THE FACE

THESE dreary hours of hopeless gloom
Are all of life I fain would know ;
I would but feel my life consume,
While bring they back mine ancient woe;
For, midst the clouds of grief and shame
That crowd around, one face I see ;
It is the face I dare not name,
The face none ever name to me.

I saw it first when in the dance
Borne, like a falcon, down the hall,
He stay❜d to cure some rude mischance
My girlish deeds had caused to fall;
He smil❜d, he danced with me, he made
A thousand ways to soothe my pain;
And sleeplessly all night I pray'd
That I might see that smile again.

I saw it next, a thousand times;
And every time its kind smile near'd ;
Oh! twice ten thousand glorious chimes
My heart rang out, when he appear'd ;

What was I then, that others' thought
Could alter so my thought of him;
That I could be by others taught
His image from my heart to dim!

I saw it last, when black and white
Shadows went struggling o'er it wild;
When he regain'd my long-lost sight,
And I with cold obeisance smil'd;
I did not see it fade from life;
My letters o'er his heart they found;
They told me in death's last hard strife
His dying hands around them wound.

Although my scorn that face did maim,
Even when its love would not depart ;
Although my laughter smote its shame
And drave it swording through his heart;
Although its death-gloom grasps my brain
With crushing unrefus'd despair;
That I may dream that face again
God still must find alone my prayer.

FROM "FESTUS"

YOUTH, LOVE, AND DEATH

Lucifer. And we might trust these youths and maidens fair,

The world was made for nothing but love, love.

Now I think it was made most to be burn'd. Festus. The night is glooming on us. It is the hour

When lovers will speak lowly, for the sake Of being nigh each other; and when love Shoots up the eye, like morning on the east, Making amends for the long northern night They pass'd, ere either knew the other lov'd ;

The hour of hearts! Say gray-beards what they please,

The heart of age is like an emptied wine

cup;

Loathes life the moment that life's riddle is read.

The knot of our existence solv'd, all things Loose-ended lie, and useless. Life is had And lo! we sigh, and say, can this be all? It is not what we thought; it is very well, But we want something more. There is but death.

And when we have said and seen, done, had, enjoy'd

And suffer'd, maybe, all we have wish'd or fear'd,

From fame to ruin, and from love to loathing,

There can come but one more change -try it death.

When, like a sea-shell with its sea-born strain,

My soul aye rang with music of the lyre, And my heart shed its lore as leaves their dew

A honey dew, and throve on what it shed. All things I lov'd; but song I lov'd in chief.

Imagination is the air of mind,

Judgment its earth and memory its main, Passion its fire. I was at home in heaven. Swiftlike, I liv'd above; once touching earth,

The meanest thing might master me: long wings

But baffled. Still and still I harp'd on song.

Oh! to create within the mind is bliss, And shaping forth the lofty thought, or lovely,

We seek not, need not heaven: and when the thought,

Cloudy and shapeless, first forms on the mind,

Slow darkening into some gigantic make, How the heart shakes with pride and fear, as heaven

Quakes under its own thunder; or as might,

Of old, the mortal mother of a god, When first she saw him lessening up the skies.

And I began the toil divine of verse, Which, like a burning bush, doth guest a god.

But this was only wing-flapping

flight;

-

not

Men who have forged gods utter'd→ made them pass:

Sons of the sons of God, who in olden days Did leave their passionless heaven for earth and woman,

Brought an immortal to a mortal breast, And, rainbowlike the sweet earth clasping, left

A bright precipitate of soul, which lives Ever, and through the lines of sullen men, The dumb array of ages, speaks for all; Flashing by fits, like fire from an enemy's front;

Whose thoughts, like bars of sunshine in shut rooms,

Mid gloom, all glory, win the world to light;

Who make their very follies like their souls,

And like the young moon with a ragged edge,

Still in their imperfection beautiful; Whose weaknesses are lovely as their strengths,

Like the white nebulous matter between