Who is it wandering in the summer meadows Where the children stoop and play In the green faint-scented flowers, spinning The guileless hours away? Who touches their bright hair? who puts A wind-shell to each cheek, Whispering betwixt its breathing silences, "Seek! seek!"? Who is it watching in the gathering twilight When the curfew bird hath flown On eager wings, from song to silence, To its darkened nest alone? Who takes for brightening eyes the stars, For locks the still moonbeam, Sighs through the dews of evening peacefully Falling, "Dream!"? THULE If thou art sweet as they are sad Who on the shores of Time's salt sea Watch on the dim horizon fade Ships bearing love to night and thee; If past all beacons Hope hath lit In the dark wanderings of the deep They who unwilling traverse it Dream not till dawn unseal their sleep; Ah, cease not in thy winds to mock Us, who yet wake, but cannot see Thy distant shores; who at each shock Of the waves' onset faint for thee! THE BIRTHNIGHT: TO F. Dearest, it was a night That in its darkness rocked Orion's stars; A sighing wind ran faintly white Along the willows, and the cedar boughs Laid their wide hands in stealthy peace across The starry silence of their antique moss: No sound save rushing air Cold, yet all sweet with Spring, And in thy mother's arms, couched weeping there, Thou, lovely thing. THE DEATH-DREAM Who, now, put dreams into thy slumbering mind? Who, with bright Fear's lean taper, crossed a hand Athwart its beam, and stooping, truth maligned, Spake so thy spirit speech should understand, And with a dread "He's dead!" awaked a peal Of frenzied bells along the vacant ways Of thy poor earthly heart; waked thee to steal, Like dawn distraught upon unhappy days, To prove nought, nothing? Was it Time's large voice Out of the inscrutable future whispered so? Or but the horror of a little noise Earth wakes at dead of night? Or does Love know When his sweet wings weary and droop, and even In sleep cries audibly a shrill remorse? Or, haply, was it I who out of dream Stole but a little where shadows course, Called back to thee across the eternal stream? "WHERE IS THY VICTORY?" None, none can tell where I shall be When the unclean earth covers me; Only in surety if thou cry Where my perplexed ashes lie, Know, 'tis but death's necessity That keeps my tongue from answering thee. Even if no more my shadow may Lean for a moment in thy day; No more the whole earth lighten, as if, Thou near, it had nought else to give: Surely 'tis but Heaven's strategy To prove death immortality. Yet should I sleep--and no more dream, Sad would the last awakening seem, If my cold heart, with love once hot, Had thee in sleep remembered not: How could I wake to find that I Had slept alone, yet easefully?