Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I
Into the infinite freedom openeth,
And makes the body's dark and narrow grate
The wide-flung leaves of Heaven's palace-gate.
THEY pass me by like shadows, crowds on crowds, Dim ghosts of men, that hover to and fro,
Hugging their bodies round them, like thin shrouds
Wherein their souls were buried long ago:
They trampled on their youth, and faith, and love,
They cast their hope of human-kind away,
With Heaven's clear messages they madly strove,
And conquered,-and their spirits turned to clay.
Lo! how they wander round the world, their grave,
Whose ever-gaping maw by such is fed,
Gibbering at living men, and idly rave,
"We, only, truly live, but ye are dead.”
Alas! poor fools, the anointed eye may trace
A dead soul's epitaph in every face!
I THOUGHT Our love at full, but I did err;
Joy's wreath drooped o'er mine eyes; I could not see
That Sorrow in our happy world must be
Love's deepest spokesman and interpreter.
But, as a mother feels her child first stir
Under her heart, so felt I instantly
Deep in my soul another bond to thee
Thrill with that life we saw depart from her.
O mother of our angel-child! twice dear!
Death knits as well as parts, and still, I wis,
Her tender radiance shall enfold us here;
Even as the light, borne up by inward bliss,
Threads the void glooms of space without a fear,
To print on farthest stars her pitying kiss.
[Born towards 1820, daughter of Mr. White, an opulent citizen of Watertown, Massachusetts; married the poet Lowell in 1844; died towards 1856].
THE MORNING-GLORY.
WE wreathed about our darling's head
The morning-glory bright;
Her little face looked out beneath,
So full of life and light,
So lit as with a sunrise,
That we could only say,
"She is the morning-glory true,
And her poor types are they."
So always from that happy time
We called her by their name,
And very fitting did it seem-
For, sure as morning came,
Behind her cradle-bars she smiled
To catch the first faint ray,
As from the trellis smiles the flower
And opens to the day.
But not so beautiful they rear
Their airy cups of blue
As turned her sweet eyes to the light,
Brimmed with sleep's tender dew;
And not so close their tendrils fine
Round their supports are thrown
As those dear arms whose outstretched plea
Clasped all hearts to her own.
We used to think how she had come
Even as comes the flower,
The last and perfect added gift
To crown love's morning hour,
And how in her was imaged forth
The love we could not say,
As on the little dewdrops round
Shines back the heart of day.
We never could have thought, O God,
That she must wither up
Almost before a day was flown,
Like the morning-glory's cup;
We never thought to see her droop
Her fair and noble head,
Till she lay stretched before our eyes,
Wilted, and cold, and dead!
The morning-glory's blossoming
Will soon be coming round:
We see their rows of heart-shaped leaves
Upspringing from the ground;
The tender things the winter killed
Renew again their birth,
But the glory of our morning
Has passed away from earth.
Oh Earth! in vain our aching eyes
Stretch over thy green plain!
Too harsh thy dews, too gross thine air,
Her spirit to sustain :
But up in groves of paradise
Full surely we shall see
Our morning-glory beautiful
Twine round our dear Lord's knee.
[Born in 1820, died in 1871. Miss Carey, who was mainly selfeducated, published her first volume of poems at the age of eighteen: her longest poetical work is named The Maiden of Tlascala, included in a collection issued in 1855. Her Clovernook Papers and other prose writings have earned considerable popularity, both in America and in England].
BRIGHT inspiration! shadowing my heart
Like a sweet thing of beauty-could I see
Tabor and Carmel ere I hence depart,
And tread the quiet vales of Galilee,
And look from Hermon, with its dew and flowers,
Upon the broken walls and mossy towers
O'er which the Son of Man in sadness wept,
The golden promise of my life were kept.
Alas! the beauteous cities, crowned with flowers,
And robed with royalty! no more in thee,
Fretted with golden pinnacles and towers,
They sit in haughty beauty by the sea:
Shadows of rocks, precipitate and dark,
Rest still and heavy where they found a grave;
There glides no more the humble fisher's bark,
And the wild heron drinks not of the wave.
But still the silvery willows fringe the rills,
Judea's shepherd watches still his fold;
And round about Jerusalem the hills
Stand in their solemn grandeur as of old;
And Sharon's roses still as sweetly bloom
As when the apostles, in the days gone by,
Rolled back the shadows from the dreary tomb,
And brought to light Life's Immortality.
The East has laid down many a beauteous bride
In the dim silence of the sepulchre,
Whose names are shrined in story, but beside
Their lives no sign to tell they ever were
The imperial fortresses of old renown--
Rome, Carthage, Thebes-alas! where are they now? In the dim distance lost and crumbled down;
The glory that was of them from her brow
Took off the wreath in centuries gone by,
And walked the path of shadows silently.
But Palestine! what hopes are born of thee!—
I cannot paint their beauty; hopes that rise,
Linking this perishing mortality
To the bright deathless glories of the skies:
Where the sweet Babe of Bethlehem was born-
Love's mission finished there in Calvary's gloom,
There blazed the glories of the rising morn,
And Death lay gasping there at Jesus' tomb!
OLD STORIES.
No beautiful star will twinkle
To-night through my window-pane,
As I list to the mournful falling
Of the leaves and the autumn rain.
High up in his leafy covert
The squirrel a shelter hath;
And the tall grass hides the rabbit,
Asleep in the churchyard path.
On the hills is a voice of wailing
For the pale dead flowers again,
That sounds like the heavy trailing
Of robes in a funeral train.
Oh if there were one who loved me-
A kindly and grey-haired sire,
To sit and rehearse old stories
To-night by my cabin fire:
The winds as they would might rattle
The boughs of the ancient trees-
In the tale of a stirring battle
My heart would forget all these.
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