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Alas, thou foolish one! alike unfit

For healthy joy and salutary pain :

Thou knowest the chase useless, and again Turnest to follow it.

TWILIGHT CALM.

O

PLEASANT eventide !

Clouds on the western side

Grow gray and grayer, hiding the warm sun : The bees and birds, their happy labors done, Seek their close nests and bide.

Screened in the leafy wood

The stock-doves sit and brood: The very squirrel leaps from bough to bough But lazily; pauses; and settles now

Where once he stored his food.

One by one the flowers close,
Lily and dewy rose

Shutting their tender petals from the moon :
The grasshoppers are still; but not so soon
Are still the noisy crows.

The dormouse squats and eats
Choice little dainty bits

Beneath the spreading roots of a broad lime ;
Nibbling his fill he stops from time to time
And listens where he sits.

From far the lowings come

Of cattle driven home:
From farther still the wind brings fitfully
The vast continual murmur of the sea,
Now loud, now almost dumb.

The gnats whirl in the air,

The evening gnats; and there

The owl opes broad his eyes and

wings to sail

For prey; the bat wakes; and the shell-less snail

Comes forth, clammy and bare.

Hark! that's the nightingale,
Telling the self-same tale

Her song

told when this ancient earth was young:

So echoes answered when her song was sung

In the first wooded vale.

We call it love and pain

The passion of her strain;

And yet we little understand or know :
Why should it not be rather joy that so
Throbs in each throbbing vein?

In separate herds the deer

Lie; here the bucks, and here

The does, and by its mother sleeps the fawn:
Through all the hours of night until the dawn
They sleep, forgetting fear.

The hare sleeps where it lies,

With wary half-closed eyes ;

The cock has ceased to crow, the hen to cluck :
Only the fox is out, some heedless duck

Or chicken to surprise.

Remote, each single star

Comes out, till there they are

All shining brightly: how the dews fall damp! While close at hand the glow-worm lights her lamp Or twinkles from afar.

But evening now is done

As much as if the sun

Day-giving had arisen in the east:

For night has come; and the great calm has ceased, The quiet sands have run.

WIFE TO HUSBAND.

PARD

ARDON the faults in me,
For the love of years ago :
Good by.

I must drift across the sea,

I must sink into the snow,
I must die.

You can bask in this sun,

You can drink wine, and eat :
Good by.

I must gird myself and run,
Though with unready feet:
I must die.

Blank sea to sail upon,

Cold bed to sleep in :
Good by.

While you clasp, I must be gone
For all your weeping:
I must die.

A kiss for one friend,
And a word for two,
Good by :-

A lock that you must send,
A kindness you must do:
I must die.

Not a word for you,

Not a lock or kiss,

Good by.

We, one, must part in two;

Verily death is this:

I must die.

"A

THREE SEASONS.

CUP for hope!" she said,

In springtime ere the bloom was old: The crimson wine was poor and cold

By her mouth's richer red.

"A cup for love!" how low,

How soft the words; and all the while
Her blush was rippling with a smile

Like summer after snow.

66 A cup

for memory!"

Cold cup that one must drain alone :

While autumn winds are up and moan

Across the barren sea.

Hope, memory, love :

Hope for fair morn, and love for day,
And memory for the evening gray
And solitary dove.

THE

MIRAGE.

HE hope I dreamed of was a dream, Was but a dream; and now I wake Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old, For a dream's sake.

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