e stings misfortune flings
Can give me little pain
When my narcotic spell has wrought
This quiet in my brain:
When I can waste the past in taste
So luscious and so ripe
That like an elf I hug myself;
And so I smoke my pipe.

And wrapped in shrouds of drifting clouds
I watch the phantom's flight,
Till alien eyes from Paradise
Smile on me as I write:
And I forgive the wrongs that live,
As lightly as I wipe
Away the tear that rises here;
And so I smoke my pipe.

{40}

[Illustration: Uncle Sidney to Marcellus--headpiece]

UNCLE SIDNEY TO MARCELLUS

Marcellus, won't you tell us--
Truly tell us, if you can,--
What will you be, Marcellus,
When you get to be a man?

You turn, with never answer
But to the band that plays.--
O rapt and eerie dancer,
What of your future days?

Far in the years before us
We dreamers see your fame,
While song and praise in chorus
Make music of your name.

And though our dreams foretell us
As only visions can,
You must prove it, O Marcellus,
When you get to be a man!

{41}

A SONG BY UNCLE SIDNEY

O were I not a clod, intent
On being just an earthly thing,
I'd be that rare embodiment
Of Heart and Spirit, Voice and Wing,
With pure, ecstatic, rapture-sent,
Divinely-tender twittering
That Echo swoons to re-present,--
A bluebird in the Spring.

{42}

[Illustration: The poet's love for the children--headpiece]

THE POET'S LOVE FOR THE CHILDREN

Kindly and warm and tender,
He nestled each childish palm
So close in his own that his touch was a prayer
And his speech a blessed psalm.

He has turned from the marvelous pages
Of many an alien tome--
Haply come down from Olivet,
Or out from the gates of Rome--

{43}

[Illustration: Of the orchard-lands of childhood]

{45}

Set sail o'er the seas between him
And each little beckoning hand
That fluttered about in the meadows
And groves of his native land,--

Fluttered and flashed on his vision
As, in the glimmering light
Of the orchard-lands of childhood,
The blossoms of pink and white.

And there have been sobs in his bosom,
As out on the shores he stept,
And many a little welcomer
Has wondered why he wept.--

That was because, O children,
Ye might not always be
The same that the Savior's arms were wound
About, in Gali