O father, wheresoe'er thou be,

Who pledgest now thy gallant son; A shot, ere half thy draught be done, Hath still'd the life that beat from thee.

O mother, praying God will save

Thy sailor,-while thy head is bow'd, His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud Drops in his vast and wandering grave.

Ye know no more than I who wrought
At that last hour to please him well;
Who mused on all I had to tell,
And something written, something
thought.

Expecting still his advent home:
And ever met him on his way
With wishes, thinking, here to-day,
Or here to-morrow will he come.

somewhere, meek unconscious dove,
That sittest ranging golden hair;
And glad to find thyself so fair,
Poor child, that waitest for thy love!
For now her father's chimney glows
In expectation of a guest

And thinking "This will please him best,"

She takes a ribbon or a rose;

For he will see them on to-night; And with the thought her color burns;

And, having left the glass, she turns Once more to set a ringlet right;

And, even when she turn'd, the curse
Had fallen, and her future lord
Was drown'd in passing thro' the
ford,

Or kill'd in falling from his horse.

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.
But since it pleased a vanish'd eye,

I go to plant it on his tomb,
That if it can it there may bloom,
Or dying, there at least may die.

IX.

FAIR ship, that from the Italian shore
Sailest the placid ocean-plains
With my lost Arthur's loved re-
mains,

Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er.

And letters unto trembling hands; And, thy dark freight, a vanish'd life. So bring him: we have idle dreams: This look of quiet flatters thus Our home-bred fancies: O to us, The fools of habit, sweeter seems To rest beneath the clover sod,

That takes the sunshine and the rains,

Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of God;

Than if with thee the roaring wells Should gulf him fathom deep in brine;

And hands so often clasp'd in mine Should toss with tangle and with shells.

XI.

CALM is the morn without a sound Calm as to suit a calmer grief,

And only thro' the faded leaf The chestnut pattering to, the ground:

Calm and deep peace on this high wold

And on these dews that drench the furze,

And all the silvery gossamers That twinkle into green and gold:

Calm and still light on yon great plain That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,

And crowded farms and lessening
towers,

To mingle with the bounding main;
Calm and deep peace in this wide air,
These leaves that redden to the fall;
And in my heart, if calm at all,
If any calm, a calm despair:

Calm on the seas, and silver sleep, And waves that sway themselves in rest,

And dead calm in that noble breast Which heaves but with the heaving deep.

XII.

Lo, as a dove when up she springs
To bear thro' Heaven a tale of woe,
Some dolorous message knit below
The wild pulsation of her wings;

And forward dart again, and play About the prow, and back return To where the body sits, and learn, That I have been an hour away.

XIII.

TEARS of the widower, when he sees
A late-lost form that sleep reveals,
And moves his doubtful arms, and
feels

Her place is empty, fall like these;

Which weep a loss forever new,

A void where heart on heart reposed;

XV.

and clos'd,

Silence, till I be silent too.

Which weep the comrade of my choice
An awful thought, a life removed,
The human-hearted man I loved,
A Spirit, not a breathing voice.
Come Time, and teach me, many
years,

I do not suffer in a dream;

For now so strange do these things

seem

Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;

My fancies time to rise on wing

And glance about the approaching sails,

As tho' they brought but merchants' bales,

And not the burthen that they bring.

XIV.

If one should bring me this report, That thou hadst touch'd the land today,

And I went down unto the quay, And found thee lying in the port; And standing, muffled round with woe, Should see thy passengers in rank Come stepping lightly down the plank,

And beckoning unto those they know;

And if along with these should come The man I held as half divine;

And roar from yonder dropping day; The last red leaf is whirl'd away, The rooks are blown about the skies; The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd, The cattle huddled on the lea;

And wildly dash'd on tower and tree The sunbeam strikes along the world: And but for fancies, which aver

That all thy motions gently pass Athwart a plane of molten glass, I scarce could brook the strain and stir That makes the arren branches oud; And but for fear it is not so,

The wild unrest that lives in woe Would dote and pore on yonder cloud That rises upward always higher,

And onward drags a laboring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire.

XVI.

WHAT words are these have fall'n from me?

Can calm despair and wild unrest
Be tenants of a single breast,
Or sorrow such a changeling be?
Or doth she only seem to take

The touch of change in calm or
storm;

But knows no more of transient form

In her deep self, than some dead lake

That holds the shadow of a lark
Hung in the shadow of a heaven?
Or has the shock, so harshly given,
Confused me like the unhappy bark
That strikes by night a craggy shelf,
And staggers blindly ere she sink?
And stunn'd me from my power to
think

And all my knowledge of myself;
And made me that delirious man
Whose fancy fuses old and new,
And flashes into false and true,
And mingles all without a plan ?

XVII.

THOU Comest, much wept for: such a breeze

Compell'd thy canvas, and my prayer Was as the whisper of an air To breathe thee over lonely seas.

For I in spirit saw thee move

Thro' circles of the bounding sky, Week after week: the days go by: Come quick, thou bringest all I love. Henceforth, wherever thou may'st

roam,

My blessing, like a line of light, Is on the waters day and night, And like a beacon guards thee home. So may whatever tempest mars

Mid-ocean spare thee, sacred bark; And balmy drops in summer dark Slide from the bosom of the stars.

So kind an office hath been done,

Such precious relics brought by thee;

The dust of him I shall not see Till all my widow'd race be run.

XVIII.

TIs well; 'tis something; we may

stand

Where he in English earth is laid, And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land. 'Tis little; but it looks in truth

As if the quiet bones were blest Among familiar names to rest And in the places of his youth.

Come then, pure hands, and bear the head

That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep,

And come, whatever loves to weep, And hear the ritual of the dead.

Ah yet, ev'n yet, if this might be,
I, falling on his faithful heart,
Would breathing through his lips
impart

The life that almost dies in me;
That dies not, but endures with pain,

And slowly forms the firmer mind, Treasuring the look it cannot find, The words that are not heard again.

XIX.

THE Danube to the Severn gave The darken'd heart that beat no more;

They laid him by the pleasant shore, And in the hearing of the wave.

There twice a day the Severn fills;

The salt sea-water passes by,

And hushes half the babbling Wye,

And makes a silence in the hills.
The Wye is hush'd nor moved along,

And hush'd by deepest grief of all,
When fill'd with tears that cannot
fall,

I brim with sorrow drowning song.

The tide flows down, the wave again
Is vocal in its wooded walls;
And I can speak a little then.
My deeper anguish also falls

My lighter moods are like to these,

That out of words a comfort win; But there are other griefs within, And tears that at their fountain freeze :

For by the hearth the children sit

Cold in that atmosphere of Death, And scarce endure to draw the breath,

Or like to noiseless phantoms flit:

But open converse is there none,

So much the vital spirits sink To see the vacant chair, and think, "How good! how kind! and he is gone."

XXI.

I SING to him that rests below, And, since the grasses round me wave,

I take the grasses of the grave, And make them pipes whereon to blow.

The traveller hears me now and then, And sometimes harshly will he speak:

"This fellow would make weakness weak,

And melt the waxen hearts of men."

Another answers, "Let him be,

He loves to make parade of pain, That with his piping he may gain The praise that comes to constancy."

A third is wroth, Is this an hour
For private sorrow's barren song,
When more and more the people
throng

The chairs and thrones of civil power? "A time to sicken and to swoon, When Science reaches forth her

arms

To feel from world to world, and charms

Her secret from the latest moon?"

Behold, ye speak an idle thing:
Ye never knew the sacred dust;
I do but sing because I must,
And pipe but as the linnets sing:

And one is glad; her note is gay,
For now her little ones have ranged;
And one is sad; her note is changed,
Because her brood is stol'n away..

XXII.

THE path by which we twain did go, Which led by tracts that pleased us well,

Thro' four sweet years arose and fell, From flower to flower, from snow to

snow:

And we with singing cheer'd the way,

And crown'd with all the season lent, From April on to April went, And glad at heart from May to May: But where the path we walk'd began To slant the fifth autumnal slope, As we descended, following Hope, There sat the Shadow fear'd of man; Who broke our fair companionship,

And spread his mantle dark and cold, And wrapt thee formless in the fold, And dull'd the murmur on thy lip, And bore thee where I could not see Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste, And think that somewhere in the waste

The Shadow sits and waits for me.