THE FOOL'S PRAYER

THE royal feast was done; the King Sought some new sport to banish care, And to his jester cried: "Sir Fool,

Kneel now, and make for us a prayer!

The jester doffed his cap and bells,

And stood the mocking court before; They could not see the bitter smile Behind the painted grin he wore.

He bowed his head, and bent his knee
Upon the monarch's silken stool;
His pleading voice arose: "O Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!

"No pity, Lord, could change the heart

From red with wrong to white as wool; The rod must heal the sin: but, Lord, Be merciful to me, a fool!

«'Tis not by guilt the onward sweep

Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay; 'Tis by our follies that so long

We hold the earth from heaven away.

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THE FOOL'S PRAYER

"These clumsy feet, still in the mire,

Go crushing blossoms without end;
These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust
Among the heart-strings of a friend.

"The ill-timed truth we might have kept-
Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung ?
The word we had not sense to say
Who knows how grandly it had rung?

"Our faults no tenderness should ask,

The chastening stripes must cleanse them all;
But for our blunders oh, in shame
Before the eyes of heaven we fall.

"Earth bears no balsam for mistakes;

Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool
That did his will; but Thou, O Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!"

The room was hushed; in silence rose
The King, and sought his gardens cool,
And walked apart, and murmured low,
"Be merciful to me, a fool!"

THIS I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream :
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged

A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords
Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner
Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.
A craven hung along the battle's edge,

And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel -
That blue blade that the king's son bears,

but this

Blunt thing — !" he snapt and flung it from his hand,

And lowering crept away and left the field.

Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead,
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,
Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,

And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout
Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,

And saved a great cause that heroic day.

AN ASPIRATION

YALE CLUB, SAN FRANCISCO, DECEMBER 11, 1879

LET us return once more, we said,

And greet the saintly mother Yale; That gray and venerable head,

That wrinkled brow, time-worn and pale.

So from afar we fared, and found

Her children thronging round her feet: The summer all her elms had crowned, The dappled grass was cool and sweet.

But lo! no ancient dame was there,

With tottering step and waning powers: Our maiden mother, fresh and fair,

Stood queenlike 'mid her trees and towers.

Men may grow old: Time's tremulous hands Still hasten the spent glass; but she "Mewing her mighty youth" she stands, And wears her laurels royally.

From olden fountain-wells that flow
Down every sacred height of truth,

As pure as fire, as cold as snow,

Her lips have quaffed immortal youth.

AN ASPIRATION

Her feet in fields of amaranth tread,
Lilies of every golden clime

Are in her hand, and round her head
The aureole of the coming time.

Ah, maiden-mother, might there rise
On these far shores a power like thine,
With Learning's sceptre, mild and wise,
And all the sister Arts benign!

It matters little that it bear

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The name that Cloyne's great bishop bore, If only it might bring the fair

Fulfillment of his thought of yore;

If somewhere, on the hill or plain,
By forest's calm, or quickening sea,
Or where the town's electric brain
With silent lightnings flashes free, -

If one like Yale among us stood,
To nourish at her ample breast
And feed with her ambrosial food

The infant vigor of the West.

The smitten rocks pour forth in vain

Their Midas-streams: when shall be wrought

From out our store some classic fane,

Some cloistered home of finer thought?