When looking back I dimly see
The trails my feet have trod,
Some hand divine, it seems to me,
Has pulled the strings with God;
Some angel form has lifeward leaned
When hope for me was past;
Some love sublime has intervened
To save me at the last.

For look you! I was born a fool,
Damnation was my fate;
My lot to drivel and to drool,
Egregious and frutrate.
But in the deep of my despair,
When dark my doom was writ,
Some saving hand was always there
to pull me from the Pit.

A Guardian Angel - how absurd!

MY grief on the sea,
How the waves of it roll!
For they heave between me
And the love of my soul!

Abandon'd, forsaken,
To grief and to care,
Will the sea ever waken
Relief from despair?

My grief and my trouble!
Would he and I were,
In the province of Leinster,
Or County of Clare!

Were I and my darling--
O heart-bitter wound!--
On board of the ship
For America bound.

On a green bed of rushes
All last night I lay,
And I flung it abroad

Art thou abroad on this stormy night
on thy journey of love, my friend?
The sky groans like one in despair.

I have no sleep tonight.
Ever and again I open my door and look out on
the darkness, my friend!

I can see nothing before me.
I wonder where lies thy path!

By what dim shore of the ink-black river,
by what far edge of the frowning forest,
through what mazy depth of gloom art thou threading
thy course to come to me, my friend?

My days have been so wondrous free,
The little birds that fly
With careless ease from tree to tree,
Were but as bless'd as I.

Ask gliding waters, if a tear
Of mine increas'd their stream?
Or ask the flying gales, if e'er
I lent one sigh to them?

But now my former days retire,
And I'm by beauty caught;
The tender chains of sweet desire
Are fix'd upon my thought.

Ye nightingales, ye twisting pines!
Ye swains that haunt the grove!
Ye gentle echoes, breezy winds!
Ye close retreats of love!

In idle dream with pipe in hand
I looked across the Square,
And saw the little chapel stand
In eloquent despair.
A ruin of the War it was,
A dreary, dingy mess:
It worried me a lot because
My hobby's happiness.

The shabby Priest said: 'You are kind.
Time leaves us on the lurch,
And there are very few who mind
Their duty to the Church.
But with this precious sum you give,
I'll make it like a gem;
Poor folks will come, our altar live
To comfort them.'

"Why is my District death-rate low?"
Said Binks of Hezabad.
"Well, drains, and sewage-outfalls are
"My own peculiar fad.
"I learnt a lesson once, It ran
"Thus," quoth that most veracious man: --


It was an August evening and, in snowy garments clad,
I paid a round of visits in the lines of Hezabad;
When, presently, my Waler saw, and did not like at all,
A Commissariat elephant careering down the Mall.

I couldn't see he driver, and across my mind it rushed
That that Commissariat elephant had suddenly gone musth.

I.

Dead ! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead ! both my boys ! When you sit at the feast
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me !

II.
Yet I was a poetess only last year,
And good at my art, for a woman, men said ;
But this woman, this, who is agonized here,
-- The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head
For ever instead.

III.
What art can a woman be good at ? Oh, vain !

Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis,
Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies.
Ovid, Fastorum, Lib. vi.
"O Cæsar, we who are about to die
Salute you!" was the gladiators' cry
In the arena, standing face to face
With death and with the Roman populace.
O ye familiar scenes,--ye groves of pine,
That once were mine and are no longer mine,--
Thou river, widening through the meadows green
To the vast sea, so near and yet unseen,--
Ye halls, in whose seclusion and repose

Would we attain the happiest State,
That is design'd us here;
No Joy a Rapture must create,
No Grief beget Despair.
No Injury fierce Anger raise,
No Honour tempt to Pride;
No vain Desires of empty Praise
Must in the Soul abide.
No Charms of Youth, or Beauty move
The constant, settl'd Breast:
Who leaves a Passage free to Love,
Shall let in, all the rest.
In such a Heart soft Peace will live,
Where none of these abound;
The greatest Blessing, Heav'n do's give,

Chill penury repress'd his noble rage,
And froze the genial current of his soul.
GRAY.


IF GRIEF can deprecate the wrath of Heaven,
Or human frailty hope to be forgiven !
Ere now thy sainted spirit bends its way
To the bland regions of celestial day;
Ere now, thy soul, immers'd in purest air
Smiles at the triumphs of supreme Despair;
Or bath'd in seas of endless bliss, disdains
The vengeful memory of mortal pains;
Yet shall the MUSE a fond memorial give
To shield thy name, and bid thy GENIUS live.