THE CONQUEROR WORM

Lo! 'tis a gala night

Within the lonesome latter years
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see

A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully

The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,

And hither and thither fly

Mere puppets they, who come and go At bidding of vast formless things That shift the scenery to and fro, Flapping from out their Condor wings Invisible Wo!

That motley drama-oh, be sure

It shall not be forgot!

With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,

Through a circle that ever returneth in

To the self-same spot,

And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout

A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!

It writhes!—it writhes !—with mortai pangs

The mimes become its food,
And the angels sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

THOU wouldst be loved?-then let thy heart
From its present pathway part not!
Being everything which now thou art,
Be nothing which thou art not.
So with the world thy gentle ways,

Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise,
And love a simple duty.

TO ONE IN PARADISE.

THOU wast that all to me, love,

For which my soul did pineA green isle in the sea, love,

A fountain and a shrine,

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!

Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise

But to be overcast !

A voice from out the Future cries, “On! on !”—but o'er the Past

(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! with me

The light of Life is o'er!

"No more-no more-no more-"
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)

Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree.
Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances,

And all my nightly dreams. Are where thy dark eye glances,

And where thy footstep gleans

In what ethereal dances,

By what eternal streams.

THE VALLEY OF UNREST.

;

Once it smiled a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell
They had gone unto the wars,
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
Nightly, from their azure towers,
To keep watch above the flowers,
In the midst of which all day
The red sun-light lazily lay.
Now each visiter shall confess
The sad valley's restlessness.
Nothing there is motionless-
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.

Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
That palpitate like the chill seas
Around the misty Hebrides!

Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
That rustle through the unquiet Heaven
Uneasily, from morn till even,

Over the violets there that lie

In myriad types of the human eye-
Over the lilies there that wave

And weep above a nameless grave!
They wave-from out their fragrant tops
Eternal dews come down in drops.

They weep-from off their delicate stems

THE CITY IN THE SEA.

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West,

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

There shrines and palaces and towers

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

Resemble nothing that is ours.

Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town ;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently-

Gleams up the pinnacles far and free-
Up domes-up spires-up kingly halls—
Up fanes-up Babylon-like walls-
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers-
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathéd friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.