TO EDWARD WILLIAMS.

I.

THE serpent is shut out from paradise.

The wounded deer must seek the herb no more

In which its heart-cure lies:

The widowed dove must cease to haunt a bower Like that from which its mate with feignèd sighs Fled in the April hour.

I too must seldom seek again

Near happy friends a mitigated pain.

Of hatred I am proud,

II.

with scorn content;

Indifference, that once hurt me, now is grown

Itself indifferent.

But, not to speak of love, pity alone

Can break a spirit already more than bent.
The miserable one

Turns the mind's poison into food,

Its medicine is tears, - its evil good.

III.

Therefore, if now I see you seldomer,

Dear friends, dear friend! know that I only fly

Your looks, because they stir

Griefs that should sleep, and hopes that cannot die : The very comfort that they minister

I scarce can bear, yet I,

So deeply is the arrow gone,
Should quickly perish if it were withdrawn.

IV.

When I return to my cold home, you ask
Why I am not as I have ever been.

You spoil me for the task

Of acting a forced part in life's dull scene,

Of wearing on my brow the idle mask

Of author, great or mean,

In the world's carnival. I sought Peace thus, and but in you I found it not.

V.

Full half an hour, to-day, I tried my lot

With various flowers, and every one still said,

"She loves me

loves me not."

And if this meant a vision long since fled

If it meant fortune, fame, or peace of thought—

To speak what you may know too well:

Still there was truth in the sad oracle.

VI.

The crane o'er seas and forests seeks her home;
No bird so wild but has its quiet nest,
When it no more would roam;

The sleepless billows on the ocean's breast
Break like a bursting heart, and die in foam,
And thus at length find rest.

Doubtless there is a place of peace
-Where my weak heart and all its throbs will cease.

VII.

I asked her, yesterday, if she believed

That I had resolution. One who had

Would ne'er have thus relieved

His heart with words, — but what his judgment bade Would do, and leave the scorner unrelieved.

These verses are too sad

To send to you, but that I know,

Happy yourself, you feel another's woe.

ΤΟ

I.

ONE word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it.

One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother,

And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.

II.

I can give not what men call love,
But wilt thou accept not

The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not,
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,

The devotion to something afar

From the sphere of our sorrow?

GINEVRA.

WILD, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one
Who staggers forth into the air and sun
From the dark chamber of a mortal fever,
Bewildered, and incapable, and ever
Fancying strange comments in her dizzy brain
Of usual shapes, till the familiar train

Of objects and of persons past like things
Strange as a dreamer's mad imaginings,
Ginevra from the nuptial altar went;

The vows to which her lips had sworn assent
Rung in her brain still with a jarring din,
Deafening the lost intelligence within.

And so she moved under the bridal veil,

Which made the paleness of her cheek more pale,
And deepened the faint crimson of her mouth,
And darkened her dark locks, as moonlight doth,-
And of the gold and jewels glittering there
She scarce felt conscious, but the weary glare
Lay like a chaos of unwelcome light,

Vexing the sense with gorgeous undelight.