XIII.

TEARS of the widower, when he sees
A late-lost form that sleep reveals,

And moves his doubtful arms, and feels
Her place is empty, fall like these ;

Which weep a loss for ever new,

A void where heart on heart reposed;

And, where warm hands have prest and closed, Silence, till I be silent too.

Which weep the comrade of my choice,

An awful thought, a life removed,

The human-hearted man I loved,

A spirit, not a breathing voice.

Come Time, and teach me many years

I do not suffer in a dream;

For now so strange do these things seem,

Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;

My fancies time to rise on wing,

And glance about the approaching sails,

As tho' they brought but merchants' bales, And not the burthen that they bring.

XIV.

If one should bring me this report,

That thou hadst touch'd the land to-day,

And I went down unto the quay,

And found thee lying in the port;

And standing, muffled round with woe,
Should see thy passengers in rank

Come stepping lightly down the plank, And beckoning unto those they know ;

And if along with these should come
The man I held as half-divine ;

Should strike a sudden hand in mine,

And ask a thousand things of home;

And I should tell him all my pain,

And how my life had droop'd of late, And he should sorrow o'er my state And marvel what possess'd my brain;

And I perceived no touch of change, No hint of death in all his frame,

But found him all in all the same, I should not feel it to be strange.

XV.

To night the winds began to rise
And roar from yonder dropping day:
The last red leaf is whirl'd away,
The rooks are blown about the skies;

The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd,
The cattle huddled on the lea;

And wildly dash'd on tower and tree The sunbeam strikes along the world :

And but for fancies, which aver

That all thy motions gently pass

Athwart a plane of molten glass,

I scarce could brook the strain and stir

That makes the barren branches loud;

And but for fear it is not so,

The wild unrest that lives in woe

Would dote and pore on yonder cloud