A STRANGER HERE.

My future from my past unlinking, Each dying year untwines the spell; The visible is swiftly sinking,

Uprises the invisible.

To light, unchanging, and eternal, From mists that sadden this bleak waste To scenes that smile for ever vernal,

From winter's blackening leaf I haste. Earth, what a sorrow lies before thee, None like it in the shadowy past: The sharpest throe that ever tore thee, Even though the briefest and the last!

I see the fair moon veil her lustre, I see the sackcloth of the sun; The shrouding of each starry cluster, The three- fold woe of earth begun.

I see the shadows of its sunset;

And wrapt in these the Avenger's form; I see the Armageddon- onset;

But I shall be above the storm.

There comes the moaning and the sighing There comes the hot tear's heavy fall, The thousand agonies of dying;

But I shall be beyond them all.