And the jailer forced me away. I had bid him my last goodbye ;

They had fasten'd the door of his cell, "O mother!" I heard him cry.

I could n't get back tho' I tried, he had something further to say, And now I never shall know it. The

jailer forced me away.

Then since I could n't but hear that cry of

my boy that was dead,

They seiz'd me and shut me up: they fasten'd me down on my bed. "Mother, O mother:" he call'd in the dark to me year after year

Raving politics, never at rest - as this poor earth's pale history runs, What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns?

Lies upon this side, lies upon that side, truthless violence mourn'd by the Wise,

Thousands of voices drowning his own in a popular torrent of lies upon lies ;

Stately purposes, valor in battle, glorious annals of army and fleet,

Death for the right cause, death for the wrong cause, trumpets of victory, groans of defeat;

Innocence seeth'd in her mother's milk, and Charity setting the martyr. aflame;

Thraldom who walks with the banner of Freedom, and recks not to ruin a realm in her name;

Faith at her zenith, or all but lost in the gloom of doubts that darken the schools;

Craft with a bunch of all-heal in her hand, follow'd up by her vassal legion of fools;

Trade flying over a thousand seas with her

spice and her vintage, her silk and her corn; Desolate offing, sailorless harbors, famishing populace, wharves forlorn;

Star of the morning, Hope in the sunrise; gloom of the evening, Life at a close; Pleasure who flaunts on her wide downway with her flying robe and her poison'd

rose;

Pain, that has crawl'd from the corpse of Pleasure, a worm which writhes all day, and at night

Stirs up again in the heart of the sleeper, and stings him back to the curse of the light;

Wealth with his wines and his wedded harlots; honest Poverty, bare to the bone;

Opulent Avarice, lean as Poverty; Flattery gilding the rift in a throne;

Fame blowing out from her golden trumpet a jubilant challenge to Time and to Fate;

Slander, her shadow, sowing the nettle on all the laurell'd graves of the Great;

Love for the maiden, crown'd with marriage, no regrets for aught that has been, Household happiness, gracious children, debtless competence, golden mean;

National hatreds of whole generations, and pigmy spites of the village spire; Vows that will last to the last death-ruckle, and vows that are snapp'd in a moment of fire;

He that has liv'd for the lust of a minute, and died in the doing it, flesh without mind;

He that has nail'd all flesh to the Cross, till Self died out in the love of his kind;

Spring and Summer and Autumn and Winter, and all these old revolutions of earth;

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have cross'd the bar.

And were faces, in that orient time,
Flush'd, in sooth, with more resplendent
prime,

More consummate loveliness than now?
Nay, one maiden face, at least, I know
(Whisper soft, ah! benedicite!)
Just as fair as any face could be
In the golden morning of the world.

But dark shadows reign, and storms are rife,

In the once serene clear heaven of life.
Oh! sweet angel, at the shining gate,
By God's mercy, keep one earthly fate,
One dear life ah! benedicite!
Happy, calm, as any such could be
In the golden morning of the world!

-

IN A LECTURE-ROOM

AWAY, haunt thou not me,
Thou vain Philosophy!
Little hast thou bestead,
Save to perplex the head,

And leave the spirit dead.

Unto thy broken cisterns wherefore go, While from the secret treasure-depths below,

Fed by the skyey shower,

By frivolous laugh and prate conventional All too untun'd for all she thought to

say,

With such a thought the mantling blood to her cheek

Flush'd up, and o'er-flush'd itself, blank night her soul

Made dark, and in her all her purpose swoon'd.

She stood as if for sinking. Yet anon, With recollections clear, august, sublime,