Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: FAILURE. I AM so weary of it all; and yet See how my hands are bleeding with the strain Of trying to be brave, to conquer pain And sorrow; yea, and trying to forget, That is the hardest of them all. I let The sleet and snow blow over me, the rain And roses of the Summer that would fain With sweet caresses pay my sweet love's debt. I cry to heaven as if there were some spot Through which my pain and passion might be heard; But all must go for naught. No seraph band Comforts or helps me. If I pray or not, 'Tis all the same; no angel heart is stirred To bring me balm, nor does Christ move His hand. 34 On an Antique Cameo. ON AN ANTIQUE CAMEO. /'ARVEN in sard, and quite as chastely cold As the deep stone, a woman's face, a Greek, Or, mayhap, Roman. Gods ! if it could speak ? This red-brown gem ? what stories might be Of the old time when even slaves were bold, And weakness only lay in being weak Of nerve and muscle. Some patrician cheek Lent for the jewel's grace its soft sweet mould, The man who carved it may have won him Out of this deft, clear limning, and the maid, (Or was she matron ?) it were like to be Her regal face was than her blood and name Less regal. Now a tossing leaflet's shade Is more substantial than their memory. OF LOVE. ""PO meet thee? Why, to meet thee is to Long inward breaths of something more akin To that great strength of strengths my soul would win Than I have known ? to learn to love the law That governs loving. Faith! I never saw Thy face but that I read therein How much I love thee, and it were a sin To stifle love that has no fleck nor flaw. Love grows so like the flower in yonder mead That no man ever sowed, that God's own Planted and nourished with His sun and rain. So true love grows. An...