsleeping city murmur like a shell;

The muffled tramp of the Museum guard

Once more went by me; I beheld again

Lamps vainly brighten the dispeopled street;

Again I longed for the returning morn,

The awaking traffic, the bestirring birds,

The consentaneous trill of tiny song

That weaves round monumental cornices

A passing charm of beauty. Most of all,

For your light foot I wearied, and your knock

That was the glad réveillé of my day.

Lo, now, when to your task in the great house

At morning through the portico you pass,

One moment glance, where by the pillared wall

Far-voyaging island gods, begrimed with smoke,

Sit now unworshipped, the rude monument

Of faiths forgot and races undivined;

Sit now disconsolate, remembering well

The priest, the victim, and the songful crowd,

The blaze of the blue noon, and that huge voice,

Incessant, of the breakers on the shore.

As far as these from their ancestral shrine,

So far, so foreign, your divided friends

Wander, estranged in body, not in mind.

Apemama.

Let us, who part like brothers, part like bards;

And you in your tongue and measure, I in mine,

Our now division duly solemnise.

Unlike the strains, and yet the theme is one:

The strains unlike, and how unlike their fate!

You to the blinding palace-yard shall call

The prefect of the singers, and to him,

Listening devout, your valedictory verse

Deliver; he, his attribute fulfilled,

To the island chorus hand your measures on,

Wed now with harmony: so them, at last,

Night after night, in the open hall of dance,

Shall thirty matted men, to the clapped hand,

Intone and bray and bark. Unfortunate!

Paper and print alone shall honour mine.

Let now the King his ear arouse

And toss the bosky ringlets from his brows,

The while, our bond to implement,

My muse relates and praises his descent.

Bride of the shark, her valour first I sing

Who on the lone seas quickened of a King.

She, from the shore and puny homes of men,

Beyond the climber’s sea-discerning ken,

Swam, led by omens; and devoid of fear,

Beheld her monstrous paramour draw near.

She gazed; all round her to the heavenly pale,

The simple sea was void of isle or sail—

Sole overhead the unsparing sun was reared—

When the deep bubbled and the brute appeared.

But she, secure in the decrees of fate,

Made strong her bosom and received the mate,

And, men declare, from that marine embrace

Conceived the virtues of a stronger race.

Her stern descendant next I praise,

Survivor of a thousand frays:—

In the hall of tongues who ruled the throng;

Led and was trusted by the strong;

And when spears were in the wood,

Like a tower of vantage stood:—

Whom, not till seventy years had sped,

Unscarred of breast, erect of head,

Still light of step, still bright of look,

The hunter, Death, had overtook.

His sons, the brothers twain, I sing.

Of whom the elder reigned a King.

No Childeric he, yet much declined

From his rude sire’s imperious mind,

Until his day came when he died,

He lived, he reigned, he versified.

But chiefly him I celebrate

That was the pillar of the state,

Ruled, wise of word and bold of mien,

The peaceful and the warlike scene;

And played alike the leader’s part

In lawful and unlawful art.

His soldiers with emboldened ears

Heard him laugh among the spears.

He could deduce from age to age

The web of island parentage;

Best lay the rhyme, best lead the dance,

For any festal circumstance:

And fitly fashion oar and boat,

A palace or an armour coat.

None more availed than he to raise

The strong, suffumigating blaze,

Or knot the wizard leaf: none more,

Upon the untrodden windward shore

Of the isle, beside the beating main,

To cure the sickly and constrain,

With muttered words and waving rods,

The gibbering and the whistling gods.

But he, though thus with hand and head

He ruled, commanded, charmed, and led,

And thus in virtue and in might

Towered to contemporary sight—

Still in fraternal faith and love,

Remained below to reach above,

Gave and obeyed the apt command,

Pilot and vassal of the land.

My Tembinok’ from men like these

Inherited his palaces,

His right to rule, his powers of mind,

His cocoa-islands sea-enshrined.

Stern bearer of the sword and whip,

A master passed in mastership,

He learned, without the spur of need,

To write, to cipher, and to read;

From all that touch on his prone shore

Augments his treasury of lore,

Eager in age as erst in youth

To catch an art, to learn a truth,

To paint on the internal page

A clearer picture of the age.

His age, you say? But ah, not so!

In his lone isle of long ago,

A royal Lady of Shalott,

Sea-sundered, he beholds it not;

He only hears it far away.

The stress of equatorial day

He suffers; he records the while

The vapid annals of the isle;

Slaves bring him praise of his renown,

Or cackle of the palm-tree town;

The rarer ship and the rare boat

He marks; and only hears remote,

Where thrones and fortunes rise and reel,

The thunder of the turning wheel.

For the unexpected tears he shed

At my departing, may his lion head

Not whiten, his revolving years

No fresh occasion minister of tears;

At book or cards, at work or sport,

Him may the breeze across the palace court

For ever fan; and swelling near

For ever the loud song divert his ear.

Schooner Equator, at Sea.

In all the grove, nor stream nor bird

Nor aught beside my blows was heard,

And the woods wore their noonday dress—

The glory of their silentness.

From the island summit to the seas,

Trees mounted, and trees drooped, and trees

Groped upward in the gaps. The green

Inarboured talus and ravine

By fathoms. By the multitude,

The rugged columns of the wood

And bunches of the branches stood:

Thick as a mob, deep as a sea,

And silent as eternity.

With lowered axe, with backward head,

Late from this scene my labourer fled,

And with a ravelled tale to tell,

Returned. Some denizen of hell,

Dead man or disinvested god,

Had close behind him peered and trod,

And triumphed when he turned to flee.

How different fell the lines with me!

Whose eye explored the dim arcade

Impatient of the uncoming shade—

Shy elf, or dryad pale and cold,

Or mystic lingerer from of old:

Vainly. The fair and stately things,

Impassive as departed kings,

All still in the wood’s stillness stood,

And dumb. The rooted multitude

Nodded and brooded, bloomed and dreamed,

Unmeaning, undivined. It seemed

No other art, no hope, they knew,

Than clutch the earth and seek the blue.

’Mid vegetable king and priest

And stripling, I (the only beast)

Was at the beast’s work, killing; hewed

The stubborn roots across, bestrewed

The glebe with the dislustred leaves,

And bade the saplings fall in sheaves;

Bursting across the tangled math

A ruin that I called a path,

A Golgotha that, later on,

When rains had watered, and suns shone,

And seeds enriched the place, should bear

And be called garden. Here and there,

I spied and plucked by the green hair

A foe more resolute to live,

The toothed and killing sensitive.

He, semi-conscious, fled the attack;

He shrank and tucked his branches back;

And straining by his anchor strand,

Captured and scratched the rooting hand.

I saw him crouch, I felt him bite;

And straight my eyes were touched with sight.

I saw the wood for what it was;

The lost and the victorious cause;

The deadly battle pitched in line,

Saw silent weapons cross and shine:

Silent defeat, silent assault,

A battle and a burial vault.

Thick round me in the teeming mud

Briar and fern strove to the blood.

The hooked liana in his gin

Noosed his reluctant neighbours in:

There the green murderer throve and spread,

Upon his smothering victims fed,

And wantoned on his climbing coil.

Contending roots fought for the soil

Like frightened demons: with despair

Competing branches pushed for air.

Green conquerors from overhead

Bestrode the bodies of their dead;

The Caesars of the silvan field,

Unused to fail, foredoomed to yield:

For in the groins of branches, lo!

The cancers of the orchid grow.

Silent as in the listed ring

Two chartered wrestlers strain and cling,

Dumb as by yellow Hooghly’s side

The suffocating captives died:

So hushed the woodland warfare goes

Unceasing; and the silent foes

Grapple and smother, strain and clasp

Without a cry, without a gasp.

Here also sound Thy fans, O God,

Here too Thy banners move abroad:

Forest and city, sea and shore,

And the whole earth, Thy threshing-floor!

The drums of war, the drums of peace,

Roll through our cities without cease,

And all the iron halls of life

Ring with the unremitting strife.

The common lot we scarce perceive.

Crowds perish, we nor mark nor grieve:

The bugle calls—we mourn a few!

What corporal’s guard at Waterloo?

What scanty hundreds more or less

In the man-devouring Wilderness?

What handful bled on Delhi ridge?

—See, rather, London, on thy bridge

The pale battalions trample by,

Resolved to slay, resigned to die.

Count, rather, all the maimed and dead

In the unbrotherly war of bread.

See, rather, under sultrier skies

What vegetable Londons rise,

And teem, and suffer without sound.

Or in your tranquil garden ground,

Contented, in the falling gloom,

Saunter and see the roses bloom.

That these might live, what thousands died!

All day the cruel hoe was plied;

The ambulance barrow rolled all day;

Your wife, the tender, kind, and gay,

Donned her long gauntlets, caught the spud

And bathed in vegetable blood;

And the long massacre now at end,

See! where the lazy coils ascend,

See, where the bonfire sputters red

At even, for the innocent dead.

Why prate of peace? when, warriors all,

We clank in harness into hall,

And ever bare upon the board

Lies the necessary sword.

In the green field or quiet street,

Besieged we sleep, beleaguered eat;

Labour by day and wake o’ nights,

In war with rival appetites.

The rose on roses feeds; the lark

On larks. The sedentary clerk

All morning with a diligent pen

Murders the babes of other men;

And like the beasts of wood and park,

Protects his whelps, defends his den.

Unshamed the narrow aim I hold;

I feed my sheep, patrol my fold;

Breathe war on wolves and rival flocks,

A pious outlaw on the rocks

Of God and morning; and when time

Shall bow, or rivals break me, climb

Where no undubbed civilian dares,

In my war harness, the loud stairs

Of honour; and my conqueror

Hail me a warrior fallen in war.

Vailima.

As the single pang of the blow, when the metal is mingled well,

Rings and lives and resounds in all the bounds of the bell,

So the thunder above spoke with a single tongue,

So in the heart of the mountain the sound of it rumbled and clung.

Sudden the thunder was drowned—quenched was the levin light—

And the angel-spirit of rain laughed out loud in the night.

Loud as the maddened river raves in the cloven glen,

Angel of rain! you laughed and leaped on the roofs of men;

And the sleepers sprang in their beds, and joyed and feared as you fell.

You struck, and my cabin quailed; the roof of it roared like a bell.

You spoke, and at once the mountain shouted and shook with brooks.

You ceased, and the day returned, rosy, with virgin looks.

And methought that beauty and terror are only one, not two;

And the world has room for love, and death, and thunder, and dew;

And all the sinews of hell slumber in summer air;

And the face of God is a rock, but the face of the rock is fair.

Beneficent streams of tears flow at the finger of pain;

And out of the cloud that smites, beneficent rivers of rain.

Vailima.

Let now your soul in this substantial world

Some anchor strike. Be here the body moored;—

This spectacle immutably from now

The picture in your eye; and when time strikes,

And the green scene goes on the instant blind—

The ultimate helpers, where your horse to-day

Conveyed you dreaming, bear your body dead.

Vailima.

We uncommiserate pass into the night

From the loud banquet, and departing leave

A tremor in men’s memories, faint and sweet

And frail as music. Features of our face,

The tones of the voice, the touch of the loved hand,

Perish and vanish, one by one, from earth:

Meanwhile, in the hall of song, the multitude

Applauds the new performer. One, perchance,

One ultimate survivor lingers on,

And smiles, and to his ancient heart recalls

The long forgotten. Ere the morrow die,

He too, returning, through the curtain comes,

And the new age forgets us and goes on.

Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,

Say, could that lad be I?

Merry of soul he sailed on a day

Over the sea to Skye.

Mull was astern, Rum on the port,

Eigg on the starboard bow;

Glory of youth glowed in his soul:

Where is that glory now?

Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,

Say, could that lad be I?

Merry of soul he sailed on a day

Over the sea to Skye.

Give me again all that was there,

Give me the sun that shone!

Give me the eyes, give me the soul,

Give me the lad that’s gone!

Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,

Say, could that lad be I?

Merry of soul he sailed on a day

Over the sea to Skye.

Billow and breeze, islands and seas,

Mountains of rain and sun,

All that was good, all that was fair,

All that was me is gone.

Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,

Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,

Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,

My heart remembers how!

Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places,

Standing-stones on the vacant wine-red moor,

Hills of sheep, and the homes of the silent vanished races,

And winds, austere and pure:

Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,

Hills of home! and to hear again the call;

Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees crying,

And hear no more at all.

Vailima.

The embers of the day are red

Beyond the murky hill.

The kitchen smokes: the bed

In the darkling house is spread:

The great sky darkens overhead,

And the great woods are shrill.

So far have I been led,

Lord, by Thy will:

So far I have followed, Lord, and wondered still.

The breeze from the embalmèd land

Blows sudden toward the shore,

And claps my cottage door.

I hear the signal, Lord—I understand.

The night at Thy command

Comes. I will eat and sleep and will not question more.

Vailima.

Blame me not that this epistle

Is the first you have from me;

Idleness hath held me fettered;

But at last the times are bettered,

And once more I wet my whistle

Here in France beside the sea.

All the green and idle weather,

I have had in sun and shower

Such an easy, warm subsistence,

Such an indolent existence,

I should find it hard to sever

Day from day and hour from hour.

Many a tract-provided ranter

May upbraid me, dark and sour,

Many a bland Utilitarian,

Or excited Millenarian,

—“Pereunt et imputantur”—

You must speak to every hour.

But (the very term’s deception)

You at least, my Friend, will see

That in sunny grassy meadows,

Trailed across by moving shadows,

To be actively receptive

Is as much as man can be.

He that all the winter grapples

Difficulties—thrust and ward—

Needs to cheer him thro’ his duty

Memories of sun and beauty,

Orchards with the russet apples

Lying scattered on the sward.

Many such I keep in prison,

Keep them here at heart unseen,

Till my muse again rehearses

Long years hence, and in my verses

You shall meet them re-arisen,

Ever comely, ever green.

You know how they never perish,

How, in time of later art,

Memories consecrate and sweeten

Those defaced and tempest-beaten

Flowers of former years we cherish

Half a life, against our heart.

Most, those love-fruits withered greenly,

Those frail, sickly amourettes,—

How they brighten with the distance,

Take new strength and new existence,

Till we see them sitting queenly

Crowned and courted by regrets!

All that loveliest and best is,

Aureole-fashion round their head,

They that looked in life but plainly,

How they stir our spirits vainly

When they come to us, Alcestis—

Like returning from the dead!

Not the old love but another,

Bright she comes at memory’s call,

Our forgotten vows reviving

To a newer, livelier living,

As the dead child to the mother

Seems the fairest child of all.

Thus our Goethe, sacred master,

Travelling backward thro’ his youth,

Surely wandered wrong in trying

To renew the old, undying

Loves that cling in memory faster

Than they ever lived in truth.

Boulogne-sur-Mer, September 1872.

Far have you come, my lady, from the town,

And far from all your sorrows, if you please,

To smell the good sea-winds and hear the seas,

And in green meadows lay your body down.

To find your pale face grow from pale to brown,

Your sad eyes growing brighter by degrees;

Far have you come, my lady, from the town,

And far from all your sorrows, if you please.

Here in this seaboard land of old renown,

In meadow grass go wading to the knees;

Bathe your whole soul a while in simple ease;

There is no sorrow but the sea can drown;

Far have you come, my lady, from the town.

Nous n’irons plus au bois

We’ll walk the woods no more,

But stay beside the fire,

To weep for old desire

And things that are no more.

The woods are spoiled and hoar,

The ways are full of mire;

We’ll walk the woods no more,

But stay beside the fire.

We loved, in days of yore,

Love, laughter, and the lyre.

Ah God, but death is dire,

And death is at the door—

We’ll walk the woods no more.

Château Renard, August 1875.

Since I am sworn to live my life

And not to keep an easy heart,

Some men may sit and drink apart,

I bear a banner in the strife.

Some can take quiet thought to wife,

I am all day at tierce and carte,

Since I am sworn to live my life

And not to keep an easy heart.

I follow gaily to the fife,

Leave Wisdom bowed above a chart,

And Prudence brawing in the mart,

And dare Misfortune to the knife,

Since I am sworn to live my life.

I who was young so long,

Young and alert and gay,

Now that my hair is grey,

Begin to change my song.

Now I know right from wrong,

Now I know pay and pray,

I who was young so long,

Young and alert and gay.

Now I follow the throng,

Walk in the beaten way,

Hear what the elders say,

And own that I was wrong—

I who was young so long.

1876.

Noo lyart leaves blaw ower the green,

Red are the bonny woods o’ Dean,

An’ here we’re back in Embro, freen’,

To pass the winter.

Whilk noo, wi’ frosts afore, draws in,

An’ snaws ahint her.

I’ve seen ’s hae days to fricht us a’,

The Pentlands poothered weel wi’ snaw,

The ways half-smoored wi’ liquid thaw,

An’ half-congealin’,

The snell an’ scowtherin’ norther blaw

Frae blae Brunteelan’.

I’ve seen ’s been unco sweir to sally,

And at the door-cheeks daff an’ dally,

Seen ’s daidle thus an’ shilly-shally

For near a minute—

Sae cauld the wind blew up the valley,

The deil was in it!—

Syne spread the silk an’ tak the gate,

In blast an’ blaudin’, rain, deil hae ’t!

The hale toon glintin’, stane an’ slate,

Wi’ cauld an’ weet,

An’ to the Court, gin we ’se be late,

Bicker oor feet.

And at the Court, tae, aft I saw

Whaur Advocates by twa an’ twa

Gang gesterin’ end to end the ha’

In weeg an’ goon,

To crack o’ what ye wull but Law

The hale forenoon.

That muckle ha’, maist like a kirk,

I’ve kent at braid mid-day sae mirk

Ye’d seen white weegs an’ faces lurk

Like ghaists frae Hell,

But whether Christian ghaists or Turk,

Deil ane could tell.

The three fires lunted in the gloom,

The wind blew like the blast o’ doom,

The rain upo’ the roof abune

Played Peter Dick—

Ye wad nae’d licht enough i’ the room

Your teeth to pick!

But, freend, ye ken how me an’ you,

The ling-lang lanely winter through,

Keep’d a guid speerit up, an’ true

To lore Horatian,

We aye the ither bottle drew

To inclination.

Sae let us in the comin’ days

Stand sicker on our auncient ways—

The strauchtest road in a’ the maze

Since Eve ate apples;

An’ let the winter weet our cla’es—

We’ll weet oor thrapples.

Edinburgh, October 1875.

Of where or how, I nothing know;

And why, I do not care;

Enough if, even so,

My travelling eyes, my travelling mind can go

By flood and field and hill, by wood and meadow fair,

Beside the Susquehannah and along the Delaware.

I think, I hope, I dream no more

The dreams of otherwhere,

The cherished thoughts of yore;

I have been changed from what I was before;

And drunk too deep perchance the lotus of the air,

Beside the Susquehannah and along the Delaware.

Unweary, God me yet shall bring

To lands of brighter air,

Where I, now half a king,

Shall with enfranchised spirit loudlier sing,

And wear a bolder front than that which now I wear

Beside the Susquehannah and along the Delaware.

August 1879.