“Ay! Love is stronger far than death, And wins the victory o’er the Grave; Dependent on no mortal breath, Its mission is to guide and save. Above the wrecks of Death and Time, It triumphs, changeless and sublime. “Still shall my love its vigils keep, True as the needle to the pole, For Death is not a dreamless sleep, Nor is the Grave man’s final goal. The larger growth,--the life divine,-- All that I hoped or wished, are mine.” Blest spirit! we will weep no more, But lay our selfishness to rest; The Providence, which we adore, Has ordered all things for the best. Life’s battle fought, the victory won, To nobler toils pass on! pass on! COMPENSATION. Out in the desolate midnight, Out in the cold and rain, With the bitter, bleak winds of winter Driving across the plain-- In the ghastly gloom of the churchyard, Crouching behind a stone, Fleeing from what is called Justice, I was safe with the dead alone. All of the madness and evil That into my nature was cast; All of the demon or devil Had filled up its measure at last. Blood, on my hands, of a brother! Blood--an indelible stain! Burning, and smarting, and eating Into my heart and my brain. In woe and iniquity shapen, Conceived by my mother in sin, Forecast in a soil of pollution. Did the life of my being begin. I chose not the nature within me; I was fated and fashioned by birth; Foreordained to the darkness and evil, The sins and the sorrows of earth! The World was my foe ere it knew me; It scattered its snares in my path: Like a serpent, it charmed and it drew me, Then met me with judgment and wrath! I saw that the strong crushed the weaker, That wickedness won in the strife, And the greatest of crimes and of curses Was the lot of a beggar in life! E’en the arm of God’s mercy seemed shortened, For all that could gladden or save; The child of my love, and its mother, Were laid in the pitiless grave! Then, weakened and wasted by hunger-- Ay, famished without and within-- All homeless, and hopeless, and friendless, O, what was there left me but sin? I met in the wood-path a lordling, Arrayed in his garments of pride, And, like Moses who slew the Egyptian, I smote him so sore that he died! O, the blood on my hands and my garments! O, the terrible face of the dead! His gold could not tempt me to linger-- I turned in my horror, and fled! I fled, but a terrible phantom Pursued like a demon of wrath; In the forest, the field, or the churchyard, Its footsteps were close on my path; And there, on the grave of my loved ones, As freezing and famished I lay, I was seized by the human avenger, And borne to the judgment away!