Three Flowers

HEREWITH I send you three pressed withered flowers:

This one was white, with golden star; this, blue

As Capri's cave; that, purple and shot through

With sunset-orange. Where the Duomo towers

In diamond air, and under pendent bowers

The Arno glides, this faded violet grew

On Landor's grave; from Landor's heart it drew

Its clouded azure in the long spring hours.

Within the shadow of the Pyramid

Of Cais Cestius was the daisy found,



White as the soul of Keats in Paradise.

The pansy -- there were hundreds of them hid

In the thick grass that folded Shelley's mound,

Guarding his ashes with most lovely eyes.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Forever I am conscious, moving here

FOREVER am I conscious, moving here,

That should I step a little space aside

I pass the boundary of some glorified

Invisible domain -- it lies so near!

Yet nothing know we of that dim frontier

Which each must cross, whatever fate betide,

To reach the heavenly cities where abide

(Thus Sorrow whispers) those that were most dear,

Now all transfigured in celestial light!

Shall we indeed behold them, thine and mine,



Whose going hence made black the noonday sun? --

Strange is it that across the narrow night

They fling us not some token, or make sign

That all beyond is not Oblivion.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Not in the fabled influence of some star

NOT in the fabled influence of some star,

Benign or evil, do our fortunes lie;

We are the arbiters of destiny,

Lords of the life we either make or mar.

We are our own impediment and bar

To noble endings. With distracted eye

We let the golden moment pass us by,

Time's foolish spendthrifts, searching wide and far

For what lies close at hand. To serve our turn

We ask fair wind and favorable tide.



From the dead Danish sculptor let us learn

To make Occasion, not to be denied:

Against the sheer precipitous mountain-side

Thorwaldsen carved his Lion at Lucerne.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

To L.T. In Florence

YOU by the Arno shape your marble dream,

Under the cypress and the olive trees,

While I, this side the wild wind-beaten seas,

Unrestful by the Charles's placid stream,

Long once again to catch the golden gleam

Of Brunelleschi's dome, and lounge at ease

In those pleached gardens and fair galleries.

And yet perchance you envy me, and deem

My star the happier, since it holds me here.

Even so one time, beneath the cypresses,



My heart turned longingly across the sea

To these familiar fields and woodlands dear,

And I had given all Titian's goddesses

For one poor cowslip or anemone.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The Rarity of Genius

WHILE yet my lip was breathing youth's first breath,

I all too young to know their deepest spell,

I saw Medea and Phædra in Rachel;

Later I saw the great Elizabeth.

Rachel, Ristori -- we shall speak with death

Ere we meet souls like these. In one age dwell

Not many such: a century shall tell

Its hundred beads before it braid a wreath

For two so queenly foreheads. If it take

Æons to form a diamond, grain on grain,



Æons to crystallize its fire and dew,

By what slow processes must Nature make

Her Shakespeares and her Raffaels? Great the gain

If she spoil millions making one or two.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The Loreli

YONDER we see it from the steamer's deck,

The haunted Mountain of the Lorelei --

The hanging crags sharp-cut against a sky

Clear as a sapphire without flaw or fleck.

'Twas here the Siren lay in wait to wreck

The fisher-lad. At dusk, as he rowed by,

Perchance he heard her tender amorous cry,

And, seeing the wondrous whiteness of her neck,

Perchance would halt, and lean towards the shore;

Then she by that soft magic which she had



Would lure him, and in gossamers of her hair,

Gold upon gold, would wrap him o'er and o'er,

Wrap him, and sing to him, and drive him mad,

Then drag him down to no man knoweth where.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Egypt

FANTASTIC Sleep is busy with my eyes:

I seem in some waste solitude to stand

ruled of Cheops: upon either hand

A dark illimitable desert lies,

Sultry and still-a realm of mysteries;

A wide-browed Sphinx, half-buried in the sand,

With orbless sockets stares across the land,

The woefulest thing beneath these brooding skies,

Where all is woeful, weird-lit vacancy.

'Tis neither midnight, twilight, nor moonrise.



Lo! while I gaze, beyond the vast sand sea

The nebulous clouds are downward slowly drawn,

And one bleared star, faint-glimmering like a bee,

Is shut in the rosy outstretched hand of Dawn.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

"Even This Will Pass Away"

TOUCHED with the delicate green of early May,

Or later, when the rose unveils her face,

The world hangs glittering in star-strown space,

Fresh as a jewel found but yesterday.

And yet 'tis very old; what tongue may say

How old it is? Race follows upon race,

Forgetting and forgotten; in their place

Sink tower and temple; nothing long may stay.

We build on tombs, and live our day, and die;

From out our dust new towers and temples start;



Our very name becomes a mystery.

What cities no man ever heard of lie

Under the glacier, in the mountain's heart,

In violet glooms beneath the moaning sea!

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Pursuit and Possession

WHEN I behold what pleasure is Pursuit,

What life, what glorious eagerness, it is;

Then mark how full Possession falls from this,

How fairer seems the blossom than the fruit,-

I am perplexed, and often stricken mute,

Wondering which attained the higher bliss,

The wingéd insect, or the chrysalis

It thrust aside with unreluctant foot.

Spirit of verse, which still eludes my art,

You shapes of loveliness that still do haunt me,



O never, never rest upon my heart,

If when I have thee I shall little want thee!

Still flit away in moonlight, rain, and dew,

Will-o'-the-wisp, that I may still pursue!

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Sleep

WHEN to soft Sleep we give ourselves away,

And in a dream as in a fairy bark

Drift on and on through the enchanted dark

To purple daybreak, little thought we pay

To that sweet, bitter world we know by day.

We are clean quit of it, as is a lark

So high in heaven no human eye may mark

The thin swift pinion cleaving through the gray.

Till we awake ill fate can do no ill,

The resting heart shall not take up again



The heavy load that yet must make it bleed;

For this brief space the loud world's voice is still,

No faintest echo of it brings us pain.

How will it be when we shall sleep indeed?

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Not of Desire alone is music born

NOT of Desire alone is music born,

Not till the Muse wills is our passion crowned;

Unsought she comes; if sought but seldom found,

Repaying thus our longing with her scorn.

Hence is it poets often are forlorn,

In super-subtle chains of silence bound,

And mid the crowds that compass them around

Still dwell in isolation night and morn,

With knitted brow and cheek all passion-pale

Showing the baffled purpose of the mind.



Hence is it I, that find no prayers avail

To move my Lyric Mistress to be kind,

Have stolen away into this leafy dale,

Drawn by the flutings of the silvery wind.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

I leave behind me the elm-shadowed square

I LEAVE behind me the elm-shadowed square

And carven portals of the silent street,

And wander on with listless, vagrant feet

Through seaward-leading alleys, till the air

Smells of the sea, and straightway then the care

Slips from my heart, and life once more is sweet.

At the lane's ending lie the white-winged fleet.

O restless Fancy, whither wouldst thou fare?

Here are brave pinions that shall take thee far-

Gaunt hulks of Norway; ships of red Ceylon;



Slim-masted lovers of the blue Azores!

'Tis but an instant hence to Zanzibar,

Or to the regions of the Midnight Sun:

Ionian isles are thine, and all the fairy shores!

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Because the sky is blue; because blithe May

BECAUSE the sky is blue; because blithe May

Masks in the wren's note and the lilac's hue;

Because-in fine, because the sky is blue

I will read none but piteous tales to-day.

Keep happy laughter till the skies be gray,

And the sad season cypress wears, and rue;

Then, when the wind is moaning in the flue,

And ways are dark, bid Chaucer make us gay.

But now a little sadness! All too sweet

This springtide riot, this most poignant air,



This sensuous sphere of color and perfume!

So listen, love, while I the woes repeat

Of Hamlet and Ophelia, and that pair

Whose bridal bed was builded in a tomb.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Though I am native to this frozen zone

THOUGH I am native to this frozen zone

That half the twelvemonth torpid lies, or dead;

Though the cold azure arching overhead

And the Atlantic's never-ending moan

Are mine by heritage, I must have known

Life otherwhere in epochs long since fled;

For in my veins some Orient blood is red,

And through my thought are lotus blossoms blown.

I do remember. . . it was just at dusk,

Near a walled garden at the river's turn



(A thousand summers seem but yesterday!)

A Nubian girl, more sweet than Khorja musk,

Came to the water-tank to fill her urn,

And, with the urn, she bore my heart away!

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The smooth-worn coin and threadbare classic phrase

THE smooth-worn coin and threadbare classic phrase

Of Grecian myths that did beguile my youth,

Beguile me not as in the olden days:

I think more grief and beauty dwell with truth.

Andromeda, in fetters by the sea,

Star-pale with anguish till young Perseus came,

Less moves me with her suffering than she,

The slim girl figure fettered to dark shame,

That nightly haunts the park, there, like a shade,

Trailing her wretchedness from street to street.



See where she passes-neither wife nor maid.

How all mere fiction crumbles at her feet!

Here is woe's self, and not the mask of woe:

A legend's shadow shall not move you so!

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Barberries

IN scarlet clusters o'er the gray stone-wall

The barberries lean in thin autumnal air:

Just when the fields and garden-plots are bare,

And ere the green leaf takes the tint of fall,

They come, to make the eye a festival!

Along the road, for miles, their torches flare.

Ah, if your deep-sea coral were but rare

(The damask rose might envy it withal),

What bards had sung your praises long ago,

Called you fine names in honey-worded books-



The rosy tramps of turnpike and of lane,

September's blushes, Ceres' lips aglow,

Little Red-Ridinghoods, for your sweet looks!-

But your plebeian beauty is in vain.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

England

WHILE men pay reverence to mighty things,

They must revere thee, thou blue-cinctured isle

Of England-not to-day, but this long while

In front of nations, Mother of great kings,

Soldiers, and poets. Round thee the sea flings

His steel-bright arm, and shields thee from the guile

And hurt of France. Secure, with august smile,

Thou sittest, and the East its tribute brings.

Some say thy old-time power is on the wane,

Thy moon of grandeur, filled, contracts at length-



They see it darkening down from less to less.

Let but a hostile hand make threat again,

And they shall see thee in thy ancient strength,

Each iron sinew quivering, lioness!

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Miracles

SICK of myself and all that keeps the light

Of the blue skies away from me and mine,

I climb this ledge, and by this wind-swept pine

Lingering, watch the coming of the night.

'T is ever a new wonder to my sight.

Men look to God for some mysterious sign,

For other stars than those that nightly shine,

For some unnatural symbol of His might:-

Wouldst see a miracle as grand as those

The prophets wrought of old in Palestine?



Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows

In yonder West; the fair, frail palaces,

The fading alps and archipelagoes,

And great cloud-continents of sunset-seas.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Fredericksburg

THE increasing moonlight drifts across my bed,

And on the churchyard by the road, I know

It falls as white and noiselessly as snow...

'T was such a night two weary summers fled;

The stars, as now, were waning overhead.

Listen! Again the shrill-lipped bugles blow

Where the swift currents of the river flow

Past Fredericksburg: far off the heavens are red

With sudden conflagration: on yon height,

Linstock in hand, the gunners hold their breath:



A signal-rocket pierces the dense night,

Flings its spent stars upon the town beneath:

Hark!- the artillery massing on the right,

Hark!- the black squadrons wheeling down to Death!

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

A Preacher

THUS spake the Preacher: "O, my friends, beware!

How ever smooth and tempting seems the path,

With bowers of cooling shade, the end is wrath:

Here 't is unsafe, that's dangerous footing there;

But follow me and have no further care;

Make me your guide, for I am one that hath

Lived long and gathered in life's aftermath-

Experience. I bid you not despair.

Reach me your hands and cast away all doubt;

I'll lead you safe along the glacier's shelf:



You say 't is dark? 'T is noon-day, I insist;

Besides, I know each pitfall hereabout,

I know each chasm"-just then the Preacher's self

Stumbled and plunged into eternal mist.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Euterpe

NOW if Euterpe held me not in scorn,

I'd shape a lyric, perfect, fair, and round

As that thin band of gold wherewith I bound

Your slender finger our betrothal morn.

Not of Desire alone is music born,

Not till the Muse wills is our passion crowned:

Unsought she comes, if sought but seldom found.

Hence is it Poets often are forlorn,

Taciturn, shy, self-immolated, pale,

Taking no healthy pleasure in their kind-



Wrapt in their dream as in a coat-of-mail.

Hence is it I, the least, a very hind,

Have stolen away into this leafy vale

Drawn by the flutings of the silvery wind.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

At Bay Ridge, Long Island

PPLEASANT it is to lie amid the grass

Under these shady locusts, half the day,

Watching the ships reflected on the Bay,

Topmast and shroud, as in a wizard's glass:

To see the happy-hearted martins pass,

Brushing the dew-drops from the lilac spray:

Or else to hang enamored o'er some lay

Of fairy regions: or to muse, alas!

On Dante, exiled, journeying outworn;

On patient Milton's sorrowfulest eyes



Shut from the splendors of the Night and Morn;

To think that now, beneath the Italian skies,

In such clear air as this, by Tiber's wave,

Daisies are trembling over Keats's grave.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Ghosts

THOSE forms we fancy shadows, those strange lights

That flash on dank morasses, the quick wind

That smites us by the roadside-are the Night's

Innumerable children. Unconfined

By shroud or coffin, disembodied souls,

Uneasy spirits, steal into the air

From ancient graveyards when the curfew tolls

At the day's death. Pestilence and despair

Fly with the sightless bats at set of sun;

And wheresoever murders have been done,



In crowded palaces or lonely woods,

Where'er a soul has sold itself and lost

Its high inheritance, there, hovering, broods

Some sad, invisible, accurséd ghost!

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

By the Potomac

THE soft new grass is creeping o'er the graves

By the Potomac; and the crisp ground-flower

Lifts its blue cup to catch the passing shower;

The pine-cone ripens, and the long moss waves

Its tangled gonfalons above our braves.

Hark, what a burst of music from yon bower!-

The Southern nightingale that, hour by hour,

In its melodious summer madness raves.

Ah, with what delicate touches of her hand,

With what sweet voices, Nature seeks to screen



The awful Crime of this distracted land-

Sets her birds singing, while she spreads her green

Mantle of velvet where the Murdered lie,

As if to hide the horror from God's eye.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

An Alpine Picture

STAND here and look, and softly hold your breath

Lest the vast avalanche come crashing down!

How many miles away is yonder town

Set flower-wise in the valley? Far beneath-

A scimitar half drawn from out its sheath-

The river curves through meadows newly mown;

The ancient water-courses are all strown

With drifts of snow, fantastic wreath on wreath

And peak on peak against the turquoise-blue

The Alps like towering campanili stand,



Wondrous, with pinnacles of frozen rain,

Silvery, crystal, like the prism in hue.

O tell me, Love, if this be Switzerland-

Or is it but the frost-work on the pane?

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Henry Howard Brownell

THEY never crowned him, never knew his worth,

But let him go unlaurelled to the grave:

Hereafter there are guerdons for the brave,

Roses for martyrs who wear thorns on earth,

Balms for bruised hearts that languish in the dearth

Of human love. So let the lilies wave

Above him nameless. Little did he crave

Men's praises. Modestly, with kindly mirth,

Not sad nor bitter, he accepted fate-

Drank deep of life, knew books, and hearts of men,



Cities and camps, and war's immortal woe,

Yet bore through all (such virtue in him sate

His Spirit is not whiter now than then!)

A simple, loyal nature, pure as snow.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

At Stratford Upon Avon

To Edwin Booth

THUS spake his dust (so seemed it as I read

The words): Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare

(Poor ghost!) To digg the dust encloséd heare-

Then came the malediction on the head

Of whoso dare disturb the sacred dead.

Outside the mavis whistled strong and clear,

And, touched with the sweet glamour of the year,

The winding Avon murmured in its bed.

But in the solemn Stratford church the air

Was chill and dank, and on the foot-worn tomb



The evening shadows deepened momently:

Then a great awe crept on me, standing there,

As if some speechless Presence in the gloom

Was hovering, and fain would speak with me.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich