THE DEAD COACH

AT night when sick folk wakeful lie,
I heard the dead coach passing by,
And heard it passing wild and fleet,
And knew my time was come not yet.

Click-clack, click-clack, the hoofs went past,
Who takes the dead coach travels fast,
On and away through the wild night,
The dead must rest ere morning light.

If one might follow on its track

The coach and horses, midnight black,
Within should sit a shape of doom
That beckons one and all to come.

God pity them to-night who wait
To hear the dead coach at their gate,
And him who hears, though sense be
dim,

The mournful dead coach stop for him.

He shall go down with a still face,
And mount the steps and take his place,
The door be shut, the order said!
How fast the pace is with the dead!

Click-clack, click-clack, the hour is chill,
The dead coach climbs the distant hill.
Now, God, the Father of us all,
Wipe Thou the widow's tears that fall!

A PURE HYPOTHESIS

(A Lover, in-Four-dimensioned space, describes a Dream.)

Aн, love, the teacher we decried,
That erudite professor grim,

In mathematics drenched and dyed,
Too hastily we scouted him.

He said: "The bounds of Time and Space,

The categories we revere,

May be in quite another case
In quite another sphere."

He told us: "Science can conceive

A race whose feeble comprehension Can't be persuaded to believe

That there exists our Fourth Dimen-
sion,

Whom Time and Space for ever balk ;
But of these beings incomplete,
Whether upon their heads they walk
Or stand upon their feet-

"We cannot tell, we do not know,
Imagination stops confounded;
We can but say 'It may be so,'

To every theory propounded."
Too glad were we in this our scheme
Of things, his notions to embrace, -
But I have dreamed an awful dream
Of Three-dimensioned Space!

I would not, if I could, recall

The horror of those novel heavens,
Where Present, Past, and Future all
Appeared at sixes and at sevens,
Where Capital and Labor fought,
And, in the nightmare of the mind,
No contradictories were thought
As truthfully combined!

Nay, in that dream-distorted clime,
These fatal wilds I wandered through,
The boundaries of Space and Time

Had got most frightfully askew. "What is askew'?" my love, you cry; I cannot answer, can't portray; The sense of Everything awry

No language can convey.

I can't tell what my words denote,
I know not what my phrases mean;
Inexplicable terrors float

Before this spirit once serene.

Oh, strong the lads for bat or ball,
But I in wit am first of all

The master praises.

The master's mien is grave and wise;
But, while I look into his eyes,

My heart, that o'er the schoolroom flies,
At Ella gazes.

And Hal's below me every day;
For Hal is wild, and he is gay,

He loves not learning.

But when the swiftest runners meet, Oh, who but Hal is proud and fleet, And there's a smile I know will greet His glad returning.

They call me moody, dull, and blind, They say with books I maze my mind, The lads and lasses;

But little do they know ah me! How with my book upon my knee I dream and dream, but ever see Where Ella passes.

A LEGEND

AY, an old story, yet it might

Have truth in it - who knows?

Of the heroine's breaking down one night Just ere the curtain rose.

So I arm thee for the final night,
And for thy one defeat;
For God upon his side shall fight

When thou and he shall meet.
I know, for good or evil, thine
Will be a well-fought field-
For good or evil, master mine,
If I may bear thy shield!

Now art thou the unfaithfullest
Of all that bore the vow-
Yet some there are that love thee best,
Most honor, even now.

I see the face I held divine

Ah, yet divine revealed!

For good or evil, master mine,

If I may bear thy shield!