“Fare thee well _at once_! The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire; Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me.” Again, in the scene where Hamlet kills Polonius, and reveals to his mother his full knowledge of her crime, the spirit wo-stricken, and bringing with it always the terrible cold breath of the other world—yet still, with the fingerings of human affection, is touched with pity at the terror and suffering of her whom it had once loved: “But, look! amazement on thy mother sits: Oh, step between her and her fighting soul; Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works. Speak to her Hamlet.” * * * * * BALLAD. BY J. R. LOWELL. Gloomily the river floweth, Close by her bower door, And drearily the nightwind bloweth Across the barren moor. It rustles through the withered leaves Upon the poplars tall, And mutters wildly ’neath the eaves Of the unlighted hall. The waning moon above the hill Is rising strange and red, And fills her soul, against her will, With fancies lone and dread. The stream all night will flow as drearful, The wind will shriek forlorn, She fears—she knows that something fearful Is coming ere the morn. The curtains in that lonely place Wave like a heavy pall, And her dead mother’s pale, pale face Doth flicker on the wall. And all the rising moon about Her fear did shape the clouds, And saw dead faces staring out From coffins and from shrouds. A screech-owl now, for three nights past, Housed in some hollow tree, Sends struggling up against the blast His long shriek fearfully. Strange shadows waver to and fro, In the uncertain light, And the scared dog hath howled below All through the weary night. She only feels that she is weak And fears some ill unknown, She longs, and yet she dreads to shriek It is so very lone. Her eyeballs in their sockets strain, Till the nerves seem to snap, When blasts against the window-pane Like lean, dead fingers tap. And still the river floweth by With the same lonely sound, And the gusts seem to sob and sigh, And wring their hands around. Is that a footstep on the stair, And on the entry-floor? What sound is that, like breathing, there? There, close beside the door! Hush! hark! that was a dreadful sigh! So full of woe, so near! It were an easier thing to die Than feel this deadly fear. One of her ancestors she knew A bloody man had been, They found him here, stabb’d through and through, Murdered in all his sin.