Than that the victor Hours should scorn

The long result of love, and boast, 'Behold the man that loved and lost, But all he was is overworn.'

II.

Old Yew, which graspest at the stones That name the under-lying dead, Thy fibres net the dreamless head, Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.

The seasons bring the flower again,

And bring the firstling to the flock; And in the dusk of thee, the clock Beats out the little lives of men.

O not for thee the glow, the bloom,

Who changest not in any gale,

Nor branding summer suns avail To touch thy thousand years of gloom :

And gazing on thee, sullen tree,

Sick for thy stubborn hardihood, I seem to fail from out my blood And grow incorporate into thee.

III.

O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,

O Priestess in the vaults of Death, O sweet and bitter in a breath, What whispers from thy lying lip? 'The stars,' she whispers, 'blindly run;

A web is wov'n across the sky; From out waste places comes a cry, And murmurs from the dying sun :

'And all the phantom, Nature, stands

With all the music in her tone, A hollow echo of my own,A hollow form with empty hands.'

And shall I take a thing so blind,

Embrace her as my natural good; Or crush her, like a vice of blood, Upon the threshold of the mind?

IV.

To Sleep I give iny powers away;
My will is bondsman to the dark;
I sit within a helmless bark,
And with my heart I muse and say:

O heart, how fares it with thee now,
That thou should'st fail from thy

desire,

Who scarcely darest to inquire, 'What is it makes me beat so low?'

Something it is which thou hast lost,

Some pleasure from thine early years.
Break, thou deep vase of chilling
tears,

That grief hath shaken into frost !
Such clouds of nameless trouble cross
All night below the darken'd eyes;
With morning wakes the will, and
cries,

'Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.

V.

I sometimes hold it half a sin

To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,

A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er, Like coarsest clothes against the cold; But that large grief which these enfold Is given in outline and no more.

VI.

One writes, that 'Other friends remain,' That Loss is common to the race'And common is the commonplace, And vacant chaff well meant for grain.

O what to her shall be the end?
And what to me remains of good?
To her, perpetual maidenhood,
And unto me no second friend.

VII.

Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to
beat

So quickly, waiting for a hand,
A hand that can be clasp'd no more-
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here; but far away

The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.

VIII.

A happy lover who has come

To look on her that loves him well, Who'lights and rings the gateway bell, And learns her gone and far from home; He saddens, all the magic light

Dies off at once from bower and hall, And all the place is dark, and all The chambers emptied of delight: So find I every pleasant spot

In which we two were wont to meet, The field, the chamber, and the street, For all is dark where thou art not.

Yet as that other, wandering there

In those deserted walks, may find A flower beat with rain and wind, Which once she foster'd up with care; So seems it in my deep regret,

O my forsaken heart, with thee And this poor flower of poesy Which little cared for fades not yet.