Go, take thine angle, and with practised line,
      Light as the gossamer, the current sweep;
      And if thou failest in the calm, still deep,
    In the rough eddy may a prize be thine. 
    Say thou’rt unlucky where the sunbeams shine;
      Beneath the shadow where the waters creep
      Perchance the monarch of the brook shall leap—­
    For Fate is ever better than Design. 
    Still persevere; the giddiest breeze that blows
      For thee may blow with fame and fortune rife. 
    Be prosperous; and what reck if it arose
      Out of some pebble with the stream at strife,
    Or that the light wind dallied with the boughs: 
      Thou art successful—­such is human life.

    DOUBLEDAY.

* * * * *

MARIANA.

Mariana in the moated grange.—­Measure for Measure.

[Illustration]

    With blackest moss the flower-plots
      Were thickly crusted, one and all;
    The rusted nails fell from the knots
      That held the peach to the garden wall. 
    The broken sheds look’d sad and strange—­
      Uplifted was the clinking latch,
      Weeded and worn the ancient thatch,
    Upon the lonely moated grange. 
      She only said, “My life is dreary—­
        He cometh not,” she said;
      She said, “I am aweary, weary,
        I would that I were dead!”

    Her tears fell with the dews at even—­
      Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
    She could not look on the sweet heaven,
      Either at morn or eventide. 
    After the flitting of the bats,
      When thickest dark did trance the sky,
      She drew her casement-curtain by,
    And glanced athwart the glooming flats. 
      She only said, “The night is dreary—­
        He cometh not,” she said;
      She said, “I am aweary, weary,
        I would that I were dead!”

    Upon the middle of the night,
      Waking, she heard the night-fowl crow: 
    The cock sung out an hour ere light;
      From the dark fen the oxen’s low
    Came to her.  Without hope of change,
      In sleep she seem’d to walk forlorn,
      Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
    About the lonely moated grange. 
      She only said, “The day is dreary
        He cometh not,” she said;
      She said, “I am aweary, weary,
        I would that I were dead!”

    About a stone-cast from the wall
      A sluice with blacken’d waters slept;
    And o’er it many, round and small,
      The cluster’d marish-mosses crept. 
    Hard by, a poplar shook alway,
      All silver-green with gnarled bark;
      For leagues, no other tree did dark
    The level waste, the rounding gray. 
      She only said, “My life is dreary—­
        He cometh not,” she said;
      She said, “I am aweary, weary,
        I would that I were dead!”