TO A WITHERED TREE IN JUNE.

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TO A WITHERED TREE IN JUNE.

DESOLATE tree! why are thy branches bare?
What hast thou done

To win strange winter from the summer air,
Frost from the sun?

Thou wert not churlish in thy palmier year
Unto the herd;

Tenderly gav'st thou shelter to the deer,
Home to the bird.

And ever once, the earliest of the grove,
Thy smiles were gay,

Opening thy blossoms with the haste of love
To the young May.

Then did the bees, and all the insect wings,
Around thee gleam;

Feaster and darling of the gilded things
That dwell i' the beam.

Thy liberal course, poor prodigal, is sped;
How lonely now!—

How bird and bee, light parasites, have fled
The leafless bough!

"Tell me, sad tree, why are thy branches bare? What hast thou done

To win strange winter from the summer air,
Frost from the sun?"

"Never," replied that forest-hermit lone, (Old truth and endless!)

"Never for evil done, but fortune flown, Are we left friendless.

"Yet wholly, nor for winter nor for storm
Doth Love depart!

We are not all forsaken till the worm
Creeps to the heart!

"Ah naught without, within thee if decay, Can heal or hurt thee,

Nor boots it, if thy heart itself betray,

I STAND where I last stood with thee!
Sorrow, O sorrow!

There is not a leaf on the trysting tree;
There is not a joy on the earth to me;
Sorrow, O sorrow!

When shalt thou be once again what thou wert?
O the sweet yesterdays fled from the heart!
Have they a morrow?

Here we stood, ere we parted, so close side by side ;

Two lives that once part, are as ships that divide When, moment on moment, there rushes between The one and the other, a sea;

Ah, never can fall from the days that have been A gleam on the years that shall be!

THE SABBATH.

FRESH glides the brook and blows the gale,
Yet yonder halts the quiet mill!
The whirring wheel, the rushing sail,
How motionless and still!

Six days of toil, poor child of Cain,

Thy strength the slave of Want may be; The seventh thy limbs escape the chain, — A God hath made thee free!

Ah, tender was the Law that gave
This holy respite to the breast,

To breathe the gale, to watch the wave,

And know

the wheel may rest!

But where the waves the gentlest glide

What image charms, to lift, thine eyes? The spire reflected on the tide

Invites thee to the skies.

To teach the soul its nobler worth
This rest from mortal toils is given;

Go, snatch the brief reprieve from earth And pass a guest to Heaven.

They tell thee, in their dreaming school, Of Power from old dominion hurled, When rich and poor, with juster rule, Shall share the altered world.

Alas since Time itself began,

That fable hath but fooled the hour; Each age that ripens Power in Man, But subjects Man to Power.

Yet every day in seven, at least,

One bright republic shall be known; ~ Man's world awhile hath surely ceast, When God proclaims his own!

Six days may Rank divide the poor,
O Dives, from thy banquet-hall;
The seventh the Father opes
the door,

And holds His feast for all!

ABSENT, YET PRESENT.

As the flight of a river,

That flows to the sea,

My soul rushes ever

In tumult to thee.

A twofold existence

I am where thou art; My heart, in the distance, Beats close to thy heart.

Look up, I am near thee,
I gaze on thy face;
I see thee, I hear thee,
I feel thine embrace.

As a magnet's control on
The steel it draws to it,

Is the charm of thy soul on

The thoughts that pursue it.

And absence but brightens
The eyes that I miss,
And custom but heightens
The spell of thy kiss.

It is not from duty,

Though that may be owed,

It is not from beauty,

Though that be bestowed;

But all that I care for
And all that I know,

Is that, without wherefore,
I worship thee so.