THE UNDERTONES.

O Fame, thou haunting upward-urging hope,
That makest of the pale aspiring soul

A statue of Narcissus, still and fair
For evermore, and bending evermore
Over its beauteous image mirrorëd

In the swift current of our human life,
Eternally in act to clasp and kiss!

O Fame, teach thou this soul of mine to love

Some beauteous counterpart, and while it bends Tremulously gazing on the image, blow

Thy trump aloud, and freeze it into stone!

THE UNDERTONES.

I.

ADES, KING OF HELL.

ORB'D in a rayless realm, alone,
Under the realm of sun and shower,
A palpable god with godlike power,

I, Ades, dwelt upon a throne.

Much darkness did my eyelids tire ;

But thro' my veins the hid Sun's fire Communicated impulse, hope, thought, passion, and

desire.

2.

Beneath the caves where sunless loam
Grows dim and reddens into gold;

'Neath the fat earth-seams, where the cold
Rains thicken to the flowery foam

Fringing blue streams in summer zones;

Beneath the spheres where dead men's bones

Change darkly thro' slow centuries to marl and glittering stones.

3.

Eternities of lonely reign,

Full of faint dreams of day and night
And the white glamour of starry light,

Oppress'd my patience into pain;

Upward I sent a voice of prayer

That made black thunder in the air:

And "Ades craves a queen, O Zeus!" shook heaven

unaware.

4.

The gods stopt short in full carouse,

And listen'd. On the streams of Hell
The whole effulgent conclave fell

As in a glass. With soft-arch'd brows,
And wings of dewy-tinctured dye,

Moist Iris listen'd blushingly;

And Heré sought the soul of Zeus with coldly eager

eye.

5.

Then the clear hyaline grew cold
And dim before the Father's face;

Gray meditation clothed the place ;
And rising up Zeus cried, "Behold!".
And on Olumpos' crystal wall

A kingly phantom cloudy and tall,

Throned, sceptred, crown'd, was darkly apparition'd at

the call.