For I always loved the sunny fields and the sweet,

sweet flowers,

And longed to be pure once again like them, in my better hours.

But after I first had fallen the devil opened my eyes, And I saw that the world knew my shame, and I hadn't the heart to rise;

So I gave up trying to be good, and sank down lower in sin,

Tho' the thought of poor dead mother made me always hate it within.

Oh, many's the night that I've wandered about thro' rain and snow,

Wandered about in the street, and didn't know where

to go;

And I've often crept to the river and looked at it, still and black,

And thought how every one spurned me-but something held me back.

I remember how once, when I stopped, half-dead, one rainy day,

To rest on his steps for a moment, the servants drove

me away;

Drove me away like a dog from the door of the man for whom,

O God! I had given up all in this world and beyond the tomb.

But don't weep at my story, good lady; I'm not worth it living or dead!

Ha, ha! I'm not frightened of Death, nor the devils that dance round my bed:

There cannot be any hell deeper nor fuller of devils and strife

Than the hell that burns in my heart, and the fire

that eats out life.

A MOOD.

As some great cloud upon a mountain's breast,
Hanging for ever, shutteth out the sun,
Its chilly fingers twining in the trees

And blighting them, so ever one dark thought
Broods o'er my life and makes my spirit droop
Beneath its baleful shade. A demon form

Is ever at my side, whose icy touch

Freezes my warmest thoughts, and makes them hang
Like dull, cold icicles about my heart.
I feel his presence 'mid my fellow-men;

I see his image in the restless sea

That gnaws the land; and on the towering top,
Where everything is still, amid the rocks,
Worn bald by fleeting years, I hear his tread.

I see his footsteps in the lonely wild,
Where forests ever spring and ever die;
But, most of all, I feel him near at night,

When all the world is shrouded in the gloom
Of dreamful Sleep,-so like his brother Death;
I see his eyeballs on the glittering sky;
I hear his laughter ringing from the stars,
That look at me and say, "O helpless worm,
Upon a world of worms, dost thou not know
The dust thou treadest in was once like thee,
And laughed its laugh, and had its time to weep,
And now lies helpless, trampled on, forgot,
Scattered upon thy tiny globe which hangs
Chained to its sun in black infinity?

That thou-thou, too—must soon be dust again,
Forgotten, helpless, trampled on by those

That shall come after thee?"

I even hear

His voice amid the voices of my friends,

Harsh, taunting me with death, and dreams of death. And, when I gaze in rapture on the face

Of whom I love, he casts a hideous light,

That lets me see, behind the sweet, warm flesh,

The lightless skull, and o'er the rounded form
The shades of death, aye dark and darker growing,
Until the life-light melts into the night.

Oh, would that I could break the cursed chain

That binds this monster to me! for

my life
Is like some gloomy valley that lies chill
Beneath a frowning precipice. And yet
The thread of gloom is woven in my being,
And I am loth to rend it, for my thoughts
Have long been shaded by it. Ever since
I first could play, I used to watch the boys,
So joyous in their sports, and saw them men,
Grown chilly-hearted in a chilly world,
Grown weary with the burden of their life,
All restless, seeking rest yet finding change;
And then I saw the gathering shadows lower
Upon the evening of their life, and then

They merged into the dark, and all was still-
Dust under dust, forgotten by the world
In ugly loathsomeness.

The demon still

Was at my side in after-years, and threw

A shade on every friendship, as a cloud

Floats past the sun and dims the flowering fields. Oft have I wondered at the woodland stream That dances on, through dappled-lighted woods, O'er mossy pebbles glinting in the sun,

Like

eyes of merry children round the fire,