The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;
And the white rose weeps, 66 She is late;"
The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear;

And the lily whispers, "I wait.”

II

She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.

XXIII

I

"THE fault was mine, the fault was mine
Why am I sitting here so stunn'd and still,
Plucking the harmless wild-flower on the hill ?—
It is this guilty hand!—

And there rises ever a passionate cry

From underneath in the darkening land-
What is it, that has been done?

O dawn of Eden bright over earth and sky,
The fires of Hell brake out of thy rising sun,
The fires of Hell and of Hate;

For she, sweet soul, had hardly spoken a word,
When her brother ran in his rage to the gate,
He came with the babe-faced lord;
Heap'd on her terms of disgrace,

And while she wept, and I strove to be cool,
He fiercely gave me the lie,

Till I with as fierce an anger spoke,

And he struck me, madman, over the face,
Struck me before the languid fool,

Who was gaping and grinning by:
Struck for himself an evil stroke;

Wrought for his house an irredeemable woe;
For front to front in an hour we stood,

And a million horrible bellowing echoes broke
From the red-ribb'd hollow behind the wood,

And thunder'd up into Heaven the Christless code,

That must have life for a blow.

Ever and ever afresh they seem'd to grow.
Was it he lay there with a fading eye?
"The fault was mine," he whisper'd, "fly!
Then glided out of the joyous wood
The ghastly Wraith of one that I know;
And there rang on a sudden a passionate cry,
A cry for a brother's blood:

It will ring in my heart and my ears, till I die, till I die.

Is it gone? my pulses beat

2

What was it? a lying trick of the brain?

Yet I thought I saw her stand,

A shadow there at my feet,

High over the shadowy land.

It is gone; and the heavens fall in a gentle rain,

When they should burst and drown with deluging storms
The feeble vassals of wine and anger and lust,

The little hearts that know not how to forgive:
Arise, my God, and strike, for we hold Thee just,
Strike dead the whole weak race of venomous worms,
That sting each other here in the dust;
We are not worthy to live.

XXIV

I

SEE what a lovely shell,
Small and pure as a pearl,

Lying close to my foot,
Frail, but a work divine,

Made so fairily well

With delicate spire and whorl,

How exquisitely minute,
A miracle of design!

2

What is it? a learned man
Could give it a clumsy name.
Let him name it who can,
The beauty would be the same

3

The tiny cell is forlorn,
Void of the little living will

That made it stir on the shore.

Did he stand at the diamond door
Of his house in a rainbow frill?
Did he push, when he was uncurl'd,
A golden foot or a fairy horn
Thro' his dim water-world?

4

Slight, to be crush'd with a tap
Of my finger-nail on the sand,
Small, but a work divine,
Frail, but of force to withstand
Year upon year, the shock
Of cataract seas that snap
The three-decker's oaken spine
Athwart the ledges of rock,
Here on the Breton strand!

5

Breton, not Briton; here

Like a shipwreck'd man on a coast
Of ancient fable and fear-

Plagued with a flitting to and fro,
A disease, a hard mechanic ghost
That never came from on high
Nor ever arose from below,

But only moves with the moving eye,
Flying along the land and the main-
Why should it look like Maud?
Am I to be overawed

By what I cannot but know
Is a juggle born of the brain?

6

Back from the Breton coast,

Sick of a nameless fear,

Back to the dark sea-line

Looking, thinking of all I have lost;

An old song vexes my ear;
But that of Lamech is mine.

7

For years, a measureless ill,
For years, for ever, to part—
But she, she would love me still;
And as long, O God, as she

Have a grain of love for me,

So long, no doubt, no doubt,
Shall I nurse in my dark heart,
However weary, a spark of will
Not to be trampled out.

8

Strange, that the mind, when fraught
With a passion so intense

One would think that it well
Might drown all life in the eye,-
That it should, by being so overwrought,
Suddenly strike on a sharper sense
For a shell, or a flower, little things
Which else would have been past by!
And now I remember, I,

When he lay dying there,

I noticed one of his many rings

(For he had many, poor worm) and thought It is his mother's hair.

9

Who knows if he be dead?
Whether I need have fled?
Am I guilty of blood?

However this may be,

Comfort her, comfort her, all things good,
While I am over the sea!

Let me and my passionate love go by,
But speak to her all things holy and high,
Whatever happen to me!

Me and my harmful love go by;

But come to her waking, find her asleep, Powers of the height, Powers of the deep, And comfort her tho' I die.

XXV

COURAGE, poor heart of stone!
I will not ask thee why

Thou canst not understand

That thou art left for ever alone:

Courage, poor stupid heart of stone.—

Or if I ask thee why,

Care not thou to reply:

He is but dead, and the time is at hand
When thou shalt more than die.

XXVI

I

O THAT 'twere possible
After long grief and pain

To find the arms of my true love
Round me once again!

2

When I was wont to meet her
In the silent woody places

By the home that gave me birth,
We stood tranced in long embraces
Mixt with kisses sweeter sweeter
Than any thing on earth.

3

A shadow flits before me,

Not thou, but like to thee;

Ah Christ, that it were possible

For one short hour to see

The souls we loved, that they might tell us What and where they be.

4

It leads me forth at evening,

It lightly winds and steals

In a cold white robe before me,

When all my spirit reels

At the shouts, the leagues of lights,
And the roaring of the wheels.

5

Half the night I waste in sighs,
Half in dreams I sorrow after
The delight of early skies;
In a wakeful doze I sorrow
For the hand, the lips, the eyes,
For the meeting of the morrow,
The delight of happy laughter,
The delight of low replies.

6

'Tis a morning pure and sweet,
And a dewy splendour falls
On the little flower that clings
To the turrets and the walls;