It comes in summer’s broadest noon, By a grey wall or some chance place, Unseasoning Time, insulting June, And vexing day with its presuming face. Such fragrance round my couch it makes, More rich than are Arabian drugs, That my soul scents its life and wakes The body up beneath its perfumed rugs. Such is the Muse, the heavenly maid, The star that guides our mortal course, Which shows where life’s true kernel’s laid, Its wheat’s fine flour, and its undying force. She with one breath attunes the spheres, And also my poor human heart, With one impulse propels the years Around, and gives my throbbing pulse its start. I will not doubt for evermore, Nor falter from a steadfast faith, For though the system be turned o’er, God takes not back the word which once he saith. I will not doubt the love untold Which not my worth nor want has bought, Which wooed me young, and wooes me old, And to this evening hath me brought. My memory I’ll educate To know the one historic truth, Remembering to the latest date The only true and sole immortal youth. Be but thy inspiration given, No matter through what danger sought, I’ll fathom hell or climb to heaven, And yet esteem that cheap which love has bought. -------- Fame cannot tempt the bard Who’s famous with his God, Nor laurel him reward Who has his Maker’s nod. SIC VITA[4] ‘It is but thin soil where we stand; I have felt my roots in a richer ere this. I have seen a bunch of violets in a glass vase, tied loosely with a straw, which reminded me of myself.’--_The Week._ I am a parcel of vain strivings tied By a chance bond together, Dangling this way and that, their links Were made so loose and wide, Methinks, For milder weather. A bunch of violets without their roots, And sorrel intermixed, Encircled by a wisp of straw Once coiled about their shoots, The law By which I’m fixed. A nosegay which Time clutched from out Those fair Elysian fields, With weeds and broken stems, in haste, Doth make the rabble rout That waste The day he yields. And here I bloom for a short hour unseen, Drinking my juices up, With no root in the land To keep my branches green, But stand In a bare cup. Some tender buds were left upon my stem In mimicry of life, But ah! the children will not know, Till time has withered them, The woe With which they’re rife.