THE POET AND HIS SONGS.

As the birds come in the Spring,
We know not from where ;
As the stars come at evening

From depths of the air ;

As the rain comes from the cloud, And the brook from the ground ; As suddenly, low or loud,

Out of silence a sound;

As the grape comes to the vine,
The fruit to the tree;
As the wind comes to the pine,
And the tide to the sea;

As come the white sails of ships
O'er the ocean's verge;
As comes the smile to the lips,
The foam to the surge;

So come to the Poet his songs,
All hitherward blown
From the misty realm, that belongs
To the vast Unknown.

His, and not his, are the lays

He sings; and their fame
Is his, and not his; and the praise
And the pride of a name.

For voices pursue him by day,

And haunt him by night, And he listens, and needs must obey, When the Angel says: "Write !

BECALMED.

BECALMED upon the sea of Thought,
Still unattained the land it sought,
My mind, with loosely-hanging sails,
Lies waiting the auspicious gales.

On either side, behind, before,
The ocean stretches like a floor,-
A level floor of amethyst,
Crowned by a golden dome of mist.

Blow, breath of inspiration, blow!
Shake and uplift this golden glow!
And fill the canvas of the mind
With wafts of thy celestial wind.

Blow, breath of song! until I feel
The straining sail, the lifting keel,
'The life of the awakening sea,
Its motion and its mystery!

THE POET'S CALENDAR.

JANUARY.

I.

JANUS am I; oldest of potentates; Forward I look, and backward, and below

I count, as god of avenues and gates, The years that through my portals come and go.

II.

I block the roads, and drift the fields with snow;

I chase the wild-fowl from the frozen

fen; My frosts congeal the rivers in their flow,

My fires light up the hearths and hearts of men.

FEBRUARY.

am lustration; and the sea is mine! I wash the sands and headlands with my tide;

My brow is crowned with branches of the pine;

Before my chariot wheels the fishes glide.

M M

IN MEMORY OF J. T. F.

THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE. [A FRAGMENT.]

I.

meaning

Of the familiar words that men repeat

At parting in the street.

Full of marvel, full of mystery,
Difficult to understand?
Is it fiction, is it truth?
Children in the flower of youth,

tervening

Ignorant of what helps or harms,
Without armour, without arms,
Journeying to the Holy Land!
Who shall answer or divine?
Never since the world was made
Such a wonderful crusade

Started forth for Palestine.

Never while the world shall last
Will it reproduce the past;
Never will it see again
Such an army, such a band,
Over mountain, over main,
Journeying to the Holy Land.

Like a shower of blossoms blown
From the parent trees were they;
Like a flock of birds that fly
Through the unfrequented sky,
Holding nothing as their own,
Passed they into lands unknown,
Passed to suffer and to die.

O the simple, child-like trust!
O the faith that could believe
What the harnessed, iron-mailed
Knights of Christendom had failed
By their prowess to achieve,
They, the children, could and must!

Little thought the Hermit, preaching
Holy Wars to knight and baron,
That the words dropped in his teach-
ing,

His entreaty, his beseeching,
Would by children's hands be gleaned
And the staff on which he leaned
Blossom like the rod of Aaron.

As a summer wind upheaves
The innumerable leaves

In the bosom of a wood,

Not as separate leaves, but massed
All together by the blast, -
So for evil or for good
His resistless breath upheaved
All at once the many-leaved,
Many-thoughted multitude.

In the tumult of the air

Rock the boughs with all the nests
Cradled on their tossing crests;
By the fervour of his prayer
Troubled hearts were everywhere
Rocked and tossed in human breasts.

For a century, at least,

His prophetic voice had ceased;
But the air was heated still
By his lurid words and will,
As from fires in far-off woods,
In the autumn of the year,
An unwonted fever broods
In the sultry atmosphere.

II.

In Cologne the bells were ringing,
In Cologne the nuns were singing
Hymns and canticles divine;

Loud the monks sang in their stalls,
And the thronging streets were loud
With the voices of the crowd;-
Underneath the city walls
Silent flowed the river Rhine.

From the gates, that summer day,
Clad in robes of hodden gray,
With the red cross on the breast,
Azure-eyed and golden-haired,
Forth the young Crusaders fared;
While above the band devoted
Consecrated banners floated,
Fluttered many a flag and streame,
And the cross o'er all the rest!
Singing lowly, meekly, slowly,
"Give us, give us back the holy
Sepulchre of the Redeemer! "'
On the vast procession pressed,
Youths and maidens. . . .

III.

Ah! what master hand shall paint How they journeyed on their way, How the days grew long and dreary, How their little feet grew weary, How their little hearts grew faint!

Faint not, though your bleeding feet O'er these slippery paths of sleet Move but painfully and slowly; Other feet than yours have bled; Other tears than yours been shed. Courage! lose not heart or hope; On the mountains' southern slope Lies Jerusalem the Holy!" As a white rose in its pride, By the wind in summer-tide Tossed and loosened from the branch, Showers its petals o'er the ground, From the distant mountain's side, Scattering all its snows around, With mysterious, muffled sound, Loosened, fell the avalanche. Voices, echoes far and near, Roar of winds and waters blending, Mists uprising, clouds impending, Filled them with a sense of fear, Formless, nameless, never ending.

THE CITY AND THE SEA.

THE panting City cried to the Sea, "I am faint with heat,-O breathe on me!"