LOVED ONCE.

I CLASSED, appraising once,

Earth's lamentable sounds,-the welladay,
The jarring yea and nay,

The fall of kisses on unanswering clay,

The sobbed farewell, the welcome mournfuller,—
But all did leaven the air

.

With a less bitter leaven of sure despair

Than these words,—" I loved ONCE."

And who saith, "I loved ONCE"?

Not angels,-whose clear eyes, love, love foresee,
Love, through eternity,

And by To Love do apprehend To Be.

Not God, called LOVE, His noble crown-name casting A light too broad for blasting :

The great God changing not from everlasting,

Oh, never is "Loved ONCE."

Thy word, thou Victim-Christ, misprizëd friend!
Thy cross and curse may rend,
But having loved Thou lovest to the end.
This is man's saying-man's: too weak too move
One sphered star above,

Man desecrates the eternal God-word Love

By his No More, and Once.

Blasphemers? Is your earth not cold enow,

Mourners, without that snow?

Ah, friends, and would ye wrong each other so?
And could ye say of some whose love is known,
Whose prayers have met your own,

Whose tears have fallen for you, whose smiles have shone
So long "We loved them ONCE"?

Could

ye, "We loved her once,"

Say calm of me, sweet friends, when out of sight?
When hearts of better right

Stand in between me and your happy light?
Or when, as flowers kept too long in the shade,
Ye find my colours fade,

And all that is not love in me, decayed?

Such words-Ye loved me ONCE!

Could ye, "We loved her once

Say cold of me when further put away
In earth's sepulchral clay,

When mute the lips which deprecate to-day?
Not so not then-least then! When life is shriven
And death's full joy is given,-

Of those who sit and love you up in heaven,
Say not, "We loved them once."

Say never, ye loved ONCE:

God is too near above, the grave, beneath,
And all our moments breathe
Too quick in mysteries of life and death,
For such a word. The eternities avenge
Affections light of range.

There comes no change to justify that change,
Whatever comes-Loved ONCE!

And yet that same word ONCE

Is humanly acceptive. Kings have said,
Shaking a discrowned head,

"We ruled once,”—dotards, “We once taught and led,” Cripples once danced i' the vines, and bards approved, Were once by scornings moved :

But love strikes one hour-LOVE! those never loved

Who dreamed that they loved ONCE.

SUBSTITUTION.

WHEN Some beloved voice that was to you
Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly,
And silence against which you dare not cry,
Aches round you like a strong disease and new-
What hope? what help? what music will undo
That silence to your sense? Not friendship's sigh,
Not reason's subtle count; not melody

Of viols, nor of pipes that Faunas blew ;

Not songs of poets, nor of nightingales

Whose hearts leap upward through the cypress-trees
To the clear moon; nor yet the spheric laws
Self-chanted, nor the angels' sweet All hails,
Met in the smile of God: nay, none of these.
Speak THOU, availing Christ !—and fill this pause.

COMFORT.

SPEAK low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet
From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low,

Lest I should fear and fall, and miss Thee so
Who art not missed by any that entreat.
Speak to me as to Mary at Thy feet!
And if no precious gums my hands bestow,
Let my tears drop like amber while I go
In reach of Thy divinest voice complete
In humanest affection-thus, in sooth,
To lose the sense of losing. As a child,
Whose song-bird seeks the wood for evermore
Is sung to in its stead by mother's mouth
Till, sinking on her breast, love-reconciled,
He sleeps the faster that he wept before.

TEARS.

THANK God, bless God, all ye who suffer not
More grief than ye can weep for. That is well-
That is light grieving! lighter, none befell
Since Adam forfeited the primal lot.

Tears! what are tears? The babe weeps in its cot,
The mother singing; at her marriage-bell

The bride weeps, and before the oracle

Of high-faned hills the poet has forgot

Such moisture on his cheeks. Thank God for grace, Ye who weep only! If, as some have done,

Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place

And touch but tombs,-look up! those tears will run Soon in long rivers down the lifted face,

And leave the vision clear for stars and sun.

GRIEF.

I TELL you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air,
Beat upward to God's throne in loud access

Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare

Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare

Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death-
Most like a monumental statue set

In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet :
If it could weep, it could arise and go.

FUTURITY.

AND, O beloved voices, upon which
Ours passionately call because erelong
Ye brake off in the middle of that song

We sang together softly, to enrich

The poor world with the sense of love, and witch
The heart out of things evil,-I am strong,
Knowing ye are not lost for aye among

The hills, with last year's thrush. God keeps a niche
In Heaven to hold our idols; and albeit
He brake them to our faces and denied
That our close kisses should impair their white,
I know we shall behold them raised, complete,
The dust swept from their beauty,-glorified
New Memnons singing in the great God-light.

THE TWO SAYINGS.

Two sayings of the Holy Scriptures beat
Like pulses in the Church's brow and breast,
And by them we find rest in our unrest
And, heart-deep in salt tears, do yet entreat
God's fellowship as if on heavenly seat.
The first is JESUS WEPT,-whereon is prest
Full many a sobbing face that drops its best
And sweetest waters on the record sweet :
And one is where the Christ, denied and scorned,
LOOKED UPON PETER. Oh, to render plain,
By help of having loved a little and mourned,
That look of sovran love and sovran pain
Which HE, who could not sin yet suffered, turned
On him who could reject but not sustain !