Then, darling, walk with me this morn: Let your brown tresses drink its sheen; These violets, within them worn, Of floral fays shall make you queen. What though there comes a time of pain When autumn winds forbode decay; The days of love are born again, That fabled time is far away! And never seemed the land so fair As now, nor birds such notes to sing, Since first within your shining hair I wove the blossoms of the Spring. III. SHADOW-LAND. “THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY.” Could we but know The land that ends our dark, uncertain travel, Where lie those happier hills and meadows low,— Ah, if beyond the spirit’s inmost cavil, Aught of that country could we surely know, Who would not go? Might we but hear The hovering angels’ high imagined chorus, Or catch, betimes, with wakeful eyes and clear, One radiant vista of the realm before us,— With one rapt moment given to see and hear, Ah, who would fear? Were we quite sure To find the peerless friend who left us lonely, Or there, by some celestial stream as pure, To gaze in eyes that here were lovelit only,— This weary mortal coil, were we quite sure, Who would endure? “DARKNESS AND THE SHADOW.” Waking, I have been nigh to Death,— Have felt the chillness of his breath Whiten my cheek and numb my heart, And wondered why he stayed his dart,— Yet quailed not, but could meet him so, As any lesser friend or foe. But sleeping, in the dreams of night, His phantom stifles me with fright! O God! what frozen horrors fall Upon me with his visioned pall: The movelessness, the unknown dread, Fair life to pulseless silence wed! And _is_ the grave so darkly deep, So hopeless, as it seems in sleep? Can our sweet selves the coffin hold So dumb within its crumbling mould? And is the shroud so dank and drear A garb,—the noisome worm so near? Where then is Heaven’s mercy fled,— To quite forget the voiceless dead? THE ASSAULT BY NIGHT. All night we hear the rattling flaw, The casements shiver with each breath; And still more near the foemen draw, The pioneers of Death. Their grisly chieftain comes: He steals upon us in the night; Call up the guards! light every light! Beat the alarum drums! His tramp is at the outer door; He bears against the shuddering walls; Lo! what a dismal frost and hoar Upon the window falls! Outbar him while ye may! Feed, feed the watch-fires everywhere,— Even yet their cheery warmth will scare This thing of night away.