ot sand steals and swells;
A lazy tom-tom throbs and dones
In barbarous maddening monotones;
While sandal incense blue and keen
Hangs in the air. And then the scene
Wakes, and out steps, by rhythm released,
The sorcery of all the East,
In rose and saffron gossamer,--
A young light-hearted worshipper
Who dances up the sun. She moves
Like waking woodland flower that loves
To greet the day. Her lithe, brown curve
Is like a sapling's sway and swerve
Before the spring wind. Her dark hair
Framing a face vivid and rare,
Curled to her throat and then flew wild,
Like shadows round a radiant child.
The sunlight from her cymbals played
About her dancing knees, and made
A world of rose-lit ecstasy,
Prophetic of the day to be.

Such mystic beauty might have shone
In Sardis or in Babylon,
To bring a Satrap to his doom
Or touch some lad with glory's bloom.
And now it wrought for me, with sheer
Enchantment of the dying year,
Its irresistible reprieve
From joylessness on New Year's Eve.

Mirage

Here hangs at last, you see, my row
Of sketches,--all I have to show
Of one enchanted summer spent
In sweet laborious content,
At little 'Sconset by the moors,
With the sea thundering by its doors,
Its grassy streets, and gardens gay
With hollyhocks and salvia.

And here upon the easel yet,
With the last brush of paint still wet,
(Showing how inspiration toils),
Is one where the white surf-line boils
Along the sand, and the whole sea
Lifts to the skyline, just to be
The wondrous background from whose verge
Of blue on blue there should emerge
This miracle.

One day of days
I strolled the silent path that strays
Between the moorlands and the beach
From Siasconset, till you reach
Tom Nevers Head, the lone last land
That fronts the ocean, lone and grand
As when the Lord first bade it be
For a surprise and mystery.
A sailless sea, a cloudless sky,
The level lonely moors, and I
The only soul in all that vast
Of color made intense to last!
The small white sea-birds piping near;
The great soft moor-winds; and the dear
Bright sun that pales each crest to jade,
Where gulls glint fishing unafraid.

Here man, the godlike, might have gone
With his deep thought, on that wild dawn
When the first sun came from the sea,
Glowing and kindling the world to be,
While time