reams
Born sweet and deep with dreams
From the cedar meres?
Only the Arno's flow,
Turbid, and weary, and slow
With wrath and tears.

What has he now for the song
Of the boatmen, joyous and long,
Where the rapids shine?
Only the sound of toil,
Where the peasants press the soil
For the oil and wine.

Spirit-fellow in sooth
With bold La Salle and Duluth,
And La Verandrye,--
Nothing he has but rest,
Deep in his cypress nest
With memory.

Hearts of steel and of fire,
Why do ye love and aspire,
When follows
Death--all your passionate deeds,
Garnered with rust and with weeds
In the hollows?

God that hardened the steel,
Bid the flame leap and reel,
Gave us unrest;
We act in the dusk afar,
In a star beyond your star,
His behest.

"We leave you dreams and names
Still we are iron and flames,
Biting and bright;
Into some virgin world,
Champions, we are hurled,
Of venture and fight."

Here where the shadows fall,
From the cypress by the wall,
Where the roses are--
Here is a dream and a name,
There, like a rose of flame,
Rises--a star.

THE WOOD-SPRING TO THE POET

Dawn-cool, dew-cool
Gleams the surface of my pool
Bird haunted, fern enchanted,
Where but tempered spirits rule;
Stars do not trace their mystic lines
In my confines;
I take a double night within my breast
A night of darkened heavens, a night of leaves,
And in the two-fold dark I hear the owl
Puff at his velvet horn
And the wolves howl.
Even daylight comes with a touch of gold
Not overbold,
And shows dwarf-cornel and the twin-flowers,
Below the balsam bowers,
Their tints enamelled in my dew-drop shield.
Too small even for a thirsty fawn
To quench upon,
I hold my crystal at one level
There where you see the liquid bevel
Break in silver and go free
Singing to its destiny.

Give, Poet, give!
Thus only shalt thou live.
Give! for 'tis thy joyous doom
To charm, to comfort, to illume.

Speak to the maiden and the child
With accents deep and mild,
Tell them of the world so wide
In words of wonder and pure pride,
Touched with the rapture of surprise
That dwells in a child angel's eyes,
Awed with the strangeness of new-birth,
When the flaming seraph sent
To lead him into Paradise,
Calls his name with the mother's voice
He has just ceased to hear on earth.

Give to the youth his heart's content,
But power with prudence blent,
Thicken his sinews with love,
With cou