Roll on, my song, and to after ages Tell how, disdaining all earth can give, He would have taught men, from wisdom's pages, The way to live. And tell how trampled, derided, hated, And worn by weakness, disease, and wrong, He fled for shelter to God, who mated His soul with song-- With song which alway, sublime or vapid, Flowed like a rill in the morning-beam, Perchance not deep, but intense and rapid-- A mountain stream. Tell how this Nameless, condemned for years long To herd with demons from hell beneath, Saw things that made him, with groans and tears, long For even death. Go on to tell how, with genius wasted, Betrayed in friendship, befooled in love, With spirit shipwrecked, and young hopes blasted, He still, still strove. Till, spent with toil, dreeing death for others, And some whose hands should have wrought for _him_; (If children live not for sires and mothers,) His mind grew dim. And he fell far through that pit abysmal The gulf and grave of Maginn and Burns; And pawned his soul for the devil's dismal Stock of returns. But yet redeemed it in days of darkness, And shapes and signs of the final wrath, When death, in hideous and ghastly starkness, Stood on his path. And tell how now, amid wreck and sorrow, And want, and sickness, and houseless nights, He bides in calmness the silent morrow, That no ray lights. And lives he still, then? Yes! Old and hoary At thirty-nine, from despair and woe, He lives enduring what future story Will never know. Him grant a grave to, ye pitying noble, Deep in your bosoms! There let him dwell! He, too, had tears for all souls in trouble, Here and in hell! _James Clarence Mangan_ SIBERIA In Siberia's wastes The Ice-wind's breath Woundeth like the toothèd steel. Lost Siberia doth reveal Only blight and death. Blight and death alone. No Summer shines. Night is interblent with Day. In Siberia's wastes alway The blood blackens, the heart pines. In Siberia's wastes No tears are shed, For they freeze within the brain. Nought is felt but dullest pain, Pain acute, yet dead; Pain as in a dream, When years go by Funeral-paced, yet fugitive, When man lives, and doth not live, Doth not live--nor die. In Siberia's wastes Are sands and rocks. Nothing blooms of green or soft, But the snowpeaks rise aloft And the gaunt ice-blocks. And the exile there Is one with those; They are part, and he is part, For the sands are in his heart, And the killing snows.