The sea of faith

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

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled;

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 alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

THE TERRACE AT BERNE.

EN years!-and to my waking eye

TEN

Once more the roofs of Berne appear;

The rocky banks, the terrace high,
The stream, - and do I linger here?

The clouds are on the Oberland,

The Jungfrau snows look faint and far;
But bright are those green fields at hand,
And through those fields comes down the Aar,

And from the blue twin lakes it comes,
Flows by the town, the churchyard fair,
And 'neath the garden-walk it hums,

The house,

and is my Marguerite there?

Ah, shall I see thee, while a flush
Of startled pleasure floods thy brow,
Quick through the oleanders brush,

And clap thy hands, and cry: 'Tis thou!

Or hast thou long since wandered back,

Daughter of France! to France, thy home;
And flitted down the flowery track
Where feet like thine too lightly come?

Doth riotous laughter now replace

Thy smile, and rouge, with stony glare,
Thy cheek's soft hue, and fluttering lace
The kerchief that enwound thy hair?

Or is it over?

art thou dead?

Dead? - and no warning shiver ran
Across my heart, to say thy thread
Of life was cut, and closed thy span!

Could from earth's ways that figure slight
Be lost, and I not feel 't was so?
Of that fresh voice the gay delight

Fail from earth's air, and I not know?

Or shall I find thee still, but changed,
But not the Marguerite of thy prime?
With all thy being rearranged,
Passed through the crucible of time;

With spirit vanished, beauty waned,
And hardly yet a glance, a tone,

A gesture anything - retained

Of all that was my Marguerite's own?

I will not know! - for wherefore try
To things by mortal course that live
A shadowy durability

For which they were not meant, to give?

Like driftwood spars which meet and pass Upon the boundless ocean-plain,

So on the sea of life, alas!

Man nears man, meets, and leaves again.

I knew it when my life was young,
I feel it still, now youth is o'er!
The mists are on the mountains hung,
And Marguerite I shall see no more.

STANZAS COMPOSED AT CARNAC.

MAY 6, 1859.

AR on its rocky knoll descried

FAR

Saint Michael's chapel cuts the sky.

I climbed ;-beneath me, bright and wide,
Lay the lone coast of Brittany.

Bright in the sunset, weird and still,
It lay beside the Atlantic wave,

As if the wizard Merlin's will

Yet charmed it from his forest grave.

Behind me on their grassy sweep,
Bearded with lichen, scrawled and gray,

The giant stones of Carnac sleep,

In the mild evening of the May.

No priestly stern procession now

Streams through their rows of pillars old;
No victims bleed, no Druids bow;

Sheep make the furze-grown aisles their fold.