All red with joy the waiting west,
      O little swallow,
  Couldst thou tell me which road is best? 
  Cleaving high air with thy soft breast
      For keel, O swallow,
      Thou must o’erlook
  My seas and know if I mistake;
  I would not the same harbor make
      Which yesterday forsook.

  I hear the swift blades dip and plash
      Of unseen rowers;
  On unknown land the waters dash;
  Who knows how it be wise or rash
      To meet the rowers! 
      Premi!  Premi! 
  Venetia’s boatmen lean and cry;
  With voiceless lips I drift and lie
      Upon the twilight sea.

  The swallow sleeps.  Her last low call
      Had sound of warning. 
  Sweet little one, whate’er befall,
  Thou wilt not know that it was all
      In vain thy warning. 
      I may not borrow
  A hope, a help.  I close my eyes;
  Cold wind blows from the Bridge of Sighs;
      Kneeling I wait to-morrow.

  Venice, May 30.

H.H.  JACKSON.

In the Twilight.

  Men say the sullen instrument
    That, from the Master’s bow,
    With pangs of joy or woe,
  Feels music’s soul through every fibre sent,
    Whispers the ravished strings
  More than he knew or meant;
    Old summers in its memory glow;
    The secrets of the wind it sings;
    It hears the April-loosened springs;
      And mixes with its mood
      All it dreamed when it stood
      In the murmurous pine-wood
                Long ago!

  The magical moonlight then
    Steeped every bough and cone;
  The roar of the brook in the glen
    Came dim from the distance blown;
  The wind through its glooms sang low,
    And it swayed to and fro
      With delight as it stood,
      In the wonderful wood,
                Long ago!

  O my life, have we not had seasons
    That only said, “Live and rejoice?”
  That asked not for causes and reasons,
    But made us all feeling and voice? 
  When we went with the winds in their blowing,
    When Nature and we were peers,
  And we seemed to share in the flowing
    Of the inexhaustible years? 
    Have we not from the earth drawn juices
    Too fine for earth’s sordid uses? 
      Have I heard, have I seen
        All I feel and I know? 
      Doth my heart overween? 
      Or could it have been
                Long ago?

  Sometimes a breath floats by me,
    An odor from Dreamland sent,
  That makes the ghost seem nigh me
    Of a splendor that came and went,
  Of a life lived somewhere, I know not
    In what diviner sphere,
  Of memories that stay not and go not,
    Like music heard once by an ear
      That cannot forget or reclaim it,
      A something so shy, it would shame it
        To make it a show,