To have touched, with infinite gropings dim,

Nature's extremest outward rim;

To have found some weed or shell unknown before; To advance Thought's infinite march a footpace more ; To make or to declare laws just and sage;

These are the joys of Age.

Or by the evening hearth, in the old chair,
With children's children at our knees,

So like, yet so unlike the little ones of old—
Some little lad with curls of gold,
Some little maid demurely fair,
To sit, girt round with ease,
And feel how sweet it is to live,
Careless what fate may give;

To think, with gentle yearning mind,

Of dear souls who have crossed the Infinite Sea;

To muse with cheerful hope of what shall be

For those we leave behind

When the night comes which knows no earthly morn;

Yet mingled with the young in hopes and fears,

And bringing from the treasure-house of years
Some fair-set counsel long-time worn;

To let the riper days of life

The tumult and the strife,

Go by, and in their stead

Dwell with the living past, so living, yet so dead :

The mother's kiss upon the sleeper's brow,
The little fish caught from the brook,

The dead child-sister's gentle voice and look,
The school-days and the father's parting hand;
The days so far removed, yet oh! so near,

So full of precious memories dear;

The wonder of flying Time, so hard to understand!

Not in clear eye or ear

Dwells our chief profit here.

We are not as the brutes, who fade and make no

sign;

We are sustained where'er we go,

In happiness and woe,

By some indwelling faculty divine,

Which lifts us from the deep

Of failing senses, aye, and duller brain,

And wafts us back to youth again;

And as a vision fair dividing sleep,

Pierces the vasts behind, the voids before,

And opens to us an invisible gate,

And sets our wingèd footsteps, scorning Time and

RICHARD WATSON DIXON

Born 1833

SONG

The feathers of the willow
Are half of them grown yellow
Above the swelling stream;
And ragged are the bushes,
And rusty now the rushes,

And wild the clouded gleam.

The thistle now is older,
His stalk begins to moulder,

His head is white as snow;
The branches all are barer,
The linnet's song is rarer,

The robin pipeth now.

FROM "CHRIST'S COMPANY"

THE HOLY MOTHER AT THE CROSS

Of Mary's pains may now learn whoso will,

When she stood underneath the groaning tree Round which the true Vine clung: three hours the mill Of hours rolled round; she saw in visions three

The shadows walking underneath the sun,

And these seemed all so very faint to be, That she could scarcely tell how each begun, And went its way, minuting each degree That it existed on the dial stone:

For drop by drop of wine unfalteringly,

Not stroke by stroke in blood, the three hours gone She seemed to see.

Three hours she stood beneath the cross; it seemed
To be a wondrous dial stone, for while

Upon the two long arms the sunbeams teemed,
So was the head-piece like a centre stile;
Like to the dial where the judges sat

Upon the grades, and the king crowned the pile,

In Zion town, that most miraculous plat

On which the shadow backward did defile;

And now towards the third hour the sun enorme
Dressed up all shadow to a bickering smile
I' the heat, and in its midst the form of form
Lay like an isle.

P 2

Because that time so heavily beat and slow

That fancy in each beat was come and gone; Because that light went singing to and fro,

A blissful song in every beam that shone; Because that on the flesh a little tongue

Instantly played, and spake in lurid tone; Because that saintly shapes with harp and gong Told the three hours, whose telling made them

one;

Half hid, involved in alternating beams,

Half mute, they held the plectrum to the zone,
Therefore, as God her senses shield, it seems
A dial stone.

Three hours she stood beside the cross; it seemed A splendid flower; for red dews on the edge Stood dropping; petals doubly four she deemed Shot out like steel knives from the central wedge, Which quadranted their perfect circle so

As if four anthers should a vast flower hedge Into four parts, and in its bosom, lo,

The form lay, as the seed-heart holding pledge Of future flowers; yea, in the midst was borne The head low drooped upon the swollen ledge Of the torn breast; there was the ring of thorn; This flower was fledge.