Yet what else is there worth the touch

Of lifted hand with dagger drawn?
So surely life is little worth:

Therefore I say, Look up; therefore

I

say, One little star has more

Bright gold than all the earth of earth.

"Yet we must labor, plant to reap-
Life knows no folding up of hands-
Must plough the soul, as ploughing lands,
In furrows fashion'd strong and deep.
Life has its lesson. Let us learn

The hard, long lesson from the birth,
And be content; stand breast to breast,
And bear and battle till the rest.
Yet I look to yon stars, and say.
Thank Christ, ye are so far away
That when I win you I can turn
And look, and see no sign of earth.

ABOVE THE CLOUDS.

ID white Sierras, that slope to the sea,

MI

Lie turbulent lands. Go dwell in the

skies,

And the thundering tongues of Yosemite Shall persuade you to silence, and you shall be wise.

I but sing for the love of song and the few Who loved me first and shall love me last; And the storm shall pass as the storms have pass'd,

For never were clouds but the sun came through.

INA.

AD song of the wind in the mountains

SAD

And the sea-wave of grass on the plain,

That breaks in bloom-foam by the fountains,

And forests, that breaketh again

On the mountains, as breaketh a main.

Bold thoughts that were strong as the grizzlies,

But now weak in their prison of words;

Bright fancies that flash'd like the glaciers,

Now dimm'd like the lustre of birds,

And butterfles huddled as herds.

Sad symphony, wild, and unmeasured,

Weed warp, and woof woven in strouds

Strange truths that a stray soul has treasured,

Truths seen as through folding of shrouds,

Or as stars through the rolling of clouds.

SCENE I.

A Hacienda near Tezcuco, Mexico. Young DON CARLOS alone, looking out on the moonlit mount

ain.

POPOCATAP

DON CARLOS.

OPOCATAPETL looms lone like an island, Above white-cloud waves that break up against him;

Around him white buttes in the moonlight are flashing

Like silver tents pitch'd in the fair fields of

heaven

While standing in line, in their snows everlast

ing,

Flash peaks, as my eyes into heaven are lifted, Like milestones that lead to the city eternal.

Ofttime when the sun and the sea lay together,

Red-welded as one, in their red bed of lovers, Embracing and blushing like loves newly wed

ded,

I have trod on the trailing crape fringes of twi

light,

And stood there and listen'd, and lean'd with lips parted,

Till lordly peaks wrapp'd them, as chill night blew over,

In great cloaks of sable, like proud sombre Spaniards,

And stalk'd from my presence down night's corridors.

When the red-curtain'd West has bent red as

with weeping

Low over the couch where the prone day lay

dying,

I have stood with brow lifted, confronting the mountains

That held their white faces of snow in the

heavens,

And said, "It is theirs to array them so purely, Because of their nearness to the temple eter

nal;"

And child-like have said, "They are fair resting places