TO THE MAN-OF-WAR-BIRD

Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm,
Waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions
(Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended'st,
And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee),
Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating,

As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee
(Myself a speck, a point on the world's floating vast).

Far, far at sea,

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After the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shore with wrecks,
With re-appearing day as now so happy and serene,

The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun,

The limpid spread of air cerulean,

Thou also re-appearest.

Thou born to match the gale (thou art all wings),

To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane,

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Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails,

Days, even weeks, untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating,

At dusk that look'st on Senegal, at morn America,

That sport'st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud,

In them, in thy experiences, had'st thou my soul,

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What joys! what joys were thine!

SPIRIT THAT FORM'D THIS SCENE

(Written in Platte Cañon, Colorado)

These tumbled rock-piles grim and red,

Spirit that form'd this scene,

These reckless heaven-ambitious peaks,

These gorges, turbulent-clear streams, this naked freshness,
These formless wild arrays, for reasons of their own,

1876.

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I know thee, savage spirit-we have communed together;
Mine too such wild arrays, for reasons of their own.
Was 't charged against my chants they had forgotten art-
To fuse within themselves its rules precise and delicatesse?
The lyrist's measur'd beat, the wrought-out temple's grace-column

But thou that revelest here, spirit that form'd this scene,
They have remember'd thee.

1879.

1881.

WITH HUSKY-HAUGHTY LIPS, O SEA

With husky-haughty lips, O sea!

Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore,
Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions
(I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here),
Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal,

Thy ample, smiling face, dash'd with the sparkling dimples of the sun,
Thy brooding scowl and murk, thy unloos'd hurricanes,

Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness;

Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears-a lack from all eternity in thy content

(Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make thee greatest-no less could make thee);

Thy lonely state something thou ever seek'st and seek'st, yet never gain'st,

Surely some right withheld-some voice, in huge monotonous rage, of

freedom-lover pent,

Some vast heart, like a planet's, chain'd and chafing in those breakers;
By lengthen'd swell, and spasm, and panting breath,

And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves,

And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter,

And undertones of distant lion roar

(Sounding, appealing to the sky's deaf ear-but now, rapport for once,

A phantom in the night thy confidant for once),

The first and last confession of the globe,

Outsurging, muttering from thy soul's abysms,
The tale of cosmic elemental passion,

Thou tellest to a kindred soul.

1884.

GOOD-BYE, MY FANCY

Good-bye, my Fancy!

Farewell, dear mate, dear love!

I'm going away, I know not where,

Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again,
So Good-bye, my Fancy.

Now for my last-let me look back a moment;
The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me,
Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping.

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Long have we lived, joy'd, caress'd together;

Delightful!-now separation-Good-bye, my Fancy.

Yet let me not be too hasty:

Long indeed have we lived, slept, filter'd, become really blended into

one;

Then if we die we die together (yes, we 'll remain one),

If we go anywhere we 'll go together to meet what happens,
May-be we 'll be better off and blither, and learn something,

May-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs (who
knows?),

May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning-so now

finally,

Good-bye and hail! my Fancy.

1891.

RICHARD HENRY STODDARD

LEONATUS

The fair boy Leonatus.
The page of Imogen.

It was his duty evermore

To tend the Lady Imogen;

By peep of day he might be seen
Tapping against her chamber door,

To wake the sleepy waiting-maid,

Who rose, and when she had arrayed

ΙΟ

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And dragged him down the vaults, where wine
In bins lay beaded and divine,

To pick a flask of vintage fine;

Came up, and clomb the garden wall,

And plucked from out the sunny spots

Peaches and luscious apricots,

And filled his golden salver there,

And hurried to his lady fair.

The gallant Leonatus,

The page of Imogen.

He had a steed from Arab ground;
And when the lords and ladies gay
Went hawking in the dews of May
And hunting in the country round,
And Imogen did join the band,
He rode him like a hunter grand,
A hooded hawk upon his hand,
And by his side a slender hound;

But when they saw the deer go by,
He slipped the leash and let him fly,
And gave his fiery barb the rein
And scoured beside her o'er the plain.

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He stammered, sighed, and answered, "Naught."