Until the pleasant gradual thought Which near her heart the smile enwrought,

(Soon strong enough her lips to reach/
Now soft and slow, itself, did seem
To float along a happy dream,
Beyond it into speech like this.

Xtt.

'I prayed for thee, my little child.
And (iod hath heard my prayer!
And when thy babyhood is gone,
We two together, undefiled
By men's repinings, will kneel down
Upon His earth which will be fair
(Not covering thee, sweet I) to us twain,
And give Him thankful praise.'

Xitt.

Dully and wildly drives the rain:
Against the lattices drives the rain.

xiv.

'I thank Him now, that I can think

Ol those same future days.
Nor from the harmless image shrink
- Of what I there might see—
Strange babies on their mothers' knee,
Who-ie innocent soft faces might
From off my eyelids strike the light.

With looks not meant for me!'

!

xv.

Gustily blows the wind through the rain. As against the lattices drives the rain.

Xvi.

'But now, O baby mine, together,
We turn this hope of ours again
To many an hour of summer weather
When we shall sit and intertwine
Our spirits, and instruct each other
In the pure loves of child and mother!
Two human loves make one divine.'

Xvtt.

The thunder tears through the wind and the rain,

As full on the lattices drives the raui.
Xvitt.

'My little child, what wilt thou choose 1 Let me look at thee and ponder.

What gladness, from the gladnesses
Futurity is spreading under
Thy gladsome sight? Beneath the trees
Wilt thou lean all day and lose
Tby spirit with the river seen
Intermittently between
The winding beechen alleys,—
Half in labour, half repose,
Like a shepherd keeping sheep,
Thou, with only thoughts to keep
Which never a bound will overpass.
And which are innocent as those
That feed among Arcadian valleys
Upon the dewy grass 1'

XiX.

The large white owl that with age is blind.

That hath sate for years in the old tree hollow,

Is carried away in a gust of wind!
His wings could bear him not as fast
As he goeth now the lattice past—
He is borne by the winds ; the rains di,
follow:

His white wings to the blast out-flowing.

He hooteth in going. And still in the lightnings, coldly glitter

His round unblinking eyes.

XX.

'Or, baby, wilt thou think it filter
To be eloquent and wise?
One upon whose lips the air
Turns to solemn verities,
For men to breathe anew, and win
A deeper-seated life within t
Wilt be a philosopher,
By whose voice the earth and skies .
Shall speak to the unborn?
Or a poet, broadly spreading
The golden immortalities
Of tby soul on natures lorn
And poor of such, them all to guard
From their decay? beneath tby tread-
ing,

Earth's flowers recovering hues of Eden; And stars, drawn downward by thy looks

To shine ascendant in tby books?'

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!

XXtt.

'But, O my babe, tby lids arc laid

Close, fast upon thy cheek! And not a dream of power and sheen Can make a passage up between: Tby heart is of tby 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 tby 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 lie may hear His name!'

XXtti.

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'ershe 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.

XXiv.

The moonshine on the baby's face

Falleth clear and cold.
The mother's looks have fallen back

1o the same place:
Because no moon with silver rack.
Nor broad sunrise in jasper skies
Have power to hold
Our loving eyes,

Which still revert, as ever must

Wonder and Hope, to gaze on the,bM.

XXv.

The moonshine on the baby's face

Cold and clear remaineth!
The mother's looks do shrink away,
The mother's looks return to stay,

As charmed by what paineth,
Is any glamour in the case?
Is it dream or is it sight?
Hath the change upon the wild
Elements, that signs the night,

Passed upon the child?
It is not dream but sight !—

XXvi.

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-niomhs' 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 haby-innocent, As the child spake out to the mother so !—

XXvu.

'O mother, mother, loose thy prayer!

Christ's name hath made it strong!
It bindeth me, tt 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.*

XXvttt.

'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?

XXtX.

• 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!

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 safW them turned above.

Each loving seemed for also me!

And, oh, the Unspeakable! the Hk,

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, winged Four Whose are inward, 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 snould 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 hands,
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 know—
Mother, Mother, let me go!

XXXt.

'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

The law of his own harmony ?—

Mother! albeit this be so, Let me to my Heaven go! A little harp me waits thereby— A harp whose strings are golden all, And tuned to music spherical. Hanging on the green life-tree Where no willows ever be. Shall I miss that harp of mine? Mother, no !—the Eye divine Turned upon it, makes it shine— And when I touch it, poems sweet Like separate souls shall fly from it, Each to an immortal fytte. We shall all be poets there, (lazing on the chiefest Fair!

XXXtt.

'And love! earth's love! and can we
love

Fixedly where all things move?
Can the shining love each other t

Mother, mother,
I tremble in tby close embrace—
I feel tby tears adown my face—
Tby prayers do keep me out of bliss—

O dreary earthly love!
Loose tby prayer and let me go
To the place which loving is
Yet not sad! and when is given
Escape to thee from this below,
Thou shalt behold me that I wait
For thee beside the happy gate;
And silence shall be up in heaven

To hear our greeting kiss.'

XXXitt.

The nurse awakes in the morning sun. And starts to see beside her bed The lady with a grandeur spread Like pathos o'er her face; as one God-satisfied and earth-undone: The babe upon her arm was dead! And the nurse could utter forth no cry,— She was awed by the calm in the mother's eye.

XXXiv.

'Wake nurse l' the lady said:
'We are waking—he and I—
I, on earth, and he, in sky!
/ t?.J *hou must help me to o'erlay

With garment white, this little clay Which needs no more our lullaby.

XXXv.

'I changed the cruel prayer f made. And bowed my meekencd face, and

prayed . That God would do His will! and

thus

He did it, nurse; He parted us.
And His sun shows victorious
The dead calm face:—and / am
calm:

And Heaven is hearkening a new psalm.

xXXv i.

'This earthly noise is too an ear,
Too loud, and will not let me hear
The little harp. My death will soon
Make silence.'

And a sense of tune,
A satisfied love meanwhile
Which nothing earthly could despoil.
Sang on within her soul.

xXXvn.

Oh you,

Earth's tender and impassioned few.
Take courage to entrust your love
To Him so Named, who guards above

Its ends and shall fulfil;
Breaking the narrow prayers that may
Befit your narrow hearts, away

In his broad, loving will.

A ROMANCE OF THE GANGES.

Seven maidens 'neath the midnight

Stand near the river-sea, Whose water sweepeth white around

The shadow of the tree. The moon and earth are face to face,

And earth is slumbering deep;

The wave-voice seems the voice of dreams

That wander through her sleep.

The river floweth on.

tt.

What bring they 'neath the midnight,

Beside the river-sea?
They bring that human heart wherein

No nightly calm can be,—
That droppeth never with the wind,

Nor dryeth with the dew:
Oh, calm it God! Thy calm is broad

To cover spirits, too.

The river floweth on.

m.

The maidens lean them over

The waters, side by side, And shun each other's deepening eyes,

And gaze adown the tide: For each within a little boat

A little lamp hath put, And heaped for freight some lily's weight

Or scarlet rose half shut.

The river floweth on.

iv.

Of a shell of cocoa carven,

Each little boat is made: Each carries a lamp, and carries a flower,

And carries a hope unsaid. And when the boat hath carried the lamp

Unquenched, till out of sight, The maidens are sure that love will endure. But love will fail with light.

The river floweth on.

v.

Wby, all the stars are ready

To symbolize the soul.
The stars untroubled by the wind,

Unwearied as they roll:
And yet the soul by instinct sad

Reverts to symbols low—
To that small flame, whose very name

Breathed o'er it, shakes it so.

The river floweth on.

vi.

Six boats are on the river.

Seven maidens on the shore;
While still above them steadlastly

The stars shine evermore.
Go, little boats, go soft and safe,

And guard the symbol spark !—
The boats aright go safe and bright

Across the waters dark.

The river floweth on.

vtt.

The maiden Luti watcheth

Where onwardly they float.
That look in her dilating eyes

Might seem to drive her boat;
Her eyes still mark the constant fire,

And kindling unawares
That hopeful while, she lets a smile

Creep silent through her prayers.

The river floweth on.

vm.

The smile—where hath it wandered?

She riseth from her knee,
She holds her dark, wet locks away—

There is no light to see!
She cries a quick and bitter cry—

'Nuleeni, launch me thine!
We must have light abroad to-night,

For all the wreck of mine.'

The river floweth on.

iX,

'I do remember watching

Beside this river-bed,
When on my childish knee was laid

My dying father's head.
I turned mine own, to keep the tears

From falling on his face—
What doth it prove when Death and
Love

Choose out the self-same place?'

The river floweth on.

x,

'They say the dead are joyful
The death-change here receiving.

Who say—ah, me I—who dare to say
Where joy comes to the living?

Thy boat, Nuleeni! look not sad—
Light up the waters rather!