SŒUR LOUISE DE LA MISÉRICORDE. 379

Hungry here with the crunching swine,
Hungry harvest have I to reap;
In a dream I count my Father's kine,
I hear the tinkling bells of his sheep,
I watch his lambs that browse and leap.

There is plenty of bread at home,

His servants have bread enough and to spare; The purple wine-fat froths with foam,

Oil and spices make sweet the air,
While I perish hungry and bare.

Rich and blessed those servants, rather
Than I who see not my Father's face!
I will arise and go to my Father :—
"Fallen from sonship, beggared of grace,
Grant me, Father, a servant's place."

SŒUR LOUISE DE LA MISERICORDE.

(1674)

I HAVE desired, and I have been desired;
But now the days are over of desire,

Now dust and dying embers mock my fire;
Where is the hire for which my life was hired?
Oh vanity of vanities, desire!

Longing and love, pangs of a perished pleasure,
Longing and love, a disenkindled fire,

And memory a bottomless gulf of mire,
And love a fount of tears outrunning measure;
Oh vanity of vanities, desire!

Now from my heart, love's deathbed, trickles, trickles,

Drop by drop slowly, drop by drop of fire,

The dross of life, of love, of spent desire;

Alas, my rose of life gone all to prickles,—
Oh vanity of vanities, desire!

Oh vanity of vanities, desire;

Stunting my hope which might have strained up higher,

Turning my garden plot to barren mire; Oh death-struck love, oh disenkindled fire, Oh vanity of vanities, desire!

TO-DAY'S BURDEN.

ARISE, depart, for this is not your rest.

Oh burden of all burdens, still to arise

And still depart, nor rest in any wise! Rolling, still rolling thus to east from west Earth journeys on her immemorial quest,

Whom a moon chases in no different guise: Thus stars pursue their courses, and thus flies The sun, and thus all creatures manifest.

Unrest the common heritage, the ban

Flung broadcast on all humankind, on all Who live; for living, all are bound to die: That which is old, we know that it is man :

These have no rest who sit and dream and sigh, Nor have those rest who wrestle and who fall.

AN IMMURATA" SISTER.

LIFE flows down to death; we cannot bind

That current that it should not flee:

Life flows down to death, as rivers find
The inevitable sea.

Men work and think, but women feel;
And so (for I'm a woman, I)

And so I should be glad to die
And cease from impotence of zeal,

And cease from hope, and cease from dread,
And cease from yearnings without gain,
And cease from all this world of pain,
And be at peace among the dead.

Hearts that die, by death renew their youth,
Lightened of this life that doubts and dies;
Silent and contented, while the Truth

Unveiled makes them wise.

Why should I seek and never find

That something which I have not had?
Fair and unutterably sad

The world hath sought time out of mind;
The world hath sought and I have sought,-
Ah, empty world and empty I!

For we have spent our strength for nought,
And soon it will be time to die.

Sparks fly upward toward their fount of fire,

Kindling, flashing, hovering :

Kindle, flash, my soul; mount higher and higher, Thou whole burnt-offering!

THERE IS A BUDDING MORROW IN
MIDNIGHT.”

WINTRY boughs against a wintry sky;

Yet the sky is partly blue

And the clouds are partly bright :

Who can tell but sap is mounting high
Out of sight,

Ready to burst through?

Winter is the mother-nurse of Spring,

Lovely for her daughter's sake,

Not unlovely for her own:

For a future buds in everything;

Grown, or blown,

Or about to break.

"IF THOU SAYEST, BEHOLD, WE KNEW

IT NOT."-PROVERBS Xxiv. 11, I 2.

I.

I

HAVE done I know not what,-what have I done?

My brother's blood, my brother's soul, doth cry: And I find no defence, find no reply,

No courage more to run this race I run

Not knowing what I have done, have left undone;
Ah me, these awful unknown hours that fly
Fruitless it may be. fleeting fruitless by
Rank with death-savour underneath the sun.
For what avails it that I did not know

The deed I did? what profits me the plea
That had I known I had not wronged him so?
Lord Jesus Christ, my God, him pity Thou;
Lord, if it may be, pity also me :

In judgment pity, and in death, and now.

2.

Thou Who hast borne all burdens, bear our load,
Bear Thou our load whatever load it be;
Our guilt, our shame, our helpless misery,
Bear Thou Who only canst, O God my God.
Seek us and find us, for we cannot Thee