Rosalind.

"It is to be all made of sighs and tears ;

It is to be all made of fantasy,

All made of passion, and all made of wishes,

And so am I for Rosalind."

WHY win these words their way? These words are but

The breath of love; and love itself is vain.

My heart lies wrecked and waste: the desert wind,
That wanders in its lone dark halls and bowers,
And falling towers, and haunted donjon depths,
Is no soft sigh to breathe upon the lyre.

Love! words are not thy language.

What are words,

That words should aught avail, if the true heart's Best worship, warm as blood, as life-blood, and With life poured forth in sacrifice, be vain?

If the cold rock-for cold it is, and rock,
Though all one gem, one chrysolite entire―
Feel not the near throb of the heaving deep,
Hear not the voice of the great deep, that swells,
And beats, and breaks, before it, at its feet,
Shall the faint echoes of the shore, the faint,
Far whispers of the flowery banks, be felt,
Be heard, by that proud rock?

I breathe not words,

But fire. But what is breath?

Am I to this

Come now?-Am I the thing of sighs and words?

I grasped the problem, the deep theme of life, Strongly, and held it in the light, and said, “I'll solve it: I will have the truth, the real, The life of life "-Is this the oracle:

"It is to be all made of sighs and tears"?

I grow debased of spirit: from its throne
My spirit by a tyrant is deposed,

And sinks, and is a slave.

Yet late, methought,

It rose ennobled in its passion by

That passion's height, and by the hope of her,

The seen so bright and fair.

bright

Most fair, most

She is, and high that passion; but the hope

Has sunk; and now the fire that soared and shone
Preys deep within; the eagle thought that swooped
At that wild heart, by that fair quarry lured
Far down the eddying winds of passion, turns,
A vulture, on my own, and rends me, and

I bleed away.

I sink; the sweetness of

The thought of her sinks into me-my soul
Dissolves as in the dying throes of love
Sinks the spent spirit, all my spirit sinks
And melts: melts all my o'erfull heart, almost
Into my eyes, as on her look I dwell,
Or on her motions, which my following gaze
Tracks as one tracks sweet music in the air,
Or the bright steps of saint that treads the sky,

Or on her voice that bears my heart to heaven
Sublimed into the heavenly like her own.

Yet was I strong and free, though now no more.
I still had mastery o'er myself, and o'er
My senses and my heart, and all the things
Wherein so many sink-I had, through all
Temptation, and all evil; unto which
If I myself delivered, well I felt

My own deep will and lofty beacon-thought
Superior still. I knew that I could be

My own deliverer still. Thro' pleasure and

Through love, (if that were love,) I still could soar

Into my proper region.

Thronged thick with

stars,

From those nights

ardours as the sky with

As the dark jungles of that Eastern clime
With wild and beauteous things of Eastern sun,
I rose, unspent, unstayed: with steady beat
Of outstruck pinion, my free spirit winged
The keen clear air of morning, and surveyed

Its provinces the strange things of the world,
Arts, cares, and toils, the lofty lands of lore,
Song, science and, beyond the breath of earth,
Outshot the winds, and soared into the far.

I rose o'er love and pleasure and the world,
Its cares and strifes and passions, as I rose

In the strength of love of Freedom, love of Right,
High over circumstance and prejudice,

High over things and thoughts that are to men
What Reason, Truth, and Liberty should be.

I thought I rose. I know I fall. I fail, And falter, more than falter. I have lost The path I trod, the heart that bore me up,

The heart that there found home. I have left the

heights

For the deep vales; the soaring rocks that were

My home, the home of storms and eagles, for

The soft embowered recess, far down within
The folding hills sweet spot, where dreamy
thoughts,

Love-languid lying, waste them on the flowers,
Or moss, of Fancy-lush luxuriance, rife

With golden youth. For the sweet gloom of yon
Dim dell of Nymphs, I leave the shining alps

Of Mind, heights hoar with heaven, heights with blue heaven

Associate. For the murmuring streams I leave

The land of thunder. From the pure intense,