"Is it enough, dear God? then lighten so This soul that smiles in darkness!"

Stedfast friend,

Who never didst my heart or life misknow,
Nor either's faults too keenly apprehend,-
How can I wonder when I see thee go
To join the Dead, found faithful to the end?

HUGH STUART BOYD.

LEGACIES.

THREE gifts the Dying left me; Æschylus,
And Gregory Nazianzen, and a clock
Chiming the gradual hours out like a flock
Of stars, whose motion is melodious.

The books were those I used to read from, thus
Assisting my dear teacher's soul to unlock
The darkness of his eyes: now, mine they mock,
Blinded in turn, by tears: now, murmurous
Sad echoes of my young voice, years agone,
Entoning, from these leaves, the Græcian phrase,
Return and choke my utterance. Books, lie down
In silence on the shelf within my gaze!
And thou, clock, striking the hour's pulses on,
Chime in the day which ends these parting days!

FUTURE AND PAST.

MY future will not copy fair my past.

I wrote that once; and, thinking at my side My ministering life-angel justified The word by his appealing look upcast To the white throne of God, I turned at last, And saw instead there, thee; not unallied To angels in thy soul! Then I, long tried By natural ills, received the comfort fast, While budding at thy sight, my pilgrim's staff Gave out green leaves with morning dews impearled. -I seek no copy now of life's first half!

Leave here the pages with long musing curled,

And write me new my future's epigraph,

New angel mine, unhoped for in the world!

7

THE RUNAWAY SLAVE

AT PILGRIM'S POINT.

I

I.

STAND on the mark beside the shore
Of the first white pilgrim's bended knee,

Where exile turned to ancestor,

And God was thanked for liberty.

I have run through the night, my skin is as dark, I bend my knee down on this mark ..

I look on the sky and the sea.

II.

O pilgrim-souls, I speak to you!

I see you come out proud and slow
From the land of the spirits pale as dew..
And round me and round me ye go!

O pilgrims, I have gasped and run
All night long from the whips of one
Who in your names works sin and woe.

III.

And thus I thought that I would come
And kneel here where I knelt before,
And feel your souls around me hum
In undertone to the ocean's roar;

And lift

my

black face, my black hand, Here, in your names, to curse this land

Ye blessed in freedom's evermore.

IV.

I am black, I am black;

And yet God made me, they say. But if He did so, smiling back

He must have cast his work away Under the feet of his white creatures, With a look of scorn,-that the dusky features Might be trodden again to clay.

V.

And yet He has made dark things
To be glad and merry as light.

There's a little dark bird, sits and sings;

There's a dark stream ripples out of sight; And the dark frogs chant in the safe morass, And the sweetest stars are made to pass O'er the face of the darkest night.

VI.

But we who are dark, we are dark!
Ah God, we have no stars!
About our souls in care and cark
Our blackness shuts like prison-bars:
The
poor souls crouch so far behind,
That never a comfort can they find
By reaching through the prison-bars.

VII.

Indeed we live beneath the sky,.

That great smooth Hand of God, stretched out On all His children fatherly,

To bless them from the fear and doubt,
Which would be, if, from this low place,
All opened straight up to His face
Into the grand eternity.

VIII.

And still God's sunshine and His frost,
They make us hot, they make us cold,
As if we were not black and lost :

And the beasts and birds, in wood and fold,
Do fear and take us for very men!

Could the weep-poor-will or the cat of the glen Look into my eyes and be bold?

IX.

I am black, I am black !—

But, once, I laughed in girlish glee; For one of my colour stood in the track

Where the drivers drove, and looked at me— And tender and full was the look he gave: Could a slave look so at another slave?—

I look at the sky and the sea.

X.

And from that hour our spirits grew
As free as if unsold, unbought: