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Her son, and made the forest ring,
And drove the wedge, and toiled amain.

Firm hand, that loftier office took,

A conscious leader's will obeyed,

And when men sought his word and look, With steadfast might the gathering swayed.

No courtier's, toying with a sword,

Nor minstrel's, laid across a lute;

A chief's, uplifted to the Lord

When all the kings of earth were mute!

The hand of Anak, sinewed strong,

The fingers that on greatness clutch; Yet, lo! the marks their lines along

Of one who strove and suffered much.

For here in knotted cord and vein

I trace the varying chart of years;
I know the troubled heart, the strain,
The weight of Atlas - and the tears.

Again I see the patient brow

That palm erewhile was wont to press;
And now 'tis furrowed deep, and now
Made smooth with hope and tenderness.

For something of a formless grace
This molded outline plays about;
A pitying flame, beyond our trace,
Breathes like a spirit, in and out,-

The love that cast an aureole

Round one who, longer to endure, Called mirth to ease his ceaseless dole, Yet kept his nobler purpose sure.

Lo, as I gaze, the statured man,

Built up from yon large hand, appears;

A type that Nature wills to plan

But once in all a people's years.

What better than this voiceless cast
To tell of such a one as he,

Since through its living semblance passed
The thought that bade a race be free!

PROVENÇAL LOVERS-AUCASSIN AND NICOLETTE

ITHIN the garden of Beaucaire

WITH

He met her by a secret stair,—
The night was centuries ago.
Said Aucassin, "My love, my pet,
These old confessors vex me so!
They threaten all the pains of hell
Unless I give you up, ma belle,”-
Said Aucassin to Nicolette.

"Now, who should there in heaven be
To fill your place, ma très-douce mie?
To reach that spot I little care!

There all the droning priests are met;

All the old cripples, too, are there
That unto shrines and altars cling
To filch the Peter-pence we bring,”.
Said Aucassin to Nicolette.

"There are the barefoot monks and friars
With gowns well tattered by the briars,
The saints who lift their eyes and whine:
I like them not- a starveling set!
Who'd care with folk like these to dine?
The other road 'twere just as well
That you and I should take, ma belle!"-
Said Aucassin to Nicolette.

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"Sweet players on the cithern strings,
And they who roam the world like kings,
Are gathered there, so blithe and free!
Pardie! I'd join them now, my pet,
If you went also, ma douce mie!
The joys of heaven I'd forego

To have you with me there below,"

Said Aucassin to Nicolette.

ARIEL

IN MEMORY OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY: BORN ON THE FOURTH OF AUGUST, A. D. 1792

ERT thou on earth to-day, immortal one,

WERT

How wouldst thou, in the starlight of thine eld, The likeness of that morntide look upon

Which men beheld?

How might it move thee, imaged in time's glass,
As when the tomb has kept

Unchanged the face of one who slept

Too soon, yet molders not, though seasons come and pass?

Has Death a wont to stay the soul no less?

And art thou still what SHELLEY was erewhile?

A feeling born of music's restlessness

A child's swift smile

Between its sobs-a wandering mist that rose
At dawn-a cloud that hung

The Euganean hills among;

Thy voice, a wind-harp's strain in some enchanted close?

Thyself the wild west wind, O boy divine,

Thou fain wouldst be -the spirit which in its breath Wooes yet the seaward ilex and the pine

That wept thy death?

Or art thou still the incarnate child of song

Who gazed, as if astray

From some uncharted stellar way,

With eyes of wonder at our world of grief and wrong?

Yet thou wast Nature's prodigal; the last

Unto whose lips her beauteous mouth she bent

An instant, ere thy kinsmen, fading fast,

Their lorn way went.

What though the faun and oread had fled?

A tenantry thine own,

Peopling their leafy coverts lone,

With thee still dwelt as when sweet Fancy was not dead;

Not dead as now, when we the visionless,

In Nature's alchemy more woeful wise,
Say that no thought of us her depths possess, -
No love, her skies.

Not ours to parley with the whispering June,
The genii of the wood,

The shapes that lurk in solitude,

The cloud, the mounting lark, the wan and waning moon.

For thee the last time Hellas tipped her hills

With beauty; India breathed her midnight moan, Her sigh, her ecstasy of passion's thrills,

To thee alone.

Such rapture thine, and the supremer gift

Which can the minstrel raise

Above the myrtle and the bays,

To watch the sea of pain whereon our galleys drift.

Therefrom arose with thee that lyric cry,

Sad cadence of the disillusioned soul
That asks of heaven and earth its destiny,-
Or joy or dole.

Wild requiem of the heart whose vibratings,
With laughter fraught, and tears,

Beat through the century's dying years,

[wings.

While for one more dark round the old Earth plumes her

No answer came to thee; from ether fell

No voice, no radiant beam: and in thy youth

How were it else, when still the oracle

Withholds its truth?

We sit in judgment; we above thy page Judge thee and such as thee,Pale heralds, sped too soon to see The marvels of our late yet unanointed age!

The slaves of air and light obeyed afar

Thy summons, Ariel; their elf-horns wound
Strange notes which all uncapturable are
Of broken sound.

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;

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