23.

"Talk not of God, my heart is stone!

Nor lover nor friend-be gold for both! Gold I lack; and, my all, my own,

It shall hide in my hair. I scarce die loth. If they let my hair alone!"

24.

Louis-d'ors, some six times five,

And duly double, every piece.

Now, do you see? With the priest to shrive,
With parents preventing her soul's release
By kisses that kept alive,-

25.

With Heaven's gold gates about to ope,

With friends' praise, gold-like, lingering still,

An instinct had bidden the girl's hand grope

For gold, the true sort-"Gold in Heaven, if you

will;

But I keep earth's too, I hope."

26.

Enough! The priest took the grave's grim yield:

The parents, they eyed that price of sin

As if thirty pieces lay revealed

On the place to bury strangers in,

The hideous Potter's Field.

D

27.

But the priest bethought him: "Milk that 's spilt'
-You know the adage! Watch and pray!

Saints tumble to earth with so slight a tilt!
It would build a new altar; that, we may!"
And the altar therewith was built.

28.

Why I deliver this horrible verse?

As the text of a sermon, which now I preach: Evil or good may be better or worse

In the human heart, but the mixture of each Is a marvel and a curse.

29.

The candid incline to surmise of late

That the Christian faith may be false, I find; For our Essays-and-Reviews' debate

Begins to tell on the public mind, And Colenso's words have weight:

30.

I still, to suppose it true, for my part,
See reasons and reasons; this, to begin:
"Tis the faith that launched point-blank her dart
At the head of a lie―taught Original Sin,
The Corruption of Man's Heart.

THE WORST OF IT.

THE WORST OF IT.

1.

WOULD it were I had been false, not you!
I that am nothing, not you that are all :
I, never the worse for a touch or two

On my speckled hide; not you, the pride
Of the day, my swan, that a first fleck's fall
On her wonder of white must unswan, undo!

2.

I had dipped in life's struggle, and out again,
Bore specks of it here, there, easy to see,
When I found my swan and the cure was plain;
The dull turned bright as I caught your white
On my bosom: you saved me-saved in vain
If you ruined yourself, and all through me!