But the ground grows firmer beneath his feet,
    And there from over the meadow
  A lamp is flickering homely-sweet;
    The boy at the edge of the shadow
      Looks back as he pauses to take his breath,
      And in his glance is the fear of death. 
  ’Twas eerie there ’mid the sedge and peat,
    Ah, that was a place to dread, O!

* * * * *

  ON THE TOWER[37] (1842)

  I stand aloft on the balcony,
    The starlings around me crying,
  And let like maenad my hair stream free
    To the storm o’er the ramparts flying. 
  Oh headlong wind, on this narrow ledge
    I would I could try thy muscle
  And, breast to breast, two steps from the edge,
    Fight it out in a deadly tussle.

  Beneath me I see, like hounds at play,
    How billow on billow dashes;
  Yea, tossing aloft the glittering spray,
    The fierce throng hisses and clashes. 
  Oh, might I leap into the raging flood
    And urge on the pack to harry

  The hidden glades of the coral wood,
    For the walrus, a worthy quarry! 
  From yonder mast a flag streams out
    As bold as a royal pennant;
  I can watch the good ship lunge about
    From this tower of which I am tenant;
  But oh, might I be in the battling ship,
    Might I seize the rudder and steer her,
  How gay o’er the foaming reef we’d slip
    Like the sea-gulls circling near her!

  Were I a hunter wandering free,
    Or a soldier in some sort of fashion,
  Or if I at least a man might be,
    The heav’ns would grant me my passion.

  But now I must sit as fine and still
    As a child in its best of dresses,
  And only in secret may have my will
    And give to the wind my tresses.

* * * * *

  THE DESOLATE HOUSE[38] (1842)

  Deep in a dell a woodsman’s house
    Has sunk in wild dilapidation;
  There buried under vines and boughs
    I often sit in contemplation. 
  So dense the tangle that the day
    Through heavy lashes can but glimmer;
    The rocky cleft is rendered dimmer
  By overshadowing tree-trunks gray.

  Within that dell I love to hear
    The flies with their tumultuous humming,
  And solitary beetles near
    Amid the bushes softly drumming.

  And when the trickling cliffs of slate
    The color from the sunset borrow,
    Methinks an eye all red with sorrow
  Looks down on me disconsolate.

  The arbor peak with jagged edge
    Wears many a vine-shoot long and meagre
  And from the moss beneath the hedge
    Creep forth carnations, nowise eager. 
  There from the moist cliff overhead
    The muddy drippings oft bedew them,
    Then creep in lazy streamlets through them
  To sink within a fennel-bed.