And when under fierce oppression,
Goodness suffers like Transgression,
Christ again is crucified:

But if love be there, true-hearted,
By no grief or terror parted,

Mary stands the cross beside.

347

Though I write books, it will be read
Upon the leaves of none,

And afterward, when I am dead,

Will ne'er be graved for sight or tread,

Across my funeral-stone.

This name, whoever chance to call
Perhaps your smile may win.
Nay, do not smile! mine eyelids fall
Over mine eyes, and feel withal
The sudden tears within.

Is there a leaf that greenly grows
Where summer meadows bloom,
But gathereth the winter snows,
And changeth to the hue of those,
If lasting till they come ?

Is there a word, or jest, or game,
But time encrusteth round
With sad associate thoughts the same?
And so to me my very name

Assumes a mournful sound.

My brother gave that name to me
When we were children twain, -
When names acquired baptismally
Were hard to utter, as to see
That life had any pain.

No shade was on us then, save one
Of chestnuts from the hill,

And through the word our laugh did run
As part thereof. The mirth being done,
He calls me by it still.

Nay, do not smile! I hear in it

What none of you can hear,

The talk upon the willow seat,
The bird and wind that did repeat
Around, our human cheer.

I hear the birthday's noisy bliss,
My sisters' woodland glee, -

MY SLAIN.

My father's praise I did not miss,
When, stooping down, he cared to kiss
The poet at his knee,

And voices which, to name me, aye
Their tenderest tones were keeping, —
To some I nevermore can say

An answer, till God wipes away

In heaven these drops of weeping.

My name to me a sadness wears;
No murmurs cross my mind.

Now God be thanked for these thick tears,
Which show, of those departed years,
Sweet memories left behind.

Now God be thanked for years enwrought
With love which softens yet.

Now God be thanked for every thought
Which is so tender it has caught
Earth's guerdon of regret.

Earth saddens, never shall remove,
Affections purely given;

And e'en that mortal grief shall prove

The immortality of love,

And heighten it with heaven.

349

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

My Slain.

HIS sweet child which hath climbed upon my knee,

THIS

This amber-haired, four-summered little maid,

With her unconscious beauty troubleth me,

With her low prattle maketh me afraid. Ah, darling when you cling and nestle so

You hurt me, though you do not see me cry,

Nor hear the weariness with which I sigh,
For the dear babe I killed so long ago.
I tremble at the touch of your caress;

I am not worthy of your innocent faith;
I who with whetted knives of worldliness
Did put my own child-heartedness to death,
Beside whose grave I pace forevermore,
Like desolation on a shipwrecked shore.

There is no little child within me now,

To sing back to the thrushes, to leap up
When June winds kiss me, when an apple bough
Laughs into blossoms, or a buttercup

Plays with the sunshine, or a violet

Dances in the glad dew. Alas! alas!
The meaning of the daisies in the grass
I have forgotten; and if my cheeks are wet
It is not with the blitheness of the child,
But with the bitter sorrow of sad years.

O moaning life, with life irreconciled;
O backward-looking thought, O pain, O tears,
For us there is not any silver sound

Of rhythmic wonders springing from the ground.

Woe worth the knowledge and the bookish lore

Which makes men mummies, weighs out every grain

Of that which was miraculous before,

And sneers the heart down with the scoffing brain.

Woe worth the peering, analytic days

That dry the tender juices in the breast,

And put the thunders of the Lord to test,
So that no marvel must be, and no praise,
Nor any God except Necessity.

What can ye give my poor, starved life in lieu
Of this dead cherub which I slew for ye?
Take back your doubtful wisdom, and renew
My early foolish freshness of the dunce,

Whose simple instincts guessed the heavens at once.

RICHARD REALF.

EVENING BRINGS US HOME.

351

Bendemeer's Stream.

'HERE's a bower of roses by Bendemeer's stream,

THERE

And the nightingale sings round it all the day long;
In the time of my childhood 't was like a sweet dream,
To sit in the roses and hear the bird's song.
That bower and its music I never forget,

But oft when alone in the bloom of the year,

I think is the nightingale singing there yet?
Are the roses still bright by the calm Bendemeer?

No, the roses soon withered that hung o'er the wave,

But some blossoms were gathered, while freshly they shone, And a dew was distilled from their flowers, that gave

All the fragrance of summer, when summer was gone. Thus memory draws from delight, ere it dies,

An essence that breathes of it many a year;

Thus bright to my soul, as 't was then to my eyes,
Is that bower on the banks of the calm Bendemeer!
THOMAS Moore.

Evening brings us Home.

'PON the hills the wind is sharp and cold;

UP

The sweet young grasses wither on the wold;
And we, O Lord, have wandered from thy fold;
But evening brings us home.

Among the mists we stumbled, and the rocks
Where the brown lichen whitens, and the fox
Watches the straggler from the scattered flocks;
But evening brings us home.

The sharp thorns prick us, and our tender feet
Are cut and bleeding, and the lambs repeat
Their pitiful complaints: oh! rest is sweet
When evening brings us home.