No man break thy purple cup,
Set for drinking deep in.

Whiskered cats arointed flee—
Sturdy stoppers keep from thee

Cologne distillations;
Nuts lie in thy path for stones,
And thy feast-day macaroons

Turn to daily rations!

Mock I thee, in wishing weal?— Tears are in my eyes to feel

Thou art made so straightly, Blessing needs must straighten too,— Little canst thou joy or do,

Thou who lovest greatly.

Yet be blessed to the height
Of all good and all delight

Pervious to thy nature,
Only loved beyond that line,
With a love that answers thine,

Loving fellow-creature!

S O N N

BEREAVEMENT. When some Beloveds, 'neath whose

eyelids lay The sweet lights of my childhood, one

by one

Did leave me dark before the natural sun,

And I astonished fell, and coutd not pray,

A thought within me to myself did say, 'Is God less God that thou art left undone?

Rise, worship, bless Him, in this

sackcloth spun, As in that purple !'—But I answered,

Nay I

What child his filial heart in words can loose.

If he behold his tender father raise The hand that chastens sorely? can he choose

But sob in silence with an upward gaze ?—

And my great Father, thinking fit to bruise,

Discerns in speechless tears, both prayer and praise.

CONSOLATION. All are not taken ! there are left behind Living Beloveds, tender looks to bring. And make the daylight still a happy thing,

E T S.

And tender voices, to make soft the wind.

But if it were not so—if I could find
No love in all the world for comforting,
Nor any path but hollowly did ring.
Where ' dust to dust' the love from life

disjoined—
And if before these sepulchres unmoving
I stood alone, (as some forsaken lamb
Goes bleating up the moors in weary

dearth)

Crying ' Where are ye, O my loyed and

loving ?'.... I know a Voice would sound,' Daughter,

I AM.

Can I suffice for Heaven, and not for earth V

THE SOUL'S EXPRESSION.

With stammering lips and insufficient sound

I strive and struggle to deliver right That music of my nature, day and night With dream and thought and feeling

interwound, And inly answering all the senses round With octaves of a mystic depth and

height

Which step out grandly to the infinite From the dark edges of the sensual ground!

This song of soul I struggle to outbear Through portals of the sense, sublime

and whole, And utter all myself into the air: But if I did it,—as the thunder-roll Breaks its own cloud,—my flesh would

perish there, Before that dread apocalypse of soul.

THE SERAPH AND POET.

The seraph sings before the manifest God-one, and in the burning of the Seven,

And with the full life of consummate Heaven

Heaving beneath him like a mother's breast

Warm with her first-born's slumber in that nest!

The poet sings upon the earth grave-riven:

Before the naughty world soon selfforgiven

For wronging him ; and in the darkness prest

From his own soul by worldly weights. Even so,

Sing, seraph with the glory! Heaven is high—

Sing, poet with the sorrow! Earth is low.

The universe's inward voices cry

'Amen' to either song of joy and wo—

Sing seraph,—poet,—sing on equally.

ON A PORTRAIT OF WORDSWORTH BY R. B. HAYDON.

Wordsworth upon Helvellyn l Let the cloud

Ebb audibly along the mountain-wind, Then break against the rock, and show behind

The lowland valleys floating up to crowd The sense with beauty. He, with

forehead bowed And humble-lidded eyes, as one inclined Before the sovran thought of his own

mind,

And very meek with inspiration? proud,—

Takes here his rightful place as

poet-priest By the high-altar, singing prayer and

prayer

To the higher Heavens. A noble vision free

Our Haydon's hand has flung out from the mist!

No portrait this, with Academic air— This is the poet and his poetry.

PAST AND FUTURE.

My future will not copy fair my past On any leaf but Heaven's. Be fully done,

Supernal Will! I would not fain be one

Who, satisfying thirst and breaking fast Upon the fulness of the heart, at last Says no grace after meat. My wine hath run

Indeed out of my cup, and there is none To gather up the bread of my repast Scattered and trampled;—yet I find

some good In earth's green herbs and springs that

bubble up Clear from the darkling ground,—

content until I sit with angels before better food. Dear Christ! when tby new vintage

fills my cup, This hand shall shake no more, nor that

wine spill.

IRREPARABLENESS.

I Have been in the meadows all the day And gathered there the nosegay that you see;

Singing within myself as bird or bee When such do field-work on a morn of May:

But now I look upon my flowers,— decay

Has met them in my hancjs more fatally Because more warmly clasped; and sobs are free

To come instead of songs. What do you say,

Sweet counsellors, dear friends? that I should go

Back straightway to the fields, and

gather more? Another, sooth, may do it,—but not I: My heart is very tired—my strength is

low—

My hands are full of blossoms plucked before,

Held dead within them till myself shall die

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 habe weeps in its cot,

The mother singing; at her marriagebell

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-hare Under the blanching, vertical eye-glw': 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 wo,
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it: the marble eyelids are not
wet—

If it could weep, it could arise and go.

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— Nor 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 angel's 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.

PERPLEXED MUSIC.

Experience, like a pale musician, holds A dulcimer of patience in his hand Whence harmonies we cannot understand,

Of God's will in His worlds, the strain unfolds

In sad perplexed minors. Deathly colds

Fall on us while we hear and countermand

Our sanguine heart hack from the fancyland

With nightingales in visionary wolds. We murmur,—' Where is any certai tune

Of measured music, in such notes as these ?'—

But angels, leaning from the golden seat,

Are not so minded: their fine car hath won

The issue of completed cadences; And, smiling down the stars, they whisper—Sweet.

WORK.

What are we set on earth for? Say, to toil—

Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines,

Tor all the heat o' day, till it declines,

And Death's mild curfew shall from

work assoil. God did anoint thee with his odorous

oil,

To wrestle, not to reign; and He assigns All thy tears over, like pure crystallines, For younger fellow-workers of the soil To wear for amulets. So others shall Take patience, labor, to their heart and hand,

From thy hand, and thy heart, and thy

brave cheer, And God's grace fructify through thee

to all.

The least flower, with a brimming cup,

may stand And share its dew-drop with another

near.

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 i.i prest

Full many a sobbing face that drops its best

And sweetest waters oh 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 I

THE LOOK.

The Saviour looked on Peter. Ay, no word—

No gesture of reproach! The heavens serene

Though heavy with armed justice, did not lean

Their thunders that way The forsaken Lord

loohed only, on the traitor. None record

What that look was ; none guess: for those who have seen

Wronged lovers loving through a deathpang keen,

Or pale-cheeked martyrs smiling to a sword,

Have missed Jehovah at the judgmentcall.

And Peter, from the height of blasphemy—

'I never knew this man' did quail and fall,

As knowing straight That God,—and

turned free And went out speechless from the face

of all,

And filled the silence, weeping bitterly,

THE MEANING OF THE LOOK.

I Think that look of Christ might seem to say—

* Thou Peter! art thou then a common stone

Which I at last must break my heart upon,

For all God's charge to His high angels may

Guard my foot better? Did I yesterday Wash thy feet, my beloved, that they

should run Quick to deny me 'neath the morningsun,

And do tby kisses, like the rest, betray? The cock crows coldly.—Go and manifest

A late contrition, but no bootless fear! For when tby final need's dreariest, Thou shalt not be denied, as I am here My voice, to God and angels, shall attest,

'Because / Know this man, let him be clear. '

A THOUGHT FOR A LONELY DEATH-BED.

iNSCRiBED TO MY FRiEND E. C.

If God compel thee to this destiny.
To die alone,—-with none beside tby bed
To ruffle round with sobs tby last word
said,

And mark with tears the pulses ebb from thee,—

Pray then alone—' O Christ, come tenderly!

By tby forsaken Sonship in the red Drear wine-press,—by the wilderness

outspread,— And the lone garden where Thine agony Fell bloody from tby brow,—by all of

those

Permitted desolations, comfort mine! No earthly friend being near me, interpose

No deathly angel 'twixt iny face and Thine,

But stoop Tbyself to gather my life's rose,

And smile away my mortal to Divine.'