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CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.

All creatures sing around us, and we sing.

God makes our service love, and makes our wage Love: so we wend on patient pilgrimage.

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OUR

Our Home and Heaven the work of faith All through this race of life which shelves

Downward to death.

So faith shall build the boundary wall And hope shall paint the secret bower, That both may show magnifical

With gem and flower.

While over all a dome must spread,
And love shall be that dome above;
And deep foundations must be laid,
And these are love.

SOONER OR LATER.

SOONER or later; yet at last
The Jordan must be past;

It may be he will overflow
His banks the day we go;

It may be that his cloven deep
Will stand up on a heap.

Sooner or later; yet one day
We all must pass that way;

Each man, each woman, humbled pale,

Pass veiled within the veil ;

Child, parent, bride, companion,
Alone, alone, alone.

SOONER OR LATER.

For none a ransom can be paid,
A suretyship be made.

I, bent by mine own burden, must
Enter my house of dust;

I, rated to the full amount,

Must render mine own account.

When earth and sea shall empty all
Their graves of great and small;

When earth wrapped in a fiery flood
Shall no more hide her blood;

When mysteries shall be revealed;

All secrets be unsealed;

When things of might, when things of shame

Shall find at last a name

Pealed for a hissing and a curse

Throughout the universe:

Then Awful Judge, most Awful God,
Then cause to bud Thy rod,

To bloom with blossoms, and to give
Almonds: yea, bid us live.

I plead Thyself with Thee, I plead
Thee in our utter need:

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