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Further we see not. But here faith joins hands
With reason: life that onward came to us
From simple to more complex, still must flow
Forward and forward through far wider lands:-
If thought begins with man, the luminous
Kingdom of mind beyond him still must grow.

X.

Is there then hope that thou and I shall be
Saved from the ruin of the ravenous years,
And placed, though late, at last among our peers,
On the firm heights of immortality?

Nay, not so. Thought may burn eternally,

We go, nor where; but God is over all!"
It would not then be terrible to die.

XXI.

Hush, heart of mine! Nor jest, nor blasphemy
Beseems the strengthless creature of an hour!
Wed resignation rather; dread the power,
Whate'er it be, that rules thy destiny.

Nay, learn to love; love irresistibly!

With obstinate reiteration shower

Praises and prayers, thy spirit's dearest dower,
On the mute altar of that deity!

They work no wrong who worship: they are pure

And beacon through ten thousand broadening | Who seek God even in the sightless blue:

spheres,

Using our lives like wood that disappears
In the fierce flame it feeds continually.

Thus we may serve to build the cosmic soul
As moments in its being: but to deem
That we shall therefore grow, to grasp the whole,
Or last as separate atoms in the stream
Of Life transcendent, were a beauteous dream,
Too frail to bear stern reason's strong control.

XI.

Yet Hope, cast back on Feeling, argues thus :-
If thought be highest in the scale we see,
That thought is also personality,
Conscious of self, aspiring, emulous.

Growth furthermore meaus goodness: naught in us
Abides and flourishes, unless it be
Tempered for life by love's vitality.
Evil is everywhere deciduous.

Shall then the universal Thought, pure mind,
Pure growth, pure good, be found impersonal?
And if a Person, dare we think or call
Him cruel, to his members so unkind
As to permit our agony, nor bind

Each flower Death plucks into Life's coronal?

XIX.

One saith, "The world's a stage: I took my seat;
I saw the show; and now 'tis time to rise."
Another saith, "I came with eager eyes
Into life's banquet-hall to drink and eat;
The hour hath struck when I must shoe my feet,
And gird me for the way that deathward lies."
Another saith, "Life is a bird that flies
From dark through light to darkness, arrows-fleet."
One show; one feast; one flight ;-must that be all?
Could we unlearn this longing, could we cry,
"Thanks for our part in life's fair festival!
We know not whence we came, we know not why

And they have hope of victory who endure.-
This mortal life, like a dark avenue,

Is leading thee perchance to light secure,
And limitless horizons clear to view.

THE WILL.

Blame not the times in which we live,
Nor Fortune frail and fugitive;
Blame not thy parents, nor the rule
Of vice or wrong once learned at school;
But blame thyself, O man!

Although both heaven and earth combined
To mould thy flesh and form thy mind,
Though every thought, word, action, will,
Was framed by powers beyond thee, still
Thou art thyself, O man!

And self to take or leave is free,
Feeling its own sufficiency:

In spite of science, spite of fate,
The judge within thee soon or late

Will blame but thee, O man!

Say not, "I would, but could not-He
Should bear the blame, who fashioned me-
Call you mere change of motive choice?"
Scorning such pleas, the inner voice

Cries, "Thine the deed, O man!"

BEATI ILLI.

Blessed is the man whose heart and hands are pure!
He hath no sickness that he shall not cure,
No sorrow that he may not well endure:
His feet are steadfast and his hope is sure.

JOHN A. SYMONDS.-EDMUND ARMSTRONG.-MRS. AUGUSTA WEBSTER.

Oh, blessed is he who ne'er hath sold his soul,
Whose will is perfect, and whose word is whole,
Who hath not paid to common-sense the toll
Of self-disgrace, nor owned the world's control!

Through clouds and shadows of the darkest night
He will not lose a glimmering of the light,
Nor, though the sun of day be shrouded quite,
Swerve from the narrow path to left or right.

Edmund Armstrong.

Armstrong (1841-1865) was a native of Ireland, and a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, where he was President of the Undergraduates' Philosophical Society. At one time an avowed holder of sceptical views in regard to immortality and the divine purpose of life, he lived to recant and disavow his former opinions, but died at the early age of twenty-four. A volume of his poems was published by Edward Moxon & Co., London, in 1866, They show that the poetical element in his nature was too strong for the sceptical.

FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT. Friend of my soul, for us no more The sea of dark negation booms Upon a strange and shadowy shoreAn ocean vexed with glooms; Whereon, in trembling barks forlorn,

We tossed upon the waves of doubt, Our compass gone, our starlight out, Our shrouds and cordage torn.

Our course is on another sea;
Beneath a radiant arch of day;
While bursts of noble harmony
Inspire us on our way;
Subduing to a trustful calm

Our spirits amid surge and wind, And flowing on the anxious mind Like gusts of healing balm.

Mrs. Augusta Webster.

Mrs. Webster, born in England about 1841, published in 1866 "A Woman Sold, and other Poems," also "Dramatic Studies" and "The Auspicious Day" (1872). There are several other works from her pen. One of her critics says: "She has a dramatic faculty unusual with women, a versatile range, much penetration of thought, and is remarkably free from the dangerous mannerisms of modern verse."

TO BLOOM IS THEN TO WANE.

Too soon so fair, fair lilies; To bloom is then to wane; The folded bud has still To-morrows at its will, Blown flowers can never blow again.

Too soon so bright, bright noontide; The sun that now is high

Will henceforth only sink
Toward the western brink;
Day that's at prime begins to die.

Too soon so rich, ripe summer, For autumn tracks thee fast; Lo, death-marks on the leaf! Sweet summer, and my grief; For summer come is summer past.

Too soon, too soon, lost summer; Some hours and thou art o'er. Ah! death is part of birth: Summer leaves not the earth, But last year's summer lives no more.

THE GIFT.

O happy glow! O sun-bathed tree!
O golden-lighted river!
A love-gift has been given me,
And which of you is giver?

I came upon you something sad, Musing a mournful measure, Now all my heart in me is glad

With a quick sense of pleasure.

I came upon you with a heart Half sick of life's vexed story, And now it grows of you a part, Steeped in your golden glory.

A smile into my heart has crept
And laughs through all my being;
New joy into my life has leapt,
A joy of only seeing!

O happy glow! O sun-bathed tree!
O golden-lighted river!

A love-gift has been given me,
And which of you is giver?

913

Joaquin Miller.

AMERICAN.

Miller was born in 1841 in Indiana. When he was thirteen, his parents emigrated to Oregon overland, and settled in the Willamette Valley. After some rough adventures in the mining districts of California, he studied law, was admitted to practice, and in 1866 was elected county judge. Having published a small volume of poems, one of which bore the title of "Joaquin," he adopted that name instead of his original one of Cincinnatus Heine Miller. In 1870 he went to Europe, and in London found a publisher for his "Songs of the Sierras," which quickly gave him a reputation abroad and at home. He has since published "The Ship in the Desert, a Poem," and "Songs of Italy" (1878).

And this was Rome, that shrieked for room To stretch her limbs! A hill of caves For half-wild beasts and hairy slaves; And gypsies tent within her tomb!

Two lone palms on the Palatine,

Two rows of cypress black and tall, With white roots set in Cæsar's Hall,A garden, convent, and sweet shrine.

Tall cedars on a broken wall,

That look away toward Lebanon, And seem to mourn for grandeur gone: A wolf, an owl,-and that is all.

LONGINGS FOR HOME.

Could I but return to my woods once more,
And dwell in their depths as I have dwelt,
Kneel in their mosses as I have knelt,
Sit where the cool white rivers run,

Away from the world and half hid from the sun,
Hear wind in the woods of my storm-torn shore,
Glad to the heart with listening,-

It seems to me that I then could sing,
And sing as I never have sung before.

I miss, how wholly I miss my wood,
My matchless, magnificent, dark-leaved firs,
That climb up the terrible heights of Hood,
Where only the breath of white heaven stirs!
These Alps they are barren; wrapped in storms,
Formless masses of Titan forms,

They loom like ruins of a grandeur gone,
And lonesome as death to look upon.

O God! once more in my life to hear

The voice of a wood that is loud and alive,
That stirs with its being like a vast bee-hive!
And oh, once more in my life to see

The great bright eyes of the antlered deer;
To sing with the birds that sing for me,
To tread where only the red man trod,
To say no word, but listen to God!

PALATINE HILL.

A wolf-like stream without a sound
Steals by and hides beneath the shore,
Its awful secrets evermore
Within its sullen bosom bound.

LOVE ME, LOVE.

Love me, love, but breathe it low, Soft as summer weather;

If you love me, tell me so,

As we sit together,

Sweet and still as roses blowLove me, love, but breathe it low.

Tell me only with your eyes,

Words are cheap as water, If you love me, looks and sighs Tell my mother's daughter More than all the world may knowLove me, love, but breathe it low.

Words for others, storm and snow,

Wind and changeful weatherLet the shallow waters flow

Foaming on together;

But love is still and deep, and oh! Love me, love, but breathe it low.

Marie R. Lacoste.

Miss Lacoste, born about the year 1842, was a resident of Savannah, Ga. (1863), at the time she wrote the charming little poem of "Somebody's Darling." Without her consent, it was first published, with her name attached, in the Southern Churchman. It has since been copied into American and English collections, school books, and newspapers, with her name; so that her wish to remain anonymous seems to be now impracticable. Her residence (1880) was Baltimore, and her occupation that of a teacher. In a letter to us (1880), she writes: "I am thoroughly French, and desire always to be identified with France; to be known and considered ever as a Frenchwoman. *** I cannot be considered an authoress

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Philip Bourke Marston.

Marston, one of the young English poets of the latter half of the nineteenth century, is the son of John Westland Marston (born 1820), author of "The Patrician's Daughter," and other plays; whose dramatic and poetical works were published in a collected form in 1876. Philip is said to be blind, though not from birth. He has published "Song-tide, and other Poems" (1871), and "All in All: Poems and Sonnets" (1874). He has also contributed to Lippincott's and other American magazines. His poems, artistic in construction, tender and emotional in sentiment, have found an enlarging circle of admirers.

FROM FAR.

O Love, come back, across the weary way Thou didst go yesterday

Dear Love, come back!

"I am too far upon my way to turn: Be silent, hearts that yearn

Upon my track."

O Love! Love! Love! sweet Love! we are undone If thou indeed be gone

Where lost things are.

"Beyond the extremest sea's waste light and noise, As from Ghostland, thy voice

Is borne afar."

O Love, what was our sin that we should be Forsaken thus by thee?

So hard a lot!

"Upon your hearts my hands and lips were set-My lips of fire--and yet

Ye knew me not."

Nay, surely, Love! We knew thee well, sweet Love!
Did we not breathe and move
Within thy light?

"Ye did reject my thorns who wore my roses: Now darkness closes

Upon your sight."

O Love! stern Love! be not implacable: We loved thee, Love, so well!

Come back to us!

"To whom, and where, and by what weary way That I went yesterday,

Shall I come thus ?"

Oh weep, weep, weep! for Love, who tarried long,
With many a kiss and song,
Has taken wing.

No more he lightens in our eyes like fire: He heeds not our desire,

Or songs we sing.

Sidney Lanier.

AMERICAN.

Born in Macon, Ga., in 1842, Lanier took up his residence in Baltimore, where he became lecturer on English Literature in the Johns Hopkins University. In 1876 he published a small collection of poems from the press of Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia; and a new volume was to appear in 1881. His prose works are "Florida" (1875), and "The Science of English Verse" (1880) -a volume of much original merit, in which he seems to have been unindebted to any predecessor. He is also the author of some approved books for boys. Lanier is a proficient in music, and a member of the Peabody Orchestra, an organization for the cultivation of classic music, maintained in connection with the Peabody Institute.

A ROSE-MORAL.

Soul, get thee to the heart

Of yonder tuberose; hide thee there, There breathe the meditations of thine art Suffused with prayer.

Of spirit grave yet light,

How fervent fragrances uprise

Pure-born from these most rich and yet most white Virginities!

Mulched with unsavory death,

Reach, Soul! yon rose's white estate: Give off thine art as she doth issue breath, And wait, and wait.

EVENING SONG.

Look off, dear Love, across the sallow sands, And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea; How long they kiss, in sight of all the lands! Ah, longer, longer we.

Now in the sea's red vintage melts the sun, As Egypt's pearl dissolved in rosy wine, And Cleopatra Night drinks all. Tis done! Love, lay thy hand in mine.

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