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.

Take, O star of all our seas, from not an alien hand,
Homage paid of song bowed down before thy glory's face,
Thou the living light of all our lovely stormy strand,
Thou the brave north-country's very glory of glories, Grace.
Loud and dark about the lighthouse rings and glares the night;
Glares with foam-lit gloom and darkling fire of storm and spray,
Rings with roar of winds in chase and rage of waves in flight,
Howls and hisses as with mouths of snakes and wolves at bay.
Scarce the cliffs of the islets, scarce the walls of Joyous Gard,
Flash to sight between the deadlier lightnings of the sea:
Storm is lord and master of a midnight evil-starred,
Nor may sight or fear discern what evil stars may be.
Dark as death and white as snow the sea-swell scowls and shines,
Heaves and...

Oh, why do men their glasses clink
When good old honest wine they drink?

Wine is so excellent a thing
To lowest subject, or to highest king,
That every sense alike should share
The pleasure that can banish care.
Thus may each merry eye behold
The sparkle of the red or gold.
Our lips may feel the goblet's edge
And taste the loving cup we pledge.
While from each foaming glass escape
The precious perfumes of the grape.
But ah, we hear it not, and so
We give the touch that all men know.
And thus do all the senses share
The pleasure that can banish care.

And that is why the glasses clink
When good old honest wine we drink.

Love is a syrup; and whoe'er we see
Sick and surcharg'd with this satiety,
Shall by this pleasing trespass quickly prove
There's loathsomeness e'en in the sweets of love.

To fair Fidele’s grassy tomb
Soft maids and village hinds shall bring
Each opening sweet of earliest bloom,
And rifle all the breathing Spring.

No wailing ghost shall dare appear
To vex with shrieks this quiet grove;
But shepherd lads assemble here,
And melting virgins own their love.

No wither’d witch shall here be seen,
No goblins lead their nightly crew;
The female fays shall haunt the green,
And dress thy grave with pearly dew.

The redbreast oft at evening hours
Shall kindly lend his little aid,
With hoary moss, and gather’d flowers,
To deck the ground where thou art laid.

When howling winds, and beating rain,
In tempests shake the sylvan cell;
Or ’midst the chase, on every plain,
The tender thought on thee shall dwel...

"Is it safe to lie so lonely when the summer twilight closes
No companion maidens, only you asleep among the roses?

"Thirteen, fourteen years you number, and your hair is soft and scented,
Perilous is such a slumber in the twilight all untented.

"Lonely loveliness means danger, lying in your rose-leaf nest,
What if some young passing stranger broke into your careless rest?"

But she would not heed the warning, lay alone serene and slight,
Till the rosy spears of morning slew the darkness of the night.

Young love, walking softly, found her, in the scented, shady closes,
Threw his ardent arms around her, kissed her lips beneath the roses.

And she said, with smiles and blushes, "Would that I had sooner known!
Never now the morning thrushes wake and find me al...

Lord, I am waiting, weeping, watching for Thee:
My youth and hope lie by me buried and dead,
My wandering love hath not where to lay its head
Except Thou say "Come to Me."

My noon is ended, abolished from life and light,
My noon is ended, ended and done away,
My sun went down in the hours that still were day,
And my lingering day is night.

How long, O Lord, how long in my desperate pain
Shall I weep and watch, shall I weep and long for Thee?
Is Thy grace ended, Thy love cut off from me?
How long shall I long in vain?

O God Who before the beginning hast seen the end,
Who hast made me flesh and blood, not frost and not fire,
Who hast filled me full of needs and love and desire
And a heart that craves a friend,

Who hast said "Come to Me an...

Little childer, - little childer;
Harken to an old man's ditty;
Tho yo live ith' country village, -
Tho yo live ith' busy city.
Aw've a little tale to tell yo, -
One 'at ne'er grows stale wi' tellin, -
It's abaat One who to save yo,
Here amang men made His dwellin.
Riches moor nor yo can fancy, -
Moor nor all this world has in it, -
He gave up becoss He loved yo,
An He's lovin yo this minnit.
All His power, pomp and glory,
Which to think on must bewilder, -
All He left, - an what for think yo?
Just for love ov little childer.
In a common, lowly stable
He wor laid, an th' stars wor twinklin,
As if angel's 'een wor peepin
On His face 'at th' dew wor sprinklin.
An one star, like a big lantern,
Shepherds who ther flocks wor keepin,
Sa...

Of the childhood of our Saviour
    Tells one simple verse alone;
Yet from that his whole behavior
    When he was a child, is known.

He was subject to his mother,
    So the holy Scriptures say;
'Tis enough, we need no other
    Record of him day by day.

Thus we, his obedience knowing,
    Know how gentle and how mild,--
How in truth and goodness growing
    Was our Saviour from a child.

Little children, who endeavor
    Like the blessed One to be,
As you try, remember ever
    How obedient was he.

If, like Jesus pure and holy,
    You your parents' will obey,
You will grow more meek and lowly,
    And more like him, every day.

Vain is the effort to forget.
Some day I shall be cold, I know,
As is the eternal moon-lit snow
Of the high Alps, to which I go:
But ah, not yet! not yet!

Vain is the agony of grief.
’Tis true, indeed, an iron knot
Ties straitly up from mine thy lot,
And were it snapt, thou lov’st me not!
But is despair relief?

Awhile let me with thought have done;
And as this brimm’d unwrinkled Rhine
And that far purple mountain line
Lie sweetly in the look divine
Of the slow-sinking sun;

So let me lie, and calm as they
Let beam upon my inward view
Those eyes of deep, soft, lucent hue,
Eyes too expressive to be blue,
Too lovely to be grey.

Ah Quiet, all things feel thy balm!
Those blue hills too, this river’s flow,
Were re...

I (Bread and Music)

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, belovd,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always,
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.

II

My heart has become as hard as a city street,
The horses trample upon it, it sings like iron,
All day long and all night long they beat,
They ring like the...

I'll ask the sylph who round thee flies,
    And in thy breath his pinion dips,
Who suns him in thy radiant eyes,
    And faints upon thy sighing lips:

I'll ask him where's the veil of sleep
    That used to shade thy looks of light;
And why those eyes their vigil keep
    When other suns are sunk in night?

And I will say--her angel breast
    Has never throbbed with guilty sting;
Her bosom is the sweetest nest
    Where Slumber could repose his wing!

And I will say--her cheeks that flush,
    Like vernal roses in the sun,
Have ne'er by shame been taught to blush,
    Except for what her eyes have done!

Then tell me, why, thou child of air!
    Does slumber from her eyelids rove?
What is her heart's impassioned care?
    ...

    How great my joy! How grand my recompense!
    I bow to thee; I keep thee in my sight.
    I call thee mine, in love though not in sense
    I share with thee the hermitage immense
    Of holy dreams which come to us at night,
    When, through the medium of the spirit-lens
    We see the soul, in its primeval light,
    And Reason spares the hopes it cannot blight.
    It is the soul of thee, and not the form,
    And not the face, I yearn-to in my sleep.
    It is thyself. The body is the storm,
    The soul the star beyond it in the deep
    Of Nature's calm. And yonder on the steep
    The Sun of Faith, quiescent, round, and warm!

Not while I live may I forget
That garden which my spirit trod!
Where dreams were flowers, wild and wet,
And beautiful as God.

Not while I breathe, awake adream,
Shall live again for me those hours,
When, in its mystery and gleam,
I met her 'mid the flowers.

Eyes, talismanic heliotrope,
Beneath mesmeric lashes, where
The sorceries of love and hope
Had made a shining lair.

And daydawn brows, whereover hung
The twilight of dark locks; and lips,
Whose beauty spoke the rose's tongue
Of fragrance-voweled drips.

I will not tell of cheeks and chin,
That held me as sweet language holds;
Nor of the eloquence within
Her bosom's moony molds.

Nor of her large limbs' languorous
Win...