Unclose, sad shrine, thy shrouded breast,
Expectant to receive him;
Give, ere the dust to dust return,
All that thou hast to give him —

One hallowing rite, one parting prayer,
Deep as the heart's pulsation;
One word that points to whence shall come
If ever, consolation.

One hour that holds the cherished dead
For us, the ever dying;
We, wrung by Nature's agony,
And he, screnely lying.

Sound, wailing Anthem — lend thy voice
To thoughts we cannot utter,
Till, in the dim, mysterious void,

Two haggard shades, in robes of mist,
For longer years than each could tell,
Joined by a stern gyve, wrist with wrist,
Have roamed the courts of hell.

Their blank eyes know each other not;
Their cold hearts hate this union drear ...
Yet one poor ghost was Launcelot,
And one was Guinevere.

How is it I have prospered so? How is it I have struck
Throughout the hull of my ka-reer jest one long streak of luck?
Intellijunce, young man; that's all. I reason an' reflec' —
'Tis jest intellijunce an' brains an' straightout intellec'.

W'en I git up I'm allus sure to dress me right foot first,
Or put my drawers on wrong side out, or hev my vest reversed,
For them are signs you'll hev good luck; an eddicated man
Knows all them signs, an' shapes his life on a consistent plan.

I've strewed ol' hoss-shoes down the road for somethin' like a mile,

I curse the night, yet doth from day mee hide,
The Pandionian birds I tyre with mones,
The ecchoes euen are weari'd with my grones,
Since absense did mee from my blisse diuide.
Each dreame, each toy my reason doth affright,
And when remembrance reades the curious scroule
Of pass'd contentments caused by her sight,
Then bitter anguish doth inuade my soule.
While thus I liue ecclipsed of her light,
O mee! what better am I than the mole,
Or those whose zenith is the only pole,
Whose hemisphere is hid with so long night,

Mr. Werner Laurie
Is not at all sorry
He undertook the publication
Of this instructive compilation.

Fame, who with golden pennes abroad dost range
Where Phaebus leaues the night, and brings the day;
Fame, in one place who, restlesse, dost not stay
Till thou hast flowne from Atlas vnto Gange;
Fame, enemie to time that still doth change,
And in his changing course would make decay
What here below he findeth in his way,
Euen making vertue to her selfe looke strange;
Daughter of heauen, now all thy trumpets sound,
Raise vp thy head vnto the highest skie,
With wonder blaze the gifts in her are found;

When the diplomats cease from their capers,
Their red-tape requests and replies,
Their shuttlecock battle of papers,
Their saccharine parley of lies;
When the plenipotentiary wrangle
Is tied in a chaos of knots,
And becomes an unwindable tangle
Of verbals unmarried to thoughts;
When they've anguished and argued profoundly,
Asserted, assumed, and averred,
Then I end up the dialogue roundly
With my monosyllabical word.

Not mine is a speech academic,
No lexicon lingo is mine,
And in politic parley, polemic,

So grieuous is my paine, so painefull life,
That oft I finde mee in the armes of death,
But, breath halfe-gone, that tyrant called Death
Who others killes, restoreth mee to life:
For while I thinke how woe shall ende with life,
And that I quiet peace shall ioye by death,
That thought euen doth o'repowre the paines of death,
And call mee home againe to lothed life.
Thus doth mine euill transcend both life and death,
While no death is so bad as is my life,
Nor no life such which doth not ende by death,
And Protean changes turne my death and life.

I

Lives there not, still replaced as time goes by,
 Some man who wears the wide earth's crown of woe,
 Pain's Victim-Priest, a shadow cast below
By Him that Victim-Priest enthroned on high?
Mounts not that man elect his Calvary
 Like Christ by choice not doom? If this be so
 The world's blind prophets ill the graces know
 Men reap from that perennial agony!
Damien! no name like thine exalts old story!
 Dread Leper-Saint, pray well for me and mine,

If the autumn winds are all
In a tender sort of swoon,
You can hear the cricket call,
Any autumn afternoon;
And should you heed him, soon
You will hear, it may befall,
Dreamy language wing its way
Through his low and dreamy lay:

“By the mist-empurpled skies,
By the red leaves lying sere,
I know that Summer dies
In the lands that held her dear.
And with his sparkling spear,
With his icy-brilliant eyes,
Snowy-bearded Winter speeds
On his whitest of white steeds!

“Oh, the days will shortly be,