Chapter VI

And he whispered, prayer-like, under his breath,
The name of his own young wife:
For Love, that had made his friend's peace with Death,
Alone could make his with life.

BEREAVED.

The passionate humming-birds cling
To the honeysuckles' hearts;
In and out at the open window
The twittering house-wren darts,
And the sun is bright.

June is young, and warm, and sweet;
The morning is gay and new;
Glimmers yet the grass of the door-yard,
Pearl-gray with fragrant dew,
And the sun is bright.

From the mill, upon the stream,
A busy murmur swells;
On to the pasture go the cattle,
Lowing, with tinkling bells,
And the sun is bright.

She gathers his playthings up,
And dreamily puts them by;
Children are playing in the meadow,
She hears their joyous cry,
And the sun is bright.

She sits and clasps her brow,
And looks with swollen eyes
On the landscape that reels and dances,--
To herself she softly cries,
And the sun is bright.

THE SNOW-BIRDS.

The lonesome graveyard lieth,
A deep with silent waves
Of night-long snow, all white, and billowed
Over the hidden graves.

The snow-birds come in the morning,
Flocking and fluttering low,
And light on the graveyard brambles,
And twitter there in the snow.

The Singer, old and weary,
Looks out from his narrow room:
"Ah, me! but my thoughts are snow-birds,
Haunting a graveyard gloom,

"Where all the Past is buried
And dead, these many years,
Under the drifted whiteness
Of frozen falls of tears.

"Poor birds! that know not summer,
Nor sun, nor flowèrs fair,--
Only the graveyard brambles,
And graves, and winter air!"

VAGARY.

Up and down the dusty street,
I hurry with my burning feet;
Against my face the wind-waves beat,
Fierce from the city-sea of heat.
Deep in my heart the vision is,
Of meadow grass and meadow trees
Blown silver in the summer breeze,
And ripe, red, hillside strawberries.

My sense the city tumult fills,--
The tumult that about me reels
Of strokes and cries, and feet and wheels.
Deep in my dream I list, and, hark!
From out the maple's leafy dark,
The fluting of the meadow lark!

About the throngéd street I go:
There is no face here that I know;
Of all that pass me to and fro
There is no face here that I know.
Deep in my soul's most sacred place,
With a sweet pain I look and trace
The features of a tender face,
All lit with love and girlish grace.

Some spell is on me, for I seem
A memory of the past, a dream
Of happiness remembered dim,
Unto myself that walk the street
Scathed with the city's noontide heat,
With puzzled brain and burning feet.

FEUERBILDER.

The children sit by the fireside
With their little faces in bloom;
And behind, the lily-pale mother,
Looking out of the gloom,

Flushes in cheek and forehead
With a light and sudden start;
But the father sits there silent,
From the firelight apart.

"Now, what dost thou see in the embers?
Tell it to me, my child,"
Whispers the lily-pale mother
To her daughter sweet and mild.

"O, I see a sky and a moon
In the coals and ashes there,
And under, two are walking
In a garden of flowers so fair.

"A lady gay, and her lover,
Talking with low-voiced words,
Not to waken the dreaming flowers
And the sleepy little birds."

Back in the gloom the mother
Shrinks with a sudden sigh.
"Now, what dost thou see in the embers?"
Cries the father to the boy.

"O, I see a wedding-procession
Go in at the church's door,--
Ladies in silk and knights in steel,--
A hundred of them, and more.

"The bride's face is as white as a lily,
And the groom's head is white as snow;
And without, with plumes and tapers,
A funeral paces slow."

Loudly then laughed the father,
And shouted again for cheer,
And called to the drowsy housemaid
To fetch him a pipe and beer.

AVERY.

[NIAGARA, 1853.]

I.

All night long they heard in the houses beside the shore,
Heard, or seemed to hear, through the multitudinous roar,
Out of the hell of the rapids as 'twere a lost soul's cries,--
Heard and could not believe; and the morning mocked their eyes,
Showing, where wildest and fiercest the waters leaped up and ran
Raving round him and past, the visage of a man
Clinging, or seeming to cling, to the trunk of a tree that, caught
Fast in the rocks below, scarce out of the surges raught.
Was it a life, could it be, to yon slender hope that clung?
Shrill, above all the tumult the answering terror rung.