ir, ah! well we know--
That nevermore will bless our yearning sight,
So fair and dear a land as Long Ago.

We see the gleaming spires of those high halls
We garnished with bright gems and precious show;
No foot within the gilded doorway falls,
Empty the rooms within the Long Ago.

Troops of white doves still haunt the shining towers,
And fold in blissful calm, their wings of snow;
We bade them build their nests in brighter bowers,
But still they linger in the Long Ago.

There in its sunny bay stand stately ships,
We freighted for fair lands where we would go;
Still gleams our gold within their secret crypts,
Becalmed beside the shore of Long Ago.

Between that land and this of dread and doubt,
The silent years have drifted trackless snow;
Hiding the pathway where we wandered out,
Forever from the land of Long Ago.

LEMOINE.

In the unquiet night,
With all her beauty bright,
She walketh my silent chamber to and fro;
Not twice of the same mind,
Sometimes unkind--unkind,
And again no cooing dove hath a voice so sweet and low.

Such madness of mirth lies
In the haunting hazel eyes,
When the melody of her laugh charms the listening night;
Its glamour as of old
My charmed senses hold,
Forget I earth and heaven in the pleasures of sense and sight.

With sudden gay caprice
Quaint sonnets doth she seize,
Wedding them unto sweetness, falling from crimson lips;
Holding the broidered flowers
Of those enchanted hours,
When she wound my will with her silk round her white finger-tips.

Then doth she silent stand,
Lifting her slender hand,
On which gleams the ring I tore from his hand at Baywood;
The tiny opal hearts
Are broken in two parts,
And where the ruby burned there hangeth a drop of blood.

Then with my burning cheek,
Raising my head, I speak,
"Lemoine, Lemoine, my lost! Oh, speak to me once, I pray!"
But no word will she deign,
Adown the shining lane,
The long and lustrous lane of the moonlight she glides away.

I fancy oft a stir,
Of wings seem following her,
Trailing a terrible gloom along the oaken floor,
As she walks to and fro;
Louder the strange sounds grow
To a nameless, dreadful horror, that floods the chamber o'er.

And then I raise my head
From terror-haunted bed,
And hush my breath, and my very pulses hush and hark;
But as I glance around,
The stir, the murmuring sound,
Dies away in the moonlight, lying there stiff and stark.