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COMFORT.

PEAK low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet
From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low,
Lest I should fear and fall, and miss Thee so

Who art not missed by any that entreat.

Speak to me as to Mary at Thy feet!

And if no precious gums my hands bestow,

Let my tears drop like amber while I go
In reach of Thy divinest voice complete

In humanest affection-thus, in sooth,

To lose the sense of losing. As a child,
Whose song-bird seeks the wood for evermore,
Is sung to in its stead by mother's mouth

Till, sinking on her breast, love-reconciled,
He sleeps the faster that he wept before.

FUTURITY.

ND, O beloved voices, upon which
Ours passionately call because erelong
Ye brake off in the middle of that song
We sang together softly, to enrich

The

poor world with the sense of love, and witch The heart out of things evil,-I am strong,

Knowing ye are not lost for aye among

The hills, with last year's thrush. God keeps a niche

In Heaven to hold our idols: and albeit

He brake them to our faces and denied

That our close kisses should impair their white, I know we shall behold them raised, complete, The dust swept from their beauty,-glorified, New Memnons singing in the great God-light.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

THE PROSPECT.

ETHINKS we do as fretful children do,

Leaning their faces on the window-pane

To sigh the glass dim with their own breath's stain,

And shut the sky and landscape from their view:

And thus, alas, since God the Maker drew

A mystic separation 'twixt those twain,

The life beyond us, and our souls in pain,
We miss the prospect which we are called unto
By grief we are fools to use. Be still and strong,
O man, my brother! hold thy sobbing breath,
And keep thy soul's large window pure from wrong;
That so, as life's appointment issueth,

Thy vision may be clear to watch along
The sunset consummation-lights of death.

THOUGHT once how Theocritus had sung

Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for

years,

Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;

And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,— 'Guess now who holds thee?'-'Death,' I said. But there, The silver answer rang,-'Not Death, but Love.'

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

Y own beloved, who hast lifted me

From this drear flat of earth where I was

thrown,

And, in betwixt the languid ringlets, blown
A life-breath, till the forehead hopefully
Shines out again, as all the angels see,

Before thy saving kiss! My own, my own,
Who camest to me when the world was gone,
And I who looked for only God, found thee!
I find thee; I am safe, and strong, and glad.
As one who stands in dewless asphodel,
Looks backward on the tedious time he had
In the upper life,—so I, with bosom-swell,
Make witness, here, between the good and bad,
That Love, as strong as Death, retrieves as well.

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