"Convalescente di squisiti mali"

    My spirit like a shepherd boy
    Goes dancing down the lane.
    When all the world is young with joy
    Must I lie here in pain?

    With shepherd's pipe my spirit fled
    And cloven foot of Pan;
    The mortal bondage he has shed
    And shackling yoke of man.

    And though he leave me cold and mute,
    A traitor to his care,
    I smile to hear his honeyed flute
    Hang on the scented air.

A strength Thy service cannot tire,
A faith which doubt can never dim,
A heart of love, a lip of fire,
O Freedom's God! be Thou to him!
Speak through him words of power and fear,
As through Thy prophet bards of old,
And let a scornful people hear
Once more Thy Sinai-thunders rolled.
For lying lips Thy blessing seek,
And hands of blood are raised to Thee,
And on Thy children, crushed and weak,
The oppressor plants his kneeling knee.
Let then, O God! Thy servant dare
Thy truth in all its power to tell,
Unmask the priestly thieves, and tear
The Bible from the grasp of hell!
From hollow rite and narrow span
Of law and sect by Thee released,
Oh, teach him that the Christian man
Is holier than the Jewish priest.
Chase back the shadows, gray and o...

Gone to thy Heavenly Father's rest!
The flowers of Eden round thee blowing,
And on thine ear the murmurs blest
Of Siloa's waters softly flowing!
Beneath that Tree of Life which gives
To all the earth its healing leaves
In the white robe of angels clad,
And wandering by that sacred river,
Whose streams of holiness make glad
The city of our God forever!
Gentlest of spirits! not for thee
Our tears are shed, our sighs are given;
Why mourn to know thou art a free
Partaker of the joys of heaven?
Finished thy work, and kept thy faith
In Christian firmness unto death;
And beautiful as sky and earth,
When autumn's sun is downward going,
The blessed memory of thy worth
Around thy place of slumber glowing!
But woe for us! who linger still
With fe...

Lift up thine eyes, sweet Psyche! What is she
That those soft fringes timidly should fall
Before her, and thy spiritual brow
Be shadowed as her presence were a cloud?
A loftier gift is thine than she can give -
That queen of beauty. She may mould the brow
To perfectness, and give unto the form
A beautiful proportion; she may stain
The eye with a celestial blue - the cheek
With carmine of the sunset; she may breathe
Grace into every motion, like the play
Of the least visible tissue of a cloud;
She may give all that is within her own
Bright cestus - and one silent look of thine,
Like stronger magic, will outcharm it all.

Ay, for the soul is better than its frame,
The spirit than its temple. What's the brow,
Or the eye's lustre, or the step of air,

One thing in all things have I seen:
    One thought has haunted earth and air;
Clangour and silence both have been
    Its palace chambers.    Everywhere

I saw the mystic vision flow,
    And live in men, and woods, and streams,
Until I could no longer know
    The dream of life from my own dreams.

Sometimes it rose like fire in me,
    Within the depths of my own mind,
And spreading to infinity,
    It took the voices of the wind.

It scrawled the human mystery,
    Dim heraldry--on light and air;
Wavering along the starry sea,
    I saw the flying vision there.

Each fire that in God's temple lit
    Burns fierce before the inner shrine,
Dimmed as my fire grew near to it,
    And darkened at the light of mine.

We sow the glebe, we reap the corn,
We build the house where we may rest,
And then, at moments, suddenly,
We look up to the great wide sky,
Inquiring wherefore we were born…
For earnest or for jest?

The senses folding thick and dark
About the stifled soul within,
We guess diviner things beyond,
And yearn to them with yearning fond;
We strike out blindly to a mark
Believed in, but not seen.

We vibrate to the pant and thrill
Wherewith Eternity has curled
In serpent-twine about God’s seat;
While, freshening upward to His feet,
In gradual growth His full-leaved will
Expands from world to world.

And, in the tumult and excess
Of act and passion under sun,
We sometimes hear, oh, soft and far,
As silver star did touch with st...

With reverent eyes and bowed, uncovered head,
A son of sorrow kneels by fanes you knew;
But cannot say the words that should be said
To crowned and winged divinities like you.

The perfect speech of superhuman spheres
Man has not heard since He of Nazareth,
Slain for the sins of twice two thousand years,
Saw Godship gleaming through the gates of Death.

And therefore he who in these latter days
Has lost a Father falling by the shrine,
Can only use the world’s ephemeral phrase,
Not, Lord, the faultless language that is Thine.

But he, Thy son upon whose shoulders shone
So long Elisha’s gleaming garments, may
Be pleased to hear a pleading human tone
To sift the spirit of the words I say.

O, Master, since the gentle Stenhouse died
And le...

(With a pencil sketch of an Angel by Botticelli)


    Thou in whose All no work imperfect stands,
    Thou who dost gaze on Beauty's unveiled face,
    Grant to Thy children Thy sustaining grace,
    When low at length have run the daylight sands,--
    When, though their day was set to Thy commands,
    They bow contritely in prayer's holy place,
    Because through strivings beauty-wards they trace
    The sad misshapings of their earthly hands:
    Grant them at eve a soul devoutly still,
    Grant them in dreams a vision of Thy light,
    Grant them at morn a sorrow purged away
    Into the peace of all-absolving night,
    Star in the dawnlight of a fairer day,
    Nearer the blossom of Thy perfect Will.

Ethel Allen Murphy

Brothers, look there!

What! see ye nothing yet?
Knit your eyebrows close, and stare;
Send your souls forth in the gaze,
As my finger-point is set,
Through the thick of the foggy air.
Beyond the air, you see the dark;
(For the darkness hedges still our ways;)
And beyond the dark, oh, lives away!
Dim and far down, surely you mark
A huge world-heap of withered years
Dropt from the boughs of eternity?
See ye not something lying there,
Shapeless as a dumb despair,
Yet a something that spirits can recognise
With the vision dwelling in their eyes?
It hath the form of a man!
As a huge moss-rock in a valley green,
When the light to freeze began,
Thickening with crystals of dark between,
Might look like a sleeping man.
What think ye it, br...

    Look! look there!
Send your eyes across the gray
By my finger-point away
Through the vaporous, fumy air.
Beyond the air, you see the dark?
Beyond the dark, the dawning day?
On its horizon, pray you, mark
Something like a ruined heap
Of worlds half-uncreated, that go back:
Down all the grades through which they rose
Up to harmonious life and law's repose,
Back, slow, to the awful deep
Of nothingness, mere being's lack:
On its surface, lone and bare,
Shapeless as a dumb despair,
Formless, nameless, something lies:
Can the vision in your eyes
Its idea recognize?

    'Tis a poor lost soul, alack!--
Half he lived some ages back;
But, with hardly opened eyes,
Thinking him already wise,
Down he sat and wrote a book;
Drew h...

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.


Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs,
And works his sovereign will.


Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.


Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace:
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.


His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.


Blind unbelief is sure to err,[1]
And scan his work in vain:
God is his ...

For what contend the wise? for nothing less
Than that the Soul, freed from the bonds of Sense,
And to her God restored by evidence
Of things not seen, drawn forth from their recess,
Root there, and not in forms, her holiness;
For Faith, which to the Patriarchs did dispense
Sure guidance, ere a ceremonial fence
Was needful round men thirsting to transgress;
For Faith, more perfect still, with which the Lord
Of all, himself a Spirit, in the youth
Of Christian aspiration, deigned to fill
The temples of their hearts who, with his word
Informed, were resolute to do his will,
And worship him in spirit and in truth.

Go, speed the stars of Thought
On to their shining goals;--
The sower scatters broad his seed;
The wheat thou strew'st be souls.

I touch but the things which are near;
    The heavens are too high for my reach:
        In shadow and symbol and creed,
        I discern not the soul from the deed,
    Nor the thought hidden under, from speech;
And the thing which I know not I fear.

I dare not despair nor despond,
    Though I grope in the dark for the dawn:
        Birth and laughter, and bubbles of breath,
        And tears, and the blank void of death,
    Round each its penumbra is drawn,--
I touch them,--I see not beyond.

What voice speaking solemn and slow,
    Before the beginning for me,
        From the mouth of the primal First Cause,
        Shall teach me the thing that I was,
    Shall point out the thing I shall be,
And show me the path that I go?

...

The Lord receives his highest praise
From humble minds and hearts sincere;
While all the loud professor says
Offends the righteous Judge’s ear.


To walk as children of the day,
To mark the precepts’ holy light,
To wage the warfare, watch, and pray,
Show who are pleasing in his sight.


Not words alone it cost the Lord,
To purchase pardon for his own;
Nor will a soul, by grace restored,
Return the Saviour words alone.


With golden bells, the priestly vest,
And rich pomegranates border’d round,[1]
The need of holiness express’d,
And call’d for fruit, as well as sound.


Easy, indeed, it were to reach
A mansion in the courts above,
If swelling words and fluent speech
Might serve, instead of faith...

("Dans les vieilles forêts.")

[X., April 20, 1837.]


Through ancient forests - where like flowing tide
The rising sap shoots vigor far and wide,
Mounting the column of the alder dark
And silv'ring o'er the birch's shining bark -
Hast thou not often, Albert Dürer, strayed
Pond'ring, awe-stricken - through the half-lit glade,
Pallid and trembling - glancing not behind
From mystic fear that did thy senses bind,
Yet made thee hasten with unsteady pace?
Oh, Master grave! whose musings lone we trace
Throughout thy works we look on reverently.
Amidst the gloomy umbrage thy mind's eye
Saw clearly, 'mong the shadows soft yet deep,
The web-toed faun, and Pan the green-eyed peep,
Who deck'd with flowers the cave where thou might'st rest,
Leaf...

Theme no poet gladly sung,
Fair to old and foul to young;
Scorn not thou the love of parts,
And the articles of arts.
Grandeur of the perfect sphere
Thanks the atoms that cohere.

The yesterday doth never smile,
The day goes drudging through the while,
Yet, in the name of Godhead, I
The morrow front, and can defy;
Though I am weak, yet God, when prayed,
Cannot withhold his conquering aid.
Ah me! it was my childhood's thought,
If He should make my web a blot
On life's fair picture of delight,
My heart's content would find it right.
But O, these waves and leaves,--
When happy stoic Nature grieves,
No human speech so beautiful
As their murmurs mine to lull.
On this altar God hath built
I lay my vanity and guilt;
Nor me can Hope or Passion urge
Hearing as now the lofty dirge
Which blasts of Northern mountains hymn,
Nature's funeral high and dim,--
Sable pageantry of clouds,
Mourning summer laid in shrouds.
Many...