Oh but for one short hour,-
A respite, however brief!

No blessed leisure for love or hope,
But only time for grief!

A little weeping would ease my heart;
But in their briny bed

My tears must stop, for every drop
Hinders needle and thread!"

With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread,-
Stitch-stitch-stitch!

In poverty, hunger, and dirt;

And still with a voice of dolorous pitch-
Would that its tone could reach the rich!-

She sang this "Song of the Shirt!"

Thomas Hood [1799-1845]

STANZAS

IN a drear-nighted December,

Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity:

The north cannot undo them,
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them

From budding at the prime.

In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;

But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,

Never, never petting

About the frozen time.

Ah! would 'twere so with many

A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writhed not at passèd joy?
To know the change and feel it,
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbèd sense to steal it,

Was never said in rhyme.

John Keats [1795-1821]

THE DEAD FAITH

SHE made a little shadow-hidden grave

The day Faith died;

Therein she laid it, heard the clod's sick fall,

And smiled aside

"If less I ask," tear-blind, she mocked, "I may

Be less denied."

She set a rose to blossom in her hair,

The day Faith died—

"Now glad," she said, "and free at last, I go,

And life is wide."

But through long nights she stared into the dark,

And knew she lied.

Fannie Heaslip Lea [1884

THE BALLAD OF THE BOAT

THE stream was smooth as glass, we said, "Arise and let's away":

The Siren sang beside the boat that in the rushes lay;

And spread the sail, and strong the oar, we gaily took our

way.

When shall the sandy bar be crossed? When shall we find the bay?

The broadening flood swells slowly out o'er cattle-dotted

plains,

The stream is strong and turbulent, and dark with heavy

rains;

The laborer looks up to see our shallop speed away. When shall the sandy bar be crossed? When shall we find the bay?

Now are the clouds like fiery shrouds; the sun, superbly

large,

Slow as an oak to woodman's stroke sinks flaming at their

marge.

The waves are bright with mirrored light as jacinths on our

way.

When shall the sandy bar be crossed? When shall we find the bay?

The moon is high up in the sky, and now no more we see
The spreading river's either bank, and surging distantly
There booms a sullen thunder as of breakers far away.
Now shall the sandy bar be crossed, now shall we find the
bay!

The sea-gull shrieks high overhead, and dimly to our sight The moonlit crests of foaming waves gleam towering through

the night.

We'll steal upon the mermaid soon, and start her from her lay,

When once the sandy bar is crossed, and we are in the bay.

What rises white and awful as a shroud-enfolded ghost? What roar of rampant tumult bursts in clangor on the coast? Pull back! pull back! The raging flood sweeps every oar

away.

O stream, is this thy bar of sand? O boat, is this the bay? Richard Garnett [1835-1906]

ELDORADO

GAILY bedight,

A gallant knight

In sunshine and in shadow

Had journeyed long,

Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old

This knight so bold

And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell, as he found

No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength Failed him at length, He met a pilgrim shadow: "Shadow," said he,

"Where can it be―

This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the mountains

Of the moon,

Down the valley of the Shadow

Ride, boldly ride,"

The shade replied,

"If you seek for Eldorado!"

Edgar Allan Poe [1809-1849]

A LOST CHORD

SEATED one day at the Organ,

I was weary and ill at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys.

I do not know what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then;
But I struck one chord of music,
Like the sound of a great Amen.

It flooded the crimson twilight,
Like the close of an Angel's Psalm,
And it lay on my fevered spirit
With a touch of infinite calm.

It quieted pain and sorrow,

Like love overcoming strife; It seemed the harmonious echo From our discordant life.

It linked all perplexèd meanings

Into one perfect peace,
And trembled away into silence

As if it were loth to cease.

I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,

Which came from the soul of the Organ,
And entered into mine.

It may be that Death's bright angel
Will speak in that chord again,—

It may be that only in Heaven

I shall hear that grand Amen.

Adelaide Anne Procter [1825-1864]