WHAT JUBAL SAW.

15

H'

WHAT JUBAL SAW.

E took a raft, and travelled with the stream Southward for many a league, till he might deem

He saw at last the pillars of the sky,

Beholding mountains whose white majesty

Rushed through him as new awe, and made new

song

That swept with fuller wave the chords along,
Weighting his voice with deep religious chime,
The iteration of slow chant sublime.

And ever as he travelled he would climb

The farthest mountain; yet the heavenly chime,
The mighty tolling of the far-off spheres
Beating their pathway, never touched his ears.
But, whereso'er he rose, the heavens rose,
And the far-gazing mountain could disclose
Naught but a wider earth; until one height
Showed him the ocean stretched in liquid light
And he could hear its multitudinous roar,
Its plunge and hiss upon the pebbled shore :
Then Jubal silent sat, and touched his lyre no more.
He thought, "The world is great, but I am weak ;
And where the sky bends is no solid peak

To give me footing, but, instead, this main

Like myriad maddened horses thundering o'er the

plain."

George Eliot.

C

THE SEA-LIMITS.

'ONSIDER the sea's listless chime : Time's self it is made audibleThe murmur of the earth's own shell. Secret continuance sublime

Is the sea's end. Our sight may pass No furlong further. Since time was, This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No quiet which is death's-it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,
Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.

Lost utterly, the whole sky stands
Gray and not known along its path.

Listen alone beside the sea,

Listen alone among the woods ;
Those voices of twin solitudes

Shall have one sound alike to thee.

Hark where the murmurs of thronged men

Surge and sink back and surge again,—

Still the one voice of wave and tree.

Gather a shell from the strewn beach,
And listen at its lips they sigh
The same desire and mystery,

THE FISHER-BOY.

The echo of the whole sea's speech.
And all mankind is thus at heart
Not anything but what thou art;
And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.

D. G. Rossetti.

17

THE FISHER-BOY.

Y life is like a stroll upon the beach,

My is

As near the ocean's edge as I can go : My tardy steps its waves sometimes o'erreach; Sometimes I stay to let them overflow.

My sole employment is, and scrupulous care,
To place my gains beyond the reach of tides,—
Each smoother pebble, and each shell more rare,
Which Ocean kindly to my hand confides.

I have but few companions on the shore :
They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea;
Yet oft I think the ocean they've sailed o'er
Is deeper known upon the strand to me.

The middle sea contains no crimson dulse;
Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view :
Along the shore my hand is on its pulse,
And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew.
H. D. Thoreau.

Go

"THE HILLS OF THE LORD."

OD ploughed one day with an earthquake,
And drove His furrows deep!

The huddling plains upstarted,
The hills were all aleap!

But that is the mountains' secret
Age-hidden in their breast :
"God's peace is everlasting"

Are the dream-words of their rest.

He hath made them the haunt of beauty,
The home elect of His grace;

He spreadeth His mornings on them ;
His sunsets light their face.

His thunders tread in music
Of footfalls echoing long,
And carry majestic greeting
Around the silent throng.

His winds bring messages to them-
Wild storm-news from the main ;
They sing it down to the valleys
In the love-song of the rain.

Green tribes from far come trooping,
And over the uplands flock ;
He has woven the zones together
As a robe for His risen rock.

PARTING AT MORNING.

They are nurseries for young rivers,
Nests for His flying cloud,
Homesteads for new-born races,

Masterful, free, and proud.

The people of tirèd cities

Come up to their shrines and pray ;
God freshens again within them,
As He passes by all day.

And lo! I have caught their secret,
The beauty deeper than all !
This faith-that life's hard moments,
When its jarring sorrows befall,

Are but God ploughing His mountains :
And those mountains yet shall be
The source of His grace and freshness
And His peace everlasting to me.

W. C. Gannett.

19

R

PARTING AT MORNING.

OUND the cape of a sudden came the sea,

And the sun looked over the mountain's rim, And straight was a path of gold for him,

And the need of a world of men for me.

R. Browning.