And shall I take a thing so blind,

Embrace her as my natural good: Or crush her like a vice of blood, Upon the threshold of the mind.

IV

O Sleep I give my powers away;

My will is bondsman to the dark;

I sit within a helmless bark;

And with my heart I
muse and say:

O heart, how fares it with thee now,
That thou shouldst fail from thy desire,
Who scarcely darest to inquire,
'What is it makes me beat so low?'
Something it is which thou hast lost,

Some pleasure from thy early years,
Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears,
That grief hath shaken into frost!
Such clouds of nameless trouble cross

All night below the darken'd eyes; With morning wakes the will and cries, "Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.'

SOMETIMES hold it
half a sin

To put in words the grief
I feel;

For words, like Nature,
half reveal

And half conceal the Soul
within.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,

Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold;
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.

VI

NE writes, that Other friends remain';

That Loss is common

to the race '-'

And common is the complace,

And vacant chaff well
meant for grain.

That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more:
Too common! never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.

O father, wheresoe'er thou be,

Who pledgest now thy gallant son; A shot, ere half thy draught be done, Hath still'd the life that beat from thee. O mother, praying God will save

Thy sailor,-while thy head is bow'd His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud Drops in his vast and wandering grave. Ye know no more than I who wrought

At that last hour to please him well; Who mused on all I had to tell, And something written, something thought; Expecting still his advent home; And ever met him on his way

With wishes, thinking, 'here to-day,' Or here to-morrow will he come.'

O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove,
That sittest 'ranging golden hair;
And glad to find thyself so fair,
Poor child, that waitest for thy love!
For now her father's chimney glows
In expectation of a guest;

And thinking 'this will please him best,'

She takes a riband or a rose;

For he will see them on to-night;

And with the thought her colour burns;
And, having left the glass, she turns

Once more to set a ringlet right.

And, even when she turn'd, the curse

Had fallen, and her future Lord

Was drown'd in passing thro' the ford, Or kill'd in falling from his horse.

O what to her shall be the end?

And what remains to me of good?
To her, perpetual maidenhood,

And unto me no second friend.

VII

ARK house, by which once more I stand

Here in the long unlovely street,

Doors, where my heart was used to beat

So quickly, waiting for a
hand,

A hand that can be clasp'd no more-
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.

He is not here; but far away

The noise of life begins again,

And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day.

He saddens, all the magic light

Dies off at once from bower and hall, And all the place is dark, and all The chambers emptied of delight:

So find I every pleasant spot

In which we two were wont to meet, The field, the chamber, and the street, For all is dark where thou art not.

Yet as that other, wandering there

In those deserted walks, may find
A flower beat with rain and wind,
Which once she foster'd up with care;
So seems it in my deep regret,

O my forsaken heart, with thee
And this poor flower of poesy
Which little cared for fades not yet.
But since it pleased a vanish'd eye,
I go to plant it on his tomb,
That if it can it there may bloom,
Or dying, there at least may die.