Fierce tyrants drop the scourges wherewith blindly Their own souls they were scarring; conquerors

see

With horror in their hands the accursed spear
That tore the meek One's side on Calvary,
And from their trophies shrink with ghastly fear;
Thou, too, art the Forgiver,

The beauty of man's soul to man revealing;
The arrows from thy quiver

Pierce Error's guilty heart, but only pierce for healing.

O, whither, whither, glory-winged dreams,
From out Life's sweat and turmoil would ye bear
me?

Shut, gates of Fancy, on your golden gleams,-
This agony of hopeless contrast spare me!
Fade, cheating glow, and leave me to my night!
He is a coward, who would borrow

A charm against the present sorrow
From the vague Future's promise of delight:
As life's alarums nearer roll,

The ancestral buckler calls,
Self-clanging from the walls

In the high temple of the soul;

Where are most sorrows, there the poet's sphere is, To feed the soul with patience,

To heal its desolations

With words of unshorn truth, with love that never wearies.

HEBE.

I SAW the twinkle of white feet,
I saw the flash of robes descending;
Before her ran an influence fleet,
That bowed my heart like barley bending.

As, in bare fields, the searching bees
Pilot to blooms beyond our finding,
It led me on, by sweet degrees
Joy's simple honey-cells unbinding.

Those Graces were that seemed grim Fates;
With nearer love the sky leaned o'er me;
The long-sought Secret's golden gates
On musical hinges swung before me.

I saw the brimmed bowl in her grasp Thrilling with godhood; like a lover sprang the proffered life to clasp ;— The beaker fell; the luck was over.

I

The Earth has drunk the vintage up; What boots it patch the goblet's splinters? Can Summer fill the icy cup,

Whose treacherous crystal is but Winter's?

O spendthrift, haste! await the Gods;
Their nectar crowns the lips of Patience;
Haste scatters on unthankful sods
The immortal gift in vain libations.

Coy Hebe flies from those that woo, And shuns the hands would seize upon her; Follow thy life, and she will sue To pour for thee the cup of honour.

THE SEARCH.

I WENT to seek for Christ,
And Nature seemed so fair

That first the woods and fields my youth enticed,
And I was sure to find him there:

The temple I forsook,

And to the solitude

Allegiance paid; but Winter came and shook
The crown and purple from my wood;
His snows, like desert sands, with scornful drift,
Besieged the columned aisle and palace-gate;
My Thebes, cut deep with many a solemn rift,
But epitaphed her own sepulchred state:
Then I remembered whom I went to seek,
And blessed blunt Winter for his counsel bleak.

Back to the world I turned,

For Christ, I said, is King;

So the cramped alley and the hut I spurned,
As far beneath his sojourning:
'Mid power and wealth I sought,
But found no trace of him,
And all the costly offerings I had brought
With sudden rust and mould grew dim:
I found his tomb, indeed, where, by their laws,
All must on stated days themselves imprison,
Mocking with bread a dead creed's grinning jaws,
Witless how long the life had thence arisen;
Due sacrifice to this they set apart,

Prizing it more than Christ's own living heart.

So from my feet the dust

Of the proud World I shook;

Then came dear Love and shared with me his

crust,

And half my sorrow's burden took.

After the World's soft bed,

Its rich and dainty fare,

Like down seemed Love's coarse pillow to my head,

His cheap food seemed as manna rare ; Fresh-trodden prints of bare and bleeding feet, Turned to the heedless city whence I came, Hardby I saw, and springs of worship sweet Gushed from my cleft heart smitten by the same; Love looked me in the face and spake no words, But straight I knew those foot-prints were the Lord's.

I followed where they led

And in a hovel rude,

With naught to fence the weather from his head,
The King I sought for meekly stood
A naked, hungry child

And

Clung round his gracious knee,

a poor hunted slave looked up and smiled To bless the smile that set him free; New miracles I saw his presence do,

No more I knew the hovel bare and poor, The gathered chips into a woodpile grew,

The broken morsel swelled to goodly store; I knelt and wept: my Christ no more I seek, His throne is with the outcast and the weak.

THE PRESENT CRISIS.

WHEN a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast

Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west,

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb

To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime

Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time.

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe,

When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and fro;

At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing

start,

Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart,

And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future's heart.

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill,

Under continent to continent, the sense of coming

ill,

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with God