me of heaven,
In sunshine and in twilight and in gloom,
That with the sweetness of an unseen love
Circle humanity, and like the lark
Hid in the glory of the noonday sun,
Pour o'er the world heaven's constant tenderness.
Some in the soft-hued glimmering of dreams,
Through the unfolded lattices of sleep,
Steal to the soul in visions of delight,
Pure and benignant as the evening dew
That cools the bosom of the blushing rose.
Some all unseen, save in the blessed care,
That like a lover's arm, from life's rough way
Presses the serried thorns that choke it up;
But all as with an atmosphere of love,
And peace and strength encircling man, alike
Within him and without, that the foul breath
Of pestilent corruption touch him not.
Some are there who have loved and suffered much
For earth, as a fond mother doth who sees
Her babe die in her bosom; who have traced
Man to the precipital brink of ruin,
With open arms to charm him back from death,
Rejected and despised; who on the scroll
Of conscience, as with words of living light,
Stamp the pure precepts of a holy lore,
That sin obliterates and sets at naught.

MAN.

Oh! how polluted must man's spirit show
In contrast with these ministers of heaven,
That e'en beneath frail woman's purity
Dims like a taper 'neath the light of day!--
Methinks if from our eyes sin's blindness fell,
And gave pure angels to our ravish'd sight,
Gliding around us clad in the bright robes
Of love and immortality, this earth
Would be like heaven. O! 'twere a blessed change,
And perfect as when Death's exulting sigh
Swoons through the empty chambers of the soul
His note of liberty.

SPIRIT.

'Tis man alone
Makes Earth less Paradise; its frame is full
Of perfect blessedness, which to the pure
Were Heaven in all its fulness; but mankind
Are crimsoned o'er with sin, which like blood-stains
A soundless ocean could not cleanse away.
And thus all flesh must thaw back to the dust
From which it sprang, as ice doth unto water,
Before the soul is purified for heaven.
Men little dream how near heaven is to them
In possibility, how far in deed.
As little as they dream amid their mirth,
Death stalks beside them; that his shadow falls
In the same mirror where the maiden sees
The image of her loveliness, and flits
Amongst the whirl of revelry and show.

SCENE. _A roc