"Ev'n my heart too.' And I propose to-night

To show you what is dearest to my heart,

And my heart too.

"But solve me first a doubt.

I knew a man, not many years ago: He had a faithful servant, one who loved

His master more than all on earth be side.

He falling sick, and seeming close on death,

His master would not wait until he died.

But bade his menials bear him from the door,

And leave him in the public way to die.

I knew another, not so long ago, Who found the dying servant, took him home,

And fed, and cherish'd him, and saved

A veil, that seem'd no more than gilded air,

Flying by each fine ear, an Eastern gauze

With seeds of gold-so, with that grace of hers.

Slow-moving as a wave against the wind,

That flings a mist behind it in the sunAnd bearing high in arms the mighty babe,

The younger Julian, who himself was crown'd

With roses, none so rosy as himselfAnd over all her babe and her the jewels

Of many generations of his house Sparkled and flash'd, for he had decked them out

As for a solemn sacrifice of love-
So she came in :-I am long in telling

it

I never yet beheld a thing so strange, Sad, sweet, and strange togetherfloated in,

While all the guests in mute amazement rose,

And slowly pacing to the middle hall, Before the board, there paused and

stood, her breast

Hard-heaving, and her eyes upon her feet,

Not daring yet to glance at Lionel. But him she carried, him nor lights nor feast

Dazed or amazed, nor eyes of men; who cared

Only to use his own, and staring wide And hungering for the gilt and jewell'd world

About him, look'd, as he is like to prove,

When Julian goes, the lord of all he

And bearing on one arm the noble babe,

He slowly brought them both to Lionel.

And there the widower husband and dead wife

Rnsh'd each at each with a cry, that rather seem'd

For som new death than for a life renew'd;

At this the very babe began to wail; At once they turn'd, and caught and brought him in

To their charm'd circle, and, half killing him

With kisses, round him closed and claspt again.

But Lionel, when at last he freed himself

From wife and child, and lifted up a face

All over glowing with the sun of life, And love, and boundless thanks-the sight of this

So frighted our good friend, that turning to me

And saying, "It is over: let us go-" There were our horses ready at the doors

We bade them no farewell, but mounting these

He past forever from his native land; And I with him, my Julian, back to mine.

WAGES.

GLORY of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song.

Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea

Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong

Nay, but she aim'd not at glory, no lover of glory she:

Give her the glory of going on, and still to be.

The wages of sin is death: if the wages of Virtue be dust.

Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly? She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just,

To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky: Give her the wages of going on, and not to die.

THE HIGHER PANTHEISM.

THE Sun, the moon, the stars, the seas,
the hills and the plains -
Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of
Him who reigns?

Is not the Vision He? tho' He be not that which He seems?

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?

Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb,

Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him?

Dark is the world to thee: thyself art the reason why;

For is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel "I am I?" Glory about thee, without thee; and thou fulfillest thy doom, Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendor and gloom. Speak to Him thou for He hears, and

Spirit with Spirit can meetCloser is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

God is law, say the wise: O Soul, and let us rejoice,

For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His voice.

Law is God, say some no God at all. says the fool;

For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool ; And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see ; But if we could see and hear, this Vision-were it not He?

SONG.

FLOWER in the crannied wall.

I pluck you out of the crannies:Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,

Little flower-but if I could understand

What you are, root and all, and all in all.

I should know what God and man is.

LITERARY SQUABBLES.

An God! the petty fools of rhyme
That shrick and sweat in pigmy wars
Before the stony face of Time,
And look'd at by the silent stars:

Who hate each other for a song,
And do their little best to bite
And pinch their brethren in the throng,
And scratch the very dead for spite :
And strain to make an inch of room
For their sweet selves, and cannot hear
The sullen Lethe rolling doom
On them and theirs and all things
here:

When one small touch of Charity
Conid lift them nearer God-like state
Than if the crowded Orb should cry
Like those who cried Diana great:

to it;

Who loved one only and who clave to her-"

Her-over all whose realms to their last isle,

Commingled with the gloom of imminent war,

The shadow of His loss drew like eclipse.

Darkening the world. We have lost him he is gone:

We know him now: all narrow jealousies

Are silent; and we see him as he moved,

How modest, kindly, all-accomplish'd, wise,

With what sublime repression of himself.

And in what limits, and how tenderly; Not swaying to this faction or to that; Not making his high place the lawless perch

Of wing'd ambitions, nor a vantageground

For pleasure; but thro' all this tract of years

Wearing the white flower of a blameless life.

Before a thousand peering littlenesses, In that fierce light which beats upon a

throne,

And thro' the puissance of his Table Round,

Drew all their petty princedoms under him,

Their king and head, and made a realm, and reign'd.

And thus the land of Cameliard was

waste,

Thick with wet woods, and many a beast therein,

And none or few to scare or chase tho beast;

So that wild dog, and wolf and boar and bear

Came night and day, and rooted in the fields,

And wallowed in the gardens of the king.

And ever and anon the wolf would steal

The children and devour, but now and then,

Her own brood iost or dead, lent her fierce teat

To human sucklings; and the children, housed

In her foul den, there at their meat would growl,

And mock their foster-mother on four feet,

Till, straighten'd, they grew up to wolflike men.

Worse than the wolves. And King Leodogran

Groan'd for the Roman legions here again,

And Caesar's eagle: then his brother

king,

Rience, assail'd him: last a heathen horde,

Reddening the sun with smoke and earth with blood,

And on the spike that split the mother's heart

Spitting the child, brake on him, till, amazed,

He knew not whither he should turn for aid.

But rode a simple knight among his knights,

And many of these in richer arms than he,

She saw him not, or mark'd not, if she saw,

One among many, tho' his face was bare.

But Arthur, looking downward as he past,

Felt the light of her eyes into his life Smite on the sudden, yet rode on, and pitch'd

His tents beside the forest. And he drave

The heathen, and he slew the beast, and fell'd

The forest, and let in the sun, and made

Broad pathways for the hunter and the knight;

And so return'd.

Flash'd forth and into war: for most of these

Made head against him, crying, “Who is he

That he should rulè us? who hath proven him,

King Uther's son ? for lo! we look at him

And find nor face nor bearing, limbs nor voice.

Are like to those of Uther whom we knew.

This is the son of Gorloïs, not the king;

This is the son of Anton, not the king."

And Arthur, passing thence to battle, felt

Travail, and throes and agonies of the life,

Desiring to be join'd with Guinevere ; And thinking as he rode, "Her father

said

Then might we live together as one life,

And reigning with one will in everything

Have power on this dark land to lighten it,

And power on this dead world to make it live."

And Arthur from the field of battle sent

Ulfius, and Brastias, and Bedivere, His new-made knights, to King Leodogran,

Saying, "If I in aught have served thee well,

Give me thy daughter Guinevere to wife."

Whom when he heard, Leodogran in heart Debating-"How should I that am a king,

However much he holp me at my need, Give my one daughter saving to a king, And a king's son "-lifted his voice, and call'd

A hoary man, his chamberlain, to whom

He trusted all things, and of him required

His counsel: "Knowest thou aught of Arthur's birth?"