Else our lives are incomplete,

Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet

Stumble as they seek to climb.
Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base;
And ascending and secure

Shall to-morrow find its place.

Thus alone can we attain

To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain,

And one boundless reach of sky.

SAND OF THE DESERT IN AN HOUR-GLASS.
A HANDFUL of red sand, from the hot clime
Of Arab deserts brought,

Within this glass becomes the spy of Time,
The minister of Thought.

How many weary centuries has it been
About those deserts blown!
How many strange vicissitudes has seen,
How many histories known!

Perhaps the camels of the Ishmaelite
Trampled and passed it o'er,

When into Egypt from the patriarch's sight
His favourite son they bore.

Perhaps the feet of Moses, burnt and bare,
Crushed it beneath their tread;
Or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air
Scattered it as they sped;

Or Mary, with the Christ of Nazareth
Held close in her caress,

Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and faith
Illumed the wilderness;

Or anchorites beneath Engaddi's palms
Pacing the Red Sea beach,

And singing slow their old Armenian psalms
In half-articulate speech;

Or caravans, that from Bassora's gate
With westward steps depart;

Or Mecca's pilgrims, confident of Fate,
And resolute in heart!

These have passed over it, or may have passed!
Now in this crystal tower

Imprisoned by some curious hand at last,
It counts the passing hour.

And as I gaze, these narrow walls expand;—
Before my dreamy eye

Stretches the desert with its shifting sand,
Its unimpeded sky.

And borne aloft by the sustaining blast,
This little golden thread

Dilates into a column high and vast,
A form of fear and dread.

And onward, and across the setting sun,
Across the boundless plain,"

The column and its broader shadow run,
Till thought pursues in vain.

The vision vanishes! These walls again
Shut out the lurid sun,

Shut out the hot, immeasureable plain;
The half-hour's sand is run!

BIRDS OF PASSAGE.

BLACK shadows fall

From the lindens tall,

That lift aloft their massive wall

Against the southern sky;

And from the realms

Of the shadowy elms

A tide-like darkness overwhelms
The fields that round us lie.

But the night is fair,

And everywhere

A warm, soft vapour fills the air,

And distant sounds seem near;

And above, in the light

Of the star-lit night,

Swift birds of passage wing their flight
Through the dewy atmosphere.

I hear the beat

Of their pinions fleet,

As from the land of snow and sleet

They seek a southern lea.

I hear the cry

Of their voices high

Falling dreamily through the sky,
But their forms I cannot see.

O, say not so!

Those sounds that flow

In murmurs of delight and woe

Come not from wings of birds.

They are the throngs

Of the poet's songs,

Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs, The sound of winged words.

This is the cry

Of souls, that high

On toiling, beating pinions fly,
Seeking a warmer clime.

From their distant flight

Through realms of light

It falls into our world of night,

With the murmuring sound of rhyme.

THE OPEN WINDOW.

THE old house by the lindens
Stood silent in the shade,
And on the gravelled pathway
The light and shadow played.
I saw the nursery windows
Wide open to the air;
But the faces of the children,
They were no longer there.
The large Newfoundland house-dog
Was standing by the door;
He looked for his little playmates,
Who would return no more.

They walked not under the lindens,
They played not in the hall;
But shadow, and silence, and sadness
Were hanging over all.

The birds sang in the branches,
With sweet, familiar tone;

But the voices of the children

Will be heard in dreams alone!

And the boy that walked beside me,
He could not understand
Why closer in mine, ah! closer,

I pressed his warm, soft hand!

KING WITLAF'S DRINKING-HORN.
WITLAF, a king of the Saxons,
Ere yet his last he breathed,
To the merry monks of Croyland
His drinking-horn bequeathed,-

That, whenever they sat at their revels,
And drank from the golden bowl,
They might remember the donor,
And breathe a prayer for his soul.
So sat they once at Christmas,
And bade the goblet pass;

In their beards the red wine glistened
Like dew-drops in the grass.

They drank to the soul of Witlaf,
They drank to Christ the Lord,
And to each of the Twelve Apostles,
Who had preached His Holy Word.
They drank to the Saints and Martyrs
Of the dismal days of yore,

And as soon as the horn was empty

They remembered one Saint more. And the reader droned from the pulpit, Like the murmur of many bees, The legend of good Saint Guthlac, And Saint Basil's homilies; Till the great bells of the convent, From their prison in the tower, Guthlac and Bartholomæus,

Proclaimed the midnight hour.

And the Yule-log cracked in the chimney,
And the Abbot bowed his head,
And the flamelets flapped and flickered,
But the Abbot was stark and dead.

Yet still in his pallid fingers

He clutched the golden bowl,

In which, like a pearl dissolving,

Had sunk and dissolved his soul.