So they rose her hand he took,
Gently twining with his own;
Up the
green and grassy lanes
They turned homeward from that brook,
And if Silence walked between,
"Twas the silence of the scene;
Or the trees whose foreheads cast
Sadness on them as they passed,
Or the water's tone that made
Thought fall on them like a shade,
As it seemed a voice that gave
A farewell, heard as from a grave:
Each with staid and musing mien
Listened, pensive yet serene,
As when dwelling on the s rains
Of sweet music that hath been.
TIME on man's as Nature's face
Signets the same note of change;
Twenty years had rolled away
And you scarce had found the trace
Of that green and fairy place:
All was seared, and waste, and strange;
As if taste and order fled
With them, misrule reigned instead.
The stream flowed on with paler face,
The cold sky reflecting: bare
Grew the sedges wild, and they
Through the choked-up stream were spread;
The green pathway now was grey,
Leafless boughs across it hung,
That moaning o'er the brooklet swung,
As if they held a silent tongue
That mourned and drooped o'er the decay.
And the voice of the thin wind,
Sounded like the tone unkind
Of a friend who turns his head
From you, and his welcome fled.
On the bank sits one alone,
On the sear and withered grass;
Is it he we saw? alas,
Twenty years o'er him have flown,
And deep traces they have shown
On that forehead: o'er his hair
Snow-flakes seemed as they had passed,
Drifting on the wintry blast,
In their flight arrested there.
It is he, the changed, the same:
By the trunk of a rent tree
Of a thing he sought, unfound:
But rather as a man who came
To sit alone with his despair.
And he gazed around, about,
On the water, on the sky,
On those sear leaves, red and dry:
Then turned slowly to and fro,
As the mourner who would know
prys on his grief, or hears.
By his hands his face is hidden,
As a man who would shut out
Nature, as a sight forbidden;
All but what the feverish eye
Sees of inward memory.
But between his fingers tears
Thick and fast flowed gushingly,
As if held within for years;
Then sighs burst, as from despair,
That confessed its weakness there!
And those sobs convulsing came,
Such as their own pangs impart,
When the pulse and brain are flame;
When the strong mind, giving way,
Yields to passion its wild sway;
Oh, God! it would have wrung the heart
Of apathy, to hear
The fierce utterance unreined,
That flowed from him unrestrained,
To relieve that bosom sere:
"I am here, my sister dear!
As thou saidst, unchanged, but thou
Art beyond this life's control,
Nor canst hear nor see me now;
But this I know, that nothing more
Of joy or grief can vex thee here.
I follow thee to some far shore,
I know not where, but I have felt
This truth within my inmost soul,
For such as thee to pass in youth,
Nor live again, were an untruth
Of Nature, an injustice dealt.
And if, sweet LUCY! as in sleep
We meet and talk with those we love,
And with closed eyes, or smile, or weep,
So may we, waking, meet above,
In some starred realm, where tears are dried, In paths that Sorrow doth not know:
On shores Elysian, where the tide
Of joy or grief, the ebb and flow
Of change comes not, nor can go:
Among Spirits that shall be,
Blest in their resembling thee!"
SAND-STONE surface, by the Ocean
Rippled over, hardening grew;
Wavy lines in wavy motion
That each other's course pursue:
Till that sand was ribbed and graven
As a floor by Nature laid;
On whose yellow surface paven,
Wind and light alternate played.
Then the rain-cloud passing over,
Swirled its sleet-drops on the face
Of that sand-stone, till a cover
Of staid wrinkles left their trace On its furrowed forehead, lining Its red cheek with softening grace, With that sand-drift intertwining Marks that time shall not efface.
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