NOT YET

Not yet, O friend, not yet! the patient stars

Lean from their lattices, content to wait.

All is illusion till the morning bars

Slip from the levels of the Eastern gate.

Night is too young, O friend! day is too near;

Wait for the day that maketh all things clear.

Not yet, O friend, not yet!

Not yet, O love, not yet! all is not true,

All is not ever as it seemeth now.

Soon shall the river take another blue,

Soon dies yon light upon the mountain brow.

What lieth dark, O love, bright day will fill;

Wait for thy morning, be it good or ill.

Not yet, O love, not yet!

The strain was finished; softly as the night

Her voice died from the window, yet e'en then

Fluttered and fell likewise a kerchief white;

But that no doubt was accident, for when

She sought her couch she deemed her conduct quite

Beyond the reach of scandalous commenter,—

Washing her hands of either gallant wight,

Knowing the moralist might compliment her,—

Thus voicing Siren with the words of Mentor.

She little knew the youths below, who straight

Dived for her kerchief, and quite overlooked

The pregnant moral she would inculcate;

Nor dreamed the less how little Winthrop brooked

Her right to doubt his soul's maturer state.

Brown — who was Western, amiable, and new —

Might take the moral and accept his fate;

The which he did, but, being stronger too,

Took the white kerchief, also, as his due.

They did not quarrel, which no doubt seemed queer

To those who knew not how their friendship blended;

Each was opposed, and each the other's peer,

Yet each the other in some things transcended.

Where Brown lacked culture, brains,— and oft, I fear,

Cash in his pocket,— Grey of course supplied him;

Where Grey lacked frankness, force, and faith sincere,

Brown of his manhood suffered none to chide him,

But in his faults stood manfully beside him.

In academic walks and studies grave,

In the camp drill and martial occupation,

They helped each other: but just here I crave

Space for the reader's full imagination,—

The fact is patent, Grey became a slave!

A tool, a fag, a “pleb”! To state it plainer,

All that blue blood and ancestry e'er gave

Cleaned guns, brought water!— was, in fact, retainer

To Jones, whose uncle was a paper-stainer!

How they bore this at home I cannot say:

I only know so runs the gossip's tale.

It chanced one day that the paternal Grey

Came to West Point that he himself might hail

The future hero in some proper way

Consistent with his lineage. With him came

A judge, a poet, and a brave array

Of aunts and uncles, bearing each a name,

Eyeglass and respirator with the same.

“Observe!” quoth Grey the elder to his friends,

“Not in these giddy youths at baseball playing

You'll notice Winthrop Adams! Greater ends

Than these absorb HIS leisure. No doubt straying

With Caesar's Commentaries, he attends

Some Roman council. Let us ask, however,

Yon grimy urchin, who my soul offends

By wheeling offal, if he will endeavor

To find — What! heaven! Winthrop! Oh! no! never!”

Alas! too true! The last of all the Greys

Was “doing police detail,” — it had come

To this; in vain the rare historic bays

That crowned the pictured Puritans at home!

And yet‘ twas certain that in grosser ways

Of health and physique he was quite improving.

Straighter he stood, and had achieved some praise

In other exercise, much more behooving

A soldier's taste than merely dirt removing.

But to resume: we left the youthful pair,

Some stanzas back, before a lady's bower;

‘ Tis to be hoped they were no longer there,

For stars were pointing to the morning hour.

Their escapade discovered, ill‘ twould fare

With our two heroes, derelict of orders;

But, like the ghost, they “scent the morning air,”

And back again they steal across the borders,

Unseen, unheeded, by their martial warders.

They got to bed with speed: young Grey to dream

Of some vague future with a general's star,

And Mistress Kitty basking in its gleam;

While Brown, content to worship her afar,

Dreamed himself dying by some lonely stream,

Having snatched Kitty from eighteen Nez Perces,

Till a far bugle, with the morning beam,

In his dull ear its fateful song rehearses,

Which Winthrop Adams after put to verses.

So passed three years of their novitiate,

The first real boyhood Grey had ever known.

His youth ran clear,— not choked like his Cochituate,

In civic pipes, but free and pure alone;

Yet knew repression, could himself habituate

To having mind and body well rubbed down,

Could read himself in others, and could situate

Themselves in him,— except, I grieve to own,

He could n't see what Kitty saw in Brown!

At last came graduation; Brown received

In the One Hundredth Cavalry commission;

Then frolic, flirting, parting,— when none grieved

Save Brown, who loved our young Academician.

And Grey, who felt his friend was still deceived

By Mistress Kitty, who with other beauties

Graced the occasion, and it was believed

Had promised Brown that when he could recruit his

Promised command, she'd share with him those duties.

Howe'er this was I know not; all I know,

The night was June's, the moon rode high and clear;

“‘ Twas such a night as this,” three years ago,

Miss Kitty sang the song that two might hear.

There is a walk where trees o'erarching grow,

Too wide for one, not wide enough for three

( A fact precluding any plural beau ),

Which quite explained Miss Kitty's company,

But not why Grey that favored one should be.

There is a spring, whose limpid waters hide

Somewhere within the shadows of that path

Called Kosciusko's. There two figures bide,—

Grey and Miss Kitty. Surely Nature hath

No fairer mirror for a might-be bride

Than this same pool that caught our gentle belle

To its dark heart one moment. At her side

Grey bent. A something trembled o'er the well,

Bright, spherical — a tear? Ah no! a button fell!

“Material minds might think that gravitation,”

Quoth Grey, “drew yon metallic spheroid down.

The soul poetic views the situation

Fraught with more meaning. When thy girlish crown

Was mirrored there, there was disintegration

Of me, and all my spirit moved to you,

Taking the form of slow precipitation!”

But here came “Taps,” a start, a smile, adieu!

A blush, a sigh, and end of Canto II.