in barbaric love or hate
Nailed enemies' hands at wild crossways,
Shrined leaders' hearts in costly state:

The symbol, sign, and instrument
Of each soul's purpose, passion, strife,
Of fires in which are poured and spent
Their all of love, their all of life.

O feeble, mighty human hand!
O fragile, dauntless human heart!
The universe holds nothing planned
With such sublime, transcendent art!

Yes, Death, I own I grudge thee mine
Poor little hand, so feeble now;
Its wrinkled palm, its altered line,
Its veins so pallid and so slow--

(_Unfinished here_)

Ah, well, friend Death, good friend thou art:
I shall be free when thou art through.
Take all there is--take hand and heart:
There must be somewhere work to do.

HELEN HUNT JACKSON.

[9] Her last poem: 7 August, 1885.

FAREWELL, LIFE.

WRITTEN DURING SICKNESS, APRIL, 1845.

Farewell, life! my senses swim.
And the world is growing dim;
Thronging shadows cloud the light,
Like the advent of the night,--
Colder, colder, colder still,
Upward steals a vapor chill;
Strong the earthly odor grows,--
I smell the mold above the rose!

Welcome, life! the spirit strives!
Strength returns and hope revives;
Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn
Fly like shadows at the morn,--
O'er the earth there comes a bloom;
Sunny light for sullen gloom,
Warm perfume for vapor cold,--
smell the rose above the mold!

THOMAS HOOD.

FOR ANNIE.

Thank Heaven! the crisis,--
The danger is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last,--
And the fever called "Living"
Is conquered at last.

Sadly, I know,
I am shorn of my strength,
And no muscle I move
As I lie at full length,--
But no matter!--I feel
I am better at length.

And I rest so composedly
Now, in my bed,
That any beholder
Might fancy me dead,--
Might start at beholding me,
Thinking me dead.

The moaning and groaning,
The sighing and sobbing,
Are quieted now,
With that horrible throbbing
At heart,--ah, that horrible,
Horrible throbbing!

The sickness, the nausea,
The pitiless pain,
Have ceased, with the fever
That maddened my brain,--
With the fever called "Living"
That burned in my brain.

And O, of all tortures
_That_ torture the worst
Has abated,--the terrible
Torture of thirst
For the naphthaline river
Of Passion accurst!
I have drunk of a water
That quenches all thirst,

Of a water that flows,
Wit