They are idols of hearts and of households,

They are angels of God in disguise; His sunlight still sleeps in their tresses,

His glory still gleams in their eyes;

My heart is the dungeon of darkness, Where I shut them for breaking a rule:

My frown is sufficient correction;
My love is the law of the school.

sweetest things,

If we had but a day;

wearied wills By the clearest light;

springs

In our upward way;

heavenly hills, If they lay in sight;

in an hour,

If the hours were few;

discontent Beneath our feet;

for fresher power

To be and to do.

God sent, With a trust complete.

weak regret,

If the day were but one;

selves set free, To work or to pray,

theme,

immemorial

Wheel, wheel through the sunshine, There must be odors round the pine, Wheel, wheel through the shadow; There must be balm of breathing. kine,

Somewhere down in the meadow. Must I choose? Then anchor me there

Beyond the beckoning poplars, where The larch is snooding her flowery

hair

With wreaths of morning shadow. Among the thickest hazels of the

brake

shake

Perchance some nightingale doth [song; His feathers, and the air is full of In those old days when I was young and strong,

Beside the nursery.
He used to sing on yonder garden tree,

Along my life my length I lay,
I fill to-morrow and yesterday,
I am warm with the suns that have
long since set,

fair as Spenser's dream.

HOME, WOunded.

STAY wherever you will,

By the mount or under the hill,
Or down by the little river:
Stay as long as you please,
Give me only a bud from the trees,
Or a blade of grass in morning dew,
Or a cloudy violet clearing to blue,
I could look on it forever.

not yet.

And like one who dreams and dozes Softly afloat on a sunny sea,

Two worlds are whispering over me, And there blows a wind of roses From the backward shore to the shore

before,

From the shore before to the back

ward shore,

And like two clouds that meet and pour
Each through each, till core in core
A single self reposes,

The nevermore with the evermore
Above me mingles and closes.

Careless he greets her day by day,
Nor thinks of words once said,
Oh, would that love could live again,
Or her heart give up its dead!

HEART-ORACLES.

By the motes do we know where the

sunbeam is slanting; Through the hindering stones, speaks the soul of the brook; Past the rustle of leaves we press into the stillness;

Through darkness and void to the
Pleiads we look;

One bird-note at dawn with the nightsilence o'er us,

Begins all the morning's munificent chorus.

Through sorrow come glimpses of infinite gladness;

Through grand discontent mounts the spirit of youth;

Loneliness foldeth a wonderful loving;

The breakers of Doubt lead the great tide of Truth:

And dread and grief-haunted the shadowy portal

That shuts from our vision the splendor immortal.

THE CHILD AND THE SEA.

ONE summer day, when birds flew high,

I saw a child step into the sea; It glowed and sparkled at her touch And softly plashed about her knee.

It held her lightly with its strength, It kissed and kissed her silken hair; It swayed with tenderness to know

A little child was in its care.

She, gleeful, dipped her pretty arms, And caught the sparkles in her hands;

I heard her laughter, as she soon Came skipping up the sunny sands.

"Is this the cruel sea?" I thought, "The merciless, the awful sea ?”Now hear the answer soft and true, That rippled over the beach to me:

"Shall not the sea, in the sun, be glad

When a child doth come to play? Had it been in the storm-time, what could I,

The sea, but bear her away — Bear her away on my foaming crest, Toss her and hurry her to her rest?

"Be it life or death, God ruleth me; And he loveth every soul; I've an earthly shore and a heavenly shore,

And toward them both I roll; Shining and beautiful, both are they,

And a little child will go God's way."

THE STARS.

THEY wait all day unseen by us, unfelt;

Patient they bide behind the day's full glare;

And we who watched the dawn when they were there, Thought we had seen them in the daylight melt,

While the slow sun upon the earthline knelt.

Because the teeming sky seemed void and bare,

When we explored it through the dazzled air,

We had no thought that there all day they dwelt.

Yet were they over us, alive and true, In the vast shades far up above the blue,

The brooding shades beyond our daylight ken

Serene and patient in their conscious light

Ready to sparkle for our joy again,The eternal jewels of the shortlived night.