THE GOBLET OF LIFE.

FILLED is Life's goblet to the brim;
And though my eyes with tears are dim,
I see its sparkling bubbles swim,
And chant a melancholy hymn

With solemn voice and slow.

No purple flowers, — no garlands green,
Conceal the goblet's shade or sheen,
Nor maddening draughts of Hippocrene,
Like gleams of sunshine, flash between

Thick leaves of mistletoe.

This goblet, wrought with curious art, Is filled with waters, that upstart, When the deep fountains of the heart, By strong convulsions rent apart,

Are running all to waste.

And as it mantling passes round,
With fennel is it wreathed and crowned,
Whose seed and foliage sun-imbrowned
Are in its waters steeped and drowned,
And give a bitter taste.

Above the lowly plants it towers,
The fennel, with its yellow flowers,
And in an earlier age than ours
Was gifted with the wondrous powers,
Lost vision to restore.

It gave new strength, and fearless mood;
And gladiators, fierce and rude,
Mingled it in their daily food;
And he who battled and subdued,

A wreath of fennel wore.

Then in Life's goblet freely press,
The leaves that give it bitterness,
Nor prize the colored waters less,
For in thy darkness and distress

New light and strength they give!

And he who has not learned to know
How false its sparkling bubbles show,
How bitter are the drops of woe,
With which its brim may overflow,
He has not learned to live.

The prayer of Ajax was for light;
Through all that dark and desperate fight,
The blackness of that noonday night,
He asked but the return of sight,

To see his foeman's face.

Let our unceasing, earnest prayer

Like the swell of some sweet tune, Morning rises into noon,

Childhood is the bough, where slumbered
Birds and blossoms many-numbered;
Age, that bough with snows encumbered.
Gather, then, each flower that grows,
When the young heart overflows,
To embalm that tent of snows.

Bear a lily in thy hand;
Gates of brass cannot withstand
One touch of that magic wand.

Bear through sorrow, wrong, and ruth,
In thy heart the dew of youth,
On thy lips the smile of truth.

O, that dew, like balm, shall steal
Into wounds that cannot heal,
Even as sleep our eyes doth seal;

TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING.

THE pages of thy book I read,

And as I closed each one, My heart, responding, ever said, "Servant of God! well done!"

They clasped his neck, they kissed his

cheeks,

They held him by the hand!

A tear burst from the sleeper's lids And fell into the sand.

bold;

At times they seem to me,

Like Luther's, in the days of old,

Half-battles for the free.

Go on, until this land revokes

The old and chartered Lie,

Along the Niger's bank;

His bridle-reins were golden chains,

And, with a martial clank,

At each leap he could feel his scabbard

of steel

Smiting his stallion's flank.

Insult humanity.

A voice is ever at thy side

Speaking in tones of might, Like the prophetic voice, that cried To John in Patmos, "Write !"

Write! and tell out this bloody tale; Record this dire eclipse,

This Day of Wrath, this Endless Wail, This dread Apocalypse!

THE SLAVE'S DREAM.

BESIDE the ungathered rice he lay,
His sickle in his hand;
His breast was bare, his matted hair
Was buried in the sand.

Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep,
He saw his Native Land.

Wide through the landscape of his dreams
The lordly Niger flowed;
Beneath the palm-trees on the plain
Once more a king he strode;
And heard the tinkling caravans
Descend the mountain-road.

He saw once more his dark-eyed queen Among her children stand;

The bright flamingoes flew ;

From morn till night he followed their

flight,

O'er plains where the tamarind grew, Till he saw the roofs of Caffre huts, And the ocean rose to view.