Till I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close

reserve,

In you come with your cold music, till I creep thro' every nerve.

12.

Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house

was burned

"Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what

Venice earned !

The soul, doubtless, is immortal

where a soul can be

discerned.

13.

"Yours for instance, you know physics, something of

geology,

Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their

degree;

Butterflies may dread extinction,

you'll not die, it

cannot be !

14.

"As for Venice and its people, merely born to bloom and

drop,

Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop.

What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing; had to

stop?

15.

"Dust and ashes! So you creak it, and I want the

Dear dead women, with such hair, too

heart to scold

what's become

of all the gold

Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and

grown old.

BY THE FIRESIDE.

1.

How well I know what I mean to do

When the long dark Autumn evenings come, And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue? With the music of all thy voices, dumb In life's November too!

2.

I shall be found by the fire, suppose,

O'er a great wise book as beseemeth age, While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows, And I turn the page, and I turn the page, Not verse now, only prose!

3.

Till the young ones whisper, finger on lip, "There he is at it, deep in Greek

Now or never, then, out we slip

To cut from the hazels by the creek A mainmast for our ship."

4.

I shall be at it indeed, my friends
Greek puts already on either side
Such a branch-work forth, as soon extends
To a vista opening far and wide,
And I pass out where it ends.

5.

The outside-frame like your hazel-trees
But the inside-archway narrows fast,

And a rarer sort succeeds to these,
And we slope to Italy at last

And youth, by green degrees.

6.

I follow wherever I am led,

Knowing so well the leader's hand

Oh, woman-country, wooed, not wed,

Loved all the more by earth's male-lands, Laid to their hearts instead!

7.

Look at the ruined chapel again
Half way up in the Alpine gorge.
Is that a tower, I point you plain,
Or is it a mill or an iron forge
Breaks solitude in vain?

8.

A turn, and we stand in the heart of things;
The woods are round us, heaped and dim;
From slab to slab how it slips and springs,
The thread of water single and slim,
Thro' the ravage some torrent brings!

9.

Does it feed the little lake below?

That speck of white just on its marge Is Pella; see, in the evening glow

How sharp the silver spear-heads charge When Alp meets Heaven in snow.

10.

On our other side is the straight-up rock ; And a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it By boulder-stones where lichens mock

The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit Their teeth to the polished block.

11.

Oh, the sense of the yellow mountain flowers, And the thorny balls, each three in one, The chestnuts throw on our path in showers, For the drop of the woodland fruit's begun These early November hours