But when spires shall shine on the Amazon's shore,
From temples of God, and time shall have rolled.
Like a scroll from the border the limitless wold;
When the tiger is tamed, and the mono no more

Swings over the waters to chatter and call

To the crocodile sleeping in rushes and fern;
When cities shall gleam, and their battlements burn
In the sunsets of gold, where the cocoa-nuts fall:

And the mountains flash back from their mantles of snow
The reflection of splendours from tower and dome
Of temples where art has established a home
More royal than aught that the moderns may show :

"Twill be something to lean from the stars and to know That the engine, red-mouthing with turbulent tongue, The white ships that come, and the cargoes that go,

We invoked them of old when the nations were young :

'Twill be something to know that we named them of old-
That we said to the nations, Lo! here is the fleece
That allures to the rest, and the perfectest peace,
With its foldings of sunlight shed mellow like gold :

That we were the Carsons in kingdoms untrod,

We followed the trail through the rustle of leaves,
We stood by the waves where solitude weaves

Her garments of mosses, and lonely as God:

That we have made venture when singers were young,

Inviting from Grecia, from long-trodden lands That are easy of journeys, and holy from hands Laid upon by the Masters when giants had tongue :

Yea, rugged the hills, and most hard of defeat

Are the difficult journeys to bountiful song, Through places not hallowed by fame, and the feet Of the classical singers, made sacred to song.

But prophets should lead, to discover the grand
And the beautiful hidden in quarries of stone;
Be leaders to point to the fair and unknown,
And the far, and allure to the sweets of a land.

Behold my Sierras ! new mountains of song!

The Andes shall break through wings of the night

As the fierce condor breaks through the clouds in his flight; And we here plant the cross. How long? and how long?

Aye, idle indeed! And yet to have dared

On an unsailed sea may deserve some grace.
But the harvest will come, and behold, my place
Shall be filled with prophets, to my fullest reward.

I reckon that love is the bitterest sweet
That ever laid hold on the heart of a man,
A chain to the soul, and to slumber a ban,
And a bane to the brain, and a snare to the feet.

Who would ascend on the hollow white wings

Of love but to fall; to fall and to learn,

Like a moth and a man, that the lights lure to burn, That the roses have thorns, that the honey bee stings?

I say to you surely that grief shall befall;

I lift you my finger, I caution you true,

And yet you go forward, laugh gaily, and you

Must learn for yourself, and then mourn for us all.

You had better be drown'd than to love and to dream ;

It were better to sit on a moss-grown stone,

And away from the sun, and forever alone,
Slow pitching white pebbles at trout in the stream,

Than to dream for a day, then awake for an age,

And to walk through the world like a ghost, and to start, Then suddenly stop, with the hand to the heart

Pressed hard, and the teeth set savage with rage.

The clouds are above us, and snowy and cold,
And what is beyond but the steel-gray sky,

And the still far stars that twinkle and lie
Like the eyes of a love or delusions of gold!

Ah! who would ascend?

The clouds are above.

Aye! all things perish; to rise is to fall. And alack for loving, and alas for love,

And alas that there ever are lovers at all.

And alas for a heart that is left forlorn!

If you live you must love; if you love, regret— It were better, perhaps, we had never been born, Or better, at least, we could well forget.

And yet, after all, it is harder to die

Of a broken up heart than one would suppose. The clouds blow on, and we see that the rose Of heaven is born of a turbulent sky.

The singer stood forth in the fragrance of wood,
But not as alone, and he chid in his heart,
And subdued his soul, and assumed his part

With a passionate will, in the palms where he stood;

Then he reached his hand, like to one made strong
In a strange resolve to a questionable good,
And he shook his hair, made free from his mood,
Forgot his silence and resumed his song:

"She is sweet as the breath of the Castile rose,
She is warm to the heart as a world of wine,
And as rich to behold as the rose that grows
With its red heart bent to the tide of the Rhine.

"O hot blood born of the heavens above!

I shall drain her soul, I shall drink her up.
I shall love with a searching and merciless love,
I shall sip her lips as the brown bees sup

"From the great gold heart of the buttercup!

I shall live and love! I shall have my day. Let the suns fall down or the moons rise up,

And die in my time, and who shall gainsay?

"What boots me the battles that I have fought
With self for honour? My brave resolve;
And who takes note? The senses dissolve
In a sea of love, and the land is forgot.

"And the march of men and the drift of ships,
And the dreams of fame, and desires for gold,
They shall go for aye, as a tale that is told,
Nor divide for a day my lips from her lips.

“And a knight shall rest, and none shall say nay, In a green Isle washed by an arm of the seas, And walled from the world by the white Andes,

The sentinel stood on the farthermost land,

And shouted aloud to the shadowy forms. "He comes," she cried, " in the strength of storms,

And struck her shield, and, her sword in hand,

She cried, "O Queen of the sun-kissed Isle,

He comes as a wind comes, blown from the seas,

In a cloud of canoes, on the curling breeze, With his shields of tortoise and of crocodile,

"He is girt in copper, with silver spears,

With flint-tipped arrows and bended bows, To take our blood, though we give him tears, And to flood our Isle in a world of woes."

She rushed her down where the white tide ran,
She breasted away where the breakers reeled,
She shook her sword at the foeman's van,

And beat, as the waves beat, sword on shield.

She dared them come like a storm of seas,

To come as the winds come fierce and frantic— As sounding down to the far Atlantic, And sounding away to the deep Andes.

*

Sweeter than swans are a maiden's graces!
Sweeter than fruits are the kisses of morn!
Sweeter than babes is a love new-born,
But sweeter than all are a love's embraces.

She slept at peace in the holy places,
Sacred alone to the splendid Queen ;
She slept in peace in the opaline
Hush and blush of the tropic graces.

And bound about by the twining glory,
Vine and trellis in the vernal morn,

As still and as sweet as a babe new-born,

The brown Queen listens to the old new story.