Ere you are sweet, but freed From life, you then are prized; thus prized are poets too.

And art thou yet alive?
And shall the happy hive

Send out her youth to cull
Thy sweets of leaf and flower,
And spend the sunny hour
With thee, and thy faint heart with
murmuring music lull?

Tell me what tender care,
Tell me what pious prayer,

Bade thee arise and live.
The fondest-favored bee
Shall whisper nought to thee
Move loving than the song my grateful
muse shall give.

1834.1

THE MAID'S LAMENT

I LOVED him not; and yet now he is gone I feel I am alone.

I check'd him while he spoke; yet could he speak,

Alas! I would not check.

For reasons not to love him once I sought,

And wearied all my thought

To vex myself and him: I now would give

My love, could he but live

Who lately lived for me, and when he found

'Twas vain, in holy ground

He hid his face amid the shades of death.

I waste for him my breath

Who wasted his for me: but mine returns,

And this lorn bosom burns With stifling heat, heaving it up in sleep, And waking me to weep Tears that had melted his soft heart: for years

Wept he as bitter tears. Merciful God! such was his latest

prayer, These may she never share. Quieter is his breath, his breast more cold,

Than daisies in the mould,

Where children spell, athwart the churchyard gate,

This and the following poem are from the Citation of William Shakespeare.

Groan not thus deeply; the season Of full-orb'd gladness! Shades we are indeed,

But mingled, let us feel it, with the blessed.

I knew it, but forgot it suddenly,
Altho' I felt it all at your approach.
Look on me; smile with me at my
illusion.

You are so like what you have ever been
(Except in sorrow !) I might well forget
I could not win you as I used to do.
It was the first embrace since my de-
scent

I ever aim'd at: those who love me live, Save one, who loves me most, and now would chide me.

Agamemnon. We want not, O Iphigeneia, we

Want not embrace, nor kiss that cools the heart [more With purity, nor words that more and Teach what we know, from those we know, and sink

Often most deeply where they fall most light.

Time was when for the faintest breath of thine

Value them

Kingdom and life were little,
Iphigeneia.
As little now.
Agamemnon. Were life and kingdom

all!

Iphigeneia. Ah! by our death many

are sad who loved us.

The Hours

(Descending.) To each an urn we bring: Earth's purest gold Alone can hold

The lymph of the Lethean spring. We, son of Atreus! we divide The dulcet from the bitter tide That runs athwart the paths of

men.

No more our pinions shalt thou see. Take comfort! We have done with

thee,

And must away to earth again. (Ascending.) Where thou art, thou Of braided brow, Thou cull'd too soon from Argive bowers, Where thy sweet voice is heard among The shades that thrill with choral song, None can regret the parted Hours.