No reply!—­the dreary shadows
  Lengthen from the silent hills,
And a heavy boding sorrow
  Still my aching bosom fills. 
Now the moon is up in beauty,
  Walking on a starry hight,
While her trailing vesture brightens
  The gray hollows of the night.

Things of evil go out from me,
  Leave this silence-haunted room,
Full enough of darkness keepeth
  In the chamber of his tomb. 
Full enough of shadow lieth
  In that dim futurity—­
In that wedding night, where, meekly,
  My beloved waits for me!

THE OLD HOMESTEAD.

I remember the dear little cabin
  That stood by the weather-brown mill,
And the beautiful wavelets of sunshine
  That flowed down the slope of the hill,
And way down the winding green valley,
  And over the meadow—­smooth shorn,—­
How the dew-drops lay flashing and gleaming
  On the pale rosy robes of the morn.

How the blush-blossoms shook on the upland,
  Like a red-cloud of sunset afar,
And the lilies gleamed up from the marsh pond
  Like the pale silver rim of a star;
How the brook chimed a beautiful chorus,
  With the birds that sang high in the trees;
And how the bright shadows of sunset
  Trailed goldenly down on the breeze.

I remember the mossy-rimmed springlet,
  That gushed in the shade of the oaks,
And how the white buds of the mistletoe,
  Fell down at the woodman’s strokes,
On the morning when cruel Sir Spencer
  Came down with his haughty train,
To uproot the old kings of the greenwood
  That shadowed his golden grain.

For he dwelt in a lordly castle
  That towered half-way up the hill,
And we in a poor little cabin
  In the shade of the weather-brown mill,
Therefore the haughty Earl Spencer
  Came down with his knightly train,
And uprooted our beautiful roof-trees
  That shadowed his golden grain.

Ah! wearily sighed our mother,
  When the mistletoe boughs lay shed;
But never the curse of the orphan
  Was breathed on the rich man’s head;
And when again the gentle summer
  Had gladdened the earth once more,
No branches of gnarled oaks olden
  Made shadows across the floor.

GURTHA.

The lone winds creep with a snakish hiss
  Among the dwarfish bushes,
And with deep sighing sadly kiss
  The wild brook’s border rushes;
The woods are dark, save here and there
  The glow-worm shineth faintly,
And o’er the hills one lonely star
  That trembles white and saintly.

Ah! well I know this mournful eve
  So like an evening olden;
With many a goodly harvest sheaf
  The upland fields were golden;
The lily moon in bridal white
  Leaned o’er the sea, her lover,
And stars with beauty filled the Night—­
  The wind sang in the clover.