'Mid my life's vicissitude,
Seeming evil mixed with good;
'Mid its pleasure and its pain,
Alternating loss and gain,—
Be thou still my staff and rod,
All-sustaining grace of God!

Like a pilgrim here I pass,
Darkly see as through a glass;
Little know I of the way,
What shall be I cannot say,—
Let thy light upon me shine,
All-sufficient grace divine!

'Mid my ever-changing mood
God who changeth not is good;
And his word within I have,
He will guard the life he gave,—
Sing, my soul, along thy road,
Happy in the grace of God.

As silent as the sun-gleam in the forest,
As quiet as the shadow on the hill,
Is the shining of the Spirit in our dimness,
Is the falling of its calm upon our will.

But subtler than the sun-lift in the leaf-bud,
That thrills through all the forests, making May,
And stronger than the strength that plants the mountains,
Is that shining in the heart-lands, bringing day.

Just on the threshold of threescore-and-ten—
An upward pathway, shining more and more—
She heard the call, and passed within the door
Whence none that enters ever comes again.
Henceforth will Want await her step in vain,
Wise Charity will have a lessened store:
The beatings of a faithful heart are o'er,
And struggling Truth has lost a loyal brain.
Ah, foolish plaint! Hath God no other sphere
For virtue's use, and love, and loyalty,
That they should perish with the body's breath?
O noble Friend, thy life's long service here

Not in our waking hours alone
His constancy and care are known;
But locked in slumber fast and deep
He giveth to us while we sleep.

What giveth He? From toil release,
Quiet from God, night's starlit peace;
Till with the coming of the morn
We greet the day, like it new-born.

And pondering this mystery,
There came a larger truth to me,—
How in the sleep that we call death
He sleepeth not nor slumbereth,

But still sustains the silent soul
Until the shadows backward roll,
And with the passing of the night
It wakens in immortal light!

Here where the swaying dancers float,
The heady perfume swimming round
Your slender arms and virginal throat
Thrills me though riper loves abound.

The passionate eyes and lids of her
Whose face gleams white in many a fold
Of coiling wondrous sombre hair,
The blue eyes in the wreath of gold,

These turn to me in vain, who prize
You more than all the loves and lyres,
For from your unfilled corsage rise
The perfumes that my soul desires.

Ah might I dance for ever, bent
Toward your bosom's clouded gleam,
And let the lilies' acrid scent

A thousand walls immure your days,—and yet
What are they all when, of the thousand, one
Has fallen beneath the curious urge and fret
Of you toward me, of me toward you begun?
When the first fell, I shuddered half-aghast;
The second, now a-crumble in my sight,
Predicts less thunder than the fall late past;
And I await the third with clear delight.
Mingled with all the phantoms of my fear
Are lights of utter lure. Wherefore I choose
To linger watching, though right well I bear
Knowledge that naught's to gain and much to lose,—

It needs no maxims drawn from Socrates
To tell me this is madness in my blood.
Nor does what wisdom I have learned from these
Serve to abate my most unreasoned mood.
What would I of you? What gift could you bring,
That to await you in the common street
Sets all my secret ecstasy awing
Into wild regions of sublime retreat?
And if you come, you will speak common words,
Smiling as quite ten thousand others smile—
And I, poor fool, shall thrill with ghostly chords,
And with a dream my sober sense beguile,
And yet, being mad, I am not mad alone:

He cut a sappy sucker from the muckle rodden-tree,
He trimmed it, an' he wet it, an' he thumped it on his knee;
He never heard the teuchat when the harrow broke her eggs,
He missed the craggit heron nabbin' puddocks in the seggs,
He forgot to hound the collie at the cattle when they strayed,
But you should hae seen the whistle that the wee herd made!

He wheepled on 't at mornin' an' he tweetled on 't at nicht,
He puffed his freckled cheeks until his nose sank oot o' sicht,
The kye were late for milkin' when he piped them up the closs,

Come , list to a song for the Harvest:
Thanksgiving and honor and praise
For all that the bountiful Giver
Hath given to gladden our days.

For the grain and the corn in their plenty,
For the grapes that were gathered with song;
For pumpkins so brave with their yellow,
They had lived upon sunbeams so long;

For cranberries down in the meadow,
And the buckwheat that flames on the hill,
And blueberries tempting the children
To wander and pick them at will;

For the peaches that blush through their pallor,
Or glow like a pretty quadroon,

Through what cold Oceans, since what ancient year,
—O pearly Shell and fragile, who shall say!—
The surge, the current and the tide have they
Whirled you in their abysses green and drear?

Far from the bitter floods, you now have here
Made a soft bed of golden sand and grey;
Your hope is vain; long and despairing, aye
In you the sea's great moaning voice we hear.

Sonorous to its core my soul is, for,
As from your whorl in plaintive accents pour
The sob and sighing of the sea's old stir,

So dull and slow and yet eternal well