LOVE'S TRILOGY.

PALACES.

His.

1. SWEETER to me than rosiest sun, thy Soul
Has dawned its morning rays o'er my dark hills;
Valleys of haunted gloom, whose grottoed rills
But harboured spirits for Man's deepest dole,
Begin to brighten; and some higher goal
Than mounded grave, uprears, whose glory stills
Life's horror at the flood of thought which kills,
Step by cold step, my Fancy's children all:

So yet, days are for me of love, whom Night

Had made her melancholy mate ;-for me

Who dreamt so falsely, in dead Beauty's light, Of maidens I could only blindly see

As ugly or too beautiful for sight

Foul fiends or shades of vestal purity.

2. Have I been groping in the fruitless dark, Lured by Song's sirens through weird witching

halls;

And hast thou found me, O my love, where calls Deep unto deep of misery,-where hark

Such spirits strayed, with trembling hearts, the bark

Of dogs with hanging fleshly mouths, fierce thralls To him who rules the Depth which Mind appals; And wilt thou bring me back where joyous lark Shakes down tense crystal notes of love to kin, That I too, more from Love may never err, Fair Queen of that bright Kingdom we can win ; And wilt thou cut the bands, dear Severer,

Which harshly bind as I were slave to sin,
That I may clasp my Soul's Deliverer ?

3. But what am I, that thou shouldst bend o'er

me,

So wounded heavily in battle sore,

That thou, in fairest garments, shouldst thus pore

On face like mine, most piteous to see,

That thou shouldst blur thy whiteness hideously,'

To tend a private soldier in his gore?

What matter if I know that, long before,

The noblest blood coursed through my feudal tree?

Far, far have I got carried from that home,

And never dare I claim the joy of birth;

So, let me die, calm girl, beneath Heaven's

dome,

Where man is man and has his rightful worth,

Since I, though 'Peer' in Lore's refining tome,

May know no gentle maiden's equal mirth.

4. White seas may crowd from blackest tempests

known,

Beasts soulless tear live men in Hunger's greed,

Huge stars break up far systems with blind speed,
The universe may burst like bubble blown;
Yet I know terror greater :-life, alone,

Apart from all that joy of look and deed

Which Love, Sovereign divine, makes far exceed

The quickest power of vivid word to tone!
In boat which has been long adrift, on seas
Afar from tracks of living souls, my hope

Is dead, though I can see with distant breeze
Snow sails swift moving at Life's busy slope.
They pass they pass! and I can bend no
knees;

And thou too! thou! wilt thou throw me no rope?

5. Deep in the cells retired I sought, through day, Through night, for what would equal me with

those

Whom Fate had made my masters ere life rose ;
But now I fear that I have chosen clay

To make the living Man, and failed, as they
Who chased elixir phantoms, and the glows
Of chemic gold, to life's despairing close.
Dear maid, my voice is crass-it cannot pray ;
My love may be false glimmer-mocking light,
And I so fatal to warm human ties,

That what would now get all my hate, then might
Be deeds for me, like monarch boy's dead flies,
Of monstrous passionate supreme delight,

So near approach the cruel acts to wise.

6. As quick I passed from gloom below to gloom,
Calls oft to me, from gay roads round Time's hill,
Would wake dead memories of earlier will
To know such maidens, ere there blew simoom
Of passion 'mid the highest to find room;
But all their words left me aye calmly chill,
Who ever treasured hope to beat birth's ill,

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