'Tis so; but can it be while flowers Man's doom, in death that we and ours O, can it be, that o'er the grave It cannot be; for were it so Thus man could die, Life were a mockery, thought were woe, Heaven were a coinage of the brain; And all our hopes to meet again, Then be to us, O dear, lost child! A star, death's uncongenial wild Soon, soon thy little feet have trod Yet 't is sweet balm to our despair, That heaven is God's, and thou art there, There past are death and all its woes; Farewell, then, - for a while, farewell, It cannot be that long we dwell, When one sits quite alone! then one kneels ! -God! how the house feels! VII. At first happy news came, in gay letters moiled With my kisses, of camp-life, and glory, and how They both loved me, and soon, coming home to be spoiled, In return would fan off every fly from my brow With their green laurel-bough. VIII. [This was Laura Savio of Turin, a poetess and patriot, whose Then was triumph at Turin. "Ancona was free!" sons were killed at Ancona and Gaeta.] I. DEAD! one of them shot by the sea in the east, And one of them shot in the west by the sea. And some one came out of the cheers in the street With a face pale as stone, to say something to me. - My Guido was dead! - I fell down at his feet, While they cheered in the street. Writ now but in one hand. "I was not to faint. What then? Do not mock me. One loved me for two... would be with me erelong: bells low, Ah, ring your And burn your lights faintly! My country is there, Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow, My Italy's there, with my brave civic pair, To disfranchise despair. XIX. It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear, Forgive me. Some women bear children in And how 't was impossible, quite dispossessed, To live on for the rest." XII. On which without pause up the telegraph line Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta :"Shot. Tell his mother." Ah, ah, "his," "their" mother; not "mine." No voice says "my mother" again to me. What! You think Guido forgot? XIII. Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with heaven, They dropearth's affections, conceive not of woe? I think not. Themselves were too lately forgiven Through that love and sorrow which reconciled so The above and below. XIV. O Christ of the seven wounds, who look'dst through the dark To the face of thy mother! consider, I pray, How we common mothers stand desolate, mark, Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away, And no last word to say! XV. Both boys dead! but that's out of nature. We all Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one. T were imbecile hewing out roads to a wall. Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta 's taken, what then? When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport strength, Upon the eastern mountain-top, "Yon cloud with that long purple cleft Brings fresh into my mind A day like this, which I have left "And just above yon slope of corn Such colors, and no other, Were in the sky that April morn, Of this the very brother. "With rod and line I sued the sport Which that sweet season gave, And, coming to the church, stopped short Beside my daughter's grave. "Nine summers had she scarcely seen, The pride of all the vale; And then she sang ; A very nightingale. she would have been "Six feet in earth my Emma lay; And yet I loved her more For so it seemed than till that day "And, turning from her grave, I met "A basket on her head she bare; Her brow was smooth and white: To see a child so very fair, It was a pure delight! "No fountain from its rocky cave "There came from me a sigh of pain Which I could ill confine; I looked at her, and looked again: - Matthew is in his grave, yet now Methinks I see him stand As at that moment, with a bough WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. HESTER. WHEN maidens such as Hester die, Their place ye may not well supply, Though ye among a thousand try, With vain endeavor. THE LOST SISTER. THEY waked me from my sleep, I knew not why, And bade me hasten where a midnight lamp Gleamed from an inner chamber. There she lay, |