SONG.

I.

A SPIRIT haunts the year's last hours
Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers:
To himself he talks ;

For at eventide, listening earnestly,

At his work you may hear him sob and sigh In the walks ;

Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks

Of the mouldering flowers:

Heavily hangs the broad sunflower

Over its grave i' the earth so chilly;

Heavily hangs the hollyhock,

Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.

II.

The air is damp, and hush'd, and close,

As a sick man's room when he taketh repose An hour before death;

My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves
At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves,
And the breath

Of the fading edges of box beneath,

And the year's last rose.

Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
Over its grave i' the earth so chilly;
Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.

death of a
flower
(by Miller

A CHARACTER.

WITH a half-glance upon the sky
At night he said, 'The wanderings
Of this most intricate Universe
Teach me the nothingness of things.'
Yet could not all creation pierce
Beyond the bottom of his eye.

He spake of beauty: that the dull

Saw no divinity in grass,

Life in dead stones, or spirit in air ;

Then looking as 'twere in a glass,

He smooth'd his chin and sleek'd his hair,

And said the earth was beautiful.

He spake of virtue: not the gods

More purely, when they wish to charm.

Pallas and Juno sitting by:

And with a sweeping of the arm,

And a lack-lustre dead-blue eye,

Devolved his rounded periods.

T

Most delicately hour by hour
He canvass'd human mysteries,
And trod on silk, as if the winds
Blew his own praises in his eyes,
And stood aloof from other minds
In impotence of fancied power.

With lips depress'd as he were meek,
Himself unto himself he sold:

Upon himself himself did feed:
Quiet, dispassionate, and cold,

And other than his form of creed,

With chisell'd features clear and sleek.

THE POET.

THE poet in a golden clime was born,

With golden stars above;

Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love.

He saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill,

He saw thro' his own soul.

The marvel of the everlasting will,
An open scroll,

Before him lay: with echoing feet he threaded

The secretest walks of fame :

The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed And wing'd with flame,

Like Indian reeds blown from his silver tongue, And of so fierce a flight,

From Calpe unto Caucasus they sung,

Filling with light