A power that most does recognise its might

In weakness, want, and everlasting yearning; Whose heaven is soaring, seeking, endless flight, Whose hell is thirst and everlasting burning.

For what is hell, but an eternal thirst,

And burning for the bounty once rejected? And what is heaven, but God on earth rehearsed, In the calm centre of the Lord perfected?

Then ask not why is beauty but a bud,

That never more than half itself discloses; Sweet flower, like thee is every human good,

And love divine is seen in unblown roses.

FAIRY LAND.

YES, I am old, and older yet must be,
Drifting along the everlasting sea;

And

yet, through puzzling light and perilous dark,

I bear with me, as in a lonely ark,

A precious cargo of dear memory;

For, though I never was a citizen,
Enroll'd in Faith's municipality,

And ne'er believed the phantom of the few
To be a tangible reality,

Yet I have loved sweet things, that are not now,
In frosty starlight, or the cold moonbeam.

I never thought they were; and therefore now

No doubt obscures the memory

of my

dream.

My Fairy Land was never upon earth,
Nor in the heaven to which I hoped to go;
For it was always by the glimmering hearth,
When the last fagot gave its reddest glow,
And voice of eld wax'd tremulous and low,
And the sole taper's intermittent light,
Like a slow-tolling bell, declared good night.
Then could I think of Peri and of Fay,

As if their deeds were things of yesterday.
I felt the wee maid in her scarlet hood
Real as the babes that wander'd in the wood,
And could as well believe a wolf could talk
As that a man beside the babes could stalk,
With gloomy thoughts of murder in his brain;
And then I thought how long the lovely twain
Threaded the paths that wound among the trees,
And how at last they sunk upon their knees,
And said their little prayers, as prettily

As e'er they said them at their mother's knee,
And went to sleep. I deem'd them still asleep
Clasp'd in each other's arms, beside a heap
Of fragrant leaves ;- -so little then knew I
Of bare-bone Famine's ghastly misery.
Yet I could weep and cry, and sob amain,
Because they never were to wake again;
But if 'twas said, "They 'll wake at the last day!"
Then all the vision melted quite away;

As from the steel the passing stain of breath,

So quickly parts the fancy from the faith.

And I thought the dear babes in the wood no more true. Than Red Riding Hood,-aye, or the grim loup-garou, That the poor little maid for her granny

mistook;

I knew they were both only tales in a book.

THE ROYAL MAID.

OH, thou sweet daughter and last lingering flower Of a great nation's loyal hope and love, Last of a line of kings whose royal dower Is virgin loveliness sublimed to power, The yearning blossom of the expectant dove On the strong eagle's spacious wings upborne ; Or shall I call thee prophecy of spring, In thine own virgin pureness blossoming, Like the white May-bloom on the naked thorn; Nay, rather art thou like a flower Crowning some high crazy tower, So sweetly smiling on the rifted wall, That, for thy sake, we would not see it fall. Oh, royal maid, excuse the idle brain That, knowing thee but in thy loved ideal, Plays with thine image, and would very fain Love and revere thee too as something real ; The human accents of thine innocent thought Would rather think thee flower, or happy bird, Than the dull lesson that thou hast been taught;

Rather would deem thee bird, that glad and free
Warbles its wood-notes wild on greenwood tree,
Than tutor❜d captive of a gilded cage,
Unweeting echo of a prating age.

Alas! a prisoner born, and bred a slave,
But late awaken'd from a happy trance,
Reft of the best of what thy fortune gave,
Thy childish, aimless, wantless ignorance :-
Ah, what a hopeless task it is for thee
To govern free men that were never free.
Easy it were, I doubt not, to obey,
If to obey were duty's consummation;
But throned servility, compell'd to sway
A shackled sceptre by the year and day-

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