So strange to-night--those voices there, Where all so quiet was before; They say the face has not a care Nor sorrow in it any more-- His latest scrawl:--"Forgive me--You Who prayed, 'they know not what they do!'" My tears wilt never let me see This man that rooms next door to me! THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT. O the waiting in the watches of the night! In the darkness, desolation, and contrition and affright; The awful hush that holds us shut away from all delight: The ever weary memory that ever weary goes Recounting ever over every aching loss it knows-- The ever weary eyelids gasping ever for repose-- In the dreary, weary watches of the night! Dark--stifling dark--the watches of the night! With tingling nerves at tension, how the blackness flashes white With spectral visitations smitten past the inner sight!-- What shuddering sense of wrongs we've wrought that may not be redressed-- Of tears we did not brush away--of lips we left unpressed, And hands that we let fall, with all their loyalty unguessed! Ah! the empty, empty watches of the night! What solace in the watches of the night?-- What frailest staff of hope to stay--what faintest shaft of light? Do we _dream_ and dare _believe_ it, that by never weight of right Of our own poor weak deservings, we shall win the dawn at last-- Our famished souls find freedom from this penance for the past, In a faith that leaps and lightens from the gloom that flees aghast-- Shall we survive the watches of the night? One leads us through the watches of the night-- By the ceaseless intercession of our loved ones lost to sight He is with us through all trials, in His mercy and His might;-- With our mothers there about Him, all our sorrow disappears, Till the silence of our sobbing is the prayer the Master hears, And His hand is laid upon us with the tenderness of tears In the waning of the watches of the night. HIS VIGIL. Close the book and dim the light, I shall read no more to-night. No--I am not sleepy, dear-- Do not go: sit by me here In the darkness and the deep Silence of the watch I keep. Something in your presence so Soothes me--as in long ago I first felt your hand--as now-- In the darkness touch my brow; I've no other wish than you Thus should fold mine eyelids to, Saying nought of sigh or tear-- Just as God were sitting here. THE PLAINT HUMAN Season of snows, and season of flowers, Seasons of loss and gain!-- Since grief and joy must alike be ours, Why do we still complain? Ever our failing, from sun to sun, O my intolerent brother:-- We want just a little too little of one, And much too much of the other. BY ANY OTHER NAME.