Breath freezes on my lips to moan; ... I knock and cry . . . Undone, undone ! This Nature, though the snows be down, No bird am I to sing in June, Good nests and berries red are Nature's To give away to better creatures And yet my days go on, go on. I ask less kindness to be done - Only to lift the turf unmown 66 From off the earth where it has grown, What harm would that do? Green anon DE PROFUNDIS. From gracious Nature have I won A Voice reproves me thereupon, More sweet than Nature's, when the drone The shuddering pines, and thunder on. God's Voice, not Nature's - night and noon He reigns above, he reigns alone: He reigns below, He reigns alone, By anguish which made pale the sun, However darkly days go on. -Take from my head the thorn-wreath brown! No mortal grief deserves that crown. O supreme Love, chief misery, The sharp regalia are for Thee 223 For us, ... whatever's undergone, Thou knowest, willest what is done. Whatever's lost, it first was won: That Heaven's new wine might show more clear. I praise Thee while my days go on! I praise Thee while my days go on; Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost, And, having in thy life-depth thrown ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. Tears, idle Tears. EARS, idle tears, I know not what they mean, TE Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more. Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail SWEET ARE THE ROSY MEMORIES. Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; Dear as remembered kisses after death, 225 ALFRED TENNYSON. Sweet are the Rosy Memories. WEET are the rosy memories of the lips they kiss no more: Sweet is the sight of sunset-sailing ships, Her hollow shell in Thought's forlornest wells : There is a pleasure which is born of pain: Why put the posy in the cold dead hand? Why plant the rose above the lonely grave? Why bring the corpse across the salt sea-wave? Why deem the dead more near in native land? Thy name hath been a silence in my life Oh, more to me than sister or than wife Once... and now - nothing! It is hard to know That such things have been, and are not, and yet Life loiters, keeps a pulse at even measure, And goes upon its business and its pleasure, And knows not all the depths of its regret. ROBERT BULWER LYTTON. Another Year. "ANOTHER year," she said, “another year, These roses I have watched with so much care, Have watched and tended without pain or fear, Shall bud and bloom for me exceeding fair Another year," she said, "another year." "Another year," she said, "another year, My life perhaps may bud and bloom again, May bud and bloom like these red roses here, Unlike them, tended with regret and pain Another year perhaps, another year. "Another year, ah yes, another year, When bloom my roses, all my life shall bloom ; When summer comes, my summer too 'll be here, And I shall cease to wander in this gloom Another year, ah yes, another year. "For ah, another year, another year, I'll set my life in richer, stronger soil, |