Tl\e TKo&ght of God 
 
 T 
 
FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 REV. LOUIS FITZGERALD BENSON, D. D. 
 
 BEQUEATHED BY HIM TO 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 DMaioi < SClS 
 
 actio. tV%0 
 
By the Same Authors. 
 
 The Thought of 
 
 God in 
 
 Hymns 
 
 and Poems. 
 
 Second 
 
 Series. 
 
 i6mo. Cloth, 
 
 $1.00; 
 
 paper, 
 
 50 cents. 
 
 
 
THE 
 
 THOUG 
 
 IN 
 
 HYMNS AND POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 # 
 
 FREDERICK L. HOSMER 
 
 AND . 
 
 WILLIAM C. GANNETT 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 
 1900 
 
Copyright, 1885 
 
 6Y FREDERICK L. HOSMER AND 
 WILLIAM C. GANNETT 
 
 ©nibcrsttg ^rrgg 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge 
 
TO 
 
 J. Ll. J. 
 
 AND OUR FELLOW-WORKERS IN THE WEST 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 http://archive.org/details/thoughthyOOhosm 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Thought of God F. L. H. . . <J 
 
 Listening for God W. C. G. . . 11 
 
 The Mystery of God F L. H. . . 13 
 
 Consider the Lilies, How they Grow W. C. G. . . 15 
 
 The Secret Place of the Most Higli ,l . . 17 
 
 The Indwelling God F. L. H. . . 19 
 
 The Highway W. O. G. . . 21 
 
 A Psalm of Trust F. L. H. . . 23 
 
 Glories that Remain \V. C. G. . . 25 
 
 The Larger Faith F L H. . . 27 
 
 The Stream of Faith W. C. G. . . 29 
 
 Found F. L H. . . 31 
 
 Theodore W. C. G. . . 33 
 
 My Dead F L. H. . . 35 
 
 Green Pastures and Still Waters . W. C. G. . . 37 
 
 Father, to Thee F. L. H. . . 38 
 
 Through Unknown Paths .... " . . 41 
 
 He that Inhabiteth Eternity ... " . . 43 
 
 On the Mount H . . 45 
 
VI CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Loyalty F. L. H. . . 47 
 
 Passing Understanding ... " . . 49 
 
 The Sunny Side W. C. G. . . 51 
 
 Flower Sunday F, L. H. . . 53 
 
 The Little Ones " . . 54 
 
 Christmas W. C. G. . . 55 
 
 The Children's Service . . . . F. L. H. . . 57 
 
 Jesus Who? W.G. O. . . 60 
 
 Christmas F. L. H. . . 63 
 
 Jesus " . . 65 
 
 The Year of the Lord . . . . W. C. G. . . 67 
 
 The New Year F L. H. . . 69 
 
 The Day " . . 72 
 
 The Hills of the Lord . . . W. C. G. . . 74 
 
 Sunday on the Hill-top ... " . . 77 
 
 The Cathedral ....... " . . 80 
 
 The Past ........ " . . 84 
 
 Summer Chemistry " . . 87 
 
 Where Did it Go ? " . . 89 
 
 Recognition " . . 91 
 
 In a Look " . . 95 
 
 The Fiftieth Anniversary ... " . . 97 
 
 The Teacher " . . 99 
 
 The Cliff at Newport .... F. L. H. .. 100 
 
 In Sleep " . . 101 
 
 Ministry " . . 103 
 
 The Minister's Journey . . . W.CG. . . 104 
 
 In Twos " . . 107 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Vll 
 
 Poem and Dogma . . . 
 
 The Halo 
 
 Not All There 
 
 Let it Begin Here! . . . 
 Aunt Phillis's Guest . . . 
 The Negro Burying-ground 
 Gettysburg in 1885 . . . 
 The Right Goes Marching On 
 Our Country 
 
 W. C G. 
 
 F. L. H. 
 
 PAGE 
 110 
 
 113 
 
 115 
 117 
 119 
 123 
 126 
 129 
 131 
 
THE THOUGHT OF GOD 
 
 One thought I have, my ample creed, 
 
 So deep it is and broad, 
 And equal to my every need, — 
 
 It is the thought of God. 
 
 Each morn unfolds some fresh surprise, 
 
 I feast at Life's full board ; 
 And rising in my inner skies 
 
 Shines forth the thought of God. 
 
 At night my gladness is my prayer; 
 
 I drop my daily load, 
 And every care is pillowed there 
 
 Upon the thought of God. 
 
 I ask not far before to see, 
 
 But take in trust my road ; 
 Lift 1 , death, and immortality 
 
 Are in my thought of God. 
 
10 THE THOUGHT OF GOD 
 
 To this their secret strength they owed 
 The martyr's path who trod ; 
 
 The fountains of their patience flowed 
 From out their thought of God. 
 
 Be still the light upon my way, 
 
 My pilgrim staff and rod, 
 My rest by night, my strength by day, 
 
 blessed thought of God ! 
 
 1880 
 
LISTENING FOR GOD 
 
 I hear it often in the dark, 
 
 I hear it in the light, — 
 Where is the voice that calls to me 
 
 "With such a quiet might ? 
 It seems but echo to my thought, 
 
 And yet beyond the stars ; 
 It seems a heart-beat in a hush, 
 
 And yet the plauet jars ! 
 
 Oh, may it be that far within 
 
 My inmost soul there lies 
 A spirit-sky, that opens with 
 
 Those voices of surprise ? 
 And can it be, by night and day, 
 
 That firmament serene 
 Is just the heaven, where God himself, 
 
 The Father, dwells unseen ? 
 
12 LISTENING FOR GOD 
 
 God within, so close to me 
 
 That every thought is plain, 
 Be Judge, be Friend, be Father still, 
 
 And in thy heaven reign ! 
 Thy heaven is mine, — my very soul ! 
 
 Thy words are sweet and strong ; 
 They fill my inward silences 
 
 With music and with song. 
 
 They send me challenges to right, 
 
 And loud rebuke my ill ; 
 They ring my bells of victory, 
 
 They breathe my ' Peace, be still ! 
 They ever seem to say, — c My child, 
 
 Why seek me so all day ? 
 Now journey inward to thyself. 
 
 And listen by the way ! 7 
 
 Milwaukee, 1S70 
 
THE MYSTERY OF GOD 
 
 thou, in all thy might so far, 
 
 In all thy love so near, 
 Beyond the range of sun and star, 
 
 And yet beside us here, — 
 
 What heart can comprehend thy name, 
 Or, searching, find thee out, 
 
 Who art within, a quickening Flame, 
 A Presence round about ? 
 
 Yet though I know thee but in part, 
 
 I ask not, Lord, for more : 
 Enough for me to know thou art, 
 
 To love thee and adore. 
 
 sweeter than aught else besides, 
 
 The tender mystery 
 That like a veil of shadow hides 
 
 The Light I may not see ! 
 
14 THE MYSTERY OF GOD 
 
 And clearer than all things I know 
 Is childlike faith to me, 
 
 That makes the darkest way I go 
 An open path to thee. 
 
 1S76 
 
CONSIDER THE LILIES, HOW THEY 
 GROW 
 
 He hides within the lily 
 
 A strong and tender care, 
 That wins the earth-born atoms 
 
 To glory of the air ; 
 He weaves the shining garments 
 
 Unceasingly and still, 
 Along the quiet waters, 
 
 In niches of the hill. 
 
 We linger at the vigil 
 
 With him who bent the knee 
 To watch the old-time lilies 
 
 In distant Galilee ; 
 And still the worship deepens 
 
 And quickens into new, 
 As brightening down the ages 
 
 God's secret thrilleth through. 
 
16 CONSIDER THE LILIES 
 
 Toiler of the lily, 
 
 Thy touch is in the Man ! 
 No leaf that dawns to petal 
 
 But hints the angel-plan. 
 The flower-horizons open ! 
 
 The blossom vaster shows ! 
 We hear thy wide worlds echo, — 
 
 See how the lily grows ! 
 
 Shy yearnings of the savage, 
 
 Unfolding thought by thought, 
 To holy lives are lifted, 
 
 To visions fair are wrought ; 
 The races rise and cluster, 
 
 And evils fade and fall, 
 Till chaos blooms to beauty, 
 
 Thy purpose crowning all ! 
 
 F. R. A. Festival, 1873 
 
THE SECRET PLACE OF THE MOST 
 HIGH 
 
 The Lord is in his Holy Place 
 
 In all things near and far! 
 Shekinah of the snowflake, he, 
 
 And Glory of the star, 
 And Secret of the April land 
 
 That stirs the field to flowers, 
 Whose little tabernacles rise 
 
 To hold him through the hours. 
 
 He hides himself within the love 
 
 Of those whom we love best ; 
 The smiles and tones that make our homes 
 
 Are shrines by him possessed ; 
 He tents within the lonely heart 
 
 And shepherds every thought ; 
 We find him not by seeking long, — 
 
 We lose him not, unsought. 
 
 2 
 
1 8 SECRE T PLACE OF THE MOS T HIGH 
 
 Our art may build its Holy Place, 
 
 Our feet on Sinai stand, 
 But Holiest of Holies knows 
 
 No tread, no touch of hand ; 
 The listening soul makes Sinai still 
 
 Wherever we may be, 
 And in the vow, ' Thy will be done ! • 
 
 Lies all Gethsemane. 
 
 For C. W. W., Chicago, 1878 
 
THE INDWELLING GOD 
 
 ' O that I knew where I might find him ! ' 
 
 Go not, my soul, in search of him, 
 Thou wilt not find him there, — 
 
 Or in the depths of shadow dim, 
 Or heights of upper air. 
 
 For not in far-off realms of space 
 The Spirit hath its throne ; 
 
 In every heart it findeth place 
 And waiteth to be known. 
 
 Thought answereth alone to thought, 
 And Soul with soul hath kin ; 
 
 The outward God he findeth not 
 Who finds not God within. 
 
 And if the vision come to thee 
 
 Revealed by inward sign, 
 Earth will be full of Deity 
 
 And with his glory shine! 
 
20 THE INDWELLING GOD 
 
 Thou shalt not want for company 
 Nor pitch thy tent alone ; 
 
 The indwelling God will go with thee 
 And show thee of his own. 
 
 gift of gifts, O grace of grace, 
 That God should condescend 
 
 To make thy heart his dwelling-place 
 And be thy daily Friend ! 
 
 Then go not thou in search of him, 
 
 But to thyself repair ; 
 Wait thou within the silence dim 
 
 And thou shalt find him there I 
 
 1879 
 
THE HIGHWAY 
 
 * Whatever road I take joins the highway that leads to 
 thee. 1 
 
 When the night is still and far, 
 
 Watcher from the shadowed deeps ! 
 When the morning breaks its bar, 
 
 Life that shines and wakes and leaps I 
 When old Bible-verses glow, 
 
 Starring all the deep of thought, 
 Till it fills with quiet dawn 
 
 From the peace our years have brought, — 
 Sun within both skies, we see 
 How all lights lead back to thee 1 
 
 'Cross the field of daily work 
 
 Run the footpaths, leading — where? 
 
 Run they east or run they west, 
 One way all the workers fare. 
 
I THE HIGHWAY 
 
 Every awful thing of earth, — 
 
 Sin and pain and battle-noise ; 
 Every dear thing, — baby's birth, 
 Faces, flowers, or lovers' joys, — 
 Is a wicket-gate, where we 
 Join the great highway to thee ! 
 
 Restless, restless, speed we on, — 
 
 Whither in the vast unknown ? 
 Not to you and not to me 
 
 Are the sealed orders shown : 
 But the Hand that built the road, 
 
 And the Light that leads the feet, 
 And this inward restlessness, 
 
 Are such invitation sweet, 
 That where I no longer see, 
 Highway still must lead to thee I 
 
 For J. W. C, Brooklyn, 1876 
 
A PSALM OF TRUST 
 
 I little see, I little know, 
 
 Yet can I fear no ill : 
 He who hath guided me till now 
 
 Will be my leader still. 
 
 No burden yet was on me laid 
 
 Of trouble or of care, 
 But he my trembling step hath stayed, 
 
 And given me strength to bear. 
 
 I came not hither of my will 
 
 Or wisdom of mine own: 
 That higher Power upholds me still, 
 
 And still must bear me on. 
 
 I knew not of this wondrous earth, 
 Nor dreamed what blessings lay 
 
 Beyond the gates of human birth 
 To glad my future way. 
 
24 A PSALM OF TRUST 
 
 And what beyond this life may be 
 
 As little I divine, — 
 What love may wait to welcome me, 
 
 What fellowships be mine. 
 
 I know not what beyond may lie, 
 
 But look, in humble faith, 
 Into a larger life to die 
 
 And find new birth in death. 
 
 He will not leave my soul forlorn ; 
 
 I still must find him true, 
 Whose mercies have been new each morn 
 
 And every evening new. 
 
 Upon his providence I lean, 
 
 As lean in faith I must : 
 The lesson of my life hath been 
 
 A heart of grateful trust. 
 
 And so my onward way I fare 
 With happy heart and calm, 
 
 And mingle with my daily care 
 The music of my psalm. 
 
 1833 
 
GLOEIES THAT REMAIN 
 
 1 If that which is done away was glorious, much more that 
 which remaineth is glorious.' 
 
 Fairer grows the earth each morning 
 
 To the eyes that watch aright ; 
 Every dew-drop sparkles warning 
 
 Of a miracle in sight ; 
 Of some unsuspected glory 
 
 Waiting in the old and plain ; 
 Poet's dream nor traveller's story 
 
 Words such wonders as remain. 
 
 Everywhere the gate of Beauty 
 
 Fresh across the pathway swings, 
 As we follow truth or duty 
 
 Inward to the heart of things; 
 And we enter, foolish mortals, 
 
 Thinking now the heart to find, — 
 There to gaze on vaster portals ! 
 
 Still the Glory lies behind! 
 
26 GLORIES THAT REMAIN 
 
 Faith I love ! I love you deeper 
 
 As I press your portals through, 
 Heeding not the call of keeper, 
 
 Heeding sole the vision new ! 
 All our creeds are hinting only 
 
 Of a faith, of nobler strain : 
 God is living ! are we lonely- 
 
 'Mid his glories that remain ? 
 
 F. R. A. Festival, 1874 
 
THE LARGER FAITH 
 
 We pray no more, made lowly wise, 
 
 For miracle and sign ; 
 Anoint our eyes to see within 
 
 The common the divine. 
 
 1 Lo here, lo there,' no more we cry, 
 
 Dividing with our call 
 The mantle of thy presence, Lord, 
 
 That seamless covers all. 
 
 We turn from seeking thee afar 
 
 And in unwonted ways, 
 To build from out our daily lives 
 
 The temples of thy praise. 
 
 And if thy casual comings, Lord, 
 To hearts of old were dear, 
 
 What joy shall dwell within the faith 
 That feels thee ever near 1 
 
28 THE LARGER FAITH 
 
 And nobler yet shall duty grow, 
 And more shall worship be, 
 
 When thou art found in all our life, 
 And ail our life in thee. 
 
 1879 
 
THE STREAM OF FAITH 
 
 From heart to heart, from creed to creed, 
 
 The hidden river runs ; 
 It quickens all the ages down, 
 
 It binds the sires to sons, — 
 The stream of Faith, whose source is God, 
 
 Whose sound, the sound of prayer, 
 Whose meadows are the holy lives 
 
 Upspringing everywhere. 
 
 How deep it flowed in olden time, 
 
 When men by it were strong 
 To dare the untrod wilderness, 
 
 Charmed on by river-song ! 
 Where'er they passed by hill or shore, 
 
 They gave the song a voice, 
 Till all the craggy land had heard 
 
 The Father's Faith rejoice. 
 
30 THE STREAM OF FAITH 
 
 And still it moves, a broadening flood ; 
 
 And fresher, fuller grows 
 A sense as if the sea were near, 
 
 Towards which the river flows ! 
 thou, who art the secret Source 
 
 That rises in each soul, 
 Thou art the Ocean too, — thy charm, 
 
 That ever-deepening roll ! 
 
 For J. M., Newburyport, 1875 
 
FOUND 
 
 They that know thy name will put their trust in thee. 
 
 Name, all other names above, 
 
 What art thou not to me, 
 Now I have learned to trust thy love 
 
 And cast my care on thee ! 
 
 What is our being but a cry, 
 
 A restless longing still, 
 Which thou alone canst satisfy, 
 
 Alone thy fulness fill ! 
 
 Thrice blessed be the holy souls 
 That lead the way to thee, 
 
 That burn upon the martyr-rolls 
 And lists of prophecy. 
 
 And sweet it is to tread the ground 
 O'er which therr faith hath trod ; 
 
 But sweeter far, when thou art found, 
 The soul's own sense of God ! 
 
32 FOUND 
 
 The thought of thee all sorrow calms ; 
 Our anxious burdens fall ; 
 His crosses turn to triumph-palms 
 Who finds in God his all. 
 
 1878 
 
THEODORE 
 
 O Heart of all the shining day, 
 
 The green earth's still Delight, 
 Thou Freshness in the morning wind, 
 
 Thou Silence of the night, 
 Thou Beauty of our temple-walls, 
 
 Thou Strength within the stone, — 
 "What is it we can offer thee 
 
 That is not first thine own 1 
 
 Old memories throng : we think of those 
 
 Awhile with us who trod, 
 Whose hands yet lift within our lives, — 
 
 We called them < Gift of God : » 
 And thine these shinings in our thought, 
 
 This eager, love- wrought hope, 
 This deathless faith they wait and watch 
 
 On some fair upper slope. 
 3 
 
34 THEODORE 
 
 O, solemn-sweet the sureness grows, 
 
 When such as they have passed ; 
 The darkness fills, the silence thrills, 
 
 Their life pervades the Vast ; 
 The vanished virtue quickens through 
 
 And touches every star ; 
 Their unseen love — we know it thine, 
 
 Thy Living Love they are ! 
 
 Parker Memorial Dedication, 1873 
 
MY DEAD 
 
 I cannot think of them as dead 
 Who walk with me no more ; 
 
 Along the path of life I tread 
 They have but gone before. 
 
 The Father's house is mansioned fair 
 
 Beyond my vision dim ; 
 All souls are his, and here or there 
 
 Are living unto him. 
 
 And still their silent ministry 
 Within my heart hath place, 
 
 As when on earth they walked with me 
 And met me face to face. 
 
 Their lives are made forever mine; 
 
 What they to me have been 
 Hath left henceforth its seal and sign 
 
 Engraven deep within. 
 
36 MY DEAD 
 
 Mine are they by an ownership 
 Nor time nor death can free ; 
 
 For God hath given to Love to keep 
 Its own eternally. 
 
 1882 
 
GREEN PASTURES AND STILL 
 WATERS 
 
 Clear in memory's silent reaches 
 
 Lie the pastures I have seen, 
 Greener than the sun -lit spaces 
 
 Where the May has flung her green: 
 Needs no sun and needs no starlight 
 
 To illume these fields of mine, 
 For the glory of dead faces 
 
 Is the sun, the stars, that shine. 
 
 More than one I count my pastures 
 
 As my life-path groweth long ; 
 By their quiet waters straying 
 
 Oft I lay me, and am strong. 
 And I call each by its giver, 
 
 And the dear names bring to them 
 Glory as from shining faces 
 
 In some New Jerusalem. 
 
38 GREEN PASTURES 
 
 Yet, well I can remember, 
 
 Once I called my pastures, Pain, 
 And their waters were a torrent 
 
 Sweeping through my life amain ! 
 Now I call them Peace and Stillness, 
 
 Brightness of all Happy Thought, 
 "Where I linger for a blessing 
 
 From my faces that are nought. 
 
 Nought ? I fear not. If the Power 
 
 Maketh thus his pastures green, 
 Maketh thus hi- quiet waters, 
 
 Out of waste his heavens serene, 
 I can trust the mighty Shepherd 
 
 Loseth none he ever led ; 
 Somewhere yet a greeting waits me 
 
 On the faces of my dead ! 
 
 F. R. A. Festival, 1877 
 
FATHER, TO THEE 
 
 Father, to thee we look in all our sorrow, 
 Thou art the fountain whence our healing 
 flows ; 
 Dark though the night, joy cometh with the 
 morrow ; 
 Safely they rest who on thy love repose. 
 
 When fond hopes fail and skies are dark be- 
 fore us, 
 When the vain cares that vex our life in- 
 crease, — 
 Comes with its calm the thought that thou 
 art o'er us, 
 And we grow quiet, folded in thy peace. 
 
 Nought shall affright us on thy goodness 
 leaning, 
 Low in the heart faith singeth still her 
 sons : 
 
40 FATHER, TO THEE 
 
 Chastened by pain we learn life's deeper 
 meaning, 
 And in our weakness thou dost make us 
 strong. 
 
 Patient, heart, though heavy be thy sorrows ! 
 
 Be not cast down, disquieted in vain ; 
 Yet shalt thou praise him when these dark- 
 ened furrows, 
 Where now he plougheth, wave with golden 
 grain. 
 
 1881 
 
THROUGH UNKNOWN PATHS 
 
 thou who art of all that is 
 
 Beginning both and end, 
 We follow thee through unknown paths, 
 
 Since all to thee must tend: 
 Thy judgments are a mighty deep 
 
 Beyond all fathom-line ; 
 Our wisdom is the childlike heart, 
 
 Our strength, to trust in thine. 
 
 We bless thee for the skies above, 
 
 And for the earth beneath, 
 For hopes that blossom here below 
 
 And wither not with death ; 
 But most we bless thee for thyself, 
 
 heavenly Light within, 
 Whose dayspring in our hearts dispels 
 
 The darkness of our sin. 
 
42 THROUGH UNKNOWN PATHS 
 
 Be thou in joy our deeper joy, 
 
 Our comfort when distressed ; 
 Be thou by day our strength for toil, 
 
 And thou by night our rest. 
 And when these earthly dwellings fail 
 
 And Time's last hour is come, 
 Be thou, O God, our dwelling-place 
 
 And our eternal home 1 
 
 1877 
 
HE THAT INHABITETH ETERNITY 
 
 Who does not feel how weak 
 
 Are all our words to speak 
 
 Of him, the Infinite, — 
 
 Below all depth, above all height ! 
 
 Yet hath no other speech 
 
 To me such wondrous reach 
 
 As this the prophet saith : that he 
 
 Inhabiteth Eternity ! 
 
 We dwell in Time : our ear 
 Is deafened by things near ; 
 Darkly we see, and know 
 Only in part, also. 
 From troubles that annoy 
 Plucking no future joy, 
 Sweetening failure's bitterness 
 With no deferred but sure success, — 
 As if the passing hour were all, 
 With it we rise and fall : 
 The while that he 
 Inhabiteth Eternity! 
 
44 HE THA T INHABITE TH E TERNITY 
 
 Patient and suffering long 
 
 With man's mistakes and wrong ; 
 
 Seeing how all threads come 
 
 In place in Time's vast loom, 
 
 And in the finished web fulfil 
 
 The pattern of his perfect will ; 
 
 To whom as one is seen 
 
 What is, will be, hath been, — 
 
 Tranquil and lifted clear 
 
 Above our fevered atmosphere, 
 
 Forever dwelleth he 
 
 In the sure strength of his Eternity ! 
 
 Father of my life, 
 
 Give me, amid its strife, 
 
 To bear within my breast 
 
 The secret of thy rest, — 
 
 The river of thy peace within, 
 
 Whose banks are always fresh and green ; 
 
 Give me, while here in Time I be, 
 
 Also to dwell with thee in thine Eternity. 
 
 1879 
 
ON THE MOUNT 
 
 Not always on the mount may we 
 Kapt in the heavenly vision be; 
 The shores of thought and feeling know 
 The Spirit's tidal ebb and flow. 
 
 Lord, it is good abiding here — 
 We cry, the heavenly presence near : 
 The vision vanishes, our eyes 
 Are lifted into vacant skies 1 
 
 Yet hath one such exalted hour 
 Upon the soul redeeming power, 
 And in its strength through after days 
 We travel our appointed ways ; 
 
 Till all the lowly vale grows bright 
 Transfigured in remembered light, 
 And in untiring souls we bear 
 The freshness of the upper air. 
 
46 ON THE MOUNT 
 
 The mount for vision, — but below 
 The paths of daily duty go, 
 And nobler life therein shall own 
 The pattern on the mountain shown. 
 
 1882 
 
LOYALTY 
 
 When courage fails, and faith burns low, 
 
 And men are timid grown, 
 Hold fast thy loyalty, and know 
 
 That Truth still nioveth on. 
 
 For unseen messengers she hath 
 
 To work her will and ways, 
 And even human scorn and wrath 
 
 God turneth to her praise. 
 
 She can both meek and lordly be, 
 
 In heavenly might secure ; 
 With her is pledge of victory, 
 
 And patience to endure. 
 
 The race is not unto the swift, 
 
 The battle to the strong, 
 When dawn her judgment-days that sift 
 
 The claims of right and wrong. 
 
48 LOYALTY 
 
 And more than thou canst do for Truth 
 
 Can she on thee confer, 
 If thou. heart, but give thy youth 
 
 And manhood unto her. 
 
 For she can make thee inly bright, 
 
 Thy self-love purge away, 
 And lead thee in the path whose light 
 
 Shines to the perfect day. 
 
 Who follow her, though men deride, 
 In her strength shall be strong ; 
 
 Shall see their shame become their pride, 
 And share her triumph-song ! 
 
 1881 
 
PASSING UNDERSTANDING 
 
 The peace of God, that passeth all understanding.' 
 
 Many things in life there are 
 Past our ' understanding ' far, 
 And the humblest flower that grows 
 Hides a secret no man knows. 
 
 All unread by outer sense 
 Lies the soul's experience ; 
 Mysteries around us rise, 
 We, the deeper mysteries ! 
 
 Who hath scales to weigh the love 
 That from heart to heart doth move, 
 The divine unrest within, 
 Or the keen remorse for sin ? 
 
 Who can map those tracks of light 
 Where the fancy wings its flight, 
 Or to outer vision trace 
 Thought's mysterious dwelling-place 1 
 4 
 
50 PASSING UNDERSTANDING 
 
 Who can sound the silent sea 
 Where, with sealed orders, we 
 Voyage from birth's forgotten shore 
 Toward the unknown land before ? 
 
 While we may so little scan 
 Of thy vast creation's plan, 
 Teach us, O our God, to be 
 Humble in our walk with thee ! 
 
 May we trust, through ill and good, 
 Thine unchanging Fatherhood, 
 And our highest wisdom find 
 In the reverent heart and mind ! 
 
 Clearer vision shall be ours, 
 Larger wisdom, ampler powers, 
 And the meaning yet appear 
 Of what passes knowledge here. 
 
 1885 
 
THE SUNNY SIDE 
 
 A silvery tide, called * Sunny Side,* 
 
 G-oes creeping around the earth, 
 And never a place but wins a grace 
 
 In the jubilant flood of mirth, 
 From the dancing gleam on the fretted 
 stream 
 
 To the dimple on baby's cheek, 
 That in and out, to his merry shout, 
 
 Twinkles a hide-and-seek. 
 
 Wherever it goes, the darkness glows 
 
 And men and women sing ; 
 It fills their eyes with a glad surprise, 
 
 And stays their sorrowing ; 
 The heart is a-tune, the world is June, 
 
 Nothing is old or gray, 
 As it passes along with the swell of a song, 
 
 Like a musical break of dav. 
 
52 THE SUNNY SIDE 
 
 Spirit of Love, in the blue above 
 
 Who makest the sun to flame, 
 Who guidest the flight of the planet bright, 
 
 And callest the stars by name, 
 It is thou dost hide in the ' Sunny Side/ 
 
 And creepest from heart to heart ! 
 And, soul or clod, we share the God, 
 
 Who comes, — and the shadows part ! 
 
 1875 
 
FLOWER SUNDAY 
 
 The rose is queen among the flowers, 
 
 None other is so fair : 
 The lily nodding on her stem 
 
 "With fragrance fills the air. 
 But sweeter than the lily's breath 
 
 And than the rose more fair, 
 The tender love of human hearts 
 
 That springeth everywhere. 
 
 The rose will fade and fall away, 
 
 The lily too will die : 
 But love shall live forevermore 
 
 Beyond the starry sky. 
 Then sweeter than the lily's breath 
 
 And than the rose more fair, 
 The tender love of human hearts 
 
 Upspringing everywhere. 
 
 1875 
 
THE LITTLE ONES 
 
 Children's Sunday 
 
 All hidden lie the future ways 
 Their little feet shall fare ; 
 
 But holy thoughts within us stir 
 And rise on lips of prayer. 
 
 To us beneath the noonday heat, 
 Dust-stained and travel- worn, 
 
 How beautiful their robes of white, 
 The freshness of their morn ! 
 
 Within us wakes the childlike heart, 
 Back rolls the tide of years ; 
 
 The silent wells of memory start 
 And flow in happy tears. 
 
 little ones, ye cannot know 
 The power with which ye plead, 
 
 Nor why, as on through life we go, 
 The little child doth lead. 
 
CHRISTMAS 
 
 Still the angels sing on high, 
 Still the bearded men draw nigh, 
 Bringing worship with the morn, 
 "When a little child is born ; 
 Baby-glory in the place, 
 Star-look on the mother's face, 
 Psalm within the mother's heart, — 
 Christmas all in counterpart ! 
 
 Quaintest wight that ever stirred, 
 With thy ears that never heard, 
 Eyes that eye a brand-new world, 
 Tiny limbs but half uncurled, 
 Wee-bit Adam ! wee-bit Christ ! 
 Earth, by thee new-paradised, 
 Blooms to miracles again, 
 Echoes God's ' Good- will to men ! ' 
 
56 CHRISTMAS 
 
 Blessings on the little child 
 In the cave far-off and wild ! 
 For that nursery divine 
 Tells me well, baby mine, 
 That thou art Emmanuel, 
 ' God with us,' come here to dwell, 
 Come to say, ■ Since time began, 
 Son of God is Son of Man.' 
 
 1S75 
 
THE CHILDREN'S SERVICE 
 
 From the German of Karl Gerok 
 
 The church-bells for service are ringing, 
 The father and mother have gone ; 
 
 And three little golden-haired children 
 Are left in the doorway alone. 
 
 For these are too young for the meeting — 
 The busy and frolicsome elves — 
 
 So they think to praise God like their elders 
 "With a holy-time all by themselves ! 
 
 Each one a big volume has taken 
 
 And holds it top-down 'gainst the breast ; 
 
 Forthwith the devout little mimics 
 Sing out in their loudest and best ! 
 
 They know not themselves what they're 
 singing, 
 
 And each takes a tune of his own : — 
 Sing on, ye children, your voices 
 
 Are heard at the heavenly throne ! 
 
58 THE CHILDREN'S SERVICE 
 
 And there stand your angels in glory, 
 While songs to the Father they raise, 
 
 Who out of the mouths of the children 
 Hath perfected worship and praise. 
 
 Sing on ; over there in the garden 
 There singeth an answering choir ; 
 
 'T is the brood of light-hearted birdlings 
 That chirp in the bloom-laden brier. 
 
 Sing on ; there is trust in your music, — 
 The Father, he asks not for more ; 
 
 Quick flieth the heart that is sinless 
 Like a dove to the heavenly door. 
 
 Sing on ; we sing who are older, 
 Yet little we too understand : 
 
 And our Bibles, how often we hold them 
 The bottom-side up in our hand ! 
 
 Sing on ; in the songs of our service 
 We follow each note of the card ; 
 
 But alas, in our strife with each other 
 How oft is the melody marred ! 
 
THE CHILDREN- S SERVICE 59 
 
 Sing on ; for earth's loftiest music 
 Though ever so fine and so clear, 
 
 What is it ? The lisping of children, 
 A breath in the Infinite 
 
 
JESUS WHO? 
 
 1 The other day I told my very little daughter, answering 
 a question of hers, that a certain picture was Jesus. " Jesus 
 who?" said she— " Jesus God?"' 
 
 And are the children prophets, then, 
 
 Or have they lived before, 
 To speak the words so simple-wise, 
 
 And babble spirit-lore ? 
 
 Their wonder plays on questions quaint, 
 
 All vision and surprise, 
 Like clumsy gates whose careless swing 
 
 Reveals half Paradise. 
 
 Yes, little May, you 've said it, — 
 1 God ' is his other name ; 
 
 Ours always ends with Father's ; 
 Yours is the very same. 
 
JESUS WHO? 61 
 
 Our earth is one home only, 
 
 Our Father only one, 
 A.nd all the folks are brothers, 
 
 And every one his son. 
 
 And up and down the city 
 
 Wherever you have trod, 
 It's Mary-, Maud-, and Katy-, 
 
 John-God, and "Willie-God. 
 
 Life and Love, in whom we are, 
 From whom, to whom all lives, 
 
 1 thank thee for the christening 
 Thy little prophet gives. 
 
 The simple Bible long ago 
 
 Hinted the secret well, 
 When child-faith named its hero-babes, 
 
 'Judah' and 'Israel.' 1 
 
 Why strangely sounds the name divine 
 Blending with ours to-day ? 
 
 Is God an ancient lost afar, 
 A fashion gone for aye ? 
 
 Judah,' i. e., Praise God: 'Israel,' i. e., God strives. 
 
62 JESUS WHO? 
 
 Ah, no, but thought too awful grows 
 For name or speech or look : 
 
 In silent floods the secret pours 
 That babbled in the brook. 
 
 1871 
 
CHRISTMAS 
 
 To-day be joy in every heart, 
 
 For lo, the angel throng 
 Once more above the listening earth 
 
 Repeats the advent song : 
 
 1 Peace on the earth, good-will to men ! ' 
 
 Before us goes the star 
 That leads us on to holier births 
 
 And life diviner far ! 
 
 Ye men of strife, forget to-day 
 Your harshness and your hate ; 
 
 Too long ye stay the promised years 
 For which the nations wait ! 
 
 And ye upon the tented field, 
 Sheathe, sheathe to-day the sword ! 
 
 By love, and not by might, shall come 
 The kincrdom of the Lord. 
 
64 CHRISTMAS 
 
 star of human faith and hope ! 
 
 Thy light shall lead us on, 
 Until it fades in morning's glow, 
 
 And heaven on earth is won. 
 
 1877 
 
JESUS 
 
 Immortal by their deed and word, 
 Like light around them shed, 
 
 Still speak the prophets of the Lord, 
 Still live the sainted dead. 
 
 The voice of old by Jordan's flood 
 
 Yet floats upon the air ; 
 We hear it in beatitude, 
 
 In parable and prayer. 
 
 And still the beauty of that life 
 Shines star-like on our way, 
 
 And breathes its calm amid the strife 
 And burden of to-day. 
 
 Earnest of life forevermore, 
 
 That life of duty here, — 
 The trust that in the darkest hour 
 
 Looked forth and knew no fear ! 
 5 
 
JESUS 
 
 Spirit of Jesus, still speed on ! 
 
 Speed on thy conquering way, 
 Till every heart the Father own, 
 
 And all his will obey ! 
 
 1880 
 
THE YEAR OF THE LORD 
 
 Praise to God and thanksgiving ! 
 Hearts, bow down, and voices, sing ! 
 Praises to the Glorious One, 
 All his year of wonder done ! 
 
 Praise him for his budding green, 
 April's resurrection-scene : 
 Praise him for his shining hours, 
 Starring all the land with flowers : 
 
 Praise him for his summer rain, 
 Feeding, day and night, the grain : 
 Praise him for his tiny seed, 
 Holding all his world shall need ! 
 
 Praise him for his garden root, 
 Meadow grass and orchard fruit : 
 Praise for hills and valleys broad, — 
 Each the Table of the Lord ! 
 
THE YEAR OF THE LORD 
 
 Praise him now for snowy rest, 
 Falling soft on Nature's breast : 
 Praise for happy dreams of birth 
 Brooding in the quiet earth ! 
 
 For his year of wonder done, 
 Praise to the All- Glorious One ! 
 Hearts, bow down, and voices, sing 
 Praise and love and thanksgiving ! 
 
 Harvest Festival, St. Paul, 1S82 
 
THE NEW YEAR 
 
 * Behold,' — in vision said 
 The Voice to John on Patmos — 
 
 * I make all things new ! ' 
 Vanish before his view 
 The earth and heavens old ; 
 In splendor manifold 
 
 New heavens and earth appear 
 
 To the enraptured seer: 
 
 And lo ! descending from the skies, 
 
 Fairer than storied paradise, 
 
 He saw the New Jerusalem, — 
 
 Apparelled as a bride 
 
 With gold and precious gem, — 
 
 And heard a Voice that cried : 
 
 1 God's dwelling is with men, 
 
 And he will wipe away all tears, 
 
 And death shall be no more, nor pain 
 
70 THE NEW YEAR 
 
 Passed are the things of former years : 
 
 Behold, I make all things new ! 
 
 Write : for faithful are these words and true. 
 
 So speaks to thee, O heart, 
 
 As the swift years depart 
 
 The re-creating Voice. 
 
 Turn not in vain regret 
 
 To thy fond yesterdays, 
 
 But rather forward set 
 
 Thy face toward the untrodden ways. 
 
 Open thine eyes to see 
 
 The good in store for thee, — 
 
 New love, new thought, new service too 
 
 For him who daily maketh thy life new. 
 
 Nor think thou aught is lost 
 
 Or left behind upon the silent coast 
 
 Of thy spent years ; 
 
 Give o'er thy faithless fears. 
 
 "Whate'er of real good — 
 
 Of thought, or deed, or holier mood — 
 
 Thy life hath known 
 
 Abideth still thine own, 
 
 And hath within significance 
 
THE NEW YEAR 71 
 
 Of more than Time's inheritance. 
 
 Thy good is prophecy 
 
 Of better still to be. 
 
 In the future thou shalt find 
 
 How far the Fact hath left behind 
 
 Thy fondest Dream ; how deeper than all 
 sense 
 
 Or thought of thine, thy life's sure Provi- 
 dence ! 
 
 1881 
 
THE DAY 
 
 Routine of duties, 
 Commonplace cares, — 
 
 Angels disguised 
 
 Entertained unawares ; — 
 
 Sweet human fellowships 
 
 Kindred and near, 
 Drawing the soul from 
 
 Its self atmosphere ; 
 
 The book's friendly company, 
 
 Leading along 
 To fields of new knowledge 
 
 And uplands of song ; 
 
 In-shinings of Nature, 
 
 Morning's red bars, 
 Waysides in beauty, 
 
 Night with its stars ; 
 
THE DAY 73 
 
 The nearer connn union 
 
 In silence apart, 
 When thought blooms to prayer 
 
 And song fills the heart, 
 
 While the things unseen 
 
 Grow more and more real, 
 And life deepens and broadens 
 
 Toward larger ideal : — 
 
 How many the blessings 
 
 Each day has to give 
 The soul that is seeking 
 
 Truly to live! 
 
 1885 
 
THE HILLS OF THE LORD 
 
 God ploughed one day with an earthquake, 
 
 And drove his furrows deep ! 
 The huddling plains upstarted, 
 
 The hills were all a-leap ! 
 
 But that is the mountain's secret, 
 
 Age-hidden in their breast ; 
 1 God's peace is everlasting/ 
 
 Are the dream- words of their rest. 
 
 He hath made them the haunt of beauty, 
 
 The home elect of his grace ; 
 He spreadeth his mornings on them, 
 
 His sunsets light their face. 
 
 His thunders tread in music 
 
 Of footfalls echoing long, 
 And carry majestic greeting 
 
 Around the silent throng. 
 
THE HILLS OP THE LORD \ 
 
 His winds bring messages to them, 
 Wild storm-news from the main ; 
 
 They sing it down to the valleys 
 In the love-song of the rain. 
 
 Green tribes from far come trooping, 
 And over the uplands flock ; 
 
 He weaveth the zones together 
 In robes for his risen rock. 
 
 They are nurseries for young rivers ; 
 
 Nests for his flying cloud ; 
 Homesteads for new-born races, 
 
 Masterful, free, and proud. 
 
 The people of tired cities 
 
 Come up to their shrines and pray ; 
 God freshens again within them, 
 
 As he passes by all day. 
 
 And lo, I have caught their secret, 
 The beauty deeper than all, 
 
 This faith, — that life's hard moments, 
 When the jarring sorrows befall, 
 
76 THE HILLS OF THE LORD 
 
 Are but God ploughing his mountains ; 
 
 And the mountains yet shall be 
 The source of his grace and freshness 
 
 And his peace everlasting to me. 
 
 Whitefield, 1870 
 
SUNDAY ON THE HILL-TOP 
 
 Only ten miles from the city, — 
 And how I am lifted away 
 
 To the peace that passeth knowing, 
 And the light that is not of day ! 
 
 All alone on the hill-top ! 
 
 Nothing but God and me, 
 And the spring-time's resurrection, 
 
 Far shinings of the sea, 
 
 The river's laugh in the valley, 
 Hills dreaming of their past ; 
 
 And all things silently opening, 
 Opening into the Vast ! 
 
 Eternities past and future 
 Seem clinging to all I see, 
 
 And things immortal cluster 
 Around my bended knee. 
 
78 SUNDAY ON THE HILL-TOP 
 
 That pebble — is older than Adam ! 
 
 Secrets it hath to tell ; 
 These rocks — they cry out history, 
 
 Could I but listen well. 
 
 That pool knows the ocean-feeling 
 Of storm and moon-led tide ; 
 
 The sun finds its East and West therein, 
 And the stars find room to glide. 
 
 That lichen's crinkled circle 
 Creeps with the Life Divine, 
 
 Where the Holy Spirit loitered 
 On its way to this face of mine, — 
 
 On its way to the shining faces 
 
 Where angel-lives are led, 
 And J am the lichen's circle 
 
 That creeps with the tiny tread. 
 
 I can hear these violets chorus 
 To the sky's benediction above : — 
 
 And we all are together lying 
 On the bosom of Infinite Love. 
 
SUNDAY ON THE HILL- TOP 79 
 
 I — I am a part of the poem, 
 Of its every sight and sound ; 
 
 For my heart beats inward rhymings 
 To the Sabbath that lies around. 
 
 Oh, the peace at the heart of Nature ! 
 
 Oh, the light that is not of day ! 
 Why seek it afar forever, 
 
 When it cannot be lifted away ? 
 
 Blue Hill, May 21, 1871 
 
THE CATHEDRAL 
 
 Shelf over shelf the mountain rose ; 
 And, as we climbed, they seemed the stair 
 That scales a minster's wall to seek 
 Some high-hid cell of prayer. 
 
 But every stair was carpeted 
 With mosses soft of gray and green, 
 And gold and crimson arabesques 
 Trailed in and out between. 
 
 Up, up, o'er ferny pavements still, 
 O'er dim mosaics of the wood, 
 O'er rocky terraces, we trod, 
 Till on the height we stood. 
 
 About the ancient mountain-walls 
 The silent wildernesses clung ; 
 In solemn frescos, moving slow, 
 The clouds their shadows flung. 
 
THE CATHEDRAL 81 
 
 Along the valley-deeps below 
 The shimmer of a forest floor, — 
 A leafy brightness, like the sea, 
 Wide twinkling o'er and o'er. 
 
 Niched in the mighty minster, we, 
 Beneath the dome of radiant blue : 
 Cathedral-hush on every side, 
 And worship breathing through ! 
 
 There came wild music on the winds, 
 The chanting of the forest choir, 
 Shaken across the ranged hills 
 As over a chorded lyre. 
 
 Then pauses as for quiet prayer, 
 And lulls, in which the listeners heard 
 Home-voices speak, while faces neared 
 Swifter than any bird. 
 
 Of Strength eternal, by whose will 
 The hills their steadfast places keep, 
 Whose Right is like the mountains high, 
 Whose Judgments are a deep, — 
 6 
 
82 THE CATHEDRAL 
 
 In grand old Bible verse we spoke, 
 And following close like echoes sped 
 The poems best beloved. The words 
 Along the silence fled. 
 
 The Silence, awful Living Word 
 Behind all sound, behind all thought, 
 "Whose speech is Xature-yet-to-be, 
 The Poem yet un wrought! 
 
 That day it spake within the soul, 
 Through sense all strangely blent with sense i 
 The vision took majestic rhythm, — 
 We heard the firmament? ! 
 
 And listened, time and space forgot, 
 As flowed the lesson for the day, — 
 c Order is Beauty ; Law is Love ; 
 Childlike his worlds obey.' 
 
 And all the heaven seemed folding down 
 Above the shining earth's sweet face, 
 Till in our heart? they touched ! We felt 
 The thrill of their embrace. 
 
THE CATHEDRAL 83 
 
 Then, in its peace, we wandered down 
 Our rocky staircase from the height ; 
 On dim mosaics of the wood 
 We met the climbing Night. 
 
 Sunday on * Bald Cap,' September, 1876 
 
THE PAST 
 
 For us no Past ? Nay, what is present sweet- 
 ness 
 But yesterdays dissolving in to-day ? 
 No Past ? It flowers in every new complete- 
 ness, 
 And scarce from eye and ear can hide away. 
 
 These berries, mottling bine the rocky hol- 
 lows, 
 Still cluster with the blossom-trick of June ; 
 The cloud-led shadow loiters there and fol- 
 lows 
 O'er crags sun-stained by centuries of noon ; 
 Yon aged pine waves young defiant gesture 
 When hustling winds pant by in wild sea- 
 mood ; 
 The valley's grace in all its shining vesture, — 
 Ages have carved it from the solitude ; 
 
THE PAST 85 
 
 Low sings the stream in murmurs faint re- 
 calling 
 The chant of floods the solitude once heard; 
 And this wide quiet on the hill-tops falling 
 Made hush at eves that listener never 
 stirred. 
 
 And as on us it falls, our laughter stilling, 
 
 Dim echoes cross it of all old delight ! 
 The joy, along the soul's far reaches thrilling 
 
 To glory of the summer day and night, 
 Has been inwrought by many a summer-hour 
 
 Of past selves long forgot, — enrichment 
 slow, 
 Attuning mind and heart with mystic power 
 
 To the fresh marvel of this sunset's glow. 
 I think we see our valley's brightness brighter 
 
 For faces that once brightened by our side ; 
 The peace of the eternal mountains deepens 
 
 At thought of peace on faces that have died. 
 
 For us no Past ? Nay, what is present sweet- 
 ness? 
 Dear yesterdays dissolving in to-day 1 
 
86 THE PAST 
 
 The Past — it flowers in every new complete- 
 ness 
 Of thought, faith, hope ; and so shall be for 
 aye. 
 
 Sunset on ' Crow Nest,' August, 1875 
 
SUMMER CHEMISTRY 
 
 Wliat does it take 
 
 A day to make, — 
 
 A day at the Bear Camp Ossipee ? 
 
 White clouds a-sail in the shining bine, 
 
 Dropping a shadow to dredge the lands ; 
 
 A mountain-wind, and a marching storm, 
 
 And a sound in the trees like waves on 
 
 sands ; 
 A mist to soften the shaggy side 
 Of the great green hill, till it lies as dim 
 As the hills in a childhood memory ; 
 The crags and the ledges silver-chased, 
 "Where yesterday's rainy runlets raced ; 
 The hack of an upland pasture steep, 
 "With delicate fern-beds notching wide 
 The dark wood-line where the birches keep 
 Candlemas all the summer-tide ; 
 Brown-flashing across the meadow bright 
 The stream that gems its malachite ; 
 And, watching his valley, Chocorua grim, 
 And a golden sunset watching him ! 
 
88 SUMMER CHEMISTRY 
 
 Add — fifty lives of young and old, 
 Of tired and sad, of strong and bold, 
 And every heart a deeper sea 
 Than its own owner dreams can be ; 
 Add eyes whose glances have the law 
 Of coursing planets in their draw ; 
 Add careless hands that touch and part, 
 And hands that greet with a heaven's sense 
 Add little children in their glee 
 Uprunning to a mother's knee, 
 Their earliest altar ; add her heart, 
 Their feeble, brooding Providence : — 
 
 Add this to that, and thou shalt see 
 
 "What goes to summer chemistry, — 
 
 What the God takes, 
 
 Each time he makes 
 
 One summer-day at Ossipee. 
 
 Bear Camp River House, West Ossipee, 
 August, 1877 
 
WHERE DID IT GO? 
 
 Where did yesterday's sunset go, 
 When it faded down the hills so slow. 
 And the gold grew dim, and the purple light 
 Like an army with banners passed from 
 
 sight ? 
 Will its flush go into the golden-rod, 
 Its thrill to the purple aster's nod, 
 Its crimson fleck the maple-bough, 
 And the Autumn-glory begin from now ? 
 
 Deeper than flower-fields sank the glow 
 Of the silent pageant passing slow. 
 
 It flushed all night in many a dream, 
 It thrilled in the folding hush of prayer, 
 It glided into a poet's song, 
 It is setting still in a picture rare ; 
 
90 WHERE DID IT GO ? 
 
 It changed by the miracle none can see 
 To the shifting lights of a symphony ; 
 And in resurrections of faith and hope 
 The glory died on the shining slope. 
 
 For it left its light on the hills and seas 
 That rim a thousand memories. 
 
 West Ossipee, 1877 
 
RECOGNITION 
 
 Twice have I turned to hear a tone, 
 
 And thrice have I seen a look, 
 That tell me well the soul that I love 
 
 Is to me but a sealed book. 
 
 'T was only the name of her little child, 
 And a ' Darling ! ' one day as she kissed ; 
 
 But twice those household words were strains 
 Out of exquisite music missed. 
 
 I remember the raptured hour she stood 
 
 With love-light haloing her, 
 When her lips were dim in the crimson tides 
 
 From the deeps of joy astir : 
 
 And once, 'mid the pain of farewell tears 
 
 For an exile seaward doomed, 
 How her form upreached like a quivering 
 stem 
 
 And a new face suddenly bloomed : 
 
92 RECOGNITION 
 
 And then, a day in a shaded room, 
 A day in the valley of Death ; — 
 
 She must journey and wrestle alone, — and 
 we, 
 We waited with bated breath, 
 
 Until the radiant marvel broke 
 
 Of her resurrection-face, 
 And the weary eyes, her victory won, 
 
 So peacefully filled with grace. 
 
 Three days that star-look on us beamed, 
 And the bed was a holy shrine, 
 
 Where soft we worshipped the new-born 
 Child 
 O'erhung by the Mother's sign ! 
 
 Slowly it faded, and welcome grew 
 For the old dear eyes returned, — 
 
 The light of our home, but not the eyes 
 Where the ans;el-look had burned. 
 
 Do you wonder an awe enfolds my love 
 For the presence with whom 1 dwell, — 
 
 My inmost friend, but a stranger too, 
 Whom I know not over well ? 
 
RECOGNITION 93 
 
 Her soul to me is an Upper Land, 
 
 Where mornings rise unseen 
 On pathless mountain-mysteries 
 
 And dells of hidden green. 
 
 I am so glad of her gardens sweet 
 
 Too sacred for me to walk, 
 So glad of the sunlit heights too far 
 
 To echo our mingled talk ! 
 
 And I try to climb and listen and watch ; 
 
 For may be the sense will grow, 
 Till into her loneliness I may press 
 
 And all of her sweetness know ! 
 
 A marvel ! But what if there be a truth 
 
 Passing in wonder this ? 
 Can she be to herself as dim, unknown, 
 
 And the best of her nature miss ? 
 
 Can there be in us all those heights of will 
 And shadowy deeps of thought, 
 
 A land in the heart of each one's life 
 With self-surprises fraught, — 
 
94 RECOGNITION 
 
 Whither, in sudden mystical hours 
 When the conscious self is forgot, 
 
 We are rapt as into an upper self, 
 And stand in the light of a spot, 
 
 Where are born those exquisite tones that 
 stray- 
 To startle the common days, 
 
 And the look that heralds our angel-smile 
 Dawns into our eyes and ways ? 
 
 Only a minute, — and then we are back 
 
 In the meadows far below, 
 Where the life- winds sweep and the life- 
 streams run, 
 
 And nought of their source we know ! 
 
 I verily think that she I love 
 
 Would hardly a meaning trace, 
 Should I speak to her of that twice-heard 
 tone 
 
 And the thrice-illumined face. 
 
 1872 
 
IX A LOOK 
 
 All the Morning in a face, — 
 Freshness of all happy space ! 
 Sense of sunrise in a sky 
 Serious still with stars gone by ; 
 Sense of song in waking woods, 
 Winds a-laugh in solitudes, 
 Dawn surprising dewy fields, 
 Springing sounds as slumber yields, 
 Breaths of prayer, the rush of wings, 
 Morning, deep with happy things ! 
 
 Summer Twilight in a face ! 
 Evening shadows stilling space ; 
 Two stars in a silent sky ; 
 After- calm, — a sun gone by ; 
 "Wood-paths darkening, bird-song closing, 
 Flowers on their stems reposing ; 
 
96 IN A LOOK 
 
 Widening, widening, from the grass 
 Rhythmic tides of music pass, — 
 Pass within, and hush the streams, 
 Whose thought-babble dies in dreams I 
 
 These before me seem to rise, 
 When they look me in the eyes. 
 
 1885 
 
THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 W. H. F. 
 
 Fifty times the years have turned, 
 Since the heart within him burned 
 "With its wistfulness to be 
 An apostle sent of thee. 
 
 Closely in his Master's tread 
 Still to follow, till he read 
 Tone of voice and look of face, 
 Print of wound and sign of grace. 
 
 Reading there for fifty years, 
 Pressing after, till the tears 
 And the smiles would come and go 
 At the self-same joy and woe, — 
 
 Sharing with him shouts of ' Mad !' 
 When the bold front to the bad 
 Bent to pluck the ' little ones' 
 From the feet of fellow-sons, — 
 7 
 
93 THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 Sharing in his inner peace, 
 Sharing all but his release, — 
 He is with us while the chimes 
 Ring our blessing fifty times. 
 
 Listening boys across the field 
 Hear, and hope they may not yield : 
 Are they listening from the air, — 
 Boys who started with him there ? 
 
 Philadelphia, 1S75 
 
THE TEACHER 
 
 G. R. N. 
 
 A LIGHT upon the harvest-field, 
 A ' Well-done ! ' in the air : 
 
 1 Rest- Angel, only weary yield ! ' 
 Rose up his eager prayer. 
 
 Again in work went by the day, 
 Till working hands grew thin ; 
 
 Once more the restful shining lay, — 
 The old man entered in. 
 
 A teacher he, in white-haired youth ; 
 
 The body's cloister, old, — 
 The spirit growing young with Truth 
 
 Through birthdays manifold. 
 
 A teacher he of oracles, 
 And one his life did sing : 
 
 TJie field lies always Harvest-white, 
 If inly lies the Spring. 
 
 Cambridge, 1S68 
 
THE CLIFF AT NEWPORT 
 
 I walk the Cliff, in earlier days oft trod 
 By one whose advent brought new life to 
 
 men ; 
 A prophet of the soul, speaking again 
 To earth-bound hearts of the deep things of 
 
 God. 
 Below, the passionate sea still beats in vain, 
 And white sails gleam along the horizon 
 
 broad ; 
 The same sky bends above — beneath, the 
 
 sod 
 As then is freshened by the Summer rain. 
 But, interfused with all, there shines to-day 
 A beauty born not of the earth or skies, 
 Making twice fair what was so fair before : 
 'T is that a noble Soul has passed this way, 
 Leaving a holy memory to rise 
 And speak to thought and feeling evermore. 
 
 1884 
 
IN SLEEP 
 
 L. N. R. 
 
 * He giveth his beloved (in) sleep.' 
 
 Not in our waking hours alone 
 His constancy and care are known ; 
 But locked in slumber fast and deep 
 He giveth to us while we sleep. 
 
 What giveth He ? From toil release, 
 Quiet from God, night's starlit peace ; 
 Till with the coming of the morn 
 We greet the day, like it new-born. 
 
 And pondering this mystery, 
 There came a larger truth to me, — 
 How in the sleep that we call death 
 He sleepeth not nor slumbereth, 
 
 But still sustains the silent soul 
 Until the shadows backward roll, 
 And with the passing of the night 
 It wakens in immortal light! 
 
102 IN SLEEP 
 
 What giveth He 1 No more again 
 To know the touch of mortal pain ; 
 All weakness past, each fetter riven, — 
 For earth the larger life of heaven ! 
 
 Dear friend, as o'er thy pallid face 
 The tall white lilies breathed their peace, 
 And stillness like a solitude 
 Enwrapt the tearful multitude, 
 
 How sweetly on that sea of calm 
 Floated the music of the psalm, — 
 The Spirit's voice upon the deep, — 
 ' He giveth his beloved sleep ! ' 
 
 Once more the sun with lavish hand 
 Pours lengthening day along the land ; 
 But not with spring-time bloom and bird 
 Thy smile returns, thy voice is heard : 
 
 Yet still we say the old-time words 
 ' In life, in death, we are the Lord's : ' 
 And trust thee to Ids love to keep 
 Who giveth to his own in sleep. 
 
 March 16, 1877 
 
MINISTRY 
 
 E. A. B. 
 
 Just on the threshold of threescore-and- 
 ten — 
 An upward pathway, shining more and 
 
 more — 
 She heard the call, and passed within the 
 door 
 Whence none that enters ever comes again. 
 Henceforth will Want await her step in vain, 
 Wise Charity will have a lessened store : 
 The beatings of a faithful heart are o'er, 
 And struggling Truth has lost a loyal brain. 
 Ah, foolish plaint! Hath God no other 
 sphere 
 For virtue's use, and love, and loyalty, 
 That they should perish with the body's 
 breath ? 
 noble Friend, thy life's long service here 
 Thou crownest now with its best ministry, 
 And quickenest faith beside the door of 
 death ! 
 
 November, 1879 
 
THE MINISTER'S JOURNEY 
 
 Not to the lanes of England, 
 Cathedral-aisles of France, 
 
 Or up the mountain-hollows 
 Where Alpine torrents glance ; 
 
 Not in the storied cities 
 And old highways of life, 
 
 Where shadowy generations 
 Have passed in song and strife ; 
 
 Where Raphael hath painted, 
 
 Or Socrates was born, 
 Or prophets once were cradled 
 
 In Nazareths of scorn ; — 
 
 But on more wonderful journeys 
 Than any the pilgrims know, 
 
 Our traveller has been roving, — 
 The book in his heart can show. 
 
THE MINISTER'S JOURNEY 105 
 
 He has voyaged with the Captains 
 Who sail the seas of thought, 
 
 Daring with them the tempest, 
 Hailing with them the port. 
 
 And many a dreamer's island 
 
 Has added to his lore 
 The hope that made it Patmos, — 
 
 One heavenly vision more. 
 
 In lands men deemed unholy 
 
 He gleaned from every clod 
 Some treasure-trove, revealing 
 
 Horizons new of God. 
 
 Till Heathenesse grew homelike ; 
 
 While the traveller's tale was still 
 Of a Ceaseless Care, whose presence 
 
 Out-worketh good from ill. 
 
 And unto sacred places, 
 
 The Palestines within, 
 By pathways of the Spirit, 
 
 Our traveller hath been. 
 
106 THE MINISTER'S JOURNEY 
 
 Along the silent beaches 
 
 That men call Birth and Death, 
 Rimming our fields of summer, 
 
 Giving us ocean-breath, 
 
 He paces as a watcher 
 
 Watching the tidal sweep ; 
 
 And his greeting is full of music 
 Caught from the central deep. 
 
 He knows the founts of laughter ; 
 
 "Where psalms in mothers rise ; 
 How purpose dawns in manhood, 
 
 And love in maiden eyes. 
 
 In still lanes of confession, 
 In solemn aisles of prayer, 
 
 On Alps of high endeavor, — 
 We meet him everywhere ! 
 
 The others see but Europe, 
 And go as feet may fare ; 
 
 Our pilgrim, still out-sailing, 
 Sees many an Outre-Mer! 
 
 To J. W. C, December 19, 1S34 
 
IN TWOS 
 
 Somewhere in the world there hide 
 Garden-gates that no one sees 
 Save they come in happy twos, — 
 Not in ones, nor yet in threes. 
 
 But from every maiden's door 
 Leads a pathway straight and true ; 
 Map and survey know it not, — 
 He who finds, finds room for two I 
 
 Then they see the garden-gates ! 
 Never skies so blue as theirs, 
 Never flowers so many-sweet, 
 As for those who come in pairs. 
 
 Round and round the alleys wind : 
 Now a cradle bars the way, 
 Now a little mound, behind, — 
 So the two go through the day. 
 
108 IN TWOS 
 
 When no nook in all the lanes 
 But has heard a song or sigh, 
 Lo ! another garden-gate 
 Opens as the two go by. 
 
 In they wander, knowing not ; 
 ' Five and Twenty ! ' fills the air 
 With a silvery echo low, 
 All about the startled pair. 
 
 Happier yet these garden-walks : 
 Closer, heart to heart, they lean ; 
 Stiller, softer, falls the light ; 
 Few the twos, and far between. 
 
 Till, at last, as on they pa?s 
 Down the paths so well they know, 
 Once again at hidden gates 
 Stand the two : they enter slow. 
 
 Golden Gates of ' Fifty Years/ 
 May our two your latchet press ! 
 Garden of the Sunset Land, 
 Hold their dearest happiness i 
 
IN TWOS 109 
 
 Then a quiet walk again : 
 Then a wicket in the wall: 
 Then one, stepping on alone, — 
 Then two at the Heart of All I 
 
 December 22, 1879 
 
POEM AND DOGMA 
 
 *T was Schliemann back from Troy, 
 "With relics bronze and gold : 
 
 Where other eyes saw violets, 
 He saw the city old. 
 
 And, fondling a brown skull, — 
 ' My learned friend,' said he, 
 
 ' Tells me that this a maiden's was, 
 In Troy beyond the sea ; 
 
 And from these angles here 
 
 Of brow and cheek-bone fine, 
 He judges that my maiden was 
 A creature quite divine. 
 
 1 Ah, yes ! ' he added low, 
 
 ' Virchow was right just there, 
 
 For all the maidens of old Troy 
 Were beautiful and rare.' 
 
POEM AND DOGMA 111 
 
 By summer chance we met, 
 And sat in chatting mood : 
 
 Said one, ' How noble Jesus' word 
 In that Beatitude!' 
 
 1 Ah, yes ! ' chimed in a friend, 
 
 ' You speak it truly there, 
 For all that Jesus said or was, 
 Was right beyond compare.' 
 
 * And Paul,' one said, ' was wrong; 
 
 How far from light he trod ! ' — 
 
 * But then, you know,' my lady chirped, 
 
 < 'T is all the Word of God.' 
 
 The artlessness the same ! 
 
 And why should tears half-start 
 Over the fabled beauty gone, — 
 
 Poem of German heart ; 
 
 While, with half-angry thought, 
 
 I smile away the creed 
 Of fabled beauty they would fain 
 
 Persuade me that I need ? 
 
112 POEM AND DOGMA 
 
 Angry ! who know their creeds 
 Were poems, too, — that died ; 
 
 That all the world's old dogmas are 
 Its poems petrified. 
 
 1881 
 
THE HALO 
 
 'One London dealer in birds received, when the fashion 
 was at its height, a single consignment of thirty-two thou- 
 sand dead humming-birds ; and another received at on» 
 time thirty thousand aquatic birds, and three hundred thou- 
 sand pairs of wings.' 
 
 Think what a price to pay, 
 Faces so bright and gay, 
 Just for a hat ! 
 Flowers unvisited, mornings unsung, 
 Sea-ranges bare of the wings that o'er- 
 swung, — 
 Bared just for that! 
 
 Think of the others, too, 
 Others and mothers, too, 
 Bright-Eyes in hat ! 
 Hear you no mother-groan floating in air, 
 Hear you no little moan, — birdlings' de- 
 spair, — 
 Somewhere, for that ? 
 8 
 
114 THE HALO 
 
 Caught 'mid some mother- work, 
 Torn by a hunter Turk, 
 Just for your hat ! 
 Plenty of mother-heart yet in the world: 
 All the more wings to tear, carefully twirled ! 
 Women want that ? 
 
 Oh, but the shame of it, 
 Oh, but the blame of it, — 
 Price of a hat ! 
 Just for a jauntiness brightening the street ! 
 This is your halo, faces so sweet, — 
 Death : and for that I 
 
 1885 
 
NOT ALL THERE 
 
 ' The innocents, of whom the Scotch say, " They are hot 
 all'tJiere." ' 
 
 Something short in the making, — 
 
 Something lost on the way, 
 As the little Soul was taking 
 
 Its path to the break of Day ! 
 
 Only his mood or passion, 
 
 But it twitched an atom lack ; 
 
 And she, for her gods of fashion, 
 Filched from the pilgrim's pack. 
 
 The Father did not mean it, 
 
 The Mother did not know, 
 No human eye had seen it, — 
 
 But the little Soul needed it so ! 
 
 Through the street there passed a crip j tie, 
 Maimed from before its birth ; 
 
 On the strange face gleamed a ripple, 
 Like a half-dawn on the earth. 
 
116 NOT ALL THERE 
 
 It passed, — and it awed the city, 
 As one not alive nor dead : 
 
 Eyes looked and brimmed with pity, 
 ' He is not all there/ they said. 
 
 Not all ! for part is behind it, 
 Lying dropt on the way : 
 
 That part — conld two but find it, 
 How welcome the end of Day ! 
 
 18S3 
 
LET IT BEGIN HERE 
 
 Captain Parker's words on Lexington Green : ' Don't 
 fire, unless you are fired on; but if they want a war, let it 
 begin here ! ' 
 
 The April thrills along the hills, 
 
 The violets wake below, 
 But never to the thrill they knew 
 
 A hundred years ago, 
 What day the calls from pasture-walls 
 
 In echoing signals ran, 
 And swift replied the country-side 
 
 To what they here began. 
 
 ' Let it begin ! ' a Voice within 
 
 The waiting farmers spake, — 
 His voice in whom the Aprils bloom, 
 
 In w T hom the Nations wake ! 
 Old lands had yearned, old dreamers burned 
 
 Fair Freedom's day to win, 
 And still it fled, — the farmers said, 
 
 ' Now let it here besin ! ' 
 
118 LET IT BEGIN HERE 
 
 And at the word a Nation stirred ! 
 
 Without or king or caste, 
 Serene and strong to right their wrong, 
 
 The People rose at last ! 
 All quick to feel the common weal, 
 
 The many in the one, 
 Heart pledged to heart no more to part : 
 
 And this was here begun ! 
 
 For the Lexington Centennial, April 19, 1875 
 
AUNT PHILLIS'3 GUEST 
 
 St. Helena Island in 1S63 
 
 I was young and ' Harry ' was strong, 
 
 The summer was bursting from sky and 
 plain, 
 
 Thrilling our blood as we bounded along, — 
 When a picture flashed, and I dropped the 
 
 A black sea-creek, with snaky run 
 
 Slipping through low green leagues of 
 sedge ; 
 
 An ebbing tide, and a setting sun ; 
 A hut and a woman by the edge. 
 
 Her back was bent and her wool was gray; 
 
 The wrinkles lay close on the withered face; 
 Children were buried and sold away, — 
 
 The Freedom had come to the last of a race ! 
 
120 AUNT PHILL/S'S GUEST 
 
 She lived from a neighbor's hominy-pot ; 
 And praised the Lord, if ' the pain ' passed 
 by; 
 From the earthen floor the smoke curled out 
 Through shingles patched with the bright 
 blue sky. 
 
 < Aunt Phillis, you live here all alone 1 ' 
 I asked, and pitied the gray old head ; 
 
 Sure as a child, in quiet tone, 
 ' Me and Jesus, Massa,' she said. 
 
 I started, for all the place was aglow 
 With a presence I had not seen before ; 
 
 The air was full of a music low, 
 
 And the Guest Divine stood at the door ! 
 
 Ay, it was true that the Lord of Life, 
 Who seeth the widow give her mite, 
 
 Had watched this slave in her weary strife, 
 And shown himself to her longing sight. 
 
 The hut and the dirt, the rags and the skin, 
 The grovelling want and the darkened 
 mind, — 
 
AUNT PHILLIS'S GUEST 121 
 
 I looked on this ; but the Lord, within : 
 I would what he saw was in me to tind ! 
 
 A childlike soul, whose faith had force 
 To see what the angels see in bliss : 
 
 She lived, and the Lord lived ; so, of course, 
 They lived together, — she knew but this. 
 
 And the life that I had almost despised 
 As something to pity, so poor and low, 
 
 Had already borne fruit that the Lord so 
 prized 
 He loved to come near and see it grow. 
 
 No sorrow for her that the life was done : 
 A few days more of the hut's unrest, 
 
 A little while longer to sit in the sun, — 
 Then — He would be host, and she would 
 be guest ! 
 
 And up above, if an angel of light 
 
 Should stop on his errand of love some day 
 
 To ask, ■ Who lives in the mansion bright ? ' 
 1 Me and Jesus,' Aunt Phillis will say. 
 
122 AUNT PHILLIS'S GUEST 
 
 A fancy, foolish and fond, does it seem 1 
 And things are not as Annt Phillises dream 1 
 
 Friend, surely so ! 
 
 For this I know, — 
 That our faiths are foolish by falling below, 
 Not coming above, what God will show ; 
 That his commonest thing hides a wonder 
 
 vast, 
 To whose beauty our eyes have never passed ; 
 That his fact in the present, or in the to-be, 
 Outshines the best that we think we see. 
 
THE NEGRO BURYING-GROUND 
 
 St. Helena Island in 1863 
 
 'Mid the sunny flat of the cotton-field 
 Lies an acre of forest-tangle still ; 
 
 A cloister dim, where the gray moss waves 
 And the live-oaks lock their arms at will. 
 
 Here in the shadows the slaves would hide 
 As they dropped the hoe at death's release, 
 
 And leave no sign but a sinking mound 
 To show where they passed on their way 
 to peace. 
 
 This was the Gate — there was none but 
 this — 
 
 To a Happy Land where men were men ; 
 And the dusky fugitives, one by one, 
 
 Stole in from the bruise of the prison-pen. 
 
 When, lo! in the distance boomed the guns, 
 The bruise was over, and ' Massa' had fled ! 
 
 But Death is the ' Massa ' that never flees, 
 So still to the oaks they bore the dead. 
 
124 THE NEGRO BURYING-GROUNU 
 
 'T was at set of sun ; a tattered troop 
 Of children circled a little grave, 
 
 Chanting an anthem rich in its peace 
 As ever pealed in cathedral-nave, — 
 
 The A, B, C, that the lips below 
 
 Had learnt with them in the school to 
 shout. 
 Over and over they sung it slow, 
 
 Crooning a mystic meaning out. 
 
 A, B, C, D, E, F, G, — 
 
 Down solemn alphabets they swept : 
 The oaks leaned close, the moss swung low, — 
 What strange new sound among them 
 crept ? 
 
 The holiest hymn that the children knew ! 
 'T was dreams come real, and heaven come 
 near ; 
 'T was light, and liberty, and joy, 
 And ' white-folks'-sense/ — and God right 
 here ! 
 
THE NEGRO BURYING-GROUXD L26 
 
 Over and over; they dimly felt 
 
 This was the charm could make black white, 
 This was the secret of ' Massa'a ' pride, 
 
 And this, unknown, made the negro's night. 
 
 What could they sing of braver cheer 
 To speed on her unseen way the friend ? 
 
 The children were facing the mystery Death 
 With the deepest prayer that their hearts 
 could send. 
 
 Children, too, and the mysteries last ! 
 
 We are but comrades with them there, — 
 Stammering over a meaning vast, 
 
 Crooning our guesses of how and where. 
 
 But the children were right with their A, B, C ; 
 
 In our stammering guess so much we say ! 
 The singers were happy, and so are we : 
 
 Deep as our wants are the prayers we pray. 
 
GETTYSBURG IN 1885 
 
 After a visit to the Panorama 
 
 One step from the busy street, and there, 
 With the summer hills around, 
 
 In the heart of a summer day it lie.-*, — 
 A Battle without a sound. 
 
 Whatever of battle the eyes may see — 
 
 The sweep of men to death, 
 The dash of horse, and the rush of gun. 
 
 The musket's fiery breath ; 
 
 The massing clouds of the cannon-smoke, 
 
 The horror of bursting shell, 
 The wreck of wheel and caisson, 
 
 The surgeon's mimic hell ; 
 
 The uptossed arms and the ashen cheek, 
 The droop of the shattered limb, 
 
 The men by the blood-pools in the grass, 
 The bodies stiff and grim. 
 
GETTYSBURG IN 1SS5 127 
 
 We see it all, and we hear no sound ! 
 
 We listen for roar and boom, 
 For the crack and the ping and the bullet's 
 thud : — 
 
 A stillness like the tomb ! 
 
 No rattle to wheel, no clatter to hoof, 
 
 No bugle-call or cry, 
 No fierce hurrah along that line 
 
 Where the columns press to die ; 
 
 Those sullen prisoners give no oath ; 
 
 The face in the grass no groan ; 
 Its ■ Good-bye ! ' reached a thousand miles, 
 
 But we catch never a tone. 
 
 Ah, if we could add sound to sight, 
 And then could paint the strain 
 
 And the splendor in the soldier's heart, 
 Breasting death's hurricane, 
 
 And the flashing signals of his thought 
 
 To homes that signal back, 
 And the woman's face and the climbing child 
 
 That lie in the bullet's track ; 
 
128 GETTYSBURG IN 1885 
 
 And the breathless pause, each pulse-beat 
 hushed, 
 
 Of a watching continent ; 
 And the sense of a nation's fate at stake 
 
 In the awful tournament ; 
 
 And the upturned brows of a million slaves 
 
 Beading the face of God 
 For the word that would lift them into Men, 
 
 Or doom them back to the Clod, — 
 
 Could we rim all this in those summer hills 
 
 And add to what eyes see, 
 In the cloister quaint by the city street 
 
 Then ' Gettysburg ' would be ! 
 
 And yet, as I hark, the soundlessness 
 Seems song of the war's release, 
 
 And the beauty to hint, 'mid Battle's woe, 
 The Battle's after-peace. 
 
THE RIGHT GOES MARCHING ON 
 
 For Decoration Day 
 
 One moment on the scaffold, and he left it 
 
 Holy Ground ! 
 Three hundred thousand heroes now lie 
 
 guarding it around, 
 And reverent hearts are pilgrim still to many 
 
 a sacred mound, — 
 And the Right goes marching on ! 
 
 God had counted up the slave-graves, and 
 heard the black man's moan, 
 
 Till at last his leaping thunder shook the 
 awful Judgment-Throne, — 
 
 * For each lash a cannon-crash ! For each 
 cry a battle-groan ! ' — 
 And the Right goes marching on. 
 
 The Hands wherein the sparrow falls, that 
 
 beckon to the star, 
 Are Hands that harness unseen dooms to 
 
 Wrong's triumphal car, 
 9 
 
130 THE RIGHT GOES MARCHING ON 
 
 And the steeds untiring' draw the nations 
 trembling to the Bar, — 
 And the Right goes marching on ! 
 
 Then, if perchance a nation's Soul from out 
 
 her shame shall rise, 
 And light of Justice kindle fresh within her 
 
 chastened eyes, 
 The God who dooms shall save her by the 
 
 pain that purifies, — 
 And the Right goes marching on ! 
 
 Lo, the flowers are all a-blossom, and the 
 grasses are a-wave 
 
 Where the bodies of our hero dead are sleep- 
 ing in the grave : 
 
 So shall beauty crown salvation through the 
 Hands so strong to save, — 
 And the Right goes marching on ! 
 
 18S4 
 
OUR COUNTRY 
 
 * Beautiful, my Country ! ' 
 
 Be thine a nobler care 
 Than all thy wealth of commerce, 
 
 Thy harvests waving fair : 
 Be it thy pride to lift up 
 
 The manhood of the poor ; 
 Be thou to the oppressed 
 
 Fair Freedom's open door ! 
 
 For thee our fathers suffered, 
 
 For thee they toiled and prayed ; 
 Upon thy holy altar 
 
 Their willing lives they laid. 
 Thou hast no common birthright, 
 
 Grand memories on thee shine ; 
 The blood of pilgrim nations 
 
 Comminoled flows in thine. 
 
132 OUR COUNTRY 
 
 Beautiful, our Country ! 
 
 Round thee in love we draw ; 
 Thine is the grace of Freedom, 
 
 The majesty of Law. 
 Be Righteousness thy sceptre, 
 
 Justice thy diadem ; 
 And on thy shining forehead 
 
 Be Peace the crowning gem ! 
 
 1884 
 
INDEX OF FIEST LINES 
 
 Page 
 
 A light upon the harvest-field 99 
 
 All hidden lie the future ways 54 
 
 All the Morning in a face 95 
 
 And are the children prophets, then .... 60 
 
 A silvery tide, called « Sunny Side ' .... 51 
 
 4 Behold,' — in vision said 69 
 
 Clear in memory's silent reaches 37 
 
 Fairer grows the earth each morning .... 25 
 
 Father, to thee we look in all our sorrow . . 39 
 
 Fifty times the years have turned 97 
 
 For us no Past ? Nay, what is present sweetness 84 
 
 From heart to heart, from creed to creed . . 29 
 
 God ploughed one day with an earthquake . .71 
 
 Go not, my soul, in search of him 19 
 
 He hides within the lily 15 
 
134 INDEX OF FIRST LINES 
 
 Page 
 
 I cannot think of them as dead 35 
 
 I hear it often in the dark 11 
 
 I little see, I little know 23 
 
 Immortal by their deed and word .... 65 
 
 I walk the Cliff, in earlier days oft trod . . 100 
 
 I was young and ' Harry ' was strong . . . 119 
 
 Just on the threshold of threescore-and-ten . 103 
 
 Many things in life there are 49 
 
 'Mid the sunny flat of the cotton-field ... 123 
 
 Not always on the mount may we ... . 45 
 
 Not in our waking hours alone 101 
 
 Not to the lanes of England 104 
 
 ' O Beautiful, my Country ! ' 131 
 
 O Heart of all the shining day 33 
 
 O Name, all other names above 31 
 
 One moment on the scaffold, and he left it 
 
 Holy Ground 129 
 
 One step from the busy street, and there . . 126 
 
 One thought I have, my ample creed ... 9 
 
 Only ten miles from the city 77 
 
 O thou, in all thy might so far 13 
 
 O thou who art of all that is 41 
 
 Praise to God and thanksgiving 67 
 
 Routine of duties 72 
 
INDEX OF FIRST LINES 
 
 135 
 
 Shelf over shelf the mountain rose 
 Something short in the making . 
 Somewhere in the world there hide 
 Still the angels sing on high . . 
 
 The April thrills along the hills . . 
 The church-bells for service are ringing 
 The Lord is in his Holy Place . . . 
 The rose is queen among the flowers 
 Think what a price to pay .... 
 To-day be joy in every heart . . . 
 T was Schlieroann back from Troy . 
 Twice have I turned to hear a tone . 
 
 We pray no more, made lowly wise . 
 
 What does it take 
 
 When courage fails, and faith bums lo" 
 When the night is still and far . . 
 Where did yesterday's sunset go . . 
 Who does not feel how weak . . . 
 
 Paoe 
 
 80 
 
 115 
 
 107 
 
 55 
 
 117 
 57 
 17 
 53 
 
 113 
 63 
 
 110 
 91 
 
 27 
 87 
 47 
 21 
 89 
 43 
 
THE THOUGHT OF GOD 
 
 IN 
 
 HYMNS AND POEMS 
 SeccntJ Scries 
 
By the Same Authors. 
 
 The Thought of 
 
 God in Hymns 
 
 and Poems. 
 
 First 
 
 Series. 
 
 l6mo. Cloth, 
 
 $1.00; 
 
 paper, 
 
 50 cents. 
 
 
 
THE 
 
 THOUGHT OF GOD 
 
 IN 
 
 HYMNS AND POEMS 
 
 SecontJ Series 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERICK L. HOSMER 
 
 AND 
 
 WILLIAM C. GANNETT 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS 
 
 1894 
 
Copyright, 1894 
 
 BY FREDERICK L. HOSMER AND 
 WILLIAM C GANNETT 
 
 SSmbergttg ^regs 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 One Law, One Life, One Love . . . F. L. H. . . 9 
 ' Who Wert and Art and Evermore 
 
 Shalt Be ' W. C. G. . . 11 
 
 In Lonely Vigil F. L. H. . . 13 
 
 Edelweiss : TraJislation " . . 14 
 
 Edelweiss " . . 15 
 
 The Crowning Day W. C. G. . . 16 
 
 The Day of God F. L. H. . . 18 
 
 The Inward Witness " . . 20 
 
 Thou who art Strong to Heal ... " 22 
 
 The Heavenly Helper " . . 24 
 
 Church-Bells W. C. G. . . 26 
 
 Sun-Gleams n og 
 
 The Grace of God F. L. H. . . 30 
 
 In Littles W. C. G. . . 31 
 
 With Self Dissatisfied ...... F L. H. 33 
 
 Behind and Before " .35 
 
 ' Think on These Things ' . . " . . 38 
 
 The Cross on the Flag " . . 40 
 
VI CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 From Generation to Generation . F. L. H. . . 42 
 
 Holy Places " . . 44 
 
 The Building of the Temple . . . W. C. G. . . 46 
 
 The Word of God " . . 48 
 
 Unto Him All Live F. L. H. . . 50 
 
 Easter Morn " . . 51 
 
 Risen " . . 52 
 
 What will the Violets be W. C. G. . . 54 
 
 Over the Land in Glory F. L. H. . . 55 
 
 Easter Festival " . . 57 
 
 Discipleship ........ " . . 59 
 
 The Man of Nazareth " . . 62 
 
 Mary's Manger-Song W. C. G. . . 64 
 
 Whittier F. L. H. . . 66 
 
 Whittier W. C. G. . . 67 
 
 'Nothing but a Poet ' " . . 68 
 
 Rembrandt F. L. H. . . 70 
 
 The Sower " . . 72 
 
 John C. Learned " . . 75 
 
 ' Incarnate Cheer' W. C. G. . . 76 
 
 Thirty Thousand " . . 77 
 
 Golden Wedding " . . 79 
 
 Twilight " . . 82 
 
 ' Death as Friend ' " . . 84 
 
 A. L. G " . . 87 
 
 Alma Mater F. L. H. . . 89 
 
 The Village Meeting-House .... " . . 91 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAG* 
 
 The Days W. C. G. . . 95 
 
 F. L 
 
 H. 
 
 The Old Love-Song .... 
 The Dear Togetherness . . . 
 
 Hero by Brevet 
 
 Nursery Logic 
 
 How Little Jo Named the Baby 
 
 In the Albula Pass 
 
 Coronado Beach 
 
 Dover W 
 
 We See as we Are ....... 
 
 Tree-Surprise . . 
 
 A Day in October F. L. H 
 
 C. G. 
 
 97 
 
 99 
 101 
 103 
 106 
 109 
 111 
 112 
 114 
 115 
 117 
 
ONE LAW, ONE LIFE, ONE LOVE 
 
 O Prophet souls of all the years, 
 
 Bend o'er us from above ; 
 Your far-off vision, toils and tears 
 
 Now to fulfilment move ! 
 
 From tropic clime and zones of frost 
 They come, of every name, — 
 
 This, this our day of Pentecost, 
 The Spirit's tongue of flame ! 
 
 The ancient barriers disappear : 
 Down bow the mountains high ; 
 
 The sea-divided shores draw near 
 In a world's unity. 
 
 One Life together we confess, 
 
 One all-indwelling Word, 
 One holy Call to righteousness 
 
 Within the silence heard : 
 
10 ONE LAW, ONE LIFE, ONE LOVE 
 
 One Law that guides the shining spheres 
 As on through space they roll, 
 
 And speaks in flaming characters 
 On Sinais of the soul : 
 
 One Love, unfathomed, measureless, 
 
 An ever-flowing sea, 
 That holds within its vast embrace 
 
 Time and eternity. 
 
 World's Parliament of Religions 
 Chicago, 1893 
 
'WHO WERT AND ART AND 
 EVERMORE SHALT BE' 
 
 Bring, O Morn, thy music! Bring, O 
 Night, thy hushes ! 
 Oceans, laugh the rapture to the storm-winds 
 coursing free ! 
 Suns and stars are singing, Thou art our 
 Creator, 
 Who wert and art and evermore shalt 
 be! 
 
 Life and Death, thy creatures, praise thee, 
 Mighty Giver ! 
 Praise and prayer are rising in thy beast 
 and bird and tree : 
 Lo ! they praise and vanish, vanish at thy 
 bidding, — 
 Who wert and art and evermore shalt 
 be! 
 
12 ' WHO WERT AND ART' 
 
 Light us ! lead us ! love us ! cry thy grop- 
 ing nations, 
 Pleading in the thousand tongues but nam- 
 ing only thee, 
 Weaving blindly out thy holy, happy pur- 
 pose, — 
 Who wert and art and evermore shalt 
 be! 
 
 Life nor Death can part us, O thou Love 
 Eternal, 
 Shepherd of the wandering star and souls 
 that wayward flee ! 
 Homeward draws the spirit to thy Spirit 
 yearning, — 
 Who wert and art and evermore shalt 
 be! 
 
 1893 
 
IN LONELY VIGIL 
 
 O thou in lonely vigil led 
 To follow Truth's new-risen star 
 Ere yet her morning skies are red, 
 And vale and upland shadowed are, — 
 
 Gird up thy loins and take thy road, 
 Obedient to the vision be : 
 Trust not in numbers ; God is God, 
 And one with Him majority ! 
 
 Soon pass the judgments of the hour, 
 Forgotten are the scorn and blame ; 
 The Word moves on, a gladdening power, 
 And safe enshrines the prophet's fame, 
 
 Now, as of old, in lowly plight 
 The Christ of larger faith is born : 
 The watching shepherds come by night, 
 And then — the kings of earth at morn ! 
 
 Emerson Commemoration, W. U. C, 1888 
 
EDELWEISS 
 
 From the German of Hermann Lingg 
 
 On the rock and girt with ice, 
 Neighbor to the circling star, 
 
 Bloomest thou, dear edelweiss, 
 From all other flowers afar ; 
 
 By their joyous spring unblest, 
 
 Lonely on the rock's cold breast. 
 
 Where the lightnings have their home, 
 And the startled chamois listen, 
 
 Where the plunging waters foam, 
 Eagles reign, and glaciers glisten, — 
 
 Death and terror everywhere, — 
 
 Pure and glad thou bloomest there. 
 
 So stands he in noble pain, 
 
 Lone anear the arching heaven, 
 
 Lonely proud, who worldly gain, 
 Smiles and honors, all has given 
 
 Freely as his freedom's price, — 
 
 As thou bloomest, edelweiss ! 
 
 1891 
 
EDELWEISS 
 
 This edelweiss I wear was not first mine ; 
 
 I had it cheaply in the little town 
 
 Of one who from the mountains had come 
 
 down ; 
 A meek-eyed man, rough-clad, with many a 
 
 sign 
 Of burning sun and of the tempest's frown. 
 Now through the valley, with its corn and 
 
 wine, 
 His star-blooms badge the thronging tourists 
 
 fine 
 Whose feet his toilsome path have never 
 
 known. 
 
 O prophet souls, who with bruised feet have 
 
 trod 
 The heaven-lit heights and thence to us have 
 
 brought 
 Your wider vision, your high-hearted faith, 
 Your hope for Man, your larger thought of 
 
 God, — 
 We wear your edelweiss ; Life's common lot 
 Ever to your high service witnesseth! 
 
 Switzerland, 1888 
 
THE CROWNING DAY 
 
 The morning hangs its signal 
 
 Upon the mountain's crest, 
 
 While all the sleeping valleys 
 
 In silent darkness rest ; 
 From peak to peak it flashes, 
 
 It laughs along the sky 
 That the crowning day is coming by and by 1 
 Chorus: O, the crowning day is coming, 
 Is coming by and by ! 
 We can see the rose of morning, 
 
 A glory in the sky. 
 And that splendor on the hill-tops 
 
 O'er all the land shall lie 
 In the crowning day that 's coming 
 by and by ! 
 
 Above the generations 
 
 The lonely prophets rise, — 
 The Truth flings dawn and day-star 
 
 Within their glowing eyes ; 
 
THE CROWNING DAY 17 
 
 From heart to heart it brightens, 
 
 It draweth ever nigh, 
 Till itcrowneth all men thinking, by and by I 
 Chorus : O, the crowning day is coming ! 
 
 The soul hath lifted moments 
 
 Above the drift of days, 
 When life's great meaning breaketh 
 
 In sunrise on our ways ; 
 From hour to hour it haunts us, 
 
 The vision draweth nigh, 
 Till it crowneth living, dying, by and b) I 
 Chorus : O, the crowning day is coming ! 
 
 And in the sunrise standing, 
 
 Our kindling hearts confess 
 That ' no good thing is failure, 
 
 No evil thing success ! ' 
 From age to age it groweth, 
 
 That radiant faith so high, 
 And its crowning day is coming by and by ! 
 Chorus: O, the crowning day is coming ! 
 
 Music : ' Gospel Hymns,' No. 416. 1886 
 
THE DAY OF GOD 
 
 Thy kingdom come, — on bended knee 
 
 The passing ages pray ; 
 And faithful souls have yearned to see 
 
 On earth that kingdom's day. 
 
 But the slow watches of the night 
 
 Not less to God belong, 
 And for the everlasting Right 
 
 The silent stars are strong. 
 
 And lo ! already on the hills 
 
 The flags of dawn appear ; 
 Gird up your loins, ye prophet souls, 
 
 Proclaim the day is near ! 
 
 The day in whose clear-shining light 
 All wrong shall stand revealed ; 
 
 When justice shall be throned in might, 
 And every hurt be healed : 
 
THE DAY OF GOD 19 
 
 When knowledge hand in hand with peace 
 Shall walk the earth abroad, — 
 
 The day of perfect righteousness, 
 The promised day of God! 
 
 M. T. S , June 12, 1891 
 
THE INWARD WITNESS 
 
 O Thou whose Spirit witness bears 
 
 Within our spirits free 
 That we thy children are and heirs 
 
 Of thine eternity, — 
 
 Here may this simple faith sublime 
 
 O'er-arch us like the sky; 
 Secure below the drift of time 
 
 Its firm foundations lie. 
 
 Our thought o'erflows each written scroll, 
 Our creeds, they rise and fall ; 
 
 The life of God within the soul 
 Lives and outlasts them all. 
 
 Here may that witness clearer grow 
 
 Each waiting heart within, 
 The way of filial duty show 
 
 And slad obedience win. 
 
THE INWARD WITNESS 
 
 Here be life's sorrows sanctified, 
 Here truth her radiance pour ; 
 
 While hope and faith and love abide. 
 Forever more and more ! 
 
 For T K , Omaha, 1891 
 
THOU WHO ART STRONG TO 
 HEAL 
 
 O Fount of Being's sea, 
 Forever flowing free, 
 
 The One in all, — 
 Thou whom no eye e'er saw, 
 Indwelling Love and Law, 
 To thee we suppliant draw, 
 
 On thee we call. 
 
 Be consecrate to truth, 
 In manhood as in youth, 
 
 Our growing powers ; 
 That we may read thy thought 
 Nature and Life inwrought, 
 Thy perfect will be taught, 
 
 And make it ours ! 
 
 Thine image may we own 
 
 In Man, creation's crown. 
 
 These temples thine : 
 
THOU WHO ART STRONG 23 
 
 Holy our calling be, 
 From bonds of pain to free, 
 And bring the liberty 
 Of life divine ! 
 
 Thy presence still abide 
 Within these walls to guide, 
 
 Inspire and bless ; 
 Thou who art strong to heal, 
 The Christ-like touch reveal, 
 And in each spirit seal 
 
 Thy tenderness 1 
 
 Rush Medical College, Chicago, 1891 
 
THE HEAVENLY HELPER 
 
 Unto thee, abiding ever, 
 
 Look I in my need, 
 Strength of every good endeavor, 
 
 Holy thought and deed ! 
 
 Thou dost guide the stars of heaven. 
 
 Heal the broken heart, 
 Bring in turn the morn and even, — 
 
 Law and Love thou art. 
 
 Clouds and darkness are about thee. 
 
 Just and sure thy throne, — 
 Not a sparrow falls without thee.. 
 
 All to thee is known. 
 
 Origin and end of being, 
 \ All things in and through, — 
 Light thou art of all my seeing, 
 Power to will and do. 
 
THE HEAVENLY HELPER 25 
 
 Through my life, whate'er betide me. 
 
 Thou my trust shalt be ; 
 Whom have I on earth beside thee, 
 
 Whom in heaven but thee ? 
 
 1886 
 
CHURCH-BELLS 
 
 Over hills and valleys, 
 
 Over prairies wide, 
 Quiet call the church-bells 
 
 To the altar-side. 
 High in old cathedrals 
 
 Chant the brazen lips, 
 Down the leafy by-ways 
 
 Airy pleading slips. 
 
 In his toil the worker 
 
 Pauses at the sound, — 
 Heaven a little nearer, 
 
 Earth a holier ground. 
 At the sound the Sundays 
 
 With low music fill, — 
 Hark ! the lands are singing, 
 
 Then with prayers are still. 
 
 Softer than the church-bells 
 With their mellow peal, 
 
 Softer, sweeter calling, 
 Mystic voices steal ; 
 
CHURCH BELLS 27 
 
 All the shadowy valleys 
 
 Memory calls her own, 
 All the spirit's hill-tops 
 
 Listen for the tone. 
 
 Every soul that listens 
 
 Hears the secret chime, — 
 Bells from quiet inlands 
 
 Out of space or time; 
 Mother-tones will stir them, 
 
 Child-appeals will start, 
 Hero-deeds will set them 
 
 Ringing in the heart. 
 
 Matin calls of duty 
 
 Wake us every day ; 
 'Mid each happy labor 
 
 Angelus says ' Pray 1 ' 
 Every hour that passes 
 
 Hath a vesper end, 
 Breathing, ' One who sleeps not 
 
 Is thy constant Friend.' 
 
28 CHURCH BELLS 
 
 Every hope that wings us, 
 
 Making eagle-free, 
 Every shame that bows us, 
 
 Every loyalty, 
 Each new joy and laughter, 
 
 Sorrows old that bide, — 
 Are God's church-bells calling 
 
 To an altar-side. 
 
 1891 
 
SUN-GLEAMS 
 
 As silent as the sun-gleam in the forest, 
 As quiet as the shadow on the hill, 
 
 Is the shining of the Spirit in our dimness, 
 Is the falling of its calm upon our will. 
 
 But subtler than the sun-lift in the leaf-bud, 
 That thrills through all the forests, mak- 
 ing May, 
 And stronger than the strength that plants 
 the mountains, 
 Is that shining in the heart-lands, bringing 
 day. 
 
 Ausablk Ponds, 1889 
 
THE GRACE OF GOD 
 
 'My grace is sufficient for thee ' 
 
 'Mid my life's vicissitude, 
 Seeming evil mixed with good ; 
 'Mid its pleasure and its pain, 
 Alternating loss and gain, — 
 Be thou still my staff and rod, 
 
 Like a pilgrim here I pass, 
 Darkly see as through a glass ; 
 Little know I of the way, 
 What shall be I cannot say, — 
 Let thy light upon me shine, 
 All-sufficient grace divine ! 
 
 'Mid my ever-changing mood 
 God who changeth not is good ; 
 And his word within I have, 
 He wdl guard the life he save, - 
 Sing, my soul, along thy road, 
 Happy in the grace of God. 
 
 1877 
 
IN LITTLES 
 
 A little House of Life, 
 With many noises rife, 
 
 Noises of joy and crime ; 
 A little gate of birth 
 Through which I slipped to Earth 
 
 And found myself in Time. 
 
 And there, not far before, 
 Another little door, 
 
 One day to swing so free ! 
 None pauses there to knock, 
 No other hand tries lock, — 
 
 It knows, and waits for me. 
 
 From out what Silent Land 
 I came, on Earth to stand 
 
 And learn life's little art, 
 Is not in me to say : 
 I know I did not stray, — 
 
 Was sent ; to come, my part. 
 
32 m LITTLES 
 
 And down what Silent Shore 
 Beyond yon little door 
 
 I pass, I cannot tell ; 
 I know I shall not stray, 
 Nor ever lose the way, — 
 
 Am sent ; and all is well. 
 
 1891 
 
WITH SELF DISSATISFIED 
 
 Not when, with self dissatisfied, 
 
 O Lord, I lowly lie, 
 So much I need thy grace to guide, 
 
 And thy reproving eye, — 
 
 As when the sound of human praise 
 
 Grows pleasant to my ear, 
 And in its light my broken ways 
 
 Fair and complete appear. 
 
 By failure and defeat made wise, 
 
 We come to know at length 
 What strength within our weakness lies, 
 
 What weakness in our strength : 
 
 What inward peace is born of strife, 
 What power, of being spent ; 
 
 What wings unto our upward life 
 Is noble discontent. 
 3 
 
34 WITH SELF DISSATISFIED 
 
 O Lord, we need thy shaming look 
 That burns all low desire ; 
 
 The discipline of thy rebuke 
 Shall be refining fire ! 
 
 1893 
 
BEHIND AND BEFORE 
 
 1 One thing I do ; the things behind forget- 
 ting 
 And reaching forward to the things before, 
 Unto the goal, the prize of God's high calling. 
 Onward I press,' — said that great soul of 
 yore. 
 
 And in the heart, like strains of martial 
 music, 
 Echo the words of courage, trust, and 
 cheer, 
 The while we stand, half hoping, half re- 
 gretting, 
 Between the coming and the parting year. 
 
 Behind are joys, fond hopes that found ful- 
 filment, 
 Sweet fellowships, glad toil of hand and 
 brain. 
 
36 BEHIND AND BEFORE 
 
 Unanswered prayers, burdens of loss and 
 sorrow, 
 Faces that look no more in ours again. 
 
 Before us lie the hills, sunlit with promise, 
 Fairer fulfilments than the past could 
 know, 
 New growths of soul, new leadings of the 
 Spirit, 
 And all the glad surprises God will show. 
 
 All we have done, or nobly failed in doing, 
 All we have been, or bravely striven to be, 
 
 Makes for our gain, within us still surviving 
 As power and larger possibility. 
 
 All, all shall count; the mingled joy and 
 sorrow 
 
 To force of finer being rise at last : 
 From the crude ores in trial's furnace smelted 
 
 The image of the perfect life is cast. 
 
 1 Onward I press, the things behind forget- 
 ting 
 And reaching forward to the things be- 
 fore : ' 
 
BEHIND AND BEFORE 37 
 
 Ring the brave words like strains of martial 
 music 
 As we pass through the Xew Year's 
 opened door. 
 
 1890 
 
'THINK ON THESE THINGS' 
 
 1 Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things 
 are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatso- 
 ever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, 
 whatsoever things are of good report, if there be 
 any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on 
 these things.' 1 
 
 Whatsoever is just and pure, 
 
 Think on these things, my soul ! 
 Earth shall vanish, but these endure, 
 Think on these things, my soul ! 
 When all else shall fail thee, 
 These shall still avail thee ; 
 Think on these things, strive for these things, 
 Cherish these things, my soul ! 
 
 Truth and honor, they call to thee, 
 Think on these things, my soul ! 
 
 What of virtue and praise there be, 
 Think on these things, my soul ! 
 
THINK ON THESE THINGS 39 
 
 These have been the glory 
 Of all human story ; 
 Think on these things, strive for these things, 
 Cherish these things, my soul ! 
 
 Faithful spirits before have gone, 
 
 Think on these things, my soul 1 
 Grand thy heritage, hero-won, 
 Think on these things, my soul ! 
 From all brave endeavor 
 Springeth good forever ; 
 Think on these things, strive for these things, 
 Cherish these things, my soul 1 
 
 Music: 'Gospel Hj-mns,' No. 282 
 
THE CROSS ON THE FLAG 
 
 From age to age they gather, all the brave 
 
 of heart and strong, 
 In the strife of truth with error, of the right 
 
 against the wrong ; 
 I can see their gleaming banner, I can hear 
 
 their triumph-song : 
 
 The Truth is marching on ! 
 
 ' In this sign we conquer ; ' 't is the symbol 
 
 of our faith, 
 Made holy by the might of love triumphant 
 
 over death ; 
 He finds his life who loseth it, forevermore 
 
 it saith : 
 
 The Right is marching on ! 
 
 The earth is circling onward out of shadow 
 into light ; 
 
 The stars keep watch above our way, how- 
 ever dark the night : 
 
THE CROSS ON THE FLAG 41 
 
 For every martyr's stripe there glows a bar 
 ning bright : 
 And Love is marching on ! 
 
 of morning bright : 
 
 Lead on, O cross of martyr-faith, with thee 
 
 is victory ! 
 Shine forth, O stars and reddening dawn, 
 
 the full day yet shall be ! 
 On earth his kingdom cometh, and with joy 
 
 our eyes shall see : 
 
 Our God is marching on ! 
 
 For S. S. H., Decorah, Ia., 1891 
 
FROM GENERATION TO GENERA- 
 TION 
 
 O Light, from age to age the same, 
 
 Forever living Word, — 
 Here have we felt thy kindling flame, 
 
 Thy voice within have heard. 
 
 Here holy thought and hymn and prayer 
 Have winged the spirit's powers, 
 
 And made these walls divinely fair, — 
 Thy temple, Lord, and ours. 
 
 What visions rise above the years, 
 What tender memories throng, 
 
 Till the eye fills with happy tears, 
 The heart with grateful song ! 
 
 Vanish the mists of time and sense ; 
 
 They come, the loved of yore, 
 And one encircling Providence 
 
 Holds all for evermore. 
 
PROM GENERATION, ETC. 43 
 
 O, not in vain their toil who wrought 
 To build faith's freer shrine, — 
 
 Xor theirs whose steadfast love and thought 
 Have watched the fire divine. 
 
 Burn, holy fire, and shine more wide ! 
 
 While systems rise and fall, 
 Faith, hope, and charity abide, 
 
 The heart and soul of all. 
 
 Quinct, III. : Fiftieth Anniversary, 1890 
 
HOLY PLACES 
 
 Where men on mounts of vision 
 
 Have passed the veil within, 
 Where hearts bowed in contrition 
 
 Have risen from their sin, 
 Where light on upturned faces 
 
 Earth's Calvaries has crowned, - 
 Here are her holy places, 
 
 This, consecrated ground. 
 
 Where life is nobly given 
 
 And man for man has died, 
 Where bonds of wrong are riven 
 
 And right is glorified, — 
 One faith the spirit traces, 
 
 Brightening from age to age ; 
 These are earth's holy places 
 
 And shrines of pilgrimage. 
 
HOLY PLACES 45 
 
 Here, Lord, may thy revealing 
 
 In waiting hearts be known, 
 Here holier thought and feeling 
 
 The secret Presence own : 
 May prayer and aspiration, 
 
 In-shinings of thy grace, 
 And sorrow's consolation 
 
 Make this our holy place ! 
 
 Still from the spirit's essence 
 
 All things new meaning win; 
 The temple of thy presence 
 
 Is ever, Lord, within. 
 May outward dedication 
 
 Have inward seal and sign, 
 The spirit's consecration 
 
 Make beautiful the shrine ! 
 
 For C. W. W., Oakland, Cal., 1891 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE 
 
 THE CORNER-STONE 
 
 He laid his rocks in courses, 
 
 His forest crowned the hill, 
 He yoked the ancient forces 
 
 And lent them to our will ; 
 The heart he woke to duty, 
 
 He graced the builder's thought, — 
 He gave Creation beauty, 
 
 And he the Temple wrought ! 
 
 Now, Father, build within us 
 
 The Temple's counterpart, 
 Deep laid in holy purpose, 
 
 Fair colored of the heart ; 
 Its windows heaven-lighted, 
 
 Peace and Good- will its plan, 
 Its towers our Faith and Worship, 
 
 Its doors the Love of Man ! 
 
 1888 
 
BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE 47 
 THE DEDICATION 
 
 To cloisters of the spirit 
 
 These aisles of quiet lead : 
 Here may the vision gladden, 
 
 The voice within us plead I 
 And may the dear All-Father, 
 
 Who maketh trouble cease, 
 Here send his two, the blessed, 
 
 His angels Shame and Peace ! 
 
 Here be no man a stranger ; 
 
 No holy cause be banned ; 
 No good for one be counted 
 
 Not good for all the land ! 
 And here for prophet voices 
 
 The message never fail, — 
 1 God reigns ! His Truth shall conquer, 
 
 And Right and Love prevail 1 ' 
 
 1894 
 
THE WORD OF GOD 
 
 It sounds along the ages, 
 
 •Soul answering to soul ; 
 It kindles on the pages 
 
 Of every Bible scroll ; 
 The psalmists heard and sang it, 
 
 From martyr-lips it broke, 
 And prophet-tongues outrang it 
 
 Till sleeping nations woke. 
 
 From Sinai's cliffs it echoed, 
 
 It breathed from Buddha's tree, 
 It charmed in Athens' market, 
 
 It gladdened Galilee ; 
 The hammer-stroke of Luther, 
 
 The Pilgrims' sea-side prayer, 
 The oracles of Concord, 
 
 One holy Word declare. 
 
THE WORD OF GOD 49 
 
 It dates each new ideal, — 
 
 Itself it knows not time; 
 Man's laws but catch the music 
 
 Of its eternal chime. 
 It calls — and lo, new Justice ! 
 
 It speaks — and lo, new Truth ! 
 In ever nobler stature 
 
 And unexhausted youth. 
 
 It even-where arriveth ; 
 
 Recks not of small and great ; 
 It shapes the unborn atom, 
 
 It tells the sun its fate. 
 The wing-beat of archangel 
 
 Its boundary never nears : 
 Forever on it soundeth 
 
 The music of the spheres ! 
 1894 
 
UNTO HIM ALL LIVE 
 
 O Lord of Life, where'er they be, 
 Safe in thine own eternity, 
 Our dead are living unto thee. 
 
 All souls are thine and, here or there, 
 They rest within thy sheltering care ; 
 One providence alike they share. 
 
 Thy word is true, thy ways are just ; 
 Above the requiem ' dust to dust ' 
 Shall rise our psalm of grateful trust. 
 
 O happy they in God who rest, 
 
 No more by fear and doubt oppressed ; 
 
 Living or dying they are blest. 
 
 Alleluia ! 
 
 1888 
 
EASTER MORN 
 
 Ox eyes that watch through sorrow's night, 
 
 On aching hearts and worn, 
 Rise thou with healing in thy light, 
 
 O happy Easter morn ! 
 
 The dead earth wakes beneath thy rays, 
 
 The tender grasses spring ; 
 The woods put on their robes of praise, 
 
 And flowers are blossoming. 
 
 O shine within the spirit's skies, 
 
 Till, in thy kindling glow, 
 From out the buried memories 
 
 Immortal hopes shall grow : 
 
 Till from the seed oft sown in grief, 
 
 And wet with bitter tears, 
 Our faith shall bind the harvest sheaf 
 
 Of the eternal years ! 
 
 1890 
 
RISEN 
 
 They came, bringing spices, at break of the 
 
 day 
 
 With hearts heavy-laden and sore, 
 
 And, lo, from the tomb was the stone rolled 
 away, 
 
 An angel sat there by the door ! 
 
 1 Why seek ye the living 'mid emblems of 
 
 death? 
 
 Not here, he is risen,' the shining one saith. 
 
 type through the ages and symbol of faith. 
 Whose spirit is true evermore : 
 
 The hearts we have cherished we lose not in 
 
 death, 
 The grave over love hath no power. 
 There sitteth the angel, there speaketh the 
 
 word, — 
 
 1 Not here, they are risen,' in silence is 
 
 heard. 
 
RISEN 53 
 
 O ye who still watch in the valley of tears 
 
 And wait for the night to go by, 
 Lift, lift up your eyes, on the mountains 
 appears 
 The day-spring of God from on high ! 
 He turneth the shadows of night into day, — 
 • Not here, they are risen,' his shining ones 
 say. 
 
 Santa Barbara, 1894 
 
WHAT WILL THE VIOLETS BE? 
 
 S. A. M. 
 
 What will the violets be 
 
 There in the Spring of springs ? 
 What will the bird-song be 
 
 Where the very tree-bough sings ? 
 What will their Easter be 
 
 Where never are dead to mourn, 
 But brightly the faces ask, 
 
 1 O, when will the rest be born ? ' 
 
 Brighter the Easter shines 
 
 On the faces here below, 
 That they are behind the flowers, 
 
 The heart of the living glow. 
 Beautiful secret, wait ! 
 
 A morrow or two, and we 
 Shall know in the Spring of springs 
 
 What the violets will be. 
 1886 
 
OVER THE LAND IN GLORY 
 
 Over the land in glory 
 
 Breaketh the Easter morn : 
 Nature repeateth her story, — 
 
 Life out of death new-born ! 
 Lo, the year 's at the Spring, 
 
 Buds are blossoming, 
 Earth and heavens sing : 
 
 Life is life forever, evermore ! 
 
 Listen, the birds are singing, 
 
 Softly the south winds play ; 
 Bells in the steeples ringing 
 
 Welcome the festal day : 
 And the message they bear 
 
 On the radiant air 
 
 Chides sorrow and fear : 
 
 Life is life forever, evermore ! 
 
56 OVER THE LAND IN GLORY 
 
 Skies of the spirit brighten, 
 
 Hopes like the birds return : 
 Hearts with the promise lighten, — 
 
 ' Blessed are they that mourn.' 
 To each winter a Spring 
 
 God will surely bring, 
 
 And the heart shall sing : 
 
 Life is life forever, evermore ! 
 
 Music : ' King's-Chapel Carols,' No. 49. 1890 
 
EASTER FESTIVAL 
 
 Lo, the Day of days is here, 
 Earth puts on her robes of cheer : 
 Day of hope and prophecy, 
 Feast of Immortality ! 
 Fields are smiling in the sun, 
 Loosened streamlets seaward run, 
 Tender blade and leaf appear, 
 'T is the Springtide of the year ! 
 Day of hope and prophecy, 
 Feast of Immortality ! 
 
 Lo, the Day of days is here, 
 Hearts, awake and sing with cheer ! 
 He who robes his earth anew 
 Careth for his children too. 
 They who look to him in faith 
 Triumph over fear and death ; 
 Speaks the angel by the door 
 • They are risen ' evermore. 
 
58 EASTER FESTIVAL 
 
 Day of hope and prophecy, 
 Feast of Immortality ! 
 
 Lo, the Day of days is here, 
 Music thrills the atmosphere. 
 Join, ye people all, and sing 
 Love and praise and thanksgiving ! 
 Rocky steep or flowery mead, 
 One the Shepherd that doth lead ; 
 One the hope within us born, 
 One the joy of Easter morn ! 
 Day of hope and prophecy, 
 Feast of Immortality ! 
 
 Music : ' King's-Chapel Carols,' No. 4. 1890 
 
DISCIPLESHIP 
 
 On the Judaean hills 
 
 Would I have seen the light 
 The watching shepherds saw, 
 
 Turning to noon the night V 
 Would I have seen the star 
 
 That new in heaven shone, 
 And followed with the few 
 
 The new-born Christ to own? 
 
 And if mine ears had heard 
 
 The Man of Galilee 
 Speaking from heart aflame 
 
 The Truth that maketh free, 
 Turning from priest and scribe, 
 
 Dead rite and parchment roll, 
 Would 1 have hailed in him 
 
 A Prophet of the Soul ? 
 
60 DISCIPLESHIP 
 
 Those words upon the mount, 
 
 By way-sides, in the town, — 
 Unwelcome to his time, 
 
 Now Holy Scripture grown, — 
 Would I have read in them 
 
 A message from on high, 
 Or joined the multitude 
 
 Who cried out Crucify ? 
 
 Ah, vain for you or me 
 
 To question thus the Past ! 
 Not then but now for us 
 
 The fateful choice is cast ; 
 Ever the larger faith 
 
 Makes way 'mid doubt and scorn, 
 And in its latest word 
 
 Anew the Christ is born. 
 
 The true disciples they, 
 
 The wide earth o'er, who own 
 Truth in her manger low, 
 
 Ere yet she mounts the throne : 
 Who from the dead Christ's tomb 
 
 Take not the stones to slay 
 In blinded fear and rage 
 
 The living Christ to-day. 
 
DISCIPLESHIP 61 
 
 They hear the angels' song, 
 
 'T is they who see the light 
 The watching shepherds saw 
 
 Making the heavens bright: 
 They see the self-same star 
 
 O'er Bethlehem that shone, 
 And follow joyful forth 
 
 The new-born Christ to own. 
 
 1888 
 
THE MAN OF NAZARETH 
 
 1 A cloud received him out of sight,' — 
 Even so ; and then men knew no more 
 
 The human presence warm and bright, 
 As he had walked the earth before ; 
 
 The preacher of the mountain-side, 
 Teaching the kingdom's reign within, 
 
 Strong in rebuke of hardened pride, 
 Yet pitiful of conscious sin/ 
 
 But sceptered now, and throned afar, 
 They watched in dread his swift return, 
 
 To see before his judgment bar 
 
 The earth dissolve and heavens burn. 
 
 The gathered clouds of centuries lift; 
 
 No king in wrath descends to reign, 
 Yet king-like through the shining rift 
 
 The Man of Nazareth comes again. 
 
THE MAN OF NAZARETH 63 
 
 O Friend and Brother, draw more near 
 The while thy festival we keep ; 
 
 Diviner shall our lives appear 
 Held fast in thy high fellowship. 
 
 Christmas, 1890 
 
MARY'S MANGER-SONG 
 
 Sleep, my little Jesus, 
 
 On thy bed of hay, 
 While the shepherds homeward 
 
 Journey on their way ! 
 Mother is thy shepherd 
 
 And will vigil keep : 
 O, did the angels wake thee ? 
 
 Sleep, my Jesus, sleep ! 
 
 Sleep, my little Jesus, 
 
 While thou art my own ! 
 Ox and ass thy neighbors, — 
 
 Shalt thou have a throne ? 
 Will they call me blessed ? 
 
 Shall I stand and weep ? 
 O, be it far, Jehovah ! 
 
 Sleep, my Jesus, sleep ! 
 
MARY'S MANGER-SONG 65 
 
 Sleep, my little Jesus, 
 
 Wonder-baby mine ! 
 Well the singing angels 
 
 Greet thee as divine. 
 Through my heart, as heaven, 
 
 Low the echoes sweep 
 Of Glory to Jehovah ! 
 
 Sleep, my Jesus, sleep ! 
 
 Music : ' The Carol,' page 44. 1882 
 
WHITTIER 
 
 No thrush at eve had ever sweeter song 
 Than thine whose voice no more on earth 
 
 we hear ; 
 Nor winds and flowing streams more please 
 
 the ear, 
 Nor to the speech of Nature more belong. 
 And yet thy heart beat ever with the throng 
 Of toil ; the lowliest life thou didst revere 
 And the wide law of brotherhood hold dear, 
 Most mindful still of all who suffered wrong. 
 
 Best loved of all the choir we loved so well, 
 'T was thine to bring again the Master near, 
 And hymn to men the Goodness without end : 
 Psalmist we call thee of our Israel, 
 Child of the Spirit, poet, prophet, seer, — 
 And to us all, of every name, the Friend / 
 
 1892 
 
WHITTIER 
 
 A rugged rock is the mountain, 
 
 Rock from the base to crown ; 
 But the mountain glens and valleys, 
 
 Where the brooks come leaping down. 
 Are gardens of tender, ferny things, 
 
 Sweet tangles of green and brown. 
 
 Like the mountain stood our poet I 
 
 Strength of the hills was he, 
 In the quiet sky uplifted, 
 
 A moveless sanctity ; 
 And the listening lands heard thunders roll 
 
 Of his Sinai prophecy. 
 
 But the brooks in his heart were singing, 
 
 Singing all night and day, 
 And rhymes like the mosses nestled 
 
 Over the ledges gray. 
 And a poet's radiant world of flowers 
 
 Out-bloomed from the Yea and Nay. 
 
 1892 
 
'NOTHING BUT A POET' 
 
 ' He sat and talked of his own early life and 
 aspirations; how he marvelled, as he looked back, 
 at the audacious obstinacy which had made him, 
 when a youth, determine to be a poet and noth- 
 ing but a poet.'' — Edmusd Gosse on Robert 
 Browning. 
 
 1 Nothing but a poet ! ' So he said, and 
 wondered 
 At the sole persistence of his years. 
 Laughing world, you '11 know it, now that, 
 silence-sundered, 
 He is in the welcome of his peers. 
 
 What said Milton to him, what said Keats 
 and Shakespeare ? 
 O, to see the smile on Dante's face ! 
 Catch the great Greek x ai P € > hear the ' bronze 
 throat ' hail him, 
 ' Browning 's come among us, — give him 
 place 1 ' 
 
< NOTHING BUT A POET' 69 
 
 'Nothing but a poet,' singing songs of soul- 
 growth, 
 
 Splendor in the pain-throb, rise in fall, 
 4 Saul the failure ' in us re-creating kingly, — 
 
 Songs one surge of morning ! That was all ! 
 
 Browning Commemoration, 1890 
 
REMBRANDT 
 
 Suggested by the portrait of his mother in the 
 Hermitage, St. Petersburg. 
 
 Gazing upon that face where years have 
 
 wrought 
 The record of their mingled loss and gain, 
 Where Love and Death, alternate joy and 
 
 pain, 
 Have the hid soul to such expression 
 
 brought, — 
 Life fills with vaster meaning to my thought. 
 'Neath change and loss I read what things 
 
 remain 
 To crown at last the struggle and the strain 
 Of all our days, remembered or forgot. 
 
 O mighty Master ! Shakespeare of the brush ! 
 Interpreting to eye, as he to ear, 
 
REMBRANDT 71 
 
 The story of earth's passion and its strife, — 
 Thy genius caught the new day's morning 
 
 flush, 
 Saw glory in the common and the near, 
 And on immortal canvas gave us life 1 
 
 1892 
 
THE SOWER 
 
 • A sower went forth to sow/ 
 
 Along the pathless prairie 
 
 The tread of human feet, — 
 Up rise the smoke-plumed cabins 
 
 'Mid springing corn and wheat. 
 Where, like a lonely ocean, 
 
 The wind-swept grasses swung, 
 The golden sheaves are gathered, 
 
 The harvest song is sung. 
 
 In vigil of the spirit 
 
 A young-eyed listener heard, — 
 1 Go forth among thy fellows, 
 
 Thy seed the living Word ! 
 By springs of joy and sorrow, 
 
 In fields of toil and care, 
 Through deserts of temptation, 
 
 Broadcast thy faith and prayer.' 
 
THE SOWER 73 
 
 From year to year the prairie 
 
 Has waved with ripened grain, 
 Borne on the tides of traffic 
 
 Wide over land and main. 
 But who shall mart the harvest 
 
 Of nobler thought and deed, 
 Of holier faith and purpose, 
 
 Sprung from the sower's seed ? 
 
 O brave and faithful sower, 
 
 Not thine on earth to bind 
 The full sheaves of thy harvest, 
 
 The growths of heart and mind 
 Outspreads in widening circles 
 
 The life-embodied Word, 
 And they shall bear thee witness 
 
 Thy voice who never heard. 
 
 The people cease from labor, 
 The children leave their play ; 
 
 All bring thee love and honor 
 To crown thy festal day. 
 
74 THE SOWER 
 
 The heavens glow in beauty- 
 Lit by the westering sun, 
 
 And God's far stars shall guide thee 
 When the long day is done. 
 
 Chester Corel, Seventieth birthday, 1887 
 
JOHN C. LEARNED 
 
 Thy work abides, though thou hast passed 
 
 from sight : 
 Unconsciously hast thou thy monument 
 From year to year built fair and permanent 
 In lives to which thine own was cheer and 
 
 light. 
 Wisdom and meekness clothed thee with 
 
 their might ; 
 In thee the sage and saint were equal blent ; 
 Strength, courage, tenderness dwelt in thy 
 
 tent, 
 Thou soldier of the everlasting Right ! 
 
 By so much as we mourn thee, we rejoice 
 That we have known thee in these earthly 
 
 ways, 
 And with thee striven for the things unseen : 
 Still in our silences will speak thy voice 
 And thy dear memory inspire our days. 
 Till we too pass the veil that hangs between. 
 
 December, 1893 
 
'INCARNATE CHEER' 
 
 ' Have n't I a right to be grave, too, sometimes ? ' 
 J. LI. J. 
 
 No rights of gravity to thee, dear friend ! 
 We need one face about our world to mend 
 Heart's hurt and set jarred minds in tune, 
 And sure to do this as the blessed June ; 
 One voice whose bell shall ring away all 
 
 fear ; 
 One hand in which we grasp ' incarnate 
 
 cheer ; ' 
 One steadfast smile rayed out from eyes 
 
 alight, 
 To make men say, ' He 's come ! now all is 
 
 right ! ■ 
 
 To J. LI. J. on his birthday, 1887 
 
THIRTY THOUSAND 
 
 ' Thirty thousand ! ' said the Fate, 
 
 Mixer of the days to be, 
 As she passed the mystic gate, — 
 
 Little Quaker baby, she ! 
 
 Thirty thousand days and nights — 
 This the dower with which she came 
 
 All their sounds and all their sights 
 Vested in the tiny dame. 
 
 1 Thirty thousand,' said the Fate ; 
 
 But who draw the royal breath 
 Into deeds the days translate, 
 
 Dainty Queen Elizabeth ! 
 
 Price is high for royal dowers ; 
 
 Thee must earn thy golden state ! 
 Spendthrift gods fling out the hours, 
 
 Miser gods keep count and weight. 
 
78 THIRTY THOUSAND 
 
 Day and night and night and day, 
 One by one the thousands flee : 
 
 Lady of the Yea and Nay, 
 
 Thou hast earned thy queenerie ! 
 
 Earned it as a noble should, 
 
 Dauntless, tireless, gentle-strong ; 
 
 Giving Yea to every good, 
 Daring Nay to every wrong. 
 
 Not in calendars thy fame, 
 But secrete in happy prayer ; 
 
 Lips have blessed thee — not by name 
 Thanking God for ' daily care.' 
 
 Thou dost leave a sweeter earth, 
 Less of poison, less of fen, 
 
 By thy precedent of worth 
 
 Stablished in the world's Amen. 
 
 Thou art part of all uplift ! 
 
 One tint brighter rises morn 
 Henceforth ever, — this thy gift 
 
 Wheresoe'er a child is born. 
 
 To E. B. C, on her eightieth birthday, 1886 
 
GOLDEN WEDDING 
 
 What do you see, dear hill-top pair, 
 Side by side in the quiet there, 
 Looking down through the golden air 
 On the days of long ago ? 
 
 Sounds of the valley's push and throng, 
 Din of its labor and cries of its wrong, — 
 Do they rise and blend to an evening song, 
 As you stand and listen so ? 
 
 Is the valley filling with shadows dim? 
 Do the hills grow bright on the eastern rim. 
 The hills where you played so free of limb, 
 In the days of long ago ? 
 
 Tell us your secrets, our two-in-one 1 
 Do fifty years of the rising sun 
 Draw love the closer for each year run, — 
 Will you whisper, you who know ? 
 
80 GOLDEN WEDDING 
 
 Beautiful secrets that none can tell 
 Till sunsets chant and the roses spell, — 
 As they do for twos ! as two knew well 
 In the days of long ago. 
 
 But say, O lover by love long taught, 
 Why, under the gray the years have brought, 
 She stands as a maiden to our thought, 
 And a rose that waits to blow. 
 
 Tell us the secret of home-spun ways, 
 Of spinning-wheel hours in city days, 
 Clean and calm as a Quaker phrase 
 Of the simple long ago. 
 
 Tell what you see on the farther side, 
 Where the new horizons open wide, 
 And you hear the step of a coming Guide 
 The way of the hills to show. 
 
 Out of the quiet that holds you there 
 There seems to float through the golden air, 
 Like the brooding music after prayer 
 Or a song of long ago : — 
 
GOLDEN WEDDING 81 
 
 1 Little we see ; but hand in hand 
 Fearless we turn to the still, new land, 
 Fearless to go as here to stand ; 
 For this in our hearts we know, — 
 
 1 Wherever we go, Love goeth too ; 
 Whatever may pass, Love lasteth through ; 
 And Love shall be sweet and dear and true 
 As in days of long ago.' 
 
 For J. D. and M. D. : 1836-1886 
 
TWILIGHT 
 
 The sunset glow is ebbing ; 
 
 Within the rose-rimmed sky 
 The stars wait wide and lonely 
 
 The slow day's passing by. 
 
 The evening dusks the valleys ; 
 
 The hill-tops yet are lit ; 
 The shadow broadens upward, 
 
 And the quiet climbs with it. 
 
 All that the day dissevers 
 Now, in the twilight dun, 
 
 Nestles again together, — 
 The far and the near are one. 
 
 Within her cloistered chamber 
 Brooded the evening peace, 
 
 As the dear life faded slowly, 
 Too happy to wish release. 
 
TWILIGHT 83 
 
 In the widening hush she waited, 
 
 In the beautiful after-glow, 
 The hills of her memory gleaming, 
 
 The shadows climbing below. 
 
 The holy twilight falling 
 
 Was not of the star and sun ; 
 The earth and the heaven lights mingled, — 
 
 And the far and near were one. 
 
 0. M. N., 1894 
 
'DEATH AS FRIEND' 
 
 After a picture by Alfred Rethel 
 
 So still ! 
 The little bird sits on the window-sill ; 
 The sun behind him is sinking slow ; 
 Down below in the city streets 
 The people are going to and fro, — 
 
 Going home, for their work is done. 
 
 ' Tong ! Tong ! ' 
 It is vesper-hour, 
 And soft strong booms 
 Steal out from the great cathedral tower 
 Over the house-tops, over the plain, 
 Out towards the sun : 
 < Tong ! Tong ! 
 Go home, for work is done ! ' 
 
 The old bell-ringer, 
 He, too, is so still ! 
 Fifty years, at the vesper hour, 
 He has rung the bell in his eyrie tower ; 
 
1 DEA TH AS FRIEND ' 85 
 
 A dweller there with the birds in the sky, 
 In the fields of quiet that overlie 
 The toil of cities, — ringing ' Peace ! 
 Go home, for work is done ! ' 
 
 There, alone, 
 
 "Where the undertone 
 Of the city toil moans up to him, 
 He has done his part in the busy day, 
 Ringing the pauses for men to pray, — 
 Simply, faithfully, fifty years ; 
 Ever, in heart, at his oaken board 
 Breaking his bread with the crucified Lord, 
 
 In whose great name 
 
 The bells proclaim 
 1 Peace ! go home, for work is done ! ' 
 
 One by one 
 
 The strokes sound on. 
 He sits in the chair by the window-sill : 
 The little bird wonders at him so still, 
 So still in the fingers, so still in the face ! 
 i "What ails the ringer?' the people say, 
 • The vesper-bell rings long to-day : 
 
 "We have all gone home, 
 
 And work is done.' 
 
80 'DEATH AS FRIEND' 
 
 Low, low, 
 
 In the evening glow, 
 It tolls and tolls. 
 In the belfry stands a hooded shape, 
 With a palmer's shell on his shoulder-cape. 
 As one who goeth from place to place: 
 He grasps the rope with a bony hand, 
 Bending with a tender grace 
 To each rhythm of sweeping sound. 
 With a noiseless foot he has climbed the stair, 
 And touched the old man sitting there, 
 Waiting for the vesper-hour, and said, 
 4 To-night I ring for you, old friend : 
 Go home, for work is done ! ' 
 
 So still ! 
 The little bird flies from the window-sill, 
 The sun has set, and down below 
 The people are saying, ' It never rang so, 
 Never before, so sweet and low ! ' 
 R. LI. J., 1885 
 
A. L. G. 
 
 1846 
 
 So early lost, I cannot tell the lift 
 
 Of mother-arms ! A toy or two, her gift ; 
 
 A small white gown, her needle in its seam; 
 
 And, dim as is a dream within a dream, 
 
 A little figure at a shadow's feet, 
 
 Or walking hand in hand upon the street, — 
 
 A gentle shadow with an unseen face, — 
 
 Xo smile, no tone, no foot-fall mine for trace : 
 
 That is my unknown Mother ! 
 
 Yet I know 
 The inmost currents of my being flow 
 From her high springs ; the faiths that in me 
 
 rise 
 Have once made happy lights within her 
 
 eyes ; 
 
88 A. L. G. 
 
 The gardens of my heart are seeded thick 
 With border-blooms that first in hers were 
 
 quick ; 
 My very thought of God is her bequest, 
 Sealed mine before I lay upon her breast ! 
 
 O Mother, could an earthly smile suffice, 
 And these not serve me well to recognize ? 
 Inwrought and deathless tokens pledge us 
 
 joy 
 
 What day my Mother meets her grateful 
 boy! 
 
 1894 
 
ALMA MATER 
 
 From many ways and wide apart, 
 
 Obedient to thy call, 
 Hither we turn with loyal heart, 
 
 Dear Mother of us all ! 
 
 We walk the well-known paths once more 
 
 Amid the summer's bloom ; 
 We pass familiar thresholds o'er, 
 
 And breathe the air of home. 
 
 Nor we alone ; they come unseen, 
 
 Unheard their footsteps fall ; 
 Voices long hushed to earth within 
 
 The cloistered silence call. 
 
 O, more than gold has been the lore 
 We learned beside thy knee, — 
 
 The faith that grows from more to more, 
 The truth that maketh free ; 
 
90 ALMA MATER 
 
 The strength to do and to endure 
 Through good report and ill, 
 
 The ueart of love, the conscience pure, 
 And the undaunted will. 
 
 Be proud, O Mother, of thy past ! 
 
 It lives in thee to-day ; 
 And still its high traditions cast 
 
 Their light upon thy way. 
 
 Our love and hope ring out their chime 
 
 Above thy festival ; 
 Blessings upon thee through all time, 
 
 Thou who hast blessed us all ! 
 
 1890 
 
THE VILLAGE MEETING-HOUSE 
 
 Still stands the ancient meeting-house 
 
 Upon the village-green, 
 And white above the circling trees 
 
 The belfry tower is seen. 
 
 Uncolored through the simple panes 
 The common sunlight pours ; 
 
 No Gothic arches spring above 
 The latched and painted doors. 
 
 Their thresholds witness to the tread 
 
 Of feet long since at rest 
 In yonder field of moss-grown slates 
 
 With Bible-text impressed. 
 
 No more at rise and set of sun 
 
 Is heard the numbered toll 
 That spoke to all the country round 
 
 The passing of a soul : 
 
92 VILLAGE MEETING-HOUSE 
 
 Yet still with every new-born week, 
 
 Across the meadows fair 
 And over all the upland farms, 
 
 Sounds the old call to prayer. 
 
 I walked again the village street 
 By absence made more dear ; 
 
 That summer Sunday held the bloom 
 And fragrance of the year. 
 
 I followed with the worshippers 
 The ancient house within ; 
 
 For me with all I saw and heard 
 Was mingled what had been. 
 
 For memory had new-kindled love, 
 And love had quickened faith ; 
 
 I lived that hour within a world 
 That knew not change and death. 
 
 I minded not the preacher's theme, 
 Nor caught the words of prayer ; 
 
 My thought had passed within the veil 
 And walked with spirits there. 
 
VILLAGE MEETING-HOUSE 93 
 
 The faithful shepherd of the flock, 
 Whose years knew such increase, 
 
 Who led in wisdom's simple ways 
 And by the streams of peace ; 
 
 The wise and upright citizen, 
 
 To each good cause allied, 
 Who brightened more an honored name 
 
 Through all the country-side ; 
 
 And souls that well had borne their part, 
 
 And little children fair ; — 
 Their unforgotten faces gleamed 
 
 In the illumined air. 
 
 I love the minster's vaulted roof, 
 
 Its walls of old renown, 
 Where sculptured marbles voice the past 
 
 And windowed saints look down : 
 
 Nor less I feel our Hebrew strain, 
 
 Distrustful still of art, 
 That lifts to the Invisible 
 
 Immediate the heart. 
 
94 VILLAGE MEETING-HOUSE 
 
 For inward more than outward is, 
 The soul than any shrine ; 
 
 Alone our living love and trust 
 The altar make divine. 
 
 Long may the ancient meeting-house 
 Rise from the village-green, 
 
 And over all the country round 
 Its belfried tower be seen : 
 
 Still may the call to praise and prayer 
 Be heard each Sunday morn, 
 
 And bind in growing faith the past 
 With ages yet unborn ! 
 
 NORTHBOROUGH, MASS. 
 
THE DAYS 
 
 In Father Time's old nursery 
 
 The little Morrows wait, 
 Each one impatient to be out, 
 
 Impatient to be great ; 
 On bravely through the sun to go, 
 
 On bravely through the showers, 
 A world to see, a Day to be ! 
 
 The happy-hearted Hours ! 
 
 So one by one he lets them out, 
 
 His Days so young and strong, 
 The morning shining in their face, 
 
 And on their lips a song. 
 When home they come, their work all done, 
 
 There 's quiet in their ways, 
 And shadows rise and haunt their eyes, — 
 
 They 're dear old Yesterdays ! 
 
96 THE DAYS 
 
 And now we love them for the half 
 
 Of all that we hold dear, — 
 The echo-side of every word, 
 
 The far to every near ; 
 The sunset touch to every hope 
 
 That fades along our skies, 
 The after-dream, the vanished gleam, 
 
 The love in long-shut eyes. 
 
 Rochester : 'Fiftieth Anniversary,' 1892 
 
THE OLD LOVE-SONG 
 
 Play it slowly, sing it lowly, 
 
 Old, familiar tune ! 
 Once it ran in dance and dimple, 
 
 Like a brook in June ; 
 Now it sobs along the measures 
 
 With a sound of tears ; 
 Dear old voices echo through it, 
 
 Vanished with the years. 
 
 Ripple, ripple, goes the love-song. 
 
 Till in slowing time 
 Early sweetness grows completeness, 
 
 Floods its every rhyme. 
 Who together learn the music 
 
 Life and death unfold, 
 Know that love is but be^innin^ 
 
 Until love is old. 
 7 
 
98 THE OLD LOVE-SONG 
 
 Play it slowly, — it is holy 
 
 As an evening hymn ; 
 Morning gladness hushed to sadness 
 
 Fills it to the brim. 
 Memories home within the music, 
 
 Stealing through the bars ; 
 Thoughts within its quiet spaces 
 
 Rise and set like stars. 
 
 For J. W. C. and A. H. C. : 1865-1890 
 
THE DEAR TOGETHERNESS 
 
 I dreamed of Paradise, — and still, 
 Though sun lay soft on vale and hill 
 And trees were green and rivers bright, 
 The one dear thing that made delight 
 By sun or stars or Eden weather, 
 "Was just that we two were together. 
 
 I dreamed of Heaven, — with God so near ! 
 The angels trod the shining sphere, 
 And each was beautiful ; the days 
 Were choral work, were choral praise : 
 And yet in Heaven's far-shining weather 
 The best was still, — we were together ! 
 
 I woke, — and lo, my dream was true, 
 That happy dream of me and you ! 
 For Eden, Heaven, no need to roam, — 
 The foretaste of it all is Home, 
 
 Where you and I through this world's 
 weather 
 
 Still work and praise and thank together. 
 
100 THE DEAR TOGETHERNESS 
 
 Together weave from love a nest 
 
 For all that 's good and sweet and blest 
 
 To brood in, till it come a face, 
 
 A voice, a soul, a child's embrace, — 
 
 And then what peace of Bethlehem wea- 
 ther, 
 
 What songs as we go on together ! 
 
 Together greet life's solemn real, 
 
 Together own one glad ideal, 
 
 Together laugh, together ache, 
 
 And think one thought, ' each other's sake,' 
 
 And hope one hope, — in new-world wea- 
 ther 
 
 To still go on, and go together ! 
 
 Home Dedication, 1891 
 
HERO BY BREVET 
 
 I saw a veteran to-day, 
 
 With hobbling foot and staff to stay, 
 
 In slow march by the window stray. 
 
 4 What rank ? ' There was no epaulet, — 
 Some humble rank that privates get: 
 The face said, Hero by brevet. 
 
 1 What regiment ? ' I only know 
 They take the front where'er they go, 
 As that were badge enough to show. 
 
 1 No colors ? ' None that I could see, — 
 A few gray locks were waving free, 
 Like shot-torn banners greeting me. 
 
 ' In service where ? ' How could I guess ? 
 No boast of battles marred the dress, 
 But eyes were full of field-success. 
 
102 HERO BY BREVET 
 
 1 No scars or maim, no empty sleeve ? ' 
 Only the smile that sufferings leave 
 And weary days and nights achieve. 
 
 1 And all alone, — no comrade-brother ? ' 
 Alone, yet loved beyond all other. 
 * By whom ? ' By men who call her 
 Mother 1 
 
 1886 
 
NURSERY LOGIC 
 
 There in the nursery stood the case, 
 Old and battered and brown with age, — 
 
 Dear Aunt Ann's with the saintly face, — 
 Till one of our toddlers, in cherubic raee. 
 
 Chanced on a spring and a drawer flew wide, 
 
 And lo, a plain gold ring inside ! 
 
 Wee Aunt Ann with the mystic smile, 
 That was the secret thy eyes held fast ! 
 
 Did they learn their smile in the lon<r- a cr 
 while 
 When the wooers came and the wooers 
 
 And not one dreamed that a drawer flew 
 
 wide, 
 A drawer with a plain gold ring inside ? 
 
104 NURSERY LOGIC 
 
 Xobody guessed from then till now, 
 Little maid-aunt, thy secret sweet ! 
 
 Then nobody shall, but he and thou, 
 
 Long in the heaven where old loves meet. 
 
 But — knows he yet that a drawer flew wide 
 
 To show his plain gold ring inside ? 
 
 So we all agreed, the children and I, 
 Dropping again the ring in its place, 
 
 Never to spy what lives so shy 
 
 There in the heart of the old brown case. 
 
 But the children say, ' If a drawer flew 
 wide, — 
 
 There 's a dear little uncle and aunt inside ! ' 
 
 Who f is his name. O, they know well, — 
 Have christened him, wedded him now for 
 true ! 
 But that is her secret, and they won't tell; 
 
 So it 's just ' Aunt Ann and Uncle Who? * 
 And (bless their logic !) they hear, inside, 
 Three little dream-cousins who laugh and 
 hide. 
 
NURSERY LOGIC 105 
 
 Cousins real to the poets small, 
 
 Brooding the dream, as they themselves; 
 Christened and charactered, each and all, 
 
 Discrete, insular, untwinned elves ! 
 Poets — or prophets ? Should' heaven ope 
 
 wide, 
 Whose are the children at Aunt Ann's side ? 
 
 1883 
 
HOW LITTLE JO NAMED THE 
 BABY 
 
 He stood beside the cradle, 
 
 A tender-brooding care.. 
 Watching with love-illumined eyes 
 
 The baby brother there. 
 
 He stood beside the cradle, 
 
 While busily without 
 The mother plied her morning work 
 
 The happy home about. 
 
 Three moons had bloomed and faded 
 Since ' Baby ' earthward came, 
 
 Nor yet with seeking far or near 
 Was found a fitting name. 
 
HOW LITTLE JO, ETC. 107 
 
 Anon the door was opened, — 
 The mother paused and smiled, 
 
 As, face all tremulous with joy, 
 Up spake the little child : 
 
 ' Mamma, I 've named the baby ! ' 
 ' You have ? What is it, Jo ? ' 
 
 < 1 'm going to call him God, Mamma, 
 That 's the best name I know.' 
 
 O depth of heavenly wisdom 
 
 Alone to love unsealed, — 
 Hid from the wise and prudent ones 
 
 And unto babes revealed I 
 
 Wee prophet of the Highest, 
 
 Who touched thy little tongue 
 To speak so clear the holiest thought 
 
 That e'er was said or sung? 
 
 The preaching of the pulpit 
 
 Seems vague and far away, 
 Beside thy bolder faith that sees 
 
 1 Immanuel ' to-day. 
 
108 HOW LITTLE JO, ETC. 
 
 Ah, well if in each other, 
 As through the world we go, 
 
 We saw what in that babe was seen 
 And named by little Jo ! 
 
 Cleveland, 1886 
 
IN THE ALBULA PASS. 
 
 To right, to left, the mountain wall — 
 Above, the narrow strip of sky ; 
 
 And at my feet the Albula stream 
 With youth's impatience rushes by. 
 
 The air comes cool from snowy heights 
 And tonic with the breath of pine ; 
 
 Around me like a glory spread 
 
 The flowers in rainbow beauty shine. 
 
 I leave the cares that weighed me down. 
 
 The heat and burden of the plain ; 
 I feel the strengthening of the hills 
 
 And drink the wine of youth again. 
 
 Why thus in haste, bright mountain stream. 
 
 To leave these haunts, so fair to me, 
 Full soon to find the dusty plain, 
 
 Too soon the all-engulfing: sea? 
 
110 IN THE ALBULA PASS 
 
 There comes a voice, — the streams can 
 speak ! — 
 
 1 Fair is my home and youth is free, 
 And glad my days, yet will I go 
 
 On to the plain, the unknown sea ! 
 
 ' For life is motion and not rest, 
 Nor fear I what at last shall be ; 
 
 The Hand that raised these mountain heights 
 Has scooped the hollows of the sea ! ' 
 
 I turn me from the happy stream, 
 All bright the years before me lie ; 
 
 The mountains sink as up I climb. 
 And nearer grows the widening sky. 
 
 Canton Grisons, July, 1888 
 
CORONADO BEACH 
 
 The air is tonic with the salty breath 
 Of coursing billows that at last are free ; 
 Sounds low and sweet old Ocean's symphony, 
 Whose thought the varying heart inter- 
 preted. 
 With upturned face and folded palms in 
 
 death 
 Lies Corpus Christi in mute effigy ; 
 Point Loma, sphinx-like, gazes o'er the sea 
 Nor heeds the questioning wave that breaks 
 
 beneath. 
 Along the shore the solemn mountains keep 
 Their immemorial watch ; in yonder town, 
 Sheltered between them and the curving 
 
 deep, 
 Unheard the tides of life move up and down. 
 
 peace of Nature ! here my burdens fall, 
 
 1 rest upon the mighty Heart of all ! 
 
 San Diego, February, 1894 
 
DOVER 
 
 Mouse-hole in December, 
 
 Quiet little Dover ! 
 What shall I remember, 
 
 Now the days are over? 
 
 Snow in hushes falling ; 
 
 Blue days creeping by ; 
 Trees in still processions 
 
 Etched upon the sky ; 
 And a silent village 
 
 Where the gray stones lean, 
 Whispering of a Dover 
 
 They alone have seen. 
 
 All I shall remember, 
 
 Now the days are over, — 
 
 Mouse-hole in December, 
 Quiet little Dover 1 
 
DOVER 113 
 
 When I shall be lying 
 
 With a gray stone over, 
 Will this great World dim to 
 
 Just a little Dover? 
 
 Dover, Mass. 
 
WE SEE AS WE ARE 
 
 The poem hangs on the berry-bush, 
 When comes the poet's eye ; 
 
 The street begins to masquerade, 
 When Shakespeare passes by. 
 
 The Christ sees white in Judas' heart, 
 
 He loves his traitor well ; 
 And God, to angel his new Heaven, 
 
 Explores his lowest Hell. 
 
 1885 
 

116 TREE-SURPRISE 
 
 Unheard music in the air, 
 Is it rapture or despair 
 In my tree of life the Hands will play for 
 this day's tune ? 
 But why ask it or why care, 
 With that gloom-born beauty there, 
 And the Hands to play December that shall 
 yet play June ? 
 
 1885 
 
A DAY IN OCTOBER 
 
 I leave behind the crowded street, 
 
 The city's noise and stir, 
 And face to face with Nature meet, - 
 
 Her happy worshipper. 
 
 I walk the unfrequented road 
 
 With open eye and ear ; 
 I watch afield the farmer load 
 
 The bounty of the year. 
 
 I filch the fruit of no man's toil, 
 
 No trespasser am I, 
 And yet I reap from every soil 
 
 And the unmeasured sky. 
 
 I gather where I did not sow, 
 And bind in mystic sheaf 
 
 The amber air, the river's flow, 
 The rustle of the leaf, — 
 
118 A DAY IN OCTOBER 
 
 The squirrels' chatter in the trees, 
 
 The sunlight sifted down, 
 The wholesome odors on the breeze 
 
 O'er ripened harvests blown, — 
 
 The hills in distance purple-hued, 
 
 The tinkling waterfall, 
 The ' deep contentment of the wood,' 
 
 The peace o'erbrooding all. 
 
 The maples glow beside the streams 
 
 And fleck the pastures sear, 
 Like smiles that break from happy dreams, ■ 
 
 So smiles the waning year ! 
 
 A beauty springtime never knew 
 
 Haunts all the quiet ways, 
 And sweeter shines the landscape through 
 
 Its veil of autumn haze. 
 
 The blessing of the early rain 
 
 And all the summer's shine 
 Are garnered in the golden grain 
 
 And purple of the vine. 
 
A DAY IN OCTOBER 119 
 
 What though the groves are silent all, 
 
 No bird within them sings, 
 Nor on the quiet meadows fall 
 
 Shadows from sunlit wings : 
 
 Yet is their summer music part 
 
 Of the still atmosphere, — 
 So Nature keeps by subtle art 
 
 To sight what pleased the ear. 
 
 And all my separate senses seem 
 
 To be but passive keys, 
 Whereon she plays her world-old theme 
 
 To wondrous harmonies. 
 
 I face the hills, the streams, the wood, 
 
 And feel with all akin ; 
 I ope my heart, — their fortitude 
 
 And peace and joy flow in. 
 
 Like him of old on Horeb's mount 
 
 I take again my way, 
 New-strengthened from the healing fount 
 
 Of this October day. 
 
 Michigan, 1892 
 
INDEX OF FIRST LINES 
 
 Pagb 
 
 1 A cloud received him out of sight ' ... 62 
 
 A little House of Life 31 
 
 Along the pathless prairie 72 
 
 A rugged rock is the mountain 67 
 
 As silent as the sun-gleam in the forest . . 29 
 
 Bring, O Morn, thy music ! Bring, Night, 
 
 thy hushes 11 
 
 From age to age they gather 40 
 
 From many ways and wide apart .... 89 
 
 Gazing upon that face where years have 
 
 wrought 70 
 
 He laid his rocks in courses 46 
 
 He stood beside the cradle 106 
 
 I dreamed of Paradise, —and still .... 99 
 
 I leave behind the crowded street .... 117 
 
 In Father Time's old nursery 95 
 
 I saw a veteran to-day 101 
 
 It sounds along the ages 48 
 
 Lo, the Day of days is here 57 
 
122 INDEX OF FIRST LINES 
 
 Pagb 
 
 'Mid my life's vicissitude 30 
 
 Mouse-hole in December 112 
 
 No rights of gravity to thee, dear friend . . 76 
 1 Nothing but a poet ! ' So he said, and won- 
 dered 68 
 
 No thrush at eve had ever sweeter song . . 66 
 
 Not when, with self dissatisfied 33 
 
 O Fount of Being's sea 22 
 
 O Light, from age to age the same .... 42 
 
 Lord of Life, where'er they be 50 
 
 One thing I do ; the things behind forgetting 35 
 
 On eyes that watch through sorrow's night . 51 
 
 On the Judeean hills 59 
 
 On the rock and girt with ice 14 
 
 O Prophet souls of all the years 9 
 
 O Thou in lonely vigil led 13 
 
 Thou whose Spirit witness bears .... 20 
 
 Over hills and valleys 26 
 
 Over the land in glory 55 
 
 Play it slowly, sing it lowly 97 
 
 Sleep, my little Jesus 64 
 
 So early lost, I cannot tell the lift .... 87 
 
 So still ! The little bird sits on the window-sill 84 
 
 Still stands the ancient meeting-house ... 91 
 
 The air is tonic with the salty breath . . . Ill 
 
 The morning hangs its signal 16 
 
INDEX OF FIRST LINES 123 
 
 Pack 
 
 The poem hangs on the berry-bush . . . . 114 
 
 There in the nursery stood the case .... 103 
 
 There 's a rapture in the air 115 
 
 They came, bringing spices, at break of the day 52 
 
 The sunset glow is ebbing 82 
 
 ' Thirty thousand ! ' said the Fate .... 77 
 
 This edelweiss I wear was not first mine . . 15 
 
 Thy kingdom come, — on bended knee . . 18 
 Thy work abides, though thou hast passed 
 
 from sight 75 
 
 To right, to left, the mountain wall .... 109 
 
 Unto thee, abiding ever 24 
 
 What do you see, dear hill-top pair .... 79 
 
 Whatsoever is just and pure 38 
 
 What will the violets be 54 
 
 Where men on mounts of vision 44 
 
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