Blending their souls' sublimest needs
With tasks of every day,
They went about their gravest deeds,
As noble boys at play.

And what if nature's fearful wound
They did not probe and bare,
For that their spirits never swoon'd
To watch the misery there,-

For that their love but flow'd more fast,
Their charities more free,

Not conscious what mere drops they cast Into the evil sea.

A man's best things are nearest him,

Lie close about his feet,

It is the distant and the dim

That we are sick to greet:

For flowers that grow our hands beneath We struggle and aspire,

Our hearts must die, except they breathe
The air of fresh desire.

But, brothers, who up reason's hill
Advance with hopeful cheer,
Oh! loiter not, those heights are chill,
As chill as they are clear;
And still restrain your haughty gaze,
The loftier that ye go,
Remembering distance leaves a haze
On all that lies below.

ON LADY C, IN DECLINING HEALTH.

GENTLY supported by the ready aid

Of loving hands, whose little work of toil Her grateful prodigality repaid

With all the benediction of her smile,

She turned her failing feet
To the soft-pillow'd seat,
Dispensing kindly greetings all the while.
Before the tranquil beauty of her face

I bow'd in spirit, thinking that she were
A suffering angel, whom te special grace
Of God intrusted to our pious care,
That we might learn from her
The art to minister

To heavenly beings in seraphic air.

There seem'd to lie a weight upon her brain,

That ever prest her blue-vein'd eyelids down, But could not dim her lustrous eyes with pain, Nor seam her forehead with the faintest frown; She was as she were proud,

Woman divine! ideal best-beloved,
Here was thy image realized to me;
In sensible existence lived and moved
The vision of my sacred phantasy;
Madonna! Mary mine!
Her look, her smile, was thine,-
And gazing on that form, I worshipt thee.

THE LONG-AGO.

EYES which can but ill define
Shapes that rise about and near,
Through the far horizon's line
Stretch a vision free and clear:
Memories feeble to retrace
Yesterday's immediate flow,
Find a dear familiar face

In each hour of long-ago.

Follow yon majestic train
Down the slopes of old renown,
Knightly forms without disdain,
Sainted heads without a frown;
Emperors of thought and hand
Congregate, a glorious show,
Met from every age and land
In the plains of long-ago.

As the heart of childhood brings
Something of eternal joy,
From its own unsounded springs,
Such as life can scarce destroy;
So, remindful of the prime
Spirits, wandering to and fro,
Rest upon the resting time
In the peace of long-ago.
Youthful hope's religious fire,
When it burns no longer, leaves
Ashes of impure desire

On the altars it deceives;
But the light that fills the past
Sheds a still diviner glow,
Ever farther it is cast

O'er the scenes of long-ago.

Many a growth of pain and care,
Cumbering all the present hour,
Yields, when once transplanted there,
Healthy fruit or pleasant flower;
Thoughts that hardly flourish here,
Feelings long have ceased to blow,
Breathe a native atmosphere
In the world of long-ago.

On that deep-retiring shore

Frequent pearls of beauty lie, Where the passion-waves of yore Fiercely beat and mounted high: Sorrows that are sorrows still Lose the bitter taste of woe; Nothing's altogether ill In the griefs of long-ago.

Tombs where lonely love repines,
Ghastly tenements of tears,
Wear the look of happy shrines

Through the golden mist of years:
Death, to those who trust in good,
Vindicates his hardest blow;
Oh! we would not, if we could,
Wake the sleep of long-ago!
Though the doom of swift decay
Shocks the soul where life is strong,
Though for frailer hearts the day
Lingers sad and overlong,-
Still the weight will find a leaven,
Still the spoiler's hand is slow,
While the future has its heaven,
And the past its long-ago.

PRINCE EMILIUS OF HESSEN-DARMSTADT.

FROM Hessen-Darmstadt every step
To Moskwa's blazing banks,
Was Prince Emilius found in fight,

Before the foremost ranks;
And when upon the icy waste,
That host was backward cast,
On Beresina's bloody bridge,
His banner waved the last.

His valour shed victorious grace
On all that dread retreat,

That path across the wildering snow,
Athwart the blinding sleet;
And every follower of his sword
Could all endure and dare,
Becoming warriors strong in hope,
Or stronger in despair.

Now, day and dark, along the storm
The demon Cossacks sweep;

The hungriest must not look for food,
The weariest must not sleep;
No rest, but death, for horse or man,
Whichever first shall tire;-
They see the flames destroy, but ne'er
May feel the saving fire.

Thus never closed the bitter night,
Nor rose the savage morn,
But from that gallant company
Some noble part was shorn,
And, sick at heart, the prince resolved,
To keep his purposed way,
With steadfast, forward looks, nor count
The losses of the day.

At length beside a black-burnt hut,
An island of the snow,-
Each head in frigid stupor bent
Toward the saddle bow,-
They paused, and of that sturdy troop,
That thousand banded men,

At one unmeditated glance,
He number'd only ten!

Of all that high triumphant life

That left his German home,
Of all those hearts that beat beloved,

Or lookt for love to come,
This piteous remnant hardly saved
His spirit overcame,
While memory raised each friendly face,
And called each ancient name.

Then were his words serene and firm"Dear brothers, it is best

That here, with perfect trust in Heaven,
We give our bodies rest;

If we have borne, like faithful men,
Our part of toil and pain,
Where'er we wake, for Christ's good sake,

We shall not sleep in vain."

Some utter'd, others lookt assent,
They had no heart to speak;
Dumb hands were prest, the pallid lip,
Approacht the callous cheek;
They laid them side by side; and death
To him at least did seem
To come attired in mazy robe
Of variegated dream.

Once more he floated on the breast
Of old familiar Rhine,

His mother's and one other smile
Above him seemed to shine;
A blessèd dew of healing fell
On every aching limb,

Till the stream broaden'd and the air
Thicken'd and all was dim.

Nature has bent to other laws,
If that tremendous night

Past o'er his frame exposed and worn,
And left no deadly blight;
Then wonder not that when refresht
And warm he woke at last,
There lay a boundless gulf of thought
Between him and the past.

Soon raising his astonisht head
He found himself alone,
Shelter'd beneath a genial heap
Of vestments not his own;
The light increast the solemn truth
Revealing more and more,-
His soldiers corses self-despoiled,
Closed up the narrow door.

That very hour, fulfilling good,
Miraculous succour came,
And Prince Emilius lived to give
This worthy deed to fame.
Oh, brave fidelity in death!

Oh, strength of loving will!
These are the holy balsam drops
That woful wars distil.

or at any time shall see. In some respects it is not unlike the Faust of GOETHE. It is not equal to that wonderful book; yet it has passages of deepest wisdom, of power and tenderness, such as few poets in our day have produced; and it will live.

FESTUS DESCRIBES HIS FRIEND.

He had no times of study, and no place;
All places and all times to him were one.
His soul was like the wind-harp, which he loved,
And sounded only when the spirit blew,
Sometime in feasts and follies, for he went [rose
Life-like through all things; and his thoughts then
Like sparkles in the bright wine, brighter still,
Sometimes in dreams, and then the shining words
Would wake him in the dark before his face.
All things talk'd thoughts to him. The sea went mad
To show his meaning; and the awful sun
Thundered his thoughts into him; and at night
The stars would whisper theirs, the moon sigh hers,
He spake the world's one tongue; in earth and
heaven

There is but one, it is the word of truth.
To him the eye let out its hidden meaning;
And young and old made their hearts over to him;
And thoughts were told to him as unto none,
Save one who heareth, said and unsaid, all....
All things were inspiration unto him-
Wood, wold, hill, field, sea, city, solitude,

And crowds, and streets, and man where'er he was,
And the blue eye of God which is above us;
Brook-bounded pine spinnies, where spirits flit;
And haunted pits the rustic hurries by,

Where cold wet ghosts sit ringing jingling bells; Old orchards' leaf-roofed aisles, and red-cheek'd load; And the blood-colour'd tears which yew-trees weep O'er churchyard graves, like murderers remorseful; The dark green rings where fairies sit and sup, Crushing the violet dew in the acorn cup;

Where by his new-made bride the bridegroom sips, The white moon shimmering on their longing lips; The large, o'er-loaded, wealthy-looking wains Quietly swaggering home through leafy lanes, Leaving on all low branches, as they come, Straws for the birds, ears of the harvest-home;He drew his light from that he was amidst,

In the Monthly Magazine for 1840 is an additional scene to Festus, in which the author speaks of himself and his poem. The first of the following extracts is from this

scene.

As doth a lamp from air which hath itself
Matter of light although it show not. His
Was but the power to light what might be lit.
He met a muse in every lonely maid;
And learn'd a song from every lip he loved.
But his heart ripen'd most 'neath southern eyes,
Which sunn'd their sweets into him all day long,
For fortune call'd him southward, towards the sun.
We do not make our thoughts; they grow in us
Like grain in wood; the growth is of the skies,
Which are of nature, nature is of God.
The world is full of glorious likenesses,
The poet's power is to sort these out,
And to make music from the common strings
With which the world is strung; to make the dumb
Earth utter heavenly harmony, and draw
Life clear and sweet and harmless as spring water,
Welling its way through flowers. Without faith,
Illimitable faith, strong as a state's

In its own might, in God, no bard can be.
All things are signs of other and of nature.
It is at night we see heaven moveth, and
A darkness thick with suns; the thoughts we think
Subsist the same in God, as stars in heaven,
And as those specks of light will prove great worlds,
When we approach them sometime free from flesh,
So too our thoughts will become magnified
To mindlike things immortal. And as space
Is but a property of God, wherein
Is laid all matter, other attributes

...

May be the infinite homes of mind and soul.
Love, mirth, wo, pleasure, was in turn his theme,
And the great good which beauty does the soul,
And the God-made necessity of things.
And, like that noble knight in olden tale,
Who changed his armour's hue at each fresh charge
By virtue of his lady-love's strange ring,
So that none knew him save his private page,
And she who cried, God save him, every time
He brake spears with the brave till he quell'd all-
So he applied him to all themes that came;

Loving the most to breast the rapid deep,
Where others had been drown'd, and heeding
naught

Where danger might not fill the place of fame.
And mid the magic circle of these sounds,
His lyre ray'd out, spell-bound himself he stood,
Like a still'd storm. It is no task for suns
To shine. He knew himself a bard ordain'd,
More than inspired, of God inspirited,
Making himself like an electric rod

A lure for lightning feelings; and his words
Felt like the things which fall in thunder, which
The mind, when in a dark, hot, cloudful state,
Doth make metallic, meteoric, ball-like.
He spake to spirits with a spirit-tongue,
Who came compell'd by wizard word of truth,
And ray'd them round him from the ends of heaven;
For, as be all bards, he was born of beauty,
And with a natural fitness, to draw down
All tones and shades of beauty to his soul,
Even as the rainbow tinted shell, which lies

May God that moment judge me when I do!
Oh! she was fair; her nature once all spring
And deadly beauty like a maiden sword;
Startlingly beautiful. I see her now!
Whate'er thou art, thy soul is in my mind;
Thy shadow hourly lengthens o'er my brain
And peoples all its pictures with thyself,
Gone, not forgotten; pass'd, not lost; thou'lt shine
In heaven like a bright spot in the sun!
She said she wish'd to die, and so she died;
For, cloudlike, she pour'd out her love, which was
Her life, to freshen this parch'd heart. It was
thus;

I said we were to part, but she said nothing;
There was no discord; it was music ceased;
Life's thrilling, bursting, bounding joy. She sate
Like a house-god, her hands fix'd on her knee;
And her dank hair lay loose and long behind her,
Through which her wild bright eye flash'd like a
flint;

She spake not, moved not, but she look'd the more;
As if her eye were action, speech, and feeling.
I felt it all, and came and knelt beside her,
The electric touch solved both our souls together;
Then comes the feeling which unmakes, undoes;
Which tears the sealike soul up by the roots

ground;

But spirits wing about, and wait on us,
While yet the hour of enchantment is,

And while we keep in, we are safe, and can

Force them to do our bidding. And he raised The rebel in himself, and in his mind

Walk'd with him through the world.

ANGELA.

I LOVED her, for that she was beautiful,
And that to me she seem'd to be all nature
And all varieties of things in one;
Would set at night in clouds of tears, and rise
All light and laughter in the morning; fear
No petty customs nor appearances;
But think what others only dream'd about;
And say what others did but think; and do
What others would but say; and glory in [me;
What others dared but do; it was these which won
And that she never school'd within her breast
One thought or feeling, but gave holiday
To all; and that she told me all her woes
And wrongs and ills; and so she made them mine
In the communion of love; and we

Grew like each other, for we loved each other;
She, mild and generous as the sun in spring;
And I, like earth, all budding out with love.
The beautiful are never desolate;

For some one alway loves them-God or man.
If man abandons, God Himself takes them,
And thus it was. She whom I once loved died.
The lightning loathes its cloud; the soul its clay.
Can I forget that hand I took in mine,
Pale as pale violets; that eye, where mind
And matter met alike divine? Ah, no!

Twice did I stamp to God, swearing, hand elench'd,
That not even He nordeath should tear her from me.
It is the saddest and the sorest night
One's own love weeping. But why call on God!
But that the feeling of the boundless bounds
All feeling! as the welkin doth the world.

It is this which ones us with the whole and God.
Then first we wept; then closed and clung

together;

And my heart shook this building of my breast
Like a live engine booming up and down.
She fell upon me like a snow-wreath thawing.
Never were bliss and beauty, love and wo,
Ravell'd and twined together into madness,
As in that one wild hour, to which all else,
The past, is but a picture. That alone
Is real, and for ever there in front,

After that I left her

And only saw her once again alive.

CALMNESS OF THE SUBLIME.

THE goodness of the heart is shown in deeds Of peacefulness and kindness. Hand and heart Are one thing with the good, as thou shouldst be. Do my words trouble thee? then treasure them. Pain overgot gives peace, as death doth Heaven. All things that speak of Heaven speak of peace. Peace hath more might than war; high brows are calm;

Great thoughts are still as stars; and truths, like

suns,

Stir not, but many systems tend around them. Mind's step is still as Death's; and all great things Which cannot be controll'd, whose end is good.

FAITH.

FAITH is a higher faculty than reason, Though of the brightest power of revelation, As the snow-peaked mountain rises o'er The lightning, and applies itself to heaven, We know in daytime there are stars about us Just as at night, and name them what and where By sight of science; so by faith we know, Although we may not see them till our night, That spirits are about us, and believe, That to a spirit's eye all heaven may be As full of angels as a beam of light Of motes. As spiritual, it shows all Classes of life, perhaps above our kind, Known to tradition, reason, or God's word. As earthly, it imbodies most the life

Of youth; its powers, its aims, its deeds, its failings;
And as a sketch of world-life, it begins

And ends, and rightly, in heaven, and with God;
While heaven is also in the midst thereof.
God, or all good, the evil of the world,

And man, wherein are both, are each display'd;
The mortal is the model of all men.

The foibles, follies, trials, sufferings

Of a young, hot, un-world-school'd heart, that has
Had its own way in life, and wherein all
May see some likeness of their own, 'tis these
Attract, unite, and, sunlike, concentrate
The ever-moving system of our feeling;
Like life, too, as a whole, it has a moral,
And, as in life, each scene too has its moral,
A scene for every year of his young life,
Shining upon it, like the quiet moon,
Illustrating the obscure, unequal earth:
And though these scenes may seem to careless eyes
Irregular and rough and unconnected,
Like to the stones at Stonehenge, still a use,
A meaning, and a purpose may be mark'd
Among them of a temple rear'd to God,-
It has a plan, no plot; and life has none.

GREAT THOUGHTS.

Who can mistake great thoughts? They seize upon the mind; arrest, and search, And shake it; bow the tall soul as by wind; Rush over it like rivers over reeds, Which quaver in the current; turn us cold, And pale, and voiceless; leaving in the brain A rocking and a ringing, glorious,

But momentary; madness might it last,

And close the soul with Heaven as with a seal.

A LETTER.

WHEN he hath had

A letter from his lady dear, he bless'd

The paper that her hand had travell'd over,
And her eye look'd on, and would think he saw
Gleams of that light she lavish'd from her eyes,
Wandering amid the words of love she'd traced
Like glowworms among beds of flowers. He seem'd
To bear with being but because she loved him;
She was the sheath wherein his soul had rest,
As hath a sword from war.

TRUTH AND SORROW.

NIGHT brings out stars as sorrow shows us truths; Though many, yet they help not; bright, they

light not. They are too late to serve us; and sad things Are aye too true. We never see the stars Till we can see naught but them. So with truth. And yet if one would look down a deep well, Even at noon, we might see these same stars, Far fairer than the blinding blue: the truth Stars in the water like a dark bright eye, But there are other eyes men better love Than truth's, for when we have her she is so cold And proud, we know not what to do with her... Sometimes the thought comes swiftening over us, Like a small bird winging the still blue air, And then again at other times it rises

Slow, like a cloud which scales the skies all breath

less,

And just o'erhead lets itself down on us.
Sometimes we feel the wish across the mind
Rush, like a rocket roaring up the sky,
That we should join with God and give the world
The go-by; but the world meantime turns round,
And peeps us in the face; the wanton world;
We feel it gently pressing down our arm,
The arm we raised to do for truth such wonders;
We feel it softly bearing on our side;
We feel it touch and thrill us through the body;
And we are fools, and there's an end of us.

In feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives,

Who thinks most; feels the noblest; acts the best. And he whose heart beats quickest lives the longest: Lives in one hour more than in years do some Whose fat blood sleeps as it slips along their veins. Life is but a means unto an end; that end, Beginning, mean, and end to all things-God. The dead have all the glory of the world.

THE POET.

THE bard must have a kind, courageous heart,

And natural chivalry to aid the weak.
He must believe the best of every thing;
Love all below, and worship all above.
All animals are living hieroglyphs.
The dashing dog, and stealthy-stepping cat,
Hawk, bull, and all that breathe, mean something

more

To the true eye than their shapes show; for all
Were made in love, and made to be beloved.
Thus must he think as to earth's lower life,
Who seeks to win the world to thought and love,
As doth the bard, whose habit is all kindness
To every thing.