GRIEF.

TELL you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,

Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight
air

Beat upward to God's throne in loud access Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness

In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare

Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare

Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death

Most like a monumental statue set

In everlasting watch and moveless woe

Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.

Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:

If it could weep, it could arise and go.

FINITE AND INFINITE.

HE wind sounds only in opposing straits,
The sea, beside the shore; man's spirit rends
Its quiet only up against the ends

Of wants and oppositions, loves and hates,
Where, worked and worn by passionate debates,
And losing by the loss it apprehends,

The flesh rocks round and every breath it sends
Is ravelled to a sigh. All tortured states
Suppose a straitened place. Jehovah Lord,
Make room for rest, around me! out of sight
Now float me, of the vexing land abhorred,
Till in deep calms of space my soul may right
Her nature, shoot large sail on lengthening cord,

And rush exultant on the Infinite.

COMFORT.

PEAK low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet
From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low,
Lest I should fear and fall, and miss Thee so

Who art not missed by any that entreat.

Speak to me as to Mary at Thy feet!

And if no precious gums my hands bestow,
Let my tears drop like amber while I go
In reach of Thy divinest voice complete

In humanest affection-thus, in sooth,

To lose the sense of losing. As a child,
Whose song-bird seeks the wood for evermore,
Is sung to in its stead by mother's mouth

Till, sinking on her breast, love-reconciled,
He sleeps the faster that he wept before.

FUTURITY.

ND, O beloved voices, upon which
Ours passionately call because erelong

Ye brake off in the middle of that song

We sang together softly, to enrich

The poor world with the sense of love, and witch

The heart out of things evil,-I am strong,

Knowing ye are not lost for aye among

The hills, with last year's thrush.

God keeps a niche

In Heaven to hold our idols: and albeit

He brake them to our faces and denied

That our close kisses should impair their white, I know we shall behold them raised, complete, The dust swept from their beauty,-glorified, New Memnons singing in the great God-light.

THE PROSPECT.

ETHINKS we do as fretful children do,

Leaning their faces on the window-pane

To sigh the glass dim with their own breath's stain,

And shut the sky and landscape from their view:

And thus, alas, since God the Maker drew

A mystic separation 'twixt those twain,
The life beyond us, and our souls in pain,
We miss the prospect which we are called unto
By grief we are fools to use. Be still and strong,
O man, my brother! hold thy sobbing breath,
And keep thy soul's large window pure from wrong;
That so, as life's appointment issueth,

Thy vision may be clear to watch along
The sunset consummation-lights of death.