LITMIR.BIZ

      How some succeed who have least need,

      In that they make no effort for!

      And pluck, where others pluck a weed,

      The burning blossom of a star,

      Grown from no earthly seed.

      For some shall reap that never sow;

      And some shall toil and not attain, —

      What boots it in ourselves to know

      Such labor here is not in vain,

      When we still see it so!

      Unto the portal of the House of Song,

      Symbols of wrong and emblems of unrest,

      And mottoes of despair and envious jest,

      And stony masks of scorn and hate belong.

      Who enters here shall feel his soul denied

      All welcome: lo! the chiselled form of Love,

      That stares in marble on the shrine above

      The tomb of Beauty, where he dreamed and died!

      Who enters here shall know no poppyflowers

      Of Rest, or harp-tones of serene Content;

      Only sad ghosts of music and of scent

      Shall mock the mind with their remembered powers.

      Here must he wait till striving patience carves

      His name upon the century-storied floor;

      His heart's blood staining one dim pane the more

      In Fame's high casement while he sings and starves.

      Under rocks whereon the rose,

      Like a strip of morning, glows;

      Where the azure-throated newt

      Drowses on the twisted root;

      And the brown bees, humming homeward,

      Stop to suck the honey-dew;

      Fern and leaf-hid, gleaming gloamward,

      Drips the wildwood spring I knew,

      Drips the spring my boyhood knew.

      Myrrh and music everywhere

      Haunt its cascades; – like the hair

      That a naiad tosses cool,

      Swimming strangely beautiful,

      With white fragrance for her bosom,

      For her mouth a breath of song; —

      Under leaf and branch and blossom

      Flows the woodland spring along,

      Sparkling, singing, flows along.

      Still the wet wan morns may touch

      Its gray rocks, perhaps; and such

      Slender stars as dusk may have

      Pierce the rose that roofs its wave;

      Still the thrush may call at noontide,

      And the whippoorwill at night;

      Nevermore, by sun or moontide,

      Shall I see it gliding white,

      Falling, flowing, wild and white.

      Hills of the west, that gird

      Forest and farm,

      Home of the nestling bird,

      Housing from harm,

      When on your tops is heard

      Storm:

      Hills of the west, that bar

      Belts of the gloam,

      Under the twilight star,

      Where the mists roam,

      Take ye the wanderer

      Home.

      Hills of the west, that dream

      Under the moon,

      Making of wind and stream,

      Late-heard and soon,

      Parts of your lives that seem

      Tune.

      Hills of the west, that take

      Slumber to ye,

      Be it for sorrow's sake

      Or memory,

      Part of such slumber make

      Me.

      Oh, why for us the blighted bloom!

      The blossom that lies withering!

      The Master of Life's changeless loom

      Hath wrought for us no changeless thing.

      Where grows the rose of fadeless Grace?

      Wherethrough the Spirit manifests

      The fact of an immortal race,

      The dream on which religion rests.

      Where buds the lily of our Faith?

      That grows for us in unknown wise,

      Out of the barren dust of death,

      The pregnant bloom of Paradise.

      In Heaven! so near that flowers know!

      That flowers see how near! – and thus

      Reflect the knowledge here below

      Of love and life unknown to us.

      They lean their faces to me through

      Green windows of the woods;

      Their white throats sweet with honey-dew

      Beneath low leafy hoods —

      No dream they dream but hath been true

      Here in the solitudes.

      Star trillium, in the underbrush,

      In whom Spring bares her face;

      Sun eglantine, that breathes the blush

      Of Summer's quiet grace;

      Moon mallow, in whom lives the hush

      Of Autumn's tragic pace.

      For one hath heard the dryad's sighs

      Behind the covering bark;

      And one hath felt the satyr's eyes

      Gleam in the bosky dark;

      And one hath seen the naiad rise

      In waters all a-spark.

      I bend my soul unto them, stilled

      In worship man hath lost;

      The old-world myths that science killed

      Are living things almost

      To me through these whose forms are filled

      With Beauty's pagan ghost.

      And through new eyes I seem to

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