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O

Weariness.

LITTLE feet! that such long years

Must wander on through hopes and fears,
Must ache and bleed beneath your load;
I, nearer to the wayside Inn,

Where toil shall cease and rest begin,
Am weary, thinking of your road!

O little hands! that weak or strong,
Have still to serve or rule so long,

Have still so long to give or ask ;
I, who so much with book and pen
Have toiled among my fellow-men,

Am weary thinking of your task.

O little hearts! that throb and beat
With such impatient feverish heat,

Such limitless and strong desires;
Mine, that so long has glowed and burned,
With passions into ashes turned

Now covers and conceals its fires.

O little souls! as pure and white

And crystalline as rays of light

Direct from heaven, their source divine; Refracted through the mist of years,

How red my setting sun appears,

How lurid looks this soul of mine!

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW

PRESUMPTION AND DESPAIR.

289

Presumption and Despair.

ON

NE time I was allowed to steer
Through realms of azure light:
Henceforth, I said, I need not fear
A lower, meaner flight;
But here shall evermore abide
In light and splendor glorified.

My heart one time the rivers fed,
Large dews upon it lay;
A freshness it has won, I said,

Which shall not pass away;
But what it is, it shall remain,
Its freshness to the end retain.

But when I lay upon the shore,
Like some poor wounded thing,
I deemed I should not evermore
Refit my shattered wing;

Nailed to the ground and fastened there,
This was the thought of my despair.

And when my very heart seemed dried,
And parched as summer dust,
Such still I deemed it must abide,

No hope had I, no trust

That any power again could bless
With fountains that waste wilderness.

But if both hope and fear were vain,
And came alike to naught,

Two lessons we from this may gain,
If aught can teach us aught:-
One lesson rather to divide
Between our fearfulness and pride.

RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH.

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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, "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 sideway 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.

291

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.

From the Persian.

ON parent knees, a naked, new-born child,

Weeping thou sat'st while all around thee smiled,

So live that, sinking to thy last long sleep,

Calm thou may'st smile, while all around thee weep! SIR WILLIAM JONES.

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