The entries in the journal are all brief, but they are frequent and like these: "Walk before breakfast with E---- and afterward alone. The country is beautiful, but oh, how sad! How can I live any longer!" "The glimmer of golden leaves in the sunshine; the lilac hedge shot with the crimson creeper; the river writing its silver S in the meadow; everything without full of loveliness. But within me the hunger, the famine of the heart!" "Another walk under the pines, in the bright morning sunshine." "Known and unknown; human, divine: Sweet human hand and lip and eye; Dear heavenly friend, who canst not die: Mine, mine forever; ever mine." "How inexpressibly sad are all holydays! But the dear little girls had their Christmas-tree last night, and an unseen presence blessed the scene!" No mention of his loss was ever made in his published verse, though the whole of his poetry was much sadder after that loss; but after his own death the following poem was found in his desk, written eighteen years after his wife's death:-- "In the long, sleepless watches of the night A gentle face--the face of one long dead-- Looks at me from the wall, where round its head The night lamp casts a halo of pale light. Here in this room she died, and soul more white Never through martyrdom of fire was led To its repose; nor can in books be read The legend of a life more benedight. There is a mountain in the distant West That, sun-defying in its deep ravines, Displays a cross of snow upon its side: Such is the cross I wear upon my breast These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes And seasons changeless since the day she died." It was a long time before he could work again. When he felt that he could do so, he began his translation of Dante, and frequently produced a canto in a day, finding in this absorbing occupation the first alleviation of his sorrow. In a sonnet "On Translating Dante," he said:-- "I enter here from day to day, And leave my burden at this minster gate." But when his work was done he always found that his burden was still awaiting him on the outside, and he took it up and bore it as patiently as he could. But he began earnestly to long for "The Wayside Inn, Where toil should cease and rest begin,"