DYING THOUGHTS.


As Life's receding sunset fades
    And night descends,
I calmly watch the gathering shades,
As darkness stealthily invades
    And daylight ends.

Earth's span is drawing to its close,
    With every breath;
My pain-racked brain no respite knows,
Yet shrinks it, from the grim repose
    It feels in death.

The curtain falls on Life's last scene,
    The end is neared;
At last I face death's somber screen,
The fleeting joys which intervene
    Have disappeared.

And as a panoramic scroll
    The past unreels;
The mocking past, beyond control,
Though buried, as a parchment roll,
    Its tale reveals.

I stand before the dread, unknown,
    Yet solemn fact;
I see the seeds of foll...

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 thy 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 fir...

I cannot count the pebbles in the brook.
Well hath He spoken: 'Swear not by thy head,
Thou knowest not the hairs,' though He, we read,
Writes that wild number in his own strange book.

I cannot count the sands or search the seas,
Death cometh, and I leave so much untrod.
Grant my immortal aureole, O my God,
And I will name the leaves upon the trees.

In heaven I shall stand on gold and glass,
Still brooding earth's arithmetic to spell;
Or see the fading of the fires of hell
Ere I have thanked my God for all the grass.

What is transcendentalism?
    Merely sentimentalism
With a dash of egotism
    Somewhat mixed with mysticism.
Not at all like Socialism,
    Nor a bit like Atheism,
Hinges not on pessimism,
    Treats of man's asceticism,
Quite opposes anarchism.
    Can't you name another "Ism?"
Yes, it's transcendentalism.

Give thanks, my soul, for the things that are free!
The blue of the sky, the shade of a tree,
And the unowned leagues of the shining sea.

Be grateful, my heart, for everyman's gold;
By road-way and river and hill unfold
Sun-coloured blossoms that never are sold.

For the little joys sometimes say a grace;
The scent of a rose, the frost's fairy lace,
Or the sound of the rain in a quiet place.

Be glad of what cannot be bought or beguiled;
The trust of the tameless, the fearless, the wild,
The song of a bird and the faith of a child.

For prairie and mountain, windswept and high,
For betiding beauty of earth and sky -
Say a benediction e'er you pass by.

Give thanks, my soul, for the things that are free!
The joy of life and the spring'...

A ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs,
The world uncertain comes and goes;
The lover rooted stays.
I fancied he was fled,--
And, after many a year,
Glowed unexhausted kindliness,
Like daily sunrise there.
My careful heart was free again,
O friend, my bosom said,
Through thee alone the sky is arched,
Through thee the rose is red;
All things through thee take nobler form,
And look beyond the earth,
The mill-round of our fate appears
A sun-path in thy worth.
Me too thy nobleness has taught
To master my despair;
The fountains of my hidden life
Are through thy friendship fair.

The grandest theme for tongue, or pen,
Is not the heavens supernal;
Nor mighty deeds of God-like men,
Though they may be eternal;

Nor Alpine heights, nor lovely vale,
With brooks and grazing cattle;
Nor awful roar of rushing gale,
Beyond the noise of battle;

Nor clashing arms, nor trembling earth;
Nor heaving waves of ocean;
Nor record of a nation's birth;
Nor heaven's cloud-cars in motion.

The grandest theme, for tongue, or pen,
Above all else in glory;
Which suits alike, all sinful men,
Is the sweet Gospel story,

Which tells me of my Saviour's love
And infinite compassion,
Which brought Him from His throne above
To Calvary's cross and passion.

And now the holy angels sing,
With blood-washed souls in glor...

The calm outgoing of a long, rich day,
    Checkered with storm and sunshine, gloom and light,
Now passing in pure, cloudless skies away,
    Withdrawing into silence of blank night.
    Thick shadows settle on the landscape bright,
Like the weird cloud of death that falls apace
On the still features of the passive face.


Soothing and gentle as a mother's kiss,
    The touch that stopped the beating of the heart.
A look so blissfully serene as this,
    Not all the joy of living could impart.
With dauntless faith and courage therewithal,
The Master found her ready at his call.


On such a golden evening forth there floats,
    Between the grave earth and the glowing sky
In the clear air, unvexed with hazy motes,
    The mystic-winged and f...

The Saviour hides his face!
My spirit thirsts to prove
Renew’d supplies of pardoning grace,
And never-fading love.


The favour’d souls who know
What glories shine in him,
Pant for his presence as the roe
Pants for the living stream!


What trifles tease me now!
They swarm like summer flies,
They cleave to everything I do,
And swim before my eyes.


How dull the Sabbath-day,
Without the Sabbath’s Lord!
How toilsome then to sing and pray,
And wait upon the word!


Of all the truths I hear,
How few delight my taste!
I glean a berry here and there,
But mourn the vintage past.


Yet let me (as I ought)
Still hope to be supplied;
No pleasure else is worth a thought,
Nor shall I be ...

On the river of life, as I float along,
    I see with the spirit's sight
That many a nauseous weed of wrong
    Has root in a seed of right.
For evil is good that has gone astray,
    And sorrow is only blindness,
And the world is always under the sway
    Of a changeless law of kindness.

The commonest error a truth can make
    Is shouting its sweet voice hoarse,
And sin is only the soul's mistake
    In misdirecting its force.
And love, the fairest of all fair things
    That ever to man descended,
Grows rank with nettles and poisonous things
    Unless it is watched and tended.

There could not be anything better than this
    Old world in the way it began;
And though some matters have gone amiss
    From the great original plan,<...

O soul of life, 't is thee we long to hear,
Thine eyes we seek for, and thy touch we dream;
Lost from our days, thou art a spirit near, -
Life needs thine eloquence, and ways supreme.
More real than we who but a semblance wear,
We see thee not, because thou wilt not seem!

Rifted mountains, clad with forests, girded round by gleaming pines,
Where the morning, like an angel, robed in golden splendour shines;
Shimmering mountains, throwing downward on the slopes a mazy glare
Where the noonday glory sails through gulfs of calm and glittering air;
Stately mountains, high and hoary, piled with blocks of amber cloud,
Where the fading twilight lingers, when the winds are wailing loud;
Grand old mountains, overbeetling brawling brooks and deep ravines,
Where the moonshine, pale and mournful, flows on rocks and evergreens.

Underneath these regal ridges underneath the gnarly trees,
I am sitting, lonely-hearted, listening to a lonely breeze!
Sitting by an ancient casement, casting many a longing look
Out across the hazy gloaming out beyond the brawling brook...

Back of each soldier who fights for France,
    Ay, back of each woman and man
Who toils and prays through these long tense days,
    Is the spirit of Great Joan.
For the love she gave, and the life she gave,
    In the eyes of God sufficed
To crown her with light, and power, and might,
    That made her second to Christ.

And so in that hour at the Marne she came,
    To the seeing eyes of men;
And the blind of view still felt and knew
    That her spirit had come again.
And she will come in each crucial hour
    And joy shall follow despair,
For Joan sees her France on its knees
    And she hears the voice of its prayer.

There is no hate in the heart of France,
    But a mighty moral force
That takes its stand for her worshipped land,

WRITTEN AFTER VIEWING THE RUINS OF THE ONE, AND HEARING THE CHURCH SERVICE IN THE OTHER.

Glory and boast of Avalon's fair vale,
How beautiful thy ancient turrets rose!
Fancy yet sees them, in the sunshine pale,
Gleaming, or, more majestic, in repose,
When, west-away, the crimson landscape glows,
Casting their shadows on the waters wide.[198]
How sweet the sounds, that, at still day-light's close,
Came blended with the airs of eventide,
When through the glimmering aisle faint "Misereres" died!

But all is silent now! silent the bell,
That, heard from yonder ivied turret high,
Warned the cowled brother from his midnight cell;
Silent the vesper-chant, the litany
Responsive to the organ! - scattered lie
The wrecks of the proud pile, 'mid arches gray,
Wh...

God measures souls by their capacity
For entertaining his best Angel, Love.
Who loveth most is nearest kin to God,
Who is all Love, or Nothing.
        He who sits
And looks out on the palpitating world,
And feels his heart swell in him large enough
To hold all men within it, he is near
His great Creator's standard, though he dwells
Outside the pale of churches, and knows not
A feast-day from a fast-day, or a line
Of Scripture even. What God wants of us
Is that outreaching bigness that ignores
All littleness of aims, or loves, or creeds,
And clasps all Earth and Heaven in its embrace.

No personal; a God divinely crowned
With gold and raised upon a golden throne
Deep in a golden glory, whence he nods
Man this or that, and little more than man!

And shalt thou see Him individual?
Not till the freed intelligence hath sought
Ten hundred hundred years to rise and love,
Piercing the singing cycles under God,
Their iridescent evolutions orbed
In wild prismatic splendors, shall it see
Through God-propinquity become a god
See, lightening out of spheric harmonies,
Resplendencies of empyrean light,
Prisms and facets of ten million beams
Starring a crystal of berainbowed rays,
And in this - eyes of burning sapphire, eyes
Deep as the music of the beautiful;
And o'er the eyes, limpid hierarchal brows,
As they were lilies of seraphic fire;<...

Though the bold wings of Poesy affect
The clouds, and wheel around the mountain tops
Rejoicing, from her loftiest height she drops
Well pleased to skim the plain with wild flowers deckt
Or muse in solemn grove whose shades protect
The lingering dew there steals along, or stops
Watching the least small bird that round her hops,
Or creeping worm, with sensitive respect.
Her functions are they therefore less divine,
Her thoughts less deep, or void of grave intent
Her simplest fancies? Should that fear be thine,
Aspiring Votary, ere thy hand present
One offering, kneel before her modest shrine,
With brow in penitential sorrow bent!

All things are shadows of thee, Lord;
    The sun himself is but thy shade;
My spirit is the shadow of thy word,
    A thing that thou hast said.

Diamonds are shadows of the sun,
    They gleam as after him they hark:
My soul some arrows of thy light hath won.
    And feebly fights the dark!

All knowledges are broken shades,
    In gulfs of dark a scattered horde:
Together rush the parted glory-grades--
    Then, lo, thy garment, Lord!

My soul, the shadow, still is light
    Because the shadow falls from thee;
I turn, dull candle, to the centre bright,
    And home flit shadowy.

Shine, Lord; shine me thy shadow still;
    The brighter I, the more thy shade!
My motion be thy lovely moveless will!
    My darkness, light del...