10

15

20

Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years

Which keep in trust your storied tombs, Behold! your sisters bring their tears,

And these memorial blooms.

Small tributes! but your shades will smile
More proudly on these wreaths to-day,
Than when some cannon-moulded pile
Shall overlook this bay.

Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!

There is no holier spot of ground

Than where defeated valor lies,
By mourning beauty crowned!

Flower-Life

I think that, next to your sweet eyes,
And pleasant books, and starry skies,
I love the world of flowers;
Less for their beauty of a day,
Than for the tender things they say,
And for a creed I've held alway,

That they are sentient powers.
It may be matter for a smile-
And I laugh secretly the while
I speak the fancy out-

But that they love, and that they woo,
And that they often marry too,
And do as noisier creatures do,
I've not the faintest doubt.

And so, I cannot deem it right

To take them from the glad sunlight,

As I have sometimes dared;

Though not without an anxious sigh

Lest this should break some gentle tie,
Some covenant of friendship, I

Had better far have spared.

And when, in wild or thoughtless hours,
My hand hath crushed the tiniest flowers,

I ne'er could shut from sight
The corpses of the tender things,
With other drear imaginings,
And little angel-flowers with wings

Would haunt me through the night.

Oh! say you, friend, the creed is fraught
With sad, and even with painful thought,
Nor could you bear to know

That such capacities belong

To creatures helpless against wrong,
At once too weak to fly the strong
Or front the feeblest foe?

So be it always, then, with you;
So be it whether false or true-
I press my faith on none;
If other fancies please you more,
The flowers shall blossom as before,
Dear as the Sibyl-leaves of yore,

But senseless, every one.

Yet, though I give you no reply,
It were not hard to justify

My creed to partial ears;

But, conscious of the cruel part,

My rhymes would flow with faltering art,
I could not plead against your heart,
Nor reason with your tears.

Why Silent

Why am I silent from year to year?

Needs must I sing on these blue March days?

What will you say, when I tell you here,

That already, I think, for a little praise,
I have paid too dear?

For, I know not why, when I tell my thought,
It seems as though I fling it away;
And the charm wherewith a fancy is fraught,
When secret, dies with the fleeting lay
Into which it is wrought.

So my butterfly-dreams their golden wings
But seldom unfurl from their chrysalis;

And thus I retain my loveliest things,

10

While the world, in its worldliness, does not miss
What a poet sings.

15

1 The selections from Paul Hamilton Hayne are used by permission of Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Company, publishers of Hayne's Complete Poems.

Who says 'tis a desecration

To strip the temple towers,

And invest the metal of peaceful notes
With death-compelling powers?

A truce to cant and folly!

Our people's ALL at stake,

Shall we heed the cry of the shallow fool,
Or pause for the bigot's sake?

Then crush the struggling sorrow!

Feed high your furnace fires,

And mould into deep-mouthed guns of bronze,
The bells from a hundred spires.

Methinks no common vengeance,
No transient war eclipse,

Will follow the awful thunder-burst
From their adamantine lips.

A cause like ours is holy,

And it useth holy things;

While over the storm of a righteous strife,
May shine the angel's wings.

Where'er our duty leads us,

The grace of God is there,

And the lurid shrine of war may hold

The Eucharist of prayer.

5

Forgotten

Forgotten! Can it be a few swift rounds

Of Time's great chariot wheels have crushed to naught The memory of those fearful sights and sounds,

With speechless misery fraught

Wherethro' we hope to gain the Hesperian height,
Where Freedom smiles in light?

Forgotten! scarce have two dim autumns veiled
With merciful mist those dreary burial sods,

Whose coldness (when the high-strung pulses failed,

Of men who strove like gods)

10

Decked with dull wreaths of rue,

And shedding blood for tears, hands waled with scars,
Lifts to the dumb, cold stars!

Forgotten! Can the dancer's jocund feet

Flash o'er a charnel-vault, and maidens fair
Bend the white lustre of their eyelids sweet,
Love-weighed, so nigh despair,

Its ice-cold breath must freeze their blushing brows?
And hush love's tremulous vows?

Forgotten! Nay: but all the songs we sing
Hold under-burdens, wailing chords of woe;
Our lightest laughters sound with hollow ring,
Our bright wit's freest flow,

Quavers to sudden silence of affright,
Touched by an untold blight!

Forgotten! No! we cannot all forget,

Or, when we do, farewell to Honor's face,
To Hope's sweet tendance, Valor's unpaid debt,
And every noblest Grace,