! if it be to choose and call thee mine,
Love, thou art every day my Valentine.

THE DEATH-BED.[10]

[Footnote 10: _The Englishman's Magazine_, August 1831. This magazine
was a venture of Edward Moxon, the publisher, but had a career of only
seven months. It is memorable, however, for including, besides the
above and various papers by Charles Lamb, poetical contributions from
Tennyson and Arthur Hallam, and also for containing the review by the
latter of Tennyson's first volume of poems, published in 1830. The
beautiful stanzas of Hood's appear here, as far as I have discovered,
for the first time. The date of their composition remains unfixed.
Hood's son was under the impression that they were written on the death
of one of his father's sisters, but supplied no evidence bearing on the
question.]

We watch'd her breathing through the night.
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.

So silently we seem'd to speak,
So slowly moved about,
As we had lent her half our powers
To eke her living out.

Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied--
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.

For when the morn came dim and sad,
And chill with early showers,
Her quiet eyelids closed--she had
Another morn than ours.

ANTICIPATION.[11]

[Footnote 11: These impressive, if rather morbid, lines seem to have
been hitherto overlooked by Hood's editors, and are here collected for
the first time.]

"Coming events cast their shadow before."

I had a vision in the summer light--
Sorrow was in it, and my inward sight
Ached with sad images. The touch of tears
Gushed down my cheeks:--the figured woes of years
Casting their shadows across sunny hours.
Oh, there was nothing sorrowful in flowers
Wooing the glances of an April sun,
Or apple blossoms opening one by one
Their crimson bosoms--or the twittered words
And warbled sentences of merry birds;--
Or the small glitter and the humming wings
Of golden flies and many colored things--
Oh, these were nothing sad--nor to see _Her_,
Sitting beneath the comfortable stir
Of early leaves--casting the playful grace
Of moving shadows in so fair a face--
Nor in her brow serene--nor in the love
Of her mild eyes drinking the light above
With a long thirst--nor in her gentle smile--
Nor in her hand that shone blood-red the while
She raised it in the sun. All these were