Closer and closer my steps

Come to the dark abysm, Closer Death to my lips

Presses the awful chris;

Father, perfect my trust!
Strengthen my feeble faith!

Let me feel as I shall, when I stand
On the shores of the river of death:-

Feel as I would, were my feet

Even now slipping over the brink, – For it may be I am nearer home, Nearer now, than I think!

PEACE.

O LAND, of every land the best, —
O Land, whose glory shall increase;
Now in your whitest raiment drest

For the great festival of peace:

257

Not there, but risen, redeemed, they go Where all the paths are sweet with flowers;

Yet when they set their country free, And gave her traitors fitting doom, They left their last great enemy, Baffled, beside an empty tomb.

They fought to give us peace, and lo! They gained a better peace than ours.

SYDNEY DOBELL.

KEITH OF RAVELSTON.

O HAPPY, happy maid,

In the year of war and death She wears no sorrow!

By her face so young and fair,

By the happy wreath

That rules her happy hair,

She might be a bride to-morrow! She sits and sings within her moonlit bower,

Her moonlit bower in rosy June,
Yet al, her bridal breath,

Like fragrance from some sweet nightblowing flower,

Moves from her moving lips in many a mournful tune!

She sings no song of love's despair,
She sings no lover lowly laid,
No fond peculiar grief

Has ever touched or bud or leaf
Of her unblighted spring.

She sings because she needs must sing;
She sings the sorrow of the air
Whereof her voice is made.
That night in Britain howsoe'er
On any chords the fingers strayed
They gave the notes of care.
A dim sad legend old
Long since in some pale shade
Of some far twilight told,
She knows not when or where,
She sings, with trembling hand on trem-
bling lute-strings laid :—

The murmur of the mourning ghost That keeps the shadowy kine, "O Keith of Ravelston,

The sorrows of thy line!"

Ravelston, Ravelston,

The merry path that leads Down the golden morning hill, And through the silver meads;

Ravelston, Ravelston,

The stile beneath the tree,