"High over all the lonely bugle grieves."

POSTHUMOUS

Put them in print?
Make one more dint
In the ages' furrowed rock? No, no!
Let his name and his verses go.
These idle scraps, they would but wrong
His memory, whom we honored long;
And men would ask: "Is this the best—
Is this the whole his life expressed?"
Haply he had no care to tell
To all the thoughts which flung their spell
Around us when the night grew deep,
Making it seem a loss to sleep,
Exalting the low, dingy room
To some high auditorium.
And when we parted homeward, still
They followed us beyond the hill.
The heaven had brought new stars to sight,
Opening the map of later night;
And the wide silence of the snow,
And the dark whispers of the pines,
And those keen fires that glittered slow
Along the zodiac's wintry signs,
Seemed witnesses and near of kin
To the high dreams we held within.

Yet what is left
To us bereft,
Save these remains,
Which now the moth
Will fret, or swifter fire consume?
These inky stains
On his table-cloth;
These prints that decked his room;
His throne, this ragged easy-chair;
This battered pipe, his councillor.
This is the sum and inventory.
No son he left to tell his story,
No gold, no lands, no fame, no book.
Yet one of us, his heirs, who took
The impress of his brain and heart
May gain from Heaven the lucky art
His untold meanings to impart
In words that will not soon decay.
Then gratefully will such one say:
"This phrase, dear friend, perhaps, is mine;
The breath that gave it life was thine."

HUGH LATIMER

His lips amid the flame outsent
A music strong and sweet,
Like some unearthly instrument
That's played upon by heat.

As spice-wood tough, laid on the coal,
Sets all its perfume free,
The incense of his hardy soul
Rose up exceedingly.

To open that great flower, too cold
Were sun and vernal rain;
But fire has forced it to unfold,
Nor will it shut again.

CARÇAMON

His steed was old, his armor worn,
And he was old and worn and gray:
The light that lit his patient eyes
It shone from very far away.

Through gay Provence he journeyed on;
To one high quest his life was true,
And so they called him Carçamon—
The knight who seeketh the world through.

A pansy blossomed on his shield;
"A token 'tis," the people say,
"That still across the world's wide field
He seeks la dame de ses pensées."

For somewhere on a painted wall,
Or in the city's shifting crowd,
Or looking from a casement tall,
Or shaped of dream or evening cloud—

Forgotten when, forgotten where—
Her face had filled his careless eye
A moment ere he turned and passed,
Nor knew it was his destiny.

But ever in his dreams it came
Divine and passionless and strong,
A smile upon the imperial lips
No lover's kiss had dared to wrong.

He took his armor from the wall—
Ah! gone since then was many a day—
He led his steed from out the stall
And sought la dame de ses pensées.

The ladies of the Troubadours
Came riding through the chestnut grove
"Sir Minstrel, string that lute of yours
And sing us a gay song of love."

"O ladies of the Troubadours,
My lute has but a single string;
Sirventes fit for paramours,
My heart is not in tune to sing.

"The flower that blooms upon my shield
It has another soil and spring
Than that wherein the gaudy rose
Of light Provence is blossoming.

"The lady of my dreams doth hold
Such royal state within my mind,
No thought that comes unclad in gold
To that high court may entrance find."

So through the chestnut groves he passed,
And through the land and far away;
Nor know I whether in the world
He found la dame de ses pensées.

Only I know that in the South
Long to the harp his tale was told;
Sweet as new wine within the mouth
The small, choice words and music old.

To scorn the promise of the real;
To seek and seek and not to find;
Yet cherish still the fair ideal—
It is thy fate, O restless Mind!

ECCE IN DESERTO

The wilderness a secret keeps
Upon whose guess I go:
Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard;
And yet I know, I know,

Some day the viewless latch will lift,
The airy door swing wide
To one lost chamber of the wood
Where those shy mysteries hide,—

One yet unfound, receding depth,
From which the wood-thrush sings,
Still luring in to darker shades,
In—in to colder springs.

There is no wind abroad to-day.
But hark!—the pine-tops' roar,
That sleep and in their dreams repeat
The music of the shore.

What wisdom in their needles stirs?
What song is that they sing?
Those airs that search the forest's heart,
What rumor do they bring?

A hushed excitement fills the gloom,
And, in the stillness, clear
The vireo's tell-tale warning rings:
"'Tis near—'tis near—'tis near!"

As, in the fairy-tale, more loud
The ghostly music plays
When, toward the enchanted bower, the prince
Draws closer through the maze.

Nay—nay. I track a fleeter game,
A wilder than ye know,
To lairs beyond the inmost haunt
Of thrush or vireo.

This way it passed: the scent lies fresh;
The ferns still lightly shake.
Ever I follow hard upon,
But never overtake.

To other woods the trail leads on,
To other worlds and new,
Where they who keep the secret here
Will keep the promise too.