Love me dearly, dearly, dearly with your heart and with your eyes: Whisper all your sweet emotions as they gushing, blushing rise. Throw your soft white arms around me; say you _lived not_ till you found me-- Say it, say it, Aveline! whisper you are only mine; That you cannot live without me, as you throw your arms about me, That you _cannot_ live without me, artless, rosy Aveline!
Our limits will not permit us to quote any of the remaining poems of this volume in full, and we conclude our extracts with a few passages penciled while in a hasty reading. In the piece entitled The Kings of Sorrow, the poet sings:
Was HE not sad amid the grief and strife, the Lord of light and life, Whose torture made humanity divine, upon that woful hill of Palestine? Then is it not far better thus to be, thoughtful, and brave, and melancholy, Than given up to idle revelry, amid the unreligious brood of folly? For our sorrow is a worship, worship true, and pure, and calm, Sounding from the choir of duty like a high, heroic psalm, In its very darkness bearing to the bleeding heart a balm. Brothers, we must have no wailing: do we agonize alone? Look at all the pallid millions; hear a universal moan, From the mumbling, low-browed Bushman to a Lytton on his throne. Nor shall we have coward faltering: Brothers! we must be sublime By due labor at the forges blazing in the cave of Time; Knowing life was made for duty, and that only cowards prate Of a search for Happy Valley and the hard decrees of fate: Seeing through this night of mourning all the future as a star, And a joy at last appearing on the centuries afar, When the meaning of the sorrow, when the mystery shall be plain, When the Earth shall see her rivers roll through Paradise again. O! the vision gives to sorrow something white and purple-plumed: Even the hurricane of Evil comes a hurricane perfumed.
... The Storm is silent while we speak; The awe-struck Cloud hath paused above the peak; The far Volcano statlier waves on high His smoking censer to the solemn sky; And see, the troubled Ocean folds his hands With a great patience on the yellow sands.
So rest! and Rest shall slay your many woes; Motion is god-like--god-like is repose, A mountain-stillness, of majestic might, Whose peaks are glorious with the quiet light Of suns when Day is at his solemn close. Nor deem that slumber must ignoble be. Jove labored lustily once in airy fields; And over the cloudy lea He planted many a budding shoot Whose liberal nature daily, nightly yields A store of starry fruit. His labor done, the weary god went back Up the long mountain track To his great house; there he did wile away With lightest thought a well-won holiday; For all the Powers crooned softly an old tune Wishing their Sire might sleep Through all the sultry noon And cold blue night; And very soon They heard the awful Thunderer breathing low and deep. And in the hush that dropped adown the spheres, And in the quiet of the awe-struck space, The worlds learned worship at the birth of years: They looked upon their Lord's calm, kingly face. And bade Religion come and kiss each starry place.