Verses

(TO P. G. S. WRITTEN IN A GIFT COPY OF MR. LOWELL’s POEMS.)

IF here, sweet friend, no verse you find
To wake far echoes in the mind,
No reach of passion that can stir
Your chords of deeper character,
Let it suffice if here and there
You seem to snuff New England air,
And give a kindly thought to one
Who in our ampler Western sun
Finds no such sunshine as he drew
In London’s dreariest fogs from you.

(WRITTEN IN A COPY OF “ AMONG MY BOOKS ” FOR P. G. S.)

Last year I brought you verses,
This year with prose make bold;
I know not which the worse is ;
Both are but empty purses
For your superfluous gold.

Put in your sunny fancies,
Your feeling quick and fine,
Your mirth that sings and dances,
Your nature’s graver glances,
And think they all are mine.

(WRITTEN IN A COPY OF “ FIRESIDE TRAVELS ” FOR P. G. S.)

If to my fireside I return,
And, as Life’s embers fainter burn,
No travels plan save that last post
To the low inn where Death is host,
Yet when my thoughts an outing seek,
Bowed pilgrims and with footing weak,
No spots to all men’s memories known
Shall lure them forth; one path alone
Will they with constant faith retread,
Brightening ’neath Memory’s sunset red.
Across the muffled course of steeds
Through the sheep-dotted park it leads
By water silvered in the breeze
With the swan’s shattered images,
By sun-steeped elms where not the rush
And rapture of the embowered thrush
Detain them — that could once detain
Those feet more light than summer rain
That sang beside me : — Sure ’t is I,
And not my lumpish thoughts, that fly
To lay my tribute at those feet
Of gratitude forever sweet
For comfort given when great the lack,
For sunshine, when my heaven was black,
Poured through my dull and sullen mood
From skies of purest womanhood.

This path lifelong my feet shall bless
With sense of dear indebtedness; —
Yet what avails it her or me,
Myself a dream, a vision she ?

James Russell Lowell.