The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 69, July, 1863

"Grey," said Mrs. Sheppard, "I wish we could go behind the scenes. Can we? I want to talk to Lizzy this minute."

"To tell her she is at the Devil's work, Mrs. Sheppard, eh?"

Doctor Blecker pulled at his beard, angrily.

"Suppose you and I let her alone. We don't understand her."

"I think I do. God help her!"

"We will go round when the song is over," said Grey, gently.

Lizzy, scanning their faces, scanning every face in pit or boxes, discerned a good will and wish on each. Something wholesome and sound in her heart received it, half afraid.

"I don't know," she thought.

One of the windows was open, and out beyond the gas-light and smells of the theatre she could see a glimpse of far space, with the eternal stars shining. There had been once a man who loved her: he, looking down, could see her now. If she had stayed at home, selfish and useless, there might have been a chance for her yonder.

Her song was ended; as she drew back, she glanced up again through the fresh air.

They were curious words the soul of the girl cried out to God in that dumb moment:—"Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." Yet in that moment a new feeling came to the girl,—a peace that never left her afterwards.

An actress: but she holds her work bravely and healthily and well in her grasp, with her foot always on a grave, as one might say, and God very near above. And it may be, that, when her work is nearer done, and she comes closer to the land where all things are clearly seen at last in their real laws, she will know that the faces of those who loved her wait kindly for her, and of whatever happiness has been given to them they will not deem her quite unworthy.

Perhaps they have turned Lizzy out of the church. I do not know. But her Friend, the world's Christ, they could not make dead to her by shutting him up in formula or church. He never was dead. From the girding sepulchre he passed to save the spirits long in prison; and from the visible church now he lives and works out from every soul that has learned, like Lizzy, the truths of life,—to love, to succor, to renounce.

BY THE RIVER

I

In the beautiful greenwood's charmed light,
And down through the meadows wide and bright,
Deep in the silence, and smooth in the gleam,
For ever and ever flows the stream.

Where the mandrakes grow, and the pale, thin grass
The airy scarf of the woodland weaves,
By dim, enchanted paths I pass,
Crushing the twigs and the last year's leaves.

Over the wave, by the crystal brink,
A kingfisher sits on a low, dead limb:
He is always sitting there, I think,—
And another, within the crystal brink,
Is always looking up at him.

I know where an old tree leans across
From bank to bank, an ancient tree,
Quaintly cushioned with curious moss,
A bridge for the cool wood-nymphs and me:
Half seen they flit, while here I sit
By the magical water, watching it.

In its bosom swims the fair phantasm
Of a subterraneous azure chasm,
So soft and clear, you would say the stream
Was dreaming of heaven a visible dream.

Where the noontide basks, and its warm rays tint
The nettles and clover and scented mint,
And the crinkled airs, that curl and quiver,
Drop their wreaths in the mirroring river,—
Under the shaggy magnificent drapery
Of many a wild-woven native grapery,—
By ivy-bowers, and banks of violets,
And golden hillocks, and emerald islets,
Along its sinuous shining bed,
In sheets of splendor it lies outspread.

In the twilight stillness and solitude
Of green caves roofed by the brooding wood,
Where the woodbine swings, and beneath the trailing
Sprays of the queenly elm-tree sailing,—
By ribbed and wave-worn ledges shimmering,
Gilding the rocks with a rippled glimmering,
All pictured over in shade and sun,
The wavering silken waters run.

Upon this mossy trunk I sit,
Over the river, watching it.
A shadowed face peers up at me;
And another tree in the chasm I see,
Clinging above the abyss it spans;
The broad boughs curve their spreading fans,
From side to side, in the nether air;
And phantom birds in the phantom branches
Mimic the birds above; and there,
Oh I far below, solemn and slow,
The white clouds roll the crumbling snow
Of ever-pendulous avalanches,
Till the brain grows giddy, gazing through
Their wild, wide rifts of bottomless blue.

II

Through the river, and through the rifts
Of the sundered earth I gaze,
While Thought on dreamy pinion drifts,
Over cerulean bays,
Into the deep ethereal sea