NEW POEMS
Brave as at first, in his new garb of print,
Shines forth the Elizabethan. But when Death,
The unforgettable shepherd, shall have come
And numbered us with these, the numberless,
The inheritors of slumber and neglect—
O correspondent of the immortal dead,
Shall any pious hand re-edit us?
CLXXIII
TO THE STORMY PETREL
TO HIS WIFE, ON HER BIRTHDAY.
EVER perilous
And precious, like an ember from the fire
Or gem from a volcano, we to-day
When the drums of war reverberate in the land
And every face is for the battle blacked—
No less the sky, that over sodden woods
Menaces now in the disconsolate calm
The hurly-burly of the hurricane,
Do now most fitly celebrate your day.
Yet amid turmoil keep for me, my dear,
The kind domestic faggot. Let the hearth
Shine ever as (I praise my honest gods)
In peace and tempest it has ever shone.
March 10th, 1894.
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