Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb

Unread forever.

This is life to come,

Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty-
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense.

So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.

EMILY BRONTË

LAST LINES

No coward soul is mine,

No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere: I see Heaven's glories shine,

And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

O God within my breast,

Almighty, ever-present Deity!

Life that in me has rest,

As I-undying Life-have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds

That move men's hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,

Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by thine infinity;
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of immortality.

With wide-embracing love Thy spirit animates eternal years, Pervades and broods above,

Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

Though earth and man were gone,

And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou were left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.

There is no room for Death,

Nor atom that his might could render void: Thou―THOU are Being and Breath, And what THOU art may never be destroyed.

203

THE PRISONER

Still, let my tyrants know, I am not doomed to

wear

Year after year in gloom, and desolate despair; A messenger of Hope comes every night to me, And offers for short life, eternal liberty.

He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs,

With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars.

Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire, And visions rise, and change, that kill me with desire.

Desire for nothing known in my 'maturer years, When Joy grew mad with awe, at counting future tears.

When, if my spirit's sky was full of flashes warm, I knew not whence they came, from sun or thunder-storm.

But first, a hush of peace-a soundless calm de

scends;

The struggle of distress and fierce impatience

ends;

Mute music soothes my breast-unuttered har

mony,

That I could never dream, till Earth was lost to

me.

Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals,

My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels: Its wings are almost free-its home, its harbour found,

Measuring the gulf, it stoops and dares the final bound.

Oh! dreadful is the check-intense the agonyWhen the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;

When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again;

The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.

Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture

less;

The more that anguish racks, the earlier it will

bless;

And robed in fires of hell, or bright with heavenly

shine,

If it but herald death, the vision is divine!

DORA GREENWELL

THE SEARCH

Calo tegitur qui non habet urnam.

In Spring the green leaves shoot,
In Spring the blossoms fall,
With Summer falls the fruit,
The leaves in Autumn fall,
Contented from the bough

They drop, leaves, blossoms now,
And ripen'd fruit; the warm earth takes them all.

Thus all things ask for rest,

A home above, a home beneath the sod;
The sun will seek the west,

The bird will seek its nest,

The heart another breast

Whereon to lean, the spirit seeks its God.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

EAST LONDON

'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green, And the pale weaver, through his windows seen In Spitalfields, look'd thrice dispirited.