THOUGHTS IN RHYME.

BY ARCHEUS.

My gay-garbed friend, much wonder fills the mind,
At leaf-girt Adam's stock so much refined!
The leaf has flourished wide in form and hue,
And the man dwindled while the foliage grew.

II.

Bid, at starry midnight's hour,

Dante's organ swell with power;

Hear at noon, when winds are mute,
'Mid the woods Petrarca's lute;

*The records of all sentiment grow out or become known in a mythical form. The only aspiration of savage man lies in the mythos of his religious creed. He stands naked betwixt God and nature.

Kindling list, at dawn of morn,
Ariosto's bugle horn :

Let thine ear at lingering eve
Tasso's twilight flute receive;

That sweet music manifold

Through the sense the heart may mould.

III.

EPITAPH ON A YOUNG SWISS WHO DIED AT MADEIRA.

The exiled son of old Helvetia's race

Beheld these hills, and longed for Jura's pile ; And soon, 'mid men of alien speech and face, He sank to death in this Atlantic isle.

From country far, from friends compell'd to roam,
Still she whom best he loved consoled his eyes;
And looking still to his eternal home,

He found his childhood's God in foreign skies.

IV.

Would Beatrice unto thee, O friend,

As erst for him she loved, from heaven descend,
Make pure thine eyes with light from hers, and raise
Beyond the terrene mist thy spirit's gaze;

Then wouldst thou Dante see, where starry quires
Tune voice and thought to awe-resounding lyres;
His front redeem'd from care, his lip from pride,
No love now baffled, and no foes defied;

His country there whence none are doom'd to roam,
And Christ's full presence not a foreign home.

V.

How fair the summer day of joy and light,

How soft the liquid eve's aërial dyes,

How clear and musical the starry night,

That sleep in death where Love's Petrarca lies!

VI.

Think thou no more of Words, exclaim'd my friend;

But unto Things, instead, thy labour bend!

So Words, then, are not Things! If this be true,
Thy Words of counsel, friend! are No-things too.

VII.

When reason serves at passion's will,

The Centaur flies from bonds released, And who should guide the strength by skill Himself is changed to half the beast.

VIII.

Sweet notes, to all but him unspoken,
Attuned to bliss a poet's thought;
He grasp'd the lyre, the strings were broken,
And silence hid the strain he sought.

A longing heart would fain have given
A nobler life to mortal things;
But found that earth will not be heaven,

Nor lyres resound without the strings.

IX.

The region known to men as England,
Is called among the Immortals-Thing-land.
Alas! that earth's most fully fraught land
With all its riches, is not Thought-land.

X.

I look'd upon a steam-engine, and thought
'Tis strange that when the engineer is dead,
A copy of his brains in iron wrought,
Should thus survive the archetypal head.

XI.

Poor affluence of Words, how weak thy power
Without the warming heart, the bright'ning head!
When Jove came down through Danaë's brazen tower,
It was not, mark ye, in a fall of lead.

XII.

A troop went pacing by in easy ken

Of one who rested in his idle wherry,

And wonder'd much why heaven created men
Who had no need to pass across the ferry.

XIII.

That mountains gather clouds I know,
And bring forth wood, and fire, and snow;
And when they teem with men, and teach
In word and tone of human speech,
I, too, to hills will raise my prayer,
Make them my heaven, and worship there.
But worlds of earth are only clods,
Compared with him who digs their sods.

XIV.

When the Titan brought fire to men on earth,
Said the gods, the traitor intends to scare us,
By taking a light in his schoolboy mirth
Into Jupiter's gunpowder warehouse.

XV.

The world sent forth a stately ship that long in glory sail'd,
Until against that stubborn hulk the winds of heaven prevail'd;
The ship was dash'd upon the shore, the wreck was on the foam,
Though on the shatter'd stern was seen the boast-IMPERIAL ROME.

Again the ruin was repair'd, and launch'd upon the main ;
With blazon'd flags and arms it swept, and was a ship again :
By thundersound it strove to daunt mankind, and storms, and time,
And traffic'd long, by force and fraud, in every richest clime.

Once more it struck against the rocks, beneath the stress of heaven,
And all its threats and all its wealth along the surge were driven :
It lies a hulk in slow decay, each dull sea-monster's home,
And on the slimy stern is carved the name of PAPAL ROME.

XVI.

Thou whose mental eye is keen
But to pierce the husks of things,
Learn that bees were never seen
Gathering honey with their stings.

XVII.

If all the forest leaves had speech,
And talk'd with one rhetoric fit,
What wonder would arise in each
That all would not attend to it!

XVIII.

A Russian, looking at a map of earth,

Saw England's smallness with contemptuous mirth:
Poor Boyar! 'twere a thought to break thy rest
How large a spirit haunts man's little breast!
And, fill'd with what a thimbleful of life,
The huge rhinoceros wakes for food or strife!

XIX.

Loud sceptic cock, I see thee stand
Upon thy heap of foul decay,

And, crowing keen, thy wings expand

To chase all spectral things away.

What though the ghosts thy note would scare

Be Truth's ideal starry train;

Thy voice shall chase the lights of air,

And turn them into mist again.

Ah! no; a day will surely shine,

When thou shalt know thy nature's dcom,

And self-despoil'd of life divine

Shalt find in mire thy fitting tomb.

XX.

How many giants, each in turn, have sought

To bear the world upon their shoulders wide,

King, conqueror, priest, and he whose work is thought;
And all in turn have sunk, outworn, and died!

But yet the world is never felt to move,
Because it hangs suspended from above.

XXI.

Good friend, so worthlessly complete,

So deftly small, so roundly neat,

The puniest apple being ripe

Will ne'er exceed that pigmy type;

But the ripe crab is worst of all

At once full-grown, and sour, and small.

XXII.

A Frenchman gather'd salad for his dinner,
From banks where ass and pig their viands got,
And mused if all that lies 'twixt beast and sinner
Be eating salad with a sauce or not.

It did not strike him that the brute would never
Indulge his fancy with a thought so clever.

XXIII.

When he who told Ulysses' tale in song,

Roam❜d blind and poor, compell'd for bread to sue,
From his deep heart he mourn'd the shameful wrong,-

Ah! sweet-voiced muses, are ye Sirens too?

XXIV.

A sleeper, sunk in dark discordant woes,

Scarce heard sweet music whispering through his dream,
When, 'mid his dull dead life, clear sounds arose,

Sung far in air on some Italian theme;

He shook his pains away, and half aghast
Found Florence there, and all his dream was past.

XXV.

I saw a flower-girl selling brightest flowers,
To deck with summer joys autumnal hours;
With swiftest glance, light hand, and graceful speech,
The damsel gave a rose or pink to each;

And where she came, there brighten'd many an eye;
As if her basket held a warmer sky.

Ah! 'twas not there, but lay within the breast;
The sunshine warming that is nature's best.

XXVI.

In Florence Dante's voice no more is booming,
Nor Beatrice's face by Arno blooming :

But hearts that never heard the poet's glory
Have their own Heaven, and Hell, and Purgatory.

XXVII.

I stood amid the Pitti's gilded halls,

Where art with noble shapes had spread the walls,
Where Raphael's truthful grace, and Titian's glow,
Shone 'mid the austerest forms of Angelo.
Among the bright unmoving visions there
Were gazing groups alive, but not so fair;
Gay girls admired, and counts and lords went by,
Wits, artists, soldiers, connoisseurs, and I:.
And there came in, like ghosts in dreamy scenes,
Three mantled, cowled, and barefoot Capuchins.
No stranger spectres e'er confused our life.
Since Luther broke his bonds and took a wife.
The men look'd dull and harmless, cheerful too,
And stared as sagely round as travellers do;
Yet sad the sight, and worst of all despairs-
To see contentment with a lot like theirs.

XXVIII.

True, O Sage! that mortal man
Does no more than what he can ;
But what can by man be done

Is a limit known to none.

XXIX.

ON THE FAUN IN THE TRIBUNE OF THE FLORENCE GALLERY.

Though no Bacchante treads with thee the lawn,
Dance on, and clash thy cymbals, madcap Faun!
Thy heart goes leaping through each goatish limb,
And shakes the flowers upon thy fountain's brim,
While the nymphs lurk and watch, and nature's sky
Breathes round thy horns, and drinks thy laughing cry.
Though dead to our new world as funeral dust,
So live thou on, and mock their dull distrust;
For thou art life itself in stone, and they
Who heed thee not are ghosts that flit by day.