will sing with parting breath:
As comes to me or shade or sun,
Father, thy will, not mine, be done!

SARAH FLOWER ADAMS.

VI.

DEATH: IMMORTALITY: HEAVEN.

* * * * *

THE PROSPECT.

Methinks we do as fretful children do,
Leaning their faces on the window-pane
To sigh the glass dim with their own breath's stain,
And shut the sky and landscape from their view;
And, thus, alas! since God the maker drew
A mystic separation 'twixt those twain,--
The life beyond us and our souls in pain,--
We miss the prospect which we are called unto
By grief we are fools to use. Be still and strong,
O man, my brother! hold thy sobbing breath,
And keep thy soul's large windows pure from wrong;
That so, as life's appointment issueth,
Thy vision may be clear to watch along
The sunset consummation-lights of death.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

* * * * *

THE LOST PLEIAD.

Not in the sky,
Where it was seen,
Nor on the white tops of the glistening wave,
Nor in the mansions of the hidden deep,--
Though green,
And beautiful, its caves of mystery;--
Shall the bright watcher have
A place, and as of old high station keep.

Gone, gone!
Oh, never more to cheer
The mariner who holds his course alone
On the Atlantic, through the weary night,
When the stars turn to watchers, and do sleep,
Shall it appear,
With the sweet fixedness of certain light,
Down-shining on the shut eyes of the deep.

Vain, vain!
Hopeless most idly then, shall he look forth,
That mariner from his bark.
Howe'er the north
Does raise his certain lamp, when tempests lower--
He sees no more that perished light again!
And gloomier grows the hour
Which may not, through the thick and crowding dark,
Restore that lost and loved one to her tower.

He looks,--the shepherd of Chaldea's hills
Tending his flocks,--
And wonders the rich beacon does not blaze,
Gladdening his gaze;--
And from his dreary watch along the rocks,
Guiding him safely home through perilous ways!
Still wondering as the drowsy silence fills
The sorrowful scene, and every hour distils
Its leaden dews.--How chafes he at the night,
Still slow to bring the expected and sweet light,
So natural to his sight!

And lone,
Where its first splendors shone,
Shall be that pleasant company of stars:
Ho