While just this or that poor impulse, Which for once had play unstifled, Seems the sole work of a lifetime,

That away the rest have trifled.

Doubt you if, in some such moment, As she fixed me, she felt clearly, Ages past the soul existed,

Here an age 't is resting merely, And hence fleets again for ages,

While the true end, sole and single, It stops here for is, this love-way, With some other soul to mingle?

Else it loses what it lived for,
And eternally must lose it;
Better ends may be in prospect,

Deeper blisses (if you choose it),

But this life's end and this love-bliss

Have been lost here. Doubt you whether This she felt as, looking at me,

Mine and her souls rushed together?

Oh, observe! Of course, next moment,
The world's honors, in derision,
Trampled out the light forever:

Never fear but there 's provision
Of the devil's to quench knowledge

Lest we walk the earth in rapture! -Making those who catch God's secret Just so much more prize their capture!

Such am I the secret 's mine now!

She has lost me, I have gained her; Her soul's mine: and thus, grown perfect, I shall pass my life's remainder. Life will just hold out the proving

Both our powers, alone and blended: And then, come the next life quickly! This world's use will have been ended.

EARTH'S IMMORTALITIES

FAME

SEE, as the prettiest graves will do in time,
Our poet's wants the freshness of its prime;
Spite of the sexton's browsing horse, the sods
Have struggled through its binding osier rods;
Headstone and half-sunk footstone lean awry,
Wanting the brick-work promised by-and-by;
How the minute gray lichens, plate o'er plate,
Have softened down the crisp-cut name and
date!

LOVE

So, the year's done with!
(Love me forever!)

All March begun with,
April's endeavor;
May-wreaths that bound me
June needs must sever;
Now snows fall round me,
Quenching June's fever-
(Love me forever!)

MEETING AT NIGHT

This and its companion piece were published originally simply as Night and Morning.

THE gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and
fears,

Than the two hearts beating each to each!

PARTING AT MORNING

ROUND the cape of a sudden came the sea,
And the sun looked over the mountain's rim:
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.

SONG

NAY but you, who do not love her,

Is she not pure gold, my mistress?
Holds earth aught speak truth above her ?
Aught like this tress, see, and this tress,
And this last fairest tress of all,
So fair, see, ere I let it fall?

Because you spend your lives in praising;
To praise, you search the wide world over:

The shutters are shut, no light may pass

- above

BEAUTIFUL Evelyn Hope is dead!
Sit and watch by her side an hour.
That is her book-shelf, this her bed;
She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,
Beginning to die too, in the glass;

Little has yet been changed, I think :

Save two long rays through the hinge's chink.

Sixteen years old when she died!

Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name;
It was not her time to love; beside,
Her life had many a hope and aim,
Duties enough and little cares,

And now was quiet, now astir,
Till God's hand beckoned unawares,

And the sweet white brow is all of her.

Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope?
What, your soul was pure and true,
The good stars met in your horoscope,
Made you of spirit, fire and dew-
And, just because I was thrice as old

And our paths in the world diverged so wide,
Each was naught to each, must I be told?
We were fellow mortals, naught beside?

No, indeed! for God above

Is great to grant, as mighty to make, And creates the love to reward the love: I claim you still, for my own love's sake! Delayed it may be for more lives yet, Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few: Much is to learn, much to forget

Ere the time be come for taking you.

What's in the "Times"? -a scold
At the Emperor deep and cold;
He has taken a bride

To his gruesome side,
That's as fair as himself is bold:

There they sit ermine-stoled, And she powders her hair with gold.

Fancy the Pampas' sheen!
Miles and miles of gold and green
Where the sunflowers blow
In a solid glow,

And

to break now and then the screen Black neck and eyeballs keen, Up a wild horse leaps between!

Try, will our table turn?

Lay your hands there light, and yearn
Till the yearning slips
Through the finger-tips

In a fire which a few discern,

And a very few feel burn,

And the rest, they may live and learn!

Then we would up and расе,
For a change, about the place,
Each with arm o'er neck:
"T is our quarter-deck,
We are seamen in woeful case.
Help in the ocean-space!
Or, if no help, we 'll embrace.

See, how she looks now, dressed
In a sledging-cap and vest!

'Tis a huge fur cloak-
Like a reindeer's yoke
Falls the lappet along the breast:
Sleeves for her arms to rest,
Or to hang, as my Love likes best.

Teach me to flirt a fan
As the Spanish ladies can,
Or I tint your lip

With a burnt stick's tip

And you turn into such a man!

Just the two spots that span

Half the bill of the young male swan.

Dearest, three months ago
When the mesmerizer Snow

With his hand's first sweep
Put the earth to sleep :

"T was a time when the heart could show All-how was earth to know,

'Neath the mute hand's to-and-fro ?

Dearest, three months ago

When we loved each other so,

Lived and loved the same

Till an evening came

When a shaft from the devil's bow
Pierced to our ingle-glow,

And the friends were friend and foe!

Not from the heart beneath
'Twas a bubble born of breath,
Neither sneer nor vaunt,
Nor reproach nor taunt.

See a word, how it severeth!

Oh, power of life and death

In the tongue, as the 'reacher saith!
Woman, and will you cast
For a word, quite off at last

Me, your own, your You,
Since, as truth is true,

I was You all the happy past -
Me do you leave aghast
With the memories We amassed?

Love, if you knew the light
That your soul casts in my sight,
How I look to you

For the pure and true,

And the beauteous and the right, Bear with a moment's spite When a mere mote threats the white!

But the city, oh the city- the square with the houses! Why?

They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's something to take the eye!

Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry;

You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by ;

Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high;

And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.

What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights,

'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights:

You've the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze, And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive-trees.

Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all at once;

In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns.

'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well,

The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell

Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell.

Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to spout and splash!

In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foambows flash

On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and pash

Round the lady atop in her conch-fifty gazers do not abash,

Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of sash.

All the year long at the villa, nothing to see though you linger,

Except yon cypress that points like death's lean lifted forefinger.

Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix i' the corn and mingle,

Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle.

Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is shrill,

And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on the hill. Enough of the seasons,

I spare you the months of the fever and chill.

Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin :

No sooner the bells leave off than the diligence rattles in:

You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin.

By and by there's the travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth;

Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath.

At the post-office such a scene-picture-the new play, piping hot!

And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot.

Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fatherly of rebukes,

And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law of the Duke's!

Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and-so,

Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Jerome, and Cicero,

"And moreover," (the sonnet goes rhyming,) "the skirts of Saint Paul has reached, Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he preached." Noon strikes, here sweeps the procession ! our Lady borne smiling and smart With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart! Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-tetootle the fife;

No keeping one's haunches still: it's the greatest pleasure in life.

But bless you, it's dear-it's dear! fowls, wine, at double the rate.

They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays passing the gate

It's a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, not the city!