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: "6 Howe'er obscure the utterance be, The lamp you lighted in the olden time A poet's journal, writ in fire and tears Which the heart shrank from, as 't were death instead." Then, with a loving glance towards his wife, DARKNESS. HE thread I held has slipped from out my hand: THE In this dark labyrinth, without a clew, Groping for guidance, stricken blind, I stand, A helpless child that knows not what to do. 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 clay the statue stood complete, As beautiful a form, and fair, As ever walked a Roman street Or breathed the blue Athenian air: And in the features, fine and rare, 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 With hands of fire to shape my thought, 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 16 Where I had dreamed its shrine might be : Its beauty and its majesty. VI. The torso prone before me lies; My hands shall never work again : TE THE DEAD MARCH. I. HE April sky with sunshine filled the street, 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. The dead was fortunate, IV. he could not hear: The mourners comforted, behind his bier : 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, Where the sea-gulls come and go: The sky is gray above me, There is no fisherman's pinnace In the world's deserted round. I pine for something human, |