A vicious parent shaming still its child, Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved ;

Its discords quenched by meeting harmonies,

Die in the large and charitable air.
And all our rarer, better, truer self,
That sobbed religiously in yearning song,
That watched to ease the burden of the
world,

Laboriously tracing what must be,
And what may yet be better,

saw within A worthier image for the sanctuary, And shaped it forth before the multitude, Divinely human, raising worship so To higher reverence more mixed with love,

That better self shall live till human Time

Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb, Unread forever.

This is life to come, Which martyred men have made more glorious

For us, who strive to follow.

May I reach

That purest heaven, be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony, Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,

249

And in diffusion ever more intense!

So shall I join the choir invisible, Whose music is the gladness of the world.

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

[1819-1874.]

THE THREE FISHERS.

THREE fishers went sailing out into the

west,

Out into the west as the sun went down ;

And call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home, Across the sands of Dee";

The western wind was wild and dank wi'

foam,

And all alone went she.

The western tide crept up along the sand, And o'er and o'er the sand,

And round and round the sand,

As far as eye could see.

The rolling mist came down and hid the land,

And never home came she.

him the best,

A tress o' golden hair,

A drownéd maiden's hair Above the nets at sea?

Was never salmon yet that shone so fair Among the stakes on Dee."

They rowed her in across the rolling foam. The cruel crawling foam,

The cruel hungry foam,

To her grave beside the sea:

Of the shearers that I see, Ne'er a body kens me,

cattle home

Across the sands of Dee!

A MYTH.

A FLOATING, a floating
Across the sleeping sea,

All night I heard a singing bird
Upon the topmast tree.

"O, came you from the isles of Greece,
Or from the banks of Seine,
Or off some tree in forests free,
Which fringe the Western main?"

"I came not off the old world, -
Nor yet from off the new,
But I am one of the birds of God
Which sing the whole night through."

"O sing and wake the dawning,
O whistle for the wind;
The night is long, the current strong,
My boat it lags behind."

"The current sweeps the old world,
The current sweeps the new;
The wind will blow, the dawn will glow
Ere thou hast sailed them through.'

DINAH MULOCK CRAIK.

COMING HOME.

THE lift is high and blue, And the new moon glints through The bonnie corn-stooks o' Strathairly; My ship's in Largo Bay,

And I ken it weel,-the way Up the steep, steep brae of Strathairly.

When I sailed ower the sea,
A laddie bold and free,-

The corn sprang green on Strathairly;
When I come back again,

'T is an auld man walks his lane, Slow and sad through the fields o' Strathairly.

And this fisher-wife I pass,

Can she be the braw lass

That I kissed at the back of Strathairly?

longs,

A worthy hymn in woman's praise ; The best half of creation's best,

Its heart to feel, its eye to see, The crown and complex of the rest, Its aim and its epitome.

Yet now it is my chosen task

To sing her worth as maid and wife; And were such post to seek, I'd ask On wings of love uplifted free, To live her laureate all my life.

And by her gentleness made great, I'd teach how noble man should be, To match with such a lovely mate; Until (for who may hope too much

From her who wields the powers of love), Our lifted lives at last should touch That lofty goal to which they move: Until we find, as darkness rolls

Far off, and fleshly mists dissolve, That nuptial contrasts are the poles On which the heavenly spheres revolve.

THE CHASE.

SHE wearies with an ill unknown;
In sleep she sobs and seems to float,
A water-lily, all alone

Within a lonely castle-moat;
And as the full moon, spectral, lies

Within the crescent's gleaming arms, The present shows her heedless eyes

A future dim with vague alarms: She sees, and yet she scarcely sees; For, life-in-life not yet begun, Too many are life's mysteries

For thought to fix t'ward any one.

She's told that maidens are by youths Extremely honored and desired; Andsighs, "If those sweet tales be truths, What bliss to be so much admired!" The suitors come; she sees them grieve; Her coldness fills them with despair: She'd pity if she could believe;

She's sorry that she cannot care.

Who's this that meets her on her way?
Comes he as enemy, or friend;
Or both? Her bosom seems to say

He cannot pass, and there an end. Whom does he love? Does he confer His heart on worth that answers his!