O sister, God is very good--
    Thou art a woman now:
O sister, be thy womanhood
    A baptism on thy brow!

For what?--Do ancient stories lie
    Of Titans long ago,
The children of the lofty sky
    And mother earth below?

Nay, walk not now upon the ground
    Some sons of heavenly mould?
Some daughters of the Holy, found
    In earthly garments' fold?

He said, who did and spoke the truth:
    "Gods are the sons of God."
And so the world's Titanic youth
    Strives homeward by one road.

Then live thou, sister, day and night,
    An earth-child of the sky,
For ever climbing up the height
    Of thy divinity.

Still in thy mother's heart-embrace,
    Waiting thy hour of birth,
Thou growest by the genia...

Night bent o'er the mountains
With aspect serene;
The deep waters slept
'Neath the moon's pallid sheen,
And the stars in their courses
Moved noiseless on high,
As a soul, when it cleaveth
In thought the blue sky.

The low winds were spent
With the fever of day,
And stirred scarce a leaf
Of the green wood's array;
And the white, fleecy clouds
Hovered light on the air,
Like an angel's wing, bent
For a penitent prayer.

Sleep hushed in the city
The tumult and strife,
And calmed in the spirit
The unrest of life:
But one, where Mount Lebanon
Lifted its snow,
Slumbered not till the morn
Wakened earth with its glow.

Beneath the dark cedars,
Majestic, sublime,
That for ages had mocked
Both at tempe...

Unless our Souls win back to Thee,
We shall have lost this fight.
Yes, though we win on field and sea,
Though mightier still our might may be,
We still shall lose if we win not Thee.
    Help us to climb, as in Thy sight,
    The Great High Way of Thy Delight.

It is the world-old strife again,--
The fight 'twixt good and ill.
Since first the curse broke out in Cain,
Each age has worn the grim red chain,
And ill fought good for sake of gain.
    Help us, through all life's conflict, still
    To battle upwards to Thy Will.

Are we to be like all the rest,
Or climb we loftier height?
Can we our wayward steps arrest?--
All life with nobler life invest?--
And so fulfil our Lord's behest?
    Help us, through all the world's dark night,

All my ways are before thee. Psalm 119:168.


Awake, O soul, awake!
Enter thy cell of thought,
And there in calmness meditate
On what God's word has taught.

There's nought within thy scope,
No influence thou hast sown,
No gloomy doubt, no joyful hope,
But unto him are known.

Awake! but grovel not
In ashes of despair,
Christ's precious blood can cleanse each spot;
Cast on him every care.

Before him are thy ways,
But in his mercy free
He further yet his love displays,
And intercedes for thee.

Awake to holy fear
And praise thy God on high;
Be it thy joy to praise him here
And praise him in the sky.

Once I wished I might rehearse
Freedom's paean in my verse,
That the slave who caught the strain
Should throb until he snapped his chain,
But the Spirit said, 'Not so;
Speak it not, or speak it low;
Name not lightly to be said,
Gift too precious to be prayed,
Passion not to be expressed
But by heaving of the breast:
Yet,--wouldst thou the mountain find
Where this deity is shrined,
Who gives to seas and sunset skies
Their unspent beauty of surprise,
And, when it lists him, waken can
Brute or savage into man;
Or, if in thy heart he shine,
Blends the starry fates with thine,
Draws angels nigh to dwell with thee,
And makes thy thoughts archangels be;
Freedom's secret wilt thou know?--
Counsel not with flesh and blood;
Loiter not for c...

From the mystic sidereal spaces,
In the noon of a night 'mid of May,
Came a spirit that murmured to me --
Or was it the dream of a dream?
No! no! from the purest of places,
Where liveth the highest of races,
In an unfallen sphere far away
(And it wore Immortality's gleam)
Came a Being. Hath seen on the sea
The sheen of some silver star shimmer
'Thwart shadows that fall dim and dimmer
O'er a wave half in dream on the deep?
It shone on me thus in my sleep.

Was I sleeping? Is sleep but the closing,
In the night, of our eyes from the light?
Doth the spirit of man e'en then rest?
Or doth it not toil all the more?
When the earth-wearied frame is reposing,
Is the vision then veiled the less bright?
When the earth from our sight hath been taken,

Her planted eye to-day controls,
Is in the morrow most at home,
And sternly calls to being souls
That curse her when they come.

And, not in vain embodied to the sight,
Religion finds even in the stern retreat
Of feudal sway her own appropriate seat;
From the collegiate pomps on Windsor's height
Down to the humbler altar, which the Knight
And his retainers of the embattled hall
Seek in domestic oratory small,
For prayer in stillness, or the chanted rite;
Then chiefly dear, when foes are planted round,
Who teach the intrepid guardians of the place
Hourly exposed to death, with famine worn,
And suffering under many a perilous wound
How sad would be their durance, if forlorn
Of offices dispensing heavenly grace!

On page of thine I cannot trace
The cold and heartless commonplace,
A statue's fixed and marble grace.

For ever as these lines I penned,
Still with the thought of thee will blend
That of some loved and common friend,

Who in life's desert track has made
His pilgrim tent with mine, or strayed
Beneath the same remembered shade.

And hence my pen unfettered moves
In freedom which the heart approves,
The negligence which friendship loves.

And wilt thou prize my poor gift less
For simple air and rustic dress,
And sign of haste and carelessness?

Oh, more than specious counterfeit
Of sentiment or studied wit,
A heart like thine should value it.

Yet half I fear my gift will be
Unto thy book, if not to thee,
Of more...

I.

Mother of visions, with lineaments dulcet as numbers
Breathed on the eyelids of Love by music that slumbers,
Secretly, sweetly, O presence of fire and snow,
Thou comest mysterious,
In beauty imperious,
Clad on with dreams and the light of no world that we know:
Deep to my innermost soul am I shaken,
Helplessly shaken and tossed,
And of they tyrannous yearnings so utterly taken,
My lips, unsatisfied, thirst;
Mine eyes are accurst
With longings for visions that far in the night are forsaken;
And mine ears, in listening lost,
Yearn, waiting the note of a chord that will never awaken.

II.

Like palpable music thou comest, like moonlight; and far,
Resonant bar upon bar,
The vibrating lyre
Of the spirit responds with melodious fire...

    "The sun says his prayers," said the fairy,
    Or else he would wither and die.
    "The sun says his prayers," said the fairy,
    "For strength to climb up through the sky.
    He leans on invisible angels,
    And Faith is his prop and his rod.
    The sky is his crystal cathedral.
    And dawn is his altar to God."

Night of Mid-June, in heavy vapours dying,
Like priestly hands thy holy touch is lying
Upon the world's wide brow;
God-like and grand all nature is commanding
The "peace that passes human understanding";
I, also, feel it now.

What matters it to-night, if one life treasure
I covet, is not mine! Am I to measure
The gifts of Heaven's decree
By my desires? O! life for ever longing
For some far gift, where many gifts are thronging,
God wills, it may not be.

Am I to learn that longing, lifted higher,
Perhaps will catch the gleam of sacred fire
That shows my cross is gold?
That underneath this cross - however lowly,
A jewel rests, white, beautiful and holy,
Whose worth can not be told.

Like to a scene I watched one day in wonder: -
A ...

I. Spirit's House

From naked stones of agony
I will build a house for me;
As a mason all alone
I will raise it, stone by stone,
And every stone where I have bled
Will show a sign of dusky red.
I have not gone the way in vain,
For I have good of all my pain;
My spirit's quiet house will be
Built of naked stones I trod
On roads where I lost sight of God.

II. Mastery

I would not have a god come in
To shield me suddenly from sin,
And set my house of life to rights;
Nor angels with bright burning wings
Ordering my earthly thoughts and things;
Rather my own frail guttering lights
Wind blown and nearly beaten out;
Rather the terror of the nights
And long, sick groping after doubt;
Rather be lost than let my soul
Sl...

Long, long ago He said,
He who could wake the dead,
    And walk upon the sea--
    "Come, follow Me.

"Leave your brown nets and bring
Only your hearts to sing,
    Only your souls to pray,
    Rise, come away.

"Shake out your spirit-sails,
And brave those wilder gales,
    And I will make you then
    Fishers of men."

Was this, then, what He meant?
Was this His high intent,
    After two thousand years
    Of blood and tears?

God help us, if we fight
For right, and not for might.
    God help us if we seek
    To shield the weak.

Then, though His heaven be far
From this blind welter of war,
    He'll bless us, on the sea
    From Calvary.

EZEKIEL XXXVII.


The Spirit of God with resistless control,
Like a sunbeam, illumined the depths of my soul,
And visions prophetical burst on my sight,
As he carried me forth in the power of his might.
Around me I saw in a desolate heap
The relics of those who had slept their death-sleep,
In the midst of the valley, all reckless and bare,
Like the hope of my country, lie withering there,--

"Son of man! can these dry bones, long bleached in decay,
Ever feel in their flesh the warm beams of the day;
Can the spirit of life ever enter again
The perishing heaps that now whiten the plain?"
"Lord, thou knowest alone, who their being first gave:
Thy power may be felt in the depths of the grave;
The hand that created again may impart
The rich tide of f...

II. Continued

From Rite and Ordinance abused they fled
To Wilds where both were utterly unknown;
But not to them had Providence foreshown
What benefits are missed, what evils bred,
In worship neither raised nor limited
Save by Self-will. Lo! from that distant shore,
For Rite and Ordinance, Piety is led
Back to the Land those Pilgrims left of yore,
Led by her own free choice. So Truth and Love
By Conscience governed do their steps retrace.
Fathers! your Virtues, such the power of grace,
Their spirit, in your Children, thus approve.
Transcendent over time, unbound by place,
Concord and Charity in circles move.

Betimes, I seem to see in dreams
What when awake I may not see;
Can night be God's more than the day?
Do stars, not suns, best light his way?
Who knoweth? Blended lights and shades
Arch aisles down which He walks to me.

I hear him coming in the night
Afar, and yet I know not how;
His steps make music low and sweet;
Sometimes the nails are in his feet;
Does darkness give God better light
Than day, to find a weary brow?

Does darkness give man brighter rays
To find the God, in sunshine lost?
Must shadows wrap the trysting-place
Where God meets hearts with gentlest grace?
Who knoweth it? God hath His ways
For every soul here sorrow-tossed.

The hours of day are like the waves
That fret against the shores of sin:
They touch the ...

By sound of name, and touch of hand,
Thro' ears that hear, and eyes that see,
We know each other in this land,
How little must that knowledge be?

How souls are all the time alone,
No spirit can another reach;
They hide away in realms unknown,
Like waves that never touch a beach.

We never know each other here,
No soul can here another see --
To know, we need a light as clear
As that which fills eternity.

For here we walk by human light,
But there the light of God is ours,
Each day, on earth, is but a night;
Heaven alone hath clear-faced hours.

I call you thus -- you call me thus --
Our mortal is the very bar
That parts forever each of us,
As skies, on high, part star from star.

A name is nothing but a name
...