hat which makes
Me hope and struggle and desire,
The aspiration here that aches
With ineffectual fire;

While inwardly I know the lack,
The insufficiency of power,
Each past day's retrospect makes black
Each morrow's coming hour.

Now in my youth would I could die!--
As others love to live,--go down
Into the grave without a sigh,
Oblivious of renown!

THE FOREST OF DREAMS.

I.

Where was I last Friday night?--
Within the forest of dark dreams
Following the blur of a goblin-light,
That led me over ugly streams,
Whereon the scum of the spawn was spread,
And the blistered slime, in stagnant seams;
Where the weed and the moss swam black and dead,
Like a drowned girl's hair in the ropy ooze:
And the jack-o'-lantern light that led,
Flickered the fox-fire trees o'erhead,
And the owl-like things at airy cruise.

II.

Where was I last Friday night?--
Within the forest of dark dreams
Following a form of shadowy white
With my own wild face it seems.
Did a raven's wing just flap my hair?
Or a web-winged bat brush by my face?
Or the hand of--something I did not dare
Look round to see in that obscene place?
Where the boughs, with leaves a-devil's-dance,
And the thorn-tree bush, where the wind made moan,
Had more than a strange significance
Of life and of evil not their own.

III.

Where was I last Friday night?--
Within the forest of dark dreams
Seeing the mists rise left and right,
Like the leathery fog that heaves and steams
From the rolling horror of Hell's red streams.
While the wind, that tossed in the tattered tree,
And danced alone with the last mad leaf ...
Or was it the wind?... kept whispering me--
"Now bury it here with its own black grief,
And its eyes of fire you can not brave!"--
And in the darkness I seemed to see
My own self digging my soul a grave.

LYNCHERS.

At the moon's down-going, let it be
On the quarry bill with its one gnarled tree....

The red-rock road of the underbrush,
Where the woman came through the summer hush.

The sumach high, and the elder thick,
Where we found the stone and the ragged stick.

The trampled road of the thicket, full
Of foot-prints down to the quarry pool.

The rocks that ooze with the hue of lead,
Where we found her lying stark and dead.

The scraggy wood; the negro hut,
With its doors and windows locked and