For who in age shall roam the earth and find
Reasons for loving that will strike out love
With sudden rod from the hard year-pressed mind!
Were reasons sown as thick as stars above.

'Tis love must see them, as the eye sees light;
Day is but number to the darkened sight.

IX.

We had the self-same world enlarged for each
By loving difference of girl and boy,

The fruit that hung on high beyond my reach
He plucked for me, and oft he must employ

A measuring glance to guide my tiny shoe
Where lay from stepping-stones, or call to mind
"This thing I like my sister may not do,
For she is little, and I must be kind."

Thus boyish will the nobler mastery learned
Where inward vision over impulse reigns,
Widening its life with separate life discerned,
A like unlike, a self that self restrains.

His years with others must the sweeter be
For those brief days he spent in loving me.

XI.

School parted us; we never found again

That childish world where our two spirits mingled
Like scents from varying roses that remain
One sweetness, nor can evermore be singled.

Yet the twin habit of that early time
Lingered for long about the heart and tongue
We had been natives of one happy clime,
And its dear accent to our utterance clung,

Till the dire years, whose awful name is Change,
Had grasped our souls still yearning in divorce,
And pitiless shaped them in two forms that range,
Two elements which sever their life's course.

But were another childhood-world my share,
I would be born a little sister there.

GEORGE ELIOT.

March 19.

WISHES ABOUT DEATH.

I WISH to have no wishes left,
But to leave all to Thee;

And yet I wish that Thou shouldst will
Things that I wish should be.

And these two wills I feel within
When on my death I muse;
But, Lord! I have a death to die,
And not a death to choose.

Why should I choose? for in Thy love
Most surely I descry

A gentler death than I myself

Should dare to ask to die.

But Thou wilt not disdain to hear
What those few wishes are,
Which I abandon to Thy love,
And to Thy wiser care.

Triumphant death I would not ask,
Rather would deprecate,

For dying souls deceive themselves
Soonest when most elate.

All graces I would crave to have
Calmly absorbed in one-

A perfect sorrow for my sins
And duties left undone.

All Sacraments and Church-blest things
I fain would have around,

A priest beside me, and the hope
Of consecrated ground.

I would the light of reason, Lord,
Up to the last might shine,
That my own hands might hold my soul
Until it passed to Thine.

And I would pass in silence, Lord,
No brave words on my lips,

Lest pride should cloud my soul, and I
Should die in the eclipse.

But when, and where, and by what pain-

All this is one to me;

I only long for such a death

As most shall honour Thee.

Long life dismays me by the sense
Of my own weakness scared;
And by Thy grace a sudden death
Need not be unprepared.

One wish is hard to be unwished-
That I at last might die

Loving, absolved from all my sin,
To praise Thy Majesty.

F. W. FABER.

March 20

THEREFORE to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name?

Builder and Maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands!

What, have fear of change from Thee Who art ever the same?

Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power expands?

There shall never be one lost good! What was shall live as before;

The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;

On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist,

Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power,

Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist,

When eternity confirms the conception of an hour. The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,

The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,

Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; Enough that He heard it once; we shall hear it by

and-bye.

R. BROWNING, Art Vogler.

March 21.

TO ALTHEA FROM PRISON.

WHEN love with unconfined wings
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at my grates;
When I lye tangled in her haire,
And fetter'd with her eye,
The birds that wanton in the aire
Know no such libertie.

When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no alloying Thames,

Our carelesse heads with roses crowned,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty griefe in wine we steepe,
When healths and draughts goe free,

Fishes that tipple in the deepe

Know no such libertie.

When, linnet-like, confined I

With shriller note shall sing
The mercye, sweetness, majestye,
And glories of my king;

When I shall voyce aloud how good
He is, how great should be,

Th' enlarged windes that curl the flood
Know no such libertie.

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron barres a cage,
Mindes innocent and quiet, take
That for an hermitage:
If I have freedom in my love,

And in my soul am free,

Angels alone, that soare above,

Enjoy such libertie.

ČOLONEL RICHARD LOVELACE, 1649.