{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_76279/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_76279","id":"gutenberg_76279","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76279","summary":null,"tags":["American poetry -- 19th century","Category: American Literature","Category: Poetry","Category: Religion/Spirituality"],"text":"[Illustration: JULIA CARTER ALDRICH,\n\n(PETRESIA PETERS.)]\n\n\n\n\n HAZEL BLOOM,\n\n BY\n JULIA CARTER ALDRICH.\n (PETRESIA PETERS.)\n\n _Mother! O, holy music in the sound_\n _Of that dear word\u2014Mother! O, visions sweet_\n _That crowd the mind and thickly cluster round,_\n _To drive out tempting wiles, and leave replete_\n _The soul\u2019s most lofty plans, and purest thought!_\n\n * * * * *\n\n _Could man have known the part divine, repressed_\n _Through youthful life, for noblest womanhood,_\n _When she should pass to dear maternity\u2014_\n _Had he the Christ, in Mother, rightly known,_\n _Kind Heaven had spared the pains of Calvary._\n _Through her the first of Heavenly love is shown\u2014_\n _Through her, first glimpses caught of Christ, of God._\n\n _B. F. Aldrich._\n\n [Illustration]\n\n BUFFALO:\n CHARLES WELLS MOULTON,\n 1899.\n\n COPYRIGHT BY\n JULIA CARTER ALDRICH.\n 1899.\n\n\n\n\n _In memory of that sainted one,\n My Mother,\n This volume is inscribed to the\n Mothers\u2014\n The Home-makers of our land,\n By one who has known\n The breadth and depth\n Of maternal hope and joy\u2014\n Whose soul has continually drank,\n Thro\u2019 all the years of\n Motherhood,\n From that well-spring of\n Blessing\u2014\n Unfailing, filial devotion._\n\n _J. C. A._\n\n\n\n\nINDEX.\n\n\n The Weaver 9\n\n Mystery 11\n\n In Childhood\u2019s Years 14\n\n In the City of Suffering 15\n\n Heliotrope 18\n\n Constancy 20\n\n Estranged 22\n\n My Inkstand 25\n\n History of One Life 26\n\n Evening 27\n\n Rondeaux 29\n\n Solace of the Flowers 30\n\n Regret 32\n\n Hazel Bloom 35\n\n Life\u2019s Shuttle 38\n\n Springtime 40\n\n For Insomnia 42\n\n Mother 45\n\n Eoline\u2019s Dream 48\n\n Our Own 52\n\n Wounded Faith 55\n\n Destiny 57\n\n Unclaimed 60\n\n Death 61\n\n Night-Blooming Cereus 64\n\n My Muse 66\n\n We Never Know 68\n\n A June in Childhood 70\n\n Goldenrod 74\n\n An Evening in June 75\n\n Yosemite 77\n\n Blight or Blessing 80\n\n O, For a Rainy Day 82\n\n The Great Poet 83\n\n Love\u2019s Riches 88\n\n Complainings 90\n\n Questionings 92\n\n Persecuted 94\n\n O, Kindly Speak 96\n\n He is Risen 97\n\n The Christ 99\n\n Feed My Lambs 102\n\n The Kingdom of Heaven 103\n\n Supplication 106\n\n The Portrait 107\n\n Out in the Woods 109\n\n Unforgiven 112\n\n The Evening and the Morning 114\n\n The Unseen 116\n\n Painting 117\n\n The Christian\u2019s Armor 120\n\n To My Friend 121\n\n Hill-Crest Home 124\n\n Lilies of the Valley 135\n\n Pearly Shells 138\n\n Courage 140\n\n Trailing Arbutus 141\n\n Encouragement 145\n\n Faith 147\n\n Nirvana 149\n\n Heredity 150\n\n Pebbles 152\n\n Words 157\n\n Mother 159\n\n Hands 161\n\n Endymion 163\n\n Calypso\u2014The Lover\u2019s Pocket 167\n\n What is Love 171\n\n Sleighing 173\n\n First Love 175\n\n Man 176\n\n Trust of Childhood 177\n\n Alone 180\n\n Night 183\n\n Disappointment 185\n\n Love\u2019s Ideal 186\n\n A Legend of the Lily 187\n\n To James Newton Mathews 190\n\n The Great Hereafter 191\n\n Late October 195\n\n On the Beach 198\n\n Hidden 200\n\n My Robins are Gone 202\n\n Winterbloom 204\n\n The Old Home 206\n\n Thought 209\n\n Columbus 212\n\n\n\n\nHAZEL BLOOM\n\n\n\n\nThe Weaver.\n\n\n With warm desire to please the captious ones,\n Whose fervency the finished fabric suns,\n With ardent conjurations she besought\n The thronging sprites, that feed the loom of thought,\n To gather shining woof, from climes afar\u2014\n From lands where all things bright and wondrous are\u2014\n To seek the dame whose tireless hand doth hold\n The distaff yielding threads of fine spun gold,\n And bring the gathered treasures in to her,\n All sweet with far-fetched frankincense and myrrh:\n Instead of quest in distant lands for woof\n From near they brought, and with it sharp reproof.\n\n \u201cThe glow and flame of thy desire\n Is lit by an unholy fire.\n We bring thee shreds for needs of life\n With which its ways are ever rife;\n Weave these as we shall bring them in\n (None leads with Lotus-charm to sin)\n And when the web falls from thy care,\n Who needs takes self-apportioned share.\n If one is girt by it for storm,\n Or one lone home, made glad and warm\u2014\n If one bruised heart finds through it balm,\n One groping soul, up-lifting psalm,\n Then, thank thy God that thou hast wrought\n The humble shreds that we have brought.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nMystery.\n\n\n All the earth\u2019s history\n Is mingled with mystery;\n Thrid its long pathways thro\u2019 Time\u2019s gathered pages,\n Struggle with theories,\u2014delve as you will,\n Wrapped in uncertainty, mystery still,\n Baffling the lore of philosophy\u2019s sages.\n\n Wishes ungratified,\n Longings unsatisfied;\n Search is untiring and effort is eager,\n Reaching for aye for the far, unattained,\n Feeling the spirit to narrowness chained,\u2014\n All we may know, to the unknown is meager.\n\n Yet, human pomposity,\n Rich in verbosity,\n Leads us afar, thro\u2019 the limitless spaces,\n Parting so boldly the cometal robes,\n Shows us their bodies, as infantile globes,\n Sportively seeking maturity\u2019s places.\n\n It measures Infinity,\n Questions Divinity\u2014Talks\n of the universe at its inception;\n Theory, feeling the pulse of the Earth,\n Tells us how long since the planet had birth\n And when we may look for its utter disruption.\n\n Yet LIFE\u2019S remote decimal\u2014\n The infinitesimal,\n Puzzles the agnost for Nature\u2019s great mother;\n Never a blade without fertilized germ,\u2014\n Never a seed without blossoming term,\u2014\n Each is a subsequent unto the other.\n\n * * * * *\n\n Most wondrous, mysterious,\n Throned and imperious,\n Mind, in the beautiful temple of Being,\n Rules o\u2019er its realm with absolute sway\n Till, broken and crumbling, the structure of clay,\n Then swift on the wings of the silences fleeing.\n\n Thought, strained to intensity,\n Ranging immensity,\n Asks for their home\u2014for the spirit\u2019s bright heaven;\n A speck in the universe\u2014our little earth,\n \u2019Mong millions, all grander and greater of girth\u2014\n Will God\u2019s central glory to _this_ one be given?\n\n Ah! Safely He has hidden it,\n From earth-gaze forbidden it:\n Humbled and weary the bold Thought, returning,\n Nestles down closer to God\u2019s written word;\n By grief\u2019s parching thirst its sweet fountains are stirred;\n Its pages yield balm that will soothe the heart\u2019s yearning.\n\n There, Heaven comes near to us,\u2014\n Those who were dear to us,\n Safe in its mansions\u2014we\u2019ll question not where,\u2014\n Live in the light of an Infinite Love!\n Faith sweetly whispers\u2014\u201cThey beckon above,\u2014\n The loved ones, who\u2019ve left us, are waiting us there.\u201d\n\n The hidden earth-histories\u2014\n The sought-after mysteries\n Are veiled, but in blessing;\u2014we seek for them ever;\n Wisdom hath woven this mystical bond,\n Binding the soul to God\u2019s greater Beyond,\n Enlarging, enriching, thro\u2019 constant endeavor.\n\n\n\n\nIn Childhood\u2019s Years.\n\n\n In childhood\u2019s years, what dreamy days\n In spring\u2019s soft airs or autumn\u2019s haze!\n How golden bright the sunset skies\n Where just beyond our heaven lies!\n Each dawn the sun has merry plays\n With Rosy-mist, who veils his rays\n To shield us from his glory blaze,\n While she paints morn such lovely dyes\n In Childhood\u2019s years.\n\n We tread but joy-lit, sunny ways,\n Nor dream of dread, that is decay\u2019s:\u2014\n No sorrow comes but quickly flies\u2014\n No love is known that cools and dies\u2014\n No crafty selfishness betrays\n In childhood\u2019s years.\n\n\n\n\nIn the City of Suffering.[1]\n\n\n In the city of suffering souls grow large,\n And money-greed languishing lies;\n \u2019Neath the hurrying feet, of God\u2019s messengers there,\n That pompous, old Selfishness dies:\n Ambition, so eagerly climbing to heights\n Where glory, alone, is the prize,\n Forgets his wild dreams at the shriek of distress\n And goes where Humanity cries.\n\n In the city of suffering, sympathies blend\n As valley rills, blend in a stream;\n The high, and the low, all forgetful of rank,\n Are thrilled by calamity\u2019s scream.\n There Wealth\u2019s jeweled hand and the toil-hardened palm,\n Have neither a preference in claim,\n But agony ardently stretching them forth,\n Makes common appeal, in His name.\n\n In the city of suffering hearts grow warm\u2014\n Aye, flame in the darkness of woe;\n The spark God gave, from His infinite love,\n Neath the hot breath of pain is aglow.\n There, swift to the rescue, goes valorous strength,\n Surprising the world with his deeds\u2014\n There, Courage will struggle with death for a life,\n While yielding his own up, if needs.\n\n In the city of Suffering, Avarice hides\n In the gloomy old vault with his gold,\n Nor dares to meet Charity\u2019s love-lighted face,\n His own is so pitiless and cold;\n There, cowardice, envy\u2014all drosses of soul\n In the crucial test are consumed\u2014\n Dark altars, once glowing with brotherly love,\n In the shadow of sorrow, relumed.\n\n The city of Suffering is Heaven\u2019s wide door\n For victims its horrors enthrall;\n E\u2019en martyrs have sung when the fagots blazed high\u2014\n So ever He heareth our call;\n And those who, with fellow-love prompting their deeds,\n Fought there, with the mounting flame fiends,\n Have wrought in the plan, for ennobling the world,\n With God\u2019s own, mysterious means.\n\n In the city of Suffering souls break the bonds\n That indolent selfishness forged in the womb,\n And lives, that were dwarfed by their mammon-cut groove,\n Find growth in Love\u2019s labor, and sunshine in gloom.\n When raven-winged Sorrow sweeps over the land,\n An angel attends where its shadow may fall,\n And, out from its darkness, brings heavenly light,\n And faith, in the Wisdom, that\u2019s over us all.\n\n[1] \u201cThere was a puff\u2014a muffled roar, and the tower was literally rent by\nan explosion. A moment later the flames burst out thro\u2019 every rent and\nfissure, and the men, away up there, in mid air, fighting the fire, were\ncut off from the world below, by an outpour of smoke and flame, soon to\nbecome a mighty conflagration.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nHeliotrope.\n\n\n There\u2019s a charm in its fragrance bewitchingly sweet\u2014\n A something that binds with a magical spell;\n E\u2019en silence, thro\u2019 this, to the heart can repeat\n The message that\u2019s sent in its purple fringed cell.\n\n \u2019Tis an odorous breath, from the heavenly heights\u2014\n An angel hand, beckoning to the bloom scented fields,\n Where the soul in its freedom may taste the delights\n That the garden of Paradise yields.\n\n Like childhood\u2019s sweet dreams of the holy and true,\n That float thro\u2019 Life\u2019s dusk in the ether of Thought,\n Or morn\u2019s rosy blush, melting into the blue,\n With tint of the beryl and amethyst caught.\n\n \u2019Tis an exquisite messenger, given the heart,\n That winsomely speaks to the spirit, alone,\n And whatever sentiment sent, will impart\u2014\n Will tell it so sweetly, in language its own.\n\n When souls must needs pass thro\u2019 Grief\u2019s wordless abyss,\n Then heart unto heart, through it, uttereth speech\u2014\n The sympathy, seeking expression through this,\n Is told with a tenderness words never reach.\n\n If you\u2019ve aught that\u2019s too sacred for words to express,\n Too tender to breathe in a wish or a hope,\n \u2019Twill be fittingly draped in the delicate dress,\n And borne in the perfume of HELIOTROPE.\n\n\n\n\nConstancy.\n\n\n The Fates have decreed thou canst never be mine,\n Yet, constant, my soul turneth ever to thine\n With love that outreaches Time\u2019s cruel decree.\n Too holy the passion with others to name\u2014\n Thoughts deepest and purest feed ever the flame,\n That burns on the altar, kept sacred to thee.\n\n As ocean in silence embosoms the light\n That beams from the gems in the crown of the night,\n Yet dimming its purity never,\n So thou, in my bosom a presence shalt be,\n As stars shining down in the depths of the sea\u2014\n Unsullied thy brightness forever.\n\n Like a verdure-girt spring in the wide desert plains\u2014\n Like the stroke, bringing freedom, by the riving of chains,\n Aye, Life\u2019s every essence of pleasure\n Had been love\u2019s requital, that long ago morn;\n Still ever I\u2019ll count, (yet this rose has its thorn)\n Having loved, though I lost, as a treasure.\n\n * * * * *\n\n Tho\u2019 hopes were all blighted that haloed my youth,\n And withered the flowers I deemed rooted in truth,\u2014\n Tho\u2019 sunshine will brighten no morrow,\n Yet never accusing\u2019s deep bitterness stirs\n The heart, that would only pour joy into her\u2019s,\n And the tenderest soothing for sorrow.\n\n Her spirit dwelt ever in dreamy ideal,\n While mine was so earthy and chained to the real,\n With the heavens all brazen above me:\u2014\n All nature to hers echoed hymnings divine,\n While doubts of a future, stirred ever in mine\u2014\n No marvel she never could love me.\n\n But somehow, with Destiny\u2019s mystical skein,\n My love has entangled my infidel brain\n And bound it with hope, to a heaven;\n I dream of a sphere, we may find beyond this\n Where\u2014blessed fruition! life\u2019s coveted bliss\n To the purified soul will be given.\n\n\n\n\nEstranged.\n\n\n O, to be near to you!\u2014Oh, to be dear to you!\u2014\n To feel in my heart, that your heart is my own.\n All days have been dreary\u2014my soul is aweary,\n And still, must I walk in this dark way alone?\n\n O, fond was my dreaming, when hope\u2019s star was beaming,\n When fancy\u2019s bright web like a mantle of gold,\n Lay over life\u2019s losses\u2014its trials and crosses,\n And hid them, in splendors, of fold upon fold.\n\n I thought then to follow (Oh, heartless and hollow!)\n Where Fashion\u2019s throng led, and to kneel where it knelt\u2014\n Thought Love\u2019s nectared chalice was found in a palace\u2014\n In princely halls only, true happiness dwelt.\n\n But Fashion\u2019s vile brew, is of wormwood and rue\u2014\n It prays where the virtues are trampled and dead\u2014\n The bane we thought gladness, has led to this madness;\n Dissipation came in, and the Peace-angel fled.\n\n No wandering emotion e\u2019er sullied devotion,\n But anger\u2019s hot lava my reason o\u2019erran;\n In the coolness of pride, (that love\u2019s fervor belied)\n The sorrows and pangs of estrangement began.\n\n Be rashness forgiven, bring back to us heaven\u2014\n Our Eden-like home, with its love-lighted skies;\n Tho\u2019 parted forever, affection dies never\u2014\n \u2019Tis knit into life with indissoluble ties.\n\n The rills that have mingled, can never be singled\u2014\n They\u2019ll flow on as one in their course to the sea;\n By love, early plighted, our souls were united,\n And ever\u2014forever united must be.\n\n Entwining each thought\u2014with tenderness fraught\u2014\n Is loving, enduring remembrance of thee,\n And, deep in your heart, in its holiest part,\n I know there\u2019s a hidden affection for me.\n\n Shall life be all nighted\u2014Love\u2019s flame ne\u2019er be lighted,\n While I\u2014by its altar with ashes o\u2019er strewn\u2014\n Must ever remember thro\u2019 constant December,\n The balmy bright days and the roses of June?\n\n O, desert, Sahara!\u2014Oh, waters of Marah!\n I tread the hot sands\u2014press the fount with my lips\u2014\n In sorrow, go roaming, thro\u2019 the shadowy gloaming\n That falls, o\u2019er a life, with love\u2019s sun in eclipse.\n\n\n\n\nMy Inkstand.\n\n\n This new one is thought both convenient and nice\u2014\n The atmosphere forcing the ink to the brim;\n I question the worth of this modern device,\n For seldom great thoughts on the surface will swim,\n But something like whales, when they find themselves sought,\n Down, swiftly from sight, in the depths they will sink\u2014\n At the bottom, the angled for ideas are caught,\n And only by multiplied thrusts in the ink.\n\n1855.\n\n\n\n\nHistory of One Life.\n\n\n Its morning dawned thro\u2019 penury\u2019s narrow pane\u2014\n A noon of wealth, with glory\u2019s laurel crown\u2014\n Human weakness\u2014one mistake\u2014a felon\u2019s stain\u2014\n The evening gloomed with all his fellow\u2019s frown.\n\n\n\n\nEvening.\n\n\n Vermillion and gold\n In beauty unfold\n On the light, floating clouds of the West;\n The low, crooning sound\n Of all Nature around\n Is lulling the world into rest.\n\n Like a rover of Sin\n The zephyr steals in\n \u2019Mong roses and carnations rare\u2014\n In ecstatic bliss\n Gives each one a kiss,\n Then scatters their sweets on the air.\n\n In the shadowy hush\n The linnet and thrush\n Have gone to their nests in the grove;\n The blue pimpernell\n To the lilly\u2019s wee bell\n Is whispering his story of love.\n\n Blest hour of delight\n That verges the night,\n What beauties and glories are thine,\n When the great car of day\n With its din rolls away,\n And silence seems Presence divine.\n\n Now the sparkle of dew\n And the rich violet hue\n Of the fast purpling clouds of the West,\n Hint of time\u2019s rapid flight\n And of life\u2019s coming night\n That shall lull into heavenly rest.\n\n\n\n\nRondeaux.\n\n\n A brilliant thought leaps out and glows,\n Or scatters fragrance like the rose,\n Nor needs an artizan\u2019s design\n To plan and shape to make it shine,\u2014\n Not all is brilliance in rondeaux.\n\n The labored effort plainly shows\n The mind has passed thro\u2019 mighty throes\n To give the world, with stamp divine,\n A brilliant thought.\n\n The music wins which sweetly flows,\n Not that which falls like stunning blows,\n And ease and grace, with sense combine,\n To clothe with elegance the line,\n Where Genius gives, in verse or prose,\n A brilliant thought.\n\n\n\n\nSolace of the Flowers.\n\n\n Oft a deep, unspoken anguish\n In the secret soul is stirred,\n And the wounded heart, though yearning\n For a kindly, loving word,\n Opens not its sacred portal,\n For the arts of friendly healing\u2014\n Only God is told the sorrow,\n Through a mute-lipped, sad appealing.\n\n \u201cI am with you\u201d\u2014seems responded,\n From the hush of Nature\u2019s bowers,\n And the spirit feels God nearer\n Where He\u2019s strewn the earth with flowers;\n Nature\u2019s language, rich with blessing,\n For its unobtrusive words,\n Speaks through softly murm\u2019ring streamlets,\n And the low, sweet trill of birds.\n\n E\u2019en a tiny, bruised allyssum,\n Or a trampled mignonette,\n Teach the heart, by sweet example,\n That \u2019tis better to forget.\n Like the touch of seraph pinions,\n Or a faintly whispered hope,\n Is the charm of perfume floating\n From a hidden heliotrope.\n\n Ah! there\u2019s soothing for the spirit\n Where the humid coolness lingers,\n Where the breezes touch us gently\n With their dainty, fairy fingers,\u2014\n Where the woodland nymphs are gliding,\n Noiseless, o\u2019er the mosses bright,\n Spreading Sylva\u2019s vestal altar\n With a cloth of violets white.\n\n All these tiny, fragrant flowers\n Speak to us in tender tone,\n Gently winning us from sorrow\n With a language all their own;\n Little beauties, sent in blessing,\u2014\n In our pathway angels strew them,\n That we hear, when joy is shrouded,\n Loving voices whisper through them.\n\n\n\n\nRegret.\n\n \u201c\u2014if only it never had been\n All the world had been brighter and then\u2014\u201d\n\n\n Will a hope never throb, but it comes back a sob,\n From the echoing halls of the soul?\n Do the joy-bells stirred, by a low thrilling word,\n Forever resound with a funeral toll?\n\n Will the roses we grasp, like the bite of an asp,\n Give back to our sense but the stinging of pain?\n Can there float a perfume, from the lillies\u2019 white bloom,\n That blends with enchantment Tofana\u2019s slow bane?\n\n Where but flowers were sown, has a thistle seed blown,\n To root in their soil, a vile bramble to grow?\n Doth each lovliest vine, \u2019round a hyssop entwine?\n And out from sweet fountains must bitterness flow?\n\n Does there lurk in each joy, a vile fiend to destroy\n All the pleasure and blessing it brought,\n With the stings of regret, as with thorns thickly set,\n That will pierce, as it turns, every retrospect thought?\n\n Ay, there\u2019s never a spot, where this demon is not;\n Like a serpent he creeps in this Eden of ours,\n Where its pleasures are purest, its treasures securest,\n And blights with his poison its loveliest flowers.\n\n But we\u2019ll act for the right, as God gives us the light,\n Nor complain that the end from our vision is veiled;\n \u2019Twas in blessing and love, that the Father above,\n Secured us from loss that prevision entailed.\n\n In mercy, dear Father, still veil from our sight,\n The dawn of a joy, or a grief\u2019s brooding night,\n That we faint not, expecting the gathering gloom,\n Nor cease in the strife that ennobles the life,\u2014\n That we cloud not our joys with a shadowy tomb,\n Nor a heart ever miss the delectable bliss,\n Of a sweet, unexpected delight.\n\n\n\n\nHazel Bloom.\n\n\n When paths that in summer were fringed with lush grass,\n Are raspy with frost-whitened blades as you pass,\n When the arbor\u2019s denuded of clusters and leaves,\n And the Ivy\u2019s bare vines are entwining the eaves,\n When the bright tinted sumach has changed to a brown\n And the wind-shaken forest drops summer wealth down\u2014\n The autumn\u2019s rich robings of crimson and gold\n In the path of the years, to be trampled as mould\u2014\n When the beauty of purple-hued asters is shed,\n And the glory of goldenrod faded and dead,\n When the song-birds, we loved for their jubilant tune,\n Have gone where they find a perennial June,\n When clouds that were downy on the summer\u2019s bright blue,\n Have draped all the skies in a somberly hue,\n When the orchard has yielded its riches of fruit,\n And its life-feeding myst\u2019ry is hid in the root\u2014\n The Aftermath gathered\u2014the last sheaves of grain\u2014\n When Nature seems all in a funeral train,\n Then Hazel buds burst thro\u2019 their scales into bloom,\n And glow like the stars that rob midnight of gloom.\n\n When brooklets, unfettered, went leaping in glee,\n O\u2019er rocks and thro\u2019 woodlands, adown to the sea\u2014\n When the bloom-time of Spring, in its glory, was here,\n And earth all resounding with music and cheer,\n When asphodels loaded with fragrance the air\n And vied with the roses in loveliness rare,\n Witch-Hazel, from Nature, seemed standing apart,\n The wee, golden buds were asleep in its heart,\n And sunshine and shower besought it, in vain,\n To star, with its bloom, Flora\u2019s garlanded fane.\n Oh, marvel of beauty\u2014bright blossoms of gold!\n They show us the life leafless branches enfold.\n \u2019Tis the flower of hope with this lesson of cheer\u2014\n \u2019Tis the season of rest, not \u201cThe death of the year,\u201d\n When, Nature, reposing in the bosom of God,\n Feels the throb of His heart \u2019neath her snow-mantled sod\u2014\n At the soul of All-life with new life is imbued\u2014\n At the Fountain of Beauty, enriched and renewed.\n\n * * * * *\n\n Aye, symbol of Hope and the star gleam of Faith,\n That give to Life\u2019s autumn a glow\u2014\n A spirit revealed, while the seeming of Death\n Lies palled in the brown leaves below.\n\n A mission it has that was given of Him\n Who gave it its blossoming time;\n Thus blooming alone\u2014desolation around,\n Defying the glittering rime,\n It speaks to the soul\u2014\u2019tis an oracle sweet,\n His token, His promise and bond\n That, tho\u2019 passing thro\u2019 change that leads down thro\u2019 the tomb,\n There\u2019s a beautiful Springtime beyond.\n\n\n\n\nLife\u2019s Shuttle.\n\n\n The Shuttle went flying\n With sympathy sighing,\n While it shot all the gold weft with threadings of woe.\n There was murmured complaining,\n The Shuttle arraigning\u2014\n That grief, with the joy, was unwound in the throw.\n A whispered regretting:\u2014\n \u201cNo blessing forgetting,\n God knoweth thy needs\u2014it is His to bestow:\u2014\n From LOVE I\u2019m receiving\n The woof I am weaving.\u201d\n The Shuttle\u2019s reproof was subduing and low,\n And, blent with Time\u2019s beating,\n I heard it repeating\n The lesson it taught in love\u2019s tenderest flow.\n\n Aye, softly it chanted this simple refrain\u2014\n \u201c\u2019Tis wisdom that mingles the sorrow and pain.\n The sunlight, that gilds, with its glory the earth,\n Would blight with its blaze, but for clouds and the rain,\n And lives would be arid and smitten with dearth\n If beamed on forever with joy and mirth\u2014\n _In blessing I weave in the sorrow and pain_.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nSpringtime.\n\n\n When meadows are strewn with the buttercup\u2019s gold,\n There\u2019s gladness for childhood that song never told;\n The laugh of a child, bubbling up from the heart,\n Is linked with the spring, a most beautiful part.\n\n A bevy of children\u2014sweet far away dream!\u2014\n They trip o\u2019er the sward, lit with dandelion gleam\u2014\n We\u2019ll join in their sports with a heartiness true;\n Our own vanished springtime, with them, we\u2019ll renew.\n\n The woods, (that are reached by a romp thro\u2019 the lane\n Where the grass is made velvet by sunshine and rain)\n Have infinite beauty, in blossom outspread\u2014\n Delights for the gods in the fragrance they shed.\n\n Come, drink in the perfume of blossoming trees\u2014\n Take lessons of patience from murmuring bees,\n And listen to brooklets\u2014they\u2019ll sing you a song\n As, wild in their glee, they go leaping along.\n\n Come, watch the wild birds as they cheerily dart\u2014\n Their music, with sunshine, take into your heart\u2014\n Let the gladness of childhood thrill you, and be gay,\n Thus keeping your soul in perpetual May.\n\n When Nature is robing her forests anew,\n And heaven spreads over her loveliest blue\u2014\n When earth is aglow with spring\u2019s ravishing bloom,\n Ingratitude only sits shrouded in gloom.\n\n\n\n\nFor Insomnia.\n\n\n When Somnus is giddy and flies from my pillow,\n And care\u2019s elfin throngs come to vex me\u2014\n When mem\u2019ry, perverse, all the sweet things forgetting,\n Will mention but those that perplex me,\n I ask that monotony\u2019s rigid insistence\n Shall drive out the gibberous crew;\n They flee from his presence\u2014will hie back to elfland,\n Where their Night shade and astrofell grew\u2014\n\n Ask thought for a theme that\u2019s subduing in power\u2014\n The sea, with its billows all hushed to a calm\u2014\n Not mantled with darkness, but lit with the sunset,\n When Day, unto Evening, is chanting her psalm.\n All life\u2019s petty griefs in the grandeur evanish,\n The spirit is freed from its thrall,\n And unto the faint heart a trustfulnesss whispers,\n \u201cBe brave\u2014there\u2019s a God over all.\u201d\n\n * * * * *\n\n In fancy I launch on the shimmering sea\n That\u2019s lighting with glory its waters for me;\n Like a sprite of the ocean the boat seems to glide,\n As lightly the oars dip the opaline tide,\n Till out in expanses, afar from the shore,\n Away from life\u2019s din and tumultuous roar\n Where, gently I\u2019m rocked on the breast of the deep,\n While symphonic waves woo the Lethe of Sleep.\n A broad, shining pathway is westward unrolled\u2014\n I watch the bright wavelets, with tresses of gold,\n Run out in wild play to the visual rim\n Where the sky bends to kiss them in distance so dim,\n Till thought is enchanted\u2014anxiety flees,\n And weariness slips into somnolent ease;\n The silences seem to have rhythmical beat\u2014\n \u2019Tis footfalls of wakefulness, now in retreat.\n Forgetfulness softly creeps into the mind,\n Suspecting no trace of resistance to find,\n But wakefulness turns back, commands and forbids\u2014\n Yet, Slumber steals past her and touches the lids;\n Then Morpheus bears me away in his arms\n To his realm that\u2019s swept of all fears and alarms\n Where, lulled with his stupors, of poppy and rose,\n I dreamily, dreamily sink to repose.\n\n\n\n\nMother.\n\n\n When evening falls softly, with far away dreaming,\n Oft steals o\u2019er my spirit a rapturous seeming\u2014\n I feel the light touch of her hand as of old,\n When bending above me with good night caresses,\n She lovingly pushed back the long heavy tresses,\n And smoothed out the tangles of gold.\n\n Touch memory\u2019s harp in the silence of even,\n And loved ones will leave e\u2019en the raptures of heaven,\n And come to us then when the gates are ajar:\n With mother\u2019s face, ever most central and tender,\n They light all the Past with a rosy-hued splendor\n And the soul\u2019s secret chamber\u2019s unbar.\n\n From hidden recesses they bring out its treasures\u2014\n Among them are shining youth\u2019s dream-lighted pleasures,\n When mother-love blent with, and hallowed them all;\n The haunts that the years with their sunsets have gilded,\n The castles of beauty that child-fancy builded,\n All come in the gloaming at memory\u2019s call.\n\n \u2019Twas down by the river, where bluebells were sweetest\n And swift-footed hours forever ran fleetest,\n Enthralled by the charm, that I loved most to roam\u2014\n To watch where the sunshine and ripple wove wimples,\n Like smiles, on a rosy face, dancing with dimples,\n Forgetful of duty till mother called home.\n\n Right-angled with the river-bank\u2019s water-worn ledges\n The forest and farm knit their raveled-out edges,\n In a brambled rail-fence. From the pasture\u2019s green field,\n Thro\u2019 the edge of the woodland, a path, fringed with mosses\n And bushy green tangles with clematis flosses,\n Half the charms of the deep wood revealed.\n\n When sunset was tinting each shadowy hollow\n \u2019Twas gladness, the kine, from the pasture, to follow\n And dream, as I wandered, of fairy and gnome\u2014\n To loiter \u2019mong ferns, with great trees spreading over,\n And breathe the perfume of wild roses and clover\n Enrapt, until mother called home.\n\n I\u2019m lingering now on the banks of the River\u2014\n The sunset of Time on its ripples a-quiver\u2014\n How peaceful the flowing\u2014no turmoil or foam\u2014\n A luminous mist o\u2019er the landscape is falling\u2014\n The evening has come, I hear a voice calling,\u2014\n \u2019Tis mother\u2019s voice calling me home.\n\n\n\n\nEoline\u2019s Dream.\n\n\n One long day of toil was ending,\n And my head was hot with pain\n When a thought, akin to envy,\n Racing thro\u2019 my throbbing brain,\n Muttered to my fevered fancy\n \u201cOnly wealth has power to please\u2014\n Rocking in the lap of riches\n Life were fair as summer seas.\u201d\n\n Wealth for me would bridge the ocean,\n Open Europe\u2019s storied lore,\n Rome and Greece, with art and beauty,\n Each would open wide her door;\n These my hungering soul had longed for\u2014\n Oft they seemed within my clasp,\n But like gold beneath the rainbow\n They escaped my eager grasp.\n\n How I spurned the homely hangings\n That in poverty were wrought,\n E\u2019en the couch, whose dingy plushings\n Now in weariness I sought.\n \u201cCommon things,\u201d I said, repining,\n \u201cNe\u2019er for me can blessing hold\u201d;\n But the Sun, just then declining,\n Flooded all with molten gold.\n\n And a benison, descending\n On the wings of closing day,\n Soothed and hushed my wild complaining\u2014\n Drove the evil sprite away\u2014\n Brought before me _my_ possessions,\n Richest in the long array,\n Wealth of home, where all my dear ones\n Make it bright with love, alway.\n\n Lightly drooped the shining fringes\n Of the evening\u2019s twilight hour,\n While the playful, roving zephyr\n Gently kissed each folding flower;\n Softly gliding into dreamland\n On the sunset\u2019s gilded car,\n Soon for me, his golden splendor\n Wrapped all objects, near and far.\n\n In his grand effulgent shimmer\n \u201cCommon things,\u201d grew strangely bright;\n And my home became a palace\n All resplendent in the light;\n E\u2019en the russet garb of labor,\n If unstained by deed of shame,\n There outshone imperial purple,\n With its throne and titled name.\n\n Sweeter than the grand exotics,\n Were my lillies, pure and white\u2014\n All was beauty\u2014all about me\n Whispered to me\u2014\u201cLife is bright,\u201d\n And its sweetest flowers are blooming\n In the toil-worn paths of earth,\n And its purest gems will sparkle\n On the brow of honest worth.\n\n Diamonds, oft, are but the tear-drops\n Avarice wrings from orphaned trust,\n And his gorgeous, gilded trappings\n Steal their hues from hearts he\u2019s crushed.\n More I saw in raptured dreaming\u2014\n Seraphs holding crowns of gold,\n Beckoning up the shining pathway\n Where the gates of Rest unfold.\n\n Some whose wealth did bow them earthward\n Sought for this to enter in,\n Others, wearing robes of priesthood,\n Thought that these absolved from sin;\n But no easier passed the portal,\n Those in purple, cowl, or gown;\u2014\n He who bore life\u2019s burden\u2019s bravely,\n Won the race and wore the crown.\n\n * * * * *\n\n Then a touch of dimpled fingers\n Woke my heart with mother-joy\u2014\n Golden head upon my bosom\u2014\n Tired, sleepy, baby boy\n Poured a wealth of love and kisses\n On the lips that had complained.\n He (sweet angel!\u2014God had sent him)\n Quick the demon, Envy, chained.\n\n\n\n\nOur Own.\n\n\n Not all we name as friends, the soul receives as such,\n Nor ever those whose lip-born love weaves smoothest claim;\n Those only who, to ours, give genial spirit touch\n Can light that hidden shrine with friendship\u2019s holy flame.\n \u2019Tis by this sign the friends God made for us are known;\n Dear ones! We count their names as precious gems which lie\n Within the hearts most sacred place\u2014its very own\u2014\n A circlet bright that\u2019s bound by sympathy\u2019s silken tie.\n\n There\u2019s still another bond for which no word is found\u2014\n A gift of His, so high the minds extremest reach\n Doth fail to find it name, or ontologic bound,\n Tho\u2019 undefined\u2014beyond the subtlest grasp of speech,\n This wondrous, unseen realm, to spirit sense, remains,\n And o\u2019er its lines the soul, to kindred soul, conveys\n Joy\u2019s glad, exultant flash, or sorrow\u2019s woeful pains,\n Which, thro\u2019 this gift divine, love\u2019s tenderness allays.\n\n * * * * *\n\n \u2019Tis sweet in twilight\u2019s hush, when noisy day has fled\n And evening\u2019s azure glows with beauty\u2019s single star\u2014\n When roses, gemmed with dew, their richest fragrance shed,\n To feel the silence thrill with signals from afar\n Feel the thought-lines warmly pulsing with a message from OUR OWN\u2014\n To know the call of dear ones, as we know the breath of flowers,\n And catch love\u2019s fond impulsion, thro\u2019 this mystic Psychephone,\n Trembling on the stillness of the dreamy, evening hours.\n Thro\u2019 distance, o\u2019er these subtile, sentient threads of mind,\n We feel, by finest sense, our answering heart-beats throb\n Till every fluttering, white-winged joy doth find\n Response, and every grief a sympathetic sob.\n O, blessed bond! It links us to the Life Divine!\n Thro\u2019 this our prayers may reach the holy Fount of Love\u2014\n The league of kinship which these spirit cords entwine,\n By fervent sway of soul, is felt in realms above.\n\n\n\n\nWounded Faith.\n\n\n Mine open enemy hath no power to wound\u2014\n His poison shafts fall hurtless to the ground;\n He may wreak a treach\u2019rous lynx-like deed\n And yet will never cause my heart to bleed.\n If he should glare on me in hottest hate,\n With tiger fierceness, plan the direst fate,\n With claws distended, lusting for the roon,\n I\u2019d smile and do him kindness over soon,\n Or, give a sure nepenthe for his wrath\n By silent, strewing favors in his path.\n\n But when those to whom my heart is bound in trust,\n With aim concealed, make unexpected thrust,\u2014\n When those I\u2019d counted friends, as friends had served,\n Whose joy and weal my strongest effort nerved\u2014\n If THEY shall stab and gaze with hungry eyes\n To catch my wince of pain, \u2019neath friendship\u2019s guise,\n Then, a wound is made, that all the quivering senses feel\u2014\n A wound, that only trusted friends could deal;\n And, saddest hurt of all, the heart will find,\n The same stab struck its faith in human kind.\n\n\n\n\n\u201cDestiny.\u201d\n\n\n She freighted a thistle-down once with a wish,\n And gave to the breeze with her breath;\n The Fates were to hold its invisible leash\n And, if to be granted ere death,\n Bring back, at her will, to her out-reaching hand\n This wealth-laden embassy sent.\n Unheeding her will and its pleading command,\n Up, up toward the zenith it went,\n Till will, it would seem, at the last had controlled,\n When, earthward it came, like a fairy rigged sail\u2014\n Came straight toward the hand that was eager to hold\n The zephyr-tossed feather, whose course should unveil\n What Destiny held, in the Future concealed\u2014\n Life\u2019s weightiest questions decide.\n Almost within grasp and it wavered and reeled,\n Then, mounting again the etherial tide,\n It floated\u2014was lost in the depths of the blue.\n That thistle down, swayed by a pulse of the air,\n Had wrecked her heart\u2019s hopes on the rocks of despair,\n As billows of ocean rich argosies strew.\n\n Now listless and faithless she sits on the shore\n Where Time\u2019s restless surge casts its wrack at her feet;\n She sees not the sunshine\u2014hears only the roar\n Of dark, sullen waves as they ceaselessly beat.\n In Fate-ridden weakness she shrinks from all strife\u2014\n Lets Destiny\u2019s elves to her fancy repeat\n The early \u201cdecrees\u201d that have shadowed her life\u2014\n No effort essays that might wreak a defeat\u2014\n Just waits for the stroke of pale Atropos\u2019 knife.\n\n * * * * *\n\n A faith in the hidden controllings of FATE,\n Enchains, with its might, even Reason and Will:\n In wreakless inaction her devotees wait\n For the slow-turning grind of her mill\u2014Let\n circumstance bind them with torturing gyves,\n Pass doors that would open to Industry\u2019s keys\n And when, with his braided pangs, Poverty drives,\n Receive all his lashings as \u201cFortune\u2019s decrees.\u201d\n\n E\u2019en tho\u2019 Opportunity\u2019s latch-string is out,\n They, shelterless, wait for events to compel,\n And deem themselves goaded by Destiny\u2019s knout\n While held in the toils of her mystical spell.\n Credulity, Sloth and their following throngs\n Forever are weaving entangling snares\u2014\n \u2019Tis not till a victim is bound with their thongs,\n To thwart his endeavor that Destiny dares.\n\n Bring WILL to the front\u2014strike Destiny down,\n And throttle the Fate that would hinder success\u2014\n You\u2019ll find that dame Fortune will put off her frown\n And yield, for past sufferings, an ampleredress.\n\n\n\n\nUnclaimed.\n\n\n Just beyond the reach of thought,\n Just beyond the grasp of mind\n Is a sense of Presence\u2014fraught\n With blessing\u2014felt, yet undefined.\n\n At times it seems a wondrous power\u2014\n A strength, awaiting _Faith\u2019s_ command\u2014\n For trusting soul, a proffered dower,\n That\u2019s held by Love\u2019s omniscient hand.\n\n Is it the gift, reserved of God\n For those whom Faith brings nearest Him?\u2014\n The power that smote the rock?\u2014the rod\n That rives the fountain\u2019s brim,\n That all His thirsty souls may drink?\n \u201cO, ye of little faith,\u201d He cries\u2014\n So many faithless Peters sink,\n _And the proffered power dies_.\n\n\n\n\nDeath.\n\n\n When thou, O Death, art come to be the old man\u2019s guest\n Who, bowed beneath the heavy weight of toil and years,\n So longeth for thy rest,\n Or to the weary mother, looking through her tears,\n To the bright celestial shore\n Where her loved have gone before,\n Then, truly, thou art blest.\n\n To them the ties that bound are broken, all,\n And they will stretch glad hands of welcome unto thee\n Who comes to break their thrall\u2014\n To slip the leash of weary life and set them free;\n They, impatient, wait release\n To pass the golden gates of Peace\n And gladly list thy call.\n\n But, in Love\u2019s young home, where Life is one bright, pulsing sea\n Of joy and hope, thy summons hath heart-breaking sound,\n Like cruel Fate\u2019s decree;\n As tho\u2019 alone, by stealth, she had thy gyves unbound,\n When thou hadst to this Eden crept\n And wrought, while guardian angels slept,\n What Envy\u2019s dream might be.\n\n We feel the surging depth of Sorrow\u2019s stifled cry,\n Yet in thy presence, helpless, dumb with grief, we stand\n And silent question\u2014Why?\u2014\n Why budding life is frozen by thine icy hand,\n Why yielded to thy devastating claim\n Are all the loveliest of earth,\u2014\n E\u2019en God\u2019s sweetest, dearest gift of birth\u2014\n A mother-love,\n Which is for life\u2019s most holy joys, the precious name.\n\n While cloud-depths veil in gloom the steely form of truth,\n The heart, athrob with grief, still questions why:\u2014\n Ah, why Love\u2019s brightly burning flame\n Is ever smothered by thy breath,\u2014\n Its altar, dark and cold, whereon dead ashes lie;\u2014\n Oh! why are love, and hope, and youth,\n All left within thy grasp, O, Death?\n\n\n\n\nNight-Blooming Cereus.\n\n\n Birth of darkness! bloom of night!\n Bringing me such rare delight;\n Floating charm, thy rich perfume\n Stirs the lagging, weary brain,\n Hushes all the thoughts of gloom,\n Soothes or dulls the pangs of pain.\n\n This floral wonder, glistening white,\n Scorning Day\u2019s broad, glaring light,\n In the sacred stillness now\n Beams in beauty on my sight,\n As the star on evening\u2019s brow\n Beams upon a moonless night.\n\n Like a rainbow on the skies,\n Looked for, yet a glad surprise\u2014\n Like a meteor\u2019s flash and gleam\n Crossing midnight\u2019s sullen gloom,\n Like the fairy forms of dream\n Is this wondrous, starry bloom.\n\n Tell me lovely, mystic flower,\n Why you gem this gruesome hour?\n Were the jasper gates ajar?\n Did the Night, from angel\u2019s crown,\n Pluck for us its brightest star,\n And cast the gleaming jewel down?\n\n O, thou, pearly, radiant flower!\n Why give Night such wealth of dower?\n Why with anthers, dipped in gold,\n \u2019Round a carpel, rosy red,\n Wait in darkness to unfold,\n And thy queenly beauty spread?\n\n Now a sentient presence seeming\u2014\n Ah! it whispers, or I\u2019m dreaming:\n \u201cAn evangel I\u2019m to thee,\n With this message from the Past;\n How e\u2019er full life\u2019s joys may be,\n Like my bloom they may not last.\n\n Throngs are gone\u2014the voices stilled\n That once these halls with gladness filled;\n Here, with thee, I stand alone\n Where, before Night\u2019s ebon throne,\n Silence holy, waits to bear\n From thy heart its inmost cry,\n Wrought into such fervent prayer\n As doth bring God\u2019s presence nigh.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nMy Muse.\n\n\n She wanders on, at her sweet will,\n Thro\u2019 gloomy vales or paths of pleasure,\n Nor asks the world if grave, or gay,\n Shall be her theme and measure.\n\n She scorns the stilty, stiff Rondeau\n That artizans must fashion,\n But loves the brooklets romping flow\n And Nature\u2019s gush of passion.\n\n Tho\u2019 common use has smoothly worn\n The Sonnet\u2019s polished fetter,\n She wonders how its chains are borne\n When freedom\u2019s range is better.\n\n The triolet she never tries\u2014\n She\u2019d lose in such endeavor\n The glory of the sunset skies,\n The music of the river.\n\n My muse is not a Hellenese\n With bright, Olympian halo,\n But that strong, helpful one, that feels\n The heart-throbs of her fellow.\n\n She lifts me from the slough, Despond\u2014\n Bids Nature hush my sighing\n By crooning for me sweetest song,\n While in her bosom lying.\n\n The violets, the Spring first kissed,\n To us, are sweet as heather\u2014\n We climb the hills, thro\u2019 shining mist,\n In Autumn\u2019s golden weather.\n\n When, Lotus-drugged, Ambition sleeps,\n She whispers\u2014\u201cCome up higher\u201d\u2014\n Thro\u2019 starry fields of azure deeps\n I\u2019m led and feasted by her.\n\n She breaks the locks which golden keys\n Could only open to me,\n And kindly joins her gift, with Art\u2019s,\n Earth\u2019s grandest views to show me.\n\n While those who sing for fame and crown\n Must bide the Poet\u2019s tether,\n Dear Muse and I will wander down\n Thro\u2019 Freedom\u2019s vale, together.\n\n \u2019Tis sweet to us, the path we tread\u2014\n All Nature\u2019s song is ours,\n Her wildest scenes, the stars o\u2019erhead\n And all her fragrant flowers.\n\n\n\n\nWe Never Know.\n\n\n Ah, me! we never know\n What cold, wild winds may blow\n Across the springtime\u2019s balmy promise, sweet\u2014\n By what untimely frost\n The fruit germs may be lost,\n And rosy petals beaten down with sleet.\n\n The eyes that glow tonight\n With childhood\u2019s loving light,\n To-morrow may, with pallid lids be veiled\u2014\n The bounding pulse be stilled,\n Life\u2019s crimson current chilled,\n And rich, red lips with Death\u2019s cold kisses paled.\n\n We never know the fate\n So near, until too late;\n Tho\u2019 oft the black-winged demon\u2019s shadow falls\n In heavy gloom upon the heart\u2014\n A thousand dreads upstart,\n Yet onward, all, until the shock appalls.\n\n Warm love anticipates,\n With open arms awaits,\n \u2019Till hissing wires the stunning message brings.\n Oh, God! the wild despair\n That hushes e\u2019en the voice of prayer,\n And makes the soul forget all offerings.\n\n Such sudden, crushing grief!\n Hope, rising, scouts belief,\n But falls down, prone, before the sorrow-flashing wires.\n Hear Sympathy\u2019s whispered tone,\n Oh, ye, who sit alone,\n With but the light of memory\u2019s altar fires.\n\n\n\n\nA June in Childhood.\n\n\n I stood in the flush of an evening in June\n When leafage and blossom and fragrance triune,\n Crown this, of the months, the most queenly and fair;\n The clover and roses had poured on the air\n A nectar I drank with enjoyment rare;\n Baptized in this flood of ecstatic delight\n My child eyes were blessed with miraculous sight.\n\n O, gladly I\u2019d yield up the wisdom of years,\n If gazing out now, thro\u2019 the mist of my tears,\n I could think as I tho\u2019t in that beautiful dream,\n That the gates were ajar, and the shimmer and gleam\n Of golden-paved streets on that silvery stream,\n \u201cThe River of Life\u201d\u2014shining thro\u2019 in the west,\n Gave us a bright glimpse of the home of the blest.\n\n I saw, as I gazed with my dream-lighted eyes,\n A broad, gilded stairway let down from the skies,\n And angels came out with their robings of white,\n All \u2019broidered and shining with flosses of light,\n And bound on each brow with a coronet bright,\n Was a veil of soft gossamer, fold upon fold,\n With amethyst border, and flutings of gold.\n\n And spread on the sky, to my glorified view,\n Was a foam crested ocean, pavillioned with blue;\n Bright islands of azure thro\u2019 cloud-rifts were seen,\n Then sunk, like Atlantis, in billowy sheen:\n While ships, that I fancied from shores evergreen,\n Afloat on its bosom, at anchor would ride,\n Or cut with their prows thro\u2019 the rose-tinted tide.\n\n Some angels sailed far, where the cloud-waves grew dark,\n In boats that were graceful as gondolier\u2019s barque,\n And those I tho\u2019t sailing far over the seas\n To watch over missions and little Burmese;\n Then others swept down, where the glory-crowned trees\n Hid them on the stairs, but I knew from that band\n Some went to each household, all over the land,\n\n Where children would whisper \u201cI lay me to sleep,\n Send angels dear Father, my spirit to keep\n Thro\u2019 midnight and darkness, to guard me from harm,\n To give me sweet dreams, and to shield from alarm\u2014\n To watch me till morning dawns, rosy and warm,\n Or, dying before, let them bear me above\n To the bosom of Jesus, on pinions of love.\u201d\n\n * * * * *\n\n These memories float in on the fragrance to night,\n While sunset is veiling in glory the light,\n And seasons, repeating in cyclical rune,\n Bring forward in beauty, rose-garlanded June;\n All earth seems an altar with flowers o\u2019erstrewn\u2014\n \u2019Tis Nature\u2019s thank offering\u2014my heart is in tune\n With her grand _De Profundis_, now rolling in praise;\n Send angels, dear Father, a grown-up child prays,\n And a rose-wreathed June for my sunset of days.\n\n\n\n\nGoldenrod.\n\n\n O, Goldenrod, bright goldenrod!\n It fringes all the wayside hedges,\n And makes the forest mantle rich\n With lovely tasseled edges.\n It lights with sunshine of its own\n Each dark, neglected dingle,\n And links itself with memories of\n The cheery, old-time ingle.\n\n Despite the summer\u2019s burning drought,\n It blooms profuse and bright as ever,\n And where spring fountains rippled forth\n With laughter to the river,\n It kisses now their parching lips\n To woo their music mellow,\n And wreaths our dying flowers with\n An aureole of yellow.\n\n It gaily lifts its nodding plumes\n Above decay\u2019s inceptive traces,\n And hides beneath its cloth-of-gold\n The season\u2019s fading graces.\n Bright goldenrod! \u2019tis autumn\u2019s crown\n And summer\u2019s sunset glory\u2014\n Each blooming-time is new with joy\n As Love\u2019s old charming story.\n\n\n\n\nAn Evening in June.\n\n\n Glory won \u2019gainst beauty\u2019s brush in painting sunset skies,\n But paling now, upon the hills in rosy languor lies:\n All breathing life, with her, seems panting for a cooling breeze,\n For winds have stopped \u2019mid ocean isles, to toss the gleaming spray\n And spicy odors rich, along the golden path of day;\n And motionless, awaiting Beauty\u2019s Star, stand all the trees,\n While Erse, from her stores, besprinkles earth with gems,\n From mantling robes of green, to flower-broidered hems.\n\n But mortals, restless aye, will burden all life\u2019s golden hours\n With low complainings, forgetting bounty\u2019s blessing showers,\n Impatient, beg the _one_ withheld for other days and needs,\n Nor see the plan inwoven, that the world\u2019s wide hunger feeds;\n Nor ken the flashes on the sultry air, above the plain,\n Are the wings of ripening angels, sweeping o\u2019er the grain.\n\n\n\n\nYosemite.\n\n\n With humbled heart, subdued and awed I look on thee,\n Thou time-defying granite pile; with senses rapt\n Behold thee, grand and world-renowned\u2014YOSEMITE\u2014\n Thy spray-enwreathing stream\u2014\n Thy rock-walled vale and sunset clouds, all glory capped\n With evanescent gleam.\n\n Aye, gaze and wondering gaze, until the centuries swing\n Their massive doors ajar, and glimpses give when Earth was young;\n But farthest grasp of human thought but weakling reasons bring\n To solve thy problem vast;\n In vain the Present asks the voiceless silences that hung\n Their mysteries o\u2019er the Past\u2014\n\n The far, dim Past, that wrapped our sphere in shoreless sea\u2014\n The mantling gloom, that swathed its infancy in mist,\n While yet our central orb did wait Omnipotent decree\n To bless the world with Light\u2014\n Ere Day\u2019s first, smiling morn with rosy beams had kissed\n Away the brooding night.\n\n What engine wrought in Nature\u2019s great completing plan\n To ope for thee thy chasm\u2019s broad, abysmal deeps?\n Was it the glacier\u2019s ponderous plow, that smoothed for man\n The verdant, fertile plain,\n Or, rolling waters that thro\u2019 circling eons, wore thy steeps\n With solemn, sad refrain?\u2014\n\n Or from Earth\u2019s central fires, did fierce, volcanic throes\n Expel, in molten mass, the elemental rock,\n That o\u2019er the wilds to mountain majesty arose,\n And while yet warm with throbbing strain,\n Did earthquake rend with pole-disturbing shock,\n Thy mighty walls amain?\n\n O, puny mind! be still and catch the chant sublime,\n Of Nature\u2019s psalm, that here is poured in never ending praise;\n Accept the truth that God, by His right hand, did raise\n These templed rocks, to stand thro\u2019 an eternity of time,\n An altar place of worship, where\n All nations come, and every heart an offering lays\n Of mingled praise and prayer.\n\n\n\n\nBlight, or Blessing.\n\n \u201cBut saddest is the tho\u2019t of joys\n That never yet were tasted.\u201d\u2014John Hay.\n\n\n And yet the heart will never turn,\n Tho\u2019 all its wealth beside were wasted\u2014\n \u2019Twill never cease to plead and yearn\n For joys it covets, yet untasted:\n And at its secret altar kneeling,\n Whereon the life an offering lies,\n The soul will lift its one appealing\n For joy that Wisdom still denies.\n\n It watches for the longed-for beaming\n With hidden, cherished, fond delight,\n As tho\u2019 the hoping, wishing, dreaming\n Could make the shadowed pathway bright;\n As tho\u2019 from out some shining mist,\n By radiant bow of promise kissed,\n That joy might come, to bless it yet\n And soothe the pain of long regret.\n\n Tho\u2019 at our feet fall blessing showers,\n All worthless in our grasp they seem,\n De-gloried, as are withered flowers,\n If still denied the soul\u2019s fond dream.\n For lack of it\u2014that single joy,\u2014\n The life is robbed of sweet employ;\n Each cup seems blent with Upas drips,\n Each day seems gloomed with cold eclipse.\n\n Sweet sleep will sometimes give the boon,\u2014\n Possession\u2019s own supreme delight,\u2014\n Oh, sad that Day dissolves so soon\n The bright, warm vision\u2014gift of Night!\n Brief joy! The rapturous dream diffused,\n Swims round the soul like golden mist,\n And life a moment seems suffused\n With dawn\u2019s own rose and amethyst.\n\n And shall it be,\u2014this sorest need\u2014\n To us, eternal, haunting loss?\n Or will this spirit-hunger lead\n Up, from this life-enduring cross,\n With sentience large, evolved by this,\n (When change the mortal veil shall rift,)\n To take our own supremest bliss\n From God\u2019s infinitudes of gift?\n\n\n\n\nO, For a Rainy Day.\n\nBY REQUEST.\n\n\n These days are hot, and dry, and dreary;\n The burning sun seems never weary\n The vine lies limp on the thirsty earth\u2014\n The grass grows sere in the long, long dearth\u2014\n The days are dusty, hot and dreary.\n\n The sky is cloudless, brassy, dreary,\n The wind seems ever languid, weary\n But hope still clings to the gifts of the Past\u2014\n We trust that the rain will come at last\n And the days be damp and cheery.\n\n O, clouds sweep o\u2019er, veil the sun\u2019s hot shining!\n With copious rains, come, hush all repining,\n Swell the shrunken grains of the sun-burnt lands,\n With new, green grass clothe the arid sands,\n Then the days will be bright and cheery.\n\nAugust, 1895.\n\n\n\n\nThe Great Poet.\n\n\n Upon Parnassian heights he walked and gazed below;\u2014\n From wing of Jove\u2019s high soaring bird he plucked his pen;\n Attuned to poet soul, his lofty numbers flow\u2014\n His stately verse ne\u2019er stoops to common needs of men.\n\n The earth-born, toiling throng, he saw, but from afar;\n No interlinking brotherhood bound him to them;\n For them no warmth his glory shed\u2014a cold, bright star,\n On which they gazed as on a costly, dazzling gem.\n\n To those who nearest reach his altitude of thought\n He bends himself to speak, but yet, with lofty mien;\n Of these, but few, familiar comradship, have sought;\n They stand, his far, dim height and earth\u2019s green vales, between,\n To take his gift, which often falls like vivid lightning flashes,\n And crystalize, and link for comprehension\u2019s reach\u2014\n They trace his subtle thread, entangled with the shining meshes\n Of universal lore, and weave in wefts of wondrous speech.\n\n Sometimes, it seems, an idea vast, his measure strains,\n When he doth crush the whole, as quartz is crushed for gold,\n And then, reject and cleanse, until there\u2019s naught remains\n Of quartz or dross. The massive idea we behold\n Upon his page, aglow in shining, golden grains.\n\n Then alchemistic souls, in study\u2019s crucial heat,\n Must fuse and integrate\u2014must clothe, and warm,\n And breathe into it soul, when lo, with life replete,\n The world will praise for breadth and depth, embracing form.\n\n * * * * *\n\n In this bright world of ours God placed some humble ones\n With loving hearts, o\u2019erwelling with sweet tenderness;\n They soothe the wounds of war, they cheer earth\u2019s toiling sons\n And where grief broods these faithful ones are there to bless;\n And e\u2019en when fiends come forth with pestilential breath\n To pour their reeking poisons on the stagnant air,\n Forgetting self, they wrestle long with Death,\n And, with devotion\u2019s strength, the black-winged demon, dare.\n\n Tho\u2019 humble these, their elder Brother sits enthroned\n At God\u2019s right hand; His golden words, impressive, deep,\n Still speak to us in sweet monition, gentle toned,\n \u201c_If ye love me feed my lambs,\u2014aye feed my sheep_.\u201d\n\n O, many sheep have need of thee. Go feed them \u201cIn His Name,\u201d\n Or seek that shelterless, that lone one that has strayed,\n Nor deem thy labor lost because, unknown to fame,\n For whoso lifts the cup, by which there\u2019s _one_ soul\u2019s thirst allayed,\n The same shall eat of hidden manna. He is blest of God.\n Tho\u2019, but faintly we can echo the loving Shepherd\u2019s call,\n We\u2019ll find in Duty\u2019s obscure ways, His sweetest blessings fall\u2014\n In these same, lowly paths, earth\u2019s sainted ones have trod.\n\n It may be grand to tread Olympian heights and breathe\n Ambrosial airs,\u2014to win high praise \u2019mong those whose souls\n Are lit with Heaven\u2019s fire; but sweeter far to wreathe\n A simple worded song, whose swelling music rolls\n A tidal wave of feeling, thrilling into life\n A long chained serfdom. Greater mastery of the art\n Is his, who lifts to light, from savagery and strife,\n Earth\u2019s darkened isles\u2014whose pen can touch the world\u2019s great heart\n With philanthropic fire,\u2014whose verse has, throbbing thro\u2019 the whole,\n In sympathy with man, a loving, human soul.\n\n\n\n\nLove\u2019s Riches.\n\n\n Rich blessings are scattered around us\u2014\n Why heedlessly trample them down\n And ask for the millionaire\u2019s coffers,\n Or sigh for a kingdom and crown?\n We\u2019ve ever the sunshine of loving,\n Unmixed with the drosses of gold\u2014\n Its pleasures are not in wealth\u2019s giving\n Or e\u2019en in its power to withhold.\n\n The jewels, whose splendors we covet,\n Gain much of their sparkle and glow\n From the flutter and tumult of bosoms\n Where heart-aches are throbbing below;\n In palaces, often, is hidden\n A skeleton presence of dread,\n That quenches the flame on Love\u2019s altar\n While hope in the darkness lies dead.\n\n A queen may be rich in dominions,\n Have crown and a scepter and throne,\n Yet all of the riches of loving\n To her be forever unknown;\n Far greater the kingdom for woman\n Where love is the power\u2014her throne\n In a heart of unswerving devotion,\n Its measureless realms her own.\n\n Thro\u2019 the tapestried halls of the mansion\n The ghost of dead honor may glide\u2014\n A sense of life\u2019s holiest joys departed\n In the lordliest castle abide.\n Tho\u2019 the chalice wealth drains should be golden,\n No sweeter to him is the draught\n Than the cup with the sparkle of water,\n That humble contentment has quaffed.\n\n Earth\u2019s mines, and her jewel-strewn caverns,\n With the station that title confers,\n All poured at her feet, would not purchase\n The treasure a mother counts hers.\n Ay, hid in your home you will find them\u2014\n Love\u2019s riches\u2014vast treasures untold;\n More precious than worldly possessions,\n Though counted, by millions, in gold.\n\n * * * * *\n\n Then let not the demon of envy\n E\u2019er enter the soul to enthrall;\n The Father is tenderly watching\u2014\n Is keeping a record of all.\n Rewards we have missed in our earth-life\n We\u2019ll find in that mansion above,\n All decked with the beauties of Heaven\n And lighted with Infinite Love.\n\n\n\n\nComplainings.\n\n\n Never a dove came to nestle by me,\n But green-eyed Envy was there to see\u2014\n Soiling its plumage of spotless white,\n Making it vile as a raven of night.\n Never a rose in my garden was born,\n But was surrounded by many a thorn.\n\n Never a sweet but was mingled with gall\u2014\n And freedom, forever, is shadowed by thrall;\u2014\n Fruit, that looked luscious while hanging in view,\n Is blighted ere ripe, by a blistering dew;\n Gold, that we gather and count as a joy,\n Has little of pleasure and much of alloy;\n Jealously burns, in her caustical fire,\n My tenderest hope, with malevolent ire\u2014\n Ashes, of all, she has strewn in my path,\n And mocks at my pain with demoniac laugh.\n\n But hush thy complaining, my heart, and be still\u2014\n If Heaven, our measure, with blessings should fill,\n How soon would the soul with satiety cloy,\n And life would be robbed of delightsome employ,\u2014\n Incentive would sleep, and all motive would die,\n If needs of our nature should utter no cry;\n But lacking the goal our ambition would gain\n Arouses our powers\u2014gives strength to attain.\n\n Our grandest achievements have birth in the throes\n Of Penury\u2019s labor; and multiplied woes\n But nerve us to action\u2014resist and endure,\n And highest endeavor gives aid to secure\n Success to the valiant in the struggle for right\u2014\n Though failure may sometimes descend like a blight\u2014\n Oft failure is blessing, that\u2019s sent in disguise\n To turn us from groveling to gaze on the skies.\n Then learn through each trial, my soul, to rejoice,\n And e\u2019en from the cloud will Compassion\u2019s own voice\n Be heard thro\u2019 the gloom, in response to your cry,\n \u201cFear not the tempest, my child, it is I.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nQuestionings.\n\n\n When the pallid lids have fallen\n O\u2019er the eyes in dreamless sleep\u2014\n Eyes that wake no more with watching\n Nor in loneliness will weep,\n Will a touch of pity soften\u2014\n Warm that unimpassioned gaze?\n For a moment will affection\n Hallow all their clouded days?\n\n When the heart, no longer beating,\n All its painful throbbings o\u2019er\u2014\n When it stirs life\u2019s crimson current\n With its hopes and fears no more,\n Will another heart feel sorrow\n For the stillness resting there?\n Will it for a whole tomorrow\n Wear a saddened shade of care?\n\n When the weary hands are folded\n For that long unbroken rest,\n And the spirit wings in freedom\n To its home among the blest,\n Will one tender feeling waken\n In that heart a fond regret,\n That will last thro\u2019 summer\u2019s blooming\u2014\n That will never quite forget?\n\n When the lips are cold and silent\u2014\n Hushed for aye their gentle speech,\n With love\u2019s whispers dying on them,\n Will their mute appealing reach\n To the rock-girt fount of feeling?\n Will Remorse with stinging rod,\n Smite and bring the welling tear-drops\n To bedew the new-laid sod?\n\n\n\n\nPersecuted.\n\n\n Alone, alone I tread the shore\n Where surges beat forevermore\n With deaf\u2019ning, hollow wail;\n The sky, o\u2019ercast with angry frown,\n Doth drop the loaded clouds, low down,\n To beat me with their hail.\n\n And, helpless here upon the strand\n With no out-reaching friendly hand,\n I face the roaring sea.\n With reverent love my soul is stirred,\n And seeking TRUTH within Thy word\n I come, dear Lord, to Thee.\n\n Aye, take my hand in thine Oh, God!\n And lead me, where Thine own have trod,\n By waters, pure and sweet.\n O, send thy Comforter to calm\n The aching heart with holy balm,\n And keep me at thy feet!\n\n Nature\u2019s gift had been more kind\n If a pulpy, plastic mind,\n To fit, with ease, their mold;\n Then self-assumed, \u201cstraight orthodox\u201d\n Had gathered me, with petted flocks,\n Within the church\u2019s fold.\n\n O, loving Christ! Am I not thine?\n And Thy disciples, truly mine,\n Each my sister or my brother,\n By the heritage of heaven\u2014\n By the new commandment given,\n That we all love one another?\n\n O, help me Lord with thee to pray!\u2014\n \u201cForgive them Father,\u201d Thou didst say,\n \u201cThey know not what they do.\u201d\n May sheltering love, dear Lord, be mine\u2014\n O, keep my life thine, only thine,\n My soul to conscience true!\n\n\n\n\nO, Kindly Speak.\n\n\n The chiding word that chills the flow\n Of warm child-feeling, ere it gush\n In sparkling jets, to catch the glow\n And tinge of Life\u2019s bright morning flush,\n Is the human thunder-bolt\u2014its path\n Is marked by dwarfed and shrunken minds,\n Souls scarred, as trees by lightning scath,\n Which show, like them, the spoiler\u2019s lines.\n\n\n\n\nHe Is Risen.\n\n\n Crown of all our joys supernal\n Is the hope of life eternal;\n Burst in bloom ye lillies white!\n Wreathe the altar and the cross,\u2014\n Dawn is born of brooding night,\n Heaven\u2019s joy of earthly loss,\u2014\n He is Risen!\n\n In the starry fields of Heaven\n Mansions bright, to us, are given:\n Triumph o\u2019er the grave He won\n In the resurrection morn\u2014\n Life eternal is begun,\n Hope to all the world is born,\n He is Risen!\n\n He hath passed thro\u2019 Heaven\u2019s portal,\n We, thro\u2019 Him have life immortal\u2014\n Death is met with faith and trust\u2014\n The tomb is lighted by His love;\n Earth may claim the crumbling dust\u2014\n Souls will dwell with Christ above.\n He is Risen!\n\n Think not thou art left forsaken\n Tho\u2019 by sorrow\u2019s tempest shaken;\n From His son, God veiled his face\u2014\n Heaven\u2019s light was e\u2019en withdrawn,\n But the cruel cross made place\n For the glorious Easter dawn\u2014\n He is Risen!\n\n\n\n\nThe Christ.\n\n\n In olive-crowned Gethsemane,\n Alone the Savior sought the power\n That wrought through him at Galilee,\n To stay the tide of that dark hour.\n With grief bowed soul he prayed, but grace\n Was His, to say: \u201cThy will be done.\u201d\n From Christ the Father veiled his face\n And gave the world His only Son.\n\n Tho\u2019 His displeasure hid the day,\n Spread brooding terror o\u2019er the land,\n Tho\u2019 yielding hate its earth-born sway,\n O\u2019er-ruling Love in wisdom planned;\n While human might did glut its greed\n With nod of law to sanction crime,\n A good, by higher law decreed,\n Went forth, encircling earth and time.\n\n Far-reaching, \u2019twas to win the world\u2014\n Their cruel deeds of blinded rage\u2014\n Their mocking taunts like hell-brands hurled,\n Still echo from the sacred page;\n That bitter cup\u2014the crown of thorn\n Upon His suffering, sinless brow\u2014\n That wail, adown the ages borne\u2014\n Are loving worship winning now.\n\n O! blot the hard, blasphemous creed,\n \u201cA sacrifice for wrath of God;\u201d\n And teach the world \u2019twas human deed\n That stained with blood Golgotha\u2019s sod.\n The reeling earth and darkened sun\n Proclaimed aloud Jehovah\u2019s frown;\n Yet taught us that His holy one\n Had by life\u2019s cross won Heaven\u2019s crown.\n\n That tho\u2019 he passed thro\u2019 death\u2014the tomb\n To calm a world in maddened strife,\n From out its broken bars of gloom\n A joy would beam to beacon life,\n And bless for us that morning light\n That points the glory path he trod\n From persecution, death and night,\n Through Resurrection, up to God.\n\n \u2019Tis through His bearing mortal woes\n We feel the throb of Love Divine!\n Though wrung with agonizing throes,\n His words with God-like mercy shine;\n They wake the world to faith and hope\u2014\n E\u2019en from old Memnon\u2019s music trill,\n They turn the dusky Ethiope\n To catch their soul-impassioned thrill.\n\n \u201cForgive\u2014they know not what they do!\u201d\u2014\n O, holy prayer! In every tongue\n Its tender pleading pulses thro\u2019,\n As when from Calvary\u2019s cross it rung!\u2014\n O, arms of Love\u2019s infinitude!\n They still reach down to earth from Heaven\n To bind in one great brotherhood,\n Through Him, the rescued world\u2014forgiven.\n\n\n\n\nFeed My Lambs.\n\n\n Jesus said, with tender pleading,\n \u201cIf ye love me, feed my lambs\u201d;\n Thro\u2019 His word He\u2019s interceding\u2014\n Feed my lambs, my precious lambs;\n\n (Chorus)\u2014If ye love me, feed my lambs,\n Feed my lambs, my precious lambs\u2014\n If ye love me feed my lambs.\n\n From the hedges and the highways,\n Bring the lambs all safely in;\n Seek the wanderers in the byways,\n Save them from the blight of sin.\n If ye love me, etc.\n\n Find each little son and daughter,\n Bring them in with tender care;\n Lead them to the crystal water,\n In the pastures green and fair:\u2014\n If ye love me, etc.\n\n\n\n\nThe Kingdom of Heaven.\n\n \u201cThy kingdom come, Thy will be done, in earth as in Heaven.\u201d\n\n\n O, the kingdom of Heaven will come!\u2014\n When His will shall be done\n Upon earth, as above,\n And victory won\n Through a union of love,\n Then, the kingdom of Heaven will come.\n\n Our Christian Endeavor\n Has linked, and forever,\n The lands of all climes\n Where the Savior is known.\n O, bright is the morning\n That brings us the dawning\n Of the day that\u2019s to band,\n In one army, HIS OWN!\n O, the kingdom of heaven will come!\n\n When Christians, uniting,\n The common foe fighting\n Forget every difference\n Of doctrine and creed,\n And, hushing their pleading\n For selfish succeeding,\n Beg Heaven\u2019s best gift\n For humanity\u2019s need,\n Then the kingdom of Heaven will come.\n\n When fervent in action\n They trample on faction,\n Intolerance, arrogance,\n Tread them all down,\n And put forth endeavor,\n Through loving work ever,\n For the saving of souls\n With no thought of the crown,\n Then, the kingdom of Heaven will come.\n\n When earnest endeavor\u2014\n Most powerful lever\u2014\n Is thrust under sin\n By all Christendom\u2019s might,\n Its walls will soon crumble\u2014\n The structure must tumble\n When hotly assailed\n By the legions of Right,\n Aye, the kingdom of heaven will come.\n\n When Christians are one,\n Like the Father and Son,\n And sects of all names\n At one altar can kneel,\n In God\u2019s love believing,\n For heaven achieving,\n This creed and this purpose\n Inspiring their zeal,\n Then the kingdom of heaven will come.\n\n\n\n\nSupplication.\n\n\n O, thou Savior, Brother, mine,\n God\u2019s own love and tenderness,\n Sent of Him with power divine\u2014\n Sent to soothe, sustain and bless:\u2014\n Light of Life! Oh blessed Word,\n Be my help! Dear Savior come!\n Hear my spirit\u2019s pleading, Lord\u2014\n Pleading tho\u2019 my lips are dumb.\n\n Groping now in sorrow\u2019s night\n Guide, oh, guide me, Lord, I pray,\n Quicken Thou my spirit\u2019s sight\n That I walk in wisdom\u2019s way\u2014\n Be Thou, Lord, a presence nigh\u2014\n Thou canst still the angry sea,\n Thou hast known Gethsemane\u2014\n O, Compassion, hear my cry!\n\n Deep in agony of soul\n Mother-love cries up to Thee\u2014\n Fiends have bound him to the bowl\u2014\n O, break his chains and set him free!\n\n\n\n\nThe Portrait.\n\n\n O, arms of protection, now folded so still!\u2014\n Alone in the world, so wide and so chill!\n O, eyes that would glow in a worshipful gaze!\u2014\n They\u2019ll bless me no more with their love-beaming rays!\n O, heart of devotion! thy warm throbbings o\u2019er\n Can give me asylum from sorrow no more.\n\n * * * * *\n\n O, veil it!\u2014this lifeless creation of art\u2014\n The perfect is sacredly shrined in my heart!\n Not silent, compassionless, framed in with gold,\n Nor mantled with shadows of coffin and mould,\n But youthful and strong and warm with the fire\n That glows in a soul lit with noble desire.\n\n Ay, thought gropeth not thro\u2019 the darkness and gloom\n Where the mortal is held in the bonds of the tomb.\n PROGRESSION is stamped by the hand of God\u2019s love;\n The life coming after to this is _above_!\n Our faith reaches up to the realms of bliss,\n The sphere He has fashioned\u2014the Home beyond this.\n\n The deeds that gave blessing in the pathways of earth\n Give impress and form to the Heavenly birth.\n That face, beaming ever with the glorified light\n Won here, in defending convictions of Right,\n My soul, in its holy of holies, where free\n From earth\u2019s thronging distractions in spirit I see.\n\n This portrait I gaze on\u2014the glorified one\u2014\n And that is, to this, as a star, to the sun.\n\n\n\n\nOut in the Woods.\n\n\n Glad haunts of the summer!\u2014the dim forest aisles,\n Where Sylva receives us with welcoming smiles\u2014\n Gives couch of soft mosses, embowered with vines,\n And smoothes from the forehead, care\u2019s deep written lines.\n Refreshing, she brings, for the world-weary brain\n And soothes, with her silence, its fever and pain!\u2014\n Bids Somnus pour sweets from which restfulness flows,\n And, hushing her realm into holiest calm,\n She lulls the sick soul into gentle repose,\n While winds, with the leafage, are chanting a psalm\n That charms with its rythm. Rev\u2019ry\u2019s doorways unclose\u2014\n We slip to forgetfulness\u2014sleep that is balm.\n\n * * * * *\n\n The musical tinkle of the murmuring stream\n Gave warp, for the web, of a beautiful dream,\n And woof for the weaving, the slumber-god chose\n From fragrance of violets, and queenly wild-rose.\n The sunshine that sifted thro\u2019 the crowns of the trees,\n Made threadings of gold with the shadows of these!\n The breeze, touching lightly, with cool finger tips\n Was the kiss of an angel on the tired spirit\u2019s lips.\n O, the eider-down couches of slumberous ease,\n And the tapestried halls that the millionaires please,\n Can never, such rest, on the weary bestow,\n As we find in this palace, where the luxuries grow.\n\n Majestical forest!\u2014Asylum of REST,\n Where the crowd-jostled soul is ineffably blest\u2014\n Where primeval old trees, in their grandeur and might,\n Guard Solitude\u2019s shrine, from the vandal-world\u2019s sight;\n Where spice-bearing shrubs, and the sweet-scented ferns\n Float odors as rich as when frankincense burns,\n And the praise-breathing song of the thrush, from the boughs,\n Wakes worship unknown thro\u2019 the low-muttered vows.\n \u201cFirst temples of God!\u201d\u2014and still nearest His throne,\n Where the spirit may drink, at the fountain, alone,\n Receiving His blessing through the still, small voice,\n While Nature\u2019s true Acolytes whisper\u2014rejoice.\n\n\n\n\nUnforgiven.\n\n\n Ah! that \u201cPast\u201d\u2014that bitter parting,\n Long ago, yet vivid seems\u2014\n Oft in midnight\u2019s black arms folded\n I have lived it o\u2019er in dreams;\n As a presence it has shadowed\n Every path of life I\u2019ve tried\u2014\n If I joined the festive circle\n It was stalking by my side.\n\n If I sat at hush of even\n With a sense of love and trust,\n It would come and stand before me,\n Hissing out the word\u2014unjust;\n It has stretched its ghostly fingers\n For all blessings to destroy,\n And has poured its gall and wormwood\n In each lifted cup of joy.\n\n Had you winged a sweet forgiveness,\n Sent it o\u2019er the \u201csilent line,\u201d\n It had proved a benediction\n Falling on your life and mine.\n Through the years that phantom presence,\n Like a black bird o\u2019er my door,\n Seemed to say, by silent glowering,\n \u201cI will leave thee nevermore.\u201d\n\n _You_ can drive this haunting demon,\n Send in place a snowy dove\u2014\n Only breathe the longed for blessing,\n Not youth\u2019s fervent tale of love,\n And on friendship\u2019s sacred altar\n Light a pure and holy flame,\n That may burn before the angels\n Without blanch or blush of shame.\n\n\n\n\nThe Evening and the Morning.\n\n \u201cAt Evening time it shall be light.\u201d\u2014Bible.\n\n \u201cThe evening twilight of this life meets the morning twilight\n of the next and they kiss each other.\u201d\u2014L. H. F.\n\n\n When Life\u2019s evening twilight gathers\n Darkling shadows from the tomb,\n Then a bright celestial morning\n Kisses back the gathering gloom;\n Robed in beauty\u2019s bright adorning\n This aurora\u2014dawning glory,\n Kisses back the gathering gloom.\n\n When the crimson tide is throbbing\n With the hopes that wildly mount,\n And the sensuous soul is drinking\n From enjoyment\u2019s sparkling fount,\n Then the thoughts will turn with shrinking\n From the coming of life\u2019s gloaming\u2014\n Death seems then a Stygian fount.\n\n But when life\u2019s weary day is closing\u2014\n When the lengthening shadows fall,\n Sweetly singing angel voices\n Come with blessing in their call!\n The departing soul rejoices\n With prevision, of Elysian,\n Gladly welcoming the call.\n\n As the spirit fetters loosen\n And the soul gains greater height,\n It will see the evening shadows\n Meet and kiss the dawning light;\n And, dispelling all the shadows,\n This supernal life eternal,\n Opens into morning light.\n\n Aye, the golden gates swing open!\n To reveal the splendors bright;\n From His throne the glory streaming\n Haloes Death with holy light;\n Angels voicing their rejoicing\u2014\n Heaven\u2019s mansions brightly gleaming,\n Flood Life\u2019s evening time with light.\n\n\n\n\nThe Unseen.\n\n\n Do you feel my spirit with you\u2014\n Feel my kiss upon your lips?\n Doth your heart throb with the message\n That the messenger outstrips?\n\n Ay, I know your thought, responding,\n Know this soul-touch is of thine,\n That you send me tender soothing\n O\u2019er love\u2019s subtile, unseen line.\n\n Soul to soul can tell its sorrow,\n Sympathy response impart\u2014\n Joy can flash o\u2019er lines of distance,\n Touch and thrill a kindred heart.\n\n Loneliness! I scarcely know it;\n Loved ones in my spirit\u2019s reach\n Know my call and give me answer\u2014\n Silence pulses with their speech.\n\n We have glimpse of joys, thro\u2019 this one,\n That await the soul above,\n Where unbroken, sweet communion\n Flows thro\u2019 sympathy and love.\n\n\n\n\nPainting.\n\n\n O, beauteous Art! with heart o\u2019erfilled with joy I stand\n And offer up to God its silent, grateful praise\n That He, in blessing, hath endowed a human hand\n With gifts so near divine;\n Thro\u2019 these creations, warmed to life in Genius\u2019 blaze,\n Doth inspiration shine.\n\n Here, oriental scenes are brought within my reach;\n The beauty of the castled Rhine, in softened hues,\n With fine, bewitching charm o\u2019er-mastering speech,\n My raptured gaze enchains;\n I roam in dream the land whose purple vintage strews\n With wealth its hills and plains.\n\n And thus I dream and drink the blest enchantment in,\n That flows from art, with full, ineffable delight;\n Forgetting earth is cursed with sorrow, death and sin,\n I taste supernal bliss,\n And, in this ecstacy of joy, a world of light,\n It seems, hath dropped to this.\n\n Yet not with those I\u2019d join who throng Art\u2019s crowded hall,\n Whose motive is to prove themselves profound in art\n By use of bulky words, but which, in strident fall,\n Each hearer doth impress\n With lack of gift to grasp what colors may impart,\n Or canvass may express.\n\n Nor go with her whose hand, with long and tedious drill\n Has learned to daub with paint\u2014whose tongue, with flippant ease,\n Can toss artistic nomenclature round at will,\n Yet nothing knows of art\u2014\n Of art\u2019s true self, whose secret power to hold and please\n Is soul, in every part.\n I\u2019d put the shoes from off my feet, and then, alone\n Before the work, would feel I stood on holy ground\u2014\n That there a spirit with its God had talked, and by His own\n Had been informed, inspired\u2014\n Aye, minds should be, before they range this sacred bound,\n In thoughtfullness attired.\n\n And thus prepared, Perception\u2019s polished plates receive\n The artist\u2019s dream, that seems with pulsing life aglow,\n And o\u2019er it Fancy\u2019s magic fingers silent weave\n Her draperies so real\u2014\n We seethe dimpling lake\u2014we hear the streamlets liquid flow,\n And shadowed coolness feel.\n\n\n\n\nThe Christian\u2019s Armor.\n\n_For the Band of Hope._\n\n\n Firmly stand, unyielding wrestle,\n All ye noble, earnest, youth,\u2014\n You are soldiers\u2014God is calling,\n Gird yourselves about with truth.\n\n Wear the helmet of Salvation\u2014\n Let your feet with peace be shod,\n Turn the fiery darts of evil\n With the shield of \u201cFaith in God.\u201d\n\n Arm you with the Spirit\u2019s weapon,\n \u2019Tis God\u2019s blessed, holy word,\u2014\n With the breast-plate of the righteous\n You shall conquer Satan\u2019s horde.\n\n Then with earnest supplication\n Hold the way to Heaven\u2019s throne;\n By the spirit\u2019s true devotion\n God will know and bless his own.\n\n\n\n\nTo My Friend,\n\nMRS. ANNA PRICHARD.\n\n\n And is time old? How swift he runs!\n His months like birds of passage fly.\n How slow he rolled a year of suns\n When we were children, you and I,\n How far away the spring time seemed\n When winter wore his angry frown\u2014\n An age, when apple blossoms gleamed\n Ere they would drop their fruitage down.\n\n Then childhood\u2019s eager heart was waiting\n For expectations to unfold,\n And churlish time seemed years belating\n The wished-for blessings to withhold;\n Then Fancy\u2019s fingers held the brush\n And painted all the future bright;\n Its clouds but showed the rosy flush\n Each dawn had woven with its light.\n\n Impatient then, our youthful feet\n To climb the distant sun clad hills\n Where Pleasure, from her vintage sweet,\n For each, a golden chalice fills\u2014To\n stand beneath the shining arch,\n By rainbow-tinted promise spanned:\u2014\n What fine advance, in Life\u2019s grand march,\n Our strong, young courage planned.\n\n But ah! in life\u2019s late afternoon,\n No worldly wealth, no laurels won\u2014\n I grieve that time has fled so soon\n With so much planned, left all undone;\n The barren years, like surf-worn sand,\n With glints of sun and shadow flecked,\n Are strewn with fragments as the strand\n And show where Hope\u2019s rich cargoes wrecked.\n\n No mould of sloth lies o\u2019er the years\u2014\n No waste of dissipation\u2019s fire\n Is smoldering in regrets and tears,\n Yet youth\u2019s fond dream\u2014intense desire\n A cruel fate has still denied;\n Or, was it Heaven\u2019s kind decree\n That set that cherished wish aside\n To bring a richer gift to me?\n\n There\u2019s naught in God\u2019s infinitude\n Of gifts for us, like home and wife,\n And happy, blessed motherhood,\n The crowning gift of woman\u2019s life.\n These gifts transmute to dear delight\n Each humble task, all toil and care,\n And keep home\u2019s sacred altar bright\n With love\u2019s sweet offerings there.\n\n All these, and one more gift is mine\n That stirs with joy my brooding thought\u2014\n A friendship rare and true as thine,\n A chain\u2014all precious links\u2014inwrought\n With sacred trust. Oh hush, my heart,\n No more in bitterness complain:\n Thou wouldst not with thy treasures part\n Youth\u2019s wildest dream of power to gain.\n\n\n\n\nHill-Crest Home.\n\nTO MRS. A. FOSKETT POTTER.\n\n\n The picture, you rave over there on the wall,\n Is weak by the one hung in memory\u2019s hall.\n While that one is held by the fetters of art\n To rules of perspective\u2014can only give part,\n The other has range over hill-top and dell,\n From the vaulted blue sky to the depths of the well\u2014\n Can even give sense of refreshing from this\u2014\n Show stars gleaming thro\u2019 from its seeming abyss.\n\n It has other delights, never reached with a brush,\n The ravishment held in the notes of a thrush\n (The sweetest voiced bird of the singing-bird throng)\n Reverberant groves all a-thrill with its song.\n\n Then the river, that knit a bright edge on the farm,\n Enmantled with vapor\u2014etherial charm!\n As if dawn and the dew, meeting, playfully kissed\n When the sun peeping over dissolved them in mist;\n Like a gauzy, white chrisom cloth lightly it lies\n O\u2019er the rosy-faced morning, new-born of the skies.\n Now, mellow and sweet as the music of dream,\n Or a softly touched lute, comes the song of the stream;\n Enchanted I listen, ay, listen and gaze\n Till sound seems enwreathed with this luminous haze\n That\u2019s woven for nymphs, of the sunshine and spray;\n And veiled in these light robes they mingle in play\n Till on bloom scented breezes they\u2019re floated away.\n\n I promised to tell of my humble old home,\n But my pen wanders off where my feet used to roam,\n So the home of my childhood I picture for you\n Must cover the rambles \u201cmy infancy knew.\u201d\n Come, stand \u2019neath that maple with me, if you will:\n The manse, looking south from the brow of the hill,\n Has the River, the valley, \u201cThe Island\u201d in view\u2014\n (O! if mem\u2019ry\u2019s bright search-light could give it to you,\n And you, with my childhood\u2019s own vision, could see\n The love-lighted beauty, that glowed there for me!)\n While eastward the valley-farms glint thro\u2019 the trees,\n Whose grandeur had saved them to the thither-most shore,\n And hills, as a back ground of beauty for these,\n A richly-robed forest in stateliness bore;\n And this, to my child fancy, held up the skies\n Where the dawn, stealing in thro\u2019 their bright rosy dyes,\n Peeped in at my window to waken me when\n The sun-gleams, aflash in the dew-spangled glen,\n Out rivaled Golconda in jewels and gold\u2014\n When lambkins went frolicking down from the fold\n To nip the soft grass or to drink from the brook\u2014Ah,\n there was a spot, just beyond where they drank,\n Where the brook cut the hill for its opposite bank,\n And nestled above was a shadowy nook\n With a rustic root-bench which a wind-warring tree\n Had thrown out to anchor its hold on the hill:\n There, glad as the laughter of innocent glee,\n Came the musical tinkle and play of the rill,\n A melody sweet, to that \u00e6rie of mine,\n Where, safe from intrusion as cliff dweller, I\n Heard, fresh from her lips, Nature\u2019s message divine,\n Told sweetly, thro\u2019 beauties, of earth and the sky.\n\n An old fallen tree made a foot-bridge across\n That led to this hiding\u2014this sanctum of mine.\n Bright fern fringes bordered its soft rug of moss\u2014\n A wild grape had thatched with a clambering vine\n That hid for my coming bright sparkles of dew.\n O, bower of beauty, so temptingly cool!\n \u2019Twas the home of the fairies and they only knew\n The hours spent there that were stolen from school.\n The brook-bordered fields of that moderate farm\n Had each, for my heart, individual charm.\u2014\n The skies that bent over had glories unknown\n To all other lands, even Italy\u2019s own.\n More golden its sunsets than any since seen:\u2014\n Its shadowy woodland, so rich in its green,\n Had springs purling down in a dusky ravine:\n There oft at the fount, where the waters distilled,\n My leaf-fashioned cup I have held to be filled.\n O, nectar twould be if again I could drink\n Of the sparkles that fell there like pearls from its brink,\n As it tinkled down sweetly from its rock-basined source\n To join with its peers in their river-ward course.\n In those shadowy depths, hid away from the world,\n Most delicate forms of the fronds were uncurled:\n Spring-beauties, anemonies, clematis white,\n With violets, bluebells and maiden-hair fern,\u2014\n There were some of them ever to keep the spot bright,\n To waft me good-bye and to greet my return.\n Then the hillside, our play-ground\u2014I never can tell\n Its riches of beauty in bower and dell.\n The sunrise would kiss with its first ruddy glow\n Then slip to the river that murmured below\n And lighting its ripples with flashes of gold\n It made all the valley a joy to behold.\n That River! It ever kept time with my heart,\u2014\n Grew into my soul, of my life was a part.\n It echoed my laughter, was sad when I wept\u2014\n When drowsy it lulled me with song till I slept.\u2014\n \u2019Twas playmate and teacher, companion and friend,\n From the \u201cdeep-hole\u201d that mirrored the trees at \u201cthe bend\u201d\n To that spot of enchantment, where the willows bent low\n To whisper their love. There the river went slow\n As if hushing its wonted, wild, rollicking flow\n To linger and listen\u2014the story, so sweet,\n \u2019Twould have all the zephyr-swayed branches repeat.\n\n But the loveliest view from the home on the hill\u2014\n The one that could ever enrapture and thrill,\n Was a calm summer eve with the stars beaming thro\u2019\n From the unclouded depths of the fathomless blue,\u2014\n \u201cThe city of God\u201d filling vastness above,\n Each mansion aglow with the light of His love.\n Enhancing the beauty a broad, rising moon,\n That followed a day with a languorous noon\u2014\n A day that in going left the sun-door ajar,\n When a breeze, that was born of a rain-cloud afar,\n Had stolen thro, softly, with the great evening star,\n And whispered a vow to the languishing flowers\n To bring them, ere morning, refreshing in showers.\n\n Then the murmur of waters\u2014the ripple in view,\n The robings of Nature, aglitter with dew,\n The sway of the trees, and the rose-petals strewn\u2014\n The kiss of the breeze, that has breath of the June.\n Just sit in our group on the balcony there\n And dream of this scene, inexpressibly fair\n (Remember this gable looks square at the noon):\n How the gateways of glory thrown wide by the moon\n Could pour their white floods on the beautiful scene\u2014\n What charm in the mingling of shadow and sheen!\n\n The river went north in its tortuous trend\n And wound thro\u2019 the valley with many a bend.\n This lake-like expanse, deep and smoothe, as you see,\n Lying right in the pathway, \u2019tween Luna and me,\n On an evening like this seemed a great burnished glass.\n The Island shore here, had a margin of grass\u2014\n The round little cove cutting into its edge\n Grew ferns on its banks and was dotted with sedge.\n\n In the far-reaching shadows of lofty old trees\n This part of the Island was hid from the noon;\n Its quiet invited to slumberous ease;\n Here the River flowed gently as Afton or Doon.\n Kind Nature had woven a pleachy thick screen\n Of forest and vines that were standing between,\n And made this remote from the town and its mills.\n The zephyr-stirred leaves with their mystical chant\u2014\n That soft, lulling murmur, that muffles and stills\u2014\n Hushed the tumult and jar of the noisy \u201cold plant\u201d\n And made this a spot ever calm and serene,\n Fit temple for worship, embosomed in green.\n Here, the river seemed charmed by some mythical lore\u2014\n It loitered along, seemed reluctant to pass,\n While eddying wavelets crept up on the shore\n And kissed, with their cool lips, the velvety grass.\n\n On, slowly it flows until reaching a place\n Where a glimpse may be caught of the swift running \u201cRace;\u201d\n There it breaks into foam with a current so wild\u2014\n They rush to the meeting like mother and child.\n With a plaint in its story that the mother-stream thrills,\n Race babbles and tells how it toiled at the mills\u2014Was\n prisonned and held, by the strength of the flume\u2014\n Was power that wrought on the spindle and loom.\n Received in her bosom with loving embrace\n They mingle their songs, then, the River and Race,\n Delighting us all with their musical tones,\n While silver-capped ripples go dancing o\u2019er stones.\n\n * * * * *\n\n Aye, \u201cHill-crest\u201d had beauty beyond all compare,\n But words can ne\u2019er picture how wondrously fair\n For one whose misfortune \u2019tis not to have seen\n That river\u2014that hillside\u2014the trees in their green\u2014\n Heard the music of waters, o\u2019er pebbles at play,\n Or, lapping \u2019mong rocks and then swirling away\u2014\n The brook leaping down to be lost in the stream\n As womanhood merges our girl-hood\u2019s young dream\u2014If\n her childhood\u2019s bare feet have ne\u2019er pressed that cool sod\n Where first I loved Nature, thro\u2019 Nature her God.\n\n[Illustration: HILL-CREST HOME.]\n\n\n\n\nLillies of the Valley.\n\n\n O, pearly, waxen, lilly bells!\n Glad the tale your coming tells\u2014\n Blithest time, of all the year,\n Happy, blooming spring is here\n With lillies-of-the-valley.\n\n Shining like the precious gem,\n Divers bring from ocean\u2019s floor;\n God in blessing scattered them\n Blooming by the humblest door;\n Springing in some sheltered nook,\n Peeping by a mouldering wall,\n Nodding by a babbling brook,\n Purest, sweetest flowers of all,\n Are lillies-of-the-valley.\n\n Hidden from life\u2019s cares and frets\n Is the loved embowered spot\n Sacred to our floral pets\u2014\n Lillies and forget-me-not;\n Tho\u2019 the poet\u2019s fondest dream\n Wreaths about the violet,\n With the morning\u2019s dew agleam,\n Lovlier and sweeter yet\n Are lillies-of-the-valley.\n\n Roses fade and fall apart\u2014\n Lose their beauty with their bloom,\n In the lillies perfect heart\n Lingers long its sweet perfume;\n Mem\u2019ries dear we\u2019ll ne\u2019er forget,\n With their tender thrills of bliss,\n Hover round the mignonette,\n Yet, a charm supreme to this,\n Have lillies-of-the-valley.\n\n Queens of color, tall and proud\n Bloom among the asphodels,\n But of all that lauded crowd\n None so loved as lilly bells!\n Pansy bright with dreamy eyes\n Seems acquaint with mystic lore,\n Whispers \u201chope\u201d when sorrow sighs,\n Yet, we love the lillies more,\n Sweet lillies-of-the-valley.\n\n They will breathe the tender thought\n Sympathy would fain reveal,\n But, with love\u2019s fond message fraught,\n Half their charm is to conceal.\n Lillies of the Valley.\n Rosebud boldly tells the tale\n Cupid sent it to confess\u2014\n With the fragrance they exhale\n Lillies whisper,\u2014\u201cYou may guess.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nPearly Shells.\n\n\n All the rainbow hues are hiding\n In the pearly shells of white,\n But their beauties are depending\n On the mystic powers of light;\u2014\n Going, coming, like the blushes\n On a modest maiden\u2019s cheek,\n As her heart-throb quick confesses\n What her lips would never speak.\n\n Husband, there\u2019s a heart that\u2019s loving\n With devotion pure and deep;\n If you\u2019d know its fullest blessing,\n If the treasure you would keep,\n You must flash the light upon it,\n Beaming out from loving eyes;\n Then, as shell, reflecting sunlight,\n It will glow with lovely dyes.\n\n All within and all about it\n Soon will catch the won\u2019drous charm,\n By reflection and absorption\n Home will aye be bright and warm;\n But if left alone in darkness,\n Through a life of gloom and night,\n Like the sea-shell, pure and pearly,\n It will be but cold and white.\n\n\n\n\nCourage.\n\n\n Now with zeal that will not falter\n Rally once again for Right,\n Trusting ever and believing\n God is all supreme in might.\n\n Let us work\u2014give earnest effort,\n Ere the day in darkness set,\n Work with faith and love untiring\u2014\n He will crown our labors yet.\n\n Though allies of rum are legion,\n Fear no evil may betray,\n For He\u2019s given angels o\u2019er us\n Charge to keep us in the way.\n\n We shall \u201ctread upon the adder,\u201d\n If our faith be strong in God;\n Aye, \u201cthe dragon we shall trample\u201d\n If with \u201cGospel Peace\u201d we\u2019re shod.\n\n\n\n\nTrailing Arbutus.\n\n_Emblematic Flower of Michigan W. C. T. U._\n\n\n In Flora\u2019s dominion no flower\u2019s so fitting\n To symbol our union of labor and love;\n Not tender and petted, a hot-house exotic,\n It lives when the tempest is raging above.\n Sweet forest-born flower! \u2019Twas Michigan\u2019s dower\n When Nature apportioned her gifts that are rare\u2014\n So lovely, yet lowly! Affection, that\u2019s holy,\n Seems blent with its fragrance and breathing a prayer\n That the loved may be borne in the arms of His care.\n\n Its coming we hail as a promise of blessing\u2014\n That chains shall be riven, a glory be born;\n Its delicate hue is a hint of our mission\u2014\n The soft, rosy blush that first tinges the morn,\n When hope is awakening and gloom is receding\u2014\n A pressage of light that shall gladden the world,\n When darkness has fled and the cloud-rack is lifted\n And day\u2019s golden banners on the hills are unfurled.\n\n It needs not the florist, with art and punctilio\n Nor asks for the smiles of the sun-lighted skies,\n But richest and brightest, \u2019tis found in seclusion,\n In depths of the woodland where dark shadow lies;\n Far up on the highlands, or creeping on lowlands,\n \u2019Mong towering oaks or \u2019neath whispering pines,\n The shell-tinted bloom of our sweet, trailing laurel\n The lowliest objects with beauty entwines.\n\n \u2019Tis Purity\u2019s emblem\u2014Priscilla\u2019s loved flower!\n Oft springing in fenlands where dark, sodden mould\n Grows vile-odored herbage, e\u2019en poison-fed night-shade,\n Yet, pure there, its waxen, sweet blossoms unfold.\n Thus white-ribbon bands, thro\u2019 the moral morasses,\n Tho\u2019 threading the paths which the vilest are in,\n With purity throned in the soul of all action,\n May labor \u2019mid evils, unsullied by sin.\n\n Ah! truly, no flower in Flora\u2019s dominion,\n Can symbol the virtues and graces like this\u2014\n \u2019Tis faith and endurance in winter\u2019s wild tempest,\n While gentleness tenderly speaks in the kiss\n That comes in its fragrance, on fairy winged zephyr\n And hope, in the buds swelling under the snow,\n Is whispering of joys when the full opened blossoms\n Shall herald the summer, with roseate glow.\n\n We\u2019ll gather it in, from our own native woodlands,\n And wreathe, with its beauty, our altar of prayer;\n The holiest thought, with its ambient odor,\n Is stirred, as with incense, afloat on the air.\n We love it!\u2014we love it! our sweet trailing laurel,\n And make it our emblem in labor for God\u2014\n For home, with its blessings and love-lighted altar,\n And land of our birth, with its trial-tracked sod.\n\n\n\n\nEncouragement.\n\n\n What wealth of enjoyment a sentence may hold\n That flows in a rill of encouraging words!\n The heart\u2019s weary wings with new strength will unfold,\n While quick resolution all feebleness girds.\n The sunset may brighten\u2014outrival the dawning,\n If sympathy\u2019s warm touch the drooping life thrills;\n Tho\u2019 autumn has put out her gold-tassled awning\n And mantled with haze all the woodlands and hills\u2014\n Tho\u2019 the vintage hath yielded the first of its wines\u2014\n Tho\u2019 shadows lie eastward in wavering lines,\n And evening has whispered the low uttered warning\u2014\n \u201cThe glories of Day have all drifted afar\u201d\u2014\n The spirit will rally encouraged by love.\n E\u2019en twilight may deepen, if only this star\n Shall gleam with its vestal light brightly above,\n We\u2019ll work thro\u2019 life\u2019s gloaming, till angels unbar\n The orient gates of Eternity\u2019s morning.\n\n\n\n\nFaith.\n\n\n O, by and by the sun will shine again\u2014\n Will throw glad light on hill, and field, and plain;\n The earth will smile \u2019neath Plenty\u2019s joyous reign,\n And we shall know that \u201cGod remembers the world.\u201d\n\n Aye, by and by the clouds will roll away\n And then a greater boon, a golden day\n Will seem, because we\u2019ve known a gloomy May\n When Doubt, o\u2019er brooding, shadowed all our world.\n\n Let Hope\u2019s bright sunshine gladden every hour,\n E\u2019en tho\u2019 the skies with angry tempests lower;\n Believe, beyond, above, a higher Power\n Doth watch and guard, with loving, care the world.\n\n Shrink not nor e\u2019er, with dread, thy part delay;\n With faith and courage meet each coming day\u2014\n Let duties well performed pave all thy way,\n Thus make a royal pathway thro\u2019 the world.\n\n Tho\u2019 sorrows should be thick along thy path,\n Remember none are sent to thee in wrath;\n Love fires the bolt that makes the lightning scath\u2014\n A law that gives a brighter, better world.\n\n With frowning face Calamity may come,\n Ay, strike a hemisphere with terror dumb,\n But let no boding fear thy faith benumb,\n For He who made, in wisdom rules the world.\n\n Tho\u2019 skies and seas their floods together roll\u2014\n Tho\u2019 earth should pass, a shriveled scroll,\n His care is over each immortal soul\u2014\n He\u2019ll gather us to His eternal world.\n\n\n\n\nNirvana.\n\n\n Possession blest of that Celestial sphere\n Beyond the reach of hope and fear;\n Salvation\u2019s port\u2014Elysian shore\n Where souls remain, forevermore,\n In blissful calm, disturbed by naught\n Evolved by ranging, restless Thought,\n And where Eternal arms of Peace\n Enfolding, give secure release\n From chains that bind, to Death and Sin\u2014\n A severance from the What-has-been\u2014\n An end of seeming endless range;\n No farther transmigrating change,\n But REST of soul, that\u2019s sweet, supreme,\n Beyond, the touch of Life\u2019s wild dream:\n A draught that quenches all desire\u2014\n Extinguishes Ambition\u2019s fire,\n And leave, an essence, pure, divine,\n That shall with Brama ever shine,\n Quiescent in that blest repose\n To which the wise Guatama rose.\n\n\n\n\nHeredity.\n\n\n Thro\u2019 your Eden creeps the Serpent\n Luring to the paths of sin:\n In your own, weak self-indulgence\n Life accursing crimes begin:\n Aye, you blight your own with evils\n Yielding to the tempter\u2019s sway,\n Hushing conscience, Sin imputing\n To Eve\u2019s early, shadowed day.\n\n Science swings her torch above you\n From her lofty templed heights\u2014\n Paths, by which the Race climb upward,\n By command of God she lights;\n Can you, with His laws before you,\n Violate your sacred trust?\n Dare you taint the soul you\u2019re moulding\n For Eternity, with lust?\n\n Holy is your mission, mother,\n Lives confided to your care\u2014\n Shall they, of your dissipations\n Foulest scars forever bear?\n Hush the voice of self-indulgence\u2014\n Thrust the serpent from your heart,\n That he lure not to partaking\n Of the sins you may impart.\n\n While the fires of Being kindle\n At your own life\u2019s flame and glow\n And the mother love is springing\n From this holy interflow\u2014\n While the crimson tide is pulsing\n Thro\u2019 but one heart, for the two,\n Stain not thou, with sin, the fountain\n That the new life passes through.\n\n\n\n\nPebbles.\n\n\n Pebbles, thrown upon the shore\n By a storm-stirred wild commotion,\n Tell of tumult, crash and roar,\n When wild furies lashed the ocean.\n\n Pebbles, gathered from the shore\n When the waves were only sighing,\n Tell of balmy evening strolls\n When the sunset fires were dying.\n\n Pebbles\u2014some of brightest hue\u2014\n That were snatched by dimpled fingers\n When the waves came rolling in\u2014\n Loving thought around them lingers.\n\n Pebbles, in life\u2019s pathway lie\n That the careless roughly tread,\n While another passing by\n Finds them gems that lustre shed.\n\n Pebbles\u2014scan them\u2014cast away\n Wave-worn, rounded bits of stone,\n But if one hath lighting ray,\n Keep the treasure as thine own.\n\n * * * * *\n\n When the heart is sorrow-laden\n Seek the spirit\u2019s shrine of prayer,\n Jesus there will meet and bless you\n And you\u2019ll leave your burdens there.\n\n * * * * *\n\n As the blessed, healing mentha\n Holds for mortal pains nepentha,\n So hath sympathy the art\n To soothe the bruises of the heart.\n\n * * * * *\n\n From each act, however small,\n Some result must ever fall;\n Drop a pebble in the wave\n Distant shores its ripples lave.\n\n * * * * *\n\n Give gladness to childhood! \u2019twill brighten life\u2019s years;\n Pour hydromel for it, unmingled with tears,\n So fondly, caressingly, memory clings\n To youth\u2019s every joy, forgetting its stings.\n\n * * * * *\n\n Experience teaches some lessons of worth\u2014\n That wealth is not always of lordliest birth,\n That duty makes labor, tho\u2019 humble, sublime\u2014\n That crucial trial gives strength to the soul:\u2014\n There\u2019s no royal road to Life\u2019s coveted goal,\n Earth\u2019s throngs must all pass the same doorway of Time.\n\n * * * * *\n\n If Heaven\u2019s light beam on your tears,\n Hope\u2019s bright bow will span the cloud,\n While God\u2019s own promise, calming fears,\n Will lift the soul by sorrow bowed.\n\n * * * * *\n\n Mystery deep, thy doors unbar,\n And let us look within!\u2014\n Thought goes ranging far\u2014afar,\n On webs our fancies spin.\n\n * * * * *\n\n The life I live is not my own\u2014\n \u2019Tis subterfuge and dross,\n The yearning soul makes hidden moan,\n With secret sense of loss.\n\n * * * * *\n\n O, dear Savior, I am weary\u2014\n Let me rest my soul with Thee!\n Mansions bright, Thou art preparing\u2014\n Wilt thou, Jesus, welcome me?\n\n * * * * *\n\n For the bright, warm joys, once cherished,\n There\u2019s a withered rose and a brown, sere leaf;\n Ah! dear were the hopes that perished,\n Yet there\u2019s wealth of life, in the golden sheaf.\n\n * * * * *\n\n When a gleam of the sun, thro\u2019 a rift in the storm,\n Throws a light on our path, that was shadowed before,\n We look to the cloud, for the beautiful form\n Of the bow, that is promise to us, evermore.\n\n * * * * *\n\n The rose is girt with thorns about,\n The berries sweet, with briars\u2014\n Thus Fate doth ever hedge us from\n Our heart\u2019s supreme desires.\n\n * * * * *\n\n Tossing, rolling, restless sea,\n Picture thou of Life to me\u2014Shadow-clouds\n now floating o\u2019er,\n Foam and drift-wood on the shore:\u2014\n Depths of dark and billowy waves,\n Wrecking hopes and hollowing graves\u2014\n Breaking on the beach in moans,\n Seem thy cavern\u2019s echoed groans.\n\n Prosperous winds, and thou wilt bear,\n On thy heaving bosom fair,\n Snowy sails, with treasures laden\n From the distant, sun-kissed Aden,\u2014\n Costly fabrics\u2014richest stores,\n For their own, dear, home-lit shores,\n Where Love\u2019s altars brightly burn,\n While she waits their glad return.\n\n * * * * *\n\n In all this beauteous world of ours\n What gift, of Love, so sweet as flowers!\n\n * * * * *\n\n O, sweet is the fountain of soothing\n That ever is found in His Word\u2014\n Drink deeply when heart-wounds are bleeding\n And the peace of the spirit is stirred.\n\n\n\n\nWords.\n\n\n O, words may be loving and mellow in tone,\n Sweet as the dew on the flowers of Hermon,\n Gently imparting a blessing their own,\n Precious with promise, as Olivet\u2019s sermon.\n\n Words may be careless, and cruel and coarse\u2014\n Be tauntingly hurled, or so bitterly spoken,\n Resistless as lightning\u2019s destroying force,\n They scar with their scathing the heart they have broken.\n\n Words may have edge that is keener than steel\u2014\n May pierce with their points like the swift-flying arrow;\n They hurt with these stings while the victim will feel,\n Then tear through the heart like a torturing harrow.\n\n Words may be venomed with malice and spite,\n May wither with scorn, with contempt and derision\u2014\n Be dreaded like adders when coiling to bite\n Or hiss out their poison in whispered suspicion.\n\n Aye, words may be vile as a basilisk\u2019s breath\u2014\n A falsehood the germ\u2014an ovum of evil,\n Impregnate with calumny\u2019s virus innate,\n Then heated and hovered by envy and hate;\n Thus \u201cbrooded by serpents,\u201d like the monster medieval,\n Come forth with his powers of blasting with death.\n\n But words that are warmed in the sunlight of love\n Will soothe with their feeling a brother\u2019s affliction;\n \u2019Tis the Spirit from heaven that comes like a dove,\n So gently descending in sweet benediction.\n\n \u2019Tis blessed receiving what kindness imparts,\n How trifling so ever the token,\n Thrice blessed, the giving of solace to hearts\n That words of injustice have blighted and broken.\n There\u2019s comfort and balm for life\u2019s various smarts\n In words of true sympathy, tenderly spoken.\n\n\n\n\nMother.\n\n\n Oh! mother, mine, mother, mine, come to me now,\n With a touch of thy hand sweep the care from my brow;\n Oh, come, on the wings of the silences come,\n Dear mother, my own, as you reigned in our home.\n\n Oh! mother, mine, mother, mine, come now at eve.\n I sit in the gloaming, in loneliness grieve;\n The world is so selfish, so cold and unkind,\n Sweet solace for pain in thy love I would find.\n\n Oh! mother, mine, mother, mine, hear me, I pray!\n In the silence of night, blot the sorrows of day;\n And point me away from the earth and its care.\n To the beautiful dwelling\u2014that mansion so fair,\n\n Where mother, mine, mother mine, waiteth for me,\n With loved ones who\u2019re watching my barque on life\u2019s sea\u2014\n Who\u2019ll stretch out their welcoming hands from the shore,\n When I reach the glad haven, all buffetings o\u2019er.\n\n\n\n\nHands.\n\n\n There are hands we fondly cherish\n Not alone for form and grace,\n But the loving deeds that mold them,\n Place them next a sainted face.\n\n They can soothe as if with magic,\n When the fever-furies rage;\n Their caresses, unobstrusive,\n E\u2019en a heartache can assuage.\n\n Hands can emphasize a welcome,\n Far beyond the gifts of speech,\n And their language, plain and truthful,\n Doubt did never yet impeach.\n\n Aye! there\u2019s feeling warm and tender,\n Ever pulsing in the palm,\n In whose kindly, silent pressure\n Sorrow finds a healing balm.\n\n Love\u2019s sweet mysteries course their fingers,\n For their lightest touch of tips\n Has the secret gift of thrilling,\n Like affection\u2019s clinging lips.\n\n They can knit with mystic flosses\n Such a net about the heart\u2014\n Earth has naught so near a heaven\n As this thraldom doth impart.\n\n Hands have heart-beats throbbing through them\n And the lightning flash of thought;\n \u2019Tis by such that grand impulsions\n Into living deeds are wrought.\n\n Hands may be a sculptor\u2019s pattern,\n Tipped with smooth, shell-tinted nails,\n Yet convey a touch, repulsive\n As of scaly serpent trails.\n\n If the soul is gross and selfish,\n There\u2019s no art the trait conceals,\n But the hand in mold or clasping,\n To the sentient heart reveals.\n\n Idle hands are limp and nerveless,\n Lack expression, fervor, grasp\u2014\n They receive nor give sensation,\n Simply lie within your clasp.\n\n Hands may flash a wealth of jewels,\n Yet display a pauper soul\u2014\n God inscribes these outspread tablets\n From the spirit\u2019s hidden scroll.\n\n\n\n\nEndymion.\n\n\n When the noble son of Zeus\n Asked the gift of youth immortal,\n Little wot he of the ages\n Stretching onward from life\u2019s portal;\n Tho\u2019 he walked with gods, he wearied,\n Wished for rest, intense and deep,\u2014\n Asked another gift of Zeus;\n That of everlasting sleep.\n\n And his thoughtless wish was granted;\n Glad he hushed his soul\u2019s repining\n In the winged god\u2019s misty vapors\n And, on Latmos\u2019 height reclining,\n Laid down all earth\u2019s cares and trials\u2014\n All its wearying heat and strife,\n Yet within his dormant being,\n Held the essences of life.\n\n Fair Selene, robed in beauty,\n Wandering forth in loneliness,\n Bent above the youth admiring\u2014\n Touched him with a light caress;\n And her gazing woke his spirit\n To a dream\u2019s ecstatic bliss,\n As her lips, with tender fondness,\n Snatched from his that holy kiss.\n\n And her heart\u2019s new, quickened pulsing\n Thrilled along love\u2019s unseen wires,\u2014\n Stirred in him responsive passion,\u2014\n Lit his soul\u2019s electric fires.\n Then the roused, enrapt Endymion,\n Shaking off the slumbrous air,\n Cried,\u2014\u201cYe gods, take back your giving,\n All life\u2019s perils I will dare;\n Wake my soul to keenest feeling,\n Let its sense of pleasure reign,\n Tho\u2019 my path were paved with spear-points\n I would count the waking gain.\u201d\n\n Glad he left the heights so longed for,\n Sought the lowland\u2019s balmy air,\n Leading her, the loved Selene,\n Thro\u2019 the flowery valleys fair,\n Where the paths all flash with diamonds\n From the jewelled crown of Night,\u2014\n Where the lake upon his bosom\n Rocks the sleeping lillies white,\n And his lullaby in whispers\n Floating thro\u2019 the leafy dell,\n Mingling with perfume and zephyr\n Wove a sweet entrancing spell.\n\n And \u2019twas there at Sylva\u2019s altar,\n With the gazing stars above,\n Soul to soul, by mute impulsion,\n That they pledged eternal love;\n Ay, \u2019twas then the spheric paean,\n Through the great expanses spread,\n When in Beauty\u2019s listening stillness,\n Peace and Purity were wed.\n\n And tonight I see them roaming\n Thro\u2019 the flowery paths of eld\u2014\n Thro\u2019 the valley, by the lakelet,\n Where their nuptial feast was held;\n Where the moon-beams dance with shadows,\n In the hushed, half-hidden glen,\n Shunning Mammon\u2019s crowded cities\n And the busy walks of men.\n\n But linger not too long, Selene,\u2014\n Hasten from thy lover\u2019s side,\n Or, in fleecy cloud-wrought vesture\n From the gaze of Eos hide;\n Else like darkly mantled Pleiad,\n Wailing robes of forfeit glory,\n Thou wilt find thy charms are stolen\n By the jealous, fair Aurora.\n\n Hasten, hasten, for she cometh,\u2014\n Venus bright doth herald now,\n All Jove\u2019s pageantry attends her,\n Erse\u2019s gems bedeck her brow,\n And her royal robes are \u2019broidered\n Rich with rose and amethyst;\u2014\n Hasten, but with thine Endymion\n Keep the holy evening tryst.\n\n\n\n\nCalypso\u2014The Lover\u2019s Pocket.\n\n\n Erastes saw with vain regret\n A hedge of guards was thickly set\n Around the fair one he would woo;\n For Flora\u2019s aid he quick applied\u2014\n \u201cBe art of yours with Love\u2019s allied\n And Cupid\u2019s throng shall kneel to you.\u201d\n\n Then Flora wrought that mystic flower\n And graced with it Love\u2019s Sylvan bower,\n And there a wildling still it grows;\n The hue she gave was pearly white,\n But Love would add one more delight\n And mingled in a blush of rose.\n\n T\u2019was given such an artless guise\n That e\u2019en suspicion\u2019s prying eyes\n Doth no intriguing plan suppose:\n And there within, securely hid,\n Beneath the blossom\u2019s fringy lid\n The lover\u2019s missive finds repose.\n\n * * * * *\n\n \u201cWilt thou, dear maid, thy wealth resign\n And drink with me love\u2019s ruby wine\u2014\n In weal or woe my fortune\u2019s share?\u201d\n She wrote and hid\u2014\u201cI will be thine\u2014\n With love\u2019s devotion ever mine\n There\u2019s naught but I could dare.\u201d\n\n A closely folded plan for flight\n (That marked the nearest moonless night,)\n The Orchid in its heart concealed.\n While vigilance unconscious slept,\n Two dusky steeds thro\u2019 darkness swept\n Across an unfrequented field\n And brought the lovers quickly where\n A waiting priest, with pledge and prayer,\n The sacred bonds of wedlock sealed.\n\n Paternal pride aroused, irate,\n With bluster came, a moment late,\u2014\n The holy rite had joined their hands,\n The vows were made, the pledges given\n That bound the twain as one in heaven,\n Despite his wrath and stern commands.\n\n \u201cHow could you thus,\u201d he cried in rage,\n \u201cDefy my will, disgrace my age!\n I\u2019ll disinherit and disown\u2014And\n you shall have eternal scorn\n For wedding with that lowly born\u2014\n Aye, you shall reap as you have sown.\u201d\n\n * * * * *\n\n \u201cO, woman! thou art gall and wine\u2014\n Deceit\u2019s worst name, to me, is thine!\n I thought her will succumbed to mine,\n So cheerful, happy, she had seemed.\n I felt within a conscious pride\n In power to hold, subdue and guide\u2014\n That she was conquered, fondly dreamed.\u201d\n\n \u201cAlong the wood she walked with me,\n Among the wild flowers, gay and free,\n (I guarded her with watchful eye,)\n With eager hand she plucked and smiled\n As guileless as a happy child\u2014\n No love-lorn look\u2014no sob or sigh.\u201d\n\n \u201cAye, woman\u2019s ways and woman\u2019s wiles\n Are knitted in with looks and smiles\n By which man\u2019s wisdom oft is foiled.\n She\u2019ll seem so gently yielding _will_\n While scheming for her own way, still\u2014\n With sweet deceits will blind us, till\n Our dearest hopes have been despoiled.\u201d\n\n \u201cBut, \u2019tis senseless nursing helpless wrath,\u2014\n Shall I strew thorns along her path\n Whose only dower\u2019s a father\u2019s curse?\u2014\n Drive them out with want to roam?\n I think I\u2019ll take the couple home\u2014\n In truth, her parents did much worse.\u201d\n\n * * * * *\n\n Calypso, still with winning grace,\n Adorns the ferny, sedgey place\n By purling brook or shaded dell,\n And only Cupid knows its art\n Of hiding in its fragrant heart\n The secret, sweet, that Love would tell.\n\n\n\n\nWhat Is Love?\n\n\n Not the fierce-destroying power\n Of the hot sirocco\u2019s breath,\n Withering every tender flower,\n Strewing all its path with death\n Or helpless, silent sorrow.\n\n \u2019Tis a strength that holds each feeling\n But a slave to do its will\u2014\n Every wish, abjectly kneeling,\n Waits its mandate to fulfill\n Or creeps, by stealth, in shadow.\n\n \u2019Tis Life\u2019s sacred, golden chalice,\n From as rich a vintage filled\n For the cottage, as the palace\u2014\n Sweetest draughts have been distilled\n With want upon the lever.\n\n \u2019Tis a tender, true devotion,\n Never soiled by thoughts of pelf,\n But with gladsome, sweet emotion\n To its altar bringing _self_,\n A sacrificial offering.\u2014\n\n Joy\u2019s bell whose silver ringing\n Down the ages has been borne\n Ever since in Eden, singing,\n Wedded love hailed rosy morn\u2014\n Still the tones fall sweet as ever.\n\n \u2019Tis the Horeb of the spirit,\n Where no coarse-shod thought may tread,\n The part divine, which souls inherit\n From love\u2019s holy Fountain-Head,\n Influent with our being.\n\n\n\n\nSleighing.\n\n\n Hear the bells, distant bells!\n How the merry music swells,\n As the steed, with noble speed,\n Nearer, nearer, nearer comes,\n Strength doth wing his flying feet;\n Onward, onward, onward going,\n With a strong and rythmic beat;\n Youth, with health and beauty glowing,\n Blends a rippling, laughter peal\n With the ringing hoofs of steel\u2014\n How the mingling music hums!\n\n Hear the bells, joyous bells!\n Love\u2019s sweet tale their music tells,\n As they go o\u2019er glistening snow;\n Wildly, wildly, rushing by,\n Fainter grow the hoof-beats now,\n Fainter, fainter, fainter growing;\n Venus shines on evening\u2019s brow,\n Moonlight floods o\u2019er earth are flowing;\n O, the reckless wild delights\n Of a sparkling, winter night\u2019s\n Sleighing, \u2019neath a moonlit sky!\n\n Ho, the bells, merry bells!\n Rapture in their music dwells;\n Raptures sweet, in bliss repeat,\n Gliding, gliding, o\u2019er the snow.\n Every pulse with pleasure thrills;\n To the heart new joys revealing.\n As when springtime, bird-note trills\n Stir the sweetest fount of feeling,\n Welling with all tender thought,\n From the dulcet music caught,\n Blending all in joyous flow!\n\n * * * * *\n\n Hark, the bells\u2014homeward bells!\n Something now their music quells,\n For they go, tinkling\u2014so\u2014\n Tinkle\u2014tinkle\u2014seem to wait;\n Why that steed such lagging feet,\n When returning, homeward going?\n (\u2019Mong the furs their faces meet)\u2014\n Ah! that nag is very knowing,\n Stepping lightly o\u2019er the snow\u2014\n Have their whispers, soft and low,\n Changed his mood and changed his gait?\n\n\n\n\nFirst Love.\n\n\n Tender and true as the starlight of heaven,\n Sweet as the heart of a bud when it opes,\n Swift as the flash of the cloud-leaping levin,\n Rich as the springtime in promise and hopes,\n Pure as the gleam of the dew on the flowers\n Is love\u2019s first awakening in youth\u2019s dreamy hours.\n\n It sings in the heart like a forest-hid rill\u2014\n Runs over its rim like a rock-basined spring;\n Strong, it o\u2019erpowers cold reason with will,\n Impulsively binding two lives with a ring.\n It goes where it listeth, unreined as the wind,\n So reckless, \u2019tis said, that the love god is blind.\n\n Joyful, yet trembling like a zephyr-kissed rose,\n Flushing and paling like skies of the dawn,\n Silent, lest speech shall the secret disclose,\n Wayward and shy as a mountain-bred fawn,\n Flying the bosom where yearning to rest,\n Hushing the tenderness, thrilling the heart,\n Palpitant tempests disturbing the breast;\n Enjoying\u2014enduring the sweet and the smart\n That comes of the wounding with Cupid\u2019s first dart.\n\n\n\n\nMan.\n\n\n O, grand and worshipful that being MAN,\n As fashioned by a maiden\u2019s dream-lit mind!\n To her, his soul has nobleness enshrined\u2014\n \u2019Tis pure\u2014Love\u2019s altar-place, where God began,\n \u2019Neath Eden\u2019s flow\u2019ry groves, the household plan.\n In rose-mist wreathed, by sweet enchantment blind,\n How oft she\u2019s worshiped, wedded, but to find\n The real, no more her dream, than piping Pan.\n\n Some \u201cnoble deeds\u201d bear cold ambition\u2019s stain,\n And chaff is found among Love\u2019s golden grain.\n \u2019Tis well the rose-mist lifts and clearer beams\n Show man\u2019s real self, e\u2019en tho\u2019 it give her pain,\n Else, so idolatrous, she might, it seems,\n Forget her God, if he were all she dreams.\n\n\n\n\nTrust of Childhood.\n\n\n An angel comes down from the realms of light,\n To guard me in slumber, thro\u2019 hours of the night;\n Her presence is gentle, I feel she is there,\n As soon as I\u2019ve uttered my evening prayer;\n So tenderly watching she stays in my room\n Till darkness has folded his mantle of gloom.\n I\u2019ve felt on my forehead her soft finger tips\n And the touch of her kiss, lightly pressed on my lips,\n To waken me gently, ere leaving my bed,\n When morning\u2019s bright beauties o\u2019er earth had been spread.\n\n Forbearing to open my earth-gazing eyes\n To look on the guardian sent from the skies,\n I\u2019ve listened and heard, e\u2019en the rustle of wings;\n And then at the casement, where mocking bird swings,\n A sweeping of roses and jasmines I\u2019ve heard,\n And knew that their beauty and perfume were stirred\n By her gossamer robes, as she hastened away,\n To the rose-tinted gateway that opens to day;\n (For Heaven, I know, is but little beyond,\n Where glories of morn, in its borders have dawned);\n And then by the holiness left in the room,\n Afloat, like the fragrance from violet bloom,\n I knew that a presence had surely been there,\n Had left with me blessing, and wafted my prayer\n To the throne of the Father for guidance and care.\n\n * * * * *\n\n O, trust of my childhood! bright halo of youth!\n Come, veil for tonight the stern visage of truth;\n With faith that\u2019s elysian, I\u2019d drift down the stream\n To imagery islands, with beauty agleam,\n And hear, as I heard in the far away years,\n (Ere fancy\u2019s young dream had been melted in tears),\n A strain from a harp, floating over to me,\n From a cloud-bannered sky, bending down to the sea,\n Where golden-crowned angels could plainly be seen\n With robings of white, in the glimmering sheen.\n\n Then Heaven was near, and the curtain of blue\n So thin, that at sunset the glory shone through;\n Those silken illusions, inflated with joy,\n Phylosophy\u2019s hand has been swift to destroy;\n And reason\u2019s keen steel, that\u2019s so cruelly cold,\n Has cut thro\u2019 the shimmer of heavenly gold,\n And left but the hard-featured science of light\n That will not be veiled for a dream of tonight.\n\n\n\n\nAlone.\n\n \u201cLaugh and the world laughs with you;\n Weep and you weep alone.\u201d\n\n\n In her soul\u2019s secret temple she\u2019s standing alone:\n Her being\u2019s real self, in the silence will bow;\n O\u2019er that altar, once glowing, cold ashes are strown\u2014\n Where sunshine once flooded, the shadows fall now.\n\n Away from the world, and alone with her God,\n She kneels in this consecrate place and may weep;\n This temple, by coarse sandaled grossness, untrod,\n Is never unbarred till the world is asleep.\n\n She leaves there her grief, with its shadowy stole,\n Concealing her anguish, with trembling and fear;\u2014Must\n laugh, tho\u2019 it lines a black scath on her soul,\n For the world will not _pay_ for the sigh and the tear.\n\n Aye, leaves there her sackcloth and shuts to the door;\n She puts on the mask for the frivolous world\n Her frail barque is launched \u2019mid its tumult and roar\u2014\n Unhelmed, thro\u2019 its mammon-cut channels \u2019tis hurled.\n\n The laugh, the world echoes, grows empty and hard\n When the jingle of gold is the mirth-stirring power;\n The soul is, by Avarice, shrivelled and scarred\n When it barters for pottage, a heavenly dower.\n\n God fits us, thro\u2019 suffering, for Sympathy\u2019s needs;\n \u2019Tis warring with wrong that will win for the Right;\n Oft Sorrow\u2019s lone path, to His ripe vineyard, leads\u2014\n Christ gave us, through Gethsame, heavenly light.\n\n Go work in His vineyard wherever \u2019tis needed\n And earnestly work for the sake of the need;\n Be Fame\u2019s fickle promise forever unheeded,\n Unknown, in thy labor, the miser\u2019s low greed.\n\n\n\n\nNight.\n\n\n Thro\u2019 azure paths fair Venus comes with golden bars\n To close the gates of Day. The twilight\u2019s dusky stole\n Is lightly spangled o\u2019er with heaven\u2019s brightest stars;\n Soon Night will bring her countless ones whose ceaseless roll\n Thro\u2019 boundless depths of space, repeat creation\u2019s song.\n Thus canopied by God\u2019s omnipotence, outspread,\n The earth doth lull and soothe her surging, restless throng\n With brooding calm. Sleep\u2019s poppied sweets for toil are shed.\n\n When strife is hushed to rest, by Nature\u2019s drowsy hum\n And barter\u2019s dins are stilled\u2014its flaunting ensigns furled,\n When, drugged with Somnus\u2019 wines, earth\u2019s noisy crowds are dumb\n And stillness spreads her slumber-robe, so softly o\u2019er the world,\n \u2019Tis joy to watch Night\u2019s queenly orb, climb up the eastern stair,\n And pour her flood of silver light o\u2019er hills and bowers,\n That in the sacred silence gleam, so radiant and fair,\n In glistening robes of green and dewy, fragrant flowers.\n\n All hail, blest hour of cool repose, when Labor\u2019s chains\n That bind the mind, thro\u2019 all the day, to weary tasks\n Are loosed! Ay, now, the soul, in freedom from their pains,\n May drink from founts of pure supernal joy. It basks\n In glories which the night o\u2019er earth and sky hath strown.\n Compassion sweet, the dewy coolness doth impart\n And dreamy perfumes, by the balmy breezes blown,\n Are evening\u2019s sweet acopic, when she folds us to her heart.\n\n\n\n\nDisappointment.\n\n\n We plant sometimes a tender flower\u2014\n Watch and wait through sun and shower;\n Mark its tiny leaflets, green,\n Then, the upward shoot between,\u2014\n Springing, springing, tendrils clinging,\n Hopes like cherubs round it winging\n Whispering of the blooming time.\n\n Watch the buds burst thro\u2019 their sheathing,\n Beauty\u2019s promise, round them wreathing,\n Dream of fragrance they enfold,\n Lovely blooms, almost, behold,\n Reach an eager hand for grasping\u2014\n Find the tendrils all unclasping\u2014\n Withered, ere the blooming time.\n\n\n\n\nLove\u2019s Ideal.\n\n\n Was there ever a love like the love of my dream?\n Love, holy, unselfish, devoted and pure,\n Unfailing and sweet as the flow of a stream\n Whose source is a spring, that God made to endure.\n\n A love that is LOVE, with no blending of dross;\n Where soul, unto soul, giveth strength of its own\u2014\n A love that knows never of languor or loss,\n Or silently grieves that its _spirit_ has flown.\n\n A love with its possibles nobly fulfilled,\n Where heart unto heart is e\u2019er loyal and true,\n Where blessing for each, is thro\u2019 kindness distilled\u2014\n A rodomel never embittered with rue.\n\n A love that the angels, rejoicing to see,\n Would guard in life\u2019s paths from the harpies that roam;\n Peace, Happiness, Charity,\u2014loveliest three\u2014\n Would make, for such lovers, a Heaven of Home.\n\n\n\n\nA Legend of the Lily.\n\n\n Abroad, June moon was brightly beaming\n In the depths of heaven\u2019s blue,\n While the asphodels were bending\n With the clinging beads of dew,\n When the silver rays in silence,\n Glinting thro\u2019 the swaying trees,\n Saw a modest flower turning\n To a roving, balmy breeze.\u2014\n\n Heard the zephyr softly whisper:\n \u201cAh! my Lily, charming, sweet\u2014\n Sure the god of love has led us\n In this bowery place to meet;\n Richest odors I will bring you\n From the islands of the sea;\n Aye, your beauty has enchained me\u2014\n Will you give your heart to me?\u201d\n\n With a touch exquisite, subtile,\n Then he turned to his, her face;\n In her blush of deeper crimson,\n That she faltered, he could trace.\n \u201cI have sought you\u2014will you trust me?\n Faithful as the stars I\u2019ll be\u2014\n With your fragrant breathings, answer,\n Will you give your love to me?\u201d\n\n Frail the flower, tranced enraptured\n By the lover\u2019s soft caress,\n To his tender wooing answered,\n With impulsive rashness,\u2014\u201cyes.\u201d\n Then, exultant, zephyr gloried\n In the treasure he had won\u2014\n Deftly stole her sparkling jewels,\n Sharing with the rising sun.\n\n Brushed the spangles from her tresses\n With his playful finger tips,\n Bolder grew with his caresses\u2014\n Gathering sweetness from her lips;\n Robbed her beauty of the freshness\n That was hers in early morn\u2014\n Left her \u2019neath the sun of noonday,\n Burning like the gaze of scorn.\n\n Drooping as in heat of censure\n Evening found her in the dust,\n Lifted her with tearful pity\n From the blight of trampled trust;\n But the tender flush of loving\n From her face was blanched and gone,\n Yet a beauty, born of trial,\n Met the radiant glow of dawn.\n\n Now for her the moon is shining\n With a calm and holy light;\n Dew-like gems of rarest beauty\n Sparkles on her brow at night;\n With her white face turned toward heaven\n In her vestal robe she stands,\n As a priestess, at an altar,\n Lifting consecrated hands.\n\n Chastest forms of beauty round her\u2014\n Stars that gem the vaulted blue\n Join with her in silent warning,\u2014\n \u201cLet thy love be pure and true\u2014\n Trusting e\u2019en the black-browed storm-cloud,\n With its leaping lightning-blaze,\n Rather than the rover\u2019s whisper,\n Neath the moon\u2019s enchanting gaze.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nTo James Newton Mathews.[2]\n\n\n Must write a sonnet!\u2014ere the Poet\u2019s rank,\n With its devouring hopes, I dare to claim\u2014\n Ere I with them may seek a place or name\u2014\n Ere I may taste Castalia\u2019s fount, where drank\n The bards of eld, or find the flowery bank\n Of clear Penneus, flashing back the flame\n Of sunset fires. Thro\u2019 moorlands, low and dank,\n Alone, must grope, unlit by torch of fame.\n\n Tho\u2019 Poesy should stir my soul to song\n That flowed like liquid tenderness along,\n Or, wild and glad as leaping forest rills\u2014\n Tho\u2019 Nature\u2019s music thro\u2019 my being thrills\n And Imagery, with all her fairy throng,\n My dreamy world of thought and vision fills,\u2014\n Alas! I\u2019m doomed\u2014this stanza is a line too long.\n\n[2] \u201cYou must write a Sonnet to gain a Poet\u2019s diploma.\u201d\u2014J. N. M.\n\n\n\n\nThe Great Hereafter.\n\n\n Will the wrongs of life be righted,\n Fruited there the hopes here blighted,\n In the great hereafter?\n Will the darkened lives be lighted\n And dissevered souls united\n In the great hereafter?\n\n Will this wearing, wild commotion\n Sink to rest and sweet emotion\n Calm all strife hereafter?\n Will love\u2019s slighted, fond devotion\n Reach beyond life\u2019s tossing ocean\n To the great hereafter?\n\n Will the vows here lightly broken\n With repentant tears be spoken\n In the great hereafter?\n The wounded one accept the token\n Of the heart\u2019s remorse unspoken\n In the great hereafter?\n\n Gladly from its idols turning\n Will the soul forget its yearning\n In the great hereafter?\n Thro\u2019 a quickened sense discerning\n That the labors we\u2019ve been spurning\n Keep love\u2019s holy incense burning\n In the great hereafter?\n\n Shall we find that hopes deceiving\n Helped us on to grand achieving\n In the great hereafter?\n And be blest with glad receiving\n What is now but faith, believing\n In the great hereafter?\n Will the soul that\u2019s drunk the vial\n Of a bitter self-denial\n Feel the loss hereafter?\n Or, thro\u2019 sacrifice and trial,\n Will it triumph o\u2019er Belial,\n In the great hereafter?\n\n Will the bands by dogmas riven\n Scathed and scarred by anger levin,\n Make a peaceful, joyous Heaven\n In the great hereafter?\n For the good for which they\u2019ve striven\n Will their errors be forgiven\n In the great hereafter?\n\n There, with pomp, his work resuming\n Will the bigot, still presuming,\n God\u2019s prerogative assuming\n In the great hereafter,\n Sit as judge, his brother dooming,\n And with creed-lit torch reluming\n Fires of torture \u201cunconsuming,\u201d\n Through the great hereafter?\n\n Will the Wrong, the Right assailing,\n Wring from suffering helpless wailing\n In the great hereafter?\u2014\n Conquered Good, with banners trailing,\n Seeking streams for Hope\u2019s regaling,\n Be mirage-lured, till faint and failing,\n Faith becomes a phantom, sailing\n Through the great hereafter?\n\n Or, shall our spirit eyes beholding\n God\u2019s mysterious plans unfolding\n In the great hereafter,\n See His strength the Right upholding\n And his love the weak enfolding\n In the great hereafter?\n\n Struggling here with opposition,\n Gives, perchance, the strong volition\n Some may need for angel mission,\n In the great hereafter;\n And the ills of life\u2019s condition,\n To the tried may bring fruition\n Of a joyous, sweet elysian\n In the great hereafter.\n\n What has seemed Fate\u2019s unfair dealing,\n May unveil, a joy revealing\n In the great hereafter:\n Though denying our appealing,\n Made in agony of feeling,\n God may still, with love\u2019s own healing,\n _Higher destiny, be sealing_\n For the Great Hereafter.\n\n\n\n\nLate October.\n\n\n The night was black\u2014the dismal rain\n First dripped from sullen, inky clouds,\n And then was dashed against the pane,\n By winds that shrieked like demon crowds;\n When, on the midnight\u2019s ebon breast,\n The storm, a moment, lulled to rest,\n I heard this low, half stifled moan\n With sorrow braided in the tone\u2014\n \u201cWho cares for me? Who, who?\u201d\n\n The lurid lightning\u2019s fitful glare\n Lit all the far, horizon\u2019s rim\u2014\n It showed the walnut, stripped and bare,\n And clutching one great, leafless limb\n Sat something weird, of dusky form;\n Defenceless, in the pelting storm,\n She faced alone that angry sky\u2014\n October\u2019s voice seemed in the cry,\n \u201cWho cares for me? Who, Who?\u201d\n\n With rush and wrench an angered fiend\n The loosened shutters clanged and swung,\n His single stroke the grove had preened\n And wide its deadened branches flung,\n And from the wide, o\u2019er-hanging eaves\n He tore the crimson ivy leaves\n And wildly whirled them on the blast\u2014\n The phantom murmured, as they passed,\n \u201cWho cares for me? Who, Who?\u201d\n\n The maples writhed as, tempest torn,\n Their branches beat the gables high,\n And, in the storm\u2019s dark bosom borne,\n Mad thunders bellowed thro\u2019 the sky.\n She spurned the spruce, with stately form,\n Whose robes of green might shield and warm,\n And yet, like sobbing on the gale,\n Was monotoned that dismal wail,\n \u201cWho cares for me? Who, Who?\u201d\n\n Again the leaping lightnings glared,\n The wind swept down the clinging vines,\n In twisting gusts the trees were bared,\n It rocked and tossed the rasping pines;\n Unmoved, amid the tempest there,\n And as the wraith of grim despair,\n Still clutched the limb, that dusky form,\n Repeating to the driving storm,\n \u201cWho cares for me? Who, who?\u201d\n\n The arbor gleamed with tangled vines,\n Where, erstwhile, hung, \u2019mid emerald sheen,\n The clustering wealth of unpressed wines;\n And charms of scarlet, gold and green,\n With opulence of fruit and grain,\n Poured riches for October\u2019s reign;\n Now, conquered, robbed, usurped her throne,\n Her sorrow welling in the moan,\n \u201cWho cares for me? Who, who?\u201d\n\n * * * * *\n\n The morning sun is mocking cold\u2014\n The vanquished queen stands, pale, forlorn,\n Her gauzy veil of dream and gold,\n And royal robes, all rent and torn,\n With bannered glories, trampled down,\n To bring her victor\u2019s sparkling crown.\n She feebly smiles and passes on\n To join the old October\u2019s, gone\u2014\n November wails\u2014\u201cWho cares.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nOn the Beach.\n\n\n O, tell me, rolling, tossing billow,\n Where thy place of rest may be!\u2014\n Who shall find, and who peruse them,\n Were these lines consigned to thee!\n Will the wild winds catch and carry,\n \u2019Mid the waves tumultuous roar,\n Leaving them where golden glory\n Flames along the sunset shore?\n\n Pillowed on thy throbbing bosom\n _Where_ will this wee, waifling drift?\n Will an eager hand stretch for it,\n Thinking some strange tale to lift\u2014\n A record brief of direst peril\n In a storm-wrecked sinking ship\u2014\n The moment when all hope had left them\u2014\n The tale ne\u2019er told by human lip?\n\n Or, will thy rolling, rocking cradle\n Hold the casket unrevealed,\n Till thy wrenching, prying fingers\n Hath its secrets all unsealed?\u2014\n Dropping then the worthless trifle\n Where wealth\u2019s storm-wrecked treasures lie,\n In thy mystic, wave-worn caverns,\n Hidden aye, from mortal eye.\n\n\n\n\nHidden.\n\n\n Oft the heart is full of weeping\n When no tears escape the lids;\n Bravely will stands guard o\u2019er feeling\n And the tell-tale flow forbids,\n And for love of those who love us\n Every sign of sorrow hides,\n Counterfeiting joy and gladness\n Where in secret, grief abides.\n\n Though we try to gild with sunshine\n Thorny paths we needs must tread,\n Hiding, \u2019neath a show of courage,\n That we go with shrinking dread\u2014\n Tho\u2019 we hush the sob of mourning\n For the strong true love we knew,\n Yet affection\u2019s sacred altar\n With forget-me-nots we strew.\n\n Every sentient heart holds hidden,\n From the gaze of prying eyes,\n All its sorrows. E\u2019en its raptures\n From such sharing it denies.\n Love of some and dread of others\n Shut the heart with bolts and bars;\n We shrink to wound our loving dear ones\u2014\n We dread the sympathy that jars.\n\n But, when night is darkly brooding\n Over earth with raven wings,\n Feeling may, with unseen fingers,\n Sweep the spirit\u2019s trembling strings.\n Then, within its secret chamber,\n May the heart\u2019s own words be said\u2014\n There alone, with Love\u2019s one taper,\n All its bitter tears may shed.\n\n\n\n\nMy Robins Are Gone.\n\n\n My robins are gone\u2014\n The last one has flown;\n With a pang in my breast\n I look into the nest\n And know I\u2019m forever alone.\n\n The night will come in thro\u2019 the crimsoning west,\n Repeating that lesson of pain\u2014\n \u201cThe robin that once has flown out of the nest\n Seeks never its shelter again.\u201d\n My robins are gone, etc.\n\n O, glad was my heart with its fullness of love\n When fondly I cared for them all,\n But now I\u2019m alone, in the shadowy grove,\n And they are too far for recall.\n My robins are gone, etc.\n\n The world was so wide, and the skies were so blue,\n They tempted my darlings away;\n In the bright, dewy morning so buoyant they flew,\n Nor dreamed of the noon-heat of day.\n My robins are gone, etc.\n\n I\u2019ll stay by the lonely, embowered, old nest\u2014\n Some stars will beam down thro\u2019 the night;\n I\u2019ll hush my heart\u2019s cry with a \u201cGod knoweth best,\u201d\n And wait for the dawn of the light.\n Tho\u2019 my robins are gone,\n Tho\u2019 the last one has flown,\n They\u2019ll think of the tree\n That is sheltering me,\u2014\n They\u2019ll be to me ever my own.\n\n\n\n\nWinterbloom.\n\n\n Oh! beautiful winterbloom, why did you tarry?\n O, why in Spring\u2019s glory of budding and bloom,\n Were hidden your jewels, wee, golden and starry,\n To open them now, in November\u2019s chill gloom?\n\n The crocuses first heard the warm breezes calling,\n The dandelions glowed in their emerald sea\n And lilies, sun-kissed, in the lakelets were lolling\u2014\n All Flora\u2019s enchantments were beckoning thee.\n\n When June, in soft airs, swung her rose-freighted censer,\n And dew gems were set with the buttercup\u2019s gold\u2014The\n annual bloom, growing brighter and denser\u2014\n Why still, from the summer, your beauty withhold?\n\n \u201cWhen Spring in her gladness poured beauty around you,\n And joy bells rang with most musical tone,\n When opulent Summer with riches had crowned you,\n My coming had then been unheeded, unknown.\n\n Now flowers of springtime and summer have left you,\n The winter\u2019s foreclosure has shadowed the home\u2014\n Of the last clinging leaves the cold winds have bereft you\u2014\n As a friend in Adversity, now I am come.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nThe Old Home.\n\n\n The empty hammock, in the grove,\n The playful breeze is swinging\u2014\n Wild birds, of varied note and plume,\n In Babel jargon singing,\n Come boldly near my silent door,\n And e\u2019en the woodland thrushes\n Pour forth for me, their floods of song,\n In sweet, melodious gushes.\n\n And nearer still, the squirrels come,\n Among the walnuts leaping,\n And gather in their winter stores\n Without the toil of reaping.\u2014\n The tennis plot is overgrown\n With long, untrodden grasses\u2014\n Above it hangs, from unpruned boughs,\n Their foliage wealth in masses.\n\n The lichens lengthen on the trees\u2014\n They blotch, with gray, the fences\n And prove decadence is of years,\n Whatever our pretenses;\n The storm-worn roof and gables all\n Suggest inceptive mosses\u2014\n The ample house, with silent rooms,\n Hope\u2019s argosy and losses.\n\n The shrubs that once bore stately bloom\n Are now a bushy tangle,\n Where tribes of beetles, thro\u2019 the spring,\n O\u2019er blighted beauty wrangle;\n And goldenrod, with kindly grace,\n Hides, with her shining tassels,\n Neglected spots, where once was built,\n Young Fancy\u2019s airy castles.\n\n The bell, that called the dinner hour\n With deep, revibrant clanging,\n Is woven round with maple boughs,\n Its stranded rope, down-hanging,\n Has won a morning-glory bloom\n To twine its frayed out fringes,\n And trumpet vine creeps o\u2019er the gate\n To hide its broken hinges.\n\n Now silence reigns where once was heard\n The ring of childish laughter;\u2014\n They\u2019ll come no more\u2014\u201cour little boys\u201d\u2014\n In all the years hereafter;\n Yet winds oft join with listless mood\n To cheat me with the seeming\u2014\n A dimpled hand tugs at the latch\u2014\n But ah! \u2019twas only dreaming.\n\n They\u2019re out upon the field of Life\n Where blades of strength are clashing,\n Where true and false contend for aye\n With thought\u2019s bright spear-points flashing,\n And we must hush love\u2019s hunger-cry\n And still the selfish yearning\u2014\n Must hide the heart\u2019s fond worship, tho\u2019\n Its altar fires are burning.\n\n But mother-love can make her strong\n To check her own heart\u2019s throbbing,\n And bid them go with steady voice\n While _self\u2019s_ in secret, sobbing;\n Then she will whisper broken words\n Alone with God in prayer,\n And find that heavenly blessing falls\n For every cross we bear.\n\n\n\n\nThought.\n\n\n Backward, backward Thought has traveled,\n Back into the dim unknown,\n When the spheres in cosmic star-dust\n Circled His eternal throne\u2014\n Back where cosmogonic darkness,\n Wrought upon by Spirit light,\n Yielded elemental centers\n And protoplastic satellite.\n\n Back, where first creative forces,\n By impulsion from \u201cThe Cause,\u201d\n Start the universe in motion,\n Guided by unerring laws\u2014\n Hurl the spheric fiery masses\n Thro\u2019 abysmal depths of space\u2014\n Meting out to each an orbit\n With defined, unchanging place.\n\n Thought, from thence, fares down the aeons\n Thro\u2019 the long chaotic night,\n While His omnipresent agents\n (Each a vast deific might)\n Fashion to His will and purpose\n Thro\u2019 infinitude of spheres;\n In our own group change evolving\n Till Earth\u2019s infant life appears\u2014\n\n Till creation felt Time\u2019s fullness,\n Surging thro\u2019 unmeasured night,\n That should rend the swathe of vapors\n With command\u2014\u201cLet there be Light\u2014\u201d\n Felt the rolling, tossing tumult\n Of the fierce, internal sweep\n When the thunder-toned volcanos\n Lifted lands from shoreless deep.\n\n Then, from formless void emerging,\n Earth spread wide her fields and hills,\n Woke the untrod glooms with music\n Of her new-born leaping rills;\u2014\n Then the firmament, in grandeur,\n Lit its unveiled depths of blue\n With the moon in full-orbed beauty\n And the young stars beaming through.\n\n And the sunshine thrilled earth\u2019s bosom,\n Quickened germ-imprisoned life\u2014\n Soon the hillsides and the valleys\n Were with floral beauty rife;\u2014Forests\n robed the mountain ranges,\n Bound their sun-crooned brows with green,\n While the mighty, sea-fed rivers\n Rolled in majesty between.\n\n * * * * *\n\n Farther on in Life\u2019s gradations\n He who tuned the spheric roll,\n Back in Nature\u2019s barred Arcana,\n Gave and clothed the human soul.\n Hush, oh thought, nor dare to question\n _How_ creative laws adjust!\n Canst thou comprehend Jehovah\n Or the elemental \u201cdust?\u201d\n\n Here, oh spirit, rest with child-faith;\n Covet not forbidden things.\n LIFE, the vainly sought for secret,\n Proof, to us, of Godhood brings\u2014\n Of the Infinite, beyond us\u2014\n Far beyond the grasp of mind;\u2014\n Kneeling, trusting, here we worship\n God\u2014Jehovah, Undefined.\n\n\n\n\nColumbus.\n\n\n O\u2019er the stormy, pathless seas,\n Nobly proud, the Genoese\n To a shadowed realm sailed;\n With a will to brave and bear,\n Sought he chance to do and dare,\n \u2019Mid the perils he must share\n That Earth\u2019s grandeur be unveiled.\n\n Pilgrims sailed to lighted shores,\n Hope and Home with open doors,\n But thro\u2019 dusky deeps, unknown,\n Boldly this explorer plowed,\n Facing danger\u2019s darkling crowd\n And Fate\u2019s looming, gestant cloud,\n From the waste of waters blown.\n\n Heaven gave to him a soul\n Finely fashioned to control\n With a wondrous spirit might\u2014\n That should sweep of doubt and fear,\n Broad and bright, a pathway clear\u2014\n By it lift a hemisphere\n Into Freedom\u2019s joyous light.\n\n Purpose, daring were sublime\u2014\n His the crowning deeds of Time;\n Life, for others\u2019 gain, was spent\n Opening Earth\u2019s great treasure-doors\u2014\n Half a world with Bounty\u2019s stores\u2014\n Mountains, rich in precious ores\u2014\n Caves with sparkling gems besprent.\n\n Justice gave unquestioned claim\n To the highest niche of Fame,\n But what recompense was Spain\u2019s?\n She, thro\u2019 craven sons of lust,\n Honor stabbed, with feigned distrust\u2014\n Trampled his great soul in dust,\n Scorned and loaded him with chains.\n\n Now she comes to steal his bones:\n Earth revile! In thunder tones\n Tell the tale of wrong and shame;\n Write this edict out in flame\u2014\n In the hemisphere he gave,\n (Which he begged might be his grave)\n She, of Greed, the wasted slave,\n Shall have nevermore a name.\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber\u2019s note\n\n\nPoem titles were originally printed in a stylized, \u201cGothic\u201d-variety\ntypeface (think New York Times masthead). Fonts which are a reasonable\napproximation of this, and which this ebook will display if you have\nthem installed, include Old English Text MT, Chomsky, Cloister Black,\nOld London.\n\nThe following probable printer errors were corrected.\n\n Page 47, \u201ci ngering\u201d changed to \u201clingering\u201d (I\u2019m lingering now)\n Page 89, \u201cIndnite\u201d changed to \u201cInfinite\u201d (lighted with Infinite love)\n Page 98, \u201ctemptest\u201d changed to \u201ctempest\u201d (by sorrow\u2019s tempest shaken)\n Page 104, \u201cChrstians\u201d changed to \u201cChristians\u201d (When Christians are one)\n Page 149, \u201cQueiscent\u201d changed to \u201cQuiescent\u201d (Quiescent in that blest\n repose)\n Page 178, \u201cprsence\u201d changed to \u201cpresence\u201d (I knew that a presence had\n surely been there)\n Page 191, \u201cherafter\u201d changed to \u201chereafter\u201d (beyond life\u2019s tossing\n ocean / To the great hereafter)\n Page 197, \u201cWtih bannerd\u201d changed to \u201cWith bannered\u201d (With bannered\n glories)\n Page 198, \u201crollng\u201d changed to \u201crolling\u201d (thy rolling, rocking cradle)\n Page 200, \u201cshrniking\u201d changed to \u201cshrinking\u201d (That we go with shrinking\n dread)\n Page 209, \u201csatelite\u201d changed to \u201csatellite\u201d (And protoplastic satellite)\n Page 209, \u201cunchangnig\u201d changed to \u201cunchanging\u201d (With defined, unchanging\n place.)\n Page 210, \u201cLfited\u201d changed to \u201cLifted\u201d (Lifted lands from shoreless\n deep.)\n Page 211, \u201cmigthy\u201d changed to \u201cmighty\u201d (mighty, sea-fed rivers)\n\nPunctuation, hyphenation, and word spacing errors were amended without\nfurther note.","title":"Hazel bloom","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":22834}