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.

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; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, 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 land,
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 Egæan, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow