THE CRAGS

Falernian, first! What other wine

Should brim the cup or tint the line

That would recall my days

Among your creeks and bays;

Where, founded on a rock, your house

Between the pines’ unfading boughs

Watches through sun and rain

That lonelier coast of Maine;

And the Atlantic's mounded blue

Breaks on your crags the summer through,

A long pine's length below,

In rainbow-tossing snow.

While on your railed verandah there

As on a deck you sail through air,

And sea and cloud and sky

Go softly streaming by.

Like delicate oils at set of sun

Smoothing the waves the colours run —

Around the enchanted hull,

Anchored and beautiful,—

Restoring to that sun-dried star

You brought from coral isles afar —

With shells that mock the moon —

The tints of their lagoon;

Till, from within, your lamps declare

Your harbours by the colours there,

An Indian god, a fan

Painted in Old Japan.

But, best of all, I think at night,

The moon that makes a road of light

Across the whispering sea,

A road — for memory.

When the blue dusk has filled the pane,

And the great pine-logs burn again,

And books are good to read.

— For his were books indeed.—

Their silken shadows, rustling, dim,

May sing no more of Spain for him;

No shadows of old France

Renew their courtly dance.

He walks no more where shadows are

But left their ivory gates ajar,

That shadows might prolong

The dance, the tale, the song.

His was no narrow test or rule.

He chose the best of every school,—

Stendhal and Keats and Donne,

Balzac and Stevenson;

Wordsworth and Flaubert filled their place.

Dumas met Hawthorne face to face.

There were both new and old

In his good realm of gold.

The title-pages bore his name;

And, nightly, by the dancing flame,

Following him, I found

That all was haunted ground;

Until a friendlier shadow fell

Upon the leaves he loved so well,

And I no longer read,

But talked with him instead.