Her little life-dream, rounded so with sleep,
Had all there is of life, except gray hairs,
Hope, love, trust, passion, and devotion deep;
And that mysterious tie a mother bears.

She hath fulfilled her promise and hath passed;
Set her down gently at the iron door!
Eyes look on that loved image for the last:
Now cover it in earth, her earth no more.

103.

Paradisi Gloria

"O frate mio! ciascuna e cittadina
D'una vera città "

THERE is a city, builded by no hand,
And unapproachable by sea or shore,

And unassailable by any band

Of storming soldiery for evermore.

There we no longer shall divide our time
By acts or pleasures, — doing petty things
Of work or warfare, merchandise or rhyme;
But we shall sit beside the silver springs

That flow from God's own footstool, and behold Sages and martyrs, and those blessed few

Who loved us once and were beloved of old;

To dwell with them and walk with them anew,

In alternations of sublime repose,
Musical motion, the perpetual play
Of every faculty that Heaven bestows
Through the bright, busy, and eternal day.

JULIA WARD HOWE

104. Battle-Hymn of the Republic

1819-1910

MINE eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the

Lord:

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword:

His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps.

His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,

Since God is marching on."

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call

retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment

seat:

Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!

Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me: As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

105. St. Michael the Weigher

STOOD the tall Archangel weighing

All man's dreaming, doing, saying,

All the failure and the pain,
All the triumph and the gain,
In the unimagined years,

Full of hopes, more full of tears,
Since old Adam's hopeless eyes
Backward searched for Paradise,
And, instead, the flame-blade saw
Of inexorable Law.

1819-1891

Waking, I beheld him there,
With his fire-gold, flickering hair,
In his blinding armor stand,
And the scales were in his hand:
Mighty were they, and full well
They could poise both heaven and hell.

Angel," asked I humbly then,
"Weighest thou the souls of men?
That thine office is, I know."
Nay," he answered me, not so;
But I weigh the hope of Man
Since the power of choice began,
In the world, of good or ill."
Then I waited and was still.

In one scale I saw him place
All the glories of our race,
Cups that lit Belshazzar's feast,
Gems, the lightning of the East,
Kublai's sceptre, Cæsar's sword,
Many a poet's golden word,
Many a skill of science, vain
To make men as gods again.

In the other scale he threw
Things regardless, outcast, few,
Martyr-ash, arena sand,

Of St. Francis' cord a strand,
Beechen cups of men whose need
Fasted that the poor might feed,

Disillusions and despairs

Of young saints with grief-grayed hairs,

Broken hearts that brake for Man.

Marvel through my pulses ran

Seeing then the beam divine
Swiftly on this hand decline,
While Earth's splendor and renown
Mounted light as thistle-down.

WHEN I was a beggarly boy

And lived in a cellar damp,

I had not a friend nor a toy,

But I had Aladdin's lamp;

When I could not sleep for the cold,
I had fire enough in my brain,
And builded, with roofs of gold,
My beautiful castles in Spain!

107.

Since then I have toiled day and night,
I have money and power good store,
But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright
For the one that is mine no more;
Take, Fortune, whatever you choose,
You gave, and may snatch again;
I have nothing 'twould pain me to lose,
For I own no more castles in Spain!

GOD

The Courtin'

OD makes sech nights, all white an' still
Fur 'z you can look or listen,

Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill,
All silence an' all glisten.

Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown

An' peeked in thru' the winder,
An' there sot Huldy all alone,

'ith no one nigh to hender.