ess of the other homes
About and opposite. For in our home
Rare birds sing forth uncommon melodies;
And in our home-yard a young offshoot grows,
Sprung from Dodona's tree oracular!
And in the garden of our home, full thick,
The ironworts and snakeroots blossom on;
And in our home the magic mirror shines
Reflecting always in its gleaming glass
The visage of the world thrice-wonderful!

The silence of our home is full of moans,
Moans vague and muffled from a distant world
Of bygone ages and of times unborn;
And in our home souls come to life and die.
Blossom from blossom blossoms forth and fades!
Old men have the white, rich, Levitic beard,
The foreheads wide of solemn contemplation,
The wrath of prophets, and the fleeting calm
And chilling threatfulness of the gray shadows.

Glowing with love-heat like resistless Satyrs,
The young men in the mind's most shady glades
Hunt ardently the bride that is pure thought.
The children drop their playthings carelessly,
And, standing in a corner motionless,
Open their eyes in thought like men full-grown.
And all, ancestors and descendants, young
Or old, have ways that challenge ridicule
And have the word that bursting forth makes slaves!

But still more beautiful and pure than these,
An harmony fit for the chosen few
Fills with its ringing sounds our dwelling place,
A lightning sent from Sinai and a gleam
From great Olympus, like the mingling sounds
Of David's harp and Pindar's lyre conversing
In the star-spangled darkness of the night.

THE DEAD

Within this place, I breathe a dead man's soul;
And the dead man, a blond and beardless youth!
A youthful light and blond stirs in our home;
And moments fly, and days and years and ages.
The dead man's soul is in this lonely house
Like bitter quiet about a calm-bound ship
That longs for the sea-paths, and dreams of storms.

All faces, smoked with the faint smoke that glides
From candles lighting death! All eyes, still fixed
On a sad coffin! And the mute lips, tinged
With the last kiss's bitterness, still tremble.
As for a prayer, hands are raised, and feet
Move quietly as behind a funeral.
The snow-white nakedness of the cold walls
And black luxuriance of the mourning robes
Are like discordant music of two tunes.

The children's step is light in thoughtful care
Lest they disturb the slumber of the dead.
The old men, bent as at a pit's dark end,
Lean on the virgins' shoulders, virgins fair
Like fates benevol