Have pity thou, who all my heart hast known!
Come back from thy far place and heal my pain!
My long, unshared, uncheered days wax and wane;
The strong suns mock me, I am so alone;
The hurrying winds sweep by, nor heed my moan;
The climbing stars of night, a shining train,
With curious eyes behold me wait in vain,—
And Nature's very self doth me disown.

I did not know how blest I was, God wot,
When thy dear voice made music for my ears,
Fostered my starveling joys and shamed my fears:
Now thou art dumb; and I, by thee forgot,

The great red sun glows like a thing accurst;
Along the east the sailless ocean lies,
Wide sweeping, with low waves that sink and rise
In utter weariness. The bare hills thirst,
For the fierce floods that once were wont to burst,
With lightning's flash, in answer to their cries,
Their thunder tones far echoing in the skies.
The plains that shone in morning's light immersed,
Rich with the glory ripened harvests gave,
And silver fretted by a thousand streams,
Now brown and lifeless merge in lurid space:
Some withered reeds in ghostly breezes wave,

I LEFT my home;—'twas in a little vale,
Shelter'd from snow-storms by the stately pines;
A small clear river wander'd quietly,
Its smooth waves only cut by the light barks
Of fishers, and but darken'd by the shade
The willows flung, when to the southern wind
They threw their long green tresses. On the slope
Were five or six white cottages, whose roofs
Reach'd not to the laburnum's height, whose boughs
Shook over them bright showers of golden bloom.
Sweet silence reign'd around:—no other sound
Came on the air, than when the shepherd made

Why should I strive to express it?
What should I care?
Ye will not know nor confess it
How she was fair.
Fades the song ere I begin it,
Falters and dies:—
Ah! had you seen her a minute,—
Looked in her eyes!

When she and I shall be lying
Dust at your feet,
Hours such as these shall be flying,
Life be as sweet,—
Women as lovely hereafter,
Tender and wise,
Born with her bloom and her laughter,—
Not with her eyes!

Ye lone, majestic Silences that keep
The hoary secrets of primeval time!
Titans, that with dark frontlets ponder deep
On unconjectured mysteries sublime,
Like minds of lofty mould that stand alone,
Wrapped in a wilderness of mighty thought—
The shadow of your solemn power is thrown
Over the world below and it has caught
An awèd quiet, sombre yet serene,
A grave repose, a cold, autumnal gleam;
While past your firm feet, shod in russet green,
With joyous murmur flows the broad, bright stream,
As light and song and laughter might illume

J ESUS , there is no dearer name than thine
Which Time has blazoned on his mighty scroll;
No wreaths nor garlands ever did entwine
So fair a temple of so vast a soul.

There every virtue set his triumph-seal;
Wisdom, conjoined with strength and radiant grace,
In a sweet copy Heaven to reveal,
And stamp perfection on a mortal face.

Once on the earth wert thou, before men's eyes,
That did not half thy beauteous brightness see;
E'en as the emmet does not read the skies,
Nor our weak orbs look through immensity.

If we one day had guessed how death
Would claim at last our Harlequin—
He to whom laughter was as breath,
He of the lifted brow and chin
And eyes that seemed as though just turned
From pages where a love-song burned.

One would have doubtless said, “Some night,
Blown on the Carnival's high gust,
His life will go out like a light
Between a kiss and dagger-thrust,
And his fantastic ghost will rise
With a black mask across its eyes.”

Or one might say, “Some Springtime dawn
Will find him, in all certainty,
Full-flung upon a dewy lawn

You looked at me with eyes grown bright with pain,
Like some trapped thing's. And then you moved your head
Slowly from side to side, as though the strain
Ached in your throat with anger and with dread.

And then you turned and left me, and I stood
With a queer sense of deadness over me,
And only wondered dully that you could
Fasten your trench-coat up so carefully

Till you were gone. Then all the air was thick
With my last words that seemed to leap and quiver;
And in my heart I heard the little click
Of a door that closes—quietly, forever.

The slowly-moving fingers minutes find,
And hours and days, and e'en the lengthening years;
As much before them still as is behind,
No want their circling movement ever fears.
How different Man! By sudden impulse driven,
Now in the distant past he seeks for rest;
Now in the far-off future is his heaven;
“He never is, but always to be blest.”
His morn is with his noon, his noon with night,
His hand can never point to one true hour;
But marks one past, or future in its flight,
For o'er the present he has lost all power;

The larks had nestlings; dreaming of no hurt,
Joyous they thrilled their love-song overhead:
Back to his watch,—savage, erect, alert,—
The brigand Hawk returned with talons red.