Memory

MY mind lets go a thousand things,

Like dates of wars and deaths of kings,

And yet recalls the very hour--

'Twas noon by yonder village tower,

And on the last blue noon in May--

The wind came briskly up this way,

Crisping the brook beside the road;

Then, pausing here, set down its load

Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly

Two petals from that wild-rose tree.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Miracles

SICK of myself and all that keeps the light

Of the blue skies away from me and mine,

I climb this ledge, and by this wind-swept pine

Lingering, watch the coming of the night.

'T is ever a new wonder to my sight.

Men look to God for some mysterious sign,

For other stars than those that nightly shine,

For some unnatural symbol of His might:--

Wouldst see a miracle as grand as those

The prophets wrought of old in Palestine?

Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows

In yonder West; the fair, frail palaces,

The fading alps and archipelagoes,

And great cloud-continents of sunset-seas.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Enamored Architect of Airy Rhyme

ENAMORED architect of airy rhyme,

Build as thou wilt; heed not what each man says:

Good souls, but innocent of dreamers' ways,

Will come, and marvel why thou wastest time;

Others, beholding how thy turrets climb

'Twixt theirs and heaven, will hate thee all thy days;

But most beware of those who come to praise.

O Wondersmith, O worker in sublime

And heaven-sent dreams, let art be all in all;

Build as thou wilt, unspoiled by praise or blame,

Build as thou wilt, and as thy light is given:

Then, if at last the airy structure fall,

Dissolve, and vanish--take thyself no shame.

They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Reminiscence

THOUGH I am native to this frozen zone

That half the twelvemonth torpid lies, or dead;

Though the cold azure arching overhead

And the Atlantic's never-ending moan

Are mine by heritage, I must have known

Life otherwise in epochs long since fled;

For in my veins some Orient blood is red,

And through my thought are lotus blossoms blown,

I do remember . . . it was just at dusk,

Near a walled garden at the river's turn

(A thousand summers seem but yesterday!),

A Nubian girl, more sweet than Khoorja musk,

Came to the water-tank to fill her urn,

And, with the urn, she bore my heart away!

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Heredity

A SOLDIER of the Cromwell stamp,

With sword and psalm-book by his side,

At home alike in church and camp:

Austere he lived, and smileless died.

But she, a creature soft and fine--

From Spain, some say, some say from France;

Within her veins leapt blood like wine--

She led her Roundhead lord a dance!

In Grantham church they lie asleep;

Just where, the verger may not know.

Strange that two hundred years should keep

The old ancestral fires aglow!

In me these two have met again;

To each my nature owes a part:

To one, the cool and reasoning brain;

To one, the quick, unreasoning heart.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich