Mourn, for 'tis good for all of us to mourn,

In this dark valley where our way we grope; Our very sorrow proves us not forlorn ;

We mourn, but not as mourners without hope.

The lake is still the same, the changeful skies
Change by a Law that we may not control,
Sage Nature is not bound to sympathise
With every passion of a single soul.

Look not for sorrow in the changeful skies," The mountain many-hued, or passive lake, But look to Him, who sometimes will chastise

Those whom he loves, but never will forsake.

ON THE LATE DR. ARNOLD.

SPIRIT of the Dead!

Though the pure faith of Him that was on earth
Thy subject and thy Lord forbids a prayer-

Forbids me to invoke thee as of yore :

(Weak souls, that dared not meet their God alone, 5 Sought countenance and kind companionship

Of some particular saint, whose knees had grazed

The very rock on which they knelt, whose blood
Had made or sanctified the gushing well,*

Round which their fond, mistaken piety

Had built a quaint confine of sculptured stone:—)
Yet may I hope that wheresoe'er he is,
Beneath the altar, by the great white throne,

In Abraham's bosom, or amid the deep

Of Godhead, blended with eternal light,
One ray may reach him from the humble heart
That thanks our God for all that he has been.

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* Many of the holy wells are said to have sprung from the blood of Martyrs for example, St. Winifred's in Wales.

What he is now we know not: he will be
A beautiful likeness of the God that gave
Him work to do, which he did do so well.
Whom Jesus loves, to them he gives the grace
For Him to do and suffer in the world;

To suffer for the world was His alone.

But he in whom we joyed—for whom we mourn—
Did he not suffer? Worldly men say, No!
Of ills which they call ill he had not many;
The poverty which makes the very poor
Begrudge a morsel to their very child,

Was never his; nor did he "pine in thought,"

Seeing the lady of his love possessed

By a much richer and no better man.

To him the lady of his love was wed,

Soon as his manhood authorised a wife;

And though the mother of his many babes,

To him she still was young, and fair, and fresh,
As when the golden ring slipp'd from his hand
Upon her virgin finger.

Yet he suffered

Such pains and throes as only good men feel:
For he assumed the task to rear the boy,
The bold, proud boy unto a Christian man.
"Twas not with childhood that he had to do,

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Its wayward moods and ready penitence,
That still is prompt to kiss, if not the rod,

At least the hand that wields it; not to watch
Sweet instinct reaching after distant reason,
And mere affection trained to duteous love
(Though such the solace of his happy home,
Else how had he the hard behest endured?)—
Nor was it all-oh, bliss! if it had been-

To teach the young capacious intellect

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[doomed

How beauteous Greece and Rome, the child* fore-
To catch the sceptre from its parent, spake,
Fitting high thoughts with words, and words with
deeds.

'Twas his to struggle with that perilous age
Which claims for manhood's vice the privilege
Of boyhood;-when young Dionysus† seems
All glorious as he burst upon the East,

A jocund and a welcome conqueror ;

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* "Rome, the child," &c. Alluding to the heathen prophecy, that Metis, Thetis, &c., were destined to produce a child more potent than his sire, which gave Jupiter so much alarm.

† Dionysus, Aphrodite-Bacchus, Venus. But the Greek divinities were not originally identical with the Roman idols, by whose names they are generally called. Dionysus, or Bacchus, was in all probability an Indian type of the sun, or rather of the great productive energy of the Universe, said to be the youngest of the gods, because his worship was last introduced into Greece. There can be no doubt that the Greeks blended the traditions of their local heroes with the astronomical mythology derived from Egypt and Phoenicia, of which the earliest form survives in India, especially among the wide-spreading Boodhists.

And Aphrodite, sweet as from the sea
She rose and floated in her pearly shell,

A laughing girl;—when lawless will erects
Honour's gay temple on the mount of God,

And meek obedience bears the coward's brand;
While Satan, in celestial panoply,

With Sin, his lady, smiling by his side,

Defies all heaven to arms! 'Twas his to teach,

Day after day, from pulpit and from desk,
That the most childish sin which man can do

Is yet a sin which Jesus never did

When Jesus was a child, and yet a sin

For which, in lowly pain, He lived and died :
That for the bravest sin that e'er was praised
The King Eternal wore the crown of thorns.
In him was Jesus crucified again;

For every sin which he could not prevent

Stuck in him like a nail. His heart bled for it

As it had been a foul sin of his own.

Heavy his cross, and stoutly did he bear it,

Even to the foot of holy Calvary;

And if at last he sunk beneath the weight,

There were not wanting souls whom he had taught The way to Paradise, that, in white robes,

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Thronged to the gate to hail their shepherd home! 84