The staring eye glazed o'er with sapless days, The long mechanic pacings to and fro, The set gray life, and apathetic end. But am I not the nobler thro' thy love? Will some one say, then why not ill for good? But then most Godlike being most a man. -So let me think 'tis well for thee and me Ill-fated that I am, what lot is mine Whose foresight preaches peace, my heart so slow To feel it for how hard it seem'd to me, When eyes, love-languid thro' half-tears, would dwell One earnest, earnest moment upon mine, Then not to dare to see! when thy low voice, For Love himself took part against himself If the sense is hard To alien ears, I did not speak to these No, not to thee, but to thyself in me : Hard is my doom and thine: thou knowest it all. Could Love part thus ? was it not well to speak, To have spoken once? It could not but be well. The slow sweet hours that bring us all things good, The slow sad hours that bring us all things ill, And all good things from evil, brought the night In which we sat together and alone, And to the want, that hollow'd all the heart, That burn'd upon its object thro' such tears As flow but once a life. The trance gave way To those caresses, when a hundred times The lights of sunset and of sunrise mix'd In that brief night; the summer night, that paused Spun round in station, but the end had come. O then like those, that clench their nerves to rush Upon their dissolution, we two rose, There closing like an individual life In one blind cry of passion and of pain, Like bitter accusation ev'n to death, Caught up the whole of love and utter'd it, And bade adieu for ever. Live-yet live Shall sharpest pathos blight us, knowing all Life needs for life is possible to will— Live happy! tend thy flowers: be tended by For calmer hours in memory's darkest hold, ULYSSES. IT little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd And manners, climates, councils, governments, |