O fond, Q fool, and blind!
To God I gave with tears;

But when a man like grace would find,
My soul put by her fears-

O fond, O fool, and blind!

God guards in happier spheres;

That man will guard where he did bind
Is hope for unknown years.

To hear, to heed, to wed,

Fair lot that maidens choose,

Thy mother's tenderest words are said,

Thy face no more she views;

Thy mother's lot, my dear,

She doth in nought accuse;

Her lot to bear, to nurse, to rear,

To love-and then to lose.

SEVEN TIMES SEVEN. LONGING FOR HOME.

A song of a boat:

There was once a boat on a billow.

Lightly she rocked to her port remote,

And the foam was white in her wake like snow,

And her frail mast bowed when the breeze would

blow,

And bent like a wand of willow.

I shaded mine eyes when a boat one day
Went curtseying over the billow,

I marked her course till a dancing mote
She faded out in the moonlit foam,

And I stayed behind in the dear loved home;
And my thoughts all day were about the boat
And my dreams upon the pillow.

I pray you hear my song of a boat,
For it is but short:-

My boat you shall find none fairer afloat,

In river or port.

Long I looked out for the lad she bore,

On the open desolate sea,

And I think he sailed to the heavenly shore, For he came not back to me

A song of a nest:

Ah me!

There was once a nest in a hollow:

Down in the mosses and knot-grass pressed,
Soft and warm, and full to the brim-
Vetches leaned over it purple and dim,
With buttercup buds to follow.

I pray you hear my song of a nest,
For it is not long;-

You shall never light, in a summer quest,

The bushes among

Shall never light on a prouder sitter,
A fairer nestful, nor ever know

A softer sound than their tender twitter,
That wind-like did come and go.

I had a nestful once of my own,

Ah, happy, happy I!

Right dearly I loved them but when they were

grown

They spread out their wings to fly

O, one after one they flew away
Far up to the heavenly blue,

To the better country, the upper day,
And I wish I was going too.

I

pray you what is the nest to me,

My empty nest?

And what is the shore where I stood to see

My boat sail down to the west?

Can I call that home where I anchor yet,

Though my good man has sailed?

Can I call that home where my nest was set,

Now all its hope hath failed?

Nay, but the port where my sailor went,

And the land where my nestlings be:

There is the home where my thoughts are sent,

The only home for me

Ah me!

JEAN INGELOW

H

TO A SKYLARK

AIL to thee, blithe Spirit!

Bird thou never wert,

That from Heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire;

The deep blue thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,

O'er which clouds are bright'ning,

Thou dost float and run;

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight;

Like a star of Heaven

In the broad daylight

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear

Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air

With thy voice is loud,

As when night is bare

From one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not;

What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see,

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a Poet hidden

In the light of thought,

Singing hymns unbidden

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden

In a palace tower,