Arrived at her door, we left her
  With a drippingly hurried adieu,
And our wheels went crunching the gravel
  Of the oak-darkened avenue.

As we drove away through the shadow,
  The candle she held in the door
From rain-varnished tree-trunk to tree-trunk
  Flashed fainter, and flashed no more;—­

Flashed fainter, then wholly faded
  Before we had passed the wood;
But the light of the face behind it
  Went with me and stayed for good.

The vision of scarce a moment,
  And hardly marked at the time,
It comes unbidden to haunt me,
  Like a scrap of ballad-rhyme.

Had she beauty?  Well, not what they call so;
  You may find a thousand as fair;
And yet there’s her face in my memory
  With no special claim to be there.

As I sit sometimes in the twilight,
  And call back to life in the coals
Old faces and hopes and fancies
  Long buried, (good rest to their souls!)

Her face shines out in the embers;
  I see her holding the light,
And hear the crunch of the gravel
  And the sweep of the rain that night.

’Tis a face that can never grow older,
  That never can part with its gleam,
’Tis a gracious possession forever,
  For is it not all a dream?

TO H.W.L.

ON HIS BIRTHDAY, 27TH FEBRUARY, 1867

I need not praise the sweetness of his song,
  Where limpid verse to limpid verse succeeds
Smooth as our Charles, when, fearing lest he wrong
The new moon’s mirrored skiff, he slides along,
  Full without noise, and whispers in his reeds.

With loving breath of all the winds his name
  Is blown about the world, but to his friends
A sweeter secret hides behind his fame,
And Love steals shyly through the loud acclaim
  To murmur a God bless you! and there ends.

As I muse backward up the checkered years
  Wherein so much was given, so much was lost,
Blessings in both kinds, such as cheapen tears,—­
But hush! this is not for profaner ears;
  Let them drink molten pearls nor dream the cost.

Some suck up poison from a sorrow’s core,
  As naught but nightshade grew upon earth’s ground;
Love turned all his to heart’s-ease, and the more
Fate tried his bastions, she but forced a door
  Leading to sweeter manhood and more sound.

Even as a wind-waved fountain’s swaying shade
  Seems of mixed race, a gray wraith shot with sun,
So through his trial faith translucent rayed
Till darkness, halt disnatured so, betrayed
  A heart of sunshine that would fain o’errun.

Surely if skill in song the shears may stay
  And of its purpose cheat the charmed abyss,
If our poor life be lengthened by a lay,
He shall not go, although his presence may,
  And the next age in praise shall double this.