meaningless and bright, Or show an empty canvas, blurred with light.

p. 99MEMORY’S MANSION

p. 99

In Memory’s Mansion are wonderful rooms, And I wander about them at will; And I pause at the casements, where boxes of blooms Are sending sweet scents o’er the sill. I lean from a window that looks on a lawn:  From a turret that looks on the wave. But I draw down the shade, when I see on some glade, A stone standing guard, by a grave.

To Memory’s attic I clambered one day, When the roof was resounding with rain. And there, among relics long hidden away, I rummaged with heart-ache and pain. A hope long surrendered and covered with dust, A pastime, out-grown, and forgot, And a fragment of love, all corroded with rust, Were lying heaped up in one spot.

p. 100And there on the floor of that garret was tossed A friendship too fragile to last, With pieces of dearly bought pleasures, that cost Vast fortunes of pain in the past. A fabric of passion, once ardent and bright, As tropical sunsets in spring, Was spread out before me—a terrible sight—  A moth-eaten rag of a thing.

p. 100

Then down the steep stairway I hurriedly went, And into fair chambers below. But the mansion seemed filled with the old attic scent, Wherever my footsteps would go. Though in Memory’s House I still wander full oft, No more to the garret I climb; And I leave all the rubbish heaped there in the loft To the hands of the Housekeeper, Time.

p. 101OLD RHYTHM AND RHYME

p. 101

They tell me new methods now govern the Muses, The modes of expression have changed with the times; That low is the rank of the poet who uses The old-fashioned verse with intentional rhymes. And quite out of date, too, is rhythmical metre; The critics declare it an insult to art. But oh! the sweet swing of it, oh! the clear ring of it, Oh the great pulse of it, right from the heart, Art or no art.

I sat by the side of that old poet, Ocean, And counted the billows that broke on the rocks; The tide lilted in with a rhythmical motion; The sea-gulls dipped downward in time-keeping flocks. p. 102I watched while a giant wave gathered its forces, And then on the gray granite precipice burst; And I knew as I counted, while other waves mounted, I knew the tenth billow would rhyme with the first.

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