In his “Picture of St. John” he describes, with a feeling born of experience, a scene like the closing one in the life of his wife. “Day by day Her cheeks grew thin, her footstep faint and slow; And yet so fondly, with such hopeful play Her pulses beat, they masked the coming woe. Joy dwelt with her, and in her eager breath His cymbals drowned the hollow drums of death; Life showered its promise, surer to betray, And the false Future crumbled fast away. Aye, she was happy! God be thanked for this, That she was happy!—happier than she knew, Had even the hope that cheated her been true; For from her face there beamed such wondrous bliss, As cannot find fulfilment here, and dies.” Nearer the end of the same poem, he writes:— “With cold and changeless face beside her grave I stood, and coldly heard the shuddering sound Of coffin-echoes, smothered underground.” And still later he says, as only he can say who has felt it:— “My body moved in its mechanic course Of soulless function: thought and passion ceased, Or blindly stirred with undirected force,— A weary trance which only Time decreased By slow reductions.” A sonnet of that dark hour, written on a leaf of his diary, remains to us, from which we quote two verses:— “Moan, ye wild winds! around the pane, And fall, thou drear December rain! Fill with your gusts the sullen day, Tear the last clinging leaves away! Reckless as yonder naked tree, No blast of yours can trouble me.” “Moan on, ye winds! and pour, thou rain! Your stormy sobs and tears are vain, If shed for her whose fading eyes, Will open soon on Paradise; The eye of Heaven shall blinded be, Or ere ye cease, if shed for me.” Here is another sad, sad wail, to be found in his “Autumnal Vespers”:— “The light is dying out o’er all the land, And in my heart the light is dying. She, My life’s best life, is fading silently From Earth, from me, and from the dreams we planned, Since first Love led us with his beaming hand From hope to hope, yet kept his crown in store. The light is dying out o’er all the land: To me it comes no more. The blossom of my heart, she shrinks away Stricken with deadly blight: more wan and weak Her love replies in blanching lip and cheek, And gentler in her dear eyes, day by day. God, in Thy mercy, bid the arm delay, Which thro’ her being smites to dust my own! Thou gav’st the seed Thy sun and showers; why slay The blossoms yet unblown? In vain,—in vain! God will not bid the Spring Replace with sudden green the Autumn’s gold; And as the night-mists, gathering damp and cold, Strike up the vales where water-courses sing, Death’s mist shall strike along her veins, and cling Thenceforth forever round her glorious frame: For all her radiant presence, May shall bring A memory and a name.”