Night sucks them down, the tribute of the pit,
Whose names, half entered in the book of Life,
Were God's desire at noon. And as their hair
And
eyes sink last, the Torturer designs no whit
To gaze, but, yearning, waits his destined wife,
The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there.

SONNET LXXXVI.

LOST DAYS.

THE lost days of my life until to-day,

What were they, could I see them on the street
Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
Or golden coins squandered and still to-pay?
Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway?

I do not see them here; but after death

God knows I know the faces I shall see, Each one a murdered self, with low last breath. “I am thyself,—what hast thou done to me?" "And I—and I-thyself," (lo! each one saith,) "And thou thyself to all eternity!"

SONNET LXXXVII.

DEATH'S SONGSTERS.

WHEN first that horse, within whose populous womb
The birth was death, o'ershadowed Troy with fate,
Her elders, dubious of its Grecian freight,
Brought Helen there to sing the songs of home;
She whispered, "Friends, I am alone; come, come!
Then, crouched within, Ulysses waxed afraid,
And on his comrades' quivering mouths he laid
His hands, and held them till the voice was dumb.

The same was he who, lashed to his own mast,

There where the sea-flowers screen the charnel-caves, Beside the sirens' singing island pass'd,

Till sweetness failed along the inveterate waves. Say, soul, are songs of Death no heaven to thee, Nor shames her lip the cheek of Victory?

SONNET LXXXVIII.

HERO'S LAMP.*

THAT lamp thou fill'st in Eros' name to-night,
O Hero, shall the Sestian augurs take
To-morrow, and for drowned Leander's sake
To Anteros its fireless lip shall plight.

Aye, waft the unspoken vow: yet dawn's first light
On ebbing storm and life twice ebb'd must break;
While 'neath no sunrise, by the Avernian Lake,
Lo where Love walks, Death's pallid neophyte.

That lamp within Anteros' shadowy shrine
Shall stand unlit (for so the gods decree)
Till some one man the happy issue see
Of a life's love, and bid its flame to shine :
Which still may rest unfir'd; for, theirs or thine,
O brother, what brought love to them or thee?

SONNET LXXXIX.

THE TREES OF THE GARDEN.

YE who have passed Death's haggard hills; and ye Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to know And still stand silent :-is it all a show,

A wisp that laughs upon the wall?-decree

* After the deaths of Leander and of Hero, the signal-lamp was dedicated to Anteros, with the edict that no man should light it unless his love had proved fortunate.

Of some inexorable supremacy

Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise From depth to ominous depth, looks past his eyes, Sphinx-faced with unabashèd augury?

Nay, rather question the Earth's self.

Invoke The storm-felled forest-trees moss-grown to-day Whose roots are hillocks where the children play; Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke

Those stars, his spray-crown's clustering gems, shall wage

Their journey still when his boughs shrink with age.

SONNET XC.

"RETRO ME, SATHANA!"

GET thee behind me. Even as, heavy-curled,
Stooping against the wind, a charioteer

Is snatched from out his chariot by the hair,
So shall Time be; and as the void car, hurled
Abroad by reinless steeds, even so the world:
Yea, even as chariot-dust upon the air,

It shall be sought and not found anywhere. Get thee behind me, Satan. Oft unfurled, Thy perilous wings can beat and break like lath Much mightiness of men to win thee praise. Leave these weak feet to tread in narrow ways. Thou still, upon the broad vine-sheltered path, Mayst wait the turning of the phials of wrath For certain years, for certain months and days.

SONNET XCI.

LOST ON BOTH SIDES.

As when two men have loved a woman well,
Each hating each, through Love's and Death's dece;
Since not for either this stark marriage-sheet

And the long pauses of this wedding-bell;

Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel

At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat;
Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet
The two lives left that most of her can tell :-

So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed
The one same Peace, strove with each other long,
And Peace before their faces perished since:
So through that soul, in restless brotherhood,
They roam together now, and wind among
Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns.

SONNETS XCI., XCIII.

THE SUN'S SHAME.

I.

BEHOLDING youth and hope in mockery caught
From life; and mocking pulses that remain
When the soul's death of bodily death is fain;
Honor unknown, and honor known unsought;
And penury's sedulous self-torturing thought
On gold, whose master therewith buys his bane;
And longed-for woman longing all in vain

For lonely man with love's desire distraught;
And wealth, and strength, and power, and pleasantness,
Given unto bodies of whose souls men say,

None poor and weak, slavish and foul, as they :Beholding these things, I behold no less

The blushing morn and blushing eve confess
The shame that loads the intolerable day.

II.

As some true chief of men, bowed down with stress
Of life's disastrous eld, on blossoming youth
May gaze, and murmur with self-pity and ruth,-
"Might I thy fruitless treasure but possess,
Such blessing of mine all coming years should bless; "-
Then send one sigh forth to the unknown goal,
And bitterly feels breathe against his soul
The hour swift-winged of nearer nothingness :-

Even so the World's gray Soul to the green World
Perchance one hour must cry: "Woe's me, for whom
Inveteracy of ill portends the doom,-

Whose heart's old fire in shadow of shade is furl'd:
While thou even as of yore art journeying,
All soulless now, yet merry with the Spring!"

SONNET XCIV.

MICHELANGELO'S KISS.

GREAT Michelangelo, with age grown bleak
And uttermost labors, having once o'ersaid
All grievous memories on his long life shed,
This worst regret to one true heart could speak :—
That when, with sorrowing love and reverence meek,
He stooped o'er sweet Colonna's dying bed,
His Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed,-
Her hand he kissed, but not her brow or cheek.

O Buonarruoti,-good at Art's fire-wheels
To urge her chariot !—even thus the Soul,
Touching at length some sorely-chastened goal,
Earns oftenest but a little her appeals

Were deep and mute,-lowly her claim. Let be:
What holds for her Death's garner? And for thee?

SONNET XCV.

THE VASE OF LIFE.

AROUND the vase of Life at your slow pace
He has not crept, but turned it with his hands,
And all its sides already understands.

There, girt, one breathes alert for some great race;
Whose road runs far by sands and fruitful space;

Who laughs, yet through the jolly throng has pass'd;
Who weeps, nor stays for weeping; who at last,
A youth, stands somewhere crowned, with silent face.