XXXVIII.

ITH weary steps I loiter on,

Tho' always under alter'd skies

The purple from the distance dies,

My prospect and horizon gone.

No joy the blowing season gives,

The herald melodies of spring,

But in the songs I love to sing A doubtful gleam of solace lives.

If any care for what is here

Survive in spirits render'd free,

Then are these songs I sing of thee

Not all ungrateful to thine ear.

XXXIX.

LD warder of these buried bones,

And answering now my random stroke

With fruitful cloud and living smoke,

Dark yew, that graspest at the stones

And dippest toward the dreamless head,
To thee too comes the golden hour
When flower is feeling after flower;
But Sorrow fixt upon the dead,

And darkening the dark graves of men,
What whisper'd from her lying lips?
Thy gloom is kindled at the tips,

XL.

[OULD we forget the widow'd hour And look on Spirits breathed away,

As on a maiden in the day

When first she wears her orange-flower!

When crown'd with blessing she doth rise
To take her latest leave of home,
And hopes and light regrets that come
Make April of her tender eyes;

And doubtful joys the father move,

And tears are on the mother's face,

As parting with a long embrace

She enters other realms of love;

Her office there to rear, to teach,
Becoming as is meet and fit

A link among the days, to knit
The generations each with each;

And, doubtless, unto thee is given

A life that bears immortal fruit

In such great offices as suit The full-grown energies of heaven.

Ay me, the difference I discern!

How often shall her old fireside

Be cheer'd with tidings of the bride, How often she herself return,

And tell them all they would have told,
And bring her babe, and make her boast,

Till even those that miss'd her most,

Shall count new things as dear as old :

But thou and I have shaken hands,

Till growing winters lay me low;

My paths are in the fields I know,

And thine in undiscover'd lands.

XLI.

HY spirit ere our fatal loss

Did ever rise from high to higher;

As mounts the heavenward altar-fire,

As flies the lighter thro' the gross.

But thou art turn'd to something strange,
And I have lost the links that bound

Thy changes; here upon the ground,
No more partaker of thy change.

Deep folly! yet that this could be—

That I could wing my will with might

To leap the grades of life and light, And flash at once, my friend, to thee