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LOVE IN A LIFE.

ROOM after room,

I hunt the house through

We inhabit together.

Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her,
Next time, herself! - not the trouble behind her
Left in the curtain, the couch's perfume!

As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew,—
Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather."

Yet the day wears,

And door succeeds door;

I try the fresh fortune,

Range the wide house from the wing to the centre.
Still the same chance! she goes out as I enter.

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Spend my whole day in the quest, who cares?
But 't is twilight, you see, with such suites to explore,
Such closets to search, such alcoves to importune!

LIFE IN A LOVE.

SCAPE me?

E Never,

Beloved!

While I am I, and you are you,

So long as the world contains us both,
Me the loving and you the loth,
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear,

It seems too much like a fate, indeed!

-

Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed, But what if I fail of my purpose here? It is but to keep the nerves at strain,

To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall, And baffled, get up to begin again,

So the chace takes up one's life, that's all. While, look but once from your furthest bound, At me so deep in the dust and dark,

No sooner the old hope drops to ground

Than a new one, straight to the selfsame mark,

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Απ

MEMORABILIA.

H, did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you?

And did you speak to him again?
How strange it seems, and new!

But you were living before that,
And you are living after,
And the memory I started at,

My starting moves your laughter!

I crossed a moor with a name of its own
And a use in the world no doubt,
Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone
'Mid the blank miles round about, -

For there I picked up on the heather
And there I put inside my breast
A moulted feather, an eagle-feather,
Well, I forget the rest.

AFTER.

`AKE the cloak from his face, and at first

ΤΑ

Let the corpse do its worst.

How he lies in his rights of a man!

Death has done all death can.

And, absorbed in the new life he leads,

He recks not, he heeds

Nor his wrong nor my vengeance, — both strike

On his senses alike,

And are lost in the solemn and strange

Surprise of the change.

Ha, what avails death to erase

His offence, my disgrace?

I would we were boys as of old

In the field, by the fold,

His outrage, God's patience, man's scorn
Were so easily borne.

I stand here now, he lies in his place, —
Cover the face.

IN THREE DAYS.

O, I shall see her in three days

S% And just one night, but nights are short,

Then two long hours, and that is morn.
See how I come, unchanged, unworn,
Feel, where my life broke off from thine,
How fresh the splinters keep and fine,
Only a touch and we combine!

Too long, this time of year, the days!
But nights—at least the nights are short.
As night shows where her one moon is,
A hand's-breadth of pure light and bliss,
So, life's night gives my lady birth
And my eyes hold her! what is worth
The rest of heaven, the rest of earth?

O loaded curls, release your store
Of warmth and scent as once before
The tingling hair did, lights and darks
Out-breaking into fairy sparks
When under curl and curl I pried
After the warmth and scent inside

Through lights and darks how manifold, –
The dark inspired, the light controlled !
As early Art embrowned the gold.

What great fear—should one say, "Three days
That change the world, might change as well
Your fortune; and if joy delays,

Be happy that no worse befell.”
What small fear if another says,

"Three days and one short night beside
May throw no shadow on your ways;
But years must teem with change untried,
With chance not easily defied,

With an end somewhere undescried."
or if a fear be born

No fear!

This minute, it dies out in scorn.
Fear? I shall see her in three days
And one night, now the nights are short,
Then just two hours, and that is morn.

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