To bear, to nurse, to rear,

To watch, and then to lose:

This have I done when God drew near Among his own to choose.

O fond, O fool, and blind,

To God I gave with tears;

But when a man like grace would find, My soul put by her fears

O fond, O fool, and blind,

God guards in happier spheres; That man will guard where he did bind Is hope for unknown years.

To hear, to heed, to wed,

Fair lot that maidens choose,

Thy mother's tenderest words are said,
Thy face no more she views;
Thy mother's lot, my dear,
She doth in nought accuse:
Her lot to bear, to nurse, to rear,
To love-and then to lose.

SEVEN TIMES SEVEN.

I.

LONGING FOR HOME.

A SONG of a boat;

There was once a boat on a billow:

Lightly she rocked to her port remote;

And the foam was white in her wake like snow,
And her frail mast bowed when the breeze would blow
And bent like a wand of willow.

II.

I shaded mine eyes one day when a boat
Went curtseying over the billow,

I marked her course till a dancing mote
She faded out on the moonlit foam,
And I stayed behind in the dear loved home;
And my thoughts all day were about the boat,
And my dreams upon the pillow.

III.

I pray you hear my song of a boat,
For it is but short:-

My boat, you shall find none fairer afloat,
In river or port.

Long I looked out for the lad she bore,
On the open desolate sea,

And I think he sailed to the heavenly shore,
For he came not back to me-

Ah me!

IV.

A song of a nest:

There was once a nest in a hollow:
Down in the mosses and knot-grass pressed,
Soft and warm, and full to the brim-
Vetches leaned over it purple and dim,
With buttercup buds to follow.

V.

I pray you hear my song of a nest,
For it is not long:-

You shall never light, in a summer quest
The bushes among-

Shall never light on a prouder sitter,
A fairer nestful, nor ever know
A softer sound than their tender twitter,
That wind-like did come and go.

VI.

I had a nestful once of my own,

Ah happy, happy I!

Right dearly I loved them: but when they were grown They spread out their wings to fly

O, one after one they flew away

Far up to the heavenly blue,

To the better country, the upper day,
And-I wish I was going too.

VII.

I pray you, what is the nest to me,

My empty nest?

And what is the shore where I stood to see

My boat sail down to the west?

Can I call that home where I anchor yet,

Though my good man has sailed?

Can I call that home where my nest was set,
Now all its hope hath failed?

Nay, but the port where my sailor went,
And the land where my nestlings be:
There is the home where my thoughts are sent,

The only home for me

Ah me!

DIVIDED.

AN empty sky, a world of heather,

Purple of foxglove, yellow of broom; We two among them wading together, Shaking out honey, treading perfume.

Crowds of bees are giddy with clover,

Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet,
Crowds of larks at their matins hang over,
Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet.

Flusheth the rise with her purple favor,
Gloweth the cleft with her golden ring,
"Twixt the two brown butterflies waver,
Lightly settle, and sleepily sing.

We two walk till the purple dieth

And short dry grass under foot is brown, But one little streak at a distance lieth Green like a ribbon to prank the down.

II.

Over the grass we stepped unto it,

And God He knoweth how blithe we were! Never a voice to bid us eschew it:

Hey the green ribbon that showed so fair!