hue,
Mists enchanted, floating, rising,
Fine-spun softness, tints Olympian,
Regal purple, virgin blue.

Tinkling zither, echoing jodel,
Horns that loudly hail the morn
From the upland's stony pathways
Where the snowline meets the outposts
Of the forest, sparse and lorn.

Nether tracts by sunlight heated,
Show the vines in serried rows,
Basking through the drowsy summer
Till their rich and generous vintage
From the wine-press redly flows.

Land of mountain peaks stupendous,
Lakes that fade to meet the sky!
Land for gods, for dreaming poets,
Fit for men of soaring greatness,
Sons of gifted ancestry.

Gods I found not, neither poets,
Only little men who toil
To supply the passing stranger,
Bound upon the wheel of pleasure,
With the produce of the soil.

What would Bonivard or Calvin
Think of you, my little men,
With your minds on money turning,
While you strain with itching fingers
Fast the golden calf to pen?

Yet I love your honest peasants
Dwelling on the mountain slope,
Slow and stolid, yet the children
Of the spirit born of freedom,
Of the patience born of hope.

For among these humble toilers,
From the grasping instinct free,
Still we find the cheerful-hearted,
Earnest, honest Switzer people
With the old simplicity.

Burial at Sea

'Twas midnight in the southern seas
And windless. On the placid deep
Flashed sparkling phosphorescences,
While moonbeams, bright in silver bars,
Lay like a pathway to the stars.

Tireless, our engines, day and night,
A month had throbbed their endless round
Without a pause to mark time's flight.
We heard it all unconsciously
Till suddenly it ceased to be.

For now the slowing pulse that beat,
Stopped in the vessel's iron breast
And quickly changed my slumber sweet
To wandering and uneasy thought
Of what the midnight might have brought.

Gaining the deck, I looked around
With drowsy eyes and half asleep,
And saw a something wrapped and bound
And weighted. I was standing near
Some hapless seaman's simple bier.

A shapeless form in canvas lay,
Stretched on a wooden grating low,
Waiting the word to pass away
Into the silent depths of sea
And boundless realm of fantasy.

Before the bulwark's opening stood
A group about a lantern's light
Moveless like figures carved in wood,
Whilst one with gruff solemnity,
Read prayers for those who die at sea.

Then at the end, with sudden leap,
That sent the sparkling water high,
The body plunged into the deep
Amid a million points of light
That glittered as it sank from sight.

Scarce had a moment passed, before
The men with silent haste had gone:
The engines plied their task, once more,
The ship her steady course pursued
Across the moonlit solitude.

The morning dawned, the hours passed by
And life on board from day to day
Was changeless as the sea and sky.
And so unreal the memory seemed
I wondered if I had not dreamed.

The Master of the Marionettes

'Twas at the fair of Epinetz,
And all the country-side was there.
Each booth gave out its blatant strains,
And grinning came the sheepish swains,
Who greeted with approving stare
The movements of the marionettes,
While from his place well hid from sight
The master laboured, faint and white.

A villain dark, with cloak and plume,
Through two acts of imbroglio,
Pursued a maid of laughing mien
Who played a ribboned tambourine
And loved a gay incognito,
By whom the villain met his doom,
While Pierrot, in a comic part,
Danced to conceal a breaking heart.

'Twas late. The snow fell thick and still
The market place in silence lay.
The master, tired and overwrought,
For troupe and self a lodging sought.
The inn was full. He went his way
Across the heath; beyond the hill
Dawn found him wrapped from head to feet
In winter's snowy winding-sheet.

And as he sank in deadly sleep,
His spirit, like a floating haze,
Wavered a moment o'er the snow,
A valediction to bestow.
And solemnly, with wistful gaze,
The puppets bowed in reverence deep,
Speeding with farewells and regrets
The master of the Marionettes.

Love's Counterfeit

Old as mankind, yet with immortal youth:
Unyielding, ardent, sinuous and bold,
Alluring ever in the guise of truth.

Where is the fire that warmed me yesterday?
And where the flame that will to-morrow blaze
To leave me shivering by its ashes gray?

The wind that sweetly sings in ocean caves,
Then dallies with the wallflowers on the tower
May fan assassins and sweep over graves.

What pleasure has a kiss that fever brings?
Or one grown cold with satisfied desire?
The love that on the senses fiercely plays,
Comes like a wind and passes like a fire.

The Most Precious Thing

What do men rate at the highest in life?
Diamonds that glow,
The finest in water,
In colour and form:
Such as an eastern king's favourite wife
Wears strung in a row,
Or, as those that in slaughter,
In sack or in storm
Of a citadel's heights,
Are torn from a Khalifah slain in the strife?
No. Diamonds decline when Love claims his own,
And freely are bartered for kisses alone.

Some say that virtue is prized more than all,
Virtue that scorns
The baseness and ill
The decalogue cites
And sternly forbids to great and to small.
But when on the horns
Of dilemma, men kill
Compunction, whose lights
Die in darkness profound,
Where mortals are fated to stumble and fall,
Renouncing for kisses the wisdom of time
To find in the sacrifice something sublime.

Rank, Riches and Fame have, each in their way,
A hold on the mind
That we think is supreme,
And sweep man along
To sated ambition's omnipotent sway:
Till one day we find
They are vain as a dream,
Or a beautiful song
Evanescently grand:
And the value we see of the brave display
Of Riches and Fame and Rank at their best,
Is far below kisses when put to the test.

Autumn

A light mist creeps across the downs:
A gleam through clouds is faintly seen:
The grass is wet with heavy dew:
Sear are the leaves that once were green.
I walk at midday when the sun
Throws still some welcome warmth and light:
A chill comes with the afternoon,
And icy is the air at night.
Summer is dead. Its shrouded form
Lies on the logs that make its pyre,
And fancy sees its ghost ascend,
A shadowy wraith above the fire.

To L

Just at this time of great content
Old memories come between the lights
To chasten with their whispers faint
The