Sometimes the silver cord of life
    Is loosed at one brief stroke;
As when the elements at strife,
With Nature's wild contentions rife,
    Uproot the sturdy oak.

Or fell disease, in patience borne,
    Attenuates the frame
Till the meek sufferer, wan and worn,
Of energy and beauty shorn,
    Death's sweet release would claim.

By instant touch or long decay
    Is dissolution wrought;
When, lost to earth, the grave and gay,
The young and old who pass away,
    Abide in hallowed thought.

In dear regard together drawn,
    Affection's debt to pay,
Fond greetings we exchange at dawn
With one who, ere the day be gone,
    Is bruised and lifeless clay.

O thou in manhood's morning-time
    With health and hope elate...

Addressed to Francis Greenleaf Allison of Burlington, New Jersey.


You scarcely need my tardy thanks,
Who, self-rewarded, nurse and tend
A green leaf on your own Green Banks
The memory of your friend.

For me, no wreath, bloom-woven, hides
The sobered brow and lessening hair
For aught I know, the myrtled sides
Of Helicon are bare.

Their scallop-shells so many bring
The fabled founts of song to try,
They've drained, for aught I know, the spring
Of Aganippe dry.

Ah well! The wreath the Muses braid
Proves often Folly's cap and bell;
Methinks, my ample beaver's shade
May serve my turn as well.

Let Love's and Friendship's tender debt
Be paid by those I love in life.
Why should the unborn critic whet
For m...

Immortal love, forever full,
Forever flowing free,
Forever shared, forever whole,
A never ebbing sea!

Our outward lips confess the name
All other names above;
Love only knoweth whence it came,
And comprehendeth love.

Blow, winds of God, awake and blow
The mists of earth away:
Shine out, O Light divine, and show
How wide and far we stray.

We may not climb the heavenly steeps
To bring the Lord Christ down;
In vain we search the lowest deeps,
For Him no depths can drown.

But warm, sweet, tender, even yet,
A present help is He;
And faith still has its Olivet,
And love its Galilee.

The healing of His seamless dress
Is by our beds of pain;
We touch Him in life’s throng and press,
And we are whole again...

While far along the eastern sky
I saw the flags of Havoc fly,
As if his forces would assault
The sovereign of the starry vault
And hurl Him back the burning rain
That seared the cities of the plain,
I read as on a crimson page
The words of Israel's sceptred sage: -

For riches make them wings, and they
Do as an eagle fly away.

O vision of that sleepless night,
What hue shall paint the mocking light
That burned and stained the orient skies
Where peaceful morning loves to rise,
As if the sun had lost his way
And dawned to make a second day, -
Above how red with fiery glow,
How dark to those it woke below!

On roof and wall, on dome and spire,
Flashed the false jewels of the fire;
Girt with her belt of glittering panes,<...

On great cathedral window I have seen
A summer sunset swoon and sink away,
Lost in the splendours of immortal art.
Angels and saints and all the heavenly hosts,
With smiles undimmed by half a thousand years,
From wall and niche have met my lifted gaze.
Sculpture and carving and illumined page,
And the fair, lofty dreams of architects,
That speak of beauty to the centuries -
All these have fed me with divine repasts.
Yet in my mouth is left a bitter taste,
The taste of blood that stained that age of art.

Those glorious windows shine upon the black
And hideous structure of the guillotine;
Beside the haloed countenance of saints
There hangs the multiple and knotted lash.
The Christ of love, benign and beautiful,
Looks at the torture-rack, by hate conce...

So in the sinful streets, abstracted and alone,
I with my secret self held communing of mine own.
So in the southern city spake the tongue
Of one that somewhat overwildly sung,
But in a later hour I sat and heard
Another voice that spake another graver word.
Weep not, it bade, whatever hath been said,
Though He be dead, He is not dead.
In the true creed
He is yet risen indeed;
Christ is yet risen.

Weep not beside His tomb,
Ye women unto whom
He was great comfort and yet greater grief;
Nor ye, ye faithful few that wont with Him to roam,
Seek sadly what for Him ye left, go hopeless to your home;
Nor ye despair, ye sharers yet to be of their belief;
Though He be dead, He is not dead,
Nor gone, though fled,
Not lost, though vanished;
Thou...

‘In harmony with Nature’? Restless fool,
Who with such heat dost preach what were to thee,
When true, the last impossibility;
To be like Nature strong, like Nature cool:
Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more,
And in that more lie all his hopes of good.
Nature is cruel; man is sick of blood:
Nature is stubborn; man would fain adore:
Nature is fickle; man hath need of rest:
Nature forgives no debt, and fears no grave;
Man would be mild, and with safe conscience blest.
Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends;
Nature and man can never be fast friends.
Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave

For what then was I born? — to fill the circling year with daily toil for daily bread, with sordid pains and pleasures? —
To walk this chequered world, alternate light and darkness,
The day-dreams of deep thought followed by the night dreams of fancy? —
To be one in a full procession? — to dig my kindred clay?—
To decorate the gallery of art? — to clear a few acres of forest?—
For more than these, my soul, thy God hath lent thee life.
Is then that noble end to feed this mind with knowledge.
To mix for mine own thirst the sparkling wine of wisdom,
To light with many lamps the caverns of my heart,
To reap, in the furrows of my brain, good harvest of right reasons? —
For more than these, my soul, thy God hath lent thee life.
Is it to grow stronger in self-government, to check the chafing...

O Dearer far than light and life are dear,
Full oft our human foresight I deplore;
Trembling, through my unworthiness, with fear
That friends, by death disjoined, may meet no more!
Misgivings, hard to vanquish or control,
Mix with the day, and cross the hour of rest;
While all the future, for thy purer soul,
With "sober certainties" of love is blest.

That sigh of thine, not meant for human ear,
Tells that these words thy humbleness offend;
Yet bear me up, else faltering in the rear
Of a steep march: support me to the end.

Peace settles where the intellect is meek,
And Love is dutiful in thought and deed;
Through Thee communion with that Love I seek:
The faith Heaven strengthens where 'he' moulds the Creed.

I heard, in darkness, on my bed,
    The beating of my heart
To servant feet and regnant head
    A common life impart,
By the liquid cords, in every thread
    Unbroken as they start.

Night, with its power to silence day,
    Filled up my lonely room;
All motion quenching, save what lay
    Beyond its passing doom,
Where in his shed the workman gay
    Went on despite the gloom.

I listened, and I knew the sound,
    And the trade that he was plying;
For backwards, forwards, bound and bound,
    'Twas a shuttle, flying, flying;
Weaving ever life's garment round,
    Till the weft go out with sighing.

I said, O mystic thing, thou goest
    On working in the dark;
In space's shoreless sea thou rowest,
    Concealed with...

Where shall we write your names, ye brave!
    Where build for you a monument,
Who lie in many a sylvan grave,
    Stretched half across the continent!
Young, bright and brave, the very flower
    And choice of all we had to give,
    With you what glory ceased to live,--
    Or lives again in hearts of men.
An inspiration and a power!

For when one sunny day in June,
    A sudden war-cry shook the land,
As if from out clear skies at noon
    Had dropped the lightning's deadly brand--
Ah then, while rang our British cheers,
    And pealed the bugle, rolled the drum,
    We saw the Nation rise like one!
    Swift formed the files,--a thousand miles
Of them, our gallant Volunteers!

Deep clanged the bells, the drums did beat,
    And sti...

Go, little book, and be the looking-glass
Of her dear soul,
The mirror of her moments as they pass,
Keeping the whole;
Wherein she still may look on yesterday
To-day to cheer,
And towards To-morrow pass upon her way
Without a fear.
For yesterday hath never won a crown,
However fair,
But that To-day a better for its own
Might win and wear;
And yesterday hath never joyed a joy,
However sweet,
That this To-day or that To-morrow too
May not repeat.
Think too, To-day is trustee for to-morrow,
And present pain
That's bravely borne shall ease the future sorrow
Nor cry in vain
'Spare us To-day, To-morrow bring the rod,'
For then again
To-morrow from To-morrow still shall borrow,
A little ease to gain:
But bear to-day whate'er To...

OCCASIONED BY HIS DIALOGUES ON MEDALS.[54]

See the wild waste of all-devouring years!
How Rome her own sad sepulchre appears,
With nodding arches, broken temples spread!
The very tombs now vanish'd, like their dead!
Imperial wonders raised on nations spoil'd
Where mix'd with slaves the groaning martyr toil'd:
Huge theatres, that now unpeopled woods,
Now drain'd a distant country of her floods:
Fanes, which admiring gods with pride survey,
Statues of men, scarce less alive than they!
Some felt the silent stroke of mouldering age,
Some hostile fury, some religious rage,
Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire,
And Papal piety, and Gothic fire.
Perhaps, by its own ruins saved from flame,
Some buried marble half-preserves a name;
That na...

How blind is he who prays that God will send
All pain from earth.    Pain has its use and place;
Its ministry of holiness and grace.
The darker tones upon the canvas blend
With light and colour; and their shadows lend
The painting half its dignity.    Efface
The sombre background, and you lose all trace
Of that perfection which is true art's trend.

Life is an artist seeking to reveal
God's majesty and beauty in each soul.
If from the palette mortal man could steal
The precious pigment, pain, why then the scroll
Would glare with colours meaningless and bright,
Or show an empty canvas, blurred with light.

Flowers of France in the Spring,
Your growth is a beautiful thing;
But give us your fragrance and bloom -
Yea, give us your lives in truth,
Give us your sweetness and grace
To brighten the resting-place
Of the flower of manhood and youth,
Gone into the dust of the tomb.

This is the vast stupendous hour of Time,
When nothing counts but sacrifice and faith,
Service and self-forgetfulness.    Sublime
And awful are these moments charged with death
And red with slaughter.    Yet God's purpose thrives
In all this holocaust of human lives.

I say God's purpose thrives.    Just in the measure
That men have flung away their lust for gain,
Stopped in their mad pursuit of worldly pleasure,
And boldly faced unprecedented pain
And dangers, without thin...

    Content Primroses,
    With hearts at rest in your thick leaves' soft care,
    Peeping as from his mother's lap the child
    Who courts shy shelter from his own open air!--
    Hanging Harebell,
    Whose blue heaven to no wanderer ever closes,
    Though thou still lookest earthward from thy domed cell!--
    Fluttering-wild
    Anemone, so well
    Named of the Wind, to whom thou, fettered-free,
    Yieldest thee, helpless--wilfully,
    With Take me or leave me,
    Sweet Wind, I am thine own Anemone!--
    Thirsty Arum, ever dreaming
    Of lakes in wildernesses gleaming!--
    Fire-winged Pimpernel,
    Communing with some hidden well,
    And secrets with the sun-god holding,
    At fixed hour folding and unfolding!--
    How ...

A sound of tumult troubles all the air,
Like the low thunders of a sultry sky
Far-rolling ere the downright lightnings glare;
The hills blaze red with warnings; foes draw nigh,
Treading the dark with challenge and reply.
Behold the burden of the prophet's vision;
The gathering hosts, the Valley of Decision,
Dusk with the wings of eagles wheeling o'er.
Day of the Lord, of darkness and not light!
It breaks in thunder and the whirlwind's roar!
Even so, Father! Let Thy will be done;
Turn and o'erturn, end what Thou hast begun
In judgment or in mercy: as for me,
If but the least and frailest, let me be
Evermore numbered with the truly free
Who find Thy service perfect liberty!
I fain would thank Thee that my mortal life
Has reached the hour (albeit through car...

The rage for writing has spread far and wide,
Letters on letters now are multiplied,
And every mortal, who can hold a pen,
Aspires in haste to teach his fellow men.
Paper in wasted reams, and seas of ink.
Prove how they write who never learned to think;
Some who have talents--some who have not sense;
Some who to decency make no pretence;
But, skilled in arts which better men deceive,
They spread the slander which they don't believe.
A township turned to scribblers is a sight!
Venting their malice all in black and white,
And with, apparently, no other aim
Than merely to be foaming out their shame.
--My own, my beautiful, my pride,
I must lament where strangers will deride,
O'er thy degenerate sons whose strife and hate
Will make thee as a desert desolate