The Cambridge Book of Poetry and Song: Selected from English and American ...

THE STANZA ADDED TO WALLER'S I'll tell thee something all thy heat

Or golden disk of moon that swings
Nearest of all the heavenly things,
Or world in awful distance small,
One Light doth feed and link them
all!

“I WILL ABIDE IN THINE HOUSE."
AMONG SO many, can He care?
Can special love be everywhere?
A myriad homes,-a myriad ways,-
And God's eye over every place.

Over; but in? The world is full;
A grand omnipotence must rule;
But is there life that doth abide
With mine own living, side by side?

So many, and so wide abroad:
Can any heart have all of God?
From the great spaces, vague and dim,
May one small household gather Him?

I asked: my soul bethought of this:-
In just that very place of his
Where He hath put and keepeth you,
God hath no other thing to do!

HEARTH-GLOW.

IN the fireshine at the twilight,
The pictures that I see
Are less with mimic landscape bright
Than with life and mystery.

Where the embers flush and flicker
With their palpitating glow,

I see, fitfuller and quicker,

Heart-pulses come and go.

And here and there, with eager flame,
A little tongue of light
Upreaches earnestly to claim
A somewhat out of sight.

I know, with instinct sure and high,
A somewhat must be there;
Else should the fiery impulse die.
In ashes of despair.

Through the red tracery I discern
A parable sublime;
A solemn myth of souls that burn
In ordeals of time.

SUNLIGHT AND STARLIGHT.

GOD sets some souls in shade, alone;
They have no daylight of their own:
Only in lives of happier ones
They see the shine of distant suns.
God knows. Content thee with thy
night,

Thy greater heaven hath grander
light.

To-day is close; the hours are small;
Thou sit'st afar, and hast them all.

Lose the less joy that doth but blind;
Reach forth a larger bliss to find.
To-day is brief: the inclusive spheres
Rain raptures of a thousand years.

LARVE.

My little maiden of four years old

No myth, but a genuine child is she,

With her bronze-brown eyes and her curls of gold-
Came, quite in disgust, one day, to me.

Rubbing her shoulder with rosy palm,

As the loathsome touch seemed yet to thrill her,
She cried, "O mother! I found on my arm

A horrible, crawling caterpillar!”

And with mischievous smile she could scarcely smother,

Yet a glance in its daring, half awed, half shy,

She added, While they were about it, mother

I wish they'd just finished the butterfly!"

They were words to the thought of the soul that turns
From the coarser form of a partial growth,
Reproaching the infinite patience that yearns
With an unknown glory to crown them both.

Ah, look thou largely, with lenient eyes,

On whatso beside thee may creep and cling,

For the possible glory that underlies

The passing phase of the meanest thing!

What if God's great angels, whose waiting love

Beholdeth our pitiful life below

From the holy height of their heaven above,

Could n't bear with the worm till the wings should grow ?

ELIZABETH H. WHITTIER.

CHARITY.

THE pilgrim and stranger, who, For gifts, in his name, of food and

through the day,

Holds over the desert his trackless

way,

rest,

The tents of Islam, of God are blest.

Where the terrible sands no shade Thou, who hast faith in the Christ

have known,

above,

No sound of life save his camel's Shall the Koran teach thee the Law

Thou hast more than he can buy
In the reach of ear and eye,
Outward sunshine, inward joy:
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!

Oh, for boyhood's painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor's rules,
Knowledge never learned in schools,
Of the wild bee's morning chase,
Of the wild-flower's time and place.
Flight of fowl and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood;
How the tortoise bears his shell,
How the woodchuck digs his cell,
And the ground-mole sinks his well;
How the robin feeds her young,
How the oriole's nest is hung;
Where the whitest lilies blow,
Where the freshest berries grow,
Where the ground-nut trails its vine,
Where the wood-grape's clusters
shine;

Of the black wasp's cunning way,
Mason of his walls of clay,
And the architectural plans
Of gray hornet artisans!
For, eschewing books and tasks,
Nature answers all he asks;
Hand in hand with her he walks,
Face to face with her he talks,
Part and parcel of her joy,-.
Blessings on the barefoot boy!

Oh, for boyhood's time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the
night,

Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Still as my horizon grew

Larger grew my riches too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!

---

Oh, for festal dainties spread, Like my bowl of milk and bread, Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, On the door-stone, gray and rude! O'er me, like a regal tent, Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, Purple-curtained, fringed with gold; Looped in many a wind-swung fold; While for music came the play Of the pied frogs' orchestra; And, to light the noisy choir, Lit the fly his lamp of fire. I was monarch: pomp and joy Waited on the barefoot boy.

Cheerily, then, my little man, Live and laugh, as boyhood can! Though the flinty slopes be hard, Stubble-speared

the new-mown

sward, Every morn shall lead thee through Fresh baptisms of the dew; Every evening from thy feet Shall the cool wind kiss the heat. All too soon these feet must hide In the prison cells of pride, Lose the freedom of the sod, Like a colt's for work be shod, Made to tread the mills of toil, Up and down in ceaseless moil: Happy if their track be found Never on forbidden ground; Happy if they sink not in

Quick and treacherous sands of sin. Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy, Ere it passes, barefoot boy!

IN SCHOOL-DAYS.

STILL sits the school-house by the road,

A ragged beggar sunning; Around it still the sumachs grow. And blackberry-vines are running. Within, the master's desk is seen, Deep scarred by raps official; The warping floor, the battered seats, The jack-knife's carved initial;

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