The familiar door is re

visited and his desolation even more keenly realized.

8. 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;

9. For he will see them on to-night;

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

Once more to set a ringlet right;

10. 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.

11. O what to her shall be the end?
And what to me remains of good?
To her perpetual maidenhood,
And unto me no second friend.

VII.

1. Dark 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,

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

3. 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.

VIII.

A happy lover who has come

To look on her that loves him well, Who 'lights and rings the gateway bell, And learns her gone and far from home,

2. 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:

3. 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.

4. 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:

5. 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.

6. 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.

SECTION II. THE POET FOLLOWS IN SPIRIT THE SHIP BRINGING ARTHUR'S BODY HOME FOR BURIAL: VARIOUS

A prayer for a quiet

voyage.

To be buried at home is

better than to be lost at sea.

MOODS OF GRIEF

IX.

1. Fair ship, that from the Italian shore
Sailest the placid ocean-plains

With my lost Arthur's loved remains,
Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er.

2. So draw him home to those that mourn
In vain; a favorable speed

Ruffle thy mirror'd mast, and lead
Thro' prosperous floods his holy urn.

3. All night no ruder air perplex

Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor,
bright

As our pure love, thro' early light
Shall glimmer on the dewy decks.

4. Sphere all your lights around, above;

Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow; Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, My friend, the brother of my love;

5. My Arthur, whom I shall not see
Till all my widow'd race be run;
Dear as the mother to the son,
More than my brothers are to me.

X.

1. I hear the noise about thy keel;

I hear the bell struck in the night:
I see the cabin-window bright;

I see the sailor at the wheel.

2. Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife,

And travell❜d men from foreign lands; And letters unto trembling hands; And, thy dark freight, a vanish'd life.

3. So bring him: we have idle dreams:
This look of quiet flatters thus
Our home-bred fancies: O to us,
The fools of habit, sweeter seems

4. To rest beneath the clover sod,

That takes the sunshine and the rains, Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of God,

5. Than if with thee the roaring wells
Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine,
And hands so often claspt in mine
Should toss with tangle and with shells

XI.

Reverie during 1. Calm is the morn without a sound,

a walk on a

calm autuma

morning.

Calm as to suit a calmer grief,
And only thro' the faded leaf

The chestnut pattering to the ground;

2. Calm and deep peace on this high wold, And on these dews that drench the furze,

And all the silvery gossamers

That twinkle into green and gold;

3. Calm and still light on yon great plain
That sweeps with all its autumn bow.
ers,

And crowded farms and lessening tow

In imagination he visits the ship. An hour passes unheeded.

4. Calm and deep peace in this wide air, These leaves that redden to the fall; And in my heart, if calm at all,

If any calm, a calm despair:

5. Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,

And waves that sway themselves in rest,

And dead calm in that noble breast Which heaves but with the heaving deep.

XII.

1. Lo, as a dove when up she springs

To bear thro' heaven a tale of woe,
Some dolorous message knit below
The wild pulsation of her wings,

2. Like her I go; I cannot stay;

I leave this mortal ark behind,

A weight of nerves without a mind, And leave the cliffs, and haste away

3. O'er ocean-mirrors rounded large,

And reach the glow of southern skies,
And see the sails at distance rise,

And linger weeping on the marge,

4. And saying, "Comes he thus, my friend?
Is this the end of all my care?"
And circle moaning in the air,

"Is this the end? Is this the end?"

5. And forward dart again, and play
About the prow, and back return
To where the body sits, and learn
That I have been an hour away.