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HAUNTED HOUSES.

ALL houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.
We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,

A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall

Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see

The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;

Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere

Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires;
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
And the more noble instinct that aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jar

Of earthly wants and aspirations high,
Come from the influence of an unseen star
An undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o'er the sea a floating bridge of light,
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
Into the realm of mystery and night,—

So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O'er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.

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IN THE CHURCHYARD

In the village churchyard she lies,
Dust is in her beautiful eyes,

No more she breathes, nor feels, nor
stirs ;

At her feet and at her head
Lies a slave to attend the dead,

But their dust is white as hers.

Was she a lady of high degree,
So much in love with the vanity
And foolish pomp of this world of ours;
Or was it Christian charity,
And lowliness and humility,

AT CAMBRIDGE.

Who shall tell us? No one speaks;
No colour shoots into those cheeks,
Either of anger or of pride,
At the rude question we have asked;
Nor will the mystery be unmasked

By those who are sleeping at her
side.

Hereafter?-And do you think to look
On the terrible pages of that Book

To find her failings, faults, and errors!
Ah, you will then have other cares,
In your own shortcomings and despairs,
In your own secret sins and terrors !

The richest and rarest of all dowers?
*Macho is Spanish for mule.
+ Golondrina. A swallow is also a cant word for a deserter.

THE TWO ANGELS.

Two angels, one of Life and one of Death,
Passed o'er our village as the morning broke;
The dawn was on their faces, and beneath,

The sombre houses hearsed with plumes of smoke. Their attitude and aspect were the same,

Alike their features and their robes of white;
But one was crowned with amaranth, as with flame,
And one with asphodels, like flakes of light.

I saw them pause on their celestial way;
Then said I, with deep fear and doubt oppressed,
"Beat not so loud, my heart, lest thou betray
The place where thy beloved are at rest!"
And he who wore the crown of asphodels,
Descending, at my door began to knock,
And my soul sank within me, as in wells
The waters sink before an earthquake's shock.
I recognized the nameless agony,

The terror and the tremor and the pain,
That oft before had filled or haunted me,

And now returned with threefold strength again.

The door I opened to my heavenly guest,

And listened, for I thought I heard God's voice; And, knowing whatsoe'er He sent was best,

Dared neither to lament nor to rejoice.

Then with a smile, that filled the house with light,
"My errand is not Death, but Life," he said;
And, ere I answered, passing out of sight,
On his celestial embassy he sped.

'Twas at thy door, O friend! and not at mine,
The angel with the amaranthine wreath,
Pausing, descended, and with voice divine,
Whispered a word that had a sound like Death.
Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom,

A shadow on those features, fair and thin;
And softly, from that hushed and darkened room,
Two angels issued, where but one went in.
All is of God! If He but wave His hand,
The mists collect, the rain falls thick and loud,
Till, with a smile of light on sea and land,

Lo! He looks back from the departing cloud.
Angels of Life and Death alike are His;

Without His leave they pass no threshold o'er; Who, then, would wish or dare, believing this, Against His messengers to shut the door?

In the Valley of the Vire

OLIVER BASSELIN.

Still is seen an ancient mill, With its gables quaint and queer, And beneath the window-sill, On the stone,

These words alone : "Oliver Basselin lived here."

Far above it, on the steep,
Ruined stands the old Château ;
Nothing but the donjon-keep
Left for shelter or for show.
Its vacant eyes

Stare at the skies,
Stare at the valley green and deep.

Once a convent, old and brown,

Looked, but ah! it looks no more,
From the neighbouring hill-side down
On the rushing and the roar
Of the stream
Whose sunny gleam
Cheers the little Norman town.

In that darksome mill of stone,
To the water's dash and din,
Careless, humble, and unknown,
Sang the poet Basselin
Songs that fill

That ancient mill

With a splendour of its own.

Never feeling of unrest

Broke the pleasant dream he dreamed;

Only made to be his nest,

All the lovely valley seemed;
No desire

Of soaring higher

Stirred or fluttered in his breast.

True, his songs were not divine;
Were not songs of that high art,
Which, as winds do in the pine,

Find an answer in each heart;
But the mirth

Of this green earth
Laughed and revelled in his line.
From the alehouse and the inn,
Opening on the narrow street,
Came the loud, convivial din,
Singing and applause of feet,
The laughing lays
That in those days
Sang the poet Basselin.

In the castle, cased in steel,

Knights, who fought at Agincourt,
Watched and waited, spur on heel;
But the poet sang for sport
Songs that rang
Another clang,

Songs that lowlier hearts could feel.
In the convent, clad in grey,

Sat the monks in lonely cells,
Paced the cloisters, knelt to pray,
And the poet heard their bells;
But his rhymes

Found other chimes,
Nearer to the earth than they.

Gone are all the barons bold,

Gone are all the knights and squires,

Gone the abbot stern and cold,

And the brotherhood of friars;
Not a name

Remains to fame,

From those mouldering days of old!

But the poet's memory here

Of the landscape makes a part;
Like the river, swift and clear,
Flows his song through many a heart;
Haunting still

That ancient mill,
In the Valley of the Vire.

THE JEWISH CEMETERY AT NEWPORT.

How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,
Close by the street of this fair seaport town,

Silent beside the never-silent waves,

At rest in all this moving up and down.

The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep
Wave their broad curtains in the south wind's breath,
While underneath such leafy tents they keep
The long mysterious Exodus of Death.

And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown,
That pave
with level flags their burial-place,
Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down
And broken by Moses at the mountain's base.

The very names recorded here are strange,
Of foreign accent, and of different climes;
Alvares and Rivera interchange

With Abraham and Jacob of old times.

"Blessed be God! for he created Death!"

The mourner said, "and Death is rest and peace;" Then added, in the certainty of faith,

"And giveth Life that never more shall cease."

Closed are the portals of their Synagogue,
No Psalms of David now the silence break,

No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue
In the grand dialect the Prophets spake.

Gone are the living, but the dead remain,
And not neglected; for a hand unseen,
Scattering its bounty, like a summer-rain,

Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.

How came they here? What burst of Christian hate,
What persecution, merciless and blind,

Drove o'er the sea-that desert desolate-
These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind?

They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure,
Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire;
Taught in the school of patience to endure
The life of anguish and the death of fire.

All their lives long, with the unleavened bread
And bitter herbs of exile and its fears,

The wasting famine of the heart they fed,

And slaked its thirst with Marah of their tears.

Anathema maranatha! was the cry

At

That rang from town to town, from street to street;
every gate the accursed Mordecai

Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet.

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