IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH STURGE. 357

Where war's worn victims saw his gentle pres

ence

Come sailing, Christ-like, in,

To seek the lost, to build the old waste-places,
To link the hostile shores

Of severing seas, and sow with England's daisies
The moss of Finland's moors.

Thanks for the good man's beautiful example,
Who in the vilest saw

Some sacred crypt or altar of a temple
Still vocal with God's law;

And heard with tender ear the spirit sighing
As from its prison cell,
Praying for pity, like the mournful crying
Of Jonah out of hell.

Not his the golden pen's or lip's persuasion,
But a fine sense of right,

And truth's directness, meeting each occasion
Straight as a line of light.

His faith and works, like streams that intermingle,
In the same channel ran :

The crystal clearness of an eye kept single
Shamed all the frauds of iman.

The very gentlest of all human natures
He joined to courage strong,

And love outreaching unto all God's creatures
With sturdy hate of wrong.

Tender as woman; manliness and meekness
In him were so allied

That they who judged him by his strength or

weakness

Saw but a single side.

Men failed, betrayed him, but his zeal seemed nourished

By failure and by fall ;

Still a large faith in human kind he cherished,
And in God's love for all.

And now he rests: his greatness and his sweetness
No more shall seem at strife;

And death has moulded into calm completeness
The statue of his life.

Where the dews glisten and the song-birds warble,
His dust to dust is laid,

In Nature's keeping, with no pomp of marble
To shame his modest shade.

The forges glow, the hammers all are ringing;
Beneath its smoky vale,

Hard by, the city of his love is swinging
Its clamorous iron flail.

But round his grave are quietude and beauty,
And the sweet heaven above,-
The fitting symbols of a life of duty
Transfigured into love!

TRINITAS.

Ar morn I prayed, "I fain would see
How Three are One, and One is Three.
Read the dark riddle unto me.

I wandered forth, the sun and air
I saw bestowed with equal care
On good and evil, foul and fair.

TRINITAS.

No partial favor dropped the rain ;-
Alike the righteous and profane
Rejoiced above their heading grain.

And my heart murmured, " Is it meet
That blindfold Nature thus should treat
With equal hand the tares and wheat?

A presence melted through my mood,—
A warmth, a light, a sense of good,
Like sunshine through a winter wood.

I saw that presence, mailed complete
In her white innocence, pause to greet
A fallen sister of the street.

Upon her bosom snowy pure
The lost one clung, as if secure
From inward guilt or outward lure.

"Beware!" I said; "in this I see
No gain to her, but loss to thee:
Who touches pitch defiled must be."

I passed the haunts of shame and sin,
And a voice whispered, "Who therein
Shall these lost souls to Heaven's peace win?

"Who there shall hope and health dispense,
And lift the ladder up from thence
Whose rounds are prayers of penitence ?

I said, "No higher life they know;
These earth-worms love to have it so.
Who stoops to raise them sinks as low."

That night with painful care I read
What Hippo's saint and Calvin said,
The living seeking to the dead!

859

In vain I turned, in weary quest,

Old pages, where (God give them rest!)
The poor creed-mongers dreamed and guessed.

And still I prayed, "Lord, let me see
How Three are One, and One is Three ;
Read the dark riddle unto me!"

Then something whispered, "Dost thou pray
For what thou hast? This very day
The Holy Three have crossed thy way.

"Did not the gifts of sun and air To good and ill alike declare

The all-compassionate Father's care ?

"In the white soul, that stooped to raise The lost one from her evil ways,

Thou saw'st the Christ, whom angels praise!

"A bodiless Divinity,

The still small Voice that spake to thee
Was the Holy Spirit's mystery!

“Oh, blind of sight, of faith how small !
Father, and Son, and Holy Call ;-
This day thou hast denied them all!

"Revealed in love and sacrifice,
The Holiest passed before thine eyes,
One and the same, in threefold guise.

"The equal Father in rain and sun, His Christ in the good to evil done,

His Voice in thy soul;-and the Three are One!"

I shut my grave Aquinas fast;
The monkish gloss of ages past,
The schoolman's creed aside I cast.

THE OLD BURYING-GROUnd.

And my heart answered, "Lord, I see
How Three are One, and One is Three;
Thy riddle hath been read to me!"

861

THE OLD BURYING-GROUND.

OUR vales are sweet with fern and rose,
Our hills are maple-crowned;
But not from them our fathers chose
The village burying-ground.

The dreariest spot in all the land
To Death they set apart;
With scanty grace from Nature's hand,
And none from that of Art.

A winding wall of mossy stone,
Frost-flung and broken, lines
A lonesome acre thinly grown
With grass and wandering vines.

Without the wall a birch-tree shows
Its drooped and tasselled head;
Within, a stag-horned sumach grows,
Fern-leafed, with spikes of red.

There, sheep that graze the neighboring plain Like white ghosts come and go,

The farm-horse drags his fetlock chain,

The cow-bell tinkles slow.

Low moans the river from its bed,

The distant pines reply;

Like mourners shrinking from the dead,

They stand apart and sigh.