LV.

But his sword of mettle clashed,
And his arm smote strong, I ween;

And her dreaming spirit flashèd

Through her body's fair white screen,

And the light thereof might guide him up the cedar alleys green.

LVI..

But for me, I saw no splendour—
All my sword was my child-heart;
And the wood refused surrender
Of that bower it held apart,

Safe as Edipus's grave-place, 'mid Colone's olives swart.

LVII.

As Aladdin sought the basements
His fair palace rose upon,

And the four-and-twenty casements

Which gave answers to the sun;

So, in wilderment of gazing, I looked up, and I looked down.

LVIII.

Years have vanished since, as wholly

As the little bower did then;

And you call it tender folly

That such thoughts should come again ?

Ah! I cannot change this sighing for your smiling, brother-men!

LIX.

For this loss it did prefigure

Other loss of better good,

When my soul, in spirit-vigour,

And in ripened womanhood,

Fell from visions of more beauty than an arbour in a wood.

LX.

I have lost-oh, many a pleasure—
Many a hope, and many a power-
Studious health and merry leisure—

The first dew on the first flower!

But the first of all my losses was the losing of the bower.

LXI.

I have lost the dream of Doing,
And the other dream of Done-
The first spring in the pursuing,
The first pride in the Begun,-

First recoil from incompletion, in the face of what is won-

LXII.

Exaltations in the far light,
Where some cottage only is-

Mild dejections in the starlight,

Which the sadder-hearted miss;

And the child-cheek blushing scarlet, for the very shame of bliss.

LXIII.

I have lost the sound child-sleeping
Which the thunder could not break;
Something too of the strong leaping
Of the staglike heart awake,

Which the pale is low for keeping in the road it ought to take.

LXIV.

Some respect to social fictions
Hath been also lost by me;

And some generous genuflexions,

Which my spirit offered free

To the pleasant old conventions of our false Humanity.

LXV.

All my losses did I tell you,

Ye, perchance, would look away;

Ye would answer me,

"Farewell! you

Make sad company to-day;

And your tears are falling faster than the bitter words you say."

LXVI.

For God placed me like a dial
In the open ground, with power;
And my heart had for its trial,
All the sun and all the shower!

And I suffered many losses; and my first was of the bower.

LXVII.

Laugh ye? If that loss of mine be
Of no heavy-seeming weight-

When the cone falls from the pine-tree,

The young children laugh thereat;

Yet the wind that struck it, riseth, and the tempest shall be great.

LXVIII.

One who knew me in my childhood,

In the glamour and the game,

Looking on me long and mild, would

Never know me for the same.

Come, unchanging recollections, where those changes overcame.

LXIX.

On this couch I weakly lie on,
While I count my memories,—

Through the fingers which, still sighing,

I press closely on mine eyes,—

Clear as once beneath the sunshine, I behold the bower arise.

LXX.

Springs the linden-tree as greenly,
Stroked with light adown its rind—

And the ivy-leaves serenely

Each in either intertwined;

And the rose-trees at the doorway, they have neither grown nor pined.

LXXI.

From those overblown faint roses,

Not a leaf appeareth shed,

And that little bud discloses

Not a thorn's-breadth more of red,

For the winters and the summers which have passed me overhead.

LXXII.

And that music overfloweth,

Sudden sweet, the sylvan eaves;

Thrush or nightingale-who knoweth?

Fay or Faunus-who believes?

But my heart still trembles in me, to the trembling of the leaves.

LXXIII.

Is the bower lost, then? Who sayeth
That the bower indeed is lost?

Hark! my spirit in it prayeth

Through the solstice and the frost,

And the prayer preserves it greenly, to the last and uttermost—

LXXIV.

Till another open for me

In God's Eden-land unknown,
With an angel at the doorway,

White with gazing at His Throne;

And a saint's voice in the palm-trees, singing-" ALL IS LOST and won!"

THE DESERTED GARDEN.

I MIND me in the days departed,
How often underneath the sun,
With childish bounds I used to run
To a garden long deserted.

The beds and walks were vanished quite;
And wheresoe'er had struck the spade,
The greenest grasses Nature laid,

To sanctify her right.

I called the place my wilderness,
For no one entered there but I.

The sheep looked in, the grass to espy,
And passed it ne'ertheless.

The trees were interwoven wild,
And spread their boughs enough about
To keep both sheep and shepherd out,
But not a happy child.

Adventurous joy it was for me;

I crept beneath the boughs, and found
A circle smooth of mossy ground
Beneath a poplar-tree.

Old garden rose-trees hedged it in,
Bedropt with roses waxen-white,
Well satisfied with dew and light,
And careless to be seen.

Long years ago, it might befall,
When all the garden flowers were trim,
The grave old gardener prided him
On these the most of all,—

Some Lady, stately overmuch,
Here moving with a silken noise,
Has blushed beside them at the voice
That likened her to such.

Or these, to make a diadem,
She often may have plucked and twined;
Half-smiling as it came to mind,

That few would look at them.

Oh, little thought that Lady proud,
A child would watch her fair white rose,
When buried lay her whiter brows,

And silk was changed for shroud !—

Nor thought that gardener (full of scorns
For men unlearned and simple phrase,)
A child would bring it all its praise,
By creeping through the thorns!

To me upon my low moss seat,
Though never a dream the roses sent
Of science or love's compliment,
I ween they smelt as sweet.

It did not move my grief, to see
The trace of human step departed.
Because the garden was deserted,
The blither place for me!

Friends, blame me not! a narrow ken
Hath childhood 'twixt the sun and sward:

We draw the moral afterward

We feel the gladness then.