The shapes that frowned before the eyes
Of the early world have fled,
And all the life of earth and skies,
Of streams and seas, is dead.
Forgotten is the Titan’s fame,
The dread Chimæra now
Is but a mild innocuous flame
Upon a mountain’s brow,
Around whose warmth its strawberry red
The arbutus hangs and goatherds...
My faith looks up to Thee,
Thou Lamb of Calvary,
Saviour divine!
Now hear me while I pray,
Take all my guilt away,
O let me from this day
Be wholly Thine!
May Thy rich grace impart
Strength to my fainting heart,
My zeal inspire;
As Thou hast died for me,
O may my love for Thee
Pure,...
When from the vaulted wonder of the sky
The curtain of the light is drawn aside,
And I behold the stars in all their wide
Significance and glorious mystery,
Assured that those more distant orbs are suns
Round which innumerable worlds revolve,—
My faith grows strong, my day-born doubts dissolve,
And death, that dread annulment which life...
Were i a happy bird,
Building my little nest each early spring,
It might be easy then to keep God’s word,
His praise to sing;
Easy to live content,
Tending my little ones,—of love secure,
Knowing no agony for time misspent,
Or thought impure!
Were I a butterfly,
A bright-winged creature of the...
O, Don’t be sorrowful, darling!
Now, don’t be sorrowful, pray;
For, taking the year together, my dear,
There isn’t more night than day.
It ’s rainy weather, my loved one;
Time’s wheels they heavily run;
But taking the year together, my dear,
There isn’t more cloud than sun.
We ’re old folks now, companion,—
Our...
Better trust all and be deceived,
And weep that trust and that deceiving,
Than doubt one heart that, if believed,
Had blessed one’s life with true believing.
O, in this mocking world too fast
The doubting fiend o’ertakes our youth;
Better be cheated to the last
Than lose the blessed hope of truth.
O World, thou choosest not the better part!
It is not wisdom to be only wise,
And on the inward vision close the eyes,
But it is wisdom to believe the heart.
Columbus found a world, and had no chart,
Save one that faith deciphered in the skies;
To trust the soul’s invincible surmise
Was all his science and his only art.
Our...
[The author of this poem, one of the victims of the persecuting Henry VIII., was burnt to death at Smithfield in 1546. It was made and sung by her while a prisoner in Newgate.]
LIKE as the armèd Knighte,
Appointed to the fielde,
With this world wil I fight,
And faith shal be my shilde.
Faith is that weapon stronge,
Which wil not faile at...
From “In Memoriam,” XCV.
YOU say, but with no touch of scorn,
Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes
Are tender over drowning flies,
You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.
I know not: one indeed I knew
In many a subtle question versed,
Who touched a jarring lyre at first,
But ever strove to make it true:
Perplext...
Here in the country’s heart
Where the grass is green,
Life is the same sweet life
As it e’er hath been.
Trust in a God still lives,
And the bell at morn
Floats with a thought of God
O’er the rising corn.
God comes down in the rain,
And the crop grows tall—
This is the country faith,
And the best of all...
