You speak another tongue than mine, Though both were English born. I towards the night of time decline, You mount into the morn. Youth shall grow great and strong and free, But age must still decay: To-morrow for the States—for me, England and Yesterday. _San Francisco_. XXX—A PORTRAIT I AM a kind of farthing dip, Unfriendly to the nose and eyes; A blue-behinded ape, I skip Upon the trees of Paradise. At mankind’s feast, I take my place In solemn, sanctimonious state, And have the air of saying grace While I defile the dinner plate. I am “the smiler with the knife,” The battener upon garbage, I— Dear Heaven, with such a rancid life, Were it not better far to die? Yet still, about the human pale, I love to scamper, love to race, To swing by my irreverent tail All over the most holy place; And when at length, some golden day, The unfailing sportsman, aiming at, Shall bag, me—all the world shall say: _Thank God_, _and there’s an end of that_! XXXI SING clearlier, Muse, or evermore be still, Sing truer or no longer sing! No more the voice of melancholy Jacques To wake a weeping echo in the hill; But as the boy, the pirate of the spring, From the green elm a living linnet takes, One natural verse recapture—then be still. XXXII—A CAMP {66} THE bed was made, the room was fit, By punctual eve the stars were lit; The air was still, the water ran, No need was there for maid or man, When we put up, my ass and I, At God’s green caravanserai. XXXIII—THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS {67} WE travelled in the print of olden wars, Yet all the land was green, And love we found, and peace, Where fire and war had been. They pass and smile, the children of the sword— No more the sword they wield; And O, how deep the corn Along the battlefield! XXXIV—SKERRYVORE FOR love of lovely words, and for the sake Of those, my kinsmen and my countrymen, Who early and late in the windy ocean toiled To plant a star for seamen, where was then The surfy haunt of seals and cormorants: I, on the lintel of this cot, inscribe The name of a strong tower. XXXV—SKERRYVORE: THE PARALLEL HERE all is sunny, and when the truant gull Skims the green level of the lawn, his wing Dispetals roses; here the house is framed Of kneaded brick and the plumed mountain pine, Such clay as artists fashion and such wood As the tree-climbing urchin breaks. But there Eternal granite hewn from the living isle And dowelled with brute iron, rears a tower That from its wet foundation to its crown Of glittering glass, stands, in the sweep of winds, Immovable, immortal, eminent. XXXVI