"The orchard-wall so trim !

The redbreast in the thorn! The twilight soft and dim!

The child's heart! eve and morn, So rich with thoughts of him!"

Hush! your weanling lamb is dead:
Your garden trodden over.
They have broken the farm-shed:

They have buried your first lover With the grass above his head.

Has the Past, then, so much power, You dare take not from the shelf That book with the dry flower,

Lest it make you hang yourself For being yourself for an hour?

Why can't you let thought be

For even a little while? There's naught in memory

Can bring you back the smile Those lips have lost. Just see,

Here what a costly gem

To-night in your hair you worePearls on a diamond stem!

When sweet things are no more,

Better not think of them.

Are you saved by pangs that pained you:
Is there comfort in all it cost you,
Before the world had gained you,
Before that God had lost you,

Or your soul had quite disdained you?

For your soul (and this is worst

To bear, as you well know)
Has been watching you, from first,
As sadly as God could do;
And yourself yourself have cursed..

Talk of the flames of Hell!

We fuel ourselves, I conceive, The fire the Fiend lights. Well, Believe or disbelieve,

We know more than we tell!

Surely you need repose!

To-morrow again-the Bal!. And you must revive the rose

In your check to bloom for all.

Not go?... why the whole world goes!

To bed! to bed! 'Tis sad
To find that Fancy's wings
Have lost the hues they had.
In thinking of these things
Some women have gone mad.

MIDGES.

677

SHE is talking æsthetics, the dear clever creature!

Upon Man and his functions, she speaks with

a smile.

Her ideas are divine upon Art, upon Nature,
The Sublime, the Heroic, and Mr. Carlyle.

I no more am found worthy to join in the talk,

To feel that, ages past, the soul

Hath lived-and ages hence will live; And taste, in hours like this, the whole Of all the years can give.

Then, Lady, yet one moment stay,

While your sweet face makes all things sweet, For ah, the charm will pass away Before again we meet!

ON MY TWENTY-FOURTH YEAR.

THE night's in November: the winds are at strife: The snow's on the hill, and the ice on the mere: The world to its winter is turned: and my life To its twenty-fourth year.

The swallows are flown to the south long ago: The roses are fallen: the woodland is sere. Hope's flown with the swallows: Love's rose will not grow

In my twenty-fourth year.

The snow on the threshold: the cold at the heart: But the fagot to warm, and the wine-cup to cheer:

God's help to look up to: and courage to start On my twenty-fourth year.

And 't is well that the month of the roses is o'er! The last, which I plucked for Nerea to wear, She gave her new lover. A man should do more With his twenty-fourth year

679

May judge all as fully as tho' life were doubled To its forty-eighth year.

If the prospect grow dim, 't is because it grows wide.

Every loss hath its gain. So, from sphere on to sphere,

Man mounts up the ladder of Time; so I stride Up my twenty-fourth year!

Exulting?...no... sorrowing?...no... with a mind

Whose regret chastens hope, whose faith triumphs o'er fear:

Not repining: not confident: no, but resigned To my twenty-fourth year.

SMALL PEOPLE.

THE warm moon was up in the sky,

And the warm summer out on the land. There trembled a tear from her eye: There trembled a tear on my hand.

Her sweet face I could not see clear,
For the shade was so dark in the tree:
I only felt touched by a tear,

And I thought that the tear was for me.

In her small ear I whispered a word,

With her sweet lips she laughed in my face: And, as light through the leaves as a bird, She flitted away from the place.

Then she told to her sister, the snake,

All I said; and her cousin the Toad. The Snake slipped away to the brake,

The Toad went to town by the road.

The Toad told the Devil's Coach-horse,
Who cocked up his tail at the news.
The Snake hissed the secret, of course,
To the Newt, who was changing her shoes.

The Newt drove away to the ball,

And told it the Scorpion and Asp.

The Spider who lives in the wall

Overheard it, and told it the Wasp. The Wasp told the Midge and the Gnat:

And the Gnat told the Flea and the Nit. The Nit dropped an egg as she sat :

The Flea shrugged his shoulders, and bit.

The Nit and the Flea are too small,

And the Snake slips from under my foot: I wish I could find 'mid them all A man-to insult and to shoot!

FAILURE.

I HAVE seen those that wore Heaven's armor worsted:

I have heard Truth lie:

Seen Life, beside the founts for which it thirsted, Curse God and die:

braiding Among my hair

Love's choicest flow'rets, and have found how

fading

Those garlands were:

I have watched my first and holiest hopes depart, One after one:

I have held the hand of Death upon my heart, And made no moan:

I have seen her whom life's whole sacrifice Was made to keep,

Pass coldly by me with a stranger's eyes, Yet did not weep:

Now even my body fails me; and my brow Aches night and day:

I am weak with overwork: how can I now Go forth and play?

What! now that Youth's forgotten aspirations Are all no more,

Rest there, indeed, all Youth's glad recreations, -An untried store?

Alas! what skills this heart of sad experience, This frame o'erwrought,

This memory with life's motion all at variance, This aching thought?

Orient and Occident, for all things rare, To consecrate the toil of reverent hands, And make his labor, like her virtue, fair; Knowing no beauty beautiful as she,

And all his labor void, but to beguile A sacred sorrow; so I worked. Ah, see Here are the fragments of my shattered pile! I keep them, and the flowers that sprang be

tween

Their broken workmanship-the flowers and weeds!

Sleep soft among the violets, O my Queen-
Lie calm among my ruined thoughts and deeds.

GOOD-NIGHT IN THE PORCH.

A LITTLE longer in the light, love, let me be. The air is warm.

I hear the cuckoo's last good-night float from the copse below the Farm.

A little longer, Sister sweet-your hand in mine -on this old seat.

In yon red gable, which the rose creeps round and o'er, your casement shines Against the yellow west, o'er those forlorn and solitary pines.

Where others find it?

Will not their sad steps mar the merriest meas

ure,

Or lag behind it?

Still must the man move sadlier for the dreams That mocked the boy;

And, having failed to achieve, must still, it seems,
Fail to enjoy.

It is no common failure, to have failed
Where man hath given

A whole life's effort to the task assailed-
Spent earth on heaven.

If error and if failure enter here, What helps repentance? Remember this, O Lord, in thy severe Last sentence!

REQUIESCAT.

I SOUGHT to build a deathless monument
To my dead love. Therein I meant to place
All precious things, and rare: as Nature blent
All single sweetness in one sweet face.
I could not build it worthy her mute merit,
Nor worthy her white brows and holy eyes,
Nor worthy of her perfect and pure spirit,
Nor of my own immortal memories.
But, as some rapt artificer of old,

To enshrine the ashes of a virgin saint,
Might scheme to work with ivory, and fine gold,
And carven gems, and legended and quaint

all the place is grown!

The stagnant levels, one and all, are burning in the distant marsh

Hark! t was the bittern's parting call. The frogs are out with murmurs harsh The low reeds vibrate. See! the sun catches the long pools one by one.

A moment, and those orange flats will turn dead gray or lurid white.

Look up! o'erhead the winnowing bats are come and gone, eluding sight.

The little worms are out.

The snails begin tɔ move down shining trafls,

With slow pink cones, and soft wet horns. The garden-bowers are dim with dew.

With sparkling drops the white-rose thorns are twinkling, where the sun slips through Those reefs of coral buds hung free below the purple Judas-tree.

From the warm upland comes a gust made fragrant with the brown hay there.

The meek cows, with their white horns thrust above the hedge, stand still and stare. The steaming horses from the wains droop o'er the tank their plaited manes.

And o'er yon hill-side brown and barren (where you and I as children played, Starting the rabbit to his warren), I hear the sandy, shrill cascade

Leap down upon the vale, and spill his heart out round the muffled mill.