VI. DEATH: IMMORTALITY: HEAVEN. THE PROSPECT. METHINKS we do as fretful children do, 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 windows pure from wrong; That so, as life's appointment issueth, Thy vision may be clear to watch along The sunset consummation-lights of death. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. THE LOST PLEIAD. NoT in the sky, Where it was seen, Nor on the white tops of the glistening wave, Nor in the mansions of the hidden deep, 347 Though green, And beautiful, its caves of mystery;- A place, and as of old high station keep. Gone, gone! Oh, never more to cheer The mariner who holds his course alone On the Atlantic, through the weary night, When the stars turn to watchers, and do sleep, With the sweet fixedness of certain light, Vain, vain! Hopeless most idly then, shall he look forth, Howe'er the north Does raise his certain lamp, when tempests lower He sees no more that perished light again! And gloomier grows the hour Which may not, through the thick and crowding dark, Restore that lost and loved one to her tower. He looks, the shepherd of Chaldea's hills Tending his flocks, And wonders the rich beacon does not blaze, And from his dreary watch along the rocks, The sorrowful scene, and every hour distils And lone, Where its first splendors shone, Shall be that pleasant company of stars: How should they know that death Such perfect beauty mars? And like the earth, its crimson bloom and breath; Fallen from on high, Their lights grow blasted by its touch, and die!All their concerted springs of harmony Snapped rudely, and the generous music gone. A strain—a mellow strain— A wailing sweetness filled the sky; The stars, lamenting in unborrowed pain, The hope, heart-cherished, is the soonest lost; WILLIAM GILMORE PASSING AWAY. WAS it the chime of a tiny bell That came so sweet to my dreaming ear, Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell That he winds, on the beach, so mellow and clear, When the winds and the waves lie together asleep, And the Moon and the Fairy are watching the deep, She dispensing her silvery light, And he his notes as silvery quite, While the boatman listens and ships his oar, To catch the music that comes from the shore? Hark! the notes on my ear that play Are set to words; as they float, they say, "Passing away! passing away!" But no; it was not a fairy's shell, Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear; Nor was it the tongue of a silver bell, Striking the hour, that filled my ear, As I lay in my dream; yet was it a chime That told of the flow of the stream of time. For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung, And a plump little girl, for a pendulum, swung (As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring That hangs in his cage, a canary-bird swing); And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet, And, as she enjoyed it, she seemed to say, "Passing away! passing away!" Oh, how bright were the wheels, that told Of the lapse of time, as they moved round slow; And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold, Seemed to point to the girl below. And lo! she had changed: in a few short hours While I gazed at that fair one's cheek, a shade That marched so calmly round above her, love her, For she looked like a mother whose first babe lay While yet I looked, what a change there came! Her eye was quenched, and her cheek was wan; |