THE SOUL'S EXPRESSION.

WITH stammering lips and insufficient sound,

I strive and struggle to deliver right

That music of my nature, day and night

With dream and thought and feeling, interwound,

And inly answering all the senses round

With octaves of a mystic depth and height,

Which step out grandly to the infinite

From the dark edges of the sensual ground!

This song of soul I struggle to outbear

Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole,

And utter all myself into the air:

But if I did it,- -as the thunder-roll

Breaks its own cloud,-my flesh would perish there,

Before that dread apocalypse of soul.

THE SERAPH AND POET.

THE seraph sings before the manifest
God-one, and in the burning of the Seven,
And with the full life of consummate Heaven
Heaving beneath him like a mother's breast
Warm with her first-born's slumber in that nest!
The poet sings upon the earth grave-riven;
Before the naughty world soon self-forgiven

For wronging him; and in the darkness prest
From his own soul by worldly weights. Even so,

Sing, seraph with the glory!

Sing, poet with the sorrow!

Heaven is high—

Earth is low.

The universe's inward voices cry

"Amen" to either song of joy and woe

Sing seraph,-poet,-sing on equally.

BEREAVEMENT.

WHEN Some Beloveds, 'neath whose eyelids lay
The sweet lights of my childhood, one by one
Did leave me dark before the natural sun,
And I astonied fell, and could not pray,

A thought within me to myself did say,

66

Is God less God, that thou art left undone ?

Rise, worship, bless Him! in this sackcloth spun, As in that purple! "—But I answer, nay!

What child his filial heart in words can loose,

If he behold his tender father raise

The hand that chastens sorely? Can he choose
But sob in silence with an upward gaze ?—
And my great Father, thinking fit to bruise,
Discerns in speechless tears, both prayer and praise.

CONSOLATION.

ALL are not taken! there are left behind
Living Beloveds, tender looks to bring,
And make the daylight still a happy thing,
And tender voices, to make soft the wind.
But if it were not so- if I could find
No love in all the world for comforting,

Nor any path but hollowly did ring,

Where "dust to dust" the love from life disjoined— And if before those sepulchres unmoving

I stood alone, (as some forsaken lamb

Goes bleating up the moors in weary dearth) Crying "Where are ye, O my loved and loving?". I know a Voice would sound, "Daughter, I AM.

Can I suffice for HEAVEN, and not for earth?"

TO MARY RUSSELL MITFORD

IN HER GARDEN.

WHAT time I lay these rhymes anear thy feet,
Benignant friend! I will not proudly say
As better poets use, "These flowers I lay,"
Because I would not wrong thy roses sweet,
By spoiling so their name. And yet, repeat
Thou, overleaning them this springtime day,
With heart as wide to love as theirs to May,-

66

Low-rooted verse may reach some heavenly heat,
Even like my blossoms, if as nature-true,

Though not as precious." Thou art unperplext,
Dear friend, in whose dear writings drops the dew
And blow the natural airs; thou, who art next
To nature's self in cheering the world's view,
To preach a sermon on so known a text!

VOL. I.

Y

.