VIII.

Yet, touching so, they draw above

Our common thoughts to Heaven's unknown

Our daily joy and pain, advance

To a divine significance,

Our human love-O mortal love,

That light is not its own!

IX.

And, sometimes, horror chills our blood,
To be so near such mystic Things;
And we wrap round us, for defence,
Our purple manners, moods of sense—
As angels, from the face of God,

Stand hidden in their wings.

X.

And, sometimes, through Life's heavy swound,
We grope for them!—with strangled breath
We stretch our hands abroad, and try
To reach them in our agony,—
And widen, so, the broad life-wound,

Which soon is large enough for death.

A CHILD'S THOUGHT OF GOD.

I.

THEY say that God lives very high!
But, if you look above the pines,
You cannot see our God. And why?

II.

And, if you dig down in the mines,
You never see Him in the gold,
Though, from Him, all that's glory, shines.

III.

God is so good, He wears a fold

Of heaven and earth across his faceLike secrets kept, for love, untold.

IV.

But still I feel that His embrace

Slides down, by thrills, through all things made, Through sight and sound of every place:

V.

As if my tender mother laid

On my shut lids, her kisses' pressure, Half-waking me at night; and said, [guesser?" "Who kissed you through the dark, dear

THE CLAIM.

GRI

I.

RIEF sate upon a rock and sighed one day: (Sighing is all her rest!)

"Wellaway, wellaway, ah, wellaway!"

As ocean beat the stone, did she her breast. . . "Ah, wellaway!..ah me! alas, ah me!" Such sighing uttered she.

II.

A Cloud spake out of heaven, as soft as rain
That falls on water; "Lo,

The Winds have wandered from me! I remain

Alone in the sky-waste, and cannot go

To lean my whiteness on the mountain blue,

Till wanted for more dew.

III.

"The Sun has struck my brain to weary peace,

Whereby, constrained and pale,

I spin for him a larger golden fleece

Than Jason's, yearning for as full a sail!

Sweet Grief, when thou hast sighed to thy mind,

Give me a sigh for wind,—

IV.

And let it carry me adown the west!"

But Love, who, prostrated,

Lay at Grief's foot, . . his lifted eyes possessed Of her full image, . . answered in her stead : "Now nay, now nay! she shall not give away t is my wealth, for any Cloud that flieth. Where Grief makes moan,

Love claims his own!

And therefore do I lie here night and day,
And eke my life out with the breath she sigheth."

LIFE AND LOVE.

FAST

I.

AST this Life of mine was dying, Blind already and calm as death; Snowflakes on her bosom lying, Scarcely heaving with the breath.

II.

Love came by, and, having known her
In a dream of fabled lands,
Gently stooped, and laid upon her
Mystic chrism of holy hands;

III.

Drew his smile across her folded

Eyelids, as the swallow dips, Breathed as finely as the cold did, Through the locking of her lips.

IV.

So, when Life looked upward, being Warmed and breathed on from above, What sight could she have for seeing, Evermore... but only LOVE?