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LYRICS OF LIFE.

"HEAP CASSIA, SANDAL-BUDS, AND STRIPES."

H

EAP cassia, sandal-buds, and stripes

Of labdanum, and aloe-balls

Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes
From out her hair: (such balsam falls
Down seaside mountain pedestals,

From summits where tired winds are fain,
Spent with the vast and howling main,
To treasure half their island-gain.)

And strew faint sweetness from some old
Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud,
Which breaks to dust when once unrolled;
And shred dim perfume, like a cloud
From chamber long to quiet vowed,
With mothed and dropping arras hung,
Mouldering the lute and books among
Of queen, long dead, who lived there young.

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O

VER the sea our galleys went,

With cleaving prows in order brave,

To a speeding wind and a bounding wave, A gallant armament:

Each bark built out of a forest-tree,

Left leafy and rough as first it grew,
And nailed all over the gaping sides,
Within and without, with black-bull hides,
Seethed in fat and suppled in flame,
To bear the playful billows' game;
So each good ship was rude to see,
Rude and bare to the outward view,

But each upbore a stately tent;
Where cedar-pales in scented row
Kept out the flakes of the dancing brine:
And an awning drooped the mast below,
In fold on fold of the purple fine,
That neither noontide, nor star-shine,

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"OVER THE SEA OUR GALLEYS WENT."

Nor moonlight cold which maketh mad,

Might pierce the regal tenement.
When the sun dawned, O, gay and glad
We set the sail and plied the oar;
But when the night-wind blew like breath,
For joy of one day's voyage more,
We sang together on the wide sea,
Like men at peace on a peaceful' shore;
Each sail was loosed to the wind so free,
Each helm made sure by the twilight star,
And in a sleep as calm as death,
We, the strangers from afar,

Lay stretched along, each weary crew
In a circle round its wondrous tent,

Whence gleamed soft light and curled rich scent,
And with light and perfume, music too:

So the stars wheeled round, and the darkness past,
And at morn we started beside the mast,
And still each ship was sailing fast!

One morn the land appeared! - a speck
Dim trembling betwixt sea and sky-
Avoid it, cried our pilot, check

The shout, restrain the longing eye!
But the heaving sea was black behind
For many a night and many a day,
And land, though but a rock, drew nigh;
So we broke the cedar-pales away,
Let the purple awning flap in the wind,

And a statue bright was on every deck!
We shouted, every man of us,

And steered right into the harbor thus,
With pomp and pæan glorious.

An hundred shapes of lucid stone!

All day we built a shrine for each

A shrine of rock for every one-
Nor paused we till in the westering sun
We sate together on the beach

7

To sing, because our task was done;
When lo! what shouts and merry songs!
What laughter all the distance stirs !
What raft comes loaded with its throngs
Of gentle islanders?

"The isles are just at hand," they cried;
"Like cloudlets faint at even sleeping,
Our temple-gates are opened wide,

Our olive-groves thick shade are keeping
For the lucid shapes you bring," - they cried.
O, then we awoke with sudden start
From our deep dream; we knew, too late,
How bare the rock, how desolate,

To which we had flung our precious freight :
Yet we called out-" Depart!

Our gifts, once given, must here abide :
Our work is done; we have no heart
To mar our work, though vain,"

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we cried.

"ALL SERVICE RANKS THE SAME WITH GOD."

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LL service ranks the same with God:

If now, as formerly He trod

Paradise, His presence fills

Our earth, each only as God wills

Can work,

God's puppets, best and worst,

Are we; there is no last nor first.

Say not "a small event"! Why "small"?
Costs it more pain than this, ye call
A "great event," should come to pass,
Than that? Untwine me from the mass
Of deeds which make up life, one deed
Power shall fall short in, or exceed!

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