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And round my bier ye come to weep,
Let One, most loving of you all,

Say, 'Not a tear must o'er her fall!

He giveth His beloved, sleep.'

LVII.

E. B. Browning.

THE SABBATH.

RESH glides the brook and blows the gale,
Yet yonder halts the quiet mill;

The whirring wheel, the rushing sail,
How motionless and still!

Six days stern Labour shuts the poor
From Nature's careless banquet-hall;
The seventh, an Angel opes the door,
And, smiling, welcomes all!

A Father's tender mercy gave
This holy respite to the breast,
To breathe the gale, to watch the wave,
And know the wheel may rest!

Six days of toil, poor child of Cain,

Thy strength thy master's slave must be ;
The seventh, the limbs escape the chain—
A God hath made thee free!

The fields that yester-morning knew
Thy footsteps as their serf, survey;
On thee, as them, descends the dew,
The baptism of the day.

Fresh glides the brook and blows the gale,
But yonder halts the quiet mill ;
The whirring wheel, the rushing sail,
How motionless and still!

So rest,―O weary heart !—but, lo,

The church-spire, glist'ning up to heaven,
To warn thee where thy thoughts should go
The day thy God hath given !

Lone through the landscape's solemn rest,
The spire its moral points on high,—
O Soul, at peace within the breast,
Rise, mingling with the sky!

They tell thee, in their dreaming school,
Of Power from old Dominion hurled,
When rich and poor, with juster rule,
Shall share the altered world.

Alas! since Time itself began,

That fable hath but fooled the hour;
Each age that ripens Power in Man,
But subjects Man to Power.

Yet every day in seven, at least,

One bright Republic shall be known ;—
Man's world awhile hath surely ceased,
When God proclaims His own!

Six days may Rank divide the poor,

O Dives, from thy banquet hall—

The seventh the Father opes the door,
And holds His feast for all!

LVIII.

E. L. Bulwer Lytton.

TO A SKYLARK.

AIL to thee, blithe spirit!

Bird thou never wert,

That from heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest;
Like a cloud of fire

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,

O'er which clouds are brightening,

Thou dost float and run;

Like an embodied Joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight;

Like a star of heaven

In the broad day-light

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear,

Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,

From one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not;

What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see,

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody,

Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden

In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden

In a dell of dew,

Scattering unbeholden

Its aërial hue

Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the

view :

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered,

Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingéd thieves.

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was

Joyous and clear and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine :

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal,

Or triumphal chant,

Matched with thine would be all

But an empty vaunt—

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance

Languor cannot be :

Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear;

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

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