My pulses therefore beat again

For other friends that once I met;

Nor can it suit me to forget

The mighty hopes that make us men.

I woo your love: I count it crime

To mourn for any overmuch;

I, the divided half of such
A friendship as had mastered Time;

Which masters Time indeed, and is
Eternal, separate from fears.

The all-assuming months and years
Can take no part away from this :

But Summer on the steaming floods,

And Spring that swells the narrow brooks,

And Autumn, with a noise of rooks,

That gather in the waning woods,

And every pulse of wind and wave

Recalls, in change of light or gloom,

My old affection of the tomb,

And my prime passion in the grave:

My old affection of the tomb,

A part of stillness, yearns to speak: "Arise, and get thee forth and seek A friendship for the years to come.

"I watch thee from the quiet shore;
Thy spirit up to mine can reach ;
But in dear words of human speech
We two communicate no more."

And I, "Can clouds of nature stain
The starry clearness of the free?

How is it? Canst thou feel for me Some painless sympathy with pain ?"

And lightly does the whisper fall:

“”T is hard for thee to fathom this;

I triumph in conclusive bliss,

And that serene result of all."

So hold I commerce with the dead;

Or so methinks the dead would say ;

Or so shall grief with symbols play, And pining life be fancy-fed.

Now looking to some settled end,

That these things pass, and I shall prove

A meeting somewhere, love with love, I crave your pardon, O my friend;

If not so fresh, with love as true,
I, clasping brother-hands, aver
I could not, if I would, transfer
The whole I felt for him to you.

For which be they that hold apart

The promise of the golden hours?

First love, first friendship, equal powers

That marry with the virgin heart.

Still mine that cannot but deplore,

That beats within a lonely place,

That yet remembers his embrace,

But at his footstep leaps no more,

My heart, though widowed, may not rest
Quite in the love of what is gone,

But seeks to beat in time with one

That warms another living breast.

Ah, take the imperfect gift I bring, Knowing the primrose yet is dear, The primrose of the later year, As not unlike to that of Spring.

9

LXXXIV.

84

SWEET after showers, ambrosial air,
That rollest from the gorgeous gloom
Of evening over brake and bloom
And meadow, slowly breathing bare

The round of space, and rapt below

Through all the dewy-tasselled wood,
And shadowing down the horned flood

In ripples, fan my brows and blow

The fever from my cheek, and sigh

The full new life that feeds thy breath
Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death,

Ill brethren, let the fancy fly

From belt to belt of crimson seas,

On leagues of odor streaming far,

To where in yonder orient star

A hundred spirits whisper "Peace."