elate,

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!

ASK ME NO MORE.

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose,
For in your beauty's orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep,

Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day,
For, in pure love, heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.
Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past,
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more where those stars light
That downwards fall in dead of night,
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixed become as in their sphere.

Ask me no more if east or west
The phoenix builds her spicy nest,
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.

CUI BONO?

WHAT is hope? A smiling rainbow
Children follow through the net :
'Tis not here — still yonder, yonder;
Never urchin found it yet.

What is life? A thawing iceboard
On a sea with sunny shore :

Gay we sail; it melts beneath us; We are sunk, and seen no more.

What is man? A foolish baby;
Vainly strives, and fights, and
frets:
Demanding all, deserving nothing,
One small grave is all he gets.

SOLITUDE!

tude;

LIFE.

Life is inviolate soli

Eye looks in eye with a question

ing wonder,

Why are we thus in our meeting asunder?

dreaming

As lieth the selfhood inside of the

seeming,

dull?

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.

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 spread,

The rose that climbed my garden wall 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.

LIFE'S MYSTERY. LIFE'S sadly solemn mystery, Hangs o'er me like a weight; The glorious longing to be free, The gloomy bars of fate.

Alternately the good and ill,

The light and dark, are strung; Fountains of love within my heart, And hate upon my tongue.

Beneath my feet the unstable ground,
Above my head the skies;
Immortal longings in my soul,
And death before my eyes.

No purely pure, and perfect good,
No high, unhindered power;
A beauteous promise in the bud,
And mildew on the flower.