VISION'

WITHIN a poor man's squalid home I stood: The one bare chamber, where his work-worn wife

Above the stove and wash-tub passed her life,

Next the sty where they slept with all their brood.

But I saw not that sunless, breathless lair, The chamber's sagging roof and reeking floor;

The smeared walls, broken sash, and battered door;

The foulness and forlornness everywhere.
I saw a great house with the portals wide
Upon a banquet room, and, from without,
The guests descending in a brilliant line
By the stair's statued niches, and beside
The loveliest of the gemmed and silken

rout

The poor man's landlord leading down to

dine.

JUDGMENT DAY1

BEFORE Him weltered like a shoreless sea The souls of them that had not sought to be, With all their guilt upon them, and they cried,

They that had sinned from hate and lust and pride,

"Thou that didst make us what we might

become,

Judge us!" The Judge of all the earth was dumb;

But high above them, in His sovereign place,

He lifted up the pity of His face.

WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT?1

IF I lay waste and wither up with doubt The blessed fields of heaven where once my faith

Possessed itself serenely safe from death;
If I deny the things past finding out;
Or if I orphan my own soul of Öne
That seemed a Father, and make void the
place

Within me where He dwelt in power and grace,

What do I gain by that I have undone ?

"Feel my pulse, sir, if you want to, but it ain't much use to try: "Never say that," said the Surgeon as he smothered down a sigh;

"It will never do, old comrade, for a soldier to say die!"

"What you say will make no difference, Doctor, when you come to die.

"Doctor, what has been the matter?" "You were very faint, they say; You must try to get to sleep now." "Doctor, have I been away ? "Not that anybody knows of!" Doctor, please to stay! There is something I must tell you, and you won't have long to stay!

"Doctor

Knew it could n't be the Lighter, — he could not have spoken so,

And I tried to answer, 'Here, sir!' but I could n't make it go;

For I could n't move a muscle, and I could n't make it go!

"Then I thought: it's all a nightmare, all a humbug and a bore;

Just another foolish grape-vine,1 — and it won't come any more;

But it came, sir, notwithstanding, just the same way as before:

'ORDERLY SERGEANT ROBERT BUR

"And the old field lay before me all deserted far and wide;

There was where they fell on Prentiss,

there McClernand met the tide; There was where stern Sherman rallied, and where Hurlbut's heroes died, – Lower down, where Wallace charged them, and kept charging till he died.

"There was where Lew Wallace showed them he was of the canny kin,

There was where old Nelson thundered, and where Rousseau waded in; There McCook sent 'em to breakfast, and we all began to win —

There was where the grape-shot took me, just as we began to win.

"Now, a shroud of snow and silence over everything was spread;

And but for this old blue mantle and the old hat on my head,

I should not have even doubted, to this moment, I was dead,

For my footsteps were as silent as the snow upon the dead!

AUTHORITY

LAUNCHED upon ether float the worlds se

cure.

Naught hath the truthful Maker to conceal.

No trestle-work of adamant or steel
Is that high firmament where these en-
dure.

Patient, majestic, round their cynosure
In secular procession see them wheel;
Self-poised, but not self-centred, for they
feel

In each tense fibre one all-conquering
Jure.

And need I fret me, Father, for that Thou

Dost will the weightiest verities to swing On viewless orbits? Nay, henceforth I cleave

More firmly to the Credo; and my vow With readier footstep to thine altar bring, As one who counts it freedom to believe.

To field, to market, to mill he goes,
Nor sees his comrade gleaming
Where he flies along the purple hills,

Nor the flame from his bridle streaming;
Sees not his track, nor the sparks of fire
So terribly flashing from it,
As they flashed from the track of Alborak
When he bravely carried Mahomet.

One steed, in a few short years, will rest Under the grasses yonder;

The other will come there centuries hence To linger and dream and ponder;

1 Copyright, 1893, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

And yet both steeds are mine to-day,
The immortal and the mortal:
One beats alone the clods of earth,
One stamps at heaven's portal.

SHAKESPEARE

I WISH that I could have my wish to-night,
For all the fairies should assist my flight
Back into the abyss of years;
Till I could see the streaming light,

And hear the music of the spheres
That sang together at the joyous birth
Of that immortal mind,
The noblest of his kind,
The only Shakespeare that has graced our
earth.

Oh that I might behold

Those gentle sprites, by others all unseen,
Queen Mab and Puck the bold,
With curtseys manifold

Glide round his cradle every morn and e'en;

Copyright, 1897, by HARPER & BROTHERS.