"Oh, Brandan, think what grace divine,
What blessing must full goodness shower,
When fragment of it small, like mine,
Hath such inestimable power!

"Well-fed, well-clothed, well-friended, I
Did that chance act of good, that one!
Then went my way to kill and lie—
Forgot my good as soon as done.

"That germ of kindness, in the womb
Of mercy caught, did not expire;
Outlives my guilt, outlives my doom,
And friends me in the pit of fire.

"Once every year, when carols wake,
On earth, the Christmas-night's repose,
Arising from the sinners' lake,
I journey to these healing snows.

"I stanch with ice my burning breast,
With silence balm my whirling brain.
O Brandan! to this hour of rest
That Joppan leper's ease was pain.”—

Tears started to Saint Brandan's eyes;
He bow'd his head, he breathed a prayer-
Then look'd, and lo, the frosty skies!
The iceberg, and no Judas there!

THE GOOD SHEPHERD WITH THE KID. [New Poems 1867.]

HE saves the sheep, the goats he doth not save. So rang Tertullian's sentence, on the side

Of that unpitying Phrygian sect which cried:1
"Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave,

“Who sins, once wash'd by the baptismal wave.”-
So spake the fierce Tertullian. But she sigh'd,
The infant Church! of love she felt the tide
Stream on her from her Lord's yet recent grave.

And then she smiled; and in the Catacombs,
With eye suffused but heart inspired true,
On those walls subterranean, where she hid

Her head 'mid ignominy, death, and tombs,
She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew-
And on his shoulders, not a lamb, a kid.

EAST LONDON.

[New Poems 1867.]

'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead
Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,
And the pale weaver, through his windows seen
In Spitalfields, look'd thrice dispirited.

I met a preacher there I knew, and said:

"Ill and o'erwork'd, how fare you in this scene?”"Bravely!" said he; "for I of late have been

Much cheer'd with thoughts of Christ, the living bread."

O human soul! as long as thou canst so

Set up a mark of everlasting light,
Above the howling senses' ebb and flow,

To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam-
Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night!
Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home.

1 The Montanists.

WEST LONDON.

[New Poems 1867.]

CROUCH'D on the pavement, close by Belgrave Square, A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied.

A babe was in her arms, and at her side

A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare.

Some labouring men, whose work lay somewhere there,
Pass'd opposite; she touch'd her girl, who hied
Across, and begg'd, and came back satisfied.
The rich she had let pass with frozen stare.

Thought I: "Above her state this spirit towers;
She will not ask of aliens, but of friends,
Of sharers in a common human fate.

"She turns from that cold succour, which attends The unknown little from the unknowing great, And points us to a better time than ours."

WORLDLY PLACE.

[New Poems 1867.]

EVEN in a palace, life may be led well!
So spake the imperial sage, purest of men,
Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling den
Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell,

Our freedom for a little bread we sell,
And drudge under some foolish master's ken
Who rates us if we peer outside our pen-
Match'd with a palace, is not this a hell?

Even in a palace! On his truth sincere,
Who spoke these words, no shadow ever came;
And when my ill-school'd spirit is aflame

Some nobler, ampler stage of life to win,
I'll stop, and say: “There were no succour here!

The aids to noble life are all within.”

GROWING OLD.

[New Poems 1867.]

WHAT is it to grow old?

Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The lustre of the eye?

Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
-Yes, but not this alone.

Is it to feel our strength

Not our bloom only, but our strength-decay?
Is it to feel each limb

Grow stiffer, every function less exact,

Each nerve more loosely strung?

Yes, this, and more; but not

Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dream'd 'twould be!

'Tis not to have our life

Mellow'd and soften'd as with sunset-glow,

A golden day's decline.

'Tis not to see the world

As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirr'd;

And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,
The years that are no more.

It is to spend long days

And not once feel that we were ever young;

It is to add, immured

In the hot prison of the present, month
To month with weary pain.

It is to suffer this,

And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel.
Deep in our hidden heart

Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
But no emotion-none.

It is last stage of all

When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves,

To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man.

THE LAST WORD.

[New Poems 1867.]

CREEP into thy narrow bed,
Creep, and let no more be said!
Vain thy onset! all stands fast.
Thou thyself must break at last.

Let the long contention cease!
Geese are swans, and swans are geese.

Let them have it how they will!

Thou art tired; best be still.

They out-talk'd thee, hiss'd thee, tore thee?

Better men fared thus before thee;

Fired their ringing shot and pass'd,

Hotly charged--and sank at last.

Charge once more, then, and be dumb!

Let the victors, when they come,

When the forts of folly fall,

Find thy body by the wall!