"

And one: "A ceiling meets my needs
Within a Smyrna coffee-house,
Where Hadjis tell their amber beads
Upon the threshold luminous.

"I go and come above the folk,
While their chibouques their clouds upfling.
I skim along through silver smoke,
And graze the turbans with my wing."

Another: "There's a triglyph gray
On one of Baalbec's temples high.
'T is there I go to brood all day
Above my little family."

Another calleth, "My address
Is settled: 'At the Knights of Rhodes.'
In a dark colonnade's recess
I'll make the snuggest of abodes."

"Old age hath made me slow for flight,"
Declares a fifth; "I'll rest at even
On Malta's terraces of white,
Where blue sea melts to blue of heaven."

A sixth: "In Cairo is my home,
Up in a minaret's retreat:
A twig or two, a bit of loam--
My winter lodgings are complete."

A last: "The Second Cataract
Shall mark my place--the nest of brown
A granite king doth hold intact
Within the circle of his crown."

And all together sing: "What miles
To-morrow shall have stretched beneath
Our fleeing swarm:--remembered isles,
Snow peaks, vast waters, lands of heath!"

With calls and cries and beat of wings,
Grown eager now and venturesome,
The swallows hold their twitterings,
To see the blight of winter come.

And I--I understand them all,
Because the poet is a bird,--
Oh! but a sorry bird, and thrall
To a great lack, pressed heavenward.

It's Oh for wings! to seek the star,
To count the seas when day is done,
To breast the air with swallows far,
To verdant spring, to golden sun!

CHRISTMAS

Black is the sky and white the ground.
O ring, ye bells, your carol's grace!
The Child is born! A love profound
Beams o'er Him from His Mother's face.

No silken woof of costly show
Keeps off the bitter cold from Him.
But spider-webs have drooped them low,
To be His curtain soft and dim.

Now trembles on the straw downspread
The Little Child, the Star beneath.
To warm Him in His holy bed,
Upon Him ox and ass do breathe.

Snow hangs its fringes on the byre.
The roof stands open to the tryst
Of aureoled saints, that sweetly choir
To shepherds, "Come, behold the Christ!"

THE DEAD CHILD'S PLAYTHINGS

Marie comes no more at call.
She has wandered from her play.
Ah, how pitifully small
Was the coffin borne away!

See--about the nursery floor
All her little heritage:
Rubber ball and battledore,
Tattered book and coloured page.

Poor forsaken doll! in vain