"Dear Friend, one volume of your life I read
Beneath these vines: you placed it in my hand
And made it mine, but how the tale has sped
Since then, I know not, or can understand
From this fair ending only. Let me see
The intervening chapters, dark and bright,
In order, as you lived them. Give to-night
Unto the Past, dear Ernest, and to me!"
Thus I, with doubt and loving hesitance,
Lest I should touch a nerve he fain would hide;
But he, with calm and reassuring glance,
In which no troubled shadow lay, replied:

That mingled light and darkness are no more In this new life, than are the sun and shade Of painted landscapes: distant lies the shore Where last we parted, Philip: how I made The journey, what adventures on the road, What haps I met, what struggles, what success Of fame, or gold, or place, concerns you less, Dear friend, than how I lost that sorest load I started with, and came to dwell at last In the House Beautiful. There but remains A fragment here and there, wild, broken strains And scattered voices speaking from the Past." "Let me those broken voices hear," I said, "And I shall know the rest." "Well-be it so. You, who would write Resurgam' o'er my dead, The resurrection of my heart shall know."

Then Edith rose, and up the terraces
Went swiftly to the house; but soon we spied
Her white dress gleam, returning through the trees,
And, softly flushed, she came to Ernest's side,
A volume in her hand. But he delayed

Awhile his task, revolving leaf by leaf
With tender interest, now that ancient grief
No more had power to make his heart afraid;
For pain, that only lives in memory,

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,
(For you and Edith only, many a page!)

Then slow deliverance, with the gaps of years
Between, and final struggles into life,

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 :-

THE

DARKNESS.

HE thread I held has slipped from out my hand:

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,
The sudden night surprised me unawares :
I see no pitying star above me shine,

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 son of light, by darkness overcome,
A bird of air, my broken wings I fold,

A harp of joy, my shattered strings are dumb.

And every gift that Life to me had given
Lies at my feet, in useless fragments trod :
There is no justice or in Earth or Heaven:
There is no pity in the heart of God.

THE TORSO.

I.

I

N clay the statue stood complete,
As beautiful a form, and fair,

As ever walked a Roman street

Or breathed the blue Athenian air:
The perfect limbs, divinely barė,
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,
Its lifted brow was crowned with flame
And purified from touch of blame :
Yet wholly human was the face,

And over them who saw it came
The knowledge of their own disgrace.

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
Their final hour of triumph caught;
The clay was tempered with my tears,
The forces of my spirit wrought
With hands of fire to shape my thought,
That when, complete, the statue stood,
To marble resurrection brought,
The Master might pronounce it good.

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 cloven brow is knit with pain:
Mute lips, and blank, reproachful eyes
Unto my hands appeal in vain.

My hands shall never work again :
My hope is dead, my strength is spent:
This fatal wreck shall now remain
The ruined sculptor's monument.

THE DEAD MARCH.

THE

I.

HE April sky with sunshine filled the street, And lightly fell the tread of pattering feet, As on the last year's leaves the April rain. The glaring houses wore a foreign grace; A foreign sweetness shone on Labor's face, And open lay, relaxed, the hand of Gain.

II.

My sorrow slept; I breathed the peace of Spring.
One fledgling hope outreached a timorous wing:
Concealed, at least, and sacred was my pain,
When, suddenly, the dreadful trumpets blew,
And every wind my gloomy secret knew,

And all the echoes hurled it back again.