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Of its unseen confessional.
He needs no special place of prayer
Whose hearing ear is everywhere:
He brings not back the childish days
That ringed the earth with stones of
praise,

Roofed Karnak's hall of gods, and laid
The plinths of Phila's colonnade.
Still less He owns the selfish good
And sickly growth of solitude, -
The worthless grace that, out of sight.
Flowers in the desert anchorite;
Dissevered from the suffering whole,
Love hath no power to save a soul.
Not out of Self, the origin
And native air and soil of sin,
The living waters spring and flow,
The trees with leaves of healing grow.

"Dream not, O friend, because I seek
This quiet shelter twice a week,
I better deem its pine-laid floor
Than breezy hill or sea-sung shore;
But nature is not solitude:

She crowds us with her thronging wood;

Her many hands reach out to us,
Her many tongues are garrulous;
Perpetual riddles of surprise
She offers to our ears and eyes;
She will not leave our senses still,
But drags them captive at her will:
And, making earth too great for heaven,
She hides the Giver in the given.

"And so, I find it well to come
For deeper rest to this still room,
For here the habit of the soul
Feels less the outer world's control:
The strength of mutual purpose pleads
More earnestly our common needs;
And from the silence multiplied
By these still forms on either side,
The world that time and sense have
known

Falls off and leaves us God alone.

And here, in its accustomed place,
I look on memory's dearest face;
The blind by-sitter guesseth not
What shadow haunts that vacant spot;
No eyes save mine alone can see
The love wherewith it welcomes me!
And still, with those alone my kin,
In doubt and weakness, want and sin,
I bow my head, my heart I bare
As when that face was living there,
And strive (too oft, alas! in vain)
The peace of simple trust to gain,
Fold fancy's restless wings, and lay
The idols of my heart away.

"Welcome the silence all unbroken,
Nor less the words of fitness spoken, -
Such golden words as hers for whom
Our autumn flowers have just made

room;

Whose hopeful utterance through and through

The freshness of the morning blew ;
Who loved not less the earth that light
Fell on it from the heavens in sight,
But saw in all fair forms more fair
The Eternal beauty mirrored there.
Whose eighty years but added grace
And saintlier meaning to her face,-
The look of one who bore away
Glad tidings from the hills of day,
While all our hearts went forth to meet
The coming of her beautiful feet!
Or haply hers, whose pilgrim tread
Is in the paths where Jesus led:
Who dreams her childhood's sabbath
dream

By Jordan's willow-shaded stream,
And, of the hymns of hope and faith,
Sung by the monks of Nazareth,
Hears pious echoes, in the call
To prayer, from Moslem minarets fall,
Repeating where His works were
wrought

The lesson that her Master taught,
Of whom an elder Sibyl gave,
The prophecies of Cuma's cave!

"I ask no organ's soulless breath
To drone the themes of life and death,
No altar candle-lit by day,

No ornate wordsman's rhetoric-play,
No cool philosophy to teach
Its bland audacities of speech

To doubled-tasked idolators Themselves their gods and worshippers,

No pulpit hammered by the fist
Of loud-asserting dogmatist,
Who borrows for the hand of love
The smoking thunderbolts of Jove.
I know how well the fathers taught,
What work the later schoolmen
wrought;

i reverence old-time faith and men,
But God is near us now as then ;
His force of love is still unspent,
His hate of sin as imminent;
And still the measure of our needs
Outgrows the cramping bounds of
creeds;

The manna gathered yesterday
Already savors of decay;

Doubts to the world's child-heart unknown

Question us now from star and stone;
Too little or too much we know,
And sight is swift and faith is slow;
The power is lost to self-deceive
With shallow forms of make-believe.
We walk at high noon, and the bells
Call to a thousand oracles,

But the sound deafens, and the light
Is stronger than our dazzled sight;
The letters of the sacred Book
Glimmer and swim beneath our look;
Still struggles in the Age's breast
With deepening agony of quest
The old entreaty: Art thou He,
Or look we for the Christ to be?'

"God should be most where man is least:

So, where is neither church nor priest,
And never rag of form or creed
To clothe the nakedness of need,
Where farmer-folk in silence meet, -
I turn my bell-unsummoned feet;
I lay the critic's glass aside,
I tread upon my lettered pride,
And, lowest-seated, testify
To the oneness of humanity;
Confess the universal want,

And share whatever Heaven may grant.
He findeth not who seeks his own,
The soul is lost that 's saved alone.
Not on one favored forehead fell
Of old the fire-tongued miracle,

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But flamed o'er all the thronging host The baptism of the Holy Ghost; Heart answers heart: in one desire The blending lines of prayer aspire ; 'Where, in my name, meet two or three,'

Our Lord hath said, 'I there will be !'

"So sometimes comes to soul and sense
The feeling which is evidence
That very near about us lies
The realm of spiritual mysteries.
The sphere of the supernal powers
Impinges on this world of ours.
The low and dark horizon lifts,
To light the scenic terror shifts;
The breath of a diviner air
Blows down the answer of a prayer:-
That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt
A great compassion clasps about,
And law and goodness, love and force,
Are wedded fast beyond divorce.
Then duty leaves to love its task,
The beggar Self forgets to ask;
With smile of trust and folded hands,
The passive soul in waiting stands
To feel, as flowers the sun and dew,
The One true Life its own renew.

So, to the calmly gathered thought The innermost of truth is taught, The mystery dimly understood, That love of God is love of good, And, chiefly, its divinest trace In Him of Nazareth's holy face; That to be saved is only this, Salvation from our selfishness, From more than elemental fire, The soul's unsanctified desire, From sin itself, and not the pain That warns us of its chafing chain; That worship's deeper meaning lies In mercy, and not sacrifice, Not proud humilities of sense And posturing of penitence,

But love's unforced obedience;

That Book and Church and Day are

given

For man, not God, for earth, not

heaven,

The blessed means to holiest ends, Not masters, but benignant friends; That the dear Christ dwells not afar, The king of some remoter star,

Listening, at times, with flattered ear To homage wrung from selfish fear, But here, amidst the poor and blind, The bound and suffering of our kind, In works we do, in prayers we pray, Life of our life, he lives to-day."

THE ANSWER.

SPARE me, dread angel of reproof,

And let the sunshine weave to day Its gold threads in the warp and woof Of life so poor and gray.

Spare me awhile; the flesh is weak.
These lingering feet, that fain would
stray
Among the flowers, shall some day seek
The strait and narrow way.

Take off thy ever-watchful eye,

The awe of thy rebuking frown; The dullest slave at times must sigh To fling his burdens down;

To drop his galley's straining oar,
And press, in summer warmth and
calm,

The lap of some enchanted shore
Of blossom and of balm.

G. L. S.

He has done the work of a true man,-
Crown him, honor him, love him.
Weep over him, tears of woman,
Stoop maniiest brows above him!

O dusky mothers and daughters,

Vigils of mourning keep for him! Up in the mountains, and down by the

waters,

Lift up your voices and weep for him!

For the warmest of hearts is frozen,
The freest of hands is still;
And the gap in our picked and chosen
The long years may not fill.

No duty could overtask him,
No need his will outrun;
Or ever our lips could ask him,
His hands the work had done.

He forgot his own soul for others,

Himself to his neighbor lending; He found the Lord in his suffering brothers,

And not in the clouds descending.

So the bed was sweet to die on, Whence he saw the doors wide swung Against whose bolted iron

The strength of his life was flung.

And he saw ere his eye was darkened The sheaves of the harvest-bringing, And knew while his ear yet hearkened The voice of the reapers singing.

Ah, well! The world is discreet;

There are plenty to pause and wait; But here was a man who set his feet Sometimes in advance of fate,

Plucked off the old bark when the

inner

Was slow to renew it,

And put to the Lord's work the sinner When saints failed to do it.

Never rode to the wrong's redressing
A worthier paladin.
Shall he not hear the blessing,

"Good and faithful, enter in !"

FREEDOM IN BRAZIL.

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From his gaunt hand shall drop the martyr's palm

To greet thee with "Well done!"

And thou, O Earth, with smiles thy face make sweet,

And let thy wail be stilled, To hear the Muse of prophecy repeat Her promise half fulfilled.

The Voice that spake at Nazareth speaks still,

No sound thereof hath died; Alike thy hope and Heaven's eternal will

Shall yet be satisfied.

The years are slow, the vision tarrieth long,

And far the end may be ;

But, one by one, the fiends of ancient

wrong

Go out and leave thee free.

DIVINE COMPASSION.

LONG since, a dream of heaven I had,
And still the vision haunts me oft;
I see the saints in white robes clad,

The martyrs with their palms aloft ; But hearing still, in middle song,

The ceaseless dissonance of wrong; And shrinking, with hid faces, from the strain

Of sad, beseeching eyes, full of remorse and pain.

The glad song falters to a wail,

The harping sinks to low lament; Before the still uplifted veil

I see the crowned foreheads bent, Making more sweet the heavenly air, With breathings of unselfish prayer; And a Voice saith: "O Pity which is pain,

O Love that weeps, fill up my sufferings which remain !

"Shall souls redeemed by me refuse To share my sorrow in their turn? Or, sin-forgiven, my gift abuse

Of peace with selfish unconcern? Has saintly ease no pitying care? Has faith no work, and love no prayer?