"Shall he, grown gray among his peers, Through the thick curtain of his tears Catch glimpses of his earlier years, "And hear the sounds he knew of yore, Old shufflings on the sanded floor, Old knuckles tapping at the door? "Yet still before him as he flies One pallid form shall ever rise, And, bodying forth in glassy eyes "The vision of a vanished good, Low peering through the tangled wood, Shall freeze the current of his blood." Still from each fact, with skill uncouth And savage rapture, like a tooth She wrenched some slow reluctant truth. Till, like a silent water-mill, When summer suns have dried the rill, She reached a full stop, and was still. Dead calm succeeded to the fuss, As when the loaded omnibus Has reached the railway terminus: When, for the tumult of the street, Is heard the engine's stifled beat, The velvet tread of porters' feet. With glance that ever sought the ground, She moved her lips without a sound, And every now and then she frowned. He gazed upon the sleeping sea, And joyed in its tranquillity, And in that silence dead, but she To muse a little space did seem, Then, like the echo of a dream, Harked back upon her threadbare theme. Still an attentive ear he lent But could not fathom what she meant: She was not deep, nor eloquent. He marked the ripple on the sand: