Before this teased o'erlabour'd heart
For ever leaves its vain employ,
Dead to its deep habitual smart,
And dead to hopes of future joy.

2. Too Late.

EACH on his own strict line we move,
And some find death ere they find love;
So far apart their lives are thrown

From the twin soul that halves their own.

And sometimes, by still harder fate,

The lovers meet, but meet too late.

-Thy heart is mine!-True, true! ah, true!
-Then, love, thy hand!-Ah no! adieu!

3. Separation.

STOP!-not to me, at this bitter departing,
Speak of the sure consolations of time!
Fresh be the wound, still-renew'd be its smarting,
So but thy image endure in its prime!

But, if the stedfast commandment of Nature

Wills that remembrance should always decay— If the loved form and the deep-cherish'd feature Must, when unseen, from the soul fade away—

Me let no half-effaced memories cumber!

Fled, fled at once, be all vestige of thee! Deep be the darkness and still be the slumberDead be the past and its phantoms to me!

Then, when we meet, and thy look strays toward me,
Scanning my face and the changes wrought there:
Who, let me say, is this stranger regards me,
With the grey eyes, and the lovely brown hair?

4. On the Rhine.

VAIN is the effort to forget.

Some day I shall be cold, I know,
As is the eternal moon-lit snow
Of the high Alps, to which I go-
But ah, not yet, not yet!

Vain is the agony of grief.

'Tis true, indeed, an iron knot
Ties straitly up from mine thy lot,
And were it snapt-thou lov'st me not!
But is despair relief?

Awhile let me with thought have done.
And as this brimm'd unwrinkled Rhine,
And that far purple mountain-line,
Lie sweetly in the look divine
Of the slow-sinking sun;

So let me lie, and, calm as they,

Let beam upon my inward view

Those eyes of deep, soft, lucent hue-
Eyes too expressive to be blue,
Too lovely to be grey.

Ah, Quiet, all things feel thy balm!
Those blue hills too, this river's flow,
Were restless once, but long ago.
Tamed is their turbulent youthful glow;
Their joy is in their calm.

5. Longing.

COME to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again!

For then the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day.

P

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth;
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say: My love! why sufferest thou?
Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!

For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

DESPONDENCY.

THE thoughts that rain their steady glow
Like stars on life's cold sea,

Which others know, or say they know-
They never shone for me.

Thoughts light, like gleams, my spirit's sky,

But they will not remain.

They light me once, they hurry by;
And never come again.

SELF-DECEPTION.

SAY, what blinds us, that we claim the glory

Of possessing powers not our share?

-Since man woke on earth, he knows his story,

But, before we woke on earth, we were.

Long, long since, undower'd yet, our spirit
Roam'd, ere birth, the treasuries of God;
Saw the gifts, the powers it might inherit,
Ask'd an outfit for its earthly road.

Then, as now, this tremulous, eager being
Strain'd and long'd and grasp'd each gift it saw;
Then, as now, a Power beyond our seeing
Staved us back, and gave our choice the law.

Ah, whose hand that day through Heaven guided. Man's new spirit, since it was not we?

Ah, who sway'd our choice, and who decided What our gifts, and what our wants should be? For, alas! he left us each retaining

Shreds of gifts which he refused in full;

Still these waste us with their hopeless straining,
Still the attempt to use them proves them null.
And on earth we wander, groping, reeling;
Powers stir in us, stir and disappear.
Ah! and he, who placed our master-feeling,
Fail'd to place that master-feeling clear.

We but dream we have our wish'd-for powers,
Ends we seek we never shall attain.

Ah! some power exists there, which is ours?
Some end is there, we indeed may gain?

DOVER BEACH.

THE sea is calm to-night.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits ;- on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone;

Glimmering and vast,

the cliffs of England stand,

out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The sea of faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.