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'Our Father,' looking upward in the chamber,

We say softly for a charm.

We know no other words except 'Our Father,'

And we think that, in some pause of angels' song,

God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,

And hold both within His right hand which is strong.

"Our Father!' If He heard us, He would surely

(For they call Him good and mild) Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,

'Come and rest with me, my child.'

"But, no!" say the children, weeping faster,

"He is speechless as a stone : And they tell us, of His image is the master Who commands us to work on.

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Go to!" say the children, Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find.

Do not mock us; grief has made us unbe

lieving :

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They look up with their pale and sunken faces,

And their look is dread to see,

For they mind you of their angels in high places,

With eyes turned on Deity. "How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation,

Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart,

Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,

And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?

Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper, And your purple shows your path! But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper

Than the strong man in his wrath.”

MY HEART AND I

ENOUGH! we're tired, my heart and I.
We sit beside the headstone thus,
And wish that name were carv'd for us.
The moss reprints more tenderly

The hard types of the mason's knife,
As Heaven's sweet life renews earth's life
With which we 're tired, my heart and I.

You see we're tired, my heart and I.

We dealt with books, we trusted men, And in our own blood drench'd the pen, As if such colors could not fly.

We walk'd too straight for fortune's end,
We lov'd too true to keep a friend;
At last we're tired, my heart and I.

How tired we feel, my heart and I!
We seem of no use in the world;
Our fancies hang gray and uncurl'd
About men's eyes indifferently;

Our voice which thrill'd you so, will let You sleep; our tears are only wet: What do we here, my heart and I ?

So tired, so tired, my heart and I!
It was not thus in that old time
When Ralph sat with me 'neath the lime
To watch the sunset from the sky.

"Dear love, you're looking tired," he said:

I, smiling at him, shook my head. 'Tis now we 're tired, my heart and I.

So tired, so tired, my heart and I!

Though now none takes me on his arm
To fold me close and kiss me warm
Till each quick breath end in a sigh
Of happy languor. Now, alone,
We lean upon this graveyard stone,
Uncheer'd, unkiss'd, my heart and I.
Tired out we are, my heart and I.

Suppose the world brought diadems
To tempt us, crusted with loose gems
Of powers and pleasures? Let it try.
We scarcely care to look at even
A pretty child, or God's blue heaven,
We feel so tired, my heart and I.

Yet who complains? My heart and I?
In this abundant earth no doubt
Is little room for things worn out:
Disdain them, break them, throw them by !
And if before the days grew rough
We once were lov'd, us'd, — well enough,
I think, we've far'd, my heart and I.

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IX

CAN it be right to give what I can give?
To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears
As salt as mine, and hear the sighing years
Re-sighing on my lips renunciative
Through those infrequent smiles which fail
to live

For all thy adjurations? O my fears, That this can scarce be right! We are not peers

So to be lovers; and I own, and grieve, That givers of such gifts as mine are, must Be counted with the ungenerous. Out, alas! I will not soil thy purple with my dust, Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass, Nor give thee any love - which were unjust. Beloved, I only love thee! let it pass.

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IF I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange And be all to me? Shall I never miss Home-talk and blessing and the common kiss

That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange,

When I look up, to drop on a new range Of walls and floors, another home than this? Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is

Fill'd by dead eyes too tender to know change

That's hardest? If to conquer love, has tried,

To conquer grief, tries more, as all things

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To

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I THANK all who have lov'd me in their hearts,

With thanks and love from mine. Deep thanks to all

Who paus'd a little near the prison-wall
To hear my music in its louder parts
Ere they went onward, each one to the
mart's

Or temple's occupation, beyond call.
But thou, who, in my voice's sink and fall
When the sob took it, thy divinest Art's

Own instrument didst drop down at thy foot

To hearken what I said between my tears, .

Instruct me how to thank thee! Oh, to shoot

My soul's full meaning into future years, That they should lend it utterance, and salute

Love that endures, from Life that disappears!

XLIII

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's
faith.

I love thee with a love I seem'd to lose With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT

WHAT was he doing, the great god Pan, Down in the reeds by the river? Spreading ruin and scattering ban, Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, And breaking the golden lilies afloat

With the dragon-fly on the river.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river:
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,

Ere he brought it out of the river.

High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
While turbidly flow'd the river;
And hack'd and hew'd as a great god

can,

With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notch'd the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sat by the river.

"This is the way," laugh'd the great god Pan,

(Laugh'd while he sat by the river,) "The only way, since gods began

To make sweet music, they could succeed." Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,

He blew in power by the river.

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