BEREAVEMENT.

SHE dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove;

A maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love.

A violet by a mossy stone
Half-hidden from the eye!
-Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and O!

The difference to me!

W. Wordsworth.

16

RECONCILEMENT THROUGH LOSS.

RECONCILEMENT THROUGH LOSS.

As thro' the land at eve we went,
And plucked the ripened ears,

We fell out, my wife and I,
We fell out, I know not why,

And kissed again with tears.

And blessings on the falling out
That all the more endears,

When we fall out with those we love,
And kiss again with tears!

For when we came where lies the child
We lost in other years,

There above the little grave,
O there above the little grave,
We kissed again with tears.

A. Tennyson.

THE PAST.

WILT thou forget the happy hours

Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers,
Heaping over their corpses cold

Blossoms and leaves instead of mould?
Blossoms which were the joys that fell,

And leaves, the hopes that yet remain.

Forget the dead, the past? Oh yet

There are ghosts that may take revenge for it!
Memories that make the heart a tomb,

Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom,
And with ghastly whispers tell

That joy, once lost, is pain.

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Modern Poets.

18

NIGHT AND DEATH.

NIGHT AND DEATH.

MYSTERIOUS Night! when our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,

This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came,

And lo! creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O sun! or who could find,
Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,

That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind! Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife? If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?

J. Blanco White.

LONDON AT SUNRISE:

(FROM WESTMINSTER BRIDGE).

EARTH has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:

This city now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields and to the sky,

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

W. Wordsworth.