for life! or from the face
Of the world wipe so irreparable a place!

CONSOLATION

I

Come to me, shadows, down the hill,
Lie softly at my feet.
The sun has worked his will
And the day is done.
Come to me softly and distil
Your dews and dreams, that heat
And hours of heartless glare have overrun.

II

Come to me, shadows, down the hill
And bring with you the night,
Fire-flies and the whippoorwill
And ah, the moon--
Whose soft interpretings can still
The tangled tongues of right
And wrong, and hope and fear, that haunt the noon.

III

Come to me, shadows, down the hill--
And let there follow Sleep,
Which is God's tidal Will
That overflows
The world--obliterating ill,
And in its soothing sweep
Murmuring more of mercy than man knows.

WAVES

The evening sails come home
With twilight in their wings.
The harbour-light across the gloam
Springs;
The wind sings.

The waves begin to tell
The sea's night-sorrow o'er,
Weaving within their ancient spell
More
Than earth's lore.

The rising moon wafts strange
Low lures across the tide,
On which my dim thoughts seem to range,
Stride
Upon stride,
Until, with flooding thrill,
They seem at last to blend
With waves that from the Eternal Will
Wend,
Without end.

VIS ULTIMA

There is no day but leads me to
A peak impossible to scale,
A task at which my hands must fail,
A sea I cannot swim or sail.
There is no night I suffer thro
But Destiny rules stern and pale:
And yet what I am meant to do
I will do, ere Death drop his veil.

And it shall be no little thing,
Tho to oblivion it fall,
For I shall strive to it thro all
That can imperil or appal.
So at each morning's trumpet-ring
I mount again, less slave and thrall,
And at the barriers gladly fling
A fortitude that scorns to crawl.

MEREDITH

What am I reading? He is dead?
He the great interpreter
And seer--England's noblest head?
What am I reading? It is hushed?
The deepest voice that life had found
To read a century profound
With all time's seethe and stir?

Why, it is but a scanty score
Of days, since, at his side,
Clasping his hand with more than pride,
I felt that the immortal tide
Of his great mind would long break o'er
The cold command of Death.
Still in my ear is echoing
The surf of his strong words, and still
Against the wild trees on the Hill
His cotta