And hears, while sowing outward fields,
The harvest-song of inward peace.
"Free-lipped the liberal streamlets run,
Free shines for all the healthful ray;
The still pool stagnates in the sun,

The lurid earth-fire haunts decay!

"What is it, that the crowd requite Thy love with hate, thy truth with lies?

And but to faith, and not to sight,

The walls of Freedom's temple rise?

"Yet do thy work; it shall succeed
In thine or in another's day;
And, if denied the victor's meed,
Thou shalt not lack the toiler's pay.

"Faith shares the future's promise; Love's

Self-offering is a triumph won ; And each good thought or action moves The dark world nearer to the sun.

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Then faint not, falter not, nor plead Thy weakness; truth itself is strong; The lion's strength, the eagle's speed, Are not alone vouchsafed to wrong.

"Thy nature, which, through fire and flood,

To place or gain finds out its way, Hath power to seek the highest good, And duty's holiest call obey!

"Strivest thou in darkness? - Foes without

In league with traitor thoughts within;

Thy night-watch kept with trembling
Doubt

And pale Remorse the ghost of
Sin?-

"Hast thou not, on some week of storm,

Seen the sweet Sabbath breaking fair, And cloud and shadow, sunlit, form The curtains of its tent of prayer?

"So, haply, when thy task shall end, The wrong shall lose itself in right, And all thy week-day darkness blend With the long Sabbath of the light!"

In my dream, methought I trod,
Yesternight, a mountain road;
Narrow as Al Sirat's span,
High as eagle's flight, it ran.

Overhead, a roof of cloud

With its weight of thunder bowed; Underneath, to left and right, Blankness and abysmal night.

Here and there a wild-flower blushed,
Now and then a bird-song gushed;
Now and then, through rifts of shade,
Stars shone out, and sunbeams played.

But the goodly company,
Walking in that path with me,
One by one the brink o'erslid,
One by one the darkness hid.

Some with wailing and lament, Some with cheerful courage went; But, of all who smiled or mourned, Never one to us returned.

Anxiously, with eye and ear, Questioning that shadow drear, Never hand in token stirred, Never answering voice I heard !

Steeper, darker!-lo! I felt From my feet the pathway melt. Swallowed by the black despair, And the hungry jaws of air,

Past the stony-throated caves, Strangled by the wash of waves, Past the splintered crags, I sank On a green and flowery bank,

Soft as fall of thistle-down, Lightly as a cloud is blown, Soothingly as childhood pressed To the bosom of its rest.

Of the sharp-horned rocks instead, Green the grassy meadows spread, Bright with waters singing by Trees that propped a golden sky.

Painless, trustful, sorrow-free,
Old lost faces welcomed me,
With whose sweetness of content
Still expectant hope was blent.

Waking while the dawning gray
Slowly brightened into day,
Pondering that vision fled,
Thus unto myself I said :-

"Steep, and hung with clouds of strife,
Is our narrow path of life;
And our death the dreaded fall
Through the dark, awaiting all.

"So, with painful steps we climb
Up the dizzy ways of time,
Ever in the shadow shed
By the forecast of our dread.

"Dread of mystery solved alone,
Of the untried and unknown;
Yet the end thereof may seem
Like the falling of my dream.