III Now is Light, sweet mother, down the west, While he sleeps, one wanders in his stead, IV Behind the hilltop drops the sun, The bird is silent overhead, The south wind feels its amorous course THE SKILFUL LISTENER THE skilful listener, he, methinks, may hear The grass blades clash in sunny field together, The roses kissing, and the lily, whether When morning lightly moves them in June weather, The flocked hours flitting by on stealthy feather, The last leaves' wail at waning of the year. Haply, from these we catch a passing sound, (The best of verities, perchance, but seem) We overhear close Nature, on her round, When least she thinks it; bird and bough and stream Not only, but her silences profound, Surprised by softer footfall of our dream. THE BALLAD OF ORISKANY SHE leaned her cheek upon her hand, The moonlight through the open door The fatal name, Oriskany. "The year went round, there came a guest A lovely babe lay on my breast, Ah, we were blest! Then came the sound "Below the hill the battle broke; "All day within the homestead dim My tasks of hands and feet and soul "I cannot think of him as dead Nor dream of him within the tomb, Amid the willowed churchyard's gloom, Oriskany, Oriskany! Did the winged arrows of that barbed wit glance ? The years' thick, clinging curtains backward pull, And show him as he is, crowned with bright beams, "Beauteous, and yet not all as beautiful As he hath been or might be ; Sorrow seems Half of his immortality." He needs No monument whose name and song and deeds Are graven in all foreign hearts; but she, His mother, England, slow and last to wake, Needs raise the votive shaft for her fame's sake: Hers is the shame if such forgotten be! VENUS OF THE LOUVRE Down the long hall she glistens like a star, The foam-born mother of Love, transfixed to stone, |