Even so, suggestive to her inward sense All sounds of life assumed one tune of love.

And when the glory of her dream withdrew,

When knightly guests and courtly pageantries

Were broken in her visionary eyes
By tears the solemn seas attested true,-
Forgetting that sweet lute beside her
hand,

She asked not,-Do you praise me, O my land?

But, Think ye of me, friends, as I of you?'

Hers was the hand that played for: many a year

Love's silver phrase for England,smooth and well!

Would God, her heart's more inward oracle

In that lone moment, might confirm her dear!

For when her questioned friends in agony

Made passionate response-'We think of thee,'

Her place was in the dust, too deep to hear.

Could she not wait to catch their answering breath?

Was she content-content-with ocean's sound,

Which dashed its mocking infinite

around

SAID a people to a poet-Go out from among us straight way! While we are thinking earthly things, thou singest of divine.

There's a little fair brown nightingale, who, sitting in the gateway, Makes fitter music to our ear, than any song of thine !'

The poet went out weeping-the nightingale ceased chanting; 'Now, wherefore, O thou nightingale, is all thy sweetness done?' 'I cannot sing my earthly things, the heavenly poet wanting,

Whose highest harmony includes the lowest under sun.'

The poet went out weeping,-and died abroad, bereft there

The bird flew to his grave and died amid a thousand wails!

And, when I last came by the place, I swear the music left there Was only of the poet's song, and not the nightingale's!

A CHILD ASLEEP.

How he sleepeth! having drunken
Weary childhood's mandragore,
From his pretty eyes have sunken

Pleasures to make room for moreSleeping near the withered nosegay which he pulled the day before.

Nosegays! leave them for the waking.

Throw them earthward where they
grew:

Dim are such beside the breaking
Amaranths he looks unto-

Folded eyes see brighter colors than the open ever do.

Heaven-flowers, rayed by shadows golden

From the palms they sprang beneath

Now perhaps divinely holden,

Swing against him in a wreathWe may think so from the quickening of his bloom and of his breath.

Vision unto vision calleth,
While the young child dreameth

on :

Fair, O dreamer, thee befalleth With the glory thou hast won! Darker wert thou in the garden, yestermorn by summer sun.

We should see the spirits ringing

Round thee,-were the clouds away 'Tis the child-heart draws them, singing

Sit still as erst beside his feet!
The future days are dim,-

But those will seem to thee most sweet,
Which keeps thee nearest him!
Sit at his feet in quiet mirth,

And let him see arise
A clearer sun and greener earth
Within thy loving eyes!-

Ah loving eyes! that used to lift
Your childhood to my face-
That leave a memory on the gift
I look on in your place-
May bright-eyed hosts your guardians
be

From all but thankful tears,—
While, brightly as ye turned on me,
Ye meet th' advancing years!

THE MOURNING MOTHER

(OF THE DEAD BLIND.)

DOST thou weep, mourning mother,
For thy blind boy in the grave?
That no more with each other
Sweet counsel ye can have?-
That he, left dark by nature,
Can never more be led
By thee, maternal creature,

Along smooth paths instead?
That thou canst no more show him
The sunshine, by the heat;
The river's silver flowing,
By murmurs at his feet?
The foliage, by its coolness;
The roses, by their smell;
And all creation's fulness,
By Love's invisible?
Weepest thou to behold not

His meek blind eyes again,-
Closed doorways which were folded,
And prayed against in vain-
And under which, sat smiling
The child-mouth evermore,
As one who watch eth, wiling
The time by, at the door?
And weepest thou to feel not

His clinging hand on thine

Which now, at dream time, will not
Its cold touch disentwine?
And weepest thou still ofter
Oh, nevermore to mark

His low soft words, made softer

By speaking in the dark? Weep on, thou mourning mother!

But since to him when living.

Thou wert both sun and moon, Look o'er his grave, surviving, From a high sphere alone! Sustain that exaltationExpand that tender light; And hold in mother

passion Thy Blessed in thy sight. See how he went out straightway From the dark world he knew,No twilight in the gateway

To mediate 'twixt the two,Into the sudden glory,

Out of the dark he trod, Departing from before thee

At once to Light and GOD!For the first face, beholding

The Christ's in its divine,For the first place, the golden And tideless hyaline: With trees, at lasting summer, That rock to songful sound, While angels, the new-comer, Wrap a still smile around. Oh, in the blessed psalm now, His happy voice he tries, Spreading a thicker palm-bough, Than others, o'er his eyes. Yet still, in all the singing, Thinks haply of thy song Which, in his life's first springing, Sang to him all night long, And wishes it beside him,

With kissing lips that cool And soft did overglide him, To make the sweetness full.

Look up, O mourning mother;

Thy blind boy walks in light! Ye wait for one another,

Before God's infinite!
But thou art now the darkest,
Thou mother left below,-
Thou, the sole blind,-thou markest,
Content that it be so:-

Until ye two have meeting
Where Heaven's pearl-gate is,
And he shall lead thy feet in
As once thou leddest his.
Wait on, thou mourning mother.