With dinning sound my ears are rife, My tremulous tongue faltereth, I lose my colour, I lose my breath, I drink the cup of a costly death, Brimm'd with delirious draughts of warmest life.

I die with my delight, before

I hear what I would hear from thee;

Yet tell my name again to me,

I would be dying evermore,

So dying ever, Eleänore.

I.

My life is full of weary days,

But good things have not kept aloof, Nor wander'd into other ways:

I have not lack'd thy mild reproof, Nor golden largess of thy praise.

And now shake hands across the brink
Of that deep grave to which I go:
Shake hands once more: I cannot sink
So far-far down, but I shall know
Thy voice, and answer from below.

II.

When in the darkness over me

The four-handed mole shall scrape,

Plant thou no dusky cypress-tree,

Nor wreathe thy cap with doleful crape,

But pledge me in the flowing grape.

ΙΟΙ

102

MY LIFE IS FULL OF WEARY DAYS.

And when the sappy field and wood

Grow green beneath the showery gray,
And rugged barks begin to bud,

And thro' damp holts new-flush'd with may,
Ring sudden scritches of the jay,

Then let wise Nature work her will,
And on my clay her darnel grow;
Come only, when the days are still,
And at my headstone whisper low,
And tell me if the woodbines blow.

EARLY SONNETS.

I.

ΤΟ

As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood, And ebb into a former life, or seem

To lapse far back in some confused dream

To states of mystical similitude;

If one but speaks or hems or stirs his chair,
Ever the wonder waxeth more and more,
So that we say, 'All this hath been before,
All this hath been, I know not when or where.'
So, friend, when first I look'd upon your face,
Our thought gave answer each to each, so true-
Opposed mirrors each reflecting each-
That tho' I knew not in what time or place,
Methought that I had often met with you,
And either lived in either's heart and speech.

103

II.

TO J. M. K.

My hope and heart is with thee-thou wilt be
A latter Luther, and a soldier-priest

To scare church-harpies from the master's feast;
Our dusted velvets have much need of thee:
Thou art no sabbath-drawler of old saws,
Distill'd from some worm-canker'd homily;
But spurr'd at heart with fieriest energy
To embattail and to wall about thy cause
With iron-worded proof, hating to hark
The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone

Half God's good sabbath, while the worn-out clerk
Brow-beats his desk below. Thou from a throne

Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the dark

Arrows of lightnings. I will stand and mark.