When, but a child, I wandered hence,
Another child—sweet Innocence,
My sister—went with me:
But I have lost her, and am fain
To seek her in the home again
Where we were wont to be.

What cared she for the free hearts? She would comfort
The prisoned one:
What recked I of the wanton other singers?
She sang for me alone—
Was all my own, my own!

But when they loaded me with heavier fetters,
And chained I lay,
How could she know I longed to reach her window?
Athirst the livelong day,
At eve she fled away.

Still stands her cage wide open at the casement,
In sun and rain,
Though years have gone, and rust has thickly gathered,—
My watching all in vain;
She will not come again.

Against its wires I strum with idle fingers

Ah, sweet it was to feel the strain,
What time, unseen, the ship above
Stood steadfast to the storm that strove
To rend our kindred cords atwain!

To feel, as feel the roots that grow
In darkness, when the stately tree
Resists the tempests, that in me
High Hope was planted far below!

But now, as when a mother's breast
Misses the babe, my prisoned power
Deep-yearning, heart-like, hour by hour,
Unquiet aches in cankering rest.

Go, bird, and to the sky
Pour forth what thou and I
Have suffered here:
Thou, for thy mate removed,
And I, for faith disproved
In one as dear.

Farewell; and if again
Thou find for prison-pain
Felicity,
Be this thy glad release
A prophecy of peace,
Dear bird, for me!

Kanzo Makame, the diver, sturdy and small Japanee,
Seeker of pearls and of pearl-shell down in the depths of the sea,
Trudged o'er the bed of the ocean, searching industriously.

Over the pearl-grounds, the lugger drifted—a little white speck:
Joe Nagasaki, the ‘tender’, holding the life-line on deck,
Talked through the rope to the diver, knew when to drift or to check.

Kanzo was king of his lugger, master and diver in one,
Diving wherever it pleased him, taking instructions from none;
Hither and thither he wandered, steering by stars and by sun.

Mute is his eloquence: that silver tongue
On whose sweet accents crowds, admiring, hung,—
Whose fitting words in heavenly beauty fell
On ear and heart, that owned the witching spell;
Whose graceful cadence tides of feeling woke,
As if on earth some loving angel spoke,—
Now rests in silence, like a harp unstrung.
Its notes, unrivalled, on the breezes flung,
Still breathe in living echoes in the air,
As though the master-spirit lingered there.
Who can do justice to so great a name?
Who speak in worthy words his matchless fame?

Come back to be buried beneath the green willow,
Whose long weeping branches trail over the tomb;
The soil of thy birthplace prepares thee a pillow,—
Where kindled thy morn, for thy eve there is room.

Come back to be buried, where patriarchs holy
In faith breathed thy name at the altar of prayer;
Come back, from thy greatness, to sleep with the lowly,
Where pride sounds no trumpet, and fame is but air.

Come back to be buried, where honor first found thee,
And o'er thee her mantle deliciously flung;

If I could weepe my self into a spring,
Or a perpetuall current: then
This Metamorphosis might seeme a thing
Of merit, in the eyes of Men:
But what requitall can this bee,
To him, that did weepe blood for me?

Could I for penitentiall sigheings, vye
With the whole compasse, some might guesse,
That my contrition was a motive high,
To melt an heart, even mercyles.
But what requitall can this bee,
To him that sigh'd his last for mee?

What if I should to death my self expose?
And feele a torture in each nerve:

All ways lead to my heart:
Out of confusions and rebellions, out of venoms and revolts, lead to my heart:
Though they come in the darkness in acts of crime, lead to my heart:
Though they are wayward and would prefer to go somewhere else, somehow lead to my heart:
By some mysterious impetus back of what they will to do or not to do, lead to my heart:
All things and all people, clean or corrupt, divine or devilish, lead to my heart:
Sometimes eager, sometimes dreaming of me and of the voyage, lead to my heart:

I had a message to send her,
To her whom my soul loved best;
But I had my task to finish,
And she was gone home to rest.

To rest in the far bright heaven:
O, so far away from here,
It was vain to speak to my darling,
For I knew she could not hear!

I had a message to send her,
So tender, and true, and sweet,
I longed for an Angel to bear it,
And lay it down at her feet.

I placed it, one summer evening,
On a Cloudlet's fleecy breast;
But it faded in golden splendor,
And died in the crimson west.

I gave it the Lark, next morning,