“Deem me not faithless, if all day
      Among my dusty books I linger,
    No pipe, like thee, for June to play
      With fancy-led, half-conscious finger. 40

    “A bird is singing in my brain
      And bubbling o’er with mingled fancies,
    Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain
      Fed with the sap of old romances.

    “I ask no ampler skies than those 45
      His magic music rears above me,
    No falser friends, no truer foes,—­
      And does not Dona Clara love me?

    “Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars,
      A rush of feet, and rapiers clashing, 50
    Then silence deep with breathless stars,
      And overhead a white hand flashing.

    “O music of all moods and climes,
      Vengeful, forgiving, sensuous, saintly,
    Where still, between the Christian chimes, 55
      The moorish cymbal tinkles faintly!

    “O life borne lightly in the hand,
      For friend or foe with grace Castilian! 
    O valley safe in Fancy’s land,
      Not tramped to mud yet by the million! 60

    “Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale
      To his, my singer of all weathers,
    My Calderon, my nightingale,
      My Arab soul in Spanish feathers.

    “Ah, friend, these singers dead so long, 65
      And still, God knows, in purgatory,
    Give its best sweetness to all song,
      To Nature’s self her better glory.”

ALADDIN.

    When I was a beggarly boy,
      And lived in a cellar damp,
    I had not a friend nor a toy,
      But I had Aladdin’s lamp;
    When I could not sleep for cold, 5
      I had fire enough in my brain,
    And builded with roofs of gold
      My beautiful castles in Spain!

    Since then I have toiled day and night,
      I have money and power good store, 10
    But, I’d give all my lamps of silver bright
      For the one that is mine no more;
    Take, Fortune, whatever you choose,
      You gave, and may snatch again;
    I have nothing ’t would pain me to lose, 15
      For I own no more castles in Spain!

BEAVER BROOK.

    Hushed with broad sunlight lies the hill,
    And, minuting the long day’s loss,
    The cedar’s shadow, slow and still,
    Creeps o’er its dial of gray moss.

    Warm noon brims full the valley’s cup, 5
    The aspen’s leaves are scarce astir;
    Only the little mill sends up
    Its busy, never-ceasing burr.

    Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems
    The road along the mill-pond’s brink, 10
    From ’neath the arching barberry-stems,
    My footstep scares the shy chewink.