SHALL I forget on this side of the grave?
I promise nothing: you must wait and see,
Patient and brave.

(O my soul, watch with him, and he with me.)

Shall I forget in peace of Paradise?

I promise nothing: follow, friend, and see,
Faithful and wise.

(O my soul, lead the way he walks with me.)

DEAD HOPE.

[Macmillan's Magazine 1868.

21 February 1865.]

HOPE newborn one pleasant morn

Died at even:

Hope dead lives nevermore,
No not in heaven.

If his shroud were but a cloud
To weep itself away-

Or were he buried underground
To sprout some day!

But dead and gone is dead and gone,
Vainly wept upon.

Nought we place above his face
To mark the spot,

But it shows a barren place
In our lot.

Hope has birth no more on earth
Morn or even;

Hope dead lives nevermore,
No not in heaven.

I.

LIFE flows down to death; we cannot bind
That current that it should not flee:
Life flows down to death, as rivers find
The inevitable sea.

2.

Wherefore art thou strange, and not my mother?
Thou hast stolen my heart and broken it:
Would that I might call thy sons 'My brother,'
Call thy daughters 'Sister sweet':
Lying in thy lap, not in another,
Dying at thy feet.

Farewell, land of love, Italy,
Sister-land of Paradise:

With mine own feet I have trodden thee,
Have seen with mine own eyes:

I remember, thou forgettest me,
I remember thee.

Blessed be the land that warms my heart,
And the kindly clime that cheers,
And the cordial faces clear from art,

And the tongue sweet in mine ears:
Take my heart, its truest tenderest part,
Dear land, take my tears.

Jiriczek, Englische Dichter.

3.

Men work and think, but women feel;
And so (for I'm a woman, I)

And so I should be glad to die,

30

And cease from impotence of zeal,
And cease from hope, and cease from dread,
And cease from yearnings without gain,
And cease from all this world of pain,
And be at peace among the dead.

Why should I seek and never find

That something which I have not had?
Fair and unutterably sad

The world hath sought time out of mind.
Our words have been already said,

Our deeds have been already done: There's nothing new beneath the sun, But there is peace among the dead.

So my spirit fails
After thee.

As dew leaves not a trace
On the green earth's face;
I, no trace
On thy face.

Its goal the river knows,
Dewdrops find a way,
Sunlight cheers the rose
In her day:

Shall I, lone sorrow past,
Find thee at the last?

Sorrow past,
Thee at last?

FOR THINE OWN SAKE, O MY GOD.
[A Pageant etc. 1881.]

WEARIED of sinning, wearied of repentance,
Wearied of self, I turn, my God, to Thee;
To Thee, my Judge, on Whose allrighteous sentence
Hangs mine eternity:

I turn to Thee, I plead Thyself with Thee,-
Be pitiful to me.

Wearied I loathe myself, I loathe my sinning,
My stains, my festering sores, my misery:
Thou the Beginning, Thou ere my beginning
Didst see and didst foresee

Me miserable, me sinful, ruined me, -
I plead Thyself with Thee.

I plead Thyself with Thee Who art my maker,
Regard Thy handiwork that cries to Thee;