Long time, with keen and meditative eye,
Stood the old painter of Siena by
A canvas, whose sign manual him confest.

His head droopt low, his eye ceased from its quest,
As tears filled full the fountains long since dry;
And from his lips there broke the haunting cry:
"May God forgive me--I did not my best!"

{112}

THE YEARS.

"Time in advance behind him hides his wings."--YOUNG.

As comes amain the glossy flying raven,
That with unwavering wing, breast on the view,
Cleaves slow the lucid air beneath the blue,
And seems scarce other than a figure graven--
Ha! now the sweeping pinions flash as levin,
And all their silken cordage whistles loud!--
Lo, the departing flight, like fleck of cloud,
Is swallowed quick by the awaiting heaven!

{113}

So lag and tarry, to the youth, the years
In their oncoming from the brooding sky,
Till bursts at middle life their rushing speed
All breathless with the world of hopes and fears;
And, lo, departing, the Eternal Eye
Winks them to moments in His endless brede!

{114}

THE NOTE OF NATURE.

Earth's manifold noises break
Overhead, in the calm,
In unison full, and wake
The note of a psalm.

On the sunny hills, in the vales,
It falls on my ear;
Down the baffling winds it sails,
In the night draweth near.

{115}

It sounds like great mountains to me,
A deep monotone--
Like the veiled AEonian sea,
That girdles Time's zone.

The sun and the stars and the moon
Keep time with this note,
The evening and morning and noon,
Things near and remote.

The tides ebb and flow to its beat,
'Tis the seasons' rhyme,--
The harebell and twin-flower sweet
Its undertone chime.

{116}

The night-moth stirs to the reed,
And the beetle booms;
The bird and the beast are keyed
To the flower that blooms.

And man to his high service goes
Aswing to his goal,
Like the tides and the stars and the rose,--
Tone, overtone, whole!

I hear it by day and by night,
In storm and in calm,--
A low swelling note from a height,
With the roll of a psalm.

{117}

AT THE FORD.

I.

A death-like dew was falling
On the herbs and the grassy ground;
The stars to their bournes prest forward,
Night cloaked the hills around.

He thought of a night long past,--
Of the ladder th