The singers of serenades
Whisper their fated vows
Unto far listening maids
Under the singing boughs.

Tircis, Aminte, are there,
Clitandre has waited long,
And Damis for many a fair
Tyrant makes many a song.

Their short vests, silken and bright,
Their long pale silken trains,
Their elegance of delight,
Twine soft blue silken chains.

And the mandolines and they,
Faintlier breathing, swoon
Into the rose and grey
Ecstasy of the moon.

O THOU art put to many uses, sweet!
Thy blood will urge the rose, and surge in Spring;
But yet! …

And all the blue of thee will go to the sky,
And all thy laughter to the rivers run;
But yet! …

Thy tumbling hair will in the West be seen,
And all thy trembling bosom in the dawn;
But yet! …

Thy briefness in the dewdrop shall be hung,
And all the frailness of thee on the foam;
But yet! …

Thy soul shall be upon the moonlight spent,
Thy mystery spread upon the evening mere.

I IN the greyness rose;
I could not sleep for thinking of one dead.
Then to the chest I went,
Where lie the things of my beloved spread.

Quietly these I took;
A little glove, a sheet of music torn,
Paintings, ill-done perhaps;
Then lifted up a dress that she had worn.

And now I came to where
Her letters are; they lie beneath the rest;
And read them in the haze;
She spoke of many things, was sore opprest.

But these things moved me not;
Not when she spoke of being parted quite,
Or being misunderstood,

O TO recall!
What to recall?
All the roses under snow?
Not these.
Stars that toward the water go?
Not these.

O to recall!
What to recall?
All the greenness after rain?
Not this.
Joy that gleameth after pain?
Not this.

O to recall!
What to recall?
Not the greenness nor delight,
Not these;
Not the roses out of sight,
Not these.

O to recall!
What to recall?
Not the star in waters red,
Not this:
Laughter of a girl that's dead,

The strongest Gods dwell ever in the North,
In labor's land and sorrow's; but at length
Labor and sorrow bring the perfect strength.
See, from Ezekiel's northern hills leaps forth
The car of crystal floor and sapphire throne,
In amber-colored light and rainbow zone,
On self-moved beryl wheels,
Through fire-mist that reveals
Man, its great charioteer, aloft, alone,
Where round him float three mystic shapes divine,
Cloven foot of steer, and starred wing aquiline,
And lion's regal mane ready to rise,

Look whither Nature leads thee, soldier-priest;
Not South to soil war-scourged and thunder-scarred,
Not West where friendship fails thee ocean-barred,
Not to the palsied, mad, monarchic East,
Dazzling with sunlike gems of gay romance
And backward gaze fixed in tradition's trance,
Who sent across the main
The monkish spawn of Spain,
And Austria's yellow plague and black Bazaine,
To lash thy land with battle's gory shower
And cage thee in Puebla's dungeon-tower,
Whence rushed thy eagle spirit new-fledged, and burst

O Tree of Liberty, thou Tree of Life,
Without thee what were all the golden South?
The Cid's rich song from ripe Castilian mouth.
The eyes' black velvet of each gay girl-wife;
The scarlet nopal, jasmine's earth-born star;
The low bird-language of the light guitar
Wooed by love's wandering hand;
And teocalli grand,
With scroll and sculptured face of mild command;
Querêtaro's wave-worn arches, one long mile
Of marching giants; Viga's floating isle;
Cholula's hill-shrine of the all-worshipped Sun;

The Pine-tree waves her peace-pledge to the Palm,
Sending sweet grace and greeting, not as they
Who greet and give not. For in time's past day,
Ere thy quick South roused from their summer-calm
Her baby Hopes adream on wings warm-furled,
Our seedplot for all gardens of the world
Nursed through its bud and birth
One tree, till the whole earth
Owned its circumferent leaves and giant girth;
Whence winnowed by the northwind's wings of power
A fire-seed smote thy soil, and lo! a bower,
A blossom-blaze, a Maytime glorious.

He comes a hero to a heroes' home,
New England's hills, peal forth your thrice All Hail,
Far as the Gulf, till every seaward sail
Bends low to hear, and Orizaba's dome
Heaves his flame-hearted breast of barren brown
And breaks the frosts that bind his helmet-crown,
To see his realm re-born,
Which late the old worlds could scorn,
Now nearer to life's flowering marge of morn;
To see his country's chief and chosen thereof
In war and peace its eagle and its dove,
Called here to reap the far fruits of past pain
And bear New England's blessing to New Spain

“T HREE cold, bright moons have marched and wheeled;
And the white cerement that revealed
A Figure stretched upon a Shield,
Is turned to verdure; and the Land is now one mighty Battle-Field.

“And lo, the children which she bred,
And more than all else cherishéd,
To make them true in heart and head,
Stand face to face, as mortal foes, with their swords crossed above the dead.

“Each hath a mighty stroke and stride:
One true—the more that he is tried;
The other dark and evil-eyed;—