In the June twilight, in the soft, gray twilight,
The yellow sun-glow trembling through the rainy eve,
As my love lay quiet, came the solemn fiat,
"All these things for ever, for ever thou must leave."

My love she sank down quivering like a pine in tempest shivering,
"I have had so little happiness as yet beneath the sun;
I have called the shadow sunshine, and the merest frosty moonshine
I have, weeping, blessed the Lord for as if daylight had begun.

"Till he sent a sudden angel, with a glorious sweet evangel,
Who turned all my tears to pearl-gems, and crowned _me_--so little
worth;
_Me!_ and through the rainy even changed my poor earth into heaven
Or, by wondrous revelation, brought the heavens down to earth.

"O the strangeness of the feeling!--O the infinite revealing,--
To think how God must love me to have made me so content!
Though I would have served him humbly, and patiently, and dumbly,
Without any angel standing in the pathway that I went."

In the June twilight, in the lessening twilight,
My love cried from my bosom an exceeding bitter cry:
"Lord, wait a little longer, until my soul is stronger!
O wait till thou hast taught me to be content to die!"

Then the tender face, all woman, took a glory superhuman,
And she seemed to watch for something, or see some I could not see:
From my arms she rose full-statured, all transfigured,
queenly-featured,--
"As thy will is done in heaven, so on earth still let it be!"

I go lonely, I go lonely, and I feel that earth is only
The vestibule of places whose courts we never win;
Yet I see my palace shining, where my love sits amaranths twining,
And I know the gates stand open, and I shall enter in!

--Dinah Maria Mulock Craik.

CROSSING THE BAR

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as, moving, seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell
When I embark;

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.