RESIGNATION.-SAND OF THE DESERT IN AN HOUR-GLASS. 107 BY THE FIRESIDE. RESIGNATION. THERE is no flock, however watched and tended, The air is full of farewells to the dying, The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, Let us be patient! These severe afflictions But oftentimes celestial benedictions We see but dimly through the mists and vapors; What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers There is no Death! What seems so is transition; Is but a suburb of the life elysian, She is not dead,--the child of our affection,- Where she no longer needs our poor protection, In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, By guardian angels led, Safe frem temptation, safe from sin's pollution, She lives, whom we call dead. Day after day we think what she is doing In those bright realms of air, Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, Behold her growa more fair. 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, Our to-days and yesterdays Are the blocks with which we build. Truly shape and fashion these; 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; Else our lives are incomplete. Build to-day, then, strong and sure, Thus alone can we attain To those turrets, where the eye Sees the world as one vast plain, And one boundless reach of sky. Thinking that our remembrance, though un- SAND OF THE DESERT IN AN HOUR THE OPEN WINDOW. THE old house by the lindens I saw the nursery windows The large Newfoundland house-dog They walked not under the lindens, They played not in the hall; But shadow, and silence, and sadness The birds sang in the branches, Will be heard in dreams alone! And the boy that walked beside me, 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 They drank to the soul of Witlaf, And the reader droned from the pulpit, 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, Yet still in his pallid fingers He clutched the golden bowl, In which, like a pearl dissolving, Had sunk and dissolved his soul. PEGASUS IN POUND. It was Autumn, and incessant Burned among the withering leaves. Loud the clamorous bell was ringing Not the less he saw the landscape, Thus, upon the village common, By the school-boys he was found; Then the sombre village crier, And the curious country people, Rich and poor, and young and old, Came in haste to see this wondrous Winged steed, with mane of gold. Thus the day passed, and the evening Fell, with vapors cold and dim; But it brought no food nor shelter, Brought no straw nor stall, for him. Patiently, and still expectant, Looked he through the wooden bars, Saw the moon rise o'er the landscape, Saw the tranquil, patient stars; Till at length the bell at midnight Sounded from its dark abode, And, from out a neighboring farm-yard, Loud the cock Alectryon crowed. Then, with nostrils wide distended, Breaking from his iron chain, And unfolding far his pinions, To those stars he soared again. On the morrow, when the village But they found, upon the greensward Where his struggling hoofs had trod, Pure and bright, a fountain flowing From the hoof-marks in the sod. From that hour, the fount unfailing Gladdens the whole region round, Strengthening all who drink its waters, While it soothes them with its sound. TEGNER'S DRAPA. I HEARD a voice, that cried, "Balder the Beautiful Is dead, is dead!" And through the misty air Passed like the mournful cry Of sunward sailing cranes. I saw the pallid corpse Of the dead sun Borne through the Northern sky. Blasts from Niffelheim Lifted the sheeted mists Around him as he passed. And the voice forever cried, Balder the Beautiful, All things in earth and air Hoeder, the blind old God, They laid him in his ship, A ring upon his finger, They launched the burning ship! Over the misty sea, Till like the sun it seemed, So perish the old Gods! Over its meadows green O PRECIOUS evenings! all too swiftly sped! O happy Reader! having for thy text The rarest essence of all human thought! O happy Poet! by no critic vext! How must thy listening spirit now rejoice THE SINGERS. GOD sent his Singers upon earth |