A LOOK INTO THE GULF

I LOOKED one night, and there Semiramis,
With all her mourning doves about her head,
Sat rocking on an ancient road of Hell,
Withered and eyeless, chanting to the moon
Snatches of song they sang to her of old
Upon the lighted roofs of Nineveh.

And then her voice rang out with rattling laugh:
"The bugles! they are crying back again
Bugles that broke the nights of Babylon,
And then went crying on through Nineveh.

Stand back, ye trembling messengers of ill!
Women, let go my hair: I am the Queen,
A whirlwind and a blaze of swords to quell
Insurgent cities. Let the iron tread

Of armies shake the earth. Look, lofty towers:
Assyria goes by upon the wind!"

And so she babbles by the ancient road,
While cities turned to dust upon the Earth
Rise through her whirling brain to live again
Babbles all night, and when her voice is dead
Her weary lips beat on without a sound.
Edwin Markham.

LION AND LIONESS

ONE night we were together, you and I,
And had unsown Assyria for a lair,
Before the walls of Babylon rose in air.
Low languid hills were heaped along the sky,
And white bones marked the wells of alkali,

BROWNING AT ASOLO

221

When suddenly down the lion-path a sound... The wild man-odor ... then a crouch, a bound, And the frail Thing fell quivering with a cry!

Your yellow eyes burned beautiful with light:
The dead man lay there quieted and white:

I roared my triumph over the desert wide,
Then stretched out, glad of the sands and satis-
fied;

And through the long, star-stilled Assyrian night, I felt your body breathing by my side.

Edwin Markham.

BROWNING AT ASOLO

THIS is the loggia Browning loved,
High on the flank of the friendly town;
These are the hills that his keen eye roved,
The green like a cataract leaping down
To the plain that his pen gave new renown.

There to the West what a range of blue!
The very background Titian drew

To his peerless Loves! O tranquil scene!
Who than thy poet fondlier knew

The peaks and the shore and the lore be-
tween?

See! yonder's his Venice - the valiant Spire,

Highest one of the perfect three,

Guarding the others: the Palace choir,
The Temple flashing with opal fire-
Bubble and foam of the sunlit sea,

Yesterday he was part of it all

Sat here, discerning cloud from snow

In the flush of the Alpine afterglow,

Or mused on the vineyard whose wine-stirred

row

Meets in a leafy bacchanal.

Listen a moment

- how oft did he!

To the bells from Fontalto's distant tower Leading the evening in . . . ah, me!

Here breathes the whole soul of Italy

As one rose breathes with the breath of the bower.

Sighs were meant for an hour like this

When joy is keen as a thrust of pain.
Do you wonder the poet's heart should miss
This touch of rapture in Nature's kiss
And dream of Asolo ever again?

"Part of it yesterday," we moan?

Nay, he is part of it now, no fear. What most we love we are that alone. His body lies under the Minster stone,

But the love of the warm heart lingers here.

Robert Underwood Johnson.

LOVE AND ITALY

THEY halted at the terrace wall;
Below, the towered city lay;

The valley in the moonlight's thrall
Was silent in a swoon of May.

HER PICTURE

As hand to hand spake one soft word
Beneath the friendly ilex-tree,

They knew not, of the flame that stirred,
What part was Love, what Italy.

223

They knew what makes the moon more bright Where Beatrice and Juliet are,

The sweeter perfume in the night,
The lovelier starlight in the star;
And more that glowing hour did prove
Beneath the sheltering ilex-tree,

That Italy transfigures Love
As Love transfigures Italy.

Robert Underwood Johnson.

HER PICTURE

AUTUMN was cold in Plymouth town;
The wind ran round the shore,
Now softly passing up and down,
Now wild and fierce and fleet,
Wavering overhead,

Moaning in the narrow street
As one beside the dead.

The leaves of wrinkled gold and brown
Fluttered here and there,

But not quite heedless where;
For as in hood and sad-hued gown

The Rose of Plymouth took the air,

They whirled, and whirled, and fell to rest

Upon her gentle breast,

Then on the happy earth her foot had pressed.

Autumn is wild in Plymouth town,
Barren and bleak and cold,

And still the dead leaves flutter down
As the years grow old.

And still

forever gravely fair

Beneath their fitful whirl,

New England's sweetest girl,

Rose Standish, takes the air.

Ellen Mackay Hutchinson.

WHEN SHE COMES HOME1

WHEN she comes home again! A thousand ways I fashion, to myself, the tenderness

Of my glad welcome: I shall tremble

yes;

And touch her, as when first in the old days

I touched her girlish hand, nor dared upraise
Mine eyes, such was my faint heart's sweet distress.
Then silence: and the perfume of her dress:

The room will sway a little, and a haze
Cloy eyesight - soulsight, even

And tears

for a space;

yes; and the ache here in the throat,

To know that I so ill deserve the place

Her arms make for me; and the sobbing note

I stay with kisses, ere the tearful face

Again is hidden in the old embrace.

James Whitcomb Riley.

1 From the Biographical Edition of The Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley. Copyright, 1913. Used by special permission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.