Trust me, I will not any hindrance prove, But, like Athenè’s helm, a guiding star, A glory and a comfort! O, be sure My heart shall take its lesson from thine own! My voice shall cheer the mariners at their oars In the night watches; it shall warble songs, Whose music shall o’erpower the luring airs Of Nereïd or Siren. If we find Those isles thou namest, where the golden fount Gives youth to all who taste it, we will drink Deep draughts, until the furrows leave thy brow, And I shall walk in beauty, as when first I saw thee from afar in Sparta’s groves. But if Charybdis seize our keel, or swift Black currents bear us down the noisome wave That leads to Hades, till the vessel sink In Stygian waters, none the less our souls Shall gain the farther shore, and, hand in hand, Walk from the strand across Elysian fields, ’Mong happy thronging shades, that point and say: “There go the great Ulysses, loved of gods, And she, his wife, most faithful unto death!” THE SINGER. O lark! sweet lark! Where learn you all your minstrelsy? What realms are those to which you fly? While robins feed their young from dawn till dark, You soar on high,— Forever in the sky. O child! dear child! Above the clouds I lift my wing To hear the bells of Heaven ring; Some of their music, though my flights be wild, To Earth I bring; Then let me soar and sing! HELIOTROPE. I walk in the morning twilight, Along a garden-slope, To the shield of moss encircling My beautiful Heliotrope. O sweetest of all the flowerets That bloom where angels tread! But never such marvellous odor From heliotrope was shed, As the passionate exhalation, The dew of celestial wine, That floats in tremulous languor Around this darling of mine. For, only yester-even, I saw the dearest scene! I heard the delicate footfall, The step of my love, my queen. Along the walk she glided: I made no sound nor sign, But ever, at the turning Of her star-white neck divine, I shrunk in the shade of the cypress, And crouched in the swooning grass, Like some Arcadian shepherd To see an Oread pass. But when she came to the border At the end of the garden-slope, She bent, like a rose-tree, over That beautiful Heliotrope. The cloud of its subtile fragrance Entwined her in its wreath, And all the while commingled With the incense of her breath. And so she glistened onward, Far down the long parterre, Beside the statue of Hesper, And a hundred times more fair. But ah! her breath had added The perfume that I find In this, the sweetest of flowerets, And the paragon of its kind. I drink deep draughts of its nectar; I faint with love and hope! Oh, what did she whisper to you, My beautiful Heliotrope? ROSEMARY. “THERE’S ROSEMARY, THAT’S FOR REMEMBRANCE.”