While the presence grew with the rising sound,
Spurning in grandeur the hollow ground,
As if the breath on the carver's tongue
Were fumes from some precious censer swung,
That lifted the spirit's wingéd soul

To the heights where crystal planets roll
Their choral anthems, and heaven's wide arch
Is thrilled with the music of their march;
And the faithless shades fled backward, dim
From the wondrous light that lived in him.—
Thus spake the carver, his words were few,
Simple and meek, but he felt them true,—

I labor by day, I labor by night;

The master ordered, the work is right;

"Pray that He strengthen my feeble good;

"For much must be conquered, much withstood." The artist labored, the labor sped,

But a corpse lay in his bridal bed.

Wearily worked the artist alone,

And his tears ran down the ivory bone;

And the presence lost its wonted glow,
For its trembling heart was beating low,
And the stealthy shadows came crawling in,
With the silent tread of a flattered sin;
Till the spirit fled to the Christ's own face,
Like a haunted man to a place of grace;
On the crown, the death-wrung eye, the tear,
On the placid triumph, faint yet clear,
That trembled round the mouth; and last
On the fatal wound, its brightness passed,
Shrinking low down in the horrid scar,
And flickering there like a waning star.
Slowly he labored with drooping head,
For the artist's heart from his work had fled.

He moaned, he muttered his lost one's name,
He looked on the Christ with a look of shame;

He called, he listened, no voice replied;
He prayed her to come again, and chide
The hateful work which his hand began;
He promised ships, rings, toys, drinking-can.
With level stare, through the thickening shade,
Hither and thither his eye-balls strayed;
But ne'er turned upward where just above,

A single star with a look of love-
Divine, supernal, transcending sense-

Shone on him a splendor so intense
That it half replaced the spirit's light,

And thwarted the leaguering bands of night.
Albeit he did not see the star,

Sense is not a perfect pass nor bar

To the mystic steps of love; his heart
Felt a dumb stir through its chillest part,
Felt a warm glow through its currents run,
And knew, as the blind man knows the sun,
That the night was past, and day was come.
Bravely he bent o'er the ivory bone;
But dull and dusk as a time-stained stone,
From some mouldering sculptured aisle redeemed,

The face of the slighted figure seemed;

Till with heart and soul the artist cast

His mind on the visionary past,

When the face put on a purer hue,

While again the wondrous presence grew;
And the star's and the spirit's leaguéd light
Baffled the cunning of plotting night.

"Father, why sit you ever alone,

'Carving this Christ from the ivory bone?

"Unlovely the figure, and passing grim "With cramping tortures in every limb. "A ghastly sight is the open wound,

"The wicked nails, and the sharp thorns bound "O'er his heavy brow's crowned agony :—

"Fearful is Christ on the cursed tree!"

And see you nothing," the artist said,

"But pain and death in this sacred head?—

"No triumph in the firm lip see you?

"

'No gracious promise which struggles through

"The half-closed lids; or no patient vow
"Sealed on the breadth of this mighty brow?
"Is my purpose idle, my labor vain?”

They answered, "We see but death and pain."
A little word had frozen his blood;

All silent the woful artist stood,

Turning the figure, now here, now there,
With the stolid wonder of despair.
Blankly his eye-balls he swept around,
As one who wakes from a dream profound,
And doubts the actual world he sees,
Yet knows his visions but fantasies.
"Nothing?" the artist murmured again.

"Nothing," they answered, "but death and pain.

"O, father, come to the sunny heath,

"Where the violets nod in their own sweet breath,

"Where the roses, prodigal as fair,

Squander their wealth on the thankless air,

"And all the glory of heaven and earth

"Meets in the hour of the lily's birth;

"Where the wheeling sky-larks upward throng, "Chasing to heaven their morning song, "Till its music fades from the listening ear,

"And only God's placid angels hear,

"As they hush their matin hymn, and all

'Serenely bend o'er the crystal wall.

“Hasten, dear father! there's nothing there
"So dread as yon figure's dying stare;
"For sun and dew have a cunning way
"Of making the dullest thing look gay;

"There's a wonder there in the coarsest stone,
"Which you cannot solve, yet still must own.
"Or, if it suits not your present mood,

"Come with us then to the darksome wood;

64

Where cataracts talk to hoary trees

“Of the world in by-gone centuries,

"Ere the dew on Eden's hills had dried,

"Or its valleys lost their flowery pride;

"When earth beneath them, and heaven above,

"Were lulled in the nursing arms of love,

44

44

And all God's creatures together grew

A peace in the very air they drew

Until sin burst nature's golden zone,

And nature dwindled, and sin has grown.

"Come, father, there's more of joy and good "In our merry heath and solemn wood,

64

Than the cold, dead hands of art can reach,

Or its man-made canons darkly teach." “Children, dear children, it may not be: "This work the master hath set for me.

All are not framed of the self-same clay;
And some must labor, or none could play."
The bright flowers blossomed, the sky-larks sang,
Deep in the forest the cataract's clang

Went up, unheard, in the silent sun;

The childish ears, which their charms had won,

And the tongues they woke, were there no more—
They lay with the clay that breathed of yore.
Up sprang the artist, and glared around,
Dashing the Christ to the shuddering ground,

With a cry whose piercing agony
Made hell reecho with welcome glee,
And all the trembling angels pale

At the terrors of that human wail.
"Was it for this I was singled out
"From the cringing, slavish, coward rout
"That blacken foul earth? Was it for this
"I bore the low sneer, the open hiss,
"The cross, the passion, the cheerless toil-
"Which nothing fosters, and all things foil-
"Only that Thou shouldst be glorified
"In the Saviour who sitteth by thy side?
"And is this Thy servant's rich reward?

"Are these the blessings which Thou hast stored "For the faithful few?-From sons of men

"Choose me for Thy chiefest rebel, then;

"Thriced cursed be the murderous, cheating thought "That led me blindly? The hand that wrought

“This ivory fraud, thrice curséd be;

"For it slew the hearts that lived for me!

"Thrice cursed be the sight of heaven and earth! "Thrice cursed be the womb that gave me birth! "Thrice cursed be the blood on Calvary poured! "Cursed, cursed be Thy hollow name "-The word, That might have uttered unpardoned sin, Died on his shuddering lips; and within, Like a dead weight, on his palsied tongue The impious thought of his fury hung. Around, above, with one rapid stoop, The waiting shadows of evil swoop; And in and out, through the vast turmoil Of cloudy currents, that twist and coil In endless motion, unnumbered forms— Countless as sands in the desert stormsWere drifted in masses indistinct;