For save when shutting reasons up in rhythm,

Or Heliconian honey in living words,

To make a truth less harsh, I often grew

Tired of so much within our little life,

Poor little life that toddles half an hour

Crown'd with a flower or two, and there an end
And since the nobler pleasure seems to fade,
Why should I, beastlike as I find myself,
Not manlike end myself? - our privilege -
What beast has heart to do it? And what man,
What Roman would be dragg'd in triumph thus?
Not I; not he, who bears one name with her,
Whose death-blow struck the dateless doom of kings,
When brooking not the Tarquin in her veins,

\

She made her blood in sight of Collatine
And all his peers, flushing the guiltless air,

Spout from the maiden fountain in her heart.

And from it sprang the Commonwealth, which breaks

As I am breaking now!

"And therefore now

Let her, that is the womb and tomb of all,
Great Nature, take, and forcing far apart
Those blind beginnings that have made me man
Dash them anew together at her will
Through all her cycles - into man once more,
Or beast or bird or fish, or opulent flower-
But till this cosmic order everywhere
Shatter'd into one earthquake in one day
Cracks all to pieces, - and that hour perhaps
Is not so far when momentary man

Shall seem no more a something to himself,
But he, his hopes and hates, his homes and fanes,
And even his bones long laid within the grave,
The very sides of the grave itself shall pass,
Vanishing, atom and void, atom and void,
Into the unseen forever, - till that hour,
My golden work in which I told a truth
That stays the rolling Ixionian wheel,

And numbs the Fury's ringlet-snake, and plucks

:

The mortal soul from out immortal hell,

1

Shall stand: ay, surely: then it fails at last,

And perishes as I must; for O Thou,

Passionless bride, divine Tranquillity,

Yearn'd after by the wisest of the wise,
Who fail to find thee, being as thou art
Without one pleasure and without one pain,
Howbeit I know thou surely must be mine
Or soon or late, yet out of season, thus

I woo thee roughly, for thou carest not

How roughly men may woo thee so they win

thus: the soul flies out and dies in the air."

With that he drove the knife into his side: She heard him raging, heard him fall; ran in, Beat breast, tore hair, cried out upon herself As having fail'd in duty to him, shriek'd That she but meant to win him back, fell on him, Clasp'd, kiss'd him, wail'd: he answer'd, "Care not thou What matters? All is over: Fare thee well!"

THE GOLDEN SUPPER.

[This poem is founded upon a story in Boccaccio.

A young lover, Julian, whose cousin and foster-sister, Camilla, has been wedded to his friend and rival, Lionel, endeavors to narrate the story of his own love for her, and the strange sequel of it. He speaks of having been haunted in delirium by visions and the sound of bells, sometimes tolling for a funeral, and at last ringing for a marriage; but he breaks away, overcome, as he approaches the Event, and a witness to it completes the tale.]

HE flies the event: he leaves the event to me:
Poor Julian - how he rush'd away; the bells,
Those marriage-bells, echoing in ear and heart
But cast a parting glance at me, you saw,
As who should say "continue." Well, he had
of triumph shall I say?

One golden hour

-

Solace at least before he left his home.

Would you had seen him in that hour of his!

*

He moved thro' all of it majestically

Restrain'd himself quite to the close - but now

Whether they were his lady's marriage-bells,

Or prophets of them in his fantasy,

I never ask'd: but Lionel and the girl
Were wedded, and our Julian came again
Back to his mother's house among the pines.
But there, their gloom, the mountains and the Bay,
The whole land weigh'd him down as Ætna does
The Giant of Mythology: he would go,
Would leave the land forever, and had gone
Surely, but for a whisper "Go not yet,"
Some warning, and divinely as it seem'd
By that which follow'd - but of this I deem
As of the visions that he told - the event
Glanced back upon them in his after life,
And partly made them - tho' he knew it not.

And thus he stay'd and would not look at her