O'er the blank world of waters, than to seek,

In the one sacred ark, a duteous home,
May good be with it!

Yes, we do differ when we most agree,
For words are not the same to you and me.
And it may be our several spiritual needs
Are best supplied by seeming different creeds.
And differing, we agree in one

Inseparable communion,

If the true life be in our hearts the faith,

Which not to want is death;

To want is penance; to desire
Is purgatorial fire;

To hope, is paradise; and to believe

Is all of Heaven that earth can e'er receive.

ON A FRIEND'S DEATH.

SAD doth it seem, but nought is really sad,
Or only sad that we may better be ;

We should, in very gulfs of grief, be glad,

The great intents of God could we but see.

Think of the souls that he in heaven will meet,
Some that on earth he knew and loved most dearly;

And whose perfection at their Saviour's feet,

Without a stain of earth, will shine so clearly.

Think, too, of souls on earth unknown to him,

Whom he will know as well as kin or neighbors — Laborious saints, that now with seraphim

Expect the blessed fruit of all their labors.

Think that he is what oft he wished to be
While yet he was a mortal man on earth;
Then weep, but know that grief's extremity
Contains a hope which never was in mirth.

THE WORD OF GOD.

In holy books we read how God hath spoken
To holy men in many different ways;

But hath the present worked no sign or token?
Is God quite silent in these latter days?

And hath our heavenly Sire departed quite,
And left His poor babes in this world alone,
And only left for blind belief- not sight -

Some quaint old riddles in a tongue unknown?

Oh! think it not, sweet maid! God comes to us
With every day, with every star that rises;

In every moment dwells the Righteous,

And starts upon the soul in sweet surprises.

The Word were but a blank, a hollow sound,
If He that spake it were not speaking still,
If all the light and all the shade around

Were aught but issues of Almighty will.

Sweet girl, believe that every bird that sings,
And every flower that stars the elastic sod,
And every thought the happy summer brings
To thy pure spirit, is a WORD of God.

SONNETS.

I.

LET me not deem that I was made in vain,
Or that my Being was an accident,
Which Fate, in working its sublime intent,
Not wished to be, to hinder would not deign.
Each drop uncounted in a storm of rain
Hath its own mission, and is duly sent
To its own leaf or blade, not idly spent
'Mid myriad dimples on the shipless main.
The very shadow of an insect's wing

For which the violet cared not while it stayed
Yet felt the lighter for its vanishing,

Proved that the sun was shining by its shade:
Then can a drop of the eternal spring,
Shadow of living lights, in vain be made?

II.

THINK upon Death, 'tis good to think of Death,
But better far to think upon the Dead.
Death is a spectre with a bony head,
Or the mere mortal body without breath,
The state foredoomed of every son of Seth,
Decomposition - dust, or dreamless sleep.

But the dear Dead are those for whom we weep,
For whom I credit all the Bible saith.

Dead is my father, dead is my good mother,
And what on earth have I to do but die?
But if by grace I reach the blesséd sky,

I fain would see the same, and not another;
The very father that I used to see,

The mother that has nursed me on her knee.

LONE in the wilderness, her child and she,
Sits the dark beauty, and her fierce-eyed boy;
A heavy burden, and no winsome toy

To such as she, a hanging babe must be.

A slave without a master

wild, nor free,

With anger in her heart! and in her face

Shame for foul wrong and undeserved disgrace,

Poor Hagar mourns her lost virginity!

Poor woman, fear not God is everywhere;

Thy silent tears, thy thirsty infant's moan,

Are known to Him, whose never-absent care

Still wakes to make all hearts and souls his own;

He sends an angel from beneath his throne

To cheer the outcast in the desert bare.

IV.

ISAIAH XLVI. V. 9.

WHEN I consider all the things that were,
And count them upwards from the general flood,
The tricks of fraud, and violent deeds of blood,
Weigh down the heart with sullen, deep despair.
I well believe that Satan, Prince of Air,
Torments to ill the pleasurable feeling;
But ever and anon, a breeze of healing
Proclaims that God is always everywhere.
'Twas hard to see him in the days of old,
And harder still to see our God to-day;
For prayer is slack, and love, alas! is cold,
And Faith, a wanderer, weak and wide astray:
Who hath the faith, the courage, to behold
God in the judgments that have passed away?

V.

ALL Nature ministers to Hope. The snow
Of sluggard Winter, bedded on the hill,
And the small tinkle of the frozen rill,

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