THE CONQUEROR WORM Lo! 'tis a gala night Within the lonesome latter years A play of hopes and fears, The music of the spheres. Mimes, in the form of God on high, And hither and thither fly Mere puppets they, who come and go At bidding of vast formless things That shift the scenery to and fro, Flapping from out their Condor wings Invisible Wo! That motley drama-oh, be sure It shall not be forgot! With its Phantom chased for evermore, Through a circle that ever returneth in To the self-same spot, And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot. But see, amid the mimic rout A crawling shape intrude! A blood-red thing that writhes from out It writhes!—it writhes !—with mortai pangs The mimes become its food, THOU wouldst be loved?-then let thy heart Thy grace, thy more than beauty, TO ONE IN PARADISE. THOU wast that all to me, love, For which my soul did pineA green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine. Ah, dream too bright to last! Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise But to be overcast ! A voice from out the Future cries, “On! on !”—but o'er the Past (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies Mute, motionless, aghast! For, alas! alas! with me The light of Life is o'er! "No more-no more-no more-" Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree. And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams. Are where thy dark eye glances, And where thy footstep gleans In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams. THE VALLEY OF UNREST. ; Once it smiled a silent dell Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven Over the violets there that lie In myriad types of the human eye- And weep above a nameless grave! They weep-from off their delicate stems THE CITY IN THE SEA. Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone Far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest. There shrines and palaces and towers (Time-eaten towers that tremble not!) Resemble nothing that is ours. Around, by lifting winds forgot, The melancholy waters lie. No rays from the holy heaven come down Gleams up the pinnacles far and free- |