Who, who would live alway, away from his God, - There saints of all ages in harmony meet, BEYOND THE WM. A. MUHLENBERG. SMILING AND THE BEYOND the smiling and the weeping Beyond the waking and the sleeping, Love, rest, and home! Lord, tarry not, but come. Beyond the blooming and the fading Beyond the shining and the shading, Love, rest, and home! Beyond the rising and the setting Beyond the calming and the fretting, Beyond the gathering and the strowing Beyond the ebbing and the flowing, Love, rest, and home! Beyond the parting and the meeting Beyond the farewell and the greeting, Love, rest, and home! Beyond the frost chain and the fever Beyond the rock waste and the river, Love, rest, and home! Sweet hope! Lord, tarry not, but come. HORATIUS BONAR. THE LAND O' THE LEAL. I'm wearing awa', Jean, To the land o' the leal. In the land o' the leal. Ye were aye leal and true, Jean; Your task 's ended noo, Jean, And I'll welcome you To the land o' the leal. Our bonnie bairn 's there, Jean, She was baith guid and fair, Jean, O, we grudged her right sair To the land o' the leal! Then dry that tearfu' e'e, Jean, My soul langs to be free, Jean, And angels wait on me To the land o' the leal! Now fare ye weel, my ain Jean, This warld's care is vain, Jean; We'll meet and aye be fain In the land o' the leal. LADY NAIRN. UNDER THE VIOLETS. HER hands are cold; her face is white; To plead for tears with alien eyes; And gray old trees of hugest limb Shall wheel their circling shadows round, The acorns and the chestnuts fall, For her the morning choir shall sing Its matins from the branches high, And every minstrel-voice of spring, That trills beneath the April sky, Shall greet her with its earliest cry. When, turning round their dial-track, Eastward the lengthening shadows pass, Her little mourners, clad in black, The crickets, sliding through the grass, Shall pipe for her an evening mass. At last the rootlets of the trees Shall find the prison where she lies, In leaves and blossoms to the skies. If any, born of kindlier blood, Should ask, What maiden lies below? Say only this: A tender bud, That tried to blossom in the snow, OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. SELECTIONS FROM "IN MEMORIAM." GRIEF UNSPEAKABLE. I SOMETIMES hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel: But, for the unquiet heart and brain, DEAD, IN A FOREIGN LAND. So draw him home to those that mourn All night no ruder air perplex Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright As our pure love, through early light Shall glimmer on the dewy decks. Sphere all your lights around, above; Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow; Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, My friend, the brother of my love; My Arthur, whom I shall not see Till all my widowed race be run; Dear as the mother to the son, More than my brothers are to me. THE PEACE OF sorrow. CALM is the morn without a sound, Calm and deep peace on this high wold And on these dews that drench the furze, And all the silvery gossamers That twinkle into green and gold: Calm and still light on yon great plain That sweeps with all its autumn bowers, And crowded farms and lessening towers, To mingle with the bounding main: Calm and deep peace in this wide air, Calm on the seas, and silver sleep, And waves that sway themselves in rest, And dead calm in that noble breast Which heaves but with the heaving deep. TIME AND ETERNITY. IF Sleep and Death be truly one, Unconscious of the sliding hour, Bare of the body, might it last, And silent traces of the past Be all the color of the flower: So then were nothing lost to man; So that still garden of the souls In many a figured leaf enrolls The total world since life began ; And love will last as pure and whole As when he loved me here in Time, And at the spiritual prime Rewaken with the dawning soul. PERSONAL RESURRECTION. THAT each, who seems a separate whole, Should move his rounds, and fusing all The skirts of self again, should fall Remerging in the general Soul, Is faith as vague as all unsweet: Enjoying each the other's good: Upon the last and sharpest height, Some landing-place to clasp and say, "Farewell! We lose ourselves in light." SPIRITUAL COMPANIONSHIP. Do we indeed desire the dead Should still be near us at our side? I had such reverence for his blame, I wrong the grave with fears untrue : Shall love be blamed for want of faith? There must be wisdom with great Death: The dead shall look me through and through. Be near us when we climb or fall: Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours MOONLIGHT MUSINGS. WHEN on my bed the moonlight falls, The mystic glory swims away; From off my bed the moonlight dies: And then I know the mist is drawn DEATH IN LIFE'S PRIME. So many worlds, so much to do, So little done, such things to be, How know I what had need of thee, For thou wert strong as thou wert true? The fame is quenched that I foresaw, We pass; the path that each man trod Fade wholly, while the soul exults, WHAT hope is here for modern rhyme |