Stately elders, white around,-
Suffer me to go to Him!

"Is your wisdom very wise,
Mother, on the narrow earth?
Very happy, very worth
That I should stay to learn?
Are these air-corrupting sighs
Fashioned by unlearned breath?
Do the students' lamps that burn
All night, illumine death?
Mother, albeit this be so,

Loose thy prayer and let me go
Where that bright chief angel stands
Apart from all his brother bands,
Too glad for smiling; having bent
In angelic wilderment

O'er the depths of God, and brought
Reeling thence one only thought
To fill his whole eternity.

He the teacher is for me!

He can teach what I would know;
Mother, mother, let me go!

"Can your poet make an Eden

No winter will undo?

And light a starry fire, while heeding

His hearth's is burning too? Drown in music the earth's din,

FROM "ISOBEL'S CHILD.”

And keep his own wild soul within
The law of his own harmony?

Mother, albeit this be so

Let me to my Heaven go!

A little harp me waits thereby, -
A harp whose strings are golden all,
And tuned to music spherical,
Hanging on the green life-tree,
Where no willows ever be.

Shall I miss that harp of mine?
Mother, no! the Eye divine
Turned upon it, makes it shine, —
And when I touch it, poems sweet
Like separate souls shall fly from it,
Each to an immortal fytte.

We shall all be poets there,

Gazing on the chiefest Fair!

287

"And love! earth's love! and can we love

Fixedly where all things move?

Can the sinning love each other?
Mother, mother!

I tremble in thy close embrace,—

I feel thy tears adown my face,

Thy prayers do keep me out of bliss, -
O dreary earthly love!

Loose thy prayer, and let me go
To the place which loving is,
Yet not sad! and when is given

Escape to thee from this below,
Thou shalt behold me that I wait
For thee beside the happy gate;
And silence shall be up in heaven
To hear our meeting kiss."

The nurse awakes in the morning sun,
And starts to see beside her bed
The lady, with a grandeur spread,
Like pathos, o'er her face, as one
God-satisfied and earth-undone: -

The babe upon her arm was dead!
And the nurse could utter forth no cry,
She was awed by the calm in the mother's eye.

"Wake, nurse!" the lady said;
"We are waking, he and I, —
I on earth, and he in sky!
And thou must help me to o'erlay
With garment white this little clay,
Which needs no more our lullaby.

"I changed the cruel prayer I made,
And bowed my meekened face, and prayed
That God would do his will! and thus
He did it, nurse: He parted us.
And His sun shows victorious

The dead, calm face; and I am calm:

And Heaven is hearkening a new psalm.

FROM "ISOBEL'S CHILD."

289

This earthly noise is too anear,

Too loud, and will not let me hear
The little harp. My death will soon
Make silence."

And a sense of tune,

A satisfied love, meanwhile,

Which nothing earthly could despoil,
Sang on within her soul.

O you,

Earth's tender and impassioned few,
Take courage to intrust your love
To Him so Named, who guards above
Its ends, and shall fulfil;

Breaking the narrow prayers that may
Befit your narrow hearts, away

In His broad, loving will.

25

THE INFANT SPIRIT'S PRAYER.

LINES ADDRESSED TO A LADY WHO HAD LOST HER HUSBAND AND CHILD.

ANONYMOUS.

"In heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father."

SILENCE filled the courts of heaven, hushed were angel harp and tone,

While a little new-born spirit knelt before the Eternal throne.

As his small white hands were lifted, clasped as if in earnest prayer,

And his voice in low, sweet murmurs rose like music on the air,

Light from the full fount of glory on his robes of whiteness glistened,

And the bright-winged seraphs round him bowed their radiant heads and listened.

Lord, from thy world of glory here,
My heart turns fondly to another:
O Lord, our God! the Comforter,
Comfort, comfort my sweet mother!
Many sorrows hast thou sent her,

Meekly hath she drained the cup,
And the jewels thou hast lent her,
Unrepining, yielded up:

Comfort, comfort my sweet mother!