THE DEAR OLD TOILING ONE

Он, many a leaf will fall to-night,
As she wanders through the wood!
And many an angry gust will break
The dreary solitude.

I wonder if she's past the bridge,
Where Luggie moans beneath,

While rain-drops clash in planted lines
On rivulet and heath.

Disease hath laid his palsied palm
Upon my aching brow;

The headlong blood of twenty-one
Is thin and sluggish now.

Tis nearly ten! A fearful night,
Without a single star

To light the shadow on her soul
With sparkle from afar :

The moon is canopied with clouds,
And her burden it is sore;
What would wee Jackie do, if he
Should never see her more?
Ay, light the lamp, and hang it up
At the window fair and free;

"T will be a beacon on the hill
To let your mother see.
And trim it well, my little Ann,
For the night is wet and cold,
And you know the weary, winding way
Across the miry wold.

All drench'd will be her simple gown,
And the wet will reach her skin:
I wish that I could wander down,
And the red quarry win,

To take the burden from her back,
And place it upon mine;

With words of cheerful condolence,

Not utter'd to repine.

You have a kindly mother, dears,
As ever bore a child,

And Heaven knows I love her well
In passion undefil'd.

Ah me! I never thought that she
Would brave a night like this,
While I sat weaving by the fire

A web of fantasies.

How the winds beat this home of ours With arrow-falls of rain;

LUX EST UMBRA DEI

NAY, Death, thou art a shadow! Even as light

Is but the shadow of invisible God,
And of that shade the shadow is thin Night,
Veiling the earth whereon our feet have
trod;

So art Thou but the shadow of this life,
Itself the pale and unsubstantial shade
Of living God, fulfill'd by love and strife
Throughout the universe Himself hath
made:

And as frail Night, following the flight of earth,

Obscures the world we breathe in, for a while,

So Thou, the reflex of our mortal birth, Veilest the life wherein we weep and smile :

But when both earth and life are whirl'd away,

What shade can shroud us from God's deathless day?

A star that shoots athwart star-steadfast heaven;

A fluttering aigrette of toss'd passion's brine;

A leaf from youth's immortal missal torn; A bark across dark seas of anguish driven; A feather dropp'd from breast-wings aquiline;

A silvery dream shunning red lips of morn.

II

There is no mood, no heart-throb fugitive, No spark from man's imperishable mind, No moment of man's will, that may not find

Form in the Sonnet; and thenceforward live

A potent elf, by art's imperative

Magic to crystal spheres of song confin'd: As in the moonstone's orb pent spirits wind

'Mid dungeon depths day-beams they take and give.

Spare thou no pains; carve thought's pure diamond

With fourteen facets, scattering fire and light: :

Uncut, what jewel burns but darkly bright? And Prospero vainly waves his runic wand, If spurning art's inexorable law

In Ariel's prison-sphere he leave one flaw.