If always nourished on the selfsame From life's dark threads a trembling

If mammals try it, that their eyes drop While the calm centuries spell their les

It spoils their eyeballs while it spares The chosen Prophet knew his voice

And starves the heart to feed the noisy When Pilate's hall that awful question

In flaming line the telltales of the stage Except when squabbling turns them Showed on his brow the autograph of

Pale, hueless waves amid his clustered | Their central sun the flashing chandelier!

Flit past the scenes and others take their | Again, again, the crashing galleries rung.
place;
As the old guardsman at the bugle's blast
Yet the old prompter watched his accents Hears in its strain the echoes of the past;
So, as the plaudits rolled and thundered

still,

his strange tale of midnight melting snow;

cloak and blade,

With Southern throbs the sturdy Saxon | And dark-plumed Hamlet, with his

heart,

While fresh sopranos shook the painted Looked on the royal ghost, himself a

With their long, breathless, quivering All in one flash, his youthful memories

locust-cry.

came,

Yet there he stood, — the man of other Traced in bright hues of evanescent days,

flame,

In the clear present's full, unsparing As the spent swimmer's in the lifelong

blaze,

As on the oak a faded leaf that clings While a new April spreads its burnished wings.

How bright yon rows that soared in triple tier,

dream,

While the last bubble rises through the

stream.

Call him not old, whose visionary

brain

Holds o'er the past its undivided reign.

crowns and cheers,

For him in vain the envious seasons roll | Triumphs and banquets, wreaths and
Who bears eternal summer in his soul.
If yet the minstrel's song, the poet's lay,
Spring with her birds, or children at
their play,

Or maiden's smile, or heavenly dream of art,

Stir the few life-drops creeping round his heart,

Pangs of wild joy that perish on the tongue,

And all that poets dream, but leave unsung!

In every heart some viewless founts are fed

Turn to the record where his years are From far-off hillsides where the dews

Count his gray hairs, - they cannot On the worn features of the weariest face

make him old!

What magic power has changed the

faded mime?

Some youthful memory leaves its hidden

trace,

As in old gardens left by exiled kings One breath of memory on the dust of The marble basins tell of hidden springs,

all.

And kneeling pilgrims on its storied pane The world's a stage, and we are players
See angels glow in every shapeless stain ;
So streamed the vision through his A strange rehearsal!

sunken eye,

their crowns,

Kings without

Clad in the splendors of his morning sky. And threadbare lords, and jewel-wear

All the wild hopes his eager boyhood

knew,

All the young fancies riper years proved true,

The sweet, low-whispered words, the winning glance

ing clowns,

Speak the vain words that mock their

throbbing hearts,

As Want, stern prompter! spells them out their parts.

The tinselled hero whom we praise and pay

From queens of song, from Houris of Is twice an actor in a twofold play.

the dance,

Wealth's lavish gift, and Flattery's

soothing phrase,

We smile at children when a painted

screen

Seems to their simple eyes a real scene; And Beauty's silence when her blush Ask the poor hireling, who has left his

And melting Pride, her lashes wet with To seek the cheerless home he calls his

Which of his double lives most real A stain of verdure on an azure field,

Life is a running shade, with fettered A boat shall waft us from the out

That chases phantoms over shifting The breeze blows fresh; we reach the

Death only grasps; to live is to pur- Yet these green ridges mark an ancient

Dream on! there's nothing but illusion And lo! the traces of a fair abode;

Next an old roof, or where a roof has | Who sought them both beneath these quiet trees?

been; Its knot-grass, plantain, — all the social Why question mutes no question can weeds, unlock,

Man's mute companions, following where Dumb as the legend on the Dighton rock? One thing at least these ruined heaps declare,

he leads;

Its dwarfed, pale flowers, that show their straggling heads,

Sown by the wind from grass-choked garden-beds;

Its woodbine, creeping where it used to
climb;

Its roses, breathing of the olden time;
All the poor shows the curious idler sees,

They were a shelter once; a man lived there.

But where the charred and crumbling records fail,

Some breathing lips may piece the halftold tale;

As life's thin shadows waste by slow No man may live with neighbors such degrees, Till naught remains, the saddening tale | Though girt with walls of rock and angry

to tell,

as these,

seas,

Save home's last wrecks, the cellar And shield his home, his children, or

and the well!

And whose the home that strews in

black decay

The one green-glowing island of the bay? Some dark-browed pirate's, jealous of the fate

That seized the strangled wretch of "Nix's Mate"?

name,

his wife,

His ways, his means, his vote, his creed,
his life,

From the dread sovereignty of Ears and
Eyes

And the small member that beneath
them lies.

They told strange things of that mysterious man;

Some forger's, skulking in a borrowed Believe who will, deny them such as can; Why should we fret if every passing sail Whom Tyburn's dangling halter yet Had its old seaman talking on the rail? The deep-sunk schooner stuffed with

may claim?

Some wan-eyed exile's, wealth and sorrow's heir,

Who sought a lone retreat for tears and prayer?

Some brooding poet's, sure of deathless fame,

Eastern lime,

Slow wedging on, as if the waves were slime;

The knife-edged clipper with her ruffled spars,

The pawing steamer with her mane of stars,

Had not his epic perished in the flame? Or some gray wooer's, whom a girlish The bull-browed galliot butting through frown

Chased from his solid friends and sober The wide-sailed yacht that slipped along

bacco-boats,

Or some plain tradesman's, fond of shade The deck-piled sloops, the pinched che

and ease,