The organ heaved its surges to and fro.

went,

Give out an audible rustle, curling through

The midnight silence of that awestruck air, More hushed than death, though so much life was there.

late, having only been sent on this morning. It is the longest and best poem I have ever written, and overrunning with true radicalism and antislavery. I think that it will open the eyes of some folk and make them think that I am a poet, whatever they may say."

After the appearance of the poem, he regrets the absence of any public notice, and acknowledges thus an appreciative letter from his friend Charles F. Briggs: "Although such great names as Goethe, Byron, and Shelley have all handled the subject in modern times, you will find that I have looked at it from a somewhat new point of view. I have made it radical, and I believe that no poet in this age can write much that is good unless he give himself up to this tendency. For radicalism has now for the first time taken a distinctive and acknowledged shape of its own. So much of its spirit as poets in former ages have attained (and from their purer organization they could not fail of some) was by instinct rather than by reason. It has never till now been seen to be one of the two great wings that upbear the universe."

ONE after one the stars have risen and set,

Sparkling upon the hoarfrost on my chain: The Bear, that prowled all night about the fold

Of the North-star, hath shrunk into his den, Scared by the blithesome footsteps of the Dawn,

Whose blushing smile floods all the Orient; And now bright Lucifer grows less and less,

Into the heaven's blue quiet deep-withdrawn.

Sunless and starless all, the desert sky
Arches above me, empty as this heart
For ages hath been empty of all joy,
Except to brood upon its silent hope,
As o'er its hope of day the sky doth now.
All night have I heard voices: deeper yet
The deep low breathing of the silence grew,
While all about, muffled in awe, there stood
Shadows, or forms, or both, clear-felt at
heart,

But, when I turned to front them, far along
Only a shudder through the midnight ran,
And the dense stillness walled me closer
round.

But still I heard them wander up and down That solitude, and flappings of dusk wings Did mingle with them, whether of those

hags

Let slip upon me once from Hades deep,

Or of yet direr torments, if such be,
I could but guess; and then toward me

came

A shape as of a woman: very pale

It was, and calm; its cold eyes did not move,

And mine moved not, but only stared on them.

Their fixed awe went through my brain like ice;

A skeleton hand seemed clutching at my heart,

And a sharp chill, as if a dank night fog
Suddenly closed me in, was all I felt:
And then, methought, I heard a freezing
sigh,

A long, deep, shivering sigh, as from blue lips

Stiffening in death, close to mine ear. I thought

Some doom was close upon me, and I looked And saw the red moon through the heavy mist,

Just setting, and it seemed as it were fall

ing,

Or reeling to its fall, so dim and dead And palsy-struck it looked. Then all sounds merged

Into the rising surges of the pines, Which, leagues below me, clothing the gaunt loins

Of ancient Caucasus with hairy strength, Sent up a murmur in the morning wind, Sad as the wail that from the populous earth

All day and night to high Olympus soars, Fit incense to thy wicked throne, O Jove!

Thy hated name is tossed once more in