I can sing of widow's tears,
Orphans' cries-but let it pass.

I can sing with ready words
And to music roughly wed,
Catch the melody of birds
From the shady beeches shed.

November 4, 1859.

Flows from the mind a stream of thought,

Ah whither is it flowing,

By space like vapour is it caught,
An endless journey going?

Who can trace back the earliest wave,
From which that stream was springing?

Or say what force its impulse gave,
Truth from its fountain bringing.

That stream of thought no barriers stay,
Wave unto wave succeeding,

Through every moment of the day,

Unintermittent, speeding.

No sound its gentle course betrays,
Nor wide its current ranges:
Onward, nor death that river stays,
Its course it only changes.

Through other spheres its tide shall run
Remote from its beginning;

Far, far, away beyond the sun,
No ocean ever winning.

November 11, 1859.

When I see a pretty face
Underneath a bonnet,

All the characters I trace

Which are stamped upon it.

Is it marked with pride and scorn
And is anger blending,

Or with passion is it worn,
Deeper shadows lending!

Sad, I see its beauty marred,

Faultless though the moulding,

Nor would I the prize award,
If my hand were holding.

On another then I look

Of a gentler meaning,

Features open as a book,

No artifice screening.

Humour, wit, a polished mind,

That index revealing,

And a heart both good and kind,
There its impress sealing.

Pity mingling with the rest
All the rest doth leaven,
In that gentle woman's breast
Like a little heaven.

December 17,

1859.

MAN IMMORTAL-A FEW PROOFS.

By his praising, by his praying,
Man's immortal, they are saying,
Though his body be decaying.

By the thoughts which he is thinking,
To a state immortal linking,
From annihilation shrinking.

By his suffering, by his sorrow,
By his hopes of each to-morrow;
From the future still we borrow.

By his sinning, and repenting,
By his fasts at seasons lenten,
By his anger and relenting.

By the truth which he is telling,
Honesty in buying, selling,
Against evil his rebelling.

By the flight which he is taking,
To the stars his journey making,
Earth and all that's earth's forsaking.

In a moment soaring yonder,
Past the region of the thunder

There to meditate and wonder.

Higher, higher, higher, mounting, Planets, stars, by thousands counting, Up to light's eternal fountain.

Dying man this truth attesteth,
When his mortal foe he breasteth,
Ere in final peace he resteth.

Immortality he teaches,

When his voice in quiet speeches,
God's forgiving love beseeches.

December 11, 1859.

THE MISER.

Thy riches tell till nature faint,
With figures fill thy book;
Look on the picture which I paint
Oh wretched miser look.

Behold the features of the man,
Eyes in their sockets sunk,
Behold his cheeks all pale and wan,
All pale and wan and shrunk.

In chamber lit with feeble lamp
His riches he doth tell,

In chamber comfortless and damp
As burial vault or well.