I saw the brimmed bowl in her grasp Thrilling with godhood; like a lover

I sprang the proffered life to clasp ;The beaker fell; the luck was over.

The Earth has drunk the vintage up;

What boots it patch the goblet's splinters? Can Summer fill the icy cup,

Whose treacherous crystal is but Winter's ?

O spendthrift Haste! await the Gods; Their nectar crowns the lips of Patience; Haste scatters on unthankful sods

The immortal gift in vain libations.

Coy Hebe flies from those that woo,

And shuns the hands would seize

Follow thy life, and she will sue To pour for thee the cup of honor.

upon

her;

THE SEARCH.

I WENT to seek for Christ,

And Nature seemed so fair

That first the woods and fields my youth enticed, And I was sure to find him there:

The temple I forsook,

And to the solitude

Allegiance paid; but Winter came and shook

The crown and purple from my wood; His snows, like desert sands, with scornful drift, Besieged the columned aisle and palace-gate; My Thebes, cut deep with many a solemn rift, But epitaphed her own sepulchred state: Then I remembered whom I went to seek, And blessed blunt Winter for his council bleak.

Back to the world I turned,

For Christ, I said, is King;

So the cramped alley and the hut I spurned,
As far beneath his sojourning:

'Mid power and wealth I sought,

But found no trace of him,

And all the costly offerings I had brought

With sudden rust and mould grew dim: I found his tomb, indeed, where, by their laws, All must on stated days themselves imprison, Mocking with bread a dead creed's grinning jaws, Witless how long the life had thence arisen ; Due sacrifice to this they set apart,

Prizing it more than Christ's own living heart.

Of the proud World I shook;

Then came dear Love and shared with me his crust,

And half

my

sorrow's burden took.

After the World's soft bed,

Its rich and dainty fare,

Like down seemed Love's coarse pillow to my head,

His cheap food seemed as manna rare ;

Fresh-trodden prints of bare and bleeding feet,

Turned to the heedless city whence I came, Hard by I saw, and springs of worship sweet

Gushed from my cleft heart smitten by the same; Love looked me in the face and spake no words, But straight I knew those foot-prints were the Lord's.

I followed where they led,

And in a hovel rude,

With naught to fence the weather from his head,

The King I sought for meekly stood;

A naked, hungry child

Clung round his gracious knee,

And a poor hunted slave looked up and smiled
To bless the smile that set him free;

New miracles I saw his presence do,

No more I knew the hovel bare and poor, The gathered chips into a woodpile grew,

The broken morsel swelled to goodly store; I knelt and wept: my Christ no more I seek, His throne is with the outcast and the weak.

THE PRESENT CRISIS.

WHEN a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast

Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east

to west,

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb

To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sub

lime

Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem

of Time.