For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavour;
And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,

Whose songs gushed from his heart,

As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,

Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction

That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume

The poem of thy choice,

And lend to the rhyme of the poet

The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away.

SEAWEED.

WHEN descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic

Storm-wind of the equinox,

Landward in his wrath he scourges

The toiling surges,

Laden with seaweed from the rocks:

From Bermuda's reefs; from edges

Of sunken ledges,

In some far-off, bright Azore;

From Bahama, and the dashing,

Silver-flashing

Surges of San Salvador;

From the tumbling surf, that buries

The Orkneyan skerries,

Answering the hoarse Hebrides;

And from wrecks of ships, and drifting

Spars, uplifting

On the desolate, rainy seas`;—

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting

On the shifting

Currents of the restless main;

Till in sheltered coves, and reaches
Of sandy beaches,

All have found repose again.

So when storms of wild emotion

Strike the ocean

Of the poet's soul, ere long

From each cave and rocky fastness,

In its vastness,

Floats some fragment of a song:

From the far-off isles enchanted,

Heaven has planted

With the golden fruit of Truth;

From the flashing surf whose vision

Gleams Elysian

In the tropic clime of Youth;

From the strong Will, and the Endeavour

That for ever

Wrestles with the tides of Fate;

From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered,

Tempest-shattered,

Floating waste and desolate ;

26592B

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting

Currents of the restless heart;

Till at length in books recorded,

They, like hoarded

Household words, no more depart.

EARLIER POEMS.