III.

O SORROW, cruel fellowship!

O Priestess in the vaults of Death!

O sweet and bitter in a breath,

What whispers from thy lying lip?

The stars,' she whispers, blindly run; A web is wov'n across the sky;

From out waste places comes a cry, And murmurs from the dying sun:

And all the phantom, Nature, stands— With all her music in her tone,

A hollow echo of my own,A hollow form with empty hands.'

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.

To 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 should'st 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 thine early years. Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears, That grief hath shaken into frost! tric

Such clouds of nameless trouble cross

All night below the darken'd eyes;

With morning wakes the will, and cries,

• Thou shall not be the fool of loss.'

V.

I SOMETIMES hold it half a sin

To put in words the grief 1 feel;

For words, like nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measur'd 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.

ONE writes, that

Other friends remain,'

That Loss is common to the race And common is the commonplace, 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,

That 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;