We read her face, as one who reads We miss her in the place of prayer, Alone unto our Father's will One thought hath reconciled; Fold her, O Father! in thine arms, WORDSWORTH. Dear friends, who read the world aright, And in its common forms discern A beauty and a harmony The many never learn! Kindred in soul of him who found In simple flower and leaf and stone Accept this record of a life As sweet and pure, as calm and good, As a long day of blandest June In green field and in wood. How welcome to our ears, long pained The violet by its mossy stone, The primrose by the river's brim, And chance-sown daffodil, have found Immortal life through him. The sunrise on his breezy lake, The rosy tints his sunset brought, World-seen, are gladdening all the vales And mountain-peaks of thought. Art builds on sand; the works of pride RAPHAEL. I shall not soon forget that sight: It was a simple print I saw, The fair face of a musing boy; There drooped thy more than mortal face, Slow passed that vision from my view, The truth, that painter, bard, and sage, The fruits and flowers of time. We shape ourselves the joy or fear The tissue of the Life to be We weave with colors all our own, THE VOICE OF THE READER. O, sweet as the lapse of water at noon So sweet, so dear is the silvery tone, Of her in whose features I sometimes look, As I sit at eve by her side alone, And we read by turns from the self-same book, Some tale perhaps of the olden time, Then when the story is one of woe, Some prisoner's plaint through his dungeon-bar, Her blue eye glistens with tears, and low Her voice sinks down like a moan afar; And I seem to hear that prisoner's wail, And his face looks on me worn and pale. And when she reads some merrier song, Her voice is glad as an April bird's, And when the tale is of war and wrong, A trumpet's summons is in her words, And the rush of the hosts I seem to hear, And see the tossing of plume and spear! MY SOUL AND I. Stand still, my soul, in the silent dark Alone in the shadow drear and stark What, my soul, was thy errand here? Or heaping up dust from year to year? Speak, soul, aright in His holy sight And steadily on thee through the night: What hast thou wrought for Right and Trut From the golden hours of bright eyed youth Go to, go to for thy very self Thou for fame, the miser for pelf, And where art thou going, soul of mine? And whither this troubled life of thine The Present, the Present is all thou hast Like the patriarch's angel hold it fast All which is real now remaineth, The hand which upholds it now sustaineth Leaning on Him, make with reverent meekness And with strength from Him shall thy utter weakness, Then of what is to be, and what is done, The past and the time to be are one,— SKETCHES. Along the roadside, like the flowers of gold No time is this for hands long overworn To task their strength: and (unto Him be praise Of years that did the work of centuries Have ceased, and we can draw our breath once more Freely and full. So, as yon harvesters Make glad their nooning underneath the elms With tale and riddle and old snatch of song, I lay aside grave themes, and idly turn The leaves of memory's sketch-book, dreaming o'er And human life, as quiet, at their feet. And yet not idly all. A farmer's son, Proud of field-lore and harvest-craft, and feeling All their fine possibilities, how rich Become when beauty, harmony, and love At evening in the patriarch's tent, when man How wearily the grind of toil goes on And call to mind old homesteads, where no flower To cast the tremulous shadow of its leaves Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece, A green-haired woman, peony-cheeked, beneath Impossible willows; the wide-throated hearth Bristling with faded pine-boughs half concealing The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's back. And, in sad keeping with all things about them, Shrill, querulous women, sour and sullen men, Untidy, loveless, old before their time, With scarce a human interest save their own Monotonous round of small economies, Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood; Blind to the beauty everywhere revealed, Treading the May-flowers with regardless feet, For them the song-sparrow and the bobolink Sang not, nor winds made music in the leaves; For them in vain October's holocaust Burned, gold and crimson, over all the hills, The sacramental mystery of the woods. Church-goers, fearful of the unseen Powers, |