Employment.

All things are busy; only I

Neither bring honey with the bees,

Nor flowers to make that, nor the husbandry
To water these.

I am no link of thy great chain,
But all my company is a weed:

143

Lord, place me in thy concert, give one strain To my poor reed!

THE SAME DULL TASK AND WEARY WAY.

DAY after day, until to-day,

Imaged its fellows gone before; The same dull task, the weary way,

The weakness pardoned o'er and o'er;

The thwarted thirst, too faintly felt,
For joy's wellnigh forgotten life;
The impatient heart, which, when I knelt,
Made of my worship barren strife.

Ah, whence to-day's so sweet release?
This clearance light of all my care;
This conscience free, this fertile peace,
These softly folded wings of prayer;

This calm and more than conquering love, With which the tempter dares not cope; This joy that lifts no glance above,

For faith too sure, too sweet for hope?

The same dull Task and weary Way. 145 Oh, happy time, too happy change,

It will not live, though fondly nursed! Sweet Day, which soon will seem as strange As now the Night which seems dispersed!

Adieu! But, while my heart is warmed,

Some heavenly promise let me make: Strong are those vows, and well performed, Which at such times we undertake.

IMPERFECTION OF HUMAN SYMPATHY

WHY should we faint and fear to live alone,
Since all alone so Heaven has willed

die,

-we

Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own, Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh?

Each in his hidden sphere of joy or woe,
Our hermit spirits dwell, and range apart;

Our eyes see all around, in gloom or glow,
Hues of their own, fresh borrowed from the
heart.

And well it is for us our God should feel

Alone our secret throbbings: so our prayer May readier spring to Heaven, nor spend its zeal On cloud-born idols of this lower air.

For if one heart in perfect sympathy

Beat with another, answering love for love, Weak mortals all entranced on earth would lie, Nor listen for those purer strains above.

Imperfection of Human Sympathy. 147

Or what if Heaven for once its searching light
Lent to some partial eye, disclosing all
The rude, bad thoughts that in our bosom's night

Wander at large, nor heed love's gentle thrall?

Who would not shun the dreary, uncouth place?
As if, fond leaning where her infant slept,
A mother's arm a serpent should embrace:
So might we friendless live, and die unwept.

Then keep the softening veil in mercy drawn, Thou who canst love us though thou read us true;

As on the bosom of the aerial lawn

Melts in dim haze each coarse, ungentle hue.

Thou know'st our bitterness; our joys are thine; No stranger thou to all our wanderings wild : Nor could we bear to think, how every line

Of us, thy darkened likeness and defiled,

Stands in full sunshine of thy piercing eye,

But that thou call'st us Brethren: sweet repose Is in that word: the Lord who dwells on high Knows all, yet loves us better than he knows.