Till the slow mountain's dial-hand

Shorten to noon's triumphal hour, While ye sit idle, do ye think

The Lord's great work sits idle too? That light dare not o'erleap the brink

Of morn, because 't is dark with you?

Though yet your valleys skulk in night, In God's ripe fields the day is cried, And reapers, with their sickles bright, Troop, singing, down the mountainside:

Come up, and feel what health there is

In the frank Dawn's delighted eyes, As, bending with a pitying kiss,

The night-shed tears of Earth she dries!

The Lord wants reapers: O, mount up, Before night comes, and says, "Too late!"

Stay not for taking scrip or cup,

The Master hungers while ye wait; "T is from these heights alone your eyes The advancing spears of day can see, That o'er the eastern hill-tops rise,

To break your long captivity.

II.

Lone watcher on the mountain-height,
It is right precious to behold
The first long surf of climbing light

Flood all the thirsty east with gold;

Thou hast thine office; we have ours;
God lacks not early service here,
But what are thine eleventh hours
He counts with us for morning cheer;
Our day, for Him, is long enough,
And when he giveth work to do,
The bruised reed is amply tough
To pierce the shield of error through.

But not the less do thou aspire

Light's earlier messages to preach; Keep back no syllable of fire,

Plunge deep the rowels of thy speech. Yet God deems not thine aeried sight More worthy than our twilight dim; For meek Obedience, too, is Light, And following that is finding Him.

THE CAPTIVE.

IT was past the hour of trysting,
But she lingered for him still;
Like a child, the eager streamlet
Leaped and laughed adown the hill,
Happy to be free at twilight

From its toiling at the mill.

Then the great moon on a sudden
Ominous, and red as blood,
Startling as a new creation,

O'er the eastern hill-top stood,
Casting deep and deeper shadows
Through the mystery of the wood.

Dread closed vast and vague about her,
And her thoughts turned fearfully
To her heart, if there some shelter
From the silence there might be,
Like bare cedars leaning inland

From the blighting of the sea.

Yet he came not, and the stillness

Dampened round her like a tomb; She could feel cold eyes of spirits

Looking on her through the gloom, She could hear the groping footsteps Of some blind, gigantic doom.

Suddenly the silence wavered

Like a light mist in the wind, For a voice broke gently through it, Felt like sunshine by the blind,