Immortal with beauty and vital with youth,

Thou standest, O Love, as thou always hast stood From the wastes of the ages, proclaiming this truth, All peoples and nations are made of one blood.

Ennobled by scoffing and honored by shame,

The chiefest of great ones, the crown and the head, Attested by miracles done in thy name

For the blind, for the lame, for the sick and the dead.

Because He in all things was tempted like me,

Through the sweet human hope, by the cross that He bore,

For the love which so much to the Marys could be, Christ Jesus the man, not the God, I adore.

LIFE'S MYSTERIES.

ROUND and round the wheel doth run,
And now doth rise, and now doth fall .;

How many lives we live in one,

And how much less than one, in all !

The past as present as to-day

How strange, how wonderful! it seems

A player playing in a play,

A dreamer dreaming that he dreams!

But when the mind through devious glooms
Drifts onward to the dark amain,

LIFE'S MYSTERIES.

Her wand stern Conscience reassumes,
And holds us to ourselves again.

Vague reminiscences come back

Of things we seem, in part, to have known, And Fancy pieces what they lack

With shreds and colors all her own

Fancy, whose wing so high can soar,
Whose vision hath so broad a glance,
We feel sometimes as if no more

Amenable to change and chance.

And yet, one tiny thread being broke
One idol taken from our hands,
The eternal hills roll up like smoke,

The earth's foundations shake like sands!

Ah! how the colder pulse still starts
To think of that one hour sublime,
We hugged heaven down into our hearts,
And clutched eternity in time!

When love's dear eyes first looked in ours,

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When love's dear brows were strange to frowns,

When all the stars were burning flowers

That we might pluck and wear for crowns.

We cannot choose but cry and cry-
O, that its joys we might repeat !

When just its mutability

Made all the sweetness of it sweet.

Close to the precipice's brink

We press, look down, and, while we quail From the bad thought we dare not think, Lift curiously the awful vail.

Our wills being set against our wills, And suffer o'er and o'er anew

The penalty our peace that kills.

Great God, we know not what we know
Or what we are, or are to be!

We only trust we cannot go

Through sin's disgrace outside of Thee.

And trust that though we are driven in
And forced upon thy name to call

At last, by very strength of sin,

Thou wilt have mercy on us all!

POEMS OF NATURE AND HOME.

A DREAM OF HOME.

SUNSET! A hush is on the air,

Their gray old heads the mountains bare,
As if the winds were saying prayer.

The woodland, with its broad green wing,
Shuts close the insect whispering,

And lo! the sea gets up to sing.

The day's last splendor fades and dies,
And shadows one by one arise,

To light the candles of the skies.

O wild flowers, wet with tearful dew,
O woods, with starlight shining through,
My heart is back to-night with you!

I know each beech and maple tree,
Each climbing brier and shrub I see,
Like friends they stand to welcome me.

Musing I go along the streams,
Sweetly believing in my dreams;
For fancy like a prophet seems.

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Footsteps beside me tread the sod
As in the twilights gone they trod;
And I unlearn my doubts, thank God!

Unlearn my doubts, forget my fears,
And that bad carelessness that sears
And makes me older than my years.

I hear a dear, familiar tone,
A loving hand is in my own,
And earth seems made for me alone.

If I my fortunes could have planned, I would not have let go that hand; But they must fall who learn to stand.

And how to blend life's varied hues,
What ill to find, what good to lose,
My Father knoweth best to choose.

EVENING PASTIMES.

SITTING by my fire alone, When the winds are rough and cold, And I feel myself grow old

Thinking of the summers flown.

I have many a harmless art To beguile the tedious time: Sometimes reading some old rhyme I already know by heart;