and knightly themes,
Of tourney gay and woodland quest,
Of Perceval and Perceforest,
Of Richard, Arthur, Charlemain,
Amadis and the Cid of Spain—
Must leave them all and seek alone
Some grand adventure of my own.

CLOUD
Yet if you seek and cannot find
Or fail to work what you designed,
Be it but as the steadfast sun
Who bright or dim his course doth run,
And last doth reach as far a spot
Whether he seems to shine or not.

RANDOLPH
The height, the fynial of my aim
Is to be worthy of her name.

CLOUD
You mortals are a curious race—
More whirled by passions, hot in chase
Of passions, than myself am whirled
When tempests tug me o'er the world;
I cannot understand your ways.
We clouds live our divinest days
Beneath great sunny depths of sky,
High above all that you think high,
Drifting through sunset's surf of gold,
Dawn-lakes and moonlight's clear waves cold,
In realms so distant, chill and lone,
That Love, impatient, leaves the throne
To meditative Amity.

RANDOLPH
So would my guardian have it be,
So flowed his constant voice to me,
Of those to make me one, he sought,
Who watch from mountain towers of thought,
Or wandering into paths apart
Pursue the lonely star of art.

WIND
But you would rather love and do.
Well said, so much the wiser you!
But let your love be false as maid's,
Your every fire a flame that fades—
A word, a smile, an easy thing
To fledge and easy taking wing.
Kiss every lip, as tired of rest
As I am now. I'm off to west
Good-bye, and some day when you're hot
I'll meet you cool.

CLOUD
And I should not
Delay my showers so long as this.
God speed! Good-bye!

RANDOLPH
                     Good-bye.
                               I miss
Their wonderful companionship.
So onward seems the world to slip.
Now one glance backward firmly cast;
Thy next foot forward bears thee past
The mountain's crest. Ah, I behold
Our reckless river leaping bold
Down all its ledges. And I see
The castle where Elaine must be.
Lo, in yon window sits she oft.—
From yon green maze of willows soft
I hear our hermitage's bell.
Sweet sound, sweet many scenes, farewell.
        Elaine! Elaine!

CUJUS ANIMÆ PROPICIETUR DEUS.

A quiet, old cathedral folds apart
  At Oxford, from the world of colleges
A world of tombs, and shades them in its heart;
  Contrasting with the busy knowledges
This wisdom, that they all shall end in peace.—
"Vex you not, slaves of truth! there is release."

There every window is a monument
  Emblazoned: every slab along the pave,
Each effigy with knees devoutly bent,—
  Or prone, with folded gauntlets,—is a grave.
Unnoticed down the sands of Kronos run:
Slow move the sombre shadows with the sun.

Hard by a Norman shaft, along the floor
  A portraiture on ancient bronze designed
In Academic hood and robes of yore,
  Commemorates some by-gone lord of mind.
Mournful the face and dignified the head:
A man who pondered much upon the dead.

Repose unbroken now his dust surrounds,
  He is with those whom mortals honor most.
Respect and tender sighs and holy sounds
  Of choirs, and the presence of the Holy Ghost
And fellow spirits and shadowy mem'ries dear
Make for his rest a sacred atmosphere.

Sometime a gentle and profound Divine,
  Father revered of spiritual sons.
He died. They laid him here. About his shrine,
  Of what they wrote this remnant legend runs:
"Nascitur omnis homo peccato mortuus
Una post cineres virtus vivere sola facit."[A]

There as I breathed the lesson of the dead:
Sudden the rich bells chorussed overhead:
  "O be not of the throng ephemeral
    To whom to-day is fame, to-morrow fate,
  Proud of some robe no statelier than a pall,
  Mad for some wreath of cypress funeral—
    A phantom generation fatuate.
Stand thou aside and stretch a hand to save,
Virtue alone revives beyond the grave."

[Footnote A: "Every man is born dead in sin. Virtue alone brings life eternal."]

STANCHEZZA.

EARLY LINES

    Lo Zephyr floats, on pinions delicate,
Past the dark belfry, where a deep-toned bell
Sways back and forth, Grief tolling out the knell
    For thee, my friend, so young and yet so great.
    Dead—thou art dead. The destiny of men
Is ever thus, like waves upon the main
To rise, grow great, fall with a crash and wane,
    While still another grows to wane again,
    Dead—thou art dead. Would that I too were gone
And that the grass which rustles on thy grave
Might also over mine forever wave
    Made living by the death it grew upon.
I ask not Orpheus-like, that Pluto give
Thy soul to earth. I would not have thee live.

PRÆTERITA EX INSTANTIBUS.

How strange it is that, in the after age,—
   When Time's clepsydra will be nearer dry—
   That all the accustomed things we now pass by
Unmarked, because familiar, shall engage
The antique reverence of men to be;
   And that quaint interest which prompts the sage
   The silent fathoms of the past to gauge
Shall keep alive our own past memory,
Making all great of ours—the garb we wear—
   Our voiceless cities, reft of roof and spire—
   The very skull whence now the eye of fire
Glances bright sign of what the soul can dare.
So shall our annals make an envied lore,
And men will say, 'Thus did the men of yore.'

SUNRISE.

EARLY LINES

I saw the shining-limbed Apollo stand,
    Exultant, on the rim of Orient,
  And well and mightily his bow he bent,
And unseen-swift the arrow left his hand.
  Far on it sped, as did those elder ones
    That long ago shed plague upon the Greek—
    Far on—and pierced the side of Night, who weak
And out of breath with fright, fled to his sons,
  The nether ghosts; and lo! his jewelled robe
No more did shade a sleep-encircled world;
And thereupon the faëry legions furled
  The silk of silence, and the wheeling globe
Spun freer on its grand, accustomed way,
While all things living rose to hail the day.

REALITY.

A FANCY

Fade lesser dreams, that, built of tenderness,
Young trust and tinted hopes, have led me long.
These jagged ways ye whiled will pain me less
Than hath your falsity. Your spirit song
Sent magic wafted up and down along
The waves of wind to me. Your world was real.
There was no ruder world that I could feel.
I lived in dreams and thought you all I would,
Nor knew what dread, bare truth is doomed to rise,
When love and hope and all but one far Good,
Like sunset lands feel the cold night of lies.

Go, sweetest