C.

Strangers yet!
After years of life together,
After fair and stormy weather,
After travel in far lands,
After touch of wedded hands,
Why thus joined? Why ever met,
If they must be strangers yet?

Strangers yet!
After childhood's winning ways,
After care and blame and praise,
Counsel asked and wisdom given,
After mutual prayer to Heaven,
Child and parent scarce regret
When they part—are strangers yet.

Strangers yet!
Oh, the bitter thought to scan
All the loneliness of man :-
Nature, by magnetic laws,
Circle unto circle draws,
But they only touch when met,
Never mingle, strangers yet.

Strangers yet!
Will it evermore be thus,-
Spirits still impervious ?
Shall we never fairly stand
Soul to soul as hand to hand ?
Are the bounds eternal set
To retain us-strangers yet?

Lord Houghton. CI.

THAT DAY.

I stand by the river where both of us stood,
And there is but one shadow to darken the flood;
And the path leading to it, where both used to pass,
Has the step but of one, to take dew from the grass,

One forlorn since that day.

The flowers of the margin are many to see;
None stoops at my bidding to pluck them for me,
The bird in the alder sings loudly and long-
My low sound of weeping disturbs not his song,

As thy vow did that day.

I stand by the river-I think of that vow-
O calm as the place is, vow-breaker, be thou !
I leave the flower growing, the bird unreproved;
Would I trouble thee rather than them, my beloved,

And my lover that day?

Go, be sure of my love-by that treason forgiven;
Of my prayers by the blessings they win thee from

Heaven;
Of my grief-(guess the length of the sword by the

sheath's)
By the silence of life, more pathetic than death’s !

Go,-be clear of that day!

Mrs. Browning.

CII.

I stand where I last stood with thee!

Sorrow, O sorrow!
There is not a leaf on the trysting-tree;
There is not a joy on the earth to me;

Sorrow, O sorrow!
When shalt thou be once again what thou wert;
Oh, the sweet yesterdays fled from the heart !

Have they a morrow ?-
Here we stood, ere we parted, so close side by side;
Two lives that once part are as ships that divide,
When, moment on moment, there rushes between

The one and the other, a sea ;-
Ah, never can fall from the days that have been

A gleam on the years that shall be !

Sir E. Bulwer Lytton.

L

CIII.

Her last words at parting, how can I forget ?

Deep treasured thro' life, in my heart they shall stay; Like music whose charm in the soul lingers yet,

When its sounds from the ear have long melted away. Let Fortune assail me, her threat'nings are vain;

Those still-breathing words shall my talisman be“ Remember, in absence, in sorrow and pain,

There's one heart unchanging, that beats but for thee.”

From the desert's sweet well tho' the pilgrim must hie,

Never more of that fresh-springing fountain to taste, He hath still of its bright drops a treasured supply,

Whose sweetness lends life to his lips thro' the waste. So, dark as my fate is still doomed to remain,

These words shall my well in the wilderness be“ Remember, in absence, in sorrow and pain,

There's one heart, unchanging, that beats but for thee."

T. Moore.

CIV.

Farewell! if ever fondest prayer

For other's weal availed on high, Mine will not all be lost in air,

But waft thy name beyond the sky. 'Twere vain to speak, to weep, to sigh :

Oh! more than tears of blood can tell, When rung from guilt's expiring eye,

Are in that word-Farewell !-Farewell!

These lips are mute, these eyes are dry;

But in my breast and in my brain, Awake the

pangs

that
pass

not by,
The thought that ne'er shall sleep again.
My soul nor deigns, nor dares complain,

Tho' grief and passion there rebel : I only know we loved in vain

I only feel-Farewell !-Farewell.

Lord Byron.