HOW MANY NOW ARE DEAD TO ME. 243

How Many now are Dead to Me.

OW many now are dead to me,

HOW

That live to others yet!

How many are alive to me,

Who crumble in their graves, nor see

That sickening, sinking look which we,
Till dead, can ne'er forget!

Beyond the blue seas far away,

Most wretchedly alone,

One died in prison, far away,

Where stone on stone shut out the day,
And never hope nor comfort's ray
In his lone dungeon shone.

Dead to the world, alive to me,

Though months and years have passed,
In some lone hour his sigh to me
Comes like the hum of some wild bee,
And then his form and face I see,

As when I saw him last.

And one with a bright lip, and cheek,

And eye, is dead to me:

How pale the bloom of his smooth cheek!
His heart was cold, for it did not break;
His lip was dead, for it did not speak,
And his eye, for it did not see.

Then for the living be the tomb,
And for the dead the smile;
Engrave oblivion on the tomb

Of pulseless life, and senseless bloom :-
Dim is such glare, but bright the gloom

Around the funeral pile.

JOHN G. C. BRAINARD.

Break, Break, Break.

BREAK, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy

That he shouts with his sister at play!

O well for the sailor lad

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on,

To the haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

Too Late.

"Ah! si la jeunesse savait-si la vieillesse pouvait !"

HERE sat an old man on a rock,

THE

And unceasing bewailed him of Fate

That concern where we all must take stock,

Though our vote has no hearing or weight;
And the old man sang him an old, old song-
Never sang voice so clear and strong

That it could drown the old man's long,

For he sang the song too late! too late!"

TOO LATE.

"When we want, we have for our pains
The promise that if we but wait

Till the want has burned out of our brains,
Every means shall be present to sate;

While we send for the napkin the soup gets cold,
While the bonnet is trimming the face grows old,
When we've matched our buttons the pattern is sold,
And everything comes too late—too late!

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"When strawberries seemed like red heavensTerrapin stew a wild dream

When my brain was at sixes and sevens

If my mother had 'folks' and ice-cream,
Then I gazed with a lickerish hunger
At the restaurant man and fruit-monger-
But oh! how I wished I were younger

When the goodies all came in a stream! in a strearn!

"I've a splendid blood horse, and—a liver

That it jars into torture to trot;

My row-boat's the gem of the river-
Gout makes every knuckle a knot !

I can buy boundless credits on Paris and Rome,
But no palate for ménes-no eyes for a dome-
Those belonged to the youth who must tarry at home,
When no home but an attic he'd got-he'd got!

"How I longed, in that lonest of garrets,
Where the tiles baked my brains all July,
For ground to grow two pecks of carrots,
Two pigs of my own in a sty,

A rose-bush--a little thatched cottage-
Two spoons-love-a basin of pottage!-
Now in freestone I sit—and my dotage-

With a woman's chair empty close by-close by!

"Ah! now, though I sit on a rock,

I have shared one seat with the great;

I have sat-knowing nought of the clock-
On love's high throne of state;

But the lips that kissed, and the arms that caressed,
To a mouth grown stern with delay were pressed,
And circled a breast that their clasp had blessed
Had they only not come too late! too late!"
FITZ HUGH LUDLOW.

Longing.

F all the myriad moods of mind

OF

O one

That through the soul come thronging,
Which one was e'er so dear, so kind,

So beautiful as longing?

The thing we long for that we are

For one transcendent moment;
Before the present, poor and bare,
Can make its sneering comment.

Still through our paltry stir and strife
Glows down our wished Ideal;
And longing moulds in clay what life
Carves in the marble Real;

To let the new life in, we know,
Desire must ope the portal;

Perhaps the longing to be so
Helps make the soul immortal.

Longing is God's fresh heavenward will

With our poor earthward striving;

We quench it that we may be still
Content with merely living;

EACH AND ALL.

But would we know that heart's full scope,
Which we are hourly wronging,

Our lives must climb from hope to hope,
And realize our longing.

Ah! let us hope that to our praise
Good God not only reckons

The moments when we tread his ways,
But when the spirit beckons;

That some slight good is also wrought
Beyond self-satisfaction,

When we are simply good in thought,

Howe'er we fail in action.

JAMES R. Lowell.

L

Each and All

ITTLE thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown

Of thee from the hill-top looking down;

The heifer that lows in the upland farm,

Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm ;
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,

Deems not that great Napoleon

Stops his horse, and lists with delight,

Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height.

Nor knowest thou what argument

Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one--
Nothing is fair or good alone.

I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough ;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
He sings the song, but it pleases not now;
For I did not bring home the river and sky;
He sang to my ear-they sang to my eye.

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