Only a tear for Venice?  She turned as in passion and loss,
     And stooped to his forehead and kissed it, as if she were kissing
     the cross.

     Faint with that strain of heart, she moved on then to another,
     Stern and strong in his death:  “And dost thou suffer, my brother?”

     Holding his hands in hers:  “Out of the Piedmont lion
     Cometh the sweetness of freedom! sweetest to live or to die on.”

     Holding his cold rough hands:  “Well, oh well have ye done
     In noble, noble Piedmont, who would not be noble alone.”

     Back he fell while she spoke.  She rose to her feet with a spring. 
     “That was a Piedmontese! and this is the court of the King!”

     THE PROSPECT

     Methinks we do as fretful children do,
        Leaning their faces on the window-pane
        To sigh the glass dim with their own breath’s stain,
     And shut the sky and landscape from their view;
     And thus, alas! since God the maker drew
        A mystic separation ’twixt those twain,—­
        The life beyond us and our souls in pain,—­
     We miss the prospect which we are called unto
     By grief we are fools to use.  Be still and strong,
     O man, my brother! hold thy sobbing breath,
       And keep thy soul’s large window pure from wrong;
     That so, as life’s appointment issueth,
       Thy vision may be clear to watch along
     The sunset consummation-lights of death.

     DE PROFUNDIS

     The face which, duly as the sun,
     Rose up for me with life begun,
     To mark all bright hours of the day
     With daily love, is dimmed away—­
       And yet my days go on, go on.

     The tongue which, like a stream, could run
     Smooth music from the roughest stone,
     And every morning with “Good day”
     Make each day good, is hushed away—­
       And yet my days go on, go on.

     The heart which, like a staff, was one
     For mine to lean and rest upon,
     The strongest on the longest day,
     With steadfast love is caught away—­
       And yet my days go on, go on.

     The world goes whispering to its own,
     “This anguish pierces to the bone.” 
     And tender friends go sighing round,
     “What love can ever cure this wound?”
       My days go on, my days go on.

     The past rolls forward on the sun
     And makes all night.  O dreams begun,
     Not to be ended!  Ended bliss! 
     And life, that will not end in this! 
       My days go on, my days go on.

     Breath freezes on my lips to moan: 
     As one alone, once not alone,
     I sit and knock at Nature’s door,
     Heart-bare, heart-hungry, very poor,
       Whose desolated days go on.

     I knock and cry—­Undone, undone! 
     Is there no help, no comfort—­none? 
     No gleaning in the wide wheat-plains
     Where others drive their loaded wains? 
       My vacant days go on, go on.