Yet firmer hands shall Freedom's torchlights trim, And wave them high across the abysmal black, Till bound, dumb millions there shall see them and rejoice.

MM mo.9 1847.

LINES,

ACCOMPANYING MANUSCRIPTS PRESENTED TO A FREEH*

'Tis said that in the Holy Land

The angels of the place have blessed

The pilgrim's bed of desert sand,
Like Jacob's stone of rest.

That down the hush of Syrian skies

Some sweet-voiced saint at twilight sings

The song whose holy symphonies
Are beat by unseen wings;

Till starting from his sandy bed,
The wayworn wanderer looks to see

The halo of an angel's head
Shine through the tamarisk-tree.

So through the shadows of my way
Thy smile hath fallen soft and clear,

So at the weary close of day
Hath seemed thy voice of cheer.

That pilgrim pressing to his goal
May pause not for the vision's sake,

Yet all fair things within his soul
The thought of it shall wake;

LINES. 51

The graceful palm-tree by the well,

Seen on the far horizon's rim; The dark eyes of the fleet gazelle,

Bent timidly on him;

Each pictured saint, whose golden hair

Streams sunlike through the convent's gloom;

Pale shrines of martyrs young and fair,
And loving Mary's tomb;

And thus each tint or shade which falls
From sunset cloud or waving tree,

Along my pilgrim path recalls
The pleasant thought of thee.

Of one, in sun and shade the same,
In weal and woe my steady friend,

Whatever by that holy name
The angels comprehend.

Not blind to faults and follies, thou

Hast never failed the good to see, Nor judged by one unseemly bough

The upward-struggling tree.

These light leaves at thy feet I lay—

Poor common thoughts on common things,

Which time is shaking, day by day,
Like feathers from his wings—

Chance shootings from a frail life-tree,
To nurturing care but little known,

Their good was partly learned of thee,
Their folly is my own.

That tree still clasps the kindly mould,
Its leaves still drink the twilight dew,

And weaving its pale green with.gold,
Still shines the sunlight through.

There still the morning zephyrs play,
And there at times the spring bird sings,

And mossy trunk and fading spray
Are flowered with glossy wings.

Yet, even in genial sun and rain,

Root, branch, and leaflet fail and fade;

The wanderer on its lonely plain
Ere long shall miss its shade.

Oh, friend beloved, whose curious skill
Keeps bright the last year's leaves and flo tfers,

With warm, glad summer thoughts to fill
The cold, dark, winter hours!

Pressed on thy heart, the leaves I bring

May well defy the wintry cold, Until, in Heaven's eternal spring,

Life's fairer ones unfold.

THE REWARD.

Who, looking backward from his manhood's prince.
Sees not the spectre of his misspent time?

And, through the shade
Of funeral cypress planted thick behind,
Hears no reproachful whisper on the wind

From his loved dead?

Who bears no trace of passion's evil force V
Who shuns thy sting, oh terrible Remorse ?—

Who does not cast
On the thronged pages of his memory's book,
At times, a sad and half reluctant look,

Regretful of the Past?

RAPHAEL. 55

Alas!—the evil which we fain would shun
We do, and leave the wished-for good undone:

Our strength to-day
Is but to-morrow's weakness, prone to fall;
Poor, blind, unprofitable servants all

Are we alway.

Yet, who, thus looking backward o'er his years,
Feels not his eyelids wet with grateful tears,

If he hath been
Permitted, weak and sinful as he was,
To cheer and aid, in some ennobling cause,

His fellow-men?

If he hath hidden the outcast, or let in
A ray of sunshine to the cell of sin,—

If he hath lent
Strength to the weak, and, in an hour of need,
Over the suffering, mindless of his creed

Or home, hath bent.

He has not lived in vain, and while he gives
The praise to Him, in whom he moves and lives,

With thankful heart;
He gazes backward, and with hope before,
Knowing that from his works he never more

Can henceforth part.

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.

A simple print:—the graceful flow
Of boyhood's soft and wavy hair,

And fresh young lip and cheek, and brow
Unmarked and clear, were there.

Yet through its sweet and calm repose

I saw the inward spirit shine; It was as if before me rose

The white veil of a shrine.

As if, as Gothland's sage has told,
The hidden life, the man within,

Dissevered from its frame and mould,
By mortal eye were seen.

Was it the lifting of that eye,

The waving of that pictured hand?

Loose as a cloud-wreath on the sky,
I saw the walls expand.

The narrow room had vanished,—space
Broad, luminous, remained alone,

Through which all hues and shapes of grace
And beauty looked or shone.

Around the mighty master came

The marvels which his pencil wrought,

Those miracles of power whose fame
Is wide as human thought.

There drooped thy more than mortal face,
Oh Mother, beautiful and mild!

Enfolding in one dear embrace
Thy Saviour and thy Child 1