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THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS.

No Hermits now the wanderer sees,
Nor chapel with its chestnut-trees;
A morning dream, a tale that's told,
The wave of change o'er all has rolled.

Yet lives the lesson of that day;
And from its twilight cool and gray
Comes up a low, sad whisper, "Make
The truth thine own, for truth's own
sake.

"Why wait to see in thy brief span
Its perfect flower and fruit in man?
No saintly touch can save; no balm
Of healing hath the martyr's palm.

"Midst soulless forms, and false pre

tence

Of spiritual pride and pampered sense, A voice saith, 'What is that to thee? Be true thyself, and follow Me!'

"In days when throne and altar heard The wanton's wish, the bigot's word, And of state and ritual show pomp Scarce hid the loathsome death below,

"Midst fawning priests and courtiers foul,

The losel swarm of crown and cowl, White-robed walked François Fenelon, Stainless as Uriel in the sun!

"Yet in his time the stake blazed red,
The poor were eaten up like bread;
Men knew him not: his garment's hem
No healing virtue had for them.

"Alas! no present saint we find;
The white cymar gleams far behind,
Revealed in outline vague, sublime,
Through telescopic mists of time !

"Trust not in man with passing breath, But in the Lord, old Scripture saith; The truth which saves thou mayst not blend

With false professor, faithless friend.

"Search thine own heart. What paineth thee

In others in thyself may be ;
All dust is frail, all flesh is weak;

Be thou the true man thou dost seek!

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Where now with pain thou treadest, trod

The whitest of the saints of God!
To show thee where their feet were set,
The light which led them shineth yet.

"The footprints of the life divine, Which marked their path, remain in thine;

And that great Life, transfused in theirs,
Awaits thy faith, thy love, thy prayers!".

A lesson which I well may heed,
A word of fitness to my need;
So from that twilight cool and gray
Still saith a voice, or seems to say.

We rose, and slowly homeward turned, While down the west the sunset burned;

And, in its light, hill, wood, and tide,
And human forms seemed glorified.

The village homes transfigured stood,
And purple bluffs, whose belting wood
Across the waters leaned to hold
The yellow leaves like lamps of gold.

Then spake my friend: "Thy words are

true;

Forever old, forever new,
These home-seen splendors are the

same

Which over Eden's sunsets came.

"To these bowed heavens let wood and hill

Lift voiceless praise and anthem still; Fall, warm with blessing, over them, Light of the New Jerusalem !

"Flow on, sweet river, like the stream Of John's Apocalyptic dream! This mapled ridge shall Horeb be, Yon green-banked lake our Galilee ! "Henceforth my heart shall sigh nc

more

For olden time and holier shore; God's love and blessing, then and there,

Are now and here and everywhere."

MISCELLANEOUS.

QUESTIONS OF LIFE.

And the angel that was sent unto me, whose name was Uriel, gave me an answer, and said,

Thy heart hath gone too far in this world, and thinkest thou to comprehend the way of the Most High?"

Then said I," Yea, my Lord."

Then said he unto me, "Go thy way, weigh me the weight of the fire, or measure me the blast of the wind, or call me again the day that is past."-2 Esdras, chap. iv.

A BENDING staff I would not break,
A feeble faith I would not shake,
Nor even rashly pluck away

The error which some truth may stay,
Whose loss might leave the soul without
A shield against the shafts of doubt.

And yet, at times, when over all
A darker mystery seems to fall,
(May God forgive the child of dust,
Who seeks to know, where Faith should
trust!)

I raise the questions, old and dark,
Of Uzdom's tempted patriarch,
And, speech-confounded, build again
The baffled tower of Shinar's plain.

I am how little more I know!
Whence came I? Whither do I go?
A centred self, which feels and is;
A cry between the silences;

A shadow-birth of clouds at strife
With sunshine on the hills of life;
A shaft from Nature's quiver cast
Into the Future from the Past;
Between the cradle and the shroud,
A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud.

Thorough the vastness, arching all,
I see the great stars rise and fall,
The rounding seasons come and go,
The tided oceans ebb and flow;
The tokens of a central force,
Whose circles, in their widening course,
O'erlap and move the universe;
The workings of the law whence springs
The rhythmic harmony of things,
Which shapes in earth the darkling spar,
And orbs in heaven the morning star.

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This conscious life, is it the same
Which thrills the universal frame,
Whereby the caverned crystal shoots,
And mounts the sap from forest roots,
Whereby the exiled wood-bird tells
When Spring makes green her native
dells?

How feels the stone the of birth,
pang
Which brings its sparkling prism forth?
The forest-tree the throb which gives
The life-blood to its new-born leaves?
Do bird and blossom feel, like me,
Life's many-folded mystery,

The wonder which it is TO BE?
Or stand I severed and distinct,
From Nature's chain of life unlinked?
Allied to all, yet not the less
Prisoned in separate consciousness,
Alone o'erburdened with a sense
Of life, and cause, and consequence?

In vain to me the Sphinx propounds
The riddle of her sights and sounds;
Back still the vaulted mystery gives
The echoed question it receives.
What sings the brook? What oracle
Is in the pine-tree's organ swell?
What may the wind's low burden be?
The meaning of the moaning sea?
The hieroglyphics of the stars?
Or clouded sunset's crimson bars?
I vainly ask, for mocks my skill
The trick of Nature's cipher still.

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THE PRISONERS OF NAPLES.

Alas! the dead retain their trust;
Dust hath no answer from the dust.
The great enigma still unguessed,
Unanswered the eternal quest;
I gather up the scattered rays
Of wisdom in the early days,
Faint gleams and broken, like the light
Of meteors in a northern night,
Betraying to the darkling earth
The unseen sun which gave them birth;
I listen to the sibyl's chant,

The voice of priest and hierophant ;
I know what Indian Kreeshna saith,
And what of life and what of death
The demon taught to Socrates;
And what, beneath his garden-trees
Slow pacing, with a dream-like tread,
The solemn-thoughted Plato said;
Nor lack I tokens, great or small,
Of God's clear light in each and all,
While holding with more dear regard
The scroll of Hebrew seer and bard,
The starry pages promise-lit
With Christ's Evangel over-writ,
Thy miracle of life and death,
O holy one of Nazareth!

On Aztec ruins, gray and lone,
The circling serpent coils in stone,
Type of the endless and unknown;
Whereof we seek the clew to find,
With groping fingers of the blind!
Forever sought, and never found,
We trace that serpent-symbol round
Our resting-place, our starting bound!
O thriftlessness of dream and guess!
O wisdom which is foolishness!
Why idly seek from outward things
The answer inward silence brings;
Why stretch beyond our proper sphere
And age, for that which lies so near?
Why climb the far-off hills with pain,
A nearer view of heaven to gain?
In lowliest depths of bosky dells
The hermit Contemplation dwells.
A fountain's pine-hung slope his seat,
And lotus-twined his silent feet,
Whence, piercing heaven, with screenéd
sight,

He sees at noon the stars, whose light
Shall glorify the coming night.

Here let me pause, my quest forego; Enough for me to feel and know

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-

That he in whom the cause and end,
The
past and future, meet and blend, -
Who, girt with his immensities,
Our vast and star-hung system sees,
Small as the clustered Pleiades,
Moves not alone the heavenly quires,
But waves the spring-time's grassy
spires,

Guards not archangel feet alone,
But deigns to guide and keep my own;
Speaks not alone the words of fate
Which worlds destroy, and worlds
create,

But whispers in my spirit's ear,
In tones of love, or warning fear,
A language none beside may hear.
To Him, from wanderings long and
wild,

I come, an over-wearied child,
In cool and shade his peace to find,
Like dew-fall settling on my mind.
Assured that all I know is best,
And humbly trusting for the rest,
I turn from Fancy's cloud-built scheme,
Dark creed, and mournful eastern
dream

Of power, impersonal and cold,
Controlling all, itself controlled,
Maker and slave of iron laws,
Alike the subject and the cause;
From vain philosophies, that try
The sevenfold gates of mystery,
And, baffled ever, babble still,
Word-prodigal of fate and will;
From Nature, and her mockery, Art,
And book and speech of men apart,
To the still witness in my heart;
With reverence waiting to behold
His Avatár of love untold,

The Eternal Beauty new and old!

THE PRISONERS OF NAPLES. I HAVE been thinking of the victims bound

In Naples, dying for the lack of air And sunshine, in their close, damp cells of pain,

Where hope is not, and innocence in vain

Appeals against the torture and the chain !

Unfortunates! whose crime it was to share

Our common love of freedom, and to dare,

In its behalf, Rome's harlot triple

crowned,

And her base pander, the most hateful thing

Who upon Christian or on Pagan ground

Makes vile the old heroic name of king. O God most merciful! Father just and kind!

Whom man hath bound let thy right hand unbind.

Or, if thy purposes of good behind Their ills lie hidden, let the sufferers find

Strong consolations; leave them not to doubt

Thy providential care, nor yet without The hope which all thy attributes inspire,

That not in vain the martyr's robe of fire

Is worn, nor the sad prisoner's fretting chain;

Since all who suffer for thy truth send

forth,

Electrical, with every throb of pain, Unquenchable sparks, thy own baptismal rain

Of fire and spirit over all the earth, Making the dead in slavery live again. Let this great hope be with them, as they lie

Shut from the light, the greenness, and the sky,

From the cool waters and the pleasant breeze,

The smell of flowers, and shade of summer trees;

Bound with the felon lepers, whom disease

And sins abhorred make loathsome; let them share

Pellico's faith, Foresti's strength to bear Years of unutterable torment, stern and still,

As the chained Titan victor through his will!

Comfort them with thy future; let them

see

The day-dawn of Italian liberty;

For that, with all good things, is hid with Thee,

And, perfect in thy thought, awaits its time to be!

I, who have spoken for freedom at the

cost

Of some weak friendships, or soma paltry prize

Of name or place, and more than I have lost

Have gained in wider reach of sym. pathies,

And free communion with the good and wise,

May God forbid that I should ever boast

Such easy self-denial, or repine

That the strong pulse of health no more is mine;

That, overworn at noonday, I must yield

To other hands the gleaning of the field,

A tired on-looker through the day's decline.

For blest beyond deserving still, and knowing

That kindly Providence its care is showing

In the withdrawal as in the bestowing, Scarcely I dare for more or less to pray. Beautiful yet for me this autumn day Melts on its sunset hills; and, far away, For me the Ocean lifts its solemn psalm, To me the pine-woods whisper; and for me

Yon river, winding through its vales of calm,

By greenest banks, with asters purplestarred,

And gentian bloom and golden-rod made gay,

Flows down in silent gladness to the sea, Like a pure spirit to its great reward!

Nor lack I friends, long-tried and near and dear,

Whose love is round me like this atmosphere,

Warm, soft and golden. For such gifts to me

What shall I render. C my God, to

thee?

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