England's Antiphon

DESOLATION

O say not thou art left of God,
Because His tokens in the sky
Thou canst not read: this earth He trod
To teach thee He was ever nigh.

He sees, beneath the fig-tree green,
Nathaniel con His sacred lore;
Shouldst thou thy chamber seek, unseen
He enters through the unopened door.

And when thou liest, by slumber bound,
Outwearied in the Christian fight,
In glory, girt with saints around,
He stands above thee through the night.

When friends to Emmaus bend their course,
He joins, although He holds their eyes:
Or, shouldst thou feel some fever's force,
He takes thy hand, He bids thee rise.

Or on a voyage, when calms prevail,
And prison thee upon the sea,
He walks the waves, He wings the sail,
The shore is gained, and thou art free.

Sir Aubrey de Vere is a poet profound in feeling, and gracefully tender in utterance. I give one short poem and one sonnet.

REALITY

Love thy God, and love Him only:
And thy breast will ne'er be lonely.
In that one great Spirit meet
All things mighty, grave, and sweet.
Vainly strives the soul to mingle
With a being of our kind:
Vainly hearts with hearts are twined:
For the deepest still is single.
An impalpable resistance
Holds like natures still at distance.
Mortal! love that Holy One!
Or dwell for aye alone.

I respond most heartily to the last two lines; but I venture to add, with regard to the preceding six, "Love that holy One, and the impalpable resistance will vanish; for when thou seest him enter to sup with thy neighbour, thou wilt love that neighbour as thyself."

SONNET

Ye praise the humble: of the meek ye say,
"Happy they live among their lowly bowers;
"The mountains, and the mountain-storms are ours."
Thus, self-deceivers, filled with pride alway,
Reluctant homage to the good ye pay,
Mingled with scorn like poison sucked from flowers—
Revere the humble; godlike are their powers:
No mendicants for praise of men are they.
The child who prays in faith "Thy will be done"
Is blended with that Will Supreme which moves
A wilderness of worlds by Thought untrod;
He shares the starry sceptre, and the throne:
The man who as himself his neighbour loves
Looks down on all things with the eyes of God!

Is it a fancy that, in the midst of all this devotion and lovely thought, I hear the mingled mournful tone of such as have cut off a right hand and plucked out a right eye, which had not caused them to offend? This is tenfold better than to have spared offending members; but the true Christian ambition is to fill the divine scheme of humanity—abridging nothing, ignoring nothing, denying nothing, calling nothing unclean, but burning everything a thank-offering in the flame of life upon the altar of absolute devotion to the Father and Saviour of men. We must not throw away half his gifts, that we may carry the other half in both hands to his altar.

But sacred fervour is confined to no sect. Here it is of the profoundest, and uttered with a homely tenderness equal to that of the earliest writers. Mrs. Browning, the princess of poets, was no partisan. If my work were mainly critical, I should feel bound to remark upon her false theory of English rhyme, and her use of strange words. That she is careless too in her general utterance I cannot deny; but in idea she is noble, and in phrase magnificent. Some of her sonnets are worthy of being ranged with the best in our language—those of Milton and Wordsworth.

BEREAVEMENT

When some Beloveds, 'neath whose eyelids lay
The sweet lights of my childhood, one by one
Did leave me dark before the natural sun,
And I astonied fell, and could not pray,
A thought within me to myself did say,
"Is God less God that thou art left undone?
Rise, worship, bless Him! in this sackcloth spun,
As in that purple!"—But I answer, Nay!
What child his filial heart in words can loose,
If he behold his tender father raise
The hand that chastens sorely? Can he choose
But sob in silence with an upward gaze?
And my great Father, thinking fit to bruise,
Discerns in speechless tears both prayer and praise.

COMFORT

Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet,
From out the hallelujahs sweet and low,
Lest I should fear and fall, and miss thee so,
Who art not missed by any that entreat.
Speak to me as to Mary at thy feet—
And if no precious gums my hands bestow,
Let my tears drop like amber, while I go
In reach of thy divinest voice complete
In humanest affection—thus, in sooth
To lose the sense of losing! As a child,
Whose song-bird seeks the wood for evermore,
Is sung to in its stead by mother's mouth;
Till sinking on her breast, love-reconciled,