and lip and eye;
Dear heavenly friend, who canst not die:
Mine, mine forever; ever mine."

"How inexpressibly sad are all holydays! But the dear little girls had
their Christmas-tree last night, and an unseen presence blessed the
scene!"

No mention of his loss was ever made in his published verse, though the
whole of his poetry was much sadder after that loss; but after his own
death the following poem was found in his desk, written eighteen years
after his wife's death:--

"In the long, sleepless watches of the night
A gentle face--the face of one long dead--
Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
The night lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died, and soul more white
Never through martyrdom of fire was led
To its repose; nor can in books be read
The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying in its deep ravines,
Displays a cross of snow upon its side:
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons changeless since the day she died."

It was a long time before he could work again. When he felt that he
could do so, he began his translation of Dante, and frequently produced
a canto in a day, finding in this absorbing occupation the first
alleviation of his sorrow. In a sonnet "On Translating Dante," he
said:--

"I enter here from day to day,
And leave my burden at this minster gate."

But when his work was done he always found that his burden was still
awaiting him on the outside, and he took it up and bore it as patiently
as he could. But he began earnestly to long for

"The Wayside Inn,
Where toil should cease and rest begin,"

and to feel that the approach of old age without the beloved
companionship was hard indeed to contemplate. But his children were
beautiful and promising and affectionate, and he a most loving and
conscientious father; so they gradually came to occupy his thoughts and
much to cheer his solitude. He was a famous man too by this time, indeed
long before; and the world made demands upon him which could not always
be disregarded, and he began to mingle with it somewhat again. But the
little group of friends to whom allusion has been made were his best
comforters, and were more and more prized as the years went on. During
the translation of Dante they assembled at very short intervals to