O thou of purer eyes than to behold
Uncleanness! sift my soul, removing all
Strange thoughts, imaginings fantastical,
Iniquitous allurements manifold.
Make it into a spiritual ark; abode
Severely sacred, perfumed, sanctified,
Wherein the Prince of Purities may abide—
The holy and eternal Spirit of God.
The gross, adhesive loathsomeness of sin,
Give me to see. Yet, O far more, far more,
That beautiful purity which the saints adore
In a consummate Paradise within
The Veil,—O Lord, upon my soul bestow,
An earnest of that purity here below.
Miscellaneous Poems.
A Winter Ramble.
John Frost, old Nature’s jeweller, had beautified the leas,
And the lustre of his fretwork was twinkling on the trees,
As we ramble o’er the meadows in a meditative ease.
We had left the town behind us for a roaming holiday,
Beneath an arc of gloom, all dark and indistinct it lay,
And the fog was wreathed about it like a robe of iron-gray.
But a carpeting of leaflets, and a canopy of blue,
And the mystery of ether as the warming sunshine grew,
Sent a mellow thrill of happiness our eager spirits through.
And over lanes, where Winter bluff had shook his hoary beard,
Where in the naked hedgerows the broodless nests appear’d,
And the brown leaves of the beech-tree were with silver gloss
veneer’d.
We wandered and we pondered till half the morn was spent,
And the red orb through the tangled boughs his cunning vigour sent,
And the valley mists all melted at his glance omnipotent.
Dim on a sloping hill-side, clothed in a misty pall,
Stands a turret grey and hoary, where the ancient ivies crawl,
Their Arab arms round casement, sill, and door, and mould’ring wall.
And there we halted half-an-hour within a roofless hall,
’Neath a bower of wildest ivy hanging downwards from the wall,
Bearing in its grand luxuriance a flower funereal.
There we talked of the gay plumes erst bent to pass the lintel old,
The maidens that were moved to smile at gallant wooers bold,
The jovial nights of brave carouse, the wine-cups manifold.
And all the faded glories of the mediæval time,
When the age was in its manhood, and the land was in its prime,
And manly deeds were chanted in a bold heroic rhyme.
Then, plucking each a sprig, bedecked with simple yellow flower,
We scrambled sadly downwards from our old enchanted bower,
And the glory of the sunshine fell upon us like a shower.
Once more beneath the concave of a clear effulgent sky,
Where flocks of cawing rooks to the mansion wavered by—
A mansion standing coldly ’mid a windy rookery.
And over breezy mountains, where the poacher, with his gun,
Stood lonely as a boulder-stone ’tween earth and shining sun,
We wandered and we pondered till the winter day was done.
The Home-Comer.
Oh, many a leaf will fall to-night,
As she wanders through the wood!
And many an angry gust will break
The dreary solitude.
I wonder if she’s past the bridge,
Where Luggie moans beneath;
While rain-drops clash in slanted lines
On rivulet and heath.
Disease hath laid his palsied palm
Upon my aching brow;
The headlong blood of twenty-one
Is thin and sluggish now.
’Tis nearly ten! A fearful night,
Without a single star
To light the shadow on her soul
With sparkle from afar:
The moon is canopied with clouds,
And her burden it is sore;—
What would wee Jackie do, if he
Should never see her more?
Aye, light the lamp, and hang it up
At the window fair and free;
’Twill be a beacon on the hill
To let your mother see.
And trim it well, my little Ann,
For the night is wet and cold,
And you know the weary, winding way
Across the miry wold.
All drenched will be her simple gown,
And the wet will reach her skin:
I wish that I could wander down,
And the red quarry win—
To take the burden from her back,
And place it upon mine;
With words of kind condolence,
To bid her not repine.
You have a kindly mother, dears,
As ever bore a child,
And heaven knows I love her well
In passion undefiled.
Ah me! I never thought that she
Would brave a night like this,
While I sat weaving by the fire
A web of phantasies.
How the winds beat this home of ours
With arrow-falls of rain;
This lonely home upon the hill
They beat with might and main.
And ’mid the tempest one lone heart
Anticipates the glow,
Whence, all her weary journey done,
Shall happy welcome flow.
’Tis after ten! Oh, were she here,
Young man altho’ I be,
I could fall down upon her neck,
And weep right gushingly!
I have not loved her half enough,
The dear old toiling one,
The silent watcher by my bed,
In shadow or in sun.
My Brown Little Brother of Three.
“Happy child!
Thou art so exquisitely wild,
I think of thee with many tears,
For what may be thy lot in future years.”