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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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ΤΟ

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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
The Princess, and the twain had prayed

(With pearlèd rosaries used of yore),

ΤΟ

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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;

He stammered, sighed, and answered, “Naught.”

The neat scribe Leonatus,
The page of Imogen.

She wondered that he did not speak
And own his love, if love indeed
It was that made his spirit bleed.

And she bethought her of a freak

To test the lad: she bade him write

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A letter that a maiden might,

A billet to her heart's delight;
He took the pen with fingers weak,

Unknowing what he did, and wrote,
And folded up and sealed the note;
She wrote the superscription sage,
"For Leonatus, Lady's Page."

The happy Leonatus,

The page of Imogen.

The page of Imogen no more,

But now her love, her lord, her life,
For she became his wedded wife,

As both had hoped and dreamed before.
He used to sit beside her feet
And read romances rare and sweet,
And when she touched her lute repeat
Impassioned madrigals of yore,

Uplooking in her face the while,
Until she stooped with loving smile
And pressed her melting mouth to his,

That answered in a dreamy bliss

The joyful Leonatus,

The Lord of Imogen.

THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS
ON A BUST OF DANTE

See, from this counterfeit of him
Whom Arno shall remember long,
How stern of lineament, how grim,
The father was of Tuscan song:

1852.