Silent streets and vacant halls,
Ruined roofs and towers and walls;
Hidden from all mortal eyes
Deep the sunken city lies:
Even cities have their graves!

This is an enchanted land! Round the headlands far away Sweeps the blue Salernian bay With its sickle of white sand: Further still and furthermost On the dim discovered coast Pæstum with its ruins lies, And its roses all in bloom Seem to tinge the fatal skies Of that lonely land of doom.

On his terrace, high in air,
Nothing doth the good monk care
For such worldly themes as these.
From the garden just below
Little puffs of perfume blow,
And a sound is in his ears
Of the murmur of the bees
In the shining chestnut-trees;
Nothing else he heeds or hears.
All the landscape seems to swoon
In the happy afternoon;
Slowly o'er his senses creep
The encroaching waves of sleep,
And he sinks as sank the town,
Unresisting, fathoms down,
Into caverns cool and deep!

Walled about with drifts of snow,
Hearing the fierce north-wind blow,
Seeing all the landscape white,
And the river cased in ice,
Comes this memory of delight,
Comes this vision unto me
Of a long-lost Paradise

In the land beyond the sea.

THE SERMON OF ST. FRANCIS.

UP soared the lark into the air,
A shaft of song, a winged prayer,
As if a soul, released from pain,
Were flying back to heaven again.

St. Francis heard; it was to him
An emblem of the Seraphim;
The upward motion of the fire,
The light, the heat, the heart's desire.

Around Assisi's convent gate

The birds, God's poor who cannot wait, From moor and mere and darksome wood Came flocking for their dole of food.

"O brother birds," St. Francis said,
"Ye come to me and ask for bread,
But not with bread alone to-day
Shall ye be fed and sent away.

"Ye shall be fed, ye happy birds,
With manna of celestial words;
Not mine, though mine they seem to be,
Not mine, though they be spoken through

me.

"O, doubly are ye bound to praise
The great Creator in your lays;
He giveth you your plumes of down,
Your crimson hoods, your cloaks of brown.

"He giveth you your wings to fly
And breathe a purer air on high,
And careth for you everywhere,
Who for yourselves so little care !"

With flutter of swift wings and songs
Together rose the feathered throngs,
And singing scattered far apart;
Deep peace was in St. Francis' heart.

He knew not if the brotherhood
His homily had understood;
He only knew that to one ear
The meaning of his words was clear.

BELISARIUS.

I AM poor and old and blind;
The sun burns me, and the wind
Blows through the city gate
And covers me with dust
From the wheels of the august
Justinian the Great.

It was for him I chased

The Persians o'er wild and waste,
As General of the East;
Night after night I lay
In their camps of yesterday;
Their forage was my feast.

For him, with sails of red, And torches at mast-head, Piloting the great fleet,

Walled with woods or sandy shelf, Ever doubling on itself

Flows the stream, so still and slow That it hardly seems to flow.

Never errant knight of old,
Lost in woodland or on wold,
Such a winding path pursued
Through the sylvan solitude.

Never school-boy in his quest
After hazel-nut or nest,
Through the forest in and out
Wandered loitering thus about.

In the mirror of its tide Tangled thickets on each side Hang inverted, and between Floating cloud or sky serene.

Swift or swallow on the wing
Seems the only living thing,
Or the loon, that laughs and flies
Down to those reflected skies.

Silent stream! thy Indian name
Unfamiliar is to fame;

For thou hidest here alone,
Well content to be unknown.

But thy tranquil waters teach
Wisdom deep as human speech,
Moving without haste or noise
In unbroken equipoise.

Though thou turnest no busy mill,
And art ever calm and still,
Even thy silence seems to say
To the traveller on his way:

"Traveller, hurrying from the heat Of the city, stay thy feet!

Rest awhile, nor longer waste
Life with inconsiderate haste!

"Be not like a stream that brawls

Loud with shallow waterfalls,

But in quiet self-control

Link together soul and soul."

THREE FRIENDS OF MINE.

I.

WHEN I remember them, those friends

of mine,

Who are no longer here, the noble three,

Who half my life were more than friends to me,

And whose discourse was like a generous wine,

I most of all remember the divine Something, that shone in them, and made us see

The archetypal man, and what might be

The amplitude of Nature's first design. In vain I stretch my hands to clasp their hands;

I cannot find them. Nothing now is left

But a majestic memory. They meanwhile

Wander together in Elysian lands, Perchance remembering me, who am bereft

Of their dear presence, and, remembering, smile.

Are busy with their trivial affairs, Having and holding? Why, when

thou hadst read

Nature's mysterious manuscript, and

then

Wast ready to reveal the truth it bears, Why art thou silent? Why shouldst thou be dead?

IV.

RIVER, that stealest with such silent pace

Around the City of the Dead, where

lies

A friend who bore thy name, and

whom these eyes

Shall see no more in his accustomed

place,

Linger and fold him in thy soft embrace

To the red rising moon, and loud and deep

The nightingale is singing from the steep; It is midsummer, but the air is cold; Can it be death? Alas, beside the fold A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep.

Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white,

On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name

Was writ in water." And was this the meed

Of his sweet singing? Rather let me write :

"The smoking flax before it burst to flame Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed."

THE GALAXY.

TORRENT of light and river of the air, Along whose bed the glimmering stars

are seen

Like gold and silver sands in some ravine

Where mountain streams have left their channels bare!

THE SOUND OF THE SEA.

THE sea awoke at midnight from its sleep, And round the pebbly beaches far and wide

I heard the first wave of the rising tide Rush onward with uninterrupted

sweep;

where

O summer day so wonderful and white,