Oh, boatman, cease thy mellow song!
Oh, minstrel, drop thy lyre!

Let us hear the voice of the midnight sea,
Let us speak as the waves inspire,
While the plashy dip of the languid oar
Is a furrow of silver fire.

Day cannot make thee half so fair,

Nor the stars of eve so dear:

The arms that clasp, and the breast that keeps, They tell me thou art near,

And the perfect beauty of thy face

In thy murmured words I hear.

The lights of land have dropped below
The vast and glimmering sea;

The world we leave is a tale that is told

A fable, that cannot be.

There is no life in the sphery dark
But the love in thee and me.

BEDOUIN SONG.

FROM the Desert I come to thee
On a stallion shod with fire;
And the winds are left behind
In the speed of my desire.
Under thy window I stand,

And the midnight hears my cry:

I love thee, I love but thee,

With a love that shall not die

Till the sun grows cold,

And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment
Book unfold!

Look from thy window and see
My passion and my pain;
I lie on the sands below,

And I faint in thy disdain.

Let the night-winds touch thy brow
With the heat of my burning sigh,
And melt thee to hear the vow

Of a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,

And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment
Book unfold!

My steps are nightly driven,

By the fever in my breast,

To hear from thy lattice breathed The word that shall give me rest.

Open the door of thy heart,

And open thy chamber door,

And my kisses shall teach thy lips The love that shall fade no more Till the sun grows cold,

And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment
Book unfold!

Stands Saint Christopher, carven in stone,
With the little child in his huge caress,
And the arms of the baby Jesus thrown
About his gigantic tenderness;

And over the wall a wandering growth
Of darkest and greenest ivy clings,

And climbs around them, and holds them both
In its netted clasp of knots and rings,

Clothing the saint, from foot to beard,

In glittering leaves that whisper and dance
To the child, on his mighty arm upreared,
With a lusty, summer exuberance.

To the child on his arm the faithful saint
Looks up with a broad and tranquil joy,
His brows and his heavy beard aslant
Under the dimpled chin of the boy,

Who plays with the world upon his palm,
And bends his smiling looks divine
On the face of the giant, rapt and calm,
And the glittering frolic of the vine.

He smiles on either with equal grace--
On the simple ivy's unconscious life,
And the soul in the giant's lifted face,

Strong from the peril and the strife;

For both are his own-the innocence

That climbs from the heart of earth to heaven, And the virtue that greatly rises thence

Through trial sent and victory given.

Grow, ivy, up to his countenance !

But it cannot smile on my life as on thineLook, saint, with thy trustful, fearless glance, Where I dare not lift these eyes of mine!

ALDEN.

THE ANCIENT "LADY OF SORROW."

HER closing eyelids mock the light;
Her cold, pale lips are sealèd quite;
Before her face of spotless white

A mystic veil is drawn.
Our Lady hides herself in night;
In shadows hath she her delight;
She will not see the dawn!

The morning leaps across the plain-
It glories in a promise vain;
At noon the day begins to wane,
With its sad prophecy;

At eve the shadows come again:
Our Lady finds no rest from pain,
No answer to her cry.

In Spring she doth her Winter wait;
The Autumn shadoweth forth her fate;
Thus, one by one, years iterate.

Her mystic tragedy.

Before her pass in solemn state

All shapes that come, or soon or late,
Of this world's misery.

What is, or shall be, or hath been,
This Lady is; and she hath seen,
Like frailest leaves, the tribes of men
Come forth, and quickly die.
Therefore our Lady hath no rest;

For close beneath her snow-white breast
Her weary children lie.