Oh! then sleep comes on us like death,
All soundless, deaf, and deep:
Lord! teach us so to watch and pray,
That death may come like sleep.

Abide with us, abide with us,
While flesh and soul agree;
And when our flesh is only dust,
Abide our souls with Thee.

WEARINESS.

MINE eyes are weary of surveying
The fairest things, too soon decaying;
Mine ears are weary of receiving
The kindest words-ah, past believing!
Weary my hope, of ebb and flow;
Weary my pulse, of tunes of woe:
My trusting heart is weariest !

For me, can earth refuse to fade?
For me, can words be faithful made?
Will my embittered hope be sweet?
My pulse forego the human beat?
No! Darkness must consume mine eye-
Silence, mine ear-hope cease-pulse die-
And o'er mine heart a stone be pressed-
Or vain this, "Would I were at rest!"

There is a land of rest deferred:
Nor eye hath seen, nor ear hath heard,
Nor Hope hath trod the precinct o'er;
For hope beheld is hope no more!
There, human pulse forgets its tone-
There, hearts may know as they are known!
Oh for dove's wings, thou dwelling blest,
To fly to thee, and be at rest!

SCENE.-STRENGTH AND FORCE, HEPHÆSTUS, and PROMETHEUS at the Rocks.

Strength. We reach the utmost limit of the earth,
The Scythian track, the desert without man,-
And now, Hephæstus, thou must needs fulfil

The mandate of our father, and, with links
Indissoluble of adamantine chains,
Fasten against this beetling precipice,
This guilty god! Because he filched away
Thine own bright flower, the glory of plastic fire,
And gifted mortals with it,—such a sin,
It doth behove he expiate to the gods,
And learn free service to the rule of Zeus,
And leave disused his trick of loving man.

Hephaestus. O Strength and Force,—for you, our Zeus's will Presents a deed for doing.-No more!—but I,

I lack your daring, up this storm-rent chasm,
To fix with violent hands a kindred god.
Howbeit necessity compels me so

That I must dare it,—and our Zeus command
With word as heavy as bolts-inevitable !
Ho!-lofty son of Themis, who is sage,
Thee loth, I loth, must rivet fast in chains
Against this rocky height unclomb by man,
Where never human voice nor face shall find

Out thee, who lov'st them!—where thy beauty's flower,
Scorched in the sun's clear heat, shall fade away,
And night come up with garniture of stars
To comfort thee with shadow, and the sun
Disperse, with retrickt beams, the morning-frosts;
And through all changes, sense of present woe
Shall vex thee sore, because, with none of them
There comes a hand to free. Such fruit is plucked
From love of man !—for in that thou, a god,
Didst brave the wrath of gods, and give away
Undue respect to mortals; for that crime
Thou art adjudged to guard this joyless rock,
Erect, unslumbering, bending not the knee,
And many a cry and unavailing moan
To utter on the air! For Zeus is stern,
And new-made kings are cruel.
Strength.
Be it so.
Why loiter in vain pity? Why not hate

A god the gods hate?-one, too, who betrayed
Thy glory unto men?

Hephaestus.

An awful thing

Grant it be ;

Is kinship joined to friendship.

Strength.

Is disobedience to the Father's word

A possible thing? Dost quail not more for that? Hephaestus. Thou, at least, art a stern one! ever bold! Strength. Why, if I wept, it were no remedy!

And do not thou spend labour on the air

To bootless uses.

Hephaestus.

Cursed handicraft!

I curse and hate thee, O my craft!

Strength.

Thy craft, most plainly innocent of all
These pending ills?
Hephaestus.

Were here to work it!
Strength.
Except to rule the gods.
Except King Zeus.
Hephaestus.

I argue not against it.
Strength.

I

Why hate

I would some other hand

All work hath its pain,

There is none free

know it very well:

Why not, then,