Pagina-afbeeldingen
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While in her season of great darkness sharing, Hail thou the coming of each promise-star Which climbs the midnight of her long despair. ing,

And watch for morning o'er the hills afar. Wherever Truth her holy warfare wages,

Or Freedom pines, there let thy voice be heard; Sound like a prophet-warning down the ages The human utterance of God's living word.

But bring not thou the battle's stormy chorus,

The tramp of armies, and the roar of fight, Not war's hot smoke to taint the sweet morn

o'er us,

Nor blaze of pillage, reddening up the night.

O, let thy lays prolong that angel-singing, Girdling with music the Redeemer's star,

And that one word were Lightning, I would And breathe God's peace, to earth "glad tidings'

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Like snow in May,

As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shrivelled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
Quite underground; as flowers depart

To see their mother root, when they have blown;
Where they together

All the hard weather,

Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quickning, bringing down to hell
And up to heaven in an houre;
Making a chiming of a passing-bell.
We say amisse,

This or that is:

Thy word is all, if we could spell.

O that I once past changing were,

Fast in thy paradise, where no flower can wither!
Many a spring I shoot up fair,

YUSSOUF.

A STRANGER came one night to Yussouf's tent,
Saying, "Behold one outcast and in dread,
Against whose life the bow of power is bent,
Who flies, and hath not where to lay his head;
I come to thee for shelter and for food,
To Yussouf, called through all our tribes 'The
Good.'"

"This tent is mine," said Yussouf, "but no more
Than it is God's; come in, and be at peace ;
Freely shalt thou partake of all my store
As I of his who buildeth over these
Our tents his glorious roof of night and day,
And at whose door none ever yet heard Nay."

So Yussouf entertained his guest that night,
And, waking him ere day, said: "Here is gold,
My swiftest horse is saddled for thy flight,
Depart before the prying day grow bold."
As one lamp lights another, nor grows less,
So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.

That inward light the stranger's face made grand,
Which shines from all self-conquest; kneeling low,
He bowed his forehead upon Yussouf's hand,
Sobbing: "O Sheik, I cannot leave thee so;
I will repay thee; all this thou hast done

Offring at heav'n, growing and groning thither; Unto that Ibrahim who slew thy son!"

Nor doth my flower

Want a spring-showre,

My sinnes and I joining together.

But, while I grow in a straight line,
Still upwards bent, as if heav'n were mine own,
Thy anger comes, and I decline :

What frost to that? what pole is not the zone
Where all things burn,
When thou dost turn,

And the least frown of thine is shown?

And now in age I bud again;
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my only light,
It cannot be

That I am he

On whom thy tempests fell all night!

"Take thrice the gold," said Yussouf, "for with thee

Into the desert, never to return,

My one black thought shall ride away from me ;
First-born, for whom by day and night I yearn,
Balanced and just are all of God's decrees;
Thou art avenged, my first-born, sleep in peace!"

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

ABOU BEN ADHEM.

ABOU BEN ADHEM (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold :
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,

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I HAD a dream, one glorious, summer night,
In the rich bosom of imperial June.
Languid I lay upon an odorous couch,
Golden with amber, festooned wildly o'er
With crimson roses; and the longing stars
Wept tears of light upon their clustered leaves.
Above me soared the azure vault of heaven,
Vast and majestic; cinctured with that path
Whereby, perchance, the sea-born Venus found
Her way to higher spheres; that path which seems
A coronet of silver, gemmed with stars,
And bound upon the forehead of the night.
There, as I lay, the musical south wind
Shook all the roses into murmurous life,
And poured their fragrance o'er me, in a shower
Of crimson mist; and softly, through the mist,
Came a low, sweet, enchanting melody,
A far-off echo from the land of dreams,
Which with delicious languor filled the air,
And steeped in bliss the senses and the soul.
Then rose a shape, a dim and ghostly shape,
Whereto no feature was, nor settled form,
A shadowy splendor, seeming as it came
A pearly summer cloud, shot through and through
With faintest rays of sunset; yet within
A spirit dwelt; and, floating from within,
A murmur trembled sweetly into words:

I am the ghost of a most lovely dream,
Which haunted, in old days, a poet's mind.
And long he sought for, wept, and prayed for me;
And searched through all the chambers of his soul,
And searched the secret places of the earth,
The lonely forest and the lonely shore;
And listened to the voices of the sea,
What time the stars shone out, and midnight cold
Slept on the dark waves whispering at his feet;
And sought the mystery in a human form,
Amid the haunts of men, and found it not;
And looked in woman's fond, bewildering eyes,
And mirrored there his own, and saw no sign:

But only in his sleep I came to him,
And gave him fitful glimpses of my face,
Whereof he after sang, in sweetest words;
Then died, and came to me. But evermore,
Through lonely days, and passion-haunted nights,
A life of starlit gloom, do poets seek
To rend the mystic veil that covers me,
And evermore they grasp the empty air.
For only in their dreams I come to them,

And give them fitful glimpses of my face,
And lull them, siren-like, with words of hope-
That promise, sometime, to their ravished eyes,
Beauty, the secret of the universe,

God's thought, that gives the soul eternal peace.
Then the voice ceased, and only, through the mist,
The shaken roses murmured, and the wind.

VANITY.

WILLIAM WINTER.

THE sun comes up and the sun goes down,
And day and night are the same as one;
The year grows green, and the year grows brown,
And what is it all, when all is done?
Grains of sombre or shining sand,

Gliding into and out of the hand.

And men go down in ships to the seas,
And a hundred ships are the same as one;
And backward and forward blows the breeze,
And what is it all, when all is done?
A tide with never a shore in sight
Getting steadily on to the night.

The fisher droppeth his net in the stream,
And a hundred streams are the same as one;
And the maiden dreameth her love-lit dream,
And what is it all, when all is done?
The net of the fisher the burden breaks,
And alway the dreaming the dreamer wakes.

HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD

A PSALM OF LIFE.

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest !

And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each to-morrow Find us farther than to-day.

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