Bright as with deathless hope -but, how- and woe. IV 20 First printed in 'The Nineteenth Century' A fiery scroll written over with lamentation for November, 1881, with the following preface: A man and his wife having lost faith in a God, and hope of a life to come, and being utterly miserable in this, resolve to end themselves by drowning. The woman is drowned, but the man rescued by a minister of the sect he had abandoned.' See, we were nursed in the drear nightfold And we turn'd to the growing dawn, we had would scatter the ghosts of the past, And the cramping creeds that had madden'd the peoples would vanish at And she laid her hand in my own was always loyal and sweet - she 50 Till the points of the foam in the dusk caine playing about our feet. There was a strong sea-current would sweep us out to the main. 'Ah, God!' tho' I felt as I spoke I was taking the name in vain 'Ah, God!' and we turn'd to each other, we kiss'd, we embraced, she and I, Knowing the love we were used to believe everlasting would die. We had read their know-nothing books, and we lean'd to the darker side The placid gleam of sunset after storm! ""The statesman's brain that sway'd the past Is feebler than his knees; The passive sailor wrecks at last The warrior hath forgot his arms, The changing market frets or charms The plowman passes, bent with pain, He knows not even the book he wrote, And, darkening in the light, 140 150 The shell must break before the bird can fly. "The years that when my youth began Had set the lily and rose By all my ways where'er they ran, My rose of love for ever gone, They made her lily and rose in one, O rose-tree planted in my grief, O slender lily waving there, 160 170* |