HOW MANY NOW ARE DEAD TO ME. 243 How Many now are Dead to Me. OW many now are dead to me, HOW That live to others yet! How many are alive to me, Who crumble in their graves, nor see That sickening, sinking look which we, Beyond the blue seas far away, Most wretchedly alone, One died in prison, far away, Where stone on stone shut out the day, Dead to the world, alive to me, Though months and years have passed, As when I saw him last. And one with a bright lip, and cheek, And eye, is dead to me: How pale the bloom of his smooth cheek! Then for the living be the tomb, Of pulseless life, and senseless bloom :- Around the funeral pile. JOHN G. C. BRAINARD. Break, Break, Break. BREAK, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O sea! O well for the fisherman's boy That he shouts with his sister at play! O well for the sailor lad That he sings in his boat on the bay! And the stately ships go on, To the haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanished hand, Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me. ALFRED TENNYSON. Too Late. "Ah! si la jeunesse savait-si la vieillesse pouvait !" HERE sat an old man on a rock, THE And unceasing bewailed him of Fate That concern where we all must take stock, Though our vote has no hearing or weight; That it could drown the old man's long, For he sang the song too late! too late!" TOO LATE. "When we want, we have for our pains Till the want has burned out of our brains, While we send for the napkin the soup gets cold, 245 "When strawberries seemed like red heavensTerrapin stew a wild dream When my brain was at sixes and sevens If my mother had 'folks' and ice-cream, When the goodies all came in a stream! in a strearn! "I've a splendid blood horse, and—a liver That it jars into torture to trot; My row-boat's the gem of the river- I can buy boundless credits on Paris and Rome, "How I longed, in that lonest of garrets, A rose-bush--a little thatched cottage- With a woman's chair empty close by-close by! "Ah! now, though I sit on a rock, I have shared one seat with the great; I have sat-knowing nought of the clock- But the lips that kissed, and the arms that caressed, Longing. F all the myriad moods of mind OF O one That through the soul come thronging, So beautiful as longing? The thing we long for that we are For one transcendent moment; Still through our paltry stir and strife To let the new life in, we know, Perhaps the longing to be so Longing is God's fresh heavenward will With our poor earthward striving; We quench it that we may be still EACH AND ALL. But would we know that heart's full scope, Our lives must climb from hope to hope, Ah! let us hope that to our praise The moments when we tread his ways, That some slight good is also wrought When we are simply good in thought, Howe'er we fail in action. JAMES R. Lowell. L Each and All ITTLE thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown Of thee from the hill-top looking down; The heifer that lows in the upland farm, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm ; Deems not that great Napoleon Stops his horse, and lists with delight, Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height. Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, 247 |