For the structure that we raise,

Time is with materials filled;

Our to-days and yesterdays

Are the blocks with which we build.

Truly shape and fashion these ;

Leave no yawning gaps between;

Think not, because no man sees,
Such things will remain unseen.

In the elder days of Art,

Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part ;

For the gods see every where.

Let us do our work as well,

Both the unseen and the seen; Make the house, where gods may dwell, Beautiful, entire, and clean.

Else our lives are incomplete,
Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb.

Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base;

And ascending and secure

Shall to-morrow find its place.

Thus alone can we attain

To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain,

And one boundless reach of sky.

SAND OF THE DESERT IN AN HOURGLASS.

A HANDFUL of red sand, from the hot clime

Of Arab deserts brought,

Within this glass becomes the spy of Time,
The minister of Thought.

How many weary centuries has it been
About those deserts blown!

How many strange vicissitudes has seen,

Perhaps the camels of the Ishmaelite

Trampled and passed it o'er,

When into Egypt from the patriarch's sight
His favourite son they bore.

Perhaps the feet of Moses, burnt and bare,
Crushed it beneath their tread;

Or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air

Scattered it as they sped;

Or Mary, with the Christ of Nazareth

Held close in her caress,

Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and faith Illumed the wilderness;

Or anchorites beneath Engaddi's palms
Pacing the Red Sea beach,

And singing slow their old Armenian psalms
In half-articulate speech;

Or caravans, that from Bassora's gate
With westward steps depart;

Or Mecca's pilgrims, confident of Fate,
And resolute in heart!

These have passed over it, or may have passed!
Now in this crystal tower
Imprisoned by some curious hand at last,
It counts the passing hour.

And as I gaze, these narrow walls expand ;— Before my dreamy eye

Stretches the desert with its shifting sand,

Its unimpeded sky.

And borne aloft by the sustaining blast,
This little golden thread

Dilates into a column high and vast,

A form of fear and dread.

And onward, and across the setting sun,
Across the boundless plain,

The column and its broader shadow run,
Till thought pursues in vain.

The vision vanishes! These walls again
Shut out the lurid sun,

Shut out the hot, immeasurable plain ;
The half-hour's sand is run!

BIRDS OF PASSAGE.

BLACK shadows fall

From the lindens tall

That lift aloft their massive wall
Against the southern sky;

And from the realms

Of the shadowy elms

A tide-like darkness overwhelms

The fields that round us lie.

But the night is fair,

And every where

A warm, soft vapour fills the air,

And distant sounds seem near;

And above, in the light
Of the star-lit night,

Swift birds of passage wing their flight
Through the dewy atmosphere.

I hear the beat

Of their pinions fleet,

As from the land of snow and sleet

They seek a southern lea.

I hear the cry

Of their voices high

Falling dreamily through the sky,
But their forms I cannot see.

Oh, say not so!

Those sounds that flow

In murmurs of delight and woe

Come not from wings of birds.

They are the throngs

Of the poet's songs,

Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs,

The sound of winged words.

This is the cry

Of souls, that high

On toiling, beating pinions fly,

Seeking a warmer clime.