Eternity's unbroken monotone.
And more and more smiled Isobel
To see the baby sleep so well-

She knew not that she smiled.
The wind in intermission stops
Down in the beechen forest,
Then cries aloud

As one at the sorest,
Self-stung, self-driven,
And rises up to its very tops,
Stiffening erect the branches bowed;
Dilating with a tempest soul

The trees that with their dark hands
break

Through their o..n outline and heavily roll

Chadows as massive as clouds in heaven,

Across the castle lake.

And more and more smiled Isobel To see the baby sleep so well; She knew not that she smiledShe knew not that the storm was wild. Through the uproar drear she could not hear

The castle clock which struck anearShe heard the low, light breathing of her child.

V.

O sight for wondering look! While the external nature broke Into such abandonment; While the very mist heart-rent By the lightning, seemed to eddy Against nature, with a dinA sense of silence and of steady Natural calm appeared to come From things without, and enter in The human creature's room.

VI.

So motionless she sate,
The babe asleep upon her knees,

You might have dreamed their souls had gone

Away to things inanimate,

In such to live, in such to moan;
And that their bodies had ta'en back,
In mystic change, all silences
That cross the sky in cloudy rack,
Or dwell beneath the reedy ground
In waters safe from their own sound,

A solemn thing it is to me

To look upon a babe that sleeps-
Wearing in its spirit-deeps
The undeveloped mystery
Of its Adam's taint and woe,
Which, when they developed be,
Will not let it slumber so:
Lying new in life beneath
The shadow of the coming death,
With that soft, low, quiet breath,

As if it felt the sun!
Knowing all things by their blooms,
Not their roots; yea,-sun and sky,
Only by the warmth that comes
Out of each; earth only by
The pleasant hues that o'er it run;
And human love, by drops of sweet
White nourishment still hanging round.

The little mouth so slumber-bound.
All which broken sentiency
And conclusion incomplete,
Will gather and unite and climb
To an immortality

Good or evil, each sublime,
Through life and death to life again!
O little lids, now folded fast,
Must ye learn to drop at last
Our large and burning tears?
O warm quick body, must thou lie,
When the time comes round to die,
Still from all the whirl of
years,
Bare of all the joy and pain?
O small frail being, wilt thou stand
At God's right hand,
Lifting up those sleeping eyes
Dilated by great destinies,

To an endless waking? Thrones and seraphim,

Through the long ranks of their solemnities,

Sunning thee with calm looks of Heaven's surprise

But thine alone on Him?Or else, self-willed, to tread the godless place,

(God keep thy will!) feel thine own

Broken by an earthly sigh),
Thou, who didst not erst deny
The mother-joy to Mary mild,
Blessed in the blessed child,
Which hearkened in meek babyhood
Her cradle-hymn, albeit used
To all that music interfused
In breasts of angels high and good!
Oh, take not, Lord, my babe away--
Oh, take not to thy songful heaven,
The pretty baby thou hast given,
Or ere that I have seen him play
Around his father's knees and known
That he knew how my love hath gone
From all the world to him.
Think, God among the cherubim,
How I shall shiver every day
In thy June sunshine, knowing where
The grave-grass keeps it from his fair
Still cheeks! and feel at every tread
His little body which is dead
And hidden in the turfy fold,
Doth make thy whole warm earth a-
cold!

O God, I am so young, so young-
I am not used to tears at nights
Instead of slumber-nor to prayer
With sobbing lips and hands out-wrung:
Thou knowest all my prayings were
'I bless thee, God, for past delights-
Thank God!' I am not used to bear
Hard thoughts of death. The earth.
doth cover

No face from me of friend or lover:
And must the first who teacheth me
The form of shrouds and funerals, be
Mine own first-born beloved? he
Who taught me first this mother-love?
Dear Lord, who spreadest out above
Thy loving, transpierced hands to meet
All lifted hearts with blessing sweet,-
Pierce not my heart, my tender heart,
Thou madest tender! Thou who art
So happy in thy heaven alway,
Take not mine only bliss away!'

XI.

She so had prayed: and God, who hears
Through seraph-songs the sound of tears,
From that beloved babe had ta'en
The fever and the beating pain.
And more and more smiled Isobel
To see the baby sleep so well-

(She knew not that she smiled, I wis,)

XXI.

The tame hawk in the castle yard, How it screams to the lightning, with its

wet

Jagged plumes overhanging the parapet! And at the lady's door the hound Scratches with a crying sound!

XXII.

But, O my babe, thy lids are laid
Close, fast upon thy cheek!
And not a dream of power and sheen
Can make a passage up between :
Thy heart is of thy mother's made,
Thy looks are very meek!
And it will be their chosen place
To rest on some beloved face,

As these on thine-and let the noise
Of the whole world go on, nor drown
The tender silence of thy joys;
Or when that silence shall have grown
Too tender for itself, the same
Yearning for sound,-to look above
And utter its one meaning, LOVE,
That He may hear His name!

XXIII.

No wind-no rain-no thunder!
The waters had trickled not slowly,
The thunder was not spent,
Nor the wind near finishing.

Who would have said that the storm was diminishing?

No wind-no rain-no thunder!
Their noises dropped asunder
From the earth and the firmament,
From the towers and the lattices,
Abrupt and echoless

As ripe fruits on the ground unshaken wholly

As life in death;

And sudden and solemn the silence fell, Startling the heart of Isobel

As the tempest could not!
Against the door went panting the breath
Of the lady's hound whose cry was still-
And she, constrained howe'er she would
not,

Did lift her eyes, and saw the moon
Looking out of heaven alone
Upon the poplared hill,-

A calm of God, made visible
That men might bless it at their will.

The babe hath awakened from sleep,
And unto the gaze of its mother
Bent over it, lifted another!
Not the baby looks that go
Unaimingly to and fro:
But an earnest gazing deep,
Such as soul gives soul at length,
When, by work and wail of years,
It winneth a solemn strength,

And mourneth as it wears!
A strong man could not brook
With pulse unhurried by fears,
To meet that baby's look

O'erglazed by manhood's tears-
The tears of the man full grown,
With the power to wring our own,
In the eyes all undefiled

Of a little three-months' child!
To see that babe-brow wrought
By the witnessing of thought,
To judgment's prodigy;

And the small soft mouth unweaned,
By mother's kiss o'erleaned
(Putting the sound of loving
Where no sound else was moving,
Except the speechless cry)
Quickened to mind's expression,

Shaped to articulation

Yea, uttering words-yea, naming woe In tones that with it strangely went, Because so baby innocent,

As the child spake out to the mother so!

XXVII.

'O mother, mother, loose thy prayer!
Christ's name hath made it strong!
It bindeth me, it holdeth me
With its most loving cruelty,
From floating my new soul along
The happy heavenly air!
It bindeth me, it holdeth me
In all this dark, upon this dull

Low earth, by only weepers trod!-
It bindeth me, it holdeth me !—
Mine angel looketh sorrowful
Upon the face of God.*

XXVIII.

Mother, mother! can I dream
Beneath your earthly trees?
I had a vision and a gleam-

I heard a sound more sweet than these
When rippled by the wind.

Did you see the Dove with wings
Bathed in golden glisterings
From a sunless light behind,
Dropping on me from the sky
Soft as mother's kiss until

I seemed to leap, and yet was still?
Saw you how his love-large eye
Looked upon me mystic calms,
Till the power of his divine
Vision was indrawn to mine?

XXIX.

'Oh, the dream within the dream!
I saw celestial places even.
Oh, the vistas of high palms,
Making finites of delight
Through the heavenly infinite-
Lifting up their green still tops

To the heaven of Heaven!
Oh, the sweet life-tree that drops
Shade like light across the river
Glorified in its for ever

Flowing from the Throne!

*For I say unto you, that in Heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in Heaven.-Matt. ch. xviii. ver. 10.

Oh the shining holinesses

Of the thousand, thousand faces
God-sunned by the throned ONE!
And made intense with such a love,
That though I saw them turned above,
Each loving seemed for also me!
And, oh, the Unspeakable! the HE,
The manifest in secrecies,

Yet of mine own heart partaker!
With the overcoming look

Of one who hath been once forsook,
And blesseth the forsaker.
Mother, mother, let me go
Towards the face that looketh so.
Through the mystic, wingèd Four
Whose are in ward, outward eyes
Dark with light of mysteries,
And the restless evermore
Holy, holy, holy,'-through

The sevenfold Lamps that burn in view
Of cherubim and seraphim;
Through the four-and-twenty crowned
Stately elders, white around,
Suffer me to go to Him!

XXX.

'Is your wisdom very wise,
Mother, on the narrow earth?
Very happy, very worth
That I should stay to learn?
Are these air-corrupting sighs
Fashioned by unlearned breath?
Do the students' lamps that burn
All night, illumine death?
Mother, albeit this be so,
Loose thy prayer and let me go
Where that bright chief angel stands
Apart from all his brother bands,
Too glad for smiling; having bent
In angelic wilderment

O'er the depths of God, and brought
Reeling thence, one only thought
To fill his whole eternity.

He the teacher is for me!

He can teach what I would knowMother, Mother, let me go!

XXXI.

'Can your poet make an Eden

No winter will undo? And light a starry fire while heeding His hearth's is burning too?

Drown in music the earth's din? And keep his own wild soul within