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Hint more than all the sages say,

Or poets sing, of death or life!

For, truth half drawn from Nature's breast,

Through subtlest types of form and tone,

Outweigh what man at most hath guessed,

While heeding his own heart alone.

And midway betwixt heaven and us Stands Nature, in her fadeless grace, Still pointing to our Father's house, His glory on her mystic face!

WINDLESS RAIN.

THE rain, the desolate rain!

Ceaseless, and solemn, and chill! How it drips on the misty pane, How it drenches the darkened sill! O scene of sorrow and dearth!

I would that the wind awaking To a fierce and gusty birth

Might vary this dull refrain

Of the rain, the desolate rain: For the heart of heaven seems breaking

In tears o'er the fallen earth,
And again, again, again,

We list to the sombre strain,
The faint, cold, monotone —
Whose soul is a mystic moan-
Of the rain, the mournful rain,
The soft, despairing rain!

The rain, the murmurous rain! Weary, passionless, slow, 'Tis the rhythm of settled sorrow, "T is the sobbing of cureless woe! And all the tragic life,

The pathos of Long-Ago,

Comes back on the sad refrain Of the rain, the dreary rain, Till the graves in my heart unclose And the dead who are buried there From a solemn and weird repose

Awake, but with eyeballs drear, And voices that melt in pain On the tide of the plaintive rain, The yearning, hopeless rain, The long, low, whispering rain?

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QUESTIONINGS.

HATH this world without me wrought
Other substance than my thought?
Lives it by my sense alone,
Or by essence of its own?
Will its life, with mine begun,
Cease to be when that is done?
Or another consciousness
With the self-same forms impress?

Doth yon fire-ball, poised in air,
Hang by my permission there?
Are the clouds that wander by
But the offspring of mine eye,
Born with every glance I cast,
Perishing when that is past?
And those thousand, thousand eyes,
Scattered through the twinkling skies,
Do they draw their life from mine,
Or of their own beauty shine?

Now I close my eyes, my ears,
And creation disappears;
Yet if I but speak the word,
All creation is restored.
Or- more wonderful - within,
New creations do begin;

Hues more bright and forms more

rare

Than reality doth wear,

Flash across my inward sense
Born of the mind's omnipotence.
Soul! that all informest, say!
Shall these glories pass away?
Will those planets cease to blaze
When these eyes no longer gaze?
And the life of things be o'er
When these pulses beat no more?

Thought that in me works and lives,

Life to all things living gives,
Art thou not thyself, perchance,
But the universe in trance ?
A reflection inly flung

By that world thou fanciedst sprung
From thyself, thyself a dream, -
Of the world's thinking, thou the

theme ?

Be it thus, or be thy birth
From a source above the earth, –
Be thou matter, be thou mind,
In thee alone myself I find,
And through thee, alone, for me,
Hath this world reality.
Therefore, in thee will I live,
To thee all myself will give,
Losing still that I may find

This bounded self in boundless mind.

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We know when moons shall wane,

Speak, then, thou voice of God When summer-birds from far shall

within!

Thou of the deep low tone!

Answer me through life's restless din, Where is the spirit flown?

And the voice answered, "Be thou

still!

Enough to know is given;

cross the sea,

When autumn's hue shall tinge the golden grain,

But who shall teach us when to look

for thee?

Is it when spring's first gale

Clouds, winds, and stars their task Comes forth to whisper where the

fulfil;

Thine is to trust in Heaven!"

THE HOUR OF DEATH.

LEAVES have their time to fall, And flowers to wither at the north

wind's breath,

And stars to set, but all,

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violets lie?

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Thou hast all seasons for thine own, And the world calls us forth,-and

oh! Death.

thou art there.

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