XII.

Beneath a hard Arabian moon

And alien stars. To question, why
The sons before the fathers die,
Not mine! and I may meet him soon;

XIII.

But while my life's late eve endures,
Nor settles into hueless gray,

My memories of his briefer day
Will mix with love for you and yours.

ON THE JUBILEE OF QUEEN VICTORIA.

I.

FIFTY times the rose has flower'd and faded,

Fifty times the golden harvest fallen,

Since our Queen assumed the globe, the sceptre.

II.

She beloved for a kindliness
Rare in Fable or History,
Queen, and Empress of India,
Crown'd so long with a diadem
Never worn by a worthier,
Now with prosperous auguries
Comes at last to the bounteous
Crowning year of her Jubilee.

III.

Nothing of the lawless, of the Despot,
Nothing of the vulgar, or vainglorious,
All is gracious, gentle, great and Queenly.

IV.

You then joyfully, all of you,
Set the mountain aflame to-night,
Shoot your stars to the firmament,
Deck your houses, illuminate
All your towns for a festival,
And in each let a multitude
Loyal, each, to the heart of it,
One full voice of allegiance,
Hail the fair Ceremonial
Of this year of her Jubilee.

V.

Queen, as true to womanhood as Queenhood, Glorying in the glories of her people, Sorrowing with the sorrows of the lowest

VI.

You, that wanton in affluence,
Spare not now to be bountiful,
Call your poor to regale with you,
All the lowly, the destitute,

Make their neighborhood healthfuller,

Give your gold to the Hospital,

Let the weary be comforted,

Let the needy be banqueted,

Let the maim'd in his heart rejoice

At this glad Ceremonial,

And this year of her Jubilee.

VII.

Henry's fifty years are all in shadow,
Gray with distance Edward's fifty summers,
Ev'n her Grandsire's fifty half forgotten.

VIII.

You, the Patriot Architect,
You that shape for Eternity,
Raise a stately memorial,
Make it regally gorgeous
Some Imperial Institute,
Rich in symbol, in ornament,
Which may speak to the centuries,

All the centuries after us,

Of this great Ceremonial,

And this year of her Jubilee.

IX.

Fifty years of ever-broadening Commerce!
Fifty years of ever-brightening Science !
Fifty years of ever-widening Empire!

X.

You, the Mighty, the Fortunate,
You, the Lord-territorial,

You, the Lord-manufacturer,
You, the hardy, laborious,
Patient children of Albion,
You, Canadian, Indian,
Australasian, African,

All your hearts be in harmony,
All your voices in unison,

Singing "Hail to the glorious

Golden year of her Jubilee!"

XI.

Are there thunders moaning in the distance? Are there spectres moving in the darkness? Trust the Hand of Light will lead her people, Till the thunders pass, the spectres vanish, And the Light is Victor and the darkness Dawns into the Jubilee of the Ages.

TO PROFESSOR JEBB,

WITH THE FOLLOWING POEM.

FAIR

AIR things are slow to fade away,
Bear witness you, that yesterday 1

From out the Ghost of Pindar in you

Roll'd an Olympian; and they say 2

That here the torpid mummy wheat
Of Egypt bore a grain as sweet

As that which gilds the glebe of England,
Sunn'd with a summer of milder heat.

So may this legend for awhile,

If greeted by your classic smile,

Tho' dead in its Trinacrian Enna,

Blossom again on a colder isle.

DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE.

(IN ENNA.)

FAINT as a climate-changing bird that flies

All night across the darkness, and at dawn Falls on the threshold of her native land, And can no more, thou camest, O my child, Led upward by the God of ghosts and dreams, Who laid thee at Eleusis, dazed and dumb With passing thro' at once from state to state, Until I brought thee hither, that the day, When here thy hands let fall the gather'd flower, Might break thro' clouded memories once again On thy lost self. A sudden nightingale

Saw thee, and flash'd into a frolic of song

1 In Bologna.

2

They say, for the fact is doubtful

And welcome; and a gleam as of the moon,
When first she peers along the tremulous deep,
Fled wavering o'er thy face, and chased away
That shadow of a likeness to the king
Of shadows, thy dark mate. Persephone!
Queen of the dead no more my child! Thine eyes
Again were human-godlike, and the Sun
Burst from a swimming fleece of winter gray,
And robed thee in his day from head to feet
"Mother!" and I was folded in thine arms.

Child, those imperial, disimpassion'd, eyes
Awed even me at first, thy mother - eyes
That oft had seen the serpent-wanded power
Draw downward into Hades with his drift
Of flickering spectres, lighted from below
By the red race of fiery Phlegethon ;
But when before have Gods or men beheld
The Life that had descended re-arise,
And lighted from above him by the Sun?
So mighty was the mother's childless cry,

A cry that rang thro' Hades, Earth, and Heaven!

So in this pleasant vale we stand again,
The field of Enna, now once more ablaze
With flowers that brighten as thy footstep falls,
All flowers but for one black blur of earth
Left by that closing chasm, thro' which the car
Of dark Aïdoneus rising rapt thee hence.
And here, my child, tho' folded in thine arms,
I feel the deathless heart of motherhood
Within me shudder, lest the naked glebe
Should yawn once more into the gulf, and thence
The shrilly whinnyings of the team of Hell,
Ascending, pierce the glad and songful air,

And all at once their arch'd necks, midnight-maned,
Jet upward thro' the mid-day blossom. No!