55
1. SILENT LOVE.
Ne'er by a word do I surrender
What 'mid the heart in slumber lies:
Sufficient in the hour of rapture
Is speech of countenance and eyes.
The empty shells with savage tumult
Upon the shore the billow hurls;
But in the heart as in the ocean
Rest in the depths the stainless pearls.
“Dreams of Happiness” (1876).
2. ADAGIO.
Over the marble with its great drab shell,
Where faded leaves in place of water lie,
The boughs of birches and of maples fell:
All slumbers, save the scudding clouds on high.
Fain would I linger here in wistful poring,
And gaze at evening drawing nigh this way;
And at the hawk's gloom-covered, clamorous soaring,
How o'er the wood he watches for his prey;
Fain would I be this statue wrought in stone,
On loneliness in forest-depths to brood,
Speaking with winds and echo all alone,
Upon whose brow the night by day is wooed.
“A year in the south” (1878).
