change

OFT have I seen in wedlock with surprise,
That most forgot from which true bliss would rise
When marriage for a daughter is designed,
The parents solely riches seem to mind;
All other boons are left to heav'n above,
And sweet SIXTEEN must SIXTY learn to love!
Yet still in other things they nicer seem,
Their chariot-horses and their oxen-team
Are truly matched;--in height exact are these,
While those each shade alike must have to please;
Without the choice 'twere wonderful to find,
Or coach or wagon travel to their mind.

You that in vain would front the coming order
With eyes that meet forlornly what they must,
And only with a furtive recognition
See dust where there is dust,—
Be sure you like it always in your faces,
Obscuring your best graces,
Blinding your speech and sight,
Before you seek again your dusty places
Where the old wrong seems right.

Longer ago than cave-men had their changes
Our fathers may have slain a son o two,
Discouraging a further dialectic
Regarding what was new;

In through the porch and up the silent stair;
Little is changed, I know so well the ways;--
Here, the dead came to meet me; it was there
The dream was dreamed in unforgotten days.

But who is this that hurries on before,
A flitting shade the brooding shades among?--
She turned,--I saw her face,--O God, it wore
The face I used to wear when I was young!

I thought my spirit and my heart were tamed
To deadness; dead the pangs that agonise.
The old grief springs to choke me,--I am shamed

My old flame, my wife!
Remember our lists of birds?
One morning last summer, I drove
by our house in Maine. It was still
on top of its hill -

Now a red ear of Indian maize
was splashed on the door.
Old Glory with thirteen stripes
hung on a pole. The clapboard
was old-red schoolhouse red.

Inside, a new landlord,
a new wife, a new broom!
Atlantic seaboard antique shop
pewter and plunder
shone in each room.

A new frontier!
No running next door
now to phone the sheriff

I need not tell you of the great quarrels that have happened in our
neighbourhood since the death of the late Lord Strutt; how the
parson and a cunning attorney got him to settle his estate upon
his cousin Philip Baboon, to the great disappointment of his cousin
Esquire South. Some stick not to say that the parson and the
attorney forged a will; for which they were well paid by the family
of the Baboons. Let that be as it will, it is matter of fact that
the honour and estate have continued ever since in the person of

The North Star whispers: "You are one
Of those whose course no chance can change.
You blunder, but are not undone,
Your spirit-task is fixed and strange.

"When here you walk, a bloodless shade,
A singer all men else forget.
Your chants of hammer, forge and spade
Will move the prarie-village yet.

"That young, stiff-necked, reviling town
Beholds your fancies on her walls,
And paints them out or tears them down,
Or bars them from her feasting halls.

LOUGH, vessel, plough the British main,
Seek the free ocean's wider plain;
Leave English scenes and English skies,
Unbind, dissever English ties;
Bear me to climes remote and strange,
Where altered life, fast-following change,
Hot action, never-ceasing toil,
Shall stir, turn, dig, the spirit's soil;
Fresh roots shall plant, fresh seed shall sow,
Till a new garden there shall grow,
Cleared of the weeds that fill it now,­
Mere human love, mere selfish yearning,
Which, cherished, would arrest me yet.

I

AND, like a dying lady lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The mood arose up in the murky east,
A white and shapeless mass.

II

   Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
   Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

For supper we had curried tripe.
I washed the dishes, wound the clock;
Then for awhile I smoked my pipe -
Puff! Puff! We had no word of talk.
The Misses sewed - a sober pair;
Says I at last: "I need some air."

A don't know why I acted so;
I had no thought, no plot, no plan.
I did not really mean to go -
I'm such a docile little man;
But suddenly I felt that I
Must change my life or I would die.

A sign I saw: A ROOM TO LET.
It had a musty, dusty smell;
It gloated gloom, it growled and yet

1894


We've drunk to the Queen -- God bless her! --
We've drunk to our mothers' land;
We've drunk to our English brother,
(But he does not understand);
We've drunk to the wide creation,
And the Cross swings low for the mom,
Last toast, and of Obligation,
A health to the Native-born!

They change their skies above them,
But not their hearts that roam!
We learned from our wistful mothers
To call old England 'home';
We read of the English skylark,
Of the spring in the English lanes,