Thundering foam and crested wave,

While your darlings lay asleep.

How she cleft the midnight air;

And the idiot surge beneath

Whirled her sea-ward to her death,

Angry that she was so fair.

Tossed her, beat her, till no more

Rage could do, through all the night;
Then with morning's ghastly light,

Flung her down upon the shore.

Mother! when brief years ago
You were happy in your child,
Smiling on her as she smiled,
Thought you she would perish so?

Man! who made her what she is;

What, if when you falsely swore
You would love her more and more,

You had seen her lie like this.

And, O Infinite Cause! didst Thou,

When Thou mad'st this hapless child,

Dowered with passions, fierce and wild,

See her lie as she lies now?

Filled with wild revolt and rage,

All I feel I may not speak ;

Fate so strong, and we so weak,

Like rats in a cage,—like rats in a cage.

THE WANDERING SOUL.

I REARED my virgin Soul on dainty food,
I fed her with rich fruit and garnered gold
From those fair gardens sown by pious care
Of precious souls of old.

The long procession of the fabulous Past,
Rolled by for me—the earliest dawn of time;
The seven great days; the garden and the sword;
The first red stain of crime;

The fierce rude chiefs who smote, and burned, and slew,
And all for God; the pitiless tyrants grand,

Who piled to heaven the eternal monuments,
Unchanged amid the sand;

The fairy commonwealths, where Freedom first
Inspired the ready hand and glowing tongue
To a diviner art and sweeter song

Than men have feigned or sung;

The strong bold sway that held mankind in thrall, Soldier and jurist marching side by side,

Till came the sure slow blight, when all the world Grew sick, and swooned, and died;

Again the long dark night, when Learning dozed
Safe in her cloister, and the world without
Rang with fierce shouts of war and cries of pain,
Base triumph, baser rout;

Till rose a second dawn of light again,
Again the freemen stood in firm array

Behind the foss, and Pope and Kaiser came,

Wondered and turned away;

And then the broadening stream, till the sleek priest
Aspired to tread the path the Pagan trod,

And Rome fell once again, and the brave North
Rose from the church to God.

All these passed by for me, till the vast tide
Grew to a sea too wide for any shore ;

Then doubt o'erspread me, and a cold disgust,
And I would look no more.

For something said, The Past is dead and gone,

Let the dead bury their dead, why strive with Fate? Why seek to feed the children on the husks

Their rude forefathers ate ?

For even were the Past reflected back

As in a mirror, in the historic page,

For us its face is strange, seeing that the race
Betters from age to age.

And if, hearing the tale we told ourselves,
We marvel how the monstrous fable grew;
How in these far-off years shall men discern
The fictive from the true?

*

*

*

*

Then turned I to the broad domain of Art,
To seek if haply Truth lay hidden there;
Well knowing that of old close links connect
The true things and the fair.

Fair forms I found, and rounded limbs divine,
The maiden's grace, the tender curves of youth,
The majesty of happy perfect years,

But only half the truth.