Now close on the storm it rises,
  Now sadly it sinks with a moan—­
Like a human heart in its anguish,
  Crushing a fruitless groan—­
Like a soul that goes wailing and pining,
  Thro’ the motherless world, alone.

Is it hung in an ancient turret? 
  Is it swung by a mortal hand? 
Is it chiming in woe or gladness,
  Its symphonies sweet and grand? 
Is it rung for a shadowy sorrow,
  In the shadowy phantom land?

Alas for the beautiful guesses
  That live in a poet’s rhyme—­
’Tis only the bell of the factory
  Tolling its woe sublime;
And the wind is the ghostly ringer,
  Ringing the midnight chime.

Toll, mournful bell of the tempest,
  Through my dreams by sleep unblest;
My bosom is throbbing as madly
  To surges of wild unrest—­
E’en as thy heart of iron
  Is beating thy brazen breast!

MAY-THALIA.

TO THOMAS HEMPSTEAD.

Thy lay—­a sweet sung bridal hymn,
  Wedding the Old year to the New,
  ’Mid starry buds, and silver dew,
And brooks, and birds in woodlands dim—­

That touched the hidden veins of thought
  With the electric force of strife,
  Thrilled the dumb marble of my life
Unto a perfect beauty wrought.

And straight, unclasping from my brow
  The thorny crown of lost delight,
  The solemn grandeur of the night
Flashed on me from old years, as now.

The budding of my days is past! 
  And May sits weeping in the shade
  The weeds on April’s grave have made,
Blown slantwise in the sobbing blast.

Ah me! but in the Poet’s heart
  Some pools of troubled water lie! 
  The hidden founts of agony,
That keep the better springs apart.

What comfort is there in the Earth! 
  What height, or depth, where we may hide
  Our life long anguish, and abide
The ripening unto newer birth!

But Poet, in thy song is power
  To lift the flood gates of my woe,
  And bid its solemn surging flow
Far from the triumph of this hour.

Yea, rising from life’s evil things,
  My soul, long blinded from the light,
  Starlit across the purple night
Sweeps the red lightning of her wings!

I will be free! there is a strength
  In the full blowing of our youth
  To climb the rosied hills of truth
From the dry desert’s burning length.

From far a voice shouts to my fate
  As shout the choiring Angels, when
  The fiery cross of suffering men
Falls broken at the narrow gate!

Be brave! be noble, and sublime
  Thyself unto a higher aim—­
  Keeping thy nature white of blame
In all the dreary walks of time!

Oh musty creeds in mouldy books! 
  Blind teachers of the blind are ye—­
  A plainer wisdom talks with me
In God’s full psalmody of brooks.