Our joy was all a drunken dream:
This is the truth at waking. We
Are swept out rootless by the stream
And current of calamity,
Out on some lone, and shoreless sea
Of solitude, so vast and deep,
As in a wrong Eternity,
Where God is not, or gone to sleep.

My friend, I see you with your cap
Of tears and trembling, see you sit,
And long to help you drink it up,
With useless longings infinite—
Sit, rocking the old mournful thought,
That on the heart's blood will be nurs'd,
Unless the blessed tears be brought,
Unless the cloudy sorrows burst.

The little ones are gone to rest,
And for a while they will not miss
The mother-wings above the nest,
But down a dream they feel her kiss;
And in their sleep will sometimes start,
nd toes wild arms for her caress,
With moanings that must thrill a heart
In heaven with divine distress.

And Sorrow on your threshold stands,
The Dark Ladye in glooming pall;
I see her take you by the hands,
I reel her shadow over all.
Hers is no warm and tender clasp:
With silence solemn as the night's,
And veilèd face, and mighty grasp,
She leads her chosen up the heights.

The cloudy crags are cold and grey,
You cannot scale them without scars—
A many martyrs, by the way,
Who never reach'd her tower of stars!
But there her beauty shall be seen,
Her glittering face so proudly pure,
And all her majesty of mien,
And all her guerdon shall be sure.

Well. 'Tis not written God will give
To his beloved only rest;
The hard life of the Cross they live,—
They strive, and suffer, and are blessed.
The feet must bleed to reach their throne;
he brow will burn before it bear
One of the crowns that may be won
By workers for immortal wear.

Dear friend, life beats, though buried 'neath
Its long black vault of night; and see,
There trembles, through this dark of death,
Starlight of immortality.
And yet shall dawn the eternal day,
o kiss the eyes of them that sleep;
And He shall wipe all tears away
From tired eyes of them that weep.

'Tis something for the poor bereaven,
In such a weary world of care,
To feel that we have friends in heaven:
Who helped us here, may aid us there.
These yearnings for them set our arc
Of being widening more and more,
In circling sweep, through outer dark,
To day more perfect than before.

So much was left unsaid, the soul
Must live in other worlds to be;
On earth we cannot grasp the whole,
For that Love has eternity.
Love deep as death, and rich as rest;
Love that was love with all Love's might;
Level to needs the lowliest,
Will not be less love at full-height.

Though earthly forms be far apart,
Spirit to spirit may be nigher;
The music chord the same at heart,
Though one should range an octave higher.
Eyes watch us that we cannot see;
Lips warn us which we may not kiss;
They wait for us, and starrily
Lean towards us from heaven's lattices.

We cannot see them face to face;
But Love is nearness, and they love
Us yet, nor change with change of place,
In their more human world above,
Where love, once leal, hath never ceased,
And dear eyes never lose their shine,
And there shall be a marriage feast
Where Christ shall once more make the wine.

THE NOBLE ROMAN.

TOWARDS evening, when the sun is going
down and a refreshing coolness is abroad, should
we choose to toil up those steep thousand and
one steps which lead to the mount called
Pincian—making fresh acknowledgment of the
grand eleemosynary element, which here appeals
to you as maimed, limbless mendicancy, tumbling
adroitly from step to step—we shall presently
see the noble Roman develop himself in all
magnificence. With all the roofs of the Eternal
City spread out at our feet, as like a mass of
non-eternal smashed flower-pots as can well be
conceived; with that blighted waste of
Campagna, stretching away to the right, I sit in
the shade under the stunted trees, hearken
to the thin piping music of a pontifical band,
and watch the company sauntering to and fro,
and the carriages trundling round, in a general
well-meaning, but on the whole feeble, effort at
reproducing London Rotten-row, Spanish Prado,
or Parisian Bois de Boulogne. I am not dazzled
by any brilliancy of colours and elegance of
dress, or by nobility betraying itself in a
thousand shapes of form, hue, cut, and bearing. But
I can analyse the sad coloured crowd into a
shabby dandyism, arm in arm, and bearing hats
of a spiral volute pattern: into a sorry sort
of dowdyism in the matter of female finery. A
sprinkling of wasp-waisted warriors, a dash of
square sturdy Britons, whose garments straight
and plain run off into no flowing rolls and
graceful curves; a flavour of the rascality
which devotes itself to " industry;" all pacing
those dusty sanded walks round and round,
while thin music discourses laboriously. And the
exercises derive a little flavour and piquancy
from the fact, that if you linger here until it
comes on to be cool and dusklsh, taking care
also to keep well to the right where the wall
looks down into the blighted Campagna, a horrid
goblin will ascend from those reeking seething