Through rivers of veins on the nameless quest
       The tide of my life goes hurriedly sweeping,
     Till it reaches that curious wheel o’ the breast,
     The human heart, which is never at rest. 
       Faster, faster, it cries, and leaping,
     Plunging, dashing, speeding away,
     The wheel and the river work night and day.

     I know not wherefore, I know not whither,
       This strange tide rushes with such mad force: 
     It glides on hither, it slides on thither,
       Over and over the selfsame course,
       With never an outlet and never a source;
     And it lashes itself to the heat of passion
     And whirls the heart in a mill-wheel fashion.

     I can hear in the hush of the still, still night,
       The ceaseless sound of that mighty river;
     I can hear it gushing, gurgling, rushing,
     With a wild, delirious, strange delight,
     And a conscious pride in its sense of might,
       As it hurries and worries my heart forever.

     And I wonder oft as I lie awake,
       And list to the river that seethes and surges
     Over the wheel that it chides and urges—­
     I wonder oft if that wheel will break
       With the mighty pressure it bears, some day,
       Or slowly and wearily wear away.

     For little by little the heart is wearing,
     Like the wheel of the mill, as the tide goes tearing
       And plunging hurriedly through my breast,
       In a network of veins on a nameless quest,
     From and forth, unto unknown oceans,
     Bringing its cargoes of fierce emotions,
       With never a pause or an hour for rest.

     A MEETING.

     Quite carelessly I turned the newsy sheet;
       A song I sang, full many a year ago,
     Smiled up at me, as in a busy street
       One meets an old-time friend he used to know.

     So full it was, that simple little song,
       Of all the hope, the transport, and the truth,
     Which to the impetuous morn of life belong,
       That once again I seemed to grasp my youth.

     So full it was of that sweet, fancied pain
       We woo and cherish ere we meet with woe,
     I felt as one who hears a plaintive strain
       His mother sang him in the long ago.

     Up from the grave the years that lay between
       That song’s birthday and my stern present came
     Like phantom forms and swept across the scene,
       Bearing their broken dreams of love and fame.

     Fair hopes and bright ambitions that I knew
       In that old time, with their ideal grace,
     Shone for a moment, then were lost to view
       Behind the dull clouds of the commonplace.

     With trembling hands I put the sheet away;
       Ah, little song! the sad and bitter truth
     Struck like an arrow when we met that day! 
       My life has missed the promise of its youth.