e.
Now see thy ever-self; Life never fled;
Man is not mortal, never of the dead:
The dark unknown.

"When hope soared high, and joy was eagle-plumed,
Thy pinions drooped; the flesh was weak, and doomed
To pass away.
But faith triumphant round thy death-couch shed
Majestic forms; and radiant glory sped
The dawning day.

"Intensely grand and glorious life's sphere,--
Beyond the shadow, infinite appear
Life, Love divine,--
Where mortal yearnings come not, sighs are stilled,
And home and peace and hearts are found and filled,
Thine, ever thine.

"Bearest thou no tidings from our loved on earth,
The toiler tireless for Truth's new birth
All-unbeguiled?
Our joy is gathered from her parting sigh:
This hour looks on her heart with pitying eye,--
What of my child?"

"When, severed by death's dream, I woke to Life,
She deemed I died, and could not know the strife
At first to fill
That waking with a love that steady turns
To God; a hope that ever upward yearns,
Bowed to His will.

"Years had passed o'er thy broken household band,
When angels beckoned me to this bright land,
With thee to meet.
She that has wept o'er thee, kissed my cold brow,
Rears the sad marble to our memory now,
In lone retreat.

"By the remembrance of her loyal life,
And parting prayer, I only know my wife,
Thy child, shall come--
Where farewells cloud not o'er our ransomed rest--
Hither to reap, with all the crowned and blest,
Of bliss the sum.

"When Love's rapt sense the heartstrings gently sweep
With joy divinely fair, the high and deep,
To call her home,
She shall mount upward unto purer skies;
We shall be waiting, in what glad surprise,
Our spirits' own!"

_ISLE OF WIGHT_

On receiving a painting of the Isle.

Isle of beauty, thou art singing
To my sense a sweet refrain;
To my busy mem'ry bringing
Scenes that I would see again.

Chief, the charm of thy reflecting,
Is the moral that it brings;
Nature, with the mind connecting,
Gives the artist's fancy wings.