And beautiful with all the soul's expansion

Shall we behold her face.

And though at times impetuous with emotion

And anguish long suppressed,

The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean,

That cannot be at rest,

We will be patient, and assuage the feeling
We may not wholly stay;

By silence sanctifying, not concealing,
The grief that must have way.

SAND OF THE DESERT IN AN HOURGLASS.

HANDFUL of red sand, from

the hot clime

Of Arab deserts brought,

Within this glass becomes the spy of Time,

The minister of Thought.

Sand of the Desert in an Hourglass 73

How many weary centuries has it been
About those deserts blown!

How many strange vicissitudes has seen,
How many histories known!

Perhaps the camels of the Ishmaelite
Trampled and passed it o'er,

When into Egypt from the patriarch's sight

His favorite son they bore.

Perhaps the feet of Moses, burnt and bare, Crushed it beneath their tread,

Or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air Scattered it as they sped;

Or Mary, with the Christ of Nazareth
Held close in her caress,

Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and faith

Illumed the wilderness;

Or anchorites beneath Engaddi's palms
Pacing the Dead Sea beach,

And singing slow their old Armenian psalms

In half-articulate speech;

Or caravans, that from Bassora's gate
With westward steps depart;

Or Mecca's pilgrims, confident of Fate,
And resolute in heart!

These have passed over it, or may have passed!

Now in this crystal tower Imprisoned by some curious hand at last, It counts the passing hour.

And as I gaze, these narrow walls expand;

Before my dreamy eye

Stretches the desert with its shifting sand, Its unimpeded sky.

And borne aloft by the sustaining blast,
This little golden thread
Dilates into a column high and vast,
A form of fear and dread.

And onward, and across the setting sun, Across the boundless plain,

The column and its broader shadow run, Till thought pursues in vain.

The vision vanishes! These walls again
Shut out the lurid sun,

Shut out the hot, immeasurable plain;
The half-hour's sand is run!

KING WITLAF'S DRINKING-HORN.

ITLAF, a king of the Saxons,
Ere yet his last he breathed,
To the merry monks of Croyland

His drinking-horn bequeathed,

That, whenever they sat at their revels,
And drank from the golden bowl,

They might remember the donor,
And breathe a prayer for his soul.

So sat they once at Christmas,
And bade the goblet pass;

In their beards the red wine glistened
Like dew-drops in the grass.

They drank to the soul of Witlaf,
They drank to Christ the Lord,
And to each of the Twelve Apostles,
Who had preached his holy word.

They drank to the Saints and Martyrs
Of the dismal days of yore,

And as soon as the horn was empty
They remembered one Saint more.

And the reader droned from the pulpit,
Like the murmur of many bees,
The legend of good Saint Guthlac,
And Saint Basil's homilies;

Till the great bells of the convent,
From their prison in the tower,
Guthlac and Bartholomæus,

Proclaimed the midnight hour.

And the Yule-log cracked in the chimney,
And the Abbot bowed his head,
And the flamelets flapped and flickered,
But the Abbot was stark and dead.

Yet still in his pallid fingers

He clutched the golden bowl,

In which, like a pearl dissolving,
Had sunk and dissolved his soul.

But not for this their revels

The jovial monks forbore,