The stillness of the lenten air

Call'd into sound

The motions of all life that were
In field and farm around:

So fair it was, so sweet and bright,
The jocund Spring
Awoke in me the old delight
Of man's imagining,

Riding adown the country lanes:
The larks sang high.—

O heart! for all thy griefs and pains
Thou shalt be loth to die.

13

PATER FILIO

SENSE with keenest edge unused,
Yet unsteel'd by scathing fire;
Lovely feet as yet unbruised

On the ways of dark desire;
Sweetest hope that lookest smiling
O'er the wilderness defiling!

Why such beauty, to be blighted

By the swarm of foul destruction ?
Why such innocence delighted,

When sin stalks to thy seduction?
All the litanies e'er chaunted
Shall not keep thy faith undaunted.

I have pray'd the sainted Morning

To unclasp her hands to hold thee; From resignful Eve's adorning

Stol'n a robe of peace to enfold thee; With all charms of man's contriving Arm'd thee for thy lonely striving.

Me too once unthinking Nature,

-Whence Love's timeless mockery took me,— Fashion'd so divine a creature,

Yea, and like a beast forsook me.

I forgave, but tell the measure

Of her crime in thee, my treasure.

14

NOVEMBER

THE lonely season in lonely lands, when fled
Are half the birds, and mists lie low, and the sun
Is rarely seen, nor strayeth far from his bed;
The short days pass unwelcomed one by one.

Out by the ricks the mantled engine stands
Crestfallen, deserted, for now all hands.
Are told to the plough,—and ere it is dawn appear
The teams following and crossing far and near,
As hour by hour they broaden the brown bands
Of the striped fields; and behind them firk and prance
The heavy rooks, and daws grey-pated dance:
As awhile, surmounting a crest, in sharp outline
(A miniature of toil, a gem's design,)

They are pictured, horses and men, or now near by
Above the lane they shout lifting the share,
By the trim hedgerow bloom'd with purple air;
Where, under the thorns, dead leaves in huddle lie
Packed by the gales of Autumn, and in and out
The small wrens glide

With a happy note of cheer,

And yellow amorets flutter above and about,
Gay, familiar in fear.

And now, if the night shall be cold, across the sky
Linnets and twites, in small flocks helter-skelter,
All the afternoon to the gardens fly,

From thistle-pastures hurrying to gain the shelter
Of American rhododendron or cherry-laurel :
And here and there, near chilly setting of sun,
In an isolated tree a congregation

Of starlings chatter and chide,

Thickset as summer leaves, in garrulous quarrel :
Suddenly they hush as one,-

The tree top springs,

And off, with a whirr of wings,
They fly by the score

To the holly-thicket, and there with myriads more
Dispute for the roosts; and from the unseen nation
A babel of tongues, like running water unceasing,
Makes live the wood, the flocking cries increasing,
Wrangling discordantly, incessantly,

While falls the night on them self-occupied ;
The long dark night, that lengthens slow,
Deepening with Winter to starve grass and tree,
And soon to bury in snow

The Earth, that, sleeping 'neath her frozen stole,
Shall dream a dream crept from the sunless pole
Of how her end shall be.

15

WINTER NIGHTFALL

THE day begins to droop,

Its course is done:

But nothing tells the place

Of the setting sun.

The hazy darkness deepens,
And up the lane

You may hear, but cannot see,

The homing wain.

An engine pants and hums
In the farm hard by:
Its lowering smoke is lost
In the lowering sky.

The soaking branches drip,
And all night through
The dropping will not cease

In the avenue.

A tall man there in the house
Must keep his chair:
He knows he will never again
Breathe the spring air:

His heart is worn with work;
He is giddy and sick

If he rise to go as far

As the nearest rick:

He thinks of his morn of life,

His hale, strong years;

And braves as he may the night

Of darkness and tears.

16

SINCE we loved,-(the earth that shook
As we kissed, fresh beauty took)—

Love hath been as poets paint,
Life as heaven is to a saint;

All my joys my hope excel,
All my work hath prosper'd well,
All my songs have happy been,
O my love, my life, my queen.

17

WHEN Death to either shall come,-
I pray it be first to me,-
Be happy as ever at home,
If so, as I wish, it be.

Possess thy heart, my own;

And sing to the child on thy knee, Or read to thyself alone

The songs that I made for thee.

18

WISHES

I WISH'D to sing thy grace, but nought Found upon earth that could compare : Some day, maybe, in heaven, I thought,If I should win the welcome there,—

There might I make thee many a song:
But now it is enough to say

I ne'er have done our life the wrong
Of wishing for a happier day.

19

A LOVE LYRIC

WHY art thou sad, my dearest ?
What terror is it thou fearest,
Braver who art than I

The fiend to defy?

Why art thou sad, my dearest?
And why in tears appearest,

Closer than I that wert

At hiding thy hurt?