And hers whose faith

Drew strength from death,

And prayed her Russell up to God!

Our hearts grow cold,
We lightly hold

A right which brave men died to gain ;
The stake, the cord,

The axe, the sword,

Grim nurses at its birth of pain.

The shadow rend,

And o'er us bend,

Oh, martyrs, with your crowns and palms,Breathe through these throngs

Your battle songs,

Your scaffold prayers, and dungeon psalms!

Look from the sky,

Like God's great eye,

Thou solemn moon, with searching beam;
Till in the sight
Of thy pure light

Our mean self-seekings meaner seem.

Shame from our hearts

Unworthy arts,

The fraud designed, the purpose dark;
And smite away

The hands we lay

Profanely on the sacred ark.

To party claims,
And private aims,

Reveal that august face of Truth,
Whereto are given

The age of heaven,

The beauty of immortal youth.

THE OVER-HEART.

So shall our voice

Of sovereign choice

Swell the deep bass of duty done,

And strike the key

Of time to be,

When God and man shall speak as one!

358

THE OVER-HEART.

FOR of Him, and through Him, and to Ilim are all things, to whom be glory for ever!-Paul.

ABOVE, below, in sky and sod,

In leaf and spar, in star and man,
Well might the wise Athenian scan
The geometric signs of God,

The measured order of his plan.

And India's mystics sang aright
Of the One Life pervading all,—
One Being's tidal rise and fall
In soul and form, in sound and sight,-
Eternal outflow and recall.

God is and man in guilt and fear
The central fact of Nature owns;-
Kneels, trembling, by his altar-stones,
And darkly dreams the ghastly smear
Of blood appeases and atones.

Guilt shapes the Terror: deep within
The human heart the secret lies
Of all the hideous deities;
And, painted on a ground of sin,
The fabled gods of torment rise!

And what is He?-The ripe grain nods,
The sweet dews fall, the sweet flowers blow;

VOL. II.

23

But darker signs his presence show. The earthquake and the storm are God's, And good and evil interflow.

Oh, hearts of love! Oh, souls that turn
Like sunflowers to the pure and best!
To you the truth is manifest:

For they the mind of Christ discern
Who lean like John upon his breast!

In him of whom the Sibyl told,

For whom the prophet's harp was toned, Whose need the sage and magian owned, The loving heart of God behold,

The hope for which the ages groaned!

Fade, pomp of dreadful imagery

Wherewith mankind have deified
Their hate, and selfishness, and pride!
Let the scared dreamer wake to see
The Christ of Nazareth at his side!

What doth that holy Guide require ?—
No rite of pain, nor gift of blood,
But man a kindly brotherhood,
Looking, where duty is desire,
To him, the beautiful and good.

Gone be the faithlessness of fear,

And let the pitying heaven's sweet rain Wash out the altar's bloody stain;

The law of Hatred disappear,

The law of Love alone remain.

How fall the idols false and grim !——
And lo! their hideous wreck above
The emblems of the Lamb and Dove!
Man turns from God, not God from him;
And guilt, in suffering whispers Love!

IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH STURGE. 355

The world sits at the feet of Christ,
Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled;
It yet shall touch his garment's fold,
And feel the heavenly Alchemist
Transform its very dust to gold.

The theme befitting angel tongues
Beyond a mortal's scope has grown.
Oh, heart of mine! with reverence own
The fulness which to it belongs,

And trust the unknown for the known

IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH STURGE.

In the fair land o'erwatched by Ischia's mountains, Across the charmed bay

Whose blue waves keep with Capri's silver fountains Perpetual holiday,

A king lies dead, his wafer duly eaten,
His gold bought masses given;

And Rome's great altar smokes with gums to sweeten
Her foulest gift to Heaven.

And while all Naples thrills with mute thanksgiving,
The court of England's queen

For the dead monster so abhorred while living
In mourning garb is seen.

With a true sorrow God rebukes that feigning;
By lone Edgbaston's side

Stands a great city in the sky's sad raining,
Bare-headed and wet-eyed!

Silent for once the restless hive of labor,
Save the low funeral tread,

Or voice of craftsman whispering to his neighbor
The good deeds of the dead.

For him no minster's chant of the immortals
Rose from the lips of sin;

No mitred priest swung back the heavenly portals
To let the white soul in.

But Age and Sickness framed their tearful faces
In the low hovel's door,

And prayers went up from all the dark by-places
And Ghettos of the poor.

The pallid toiler and the negro chattel,
The vagrant of the street,

The human dice wherewith in games of battle
The lords of earth compete,

Touched with a grief that needs no outward draping,

All swelled the long lament,

Of grateful hearts, instead of marble, shaping
His viewless monument !

For never yet, with ritual pomp and splendor,
In the long heretofore,

A heart more loyal, warm, and true, and tender,
Has England's turf closed o'er.

And if there fell from out her grand old steeples No crash of brazen wail,

The murmurous woe of kindreds, tongues, and peoples

Swept in on every gale.

It came from Holstein's birchen-belted meadows,
And from the tropic calms

Of Indian islands in the sun-smit shadows
Of Occidental palms;

From the locked roadsteads of the Bothnian peasants,

And harbors of the Finn,