The New Zealot to the Sun

Persian, you rise Aflame from climes of sacrifice Where adulators sue, And prostrate man, with brow abased, Adheres to rites whose tenor traced All worship hitherto.

Arch type of sway, Meetly your over-ruling ray You fling from Asia’s plain, Whence flashed the javelins abroad Of many a wild incursive horde Led by some shepherd Cain.

Mid terrors dinned Gods too came conquerors from your Ind, The book of Brahma throve; They came like to the scythed car, Westward they rolled their empire far, Of night their purple wove.

Chemist, you breed In orient climes each sorcerous weed That energizes dream— Transmitted, spread in myths and creeds, Houris and hells, delirious screeds And Calvin’s last extreme.

What though your light In time’s first dawn compelled the flight Of Chaos’ startled clan, Shall never all your darted spears Disperse worse Anarchs, frauds and fears, Sprung from these weeds to man?

But Science yet An effluence ampler shall beget, And power beyond your play— Shall quell the shades you fail to rout, Yea, searching every secret out Elucidate your ray.

MONODY

To have known him, to have loved him After loneness long; And then to be estranged in life, And neither in the wrong; And now for death to set his seal— Ease me, a little ease, my song!

By wintry hills his hermit-mound The sheeted snow-drifts drape, And houseless there the snow-bird flits Beneath the fir-trees’ crape: Glazed now with ice the cloistral vine That hid the shyest grape.