Love, laughter, and the exultant Shot down in skirmish, or disas joy of song Have ebbed from me forever! Suddenly o'er me They swept again from their deep ocean bed, And in a tumult of delight, and strong trous rout Of battle, when the loud artillery drave Its iron wedges through the ranks of brave And doomed battalions, storming the redoubt. As youth, and beautiful as youth, Thou unknown hero sleeping by upbore me. A SHADOW I SAID unto myself, if I were dead, What would befall these chil. dren? What would be Their fate, who now are looking up to me For help and furtherance? Their lives, I said, Would be a volume wherein I have read But the first chapters, and no longer see To read the rest of their dear history, So full of beauty and so full of dread. Be comforted; the world is very old, And generations pass, as they have passed, A troop of shadows moving with the sun; Thousands of times has the old tale been told; The world belongs to those who come the last, They will find hope and strength as we have done. A NAMELESS GRAVE A SOLDIER of the Union mustered out,' the sea In thy forgotten grave! with se cret shame I feel my pulses beat, my fore head burn, When I remember thou hast giver for me All that thou hadst, thy life, thy very name, And I can give thee nothing in return. SLEEP LULL me to sleep, ye winds, whos fitful sound Seems from some faint Æolian harp-string caught; Seal up the hundred wakeful eyes of thought As Hermes with his lyre in sleep profound The hundred wakeful eyes of Argus bound; For I am weary, and am overwrought With too much toil, with too much care distraught, And with the iron crown of an guish crowned. Lay thy soft hand upon my brow and cheek, O peaceful Sleep! until from pain released I breathe again uninterrupted breath! Is the inscription on an unknown Ah, with what subtle meaning did Still gazing at them through the open door, Nor wholly reassured and comforted By promises of others in their stead, Which, though more splendid, may not please him more; So Nature deals with us, and takes away Our playthings one by one, and by the hand Leads us to rest so gently, that we go GADDI mi fece; il Ponte Vecchio Scarce knowing if we wish to go or Due volte i miei maggior. Me HERE lies the gentle humorist, By ocean streams, and from the silt and weeds Lifting thy golden filaments and seeds, Thy sun-illumined spires, thy crown and crest! White phantom city, whose untrodden streets Are rivers, and whose pave ments are the shifting Shadows of palaces and strips of sky; I wait to see thee vanish like the fleets Seen in mirage, or towers of cloud uplifting In air their unsubstantial masonry. Deserted, on the curtained window-panes Not in the shouts and plaudits Of rooms where children sleep, on All things are symbols: the exter- THREE Silences there are the nal shows Of Nature have their image in the mind, As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves; The song-birds leave us at the summer's close, first of speech, The second of desire, the third of thought; This is the lore a Spanish monk, distraught With dreams and visions, was the first to teach. Only the empty nests are left be- These Silences, commingling each |