ADELAIDE NEILSON1

AND oh, to think the sun can shine,
The birds can sing, the flowers can bloom,
And she, whose soul was all divine,

Be darkly mouldering in the tomb:

That o'er her head the night-wind sighs,
And the sad cypress droops and moans;
That night has veiled her glorious eyes,
And silence hushed her heavenly tones:

That those sweet lips no more can smile,
Nor pity's tender shadows chase,
With many a gentle, child-like wile,

The rippling laughter o'er her face:

That dust is on the burnished gold

That floated round her royal head; That her great heart is dead and coldIler form of fire and beauty dead !

Roll on, gray earth and shining star,
And coldly mock our dreams of bliss;
There is no glory left to mar,
Nor

any grief so black as this!

ARTHUR

(1872-1886)

I

WHITE sail upon the ocean verge,
Just crimsoned by the setting sun,
Thou hast thy port beyond the surge,

Thy happy homeward course to run, And winged hope, with heart of fire, To gain the bliss of thy desire.

I watch thee till the sombre sky

Has darkly veiled the lucent plain; My thoughts, like homeless spirits, fly

Behind thee o'er the glimmering main;
Thy prow will kiss a golden strand,
But they can never come to land.

And if they could, the fanes are black
Where once I bent the reverent knee;
No shrine would send an answer back,
No sacred altar blaze for me,
No holy bell, with silver toll,
Declare the ransom of my soul.

'Tis equal darkness, here or there; For nothing that this world can give

And I, who loved them, and shall love them ever,

And think with yearning tears how each light hand

TRADITION OF CONQUEST

His Grace of Marlborough, legends say, Though battle-lightnings proved his worth,

Was scathed like others, in his day,

By fiercer fires at his own hearth.

The patient chief, thus sadly tried, Madam, the Duchess, was so fair, In Blenheim's honors felt less pride Than in the lady's lovely hair.

Once (shorn, she had coiled it there to wound

Her lord when he should pass, 't is said), Shining across his path he found The glory of the woman's head.

No sudden word, nor sullen look,

In all his after days, confessed
He missed the charm whose absence took
A scar's pale shape within his breast.

I think she longed to have him blame,
And soothe him with imperious tears:
As if her beauty were the same,

He praised her through his courteous years.

But when the soldier's arm was dust,

Among the dead man's treasures, where He laid it as from moth and rust, They found his wayward wife's sweet hair.

(Then the gray man tore a vine from the wall

Of the roofless church where he lay, And the leaves that the withering year let fall

He swept, with the ivy, away;
And, as we read on the rock the words
That, writ in the moss, we found,
Right over his bosom a shower of birds
In music fell to the ground.)

Young poet, I wonder did you care,
Did it move you in your rest
To hear that child in his golden hair,
From the mighty woods of the West,
Repeating your verse of his own sweet
will,

To the sound of the twilight bell, Years after your beating heart was still In the churchyard of Clonmel ?