'Ah, once more,' I cried, 'ye stars, ye waters, On my heart your mighty charm renew! Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you, Feel my soul becoming vast like you!' From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven, In the rustling night air came the answer- 'Unaffrighted by the silence round them, These demand not that the things without them Yield them love, amusement, sympathy. And with joy the stars perform their shining, 'Bounded by themselves and unregardful O air-born voice! long since, severely clear MATTHEW ARNOLD. MORALITY. E cannot kindle when we will WE The fire which in the heart resides, The spirit bloweth and is still, In mystery our soul abides, But tasks in hours of insight willed With aching hands and bleeding feet Of the long day, and wish 'twere done. Then, when the clouds are off the soul, Thy struggling tasked morality— And she, whose censure thou dost dread, Whose eye thou wast afraid to seek, See, on her face a glow is spread, A strong emotion on her cheek! "Ah, child!' she cries, 'that strife divine— Whence was it, for it is not mine? 'There is no effort on my brow— I rush with the swift spheres, and glow 'I knew not yet the gauge of time, I saw it in some other place. 'Twas when the heavenly house I trod, And lay upon the breast of God.' MATTHEW ARNOLD. ALL SAINTS. NE feast, of holy days the crest, ONE I, though no churchman, love to keep, All-Saints, the unknown good that rest In God's still memory folded deep. The bravely dumb that did their deed, Men of the plain heroic breed, That loved Heaven's silence more than fame. Such lived not in the past alone, But thread to-day the unheeding street, And stairs to Sin and Famine known Sing with the welcome of their feet; The den they enter grows a shrine, The grimy sash an oriel burns, About their brows to me appears An aureole traced in tenderest light, JAMES RUSSELL Lowell. GOOD LIFE, LONG LIFE. T is not growing like a tree, IT In bulk, doth make men better be; Or standing long, an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere. A lily of a day Is fairer far in May; Although it fall and die that night, BEN JONSON. I WILL ARISE. HO, toiling on the weary round of life, WHO, But feels sometimes,—when all the way is dark, And mists of sense and clouds of weariness Close round him, and before him stretches out And all the future like a barren road Through the long waste of years,-lo, suddenly Height after height, peak after peak revealed; And, somewhere in the space 'twixt them and heaven, Sway on the trembling bridge which spans the foam, |