CONFESSION. — ELEMENTS.

CONFESSION.

HAT is hard to be hidden?

WHAT

The fire!

For the smoke will blab by day,

By night the monster; flame, in ire.
Still harder to conceal we say

Is love, however still it keeps

Through both the eyes the traitor peeps.

Hardest a poem is to cover,

One never puts a bushel over:
The poet who has lately sung

Is all one glowing, breathing tongue.
If finished on the sheet it lies,

He longs to have the whole world prize:
To each he reads it glad and clear,
Whether for torment or for cheer.

E

ELEMENTS.

`LEMENTS, how many are there
Fit a real song to nourish,

So that all the people listen,
Masters hail with joyous flourish?

9

Be it Love before all other

Theme for us, when we are singing; Song that palpitates with passion Catches all the finer ringing.

Then must sound the clang of beaker
That the ruby wine exposes,

Since for lovers and for drinkers
One must nod with fairest roses.

And we need the ring of weapons,
Till the trumpets take to pealing,
That, when fate to victory kindles,
Skyward be the hero's feeling.

Last, 'tis urgent that the Poet

Hate for many things should cherish,

Let all beauty live and show it,
Help the odious to perish.

If this fourfold stuff primeval
Knows the singer how to mingle,
Hafis-like his song will freshen,
Through the people ever tingle.

FORMED AND INFORMED.

HANS

́ANS ADAM from a clod of earth
Into a man was fashioned,

Yet stayed he after such a birth

A trifle unimpassioned.

The Elohim into his nose

With best of spirit breezing; Some sign of life the creature shows By hearty fit of sneezing.

Yet bones alone, and head and limb,
Made but a sorry clumper,
Till one day Noah found for him
The very thing, a bumper.

At once he feels his moistened clay
Brim o'er and o'er with heaven,
As when the dough gets quick and gay
In answer to the leaven.

So, Hafis, may thy charming song,

And thy divine example,

Lead us with ringing cups along

To our Creator's temple.

WONDER what so gay is binding My horizon with the sky? Early haze there gathers, blinding Wonted sharpness of the eye.

Are they tents of the Vizier

Where his lovely women tarry? Or the festal carpets are they,

Since the dearest he will marry?

I might look in vain for fairer
Red and white together sporting;
Hafis, how then! Is thy Schiras

To our gloomy North resorting?

Yes, they are the poppies flaunting, Here they make of thee a neighbor, 'Cross our fields are friendly slanting To bemock the war-god's labor.

Ever so to the Discreet one

Service be and charm of roses, And a sun like this, to greet one, Touch the tint my path discloses.

WHE

DISCORD.

HEN by the river-sand
Cupid is playing,

While in the field at hand

Trumpets are braying,
Draws he the ear along
Lovingly thither,

But all the blooms of song

In the noise wither.
Now flutes he full and glad

Through battle's thunder;