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:

"They rest," we said, "their sleep is sweet,"

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?

XXXIII.

O THOU that after toil and storm

Mayst seem to have reached a purer air,
Whose faith has centre everywhere,

Nor cares to fix itself to form,

Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,

Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse

A life that leads melodious days.

Her faith through form is pure as thine,
Her hands are quicker unto good.
O, sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine!

See, thou that countest reason ripe
In holding by the law within,
Thou fail not in a world of sin,
And ev'n for want of such a type.

XXXIV.

My own dim life should teach me this,
That life shall live forevermore,
Else earth is darkness at the core,

And dust and ashes all that is;

This round of green, this orb of flame,
Fantastic beauty; such as lurks

In some wild Poet, when he works
Without a conscience or an aim.

What then were God to such as I?

'Twere hardly worth my while to choose Of things all mortal, or to use

A little patience ere I die,

"Twere best at once to sink to peace,
Like birds the charming serpent draws,
To drop head-foremost in the jaws
Of vacant darkness, and to cease.

XXXV.

YET if some voice that man could trust
Should murmur from the narrow house :
"The cheeks drop in; the body bows;
Man dies nor is there hope in dust:"

Might I not say? "yet even here,

But for one hour, O Love, I strive To keep so sweet a thing alive:" But I should turn mine ears and hear

The moanings of the homeless sea,

The sound of streams that, swift or slow,
Draw down Æonian hills, and sow

The dust of continents to be;

And Love would answer, with a sigh,

"The sound of that forgetful shore

Will change my sweetness more and more,

Half dead to know that I shall die."

O me! what profits it to put

An idle case? If Death were seen

At first as Death, Love had not been,

Or been in narrowest working shut,

Mere fellowship of sluggish moods,

Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape

Had bruised the herb and crushed the grape,

And basked and battened in the woods.

XXXVI.

THOUGH truths in manhood darkly join,
Deep-seated in our mystic frame,
We yield all blessing to the name
Of Him that made them current coin;

For wisdom dealt with mortal powers,

Where Truth in closest words shall fail,
When Truth embodied in a tale

Shall enter in at lowly doors.

And so the Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds In loveliness of perfect deeds,

More strong than all poetic thought;

Which he may read that binds the sheaf,
Or builds the house, or digs the grave,
And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef.

XXXVII.

URANIA speaks with darkened brow: "Thou pratest here where thou art least; This faith has many a purer priest,

And many an abler voice, than thou;

"Go down beside thy native rill,
On thy Parnassus set thy feet,
And hear thy laurel whisper sweet

About the ledges of the hill."

And my Melpomene replies,

A touch of shame upon her cheek:
"I am not worthy ev'n to speak

Of thy prevailing mysteries;