And Life, in suspense

O'er the cold womb of Death,
Waits the new parturition-
In the far-off revealing.
The profluent surges,

Sweep inward and onward,
In a calm preterition,

Eternally, endlessly.

And beyond an horizon
Dimcast and uncertain,
Pale luminous lashes,
Like dawnings of sunlight
In eyes that are blinded,,
Flush up the dead vapours,
And mystical breathings
Of an imminent waking
To a great revelation ;
Float fainter than whispers.

Soft Drifting and drifting,
The bright skirts of hazes
Revolving and folding,
Wrap golden about me.
While, thrilling, recumbent,
On ethereal wing-pulsings
Through thin waves of music,
'Neath gathering splendours
In breathless gradations
Borne glory-ward, floating,
For ever-for ever!

Lo! death was upon him,
Till the grey of the morning

Broke cold on the moorlands,

And the storm had abated.

Then his features a moment

Flushed out a great radiance;
Then died into blackness,

The blackness of ashes,

As the moon of the midnight

Pours light through a cloud-rift
And is suddenly darkened.

All was done and they placed him

In shape for his coffin,

And turned down the lamplight,

Let the few glowing embers

Die down into ashes;

Drop the blind o'er the window

And leave him to darkness.

TIRED OUT.*

OFTLY float about me, Music,

Wrap me up in soothing calms, Wile my spirit of its demon,

With the magic of thy psalms; Wave the meadow's russet fruitage, Thrill the ivy's clasping bars, Wake the mountain's bass intonings, Stir the lilac's bloom of stars;

The last Poem he wrote.

Loose the fountain of my being,
Rouse my pulses' languid beat-
Let me lose the world a little,
Find my wings and fold my feet.
I am tired of all the doing,

Tired of all I've sung and wrought, And my brow is damp with anguish, And my soul is sick with thought : And the jar and incompleteness

Of the things around oppress,
And the sense of baffled yearning,
And the imploring tenderness,
And the hauntings of the vanished,
And the sin and the regret,
That upon me lie so heavy,

I would fain awhile forget.
Thrill around me, mystic music,
Break in many a slumberous fall,
Charm me of my spirit's darkness,
As of old the sullen Saul.
Let me taste Imagination's
Sibyl-cup with Lethe blent;
Let my soul expand unfettered
In her own wide element;
Let me drift along the twilight
On the white aerial streams,
Starred with Fancy's constellations,
Misted with the balm of dreams;

Let me feel the dew about me,
Sunk on languorous asphodels,
Palm and laurel shadow-braided,

Philter-charmed with opiate spells;