he gilds their fine gold,--
Gives the one thing they lacked,

The breath, aspiration, desire,
Core, kindle, control,
Memory and rapture and fire,--
The touch of man's soul.

How know the true master? I know
By my joys and my fears,
For my heart crumbles down like the snow
With spring rain into tears.

Now I am a precious one!
With nothing to do
But idle here in the sun
And gossip with you

Of a stranger you have not seen,
As like never will.
I would every soul had a screen,
When the wind sets ill

In the world's bleak house, like this
Strange lodger of mine.
His presence is worse to miss
Than sun's best shine.

I put no thought at all
Upon the end,
If only I may call
Such a man friend.

And a friend he is, heart light
With love for heft,
Proud as silence, whose right
Hand ignores his left.

Yes, odd! he gives his name
As Spiritus.
But that is vague as a flame
In the wind to us.

And then (but not a breath
Of this!) you see,
All his effects, my faith!
Are marked D.V.

His cape-coat has a rip,
But for all that,
(Folk smile, suggest a dip
In the dyer's vat,--

Those purple aldermen
Who roll about
In coaches, drive till ten,
And die of gout),

I think he finely shows
How learning's crumbs
At least can rival those
Of-- 'st, here he comes!

_Beyond the Gamut_

Softly, softly, Niccolo Amati!
What can put such fancies in your head?
There, go dream of your blue-skied Cremona,
While I ponder something you have said.

Something in that last low lovely cadence
Piercing the green dusk alone and far,
Named a new room in the house of knowledge,
Waiting unfrequented, door ajar.

While you dream then, let me unmolested
Pass in childish wonder through that door,--
Breathless, touch and marvel at the beauties
Soon my wiser elders must explore.

Ah, my Niccolo, it's no great science
We shall ever conquer, you and I.
Yet, when you are nestled at my shoulder,
Others guess not half that we descry.

As all sight is but a finer hearing,
And all color but a finer sound,
Beauty, but the reach of lyric freedom,
Caught and quivering past all music's bound;

Life, that faint sigh whispered from oblivion,
Harks and wonders if we may not be
Five small wits to carry one great rhythmus,
The vast theme of God's new symphony.

As fine sand spread on a disc of silver,
At some chord which bids the motes combine,
Heeding the hidden and reverberant impulse,
Shifts and dances into curve and