"What is the moral?" ye

ask me this

I offer, tell me whether it is.

The earth all quick with the diamond's soul In its throes oft bears but the formless coal, So close of kin to the perfect gem

That is meet for a kingly diadem.

"This is no moral! why fail'd the man?
Ay, tell me that, if ye only can.
Why and wherefore I know not, I,
Nor take upon me the mystery
Of things, as if I were God's spy.

Think ye God answers no or yes
To men as they idly guess and guess,
"If he had lov'd or if-"?—that If
Is God's undecipher'd hieroglyph.

TOLD IN THE FIRELIGHT.

At last, old friend, after all the years of hope that, deferr'd, doth tire

The heart as surely as pain itself, you are sitting here by my fire:

'Twas worth the waiting to find your heart the same as ever still,

Though alter'd much is that dear old face since last we met, friend Will.

The eyes are as bright as ever they were, but, just about the mouth,

The lines, not stern, but tenderly grave, tell something of parted youth:

And your step is slower than us'd to be, and bow'd is the stalwart form

Which minded us all of a rock that bade defiance to beat

of storm:

And the waves of care have swept o'er your head, and left, just here and there,

A little streak of their silvery foam on the seaweed brown

But oh! on your face is the sweetness still that oft is wrung out by pain

From natures less noble than yours, as the juice is crusht away from the cane.

Both of us, Will, have lov'd; each sought, in the Spring of his life, to be

The Knight of knights in the gentle eyes of the one belov'd lady :

Your dream, old friend, was realiz'd in the gift of your beautiful one—

To love her made you exceeding glad, to lose her, exceeding lone.

I remember the grace of her movements light, and her voice as soft as the sigh

Of wind among summer's full-leav'd trees—she was very fair to die

But I think, such sweetness was on her brow, such pureness on her tongue,

She was lov'd with the mystic immortal love they say is death to the young.

Hand in hand together we stood on the still September

morn

While the reapers' sickles rustled like wind against the yellow corn,

Hard by the place of your dove's last nest there under the light, loose turf

Whose bending grass should never be stirr'd by wind that had moan'd on the surf.

We parted soon for a long, long while you went to the morning land

Where Nature spreadeth a daily feast of her lovely things and grand,

And the spirit of love and of those sweet songs which lips of the true have sung

Watcht o'er you by night and day and kept the harp of your life well-strung,

Else how, since grief doth age the heart, can your heart be so fresh and young?

My story you ask for, old comrade? Well, you shall have it and welcome too:

I could not have told it in letters, I think, but am glad to

tell it to you,

Face to face and hand to hand this eventide by my

fire,

Here, as so often I've wanted you with restless, great

desire.

Is it not strange how the certain hand of Time can utterly smooth

Down into calm the passionate storms that trouble the heart of youth ?

The wine that, in drinking, was bitterest, is mixt in remembrance with myrrh

So, Will, it does not hurt me now to think or to speak of

her.

Calm on my life's love-threshold she stood, with the forehead smooth and square

That gleam'd like a silver star against the drifts of her cloud-like hair;

And cheeks too young, too young to be so utterly pale and grave,

And lips where delicate pathos lay at the heart of each smile they gave.

A still, calm presence that, moonlike, wrought such a passionate tide in my breast,

That to me the love which I priz'd so dear was only a name for unrest.

My whole life gather'd up at once its trouble and joy and

desire,

And laid itself down at her feet and pour'd out its strength in words of fire.

At first, as she listen'd, those lips of hers that stately were, but mild,

Curv'd into a pitying, quiet smile, as if for a wayward

child;

But soon, with the force of my pleading strong, there came a look in her eyes,

As if she were gazing back to the past with its mazes and mysteries.

And when I ceast, she droopt her lids, and the few, low words she said

Were utter'd so faintly, I only caught the sound of the last one-dead!