JULY FOURTH.

  God said:  “Let there be noise.”  The dawning fire
  Of Independence gilded every spire.

WITH MINE OWN PETARD.

  Time was the local poets sang their songs
  Beneath their breath in terror of the thongs
  I snapped about their shins.  Though mild the stroke
  Bards, like the conies, are “a feeble folk,”
  Fearing all noises but the one they make
  Themselves—­at which all other mortals quake. 
  Now from their cracked and disobedient throats,
  Like rats from sewers scampering, their notes
  Pour forth to move, where’er the season serves,
  If not our legs to dance, at least our nerves;
  As once a ram’s-horn solo maddened all
  The sober-minded stones in Jerich’s wall. 
  A year’s exemption from the critic’s curse
  Mends the bard’s courage but impairs his verse. 
  Thus poolside frogs, when croaking in the night,
  Are frayed to silence by a meteor’s flight,
  Or by the sudden plashing of a stone
  From some adjacent cottage garden thrown,
  But straight renew the song with double din
  Whene’er the light goes out or man goes in. 
  Shall I with arms unbraced (my casque unlatched,
  My falchion pawned, my buckler, too, attached)
  Resume the cuishes and the broad cuirass,
  Accomplishing my body all in brass,
  And arm in battle royal to oppose
  A village poet singing through the nose,
  Or strolling troubadour his lyre who strums
  With clumsy hand whose fingers all are thumbs? 
  No, let them rhyme; I fought them once before
  And stilled their songs—­but, Satan! how they swore!—­
  Cuffed them upon the mouth whene’er their throats
  They cleared for action with their sweetest notes;
  Twisted their ears (they’d oft tormented mine)
  And damned them roundly all along the line;
  Clubbed the whole crew from the Parnassian slopes,
  A wreck of broken heads and broken hopes! 
  What gained I so?  I feathered every curse
  Launched at the village bards with lilting verse. 
  The town approved and christened me (to show its
  High admiration) Chief of Local Poets!

CONSTANCY.

  Dull were the days and sober,
    The mountains were brown and bare,
  For the season was sad October
    And a dirge was in the air.

  The mated starlings flew over
    To the isles of the southern sea. 
  She wept for her warrior lover—­
    Wept and exclaimed:  “Ah, me!

  “Long years have I mourned my darling
    In his battle-bed at rest;
  And it’s O, to be a starling,
    With a mate to share my nest!”

  The angels pitied her sorrow,
    Restoring her warrior’s life;
  And he came to her arms on the morrow
    To claim her and take her to wife.

  An aged lover—­a portly,
    Bald lover, a trifle too stiff,
  With manners that would have been courtly,
    And would have been graceful, if—­