dead and gone--
Within the unknown deep,
Shall we the trysts then keep
That now are done?

XV.

Holding both your hands in mine,
Often have we sat together,
While, outside, the boisterous weather
Hung the wild wind on the pine
Like a black marauder, and
With a sudden warning hand
At the casement rapped. The night
Read no sentiment of light,
Starbeam-syllabled, within
Her romance of death and sin,
Shadow-chaptered tragicly.--
Looking in your eyes, ah me!
Though I heard, I did not heed
What the night read unto us,
Threatening and ominous:
For love helped my heart to read
Forward through unopened pages
To a coming day, that held
More for us than all the ages
Past, that it epitomized
In its sentence; where we spelled
What our present realized
Only--all the love that was
Past and yet to be for us.

XVI.

'Though in the garden, gray with dew,
All life lies withering,
And there's no more to say or do,
No more to sigh or sing,
Yet go we back the ways we knew,
When buds were opening.

Perhaps we shall not search in vain
Within its wreck and gloom;
'Mid roses ruined of the rain
There still may live one bloom;
One flower, whose heart may still retain
The long-lost soul-perfume.

And then, perhaps, will come to us
The dreams we dreamed before;
And song, who spoke so beauteous,
Will speak to us once more;
And love, with eyes all amorous,
Will ope again his door.

So 'though the garden's gray with dew,
And flowers are withering,
And there's no more to say or do,
No more to sigh or sing,
Yet go we back the ways we knew
When buds were opening.

XVII.

Looking on the desolate street,
Where the March snow drifts and drives,
Trodden black of hurrying feet,
Where the athlete storm-wind strives
With each tree and dangling light,--
Centers, sphered with glittering white,--
Hissing in the dancing snow ...
Backward in my soul I go
To that tempest-haunted night
Of two autumns past, when we,
Hastening homeward, were o'ertaken
Of the storm; and 'neath a tree,
With its wild leaves whisper-shaken,
Sheltered us in that forsaken,
Sad and ancient cemetery,--
Where folk came no more to bury.--
Haggard grave-stones, mossed and crumbled,
Tottered 'round us, or o'ertumbled
In their sunken graves; and some,
Urned and obelisked above
Iron-fenced in tombs, stood d