Man feels a presence without form or name,

When by the bodies of his speechless dead

In barbarous woe he bows his stricken head.

Then in the hunger of his piteous love

He sends his thought, winged like a carrier dove—

Through the unanswering silence void and vast,

Whence from dim hollows blows an icy blast—

To bring some sign, some little sign at last,

[22]

From his lost chiefs—the beautiful, the brave—

Vanished like bubbles on a breaking wave,

Lost in the unfathomed darkness of the grave.

When, lo, behold beside him in the night,—

Softly beside him, like the noiseless light

Of moonbeams moving o'er the glimmering floor

That come unbidden through the bolted door,—

The lonely sleeper sees the lost one stand

Like one returned from some dim, distant land,

Bending towards him with his outstretched hand.

But when he fain would grasp it in his own,

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