d
My shallop-soul rideth where roars
The swirling water-spout--rides undefeated;
No rudder, no oars;
Only within, thy small image seated.

JAMES A. MACKERETH

TO A BLACKBIRD ON NEW YEAR'S DAY

Hail, truant with song-troubled breast--
Thou welcome and bewildering guest!
Blithe troubadour, whose laughing note
Brings Spring into a poet's throat,--
Flute, feathered joy! thy painted bill
Foretells the daffodil.

Enchanter, 'gainst the evening star
Singing to worlds where dreamers are,
That makes upon the leafless bough
A solitary vernal vow--
Sing, lyric soul! within thy song
The love that lures the rose along!

The snowdrop, hearing, in the dell
Doth tremble for its virgin bell;
The crocus feels within its frame
The magic of its folded flame;
And many a listening patience lies
And pushes toward its paradise.

Young love again on golden gales
Scents hawthorn blown down happy dales;
The phantom cuckoo calls forlorn
From limits of the haunted morn;--
Sing, elfin heart! thy notes to me
Are bells that ring in Faery!

Again the world is young, is young,
And silence takes a silver tongue;
The echoes catch the lyric mood
Of laughing children in the wood:
Blithe April trips in winter's way
And nature, wondering, dreams of May.

Sing on, thou dusky fount of life!
God love thee for a merry sprite!
Sing on! for though the sun be coy
I sense with thee a budding joy,
And all my heart with ranging rhyme
Is poet for the prime!

LA DANSEUSE

She moved like silence swathed in light,
Like mists at morning clear;
A music that enamoured sight
Yet did elude the ear.

A rapture and a spirit clad
In motion soft as sleep;
The epitome of all things glad,
The sum of all that weep;

Her form was like a poet's mind--
By all sensations sought;
She seemed the substance of the wind,
The shape of lyric thought,--

A being 'mid terrestrial things
Transcendently forlorn,
From time bound far on filmy wings
For some diviner bourne.

The rhythms of the raptured heart
Swayed to her sweet control;
Life in her keeping all was art,
And all of body soul.

Lone-shimmering in the roseate air
She seemed to ebb and flow,
A memory, perilously fair,
And pale from long ago.

She stooped to time's remembered tears,
Yearned to undawned delight.
Ah beauty, passionate from the years!
Oh body wise and white!

She vanished like an evening cloud,
A sunset's radiant gle