383 That sees through tears the jugglers leap,- Would childlike on His love repose, Who "giveth His beloved, sleep!" And, friends, dear friends,—when it shall be Say, "Not a tear must o'er her fall- THE SERAPH AND POET. MRS. BROWNING. THE seraph sings before the manifest Sing, poet with the sorrow! Earth is low. O merciful One! When men are farthest, then art Thou most near; When friends pass by, my weaknesses to shun, Thy chariot I hear. Thy glorious face Is leaning toward me, and its holy light On bended knee, I recognise Thy purpose, clearly shown; I have naught to fear; This darkness is the shadow of Thy wing; Can come no evil thing. Oh! I seem to stand Trembling, where foot of mortal ne'er hath been, Wrapped in the radiance from Thy sinless land, Which eye hath never seen. Visions come and go; Shapes of resplendent beauty round me throng; It is nothing now, When heaven is opening on my sightless eyes, In a purer clime, My being fills with rapture-waves of thought Give me now my lyre! I feel the stirrings of a gift divine: THE LIVE-OAK. H. R. JACKSON WITH his gnarled old arms, and his iron form, Majestic in the wood, From age to age, in the sun and storm, The live-oak long hath stood; With his stately air, that grave old tree, And the generations come and go, And he sternly looks on the wood below, But a mourner sad is the hoary tree, A mourner sad and lone, And is clothed in funeral drapery For the long since dead and gone. For the Indian hunter beneath his shade And he here has wooed his dusky maid- And the tree is red with the gushing gore But the maid is gone, and the chase is o'er, In former days, when the battle's din In his friendly shadow, few and thin, And the stern old oak, how proud was he To shelter hearts so brave! But they all are gone-the bold and free— And the aged oak, with his locks of gray, Is ripe for the sacrifice; For the worm and decay, no lingering prey, He falls, he falls, to become our guard, And his bosom of steel is proudly bared When the battle comes, and the cannon's roar Then nobly he'll bear the bold hearts o'er Oh! may those hearts be as firm and true, THE FAMINE. O THE long and dreary Winter! Hardly from his buried wigwam Fell, and could not rise from weakness, All the earth was sick and famished; And the hungry stars in heaven LONGFELLOW. |