This supreme song of him who dreamed
All beauty, and whose heart foreknew
The anguish of vain longing, seemed
To breathe new mystery, breathed by you.

As if the rapture of the night,
Moon-tranced, and passion-still, were stirred
To some undreamed divine delight
By sudden singing of a bird!


RONDEAU.

TO LOUIS HONORE FRÉCHETTE.


Laurels for song! And nobler bays,
In old Olympian golden days
Of clamor thro' the clear-eyed morn,
No bowed triumphant head hath borne,
Victorious in all Hellas' gaze!

They watched his glowing axles graze
The goal, and rent the heavens with praise;--
Yet the supremer heads have worn
Laurels for song.

So thee, from no palaestra-plays
A conqueror, to the gods we raise,
Whose brows of all our singers born