class="c6">Were cooled with radiance of that gem divine.

Might I so wed the crystal and the grape,
Passion's red heart and plastic Art's endeavor,
Delirium should take on immortal shape,
Dancing and blushing in strong rock forever.

KATY DID

In a windy tree-top sitting,
Singing at the fall of dew,
Katy watched the bats a-flitting,
While the twilight's curtains drew
Closer round her; till she only
Saw the branches and the sky—
Rocking late and rocking lonely,
Anchored on the darkness high.
And the song that she was singing,
In the windy tree-tops swinging,
Was under the tree, under the tree
The fox is digging a pit for me.

When the early stars were sparkling
Overhead, and down below
Fireflies twinkled, through the darkling
Thickets she heard footsteps go—
Voice of her false lover speaking,
Laughing to his sweetheart new:—
"Half my heart for thee I'm breaking:
Did not Katy love me true?"
Then no longer she was singing,
But through all the wood kept ringing—
Katy did, Katy did, Katy did love thee
And the fox is digging a grave for me.

NARCISSUS

Where the black hemlock slants athwart the stream
He came to bathe; the sun's pursuing beam
Laid a warm hand upon him, as he stood
Naked, while noonday silence filled the wood.
Holding the boughs o'erhead, with cautious foot
He felt his way along the mossy root
That edged the brimming pool; then paused and dreamed.
Half like a dryad of the tree he seemed,
Half like the naiad of the stream below,
Suspended there between the water's flow
And the green tree-top world; the love-sick air
Coaxing with softest touch his body fair
A little longer yet to be content
Outside of its own crystal element.
And he, still lingering at the brink, looked down
And marked the sunshine fleck with gold the brown
And sandy floor which paved that woodland pool.
But then, within the shadows deep and cool
Which the close hemlocks on the surface made,
Two eyes met his yet darker than that shade
And, shining through the watery foliage dim,
Two white and slender arms reached up to him.
"Comest thou again, now all the woods are still,
Fair shape, nor even Echo from the hill
Calls her Narcissus? Would her voice were thine,
Dear speechless image, and could answer mine!
Her I but hear and thee I may but see;
Yet, Echo, thou art happy unto me;
For though thyself art but a voice, sad maid,
Thy love the substance is and my love shade.
Alas! for never may I kiss those dumb
Sweet lips, nor ever hope to come
Into that shadow-world that lies somewhere—
Somewhere between the water and the air.
Alas! for never shall I clasp that form
That mocks me yonder, seeming firm and warm;
But if I leap to its embrace, the cold
And yielding flood is all my arms enfold.
All creatures else, save only me, can share
My beauties, be it but to stroke my hair,
Or hold my hand in theirs, or hear me speak.
The village wives will laugh and clap my cheek;
The forest nymphs will beg me for a kiss,
To make me blush, or hide themselves by this
Clear brook to see me bathe. But I must pine,
Loving not me but this dear ghost of mine."
Then, bending down the boughs, until they dipped
Their broad green fronds, into the wave he slipped,
And, floating breast-high, from the branches hung,
His body with the current idly swung.
And ever and anon he caught the gleam
Of a white shoulder swimming in the stream,
Pressed close to his, and two young eyes of black
Under the dimpling surface answered back
His own, just out of kissing distance: then
The vain and passionate longing came again
Still baffled, still renewed: he loosed his hold
Upon the boughs and strove once more to fold
To his embrace that fine unbodied shape;
But the quick apparition made escape,
And once again his empty arms took in
Only the water and the shadows thin.
Thus every day, when noon lay bright and hot
On all the plains, there came to this cool spot,
Under the hemlocks by the deepening brook,
Narcissus, Phoebus' darling, there to look
And pore upon his picture in the flood:
Till once a peeping dryad of the wood,
Tracking his steps along the slender path
Which he between the tree trunks trodden hath,
Misses the boy on whom her amorous eyes
Where wont to feed; but where he stood she spies
A new-made yellow flower, that still doth seem
To woo his own pale reflex in the stream;
Whom Phoebus kisses when the woods are still
And only ceaseless Echo from the hill
Unprompted cries Narcissus!

NUNC DIMITTIS

Highlands of Navesink,
By the blue ocean's brink,
Let your gray bases drink
Deep of the sea.
Tide that comes flooding up,
Fill me a stirrup cup,
Pledge me a parting sup,
Now I go free.

Wall of the Palisades,
I know where greener glades,
Deeper glens, darker shades,
Hemlock and pine,
Far toward the morning lie
Under a bluer sky,
Lifted by cliffs as high,
Haunts that are mine.

Marshes of Hackensack,
See, I am going back
Where the Quinnipiac
Winds to the bay,
Down its long meadow track,
Piled with the myriad stack,
Where in wide bivouac
Camps the salt hay.

Spire of old Trinity,
Never again to be
Sea-mark and goal to me
As I walk down;
Chimes on the upper air,
Calling in vain to prayer,
Squandering your music where
Roars the black town:

Bless me once ere I ride
Off to God's countryside,
Where in the treetops hide
Belfry and bell;
Tongue of the steeple towers,
Telling the slow-paced hours—
Hail, thou still town of ours—
Bedlam, farewell!

BEAVER POND MEADOW

Thou art my Dismal Swamp, my Everglades:
Thou my Campagna, where the bison wades
Through shallow, steaming pools, and the sick air
Decays. Thou my Serbonian Bog art, where
O'er leagues of mud, black vomit of the Nile,
Crawls in the sun the myriad crocodile.
Or thou my Cambridge or my Lincoln fen
Shalt be—a lonely land where stilted men
Stalking across the surface waters go,
Casting long shadows, and the creaking, slow
Canal-barge, laden with its marshy hay,
Disturbs the stagnant ditches twice a day.
Thou hast thy crocodiles: on rotten logs
Afloat, the turtles swarm and bask: the frogs,
When come the pale, cold twilights of the spring,
Like distant sleigh-bells through the meadows ring.
The school-boy comes on holidays to take
The musk-rat