INVOCATIONS

TO HELEN

HELEN, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicæan barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche

How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand! Ah, Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy Land!

TO F

BELOVED! amid the earnest woes
That crowd around my earthly path
(Drear path, alas! where grows
Not even one lonely rose),

My soul at least a solace hath

In dreams of thee, and therein knows
An Eden of bland repose.

And thus thy memory is to me

Like some enchanted far-off isle

In some tumultuous sea,

Some ocean throbbing far and free
With storms, but where meanwhile
Serenest skies continually

Just o'er that one bright island smile.

TO ONE IN PARADISE

THOU wast all that to me, love,

For which my soul did pine:

A green isle in the sea, love,

A fountain and a shrine

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!

Ah, starry Hope, that didst arise But to be overcast!

A voice from out the Future cries, "On! on!" - but o'er the Past

(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies Mute, motionless, aghast.

For, alas! alas! with me

The light of Life is o'er!

No more no more

no more

(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar.

And all my days are trances,

And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy gray eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams

In what ethereal dances,

By what eternal streams.

TO Fs S. Od

HOU wouldst be loved? - then let thy heart
From its present pathway part not:

Being everything which now thou art,
Be nothing which thou art not.

So with the world thy gentle ways,
Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise,
And love a simple duty.

FOR

A VALENTINE

OR her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,
Brightly expressive as the twins of Leda,

Shall find her own sweet name, that nestling lies
Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader.
Search narrowly the lines! they hold a treasure
Divine, a talisman, an amulet
That must be worn at heart.

ure

Search well the meas

The words the syllables. Do not forget The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor: And yet there is in this no Gordian knot Which one might not undo without a sabre,

If one could merely comprehend the plot. Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering Eyes scintillating soul, there lie perdus Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing Of poets, by poets as the name is a poet's, too. Its letters, although naturally lying

Like the knight Pinto, Mendez Ferdinando,

Still form a synonym for Truth. Cease trying! You will not read the riddle, though you do the best you can do.