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THE ROSE IN OCTOBER.

LATE and sweet, too sweet, too late! What nightingale will sing to thee? The empty nest, the shivering tree, The dead leaves by the garden gate, And cawing crows for thee will wait,

O sweet and late!

Where wert thou when the soft June nights
Were faint with perfume, glad with song?
Where wert thou when the days were long
And steeped in summer's young delights?
What hopest thou now but checks and slights,
Brief days, lone nights?

Stay, there's a gleam of winter wheat
Far on the hill; down in the woods

A very heaven of stillness broods;

And through the mellow sun's noon heat,
Lo, tender pulses round thee beat,

O late and sweet!

MARY TOWNLEY.

DOVER BEACH.

HE sea is calm to-night,

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits;—on the French coast, the

light

Gleams, and is gone; the cliffs of England stand
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray

Where the ebb meets the moon-blanch'd sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery ; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd;

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating to the breath

Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarm of struggle and fight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night!

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

N

X

BURDENS.

RE sorrows hard to bear,-the ruin
Of flowers, the rotting of red fruit,
A love's decease, a life's undoing,

And summer slain, and song-birds mute,

And skies of snow and bitter air?
These things, you deem, are hard to bear.

But ah the burden, the delight

Of dreadful joys! Noon opening wide, Golden and great; the gulfs of night,

Fair deaths, and rent veils cast aside, Strong soul to strong soul rendered up, And silence filling like a cup.

EDWARD DOWDEN.

ON THE SHORE.

HE angry sunset fades from out the west,
A glimmering greyness creeps along the

sea;

Wild waves be hushed and moan into your

rest,

Soon will all earth be sleeping, why not ye?

Far off the heavens deaden o'er with sleep,
The purple twilight darkens on the hill;
Why will ye only ever wake and weep?
I weary of your sighing, oh! be stil.

But ever, ever, moan ye by the shore,

While all your trouble surges in my breast;
Oh, waves of trouble surge in me no more,
Or be but still awhile and let me rest.

AUGUSTA WEBSTER.

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