It is man's saying-man's! Too weak to move Man desecrates the eternal God-word Love With his No More, and Once. Blasphemers? Is your earth not cold enow, Ah, friends! and would ye wrong each other so? Whose tears have fallen for you, whose smiles have shone, 66 We loved them ONCE?" Such words, Lay calm of me, sweet friends, when out of sight? When hearts of better right Stand in between me and your happy light? And when, as flowers kept too long in the shade, And all that is not love in me, decayed? Such words - Ye loved me ONCE! Could ye, We loved her once," Say cold of me, when further put away When mute the lips which deprecate to-day? - Of those who sit and love you up in Heaven, Say never, ye loved ONCE! God is too near above, the grave below, And all our moments go Too quickly past our souls, for saying so: There comes no change to justify that change, And yet that word of ONCE Is humanly acceptive! Kings have said, Shaking a discrowned head, "We ruled once,"—idiot tongues, "We once bested,". Cripples once danced i' the vines and bards approved But love strikes one hour - LOVE. Those never loved, STANZAS. From "In Memoriam."--Ternyson. The love that rose on stronger wings, No doubt, vast eddies in the flood Of onward time shall yet be made, Yet, oh ye ministers of good, Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear, With old results that look like new, If this were all your mission here, To draw, to sheathe a useless sword, To shift an arbitrary power, To cramp the student at his desk, To make old baseness picturesque And tuft with grass a feudal tower; Why then my scorn might well descend On you and yours. I see in part That all, as in some piece of art, Is toil coöperant to an end. DIES IRE. [Translated by General Dix.] Thomas de Celano. THAT DAY, A DAY OF WRATH, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high towers! — ZEPHANIAH i. 15, 16. Day of vengeance, without morrow! Ah! what terror is impending, To the throne, the trumpet sounding, Death and Nature, mazed, are quaking, On the written Volume's pages, Sits the Judge, the raised arraigning, Darkest mysteries explaining, Nothing unavenged remaining, What shall I then say, unfriended, By no advocate attended, When the just are scarce defended? King of majesty tremendous, Holy Jesus, meek, forbearing, Worn and weary, Thou hast sought me; Righteous Judge of retribution, As a guilty culprit groaning, In my prayers no grace discerning, Give me, when Thy sheep confiding When the wicked are confounded, Prostrate, all my guilt discerning, EXTRACT FROM "DE PROFUNDIS." He reigns above, He reigns alone; Mrs. Browsing. He reigns below, He reigns alone, By anguish which made pale the sun, I hear Him charge His saints that none Blaspheme against Him with despair, Take from my head the thorn-wreath brown! No mortal grief deserves that crown. O supreme Love, chief Misery, The sharp regalia are for THEE For us,- Whatever's lost, it first was won: That Heaven's new wine might show more clear. I praise Thee while my days go on. I praise Thee while my days go on; I love Thee while my days go on : Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost, And having in Thy life-depth thrown When the snows begin, and the blasts denote I am nearing the place, Robert Browning. The power of the night, the press of the storm, The post of the foe; |