The snake's wit evadeth not,
The charmed lip persuadeth not;
So thoroughly it despiseth
The thing thy hand prizeth,
Though the sun were thy clothing,

It should count thee for nothing. Thine own eye divineth thee, Thine own soul arraigneth thee; God himself cannot shrive thee Till that judge forgive thee.

THE FLUTE

PUFFED up with luring to her knees
The rabbits from the blackberries,
Quaint little satyrs, and shy and mute,
That limped reluctant to the flute,
She needs must seek the forest's womb
And pipe up tigers from green gloom.

Grouped round the dreaming oaten quill
Those sumptuous savages were still,
Rich spectral beasts that feared to stir,
And haughty and wistful gazed on her,
And swayed their sleepy masks in time
And growled a drowsy under-rhyme.

Tune done, that agile fancy stopped,
The lingering notes in mid-air dropped;
The flute stole from her parted kiss,
Her cheeks for sorcery burned with bliss.
Then grew a deadly muttering there;
And sudden yellow eyes aglare
Blazed furious over wrinkled lips
And teeth on her. Her finger-tips
Trembled a little as they woke
The second tune beneath the oak,

A lilt that charmed and lulled to mute
The uneasy soul within the brute.

And all that warbling ecstasy
Was winged with terror, and daintily
Ceased on the wild and tragic face
And desperate huddle of her grace:
For with the hush began to gride
Their sullen, soulless, evil-eyed,
Intolerable rage, blown hot

Upon her. The third tune was caught

A SONG WITH A DISCORD

THOUGH Winter come with dripping

skies,

And laden winds and strong,

Yet I'll read summer in her eyes
Whose voice is summer's song.

Who grieves because the world is old,
Or cares how long it last,

Or feathers from the white moth's wing,

Out of the gates of bramble-town
The silkweed goes a-gypsying.

Too fair to fly in autumn's rout,

All winter in the sheath it lay;
But now, when spring is pushing out,
The zephyr calls, "Away! away!"

Through mullein, bramble, brake, and fern,

Up from their cradle-spring they fly,
Beyond the boundary wall to turn
And voyage through the friendly sky.

Softly, as if instinct with thought,

They float and drift, delay and turn; And one avoids and one is caught Between an oak-leaf and a fern.

And one holds by an airy line

The spider drew from tree to tree; And if the web is light and fine, 'Tis not so light and fine as he !

And one goes questing up the wall As if to find a door; and then,

As if he did not care at all,

Goes over, and adown the glen.

And all in airiest fashion fare
Adventuring, as if, indeed,

'T were not so grave a thing to bear The burden of a seed !

SOLITUDE

As one advances up the slow ascent
Along the pathway in the woods, the trees
Change aspect, nor alone in this, but
change

In stature and in power till Solitude
Seems cut out of the ancient forest. Here
Was Solitude! where man had lived of
old,

Loved, serving God, and built himself a home.

Man smooths an acre on the rolling earth, Turns up the mould and reaps the gifts of God;

Plucks down the apple from the tree, the tree

From empire in the forest, builds a home;
Turns for a bout among his brothers, wins
A sister to his wife and gets an heir;
And then as here in Solitude departs
And leaves small mark behind. The place
is rare

In this high epic of the human life.
Where wildness has been wilderness shall

be,

But give God time; and life is but a span,
Nine inches, while before it and behind
Stretches the garden of the cosmic gods;
For after London, England shall be wild,
And none can thaw the iceberg at the pole.
In Solitude one sees the winding trace
Of what has been a road, a block of stone
Footworn, that lies along the dim pathway
Before one old foundation; and the rest
Is freaks of grass among the rising growth
Of birch and maple that another year
Shall see almost a forest.

INFINITY

I DARE not think that thou art by, to stand

And face omnipotence so near at hand!

RICHARD SOMERS

JOY ENOUGH

INTO the caverns of the sea
Shall all at last descend,
Who now press forward gallantly
Unrecking of the end."

And no man knoweth what is there,
Nor when his time shall come
To yield his soul and take his share
With all those gone and dumb.

It may be we shall find our kin
Waiting to grasp our hands,
And lead us glorified within,
Over the shining sands;

It may be we with them shall lie,
While heaven and earth abide,
Swaying silent with sightless eye
There in the sluggish tide.

It matters nothing if to-day,
Beneath the splendid sun,
We hold to the appointed way,
Doing what must be done.

Reward? What would you? Have not we
The waves beneath us bent?
The winds about us blowing free?
Above the firmament ?

FROM "AN ODE IN TIME OF HESITATION"

1900

ROBERT GOULD SHAW

THE wars we wage

Are noble, and our battles still are won
By justice for us, ere we lift the gage.
We have not sold our loftiest heritage.
The proud republic hath not stooped to
cheat

And scramble in the market place of war;
Her forehead weareth yet its solemn star.
Here is her witness: this, her perfect son,
This delicate and proud New England soul
Who leads despised men, with just-un-
shackled feet,

Up the large ways where death and glory

meet,

To show all peoples that our shame is done, That once more we are clean and spiritwhole.

Crouched in the sea fog on the moaning sand

All night he lay, speaking some simple word From hour to hour to the slow minds that

heard,

Holding each poor life gently in his hand
And breathing on the base rejected clay
Till each dark face shone mystical and grand
Against the breaking day;

And lo, the shard the potter cast away
Was grown a fiery chalice crystal-fine,
Fulfilled of the divine

Great wine of battle wrath by God's ringfinger stirred.

Then upward, where the shadowy bastion loomed

Huge on the mountain in the wet sea light, Whence now, and now, infernal flowerage bloomed,

Bloomed, burst, and scattered down its deadly seed, They swept, and died like freemen on the

height,

Like freemen, and like men of noble breed;
And when the battle fell away at night
By hasty and contemptuous hands were
thrust

Obscurely in a common grave with him

The fair-haired keeper of their love and trust.

Now limb doth mingle with dissolved limb In nature's busy old democracy

To flush the mountain laurel when she blows Sweet by the southern sea,

And heart with crumbled heart climbs in the rose:

The untaught hearts with the high heart that knew

This mountain fortress for no earthly hold Of temporal quarrel, but the bastion old Of spiritual wrong,

Built by an unjust nation sheer and strong, Expugnable but by a nation's rue

And bowing down before that equal shrine By all men held divine,

Whereof his band and he were the most holy sign.

"NO HINT OF STAIN"

We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know!

'Twas only yesterday sick Cuba's cry
Came up the tropic wind, "Now help us,
for we die !"
Then Alabama heard,

And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho
Shouted a burning word;

Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred,

And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth, East, west, and south, and north, Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young

Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan, By the unforgotten names of eager boys Who might have tasted girls' love and been stung

With the old mystic joys

And starry griefs, now the spring nights