Thus girt without and garrisoned at home, Day patient following day, Old Charleston looks from roof and spire and dome Across her tranquil bay. Ships, through a hundred foes, from Saxon lands And spicy Indian ports Bring Saxon steel and iron to her hands And Summer to her courts. But still, along yon dim Atlantic line The only hostile smoke 25 30 Creeps like a harmless mist above the brine 35 From some frail, floating oak. Shall the Spring dawn, and she, still clad in smiles And with an unscathed brow, Rest in the strong arms of her palm-crowned isles As fair and free as now? 40 We know not: in the temple of the Fate. God has inscribed her doom; And, all untroubled in her faith, she waits The triumph or the tomb. 1861 or 1862. SPRING Spring, with that nameless pathos in the air Spring, with her golden suns and silver rain, Out in the lonely woods the jasmine burns Its fragrant lamps, and turns 1862 ? 5 Yet still on every side we trace the hand Of Winter in the land, Save where the maple reddens on the lawn, Flushed by the season's dawn; Or where, like those strange semblances we find That age to childhood bind, The elm puts on, as if in Nature's scorn, The brown of Autumn corn. As yet the turf is dark, although you know That, not a span below, A thousand germs are groping through the gloom, And soon will burst their tomb. Already, here and there, on frailest stems 15 20 25 And near the snowdrop's tender white and green Some wondrous pageant; and you scarce would start 45 A blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say, "Behold me! I am May!" Ah, who would couple thoughts of war and crime Than she shall rouse, for all her tranquil charms, 55 And calling, with the voice of all her rills, To fall and crush the tyrants and the slaves 1862. 1862 ? 65 I KNOW NOT WHY, BUT ALL THIS WEARY DAY I know not why, but all this weary day, Sad fancies have been flitting through my brain: Rounding a stormy headland; now a gray Like whispers round the body of the dead. 5 ΙΟ PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE THE MOCKING-BIRDS Oh, all day long they flood with song The forest shades, the fields of light; Heaven's heart is stilled and strangely thrilled By ecstasies of lyric might; From flower-crowned nooks of splendid dyes, Lone dells a shadowy quiet girds; Far echoes, wakening, gently rise, And o'er the woodland track send back Soft answers to the mocking-birds. The winds, in awe, no gusty flaw Dare breathe in rhythmic Beauty's face; Nearer the pale-gold cloudlets draw Above a charmed, melodious place: Entranced Nature listening knows No music set to mortal words, 5 ΙΟ 15 On each wild, wood-born note conferred, Aye pause and hark-be still, and mark 25 30 These small, winged genii make their own: Fine lyric memories live again, From tuneful burial disinterred, To magnify the fiery strain Which quivering trills and smites the hills Aye pause and hark-be still, and mark 36 35 How downward borne from Song's high clime (No loftier haunts the English lark) They revel, each a jocund mime: 40 Their glad sides shake in bush and brake; And farm-girls, bowed o'er cream and curd, At last, fair boon, the summer moon Ah, soon through night they wing their flight A tremulous hush-then sweet and grand, 60 65 From depths the dense, fair foliage girds, Their love notes fill the enchanted land; 70 These love songs of the mocking-birds. |