"And therefore now

Let her, that is the womb and tomb of all,

Great Nature, take, and forcing far apart

Those blind beginnings that have made me man Dash them anew together at her will

Through all her cycles into man once more,

Or beast or bird or fish, or opulent flower

But till this cosmic order everywhere

Shatter'd into one earthquake in one day
Cracks all to pieces, and that hour perhaps

Is not so far when momentary man

Shall seem no more a something to himself,

But he, his hopes and hates, his homes and fanes,
And even his bones long laid within the grave,
The very sides of the grave itself shall pass,
Vanishing, atom and void, atom and void,
Into the unseen forever,- till that hour,
My golden work in which I told a truth

That stays the rolling Ixionian wheel,

And numbs the Fury's ringlet-snake, and plucks

The mortal soul from out immortal hell,

Shall stand: ay, surely: then it fails at last,

And perishes as I must; for O Thou,

Passionless bride, divine Tranquillity,

Yearn'd after by the wisest of the wise,
Who fail to find thee, being as thou art
Without one pleasure and without one pain,
Howbeit I know thou surely must be mine
Or soon or late, yet out of season, thus

I woo thee roughly, for thou carest not

How roughly men may woo thee so they win

Thus thus: the soul flies out and dies in the air."

With that he drove the knife into his side:

She heard him raging, heard him fall; ran in,

Beat breast, tore hair, cried out upon herself

As having fail'd in duty to him, shriek'd

That she but meant to win him back, fell on him,

Clasp'd, kiss'd him, wail'd: he answer'd, "Care not thou

What matters? All is over: Fare thee well!"

THE GOLDEN SUPPER.

[This poem is founded upon a story in Boccaccio.

A young lover, Julian, whose cousin and foster-sister, Camilla, has been wedded to his friend and rival, Lionel, endeavors to narrate the story of his own love for her, and the strange sequel of it. He speaks of having been haunted in delirium by visions and the sound of bells, sometimes tolling for a funeral, and at last ringing for a marriage; but he breaks away, overcome, as he approaches the Event, and a witness to it completes the tale.]

HE flies the event: he leaves the event to me:

Poor Julian - how he rush'd away; the bells,
Those marriage-bells, echoing in ear and heart-
But cast a parting glance at me, you saw,

As who should say "continue." Well, he had

One golden hour of triumph shall I say?

Solace at least before he left his home.

Would you had seen him in that hour of his!

He moved thro' all of it majestically

Restrain'd himself quite to the close but now

-

Whether they were his lady's marriage-bells,

Or prophets of them in his fantasy,

I never ask'd: but Lionel and the girl

Were wedded, and our Julian came again

Back to his mother's house among the pines.

But there, their gloom, the mountains and the Bay,

The whole land weigh'd him down as Ætna does The Giant of Mythology: he would go,

Would leave the land forever, and had gone

Surely, but for a whisper "Go not yet,”

Some warning, and divinely as it seem'd

By that which follow'd

but of this I deem

As of the visions that he told the event

Glanced back upon them in his after life,

And partly made them tho' he knew it not.

And thus he stay'd and would not look at her.

No, not for months: but, when the eleventh moon After their marriage lit the lover's Bay,

Heard yet once more the tolling bell, and said,

Would you could toll me out of life, but found

All softly as his mother broke it to him

A crueller reason than a crazy ear,

For that low knell tolling his lady dead

Dead - and had lain three days without a pulse: All that look'd on her had pronounced her dead. And so they bore her (for in Julian's land

They never nail a dumb head up in elm),

Bore her free-faced to the free airs of heaven,
And laid her in the vault of her own kin.

What did he then? not die: he is here and hale Not plunge headforemost from the mountain there, And leave the name of Lover's Leap: not he: He knew the meaning of the whisper now, Thought that he knew it. "This, I stay'd for this; O love, I have not seen you for so long.