Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, Mauger the farmer's sighs; and at the gate . A tapering turret overtops the work. And when his hours are numbered, and the world 5 THE RHODORA On being asked whence is the flower In May, when sea winds pierced our solitudes, Made the black water with their beauty gay; This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being: Why thou were there, O rival of the rose! But, in my simple ignorance, suppose The self-same Power that brought me there brought you. TERMINUS It is time to be old, To take in sail; The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds, And said: "No more! No farther shoot Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root. Fancy departs: no more invent; Contract thy firmament To the compass of a tent. There's not enough for this and that, Make thy option which of two; Economize the failing river, Not the less revere the Giver, Still plan and smile, And fault of novel germs Who, when they gave thee breath, The needful sinew stark as once, Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, As the bird trims her to the gale, I trim myself to the storm of time, Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: Right onward drive unharmed; The port, well worth the cruise, is near, HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW THE SKELETON IN ARMOR Why dost thou haunt me?" Then, from those cavernous eyes From the heart's chamber. "I was a Viking old! My deeds, though manifold, "Far in the Northern Land, "Oft to his frozen lair Tracked I the grisly bear, While from my path the hare Oft through the forest dark Until the soaring lark Sang from the meadow. "But when I older grew, With the marauders. |