Orphan Hours, the Year is dead, Come and sigh, come and weep! Merry Hours, smile instead, For the Year is but asleep. See, it smiles as it is sleeping,

Dear home, thou scene of earliest… The least of which wronged Memory… Bitterer than all thine unremember…

How, my dear Mary,—are you critic… (For vipers kill, though dead) by… That you condemn these verses I h… Because they tell no story, false… What, though no mice are caught by…

Is it that in some brighter sphere We part from friends we meet with… Or do we see the Future pass Over the Present’s dusky glass? Or what is that that makes us seem

Flourishing vine, whose kindling c… Beneath the autumnal sun, none tas… For thou dost shroud a ruin, and b… The rotting bones of dead antiquit…

As the sunrise to the night, As the north wind to the clouds, As the earthquake’s fiery flight, Ruining mountain solitudes, Everlasting Italy,

Sweet star, which gleaming o’er th… Through fleecy clouds of silvery r… Spanglet of light on evening’s sha… Which shrouds the day-beam from th… Lighting the hour of sacred love;…

And who feels discord now or sorro… Love is the universe to-day— These are the slaves of dim to-mor… Darkening Life’s labyrinthine way…

One word is too often profaned For me to profane it, One feeling too falsely disdained For thee to disdain it; One hope is too like despair