Their tears fell on the dear companion cold
Of pleasures now departed; then was knolled
The bell of death, and soon the priests arrived,
And finding death their penitent had shrived,
Returned like ravens from a corpse whereon.
A vulture has just feasted to the bone.
And then the mourning women came. —

THE DIRGE

Old winter was gone

In his weakness back to the mountains hoar, And the spring came down

From the planet that hovers upon the shore Where the sea of sunlight encroaches

On the limits of wintry night;

If the land, and the air, and the sea
Rejoice not when spring approaches,
We did not rejoice in thee,

Ginevra!

She is still, she is cold

On the bridal couch,

One step to the white death-bed,

And one to the bier,

And one to the charnel—and one, oh, where?

The dark arrow fled

In the noon.

Ere the sun through heaven once more has

rolled,

The rats in her heart

Will have made their nest,

And the worms be alive in her golden hair,
While the spirit that guides the sun

Sits throned in his flaming chair,
She shall sleep.

Crowd"

ETHOUGHT I was a billow in

the crowd

Of common men, that stream

without a shore,

That ocean which at once is deaf and loud;
That I, a man, stood amid many more
By a wayside... which the aspect bore
Of some imperial metropolis,

,

HE sun is set; the swallows are asleep ;

The bats are flitting fast in the gray air;

The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep,

And evening's breath, wandering here and

there

Over the quivering surface of the stream, Wakes not one ripple from its summer dream.

II.

There is no dew on the dry grass to-night, Nor damp within the shadow of the trees;

The wind is intermitting, dry, and light;

And in the inconstant motion of the breeze The dust and straws are driven up and down, And whirled about the pavement of the town.

III.

Within the surface of the fleeting river
The wrinkled image of the city lay,
Immovably unquiet, and for ever

It trembles, but it never fades away;
Go to the ..

You, being changed, will find it then as now.

IV.

The chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut

By darkest barriers of cinereous cloud, Like mountain over mountain huddled but

Growing and moving upwards in a crowd,

And over it a space of watery blue,

Which the keen evening star is shining through.