O insatiate! O Secret of the white and unknown world, cruel indeed thou art!
Thou hast sent back to us our best belovèd; their bodies thou hast rendered up, but their spirits thou hast taken away from us forever.
In life thou didst hold them from us—and in death, in death they are thine.
New York, February 20, 1884.
ILL TIDINGS
(THE STUDIO CONCERT)
In the long studio from whose towering walls
Greek Phidias beams, and Angelo appalls,
Eager the listening, downcast faces throng
While violins their piercing tones prolong.
At times I know not if I see, or hear,
Yon statue's smile, or some not sorrowing tear
Down-falling on the surface of the stream
That music pours across my waking dream.
Ah, is it then a dream that while repeat
Those chords, like strokes of silver-shod light feet,
And the great Master's music marches on—
I hear the horses of the Parthenon?
·········
But all to-day seems vague, unreal, far,
With fear and discord in the dearest strain,
For 'neath yon slowly-sinking western star
One that I love lies on her bed of pain.
A NEW WORLD
"I know" he said,
"The thunder and the lightning have past by
And all the earth is black, and burned, and dead;
