"Often at midnight, on the cold stone lying,

My passionate sobs have rent the passive air,

While my crisped fingers clutched the pavement, trying

To hold him fast, as he had still been there.

"I called, I shrieked, till my spent breath came faintly,

I sank, in pain Christ's martyrs could not bear;

Then dreamed I saw him, beautiful and saintly,

As his far convent tolled the hour of prayer.

"Solemn and deep that vision of reunion

He passed in robe, and cowl, and sandall'd feet,

But our dissever'd lips held no communion,

Our long divorced glances could not meet.

"Then slowly, from that hunger of

sensation,

it sin,

I rose to calmer, wider contemplation, And knew the Holiest, and his discipline.

That breath of mine no more shall

thou bearest

an's vest,

If thou my mournful earthly fortune

sharest,

She ranged my hair with gem or flower,

Careful, the festal draperies hung,
Or plied her needle, hour by hour
In cadence with the song I sung.

My highest joy she could not share,
Nor fathom sorrow's deep abyss;
For that, she wore a smiling air,
She hung her head and pined for this.

"And she shall live with me," I said,
"Till all my pretty ones be grown;
I'll give my girls my little maid,
The gayest thing I call my own."

Or else, methought, some farmer bold Should woo and win my gentle Lizzie,

And I should stock her house fourfold,

Be with her wedding blithely busy.

But lo! Consumption's spectral form Sucks from her lips the flickering breath;

In these pale flowers, these tear-drops

Thus Faith, cast out of barren creeds, Shall rest in emblems of her own; Beauty, still springing from Decay, The cross-wood budding to the crown.

THE DEAD CHRIST.

TAKE the dead Christ to my chamber,
Over all the tossing ocean,
The Christ I brought from Rome;

He has reached his western home; Bear him as in procession,

And lay him solemnly Where, through weary night and morning,

He shall bear me company.

The name I bear is other

Than than that I bore by birth, And I've given life to children

But the time comes swiftly towards Who'll grow and dwell on earth;

me

When the dead Christ will be more (Nor do I bid it stay),

to me

Than all I hold to-day.

Lay the dead Christ beside me,

Öh, press him on my heart,

I would hold him long and painfully Till the weary tears should start; Till the divine contagion

Heal me of self and sin, And the cold weight press wholly down

The pulse that chokes within.

Reproof and frost, they fret me,

Towards the free, the sunny lands, From the chaos of existence

I stretch these feeble hands; And, penitential, kneeling,

Pray God would not be wroth, Who gave not the strength of feeling, And strength of labor both.

Thou'rt but a wooden carving,

Defaced of worms, and old; Yet more to me thou couldst not be Wert thou all wrapt in gold

Without is tender yearning, And tender love is within;

I crept,

Holding my breath;

There, safe and sad, lay shuddering,

and wept

beats,