strife Be all the faithless charter of my life, If Chance awakened, inexorable power This frail and feverish being of an hour; Doomed o'er the world's precarious scene to sweep, Swift as the tempest travels on the deep, To know Delight but by her parting smile, And toil, and wish, and weep a little while; Then melt, ye elements, that formed in vain This troubled pulse and visionary brain! Fade, ye wild flowers, memorials of my doom, And sink, ye stars, that light me to the tomb! Truth, ever lovely, - since the world began, The foe of tyrants, and the friend of Yet, if thy voice the note of thunder Oh! let her read, nor loudly, nor elate, rolled, And that were true which Nature The doom that bars us from a better never told, Let Wisdom smile not on her conquered field No rapture dawns, no treasure is revealed! fate; But, sad as angels for the good man's sin, Weep to record, and blush to give it in! THOMAS CAREW. ASK ME NO MORE. Ask me no more where Jove bestows, Ask me no more whither do stray Ask me no more whither doth haste Ask me no more if east or west SOLITUDE! Life is inviolate solitude; Eye looks in eye with a question ing wonder, Why are we thus in our meeting asunder? Never was truth so apart from the Why are our pulses so slow and so dreaming As lieth the selfhood inside of the seeming, dull? Guarded with triple shield out of all Fruitless, fruitionless! Life is fru quest, So that the sisterhood nearest and sweetest, So that the brotherhood kindest, completest, Is but an exchanging of signals at best. Desolate! Life is so dreary and desolate. Women and men in the crowd meet and mingle, Yet with itself every soul standeth single, Deep out of sympathy moaning its moan; Holding and having its brief exultation; Making its lonesome and low lamentation; Fighting its terrible conflicts alone. Separate! Life is so sad and so sep arate. Under love's ceiling with roses for lining, Heart mates with heart in a tender entwining, Yet never the sweet cup of love filleth full. itionless; Never the heaped-up and generous If fortune disregard thy claim, When thou hast done thy best. Disdain neglect, ignore despair, On loves and friendships gone Plant thou thy feet, as on a stair, And mount right up and on! A DREAM. I DREAMED I had a plot of ground, Once when I chanced asleep to drop, And that a green hedge fenced it round, Cloudy with roses at the top. I saw a hundred mornings rise,— So far a little dream may reach,— And Spring with Summer in her eyes Making the chiefest charm of each. A thousand vines were climbing o'er The hedge, I thought, but as I tried To pull them down, for evermore The flowers dropt off the other side! Waking, I said, "These things are signs Sent to instruct us that 'tis ours Duly to keep and dress our vines,Waiting in patience for the flowers. "And when the angel feared of all Across my hearth its shadow The rose that climbed my garden wall spread, Has bloomed the other side," I said. SPENT AND MISSPENT. STAY yet a little longer in the sky, O golden color of the evening sun! Let not the sweet day in its sweetness die, While my day's work is only just begun. |