THE REAL.

How true and great that world must be,

How false, how little this!

Man sees not what he seems to see,

He seems not what he is.

Here is the hollow and untrue;
This is the night of dreams;

Thickly o'erspread with mist and dew,
Earth is not what it seems.

Each morn is coming with its light,

To chase each shade and ill,
Then time's vain beauty shall take flight,
Like rainbow from the hill.

And truth returneth from on high;

Gone is the night of dreams, Gone is the shadow and the lie,-

Earth shall be what it seems.

79

NOT HERE.

SOFTLY the winds were fanning this fresh cheek,

When heedless boyhood loved to dream and stray,
I loved earth's skies, nor deemed them sad or bleak:
Its fields seemed still to breathe of joyous May.
I said, what better home shall this heart seek?
Here let me dwell for aye.

Cold winter smote, frosts nipped, sore tempests broke,
And the dark cloud shut out the beauteous day;
The fair flower perished, and the blast's rude shock
Struck the strong pine, and swept its pride away;
My fond dream passed, I said, as I awoke,

"I would not live alway."

Yet would I not turn back, nor faint, nor sigh,
Nor shun the war, nor murmur at the doom;
I see the beacon-light of yonder sky

Beyond the earth and sea-beyond the tomb!
And then I say, "O Saviour, ever nigh,

Light me through this cold gloom."

1

In joy or woe;

Days go and come,

In endless sum.

Only the eternal day

Shall come but never go,

Only the eternal tide

Shall never ebb but flow.

O long eternity,

Suns set and rise

In these dull skies,

Suns rise and set,

Till men forget,

The day is at the door,

When they shall rise no more.

O everlasting Sun,

Whose race is never run,

Be thou endless light,

my

Then shall I fear no night!

LIGHT'S TEACHINGS.

THE light is ever silent;

It calls up voices over sea and earth.

And fills the glowing air with harmonies,

The lark's gay chant, the note of forest-dove,

The lamb's quick bleat, and the bee's earnest hum,
The sea-bird's winged wail upon the wave.
It wakes the voice of childhood, soft and clear;
The city's noisy rush, the village-stir,

And the world's mighty murmur that had sunk,
For a short hour, to sleep upon the down
That darkness spread for wearied limbs and eyes.
But still it sounds not, speaks not, whispers not!
Not one faint throb of its vast pulse is heard
By creature-ear. How silent is the light!
Even when of old it wakened Memnon's lyre,
It breathed no music of its own; and still,
When at sweet sunrise, on its golden wings,
It brings the melodies of dawn to man,
It scatters them in silence o'er the earth.

LIGHT'S TEACHINGS.

83

The light is ever silent;

It sparkles on morn's million gems

of dew,

It flings itself into the shower of noon,

It weaves its gold into the cloud of sunset—
Yet not a sound is heard; it dashes full

On

yon broad rock, yet not an echo answers; It lights in myriad drops upon the flower, Yet not a blossom stirs, it does not move The slightest film of floating gossamer, Which the faint touch of insect's wing would shiver.

The light is ever silent;

Most silent of all heavenly silences;

Not even the darkness stiller, nor so still;

Too swift for sound or speech, it rushes on
Right through the yielding skies, a massive flood
Of multitudinous beams; an endless sea,
That flows but ebbs not, breaking on the shore
Of this dark earth, with never-ceasing wave,
Yet in its swiftest flow, or fullest spring-tide,
Giving less sound than does one falling blossom,
Which the May breeze lays lightly on the sward.

Such let my life be here;

Not marked by noise but by success alone;