THINE EYES STILL SHONE.

Was woven still by the snow-white choir. At last she came to his hermitage,

LITTLE thinks, in the field, yon redcloaked clown

Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine
height;

Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
He sings the song, but it pleases not now,
For I did not bring home the river and
sky;-

He sang to my ear, they sang to my

cage ;

The gay enchantment was undone,
A gentle wife, but fairy none.
Then I said, "I covet truth;
Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;
I leave it behind with the games of
youth."

As I spoke, beneath my feet
The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs;
I inhaled the violet's breath;
Around me stood the oaks and firs;
Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Over me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and of deity;
Again I saw, again I heard,

The rolling river, the morning bird;-
Beauty through my senses stole;
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

THE PROBLEM.

I LIKE a church, I like a cowl, I love a prophet of the soul, And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles, Yet not for all his faith can see Would I that cowled churchman be.

Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure?

Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought; Never from lips of cunning fell The thrilling Delphic oracle; Out from the heart of nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations came, Like the volcano's tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below, The canticles of love and woe. The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity.

--

Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew;
The conscious stone to beauty grew.
Know'st thou what wove yon wood.

bird's nest

Of leaves, and feathers from her breast; Or how the fish outbuilt her shell, Painting with morn each annual cell; Or how the sacred pine-tree adds

To her old leaves new myriads?
Such and so grew these holy piles,
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone;
And morning opes with haste her lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids;
O'er England's Abbeys bends the sky
As on its friends with kindred eye;
For, out of Thought's interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air,
And Nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.

These temples grew as grows the grass;
Art might obey, but not surpass.
The passive Master lent his hand
To the vast Soul that o'er him planned,
And the same power that reared the
shrine,

Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.
Ever the fiery Pentecost

Girds with one flame the countless host, Trances the heart through chanting choirs,

And through the priest the mind inspires.

The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost.
I know what say the Fathers wise, -
The book itself before me lies, -
Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,
And he who blent both in his line,
The younger Golden Lips or mines,
Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines;
His words are music in my ear,
I see his cowled portrait dear,
And yet, for all his faith could see,
I would not the good bishop be.

BOSTON HYMN.

THE word of the Lord by night
To the watching Pilgrims came,
As they sat by the seaside,

And filled their hearts with flame.

God said, I am tired of kings,
I suffer them no more;

Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor.

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How it swells!

How it dwells

What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!

In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,

In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,

In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire.

Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
Now -now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
O, the bells, bells, bells,

What a tale their terror tells

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At the melancholy menace of their

tone!

For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.

And the people, -ah, the people, —
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,

And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling

On the human heart a stone, They are neither man nor woman, They are neither brute nor human, They are Ghouls:

And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls

A pæan from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells

With the pan of the bells!
And he dances and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the pean of the bells,-
Of the bells:

Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the throbbing of the bells,Of the bells, bells, bells,

Save two long rays through the hinge's

chink.

My heart seemed full as it could hold, There was place and to spare for the frank

young smile

And the red young mouth and the hair's young gold.

So, hush, I will give you this leaf to keep,

See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand. There, that is our secret! go to sleep; You will wake, and remember, and understand.

RABBI BEN EZRA.

GROW old along with me!
The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was made:

Our times are in His hand

Who saith, "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see
all, nor be afraid!"

Not that, amassing flowers,
Youth sighed, "Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall?"
Not that, admiring stars,

It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars;
Mine be some figured flame which blends,
transcends them all!"

Not for such hopes and fears,
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate, - folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by
a spark.

Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast:
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to men;
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt
the maw-crammed beast?

Rejoice we are allied

To That which doth provide
And not partake, effect and not receive!
A spark disturbs our clod;

Nearer we hold of God
Who gives, than of his tribes that take,
I must believe.