Songs of Three Centuries

But from some higher point behold
This dense, perplexing complication;
And laws involved in laws unfold,
And orb into thy contemplation.

God, when he made the seed, conceived The flower; and all the work of sun And rain, before the stem was leaved,

In that prenatal thought was done;

The girl who twines in her soft hair
The orange-flower, with love's devotion,
By the mere act of being fair

Sets countless laws of life in motion;

So thou, by one thought thoroughly great,
Shalt, without heed thereto, fulfil
All laws of art. Create! create!

Dissection leaves the dead dead still.

Burn catalogues. Write thine own books. What need to pore o'er Greece and Rome? When whoso through his own life looks Shall find that he is fully come,

Through Greece and Rome, and Middle Age:

Hath been by turns, ere yet full-grown, Soldier, and Senator, and Sage,

And worn the tunic and the gown.

Cut the world thoroughly to the heart. The sweet and bitter kernel crack. Have no half-dealings with thine art. All heaven is waiting: turn not back.

If all the world for thee and me

One solitary shape possessed, What shall I say? a single tree, Whereby to type and hint the rest,

And I could imitate the bark

And foliage, both in form and hue, Or silvery-gray, or brown and dark, Or rough with moss, or wet with dew,

But thou, with one form in thine eye, Couldst penetrate all forms: possess The soul of form and multiply

A million like it, more or less,

Which were the Artist of us twain?

The moral's clear to understand. Where'er we walk, by hill or plain, Is there no mystery on the land?

The osiered, oozy water, ruffled

By fluttering swifts that dip and wink: Deep cattle in the cowslips muffled, Or lazy-eyed upon the brink:

Or, when a scroll of stars-the night (By God withdrawn) is rolled away, The silent sun, on some cold height, Breaking the great seal of the day:

Are these not words more rich than ours? Our souls are parched like withering O, seize their import if you can! flowers,

Our knowledge ends where it began.

While yet about us fall God's dews,

And whisper secrets o'er the earth
Worth all the weary years we lose
In learning legends of our birth,

Arise, O Artist! and restore

Their music to the moaning winds, Love's broken pearls to life's bare shore, And freshness to our fainting minds.

ANNE WHITNEY.

[U. S. A.]

BERTHA.

THE leaves have fallen from the trees; For under them grew the buds of May, And such is Nature's constant way;

Let us accept the work of her hand. Still, if the winds sweep bare the height, Something is left for hearts' delight,

Let us but know and understand.

Bertha looked down from the rocky cliff, Whose feet the tender foam-wreaths kist, Toward the outer circle of mist

That hedged the old and wonderful sea. Below her, as if with endless hope, Up the beach's marbled slope,

The waters clomb eternally.

Many a long-bleached sail in sight Hovered awhile, then flitted away, Beyond the opening of the bay;

Fair Bertha entered her cottage late; "He does not come," she said, and smiled,

J. H. PERKINS.

"But the shore is dark, and the sea is wild, And, dearest father, we still must wait."

She hastened to her inner room, And silently mused there alone; "Three springs have come, three winters gone,

And still we wait from hour to hour; But earth waits long for her harvest-time, And the aloe, in the northern clime,

Waits an hundred years for its flower.

"Under the apple-boughs as I sit In May-time, when the robin's song Thrills the odorous winds along,

The innermost heaven seems to ope; I think, though the old joys pass from sight,

Still something is left for hearts' delight, For life is endless, and so is hope.

"If the aloe waits an hundred years, And God's times are so long indeed For simple things, as flower and weed,

That gather only the light and glooin, For what great treasures of joy and dole, Of life and death, perchance, must the soul,

Ere it flower in heavenly peace, find room?

"I see that all things wait in trust, As feeling afar God's distant ends, And unto every creature he sends

That measure of good that fills its scope; The marmot enters the stiffening mould, And the worm its dark sepulchral fold,

To hide there with its beautiful hope."

Still Bertha waited on the cliff, To catch the gleam of a coming sail, And the distant whisper of the gale, Winging the unforgotten home; And hope at her yearning heart would knock,

When a sunbeam on a far-off rock

Married a wreath of wandering foam.

Was it well? you ask-(nay, was it il?) Who sat last year by the old man's hearth; The sun had passed below the earth,

And the first star locked its western gate,

When Bertha entered his darkening home, And smiling said, "He does not come,

But, dearest father, we still can wait!"

J. H. PERKINS.

[U. S. A.]

THE UPRIGHT SOUL.

269

LATE to our town there came a maid, A noble woman, true and pure, Who, in the little while she stayed, Wrought works that shall endure.

It was not anything she said,
It was not anything she did:
It was the movement of her head,
The lifting of her lid.

Her little motions when she spoke, The presence of an upright soul, The living light that from her broke, It was the perfect whole:

We saw it in her floating hair,

We saw it in her laughing eye; For every look and feature there Wrought works that cannot die.

For she to many spirits gave

A reverence for the true, the pure, The perfect, that has power to save, And make the doubting sure.

She passed, she went to other lands,

The wondrous product of her hands She knew not of the work she did;

From her is ever hid.

Forever, did I say? O, no!

The time must come when she will look Upon her pilgrimage below,

And find it in God's book,

That, as she trod her path aright,
Power from her very garments stole;
For such is the mysterious might
God grants the upright soul.

A deed, a word, our careless rest,
A simple thought, a common feeling,
If He be present in the breast,

Has from him powers of healing.

Go, maiden, with thy golden tresses,

Thine azure eye and changing cheek, Go, and forget the one who blesses Thy presence through the week.

Forget him he will not forget,

But strive to live and testify

But gin ye lo'ed me as I lo'e you, I wad ring my ain deid knell;

Thy goodness, when earth's sun has set, Mysel' wad vanish, shot through and And Time itself rolled by.

GEORGE MACDONALD.

O LASSIE AYONT THE HILL!

O LASSIE ayont the hill!
Come ower the tap o' the hill,
Or roun' the neuk o' the hill,
For I want ye sair the nicht,
I'm needin' ye sair the nicht,
For I'm tired and sick o' mysel',
A body's sel' 's the sairest weicht, -
O lassie, come ower the hill!

Gin a body could be a thocht o' grace, And no a sel' ava!

I'm sick o' my heid, and my han's and my face,

An' my thochts and mysel' and a';
I'm sick o' the warl' and a';
The licht gangs by wi' a hiss;

For thro' my een the sunbeams fa',
But my weary heart they miss.
O lassie ayont the hill!
Come ower the tap o' the hill,
Or roun' the neuk o' the hill
Bidena ayont the hill!