aspires by to some high goal,--
Set in the haunted garden of my soul!

The Artist

In story books, when I was very young,
I knew you first, one of the Fairy Race;
And then it was your picture took its place,
Framed in with love's deep gold, and draped and hung
High in my heart's red room: no song was sung,
No tale of passion told, I did not grace
With your associated form and face,
And intimated charm of touch and tongue.
As years went on you grew to more and more,
Until each thing, symbolic to my heart
Of beauty,--such as honor, truth, and fame,--
Within the studio of my soul's thought wore
Your lineaments, whom I, with all my art,
Strove to embody and to give a name.

Poetry and Philosophy

Out of the past the dim leaves spoke to me
The thoughts of Pindar with a voice so sweet
Hyblaean bees seemed swarming my retreat
Around the reedy well of Poesy.
I closed the book. Then, knee to neighbor knee,
Sat with the soul of Plato, to repeat
Doctrines, till mine seemed some Socratic seat
High on the summit of Philosophy.
Around the wave of one Religion taught
Her first rude children. From the stars that burned
Above the mountained other, Science learned
The first vague lessons of the work she wrought.
Daughters of God, in whom we still behold
The Age of Iron and the Age of Gold.

"Quo Vadis"

It is as if imperial trumpets broke
Again the silence on War's iron height;
And Caesar's armored legions marched to fight,
While Rome, blood-red upon her mountain-yoke,
Blazed like an awful sunset. At a stroke,
Again I see the living torches light
The horrible revels, and the bloated, white,
Bayed brow of Nero smiling through the smoke:
And here and there a little band of slaves
Among dark ruins; and the form of Paul,
Bearded and gaunt, expounding still the Word:
And towards the North the tottering architraves
Of empire; and, wild-waving over all,
The flaming figure of a Gothic sword.

To a Critic

Song hath a catalogue of lovely things
Thy kind hath oft defiled,--whose spite misleads
The world too often!--where the poet reads,
As in a fable, of old envyings,
Crows, such as thou, which hush the bird that sings,
Or kill it with their cawings; thorns and weeds,
Such as thyself, 'midst which the wind sows seeds
Of flow'rs, these crush