Ever whitening, ever whitening,
    As thy waves against them dash;
  What thy torrent, in the current,
    Swallow’d, now it helps to wash.

  As if senseless, as if senseless
    Things had feeling in this case;
  What so blindly, and unkindly,
    It destroy’d, it now does grace.

* * * * *

THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES.

  I have had playmates, I have had companions,
  In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days,
  All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

  I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
  Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies,
  All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

  I loved a love once, fairest among women;
  Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her—­
  All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

  I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man;
  Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
  Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

  Ghostlike I paced round the haunts of my childhood. 
  Earth seem’d a desert I was bound to traverse,
  Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

  Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
  Why wert not thou born in my father’s dwelling? 
  So might we talk of the old familiar faces,—­

  How some they have died, and some they have left me,
  And some are taken from me; all are departed;
  All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

* * * * *

HELEN.

  High-born Helen, round your dwelling
    These twenty years I’ve paced in vain: 
  Haughty beauty, thy lover’s duty
    Hath been to glory in his pain.

  High-born Helen, proudly telling
    Stories of thy cold disdain;
  I starve, I die, now you comply,
    And I no longer can complain.

  These twenty years I’ve lived on tears,
    Dwelling forever on a frown;
  On sighs I’ve fed, your scorn my bread;
    I perish now you kind are grown.

  Can I, who loved my beloved
    But for the scorn “was in her eye,”
  Can I be moved for my beloved,
    When she “returns me sigh for sigh?”

  In stately pride, by my bedside,
    High-born Helen’s portrait’s hung;
  Deaf to my praise, my mournful lays
    Are nightly to the portrait sung.

  To that I weep, nor ever sleep,
    Complaining all night long to her—­
  Helen, grown old, no longer cold,
    Said, “You to all men I prefer.”

* * * * *

A VISION OF REPENTANCE.

  I saw a famous fountain, in my dream,
    Where shady pathways to a valley led;
  A weeping willow lay upon that stream,
    And all around the fountain brink were spread
  Wide-branching trees, with dark green leaf rich clad,
    Forming a doubtful twilight—­desolate and sad.