| Of that long cloud-bar in the West,
Whose nether edge, erelong, you see
The silvery chrism in turn anoint,
And then the tiniest rosy point
Touched doubtfully and timidly
Into the dark blue's chilly strip,
As some mute, wondering thing below,
Awakened by the thrilling glow,
Might, looking up, see Dian dip
One lucent foot's delaying tip
In Latmian fountains long ago.

Knew you what silence was before?
Here is no startle of dreaming bird
That sings in his sleep, or strives to
sing;

Nor noise of any living thing,
Here is no sough of branches stirred,
Only, now and then, a sigh,
Such as one hears by night on shore;
With fickle intervals between,
Such as Andromeda might have heard,
Sometimes far, and sometimes nigh,
And fancied the huge sea-beast unseen
Turning in sleep; it is the sea
That welters and wavers uneasily
Round the lonely reefs of Appledore.

THE WIND-HARP.

I TREASURE in secret some long, fine hair

Of tenderest brown, but so inwardly

golden

I half used to fancy the sunshine there, So shy, so shifting, so waywardly rare, Was only caught for the moment and holden

While I could say Dearest! and kiss it, and then

In pity let go to the summer again.

I twisted this magic in gossamer strings Over a wind-harp's Delphian hollow; Then called to the idle breeze that swings

All day in the pine-tops, and clings, and sings

Mid the musical leaves, and said, "O, follow

The will of those tears that deepen my words,

And fly to my window to waken these chords."

AFTER THE BURIAL.

YES, faith is a goodly anchor;
When skies are sweet as a psalm,
At the bows it lolls so stalwart,
In its bluff, broad-shouldered calm.

And when over breakers to leeward
The tattered surges are hurled,
It may keep our head to the tempest,
With its grip on the base of the world.

But, after the shipwreck, tell me
What help in its iron thews,
Still true to the broken hawser,
Deep down among sea-weed and ooze?

In the breaking gulfs of sorrow,
When the helpless feet stretch out
And find in the deeps of darkness
No footing so solid as doubt,

Then better one spar of Memory,
One broken plank of the Past,
That our human heart may cling to,
Though hopeless of shore at last!

To the spirit its splendid conjectures,
To the flesh its sweet despair,
Its tears o'er the thin-worn locket
With its anguish of deathless hair!

Immortal? I feel it and know it,
Who doubts it of such as she?
But that is the pang's very secret, –
Immortal away from me.

There's a narrow ridge in the graveyard

Would scarce stay a child in his race,
But to me and my thought it is wider
Than the star-sown vague of Space.

Your logic, my friend, is perfect,
Your moral most drearily true;
But, since the earth clashed on her
coffin,

I keep hearing that, and not you.

Console if you will, I can bear it;
"T is a well-meant alms of breath;
But not all the preaching since Adam
Has made Death other than Death.

It is pagan; but wait till you feel it,
That jar of our earth, that dull shock
When the ploughshare of deeper pas-

sion

Tears down to our primitive rock.

Communion in spirit! Forgive me,
But I, who am earthy and weak,
Would give all my incomes from dream-
land

For a touch of her hand on my cheek.
That little shoe in the corner,
So worn and wrinkled and brown,
With its emptiness confutes you,
And argues your wisdom down.

THE DEAD HOUSE.

HERE once my step was quickened,
Here beckoned the opening door,
And welcome thrilled from the thresh-
old

To the foot it had known before.

A glow came forth to meet me From the flame that laughed in the grate,

And shadows adance on the ceiling,

Danced blither with mine for a mate.

"I claim you, old friend," yawned the arm-chair,

"This corner, you know, is your seat ";

"Rest your slippers on me," beamed the fender,

"I brighten at touch of your feet." "We know the practised finger,"

Said the books, "that seems like brain";

And the shy page rustled the secret
It had kept till I came again.

Sang the pillow, "My down once quivered

On nightingales' throats that flew Through moonlit gardens of Hafiz

To gather quaint dreams for you."

Unaltered! Alas for the sameness That makes the change but more! Tis a dead man I see in the mirrors, 'Tis his tread that chills the floor!

To learn such a simple lesson,

Need I go to Paris and Rome, That the many make the household, But only one the home?

'T was just a womanly presence, An influence unexprest,

But a rose she had worn, on my grave. sod

Were more than long life with the rest!

'T was a smile, 't was a garment's rustle, 'T was nothing that I can phrase, But the whole dumb dwelling grew conscious,

And put on her looks and ways.

Were it mine I would close the shutters,
Like lids when the life is fled,
And the funeral fire should wind it,
This corpse of a home that is dead.

For it died that autumn morning
When she, its soul, was borne
To lie all dark on the hillside

That looks over woodland and corn.

To me 't is not cheer thou art singing:
There's a sound of the sea,
O mournful tree,

In thy boughs forever clinging,
And the far-off roar

Of waves on the shore
A shattered vessel flinging.

As thou musest still of the ocean
On which thou must float at last,
And seem'st to foreknow
The shipwreck's woe

And the sailor wrenched from the broken mast,

Do I, in this vague emotion,
This sadness that will not pass,
Though the air throb with wings,
And the field laughs and sings,

Do I forebode, alas !

The ship-building longer and wearier,
The voyage's struggle and strife,
And then the darker and drearier
Wreck of a broken life?