STANZAS TO

1.

THOUGH the day of my destiny's over,
And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover

The faults which so many could find; Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted, It shrunk not to share it with me,

And the love which my spirit hath painted

It never hath found but in thee.

2.

Then when nature around me is smiling,
The last smile which answers to mine,

I do not believe it beguiling

Because it reminds me of thine;

And when winds are at war with the ocean,
As the breasts I believed in with me,

If their billows excite an emotion

It is that they bear me from thee.

3.

Though the rock of my last hope is shiver'd,
And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is deliver'd
To pain-it shall not be its slave.

There is many a pang to pursue me:

They may crush, but they shall not contemnThey may torture, but shall not subdue me— "Tis of thee that I think-not of them.

4.

Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake,

Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though slander'd, thou never could'st shake,-
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,

Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me,
Nor, mute, that the world might belie.

5.

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,

Nor the war of the many with one

If

my soul was not fitted to prize it, 'Twas folly not sooner to shun: And if dearly that error hath cost me,

And more than I once could foresee, I have found that, whatever it lost me, It could not deprive me of thee.

6.

From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd,
Thus much I at least may recall,

It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd
Deserved to be dearest of all:

In the desert a fountain is springing,

In the wide waste there still is a tree, And a bird in the solitude singing,

Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

DARKNESS..

I HAD a dream, which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

Morn came, and went-and came, and brought no day,

And men forgot their passions in the dread

Of this their desolation; and all hearts

Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:

And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,

The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,

The habitations of all things which dwell,

Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face ;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch :
A fearful hope was all the world contain❜d;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks

Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits

The flashes fell upon them; some lay down

And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed

Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up

With mad disquietude on the dull sky,

The pall of a past world; and then again

With curses cast them down upon the dust,

And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd,

And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,

And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless-they were slain for food :
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again;-a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom : no love was left;

All earth was but one thought—and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang

Of famine fed upon all entrails-men