University of Virginia Library

SONNETS.

COMMENCEMENT.

The years appear to mock me as they fly,
O heavenly Father! half my life is done,
And yet my work is scarcely well begun.
Grant me the power to do, before I die,
Some work worth doing! Let me glorify
Thee, and my Saviour! Grant me to achieve
Some conquest for mankind; and let me leave
Something behind me which, as time goes by,
Into the common garner may be brought
Of true and pure and fruitful human thought.
On those foundations let me build, which lie
Laid by no mortal hand; and when the flame
Tries all things, what they are and whence they came,
Oh, let my work abide eternally.

COMPLETION.

I know the builder's toil must go for nought
Unless Thou build, Almighty! but I trust
That not in vain from Thee, the Good and Just,
Patience and strength and guidance have I sought.
And now the work Thou gav'st me have I brought
Back to Thee, finished; and I hope to be
Counted a fellow-labourer with Thee,
As one who worthily for truth has wrought.
But if it be that I have toiled in vain,
Let me not, Father! feel too deep a pain
At disappointment of that great reward:
But make my spirit to be one with Thine;
For, whether failure or success be mine,
Truth shall prevail, and Christ be ever Lord.

MARY MAGDALENE ON THE MORNING OF THE RESURRECTION.

A Recollection of Herbert's Picture of that Subject.

CHRIST IN HEAVEN.

Thou who wast dead and livest evermore,
And hast the keys of Hades and of death;
Who givest and who takest life and breath;—
O Thou who standest on the eternal shore,
Beyond the flow of time, beyond the roar
Of change and toil and tumult!—Lord, we know
The heart of love that dwelt in Thee below
Still dwells in Thee, whom Seraphim adore.
And though Thy ways are in the mighty deep,
And though Thy footsteps are by paths unknown,
Thou wilt Thine earthly flock in safety keep,
And lead and guard and guide it for Thine own;
Thou, Heavenly King, art Shepherd of the sheep,
And Thou wilt gather all around Thy throne.

CHRISTMAS IN ARMAGH CATHEDRAL.

With angels and archangels, and with all
The host of Heaven, we magnify Thy Name
Of Saviour, from the highest Heaven who came
To be the Virgin's Son! whom seraphs call
Thrice-Holy, God Almighty!—Let the same
Be echoed in Thy churches here below,
With organ music like the cataract's flow,
And hovering voices like the rainbow's flame
Above the cataract! And when silence falls,
May all that kneel within these sacred walls
Feel on their hearts Thy blessing fall like dew.
And let us bear away, when we depart,
Music of Heaven embalmed in every heart!
For Thou art mighty all things to renew.

ON THE RIVIERA.

SISTER DORA.

O strong and blest, who makest God thy choice,
And bearest in thy heart thy Saviour's ways,
Bidding the vale of misery to rejoice
With showers of blessing on its wintry days!
Thy life of labour is a life of praise;
Thy toil is prayer, thy rest thanksgiving. Go
Onward, from strength to strength increasing; so
Thy God will guide thee through the thorniest maze
Of earthly life, and make all service sweet,
Even to bind the wounds and wash the feet
Alike of sinner and of saint. Go on
And follow in the path thy Saviour trod,
Till thou in Zion stand before thy God,
And hear thy Father's blessing, “Child, well done.”

GRACE FOR GRACE.

Love may bestow itself, but not withdraw;
The gift of love, bestowed, becomes a debt.
Thus Love and Duty in the ring are set
Of holy Marriage, gems without a flaw;
And thus it is that Grace is one with Law
In regions higher and more holy still—
In His divinely human heart and will
Whose heavenly glory the apostles saw.
Not for our merit—merit we have none—
We claim the love of God's eternal Son,
And hope to see the brightness of His face;
For its own sake His love itself bestows,
And out of God's eternal fulness flows,
And for His grace gives ever fuller grace.

INFANCY.

A forest in an acorn lies asleep,
And sunrise waits below the morning star
To flood with spreading light the world afar;
All wisdom in an infant's mind lies deep
Buried and hid, till He Whose angels keep
Charge of the little ones, shall touch and wake
His child to knowledge, life, and power;—shall make
The seed a fruit for husbandmen to reap.
But what the seed is to the full-grown tree,
Or what the child is to the perfect man,
The same is man to what he yet shall be
When Heaven matures the Almighty Father's plan;
His roots are in the past eternity,
His fruit the eternity to come shall see.

MORTALITY.

We live within a prison, which we call
Mortality. Its massive walls and roof
Against the eternal light of Heaven are proof.
In utter darkness it enclosed us all,
Till One arose, our hopes to disenthral;
The Son of God and man, who broke a way
Up through the roof to Heaven; and thence a ray
Does ever since upon the darkness fall.
And they who see it wait in hope the day
When, at the sounding of the trump of might,
The roof and walls shall vanish all away
That hide the heavenly glories from our sight;—
When life shall fling aside its bonds of clay,
And darkness shall be swallowed up of light.

PHILOSOPHY.

Not long ago I thought, my dearest friend,
Like you, that all philosophy was vain,
And barren as the desert's pathless plain
Whose wastes of sand round Tadmor's fanes extend,
And, like the ocean, in the distance blend
With Heaven. But on my soul I felt a spell
Of strong magnetic virtue, to compel
My thoughts toward mightiest mysteries still to bend.
Then found I knowledge that I had not sought,
Like one who roams, the desert to explore,
And, when such dreams are farthest from his thought,
Finds suddenly a vein of precious ore,
And thanks the Power that led him to the spot,
And gathers eagerly the golden store.

ON READING HERBERT SPENCER'S “PSYCHOLOGY.”

I thank thee, sage and seer, that thou hast brought
The widely wandering intellect of man
Back to where first its childhood's walks began;
Where the reality we long have sought
Through clouds and mists and vapours phantom-fraught
Is found upon the firm familiar earth,
Where flowers are bright and children make their mirth,
And mines of knowledge ask but to be wrought.
Again we see “the light of common day”
As when it shone upon our childish way,
Before our souls to wander had been taught.
We see the truths that are most widely true,
Old as the ages, as the morning new,
Revealed in things and imaged back in thought.

CROMWELL.

A gallant ship, upon a stormy tide
Onward and upward borne rejoicingly,
Beyond the common bounds of land and sea;
Then, when the waters ebb, upon the side
Of ocean left, a stranded wreck, to glide
No more where breezes sweep and billows roll:—
Behold a type of the sublimest soul
That has in England reigned since Alfred died.
His visioned hopes, his stormy ardour, bore
Him onward, upward, to a perilous shore,
Then left him desolate in kingly pride.
The dream of glory and the sense of power
That raised the warrior's soul in battle's hour
Were to the lonely despot's heart denied.

ON THE COMPLETION OF COLOGNE CATHEDRAL.

No need for “help of angels to complete
This temple!” it was better far that man,
While centuries passed, should gaze upon its plan
Unfinished and abandoned;—then 'twas meet
The German nation, in the “aspiring heat”
Of its returning life, the work should end;
That from the finished Minster might ascend
The prayer of human faith, with praises sweet.
It stands no longer like a broken vow;
The spires are crowned, the sculpture perfect now,
Keeping the mighty promise of the past.
Oh may this glorious Church a symbol stand
Of German loyalty to fatherland,
And faith in God, while earthly ages last!

WORDSWORTH.

I dreamed I was a poet once; but all
Nature's most mighty spells of sound and sight
Fell on my heart like softest notes that fall,
And, dying, only wake a dumb delight;
And now the charm of all that's dear and bright-
The “glory of the grass” in sparkling showers,
The breath of spring-time in the woodland bowers,
The grandeur of a snowy mountain height,
The starry splendour of the heavenly powers,
The light of sunset on a sleeping sea,
The loveliness of bright-eyed mountain flowers,
The music of the skylark and the bee,
The mirth of children in the summer hours—
I leave to Wordsworth to express for me.

VIRGIL.

“Happy were he who could attain to know
Causes of things, and underneath his feet
Set fear and fate, and the unreturning flow
Of all-devouring Acheron.” Oh! unmeet
Such tearless Stoic calm for thee, the sweet
Half-Christian poet of the Pagan age,
Whom later times esteemed a wizard sage
And Dante as his guide rejoiced to greet;
Tender as woman, and as childhood pure!
Not thoughts like those shall in his mind endure
Who learns aright the lore thy genius brings;
But human sympathy for human woe;
And words of thine which tell that “tears must flow,
And hearts of men are touched by mortal things.”

THE ARABIAN NIGHTS.

In childhood, when the days and years seemed long,
And life a wonderland, I thought that men
Were men indeed. But I have lived since then;
And being now a man among the throng
Of other men, I see that I was wrong.
I find that we are truly children yet;
And hours of sickness or of deep regret;
Mornings of summer, with the skylark's song;
And tales like these—wild wondrous tales of yore,
Which to the child's play of the world belong—
Can bring to grave and care-worn men once more
The thoughts of childhood, with conviction strong
That even though manliness be folded o'er
Our bosoms, we are children at the core.

MIST.

I can rejoice that I have not been born
In southern climes, where heavens are deep and clear;
Where stars are brighter, and the hues of morn
And sunset shine with richer glow than here;
Where spring meets autumn in the circling year;
Where myrtles flower, and palm-trees wave on high;
For, had I lived in such an atmosphere,
The solemn glories of a northern sky
Would bring to me not joy, but gloom and dread;—
The veils of rainy mist that magnify
The mighty hills and glaciers round me spread;
While in the clouds is lost the mountain's head,
And every hollow to the baffled eye
Seems like a sea's unfathomable bed.

GROWING OLD.

Do I retain my childhood's heart? you ask.
No, but far better! I have put away
The childish things and schoolboy's slavish task,
That filled the opening hours of life's long day;
And whether smooth or thorny be the way
Of life, which I so many years have trod,
I find it lightened by a heavenly ray—
I find it lead to freedom and to God.
And He will bear me safely through the wild,
Whatever joy or sorrow He may send;
All is in kindness sent; and reconciled,
And not a stranger, I shall wait the end;
Of God no more a servant, but a child;
Of Christ no more a servant, but a friend.