POE'S COTTAGE AT FORDHAM

HERE lived the soul enchanted
By melody of song;

Here dwelt the spirit haunted
By a demoniac throng;
Here sang the lips elated;

Here grief and death were sated;
Here loved and here unmated

Was he, so frail, so strong.

Here wintry winds and cheerless
The dying firelight blew,
While he whose song was peerless
Dreamed the drear midnight through,
And from dull embers chilling
Crept shadows darkly filling
The silent place, and thrilling

His fancy as they grew.

Here, with brow bared to heaven,
In starry night he stood,
With the lost star of seven
Feeling sad brotherhood.
Here in the sobbing showers
Of dark autumnal hours
He heard suspected powers
Shriek through the stormy wood.
From visions of Apollo

And of Astarte's bliss,

He gazed into the hollow
And hopeless vale of Dis;

And though earth were surrounded
By heaven, it still was mounded
With graves. His soul had sounded
The dolorous abyss.

Proud, mad, but not defiant,

He touched at heaven and hell.

Give me old Carolina's own,
A great log house, a great hearth-
stone,

A cheering pipe of cob or briar,
And a red, leaping light'ood fire.

When dreary day draws to a close.

And all the silent land is dark, When Boreas down the chimney blows

And sparks fly from the crackling bark, When limbs are bent with snow or sleet

And owls hoot from the hollow tree,
With hounds asleep about your feet,
Then is the time for reverie.

Give me old Carolina's own,
A hospitable wide hearthstone,
A cheering pipe of cob or briar,
And a red, rousing light'ood fire.

Nor we, the lingerers, wholly stay
Apart from those we love:
For spirits in eternity,

As shadows in the sun,
Reach backward into Time, as we,
Like lifted clouds, reach on.

INDIAN SUMMER

No more the battle or the chase
The phantom tribes pursue,
But each in its accustomed place
The Autumn hails anew:

And still from solemn councils set
On every hill and plain,
The smoke of many a calumet
Ascends to heaven again.

THE DRUID

GODLIKE beneath his grave divinities,
The last of all their worshippers, he stood.
The shadows of a vanished multitude
Enwound him, and their voices in the
breeze

Made murmur, while the meditative trees Reared of their strong fraternal branches rude

A temple meet for prayer. What blossoms strewed

The path between Life's morning hours and these?

What lay beyond the darkness? He alone The sunshine and the shadow and the dew Had shared alike with leaf, and flower, and stem:

Their life had been his lesson; and from them

A dream of immortality he drew,

As in their fate foreshadowing his own.

THE CHILD

AT BETHLEHEM

I

LONG, long before the Babe could speak, When he would kiss his mother's cheek And to her bosom press,

HELEN

THE autumn seems to cry for thee,
Best lover of the autumn days!
Each scarlet-tipped and wine-red tree,

Each russet branch and branch of gold,
Gleams through its veil of shimmering haze,
And seeks thee as they sought of old:
For all the glory of their dress,
They wear a look of wistfulness.

In every wood I see thee stand,

The ruddy boughs above thy head, And heaped in either slender hand

The frosted white and amber ferns, The sumach's deep, resplendent red, Which like a fiery feather burns, And, over all, thy happy eyes, Shining as clear as autumn skies.

I hear thy call upon the breeze,

Gay as the dancing wind, and sweet, And, underneath the radiant trees,

O'er lichens gray and darkling moss, Follow the trace of those light feet

Which never were at fault or loss, But, by some forest instinct led, Knew where to turn and how to tread.

Where art thou, comrade true and tried ?
The woodlands call for thee in vain,
And sadly burns the autumn-tide

Before my eyes, made dim and blind
By blurring, puzzling mists of pain.
I look before, I look behind;
Beauty and loss seem everywhere,
And grief and glory fill the air.

Already, in these few short weeks,

A hundred things I leave unsaid,
Because there is no voice that speaks
In answer, and no listening ear,
No one to care now thou art dead!

And month by month, and year by year,
I shall but miss thee more, and
go
With half my thought untold, I know.

I do not think thou hast forgot,

I know that I shall not forget,