A cottage with broad eaves and a thick vine, Whose mountain-language was the same as mine: I had a home to make the gloomiest heart Alight with joy, A temple of chaste love, a place apart From Time's annoy; A moonlight scene of life, where all things rude With pity rounded and by grace subdued : MOMENTS. I LIE in a heavy trance, With' a world of dream without me, Shapes of shadow dance, In wavering bands, about me; But, at times, some mystic things Appear in this phantom lair, Of Truth known elsewhere: The world is wide, these things are small, They may be nothing, but they are All. A prayer in an hour of pain, Be heard by the heart alone; A throb, when the soul is entered By a light that is lit above, Where the God of Nature has centered The Beauty of Love. The world is wide,—these things are small, They may be nothing, but they are All. A look that is telling a tale, When' a cheek is no longer pale, That has caught the glance, as it fell; And the bitter-sweet first shock, One can never forget ; The world is wide,-these things are small, They may be nothing, but they are All. A sense of an earnest Will The world is wide,-these things are small, The moment we think we have learnt The lore of the all-wise One, By which we could stand unburnt, On the ridge of the seething sun : The moment we grasp at the clue, Which guides our soul to the True, And the Poet to Heaven. The world is wide,—these things are small,— If they be nothing, what is there at all? THE MEN OF OLD. I KNOW not that the men of old Of heart more kind, of hand more bold, Of more ingenuous brow: I heed not those who pine for force A ghost of Time to raise, As if they thus could check the course Of these appointed days, Still it is true, and over true, That I delight to close This book of life self-wise and new, And let my thoughts repose On all that humble happiness, The world has since foregone,— The daylight of contentedness That on those faces shone ! With rights, tho' not too closely scanned, Enjoyed, as far as known,— With will by no reverse unmanned,— With pulse of even tone,- They from to-day and from to-night Than yesterday and yesternight Had proffered them before. To them was life a simple art Of duties to be done, A game where each man took his part, A race where all must run; A battle whose great scheme and scope They little cared to know, Content, as men at arms, to cope Each with his fronting foe. Man now his Virtue's diadem Puts on and proudly wears, Great thoughts, great feelings, came to them, Like instincts, unawares : Blending their souls' sublimest needs With tasks of every day, They went about their gravest deeds, As noble boys at play.— And what if Nature's fearful wound They did not probe and bare, For that their spirits never swooned To watch the misery there,— For that their love but flowed more fast, Their charities more free, Not conscious what mere drops they cast E A man's best things are nearest him, It is the distant and the dim' That we are sick to greet : For flowers that grow our hands beneath We struggle and aspire,— Our hearts must die, except they breathe The air of fresh Desire. Yet, Brothers, who up Reason's hill O! loiter not, those heights are chill, And still restrain your haughty gaze, Remembering distance leaves a haze THE VOICES OF HISTORY. THE Poet in his vigil hears And bearing down delight: The Voices of the waves has caught,— |