O tell me, friends, ye hardly hear,— And if indeed ye did, I fear Ye would not say, ye would not speak,— Are you so strong, am I so weak, And yet, how much so e’er I yearn, Can I not follow, nor you turn? O tell me, friends, ye hardly hear! O tell me, friends, ere words are o’er! There’s something in me sad and sore Repines, and underneath my eyes I feel a somewhat that would rise,— O tell me, O my friends, and you, Do you feel nothing like it too? O tell me, friends, ere words are o’er! O tell me, friends that are no more, Do you, too, think ere it is o’er Old times shall yet come round as erst, And we be friends, as we were first? Or do you judge that all is vain, Except that rule that none complain? O tell me, friends that are no more! _QUA CURSUM VENTUS._ As ships, becalmed at eve, that lay With canvas drooping, side by side, Two towers of sail at dawn of day Are scarce long leagues apart descried; When fell the night, upsprung the breeze, And all the darkling hours they plied, Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas By each was cleaving, side by side: E’en so—but why the tale reveal Of those, whom year by year unchanged, Brief absence joined anew to feel, Astounded, soul from soul estranged? At dead of night their sails were filled, And onward each rejoicing steered— Ah, neither blame, for neither willed, Or wist, what first with dawn appeared! To veer, how vain! On, onward strain, Brave barks! In light, in darkness too, Through winds and tides one compass guides— To that, and your own selves, be true. But O blithe breeze; and O great seas, Though ne’er, that earliest parting past, On your wide plain they join again, Together lead them home at last. One port, methought, alike they sought, One purpose hold where’er they fare,— O bounding breeze, O rushing seas! At last, at last, unite them there! ‘_WEN GOTT BETRÜGT, IST WOHL BETROGEN._’ Is it true, ye gods, who treat us As the gambling fool is treated; O ye, who ever cheat us, And let us feel we’re cheated! Is it true that poetical power, The gift of heaven, the dower Of Apollo and the Nine, The inborn sense, ‘the vision and the faculty divine,’ All we glorify and bless In our rapturous exaltation, All invention, and creation, Exuberance of fancy, and sublime imagination, All a poet’s fame is built on, The fame of Shakespeare, Milton, Of Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Is in reason’s grave precision, Nothing more, nothing less, Than a peculiar conformation, Constitution, and condition Of the brain and of the belly? Is it true, ye gods who cheat us? And that’s the way ye treat us? Oh say it, all who think it, Look straight, and never blink it! If it is so, let it be so, And we will all agree so; But the plot has counterplot, It may be, and yet be not. POEMS ON RELIGIOUS AND BIBLICAL SUBJECTS.