[Footnote A:  “Every man is born dead in sin.  Virtue alone brings life eternal.”]

STANCHEZZA.

EARLY LINES

    Lo Zephyr floats, on pinions delicate,
Past the dark belfry, where a deep-toned bell Sways back and forth, Grief tolling out the knell
    For thee, my friend, so young and yet so great. 
    Dead—­thou art dead.  The destiny of men
Is ever thus, like waves upon the main
To rise, grow great, fall with a crash and wane,
    While still another grows to wane again,
    Dead—­thou art dead.  Would that I too were gone
And that the grass which rustles on thy grave
Might also over mine forever wave
    Made living by the death it grew upon. 
I ask not Orpheus-like, that Pluto give
Thy soul to earth.  I would not have thee live.

PRAETERITA EX INSTANTIBUS.

How strange it is that, in the after age,—­
   When Time’s clepsydra will be nearer dry—­
   That all the accustomed things we now pass by
Unmarked, because familiar, shall engage
The antique reverence of men to be;
   And that quaint interest which prompts the sage
   The silent fathoms of the past to gauge
Shall keep alive our own past memory,
Making all great of ours—­the garb we wear—­
   Our voiceless cities, reft of roof and spire—­
   The very skull whence now the eye of fire
Glances bright sign of what the soul can dare. 
So shall our annals make an envied lore,
And men will say, ‘Thus did the men of yore.’

SUNRISE.

EARLY LINES

I saw the shining-limbed Apollo stand,
    Exultant, on the rim of Orient,
  And well and mightily his bow he bent,
And unseen-swift the arrow left his hand. 
  Far on it sped, as did those elder ones
    That long ago shed plague upon the Greek—­
    Far on—­and pierced the side of Night, who weak
And out of breath with fright, fled to his sons,
  The nether ghosts; and lo! his jewelled robe
No more did shade a sleep-encircled world;
And thereupon the faery legions furled
  The silk of silence, and the wheeling globe
Spun freer on its grand, accustomed way,
While all things living rose to hail the day.

REALITY.

A FANCY

Fade lesser dreams, that, built of tenderness,
Young trust and tinted hopes, have led me long. 
These jagged ways ye whiled will pain me less
Than hath your falsity.  Your spirit song
Sent magic wafted up and down along
The waves of wind to me.  Your world was real. 
There was no ruder world that I could feel. 
I lived in dreams and thought you all I would,
Nor knew what dread, bare truth is doomed to rise,
When love and hope and all but one far Good,
Like sunset lands feel the cold night of lies.