Loved-one of my youth thou wast,
      Of my merry youth,
          And I see,
          Tearfully,
  All the fair and sunny past,
  All its openness and truth,
  Ever fresh and green in thee
  As the moss is in the sea.

      Thy little heart, that hath with love
      Grown colored like the sky above,
      On which thou lookest ever,—­
          Can it know
          All the woe
  Of hope for what returneth never,
  All the sorrow and the longing
  To these hearts of ours belonging?

      Out on it! no foolish pining
        For the sky
        Dims thine eye,
  Or for the stars so calmly shining;
  Like thee let this soul of mine
  Take hue from that wherefor I long,
  Self-stayed and high, serene and strong,
  Not satisfied with hoping—­but divine.

      Violet! dear violet! 
      Thy blue eyes are only wet
  With joy and love of him who sent thee,
  And for the fulfilling sense
  Of that glad obedience
  Which made thee all that Nature meant thee!

* * * * *

From “The Present Crisis.”

=_382._= IMPORTANCE OF A NOBLE DEED.

  When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth’s aching breast
  Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west,
  And the slave, where’er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb
  To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime
  Of a century, bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time.

* * * * *

  Once, to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,
  In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
  Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,
  Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,
  And the choice goes by for ever, twist that darkness and that light.

* * * * *

  We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,
  Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate,
  But the soul is still oracular; amid the market’s din,
  List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,—­
  “They enslave their children’s children, who make compromise with sin.”

* * * * *

From The Atlantic Monthly.

=_383._= THE SPANIARDS’ GRAVES AT THE ISLES OF SHOALS.

  O sailors, did sweet eyes look after you,
    The day you sailed away from sunny Spain? 
  Bright eyes that followed fading ship and crew,
                Melting in tender rain?

  Did no one dream of that drear night to be,
    Wild with the wind, fierce with the stinging snow,
  When, on yon granite point that frets the sea,
                The ship met her death-blow?