Now men do check and still your course To serve a village enterprise, And wheelward drive your sullen force, What wonder, slave! that in no wise Breaks from you, pooled ’mid reeds and gorse, The voice you had in Paradise? TEMPTATION. I COME where the wry road leads Thro’ the pines and the alder scents, Sated of books, with a start, Sharp on the gang to-day: Scarce see the Romany steeds, Scarce hear the flap of the tents, When hillo! my heart, my heart Is out of its leash, and away. Gypsies, gypsies, the whole Tatterdemalion crew! Brown and sly and severe With curious trades in hand. A string snaps in my soul, The one high answer due If an exile chance to hear The songs of his fatherland. ... To be abroad with the rain, And at home with the forest hush, With the crag, and the flower-urn, And the wan sleek mist upcurled; To break the lens and the plane, To burn the pen and the brush, And, clean and alive, return Into the old wild world!... How is it? O wind that bears The arrow from its mark, The sea-bird from the sea, The moth from his midnight lamp, Fate’s self, thou mocker of prayers! Whirl up from the mighty dark, And even so, even me Blow far from the gypsy camp! FOR A CHILD. Schumann’s ‘Erinnerung: Novbr. 4, 1847.’ IN memory of dear Mendelssohn, the loving song I made Fain would I sing for you, my own, but that I am afraid, Aye, truly, sore afraid: For sweet as was its every tone, once freed to mortal ears, In memory of dear Mendelssohn, the ghostly wand of tears Would yet be strong to break my song, Thro’ all these after-years! AGLAUS. THE ash hath no perfidious mind; The open fields are just and kind; Tho’ loves betray, I hear this way The feathery step of the faithful wind. Thorn-apple, bayberry and rose Around me, talismanic, close: The frosty flakes, the thunder-quakes, Are bulwarks twain of my year’s repose. No struggle, no delight, no moan, But at my hearthstone I have known! All thoughts that pass, as in a glass The gods have bared to me for mine own. Wisdom, the sought and unpossessed, Hath of her own will been my guest; Not smoking feud, but quietude My heart hath chosen, at her behest. ‘This is of men the happiest man Who hath his plot Arcadian,’ Apollo cried, my gates beside, ‘Nor ever wanders beyond its span.’ Now, like my sheep, I seek the fold; My hair is shaken in the cold; The night is nigh; but ere I die, Bear witness, brothers! that young and old, My name I wear without regret: The Home-Keeper am I, and yet At every inn my feet have been, Above all travellers I am set.