Thou Grace Divine, encircling all,
A soundless, shoreless sea!
Wherein at last our souls must fall,
O Love of God most free!

When over dizzy heights we go,
One soft hand blinds our eyes,
The other leads us, safe and slow,
O Love of God most wise!

And though we turn us from thy face,
And wander wide and long,
Thou hold'st us still in thine embrace,
O Love of God most strong!

The saddened heart, the restless soul,
The toil-worn frame and mind,
Alike confess thy sweet control,
O Love of God most kind!

Alas! that men must see
Love, before Death!
Else they content might be
With their short breath;
Aye, glad, when the pale sun
Showed restless day was done,
And endless Rest begun.

Glad, when with strong, cool hand
Death clasped their own,
And with a strange command
Hushed every moan;
Glad to have finished pain,
And labor wrought in vain,
Blurred by Sin's deepening stain.

But Love's insistent voice
Bids self to flee--
"Live that I may rejoice,
Live on, for me!"
So, for Love's cruel mind,

Beyond the smiling and the weeping
I shall be soon;
Beyond the waking and the sleeping,
Beyond the sowing and the reaping,
I shall be soon.
Love, rest, and home!
Sweet hope!
Lord, tarry not, but come.

Beyond the blooming and the fading
I shall be soon;
Beyond the shining and the shading,
Beyond the hoping and the dreading,
I shall be soon.
Love, rest, and home! etc.

Beyond the rising and the setting
I shall be soon;
Beyond the calming and the fretting,
Beyond remembering and forgetting,
I shall be soon.

Down, down, Ellen, my little one,
Climbing so tenderly up to my knee;
Why should you add to the thoughts that are taunting me,
Dreams of your mother's arms clinging to me?

Cease, cease, Ellen, my little one,
Warbling so fairily close to my ear;
Why should you choose, of all songs that are haunting me,
This that I made for your mother to hear?

Hush, hush, Ellen, my little one,
Wailing so wearily under the stars;
Why should I think of her tears, that might light to me
Love that had made life, and sorrow that mars?

Pack, clouds, away, and welcome day,
With night we banish sorrow;
Sweet air blow soft, mount larks aloft
To give my Love good-morrow!
Wings from the wind to please her mind,
Notes from the lark I'll borrow;
Bird, prune thy wing, nightingale sing,
To give my Love good-morrow;
To give my Love good-morrow
Notes from them both I'll borrow.

Wake from thy nest, Robin-redbreast!
Sing, birds, in every furrow;
And from each hill, let music shrill
Give my fair Love good-morrow!
Blackbird and thrush in every bush,

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when Thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

A widow bird sate mourning for her Love
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.

There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
No flower upon the ground,
And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel's sound.

(SUGGESTED BY MR. WATTS'S PICTURE OF LOVE AND DEATH.)


Yea, Love is strong as life; he casts out fear,
And wrath, and hate, and all our envious foes;
He stands upon the threshold, quick to close
The gate of happiness ere should appear
Death's dreaded presence--ay, but Death draws near,
And large and gray the towering outline grows,
Whose face is veiled and hid; and yet Love knows
Full well, too well, alas! that Death is here.
Death tramples on the roses; Death comes in,
Though Love, with outstretched arms and wings outspread,

When the lamp is shatter'd,
The light in the dust lies dead—
When the cloud is scatter'd,
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remember'd not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.

As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart's echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute—
No song but sad dirges,
Like the wind through a ruin'd cell,
Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman's knell.

When hearts have once mingled,

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove;
A maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love.

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
—Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and O!
The difference to me!