fessed,
While we kiss a sweet Good Night.

There comes a last Good Night.
Human life--not love--is fleeting;
Heaven send many a birth-day greeting;
Dim years roll on
To life's gray-haired dawn,
Ere we kiss our last Good Night.

------

We've kissed our last Good Night!
Love's warm tendrils torn and bleeding,
Vain all human interceding!
Oh, life! how dark!
Its one vital spark
Was quenched with our last GOOD NIGHT!

{135}

HOPELESS.

I think through the long, long evenings,
Such thoughts of intensest pain,
And I hope and watch for her coming,
But I hope and watch in vain,
My life is a long, long journey
Over a barren moor,
With nought but my own dark shadow
Hastening on before.

I'm weary of all this watching,
Aweary of life and thought;
For there's little hope in the distance,
And for peace--I know it not!
Oh, why must we think and shudder,
And shudder and think again?
When life's but a dance of shadows
Haunting a barren plain!

{139}

INTO THE SILENT LAND.

I.

"Oh for a pen of light, a tongue of fire,
That every word might burn in living flame
Upon the age's brow, and leave one name
Engraven on the future! One desire
Fills every nook and cranny of my heart;
One hope--one sorrow--one beloved aim!
She whose pure life was of my life a part,
As light is of the day, could she inspire
My unmelodious muse, or tune the lyre
To diapasons worthy of the theme,
How would her joy put on its robes of light,
And nestle in my bosom once again,
As when life, like an Oriental dream,
Fanned by Arabian airs, glode down the stream
To music whose remembrance is a pain.
The foot of time might trample on my strain,
But could not quench its essence. There was might,
And majesty, and greatness in the love
She blest me with--a blessing without stain,
And that was earthly; since her spirit-sight
Looked through the veil, and learned love's true delight,
Which sainted ministrants alone can prove
Who taste the waters of eternal love:
I pause to think how wonderful has grown
The love that was to me so wondrous here!
Chained as I am to this terrestrial sphere,
Groping my way through darkness, and alone,

{140}

Like a blind eaglet soaring towards the sun,
How would her full experience lift and cheer
The heart that never feels