the bondage of “was uns alle bandigt, Das Gemeine!” She will forgive me, even if I have unwittingly drawn upon her a shot or two aimed at her unworthy son; for she is generous, and the cause in which I fight is, after all, hers.  Apparitions of a day, what is our puny warfare against the Philistines, compared with the warfare which this queen of romance has been waging against them for centuries, and will wage after we are gone?

TO A FRIEND

Who prop, thou ask’st, in these bad days, my mind?—­
He much, the old man, who, clearest-souled of men,
Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen,
And Tmolus hill, and Smyrna bay, though blind. 
Much he, whose friendship I not long since won,
That halting slave, who in Nicopolis
Taught Arrian, when Vespasian’s brutal son
Cleared Rome of what most shamed him.  But he his
My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul,
From first youth tested up to extreme old age,
Business could not make dull, nor passion wild;
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole;
The mellow glory of the Attic stage,
Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child.

YOUTH AND CALM

’Tis death! and peace, indeed, is here,
And ease from shame, and rest from fear. 
There’s nothing can dismarble now
The smoothness of that limpid brow. 
But is a calm like this, in truth,
The crowning end of life and youth,
And when this boon rewards the dead,
Are all debts paid, has all been said? 
And is the heart of youth so light,
Its step so firm, its eye so bright,
Because on its hot brow there blows
A wind of promise and repose
From the far grave, to which it goes;
Because it has the hope to come,
One day, to harbor in the tomb? 
Ah no, the bliss youth dreams is one
For daylight, for the cheerful sun,
For feeling nerves and living breath—­
Youth dreams a bliss on this side death. 
It dreams a rest, if not more deep,
More grateful than this marble sleep;
It hears a voice within it tell: 
Calms not life’s crown, though calm is well.
’Tis all perhaps which man acquires,
But ’tis not what our youth desires.

ISOLATION

TO MARGUERITE

     We were apart; yet, day by day,
       I bade my heart more constant be. 
     I bade it keep the world away,
       And grow a home for only thee;
     Nor feared but thy love likewise grew,
     Like mine, each day, more tried, more true.

     The fault was grave!  I might have known,
       What far too soon, alas!  I learned—­
     The heart can bind itself alone,
       And faith may oft be unreturned. 
     Self-swayed our feelings ebb and swell—­
     Thou lov’st no more;—­Farewell!  Farewell!

     Farewell!—­and thou, thou lonely heart,
       Which never yet without remorse
     Even for a moment didst depart
       From thy remote and sphered course
     To haunt the place where passions reign—­
     Back to thy solitude again!