Awhile his task, revolving leaf by leaf Like battle-scars, it is no pain to show. " Here, Philip, are the secrets you would know," He said: "Howe'er obscure the utterance be, The lamp you lighted in the olden time Will show my heart's-blood beating through the rhyme : A poet's journal, writ in fire and tears At first, blind protestations, blinder rage, Then slow deliverance, with the gaps of years Which the heart shrank from, as 't were death instead." Then, with a loving glance towards his wife, Which she as fondly answered, thus he read : DARKNESS. HE thread I held has slipped from out my hand: THE In this dark labyrinth, without a clew, When all the glory of the morn was mine, I hear no voice in answer to my prayers. At every step, I stumble on the road; Fain would I rest, the wild hours whirl me on; What business have I in this blank abode, Whence Love, and Hope, and even Faith, are gone? A child of summer, shivering in the cold, - A harp of joy, my shattered strings are dumb. And every gift that Life to me had given THE TORSO. I. IN stood complet N clay the statue stood complete, As ever walked a Roman street Or breathed the blue Athenian air: The perfect limbs, divinely bare, Their old, heroic freedom kept, And in the features, fine and rare, A calm, immortal sweetness slept. II. O'er common men it towered, a god, And smote their meaner life with shame, For while its feet the highway trod, And over them who saw it came III. It stood, regardless of the crowd, And simply showed what men might be: Its solemn beauty disavowed The curse of lost humanity. Erect and proud, and pure and free, It overlooked each loathsome law Whereunto others bend the knee, And only what was noble saw. IV. The patience and the hope of years V. But in the night an enemy, Who could not bear the wreath should grace My ready forehead, stole the key And hurled my statue from its base; And now its fragments strew the place Where I had dreamed its shrine might be: The stains of common earth deface Its beauty and its majesty. VI. The torso prone before me lies; THE DEAD MARCH. I. HE April sky with sunshine filled the street, As on the last year's leaves the April rain. II. My sorrow slept; I breathed the peace of Spring. III. Before a stranger's corpse the trumpets cried Then hollow horns took up the fatal strain, Till tongues of fire went flashing through the air, The myriad clamors of a sole despair, The cry of grief that knows its cry is vain. IV. The dead was fortunate, — he could not hear: Thro' happy crowds advanced the funeral train : Mine was the sorrow, mine the deathlike pang, And tears, that burned the eyelids as they sprang, To hear the awful music of my pain. I ON THE HEADLAND. SIT on the lonely headland, The sky is gray above me, And the sea is gray below. There is no fisherman's pinnace In the world's deserted round. I pine for something human, go: |