4. ON THE RHINE

VAIN is the effort to forget.

Some day I shall be cold, I know,
As is the eternal moonlit snow
Of the high Alps, to which I go-
But ah. not yet, not yet!

Vain is the agony of grief.

'Tis true, indeed, an iron knot

Ties straitly up from mine thy lot,

And were it snapt-thou lov'st me not! But is despair relief?

Awhile let me with thought have done.
And as this brimm'd unwrinkled Rhine,
And that far purple mountain-line,
Lie sweetly in the look divine
Of the slow-sinking sun;

So let me lie, and, calm as they,

Let beam upon my inward view

Those eyes of deep, soft, lucent hueEyes too expressive to be blue,

Too lovely to be grey.

Ah, Quiet, all things feel thy balm !
Those blue hills too, this river's flow,
Were restless once, but long ago.
Tamed is their turbulent youthful glow;
Their joy is in their calm.

5. LONGING

COME to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!

For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth;
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say: My love! why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!

For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

DESPONDENCY

THE thoughts that rain their steady glow Like stars on life's cold sea,

Which others know, or say they know—

They never shone for me.

Thoughts light, like gleams, my spirit's sky,

But they will not remain.

They light me once, they hurry by ;

And never come again.

SELF-DECEPTION

SAY, what blinds us, that we claim the glory
Of possessing powers not our share?

—Since man woke on earth, he knows his story,
But, before we woke on earth, we were.
Long, long since, undower'd yet, our spirit
Roam'd, ere birth, the treasuries of God;
Saw the gifts, the powers it might inherit,
Ask'd an outfit for its earthly road.

Then, as now, this tremulous, eager being
Strain'd and long'd and grasp'd each gift it saw ;
Then, as now, a Power beyond our seeing
Staved us back, and gave our choice the law.

Ah, whose hand that day through Heaven guided Man's new spirit, since it was not we?

Ah, who sway'd our choice, and who decided What our gifts, and what our wants should be?

For, alas! he left us each retaining

Shreds of gifts which he refused in full.

Still these waste us with their hopeless straining,
Still the attempt to use them proves them null.
And on earth we wander, groping, reeling;
Powers stir in us, stir and disappear.
Ah! and he, who placed our master-feeling,
Fail'd to place that master-feeling clear.

We but dream we have our wish'd-for powers,
Ends we seek we never shall attain.

Ah! some power exists there, which is ours?
Some end is there, we indeed may gain?

Q

DOVER BEACH

THE 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 sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
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,

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.

GROWING OLD

WHAT is it to grow old?

Is it to lose the glory of the form,

The lustre of the eye?

Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?

-Yes, but not this alone.

Is it to feel our strength

Not our bloom only, but our strength-decay?

Is it to feel each limb

Grow stiffer, every function less exact,

Each nerve more loosely strung?

Yes, this, and more; but not

Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dream'd 'twould be!

'Tis not to have our life

Mellow'd and soften'd as with sunset-glow,

A golden day's decline.

'Tis not to see the world

As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirr'd;