As a child may ask A father, pray the Everlasting Good For light and guidance midst the subtle snares Of sin thick planted in life's thoroughfares, For spiritual strength and moral hardihood; Still listening, through the noise of time and sense, To the still whisper of the Inward Word; Bitter in blame, sweet in approval heard, Itself its own confirming evidence To health of soul a voice to cheer and please, To guilt the wrath of the Eumenides.
1881.
UTTERANCE.
But what avail inadequate words to reach The innermost of Truth?
Who shall essay, Blinded and weak, to point and lead the way, Or solve the mystery in familiar speech?
Yet, if it be that something not thy own, Some shadow of the Thought to which our schemes, Creeds, cult, and ritual are at best but dreams, Is even to thy unworthiness made known, Thou mayst not hide what yet thou shouldst not dare To utter lightly, lest on lips of thine The real seem false, the beauty undivine.
So, weighing duty in the scale of prayer, Give what seems given thee.

It may prove a seed Of goodness dropped in fallow-grounds of need.
1881.
ORIENTAL MAXIMS.
PARAPHRASE OF SANSCRIT TRANSLATIONS.
THE INWARD JUDGE.
From Institutes of Manu.
The soul itself its awful witness is.
Say not in evil doing, "No one sees," And so offend the conscious One within, Whose ear can hear the silences of sin.
Ere they find voice, whose eyes unsleeping see The secret motions of iniquity.
Nor in thy folly say, "I am alone." For, seated in thy heart, as on a throne, The ancient Judge and Witness liveth still, To note thy act and thought; and as thy ill Or good goes from thee, far beyond thy reach, The solemn Doomsman's seal is set on each.
1878.
LAYING UP TREASURE From the Mahabharata.
Before the Ender comes, whose charioteer Is swift or slow Disease, lay up each year Thy harvests of well-doing, wealth that kings Nor thieves can take away.

When all the things Thou tallest thine, goods, pleasures, honors fall, Thou in thy virtue shalt survive them all.
1881.
CONDUCT From the Mahabharata.
Heed how thou livest.

Do no act by day Which from the night shall drive thy peace away.
In months of sun so live that months of rain Shall still be happy.

Evermore restrain Evil and cherish good, so shall there be Another and a happier life for thee.
1881.
AN EASTER FLOWER GIFT.
O dearest bloom the seasons know, Flowers of the Resurrection blow, Our hope and faith restore; And through the bitterness of death And loss and sorrow, breathe a breath Of life forevermore! The thought of Love Immortal blends With fond remembrances of friends; In you, O sacred flowers, By human love made doubly sweet, The heavenly and the earthly meet, The heart of Christ and ours! 1882.
THE MYSTIC'S CHRISTMAS.
"All hail!" the bells of Christmas rang, "All hail!" the monks at Christmas sang, The merry monks who kept with cheer The gladdest day of all their year.
But still apart, unmoved thereat, A pious elder brother sat Silent, in his accustomed place, With God's sweet peace upon his face.
"Why sitt'st thou thus ?" his brethren cried.
"It is the blessed Christmas-tide; The Christmas lights are all aglow, The sacred lilies bud and blow.
"Above our heads the joy-bells ring, Without the happy children sing, And all God's creatures hail the morn On which the holy Christ was born! "Rejoice with us; no more rebuke Our gladness with thy quiet look." The gray monk answered: "Keep, I pray, Even as ye list, the Lord's birthday.
"Let heathen Yule fires flicker red Where thronged refectory feasts are spread; With mystery-play and masque and mime And wait-songs speed the holy time! "The blindest faith may haply save; The Lord accepts the things we have; And reverence, howsoe'er it strays, May find at last the shining ways.
"They needs must grope who cannot see, The blade before the ear must be; As ye are feeling I have felt, And where ye dwell I too have dwelt.
"But now, beyond the things of sense, Beyond occasions and events, I know, through God's exceeding grace, Release from form and time and place.
"I listen, from no mortal tongue, To hear the song the angels sung; And wait within myself to know The Christmas lilies bud and blow.
"The outward symbols disappear From him whose inward sight is clear; And small must be the choice of clays To him who fills them all with praise! "Keep while you need it, brothers mine, With honest zeal your Christmas sign, But judge not him who every morn Feels in his heart the Lord Christ born!" 1882.
AT LAST.
When on my day of life the night is falling, And, in the winds from unsunned spaces blown, I hear far voices out of darkness calling My feet to paths unknown, Thou who hast made my home of life so pleasant, Leave not its tenant when its walls decay; O Love Divine, O Helper ever present, Be Thou my strength and stay! Be near me when all else is from me drifting Earth, sky, home's pictures, days of shade and shine, And kindly faces to my own uplifting The love which answers mine.
I have but Thee, my Father! let Thy spirit Be with me then to comfort and uphold; No gate of pearl, no branch of palm I merit, Nor street of shining gold.
Suffice it if--my good and ill unreckoned, And both forgiven through Thy abounding grace-- I find myself by hands familiar beckoned Unto my fitting place.
Some humble door among Thy many mansions, Some sheltering shade where sin and striving cease, And flows forever through heaven's green expansions The river of Thy peace.
There, from the music round about me stealing, I fain would learn the new and holy song, And find at last, beneath Thy trees of healing, The life for which I long.
1882 WHAT THE TRAVELLER SAID AT SUNSET.
The shadows grow and deepen round me, I feel the deffall in the air; The muezzin of the darkening thicket, I hear the night-thrush call to prayer.
The evening wind is sad with farewells, And loving hands unclasp from mine; Alone I go to meet the darkness Across an awful boundary-line.
As from the lighted hearths behind me I pass with slow, reluctant feet, What waits me in the land of strangeness?
What face shall smile, what voice shall greet?
What space shall awe, what brightness blind me?
What thunder-roll of music stun?
What vast processions sweep before me Of shapes unknown beneath the sun?
I shrink from unaccustomed glory, I dread the myriad-voiced strain; Give me the unforgotten faces, And let my lost ones speak again.
He will not chide my mortal yearning Who is our Brother and our Friend; In whose full life, divine and human, The heavenly and the earthly blend.
Mine be the joy of soul-communion, The sense of spiritual strength renewed, The reverence for the pure and holy, The dear delight of doing good.
No fitting ear is mine to listen An endless anthem's rise and fall; No curious eye is mine to measure The pearl gate and the jasper wall.
For love must needs be more than knowledge: What matter if I never know Why Aldebaran's star is ruddy, Or warmer Sirius white as snow! Forgive my human words, O Father! I go Thy larger truth to prove; Thy mercy shall transcend my longing I seek but love, and Thou art Love! I go to find my lost and mourned for Safe in Thy sheltering goodness still, And all that hope and faith foreshadow Made perfect in Thy holy will! 1883.
THE "STORY OF IDA." Francesca Alexander, whose pen and pencil have so reverently transcribed the simple faith and life of the Italian peasantry, wrote the narrative published with John Ruskin's introduction under the title, _The Story of Ida_.
Weary of jangling noises never stilled, The skeptic's sneer, the bigot's hate, the din Of clashing texts, the webs of creed men spin Round simple truth, the children grown who build With gilded cards their new Jerusalem, Busy, with sacerdotal tailorings And tinsel gauds, bedizening holy things, I turn, with glad and grateful heart, from them To the sweet story of the Florentine Immortal in her blameless maidenhood, Beautiful as God's angels and as good; Feeling that life, even now, may be divine With love no wrong can ever change to hate, No sin make less than all-compassionate! 1884.
THE LIGHT THAT IS FELT.
A tender child of summers three, Seeking her little bed at night, Paused on the dark stair timidly.
"Oh, mother! Take my hand," said she, "And then the dark will all be light." We older children grope our way From dark behind to dark before; And only when our hands we lay, Dear Lord, in Thine, the night is day, And there is darkness nevermore.
Reach downward to the sunless days Wherein our guides are blind as we, And faith is small and hope delays; Take Thou the hands of prayer we raise, And let us feel the light of Thee! 1884.
THE TWO LOVES Smoothing soft the nestling head Of a maiden fancy-led, Thus a grave-eyed woman said: "Richest gifts are those we make, Dearer than the love we take That we give for love's own sake.
"Well I know the heart's unrest; Mine has been the common quest, To be loved and therefore blest.
"Favors undeserved were mine; At my feet as on a shrine Love has laid its gifts divine.
"Sweet the offerings seemed, and yet With their sweetness came regret, And a sense of unpaid debt.
"Heart of mine unsatisfied, Was it vanity or pride That a deeper joy denied?
"Hands that ope but to receive Empty close; they only live Richly who can richly give.
"Still," she sighed, with moistening eyes, "Love is sweet in any guise; But its best is sacrifice! "He who, giving, does not crave Likest is to Him who gave Life itself the loved to save.
"Love, that self-forgetful gives, Sows surprise of ripened sheaves, Late or soon its own receives." 1884.
ADJUSTMENT.
The tree of Faith its bare, dry boughs must shed That nearer heaven the living ones may climb; The false must fail, though from our shores of time The old lament be heard, "Great Pan is dead!" That wail is Error's, from his high place hurled; This sharp recoil is Evil undertrod; Our time's unrest, an angel sent of God Troubling with life the waters of the world.
Even as they list the winds of the Spirit blow To turn or break our century-rusted vanes; Sands shift and waste; the rock alone remains Where, led of Heaven, the strong tides come and go, And storm-clouds, rent by thunderbolt and wind, Leave, free of mist, the permanent stars behind.
Therefore I trust, although to outward sense Both true and false seem shaken; I will hold With newer light my reverence for the old, And calmly wait the births of Providence.
No gain is lost; the clear-eyed saints look down Untroubled on the wreck of schemes and creeds; Love yet remains, its rosary of good deeds Counting in task-field and o'erpeopled town; Truth has charmed life; the Inward Word survives, And, day by day, its revelation brings; Faith, hope, and charity, whatsoever things Which cannot be shaken, stand.