Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken

The bond which nature gives.

Nothing useless is, or low;

Each thing in its place is best; And what seems but idle show Strengthens and supports the rest.

For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;

Our to-days and yesterdays

Are the blocks with which we build.

Truly shape and fashion these; Leave no yaw..ing gaps between, Think not, because no man sees, Such things will remain unseen.

In the elder days of Art,

Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part; For the Gods see everywhere.

Let us do our work as well,

Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house, where Gods may dwell,
Beautiful, entire, and clean.

Else our lives are incomplete,
Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb.

Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base;
And ascending and secure

Shall to-morrow find its place.

Thus alone can we attain

To those turrets, where the eye Sees the world as one vast plain, And one boundless reach of sky.

spoken,

May reach her where she lives.

Not as a child shall we again behold her;
For when with raptures wild

In our embraces we again enfold her,
She will not be a child;

But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion,
Clothed with celestial grace;

And beautiful with all the soul's expansion
Shall we behold her face.

And though at times impetuous with emotion
And anguish long suppressed,

The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean,
That cannot be at rest,-

We will be patient, and assuage the feeling
We may not wholly stay;

By silence sanctifying, not concealing,
The grief that must have way.

THE BUILDERS.

ALL are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time; Some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme.

GLASS.

A HANDFUL of red sand, from the hot clime Of Arab deserts brought,

Within this glass becomes the spy of Time,
The minister of Thought.

How many weary centuries has it been
About those deserts blown!

How many strange vicissitudes has seen,
How many histories known!

Perhaps the camels of the Ishmaelite
Trampled and passed it o'er,
When into Egypt from the patriarch's sight
His favorite son they bore.

Perhaps the feet of Moses, burnt and bare,
Crushed it beneath their tread ;
Or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air
Scattered it as they sped;

Or Mary, with the Christ of Nazareth
Held close in her caress,

Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and faith
Illumed the wilderness;

Or anchorites beneath Engaddi's palms
Pacing the Dead Sea beach,

And singing slow their old Armenian psalms
In half-articulate speech;

THE OPEN WINDOW.

THE old house by the lindens
Stood silent in the shade,
And on the gravelled pathway
The light and shadow played.

I saw the nursery windows
Wide open to the air;
But the faces of the children,
They were no longer there.

The large Newfoundland house-dog
Was standing by the door;
He looked for his little playmates,
Who would return no more.

They walked not under the lindens, They played not in the hall;

But shadow, and silence, and sadness
Were hanging over all.

The birds sang in the branches,
With sweet, familiar tone;
But the voices of the children

Will be heard in dreams alone!

And the boy that walked beside me,
He could not understand
Why closer in mine, ah! closer,
I pressed his warm, soft hand!

KING WITLAF'S DRINKING-HORN.

WITLAF, a king of the Saxons,
Ere yet his last he breathed,
To the merry monks of Croyland
His drinking-horn bequeathed,-

That, whenever they sat at their revels,
And drank from the golden bowl,
They might remember the donor,
And breathe a prayer for his soul.

So sat they once at Christmas,

And bade the goblet pass;

In their beards the red wine glistened
Like dew-drops in the grass.

They drank to the soul of Witlaf,
They drank to Christ the Lord,
And to each of the Twelve Apostles,
Who had preached his holy word.
They drank to the Saints and Martyrs
Of the dismal days of yore,
And as soon as the horn was empty
They remembered one Saint more.

And the reader droned from the pulpit,
Like the murmur of many bees,
The legend of good Saint Guthlac,
And Saint Basil's homilies;

Till the great bells of the convent,
From their prison in the tower,
Guthlac and Bartholomæus,

Proclaimed the midnight hour.

And the Yule-log cracked in the chimney,
And the Abbot bowed his head,
And the flamelets flapped and flickered,
But the Abbot was stark and dead.

Yet still in his pallid fingers

He clutched the golden bowl, In which, like a pearl dissolving, Had sunk and dissolved his soul.

It was Autumn, and incessant
Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves,
And, like living coals, the apples
Burned among the withering leaves.

Loud the clamorous bell was ringing
From its belfry gaunt and grim;
"T was the daily call to labor,
Not a triumph meant for him.

Not the less he saw the landscape,
In its gleaming vapor veiled;
Not the less he breathed the odors
That the dying leaves exhaled.

Thus, upon the village common,

By the school-boys he was found;
And the wise men, in their wisdom,
Put him straightway into pound.

Then the sombre village crier.
Ringing loud his brazen beil,
Wandered down the street proclaiming
There was an estray to sell.

Hoeder, the blind old God,
Whose feet are shod with silence,
Pierced through that gentle breast
With his sharp spear, by fraud
Made of the misletoe,
The accursed misletoe!

They laid him in his ship,
With horse and harness,
As on a funeral pyre.
Odin placed

A ring upon his finger,
And whispered in his ear.

They launched the burning ship!

It floated far away

Over the misty sea,

Till like the sun it seemed,
Sinking beneath the waves.
Balder returned no more!

So perish the old Gods!
But out of the sea of Time
Rises a new land of song,
Fairer than the old.
Over its meadows green
Walk the young bards and sing.

Build it again,

O ye bards,

Fairer than before!

Ye fathers of the new race, Feed upon morning dew, Sing the new Song of Love!

The law of force is dead!
The law of love prevails!
Thor, the thun derer,
Shall rule the earth no more,
No more, with threats,
Challenge the meek Christ.

Sing no more,

O ye bards of the North, Of Vikings and of Jarls! Of the days of Eld Preserve the freedom only, Not the deeds of blood!

SONNET.

ON MRS. KEMBLE'S READINGS FROM SHAKE

SPEARE

O PRECIOUS evenings! all too swiftly sped!
Leaving us heirs to amplest heritages
Of all the best thoughts of the greatest sages,
And giving tongues unto the silent dead!
How our hearts glowed and trembled as she read,
Interpreting by tones the wondrous pages
Of the great poet who foreruns the ages,
Anticipating all that shall be said!

O happy Reader! having for thy text
The magic book, whose Sibylline leaves have
caught

The rarest essence of all human thought!
O happy Poet! by no critic vext!

How must thy listening spirit now rejoice
To be interpreted by such a voice!

THE SINGERS.

GOD sent his Singers upon earth
With songs of sadness and of mirth,
That they might touch the hearts of men,
And bring them back to heaven again.