WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. PHILIP JAMES BAILEY. Sometime in feasts and follies, for he went If Thought and Love desert us, from that day Lifelike through all things; and his thoughts Let us break off all commerce with the Muse : then rose With Thought and Love companions of our way; - went mad THE POET OF TO-DAY. More than the soul of ancient song is given To thee, O poet of to-day ! - thy dower In holier beauty and in larger power. To thee Humanity, her woes revealing, hearse; ye! | Would make thy song the voice of her appealing, With night, and clouds, and thunder, and ai And sob her mighty sorrows through thy verse. soul While in her season of great darkness sharing, To make these felt and feeling, well may be i Hail thou the coming of each promise-star Things that have made me watchful; the far Which climbs the midnight of her long despair. ing, of your departing voices is the knoll And watch for morning o'er the hills afar. Of what in me is sleepless, — if I rest. But where of ye, 0 tempests! is the goal ? | Wherever Truth her holy warfare wages, Are ye like those within the human breast ? Or Freedom pines, there let thy voice be heard ; Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high sound like a prophet-warning down the ages nest? The human utterance of God's living word. roll Could I embody and unbosom now But bring not thou the battle's stormy chorus, That which is most within me, - could I wreak The tramp of armies, and the roar of fight, My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw Not war's hot smoke to taint the sweet morn Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or o'er as, weak, i Nor blaze of pillage, reddening up the night. All that I would have sought, and all I seek, Bear, know, feel, and yet breathe - into one o, let thy lays prolong that angel-singing, word, Girdling with music the Redeemer's star, And that one word were Lightning, I would And breathe God's peace, to earth “glad tidings' speak; bringing But as it is, I live and die unheard, . From the near heavens, of old so dim and far! With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a SARAH JANE LIPPINCOTT (Grace Greenwood). sword. LORD BYRON. THE INNER VISION. Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes To pace the ground, if path there be or none, BOOKS. ANONYMOUS BOOKS. wrote ! These are thy wonders, Lord of love, Which when we once can tinde and prove, Who would be more, Swelling through store, JOHN HIGGINS, GEORGE HERBERT. THE FLOWER. YUSSOUF. How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean A STRANGER came one night to Yussouf's tent, Are thy returns ! even as the flowers in spring; Saying, “ Behold one outcast and in dread, To which, besides their own demean, | Against whose life the bow of power is bent, The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring. Who flies, and hath not where to lay his head ; Grief melts away I come to thee for shelter and for food, To Yussouf, called through all our tribes The As if there were no such cold thing. Good.'” Who would have thought my shrivelled heart “ This tent is mine," said Yussouf, “but no more Could have recovered greenness? It was gone Than it is God's; come in, and be at peace ; Quite underground ; as flowers depart Freely shalt thou partake of all my store To see their mother root, when they have blown ; As I of his who buildeth over these Where they together Our tents his glorious roof of night and day, All the hard weather, And at whose door none ever yet heard Nay.” Dead to the world, keep house unknown. So Yussouf entertained his guest that night, These are thy wonders, Lord of power, And, waking him ere day, said : “Here is gold, Killing and quickning, bringing down to hell My swiftest horse is saddled for thy flight, And up to heaver in an houre; 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, O that I once past changing were, He bowed his forehead upon Yussouf's hand, Fast in thy paradise, where no flower can wither! Sobbing: “O Sheik, I cannot leave thee so ; Many a spring I shoot up fair, I will repay thee; all this thou hast done Nor dóth my flower “Take thrice the gold," said Yussouf, “ for with My sinnes and I joining together. thee Into the desert, never to return, But, while I grow in a straight line, My one black thought shall ride away from me ; Still upwards bent, as if heav'n were mine own, | First-born, for whom by day and night I yearn, Thy anger comes, and I decline : | Balanced and just are all of God's decrees ; What frost to that? what pole is not the zone Thou art avenged, my first-born, sleep in peace!” Where all things burn, JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. ABOU BEN ADHEM. ABOU BEN ADHEM (may his tribe increase !) I once inore smell the dew and rain, Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, And relish versing : O my only light, 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 : WILLIAM WINTER. And to the presence in the room he said, But only in his sleep I came to him, For only in their dreams I come to them, And give them fitful glimpses of my face, And showed the names whom love of God had And lull them, siren-like, with words of hope – blessed, That promise, sometime, to their ravished eyes, And, lo ! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest ! Beauty, the secret of the universe, God's thought, that gives the soul eternal peace. Then the voice ceased, and only, through the mist, BEAUTY. The shaken roses murmured, and the wind. I had a dream, one glorious, sunimer night, In the rich bosom of imperial June. Languid I lay upon an odorous couch, VANITY. Golden with amber, festooned wildly o'er The sun comes up and the sun goes down, With crimson roses ; and the longing stars And day and night are the same as one ; Wept tears of light upon their clustered leaves. The year grows green, and the year grows brown, Above me soared the azure vault of heaven, And what is it all, when all is done ? Vast and majestic ; cinctured with that path | Grains of sombre or shining sand, Whereby, perchance, the sea-born Venus found Gliding into and out of the hand. And men go down in ships to the seas, And backward and forward blows the breeze, The fisher droppeth his net in the stream, Which with delicious languor filled the air, And a hundred streams are the same as one ; And steeped in bliss the senses and the soul. And the maiden dreameth her love-lit dream, Then rose a shape, a dim and ghostly shape, And what is it all, when all is done? Whereto no feature was, nor settled form, The net of the fisher the burden breaks, A shadowy splendor, seeming as it came And alway the dreaining the dreamer wakes. A pearly summer cloud, shot through and through HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD A PSALM OF LIFE. Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! And long he sought for, wept, and prayed for me ; For the soul is dead that slumbers, And searched through all the chambers of his soul, And things are not what they seem. And searched the secret places of the earth, Life is real ! Life is earnest ! The lonely forest and the lonely shore; And the grave is not its goal ; And listened to the voices of the sea, Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way ; And looked in woman's fond, bewildering eyes, But to act, that each to-morrow and mirrored there his own, and saw no sign : Find us farther than to-day. |