When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O, abide with me!
Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day;
Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see:
O Thou, who changest not, abide with me!
Not a brief glance, I beg, a passing word,
But as Thou dwell'dst with Thy disciples, Lord;
Familiar, condescending, patient, free,
Come, not to sojourn, but abide with me!
Come not in terrors as the King of kings,
But kind and good, with healing in Thy wings;
Tears for all woes, a heart for every plea;
Come, Friend of sinners, and thus bide with me!
Thou on my head in early youth didst smile;
And, though rebellious and perverse meanwhile,
Thou hast not left me, oft as I left Thee:
On to the close, O Lord, abide with me!
I need Thy presence every passing hour;
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter's power?
Who like Thyself my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, O, abide with me!
I fear no foe with Thee at hand to bless :
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death's sting? where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.
Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies: Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me!
DETHRONED SATURN.
DEEP in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat grey-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer day
Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deaden'd more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds
Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.
Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went No further than to where his feet had stray'd, And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground
His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed; While his bow'd head seem'd listening to the Earth, His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.
FROM "ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE."
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk :
"Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,-
That thou, light-wingéd dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine ;
Fast-fading violets, cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Thou wert not born for death, immortal bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music-do I wake or sleep?
THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET.
THE poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead: That is the grasshopper's—he takes the lead In summer luxury-he has never done
With his delights, for, when tired out with fun, He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems, to one in drowsiness half lost, The grasshopper's among some grassy hills.
AFTER AN INTERVAL OF ABSENCE.
I MISS thee from my side,
With thy merry eyes and blue;
From thy crib at morning-tide,
Oft its curtains peeping through;
In the kisses, not a few,
Thou wert wont to give me then ;
In thy sleepy sad adieu,
When 'twas time for bed again!
I miss thee from my side,
With thy question oft repeated;
On thy rocking-horse astride,
Or beneath my table seated;
Or, when tired and overheated
With a summer-day's delight,
Many a childish aim defeated,
Sleep hath overpower'd thee quite !
I miss thee from my side,
When brisk Punch is at the door;
Vainly pummels he his bride,
Judy's wrongs can charm no more!
He may beat her till she's sore,
She may die, and he may flee;
Though I loved their squalls of yore,
What's the pageant now to me?
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