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That pious thoughts, which visit at new graves
In tender pilgrimage, will cease to go

So duly and so oft, and when grass waves
Over the past-away, there may be then
No resurrection in the minds of men.

By every sweet tradition of true hearts,
Graven by Time, in love with his own lore;
By all old martyrdoms and antique smarts,
Wherein Love died to be alive the more;
Yea, by the sad impression on the shore
Left by the drowned Leander, to endear
That coast forever, where the billows' roar
Moaneth for pity in the poet's ear;
By Hero's faith, and the foreboding tear
That quenched her brand's last twinkle in its fall;
By Sappho's leap, and the low rustling fear
That sighed around her flight; I swear by all,
The world shall find such pattern in my act,
As if Love's great examples still were lacked.

ON RECEIVING A GIFT.

Look how the golden ocean shines above
Its pebbly stones, and magnifies their girth;
So does the bright and blesséd light of love
Its own things glorify, and raise their worth.
As weeds seem flowers beneath the flattering brine,
And stones like gems, and gems as gems indeed,
Even so our tokens shine; nay, they outshine
Pebbles and pearls, and gems and coral weed;

For where be ocean waves but half so clear,
So calmly constant, and so kindly warm,
As Love's most mild and glowing atmosphere,
That hath no dregs to be upturned by storm?
Thus, sweet, thy gracious gifts are gifts of price,
And more than gold to doting Avarice.

SILENCE.

THERE is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,

In the cold grave

under the deep, deep sea,

Or in wide desert where no life is found,

Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;
No voice is hushed- -no life treads silently,
But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,
That never spoke, over the idle ground:
But in green ruins, in the desolate walls
Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,
Though the dun fox, or wild hyena, calls,
And owls, that flit continually between,
Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan,
There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.

THE curse of Adam, the old curse of all
Though I inherit in this feverish life

Of worldly toil, vain wishes, and hard strife,
And fruitless thought, in Care's eternal thrall,
Yet more sweet honey than of bitter gall
I taste, through thee, my Eva, my sweet wife.

Then what was Man's lost Paradise!- how rife
Of bliss, since love is with him in his fall!
Such as our own pure passion still might frame,
Of this fair earth, and its delightful-bowers,
If no fell sorrow, like the serpent, came
To trail its venom o'er the sweetest flowers:
But, O! as many and such tears are ours,
As only should be shed for guilt and shame!

LOVE, dearest lady, such as I would speak,
Lives not within the humor of the eye;
Not being but an outward fantasy,

That skims the surface of a tinted cheek—
Else it would wane with beauty, and grow weak,
As if the rose made summer, — and so lie
Amongst the perishable things that die,
Unlike the love which I would give and seek,
Whose health is of no hue -to feel decay
With cheeks' decay, that have a rosy prime.
Love is its own great loveliness alway,
And takes new lustre from the touch of time;
Its bough owns no December and no May,
But bears its blossom into Winter's clime.

THE LEE SHORE.

SLEET! and hail! and thunder!
And ye winds that rave,

Till the sands thereunder
Tinge the sullen wave—

Winds, that like a demon
Howl with horrid note
Round the toiling seaman,
In his tossing boat –

From his humble dwelling
On the shingly shore,
Where the billows swelling
Keep such hollow roar―

From that weeping womån,
Seeking with her cries
Succor superhuman

From the frowning skies

From the urchin pining

For his father's knee
From the lattice shining,
Drive him out to sea!

Let broad leagues dissever
Him from yonder foam;
O, God! to think man ever
Comes too near his home!

THE DEATH-BED.

WE watched her breathing through the night,

Her breathing soft and low,

As in her breast the wave of life

Kept heaving to and fro.

So silently we seemed to speak,
So slowly moved about,

As we had lent her half our powers
To eke her living out.

Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied-
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.

For when the morn came dim and sad,
And chill with early showers,
Her quiet eyelids closed she had

Another morn than ours.

LINES

ON SEEING MY WIFE AND TWO CHILDREN SLEEPING IN THE SAME CHAMBER.

AND has the earth lost its so spacious round,
The sky its blue circumference above,

That in this little chamber there is found
Both earth and heaven - my universe of love!
All that my God can give me or remove,
Here sleeping, save myself, in mimic death.
Sweet that in this small compass I behove
To live their living and to breathe their breath!
Almost I wish that with one common sigh
We might resign all mundane care and strife,
And seek together that transcendent sky,
Where father, mother, children, husband, wife,
Together pant in everlasting life!

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