My mind lets go a thousand things, Like dates of wars and deaths of kings, And yet recalls the very hour— ’Twas noon by yonder village tower, And on the last blue noon in May— The wind came briskly up this way, Crisping the brook beside the road; Then, pausing here, set down its load Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly Two petals from that wild-rose tree. “ENAMORED ARCHITECT OF AIRY RHYME” Enamored architect of airy rhyme, Build as thou wilt, heed not what each man says. Good souls, but innocent of dreamers’ ways, Will come, and marvel why thou wastest time; Others, beholding how thy turrets climb ’Twixt theirs and heaven, will hate thee all thy days; But most beware of those who come to praise. O Wondersmith, O worker in sublime And heaven-sent dreams, let art be all in all; Build as thou wilt, unspoiled by praise or blame, Build as thou wilt, and as thy light is given; Then, if at last the airy structure fall, Dissolve, and vanish—take thyself no shame. They fail, and they alone, who have not striven. TWO QUATRAINS MAPLE LEAVES October turned my maple’s leaves to gold; The most are gone now; here and there one lingers: Soon these will slip from out the twigs’ weak hold, Like coins between a dying miser’s fingers. PESSIMIST AND OPTIMIST This one sits shivering in Fortune’s smile, Taking his joy with bated, doubtful breath. This other, gnawed by hunger, all the while Laughs in the teeth of Death. _John Hay_ John Hay was born at Salem, Indiana, in 1838, graduated from Brown University in 1858 and was admitted to the Illinois bar a few years later. At nineteen, when he went back to Warsaw, the little Mississippi town where he had lived as a boy, he dreamed only of being a poet—a poet, it must be added, of the pleasantly conventional, transition type. But the Civil War was to disturb his mild fantasies. He became private secretary to Lincoln, then major and assistant adjutant-general under General Gilmore, then secretary of the Legation at Paris, _chargé d’affaires_ at Vienna and secretary of legation at Madrid.