"From every firmest limb and fairest face

The strength and freshness fell like dust, and left
The action and the shape without the grace

"Of life. The marble brow of youth was cleft
With care; and in those eyes where once hope shone,
Desire, like a lioness bereft

"Of her last cub, glared ere it died; each one

Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly

These shadows, numerous as the dead leaves blown

"In autumn evening from a poplar tree. Each like himself and like each other were At first; but some distorted seemed to be

"Obscure clouds, moulded by the casual air; And of this stuff the car's creative ray

Wrapt all the busy phantoms that were there,

"As the sun shapes the clouds; thus on the way Mask after mask fell from the countenance

And form of all; and long before the day

"Was old, the joy which waked like heaven's glance The sleepers in the oblivious valley, died;

And some grew weary of the ghastly dance,

"And fell, as I have fallen,

by the way

side;

Those soonest from whose forms most shadows past,

And least of strength and beauty did abide.

FRAGMENTS

FROM AN UNFINISHED DRAMA.

H

FRAGMENTS

FROM AN UNFINISHED DRAMA.

He came like a dream in the dawn of life,
He fled like a shadow before its noon;
He is gone, and my peace is turned to strife,
And I wander and wane like the weary moon.
O sweet Echo wake,

And for my sake

Make answer the while my heart shall break!

But heart has a music which Echo's lips,

Though tender and true, yet can answer not, And the shadow that moves in the soul's eclipse Can return not the kiss by his now forgot; Sweet lips! he who hath

On my desolate path

Cast the darkness of absence worse than death!

Indian. And if my grief should still be dearer to me

Than all the pleasure in the world beside,

Why would you lighten it ?