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Her mother, Elfie older grown,
One evening, for adieu,
Said, "You'll not mind being left alone,
For God takes care of you!"

In child-way her heart's eye did see
The correlation's node:...

"Rejoice," said the Sun; "I will make thee gay
With glory and gladness and holiday;
I am dumb, O man, and I need thy voice!"
But man would not rejoice.

"Rejoice in thyself," said he, "O Sun,...

I.

When round the earth the Father's hands
Have gently drawn the dark;
Sent off the sun to fresher lands,
And curtained in the lark;
'Tis sweet, all tired with glowing day,...

A power is on me, and my soul must speak
To thee, thou grey, grey man, whom I behold
With those white-headed children. I am bold
To commune with thy setting, and to wreak...

I.

I have only one foot, but thousands of toes;
My one foot stands well, but never goes;
I've a good many arms, if you count them all,
But hundreds of fingers, large and small;...

I follow, tottering, in the funeral train
That bears my body to the welcoming grave.
As those I mourn not, that entomb the brave,
But smile as those that lay aside the vain;
...

Strait is the path? He means we must not roam?
Yes; but the strait path leads into a boundless home.

Oh holy Sabbath bells,
Ye have a pleasant voice!
Through all the land your music swells,
And man with one commandment tells
To rest and to rejoice.

As birds rejoice to flee...

Said the boy as he read, "I too will be bold,
I will fight for the truth and its glory!"
He went to the playground, and soon had told
A very cowardly story!
...

O Peter, wherefore didst thou doubt?
Indeed the spray flew fast about,
But he was there whose walking foot
Could make the wandering hills take root;
And he had said, "Come down to me,"...

Rich is the fancy which can double back
All seeming forms, and from cold icicles
Build up high glittering palaces where dwells
Summer perfection, moulding all this wrack
To spirit symmetry, and doth not lack...

All things are shadows of thee, Lord;
The sun himself is but thy shade;
My spirit is the shadow of thy word,
A thing that thou hast said.

Diamonds are shadows of the sun,...

I cannot praise thee. By his instrument
The master sits, and moves nor foot nor hand;
For see the organ-pipes this, that way bent,
Leaning, o'erthrown, like wheat-stalks tempest-fanned!
...

On the far horizon there
Heaps of cloudy darkness rest;
Though the wind is in the air
There is stupor east and west.

For the sky no change is making,
Scarce we know it from the plain;...

"Shew us the Father." Chiming stars of space,
And lives that fit the worlds, and means and powers,
A Thought that holds them up reveal to ours--
A Wisdom we have been made wise to trace....

"Good morrow, my lord!" in the sky alone
Sang the lark as the sun ascended his throne.
"Shine on me, my lord: I only am come,
Of all your servants, to welcome you home!...

Oh! is it Death that comes
To have a foretaste of the whole?
To-night the planets and the stars
Will glimmer through my window-bars
But will not shine upon my soul!

For I shall lie as dead...

Lord, I have laid my heart upon thy altar
But cannot get the wood to burn;
It hardly flares ere it begins to falter
And to the dark return.

Old sap, or night-fallen dew, makes damp the fuel;...

A Microcosm In Terza Rima.

I.

Quiet I lay at last, and knew no more
Whether I breathed or not, so worn I lay
With the death-struggle. What was yet before...

Lighter and sweeter
Let your song be;
And for sorrow--oh cheat her
With melody!