III.

SEPARATION.

STOP

Not to me, at this departing,

Speak of the sure consolations of Time.

Fresh be the wound, still-renew'd be its smarting,
So but thy image endure in its prime.

But, if the steadfast commandment of Nature
Wills that remembrance should always decay;
If the lov'd form and the deep-cherish'd feature
Must, when unseen, from the soul fade away

Me let no half-effac'd memories cumber!
Fled, fled at once, be all vestige of thee
Deep be the darkness, and still be the slumber-
Dead be the Past and its phantoms to me!

Then, when we meet, and thy look strays towards me, Scanning my face and the changes wrought there, Who, let me say, is this Stranger regards me,

With the gray eyes, and the lovely brown hair?

IV.

ON THE RHINE.

VAIN is the effort to forget.

Some day I shall be cold, I know,
As is the eternal moon-lit snow
Of the high Alps, to which I go:
But ah, not yet! not yet!

Vain is the agony of grief.

'Tis true, indeed, an iron knot

Ties straitly up from mine thy lot,

And were it snapt — thou lov'st me not! But is despair relief?

Awhile let me with thought have done; And as this brimm'd unwrinkled Rhine And that far purple mountain line

Lie sweetly in the look divine

Of the slow sinking sun;

So let me lie, and calm as they

Let beam upon my inward view
Those eyes of deep, soft, lucent hue

Eyes too expressive to be blue,
Too lovely to be grey.

Ah Quiet, all things feel thy balm!
Those blue hills too, this river's flow,
Were restless once, but long ago.
Tam'd is their turbulent youthful glow:
Their joy is in their calm.

18

V.

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,
and let me dream it truth.

Come now,

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.

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

Stav'd us back, and gave our choice the law.

Ah, whose hand that day through heaven guided Man's blank spirit, since it was not we? Ah, who sway'd our choice, and who decided What our gifts, and what our wants should be?