Alas for men! whom he might have lightened
By mirth and music of half their load.
Will he sit him down in the long-lost places,
And with sad eyes dazed by the shine of gold,
Read Nature's soul in her stranger faces
Known of old?
Will his wistful heart weave aforetime visions
From floating drifts in the dreamy sky?
Or, wrapt in the web of the world's derisions,
Is the bold hope bowed that has soared so high?
It is fled as the foam that the brief wave crested.
There is nothing left in the poet's view
Save the circling swan which glides, white- breasted,
On the blue.
RAINY DAYS.
THE Spring Day rose from her sleeping
In the deep, dim caverns of mist,
With the waiting world to be keeping
Her brief and beautiful tryst.
But her sweet eyes opened weeping,
As the sunshine their pale lids kissed,
And thus she arose from her sleeping
In the caverns of eastern mist.
