Her smile is chilly-and her beam,
In that time of dreariness, will seem
(So like you gather in your breath)
A portrait taken after death.
And boyhood is a summer sun
Whose waning is the dreariest one-
For all we live to know is known,
And all we seek to keep hath flown-
Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall
With the noon-day beauty-which is all.

XXI.

I reached my home-my home no more-
For all had flown who made it so.
I passed from out its mossy door,

And, tho' my tread was soft and low,
A voice came from the threshold stone
Of one whom I had earlier known-
O, I defy thee, Hell, to show
On beds of fire that burn below,
An humbler heart-a deeper woe.

XXII.

Father, I firmly do believe

I know-for Death who comes for me

From regions of the blest afar,

Where there is nothing to deceive,
Hath left his iron gate ajar,

And rays of truth you cannot see
Are flashing through Eternity-
I do believe that Eblis hath-
A snare in every human path-
Else how, when in the holy grove
I wandered of the idol, Love,
Who daily scents his snowy wings
With incense of burnt offerings
From the most unpolluted things,
Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven
Above with trellised rays from Heaven
No mote may shun-no tiniest fly-
The lightning of his eagle eye—
How was it that Ambition crept,
Unseen, amid the revels there,

Till, growing bold, he laughed and leapt In the tangles of Love's very hair?

THE

ΤΟ

HE bowers whereat, in dreams, I see
The wantonest singing birds,

Are lips-and all thy melody

Of lip-begotten words-

Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrined,

Then desolately fall,

O God! on my funereal mind

Like starlight on a pall—

Thy heart-thy heart !-I wake and sigh,
And sleep to dream till day

Of the truth that gold can never buy―
Of the baubles that it may.

A DREAM.

IN visions of the dark night

IN

I have dreamed of joy departedBut a waking dream of life and light Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream-that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro' storm and night,

So trembled from afar

What could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day-star?

ROMANCE.

ROMANCE, who loves to nod and sing,

With drowsy head and folded wing,

Among the green leaves as they shake
Far down within some shadowy lake,
To me a painted paroquet

Hath been-a most familiar bird-
Taught me my alphabet to say-
To lisp my very earliest word
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child-with a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal Condor years
So shake the very heaven on high
With tumult as they thunder by,
I have no time for idle cares
Through gazing on the unquiet sky.
And when an hour with calmer wings
Its down upon my spirit flings-

That little time with lyre and rhyme. To while away-forbidden things! My heart would feel to be a crime Unless it trembled with the strings.

DIM

FAIRYLAND:

IM vales-and shadowy floods-
And cloudy-looking woods,

Whose forms we can't discover

For the tears that drip all over—
Huge moons there wax and wane-
Again-again-again-

Every moment of the night-
For ever changing places-

And they put out the starlight

With the breath from their pale faces.

About twelve by the moon-dial

One more filmy than the rest

(A kind, which, upon trial,

They have found to be the best)

Comes down-still down-and down

With its centre on the crown

Of a mountain's eminence,

While its wide circumference
In easy drapery fall