AFTER THE BURIAL. There's a narrow ridge in the graveyard Your logic, my friend, is perfect, Console, if you will; I can bear it ; 'Tis a well-meant alms of breath; But not all the preaching since Adam Has made Death other than Death. It is pagan: but wait till you feel it, Communion in spirit! Forgive me, But I, who am earthly and weak, That little shoe in the corner, So worn and wrinkled and brown Its emptiness confutes you, And argues your wisdom down. JAMES R. Lowell. 305 The Dead House. HERE once my step was quickened, Here beckoned the opening door, And welcome thrilled from the threshold A glow came forth to meet me From the flame that laughed in the grate, And shadows a-dance on the ceiling, Danced blither with mine for a mate. "I claim you, old friend," yawned the arm-chair; "This corner, you know, is your seat;" "Rest your slippers on me," beamed the fender, "I brighten at touch of your feet.” "We know the practiced finger," Said the books, "that seems like brain ;" And the shy page rustled the secret It had kept till I came again. Sang the pillow, "My down once quivered Ah me, where the Past sowed heart's-ease, I come back that scar unhealing But, I think, the house is unaltered, At the rooms that were once familiar Unaltered! Alas for the sameness That makes the change but more! 'Tis a dead man I see in the mirrors, 'Tis his tread that chills the floor! To learn such a simple lesson, Need I go to Paris and Rome, That the many make the household, But only one the home? FRAGMENT. 'T was just a womanly presence, An influence unexpressed, But a rose she had worn, on my grave-sod 'T was a smile, 't was a garment's rustle, Were it mine I would close the shutters, For it died that autumn morning To lie all dark on the hillside That looks over woodland and corn. JAMES R. LOWELL. Fragment. OLD in earth, and the deep snow piled above thee, COLD Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave! Have I forgot, my only love, to love thee, Severed at last by time's all severing wave? Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover Cold in the earth-and fifteen wild Decembers From those brown hills have melted into spring; 307 Sweet love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong. No later light has lightened up my heaven, But when the days of golden dreams had perished, Then did I check the tears of useless passion, Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine; Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten Down to that tomb already more than mine. And even yet I dare not let it languish, Dare not indulge in memory's rapturous pain; Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish, How could I seek the empty world again? EMILY BRONTÉ. An Evening Guest. F, in the silence of this lonely eve, IF With the street-lamp pale flickering on the wall, An angel were to whisper me, "Believe It shall be given thee. Call!"-whom should I call? And then I were to see thee gliding in, Clad in known garments, that with empty fold Lie in my keeping, and my fingers, thin As thine were once, to feel in thy safe hold: THE PASSAGE. I should fall weeping on thy neck, and say "I have so suffered since-since."-But my tears Would stop, remembering how thou count'st thy day, A day that is with God a thousand years. Then what are these sad days, months, years of mine, What my whole life, when myriad lives divine I lose myself—I faint. Beloved, best, Let me still dream thy dear humanity DINAH MARIA MULOCK. 309 Lo, whene'er I turn mine eye Back upon the days gone by, Saddening thoughts of friends come o'er me, Friends that closed their course before me. |