Very tame our passions nestle,

Very even seem our brows, Outward forces rarely wrestle, Soft the words the age allows : Incommunicable sadness

Yet is haunting all the while— Yet one day the crouching madness Leaps from under all the smile.

Ours is not the early Faith
Which our fathers gazed upon,
Till the iron gates of Death

With a golden splendour shone ;
We must rest content with Hope,
Fair to aid, but frail to rule :
Gentle Hope! too weak to cope
With the villain and the fool.

Ours the shame to understand

That the World prefers the lie That, with medicine in her hand, She will sink and choose to die ;

Ours the agonising sense

Of the Heaven this Earth might be,

If, from their blank indifference,

Men woke one hour and felt as we !

Heroes of the inward strife,

Whom your spirit cannot prize;

Saints of the mysterious life,

Whom no Church can canonize;

G

Unremembered-unrecorded

They are passing by you now;
Other gifts are here rewarded,
To far other names you bow.

Yet the Power appears to-morrow,
That to-day seems wholly lost,
And the reproductive sorrow

Is a treasure worth the cost:
Fate permits no break or suture
In the' Ideal of Mankind,
Weaving out its brightest Future
From the Martyrs of the Mind.

WRITTEN FOR THE CONSUMPTIVE HOSPITAL.

IF parting hours are ever had

In reverence among men ;
If fierce emotions turn to sad,
And sins to sorrows then ;
If the grave presence of the Last

The lightest scenes can hallow,
Adorn each desert of the Past,
And deepen every shallow :

Then, surely, in the hours that rend
The spirit from the frame
In which it dwelt so long, and send
The dust to whence it came;

'Tis, above all things, well that those About to go for ever,

Should solemnly and calmly close

Their scene of hard Endeavour!

Gladly the soldier falls in strife
Hailed by his comrades' cheers;
Bravely the wise man yields his life
Amid familiar tears;

But rare must be his spirit's tone,
Who, after years repented,
Can dare lie down and die alone,
Neglected, unlamented!

Through Faith the yearning eye may fix
On joys that almost blind,

Yet should some gentle feelings mix,
For what is left behind.

And, if both heart and mind grow weak

In agony or languor,

Let the last wandering accents speak

Of sorrow, not of anger!

Oh! who can tell how far may fly

Into the world unseen,

The record of some pitying sigh,

Some sympathetic mien :

How deep may the abyss be stirred

Of ghostly recollection!

How long may last one casual word
Of brotherly affection!

Then aid our work; help us who strive
To check the' insidious ill

That gives to death those most alive,
And beautifies to kill;

Help us who, at the worst, can sooth
The heart's last fatal swelling,
The' inevitable bed can smooth,

And light the narrow dwelling.

While Fortune's favours round you smile, 'Tis something, even then,

To know you helped to reconcile

A man with brother men ;

And when, through waves that round you roll, Your heart is hardly faring,

'Tis more to think you saved one soul

From dying God-despairing!

SECOND CHILDHOOD.

TAKE not Childhood's name in vain,

Give it not to Him:

Can the lees of life retain

Bubbles from the brim?

What can Childhood-made to deck

Time with early flowers

Have in common with the wreck

Of uncounted hours?

Nothing but the ignorance-
Not of things unknown--
But forgotten, like a glance,
Vanished, like a tone!

Nothing but the froward will,
Now without controul,
Self-absorbed, for good or ill
Of body and of soul.

Childhood without dignity,--
Childhood without grace,-
Childhood with the sunken eye
And the wasted face:

Childhood, vain of petty skill,
Proud of little lore,

Yet devoid of power or will

To advance to more.

Oh! that each of us might die

When we're at the best!

Pass away harmoniously

To some fitting rest!

No travestied childhood then

Could abuse the word,

Each would say, a man to men,

"I go-so wills the Lord."

Then the Few whose age endured

With untarnished worth,

Would go down with fame assured, Moral kings of earth :