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TIME LONG PAST.

251

TIME LONG PAST.

LIKE the ghost of a dear friend dead
Is time long past.

A tone which is now forever fled,
A hope which is now forever past,
A love so sweet it could not last,
Was time long past.

There were sweet dreams in the night
Of time long past:

And, was it sadness or delight,

Each day a shadow onward cast

Which made us wish it yet might last-
That time long past.

There is regret, almost remorse,

For time long past.

'Tis like a child's beloved corse

A father watches, till at last
Beauty is like remembrance cast
From time long past.

P. B. Shelley.

252

A LAMENT.

A LAMENT.

I STAND where I last stood with thee!
Sorrow, Oh sorrow!

There is not a leaf on the trysting tree;
There is not a joy on the earth for me;
Sorrow, Oh sorrow!

When shalt thou be once again what thou wert?
Oh the sweet yesterdays fled from the heart!

Have they a morrow?

Here we stood, ere we parted, so close side by side;
Two lives that once part are as ships that divide
When, moment on moment there rushes between
The one and the other, a sea;-

Ah, never can fall from the days that have been
A gleam on the years that shall be!

E. Bulwer, Lord Lytton.

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FROM the close-shut windows gleams no spark;
The night is chilly, the night is dark,
The poplars shiver, the pine-trees moan,
My hair by the autumn breeze is blown,
Under thy window I sing alone,
Alone, alone, ah woe! alone!

The darkness is pressing coldly around,
The windows shake with a lonely sound,
The stars are hid and the night is drear,
The heart of silence throbs in mine ear,
In thy chamber thou sittest alone,
Alone, alone, ah woe! alone!

The world is happy, the world is wide,
Kind hearts are beating on every side;
Ah, why should we lie so coldly curled
Alone in the shell of this great world?
Why should we any more be alone?
Alone, alone, ah woe! alone!

O, 'tis a bitter and dreary word,
The saddest by man's ear ever heard!
We each are young, we each have a heart,
Why stand we ever coldly apart?

Must we for ever, then, be alone?

Alone, alone, ah woe! alone!

J. R. Lowell.

254

THE LOST HORIZON.

THE LOST HORIZON.

I STOOD at evening in the crimson air:
The trees shook off their dusky twilight glow;
The wind took up old burdens of despair,

And moaned like Atlas with his world of woe.

Like the great circle of a bronzèd ring

That clasped the vision of the vanished day, I saw the vague horizon vanishing

Around me into darkness, far away.

Then, while the night came fast with cloudy roar,
Lo, all around me rays of hearths unknown
Sprang from the gloom with light unseen before,
And made a warm horizon of their own.

I sighed: "The wanderer in the desert sees
Strange ghosts of summer lands arising, sweet
With restless waters, green with gracious trees
Whose shadows beckon welcome to his feet.

"For erst, where now the desert far away

Stretches a wilderness of hopeless sand,
Clasping fair fields and sunburnt harvests lay
The heavenly girdles of a fruitful land.”

I thought of a sweet mirage now no more:
Warm windows radiant with a dancing flame-
Dear voices heard within a happy door-

A face that to the darkness, lighted, came.

ASSOCIATIONS.

No hearth of mine was waiting, near or far;
No threshold for my coming footstep yearned
To touch its slumber; no warm window-star,
The tender Venus, to my longing burned.

The darkened windows slowly lost their fire,
But shimmered with the ghostly ember-light:
A wanderer, with old embers of desire,
The lost horizon held me in the night

John James Piatt.

255

ASSOCIATIONS.

You know the place is just the same!
The rooks ouild here: the sandy hill is
Ablaze with broom, as when she came
Across the sea with her new name,

To dwell among the moated lilies.

The trifoly is on the walls:

The daisies in the bowling alley:
The ox at eve lows from the stalls:
At eve the cuckoo, floating, calls,
When foxgloves tremble in the valley.

The iris blows from court to court:
The bald white spider flits, or stays in
The chinks behind the dragonwort;
That Triton still, at his old sport,
Blows bubbles in his broken basin.

The terrace where she used to walk

Still shines at noon between the roses: The garden-paths are blind with chalk: The dragonfly from stalk to stalk

Swims sparkling blue till evening closes.

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