We read her face, as one who reads
A true and holy book.

We miss her in the place of prayer,
And by the hearth fire's light;
We pause beside her door to hear
Once more her sweet "Good-night!"
There seems a shadow on the day,
Her smile no longer cheers;
A dimness on the stars of night,
Like eyes that look through tears.

Alone unto our Father's will

One thought hath reconciled;
That he whose love exceedeth ours
Hath taken home his child.

Fold her, O Father! in thine arms,
And let her henceforth be
A messenger of love between
Our human hearts and thee.

WORDSWORTH.

Dear friends, who read the world aright, And in its common forms discern

A beauty and a harmony

The many never learn!

Kindred in soul of him who found

In simple flower and leaf and stone
The impulse of the sweetest lays
Our Saxon tongue has known,-

Accept this record of a life

As sweet and pure, as calm and good, As a long day of blandest June

In green field and in wood.

How welcome to our ears, long pained
By strife of sect and party noise,
The brook-like murmur of his song
Of nature's simple joys!

The violet by its mossy stone,

The primrose by the river's brim, And chance-sown daffodil, have found Immortal life through him.

The sunrise on his breezy lake,

The rosy tints his sunset brought,

World-seen, are gladdening all the vales And mountain-peaks of thought.

Art builds on sand; the works of pride
And human passion change and fall;
But that which shares the life of God
With him surviveth all.

RAPHAEL.

I shall not soon forget that sight:
The glow of autumn's westering day,
A hazy warmth, a dreamy light,
On Raphael's picture lay.

It was a simple print I saw,

The fair face of a musing boy;
Yet, while I gazed, a sense of awe
Seemed blending with my joy.

There drooped thy more than mortal face,
O mother, beautiful and mild!
Enfolding in one dear embrace
Thy Saviour and thy Child!

Slow passed that vision from my view,
But not the lesson which it taught;
The soft, calm shadows which it threw
Still rested on my thought:

The truth, that painter, bard, and sage,
E'en in earth's cold and changeful clime,
Plant for their deathless heritage

The fruits and flowers of time.

We shape ourselves the joy or fear
Of which the coming life is made,
And fill our future's atmosphere
With sunshine or with shade.

The tissue of the Life to be

We weave with colors all our own,
And in the field of Destiny
We reap as we have sown.

THE VOICE OF THE READER.

O, sweet as the lapse of water at noon
O'er the mossy roots of some forest tree,
The sigh of the wind in the woods of June,
Or sound of flutes o'er a moonlight sea,
Or the low soft music, perchance, which seems
To float through the slumbering singer's dreams,

So sweet, so dear is the silvery tone,

Of her in whose features I sometimes look,

As I sit at eve by her side alone,

And we read by turns from the self-same book,

Some tale perhaps of the olden time,
Some lover's romance or quaint old rhyme.

Then when the story is one of woe,

Some prisoner's plaint through his dungeon-bar, Her blue eye glistens with tears, and low Her voice sinks down like a moan afar; And I seem to hear that prisoner's wail, And his face looks on me worn and pale. And when she reads some merrier song, Her voice is glad as an April bird's, And when the tale is of war and wrong,

A trumpet's summons is in her words, And the rush of the hosts I seem to hear, And see the tossing of plume and spear!

MY SOUL AND I.

Stand still, my soul, in the silent dark
I would question thee,

Alone in the shadow drear and stark
With God and me!

What, my soul, was thy errand here?
Was it mirth or ease,

Or heaping up dust from year to year?
"Nay, none of these!"

Speak, soul, aright in His holy sight
Whose eye looks still

And steadily on thee through the night:
"To do his will!"

What hast thou wrought for Right and Trut
For God and man,

From the golden hours of bright eyed youth
To life's mid span?

Go to, go to for thy very self
Thy deeds were done :

Thou for fame, the miser for pelf,
Your end is one!

And where art thou going, soul of mine?
Canst see the end?

And whither this troubled life of thine
Evermore doth tend?

The Present, the Present is all thou hast
For thy sure possessing;

Like the patriarch's angel hold it fast
Till it gives its blessing.

All which is real now remaineth,
And fadeth never:

The hand which upholds it now sustaineth
The soul forever.

Leaning on Him, make with reverent meekness
His own thy will,

And with strength from Him shall thy utter weakness,
Life's task fulfil.

Then of what is to be, and what is done,
Why queriest thou?

The past and the time to be are one,—
And both are NOW!

SKETCHES.

Along the roadside, like the flowers of gold
That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought,
Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod,
And the red pennons of the cardinal flowers
Hang motionless upon their upright staves.
The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind,
Wing-weary with its long flight from the south,
Unfelt; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leaf
With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams,
Confesses it. The locust by the wall
Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm.
A single hay-cart down the dusty road
Creaks slowly with its driver fast asleep
On the load's top. Against the neighboring hill
Huddled along the stone wall's shady side,
The sheep show white, as if a snow-drift still
Defied the dog-star. Through the open door
A drowsy smell of flowers-gray heliotrope,
And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette-
Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends
To the pervading symphony of peace.

No time is this for hands long overworn

To task their strength: and (unto Him be praise
Who giveth quietness!) the stress and strain

Of years that did the work of centuries

Have ceased, and we can draw our breath once more

Freely and full. So, as yon harvesters

Make glad their nooning underneath the elms

With tale and riddle and old snatch of song,

I lay aside grave themes, and idly turn

The leaves of memory's sketch-book, dreaming o'er
Old summer pictures of the quiet hills,

And human life, as quiet, at their feet.

And yet not idly all. A farmer's son,

Proud of field-lore and harvest-craft, and feeling

All their fine possibilities, how rich
And restful even poverty and toil

Become when beauty, harmony, and love
Sit at their humble hearth as angels sat

At evening in the patriarch's tent, when man
Makes labor noble, and his farmer's frock
The symbol of a Christian chivalry
Tender and just and generous to her
Who clothes with grace all duty; still, I know
Too well the picture has another side:—

How wearily the grind of toil goes on
Where love is wanting; how the eye and ear
And heart are starved amidst the plenitude
Of nature, and how hard and colorless
Is life without an atmosphere. I look
Across the lapse of half a century,

And call to mind old homesteads, where no flower
Told that the spring had come, but evil weeds,
Nightshade and rough-leaved burdock in the place
Of the sweet doorway greeting of the rose
And honeysuckle, where the house walls seemed
Blistering in sun, without a tree or vine

To cast the tremulous shadow of its leaves
Across the curtainless windows from whose panes
Fluttered the signal rags of shiftlessness;
Within, the cluttered kitchen-floor unwashed
(Broom-clean I think they called it); the best room
Stifling with cellar damp, shut from the air
In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless
Save the inevitable sampler hung

Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece,

A green-haired woman, peony-cheeked, beneath Impossible willows; the wide-throated hearth Bristling with faded pine-boughs half concealing The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's back.

And, in sad keeping with all things about them, Shrill, querulous women, sour and sullen men, Untidy, loveless, old before their time, With scarce a human interest save their own Monotonous round of small economies, Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood; Blind to the beauty everywhere revealed, Treading the May-flowers with regardless feet, For them the song-sparrow and the bobolink Sang not, nor winds made music in the leaves; For them in vain October's holocaust Burned, gold and crimson, over all the hills, The sacramental mystery of the woods. Church-goers, fearful of the unseen Powers,