WHAT RABBI JEHOSHA SAID, — A WINTER-EVENING HYMN.

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Hardest heart would call it very awful

ALL-SAINTS. When thou look'st at us and seest 0, what?

ONE feast, of holy days the crest, If we move away, thou sittest gazing I, though no Churchman, love to With those vague eyes at the seltsame keep, spot,

All-Saints, – the unknown good that And thou mutterest, thy hands thou

rest wringest,

In God's still memory folded deep ; Seeing something, us thou seëst not. The bravely dumb that did their deed,

And scorned to blot it with a nane,

Men of the plain heroic breed, Strange it is that, in this open bright

That loved Heaven's silence more than Hess,

fame. Thou shouldst sit in such a narrow cell ; Strange it is that thou shouldst be so Such lived not in the past alone,

lonesome Where those are who love thee all so

But thread to-day the unheeding well;

street, Not so much of thee is left ainong us

And stairs to Sin and Famine known

Sing with the welcome of their feet; As the hum outliving the hushed bell.

The den they enter grows a shrine,

The grimy sash an oriel burns,

Their cup of water warms like wine, WHAT RABBI JEHOSHA SAID.

Their speech is filled from heavenly

urns.

Rabbi JEHOSHA lised to say
That God made angels every day,
Perfect as Michael and the rest
First brooded in creation's nest,
Whose only office was to cry
Hosanna! once, and then to die ;
Or rather, with Life's essence blent,
To be led home from banishment.

About their brows to me appears

An aureole traced in tenderest light, The rainbow-gleam of smiles through

tears In dying eyes, by them made bright, Of souls that shivered on the edge

Of that chill ford repassed no more, And in their nerey felt the pledge

And sweetness of the farther shore.

Rabbi Jehosha had the skill
To know that Heaven is in God's will;
And doing that, though for a space
One heart-beat long, may win a grace
As full of grandeur and of glow
As Princes of the Chariot know.

A WINTER-EVENING HYMN TO MY

FIRE.

1.

"T were glorious, no doubt, to be BEAUTY on my hearth-stone blazing!
One of the strong-winged Hierarchy, To-night the triple Zoroaster
To burn with Seraphs, or to shine Shall my prophet be and master :
With Cherubs, deathlessly divine; To-night will I pure Magian be,
Yet I, perhaps, poor earthly clod, Hymns to thy sole honor raising,
Could I forget myself in God,

While thou leapest fast and faster,
Could I but find my nature's clew Wild with self-delighted glee,
Simply as birds and blossoms do, Or sink'st low and glowest faintly
And but for one rapt moment know As an aureole still and saintly,
'T is Heaven must come, not we must go, Keeping cadence to my praising
Should win my place as near the throne Thee ! still thee ! and only thee !
As the pearl-angel of its zone,
And God would listen mid the throng
For my one breath of perfect song,
That, in its simple human way,

Elfish daughter of Apollo !
Said all the Host of Heaven could say. Thee, from thy father stolen and bound

II.

V.

a

VI.

To serve in Vulcan's clangorous smithy
Prometheus (primal Yankee) found,
And, when he had tampered with thee, But when we make a friend of thee,

And admit thee to the hall
(Too confiding little maid !)
In a reed's precarious hollow

On our nights of festival, To our frozen earth conveyed :

Then, Cinderella, who could see For he swore I know not what ;

In thee the kitchen's stunted thrall ? Endless ease should be thy lot,

Once more a Princess lithe and tail, Pleasure that should never falter,

Thou dancest with a whispering tread, Lifelong play, and not a duty

While the bright marvel of thy head Save to hover o'er the altar,

In crinkling gold floats all abroad, Vision of celestial beauty,

And gloriously dost vindicate Fed with precious woods and spices ;

The legend of thy lineage great, Then, perfidious ! having got

Earth-exiled daughter of the Pythian Thee in the net of his devices,

god! Sold thee into endless slavery,

Now in the ample chimney-place,

To honor thy acknowledged race,
Made thee a drudge to boil the pot,
Thee, Helios' daughter, who dost bear

We crown thee high with laurel good,
His likeness in thy golden hair ;

Thy shining father's sacred wood, Thee, by nature wild and wavery,

Which, guessing thy ancestral right, Palpitating, evanescent

Sparkles and

his dumb delight,

snaps As the shade of Dian's crescent,

And, at thy touch, poor outcast one,
Life, motion, gladness, everywhere !

Feels through his gladdened fibres go
The tingle and thrill and vassal glow

Of instincts loyal to the sun.
III.
Fathom deep men bury thee
In the furnace dark and still,

O thou of home the guardian Lar,
There, with dreariest mockery,

And, when our earth hath wandered far Making thee eat, against thy will,

Into the cold, and deep

snow covers Blackest Pennsylvanian stone;

The walks of our New England lovers, But thou dost avenge thy doom,

Their sweet secluded evening-star ! For, from out thy catacomb,

"T was with thy rays the English Muse Day and night thy wrath is blown

Ripened her mild domestic hues ; In a withering simoom,

"T was by thy flicker that she conned And, adown that cavern drear,

The fireside wisdom that enrings Thy black pitfall in the floor,

With light from heaven familiar things; Staggers the lusty antique cheer,

By thee she found the homely faith
Despairing, and is seen no more!

In whose mild eyes thy comfort stay th,
When Death, extinguishing his toreli,
Gropes for the latch-string in the porch ;
The love that wanders not beyond

His earliest nest, but sits and sings
Elfish I may rightly name thee ;
I

While children smooth his patient
We enslave, but cannot tame thee;

wings ;
With fierce snatches, now and then, Therefore with thee I love to read
Thou pluckest at thy right again, Our brave old poets : at thy touch how
And thy down-trod instincts savage

stirs To stealthy insurrection creep,

Life in the withered words ! how swift While thy wittol masters sleep,

recede And burst in indiscerning ravage :

Time's shadows ! and how glows again Then how thou shak'st thy bacchant Through its dead mass the incandescent locks !

verse,
While brazen pulses, far and near, As when upon the anvils of the brain
Throb thick and thicker, wild with fear It glittering lay, cyclopically wronght
And dread conjecture, till the drear By the fast-throbbing hammers of the
Disordered clangor every steeple rocks ! poet's thought !

IV.

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