G

Extreme Unction.

O! leave me, Priest; my soul would be
Alone with the consoler, Death;

Far sadder eyes than thine will see

This crumbling clay yield up its breath : These shriveled hands have deeper stains Than holy oil can cleanse away—

Hands that have plucked the world's coarse gains, As erst they plucked the flowers of May.

Call, if thou canst, to these gray eyes

Some faith from youth's traditions wrung; This fruitless husk which dustward dries, Has been a heart once, has been young; On this bowed head the awful Past

Once laid its consecrating hands; The Future in its purpose vast

Paused, waiting my supreme commands.

But look! whose shadows block the door?
Who are those two that stand aloof?
See! on my hands this freshening gore
Writes o'er again its crimson proof!
My looked-for death-bed guests are met;—
There my dead Youth doth wring its hands,
And there, with eyes that goad me yet,
The ghost of my Ideal stands!

God bends from out the deep and says—
"I gave thee the great gift of life
Wast thou not called in many ways?

Are not my earth and heaven at strife?

I gave thee of my seed to sow,

Bringest thou me my hundred-fold ?” Can I look up with face aglow,

And answer, 66 Father, here is gold ?"

EXTREME UNCTION.

I have been innocent; God knows

When first this wasted life began,
Not grape with grape more kindly grows
Than I with every brother-man ;
Now here I gasp; what lose my kind,

When this fast-ebbing breath shall part?
What bands of love and service bind
This being to the world's sad heart?

Christ still was wandering o'er the earth
Without a place to lay his head;
He found free welcome at my hearth,

He shared my cup and broke my bread;
Now, when I hear those steps sublime,
That bring the other world to this,
My snake-turned nature, sunk in slime,
Starts sideways with defiant hiss.

Upon the hour when I was born,

God said, "Another man shall be;"

And the great Maker did not scorn
Out of himself to fashion me;
He sunned me with his ripening looks,
And Heaven's rich instincts in me grew,

As effortless as woodland nooks

Send violets up and paint them blue.

Yes, I who now, with angry tears,
Am exiled back to brutish clod,

Have borne unquenched for fourscore years
A spark of the eternal God;

And to what end? How yield I back
The trust for such high uses given?
Heaven's light hath but revealed a track
Whereby to crawl away from heaven.

381

Men think it is an awful sight

To see a soul just set adrift

On that drear voyage from whose night
The ominous shadows never lift;
But 't is more awful to behold

A helpless infant newly born,
Whose little hands unconscious hold
The keys of darkness and of morn.

Mine held them once; I flung away
Those keys that might have open set
The golden sluices of the day,

But clutch the keys of darkness yet;—
I hear the reapers singing go

Into God's harvest; I, that might
With them have chosen, here below
Grope shuddering at the gates of night.

O glorious Youth, that once was mine!
O high ideal! all in vain

Ye enter at this ruined shrine

Whence worship ne'er shall rise again;

The bat and owl inhabit here,

The snake nests in the altar-stone, The sacred vessels moulder near,

The image of the God is gone.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

SONG OF THE SILENT LAND.

383

Lines Written in a Bible.

WITHIN this awful volume lies

W

The mystery of mysteries:
O happiest they, of human race,
To whom our God has given grace
To read, to hear, to seek, to pray,
To lift the latch and force the way!
But better they had ne'er been born
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn!

LORD BYRON,

Song of the Silent Land.

NTO the silent land!

IN

Ah! who shall lead us thither?

Clouds in the evening sky more darkly gather,
And shattered wrecks lie thicker on the strand;
Who leads us with a gentle hand

Thither, O thither!

Into the silent land?

Into the silent land!

To you, ye boundless regions

Of all perfection! Tender morning-visions and
Of beauteous souls! The future's pledge and band!
Who in life's battle firm doth stand

Shall bear hope's tender blossoms
Into the silent land!

O land! O land!

For all the broken-hearted,

The mildest herald by our fate allotted
Beckons, and with inverted torch doth stand

To lead us with a gentle hand

Into the land of the great departed-

Into the silent land!

(Translated by H. W. LONGFELLOW.)

J. G. VON SALIS.

The Future Life.

WOW shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps

The disembodied spirits of the dead,

When all of thee that time could wither sleeps

And perishes among the dust we tread?

For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain,
If there I meet thy gentle presence not;
Nor hear the voice I love, nor read again

In thy serenest eyes the tender thought.

Will not thy own meek heart demand me there!
That heart whose fondest throbs to me were given?
My name on earth was ever in thy prayer,
And wilt thou never utter it in heaven?

In meadows fanned by heaven's life-breathing wind,
In the resplendence of that glorious sphere,
And larger movements of the unfettered mind,
Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here?

The love that lived through all the stormy past,
And meekly with my harsher nature bore,

And deeper grew, and tenderer to the last,
Shall it expire with life, and be no more?