If it be true, as some have dreamed,
That all have lived and loved before,
I cannot wonder it hath seemed
That on some other shore,
In former ages long ago,
Our souls had met and learned to know
The truths that now upon the sea
Establish our affinity.
Heart leaps to heart and mind to mind:
A look, a word, a smile, a phrase,--
And we at once a kinship find,
A relic of those days,
When we both watched the sunset kiss
The storied Bay of Salamis,
Or paced beside the classic stream
That borders Plato's Academe.--
Perhaps our spirits met again,
When Virgil wrote his deathless lines,
And Horace praised, in lighter vein,
His farm amid the Apennines;
Or else we walked this old, old Earth
When Grecian learning found new birth,
And arm in arm watched Giotto's tower
Rise heavenward, like a peerless flower.
Enough that we have surely met,
No matter in what land or age;
For, if such trifles we forget,
We share a common heritage:
And though in this brief life stern Fate
Shall bid us once more separate,
O brother poet, it must be
That kindred spirits such as we
Shall sail another ocean blue,
Still you with me and I with you.
Sent with a Copy of "Red Letter Days Abroad"
To J.C.Y.
Book of my youth, I send thee to a friend
Met, comprehended, loved, alas! too late,--
Too near the sad, inevitable end
Decreed by life's inexorable fate;
Yet though an ocean's billows roll between,
And two great continents our paths divide,
The unseen subtly triumphs o'er the seen,
We walk in spirit, ever side by side;
He on the stately Mississippi's shore,
I 'mid the snow and roses of Tyrol,
But in my heart he dwells forevermore,--
Belovèd friend, and double of my soul.
To HON. JESSE HOLDOM OF CHICAGO,
on receipt of his picture and that of his baby in his arms.
Far from the great lake's pride,
Over the ocean vast,
Two faces picture, side by side,
The future and the past.
On one is the flush of dawn
And the light of the morning star;
On the other a shade, from knowledge drawn
And the dusk of the sunset bar.
One brow has the spotless sweep
Of a page that is white and fair;
The other forehead is graven deep
With lines of thought and care.
The eyes of the child look out
On a world all pure and sweet;
But those of the man are sad from doubt
And a knowledge of men's deceit.
To the baby's dainty ears
Only love's accents flow;
Through the man's alas! have surged for years
Stories of crime and woe.
Held in the infant's grasp
Is a tiny, lifeless toy;
In the father's firm yet tender clasp
Is his last great hope,--his boy!
Wisely the parent peers
Through the future's unknown skies,
For knowledge of life has awakened fears
Of the storms that may arise
When his darling boy no more
Can cling to his father's breast,
But when on the strand of the silent shore
That father shall be at rest.
Ah me! could the wisdom won
Through the father's fateful years
Be but transmitted to the son,
There were little need for fears.
But each must tread alone
The wine-press of his life;
Into each cup by Fate is thrown
The bitter drops of strife.
Forth from that fond embrace
Must the little stranger go;
For the rising sun must mount through space.
And the waning sun sink low.