Bedouin Song

FROM the Desert I come to thee

    On a stallion shod with fire;

And the winds are left behind

    In the speed of my desire.

Under your window I stand,

    And the midnight hears my cry:

I love thee, I love but thee,

    With a love that shall not die

    Till the sun grows cold,

    And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgement Book unfold!

Look from thy window and see

    My passion and my pain;

I lie on the sands below,

    And I faint in thy disdain.

Let the night-wind touch thy brow

    With the heat of my burning sigh,

And melt thee to hear the vow

    Of a love that shall not die

    Till the sun grows cold,

    And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgement Book unfold!

My steps are nightly driven,

    By the fever in my breast,

To hear form thy lips

    The words that shall give me rest.

Open the door of thy heart,

    And open thy chamber door,

And my kisses shall teach thy lips

    The love that shall fade no more

    Till the sun grows cold,

    And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgement Book unfold!

Bayard Taylor

The Ballad of Hiram Hover

WHERE the Moosatockmaguntic

Pours its water in the Skuntic,

Met, along the forest side

Hiram Hover, Huldah Hyde.

She, a maiden fair and dapper,

He, a red-haired, stalwart trapper,

Hunting beaver, mink and skunk

In the woodlands of Squeedunk.

She, Pentucket's pensive daughter,

Walked beside the Skuntic water

Gathering, in her apron wet,

Snake-root, mint, and bouncing-bet.

"Why," he murmured, loth to leave her,

"Gather yarbs for chills and fever,

When a lovyer bold and true,

Only waits to gather you?"

"Go," she answered, "I'm not hasty,

I prefer a man more tasty;

Leastways, one to please me well

Should not have a beastly smell."

"Haughty Huldah!" Hiram answered,

"Mind and heart alike are cankered;

Jest look here! these peltries give

Cash, wherefrom a pair may live.

"I, you think, am but a vagrant,

Trapping beasts by no means fragrant;

Yet, I'm sure it's worth a thank--

I've a handsome sum in bank."

Turned and vanished Hiram Hover,

And, before the year was over,

Huldah, with the yarbs she sold,

Bought a cape against the cold.

Black and thick the furry cape was,

Of a stylish cut the shape was;

And the girls, in all the town,

Envied Huldah up and down.

Then at last, one winter morning,

Hiram came without a warning.

"Either," said he, "you are blind,

Huldah, or you've changed your mind.

"Me you snub for trapping varmints,

Yet you take the skins for garments;

Since you wear the skunk and mink,

There's no harm in me, I think."

"Well," said she, "we will not quarrel,

Hiram; I accept the moral,

Now the fashion's so I guess

I can't hardly do no less."

Thus the trouble all was over

Of the love of Hiram Hover.

Thus he made sweet Huldah Hyde

Huldah Hover as his bride.

Love employs, with equal favor,

Things of good and evil savor;

That which first appeared to part,

Warmed, at last, the maiden's heart.

Under one impartial banner,

Life the hunter, Love the tanner,

Draw, from every beast they snare

Comfort for a wedded pair!

Bayard Taylor

The Promissory Note

     IN the lonesome latter years

          (Fatal years!)

     To the dropping of my tears

     Danced the mad and mystic spheres

     In a rounded, reeling rune,

          'Neath the moon,

To the dripping and the dropping of my tears.

     Ah, my soul is swathed in gloom,

          (Ulalume!)

     In a dim Titanic tomb,

     For my gaunt and gloomy soul

     Ponders o'er the penal scroll,

     O'er the parchment (not a rhyme),

     Out of place,--out of time,--

     I am shredded, shorn, unshifty,

          (Oh, the fifty!)

     And the days have passed, the three,

          Over me!

And the debit and the credit are as one to him and me!

     'Twas the random runes I wrote

     At the bottom of the note,

          (Wrote and freely

          Gave to Greeley)

     In the middle of the night,

     In the mellow, moonless night,

     When the stars were out of sight,

     When my pulses, like a knell,

          (Israfel!)

     Danced with dim and dying fays

     O'er the ruins of my days,

     O'er the dimeless, timeless days,

     When the fifty, drawn at thirty,

     Seeming thrifty, yet the dirty

Lucre of the market, was the most that I could raise!

          Fiends controlled it,

    &Nbsp;     (Let him hold it!)

Devils held for me the inkstand and the pen;

     Now the days of grace are o'er,

          (Ah, Lenore!)

     I am but as other men;

     What is time, time, time,

     To my rare and runic rhyme,

     To my random, reeling rhyme,

     By the sands along the shore,

Where the tempest whispers, "Pay him!" and I answer, "Nevermore!"

Bayard Taylor

The Cantelope

SIDE by side in the crowded streets,

  Amid its ebb and flow,

We walked together one autumn morn;

  ('Twas many years ago!)

The markets blushed with fruits and flowers;

  (Both Memory and Hope!)

You stopped and bought me at the stall,

  A spicy cantelope.

We drained together its honeyed wine,

  We cast the seeds away;

I slipped and fell on the moony rinds,

  And you took me home in a dray!

The honeyed wine of your love is drained;

  I limp from the fall I had;

The snow-flakes muffle the empty stall,

  And everything is sad.

The sky is an inkstand, upside down,

  It splashes the world with gloom;

The earth is full of skeleton bones,

  And the sea is a wobbling tomb!

Bayard Taylor

A Night With a Wolf

Little one come to my knee !

   Hark how the rain is pouring

Over the roof in the pitch dark night,

   And the winds in the woods a-roaring

Hush,my darling, and listen,

   Then pay for the story with kisses;

Father was lost in the pitch-black night

   In just such a storm as this is.

High on the lonely mountain

   Where the wild men watched and waited;

Wolves in the forest, and bears in the bush,

   And I on my path belated.

The rain and the night together

   Came down, and the wind came after,

Bending the props of the pine tree roof

   And snapping many a rafter.

I crept along in the darkness,

   Stunned and bruised and blinded...

Crept to a fir with thick-set boughs,

   And a sheltering rock behind it.

There, from the blowing and raining,

   Crouching I sought to hide me;

Something rustled,two green eyes shone,

   And a wolf lay down beside me.

Little one, be not frightened;

   I and the wolf together,

Side be side through the long, long night,

   Hid from the awful weather.

His wet fur pressed against me;

   Each of us warmed the other;

Each of us felt in the stormy dark

   That beast and man was brother.

And when the falling forest

   No longer crashed in warning,

Each of us went from our hiding place

   Forth in the wild wet morning.

Darling, kiss me in payment...

   Hark! how the wind is roaring!

Father's house is a better place

   When the stormy rain is pouring.

Bayard Taylor