After the flitting of the bats, 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, 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, She only said, "My life is dreary, And ever when the moon was low, And the shrill winds were up and away, She only said, "The night is dreary, 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. She only said, "My life is dreary, 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! ALFRED TENNYSON. sway, Unwatched, the garden bough shall Unloved, by many a sandy bar, The brook shall babble down the plain, Uncared for, gird the windy grove, 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 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, THE LARGER HOPE. O YET We trust that somehow good That nothing walks with aimless feet; 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 I, considering everywhere Her secret meaning in her deeds, And falling with my weight of cares 3 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 To the dancers dancing in tune; I said to the lily, "There is but one I said to the rose, "The brief night goes |