'Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up, Whose golden rounds are our calamities, Whereon our firm feet planting, nearer God

The spirit climbs, and hath its

eyes unsealed.

True is it that Death's face seems stern and cold,

When he is sent to summon those we love,
But all God's angels come to us disguised;
Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death,
One after other lift their frowning masks,
And we behold the seraph's face beneath,
All radiant with the glory and the calm
Of having looked upon the front of God.
With every anguish of our earthly part

The spirit's sight grows clearer; this was meant
When Jesus touched the blind man's lids with clay.
Life is the jailer, Death the angel sent

To draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.

He flings not ope the ivory gate of Rest, -
Only the fallen spirit knocks at that,
But to benigner regions beckons us,
To destinies of more rewarded toil.

In the hushed chamber, sitting by the dead,
It grates on us to hear the flood of life

Whirl rustling onward, senseless of our loss.
The bee hums on; around the blossomed vine
Whirs the light humming-bird; the cricket chirps;
The locust's shrill alarum stings the ear;

Hard by, the cock shouts lustily; from farm to farm,
His cheery brothers, telling of the sun,
Answer, till far away the joyance dies:
We never knew before how God had filled
The summer air with happy living sounds;
All round us seems an overplus of life,
And yet the one dear heart lies cold and still.

It is most strange, when the great miracle

Hath for our sakes been done, when we have had
Our inwardest experience of God,

When with his presence still the room expands,
And is awed after him, that naught is changed,
That Nature's face looks unacknowledging,
And the mad world still dances heedless on
After its butterflies, and gives no sign.
"T is hard at first to see it all aright;

In vain Faith blows her trump to summon back

Her scattered troop; yet, through the clouded glass

Of our own bitter tears, we learn to look

Undazzled on the kindness of God's face;

Earth is too dark, and Heaven alone shines through.

It is no little thing, when a fresh soul

And a fresh heart, with their unmeasured scope

For good, not gravitating earthward yet,

But circling in diviner periods,

When this unbounded possibility

Into the outer silence is withdrawn.

Ah, in this world, where every guiding thread
Ends suddenly in the one sure centre, death,

The visionary hand of Might-have-been

Alone can fill Desire's cup to the brim!

How changed, dear friend, are thy part and thy

child's!

He bends above thy cradle now, or holds

His warning finger out to be thy guide;

Thou art the nursling now; he watches thee
Slow learning, one by one, the secret things
Which are to him used sights of every day;
He smiles to see thy wondering glances con
The grass and pebbles of the spirit-world,
To thee miraculous; and he will teach
Thy knees their due observances of prayer.

Children are God's apostles, day by day
Sent forth to preach of love, and hope, and peace;
Nor hath thy babe his mission left undone.
To me, at least, his going hence hath given
Serener thoughts and nearer to the skies,
And opened a new fountain in my heart
For thee, my friend, and all: and, O, if Death
More near approaches meditates, and clasps
Even now some dearer, more reluctant hand,
God, strengthen thou my faith, that I may see
That 't is thine angel, who, with loving haste,

Unto the service of the inner shrine
Doth waken thy beloved with a kiss!

1844.

EURYDICE.

HEAVEN'S cup held down to me I drain, The sunshine mounts and spurs my brain; Bathing in grass, with thirsty eye

I suck the last drop of the sky;

With each hot sense I draw to the lees

The quickening out-door influences,

And empty to each radiant comer

A supernaculum of summer:

Not, Bacchus, all thy grosser juice

Could bring enchantment so profuse, Though for its press each grape-bunch had

The white feet of an Oread.