After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

Upon the middle of the night,

Waking she heard the night-fowl crow; The cock sung out an hour ere light:

From the dark fen the oxen's low Came to her: without hope of change,

In sleep she seemed to walk forlorn, Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn About the lonely moated grange.

She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
And I would that I were dead!"

About a stone-cast from the wall

A sluice with blackened waters slept, And o'er it many, round and small,

The clustered marish-mosses crept. Hard by a poplar shook alway,

All silver-green with gnarled bark,
For leagues no other tree did dark
The level waste, the rounding gray.

She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

And ever when the moon was low,

And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low,
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.

She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

All day within the dreamy house,

The doors upon their hinges creaked, The blue fly sung i' the pane; the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shrieked,

Or from the crevice peered about.
Old faces glimmered through the doors,
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.

She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,

The slow clock ticking, and the sound Which to the wooing wind aloof

The poplar made, did all confound Her sense; but most she loathed the hour When the thick-moted sunbeam lay Athwart the chambers, and the day Was sloping toward his western bower. Then, said she, "I am very dreary, He will not come," she said; She wept, "I am aweary, aweary, O God, that I were dead!"

"BREAK, BREAK, BREAK!" BREAK, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play! O well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay! And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!

sway,

Unwatched, the garden bough shall
The tender blossom flutter down;
Unloved, that beech will gather brown,
This maple burn itself away;
Unloved, the sunflower, shining fair,
Ray round with flames her disk of seed,
And many a rose-carnation feed
With summer spice the humming air;

Unloved, by many a sandy bar,

The brook shall babble down the plain,
At noon or when the lesser Wain
Is twisting round the polar star;

Uncared for, gird the windy grove,
And flood the haunts of hernand crake;
Or into silver arrows break

The sailing moon in creek and cove;

Till from the garden and the wild

A fresh association blow,

And year by year the landscape grow Familiar to the stranger's child;

As year by year the laborer tills

His wonted glebe, or lops the glades; And year by year our memory fades From all the circle of the hills.

DOUBT.

You say, but with no touch of scorn, Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes

Are tender over drowning flies, You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.

I know not: one indeed I knew
In many a subtle question versed,
Who touched a jarring lyre at first,
But ever strove to make it true:

Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,

At last he beat his music out. There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.

He fought his doubts and gathered strength,

He would not make his judgment blind, He faced the spectres of the mind And laid them: thus he came at length

To find a stronger faith his own;

And Power was with him in the night,

197

Which makes the darkness and the light,

And dwells not in the light alone,

But in the darkness and the cloud,
As over Sinai's peaks of old,
While Israel made their gods of gold,
Although the trumpet blew so loud.

THE LARGER HOPE.

O YET We trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain;

That not a moth with vain desire Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire, Or but subserves another's gain.

Behold, we know not anything;

I can but trust that good shall fall At last far off-at last, to all, And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream: but what am I? An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light: And with no language but a cry.

THE wish, that of the living whole

No life may fail beyond the grave, Derives it not from what we have The likest God within the soul?

Are God and Nature, then, at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere

Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,

And falling with my weight of cares

For a breeze of morning moves,

And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves

On a bed of daffodil sky, To faint in the light of the sun she loves, To faint in his light, and to die.

All night have the roses heard
The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine
stirred

To the dancers dancing in tune;
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
And a hush with the setting moon.

I said to the lily, "There is but one
With whom she has heart to be gay.
When will the dancers leave her alone?
She is weary of dance and play."
Now half to the setting moon are gone,
And half to the rising day;
Low on the sand and loud on the stone
The last wheel echoes away.

I said to the rose, "The brief night goes
In babble and revel and wine.
O young lord-lover, what sighs are those,
For one that will never be thine?
But mine, but mine," so I sware to the