Hush!  Still as death,
    The tempest holds his breath
  As from a sudden will;
The rain stops short, but from the eaves
You see it drop, and hear it from the leaves, 70
  All is so bodingly still;
    Again, now, now, again
Plashes the rain in heavy gouts,
  The crinkled lightning
  Seems ever brightening,
    And loud and long
    Again the thunder shouts
          His battle-song,—­
        One quivering flash,
        One wildering crash, 80
    Followed by silence dead and dull,

        As if the cloud, let go,
        Leapt bodily below
To whelm the earth in one mad overthrow. 
        And then a total lull.

        Gone, gone, so soon! 
    No more my half-dazed fancy there,
    Can shape a giant In the air,
    No more I see his streaming hair,
  The writhing portent of his form;—­ 90
        The pale and quiet moon
    Makes her calm forehead bare,
  And the last fragments of the storm,
Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea,
Silent and few, are drifting over me.

LOVE

True Love is but a humble, low-born thing,
And hath its food served up in earthen ware;
It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand,
Through the everydayness of this workday world,
Baring its tender feet to every flint,
Yet letting not one heart-beat go astray
From Beauty’s law of plainness and content;
A simple, fireside thing, whose quiet smile
Can warm earth’s poorest hovel to a home;
Which, when our autumn cometh, as it must,
And life in the chill wind shivers bare and leafless,
Shall still be blest with Indian-summer youth
In bleak November, and, with thankful heart,
Smile on its ample stores of garnered fruit,
As full of sunshine to our aged eyes
As when it nursed the blossoms of our spring. 
Such is true Love, which steals into the heart
With feet as silent as the lightsome dawn
That kisses smooth the rough brows of the dark,
And hath its will through blissful gentleness,
Not like a rocket, which, with passionate glare,
Whirs suddenly up, then bursts, and leaves the night
Painfully quivering on the dazed eyes;
A love that gives and takes, that seeth faults,
Not with flaw-seeking eyes like needle points,
But loving-kindly ever looks them down
With the o’ercoming faith that still forgives;
A love that shall be new and fresh each hour,
As is the sunset’s golden mystery,
Or the sweet coming of the evening-star,
Alike, and yet most unlike, every day,
And seeming ever best and fairest now;
A love that doth not kneel for what it seeks,
But faces Truth and Beauty as their peer,
Showing its worthiness of noble thoughts
By a clear sense of inward nobleness;