Bring no more flowers and books and precious things! O speak no more of our beloved Art, Of summer haunts,—melodious wanderings In leafy refuge from this weary mart! Surely such thoughts were dear unto my heart; Now every word a newer sadness brings! Thus oft some forest-bird, caged far apart From verdurous freedom, droops his careless wings, Nor craves for more than food from day to day; So long bereft of wildwood joy and song, Hopeless of all he dared to hope so long, The music born within him dies away; Even the song he loved becomes a pain, Full-freighted with a yearning all in vain. A MOTHER’S PICTURE. She seemed an angel to our infant eyes! Once, when the glorifying moon revealed Her who at evening by our pillow kneeled,— Soft-voiced and golden-haired, from holy skies Flown to her loves on wings of Paradise,— We looked to see the pinions half concealed. The Tuscan vines and olives will not yield Her back to me, who loved her in this wise, And since have little known her, but have grown To see another mother, tenderly Watch over sleeping children of my own. Perchance the years have changed her: yet alone This picture lingers; still she seems to me The fair young angel of my infancy. POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH. POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH. ELFIN SONG. FROM “THE RIME OF THE ELLE-KING.” 1. Far in the western ocean’s breast The summer fairies have found a nest; The heavens ever unclouded smile Over the breadth of their beautiful isle; Through it a hundred streamlets flow, In spangled paths, to the sea below, And woo the vales that beside them lie With a low and tremulous minstrelsy. The elfin brood have homes they love In the earth below and skies above; But the haunt which of all they love the best Is the palm-crowned isle, in the ocean’s breast, That mortals call Canary; And many an Ariel, blithesome, airy, And each laughing Fay and lithesome Fairy, Know well the mystical way in the West To the sweet isle of Canary. 2. With an ever-sounding choral chant, And a clear, cerulean, wild desire To clasp that fairy island nigher, The sinuous waves of ocean pant; For here all natural things are free To mingle in passionate harmony. The light from their mirror turns away With a golden splendor, in the day, But nightly, when coroneted Even Marshals the shining queen of heaven, There gleams a silvery scenery, From the rim of the great prismatic sea Around the isle of Canary, To the central crags of Pisgatiri, Where the crested eagle builds his eyry, Scanning the shores of sweet Canary.