Bringeth me no replying,

Of word, or thought, or sigh.

In all my joying and grieving,
Living, hoping, believing,
I send my love forth flowing,
To find my unknown love.
O world that I am leaving,
O heaven where I am going,
Is there no finding and knowing,
Around, within, or above?

O soul of my soul's seeing,
O heart of my heart's being,
O love of dreaming and waking
And living and dying for -
Out of my soul's last aching,
Out of my heart just breaking -
Doubting, falling, forsaking,

I call on you this once more.

Are you too high or too lowly

To come at length unto me? Are you too sweet or too holy

For me to have and to see?

Wherever you are, I call you,
Ere the falseness of life enthral you,
Ere the hollow of death appal you,
While yet your spirit is free.

Have you not seen, in sleeping,
A lover that might not stay,
And remembered again with weeping,

And thought of him through the day? Ah! thought of him long and dearly, Till you seemed to behold him clearly,

--

And could follow the dull time merely
With heart and love far away?

Have you

not known him kneeling

To a deathless vision of you,

Whom only an earth was concealing,

Whom all that was heaven proved true?
O surely some wind gave motion
To his words like a wave of the ocean;
Ay! so that you felt his devotion,

And smiled, and wondered, and knew.

And what are you thinking and saying,
In the land where you are delaying?
Have you a chain to sever?

Have you a prison to break?
O love! there is one love forever,
And never another love - never;

And hath it not reached you, my praying
And singing these years for your sake?

We two, made one, should have power
To grow to a beautiful flower,

A tree for men to sit under

Beside life's flowerless stream:
But I without you am only
A dreamer, fruitless and lonely:
And you without me, a wonder

In my most beautiful dream.

TO A YOUNG MURDERESS.18

FAIR, yellow murderess, whose gilded head

Gleaming with deaths; whose deadly body white,

Writ o'er with secret records of the dead;

Whose tranquil eyes, that hide the dead from sight

Down in their tenderest depth and bluest bloom;

Whose strange unnatural grace; whose prolonged youth— Are for my death now and the shameful doom

Of all the man I might have been in truth

Your fell smile, sweetened still, lest I might shun
Its lingering murder, with a kiss for lure,
Is like the fascinating steel that one

Most vengeful in his last revenge and sure
The victim lies beneath him, passes slow,
Again and oft again before his eyes
And over all his frame, that he may know

And suffer the whole death before he dies.

Will you not slay me? Stab me; yea, somehow
Deep in the heart: say some foul word to last
And let me hate you as I love you now :

Oh, would I might but see you turn and cast
That false fair beauty that you e'en shall lose,
And fall down there and writhe about my feet,
The crooked loathly viper I shall bruise

Through all eternity!

Nay; kiss me, Sweet!

ROBERT BULWER, EARL OF LYTTON.

MADAME LA MARQUISE.

THE folds of her wine-dark violet dress
Glow over the sofa, fall on fall,

As she sits in the air of her loveliness,
With a smile for each and for all.

Half of her exquisite face in the shade

Which o'er it the screen in her soft hand flings: Through the gloom glows her hair in its odorous braid : In the firelight are sparkling her rings.

As she leans, the slow smile half shut up in her eyes

Beams the sleepy, long, silk-soft lashes beneath; Through her crimson lips, stirred by her faint replies, Breaks one gleam of her pearl-white teeth.

As she leans, where your eye, by her beauty subdued, Droops from under warm fringes of broidery white The slightest of feet-silken-slippered, protrude,

For one moment, then slip out of sight.

As I bend o'er her bosom, to tell her the news,

The faint scent of her hair, the approach of her cheek, The vague warmth of her breath, all my senses suffuse With HERSELF: and I tremble to speak.

So she sits in the curtained, luxurious light

Of that room, with its porcelain, and pictures, and flowers, When the dark day 's half done, and the snow flutters white, Past the windows in feathery showers.

All without is so cold, — 'neath the low leaden sky!

Down the bald, empty street, like a ghost, the gendarme Stalks surly: a distant carriage hums by:

All within is so bright and so warm!

Here we talk of the schemes and the scandals of court,
How the courtesan pushes: the charlatan thrives :
We put horns on the heads of our friends, just for sport:
Put intrigues in the heads of their wives.

Her warm hand, at parting, so strangely thrilled mine,
That at dinner I scarcely remark what they say, -
Drop the ice in my soup, spill the salt in my wine,
Then go yawn at my favorite play.

But she drives after noon; then 's the time to behold her, With her fair face, half hid, like a ripe peeping rose, 'Neath that veil, o'er the velvets and furs which enfold

To loll back in a carriage, all day, with a smile,

And at dusk, on a sofa, to lean in the shade

Of soft lamps, and be wooed for a while.

Could we find out her heart through that velvet and lace!
Can it beat without ruffling her sumptuous dress?
She will show us her shoulder, her bosom, her face;
But what the heart's like, we must guess.

With live women and men to be found in the world—

(— Live with sorrow and sin,—live with pain and with passion, — )

Who could live with a doll, though its locks should be

curled,

And its petticoats trimmed in the fashion?