The Minstrels played their Christmas tune
To-night beneath my cottage-eaves;
While, smitten by a lofty moon,
The encircling laurels, thick with leaves,
Gave back a rich and dazzling sheen,
That overpowered their natural green.

Through hill and valley every breeze
Had sunk to rest with folded wings:
Keen was the air, but could not freeze,
Nor check, the music of the strings;
So stout and hardy were the band
That scraped the chords with strenuous hand;

And who but listened? till was paid
Respect to every Inmate's claim:
The greeting given, the music played,
In honour of each household name,
Duly pronounced with lusty call,
And "merry Christmas" wished to all!

O Brother! I revere the choice
That took thee from thy native hills;

Against the cold pale sky
The elm tree company rose high.
All the fine hues of day
That flowered so bold had died away.
Only chill blue, faint green,
And deepening dark blue were seen.

There swinging on a bough
That hung or floated broad and low.
The lamp of evening, bright
With more than planetary light,
Was beautiful and free--
A white bird swaying on the tree.

You watched and I watched,
Our eyes and hearts so surely matched.
We saw the white bird leap, leap
Shining in his journey steep
Through that vast cold sky.
Our hearts knew his unuttered cry--

A cry of free delight
Spreading over the clustering night.
Pole Hill grave and stark
Stared at the valley's tidal dark,
The Darent glimmered wan;
But that eage...

I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made
Against the bitter East their barricade,
And, guided by its sweet
Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell,
The trailing spring flower tinted like a shell
Amid dry leaves and mosses at my feet.

From under dead boughs, for whose loss the pines
Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming vines
Lifted their glad surprise,
While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless trees
His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-breeze,
And snow-drifts lingered under April skies.

As, pausing, o’er the lonely flower I bent,
I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged and pent,
Which yet find room,
Through care and cumber, coldness and decay,
To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day
And make the sad earth happier for their bloom.

Not home to land and kindred wast thou brought,
Nor laid 'mid trampled dead of battle won,--
Nor after long life filled with duty done
Was thine such death as thou thyself had'st sought!
No, sadder far, with horror overwrought
That end that gave to thee thy cruel grave
Deep in blue chasms of some glacier cave,
When Cervins perils thou, the first, had'st fought
And conquered, Douglas! for in thee uprose
In boyhood e'en a nature noble, free,--
So gently brave with courtesy, that those
Old Douglas knights, the "flowers of Chivalry,"
Had joyed to see that in our times again
A link of gold had graced their ancient chain!

Far up in the wild and wintery hills in the heart of the cliff-broken woods,
Where the mounded drifts lie soft and deep in the noiseless solitudes,
The hut of the lonely woodcutter stands, a few rough beams that show
A blunted peak and a low black line, from the glittering waste of snow.
In the frost-still dawn from his roof goes up in the windless, motionless air,
The thin, pink curl of leisurely smoke; through the forest white and bare
The woodcutter follows his narrow trail, and the morning rings and cracks
With the rhythmic jet of his sharp-blown breath and the echoing shout of his axe.
Only the waft of the wind besides, or the stir of some hardy bird -
The call of the friendly chickadee, or the pat of the nuthatch - is heard;
Or a rustle comes from a dusky clump, where the busy siskin...

Come, pensive Autumn, with thy clouds, and storms,
And falling leaves, and pastures lost to flowers;
A luscious charm hangs on thy faded forms,
More sweet than Summer in her loveliest hours,
Who, in her blooming uniform of green,
Delights with samely and continued joy:
But give me, Autumn, where thy hand hath been,
For there is wildness that can never cloy, -
The russet hue of fields left bare, and all
The tints of leaves and blossoms ere they fall.
In thy dull days of clouds a pleasure comes,
Wild music softens in thy hollow winds;
And in thy fading woods a beauty blooms,
That's more than dear to melancholy minds.

    I was well known and much beloved
    And rich, as fortunes are reckoned
    In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked.
    That was the home for me,
    Though all my children had flown afar -
    Which is the way of Nature - all but one.
    The boy, who was the baby, stayed at home,
    To be my help in my failing years
    And the solace of his mother.
    But I grew weaker, as he grew stronger,
    And he quarreled with me about the business,
    And his wife said I was a hindrance to it;
    And he won his mother to see as he did,
    Till they tore me up to be transplanted
    With them to her girlhood home in Missouri.
    And so much of my fortune was gone at last,
    Though I made the will just as he drew it,
    He profited little by it...

I

Peradventure of old, some bard in Ionian Islands,
    Walking alone by the sea, hearing the wash of the waves,
Learned the secret from them of the beautiful verse elegiac,
    Breathing into his song motion and sound of the sea.

For as the wave of the sea, upheaving in long undulations,
    Plunges loud on the sands, pauses, and turns, and retreats,
So the Hexameter, rising and singing, with cadence sonorous,
    Falls; and in refluent rhythm back the Pentameter flows?

II

Not in his youth alone, but in age, may the heart of the poet
    Bloom into song, as the gorse blossoms in autumn and spring.

III

Not in tenderness wanting, yet rough are the rhymes of our poet;
    Though it be Jacob's voice, Esau's, alas! are the hands.

Master of human harmonies, where gong
And harp and violin and flute accord;
Each instrument confessing you its lord,
Within the deathless orchestra of Song.
Albeit at times your music may sound wrong
To our dulled senses, and its meaning barred
To Earth's slow understanding, never marred
Your message brave: clear, and of trumpet tongue.
Poet-revealer, who, both soon and late,
Within an age of doubt kept clean your faith,
Crying your cry of"With the world all's well!"
How shall we greet you from our low estate,
Keys in the keyboard that is life and death,
The organ whence we hear your music swell?

    Dweller in yon dungeon dark,
    Hangman of creation, mark!
    Who in widow-weeds appears,
    Laden with unhonoured years,
    Noosing with care a bursting purse,
    Baited with many a deadly curse?

Strophe.

    View the wither'd beldam's face,
    Can thy keen inspection trace
    Aught of Humanity's sweet melting grace?
    Note that eye, 'tis rheum o'erflows,
    Pity's flood there never rose.
    See these hands, ne'er stretch'd to save,
    Hands that took, but never gave.
    Keeper of Mammon's iron chest,
    Lo, there she goes, unpitied and unblest
    She goes, but not to realms of everlasting rest!

Antistrophe.

    Plunderer of armies, lift thine eyes,
    (Awhile forbear, ye tort'ring fiends;)
    S...

Although I'm in prison
Thy song is uprisen,
Thou'rt singing away to the feathery cloud,
In the blueness of morn,
Over fields of green corn,
With a song sweet and trilling, and rural and loud.

When the day is serenest,
When the corn is the greenest,
Thy bosom mounts up and floats in the light,
And sings in the sun,
Like a vision begun
Of pleasure, of love, and of lonely delight.

The daisies they whiten
Plains the sunbeams now brighten,
And warm thy snug nest where thy russet eggs lie,
From whence thou'rt now springing,
And the air is now ringing,
To show that the minstrel of Spring is on high.

The cornflower is blooming,
The cowslip is coming,
And many new buds on the silken grass lie:
On the earth's shelt'ring breast<...

(DIED, APRIL 15, 1888)

Within that wood where thine own scholar strays,
O! Poet, thou art passed, and at its bound
Hollow and sere we cry, yet win no sound
But the dark muttering of the forest maze
We may not tread, nor pierce with any gaze;
And hardly love dare whisper thou hast found
That restful moonlit slope of pastoral ground
Set in dark dingles of the songful ways.

Gone! they have called our shepherd from the hill,
Passed is the sunny sadness of his song,
That song which sang of sight and yet was brave
To lay the ghosts of seeing, subtly strong
To wean from tears and from the troughs to save;
And who shall teach us now that he is still!

The faint sun tipt the rising ground,
No blustering wind, the air was still;
The blue mist, thinly scatter'd round,
Verg'd along the distant hill:
Delightful morn! from labour free
I jocund met the south-west gale,
While here and there a busy bee
Humm'd sweetly o'er the flow'ry vale.

O joyful morn! on pleasure bent,
Down the green slopes and fields I flew;
And through the thickest covert went,
Which hid me from the public view:
Nor was it shame, nor was it fear,
No, no, it was my own dear choice;
I love the briary thicket, where
Echo keeps her mocking voice.

The sun's increasing heat was kind,
His warm beams cheer'd the vales around:
I left my own fields far behind,
And, pilgrim-like, trod foreign ground;
The glowing landscape's...

He had met hours of the clock he never guessed    before,
Dumb, dragging, mirthless hours confused with dreams and fear,
Bone-chilling, hungry hours when the gods sleep and snore,
Bequeathing earth and heaven to ghosts, and will not hear,
And will not hear man groan chained to the sodden ground,
Rotting alive; in feather beds they slumbered sound.

When noisome smells of day were sicklied by cold night,
When sentries froze and muttered; when beyond the wire
Blank shadows crawled and tumbled, shaking, tricking the sight,
When impotent hatred of Life stifled desire,
Then soared the sudden rocket, broke in blanching showers.
O lagging watch!    O dawn!    O hope-forsaken hours!

How often with numbed heart, stale lips, venting his rage
He swore he'd be a dolt, a trait...

Mira quel colle, o stanco mio cor vago.

HE BIDS HIS HEART RETURN TO LAURA, NOT PERCEIVING THAT IT HAD NEVER LEFT HER.


P.    Look on that hill, my fond but harass'd heart!
        Yestreen we left her there, who 'gan to take
        Some care of us and friendlier looks to dart;
        Now from our eyes she draws a very lake:
        Return alone--I love to be apart--
        Try, if perchance the day will ever break
        To mitigate our still increasing smart,
        Partner and prophet of my lifelong ache.
H. O wretch! in whom vain thoughts and idle swell,
        Thou, who thyself hast tutor'd to forget,
        Speak'st to thy heart as if 'twere with thee yet?
        When to thy greatest bliss thou saidst farewell,
        ...

Con the dead page as 'twere live love: press on!
Cold wisdom's words will ease thy track for thee;
Aye, go; cast off sweet ways, and leave me wan
To biting blasts that are intent on me.

But if thy object Fame's far summits be,
Whose inclines many a skeleton o'erlies
That missed both dream and substance, stop and see
How absence wears these cheeks and dims these eyes!

It surely is far sweeter and more wise
To water love, than toil to leave anon
A name whose glory-gleam will but advise
Invidious minds to quench it with their own,

And over which the kindliest will but stay
A moment, musing, "He, too, had his day!"

WESTBOURNE PARK VILLAS,
1867.

Here where the cypress tall
Shadows the stucco wall,
Bronze and deep,
Where the chrysanthemums blow,
And the roses - blood and snow -
He lies asleep.

Florence dreameth afar;
Memories of foray and war,
Murmur still;
The Certosa crowns with a cold
Cloud of snow and gold
The olive hill.

What has he now for the streams
Born sweet and deep with dreams
From the cedar meres?
Only the Arno's flow,
Turbid, and weary, and slow
With wrath and tears.

What has he now for the song
Of the boatmen, joyous and long,
Where the rapids shine?
Only the sound of toil,
Where the peasants press the soil
For the oil and wine.

Spirit-fellow in sooth
With bold La Salle and Duluth,
And La Vérandrye, -
Nothing ...

Care is a Poet fine:
He works in shade or shine,
And leaves, you know his sign!
No day without its line.

He writes with iron pen
Upon the brows of men;
Faint lines at first, and then
He scores them in again.

His touch at first is light
On Beauty’s brow of white;
The old churl loves to write
On foreheads broad and bright.

A line for young love crossed,
A line for fair hopes lost
In an untimely frost,
A line that means Thou Wast.

Then deeper script appears:
The furrows of dim fears,
The traces of old tears,
The tide-marks of the years.

To him with sight made strong
By suffering and wrong,
The brows of all the throng
Are eloquent with song.