REFUSED.

DANTE! they would call thee stern,

Unsympathetic they,

And to a lighter muse they turn

From thy sweet song away, -

Ah, could they thy soft spirit learn

As I have learned to-day.

Alas! how piteously doth tell

Thy sorrow-throbbing lay,

Where through the murky fumes of hell

The soul-ghosts never stay,

But whirl in time to the spectral knell

That tolls all hope away.

However, mid that dead, damned host,

A snowy pair there flew,

By darker thousands onward forced,

Yet never were they two, -

"A heart's true love is never lost";

Would God that it were true!

"No more we read that day," - thy song

With tears, O poet, is sown, -

But onward whirled their orb along,

And onward whirls my own;

Ah, blest were they mid that fated throng, -

For I am there alone.