Page:Poems Hoffman.djvu/315

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And the glad sunbeams fall, like melted gold
In shining pools;
While the hot noontide's burning, brazen scroll
The seabreeze cools;
And over all a deep and mighty surge
Forever swells,
The wondrous ocean's ceaseless, solemn dirge
Time never quells;
As if the sea's great palpitating heart
Remembered yet,
The silent dwellers, as the years depart
And friends forget.
Were it not beautiful to slumber here
Not all unsung;
But chanted of by one forever near
In Nature's tongue?
Sleep, peaceful dwellers, by the lovely shore;
Though life hath fled,
The throbbing, solemn ocean nevermore
Forgets the dead.


A WRECKED LIFE

"They blame us most when we are least to blame,
And they with souls made black with hate and shame,
Had angels one mistake to mourn with them,
Would stand the readiest judges to condemn.

"O Earth, have pity when thy blasts have wrecked,
The purest lily that thy gardens decked!"
(It was a woman's cry; she stood alone,
Whom fortune, beauty, love and friends had known.)

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