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Life is vain, and love is hollow,
Ugly death stands there behind,
Hate and scorn and hunger follow
Him that toileth for his kind."

Forth into the night he hurled it,
And with bitter smile did mark

How the surly tempest whirled it

Swift into the hungry dark.

Foam and spray drive back to leeward,
And the gale, with dreary moan,

Drifts the helpless blossom seaward,
Through the breakers all alone.

II.

Stands a maiden, on the morrow,

Musing by the wave-beat strand, Half in hope and half in sorrow, Tracing words upon the sand:

"Shall I ever then behold him

Who hath been my life so long, –

Ever to this sick heart fold him,—

Be the spirit of his song?

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Touch not, sea, the blessed letters
I have traced upon thy shore,

Spare his name whose spirit fetters

Mine with love forevermore!

Swells the tide and overflows it,

י!

But, with omen pure and meet, Brings a little rose, and throws it Humbly at the maiden's feet.

Full of bliss she takes the token,

And, upon her snowy breast,

Soothes the ruffled petals broken

With the ocean's fierce unrest. "Love is thine, O, heart! and surely Peace shall also be thine own,

For the heart that trusteth purely
Never long can pine alone."

III.

In his tower sits the poet,

Blisses new and strange to him

Fill his heart and overflow it

With a wonder sweet and dim.

Up the beach the ocean slideth
With a whisper of delight,

And the moon in silence glideth

Through the peaceful blue of night. Rippling o'er the poet's shoulder Flows a maiden's golden hair, Maiden-lips, with love grown bolder,

Kiss his moon-lit forehead bare.

"Life is joy, and love is power,
Death all fetters doth unbind,

Strength and wisdom only flower
When we toil for all our kind.

Hope is truth, the future giveth
More than present takes away,
And the soul forever liveth

Nearer God from day to day."
Not a word the maiden uttered,

Fullest hearts are slow to speak, But a withered roseleaf fluttered

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ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF DR. CHANNING.

I Do not come to weep above thy pall,

And mourn the dying-out of noble

powers;

The poet's clearer eye should see, in all

Earth's seeming woe, the seed of Heaven's flowers.

Truth needs no champions: in the infinite deep
Of everlasting Soul her strength abides,

From Nature's heart her mighty pulses leap,
Through Nature's veins her strength, undying, tides.

Peace is more strong than war, and gentleness,

Where force were vain, makes conquests o'er the wave; And love lives on and hath a power to bless,

When they who loved are hidden in the grave.

ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF DR. CHANNING. 207

The sculptured marble brags of death-strewn fields,
And Glory's epitaph is writ in blood;

But Alexander now to Plato yields,

Clarkson will stand where Wellington hath stood.

I watch the circle of the eternal years,

And read forever in the storied page

One lengthened roll of blood, and wrong, and tears, — One onward step of Truth from age to age.

The poor are crushed; the tyrants link their chain; The poet sings through narrow dungeon-grates; Man's hope lies quenched;—and, lo! with steadfast gain Freedom doth forge her mail of adverse fates.

Men slay the prophets; fagot, rack, and cross
Make up the groaning record of the past;
But Evil's triumphs are her endless loss,
And sovereign Beauty wins the soul at last.

No power can die that ever wrought for Truth;
Thereby a law of Nature it became,

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