But I feel that I am only

Yet more sad, and yet more lonely!

Then I turn to blue-eyed Hope,

And beg of her that she will ope

Her golden gates for me;

She is fair and full of grace,

But she hath the form and face

Of her mother Memory ;

Clear as air her glad voice ringeth,

Joyous are the songs she singeth,
Yet I hear them mournfully ;-

They are songs her mother taught her,
Crooning to her infant daughter,

As she lay upon her knee.

Many little ones she bore me,

Woe is me! in by-gone hours,

Who danced along and sang before me,

Scattering my way with flowers;

One by one

They are gone,

And their silent graves are seen,
Shining fresh with mosses green,
Where the rising sunbeams slope
O'er the dewy land of Hope.

But, when sweet Memory faileth,
And Hope looks strange and cold d;
When youth no more availeth,
And Grief grows over bold ;
When softest winds are dreary,

And summer sunlight weary,

And sweetest things uncheery,

We know not why;

When the crown of our desires

Weighs upon the brow and tires,

And we would die,

Die for, ah! we know not what,

Something we seem to have forgot,

Something we had, and now have not;

When the present is a weight

And the future seems our foe,

And with shrinking eyes we wait,
As one who dreads a sudden blow

In the dark, he knows not whence;
When Love at last his bright eye closes,
And the bloom upon his face,

That lends him such a living grace,
Is a shadow from the roses

Wherewith we have decked his bier,
Because he once was passing dear;

When we feel a leaden sense

Of nothingness and impotence,

Till we grow mad,

Then the body saith,

"There 's but one true faith;

All things are sad!"

A LOVE-DREAM.

PLEASANT thoughts come wandering,
When thou art far, from thee to me;
On their silver wings they bring

A very peaceful ecstasy,

A feeling of eternal spring;
So that Winter half forgets

Every thing but that thou art,

And, in his bewildered heart,
Dreameth of the violets,

Or those bluer flowers that ope,

Flowers of steadfast love and hope,

Watered by the living wells

Of memories dear, and dearer prophecies,

Where young Spring for ever dwells

In the sunshine of thine eyes.

I have most holy dreams of thee,

All night I have such dreams; And, when I wake, reality

No whit the darker seems;

Through the twin gates of Hope and Memory

They pour in crystal streams

From out an angel's calmèd eyes,

Who, from twilight till sunrise,

Far away in the upper deep,

Poised upon his shining wings,

Over us his watch doth keep,
And, as he watcheth, ever sings.

Through the still night I hear him sing,

Down-looking on our sleep;

I hear his clear, clear harp-strings ring,

And, as the golden notes take wing,

Gently downward hovering,

For very joy I weep ;