



Produced by Chuck Greif, Mary Glenn Krause, MFR, University
of South Carolina and the Online Distributed Proofreading
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                                VERSES.

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                                VERSES.


           “_Be friendly, pray, to these fancies of mine._”

                          --BETTINE BRENTANO.

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               NEWPORT, R. I., C. E. HAMMETT, JR., 1878.

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      Sonnets.


    I. LE VIOL D’AMOUR.

     (An Organ-stop.)

    O soft, caressing sound, more sweet than scent
    Of violets in woody hollows! Tone
    As amorous as the ring-dove’s tender moan
    Beneath the spreading forest’s leafy tent;
    What mystery of earth or air hath lent
    Thee that bewitching music, where the drone
    Of Summer bees in dewy buds new blown
    With trembling, fainting melody is blent?
    What master did conceive thee, as the sound
    Most fit to woo his lady from her rest,
    What wakeful maiden in thy wooing found
    The passion of her lover first exprest,
    And from her silken pillows, beauty-crowned,
    Stept forth and smiled on him who loved her best?

                _November 10th, 1875._

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      II. VESPERS.

    It is the vesper hour, and in yon aisle
    Where fainting incense clouds the heavy air
    My lady’s kneeling at her evening prayer,
    Alone and silently; for in a file
    The choristers have passed, and left her there,
    Where martyrs from the tinted windows stare,
    And saints look downward with a holy smile
    Upon her meek devotions, while the day
    Fades slowly, and a tender amber light
    From  panes about her head doth play--
    Her veil falls like a shade, and ghostly white
    Her clasped hands glimmer through the deepening gray;
    So will she kneel, until from Heaven’s height
    The Angels bend to hear their sister pray.

                _November 11th, 1875._

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      III. BETTINE TO GOETHE.

     “Be friendly, pray, with these fancies of mine.” BETTINE.

    Could youth discrown thy head of its gray hair,
    I could not love it as I love it now;
    Could one grand line be smoothed from thy brow,
    ’Twould seem to me less stately and less fair.
    O no, be as thou art! For thou dost wear
    The signs of noble age that cannot bow
    Thine intellect like thy form, and I who know
    How each year that did visibly impair
    Thy first fresh youth, left inwardly such grand
    And gracious gifts, would rather have thee so--
    Believe me, master, who erect doth stand
    In soul and purpose, age cannot lay low
    Till he receive, new from the Father’s hand
    The youth he did but outwardly forego.

                _April, 1876._

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      Spring Song.

     “O primavera! Gioventù dell’ anno.”


    The first warm buds that break their covers,
      The first young twigs that burst in green,
    The first blade that the sun discovers,
      Starting the loosened earth between.

    The pale soft sky, so clear and tender,
      With little clouds that break and fly;
    The crocus, earliest pretender
      To the low breezes passing by;

    The chirp and twitter of brown builders,
      A couple in a tree, at least;
    The watchful wisdom of the elders
      For callow younglings in the nest;

    The flush of branches with fair blossoms,
      The deepening of the faint green boughs,
    As leaf by leaf the crown grows fuller
      That binds the young Spring’s rosy brows;

    New promise every day of sweetness,
      The next bright dawn is sure to bring;
    Slow breaking into green completeness,
      Fresh rapture of the early Spring!

                _May, 1876._




      Prophecies of Summer.


    I found a wee leaf in the cleft
    Where the half-melted ice had left
    A sunny corner, moist and warm,
    For it to bud, beyond all harm.
          The wet, brown sod,
    Long horned with ice, had slowly grown
    So soft, the tender seedling blown
    By Autumn winds, in earliest Spring
    Sent through the sun-warmed covering,
          Its little leaf to God.

    I found it there, beneath a ledge,
    The dawning Spring time’s fairest pledge,
    And to my mind it dimly brought
    The sudden, joyous, leafy thought
          Of Summer-time.
    I plucked it from the sheltered cleft
    Which the more kindly ice had left.
    Within my hand to drop and die,
    But for its sweet suggestions, I
          Revive it in a rhyme.

                _1876._




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      Song.


    O Love, where are the hours fled,
      The hours of our young delight?
    Are they forever gone and dead,
      Or only vanished out of sight?

    O can it be that we shall live
      To know once more the joys gone by,
    To feel the old, deep love revive,
      And smile again before we die?

    Could I but fancy it might be,
      Could I the past bring back again,
    And for one moment, holding thee,
      Forget the present and its pain!

    O Love, those hours are past away
      Beyond our longing and our sighs--
    Perhaps the Angels, some bright day,
      Will give them back in Paradise!

                _August, 1876._

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      Heaven.


    Not over roof and spire doth Heaven lie,
    Star-sentinelled from our humanity,
    Beyond the humble reach of every day.
    And only near us when we weep or pray;
    But rather in the household and the street,
    Where loudest is the noise of hurrying feet,
    Where hearts beat thickest, where our duties call,
    Where watchers sit, where tears in silence fall.
    We know not, or forget, there is no line
    That marks our human off from our divine;
    For all one household, all one family
    In different chamberings labouring are we;
    God leaves the doors between them open wide,
    Knowing how life and death are close allied,
    And though across the threshold, in the gloom,
    We cannot see into that other room,
    It may be that the dear ones watching there
    Can hear our cry of passionate despair,
    And wait unseen to lead us through the door
    When twilight comes, and all our work is o’er.

                _January, 1877._




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      “Maiden, Arise.”


    She, whom through life her God forbade to hear
    The voices of her nearest and most dear,
    So that she dwelt, amid the hum and rush
    Of cities, in a vast, eternal hush,
    Yet heard the first low calling of the voice
    That others had not heeded in the noise,
    And rising, when it whispered “Come with me,”
    Followed the form that others could not see,
    Smiling, perchance, in death at last to hear
    The voices of the Angels fill her ear,
    While the great, silent void that closed her round
    Was overflowed with rippled floods of sound,
    And the dumb past in Alleluias drowned.

                _March, 1877._

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      Spring.

     A Fragment.


      HILDEGARD.

    It is the time when everything
    Is flusht with presage of the Spring,
    When every leaf and twig and bud
    Feels new life rushing like a flood
    Through greening veins and bursting tips;
    When every hour a sunbeam slips
    Across a sleepy flower’s mouth,
    And wakes it, babbling of the South;
    When birds are doubtful where or how
    To hang their nests on trunk or bough,
    And all that is in wood or croft
    Beneath an influence balmy-soft
    Towards the light begins to strive,
    Feeling how good it is to live!


      WALTHER.

    How beautiful thou standest there,
      Thyself a prophet of the May!
    The shining of thy golden hair
      Would melt December’s snows away.
    The roses on thy cheeks would woo
      Forth envious blossoms from their sleeps.
    And robins plume their breasts anew
      To mock the crimson of thy lips.


      HILDEGARD.

    But where would be the golden tresses,
    With ribands bravely intertwined
    And where the roses, that thy praises
    Have opened like a Summer wind,
    Wert thou, my love, my Knight, not here,
    To make these empty beauties dear?
    The Spring would never deck her train
    In such a fair and winsome wise
    Did she not seek by smiles to chain
    The sun her royal lover’s eyes.

                _1876._

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      May Marian.


      A BALLAD.

    In our town there dwelt a maiden
      Whom the folk called Marian;
    In her narrow gabled casement
      All day long she sat and span.

    Till a gentleman came riding
      Through our town one Summer day,
    Spied May Marian at the casement,
      Stole her silly heart away.

    Then she up and left her spinning,
      Laid aside her russet gown,
    In a footboy’s cap and mantle
      Followed him to London town.

    There he led her to a mansion
      Standing by the river side;
    “In that mansion dwells the lady
      Who is my betrothed bride;

    “Gif thou’lt be her serving-maiden,
      Thou shalt wear a braw red gown,
    Follow her to mass on Sunday
      Through the streets of London town;

    “But if thou’lt not be her maiden,
      Turn about and get thee home;
    ’Tis not meet that country wenches
      Through the city here