East griefs but west,—and strike and shame the strong,

By thunders of white silence, overthrown.

LIFE.

Each creature holds an insu.ar po.nt in space:

Yet what man stirs a finger, breathes a sound,

But all the multitudinous beings round In all the countless worlds, with time and place

For their conditions, down to the central hase,

Thrill, haply, in vibration and rebound, Life answering life across the vast profound.

In full antiphony, by a common grace!
I think, this sudden joyaunce which

illumes • A child's mouth sleeping, unaware may

run

From some soul newly loosened from earth's tombs:

I think, this passionate sigh, which halfbegun

I stifle hack, may reach and stir the plumes

Of God's calm angel standing in the sun.

LOVE.

We cannot live, except thus mutually
We alternate, aware or unaware,
The reflex act of Ufe: and when we
bear

Our virtue onward most impulsively.
Most full of invocation, and to be
Most instantly compellant, certes, there
We live most life, whoever breathes
mast air

And counts his dying years by sun and sea.

But when a soul, by choice and conscience, doth Throw *rut lier full force on another soul,

The conscience and the concentration both

Make mere life, Love. For Life in

perfect whole And aim consummated, is Love in sooth, As nature's magnet-heat rounds pole

with pole.

HEAVEN AND EARTH,

'And there wan Blleuce la heaven for the apace of half-an-l,our.'—HeveUuion.

God, who, with thunders and great voices kept

Beneath thy throne, and stars most silver-paced

Along the inferior gyres, and open-faced Melodious angels round ;—canst intercept

Music with music;—yet, at will, has swept

All hack, all hack, (said he in Patmos placed,)

To fill the heavens with silence of the waste,

Which lasted half-an-hour !—Lo, I who

have wept All day and night, beseech thee by my

tears,

And by that dread response of curse

and groan Men alternate across these hemispheres. Vouchsafe us such a half-hour's hush

alone.

In compensation for our stormy years! As heaven has paused from song, let earth, from moan.

THE PROSPECT.

Methinks we do as fretful children do, Leaning their faces on the window-pane To sigh the glass dim with their own.

breath's stain, And shut the sky and landscape from

their view. And thus, alas! since God the maker

drew

A mystic separation 'twixt those twain,

The life beyond us, and our souls in pain,

We miss the prospect which we're called un to

By grief we're fools to use. Be still

and strong, O man, my brother! hold thy sobbing

breath.

And keep thy soul's large window pure

from wrong,— That so, as life's appointment issueth, Thy vision may be clear to watch along The sunset consummation-lights of death

HUGH STUART BOYD.*

HtS BLtNDNESS.

God would not let the spheric Lights accost

This God-loved man, and hade the

earth stand off With all her beckoning hills, whose

golden stuff Under the feet of the royal sun is

crossed.

Yet such things were to him not wholly lost,—

Permitted, with his wandering eyes

light-proof, To have fair visions rendered full enough By many a ministrant accomplished

ghost:

And seeing, to sounds of softly turned

book-leaves, Sappho's crown-rose, and Meleager's

spring.

And Gregory's starlight on Greek-burnished eves:

r To whom was inscribed, in grateful affection, my poem oi ' Cyprus Wine.' There comes a moment tn life when even gratitude and ■flection turn to pain, as they do now with ine. This excellent aud learned man, enthusiastic for the good and beautiful, and one of the most simple and upright of human beings, passed out of his long darkness through death tn the summer of tMS; Dr. Adam Clarke's daughter and biographer, Mrs. Smith, (happier in this than the absent* fulfilling a double filial duty as she sat by the death bed of her father's friend and h«is.

Till Sensuous and Unsensuous seem one thing

Viewed from one level;—earth's reapers

at the sheaves Scarce plainer than Heaven's angels on

the wing I

HUGH STUART BOYD.

11tS DeaTH, 1848.

Beloved friend, who living many years With sightless eyes raised vainly to the sun,

Didst learn to keep thy patient soul in tune

To visible nature's elemental cheers! God has not caught thee to new hemispheres

Because thou wast aweary of this one :— I think thine angel's patience first was done.

And that he spake out with celestial tears,

'Is it enough, dear God 1 then lighten so This soul that smiles in darkness I'

Steadfast friend. Who never didst my heart or life misknow,

Nor either's faults too keenly apprehend,—

How can I wonder when I see thee go To join the Dead found faithful to the end?

HUGH STUART BOYD

LEGACtES,

Three gifts the Dying left me;

/Eschylus, And Gregory Nazianzen, and a clock Chiming the gradual hours out like a

flock

Of stars whose motion is melodious.
The books were those I used to read

from, thus Assisting my dear teacher's soul to unlock

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, Saith never, * I loved Once.'

Oh, never is ' Loved Once,' 1'hy word, thou Victim-Christ, misprized friend Thy cross and curse may rend; But having loved Thou lovest to the end!

It is man's saying—man's. Too weak to move

One sphered star above, Man desecrates the eternal God-word. Love

With his No More, and Once.

How say ye, ' We loved 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?

And when, as flowers kept too long in the shade, Ye find my colors 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 I 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!