Ye know no more than I who wrought
At that last hour to please him well;
Who mused on all I had to tell,
And something written, something
thought;

Expecting still his advent home;

And ever met him on his way With wishes, thinking, here to-day, Or here to-morrow will he come. O somewhere, meek unconscious dove, That sittest ranging golden hair; And glad to find thyself so fair, Poor child, that waitest for thy love! For now her father's chimney glows In expectation of a guest;

.

And thinking "this will please lim best,"

She takes a riband or a rose;

For he will see them on to-night; And with the thought her color burns;

And, having left the glass, she turns Once more to set a ringlet right;

And, even when she turn'd, the curse Had fallen, and her future Lord

Was drown'd in passing thro' the ford,

Or kill'd in falling from his horse.

O what to her shall be the end?

And what to me remains of good? To her, perpetual maidenhood, And unto me no second friend.

VII.

DARK house, by which once more I stand

Here in the long unlovely street. Doors, where my heart was used to beat

So quickly, waiting for a hand,

A hand that can be clasp'd no more,-
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
IIe is not here; but far away

The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank
day.

VIII.

A HAPPY lover who has come

To lock on her that loves him well, Who 'lights and rings the gateway bell,

And learns her gone and far from home;

Ke saddens, all the magic light

Dies off at once from bower and hall, And all the place is dark, and all The chambers emptied of delight: So find I every pleasant spot

In which we two were wont to meet, The field, the chamber, and the street,

For all is dark where thou art not.
Yet as that other, wandering there

In those deserted walks, may find
A flower beat with rain and wind,
Which once she foster'd up with care;
Lo seems it in my deep regret.
O my forsaken heart, with th:co
And this poor flower of poesy
Which little cared for fades not yet.
But since it pleased a vanish'd eye,
I go to plant it on his tomb,
That if it can it there may bloom,
Or dying, there at least may die.

IX.

FAIR ship, that from the Italian shore Sailest the placid ocean-plains

With my lost Arthur's loved remains, Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er.

Co draw him home to those that mourn
In vain; a favorable speed
Ruffle thy mirror'd mast, and lead
Thro' prosperous floods his holy urn.
All night no ruder air perplex

Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright

As our pure love, thro' early light Shall glimmer on the dewy decks. Sphere all your lights around, above; Sleep, gentle heavens, before the

Lo, as a dove when up she springs
To bear thro' Heaven a tale of woe,
Some dolorous message knit below
The wild pulsation of her wings;
Like her I go; I cannot stay;

I leave this mortal ark behind,
A weight of nerves without a mind,

O'er ocean-mirrors rounded large,

And reach the glow of southern sklos And see the sails at distance rise, And linger weeping on the marge, And saying: "Comes he thus, friend?

Is this the end of all my care?"
And circle moaning in the air:
"Is this the end? Is this the end?"
And forward dart again, and play

About the prow, and back return
To where the body sits, and learn,
That I have been an hour away.
XIII.

TEARS of the widower, when he sees
A late-lost form that sleep reveals,
And moves his doubtful arms, and
feels

Her place is empty, fall like these;
Which weep a loss for ever new,

A void where heart on heart reposed; And, where warm hands have prest and closed,

Silence, till I be silent too.

Which weep the comrade of my choice,
An awful thought, a life removed,
The human-hearted man I loved,
A Spirit, not a breathing voice.
Come Time, and teach me, many years,
I do not suffer in a dream;

For now so strange do these things seem,

Mine eyes have leisure for their tears; My fancies time to rise on wing,

And glance about the approaching sails,

As tho' they brought but merchant's
bales,

And not the burden that they bring.
XIV.

IF one should bring me this report,
That thou hadst touch'd the land to
day,

And I went down unto the quay,
And found thee lying in the port;
And standing, muffled round with woe,
Should see thy passengers in rank
Come stepping lightly down the
plank,

And beckoning unto those they know;
And if along with these should come
The man I held as half-divine;
Should strike a sudden hand in mine
And ask a thousand things of home;
And I should tell him all my pain,

And how my life had droop'd of late,
And he should sorrow o'er my state
And marvel what possess'd my brain;
And I perceived no touch of change,
No hint of death in all his fame,
But found him all in all the same,
I should not feel it to be strange.
XV.
TO-NIGHT the winds begin to rise

The last red leaf is whirl'd away, The rooks are blown about the skies; The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd, The cattle huddled on the lea; And wildly dash'd on tower and tree The sunbeam strikes along the world: And but for fancies, which aver

That all thy motions gently pass Althwart a plane of molten glass, I scarce could brook the strain and stir

That makes the barren branches loud; And but for fear it is not so,

The wild unrest that lives in woe Would dote and pore on yonder cloud That rises upward always higher,

And onward drags a laboring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire.

XVI.

WHAT words are these have fall'n from me?

Can calm despair and wild unrest
Be tenants of a single breast,

Or sorrow such a changeling be?
Or doth she only seem to take

The touch of change in calm or storm;

But knows no more of transient form In her deep self, than some dead lake That holds the shadow of a lark

Hung in the shadow of a heaven? Or has the shock, so harshly given, Confused me like the unhappy bark That strikes by night a craggy shelf, And staggers blindly ere she sink? And stunn'd me from my power to think

And all my knowledge of myself;
And made me that delirious man
Whose fancy fuses old and new,
And flashes into false and true,
And mingles all without a plan?

Was as the whisper of an air To breathe thee over lonely seas. For I in spirit saw thee move

Thro' circles of the bounding sky, Week after week: the days go by: Come quick, thou bringest all I love. Henceforth, wherever thou may'st roam,

My blessing, like a line of light, Is on the waters day and night, And like a beacon guards thee home. So may whatever tempest mars

Mid ocean, spare thee, sacred bark; And balmy drops in summer dark Slide from the bosom of the stars. So kind an office hath been done, Such precious relics brought by thee;

Where he in English earth is laid, And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land.

'Tis little; but it looks in truth

As if the quiet bones were biest Among familiar names to rest And in the places of his youth. Come then, pure hands, and bear the head

That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep,

And come, whatever loves to weep,
And hear the ritual of the dead.
Ah yet, ev'n yet, if this might be,
I, falling on his faithful heart,
Would breathing thro' his lips im
part

The life that almost dies in me;
That dies not, but endures with pain,
And slowly forms the firmer mind,
Treasuring the look it cannot find,
The words that are not heard again.

Χ.Χ.

THE Danube to the Severn gave
The darken'd heart that beat no

more:

They laid him by the pleasant shore, And in the hearing of the wave. There twice a day the Severn fills;

The salt sea-water passes by,

And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.
The Wye is hush'd nor moved along
And hush'd my deepest grief of all,
When fill'd with tears that cannot
fall,

I brim with sorrow drowning song.
The tide flows down, the wave again
Is vocal in its wooded walls;
My deeper anguish also falls,
And I can speak a little then.

XX.

THE lesser griefs that may be said, That breathe a thousand tender

Vows,

And but as servants in a house Where lies the master newly dead; Who speak their feeling as it is,

And weep the fulness from the mind; "It will be hard," they say, "to find Another service such as this."

My lighter moods are like to these,

That out of words a comfort win; But there are other griefs within, And tears that at their fountain freezer For by the hearth the children sit

Cold in that atmosphere of Death,