But this it was that made me move
As light as carrier-birds in air:
I loved the weight I had to bear,
Because it needed help of Love;

Nor could I weary, heart or limb,

When mighty Love would cleave in twain
The lading of a single pain,

And part it, giving half to him.

XXVI.

STILL onward winds the dreary way;
I with it; for I long to prove
No lapse of moons can canker Love,
Whatever fickle tongues may say.

And if that eye which watches guilt

And goodness, and hath power to see Within the green the mouldered tree, And towers fallen as soon as built,

O, if indeed that eye foresee,

Or see, (in Him is no before,)
In more of life true life no more,

And Love the indifference to be,

Then might I find, ere yet the morn
Breaks hither over Indian seas,
That Shadow waiting with the keys,
To shroud me from my proper scorn.

XXVII.

I ENVY not, in any moods,

The captive void of noble

rage,

The linnet born within the cage,

That never knew the summer woods:

I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfettered by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth,
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth,
Nor any want-begotten rest.

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
"T is better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

XXVIII.

THE time draws near the birth of Christ:
The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill

Answer each other in the mist.

Four voices of four hamlets round,

From far and near, on mead and moor,
Swell out and fail, as if a door

Were shut between me and the sound:

Each voice four changes on the wind,

That now dilate, and now decrease,

Peace and good-will, good-will and peace, Peace and good-will, to all mankind.

This year

I slept and woke with pain,

I almost wished no more to wake,
And that my hold on life would break

Before I heard those bells again :

But they my troubled spirit rule,

For they controlled me when a boy; They bring me sorrow touched with joy, The merry, merry bells of Yule.

XXIX.

WITH such compelling cause to grieve
As daily vexes household peace,
And chains regret to his decease,
How dare we keep our Christmas eve;

Which brings no more a welcome guest

To enrich the threshold of the night
With showered largess of delight,
In dance and song and game and jest.

Yet go, and while the holly-boughs
Entwine the cold baptismal font,

Make one wreath more for Use and Wont

That guard the portals of the house;

Old sisters of a day gone by,

Gray nurses, loving nothing new;

Why should they miss their yearly due Before their time? They too will die.

XXX.

WITH trembling fingers did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
A rainy cloud possessed the earth,
And sadly fell our Christmas eve.

At our old pastimes in the hall

We gambolled, making vain pretence
Of gladness, with an awful sense

Of one mute Shadow watching all.

We paused: the winds were in the beech:
We heard them sweep the winter land;
And in a circle hand in hand

Sat silent, looking each at each.

Then echo-like our voices rang;

We sung, though every eye was dim,
A merry song we sang with him
Last year: impetuously we sang :

We ceased: a gentler feeling crept

Upon us: surely rest is meet:

66

They rest," we said, "their sleep is swcet," And silence followed, and we wept.

Our voices took a higher range;

Once more we sang: “They do not die,
Nor lose their mortal sympathy,

Nor change to us, although they change;

"Rapt from the fickle and the frail,

With gathered power, yet the same,
Pierces the keen seraphic flame

From orb to orb, from veil to veil.

“Rise, happy morn! rise, holy morn!

Draw forth the cheerful day from night:
O Father! touch the east, and light
The light that shone when Hope was born."

XXXI.

WHEN Lazarus left his charnel-cave,
And home to Mary's house returned,
Was this demanded,-if he yearned

To hear her weeping by his grave?

"Where wert thou, brother, those four days?"
There lives no record of reply,
Which, telling what it is to die,
Had surely added praise to praise.

From every house the neighbors met,

The streets were filled with joyful sound;
A solemn gladness even crowned

The purple brows of Olivet.

Behold a man raised up by Christ!
The rest remaineth unrevealed;
He told it not; or something sealed
The lips of that Evangelist.

XXXII.

HER eyes are homes of silent prayer,
Nor other thought her mind admits
But, he was dead, and there he sits,
And he that brought him back is there.

Then one deep love doth supersede
All other, when her ardent gaze
Roves from the living brother's face,

And rests upon the Life indeed.

All subtle thought, all curious fears,

Borne down by gladness so complete, She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet With costly spikenard and with tears.

Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, Whose loves in higher love endure; What souls possess themselves so pure, Or is there blessedness like theirs?