Where between granite terraces
The blue Seine rolls her wave,
The Capital of Pleasure sees
Thy hardly-heard-of grave;-

Farewell! Under the sky we part,
In this stern Alpine dell.
O unstrung will! O broken heart!
A last, a last farewell!

REQUIESCAT

Strew on her roses, roses,
And never a spray of yew!

In quiet she reposes;

Ah! would that I did too.

Her mirth the world required;
She bathed it in smiles of glee.
But her heart was tired, tired,
And now they let her be.

Her life was turning, turning,

In mazes of heat and sound;
But for peace her soul was yearning,
And now peace laps her round.

Her cabin'd, ample spirit,

It flutter'd and fail'd for breath; To-night it doth inherit

The vasty hall of death.

STANZAS FROM THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE

Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused

With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
Past the dark forges long disused,

The mule-track from Saint-Laurent goes;
The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride,
Through forest, up the mountain-side.

The Autumnal Evening darkens round,
The wind is up, and drives the rain;
While hark! far down, with strangled sound
Doth the Dead Guier's stream complain,
Where that wet smoke, among the woods,
Over his boiling cauldron broods.

Swift rush the spectral vapours white

Past limestone scars with ragged pines,

Showing-then blotting from our sight!

Halt through the cloud-drift something shines! High in the valley, wet and drear,

The huts of Courrerie appear.

Strike leftward! cries our guide; and higher

Mounts up the stony forest-way

At last the encircling trees retire;

Look! through the showery twilight grey
What pointed roofs are these advance ?—
A palace of the Kings of France?

Approach, for what we seek is here!

Alight, and sparely sup, and wait For rest in this outbuilding near,

Then cross the sward and reach that gate. Knock; pass the wicket! Thou art come To the Carthusians' world-famed home.

The silent courts, where night and day
Into their stone-carved basins cold
The splashing icy fountains play—
The humid corridors behold!

Where, ghost-like in the deepening night,
Cowl'd forms brush by in gleaming white.

The chapel where no organ's peal,

Invests the stern and naked prayer—

With penitential cries they kneel

And wrestle; rising then, with bare And white uplifted faces stand, Passing the host from hand to hand;

Each takes, and then his visage wan
Is buried in his cowl once more.
The cells the suffering Son of Man

Upon the wall-the knee-worn floorAnd where they sleep, that wooden bed, Which shall their coffin be, when dead!

The library, where tract and tome

Not to feed priestly pride are there, To hymn the conquering march of Rome, Nor yet to amuse, as ours are!

They paint of souls the inner strife, Their drops of blood, their death in life.

The garden, overgrown-yet mild,

See, fragrant herbs are flowering there! Strong children of the Alpine wild,

Whose culture is the brethren's care; Of human tasks their only one,

And cheerful works beneath the sun.

Those halls, too, destined to contain
Each its own pilgrim-host of old,
From England, Germany, or Spain-
All are before me! I behold
The House, the Brotherhood austere !
-And what am I, that I am here?

For rigorous teachers seized my youth,
And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire,
Show'd me the high, white Star of Truth,
There bade me gaze, and there aspire.
Even now their whispers pierce the gloom :
What dost thou in this living tomb?

Forgive me, masters of the mind!
At whose behest I long ago
So much unlearnt, so much resign'd-
I come not here to be your foe!
I seek these anchorites, not in ruth,
To curse and to deny your truth;

Not as their friend, or child, I speak!
But as, on some far northern strand,
Thinking of his own gods, a Greek

In pity and mournful awe might stand
Before some fallen Runic stone-
For both were faiths, and both are gone.

Wandering between two worlds, one dead
The other powerless to be born,
With nowhere yet to rest my head,

Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.
Their faith, my tears, the world deride—
I come to shed them at their side.

Oh, hide me in your gloom profound,

Ye solemn seats of holy pain!

Take me, cowl'd forms, and fence me round,
Till I possess my soul again;

Till free my thoughts before me roll,
Not chafed by hourly, false control!

For the world cries your faith is now
But a dead time's exploded dream;
My melancholy, sciolists say,

Is a pass'd mode, an outworn theme-
As if the world had ever had

A faith, or sciolists been sad!

Ah, if it be pass'd, take away,

At least, the restlessness, the pain ;
Be man henceforth, no more a prey
To these out-dated stings again!
The nobleness of grief is gone—
Ah, leave us not the fret alone!

But if you cannot give us ease—

Last of the race of them who grieve, Here leave us to die out with these, Last of the people who believe! Silent, while years engrave the brow; Silent-the best are silent now.

Achilles ponders in his tent,

The kings of modern thought are dumb; Silent they are, though not content,

And wait to see the future come.

They have the grief men had of yore,
But they contend and cry no more.