The moon was pallid, but not faint,
Yet beautiful as some fair saint,
Serenely moving on her way
In hours of trial and dismay.
As if she heard the voice of God,
Unharmed with naked feet she trod
Upon the hot and burning stars,
As on the glowing coals and bars
That were to prove her strength, and try
Her holiness and her purity.

Thus moving on, with silent pace,
And triumph in her sweet, pale face,
She reached the station of Orion.
Aghast he stood in strange alarm!
And suddenly from his outstretched arm
Down fell the red skin of the lion
Into the river at his feet.

His mighty club no longer beat
The forehead of the bull; but he
Reeled as of yore beside the sea,
When, blinded by Enopion,

He sought the blacksmith at his forge,
And, climbing up the mountain gorge,

Fixed his blank eyes upon

the sun.

Then, through the silence overhead,
An angel with a trumpet said,
"For evermore, for evermore,
The reign of violence is o'er!"
And, like an instrument that flings
Its music on another's strings,
The trumpet of the angel cast
Upon the heavenly lyre its blast,
And on from sphere to sphere the words
Re-echoed down the burning chords,-
"For evermore, for evermore,
The reign of violence is o'er!"

TO A CHILD.

DEAR child! how radiant on thy mother's knee,

With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles, Thou gazest at the painted tiles,

Whose figures grace,

With many a grotesque form and face,
The ancient chimney of thy nursery!
The lady with the gay macaw,

The dancing girl, the grave bashaw,
With bearded lip and chin;

And, leaning idle o'er his gate,
Beneath the imperial fan of state,
The Chinese mandarin.

With what a look of proud command
Thou shakest in thy little hand

The coral rattle with its silver bells,
Making a merry tune!

Thousands of years in Indian seas
That coral grew, by slow degrees,

Until some deadly and wild monsoon
Dashed it on Coromandel's sand!

Those silver bells

Reposed of yore,

As shapeless ore,

Far down in the deep-sunken wells
Of darksome mines,

In some obscure and sunless place,
Beneath huge Chimborazo's base,
Or steep Potosi's mountain pines!

And thus for thee, oh little child,
Through many a danger and escape,
The tall ships passed the stormy Cape;
For thee, in foreign lands remote,
Beneath a burning, tropic clime,

The Indian peasant, chasing the wild goat,
Himself as swift and wild,

In falling, clutched the frail arbute,
The fibres of whose shallow root,
Uplifted from the soil, betrayed
The silver veins beneath it laid,
The buried treasures of the miser, Time.

But, lo! thy door is left ajar!

Thou hearest footsteps from afar!
And, at the sound,

Thou turnest round

With quick and questioning eyes,

Like one, who, in a foreign land,
Beholds on every hand

Some source of wonder and surprise!

And, restlessly, impatiently,

Thou strivest, strugglest, to be free.

The four walls of thy nursery

Are now like prison walls to thee.
No more thy mother's smiles,
No more the painted tiles,

Delight thee, nor the playthings on the floor,
That won thy little, beating heart before;
Thou strugglest for the open door.

Through these once solitary halls

Thy pattering footstep falls.

The sound of thy merry voice
Makes the old walls

Jubilant, and they rejoice

With the joy of thy young heart,
O'er the light of whose gladness
No shadows of sadness