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!

Unwatched, the garden bough shall sway,

The tender blossom flutter down;

THE splendor falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens reply.
ing:

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,

They faint on hill or field or river: Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow forever and forever.

199

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes

flying,

And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

[U. s. A.]

THE APOLOGY.

THINK me not unkind and rude,
That I walk alone in grove and glen;
I go to the god of the wood

To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I

Fold my arms beside the brook; Each cloud that floated in the sky Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band,
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand

Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery

But 't is figured in the flowers; Was never secret history

But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field
Homeward brought the oxen strong;
A second crop thy acres yield,
Which I gather in a song.

TO EVA.

O fair and stately maid, whose eyes
Were kindled in the upper skies

At the same torch that lighted mine;
For so I must interpret still
Thy sweet dominion o'er my will,
A sympathy divine.

Ah, let me blameless gaze upon
Features that seem at heart my own;

Nor fear those watchful sentinels, Who charm the more their glance forbids, Chaste-glowing, underneath their lids,

With fire that draws while it repels.

THINE EYES STILL SHONE.

Was woven still by the snow-white choir. At last she came to his hermitage,

I lonely roved the land or sea: As I behold yon evening star, Which yet beholds not me.

This morn I climbed the misty hill,
And roamed the pastures through;
How danced thy form before my path,
Amidst the deep-eyed dew!

When the red-bird spread his sable wing,
And showed his side of flame, -
When the rosebud ripened to the rose,
In both I read thy name.

EACH AND ALL.

LITTLE thinks, in the field, yon redcloaked clown

Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine
height;

Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.

I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
He sings the song, but it pleases not now,
For I did not bring home the river and
sky;

ད་

cage:

The gay enchantment was undone,
A gentle wife, but fairy none.
Then I said, "I covet truth;
Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;
I leave it behind with the games of
youth."

As I spoke, beneath my feet
The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs;
I inhaled the violet's breath;

Around me stood the oaks and firs;
Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Over me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and of deity;
Again I saw, again I heard,

The rolling river, the morning bird;-
Beauty through my senses stole;
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

THE PROBLEM.

I LIKE a church, I like a cowl, I love a prophet of the soul, And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles, Yet not for all his faith can see Would I that cowled churchman be.

Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure?

Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought; Never from lips of cunning fell The thrilling Delphic oracle; Out from the heart of nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations came, Like the volcano's tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below, The canticles of love and woe. The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity.

--

Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew;
The conscious stone to beauty grew.
Know'st thou what wove yon wood-
bird's nest

Of leaves, and feathers from her breast;
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell;
Or how the sacred pine-tree adds