—­

“Your picture smiles as once it smiled;
The ring you gave is still the same;
Your letter tells, O changing child,
No tidings since it came! 
Give me some amulet
That marks intelligence with you,
Red when you love and rosier red,
And when you love not, pale and blue. 
Alas that neither bonds nor vows
Can certify possession. 
Torments me still the fear that Love
Died in his last expression.”

—­

“He walks with God upon the hills
And sees each morn the world arise
New bathed in light of Paradise. 
He hears the laughter of her rills;
She to his spirit undefiled
Makes answer as a little child;
Unveiled before his eyes she stands
And gives her secrets to his hands.”

—­

“Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting,
The river sang below,
The dim Sierras far beyond uplifting
Their minarets of snow. 
The roaring campfire with good humor painted
The ruddy tints of health
On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted
In the fierce race for wealth. 
Till one arose and from his pack’s scant treasure
The hoarded volume drew,
And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure
To hear the tale anew. 
And as around them shadows gathered faster
And as the firelight fell,
He read aloud the book wherein the Master
Had writ of Little Nell. 
Perhaps ’twas boyish fancy, for the reader
Was youngest of them all,
Yet, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar
A silence seemed to fall. 
The fir trees gathering closer in the shadows
Listened in every spray,
While the whole camp with little Nell, on English meadows,
Wandered and lost their way. 
Lost is that camp and wasted all its fire,
And he who wro’t that spell;
Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire,
Ye have one tale to tell. 
Lost is that camp, but let its fragrant story
Blend with the breath that thrills
With hop vines’ incense all the pensive glory
That fills the Kentish hills. 
And on that grave where English oak and holly
And laurel wreath entwine,
Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly,
This spray of Western pine.”

—­

“Dark browed she broods with weary lids
Beside her Sphynx and Pyramids,
With her low, never lifted eyes. 
If she be dead, respect the dead;
If she be weeping, let her weep;
If she be sleeping, let her sleep;
For lo, this woman named the stars. 
She suckled at her tawny dugs
Your Moses, while ye reeked with wars
And prowled the woods, rude, painted thugs.”

—­

“The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart;
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice,
The humble and the contrite heart.”

—­

“Careless seems the Great Avenger,
   History’s pages but record
One death grapple in the darkness
   Twixt old systems and the word. 
Truth forever on the scaffold,
   Wrong forever on the throne;
But that scaffold sways the future,
   And behind the dim Unknown
Standeth God within the shadow. 
   Keeping watch above his own.”