there is to be
A parting and distress,--
What will avail to comfort or reprieve
The soul that's anguished most?--
The knowledge that it once possessed, perceive,
The love that it has lost.
You must acknowledge, under sun and moon
All that we feel is old;
Let morning flutter from night's brown cocoon
Wide wings of flaxen gold;
The moon split through the darkness, soaring o'er,
Like some great moth and white,
These have been seen a myriad times before
And with the same delight.--
So 'tis with love--how old yet new it is!--
This only should we heed,--
To once have known, to once have felt love's bliss,
Is to be rich indeed.--
Whether we win or lose, we lose or win,
Within our gain or loss
Some purpose lies, some end unseen of sin,
Beyond our crown or cross.

14

_Nearing home, he speaks._

True, true!--Perhaps it would be best
To be that star within the west;
Above the earth, within the skies,
Yet shining in your own blue eyes.

Or, haply, better here to blow
A flower beneath your window low;
That, brief of life and frail and fair,
Finds yet a heaven in your hair.

Or well, perhaps, to be the breeze
That sighs its soul out to the trees;
A voice, a breath of rain or drouth,
That has its wild will with your mouth.

These thing I long to be. I long
To be the burthen of some song
You love to sing; a melody,
Sure of sweet immortality.

15

_At the gate. She speaks._

Sunday shall we ride together?--
Not the root-rough, rambling way
Through the wood we went that day,
In last summer's sultry weather.

Past the Methodist camp-meeting,
Where religion helped the hymn
Gather volume; and a slim
Minister, with textful greeting

Welcomed us and still expounded.--
From the service on the hill
We had gone three hills and still
Very near the singing sounded.

Nor that road through weed and berry
Drowsy days led me and you
To the old-time barbecue,
Where the country-side made merry.

Dusty vehicles together;
Darkies with the horses near
Tied to trees; the atmosphere
Redolent of bark and leather.

As we went the homeward journey
You exclaimed,--"They intermix
Pleasure there with politics.
It reminds me of a tourney."

And the fiddles!--through the thickets,
How the wind brought from the hill
Remnants of the old quadrille!--
It was like the drone of crickets....