Now that those scenes of bliss are gone, When this day bids us from within Look out on human strifes and storms: The world's base arts, Faith's hollow forms- Read by my Mother and my Wife. THE UNTRAVELLED TRAVELLER. (Lines written on the recovery of Prince Leopold.) WHEN brothers part for manhood's race,' 'WHEN And gladly seek from year to year, From scene to scene, from place to place, To undiscovered haunt or shore, The untravelled traveller at home? Yes, gallant youth! What though to thee Nor Western worlds, their wealth disclose; Thy wanderings have been vaster far For thrice thy weary feet have trod The pathway to the realms of Death; And leaning on the hand of God, With halting step and panting breath, Thou hast, like him who rose at Nain, Each winding of that mournful way, Thou, in thy solitary strife, Hast borne aloft thy charmèd life. Yet in this pilgrimage of ill Sweet tracts and isles of peace were thineDear watchful friends, strong gentle skill, Consoling words of Love Divine, A Royal mother's ceaseless care, That lightened even the load of death. Those long descents, that upward climb, Through all thy dark and perilous course. Not Afric's swamps nor Biscay's wave And still as months and years roll by, The land of wisdom's purest gold. 'Hast Thou, O Father, dear and true, He blesses, and thou shalt be blest; GEORGE ELIOT. Born 1820. Died 1881. H, may I join the choir invisible OF Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence: live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues. So to live is heaven: To make undying music in the world, For which we struggled, failed, and agonised That sobbed religiously in yearning song, That watched to ease the burthen of the world, Laboriously tracing what must be, And what may yet be better-saw within To higher reverence more mixed with love- This is life to come, Whose music is the gladness of the world. ANNA LETITIA WARING. About 1850. THY WILL BE DONE. `ATHER, I know that all my life FATE Is portioned out for me, And the changes that are sure to come I do not fear to see; But I ask Thee for a present mind, I ask Thee for a thoughtful love, Through constant watching wise, To meet the glad with joyful smiles And to wipe the weeping eyes : And a heart at leisure from itself, To soothe and sympathise. I would not have the restless will A secret thing to know: I would be treated as a child, Wherever in the world I am, I have a fellowship with men And a work of lowly love to do, For the Lord on whom I wait. |