Thcu too, when thou against my crimes wouldst cry,
Let thy foreboded homage check thy tongue!"-
The world speaks well; yet might her foe reply,
"Are wills so weak? then let not mine wait long!

Hast thou so rare a poison? let me be
Keener to slay thee, lest thou poison me!"

STAGIRIUS.3

THOU, who dost dwell alone;
Thou, who dost know thine own;

Thou, to whom all are known.

From the cradle to the

Save, oh! save.

grave,

From the world's temptations,

From tribulations,

From that fierce anguish

Wherein we languish,

From that torpor deep

Wherein we lie asleep,

Heavy as death, cold as the grave,
Save, oh! save.

When the soul, growing clearer,

Sees God no nearer;

When the soul, mounting higher,
To God comes no nigher;
But the arch-fiend Pride

Mounts at her side,

Foiling her high emprise,

Sealing her eagle eyes,

And, when she fain would soar,
Makes idols to adore,

Changing the pure emotion

Of her high devotion,

To a skin-deep sense

Of her own eloquence;

Strong to deceive, strong to enslave,—
Save, oh! save.

From the ingrained fashion

Of this earthly nature

That mars thy creature ;

From grief that is but passion,
From mirth that is but feigning,
From tears that bring no healing,
From wild and weak complaining.
Thine old strength revealing,

Save, oh! save.

From doubt, where all is double;
Where wise men are not strong,
Where comfort turns to trouble,
Where just men suffer wrong;
Where sorrow treads on joy,
Where sweet things soonest cloy,
Where faiths are built on dust,
Where love is half mistrust,

Hungry, and barren, and sharp as the sea, -
Oh! set us free.

Oh, let the false dream fly,

Where our sick souls do lie

Tossing continually!

Oh, where thy voice doth come,

Let all doubts be dumb,

Let all words be mild,

All strifes be reconciled,

All pains beguiled!

Light bring no blindness,
Love no unkindness,

Knowledge no ruin,

Fear no undoing!

From the cradle to the grave,

Save, oh! save.

HUMAN LIFE.

WHAT mortal, when he saw,

Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend,
Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly,
"I have kept uninfringed my nature's law;
The inly-written chart thou gavest me,

To guide me, I have steered by to the end"?

Ah! let us make no claim,

On life's incognizable sea,

To too exact a steering of our way;

Let us not fret and fear to miss our aim,

If some fair coast has lured us to make stay,
Or some friend hailed us to keep company.

Ay! we would each fain drive

At random, and not steer by rule.

Weakness! and worse, weakness bestowed in vain! Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive;

We rush by coasts where we had lief remain : Man cannot, though he would, live chance's fool.

No! as the foaming swath

Of torn-up water, on the main,

Falls heavily away with long-drawn roar

On either side the black deep-furrowed path
Cut by an onward-laboring vessel's prore,
And never touches the ship-side again;

Even so we leave behind,

As, chartered by some unknown Powers,
We stem across the sea of life by night,
The joys which were not for our use designed, –
The friends to whom we had no natural right,
The homes that were not destined to be ours.

TO A GYPSY CHILD BY THE SEA

SHORE;

DOUGLAS, ISLE OF MAN.

WHO taught this pleading to unpractised eyes?

Who hid such import in an infant's gloom?

Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise?

Who massed, round that slight brow, these clouds of doom?

Lo! sails that gleam a moment, and are gone;

The swinging waters, and the clustered pier.

Not idly earth and ocean labor on,

Nor idly do these sea-birds hover near.

But thou, whom superfluity of joy

Wafts not from thine own thoughts, nor longings vain,

Nor weariness, the full-fed soul's annoy,

Remaining in thy hunger and in thy pain;

Thou, drugging pain by patience; half averse

From thine own mother's breast, that knows not thee; With eyes which sought thine eyes thou didst con

verse,

And that soul-searching vision fell on me.

Glooms that go deep as thine, I have not known;
Moods of fantastic sadness, nothing worth.

Thy sorrow and thy calmness are thine own;
Glooms that enhance and glorify this earth.

What mood wears like complexion to thy woe?
His, who in mountain glens, at noon of day,
Sits rapt, and hears the battle break below?

Ah! thine was not the shelter, but the fray.

Some exile's, mindful how the past was glad?
Some angel's, in an alien planet born?
-No exile's dream was ever half so sad,
Nor any angel's sorrow so forlorn.

Is the calm thine of stoic souls, who weigh
Life well, and find it wanting, nor deplore;
But in disdainful silence turn away,

Stand mute, self-centred, stern, and dream no more?

Or do I wait, to hear some gray-haired king
Unravel all his many-colored lore;

Whose mind hath known all arts of governing,
Mused much, loved life a little, loathed it more?

Down the pale cheek, long lines of shadow slope, Which years, and curious thought, and suffering give. -Thou hast foreknown the vanity of hope,

Foreseen thy harvest, yet proceed'st to live.