In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, Sa'e from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, Day after day we think what she is doing In those bright realms of air; Year after year her tender steps pursuing, Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken, Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, Not as a child shall we again behold her: In our embraces we again enfold her, But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion, And beautiful with all the soul's expansion And though at times, impetuous with emotion The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean, We will be patient, and assuage the feeling We may not wholly stay; By silence sanctifying, not concealing, The grief that must have way. THE BUILDERS. ALL are architects of Fate, Nothing useless is, or low; Each thing in its place is best; For the structure that we raise, Are the blocks with which we build. Truly shape and fashion these; Leave no yawning gaps between; Think not, because no man sees, Such things will remain unseen. In the elder days of Art, Builders wrought with greatest care, Each minute and unseen part; For the Gods see everywhere. Let us do our work as well, Both the unseen and the seen; Else our lives are incomplete, Stumble as they seek to climb. Build to-day, then, strong and sure, Thus alone can we attain To those turrets, where the eye SAND OF THE DESERT IN AN HOUR-GLASS. Within this glass becomes the spy of Time, How many weary centuries has it been Perhaps the camels of the Ishmaelite Perhaps the feet of Moses, burnt and bare, Or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air Or Mary, with the Christ of Nazareth Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and faith Or anchorites beneath Engaddi's palms Pacing the Dead Sea beach, And singing slow their old Armenian psalms Or caravans, that from Bassora's gate Or Mecca's pilgrims, confident of Fate, These have passed over it, or may have passed! And as I gaze, these narrow walls expand;- Stretches the desert with its shifting sand, And borne aloft by the sustaining blast, And onward, and across the setting sun, The column and its broader shadow run, The vision vanishes! These walls again Shut out the hot immeasurable plain, PEGASUS IN POUND. ONCE into a quiet village, It was Autumn, and incessant Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves, Loud the clamorous bell was ringing Not the less he saw the landscape, Thus, upon the village common, By the schoolboys he was found; Then the sombre village crier, And the curious country people, |