What old, old pain is this that bleeds anew? What old and wandering dream forgotten long Hobbles back to my mind? With faces two, Like Janus of old Rome, I look about, And yet discover not what ancient wrong Lies unrequited still. No speck of doubt Upon to-morrow's promise. Yet a pain Of some dumb thing is on me, and I feel How men go mad, how faculties do reel When these old querns turn round within the brain. 'Tis something to have known one day of joy, Now to remember when the heart is low, An antidote of thought that will destroy The asp bite of Regret. Deep will I drink By'n by the purple cups that overflow, And fill the shattered heart's urn to the brink. But some are dead who laughed ! Some scattered are Around the sultry breadth of foreign zones. You, with the warm clay wrapt about your bones, Are nearer to me than the live afar. My heart has grown as dry as an old crust, Deep in book lumber and moth-eaten wood, So long it has forgot the old love lust, So long forgot the thing that made youth dear, Two blue love lamps, a heart exceeding good, And how, when first I heard that voice ring clear Among the sering hedges of the plain, I knew not which from which beyond the corn, The laughter by the callow twisted thorn, The jay- thrush whistling in the haws for rain. I hold the mind is the imprisoned soul, And all our aspirations are its own Struggles and strivings for a golden goal, That wear us out like snow men at the thaw. And we shall make our Heaven where we have sown Our purple longings. Oh! can the loved dead draw Anear us when we moan, or watching wait Our coming in the woods where first we met, The dead leaves falling in their wild hair wet, Their hands upon the fastenings of the gate? This is the old, old pain come home once more, Bent down with answers wild and very lame For all my delving in old dog-eared lore That drove the Sages mad. And boots the world Aught for their wisdom? I have asked them,tame, And watched the Earth by its own self be hurled Atom by atom into nothingness, Loll out of the deep canyons, drops of fire, And kindle on the hills its funeral pyre, And all we learn but shows we know the less.