sea,
Dispelling doubt and fear
With her celestial minstrelsy,
Our Miriam doth cheer

The men whose homeward-going hearts
Are loyal to their King;
When all from her have learnt their parts,
Then shall creation sing!

The sweetest of the Gospel songs,
To all the Saints so dear,
To every eventide belongs
Throughout the changeful year.

It sanctifies the vesper hour
When summer smiles serene;
It is a joy-constraining power
When winter blasts are keen.

'My soul doth magnify the Lord'--
Ecstatic is the voice
That sings of Paradise restored--
'My spirit doth rejoice!'

PINZOLO: 1882.

III.

NUNC DIMITTIS.

To cradle Mary's Child his heart
An old man opens wide:
Behold him in God's peace depart,
And in God's peace abide.

He sings the very Song of Peace,
Responsive to the Word;
His lullaby shall never cease
To make its music heard.

For all the children of the Bride,
The subjects of the King,
With each returning eventide
Have learnt his song to sing.

He sings of 'peace,' 'salvation,' 'light:'
His lovely words we take
For consolation night by night,
Until God's morning break.

Then, when our dazzled eyes grow dim,
Breathed with our parting breath
The old man's sweet, heart-soothing hymn
Glad welcome gives to death.

We too what Simeon saw may see--
The Mother undefiled,
Our hearts enfold as blissfully
The Everlasting Child!

TYROL: 1882.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] _See_ Note F, page 78.

[8] S. John i. 23.

NOTES.

NOTE A.

_The Madonna di San Sisto._

Raffaelle's world-famous picture of the Mother and her Divine Child in
the Gallery at Dresden is in a measure known to almost all from prints
and photographs. As to the _colour_ of the picture, the significant
beauty of which none who have not seen the original can conceive, it
should be remembered that the parted curtains are green (the
earth-colour), and the Virgin Mother comes forth, as it were, from the
white bosom of a stooping heaven, whose far distances, dimly seen, fade
into a blue firmament peopled with angelic faces.

Many have felt this picture--at once so serene and so impassioned--to be
a _revelation_. As we yield ourselves to its fascination and search
further and further into its depths, we feel that Faber's words justify
themselves: 'Christian Art, rightly considered, is at once a th