All too soon

Life (like a wanton too-officious friend,
Who will not hear denial, vain and rude
With proffer of unwished-for services)
Entering all the avenues of sense
Passed thro' into his citadel, the brain,
With hated warmth of apprehensiveness.
And first the chillness of the sprinkled
brook

Smote on my brows, and then I seem'd to hear

Its murmur, as the drowning seaman hears,

Who with his head below the surface dropt

Listens the muffled booming indistinct Of the confused floods, and dimly knows His head shall rise no more: and then came in

The white light of the weary moon above,

Diffused and molten into flaky cloud. Was my sight drunk that it did shape

to me

Him who should own that name? Were it not well

If so be that the echo of that name Ringing within the fancy had updrawn

It should attach to? Phantom! - had the ghastliest

That ever lusted for a body, sucking The foul steam of the grave to thicken by it,

There in the shuddering moonlight brought its face

And what it has for eyes as close to mine As he did -- better that than his, than he The friend, the neighbor, Lionel, the beloved,

The loved, the lover, the happy Lionel, The low-voiced, tender-spirited Lionel, All joy, to whom my agony was a joy. Oh how her choice did leap forth from his eyes!

Oh how her love did clothe itself in smiles

About his lips! and--not one moment's grace

Then when the effect weigh'd seas upon my head

To come my way! to twit me with the

cause!

Was not the land as free thro' all her

ways

To him as me? Was not his wont to walk

Between the going light and growing night?

Had I not learnt my loss before he came ? Could that be more because he came my way?

Why should he not come my way if he would?

And yet to-night, to-night- when all my wealth

Flash'd from me in a moment and I fell Beggar'd forever - why should he come

my way

She took the body of my past delight, Narded and swathed and balm'd it for herself,

And laid it in a sepulchre of rock
Never to rise again. I was led mute
Into her temple like a sacrifice;
I was the High Priest in her holiest place,
Not to be loudly broken in upon.

O friend, thoughts deep and heavy as
these well nigh

O'erbore the limits of my brain; but he Bent o'er me, and my neck his arm upstay'd.

I thought it was an adder's fold, and

My fallen forehead in their to and fro, For in the sudden anguish of her heart Loosed from their simple thrall they had flow'd abroad,

And floated on and parted round her neck, Mantling her form half way. She, when I woke,

Something she ask'd, I know not what, and ask'd,

Unanswer'd, since I spake not; for the sound

Of that dear voice so musically low,

full-orb'd love has waned not. Did I love her,

And could I look upon her tearful eyes? What had she done to weep? Why should she weep?

O innocent of spirit let my heart Break rather whom the gentlest airs of Heaven

Should kiss with an unwonted gentle

ness.

Her love did murder mine? What then? She deem'd

I wore a brother's mind: she call'd me brother:

lov'd,

And laid it in her own, and sent my cry Thro' the blank night to Him who loving made

The happy and the unhappy love, that He

Would hold the hand of blessing over them,

Lionel, the happy, and her, and her, his bride!

Let them so love that men and boys may say,

"Lo! how they love each other!" till their love

Shall ripen to a proverb, unto all Known, when their faces are forgot in the land

One golden dream of love, from which may death

Awake them with Heaven's music in a life
More living to some happier happiness,
Swallowing its precedent in victory.
And as for me, Camilla, as for me,
The dew of tears is an unwholesome dew,
They will but sicken the sick plant the

more.

ward flow.

So Love, arraign'd to judgment and to death,

Received unto himself a part of blame, Being guiltless, as an innocent prisoner, Who, when the woful sentence hath been past,

And all the clearness of his fame hath gone

Beneath the shadow of the curse of man, First falls asleep in swoon, wherefrom awaked,

And looking round upon his tearful friends,

Forthwith and in his agony conceives
A shameful sense as of a cleaving crime-
For whence without some guilt should
such grief be?

So died that hour, and fell into the abysm

the life

one other, worth

but how

I could have loved thee, had there been none else

To love as lovers, loved again by thee.

Or this, or somewhat like to this, I spake,

When I beheld her weep so ruefully; For sure my love should ne'er indue the

front

And mask of Hate, who lives on others'

moans.

Shall Love pledge Hatred in her bitter draughts,

And batten on her poisons? Love forbid!

Love passeth not the threshold of cold Hate,

And Hate is strange beneath the roof of Love.

O Love, if thou be'st Love, dry up these

tears

Shed for the love of Love; for tho' mine image,

The subject of thy power, be cold in her, Yet, like cold snow, it melteth in the

source

died

Like odor rapt into the winged wind
Borne into alien lands and far away.

There be some hearts so airily built,
that they,

They-when their love is wreck'd-if Love can wreck

On that sharp ridge of utmost doom ride highly

Above the perilous seas of Change and Chance ;

Nay, more, hold out the lights of cheerfulness;

As the tall ship, that many a dreary year Knit to some dismal sand-bank far at

sea,

All thro' the livelong hours of utter dark, Showers slanting light upon the dolorous

wave.

For me what light, what gleam on
those black ways
Where Love could walk with banish'd
Hope no more?

It was ill done to part you, Sisters fair; Love's arms were wreath'd about the neck of Hope,

I cast them in the noisy brook beneath, And watch'd them till they vanish'd from my sight

Beneath the bower of wreathed eglantines :

And all the fragments of the living rock (Huge blocks, which some old trembling of the world

Had loosen'd from the mountain, till they fell

Half digging their own graves) these in my agony

Did I make bare of all the golden moss, Wherewith the dashing runnel in the spring

Had liveried them all over. In my brain The spirit seem'd to flag from thought to thought,

As moonlight wandering thro' a mist: my blood

Crept like marsh drains thro' all my languid limbs;

The motions of my heart seem'd far within me, Unfrequent, low, as tho' it told its pulses;

And yet it shook me, that my frame would shudder,